But the Fey can attack and then use his charm immediately and he can do it every round. Even if he saves as long as there is one enemy within 120 feet and you have a reaction you can try to charm or frighten that enemy.
This is also only the Summon Fey charm that is broken by damage. The beguiling twist charm does not break on damage (it is save every turn)
Most creatures at this level already have advantage on the save AND you can upcast with a 5th level slot (since full casters have those at this level) and get more than 1 creature with a single action cast.
Most creatures do not have advantage at this level and 5th level charm monster is not a very good combat spell. It is ok if the plan is to talk your way past them, but if you need to kill them it is very bad. Upcast cause fear can get 5 with a 5th level spell and is far better in combat, even against enemies that already have advantage.
Since there is only one enemy I am going to calculate the ally attacks together.
The way summoned Fey works is the Fey goes right after the Ranger, that means new Fey summoned go between the Ranger and the last Fey. further I am going to have all Fey attack since this is one enemy. That is not the bst way to go against a lone enemy, but the only way I can do it mathematically without programming a simulaition. That means early Fey might have their charms canceled by Fey that hit later and it dramatically drives up the damage the devil can do. As a result after there is more than 1 Fey they are going to try to get a twisted frightened in by charming the Ranger. The base chance of this working is 41% with 2 Fey on the battlefeild, 51% with 3 Fey on the battlefield and 54% with 4 Fey on the battlefield. That includes the effect of the Ranger succeeding and the devil failing. This eliminates the charm for the "new" Fey and regressively eliminates it for up to the next two by 25% and 6%. Being frightened reduces the devils chance to hit by 20% and restricts movement. The way I am going to handle this is I am going to ignore movement but apply a flat 10% reduction on the devils damage when 2 or more Fey are on the battlefield and make one of the Fey not targetable at all (he is Fey stepping towards the Ranger) when there are 2 Fey or more in the fight. The same Fey can not be non-targetable two turns in a row.
Badgers first turn and 2nd-8th badger every turn - chance to hit 30% damage 5 claws 5 bite. total damage=3
Badger with wound - chance to hit 30%, chance to not be wounded 28%. total damage=1
PC Druid -chance to hit 60% damage 10 attack, 10 extra attack, 8 PAM. total damage=17 (I will assume shillelagh is precast)
PC Ranger - chance to hit 60% damage 10 attack, 10 extra attack, 8 PAM=17 +3.5 dreadful strikes +3.5 favored foe 96% chance to hit. total damage=24
Fey - chance to hit 60% damage 7piercieng halved to 3, 7 force. Total damage 6
If all Fey attack reduce damage of one Fey by 1 to account for possibility he is wounded.
Devil fork badger: chance to hit 0.95 damage 15. Total damage=14
Devil tail badger: chance to hit 0.95 damage 10 + 10 wound with a 70% chance of failed save. total damage 0.95*(10+0.70*10)=17 some of this takes affect the next turn but it goes before the guy who is hit goes so it is ok to count it here.
Note below - fey 1, Fey 2, Fey 3 etc refer to turn order. When the first fey summoned is killed Fey 2 becomes Fey 1 for the Devil's damage purposes the NEXT turn.
Devil fork Fey 1: chance to not be charmed 55%, chance to hit 80% damage 15. total damage =7
Devil fork Fey 2: chance not to be charmed by Fey 2 (72%) chance to hit 80% damage 15. total damage= 9
Devil Fork Fey 3: chance not to be charmed by Fey 3 (84%) chance to hit 80% damage 15, total damage= 10
Devil tail Fey 1: chance to not be charmed 55%, chance to hit 80% damage 10+10 wound with 70% chance not to save. total damage= 7
Devil Tail Fey 2: chance to not be charmed by Fey 2 (72%), chance to hit 80% damage 10+10 with 70% chance not to save. Total damage =10
Devil tail Fey 3: Chance not to be charmed by Fey 3 (84%) chance to hit 80%, damage 10+10 with 70% not to save. total damage =11
Devil fork on PC with no Fey alive at start of devil turn: 75% chance to hit, 15 damage. Total damage = 11
Devil fork on PC with 1 or 2 Fey alive at start of devil turn: 55% chance to not be charmed by Ranger, 75% chance to hit total. damage = 6
Devil Fork on PC with 3 Fey alive at start of devil turn: 20% chance to not be charmed by Ranger, 75% chance to hit. total damage = 2
Devil Tail on PC with 0 Fey alive at start of devil turn: 75% chance to hit. 10 + 10 with 80% chance to fail save = 14
Devil tail on PC with 1 or 2 Fey alive at start of devil turn total damage = 7
Devil tail on PC with 3 fey alive at start of devil turn = 3
Conjure Animals
For initiative we will assume 2 badgers go before Druid, 4 between Druid and Devil and 2 after Devil. We will run up to the Devils turn and then do turn-to-turn based on the devil thereafter.
Before devils turn
6 Badgers-18 damage
Druid-17damage
1. Devil- kills one badger, wounds the other and takes it to 11
6 badgers - 18
wounded badger -1
Druid-17
2. Devil kills 2 badgers
5 badgers - 15
druid 17
3. Devil - kills badger, wounds badger
3 badgers-9
wounded badger-1
druid-17
4. Devil - kills 2 badgers
2 badgers-6
druid-17
5. Devil - kills 1 badger wounds 1
wounded badger 1
Druid - 17
7. Devil - kills last badger deals 25 to druid
At this point the devil has taken 153 damage, the Druid has taken 25 and there are no allies left on the field
Using summon Fey
Fey 1 attacks - 6
1. Devils turn Devil does 21 damage to Fey 1 (9hps left)
Fey1 and Fey 2 attack for 11
Fey 1 not targetable next turn
2. Devils turn, Devil does 25 to Fey 2 (accounting for potential for being frightened)
Fey 1, 2 and 3 attack for 17
Fey 2 is not targetable
3 Devils turn. devil kills Fey 1 with 2 fork attacks, hits Fey 3 for 10 (20hp lef)
Fey 2, Fey3 and Fey 4 hit for 17
Fey 2 is not targetable.
4. Devil - Devil hits fey 3 for 19 (1hp left)
Fey 2, Fey 3 and Fey 4 hit for 17
Ranger hits for 24
Fey 3 is not targetable
5. Devil - Devil kills Fey 2, deals 17 to Fey 4
Fey 3 and Fey 4 hit for 11
Ranger hits for 24
Fey 4 is not targetable
6. Devil- Devil kills Fey 3, deals 12 to Ranger
Fey 4 hits 6
Ranger hits for 24
7 Devil - kills Fey 4 deals 7 to Ranger
At this point The devil has taken 157 and the Ranger has taken 19
It is pretty darn close and I did not plan it that way. Note I did not consider either positioning or loss of concentration.
Also this assumes the Fey are going to attack every turn. That is not really the right way to play this ability against one enemy, that is the way to play it against large numbers. Against one enemy, The right way to play it is attack first then Fey step. If the first Fey fails to charm he draws the bad guys AOO. Once one Fey successfully charms him the rest do not attack him. They either try to get the ranger to twist or only use their charm. Any Fey after the first successful charm that succeed in charming close into melee range and ready an action to attack if the devil moves (which is a little different than an AOO). Fey who fail at charm disengage if he has not used his AOO or just leave and ready an action if he closes within reach. What this does is put the Ranger and any fey who succeeded in charm in contact with the lone enemy. If he moves he draws attacks from all of them. He does not need to move out of reach either, he just has to move.
This draws the battle out longer because you are doing less DPR but you are putting a lot of enemies in contact, he can't attack anyone easily but they can attack him. It also puts up physical barriers to movement that he has to go around.
Honestly you probably should have more like 4 devils and a party for it to be more realistic, but just wanted to make sure you gave the devil advantage on his saves because he has magic resist. (Also to cover the number of immune that I was talking about, I searched DnD beyond and filtered all monsters that had charmed immunity from CR 11-14 and checked against the total number of monsters from CR 11-14 on DnD beyond). Also you left out Dreadful strikes from the Ranger/druid multi-class, which he has as well that is a 3rd level ranger feature and you are missing the +2 damage from dueling as well the Druid/ranger should be doing 22 points of damage each round after you take into account the 60% accuracy which after 7 rounds 5 damage*7 is another 35 damage.... which is a dead horned devil, it does seem your numbers for Favored foe are a bit off as well, it should be based on the 60% hit chance because it is triggered PER hit. Also you didn't use all 8 badgers on turn 1 with the Druid ranger, you missed 2 of them, they go after but the fact that they can be burrowed means he would have to target the ones that went, not the ones that didn't so that is missing 6 damage so a total of 41 damage missed. With the damage missed, this means the Horned devil would be dead before it kills all allies and does any damage to ranger. So you may not have planned it, but you sure did make a lot of assumptions in favor of the pure ranger and just left things off the druid ranger.
And finally, remember the pure ranger nova'd everything in the one fight. The druid/ranger. Used 1 spell.... and not the best beast for it, and still did just as well, if not better once you account for the things you missed.
This said, yes Summon Fey is a fun useful control tool. But it is one a full caster gets much earlier and is much more effective at lower levels. the higher the levels go. The more legendary resistance you run into, the more charm immunity you run into. The easier it is for enemies to kill, the more magic resistance becomes a thing.
But all around I think we have exhausted this conversation.
This post showed enough. it takes you all of your high level spells to keep up with 1 spell from a druid/ranger. And the druid/ranger still out preformed once you remember that he still has the level 3 ranger features as well.
Edit: Also I know it is better to just use 1 fey and stun lock the creature if there is only 1, but we are only using 1 because we are only using 1 party member, not because it is at all realistic to only fight 1 creature.
Edit 2: to be fair, the first round would not include PAM because the druid/ranger needs to drop its totem. So it would only be 16 on round 1 and 22 on future rounds. Also to be fair, this is still only the 3rd level spells for druid ranger.... the 4th level spell would have been 16 badgers.
Thanks. Dueling and dreadful strikes (at 1d4) would be 6 extra damage per turn for the multiclass (42 total) - 7 for no PAM on the first turn =37 more damage.
Magic resistance does not apply to the Fey's charm because it is an innate ability is not magical (just like its attacks are not magical).
Based on sage advice when it comes to magic resistance "magical effects" include the following:
Magic items
Spells
Anything which specifically creates the effect of a spell (the Fey charm ability creates a condition not a spell)
A spell attack
Fueled by the use of spell slots
Otherwise explicitly declared magical
The beguiling twist ability is also not magical.
Putting more enemies on the battlefield makes beguiling twist WAY more powerful, even 1 more enemy dramatically increases its power. It also makes AOOs and movement more of a factor which is impossible to consider in this comparison. Frightened enemies can not close with the Ranger at all. This is something the Fey and other allies can exploit relatively easily. This is where the real control power of beguiliing twist comes into play. Aside from splitting the charms between multiple enemies, they Fey also are going to just leave reach if the charm fails against a frightened enemy. They will take the AOO (at disadvantage) and then the enemy can not follow them on its turn. So the enemy trades multiattack for a single AOO.
With multiple enemies it is not possible to evaluate without modeling starting positions, turn order etc.
A Horned Devil is considered a deadly encounter for any single character up to 16th level and while the characters here heavily damaged the devil, they both would have probably lost this fight in an actual game. Once the Fey were gone, the Devil would likely beat the Ranger despite being down 150hps already. Against the Druid/Ranger the devil was playing stupid the entire battle. The Druid was in melee with him, yet he went after the minions when he could easily just beat concentration (or for that matter kill the PC). If the Horned Devil concentrated on the multiclass character instead of the badgers he would have killed him in on his 3rd turn even if he miraculously hung on to concentration (healing notwithstanding). If we included concentration, the chance of the Druid/Ranger keeping concentration for just a single turn against a full multiattack action by the Devil is only 30%. Therefore if he attacked the Druid/Ranger he could have gotten rid of all the conjured animals and nearly half the characters hps in turn 1.
Debatable the fey itself is from a spell. But your probably right with any good ruling and doesn't take effect. Everything else right, but we also arent taking a party into consideration or any other intelligent play by either player. Obviously things are going to change, but the fact that the druid ranger can do with 1 spell what it takes the ranger to do with 4 is enough to end the debate for me.
This also doesnt take grappling into consideration. I mean lets make it 16 badgers thanks to level 4 spell and the devil is grappled by 4 with 12 beating on him. Then ranged attacks. The druid/ranger absolutely kills the bone devil by round 5 without it ever moving due to too many grapples. And with an upcast aid its even worse since the bone devil has to use all of its to kill 1 badger, and with multiple grappling it cant break free of all of them with its action, so it has to wittle them away.
First round 12 badgers do 36, 4 grapple with advantage. 11 badgers do 33, 10 badgers do 30, 9 badgers 27, 8 do 24
That is already 140 points of damage with 4 badgers doing nothing but grappling and the ranger druid sitting on his thumbs watching the carnage as a horned devil is burried alive.
Difficulty ratings go out the window around level 9 in optimized play.
at this point IMO Aquilontune Actively rewrites the Goals to fit his view of the game workings and will use active Negging for attacking a view Point he disagrees with. "Flowery" language is thrown in as if to signal "see I can be fair" and when he receives defensive statements of similar nature Cries of foul arise. This has been consistent across 3 Recent threads and even his first forum post.
There are so many rules "traps" all designed to prove his point. A straight ranger will never compete because he is the sole judge and creator of the competition and you are backed into a corner removing extra features that affect combat in a unlimited way across an adventuring day.
In his summon examples his badgers last several fights without concentration but then the fae summon all of a sudden have to account for concentration.
What about the loss of a feat? by only taking 3 levels there is one feat loss. how much values is that?
it happens time and time again and people wondered why I started approaching the forum rules edge ..... at least I felt bad about it.
at this point IMO Aquilontune Actively rewrites the Goals to fit his view of the game workings and will use active Negging for attacking a view Point he disagrees with. "Flowery" language is thrown in as if to signal "see I can be fair" and when he receives defensive statements of similar nature Cries of foul arise. This has been consistent across 3 Recent threads and even his first forum post.
There are so many rules "traps" all designed to prove his point. A straight ranger will never compete because he is the sole judge and creator of the competition and you are backed into a corner removing extra features that affect combat in a unlimited way across an adventuring day.
In his summon examples his badgers last several fights without concentration but then the fae summon all of a sudden have to account for concentration.
What about the loss of a feat? by only taking 3 levels there is one feat loss. how much values is that?
it happens time and time again and people wondered why I started approaching the forum rules edge ..... at least I felt bad about it.
First took 5 levels not 3 so no loss of feat or asi at 11, if you ever actually read my entire posts you would know that. The fey don't have concentration concern. My debate opponents said they were using non-concentration varient thus only 1 min, thus action economy and spell slot economy issues not concentration issues. I have previously stated that I believe concentrating on a fey pre fight and then using the non-concetration version on your first action is probably better economically, (both action and spell slot resource). Yes I am attempting to prove a point, and ECO3M's math proved it. He was the one that wanted to add caveats about concentration after I pointed out that he missed damage, and that in the comparison I used 1 spell and he used 4 to achieve the same thing. The fact that I purposely hung back a spell slot level, and didn't go searching for the best beast should have made this comparison obvious, but no apparently not. His character can make more economical choices and do better than he projects with a team behind him. This is a fact. But mine also wasnt going all out by design because the point was he could do the same if not better with less. Which, again, the math proved was true.
Fey ranger is definitely better than I gave it credit for in the right group, but a majority of the time I am still much happier with druid/ranger over pure ranger. The fact that you think I am moving the goal post is funny. I simply was addressing the concentration point. If your really worried about that. I can use a higher slot, and hang back as an option, because I was never the one going all out. Because I know there is more to an adventure then 1 fight. While you guys are assuming you can nova everything just to keep up, which simply proves my point time and time again about the 11 drop off. Which doesn't make sense to me because I feel like you all know there are better ways to handle it.
Edit: the badgers last 1 hour with concentration. I used no spell that required concentration other than badgers. 1 hour is enough for pre cast and more than 1 fight. The fact that you seem to think otherwise is strange to me. And again reeks of not actually reading what I write and creating strawman arguments.
Edit 2. The real irony to me is the real ability the fey build is going off is the level 7 one. Course if you are going to push to 7 might as well go 8 for second asi, then 9 to get those 3rd level spells, then 10 might as well get nature's veil, then hey 11 is right there, 12 and 13. So it makes sense that the 7 is the real hang on for any ranger build. Which is why fey is the argument.
Because I granted gloom, beast and drake. Everyone seems to have given up on monster slayer, hunter, horizon walker, and to a much lesser extent swarm keeper.
There are reasons to go pure ranger, depending on the sub class. Because what matters is "is the 7 feature good enough to push to 11, or is the 11th level strong?" If yes, push to 11, if no stop at 5. In the right group with fey...push. with the wrong group, jump off and go shepherd at 5.
Edit 3: I was one of the people that upvoted ECO3M'S post about cause fear over charm monster and his stuff about the fey hitting and then charming. Because he is 100% correct and I have done that exact trick myself with a feylock at level 5. My party was bored when I told them to hang back as I proceeded to solo the low wis CR 6 creature with this as they just stayed away. GM was baffled, and very unlucky, and learned that proper challenges included more than one meat head monster that will get locked out and be unable to hit the fey.
Edit 4. I really think I need to just stop responding in the ranger sub forum. It's not like I don't know there are good ranger builds, just not for what I am looking for in my next game. I shouldn't have made the blanket statement about ranger I did. At least there was some useful conversations out of it. At least useful to me. Maybe no one else got anything out of it, but I do hope ranger gets more strong subclasses in the future, or when 5.5 comes out they add something to all martials at 11. Or hell I would honestly take weaker casters at higher levels for more accurate CRs. Probably a pipe dream and I have a feeling if I tried to homebrew ranger to be just a touch stronger this forum would crucify me.
Edit 4. I really think I need to just stop responding in the ranger sub forum. It's not like I don't know there are good ranger builds, just not for what I am looking for in my next game. I shouldn't have made the blanket statement about ranger I did. At least there was some useful conversations out of it. At least useful to me. Maybe no one else got anything out of it, but I do hope ranger gets more strong subclasses in the future, or when 5.5 comes out they add something to all martials at 11. Or hell I would honestly take weaker casters at higher levels for more accurate CRs. Probably a pipe dream and I have a feeling if I tried to homebrew ranger to be just a touch stronger this forum would crucify me.
Believe it or not I don't want anyone to leave the forums. I am just sick of the private messages saying "I am sick of bein harrowed for playing/liking a ranger(or its ability) I'M done with {the DNDbeyond community, table or other group]." You aren't even the first or second this week. It almost always happens with a "this needs to be perfect or best" or "that's not what that means" argument or "that's situational{or useless}"
Considering The vagueness some people treat the ranger language. The "strength" of the class is also incredibly vague as we have seen.
Optimization is fine. RAW corrections is fine {if done in decent spirit} but sometimes the intended spirit doesn't go through. I am convinced half the reason wotc wont answer any ranger questions is because its like getting into political topics. (actually wotc probably prefers politics more). But as soon as dpr white rooms trade offs start everything goes to one of the three bad categories.
I am sorry for my Rude messiah complex But some comments you made were "last straw ones" for a couple of people. {perceived unfairly negative or Perceived active trolling} few of us are innocent but at least 3 of us dug in our heals to fight. I think 1 person was actively encouraging fighting {one of our regulars trolls per usual} just so they could sit back and laugh. still I should have known better.
Edit 4. I really think I need to just stop responding in the ranger sub forum. It's not like I don't know there are good ranger builds, just not for what I am looking for in my next game. I shouldn't have made the blanket statement about ranger I did. At least there was some useful conversations out of it. At least useful to me. Maybe no one else got anything out of it, but I do hope ranger gets more strong subclasses in the future, or when 5.5 comes out they add something to all martials at 11. Or hell I would honestly take weaker casters at higher levels for more accurate CRs. Probably a pipe dream and I have a feeling if I tried to homebrew ranger to be just a touch stronger this forum would crucify me.
Believe it or not I don't want anyone to leave the forums. I am just sick of the private messages saying "I am sick of bein harrowed for playing/liking a ranger(or its ability) I'M done with {the DNDbeyond community, table or other group]." You aren't even the first or second this week. It almost always happens with a "this needs to be perfect or best" or "that's not what that means" argument or "that's situational{or useless}"
Considering The vagueness some people treat the ranger language. The "strength" of the class is also incredibly vague as we have seen.
Optimization is fine. RAW corrections is fine {if done in decent spirit} but sometimes the intended spirit doesn't go through. I am convinced half the reason wotc wont answer any ranger questions is because its like getting into political topics. (actually wotc probably prefers politics more). But as soon as dpr white rooms trade offs start everything goes to one of the three bad categories.
I am sorry for my Rude messiah complex But some comments you made were "last straw ones" for a couple of people. {perceived unfairly negative or Perceived active trolling} few of us are innocent but at least 3 of us dug in our heals to fight. I think 1 person was actively encouraging fighting {one of our regulars trolls per usual} just so they could sit back and laugh. still I should have known better.
Yeah the reason those don't do very well is because a core group don't want to admit that there are design issues that a lot of people have with the ranger abilities.
They don't see an issue with the PHB ranger and thus will stall most talks on creating a new one.
For me I think Tashas did a good job making those abilities applicable in more scenarios and made them engaging with the way the game is designed currently.
To "fix" the ranger it's less about the actual class and more about fixing the imo terrible way they have exploration set in this edition. It needs a full book IMO to get right if you want to make the pillar exciting because it's like one page now vs. 75% of the player's handbook being about combat.
I plan on making a build that is focused around whirlwind attack with an up casted shadow blade ( at least a lvl 5 slots for shadow blade.) Also keep in mind whirlwind attack is one of the few abilities that character size actually matters. The larger your character the more targets that can be within 5 ft of you. The biggest issue there is that enlarge /reduce spell uses concentration and so does shadow blade, and no races really start off size large. Even the dark dwarves enlarge/ reduce racial ability uses concentration... so how do you do it ? The answer is pick up 3 lvls rune knight fighter. This build is pretty MAD and its not hard to roll 13+. How i plan on getting shadow blade is actually through divine soul sorcerer so 3 lvls of that can get me both shadow blade and spiritual weapon ( spirit weapon i plan on making it look like the opposite twin of the shadow blade ie. sword formed from solidified hope and light. This way you can still use a shield and use dueling fighting style with the shadow blade, and yet keep a bonus attack. I also wanted to do 3 lvls of artillerist to later replace the spiritual weapon with flamethrower eldritch cannon. I did custom lineage to get a the free feat and darkvision. Feats will be gift of the chromatic dragon, sentinel ( to hit things with shadow blade as a reaction), and mobile , because since its possible as size large with whirlwind attack+ horde breaker to hit upto 17 targets ( this includes small or smaller creatures in your squares, but isn't including targets above you up 5ft or below you 5ft) all would be unable to do OA if i have mobile. Also at lvl 3 ranger spells i took freedom of the waves spell.. this could be another way to do a bonus attack with quicken spell, that would both have a chance to knock them down setting them up for the whirlwind attack, and teleport me into what is the most amount of enemy within 5 ft. After teleport , whirlwind attack with your upcasted lvl 5 spell slot casted shadow blade ( 4d8 psychic damage) take on 1d4 elemental damage from gift of the chromatic dragon , and dueling, the extra 1d6 to first target from giant might, your dex or str mod. then walk out of there since they don't get OAs due to mobile. but maby before you alk away use action surge and do the whirlwind attack all over again. The whole build is : 11 hunter ranger/ lvl 3 divine soul sorcerer/ lvl 3 rune knight fighter/ and at the end is artillerist artificer. I thought about bladesinger instead of divine soul sorcerer, but i plan on using a shield. Taking 1st lvl as fighter. and going more or less a dex fighter at lvl 1.
But the Fey can attack and then use his charm immediately and he can do it every round. Even if he saves as long as there is one enemy within 120 feet and you have a reaction you can try to charm or frighten that enemy.
This is also only the Summon Fey charm that is broken by damage. The beguiling twist charm does not break on damage (it is save every turn)
Most creatures do not have advantage at this level and 5th level charm monster is not a very good combat spell. It is ok if the plan is to talk your way past them, but if you need to kill them it is very bad. Upcast cause fear can get 5 with a 5th level spell and is far better in combat, even against enemies that already have advantage.
Honestly you probably should have more like 4 devils and a party for it to be more realistic, but just wanted to make sure you gave the devil advantage on his saves because he has magic resist. (Also to cover the number of immune that I was talking about, I searched DnD beyond and filtered all monsters that had charmed immunity from CR 11-14 and checked against the total number of monsters from CR 11-14 on DnD beyond). Also you left out Dreadful strikes from the Ranger/druid multi-class, which he has as well that is a 3rd level ranger feature and you are missing the +2 damage from dueling as well the Druid/ranger should be doing 22 points of damage each round after you take into account the 60% accuracy which after 7 rounds 5 damage*7 is another 35 damage.... which is a dead horned devil, it does seem your numbers for Favored foe are a bit off as well, it should be based on the 60% hit chance because it is triggered PER hit. Also you didn't use all 8 badgers on turn 1 with the Druid ranger, you missed 2 of them, they go after but the fact that they can be burrowed means he would have to target the ones that went, not the ones that didn't so that is missing 6 damage so a total of 41 damage missed. With the damage missed, this means the Horned devil would be dead before it kills all allies and does any damage to ranger. So you may not have planned it, but you sure did make a lot of assumptions in favor of the pure ranger and just left things off the druid ranger.
And finally, remember the pure ranger nova'd everything in the one fight. The druid/ranger. Used 1 spell.... and not the best beast for it, and still did just as well, if not better once you account for the things you missed.
This said, yes Summon Fey is a fun useful control tool. But it is one a full caster gets much earlier and is much more effective at lower levels. the higher the levels go. The more legendary resistance you run into, the more charm immunity you run into. The easier it is for enemies to kill, the more magic resistance becomes a thing.
But all around I think we have exhausted this conversation.
This post showed enough. it takes you all of your high level spells to keep up with 1 spell from a druid/ranger. And the druid/ranger still out preformed once you remember that he still has the level 3 ranger features as well.
Edit: Also I know it is better to just use 1 fey and stun lock the creature if there is only 1, but we are only using 1 because we are only using 1 party member, not because it is at all realistic to only fight 1 creature.
Edit 2: to be fair, the first round would not include PAM because the druid/ranger needs to drop its totem. So it would only be 16 on round 1 and 22 on future rounds. Also to be fair, this is still only the 3rd level spells for druid ranger.... the 4th level spell would have been 16 badgers.
Thanks. Dueling and dreadful strikes (at 1d4) would be 6 extra damage per turn for the multiclass (42 total) - 7 for no PAM on the first turn =37 more damage.
Magic resistance does not apply to the Fey's charm because it is an innate ability is not magical (just like its attacks are not magical).
Based on sage advice when it comes to magic resistance "magical effects" include the following:
The beguiling twist ability is also not magical.
Putting more enemies on the battlefield makes beguiling twist WAY more powerful, even 1 more enemy dramatically increases its power. It also makes AOOs and movement more of a factor which is impossible to consider in this comparison. Frightened enemies can not close with the Ranger at all. This is something the Fey and other allies can exploit relatively easily. This is where the real control power of beguiliing twist comes into play. Aside from splitting the charms between multiple enemies, they Fey also are going to just leave reach if the charm fails against a frightened enemy. They will take the AOO (at disadvantage) and then the enemy can not follow them on its turn. So the enemy trades multiattack for a single AOO.
With multiple enemies it is not possible to evaluate without modeling starting positions, turn order etc.
A Horned Devil is considered a deadly encounter for any single character up to 16th level and while the characters here heavily damaged the devil, they both would have probably lost this fight in an actual game. Once the Fey were gone, the Devil would likely beat the Ranger despite being down 150hps already. Against the Druid/Ranger the devil was playing stupid the entire battle. The Druid was in melee with him, yet he went after the minions when he could easily just beat concentration (or for that matter kill the PC). If the Horned Devil concentrated on the multiclass character instead of the badgers he would have killed him in on his 3rd turn even if he miraculously hung on to concentration (healing notwithstanding). If we included concentration, the chance of the Druid/Ranger keeping concentration for just a single turn against a full multiattack action by the Devil is only 30%. Therefore if he attacked the Druid/Ranger he could have gotten rid of all the conjured animals and nearly half the characters hps in turn 1.
Debatable the fey itself is from a spell. But your probably right with any good ruling and doesn't take effect. Everything else right, but we also arent taking a party into consideration or any other intelligent play by either player. Obviously things are going to change, but the fact that the druid ranger can do with 1 spell what it takes the ranger to do with 4 is enough to end the debate for me.
This also doesnt take grappling into consideration. I mean lets make it 16 badgers thanks to level 4 spell and the devil is grappled by 4 with 12 beating on him. Then ranged attacks. The druid/ranger absolutely kills the bone devil by round 5 without it ever moving due to too many grapples. And with an upcast aid its even worse since the bone devil has to use all of its to kill 1 badger, and with multiple grappling it cant break free of all of them with its action, so it has to wittle them away.
First round 12 badgers do 36, 4 grapple with advantage. 11 badgers do 33, 10 badgers do 30, 9 badgers 27, 8 do 24
That is already 140 points of damage with 4 badgers doing nothing but grappling and the ranger druid sitting on his thumbs watching the carnage as a horned devil is burried alive.
Difficulty ratings go out the window around level 9 in optimized play.
at this point IMO Aquilontune Actively rewrites the Goals to fit his view of the game workings and will use active Negging for attacking a view Point he disagrees with. "Flowery" language is thrown in as if to signal "see I can be fair" and when he receives defensive statements of similar nature Cries of foul arise. This has been consistent across 3 Recent threads and even his first forum post.
There are so many rules "traps" all designed to prove his point. A straight ranger will never compete because he is the sole judge and creator of the competition and you are backed into a corner removing extra features that affect combat in a unlimited way across an adventuring day.
In his summon examples his badgers last several fights without concentration but then the fae summon all of a sudden have to account for concentration.
What about the loss of a feat? by only taking 3 levels there is one feat loss. how much values is that?
it happens time and time again and people wondered why I started approaching the forum rules edge ..... at least I felt bad about it.
First took 5 levels not 3 so no loss of feat or asi at 11, if you ever actually read my entire posts you would know that. The fey don't have concentration concern. My debate opponents said they were using non-concentration varient thus only 1 min, thus action economy and spell slot economy issues not concentration issues. I have previously stated that I believe concentrating on a fey pre fight and then using the non-concetration version on your first action is probably better economically, (both action and spell slot resource). Yes I am attempting to prove a point, and ECO3M's math proved it. He was the one that wanted to add caveats about concentration after I pointed out that he missed damage, and that in the comparison I used 1 spell and he used 4 to achieve the same thing. The fact that I purposely hung back a spell slot level, and didn't go searching for the best beast should have made this comparison obvious, but no apparently not. His character can make more economical choices and do better than he projects with a team behind him. This is a fact. But mine also wasnt going all out by design because the point was he could do the same if not better with less. Which, again, the math proved was true.
Fey ranger is definitely better than I gave it credit for in the right group, but a majority of the time I am still much happier with druid/ranger over pure ranger. The fact that you think I am moving the goal post is funny. I simply was addressing the concentration point. If your really worried about that. I can use a higher slot, and hang back as an option, because I was never the one going all out. Because I know there is more to an adventure then 1 fight. While you guys are assuming you can nova everything just to keep up, which simply proves my point time and time again about the 11 drop off. Which doesn't make sense to me because I feel like you all know there are better ways to handle it.
Edit: the badgers last 1 hour with concentration. I used no spell that required concentration other than badgers. 1 hour is enough for pre cast and more than 1 fight. The fact that you seem to think otherwise is strange to me. And again reeks of not actually reading what I write and creating strawman arguments.
Edit 2. The real irony to me is the real ability the fey build is going off is the level 7 one. Course if you are going to push to 7 might as well go 8 for second asi, then 9 to get those 3rd level spells, then 10 might as well get nature's veil, then hey 11 is right there, 12 and 13. So it makes sense that the 7 is the real hang on for any ranger build. Which is why fey is the argument.
Because I granted gloom, beast and drake. Everyone seems to have given up on monster slayer, hunter, horizon walker, and to a much lesser extent swarm keeper.
There are reasons to go pure ranger, depending on the sub class. Because what matters is "is the 7 feature good enough to push to 11, or is the 11th level strong?" If yes, push to 11, if no stop at 5. In the right group with fey...push. with the wrong group, jump off and go shepherd at 5.
Edit 3: I was one of the people that upvoted ECO3M'S post about cause fear over charm monster and his stuff about the fey hitting and then charming. Because he is 100% correct and I have done that exact trick myself with a feylock at level 5. My party was bored when I told them to hang back as I proceeded to solo the low wis CR 6 creature with this as they just stayed away. GM was baffled, and very unlucky, and learned that proper challenges included more than one meat head monster that will get locked out and be unable to hit the fey.
Edit 4. I really think I need to just stop responding in the ranger sub forum. It's not like I don't know there are good ranger builds, just not for what I am looking for in my next game. I shouldn't have made the blanket statement about ranger I did. At least there was some useful conversations out of it. At least useful to me. Maybe no one else got anything out of it, but I do hope ranger gets more strong subclasses in the future, or when 5.5 comes out they add something to all martials at 11. Or hell I would honestly take weaker casters at higher levels for more accurate CRs. Probably a pipe dream and I have a feeling if I tried to homebrew ranger to be just a touch stronger this forum would crucify me.
Believe it or not I don't want anyone to leave the forums. I am just sick of the private messages saying "I am sick of bein harrowed for playing/liking a ranger(or its ability) I'M done with {the DNDbeyond community, table or other group]." You aren't even the first or second this week. It almost always happens with a "this needs to be perfect or best" or "that's not what that means" argument or "that's situational{or useless}"
Considering The vagueness some people treat the ranger language. The "strength" of the class is also incredibly vague as we have seen.
Optimization is fine. RAW corrections is fine {if done in decent spirit} but sometimes the intended spirit doesn't go through. I am convinced half the reason wotc wont answer any ranger questions is because its like getting into political topics. (actually wotc probably prefers politics more). But as soon as dpr white rooms trade offs start everything goes to one of the three bad categories.
I am sorry for my Rude messiah complex But some comments you made were "last straw ones" for a couple of people. {perceived unfairly negative or Perceived active trolling} few of us are innocent but at least 3 of us dug in our heals to fight. I think 1 person was actively encouraging fighting {one of our regulars trolls per usual} just so they could sit back and laugh. still I should have known better.
I will say there are at least 3 Hombrew ranger fix threads. and they don't get much traffic but They rarely cause as many problems. Here is one of them https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/ranger/133587-my-take-on-revised-ranger-looking-for-input
Yeah the reason those don't do very well is because a core group don't want to admit that there are design issues that a lot of people have with the ranger abilities.
They don't see an issue with the PHB ranger and thus will stall most talks on creating a new one.
For me I think Tashas did a good job making those abilities applicable in more scenarios and made them engaging with the way the game is designed currently.
To "fix" the ranger it's less about the actual class and more about fixing the imo terrible way they have exploration set in this edition. It needs a full book IMO to get right if you want to make the pillar exciting because it's like one page now vs. 75% of the player's handbook being about combat.
I plan on making a build that is focused around whirlwind attack with an up casted shadow blade ( at least a lvl 5 slots for shadow blade.) Also keep in mind whirlwind attack is one of the few abilities that character size actually matters. The larger your character the more targets that can be within 5 ft of you. The biggest issue there is that enlarge /reduce spell uses concentration and so does shadow blade, and no races really start off size large. Even the dark dwarves enlarge/ reduce racial ability uses concentration... so how do you do it ? The answer is pick up 3 lvls rune knight fighter. This build is pretty MAD and its not hard to roll 13+. How i plan on getting shadow blade is actually through divine soul sorcerer so 3 lvls of that can get me both shadow blade and spiritual weapon ( spirit weapon i plan on making it look like the opposite twin of the shadow blade ie. sword formed from solidified hope and light. This way you can still use a shield and use dueling fighting style with the shadow blade, and yet keep a bonus attack. I also wanted to do 3 lvls of artillerist to later replace the spiritual weapon with flamethrower eldritch cannon. I did custom lineage to get a the free feat and darkvision. Feats will be gift of the chromatic dragon, sentinel ( to hit things with shadow blade as a reaction), and mobile , because since its possible as size large with whirlwind attack+ horde breaker to hit upto 17 targets ( this includes small or smaller creatures in your squares, but isn't including targets above you up 5ft or below you 5ft) all would be unable to do OA if i have mobile. Also at lvl 3 ranger spells i took freedom of the waves spell.. this could be another way to do a bonus attack with quicken spell, that would both have a chance to knock them down setting them up for the whirlwind attack, and teleport me into what is the most amount of enemy within 5 ft. After teleport , whirlwind attack with your upcasted lvl 5 spell slot casted shadow blade ( 4d8 psychic damage) take on 1d4 elemental damage from gift of the chromatic dragon , and dueling, the extra 1d6 to first target from giant might, your dex or str mod. then walk out of there since they don't get OAs due to mobile. but maby before you alk away use action surge and do the whirlwind attack all over again. The whole build is : 11 hunter ranger/ lvl 3 divine soul sorcerer/ lvl 3 rune knight fighter/ and at the end is artillerist artificer. I thought about bladesinger instead of divine soul sorcerer, but i plan on using a shield. Taking 1st lvl as fighter. and going more or less a dex fighter at lvl 1.