Is the Beast Master Broken? Examining D&D’s Most Misunderstood Archetype
One of Dungeons & Dragons archetypes has been the subject of more internet debates and angry Facebook posts than any other. It seems as though almost everyone who has laid eyes on the Beast Master, the second archetype for the ranger class in the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, has some sort of problem with it. Ever since the Player’s Handbook release in 2014, social media has echoed with the outcry of “The Beast Master is broken!” It’s one of the most polarizing topics of this edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and the debate needs to be settled. Is the Beast Master broken?
The answer is yes, the Beast Master is broken.
But perhaps that’s a misleading statement. The Beast Master may be broken, yet that word may not mean what you think it means. Gamers use the word “broken” as a catchall for a litany of disparate complaints, which is great for discovering that a problem exists, but terrible for actually addressing that problem. If you’re a Dungeon Master and you want to try and fix the broken Beast Master’s at your table, you need to know exactly what you’re fixing. And if you’re a player who thinks the Beast Master is broken, you’d better figure out exactly what’s wrong so you can work with your DM to make your experience more fun.
What's Wrong with the Beast Master?
In D&D, we call a part of the game broken because it’s one of three things: not fun to play (or literally unplayable), not fun to play with, or not fun to adjudicate as a Dungeon Master. Of all these complaints, it is the first that dominates this discussion; people just don’t like playing Beast Masters. These three qualities are completely subjective, of course, but they have been so pervasive (and even extending to the ranger class as a whole) that even Wizards of the Coast has taken note of them and released several new visions for the ranger and the Beast Master for public playtesting through Unearthed Arcana.
One common complaint is that the Beast Master isn’t fun to play because it isn’t as powerful in combat as other classes, or even other ranger archetypes. The reasons cited are usually that the animal companion is too weak numerically, it can’t act in combat unless the ranger spends an action to command it, and (now that Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has been released) it doesn’t get any bonus ranger spells. Since so many of Dungeons & Dragons’ rules and player options are geared towards combat, concerns of being underpowered in combat are of primary concern for most players.
So what is a player (or a player-conscious Dungeon Master) to do?
When I ran Princes of the Apocalypse around its release in 2015, one of my players decided to play an air genasi Beast Master with a hawk companion (reskinned as an osprey, but that’s neither here nor there). Even then, I had caught wind of the foul press surrounding the Beast Master, and wanted to make sure my ranger player wasn’t walking into a trap option. We talked it over and eventually decide to give her hawk companion a few buffs to make it more powerful in combat. We decided on two things: first, it could attack independently after being directed to attack a creature. Second, we opted to give it one fighter level for every four levels she had in ranger. These changes seemed perfectly reasonable.
By 20th level, this bird had probably killed more creatures than anyone else in the party, and my players had taken to calling her companion “Murder Bird.” It became a badass animal companion, but I emerged from that campaign feeling that maybe I had put my thumb on the scale a little too hard.
Dan Dillon on Fixing What's Broken and Learning What Isn't
That campaign has been over for about a year now, but I’ve been thinking about how I could have made my ranger player’s experience smoother. I decided to speak with Dan Dillon, a game designer who has created Fifth Edition-compatible adventures and player content for Kobold Press, an excellent adventure for the D&D Adventurer’s League, and has even contributed to an undisclosed project with Wizards of the Coast. He’s also a moderator of a Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Facebook group boasting over 100,000 members, and is a battle-scarred veteran of the Beast Master arguments there. He’s seen every viewpoint imaginable on this issue, he's played a Beast Master ranger from 1st to 20th level, and judging by his headshot, he's probably a Beast Master himself! He’s the perfect person to ask for insight.
One of the first things I asked Dan about was if we could separate signal from noise on this argument. What criticism of the Beast Master are valid, and what criticisms are simply off-base? The first thing he told me was he played his ranger without any house rules and was incredibly effective. He suggests that people who have had “awful experiences with the Beast Master” might need to reread the Beast Companion feature in the Player’s Handbook and be sure they aren’t missing any of the myriad little buffs the animal companion gets. Most of the perceived mechanical weaknesses of the Beast Master come from an incomplete understanding of the Fifth Edition rules.
Most of my woes in my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, Dan assures me, came from my player selecting a CR 0 animal companion. Of course a CR 0 hawk isn’t going to fight very well, it only does a few points of damage! I didn’t need to give it fighter levels in order to give it more hit points, it gets more hit points naturally as the ranger levels up. It even gets to attack and take aiding actions without consuming the ranger’s action as the ranger gets more class features! Rather than haphazardly throwing buffs on this weak animal, it would have been simpler to just insist that my ranger player use a CR 1/4 beast instead.
But some of these mechanical woes were not without precedent. A quick reading of the Beast Master archetype shows that the Beast Companion class feature suggests taking a hawk (or a mastiff or a panther) as an animal companion! Dan says that it’s “setting [a player] up for failure…you should not take challenge rating 0 beasts. But if you do want to do that, work with your DM and ask if you can just have a falcon companion that you’ve trained,” and choose a ranger archetype like Hunter instead.
That said, this option isn’t available to people with rules-adherent DMs or those who are a part of Organized Play. That is a flaw of the Beast Master; it’s inflexible. If you want its combat ability to be on par with similar characters, you need to know what the good options are and optimize your build (yuck). This may be a fun puzzle for veteran gamers, but poses a discouraging barrier to entry for new players. Not only do you need to know how disastrously poor at fighting a CR 0 beast is compared to a CR ¼ creature, but you have to know what books to look in (including asking the DM to let you use the Monster Manual or even the monster appendix for Tomb of Annihilation), and then you need to do a bunch of calculations to improve its stats. It’s not impossible, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, either.
Dan’s recommended animal companions are flying snakes for flight without sacrificing much damage, wolves for pack tactics and their keen senses, giant poisonous snakes for swimming and truly incredible damage and accuracy, and pteranodons if you’re playing in Tomb of Annihilation. If you’re playing a halfling or a gnome, you can use this flying dinosaur as a mount. That’s incredible!
If you want a second opinion, the gentlemen at Nerdarchy have a video on their 5 favorite Beast Master companions.
Also note, according to admins the D&D Adventurer’s League, where character builds are limited to the Player’s Handbook plus one other book, monster stat blocks do not count as your +1. So, if you really want to optimize your Beast Master, you can use the beasts in Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Tomb of Annihilation while still using another book.
Taking all that into consideration, the Beast Master is in a strong place mechanically. Dan says one underappreciated aspect of the Beast Master is that its animal companion simply adds another body to the players’ side, allowing rogues in the party to Sneak Attack more often, other players to get advantage more often (through the Help action and possibly Pack Tactics), and by allowing the ranger seriously improved battlefield control, as the animal companion can attack enemies on the other side of cover the ranger can’t shoot behind, get on top of elevated terrain if it can fly, and even serve as a mount if your ranger is Small and the companion is Medium.
But don’t think for a moment that the Beast Master is perfect. While it's possible that the incredible outcry over this archetype is all due to people not reading the Player’s Handbook closely enough or the archetype requiring too much system mastery, it's more likely that there are some problems with the archetype that a close reading of the rules can't solve. One of Dan’s chief concerns is that, unlike the trio of new ranger subclasses presented in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, the Beast Master (and the Hunter) lack bonus spells to supplement their “very tiny number of spells known [as compared to paladins who prepare spells like a cleric].”
Maybe in a future article on D&D Beyond, Dan could show us the bonus spell lists for Beast Masters and Hunters that he's house ruled to improve their power level in games he runs.
Final Verdict
I never directly asked Dan if the Beast Master was “broken” or not. That’s not what I wanted to learn from him, because I knew from the word go that the Beast Master was broken, I just needed to learn how it was... and how it wasn't. As it turns out, the Beast Master is not broken mechanically; it’s broken in a subtler, more insidious way. A way that’s harder to fix than changing a few calculations and printing errata.
In fact, the Beast Master is quite mechanically sound, if played in a certain way. The rub is that most players have no idea what this specific way of having fun as a Beast Master is! The Beast Master is one of the most complex and choice-dependent archetypes in the entire Player’s Handbook, but the book provides no help on how to navigate its many incredibly important choices. Spellcasters like wizards and clerics face a similar problem, but there’s a significant difference: most of the spells a spellcaster picks aren’t central to their identity. If you’ve ever seen Critical Role, try to imagine Vex’ahlia without her bear Trinket. If Pike, the party cleric, didn’t like a spell she chose, she could switch it out the next morning with no trouble; specific spells aren't part of her identity, but Trinket is essential to Vex’s character.
This highlights another problem of the Beast Master that, while it doesn’t strictly make the archetype weaker in combat, does make it less fun to play: animal companion death. For most Beast Masters, their animal companion is like another character in terms of emotional weight, but the game rules don’t treat it that way. While most player characters in D&D are expected to be resurrected if they die (after a certain point), all the Player’s Handbook has to say if an animal companion dies is: “If the beast dies, you can obtain another one by spending 8 hours magically bonding with another beast that isn’t hostile to you, either the same type of beast or a different one.” It expects you to do the equivalent of rolling up a new character named Bob II after your first character, Bob, was killed by a wandering monster.
For players that invest emotionally in the lives of their animal companions, like Laura Bailey and her ranger Vex’ahlia, this just isn’t fun. If you’re playing at home and not in the Adventurer’s League where strict adherence to the rules is necessary, consider this house rule that Dan and I hashed out about in our conversion: “As a Beast Master, you can spend 8 hours performing a ritual of resurrection that returns your dead animal companion to life if it died of means other than old age.”
Even if you don’t use this house rule, the animal companion should at least be able to roll death saves. The Player’s Handbook says “special nonplayer characters” are supposed to fall unconscious and roll death saving throws when reduced to 0 hit points, just like player characters. You’re just being a jerk if you don’t consider animal companions special NPCs.
If the Beast Master’s problem is one of system mastery and misplaced emotional expectations, what is the best way to “fix” this “broken” archetype in play? If you’re a player, you’re practically there already just because you’ve read this article. Choose a powerful animal companion when you first choose this archetype, and make sure you’re communicating well with your Dungeon Master about little rules interactions like whether or not animal companions get death saving throws.
If you’re a Dungeon Master looking to make life easier for a player who wants to be a Beast Master, then start by talking with your player about what kind of beast they want to choose. If it’s something small like a hawk, a squirrel, or some other inconsequential CR 0 creature, consider letting that player play as a Hunter ranger instead with a minor noncombatant companion instead.
The Beast Master may be broken, but clear communication and a little ingenuity can fix it. Happy hunting!
James Haeck is a D&D fan, frequent paladin player, and a lover of roleplaying and tactical combat in equal measure. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his two animal companions, Mei and Marzipan, and writes as a freelancer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurer's League, Kobold Press, and EN Publishing. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Someone mentioned the Male Strider listed above, which was tuned in MoTF to have some distinctly BM friendly options, so many the smaller monstrosites could be tooled into it.
But the find steed spell sounds like a fun workaround, I feel awfully restricted by the base options for beasts. If you want anything effective in the long term youre looking at about 4 different options (without mucking with RAW) Perhaps some of the other beasts could do with at-will power buffing; eg bears can shrug off half damage as a reaction, eagles get Improved Critical etc.
Thanks for this! I'm still sorting out my level 1 Ranger and planning ahead way too much, and this gives me some good things to think about before I reach level 3.
Nope, it's still broken.
I did up a list of "exotic beast companion options" by scaling down suitably low-intelligent monstrosities (etc.) like the Owlbear to CR 1/4. I should polish that up and post it somewhere.
I believe one of the issue with Beastmaster is that many only consider it's usefulness in regards of the Combat pillar of the game. The Ranger is the class most geared toward the Exploration pillar and the Beastmaster companion helps being even more effective. Choosing a CR 0 hawk may not be really effective in combat, but is a lot more when scouting, tracking, or even for sending message.
Here is my attempt to "fix" the beastmaster ranger. Let me know what you think.
Beast Master
The Beast Master archetype embodies a friendship between the civilized races and the beasts of the wild. United in focus, beast and ranger fight the monsters that threaten civilization and the wilderness alike.
Ranger’s Companion
At 3rd level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/2 or lower. Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and any skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals 20 plus three times your ranger level. Like any creature, it can spend Hit Dice during a short rest to regain hit points. It has the number of hit dice listed in its stat block, or hit dice equal to half your ranger level, whichever is greater. Beast companions attack once per round, and cannot perfrom the multi-attack action, even if it is listed in their stat block (exception: see Beastial Fury, below).
It takes its turn on your initiative, and will automatically defend itself or you against any melee attackers. It will continue fighting the attacker(s) until neither you nor it is engaged by melee attackers, it is incapacitated, or you give it a different command using your Command Beast feature.
If you are incapacitated or absent, the beast acts on its own, focusing on protecting you and itself. The beast never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack.
While traveling through your favored terrain with only the beast, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
Command Beast
You have the ability to issue commands to your beast companion. On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move (no action required by you). You can use your action to verbally command it to take the Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action. You can also use your action to command it to defend one of your allies instead of you (as described above). Finally, you can use your action to direct it to attack any creature of your choosing. It will continue attacking that creature until the creature is defeated, your beast is incapacitated, or you issue a different command.
Raise Beast Companion
When your beast reaches zero hit points, it makes death saving throws like a player character or important NPC. If the beast dies, you can expend three spell slots (of any level) to perform a Raise Beast Companion ritual. The ritual takes one hour and can be performed during a short rest. Your animal companion is raised from the dead at full health and vitality. Alternately, you can obtain a new companion by spending 8 hours magically bonding with a beast that isn’t hostile to you and that meets the requirements.
Exceptional Training
Beginning at 7th level, you can use a bonus action (instead of an action) to use your Command Beast feature. In addition, your beast companion’s attacks are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance.
Bestial Fury
Starting at 11th level, your beast companion can make two attacks when it takes the Attack action, or it can take the Multiattack action if it has that action.
Share Spells
Beginning at 15th level, when you cast a spell targeting yourself, you can also affect your beast companion with the spell if the beast is within 30 feet of you.
I am glad you used vex as an example. Honestly I liked the UA version of beast master better. Trinket does not level up with the ranger. Its a running gag in the show that they almost always have to leave trinket behind. Matt had to create a poke ball so that trinket would not be cumbersome in higher level encounters. I am sorry but its cool in low levels but the lack of scaling is bad.
Yeah, the UA animal companion is much sturdier than the PHB animal companion, but it's still pretty fragile. The fundamental design problem that I see with the Beastmaster is that the animal companion is making melee attacks, and the Ranger is probably supporting it with ranged attacks. In practice (unless you pick an animal with the Flyby trait) the animal companion is inevitable going to act as the tank for the Ranger, despite the fact that the Ranger has higher HP and AC than the animal companion.
A 3rd level Beast Master can use the Attack action and command the animal companion to make an attack on the same turn by using the animal companion’s reaction.
The game mechanic that allows this is the Ready action. The Beast Master can command the Ready action without using his or her own action because it is not listed in the Beast Master archetype description as an action that requires the Beast Master to use his own action to command.
Ready action is not listed and neither are Hide, Search and Use an Object. Not being listed either means that it does not require an action to command or it means the animal companion can’t hide. I’m going with no action required for Hide and the other actions as well.
Ready action can be triggered later in the round so nothing prevents the Beast Master from making the trigger “when I say attack” anytime on the turn that the Beast Master and animal companion share.
This solves the problem of a TWF Beast Master not being able to get the bonus action attack with an off-hand weapon. Using Ready action to dodge can help keep the animal companion alive.
This doesn’t solve all the problems with the Beast Master archetype, it at least allows the Beast Master more flexibility in combat.
I am afraid it can't work that way.
If you command the animal companion to take the Attack action (with the command), the animal can't take another action, namely Ready or Hide action. Those would be two actions in a single turn.
Moreover, if the Ready and Hide action would require a command with no action, the description would say so, like it does for the movement.
The ranger is commanding the animal to take the Ready action to make an attack, he is not commanding the Attack action. The ranger is using his action to use the Attack action himself.
The PHB doesn’t mention Ready, Hide, Search and Use an Object because it doesn’t need to. Specific beats General. In this case the general is an animal NPC controlled by the DM. The DM can have the animal take any of these actions. The Beast Master archetype description only has to explain the ways it is different. In this case, the only thing that applies is that the Beast Master must give a verbal command.
The explanation of movement not requiring an action is provided for clarity, They didn’t explain the rest because of editing. It’s not a coincidence that the two ranger archetypes take up exactly one page in the PHB.
When I wrote “when I say attack” I was giving an example of the trigger required by the Ready action. I was explaining that the ranger can control the trigger. The trigger doesn’t have to be caused by an opponent.
Here is an example of play
3rd level Ranger (Beast Master) TWF and wolf animal companion
Ranger commands AC to take the Ready action to make an attack at the ranger’s signal (AC has used it’s action)
Ranger and AC move to be adjacent to opponent (Ranger and AC have used some movement but no actions)
Ranger signals wolf AC to trigger Ready action (no actions used)
Wolf AC makes an attack (wolf uses it’s reaction) - we will assume wolf hits and opponent fails it’s saving throw, opponent prone
Ranger attacks opponent with main-hand weapon (ranger uses his action)
Ranger attacks opponent with off-hand weapon (ranger uses bonus action)
Ranger still has reaction available for an Opportunity Attack, the wolf AC has already used it’s reaction and cannot make an Opportunity attack
Except that you can't command the animal companion to use a Ready Action. The subclass lists out the commands you can give your animal companion: the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action, as well as how to move. The subclass then goes over when the beast can act on its own without commands from the PC.
Now, there's nothing that specifically forbids the use of the Ready Action, but that's clearly outside the rules we're given, an interpretation that most of us feel isn't intended to work. I believe that most people here understand what you're trying to say Trirhabda, but just don't think that the rules actually allow it. The natural language that 5th edition uses implies that, even if the DM allows you to command a Ready action, it should have the same requirements as the other actions (Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help).
Do you think they intended that the animal companion can’t Hide. It is that omission that backs up my point. You either believe they made a mistake by omitting Hide or that omitting Hide was intentional. Omission of Search is strange too although an AC can still use passive perception. Use an Object would be playing fetch. Together, all of these mean that these omissions were intentional and that they expected DM’s and players to figure it out. I have suggested the use of the Ready action as a way for DM’s and player to run a Beast Master in a way that has more flexibility. If you think that the archetype has problems, then try it. If you’re sure it’s fine as it is, then don’t. But I’d be surprised if a player is ok with an AC not being able to Hide.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything. Perhaps the developers do intend that the beast companion can't hide during combat, since that's not something that most animals will think of doing in the middle of a fight. Sure, many ambush predators will hide before a fight, but I don't expect a feline (iconic ambush predator types) to suddenly break off a fight and go run and hide. So, its very conceivable that the writers very much did intend on leaving Hide out. Doesn't matter if you agree with leaving it off or not, but it is possible it was intended.
Search is another odd thing, because these aren't drug sniffing dogs here. Search checks are to find hidden compartments and traps - something that animals don't quite have the intelligence to do. How would you realistically train a wolf to find magical sigils? Or false bottom drawers? Arrow traps and pit falls in abandoned crypts, so that there's no scent trail to follow?
"Use an Object" isn't playing fetch. Using an object is throwing cantrips on the ground, or activating a magical wand, or using a healer's kit, or drawing a sword. Including this action would suggest a whole host of silliness.
There are reasonable explanations on why these actions aren't on the list. But we're not mind readers, so barring word from a Sage Advice tweet, so we can't say for definite one way or another. One thing we can do, however, is infer from established precedents. Your pet takes their turn conjointly as the Ranger. You need to use your action to command to do something other than move. So, even if you allow these other actions, that doesn't suggest that they should be allowed independent of your Ranger's action-based commands. The intent is very clearly that you give up one of your attacks to allow your pet to attack. Trying to loopholes in the rules comes off as nothing more than pure rules lawyering, and I cannot see that as anywhere near the intent of the rules.
What an animal companion can and cannot do with these actions is up to the DM. I would allow Use an Object to retrieve an unattended item. For more complex tasks I might require the ranger to use a spell to talk to the AC. Some things I wouldn’t allow. A 20th level fighter can Use an Object but the doesn’t mean he can do everything with it. For instance, he can’t use a wand unless he just wanted to break it.
The DM is certainly allowed to rule that there are things the AC simply can’t find.
Just to be clear, I’m saying that the ranger can command the Ready action to make an attack, not Ready the Attack action. Essentially it makes use of the AC’s action and reaction to make one attack.
The only way I know of to become hidden is to use the Hide action. Simply being out of sight does not make you hidden. If you are not hidden then opponents that are aware of your presence know your location even if they can’t see you. If you are in their line of sight and not invisible or heavily obscured then they can see you if you are not hidden. Not being able to Hide is a huge problem for the ranger and AC.
When you say “You need to use your action to command to do something other than move” you are adding words and meanings that simply aren’t there.
The intent of the rules seems to be to maintain action economy. Using the Ready action doesn’t break action economy because it uses both the AC’s action and reaction.
They have put out errata and didn’t bother to address any of this. In fact, the errata backs up my interpretation in my opinion.
I don’t believe this is a loophole. For one thing, it doesn’t make the beast master overpowered, it gives it flexibility to be a fun archetype to play. Every time I read that the Beast Master isn’t broken (underpowered) it’s usually with the caveat that they made some House-rule or Homebrew to make it fun to play. I’m sure that DM’s who go out of their way to make the archetype worse than it should be ( no death saving throws for AC is the big one that makes no sense to me) will not be swayed by my arguments. Other DM’s may insist on a ruling from Sage Advice before they will adapt it. But if you are a DM looking for a way to make the Beast Master fun to play, I hope this is helpful.
My son is playing a beast master, and just got his companion. What I am considering doing is allowing simple commands that will not require the ranger's action. For instance, maybe a guard command where the companion will guard the ranger and attack an opponent that is near the ranger... the ranger will not get to specify a particular opponent. Also, a general attack command, where the companion will attack the nearest opponent to itself. Again, the ranger will not specify a particular opponent.
If the ranger wants to issue a more complex command, such as attacking a specify opponent, then it will require the ranger's action.
In my opinion, the ranger could teach the companion the guard/attack command and have it be a one word command that takes no time to issue.