D&D 5E Which version of the Ranger?

[Bacon Bits]

I think there was a UA that had an alternate Best Companion stats as well, it you want to go through the UAs and look for it. Otherwise, I second the alternate class features UA, with the caveat that this was written without taking multiclassing into account. If you use it and the mutli-classing optional feature, it would be very easy for someone to "cherr-pick" some good abilities for a one or two level dip into Ranger. You might want to put some sort of restriction on that. It sounds like the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will include an updated version of these features.

Exhaustion should never have been assumed to be impossible to heal. That was a deeply questionable mechanic to begin with. Exhaustion as a penalty or cost is a just a poor balancing mechanic.

Berzerker Barbarian should just be limited to one Frenzy a day or once a short rest if the ability is that good. The exhaustion component should just be dropped entirely.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Here is our revised ranger, heavy from the UA versions, etc. We've had three players use it over the last 18 months and all like it.

 

[Gadget]

Exhaustion should never have been assumed to be impossible to heal. That was a deeply questionable mechanic to begin with. Exhaustion as a penalty or cost is a just a poor balancing mechanic.

Berzerker Barbarian should just be limited to one Frenzy a day or once a short rest if the ability is that good. The exhaustion component should just be dropped entirely.

After years of hindsight, I agree. The exhaustion mechanic could have been used in so many more places in the game as a status effect but for two things:

1. It tends to affect PCs more than Monsters/NPCs until multiple levels are applied (giving monsters a penalty to ability checks for the first level is not usually that great in many instances).
2. It is such a hard penalty to get rid of, in contrast to most other status in the game.

The designers seem to have realized this and tried to side-stop it by making later spells like Sickening Radiance inflict exhaustion that 'goes away when the spell ends.' One way I have seen to help mitigate it is to have Lesser Restoration remove one level of exhaustion, rather than requiring the 5th level Greater Restoration. It doesn't really make sense that a third level spell can literally raise the (newly) dead (Revivify), but have to wait until 5th level spells to remove one level of exhaustion.

 

[NotAYakk]

I really like the class feature variants Ranger. I took it and ran with it and made this:

A Revised Ranger -- Hunt's End

This is an attempt to make an interesting to play, distinct Ranger. It is compatible with every Ranger subclass I think, except the beast ones (which need rewriting). There are a few mechanics I introduced: 1. Every ranger gets a pet - a primal spirit in the form of an animal. Its HP scale...

forums.giantitp.com

It makes the "primal" animal companion a baseline feature, and rewrites the beast master to boost the animal companion.

I think it is modestly overtuned at this point.

 

[GlassJaw]

It makes the "primal" animal companion a baseline feature, and rewrites the beast master to boost the animal companion.

Looks more like a "beastmaster" base class than a ranger variant.

 

[TwoSix]

This is the version I use, but I'll certainly allow other versions that players might bring to my attention. There's tons of revised rangers out there, enough to match pretty much anyone's version of what the ranger should be.

 

[DEFCON 1]

People complain about the Ranger due to comparing it to other combat classes. When you white-room sim all the classes, the Ranger comes out low because the two main class features they get at low level (Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer) do not help mechanically in combat, unlike almost all the other combat classes which get at least one.

But honestly... a player will usually only notice this discrepancy if they are really familiar with how all the classes play through personal experience, or the party consists of like 3 other major combat classes all of which are played by experienced, number-crunching players. But if you have your Ranger player, a Cleric, a Rogue, a Warlock, and a tanking Barbarian... I honestly doubt that the Ranger player will ever notice anything subpar about the class during combat. Especially come 2nd level and they start using Hunter's Mark to add an extra 1d6 damage on every attack they do. Even moreso when they hit 3rd and take the Hunter subclass. And if they are going Archery rather than melee... even moreso on top of that.

The complaints about the Beastmaster subclass? Yeah... the idea that from 1st to 4th level the Ranger itself doesn't ever attack because the Action is spent by the beast companion attacking is kinda lame. So I get it. But I have a Beastmaster Ranger in my current game and I just houseruled that provided the Ranger took a companion of CR 1/8 or lower (normally a BM gets CR 1/4)... then the Ranger and the companion would both be allowed to attack each round. Seeing as how the Beastmaster feature adds the Ranger's proficiency bonus to the companion's AC, attacks, damage, and proficient skills and saves... it ended up being a wonderful compromise and she's never had any complaints...

...especially considering that she as the Ranger pretty dominates all the scouting, travel, and outdoor parts of the game. With the number of people here on the boards that complain that Fighters get "nothing" for the Exploration and Social pillars of the game and it's only all about combat for them... we have here the absolute best class for continuous Exploration but yet people still think the class stinks.

If you want to use an alternate Ranger, sure, I wouldn't say anyone's wrong for suggesting it. But I also think the people who say that the Ranger as displayed in the Player's Handbook is untenable as an option are being rather hyperbolic.

 

[Minigiant]

Wrong.

Yes and No.

The core question you must ask yourself is "why do you want to play ranger?"

Depending on your answer you might be fine with the PHB ranger, you might want a variant or howebrew ranger, or you might be better served as a fighter or rogue.

Lots of people complain because the D&D ranger is a specific thing that barely translates out of D&D. So they end up looking for something that isn't and wasn't going to be there and are disappointed.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Lots of people complain because the D&D ranger is a specific thing that barely translates out of D&D. So they end up looking for something that isn't and wasn't going to be there and are disappointed.

That's really not why people are complaining about the Ranger at all.

People are complaining because it has a bunch of features that are either extremely situational or never useful at all, and are regardless extremely poorly designed. No other class fails in its design to such a degree, not even close.

 

[Minigiant]

That's really not why people are complaining about the Ranger at all.

People are complaining because it has a bunch of features that are either extremely situational, never useful at all, and are regardless extremely poorly designed. No other class fails in its design to such a degree, not even close.

Nope. The problem is people expect ribbon features to power features.
Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer are supposed to be situational but powerful or general and weak. The class power was put into Spellcasting and Subclass. The only outright weak class feature is Primeval Awareness. The class is far from perfect but it isn't as bad as the complaints state.

People come at the class in the wrong angle by comparing it to rangers of other media or editions. And this feeds disappointment because they are looking for something that isn't going to be there.