WotC Wants your Feedback On The Revised Ranger

I'm a big fan of the concave Rangers. When they're out in nature they can collect rainwater during a storm... they're great!

*EDIT* Okaaaaaayyy... so the merging of the two threads pretty much made this joke superfluous.

 

[Leatherhead]

I told them they needed to clear up the confusing rules regarding invisibility and Darkvision.
And Clean up some of the range issues on the 5' abilities.
Also, that they need more Birds and Horses.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't know how useful my feedback was, but given that this included a lot of "standard ranger options," this gave me a lot of opportunity to comment on how dull and blah so many of the standard ranger options are.

On the beastmaster, I said that it was a step in the right direction, but (a) most of it's abilities were dedicated to making the best suck less rather than making the beastmaster/beast awesome, and (b) the list still feels like it leaves out a lot of archetypes. I talked about maybe using a Conclave for each beast (or at least, like, category of beast, such as "cat/panther/saber-tooth-tiger" or "dog/wolf/dire wolf"), rather than trying to cram them all into one conclave, and maybe using unique stats for the beast that you can call so that I don't have to make that tough DM call of going "Your horse-archer sounds like a cool character, but you can't have a horse as a beast companion, so....why?"

On the Hunter, I was like, "This is yawn town, wake me when we get to Interestingvania." The Hunter is so crammed full of fiatan skillz it doesn't have room for much of an identity beyond them.

On the Deep Stalker, there were a few abilities where my reaction was also, "yawn," but it fared better. It's probably currently my favorite conclave.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Other than some clarification stuff, my biggest issue is that rangers no longer get pseudo-expertise with Natural Explorer. It's just wrong for rogues and bards to be better at Survival checks. But my reaction was generally very positive.

 

[Jester David]

I worry that the first level of this new ranger is pure power creep. It has one of the best first levels of any class. It's really appealing for dipping.

However, the ranger still gets very little in the way of power and offence after level 11. For level 11 onward, you might as well switch to fighter or rogue.

 

[Prakriti]

I worry that the first level of this new ranger is pure power creep. It has one of the best first levels of any class. It's really appealing for dipping.

Definitely this. They went too far with Natural Explorer (and Primeval Awareness). And let's not forget, all classes have highly situational and/or lackluster abilities. If the Ranger abilities were all super-useful and amazing, then we would have a new problem: All the other classes would look bad by comparison. And that's even worse. So, frankly, when I go down the list of Ranger abilities, I want to see a few clunkers that make me say, "Meh," because that's what I do with every class.

On the bright side, they have said that they over-tune new material on purpose, in order to generate interest among play-testers. Hopefully that's the case here, and the final-revised Ranger is toned down in power.

 

[Lord Twig]

I worry that the first level of this new ranger is pure power creep. It has one of the best first levels of any class. It's really appealing for dipping.

However, the ranger still gets very little in the way of power and offence after level 11. For level 11 onward, you might as well switch to fighter or rogue.

The first level of the Revised Ranger increases his chance to go first and and his chance to hit on the first round of combat. The actual benefit can range from good to none at all. The panic of getting advantage on initiative checks is overblown.

They get higher level spells, and more of them. You could say the same about the Paladin, but no one does...

 

[Prakriti]

The first level of the Revised Ranger increases his chance to go first and and his chance to hit on the first round of combat. The actual benefit can range from good to none at all. The panic of getting advantage on initiative checks is overblown.

Jester specifically mentioned dipping, i.e. multiclassing.

Edit: Woops. The Rogue and Ranger abilities overlap, rather than interact. I was mistaken. Disregard.

 

[Staccat0]

As someone who is playing this version of the class it kinda disheartens me to think that people who haven't seen it in action get an equal voice as people who have, but I'm not losing any sleep.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Just a reminder for everyone talking about level dips and multi-classing with this Ranger, Jeremy (or was it Mike?) have clearly stated that this version has not been optimized yet with multi-classing in mind. This is only a single-class playtest version. When the revised Ranger gets to a final version, it will have been adjusted so that a level dip or two will not seem the same OP that is does now. They have said this is true for all new classes still in the playtest stage.

 

[Jester David]

The first level of the Revised Ranger increases his chance to go first and and his chance to hit on the first round of combat. The actual benefit can range from good to none at all. The panic of getting advantage on initiative checks is overblown.

I didn't participate in any previous "panic" so I wouldn't know.

But giving people a bonus for going first and making it easier to go first synergies really well. And at 1st level, going first can win fights: dropping an enemy and negating damage before it even gets a turn. That's strong in and of itself, but adding the ability to just outright ignore any and all difficult terrain is really good on top of that.

I'd replace advantage with adding proficiency to initiative. The end game bonus is higher, but that comes into play far later, when the alpha strike is less devastating. The low levels it is weaker, thus making it more in line with other first level features.

I'd also move the difficult terrain avoidance back up to higher level. Just too good.
Give the ranger a small skill bonus instead. An expertise variant, perhaps limited to survival or perception. Something that doesn't directly help kill things...

They get higher level spells, and more of them. You could say the same about the Paladin, but no one does...

The paladin's spells directly translate to higher personal damage, due to the smite. New spells mean more damage when needed. And each level has a smite spell for extra utility.

The ranger doesn't have that. They can just cast hunter's mark for longer (and lose it when they get hit, since they're not proficient with Con saves). Their damage stays constant.
At the very best, this is true until 17th level when they can cast swift quiver, which is useful for archers and useless for two-weapon fighters. And comes at the cost of hunter's mark.
However, two weapon ranger has the same DPR at level 20 as at level 12. Even the archetype features are defensive.


Ranger spells are already pretty problematic.
First, the archetypal rangers (Robin Hood, Drizzt, Strider, Tanis Half-elven, Belkar Bitterleaf) are not spellcasters. Spells should be optional. Spells should be a secondary decision point. Like how warlocks pick a patron and a pact bond.
Second, nothing draws attention to the "class feature" spell (hunter's mark). You need to read far deeper than a casual glance at the class (the back of the book) to find that. All rangers should just get that for free, drawing eyes to the spell. If it could be buffed in the class, that would also be cool.