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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7701221" data-attributes="member: 37579">At low levels, a monster can only take a single hit. Dropping an enemy in round one greatly reduces the damage potential of the encounter. Even at higher levels it allows a solid alpha strike, with hunter's mark and the like.Right, which is why advantage is too strong. They're already fast, and advantage negates the chances of a bad roll. It changes the average initiative of a ranger with 16 Dexterity from 13 to 18. That's a big jump.Again, proficiency in initiative checks would be fine and unique. It has the same effect (the ranger is faster on average) but isn't quite as strong as advantage.Advantage on an attack is two chances to hit. That's not that different from Action Surge (which at low levels, often gets used after a miss). But it comes up every single encounters rather than once a short rest.The first round of an encounter at level 1 (or even 2-3) has enormous impact on the rest of the fight. And it doesn't hurt at higher levels either.Of course, there's also the Strength trap. Because you can be a dwarf ranger with double axes that hits off Str and has an ass initiative, and thus the ability confers no bonus.That the ability is only strong for half of rangers doesn't balanace it. You don't average out the power level across builds. The inability to use it in melee is another huge issue. It really favors ranged combatants, while rangers should be equally expected to rely on melee. An ability that also equally works with rangers wielding twin weapon is needed.Brainstorming, I'd give the ranger a bonus to movement in the first round, allowing time to position themself. Or a small bonus to damage if they move and attack. You mean something like a constant +2 to damage to all humanoids? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The other factors are a big thing. The ranger needs to be the exploration pillar class. But it can't be the king of exploration and the wild and equal in combat to all the other classes. Because that just makes it outright better.In the same way it'd be (or is, depending on whom you ask) poor design making a fighter better at combat than any other class and balancing it with fewer out of combat options.The ranger needs to be competitive in terms of damage, especially at higher levels. But, repeating, an ability that doesn't synergize with one classical type of ranger, doesn't work with alternate ability score choices, makes the class too appealing for a single level dip, and is potentially really strong at low levels. That's just not a well designed ability.Right. He used abilities unrelated to his being a ranger and related to his being a drow.Actually casting ranger spells was not a part of his character. It's not a part of any well-known ranger. There needs to be an option.</blockquote>

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