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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kerbarian" data-source="post: 6663241" data-attributes="member: 40393">I think of the ranger's "thing" as knowing her enemies and environment and creating advantages out of that.  The tough part is:  how do you turn that into mechanical effects that feel flavorful?If you have bonuses against specific types of enemies, that feels flavorful but has the metagame problems the designers have talked about.  If you have simple attack/damage/etc. bonuses against all enemies (like Hunter's Mark or the 4e ranger), it doesn't feel to me like it has the flavor of knowing your enemies and exploiting their weaknesses.Maybe something where you study (as a bonus action?) specific enemies in combat (or when scouting beforehand) and then can use that for various effects against them.  It would take some work to make those feel distinct from fighter maneuvers, though.  Perhaps something around setting up creatures to have Vulnerability to your attacks?  Obviously it would have to be carefully balanced, but I think it would feel fun and flavorful.  Maybe a bit like a combo class.For subclasses, the obvious ones to me seem to be purely martial (hunter), beast master, and 1/3 caster like an Eldritch Knight -- maybe based on the druid spell list, maybe not.  For beast master, I like the idea of something a bit more magical like the conjure spells or Find Familiar where you get a fey spirit that takes the form of a beast.  That way it would make more sense (to me, at least) diverging from normal animal stats and having a different action economy than an animal fighting by your side.  It would also allow for some interesting higher-level abilities.I can also understand why the designers wanted to keep some healing ability in the class, though I don't like the poultice thing of their spell-less ranger at all.  Maybe a class feature like "Student of Anatomy" that would work a bit like the Healer feat.</blockquote>

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