
Ranger Legacy This doesn't reflect the latest rules and lore. Learn More Class Details
Rough and wild looking, a human stalks alone through the shadows of trees, hunting the orcs he knows are planning a raid on a nearby farm. Clutching a shortsword in each hand, he becomes a whirlwind of steel, cutting down one enemy after another.
After tumbling away from a cone of freezing air, an elf finds her feet and draws back her bow to loose an arrow at the white dragon. Shrugging off the wave of fear that emanates from the dragon like the cold of its breath, she sends one arrow after another to find the gaps between the dragon’s thick scales.
Holding his hand high, a half-elf whistles to the hawk that circles high above him, calling the bird back to his side. Whispering instructions in Elvish, he points to the owlbear he’s been tracking and sends the hawk to distract the creature while he readies his bow.
Far from the bustle of cities and towns, past the hedges that shelter the most distant farms from the terrors of the wild, amid the dense-packed trees of trackless forests and across wide and empty plains, rangers keep their unending watch.
Deadly Hunters
Warriors of the wilderness, rangers specialize in hunting the monsters that threaten the edges of civilization—humanoid raiders, rampaging beasts and monstrosities, terrible giants, and deadly dragons. They learn to track their quarry as a predator does, moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble. Rangers focus their combat training on techniques that are particularly useful against their specific favored foes.
Thanks to their familiarity with the wilds, rangers acquire the ability to cast spells that harness nature’s power, much as a druid does. Their spells, like their combat abilities, emphasize speed, stealth, and the hunt. A ranger’s talents and abilities are honed with deadly focus on the grim task of protecting the borderlands.
Independent Adventurers
Though a ranger might make a living as a hunter, a guide, or a tracker, a ranger’s true calling is to defend the outskirts of civilization from the ravages of monsters that press in from the wild. In some places, rangers gather in secretive orders or join forces with druidic circles. Many rangers, though, are independent almost to a fault, knowing that, when a dragon or a band of orcs attacks, a ranger might be the first—and possibly the last—line of defense.
This fierce independence makes rangers well suited to adventuring, since they are accustomed to life far from the comforts of a dry bed and a hot bath. Faced with city-bred adventurers who grouse and whine about the hardships of the wild, rangers respond with some mixture of amusement, frustration, and compassion. But they quickly learn that other adventurers who can carry their own weight in a fight against monstrous foes are worth any extra burden. Coddled city folk might not know how to feed themselves or find fresh water in the wild, but they make up for it in other ways.
Creating a Ranger
As you create your ranger character, consider the nature of the training that gave you your particular capabilities. Did you train with a single mentor, wandering the wilds together until you mastered the ranger’s ways? Did you leave your apprenticeship, or was your mentor slain—perhaps by the same kind of monster that became your favored enemy? Or perhaps you learned your skills as part of a band of rangers affiliated with a druidic circle, trained in mystic paths as well as wilderness lore. You might be self-taught, a recluse who learned combat skills, tracking, and even a magical connection to nature through the necessity of surviving in the wilds.
What’s the source of your particular hatred of a certain kind of enemy? Did a monster kill someone you loved or destroy your home village? Or did you see too much of the destruction these monsters cause and commit yourself to reining in their depredations? Is your adventuring career a continuation of your work in protecting the borderlands, or a significant change? What made you join up with a band of adventurers? Do you find it challenging to teach new allies the ways of the wild, or do you welcome the relief from solitude that they offer?
QUICK BUILD
You can make a ranger quickly by following these suggestions. First, make Dexterity your highest ability score, followed by Wisdom. (Some rangers who focus on two-weapon fighting make Strength higher than Dexterity.) Second, choose the outlander background.
The Ranger Table
Level | Proficiency | Features | Spells | —Spell Slots per Spell Level— | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | ||||
1st | +2 | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
2nd | +2 | 2 | 2 | — | — | — | — | |
3rd | +2 | 3 | 3 | — | — | — | — | |
4th | +2 | 3 | 3 | — | — | — | — | |
5th | +3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — | |
6th | +3 | Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer Improvements | 4 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — |
7th | +3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | |
8th | +3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | |
9th | +4 | — | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — |
10th | +4 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — | |
11th | +4 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — | |
12th | +4 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — | |
13th | +5 | — | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — |
14th | +5 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — | |
15th | +5 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | — | |
16th | +5 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | — | |
17th | +6 | — | 10 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
18th | +6 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | |
19th | +6 | 11 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | |
20th | +6 | 11 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Class Features
As a ranger, you gain the following class features.
Hit Points
Hit Dice: 1d10 per ranger level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per ranger level after 1st
Proficiencies
Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields
Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons
Tools: None
Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity
Skills: Choose three from Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, and Survival
Equipment
You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
- (a) scale mail or (b) leather armor
- (a) two shortswords or (b) two simple melee weapons
- (a) a dungeoneer’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack
- A longbow and a quiver of 20 arrows
Favored Enemy
Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy.
Choose a type of favored enemy: aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select two races of humanoid (such as gnolls and orcs) as favored enemies.
You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them.
When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice that is spoken by your favored enemies, if they speak one at all.
You choose one additional favored enemy, as well as an associated language, at 6th and 14th level. As you gain levels, your choices should reflect the types of monsters you have encountered on your adventures.
Natural Explorer
You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
- Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
- Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
- Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
- If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
- When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
- While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level.
Fighting Style
At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options.
You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.
Archery
You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Defense
While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
Dueling
When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Two-Weapon Fighting
When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.
Spellcasting
By the time you reach 2nd level, you have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells, much as a druid does. See Spells Rules for the general rules of spellcasting and the Spells Listing for the ranger spell list.
Spell Slots
The Ranger table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your ranger spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.
For example, if you know the 1st-level spell animal friendship and have a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell slot available, you can cast animal friendship using either slot.
Spells Known of 1st Level and Higher
You know two 1st-level spells of your choice from the ranger spell list.
The Spells Known column of the Ranger table shows when you learn more ranger spells of your choice. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 5th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level.
Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the ranger spells you know and replace it with another spell from the ranger spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.
Spellcasting Ability
Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your ranger spells, since your magic draws on your attunement to nature. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a ranger spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.
Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier
Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier
Ranger Archetype
At 3rd level, you choose an archetype that you strive to emulate: the Hunter that is detailed at the end of the class description or one from another source. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 11th, and 15th level.
Primeval Awareness
Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one ranger spell slot to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you (or within up to 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn’t reveal the creatures’ location or number.
Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking this feature to take a feat of your choice instead.
Extra Attack
Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Land’s Stride
Starting at 8th level, moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can also pass through nonmagical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.
In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such those created by the entangle spell.
Hide in Plain Sight
Starting at 10th level, you can spend 1 minute creating camouflage for yourself. You must have access to fresh mud, dirt, plants, soot, and other naturally occurring materials with which to create your camouflage.
Once you are camouflaged in this way, you can try to hide by pressing yourself up against a solid surface, such as a tree or wall, that is at least as tall and wide as you are. You gain a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks as long as you remain there without moving or taking actions. Once you move or take an action or a reaction, you must camouflage yourself again to gain this benefit.
Vanish
Starting at 14th level, you can use the Hide action as a bonus action on your turn. Also, you can’t be tracked by nonmagical means, unless you choose to leave a trail.
Feral Senses
At 18th level, you gain preternatural senses that help you fight creatures you can’t see. When you attack a creature you can’t see, your inability to see it doesn’t impose disadvantage on your attack rolls against it.
You are also aware of the location of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you, provided that the creature isn’t hidden from you and you aren’t blinded or deafened.
Foe Slayer
At 20th level, you become an unparalleled hunter of your enemies. Once on each of your turns, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack roll or the damage roll of an attack you make against one of your favored enemies. You can choose to use this feature before or after the roll, but before any effects of the roll are applied.
Ranger Archetypes
The ideal of the ranger has classic expressions. These are detailed below.
Hunter Legacy This doesn't reflect the latest rules and lore. Learn More
Emulating the Hunter archetype means accepting your place as a bulwark between the people you protect and the terrors of the wilderness. As you walk the Hunter’s path, you learn specialized techniques for fighting the threats you face, from rampaging ogres to towering giants and terrifying dragons.
Hunter’s Prey
At 3rd level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.
Colossus Slayer
Your tenacity can wear down the most potent foes. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, the creature takes an extra 1d8 damage if it’s below its hit point maximum. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.
Giant Killer
When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provided that you can see the creature.
Horde Breaker
Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
Defensive Tactics
At 7th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.
Escape the Horde
Opportunity attacks against you are made with disadvantage.
Multiattack Defense
When a creature hits you with an attack, you gain a +4 bonus to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the turn.
Steel Will
You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Multiattack
At 11th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.
Volley
You can use your action to make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon’s range. You must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and you make a separate attack roll for each target.
Whirlwind Attack
You can use your action to make a melee attack against any number of creatures within 5 feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target.
Superior Hunter’s Defense
At 15th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.
Evasion
When you are subjected to an effect, such as a red dragon’s fiery breath or a lightning bolt spell, that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.
Stand Against the Tide
When a hostile creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to force that creature to repeat the same attack against another creature (other than itself) of your choice.
Uncanny Dodge
When an attacker that you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to halve the attack’s damage against you.
A lot of it is hold-over from the early days of 5e. The class was objectively the worst option because so many features are situational to the point where you can go an entire 1-20 campaign without ever touching any of them, and you get an absolutely abysmal number of spells. Even the 1/3rd caster subclasses for rogue and fighter get more than the ranger. Also, the PHB ranger is laughable, and that was what a lot of people wanted to play.
Edit: PHB beast master, not PHB ranger
It wasn't until Xanthar's and Tasha's started to come out that ranger really started to come onto even playing field.
This class is awesome, I don't know why it gets so much hate.
Fair point. I should have been a bit more specific. I can’t think of a scenario where they’d be useful compared to just attacking. To even consider using, you need at least 3 enemies within the radius of that ability. Whirlwind Attack specifically suffers a lot from this, because since those three all have to be within 5 feet of you, you can replace it entirely with the Horde Breaker ability, and since you’re not using the attack action, it doesn’t pair with Two-Weapon Fighting. Volley fairs better, because range and a 10 ft radius, but it’s highly unlikely there’s enough people in that radius to really justify the ability. Focus fire is generally better than damaging as many enemies as possible because an enemy at 1 hit point can deal exactly as much damage as they could at 100 hit points.
The only real advantage I can think of off the top of my head. they’re both technically immune to the Slow spell. That’s why I was trying to see if it’s better in practice than in theory.
Do you also think shatter and thunderclap never have scenarios where they're useful?
Has anyone ever used Hunter’s 11th level feature, either Volley or Whirlwind Attack? I can’t think of a scenario where either would be useful, but Volley is clearly more powerful
PHB Beast Master, yeah that’s bad. Tasha’s Beast Master is actually pretty great. You can command your beast as either a bonus action OR as part of the attack action, so you can always make at least one attack. If the beast dies, you can revive them for a spell slot after 1 minute, and you can change between the 3 different options every long rest. And the damage is decent
Beast Master. It is... not great. If the companion were a little stronger and didn't cost your action to command, I'd consider it.
Primal Awareness says "you learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class if you don't already know them... These spells don't count against the number of ranger spells you know." Based on the wording, they aren't one and done castings because you learn them. You get to cast them for free once as well as with any slots you have. Plus, that's been the direction they have been heading in ever since Tasha's came out.
Something I wondered. Can you cast the Primal Awareness spells using spell slots or only once per day?
Hunter is now the weakest ranger subclass, change my mind
never have i ever played dnd
If it's me building a Drakewarden I'm 100% theming it around a dragon-dagger flute that I play a tune to summon it each time.
*glass shattering noise* never noticed the level 15 thing. Wow only 3 don't
am i missing something? i cannot find the tasha's beastmaster beasts to put on my character sheet.
It's in character creation and Tashas. Just look there.
Where's the mention of TCoA Beast master variant shouldn't that be included on this page?
I think you are reading something into that which is not intended.
"A swarm of intangible nature spirits has bonded itself to you and can assist you in battle. Until you die, the swarm remains in your space, crawling on you or flying and skittering around you within your space."
Notice that this sentence does not say anything like "if you die, you can never get your swarm back". To look at this from game rules perspective, for every other character class/race where the creature is unconscious (i.e. at zero hit points), unless there is something that would enable that character to get back to 1 HP, you are now in a position where you can not take any actions. For the Swarmkeeper, even when that character is sleeping, unconscious, or even at 0 HP, their swarm remains with them, because they are still alive.
How many other character classes allow you to actively maintain any of your abilities or features when you are otherwise unable to take any actions? "Until you die" means just that with respect to this class feature - only death will stop you from using your swarm. If you are brought back from the dead, there is no implied restriction in this statement preventing you from using it again.
It was almost definitely short sighted writing with the intention that the Swarm is permanent except when your character is dead and returns if you are resurrected.
"Until you die" makes the swarmkeeper ranger, to my knowledge, the only instance in 5e of an explicit condition to lose a class feature with no inbuilt way to get it back or replace it. Except for maybe reincarnated bladesingers before it was open to non elves. There's no ritual or rest timer to get a new swarm if you're resurrected and it doesn't say yours comes back. It just leaves your space.
Not even clerics get ****ed like this. People pretend warlocks do, but at least that's not in a book.
I'd at least allow players to retrain the subclass for free if not ignore that line & house rule it coming back when they do. Maybe even say the swarm lifts them back to their feet at the end and chitter happily that their friend is here. Or in surprise because they ate their master's corpse.
Has anyone here seen the movie Willard? It's pretty much about a Swarmkeeper who uses rats