If a ranger forgoes a shield they have a free hand to occasionally chuck a dagger with their free hand to trigger restraining strike, hail of thorns, lightning arrow, etc.
Paladins can use their shield as a spellcasting focus, so they don't have to give up AC or their weapon to cast a spell. The dagger chucking has nothing to do with anything. Both paladins and fighters can do that too, and the paladin can even use a smite spell (branding smite, banishing smite) to empower the attack like you said a ranger can.
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It’s all baseline stuff, like a warlock with hex and agonizing blast. We could present the numbers a thousand different ways.
I have no idea what you're talking about anymore. Warlocks have nothing to do with this conversation. You were presenting misleading numbers to back up your claim that Paladins and Fighters are no better at melee than Rangers, and I called you out and corrected you. Stop trying to change the topic and actually start supporting your claims.
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I don't think you actually know what the purpose of a bard or ranger is, which is why you think rangers are underpowered. I've also addressed the ranger's relative power, in terms of RAW DPR, twice now. The first was when I quoted you on page 5, which you still haven't responded to.
I know the purpose of a bard and ranger. Bards are a fullcasting support class that uses battlefield control, debuffs, healing and other support abilitites and spells to help their allies. That is the purpose of a bard. There are subclasses of bards that can do damage, good damage even at certain levels of play, but that is not the overall purpose of a bard. The purpose of a ranger is to be a fighting half-caster with some exploration and nature themed abilities. They are supposed to match paladins and fighters in pure combat powers, because you cannot balance niche non-combat abilities (favored enemy, favored terrain) with healing and combat abilities (action surge, divine smite, second wind, lay on hands).
The second was in an edited post found on page 6, which goes into greater detail. If you need me to start linking my math, I will. But the short version is they can keep up in dealing damage with minimal investment while still contributing elsewhere. They may never deal as much damage as a fighter with 4 attacks or a paladin going nova with their smites, but they can contribute in other ways. If all you're going to focus on is the DPR, then you're missing the forest for the trees.
As I said, myopic.
I'll respond to your earlier post if you're going to complain about that. I honestly didn't see that post. Also, rangers are supposed to keep up in damage with paladins and fighters. They are martial half-casters, which means they should combine their magic and fighting power to deal damage, which they mostly do with Hunter's Mark. It is not myopic to want the class who is supposed to deal comparatively good damage to actually be good at that.
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The ranger isn’t underpowered. Not even the beast master. The baseline ranger class is the most open to DM interpretation of any of the classes.
I feel like you're trolling here, or have a very different experience of rangers than practically everyone else in D&D 5e. Have you played a ranger? Have you played one with another damage dealing character? Have you played more than just a ranger? Do you still think rangers aren't underpowered?
If you answered yes, yes, yes, and yes, you have been doing something wrong. Rangers are underpowered, especially beast masters.
No, they're really not. I ran a game for 6 months for a party of three, and out of the monk, paladin, and ranger it was the ranger who was the MVP. I've played one into Tier 3 and had a blast. Dan Dillon has played a beast master, using the RAW and no house rules, up to level 20. It's not underpowered as a class. If anything, it fills a specific niche (wilderness exploration) a little too well. Their sustained damage output remains competitive with other classes throughout their career, and they come with potent support magic.
The single biggest weakness for beast masters is the dearth of beasts presented in the PHB. A weak beast can hurt, so you need the monster manual to really know what your options are. But other than that they're perfectly functional.
They are. First, that's an anecdote. I have my own little anecdotes as well about my players' experiences as a ranger, and they were very much the Least Valuable Player. Dan Dillon playing Beast Master up to level 20 doesn't prove anything, that is another anecdote. It doesn't fill its niche of exploration too well, they are too dependent on the DM to be good features. They can deal decent damage, but it takes concentration, limits the uses of their other spells, and overall are worse than paladins and fighters at pure damage. They do have some very good spells, but are mostly restricted to one style of play, like Warlocks. Rangers are mostly restricted to Longbow/Hand-Crossbow, Sharpshooter, and Hunter's Mark spamming while Warlocks are mostly restricted to Hex, Eldritch Blast, Agonizing Blast spamming.
The main weakness of the beastmaster is that the beasts are super easy to kill, take your attacks to act, they can't benefit from Hunter's Mark and your other combat spells, and overall are the worst ranger subclass.
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There's nothing to concede. "Different" does not mean "better" or "worse". The three classes all work differently. As cute as these comparisons have been, it's also foolish. All of the now 13 classes, by design, aren't balanced against one another. They're deliberately not equal, so holding them up to each other and saying "look here" doesn't actually accomplish what you think it does.
Whether you roll for stats, use the standard array, or the variant point-buy method, it's not hard to get desirable statistics and serve as a melee ranger. Rangers who focus on dexterity have a slightly easier time of it, but it's not a terrible thing. And, in fact, if you want pure damage numbers a Strength-based Beast Master has the potential for more than an archer.
It is bad that a ranger is restricted to Dexterity. Fighters and Paladins aren't restricted to Strength or Dexterity, so Rangers shouldn't be either. It is difficult to get desirable stats as a Strength based melee ranger, as I said earlier, because you need your highest score to be Strength, second highest to be Dexterity for AC, third highest to be Wisdom for Spellcasting, and fourth highest to be Constitution so you can survive in melee. Dexterity based rangers will be a bit better off, only concentrating on 3 scores instead of 4. A Hunter/Gloomstalker/Horizon Walker/Monster Slayer archer ranger is strictly better than a Strength based Beast Master.
Two-Weapon Fighting is competitive. Yes, it consumes a bonus action, but it outpaces every other weapon in the early levels. After level 5, it's still competitive with the greatsword or maul, averaging only 1 DPR less with a +3 ability modifier, before factoring in hunter's mark. And with hunter's mark, it can outpace even the fighter's Extra Attack (2) at 11th-level.
At early levels it is mostly good, yes. At later levels, it is bad, especially for the ranger subclasses that need their bonus action for other damage increases, and your damage falls off once you kill the target of your hunter's mark, and you have to use a bonus action to move it to a different target instead of attacking, which neither Archer rangers nor melee paladins/fighters have to do.
You don't like medium armor or shields. Well, I guess we should just throw away all the potential armors that rangers can use but, in your opinion, shouldn't.
I don't like shields for purely dealing damage, which was a main focusing point of this discussion. I don't like medium armor for a ranger, for some other classes it is very good. It is not good for a class that already has to concentrate on 3 ability scores, and needs to concentrate on a fourth if they use medium armor and are strength based.
Theory-crafting is all well and good until you start telling people there's a right and wrong way to play. I find your opinion of the class myopic and, quite frankly, useless.
I never told anyone that they're playing incorrectly. I have been only laying out the facts, which is that rangers are underpowered. Even WotC realizes this, proven by them trying multiple times in UA to fix the class (Ranger, Revised, and Class Feature Variants show this). I find your view of the battlefield effectiveness of the class incorrect, and also pretty useless to those who want it to be better.
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There's nothing to concede. "Different" does not mean "better" or "worse". The three classes all work differently. As cute as these comparisons have been, it's also foolish. All of the now 13 classes, by design, aren't balanced against one another. They're deliberately not equal, so holding them up to each other and saying "look here" doesn't actually accomplish what you think it does.
And dumping on any class is just juvenile.
You can concede from the argument if you no longer want to continue. Different does not mean worse, but worse damage does mean worse for a class whose main point is to deal damage. It is not foolish to realize that one class is obviously worse than other to try and fix it. All of the classes are supposed to be balanced against one another. That's why paladins only get 2 attacks, but get smite spells and divine smite. That's why Bladesingers, College of Valor/Swords, and Hexblades have to give up their spells and other class specific features to be good at melee combat. The classes are supposed to be balanced against each other. If a class is obviously not balanced, that is a problem, and needs to be fixed. It is not juvenile to debate the damage effectiveness of a class. It is more juvenile to ignore arguments while making ad hominems and other logical fallacies in place of actually debating. If you want to stop debating, just stop. If you want to stop attacking me, not my arguments, I will let this go without any issues.
Everyone knows bards are the most best of all time martial combatant.
Seriously though, rangers are as powerful in combat as any other, given doing what they are good at. Fighters should deal lots of damage. That’s ALL they do. Paladins have to be frontline, melee, strength based martials. Let’s do a comparison of a dexterity based paladin versus a strength based ranger. That would be “fun”. Warlocks do more damage at level 11 than all three of these classes. Heck, anyone with 2 levels in warlock does!
Seriously though, rangers are as powerful in combat as any other, given doing what they are good at. Fighters should deal lots of damage. That’s ALL they do. Paladins have to be frontline, melee, strength based martials. Let’s do a comparison of a dexterity based paladin versus a strength based ranger. That would be “fun”. Warlocks do more damage at level 11 than all three of these classes. Heck, anyone with 2 levels in warlock does!
That's all false.
Rangers are not as powerful in combat as any other class. They are weaker than many other classes. Fighters should deal a lot of damage, but a druid should always deal at least near the amount of damage fighters can, because that's their whole point. You want to compare a dexterity based paladin to a strength based ranger? That's fine. The dexterity based paladin is better than the strength based ranger. That's a fact. Warlock's Eldritch Blast is not comparable to the weapon damage of martial classes and is not valid here. Stop pointing to things that aren't relevant to the discussion here, please.
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Seriously though, rangers are as powerful in combat as any other, given doing what they are good at. Fighters should deal lots of damage. That’s ALL they do. Paladins have to be frontline, melee, strength based martials. Let’s do a comparison of a dexterity based paladin versus a strength based ranger. That would be “fun”. Warlocks do more damage at level 11 than all three of these classes. Heck, anyone with 2 levels in warlock does!
That's all false.
Rangers are not as powerful in combat as any other class. They are weaker than many other classes. Fighters should deal a lot of damage, but a druid should always deal at least near the amount of damage fighters can, because that's their whole point. You want to compare a dexterity based paladin to a strength based ranger? That's fine. The dexterity based paladin is better than the strength based ranger. That's a fact. Warlock's Eldritch Blast is not comparable to the weapon damage of martial classes and is not valid here. Stop pointing to things that aren't relevant to the discussion here, please.
Druid?! Please show me the numbers on a dexterity paladin versus a strength ranger. 😇
Average Damage Using A Sword In One Hand (longsword or rapier)
Level 3:
Fighter 9.5
Paladin 9.5
Ranger 13
Level 5:
Fighter 21
Paladin 21
Ranger 28
Level 8:
Fighter 23
Paladin 23
Ranger 30
Level 10:
Fighter 23
Paladin 23
Ranger 30
Why did you only do to level 10? Why did you do a level 8 and level 10? Here's a better way to show this, as a general ranger, general paladin, and general fighter's average damage, no subclass features, assuming a +3 in their main stat at level 1, +4 at level 5, and +5 at level 11, all with Dueling Fighting Style:
Level 1: Fighter 9.5 Paladin 9.5 Ranger 9.5
Level 5: Fighter 21 Paladin 21 Ranger 28 (Hunter's Mark, requiring concentration, bonus actions, and spell slots to do this)
Level 20 Fighter 46 (Extra Attack 3 gives this) Paladin 32 Ranger 30 (+wisdom modifier once a turn if you use Foe Slayer)
Those numbers are correct and not misleading, like what you were saying they were. You technically didn't tell a lie about it, but lied by omission. This isn't even counting the subclasses and nova features that paladins and fighters get, with Action Surge, Divine Smite, Smite Spells, Superiority Dice, and so on. Rangers do get some nova powers that can help with this DPR, but not nearly as many as Paladins and Fighters, and they're not nearly as good.
Rangers get their level 11 damage bump from their subclass, not their core class. For example: level 11 hunter does 34.5 (actually they can do that starting at level 8, and even more at level 11 if their are many opponents around), and level 11 beast master with a wolf does 37 (the attacks are magical, have a knockdown effect, Wolf has a 17+ AC, Wolf has 44 hit points, and wolf has advantage in attack rolls).
Rangers get their level 11 damage bump from their subclass, not their core class. For example: level 11 hunter does 34.5 (actually they can do that starting at level 8, and even more at level 11 if their are many opponents around), and level 11 beast master with a wolf does 37 (the attacks are magical, have a knockdown effect, Wolf has a 17+ AC, Wolf has 44 hit points, and wolf has advantage in attack rolls).
I said that I was ignoring subclass features for all of the classes. Battlemaster Fighters get d10 superiority dice at 10th level, Vengeance Paladins get Hunter's Mark at 3rd level, and Eldritch Knights can combine GFB/BB with Shadow Blade and War Caster at 7th-10th level to do unfathomable amounts of damage compared to the ranger. If you want to go back on the "no subclasses" rule that I believe you yourself proposed, I can dig up other specific paladin/fighter features that let them do even more damage.
At level 20 a beast master with a wolf does 46 average damage.
So, you're ignoring the "no subclasses" rule now. I'll assume you did the math correctly and not it some misleading way, but I'll answer that specific example with an idiom: a broken clock is right twice a day. You'll be glad with your 46 average damage until your wolf dies and you begin being even worse.
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There's nothing to concede. "Different" does not mean "better" or "worse". The three classes all work differently. As cute as these comparisons have been, it's also foolish. All of the now 13 classes, by design, aren't balanced against one another. They're deliberately not equal, so holding them up to each other and saying "look here" doesn't actually accomplish what you think it does.
And dumping on any class is just juvenile.
You can concede from the argument if you no longer want to continue. Different does not mean worse, but worse damage does mean worse for a class whose main point is to deal damage. It is not foolish to realize that one class is obviously worse than other to try and fix it. All of the classes are supposed to be balanced against one another. That's why paladins only get 2 attacks, but get smite spells and divine smite. That's why Bladesingers, College of Valor/Swords, and Hexblades have to give up their spells and other class specific features to be good at melee combat. The classes are supposed to be balanced against each other. If a class is obviously not balanced, that is a problem, and needs to be fixed. It is not juvenile to debate the damage effectiveness of a class. It is more juvenile to ignore arguments while making ad hominems and other logical fallacies in place of actually debating. If you want to stop debating, just stop. If you want to stop attacking me, not my arguments, I will let this go without any issues.
You can't tell, but I'm laughing right now. Because that's how laughable this is.
Bards and wizards don't "give up their spells and other class specific features" to be good at melee combat. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Rangers get their level 11 damage boost from their subclasses. The examples I have went to level 10. This was explained beforehand. “...unfathomable...” Nope. Show me the numbers. Show me the numbers too comparing a level 10 dexterity paladin against a level 10 strength ranger. Let’s pick a lane. If I was the one that changed lanes I apologize.
Rangers get their level 11 damage bump from their subclass, not their core class. For example: level 11 hunter does 34.5 (actually they can do that starting at level 8, and even more at level 11 if their are many opponents around), and level 11 beast master with a wolf does 37 (the attacks are magical, have a knockdown effect, Wolf has a 17+ AC, Wolf has 44 hit points, and wolf has advantage in attack rolls).
I said that I was ignoring subclass features for all of the classes. Battlemaster Fighters get d10 superiority dice at 10th level, Vengeance Paladins get Hunter's Mark at 3rd level, and Eldritch Knights can combine GFB/BB with Shadow Blade and War Caster at 7th-10th level to do unfathomable amounts of damage compared to the ranger. If you want to go back on the "no subclasses" rule that I believe you yourself proposed, I can dig up other specific paladin/fighter features that let them do even more damage.
Cool. Now, here's the problem with that assessment.
Every fighter gets Action Surge and up to 4 attacks. Ever paladin gets Divine Smite. But a big chunk of the ranger's damage comes from their archetypes. Because they all fight differently. Heck, just the Hunter archetype has 54 different combinations of archetype features. Beast Masters are at least as varied as all their possible Animal Companions. Rangers are complex; requiring a lot of thinking and strategy. That's just how skirmishers are.
You think they're "underpowered" because you don't understand them.
There's nothing to concede. "Different" does not mean "better" or "worse". The three classes all work differently. As cute as these comparisons have been, it's also foolish. All of the now 13 classes, by design, aren't balanced against one another. They're deliberately not equal, so holding them up to each other and saying "look here" doesn't actually accomplish what you think it does.
And dumping on any class is just juvenile.
You can concede from the argument if you no longer want to continue. Different does not mean worse, but worse damage does mean worse for a class whose main point is to deal damage. It is not foolish to realize that one class is obviously worse than other to try and fix it. All of the classes are supposed to be balanced against one another. That's why paladins only get 2 attacks, but get smite spells and divine smite. That's why Bladesingers, College of Valor/Swords, and Hexblades have to give up their spells and other class specific features to be good at melee combat. The classes are supposed to be balanced against each other. If a class is obviously not balanced, that is a problem, and needs to be fixed. It is not juvenile to debate the damage effectiveness of a class. It is more juvenile to ignore arguments while making ad hominems and other logical fallacies in place of actually debating. If you want to stop debating, just stop. If you want to stop attacking me, not my arguments, I will let this go without any issues.
You can't tell, but I'm laughing right now. Because that's how laughable this is.
Bards and wizards don't "give up their spells and other class specific features" to be good at melee combat. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Bladesingers have to give up spell slots to avoid damage have you read the subclass? Hexblades and Pact of the Blade Warlocks have to give up spell slots for Eldritch Smite, Hex, and Eldritch Invocations for Thirsting Blade, Lifedrinker, Improved Pact Weapon, and Eldritch Smite. Bards have to give up Bardic Inspiration for Blade Flourish and Psychic Blades.
Keep laughing. It shows how little you actually know about this system.
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A 3rd level fireball ONLY deals an average of 21 damage to a single target (assuming a 50% successful save).
If you're casting a fireball only on one target, you're wasting your spell slots. Fireball is an AoE spell, in an entirely different class than martial classes.
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Paladins can use their shield as a spellcasting focus, so they don't have to give up AC or their weapon to cast a spell. The dagger chucking has nothing to do with anything. Both paladins and fighters can do that too, and the paladin can even use a smite spell (branding smite, banishing smite) to empower the attack like you said a ranger can.
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I have no idea what you're talking about anymore. Warlocks have nothing to do with this conversation. You were presenting misleading numbers to back up your claim that Paladins and Fighters are no better at melee than Rangers, and I called you out and corrected you. Stop trying to change the topic and actually start supporting your claims.
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I know the purpose of a bard and ranger. Bards are a fullcasting support class that uses battlefield control, debuffs, healing and other support abilitites and spells to help their allies. That is the purpose of a bard. There are subclasses of bards that can do damage, good damage even at certain levels of play, but that is not the overall purpose of a bard. The purpose of a ranger is to be a fighting half-caster with some exploration and nature themed abilities. They are supposed to match paladins and fighters in pure combat powers, because you cannot balance niche non-combat abilities (favored enemy, favored terrain) with healing and combat abilities (action surge, divine smite, second wind, lay on hands).
I'll respond to your earlier post if you're going to complain about that. I honestly didn't see that post. Also, rangers are supposed to keep up in damage with paladins and fighters. They are martial half-casters, which means they should combine their magic and fighting power to deal damage, which they mostly do with Hunter's Mark. It is not myopic to want the class who is supposed to deal comparatively good damage to actually be good at that.
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They are. First, that's an anecdote. I have my own little anecdotes as well about my players' experiences as a ranger, and they were very much the Least Valuable Player. Dan Dillon playing Beast Master up to level 20 doesn't prove anything, that is another anecdote. It doesn't fill its niche of exploration too well, they are too dependent on the DM to be good features. They can deal decent damage, but it takes concentration, limits the uses of their other spells, and overall are worse than paladins and fighters at pure damage. They do have some very good spells, but are mostly restricted to one style of play, like Warlocks. Rangers are mostly restricted to Longbow/Hand-Crossbow, Sharpshooter, and Hunter's Mark spamming while Warlocks are mostly restricted to Hex, Eldritch Blast, Agonizing Blast spamming.
The main weakness of the beastmaster is that the beasts are super easy to kill, take your attacks to act, they can't benefit from Hunter's Mark and your other combat spells, and overall are the worst ranger subclass.
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There's nothing to concede. "Different" does not mean "better" or "worse". The three classes all work differently. As cute as these comparisons have been, it's also foolish. All of the now 13 classes, by design, aren't balanced against one another. They're deliberately not equal, so holding them up to each other and saying "look here" doesn't actually accomplish what you think it does.
And dumping on any class is just juvenile.
It is bad that a ranger is restricted to Dexterity. Fighters and Paladins aren't restricted to Strength or Dexterity, so Rangers shouldn't be either. It is difficult to get desirable stats as a Strength based melee ranger, as I said earlier, because you need your highest score to be Strength, second highest to be Dexterity for AC, third highest to be Wisdom for Spellcasting, and fourth highest to be Constitution so you can survive in melee. Dexterity based rangers will be a bit better off, only concentrating on 3 scores instead of 4. A Hunter/Gloomstalker/Horizon Walker/Monster Slayer archer ranger is strictly better than a Strength based Beast Master.
At early levels it is mostly good, yes. At later levels, it is bad, especially for the ranger subclasses that need their bonus action for other damage increases, and your damage falls off once you kill the target of your hunter's mark, and you have to use a bonus action to move it to a different target instead of attacking, which neither Archer rangers nor melee paladins/fighters have to do.
I don't like shields for purely dealing damage, which was a main focusing point of this discussion. I don't like medium armor for a ranger, for some other classes it is very good. It is not good for a class that already has to concentrate on 3 ability scores, and needs to concentrate on a fourth if they use medium armor and are strength based.
I never told anyone that they're playing incorrectly. I have been only laying out the facts, which is that rangers are underpowered. Even WotC realizes this, proven by them trying multiple times in UA to fix the class (Ranger, Revised, and Class Feature Variants show this). I find your view of the battlefield effectiveness of the class incorrect, and also pretty useless to those who want it to be better.
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You can concede from the argument if you no longer want to continue. Different does not mean worse, but worse damage does mean worse for a class whose main point is to deal damage. It is not foolish to realize that one class is obviously worse than other to try and fix it. All of the classes are supposed to be balanced against one another. That's why paladins only get 2 attacks, but get smite spells and divine smite. That's why Bladesingers, College of Valor/Swords, and Hexblades have to give up their spells and other class specific features to be good at melee combat. The classes are supposed to be balanced against each other. If a class is obviously not balanced, that is a problem, and needs to be fixed. It is not juvenile to debate the damage effectiveness of a class. It is more juvenile to ignore arguments while making ad hominems and other logical fallacies in place of actually debating. If you want to stop debating, just stop. If you want to stop attacking me, not my arguments, I will let this go without any issues.
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Everyone knows bards are the most best of all time martial combatant.
Seriously though, rangers are as powerful in combat as any other, given doing what they are good at. Fighters should deal lots of damage. That’s ALL they do. Paladins have to be frontline, melee, strength based martials. Let’s do a comparison of a dexterity based paladin versus a strength based ranger. That would be “fun”. Warlocks do more damage at level 11 than all three of these classes. Heck, anyone with 2 levels in warlock does!
That's all false.
Rangers are not as powerful in combat as any other class. They are weaker than many other classes. Fighters should deal a lot of damage, but a druid should always deal at least near the amount of damage fighters can, because that's their whole point. You want to compare a dexterity based paladin to a strength based ranger? That's fine. The dexterity based paladin is better than the strength based ranger. That's a fact. Warlock's Eldritch Blast is not comparable to the weapon damage of martial classes and is not valid here. Stop pointing to things that aren't relevant to the discussion here, please.
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Druid?! Please show me the numbers on a dexterity paladin versus a strength ranger. 😇
Rangers get their level 11 damage bump from their subclass, not their core class. For example: level 11 hunter does 34.5 (actually they can do that starting at level 8, and even more at level 11 if their are many opponents around), and level 11 beast master with a wolf does 37 (the attacks are magical, have a knockdown effect, Wolf has a 17+ AC, Wolf has 44 hit points, and wolf has advantage in attack rolls).
At level 20 a beast master with a wolf does 46 average damage.
I said that I was ignoring subclass features for all of the classes. Battlemaster Fighters get d10 superiority dice at 10th level, Vengeance Paladins get Hunter's Mark at 3rd level, and Eldritch Knights can combine GFB/BB with Shadow Blade and War Caster at 7th-10th level to do unfathomable amounts of damage compared to the ranger. If you want to go back on the "no subclasses" rule that I believe you yourself proposed, I can dig up other specific paladin/fighter features that let them do even more damage.
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So, you're ignoring the "no subclasses" rule now. I'll assume you did the math correctly and not it some misleading way, but I'll answer that specific example with an idiom: a broken clock is right twice a day. You'll be glad with your 46 average damage until your wolf dies and you begin being even worse.
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You can't tell, but I'm laughing right now. Because that's how laughable this is.
Bards and wizards don't "give up their spells and other class specific features" to be good at melee combat. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Rangers get their level 11 damage boost from their subclasses. The examples I have went to level 10. This was explained beforehand. “...unfathomable...” Nope. Show me the numbers. Show me the numbers too comparing a level 10 dexterity paladin against a level 10 strength ranger. Let’s pick a lane. If I was the one that changed lanes I apologize.
A 3rd level fireball ONLY deals an average of 21 damage to a single target (assuming a 50% successful save).
Cool. Now, here's the problem with that assessment.
Every fighter gets Action Surge and up to 4 attacks. Ever paladin gets Divine Smite. But a big chunk of the ranger's damage comes from their archetypes. Because they all fight differently. Heck, just the Hunter archetype has 54 different combinations of archetype features. Beast Masters are at least as varied as all their possible Animal Companions. Rangers are complex; requiring a lot of thinking and strategy. That's just how skirmishers are.
You think they're "underpowered" because you don't understand them.
Bladesingers have to give up spell slots to avoid damage have you read the subclass? Hexblades and Pact of the Blade Warlocks have to give up spell slots for Eldritch Smite, Hex, and Eldritch Invocations for Thirsting Blade, Lifedrinker, Improved Pact Weapon, and Eldritch Smite. Bards have to give up Bardic Inspiration for Blade Flourish and Psychic Blades.
Keep laughing. It shows how little you actually know about this system.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
If you're casting a fireball only on one target, you're wasting your spell slots. Fireball is an AoE spell, in an entirely different class than martial classes.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms