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.

 

[Horwath]

I would add a feat for beatsmaster rangers;

Large companions;
+1 to any ability, you can now have large beast companion, total number of beasts hit dice(with ranger bonus hit dices) cannot exceed your ranger level.

*if the feat is to strong liem this, drop the +1 to ability part.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I'd like the animal companion to be able to include a riding beast option. If Halflings can get to ride giant badgers, why can't Humans get to ride plain old horses?

 

[CapnZapp]

The survey for concave style rangers is up at the D&D website:

Don't feel restricted to the survey, because, hey, this means there is another ranger thread on the Enworld forums and you know what that means.....

Can't we just paste the forum threads and not have to restate our opinions?

 

[CapnZapp]

Would you like to rate the revised ranger?

* No

Short survey...

 

[PrimevalSeeker]

What I wrote:

Overall the new ranger is a huge improvement over the previous version.

Natural explorer and primeval awareness are great, especially now that they are not restricted by terrains and the latter doesn’t use a spell slot. For a character who has ranger as the only class natural explorer does not feel too powerful. However, natural explorer could be considered strong when multi-classing, which would lead to one level dips. A solution could be that the bonuses of natural explorer could be spaced out over different levels. For example ignoring difficult terrain could be merged with fleet of foot and advantage to initiative and advantage to the first turn against creatures who haven’t taken an action could merge to form a separate feat given at a later level, maybe switch places with primeval awareness.

Situational abilities such as favored enemy and favored terrain should not exist, especially when they are presented as central to a less than strong chassis. Favored enemy is the only feature of the new ranger that I believe should be completely removed. Abilities like favored terrain or favored enemy feel too restrictive and they are not needed to form a complete image of a ranger. If rangers are good at hunting then this should be represented by abilities that work against all creatures. Also, favored enemy still suffers from the problem of the player making the wrong choice in the beginning (picking undead in a non-undead campaign) or forcing the DM to add monsters to the campaign that they didn’t intend to otherwise. A class feature that gives some kind of bonus to tracking or hunting creatures in general would be much better.

Beast conclave is great and it is good that the animal companion was kept as a subclass option. However, the hunter conclave could use some updates to become more interesting. Regarding the deep stalker subclass it would be nice if it was separated from the Underdark and it had more of a generic “wilderness” stalker theme or simply called “stalker conclave” as it is already mentioned somewhere in the UA. This is for the players who want to play a ranger that specializes in stealth, but without the caverns/Underdark/underground theme.

It would be more flavorful if every ranger subclass got thematically appropriate bonus spells and not just the deep stalker, since it would further distinguish each ranger subclass. More ranger specific spells are always welcome, as well as a subclass which focuses on the spellcasting aspect of the ranger (the seeker?), to go along with the animal companion, martial and stealth oriented subclasses.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I like the new ranger and hope it will replace the old one eventually after it was balanced.
For those who already have a phb the ranger should make its way into basic rules.
It really does not belong into the rules expansion.

 

[Jiggawatts]

One thing I really want to see is for the paladin and ranger to mirror each other in spellcasting (except for casting stat), the ranger prepares from his entire list, and each subclass gets extra prepared spells like all the paladin oaths receive (as the deep stalker already does).

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I put in a plug for magic fang and revive companion as new spells. I also asked if they were planning on subclasses for other "exotic" environments, like the feywild.

 

[The_Gneech]

Honestly, I feel like the ranger needs to be tossed and completely reworked from scratch. What we've got now is basically a re-warmed version of the 3.x ranger, who was never quite there either but at least made sense in that rule set. (I did a whole blog post about the topic last week, actually, for those interested: http://gneech.com/rpg/dndrpg/whither-the-ranger/ )

This new version doubles down on that "stuck in 3.x" feeling, with all those flat numerical bonuses. It's really very backwards-looking and not at all suited to the design goals or playstyle of 5E, in my opinion.

Also "favored enemy" is hella problematic and should just go.

-The Gneech

 

[Creamsteak]

I'm really not educated enough on the current state of the game in general to feel like I know how good or bad the revision was. One guy is playing it in my real life group, two sessions and only two combats so far, he's by far our biggest damage dealer... but I think that's more because he's the player that knows the game the best within the current new group. Like, everyone else is still figuring out how to calculate their attack bonuses. Also allowed it in my pbp and it was a popular choice, but obviously we are only a few rounds into the first combat there.

I will say I found the whole five mile giant sense thing disconcerting. I as the DM am not often even sure what would be within five miles of the party. I'm just confused by it, but then again maybe I misunderstand something because nobody else seemed to find that odd and it was sort of a feature of the normal 5e ranger with some slightly different range and verbiage. That said, One mile vs Five or Six miles are very different things to me.

I also didn't like the obviously fast and loose language they wrote up on some super specific stuff that I would expect to see more polished. Humanoids as a type is often too broad (I don't actually have a problem with this, just it feels weird to be better at killing drow because you used to hunt down goliath barbarians in the mountains or something). I'd even like to have it be more specific in other non race related ways, like I'm an expert at tracking mages or something, or chromatic dragons, or something.

The animal list... I'd like something a little more open. I don't have a solution, but I never liked a list and I also wasn't a huge fan of "CR" though that wasn't that bad. Given I have not even looked at the full ranger spell list I'm sure I'm not the most informed on the subject.