I agree with HeironymusZot - I thing you're reading into it in a way that isn't the intent at all.
I mean, it's your game and you can limit the beast master ranger however you want, but I think it's important to look at both the intent and wording. The intent was to make the companion more palatable, and they changed the name of the companion from beast companion to primal beast to avoid confusion at the table as to whether you were using the optional content or not. To me the relevant wording is this:
"The Beast Master in the Player’s Handbook forms a mystical bond with an animal. As an alternative, a Beast Master can take the feature below to form a bond with a special primal beast instead."
and
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger’s Companion feature"
It doesn't say it replaces the level 7, 11, and 15th level abilities of the beast master ranger, it only replaces the 3rd level ability. Which means the other abilities are still intact. Why would they replace the 3rd level ability and make the following 3 abilities which make up the core of the subclass irrelevant and useless without saying so? If that were the case, they would have said either something like:
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the 3rd, 7th, 11th, and 15th level Ranger's Companion features."
or at least
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger's Companion features."
Like I said, it's your game so you can neuter the primal companion if you want, but why would you? The entire point of the replacement feature is to improve the beast master ranger in play, which received a ton of complaints from the release of the PHB onward, and make it easier and more effective to use at the table. Why would you turn around and gimp it again?
The very fact that four different people can pull bits of the words from the combined rules to make two separate and convincing arguments only makes the original question more pressing.
You're missing the forest for the trees. My example wasn't made to provide a convincing argument. It was made to show how silly yours is.
The example you keep giving is all within the same ability at level 3 so would imply to itself.
I think you are being highly selective here. When it comes to the Ranger's Companion ability you are perfectly capable of seeing that something that does not use hard codified language implies a ruling.
But when it comes to the Primal Companion you ignore the same logical conclusions. Primal Companion says it can be taken as an alternative which replaces Ranger's Companion. The only conclusion that makes sense is that it also replaces any instances in the subclass where the Ranger's Companion feature would be used.
I do find it odd that they didnt replace the L7 ability in Tasha's to fit with Primal Companions. As HeironymusZot pointed out, its more or less redundant for what a primal beast can already do. Regardless of the other implications of this thread, I think it was a vast oversight to let choosing the optional 3rd level feature make the 7th level feature unimportant and unimpactful
Edit: Just wrote up a possible replacement feature idea. Let me know what you think. The idea is to still grant the benefit of magical attacks and also give the Ranger a way to give their companion limited commands on turns where they choose to cast a spell using their bonus action rather than commanding the creature. This is written to explicitly work with the Primal Companion feature.
Arcane Training
7th-level Beastmaster feature, which replaces the Exceptional Training feature
Attacks made by your primal beast now count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to non magical attacks and damage.
Additionally, whenever you use your bonus action to cast a Ranger spell of 1st level or higher, you can command your primal beast to Dash, Disengage, or Hide as part of the same bonus action.
I agree with HeironymusZot - I thing you're reading into it in a way that isn't the intent at all.
I mean, it's your game and you can limit the beast master ranger however you want, but I think it's important to look at both the intent and wording. The intent was to make the companion more palatable, and they changed the name of the companion from beast companion to primal beast to avoid confusion at the table as to whether you were using the optional content or not. To me the relevant wording is this:
"The Beast Master in the Player’s Handbook forms a mystical bond with an animal. As an alternative, a Beast Master can take the feature below to form a bond with a special primal beast instead."
and
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger’s Companion feature"
It doesn't say it replaces the level 7, 11, and 15th level abilities of the beast master ranger, it only replaces the 3rd level ability. Which means the other abilities are still intact. Why would they replace the 3rd level ability and make the following 3 abilities which make up the core of the subclass irrelevant and useless without saying so? If that were the case, they would have said either something like:
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the 3rd, 7th, 11th, and 15th level Ranger's Companion features."
or at least
"3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger's Companion features."
Like I said, it's your game so you can neuter the primal companion if you want, but why would you? The entire point of the replacement feature is to improve the beast master ranger in play, which received a ton of complaints from the release of the PHB onward, and make it easier and more effective to use at the table. Why would you turn around and gimp it again?
The very fact that four different people can pull bits of the words from the combined rules to make two separate and convincing arguments only makes the original question more pressing.
You're missing the forest for the trees. My example wasn't made to provide a convincing argument. It was made to show how silly yours is.
The example you keep giving is all within the same ability at level 3 so would imply to itself.
I think you are being highly selective here. When it comes to the Ranger's Companion ability you are perfectly capable of seeing that something that does not use hard codified language implies a ruling.
But when it comes to the Primal Companion you ignore the same logical conclusions. Primal Companion says it can be taken as an alternative which replaces Ranger's Companion. The only conclusion that makes sense is that it also replaces any instances in the subclass where the Ranger's Companion feature would be used.
Now you’re just being mean. LOL!
Let’s shift this over to the cleric, the other Tasha’s class that has that same extra sentence dropped in there. Thoughts on that with the subclass ability along side it?
I do find it odd that they didnt replace the L7 ability in Tasha's to fit with Primal Companions. As HeironymusZot pointed out, its more or less redundant for what a primal beast can already do. Regardless of the other implications of this thread, I think it was a vast oversight to let choosing the optional 3rd level feature make the 7th level feature unimportant and unimpactful
I don't think that's the case at all. The way I see it the bonus action commands are close to ribbons that the Beast Companion should have had access to at level 1 all along. The magical damage clause is a huge add, and absolutely something the Primal Beast loves to pick up. It's a bit strange, but I'm going to assume that WotC realized giving the companion access to those commands at level 1 was no big deal and that the magical damage clause was enough to keep the level 7 ability relevant and exciting enough to not go through the paces of reworking it when they don't think the class needed another one. Again, assumptions, but I think that tracks.
I do find it odd that they didnt replace the L7 ability in Tasha's to fit with Primal Companions. As HeironymusZot pointed out, its more or less redundant for what a primal beast can already do. Regardless of the other implications of this thread, I think it was a vast oversight to let choosing the optional 3rd level feature make the 7th level feature unimportant and unimpactful
I don't think that's the case at all. The way I see it the bonus action commands are close to ribbons that the Beast Companion should have had access to at level 1 all along. The magical damage clause is a huge add, and absolutely something the Primal Beast loves to pick up. It's a bit strange, but I'm going to assume that WotC realized giving the companion access to those commands at level 1 was no big deal and that the magical damage clause was enough to keep the level 7 ability relevant and exciting enough to not go through the paces of reworking it when they don't think the class needed another one. Again, assumptions, but I think that tracks.
The magical damage is a big benefit to be sure, but I find it odd they didn't at least come up with something different for primal beasts (even if the only change is effectively a ribbon ability). I feel like its just a bad design choice to let there be overlap between two features for the same subclass like that.
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Yeah I agree Kaboom, it's definitely a bit odd. In the end it really doesn't bother me because the companion is fantastic at 1, scales well, and ends up enabling 4 attacks per round at 11.
@Frank, I'm not being mean, I'm being facetious because I think the nature of this thread is absurd.
The only cleric ability that can be replaced is potent spellcasting or divine strikes at 8. You can have blessed strikes instead.
Yeah I agree Kaboom, it's definitely a bit odd. In the end it really doesn't bother me because the companion is fantastic at 1, scales well, and ends up enabling 4 attacks per round at 11.
@Frank, I'm not being mean, I'm being facetious because I think the nature of this thread is absurd.
The only cleric ability that can be replaced is potent spellcasting or divine strikes at 8. You can have blessed strikes instead.
If the order domain cleric takes the optional blessed strikes feature then they lose their level 17 ability, order’s wrath.
Yeah if their DM is a complete knob and doesn't allow their blessed strike damage to count when used on a weapon attack.
I don't think anything presented in this thread is a problem unless the DM is unfit for the task.
Like or not. Opinion or not. Those are the implications of the words the printed. Especially with the extra added sentence that only the cleric and ranger have in Tasha’s.
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
Of course I am!!! Sheesh.
But mostly wanting/wishing for further, rock solid, clarification so we don’t have people like me bringing this up over and over until 6E rolls around.
The Problem Between the Ranger and the Cleric are actually different.
With the Ranger we're talking about subsequent abilities that reference in essence an object gained by an ability. This is just a matter of the name of the object not always matching correctly. However both Ranger's Companion and Primal Companion make Reference to "the Beast" mostly in the way they are written.
In Fact, almost all functionality statements about them both use the phrasing "the Beast" and not Beast Companion or Primal Companion. These two phrases of Beast Companion and Primal Companion are almost entirely found in the descriptive fluff. (the non mechanics about where your beast comes from).
Ranger's Companion uses Companion Beast as far as mechanics go in only one place. Functioning when the ranger is incapacitated or absent.
Primal Companion only uses Primal Beast Functionally in it's specific way of re-summoning your Primal Beast to have it take a different form.
But at No Time does any subsequent ability actually reference a class ability you would right down on your sheet by name. It only uses implied descriptive signifiers to the variable object created by those abilities. This removes necessary exactness of pointing to one over the other since you cannot have both and they are both creating objects that the descriptive Signifiers later used can apply to.
So when you get down to the further abilities after that. Beast Companion is not a hard and fast pointer to one of these abilities when used in the abilities descriptions. It's just an Implied Signifier pointing to a particular object(of which there can be many different specific ones), which is "The Beast" that is referenced in both abilities heavily. And that Beast happens to be your "Companion" which is referenced in the name of both abilities. This in basic means that Any further abilities apply to both. Not just one of them. Because they both function around Beasts and that beast must be in some way your Companion.
The order Cleric actually has a much bigger problem with the ability replacement. This is because the future ability does not make an "Implied reference" like the Beast companion issue does. It actually outright states an exact ability that you would write on your sheet to modify and you would no longer have that ability on your sheet if you replace it. So we cannot do like with the beast companion and simply link the implied Signifiers to either ability. We have the problem that we have to make some kind of Clear Mention to the New Ability for the later ability to further work. Good DM's are easily capable of making this clear mention but the rules do not.
So while Both could be Clarified simply by putting something like "this ability functions like the ability it replaces for purposes of further reference" for the sake of Clarity. Only the Cleric actually requires this kind of rule to still function as fully intended.
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
Of course I am!!! Sheesh.
But mostly wanting/wishing for further, rock solid, clarification so we don’t have people like me bringing this up over and over until 6E rolls around.
Or you could just stop bringing it up and then no one would have to deal with it. As far as I can tell, it's just you and ChickenChamp on this crusade and ChickenChamp isn't going around starting threads about it.
I knew from the beginning that you don't care about the cleric ruling at all. You just want to include it to help legitimize your claims about Primal Companion. You're desperate to have a talking point next time some newbie steps in here asking about the Beastmaster and it shows. Just chill man. You should be able to hype up the PHB beastmaster without needing something negative to say about Tasha's.
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
Of course I am!!! Sheesh.
But mostly wanting/wishing for further, rock solid, clarification so we don’t have people like me bringing this up over and over until 6E rolls around.
Or you could just stop bringing it up and then no one would have to deal with it. As far as I can tell, it's just you and ChickenChamp on this crusade and ChickenChamp isn't going around starting threads about it.
I knew from the beginning that you don't care about the cleric ruling at all. You just want to include it to help legitimize your claims about Primal Companion. You're desperate to have a talking point next time some newbie steps in here asking about the Beastmaster and it shows. Just chill man. You should be able to hype up the PHB beastmaster without needing something negative to say about Tasha's.
I'm on the side that, It was written to prevent people from trying to take favored foe ( or deft explorer) and then try getting a favored enemy (or terrain) at higher levels Because the table says you get one.
I think all companions get the features even if it "might" be Partially redundant.
There are still potential reasons to take the old beast master - if your ranger wants that poisonous or constricting snake, spider, prone-knocking wolf or beast with multiattack forms and you don't mind suffering through the old action economy. I personally like the ease of the newer beasts but it comes at the cost of some unique potent choices from the old beast companion list. Fear not! 😜
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
Of course I am!!! Sheesh.
But mostly wanting/wishing for further, rock solid, clarification so we don’t have people like me bringing this up over and over until 6E rolls around.
Or you could just stop bringing it up and then no one would have to deal with it. As far as I can tell, it's just you and ChickenChamp on this crusade and ChickenChamp isn't going around starting threads about it.
I knew from the beginning that you don't care about the cleric ruling at all. You just want to include it to help legitimize your claims about Primal Companion. You're desperate to have a talking point next time some newbie steps in here asking about the Beastmaster and it shows. Just chill man. You should be able to hype up the PHB beastmaster without needing something negative to say about Tasha's.
I'm looking again at both classes in Tasha's that have that little extra sentence in the "optional CLASS features" section. It is specifically for the class, not the subclass, while my beast master issue option is listed in the subclass section. This means the cleric is effected a bit more as it's effected ability is a class feature and the order domain's order's wrath ability relies on it (the class ability) specifically.
I am involved in a group that is playing some all ranger on-shots with all kinds of rangers, including both beats masters, so hopefully my complaint/concern/criticism will be dismissed in my mind.
But...a primal companion and a beast companion are both ranger companions with the beast creature type, so they both are beast companions, therefore the later level features apply.
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You're missing the forest for the trees. My example wasn't made to provide a convincing argument. It was made to show how silly yours is.
I think you are being highly selective here. When it comes to the Ranger's Companion ability you are perfectly capable of seeing that something that does not use hard codified language implies a ruling.
But when it comes to the Primal Companion you ignore the same logical conclusions. Primal Companion says it can be taken as an alternative which replaces Ranger's Companion. The only conclusion that makes sense is that it also replaces any instances in the subclass where the Ranger's Companion feature would be used.
I do find it odd that they didnt replace the L7 ability in Tasha's to fit with Primal Companions. As HeironymusZot pointed out, its more or less redundant for what a primal beast can already do. Regardless of the other implications of this thread, I think it was a vast oversight to let choosing the optional 3rd level feature make the 7th level feature unimportant and unimpactful
Edit: Just wrote up a possible replacement feature idea. Let me know what you think. The idea is to still grant the benefit of magical attacks and also give the Ranger a way to give their companion limited commands on turns where they choose to cast a spell using their bonus action rather than commanding the creature. This is written to explicitly work with the Primal Companion feature.
Arcane Training
7th-level Beastmaster feature, which replaces the Exceptional Training feature
Attacks made by your primal beast now count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to non magical attacks and damage.
Additionally, whenever you use your bonus action to cast a Ranger spell of 1st level or higher, you can command your primal beast to Dash, Disengage, or Hide as part of the same bonus action.
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Now you’re just being mean. LOL!
Let’s shift this over to the cleric, the other Tasha’s class that has that same extra sentence dropped in there. Thoughts on that with the subclass ability along side it?
I don't think that's the case at all. The way I see it the bonus action commands are close to ribbons that the Beast Companion should have had access to at level 1 all along. The magical damage clause is a huge add, and absolutely something the Primal Beast loves to pick up. It's a bit strange, but I'm going to assume that WotC realized giving the companion access to those commands at level 1 was no big deal and that the magical damage clause was enough to keep the level 7 ability relevant and exciting enough to not go through the paces of reworking it when they don't think the class needed another one. Again, assumptions, but I think that tracks.
The magical damage is a big benefit to be sure, but I find it odd they didn't at least come up with something different for primal beasts (even if the only change is effectively a ribbon ability). I feel like its just a bad design choice to let there be overlap between two features for the same subclass like that.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Yeah I agree Kaboom, it's definitely a bit odd. In the end it really doesn't bother me because the companion is fantastic at 1, scales well, and ends up enabling 4 attacks per round at 11.
@Frank, I'm not being mean, I'm being facetious because I think the nature of this thread is absurd.
The only cleric ability that can be replaced is potent spellcasting or divine strikes at 8. You can have blessed strikes instead.
If the order domain cleric takes the optional blessed strikes feature then they lose their level 17 ability, order’s wrath.
Yeah if their DM is a complete knob and doesn't allow their blessed strike damage to count when used on a weapon attack.
I don't think anything presented in this thread is a problem unless the DM is unfit for the task.
Like or not. Opinion or not. Those are the implications of the words the printed. Especially with the extra added sentence that only the cleric and ranger have in Tasha’s.
I think it's pretty obvious that, RAI, the rest of the Beast Master kit is meant to play well with the new Primal Companion. Honestly, I think you're splitting hairs here.
I do have to wonder if the reason you're doing so is in an attempt to give a niche to the PHB Beast Master over its now-more popular cousin.
Of course I am!!! Sheesh.
But mostly wanting/wishing for further, rock solid, clarification so we don’t have people like me bringing this up over and over until 6E rolls around.
Its OK. They will screw it up differently in 6e.
The Problem Between the Ranger and the Cleric are actually different.
With the Ranger we're talking about subsequent abilities that reference in essence an object gained by an ability. This is just a matter of the name of the object not always matching correctly. However both Ranger's Companion and Primal Companion make Reference to "the Beast" mostly in the way they are written.
In Fact, almost all functionality statements about them both use the phrasing "the Beast" and not Beast Companion or Primal Companion. These two phrases of Beast Companion and Primal Companion are almost entirely found in the descriptive fluff. (the non mechanics about where your beast comes from).
Ranger's Companion uses Companion Beast as far as mechanics go in only one place. Functioning when the ranger is incapacitated or absent.
Primal Companion only uses Primal Beast Functionally in it's specific way of re-summoning your Primal Beast to have it take a different form.
But at No Time does any subsequent ability actually reference a class ability you would right down on your sheet by name. It only uses implied descriptive signifiers to the variable object created by those abilities. This removes necessary exactness of pointing to one over the other since you cannot have both and they are both creating objects that the descriptive Signifiers later used can apply to.
So when you get down to the further abilities after that. Beast Companion is not a hard and fast pointer to one of these abilities when used in the abilities descriptions. It's just an Implied Signifier pointing to a particular object(of which there can be many different specific ones), which is "The Beast" that is referenced in both abilities heavily. And that Beast happens to be your "Companion" which is referenced in the name of both abilities. This in basic means that Any further abilities apply to both. Not just one of them. Because they both function around Beasts and that beast must be in some way your Companion.
The order Cleric actually has a much bigger problem with the ability replacement. This is because the future ability does not make an "Implied reference" like the Beast companion issue does. It actually outright states an exact ability that you would write on your sheet to modify and you would no longer have that ability on your sheet if you replace it. So we cannot do like with the beast companion and simply link the implied Signifiers to either ability. We have the problem that we have to make some kind of Clear Mention to the New Ability for the later ability to further work. Good DM's are easily capable of making this clear mention but the rules do not.
So while Both could be Clarified simply by putting something like "this ability functions like the ability it replaces for purposes of further reference" for the sake of Clarity. Only the Cleric actually requires this kind of rule to still function as fully intended.
Or you could just stop bringing it up and then no one would have to deal with it. As far as I can tell, it's just you and ChickenChamp on this crusade and ChickenChamp isn't going around starting threads about it.
I knew from the beginning that you don't care about the cleric ruling at all. You just want to include it to help legitimize your claims about Primal Companion. You're desperate to have a talking point next time some newbie steps in here asking about the Beastmaster and it shows. Just chill man. You should be able to hype up the PHB beastmaster without needing something negative to say about Tasha's.
Ouch!
Well, you may be right.
I'm on the side that, It was written to prevent people from trying to take favored foe ( or deft explorer) and then try getting a favored enemy (or terrain) at higher levels Because the table says you get one.
I think all companions get the features even if it "might" be Partially redundant.
There are still potential reasons to take the old beast master - if your ranger wants that poisonous or constricting snake, spider, prone-knocking wolf or beast with multiattack forms and you don't mind suffering through the old action economy. I personally like the ease of the newer beasts but it comes at the cost of some unique potent choices from the old beast companion list. Fear not! 😜
I'm looking again at both classes in Tasha's that have that little extra sentence in the "optional CLASS features" section. It is specifically for the class, not the subclass, while my beast master issue option is listed in the subclass section. This means the cleric is effected a bit more as it's effected ability is a class feature and the order domain's order's wrath ability relies on it (the class ability) specifically.
I am involved in a group that is playing some all ranger on-shots with all kinds of rangers, including both beats masters, so hopefully my complaint/concern/criticism will be dismissed in my mind.
But...a primal companion and a beast companion are both ranger companions with the beast creature type, so they both are beast companions, therefore the later level features apply.