I guess it depends on character goals, function within a party, and player desire, but when I compare the class and subclass abilities of other martials (fighters, paladins, barbarians, rogues, monks, even some warlocks) ranger spells really make me want to play a ranger. 3rd level spells in particular. Conjure animals is a must pick even if you never used it in combat encounters. If you do use it in combat encounters it can fill any needed roll at a moment’s notice, even if you only conjure one or two beasts. Plant growth is combat encounter ending and world changing. And water breathing (for a non-full spellcaster) is amazing.
A ranger will do better single target weapon damage with some multiclassing. But you know what? Just about every class will! One to three level dips in almost any class will wield big dividends due to the design of 5E classes with generous front loading.
Yes. Conjure animals is a great spell and tool for the ranger. It comes in at level 9. So the question for each individual player is “Do I fight alone (ranger 5/rogue x/fighter x)? Or do I fight with buddies (ranger 9+)?”
I guess it depends on character goals, function within a party, and player desire, but when I compare the class and subclass abilities of other martials (fighters, paladins, barbarians, rogues, monks, even some warlocks) ranger spells really make me want to play a ranger. 3rd level spells in particular. Conjure animals is a must pick even if you never used it in combat encounters. If you do use it in combat encounters it can fill any needed roll at a moment’s notice, even if you only conjure one or two beasts. Plant growth is combat encounter ending and world changing. And water breathing (for a non-full spellcaster) is amazing.
A ranger will do better single target weapon damage with some multiclassing. But you know what? Just about every class will! One to three level dips in almost any class will wield big dividends due to the design of 5E classes with generous front loading.
Yes. Conjure animals is a great spell and tool for the ranger. It comes in at level 9. So the question for each individual player is “Do I fight alone (ranger 5/rogue x/fighter x)? Or do I fight with buddies (ranger 9+)?”
Arguably you can do a lot for the party with more skill expertise and fighter maneuvers as well.
And a ranger/fighter/rogue is awesome starting about what? Level 10? Level 11? So like you kind of mentioned earlier, Optimus, follow your bliss. Some folks like getting that 11 more points of damage 4 times, or being a rogue lite. It’s all awesome!
Recently retired a 8/3 ranger cleric at level 11. I found myself frustrated by the spells known mechanic so the few levels of cleric really helped broaden my spell access. I took one level of cleric before level 5 and the extra level waiting for extra attack was super painful knowing I could already have it*. It didn't really help my damage or hurt it really. If you went the archery route with sharpshooter you should be able to keep up reasonably for damage throughout the game to the other martial characters. You will fall a little behind, but with the ranger's ability to control battlefields you should be fine.
If you are concerned about roguey skills, then pass without trace really fixes a ton of that. But a level dip into rogue isn't that bad either if you just want to steal a d6 damage and some expertise on your skills. As said above try not to think about the spells as spells and think about them as class abilities. Sometimes that helps.
Personally I am a big fan of most ranger subclasses through level 12. I think the optimum levels to dip are: 4 (after you grab the subclass), 5 (after you get extra attack and second lvl spells), 9 (after you get 3rd level spells),
*but between level 3/1 and 5/1 the healing and bless I got from cleric saved the party from two TPK situations.
And a ranger/fighter/rogue is awesome starting about what? Level 10? Level 11? So like you kind of mentioned earlier, Optimus, follow your bliss. Some folks like getting that 11 more points of damage 4 times, or being a rogue lite. It’s all awesome!
Level 6 really... I would go ranger 5 then rogue 2 (Cunning Action is just too good) then fighter 3. You get the expertise at level 6 and sneak attack is just good gravy for damage. Cunning Action at level 7 makes you more able to maneuver and could help with sharpshooter if you hide.
Overall that build would put you at level 10 which is what I would generally plan for as 90% of campaigns end by that point.
Recently retired a 8/3 ranger cleric at level 11. I found myself frustrated by the spells known mechanic so the few levels of cleric really helped broaden my spell access. I took one level of cleric before level 5 and the extra level waiting for extra attack was super painful knowing I could already have it*. It didn't really help my damage or hurt it really. If you went the archery route with sharpshooter you should be able to keep up reasonably for damage throughout the game to the other martial characters. You will fall a little behind, but with the ranger's ability to control battlefields you should be fine.
If you are concerned about roguey skills, then pass without trace really fixes a ton of that. But a level dip into rogue isn't that bad either if you just want to steal a d6 damage and some expertise on your skills. As said above try not to think about the spells as spells and think about them as class abilities. Sometimes that helps.
Personally I am a big fan of most ranger subclasses through level 12. I think the optimum levels to dip are: 4 (after you grab the subclass), 5 (after you get extra attack and second lvl spells), 9 (after you get 3rd level spells),
*but between level 3/1 and 5/1 the healing and bless I got from cleric saved the party from two TPK situations.
Ranger/Cleric is an amazing MC as you get a LOT of value from 2 levels cleric.
So I've got this level 4 wood elf ranger. I'm a bit stuck where to go. I hate multiclassing, but it seems like you have to in 5e to actually make a ranger do what it's supposed to do. Just curious what others have done with this class after level 4 or 5
interesting, perhaps my power gaming, min/max friend is just crazy then
A lot of min maxing of multi-class builds is designed not around actual usefulness but what they can do in a single perfect moment that is almost never seen in actual play. In actual practice multi-classes tend to be more versatile but actually weaker in general. So it's not so much crazy as misguided by the perception that many multi-class guide creators push out for the player base to consume.
Both of these are overexaggerating the nature of the situation. In reality, it's a very happy medium. Ranger can not only be fun, but mechanically effective with single class and multiclass builds.
While there are certainly ridiculous white room builds out there, Ranger multi-classes are generally a thing because they deliver on some build goal. And none of them take longer to deliver on significant gains than it takes to wait for those 3rd level spells at 9th level Ranger.
Ranger multi-classes fall under two categories. Making the Ranger less magical, and making the Ranger more magical.
Plenty of people don't want to use Conjure Animals and Lightning Arrow to boost damage, but do want to be a super deadly combatant. Fighter and to a lesser extent Rogue is perfect for this. Rogue excels at building a non-magical exploration guy, but also shines in allowing the Ranger to expand their skill repertoire wildly thanks to how flexible the expertise are.
Meanwhile Cleric (and Druid, although I don't see that often) are awesome when you want to dial up the spellcasting even more. You get closer to the capabilities of a 2/3 spellcaster (something 5e did away with), and are less worried about damage production because your expanded spellcasting brings plenty of value to the party.
Since effectiveness is a metric you seem to care about, and Rangers can be built to be effective in any number of ways, what you want is all that really matters here. Since you seem interested in navigation and battlefield control and don't like multiclassing the decisions seems real simple. These are things that fall naturally into the Ranger toolkit, so there is no need to press your sensibilities with a multiclass.
3rd level spells are about the only reason to stay with ranger until 9th level IMO but you have to be ok with Conjure Animals being your big go to for damage past 11th level.
Also assuming your game is using feats? You might want to stay in ranger just to get to that ASI/Feat at level 8 as feats are generally pretty good overall.
What you get if you stay in ranger:
Higher level spells, good class features (if you are using Tasha's ranger), and subclass features (YMMV).
What you get if you MC out:
Depends on the MC....with rogue you get expertise, single target damage, and cunning action at 2 levels rogue....which is always amazing.
Fighter- Fighting style, Second Wind, Action Surge (Great for nova damage), subclass (Battlemaster stacks VERY well with Sharpshooter thanks to precision attack)
Cleric- Cantrips (Guidance is pretty legit), versatility with healing/buff/debuff and swapping spells out per day, Channel Divinity (War stacks well with Sharpshooter) and cleric level 1 stuff (Good ones to look at are: War for extra bow attack, Order for helping your party attack, Twilight for ADV on initiative and sharable darkvision that goes out to 300ft)
Overall it depends on what you want from the class....for damage you are generally fine with ranger as long as you take sharpshooter and archery style. You can do more damage with a fighter dip into BM but you lose out on spell progression which could affect versatility. Rogue gives you better skill checks, mobility, and single target damage but same setback as fighter. Cleric is more about leaning into versatility and having options for how you handle situations.
No wrong answer as long as you are having fun though!
yeah. Because Conjure Barrage and lightning Arrow aren't going to do a bunch of damage for you and are going to be short circuited by the first enemy mage willing to fireball members of his own party so your summons all die regardless of their saves.
That's the part people never mention about Conjure animals. That if you want 8 of them the highest hp that they have is 22. (there is one beast that has higher but it can't attack, and only gives 6 temporary hp and the benefit of remove curse if touched.) Considering that fireballs average damage is 24 at base casting. Well people can really do the math. And it's not really any better for the version where you summon 4 either. They survive a bit longer with the other two options but you also only get 1 or 2 of such creatures. And upcasting the spell doesn't make them stronger. It only makes more of them to die in one shot like your Anakin Skywalker murdering Younglings.
They aren't doing much damage comparatively no.
Also you say fireball but how many creatures really have fireball? And of this who wants to fireball themselves when surrounded by creatures? Also good chance they make the save and you just about killed yourself with a fireball and still have creatures to deal with.
Also any damage they take is damage the party isn't taking and an action and spell slot wasted to not even hurt you.
even if you only get one round of damage or damage mitigation the Conjure animals is worth it.
Exactly its a must pick
I used Fireball just as an easy to recognize stand in for AoE. Lots of things have AoE's that would work just as well.
And no. They dont' really do significantly more damage than either spell that I mentioned. It doesn't actually require either spell I mentioned to hit more than a couple creatures to do basically the same damage that the conjure animals are going to do. The reason being that each of those creatures Damage is actually fairly low if your going for either the 4 or the 8 creatures. They'll be doing something like 1d6+4 if that usually. Which means they have an average damage of 7. With no damage on anything that they don't actually hit.
Conjure Barrage does 3d8 to each creature it hits. This means it's average damage per target is 12, And will still do 6 damage if they make the save.
So this means that it doesn't take much for Conjure barrage to do as much or more damage than the 4 or 8 of them are going to do. And even if everything makes it's save and every summoned creature makes it's attack roll. It still does almost as much over the same number of targets. But for each failed Attack or Each Failed Save you can basically reduce the number of targets Conjure Barrage has to hit by 1 to keep pace.
The 1 beast and 2 beast variants hit better and do more damage but you also have the problem that there is a lot less of them. But it would Require Conjure Barrage to potentially have to hit a bit more or have a few more failed saves to keep pace.
And yes I'm aware of the argument that each Conjured Beast that takes a hit is a hit that the party doesn't take. yes this is true if enemy is forced to hit each one individually or they are all far enough away that the AoE doesn't catch your party as well. But for each party member they can hit while hitting the Beasts. That's just outright loss of value to the defense argument.
Conjure Animals Advantage is not because it does more damage. Or because it's greatly defensive. It's advantage is that it does a bit of Both AND it's not held to a specific area of effect like certain other spells like Conjure Barrage and lightning Arrow are. Making it easier to work into things or to bolster things just a little bit sometimes. But it has it's own failings as well. There are arguments and reasons and times to use all 3 spells Or decide not to even use 1 or 2 of them based upon your own style.
lightning Arrow is By far the Best Single Target amongst the Three for Example. The splash damage is nice but it's real advantage is that it's a massive boost of damage on top of what an attack with your bow can already do along with all of it's other modifiers that you can apply to that attack.
And Conjure Barrage is going to be the best choice when you need an AoE attack. is it the strongest AoE attack out there that classes can do? No it's not. But then it's not necessarily meant to be. But when the ranger needs one it's going to do a lot more in that situation than Conjure animals is going to do.
There is no one best spell. But there is a best Spell for your build or the particular situation that you are in. Depending on your play style or what you pick the spells for.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Conjure Animals does not let you intentionally summon wolves, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about how it works on the table. It's entirely GM-dependent. A vindictive GM could hand you 8 CR 0 creatures without violating any rules text, and the thing is, the spell doesn't even have guidance for the GM when it comes to picking creatures to hand out, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about whether it's cool to hand out wolves. If you want a real-world example, on a regular basis people ask in the rules forum what happens when you cast this spell or ones like it and target unoccupied spaces in the air. Answers vary wildly by GM who answers - some refuse to summon creatures into the air at all, some will only summon flying creatures into the air, and some will summon land creatures and let them fall. It's also completely GM-dependent whether the spell summons creatures native to the local biome or not, since again, the spell has no guidance whatsoever, so it's up to your GM's gut/fiat.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Conjure Animals does not let you intentionally summon wolves, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about how it works on the table. It's entirely GM-dependent. A vindictive GM could hand you 8 CR 0 creatures without violating any rules text, and the thing is, the spell doesn't even have guidance for the GM when it comes to picking creatures to hand out, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about whether it's cool to hand out wolves. If you want a real-world example, on a regular basis people ask in the rules forum what happens when you cast this spell or ones like it and target unoccupied spaces in the air. Answers vary wildly by GM who answers - some refuse to summon creatures into the air at all, some will only summon flying creatures into the air, and some will summon land creatures and let them fall. It's also completely GM-dependent whether the spell summons creatures native to the local biome or not, since again, the spell has no guidance whatsoever, so it's up to your GM's gut/fiat.
Even if you summon 8 CR 0 almiraj you are doing great.
That's 5 damage per rabbitcorn or 40 damage per turn.
That means 400 damage for 10 rounds or 120 damage for 3 rounds.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Assuming they can all get around the same target.
It's also not an action economy thing either. People Pretend it's an action economy but it's actually adding a lot more actions. And your making assumptions that the prone save is going to work. And Prone and pack Tactics is actually a pointless mix because you can't have double advantage.
Your white rooming math by assuming they are all going to hit every time. Now that's easy to do when we white room. But this is a situation that when we are white rooming we actually have to take into account that they don't hit every single time. Even with Prone and Pack Tactics. And your assuming that the wolves are always going to be the thing chosen. But we can work with that and go with it to some degree.
Your Wolves have a +4 to hit. And we're talking about level 9. I'd have to look it up but from what I remember the average AC at that range is 15. This means that your wolves have to roll an 11. This means a 45-50% chance to actually make the hit. Let's be nice and say it's 50%. That means of your 8 wolves. 4 of them are going to hit. Even when we throw in the advantage we're only looking at 6 of them hitting realistically most of the time. They also have a DC 11 Strength save to make. This means that your not going to knock down many of the things that your going to want to knock down. I think one of the lowest if not the lowest Strength on CR 9 things is like 8 or 9 so a -1 modifier. This means that they've got to roll a 12. So your looking at 60% or a little better than half at knocking it prone.
So Through all of that your Getting 42 damage assuming they could all pile onto the same target. 28 damage is more realistic if they go onto seperate targets.
And this is still basically all single target.
Everything after that. Assumes they survive. Sure the Value goes up for each additional turn they have. And I'm not denying that. But their survivability is extremely low. All 8 are only going to survive if they are completely ignored AND outside of any AoE's that are taking place which are increasingly common the higher level you get. Particularly in Tiers 3 and 4. Wolves also aren't the most survivable of the creatures that you can summon. Only having 11 hp a piece. This means that many things are actually going to kill them in 1 hit. so the Survival Rate we can expect is realistically half at best.
And this is coming from a person that really likes Multiround spells for the spell slot economy and potential added value. And makes a similar argument for Witch Bolt. But then Witch Bolt is a level 1 spell and isn't going to see much use at level 9 where the dynamics of a round are fairly different. I also accept that Witchbolt typically is only going to get a few rounds of usefulness out of it for various reasons.
Also 7 average damage is nice. But their max damage is a lot lower. That's the funny thing. Their minimum damage and their maximum damage is not that far apart.
Your looking at a maximum damage of 10 typically on a lot of the beasts you can get 8 of. And sure saying you can get 80 damage is nice when we ignore the possbility of them missing and the number of them that there are. But there is a reason that I didn't say that 24 is the max damage on each target with Conjure Barrage. Or make some kind of statement like "If I only hit 10 people then it does 240 damage!" Those statements are misleading and impractical. They sound nice. But it's a bit unreasonable of an expectation. Just like going "oh if they only survive the entire duration of the spell they are going to do this seemingly huge number of damage!" is misleading and impractical.
Reasonable expectation with some Variance with an AoE is 3 to 4 targets and that at least 1 of them is going to make the save (less and aoe isn't worth it, try to have and use something single target instead). Reasonable expectation with Conjure Animals is 2 turns and 1 of those turns with half of them dead. 3 turns out of them. Even with half of them dead and your doing pretty good with the spell and at means that at least part of them prioritized other targets. Anything over 3 is all bonus. Unless your enemies are complete idiots or entirely single target and have reason to ignore the beasts and go after something else. Conjure barrage hitting just 4 people is averaging 48 damage without saves and 42 with one saving (recognize something about that number from higher up in my response?) over a 60' cone.
Each Spell has it's strengths and weaknesses and times that it is useful. There is no truely universal best spell. People try to make these universal best spells but most of them people would list aren't actually ones. Though a couple of them are potentially close for things like their level. Partly because of being intentionally over powered by WotC.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Conjure Animals does not let you intentionally summon wolves, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about how it works on the table. It's entirely GM-dependent. A vindictive GM could hand you 8 CR 0 creatures without violating any rules text, and the thing is, the spell doesn't even have guidance for the GM when it comes to picking creatures to hand out, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about whether it's cool to hand out wolves. If you want a real-world example, on a regular basis people ask in the rules forum what happens when you cast this spell or ones like it and target unoccupied spaces in the air. Answers vary wildly by GM who answers - some refuse to summon creatures into the air at all, some will only summon flying creatures into the air, and some will summon land creatures and let them fall. It's also completely GM-dependent whether the spell summons creatures native to the local biome or not, since again, the spell has no guidance whatsoever, so it's up to your GM's gut/fiat.
I'd argue the GM that let's you summon land creatures into the air is either being a jerk or trying to make a point. Because the resulting damage is going to kill most if not all of the land creatures you summon depending on the distance. There are some pretty decent air creatures in the list for what they are. The giant bat I think it is, Actually has 22 hp instead of 11, The same hit chance as the wolf with only slight less damage, and move 60' a round as well as blindsight out to 60' So they are useful through things like patches of darkness and in other visible empairment scenario's that can make wolves useless.
With my typical Group i usually ask they pick something that suits the biome that they are in when i DM. Since Rangers in general are connected to terrain types in a sense anyway. But my usual groups are often pretty tactically minded to begin with. not really as a limitation. But just to throw some tactical variety in for them to work around and make use of. It can change how they approach a battle which can be interesting for us as a group.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Assuming they can all get around the same target.
It's also not an action economy thing either. People Pretend it's an action economy but it's actually adding a lot more actions. And your making assumptions that the prone save is going to work. And Prone and pack Tactics is actually a pointless mix because you can't have double advantage.
Your white rooming math by assuming they are all going to hit every time. Now that's easy to do when we white room. But this is a situation that when we are white rooming we actually have to take into account that they don't hit every single time. Even with Prone and Pack Tactics. And your assuming that the wolves are always going to be the thing chosen. But we can work with that and go with it to some degree.
Your Wolves have a +4 to hit. And we're talking about level 9. I'd have to look it up but from what I remember the average AC at that range is 15. This means that your wolves have to roll an 11. This means a 45-50% chance to actually make the hit. Let's be nice and say it's 50%. That means of your 8 wolves. 4 of them are going to hit. Even when we throw in the advantage we're only looking at 6 of them hitting realistically most of the time. They also have a DC 11 Strength save to make. This means that your not going to knock down many of the things that your going to want to knock down. I think one of the lowest if not the lowest Strength on CR 9 things is like 8 or 9 so a -1 modifier. This means that they've got to roll a 12. So your looking at 60% or a little better than half at knocking it prone.
So Through all of that your Getting 42 damage assuming they could all pile onto the same target. 28 damage is more realistic if they go onto seperate targets.
And this is still basically all single target.
Everything after that. Assumes they survive. Sure the Value goes up for each additional turn they have. And I'm not denying that. But their survivability is extremely low. All 8 are only going to survive if they are completely ignored AND outside of any AoE's that are taking place which are increasingly common the higher level you get. Particularly in Tiers 3 and 4. Wolves also aren't the most survivable of the creatures that you can summon. Only having 11 hp a piece. This means that many things are actually going to kill them in 1 hit. so the Survival Rate we can expect is realistically half at best.
And this is coming from a person that really likes Multiround spells for the spell slot economy and potential added value. And makes a similar argument for Witch Bolt. But then Witch Bolt is a level 1 spell and isn't going to see much use at level 9 where the dynamics of a round are fairly different. I also accept that Witchbolt typically is only going to get a few rounds of usefulness out of it for various reasons.
Also 7 average damage is nice. But their max damage is a lot lower. That's the funny thing. Their minimum damage and their maximum damage is not that far apart.
Your looking at a maximum damage of 10 typically on a lot of the beasts you can get 8 of. And sure saying you can get 80 damage is nice when we ignore the possbility of them missing and the number of them that there are. But there is a reason that I didn't say that 24 is the max damage on each target with Conjure Barrage. Or make some kind of statement like "If I only hit 10 people then it does 240 damage!" Those statements are misleading and impractical. They sound nice. But it's a bit unreasonable of an expectation. Just like going "oh if they only survive the entire duration of the spell they are going to do this seemingly huge number of damage!" is misleading and impractical.
Reasonable expectation with some Variance with an AoE is 3 to 4 targets and that at least 1 of them is going to make the save (less and aoe isn't worth it, try to have and use something single target instead). Reasonable expectation with Conjure Animals is 2 turns and 1 of those turns with half of them dead. 3 turns out of them. Even with half of them dead and your doing pretty good with the spell and at means that at least part of them prioritized other targets. Anything over 3 is all bonus. Unless your enemies are complete idiots or entirely single target and have reason to ignore the beasts and go after something else. Conjure barrage hitting just 4 people is averaging 48 damage without saves and 42 with one saving (recognize something about that number from higher up in my response?) over a 60' cone.
Each Spell has it's strengths and weaknesses and times that it is useful. There is no truely universal best spell. People try to make these universal best spells but most of them people would list aren't actually ones. Though a couple of them are potentially close for things like their level. Partly because of being intentionally over powered by WotC.
So less damage then if you get wolves and about equal if your DM goes full cr 0 on you
Also then you get the benefit of the creatures eating damage for you so basically get free thp.
I clearly see conjure animals as much much better in this case.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Assuming they can all get around the same target.
It's also not an action economy thing either. People Pretend it's an action economy but it's actually adding a lot more actions. And your making assumptions that the prone save is going to work. And Prone and pack Tactics is actually a pointless mix because you can't have double advantage.
Your white rooming math by assuming they are all going to hit every time. Now that's easy to do when we white room. But this is a situation that when we are white rooming we actually have to take into account that they don't hit every single time. Even with Prone and Pack Tactics. And your assuming that the wolves are always going to be the thing chosen. But we can work with that and go with it to some degree.
Your Wolves have a +4 to hit. And we're talking about level 9. I'd have to look it up but from what I remember the average AC at that range is 15. This means that your wolves have to roll an 11. This means a 45-50% chance to actually make the hit. Let's be nice and say it's 50%. That means of your 8 wolves. 4 of them are going to hit. Even when we throw in the advantage we're only looking at 6 of them hitting realistically most of the time. They also have a DC 11 Strength save to make. This means that your not going to knock down many of the things that your going to want to knock down. I think one of the lowest if not the lowest Strength on CR 9 things is like 8 or 9 so a -1 modifier. This means that they've got to roll a 12. So your looking at 60% or a little better than half at knocking it prone.
So Through all of that your Getting 42 damage assuming they could all pile onto the same target. 28 damage is more realistic if they go onto seperate targets.
And this is still basically all single target.
Everything after that. Assumes they survive. Sure the Value goes up for each additional turn they have. And I'm not denying that. But their survivability is extremely low. All 8 are only going to survive if they are completely ignored AND outside of any AoE's that are taking place which are increasingly common the higher level you get. Particularly in Tiers 3 and 4. Wolves also aren't the most survivable of the creatures that you can summon. Only having 11 hp a piece. This means that many things are actually going to kill them in 1 hit. so the Survival Rate we can expect is realistically half at best.
And this is coming from a person that really likes Multiround spells for the spell slot economy and potential added value. And makes a similar argument for Witch Bolt. But then Witch Bolt is a level 1 spell and isn't going to see much use at level 9 where the dynamics of a round are fairly different. I also accept that Witchbolt typically is only going to get a few rounds of usefulness out of it for various reasons.
Also 7 average damage is nice. But their max damage is a lot lower. That's the funny thing. Their minimum damage and their maximum damage is not that far apart.
Your looking at a maximum damage of 10 typically on a lot of the beasts you can get 8 of. And sure saying you can get 80 damage is nice when we ignore the possbility of them missing and the number of them that there are. But there is a reason that I didn't say that 24 is the max damage on each target with Conjure Barrage. Or make some kind of statement like "If I only hit 10 people then it does 240 damage!" Those statements are misleading and impractical. They sound nice. But it's a bit unreasonable of an expectation. Just like going "oh if they only survive the entire duration of the spell they are going to do this seemingly huge number of damage!" is misleading and impractical.
Reasonable expectation with some Variance with an AoE is 3 to 4 targets and that at least 1 of them is going to make the save (less and aoe isn't worth it, try to have and use something single target instead). Reasonable expectation with Conjure Animals is 2 turns and 1 of those turns with half of them dead. 3 turns out of them. Even with half of them dead and your doing pretty good with the spell and at means that at least part of them prioritized other targets. Anything over 3 is all bonus. Unless your enemies are complete idiots or entirely single target and have reason to ignore the beasts and go after something else. Conjure barrage hitting just 4 people is averaging 48 damage without saves and 42 with one saving (recognize something about that number from higher up in my response?) over a 60' cone.
Each Spell has it's strengths and weaknesses and times that it is useful. There is no truely universal best spell. People try to make these universal best spells but most of them people would list aren't actually ones. Though a couple of them are potentially close for things like their level. Partly because of being intentionally over powered by WotC.
So less damage then if you get wolves and about equal if your DM goes full cr 0 on you
Also then you get the benefit of the creatures eating damage for you so basically get free thp.
I clearly see conjure animals as much much better in this case.
See what you want to see. And make claims based upon white rooms and favorable scenario's all you want. There are plenty of ways for those animals to die or be rendered ineffective without taking away from the damage done or other effects to the party. AoE's are just one of them. Even Conjure Barrage could easily end up wiping them out and dealing all the damage it would have anyways to the party if done right. Doesn't make them true for everybody. Or even necessarily the average person.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Assuming they can all get around the same target.
It's also not an action economy thing either. People Pretend it's an action economy but it's actually adding a lot more actions. And your making assumptions that the prone save is going to work. And Prone and pack Tactics is actually a pointless mix because you can't have double advantage.
Your white rooming math by assuming they are all going to hit every time. Now that's easy to do when we white room. But this is a situation that when we are white rooming we actually have to take into account that they don't hit every single time. Even with Prone and Pack Tactics. And your assuming that the wolves are always going to be the thing chosen. But we can work with that and go with it to some degree.
Your Wolves have a +4 to hit. And we're talking about level 9. I'd have to look it up but from what I remember the average AC at that range is 15. This means that your wolves have to roll an 11. This means a 45-50% chance to actually make the hit. Let's be nice and say it's 50%. That means of your 8 wolves. 4 of them are going to hit. Even when we throw in the advantage we're only looking at 6 of them hitting realistically most of the time. They also have a DC 11 Strength save to make. This means that your not going to knock down many of the things that your going to want to knock down. I think one of the lowest if not the lowest Strength on CR 9 things is like 8 or 9 so a -1 modifier. This means that they've got to roll a 12. So your looking at 60% or a little better than half at knocking it prone.
So Through all of that your Getting 42 damage assuming they could all pile onto the same target. 28 damage is more realistic if they go onto seperate targets.
And this is still basically all single target.
Everything after that. Assumes they survive. Sure the Value goes up for each additional turn they have. And I'm not denying that. But their survivability is extremely low. All 8 are only going to survive if they are completely ignored AND outside of any AoE's that are taking place which are increasingly common the higher level you get. Particularly in Tiers 3 and 4. Wolves also aren't the most survivable of the creatures that you can summon. Only having 11 hp a piece. This means that many things are actually going to kill them in 1 hit. so the Survival Rate we can expect is realistically half at best.
And this is coming from a person that really likes Multiround spells for the spell slot economy and potential added value. And makes a similar argument for Witch Bolt. But then Witch Bolt is a level 1 spell and isn't going to see much use at level 9 where the dynamics of a round are fairly different. I also accept that Witchbolt typically is only going to get a few rounds of usefulness out of it for various reasons.
Also 7 average damage is nice. But their max damage is a lot lower. That's the funny thing. Their minimum damage and their maximum damage is not that far apart.
Your looking at a maximum damage of 10 typically on a lot of the beasts you can get 8 of. And sure saying you can get 80 damage is nice when we ignore the possbility of them missing and the number of them that there are. But there is a reason that I didn't say that 24 is the max damage on each target with Conjure Barrage. Or make some kind of statement like "If I only hit 10 people then it does 240 damage!" Those statements are misleading and impractical. They sound nice. But it's a bit unreasonable of an expectation. Just like going "oh if they only survive the entire duration of the spell they are going to do this seemingly huge number of damage!" is misleading and impractical.
Reasonable expectation with some Variance with an AoE is 3 to 4 targets and that at least 1 of them is going to make the save (less and aoe isn't worth it, try to have and use something single target instead). Reasonable expectation with Conjure Animals is 2 turns and 1 of those turns with half of them dead. 3 turns out of them. Even with half of them dead and your doing pretty good with the spell and at means that at least part of them prioritized other targets. Anything over 3 is all bonus. Unless your enemies are complete idiots or entirely single target and have reason to ignore the beasts and go after something else. Conjure barrage hitting just 4 people is averaging 48 damage without saves and 42 with one saving (recognize something about that number from higher up in my response?) over a 60' cone.
Each Spell has it's strengths and weaknesses and times that it is useful. There is no truely universal best spell. People try to make these universal best spells but most of them people would list aren't actually ones. Though a couple of them are potentially close for things like their level. Partly because of being intentionally over powered by WotC.
So less damage then if you get wolves and about equal if your DM goes full cr 0 on you
Also then you get the benefit of the creatures eating damage for you so basically get free thp.
I clearly see conjure animals as much much better in this case.
See what you want to see. And make claims based upon white rooms and favorable scenario's all you want. There are plenty of ways for those animals to die or be rendered ineffective without taking away from the damage done or other effects to the party. AoE's are just one of them. Even Conjure Barrage could easily end up wiping them out and dealing all the damage it would have anyways to the party if done right. Doesn't make them true for everybody. Or even necessarily the average person.
No white rooms just using exactly what you stated.
I think we need to compare a level 6-8, 9-10, and 11+ ranger to other classes/subclasses to get an idea of what we are talking about. ANY multiclass is going to get a nice little bump from dipping into 1-3 levels of another class, so that is a given that should be ignored, IMO. Just about any multiclass will do "better" than any single class in given circumstances. Almost in any combination, with some choices being better than others for certain classes.
So level 3 spells (2 of them levels 9 and 10) of a baseline ranger (thinking of them as long rest reset baseline class abilities) compared to what a baseline fighter, rogue, or barbarian gets. It's pretty good! A fighter gets a long rest reset use of indomitable. A rogue gets an extra ASI. A barbarian gets a brutal critical die. A ranger gets to choose from conjure animals, lightning arrow, plant growth, and water breathing (some of the better choices). Those are really nice and powerful. Game changing. A baseline ranger would ALSO get another natural explorer/deft explorer feature AND hide in plain sight/nature's veil! The other classes would get a subclass feature around levels 9 and 10 as well. But the ranger gets a subclass feature at 11.
So I'll restate my opinion that multiclassing a ranger after level 5 is great if you are looking for dealing damage via a weapon by yourself. But the spells and other ranger features are why you keep going in ranger. All rangers also get another bump in damage at level 11. Some more than others. Level 11+ is where the beast master subclasses actually take the lead on a regular basis.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I guess it depends on character goals, function within a party, and player desire, but when I compare the class and subclass abilities of other martials (fighters, paladins, barbarians, rogues, monks, even some warlocks) ranger spells really make me want to play a ranger. 3rd level spells in particular. Conjure animals is a must pick even if you never used it in combat encounters. If you do use it in combat encounters it can fill any needed roll at a moment’s notice, even if you only conjure one or two beasts. Plant growth is combat encounter ending and world changing. And water breathing (for a non-full spellcaster) is amazing.
A ranger will do better single target weapon damage with some multiclassing. But you know what? Just about every class will! One to three level dips in almost any class will wield big dividends due to the design of 5E classes with generous front loading.
Yes. Conjure animals is a great spell and tool for the ranger. It comes in at level 9. So the question for each individual player is “Do I fight alone (ranger 5/rogue x/fighter x)? Or do I fight with buddies (ranger 9+)?”
Arguably you can do a lot for the party with more skill expertise and fighter maneuvers as well.
Of course!
That’s the great thing about the ranger!
And a ranger/fighter/rogue is awesome starting about what? Level 10? Level 11? So like you kind of mentioned earlier, Optimus, follow your bliss. Some folks like getting that 11 more points of damage 4 times, or being a rogue lite. It’s all awesome!
Recently retired a 8/3 ranger cleric at level 11. I found myself frustrated by the spells known mechanic so the few levels of cleric really helped broaden my spell access. I took one level of cleric before level 5 and the extra level waiting for extra attack was super painful knowing I could already have it*. It didn't really help my damage or hurt it really. If you went the archery route with sharpshooter you should be able to keep up reasonably for damage throughout the game to the other martial characters. You will fall a little behind, but with the ranger's ability to control battlefields you should be fine.
If you are concerned about roguey skills, then pass without trace really fixes a ton of that. But a level dip into rogue isn't that bad either if you just want to steal a d6 damage and some expertise on your skills. As said above try not to think about the spells as spells and think about them as class abilities. Sometimes that helps.
Personally I am a big fan of most ranger subclasses through level 12. I think the optimum levels to dip are: 4 (after you grab the subclass), 5 (after you get extra attack and second lvl spells), 9 (after you get 3rd level spells),
*but between level 3/1 and 5/1 the healing and bless I got from cleric saved the party from two TPK situations.
Level 6 really...
I would go ranger 5 then rogue 2 (Cunning Action is just too good) then fighter 3. You get the expertise at level 6 and sneak attack is just good gravy for damage. Cunning Action at level 7 makes you more able to maneuver and could help with sharpshooter if you hide.
Overall that build would put you at level 10 which is what I would generally plan for as 90% of campaigns end by that point.
Ranger/Cleric is an amazing MC as you get a LOT of value from 2 levels cleric.
Both of these are overexaggerating the nature of the situation. In reality, it's a very happy medium. Ranger can not only be fun, but mechanically effective with single class and multiclass builds.
While there are certainly ridiculous white room builds out there, Ranger multi-classes are generally a thing because they deliver on some build goal. And none of them take longer to deliver on significant gains than it takes to wait for those 3rd level spells at 9th level Ranger.
Ranger multi-classes fall under two categories. Making the Ranger less magical, and making the Ranger more magical.
Plenty of people don't want to use Conjure Animals and Lightning Arrow to boost damage, but do want to be a super deadly combatant. Fighter and to a lesser extent Rogue is perfect for this. Rogue excels at building a non-magical exploration guy, but also shines in allowing the Ranger to expand their skill repertoire wildly thanks to how flexible the expertise are.
Meanwhile Cleric (and Druid, although I don't see that often) are awesome when you want to dial up the spellcasting even more. You get closer to the capabilities of a 2/3 spellcaster (something 5e did away with), and are less worried about damage production because your expanded spellcasting brings plenty of value to the party.
Since effectiveness is a metric you seem to care about, and Rangers can be built to be effective in any number of ways, what you want is all that really matters here. Since you seem interested in navigation and battlefield control and don't like multiclassing the decisions seems real simple. These are things that fall naturally into the Ranger toolkit, so there is no need to press your sensibilities with a multiclass.
I used Fireball just as an easy to recognize stand in for AoE. Lots of things have AoE's that would work just as well.
And no. They dont' really do significantly more damage than either spell that I mentioned. It doesn't actually require either spell I mentioned to hit more than a couple creatures to do basically the same damage that the conjure animals are going to do. The reason being that each of those creatures Damage is actually fairly low if your going for either the 4 or the 8 creatures. They'll be doing something like 1d6+4 if that usually. Which means they have an average damage of 7. With no damage on anything that they don't actually hit.
Conjure Barrage does 3d8 to each creature it hits. This means it's average damage per target is 12, And will still do 6 damage if they make the save.
So this means that it doesn't take much for Conjure barrage to do as much or more damage than the 4 or 8 of them are going to do. And even if everything makes it's save and every summoned creature makes it's attack roll. It still does almost as much over the same number of targets. But for each failed Attack or Each Failed Save you can basically reduce the number of targets Conjure Barrage has to hit by 1 to keep pace.
The 1 beast and 2 beast variants hit better and do more damage but you also have the problem that there is a lot less of them. But it would Require Conjure Barrage to potentially have to hit a bit more or have a few more failed saves to keep pace.
And yes I'm aware of the argument that each Conjured Beast that takes a hit is a hit that the party doesn't take. yes this is true if enemy is forced to hit each one individually or they are all far enough away that the AoE doesn't catch your party as well. But for each party member they can hit while hitting the Beasts. That's just outright loss of value to the defense argument.
Conjure Animals Advantage is not because it does more damage. Or because it's greatly defensive. It's advantage is that it does a bit of Both AND it's not held to a specific area of effect like certain other spells like Conjure Barrage and lightning Arrow are. Making it easier to work into things or to bolster things just a little bit sometimes. But it has it's own failings as well. There are arguments and reasons and times to use all 3 spells Or decide not to even use 1 or 2 of them based upon your own style.
lightning Arrow is By far the Best Single Target amongst the Three for Example. The splash damage is nice but it's real advantage is that it's a massive boost of damage on top of what an attack with your bow can already do along with all of it's other modifiers that you can apply to that attack.
And Conjure Barrage is going to be the best choice when you need an AoE attack. is it the strongest AoE attack out there that classes can do? No it's not. But then it's not necessarily meant to be. But when the ranger needs one it's going to do a lot more in that situation than Conjure animals is going to do.
There is no one best spell. But there is a best Spell for your build or the particular situation that you are in. Depending on your play style or what you pick the spells for.
Conjure Animals do a lot more damage than the spells you mentioned thanks to ADV from forms, action economy, and longevity.
8 wolves will be doing 7 points of damage, force a prone save, and gets adv on the attack thanks to Pack Tactics.
56 points of damage per turn with a potential to have them for 1 hour.
That means just 10 rounds of combat thats 560 points of damage.
If you do 3 rounds as a better average then that is still 168 points of damage and you still get your action to attack where as conjure barrage you do not
Its not even a close comparison on damage.
Conjure Animals does not let you intentionally summon wolves, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about how it works on the table. It's entirely GM-dependent. A vindictive GM could hand you 8 CR 0 creatures without violating any rules text, and the thing is, the spell doesn't even have guidance for the GM when it comes to picking creatures to hand out, so it's impossible to have a sane discussion about whether it's cool to hand out wolves. If you want a real-world example, on a regular basis people ask in the rules forum what happens when you cast this spell or ones like it and target unoccupied spaces in the air. Answers vary wildly by GM who answers - some refuse to summon creatures into the air at all, some will only summon flying creatures into the air, and some will summon land creatures and let them fall. It's also completely GM-dependent whether the spell summons creatures native to the local biome or not, since again, the spell has no guidance whatsoever, so it's up to your GM's gut/fiat.
Even if you summon 8 CR 0 almiraj you are doing great.
That's 5 damage per rabbitcorn or 40 damage per turn.
That means 400 damage for 10 rounds or 120 damage for 3 rounds.
Still blows barrage out of the water.
Conjure Barrage is a terrible spell. It's ONLY saving grace is it can be cast without having to drop hunter's mark.
Maybe conjure barrage is designed to be used by a ranger against other rangers that cast conjure animals! LOL!!
That's a good point... Could be good if you have another concentration spell up.... Like conjure animal!
Assuming they can all get around the same target.
It's also not an action economy thing either. People Pretend it's an action economy but it's actually adding a lot more actions. And your making assumptions that the prone save is going to work. And Prone and pack Tactics is actually a pointless mix because you can't have double advantage.
Your white rooming math by assuming they are all going to hit every time. Now that's easy to do when we white room. But this is a situation that when we are white rooming we actually have to take into account that they don't hit every single time. Even with Prone and Pack Tactics. And your assuming that the wolves are always going to be the thing chosen. But we can work with that and go with it to some degree.
Your Wolves have a +4 to hit. And we're talking about level 9. I'd have to look it up but from what I remember the average AC at that range is 15. This means that your wolves have to roll an 11. This means a 45-50% chance to actually make the hit. Let's be nice and say it's 50%. That means of your 8 wolves. 4 of them are going to hit. Even when we throw in the advantage we're only looking at 6 of them hitting realistically most of the time. They also have a DC 11 Strength save to make. This means that your not going to knock down many of the things that your going to want to knock down. I think one of the lowest if not the lowest Strength on CR 9 things is like 8 or 9 so a -1 modifier. This means that they've got to roll a 12. So your looking at 60% or a little better than half at knocking it prone.
So Through all of that your Getting 42 damage assuming they could all pile onto the same target. 28 damage is more realistic if they go onto seperate targets.
And this is still basically all single target.
Everything after that. Assumes they survive. Sure the Value goes up for each additional turn they have. And I'm not denying that. But their survivability is extremely low. All 8 are only going to survive if they are completely ignored AND outside of any AoE's that are taking place which are increasingly common the higher level you get. Particularly in Tiers 3 and 4. Wolves also aren't the most survivable of the creatures that you can summon. Only having 11 hp a piece. This means that many things are actually going to kill them in 1 hit. so the Survival Rate we can expect is realistically half at best.
And this is coming from a person that really likes Multiround spells for the spell slot economy and potential added value. And makes a similar argument for Witch Bolt. But then Witch Bolt is a level 1 spell and isn't going to see much use at level 9 where the dynamics of a round are fairly different. I also accept that Witchbolt typically is only going to get a few rounds of usefulness out of it for various reasons.
Also 7 average damage is nice. But their max damage is a lot lower. That's the funny thing. Their minimum damage and their maximum damage is not that far apart.
Your looking at a maximum damage of 10 typically on a lot of the beasts you can get 8 of. And sure saying you can get 80 damage is nice when we ignore the possbility of them missing and the number of them that there are. But there is a reason that I didn't say that 24 is the max damage on each target with Conjure Barrage. Or make some kind of statement like "If I only hit 10 people then it does 240 damage!" Those statements are misleading and impractical. They sound nice. But it's a bit unreasonable of an expectation. Just like going "oh if they only survive the entire duration of the spell they are going to do this seemingly huge number of damage!" is misleading and impractical.
Reasonable expectation with some Variance with an AoE is 3 to 4 targets and that at least 1 of them is going to make the save (less and aoe isn't worth it, try to have and use something single target instead). Reasonable expectation with Conjure Animals is 2 turns and 1 of those turns with half of them dead. 3 turns out of them. Even with half of them dead and your doing pretty good with the spell and at means that at least part of them prioritized other targets. Anything over 3 is all bonus. Unless your enemies are complete idiots or entirely single target and have reason to ignore the beasts and go after something else. Conjure barrage hitting just 4 people is averaging 48 damage without saves and 42 with one saving (recognize something about that number from higher up in my response?) over a 60' cone.
Each Spell has it's strengths and weaknesses and times that it is useful. There is no truely universal best spell. People try to make these universal best spells but most of them people would list aren't actually ones. Though a couple of them are potentially close for things like their level. Partly because of being intentionally over powered by WotC.
I'd argue the GM that let's you summon land creatures into the air is either being a jerk or trying to make a point. Because the resulting damage is going to kill most if not all of the land creatures you summon depending on the distance. There are some pretty decent air creatures in the list for what they are. The giant bat I think it is, Actually has 22 hp instead of 11, The same hit chance as the wolf with only slight less damage, and move 60' a round as well as blindsight out to 60' So they are useful through things like patches of darkness and in other visible empairment scenario's that can make wolves useless.
With my typical Group i usually ask they pick something that suits the biome that they are in when i DM. Since Rangers in general are connected to terrain types in a sense anyway. But my usual groups are often pretty tactically minded to begin with. not really as a limitation. But just to throw some tactical variety in for them to work around and make use of. It can change how they approach a battle which can be interesting for us as a group.
So less damage then if you get wolves and about equal if your DM goes full cr 0 on you
Also then you get the benefit of the creatures eating damage for you so basically get free thp.
I clearly see conjure animals as much much better in this case.
See what you want to see. And make claims based upon white rooms and favorable scenario's all you want. There are plenty of ways for those animals to die or be rendered ineffective without taking away from the damage done or other effects to the party. AoE's are just one of them. Even Conjure Barrage could easily end up wiping them out and dealing all the damage it would have anyways to the party if done right. Doesn't make them true for everybody. Or even necessarily the average person.
No white rooms just using exactly what you stated.
I think we need to compare a level 6-8, 9-10, and 11+ ranger to other classes/subclasses to get an idea of what we are talking about. ANY multiclass is going to get a nice little bump from dipping into 1-3 levels of another class, so that is a given that should be ignored, IMO. Just about any multiclass will do "better" than any single class in given circumstances. Almost in any combination, with some choices being better than others for certain classes.
So level 3 spells (2 of them levels 9 and 10) of a baseline ranger (thinking of them as long rest reset baseline class abilities) compared to what a baseline fighter, rogue, or barbarian gets. It's pretty good! A fighter gets a long rest reset use of indomitable. A rogue gets an extra ASI. A barbarian gets a brutal critical die. A ranger gets to choose from conjure animals, lightning arrow, plant growth, and water breathing (some of the better choices). Those are really nice and powerful. Game changing. A baseline ranger would ALSO get another natural explorer/deft explorer feature AND hide in plain sight/nature's veil! The other classes would get a subclass feature around levels 9 and 10 as well. But the ranger gets a subclass feature at 11.
So I'll restate my opinion that multiclassing a ranger after level 5 is great if you are looking for dealing damage via a weapon by yourself. But the spells and other ranger features are why you keep going in ranger. All rangers also get another bump in damage at level 11. Some more than others. Level 11+ is where the beast master subclasses actually take the lead on a regular basis.