Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="flametitan" data-source="post: 7701130" data-attributes="member: 6822731">I went back a page to grab the UA document and accidentally broke the survey.I think there's some nice add-ons, but as I haven't had a real opportunity to use it (as I've been using my group as an AL game), I don't know if it fixes the right problems.In particular I'm still mixed on just how tough the beast is to kill, and whether that's a good thing. Yes, it sucks to have the beast die in 2 hits and lose it forever, but I still think having the chance for your beast to die and stay dead is important (though maybe not have it die in just two hits). I've never thought of D&D as a character arc heavy game, but the death of a pet has some interesting narrative hooks to grab on to, which this BM gets rid of entirely.The action economy fix is useful to those who complained about it earlier, but all it currently does is simply makes the beast attacks come sooner. After 11th, you're still mostly on par with the old BM, you just have a whirlwind attack every once in a while. It's "better" technically, but it isn't really a "spike" in power so much as an increase in versatility. Mobs die faster, but there's no means of translating this to fewer, more durable foes (like how a fighter can spread their attacks around multiple targets or pile it onto one foe).Not only that, but the 15th level ability also uses the beast's reaction, which means you have a reduction of dpr in order to increase survivability. Whether that's a meaningful choice to make or bad design is not something I have experience with.Finally, my last question is: How will this affect the core +1 mantra? It's been one of the few unbending rules AL has had (With the exceptions of backgrounds), and I seem to recall in the few times Mearls has brought up the "major rules expansion" in the surveys that at one point he said that he wanted the book to encourage the idea that you shouldn't be mixing and matching content from multiple sources. With the new ranger, even as similar as they are, they're different enough that subclasses could try to take advantage of different core features; not to mention that they made the core level 5 feature into a subclass feature on the new Ranger. How will new subclasses be built? Will they all just conveniently have Extra attack at level 5; will they be built for one Ranger but not the other? Will they specifically ignore the idea that "one expansion book is all a single character ever needs" specifically for the Ranger?</blockquote>

Verification