What if Hunter's Mark was eliminated as a spell, and was made into a feature exclusive to the Ranger class? Now, I know this sort of thing has been floated many times by many people. But what I'm proposing is that Hunter's Mark stays exactly the same, except for two things: First, it is no longer a spell- it is a feature with the same number of uses as listed in Favored Enemy. Because it is no longer a spell, the option to upcast it to increase its duration would be gone. Instead, you would use another one of your "uses" of it to do that. Two uses increases it to 8 hrs. Three uses increases it to 24 hours. And Second, Hunter's Mark would now function as a Resource for subclasses, in the same way thst things like Bardic Inspiration, Channel Divinity, Wildshape, or even Second Wind work for their respective classes and subclasses.
How exactly it could be used in the subclasses is something I haven't fully worked out. But what I do know is that Hunter's Mark loses its luster in mid- and high-level play. I was thinking it might be nice if players had options for using it at those tiers of play, other than for the d6 of damage and tracking (the subclasses would uses the "uses" of Hunter's Mark, without necessarily adhering to the spells requirements. I.e., concentration might not be required to expend a use of your Hunter's Mark to, say.... increase your Primal companion's size by one category for one minute, giving it strength check advantage, speed increase, and increased damage [as an idea thst just occurred to me].)
Let me know what you think of this idea. Does anyone have some ideas on how the subclasses could be amended to include such a mechanic? And what kind of subclass features would you add?
I think looking at the new Winter Warden Ranger is a good idea of what could be done with Hunter's Mark. It gives you benefits at 3rd and 15th level that turn the spell from a simple 1d6 into something more. By doing so it transforms it into a feature worth concentrating on at higher level.
A number of the new playtest subclasses have used Hunter's Mark as a feature, and the main complaint most people make is that it then forces them to constantly use Hunter's Mark instead of other spells in order to use their subclass features. Look at the Hollow Warden from the Horror Subclasses UA, which is built almost entirely around using Hunter's Mark to augment your character. The augmentations are cool as hell, but if I want to cast Zephyr Strike or Summon Beast, I give up about 80% of my class features.
I think the problem is the class is already built too much around Hunter's Mark in the first place. If the class spell list was less laden with desirable concentration-based spells, that might mitigate the issue as it is, but I can think of a dozen Ranger spells that I consider far more essential in most circumstances.
Ultimately, the issue is, whoever is creating all these classes is too hung up on keeping true to old BS. Early Rangers were built around having Favored Enemies, which was extremely limiting and everybody hated it. So they were like, "Okay, the Ranger fans liked dealing extra damage, but they didn't like it being tied to a specific creature type. So we should spend three editions revamping the feature." They probably should have just accepted it was a bad feature and replaced it with something more functional and class-specific. But they didn't. So here we are, with this Frankenstein's monster of a class feature that hampers more than helps, trying to find a way to make IT work, rather than trying to replace it with something that does.
Will someone dumb hunters mark down. My ranger has it. I want to know the mechanics.
The basic idea is that you cast it on a target, and then every time you hit that target with an attack while the spell is active, you deal extra damage. If the target dies before the spell runs out, you can move it to another target without having to cast the spell again.
It also provides advantage on ability checks you make to try to find or track the target, but in my experience this rarely comes up in practice, and it's mostly about the extra damage.
The big error is consolidating everything into Hunter's mark. Hunter's Mark should, in practice, be broken up into two spells, and one of those spells should be self targeted. Hear me out.
Hunter's Prowess. Target: Self, 1 Min Concentration: Designate 1 one creature you can see (or locate) at the start of your turn. Until the End of your turn, that creature takes 1d6 force damage whenever you hit with an Attack Roll. You also have Advantage on any Wisdom (Perception or Survival) check you make to find it. Upcasting: 3+ - increase damage to 2d6, 5+ increase damage to 3d6.
This is the straight forward version you get free castings of as a core Ranger feature, and is meant to get the benefits intended by Hunter's Mark, but foregoes the long term tracking option. The advantage is to help seek out targets prone to hiding or going invisible mid-combat. Upcasting makes you a beast in single target damage, since you can't change target until next turn. Since its good stand alone now, bolting extra on it via sub-classes can amplify it to levels that can logically compete with even spell casters.
Predator's Focus lv1: Target: 1 Creature, 60ft, 1 Min, Concentration: Target one Creature you can see. You glean insights into the creature, and can learn more as you observe it. Knowledge checks against the creature are made with Advantage, and can make an attempt when casting the spell. Until the spell ends, you can use a Magic Action to know the general direction of the creature as long as its within 1 mile of your location, and on the same plane. If the creature moves to a different plane, the effect does not end, but you can only track it to its last known location. If it reappears on your plane before the effect ends, you can begin locating it again. If the creature becomes invisible, you have a +3 bonus and advantage to locate it if it is within your line of sight.
UpcastL lv2: In addition - When cast learn the creature's type, learn one of its resistances, and the spell's duration is increased to 1 hour.
Upcast lv3: In addition- When cast you can attempt a DC16 Knowledge check to learn one of its Legendary Resistances or Legendary Actions. Duration increased to 4 hours. Range increases to 4 miles.
Upcast lv4: In addition- If the creature becomes invisible, it is not invisible to you. You Crit on a 19 or 20 on attack rolls against the target. Duration increased to 8 Hours. Range increases to 10 miles.
Upcast lv5: Allies within 30ft of you gain the following benefits. The targeted Creature can not be invisible to you, you crit on a 19 or 20 on attack rolls, flanking gives a +2 bonus to attack rolls (in addition to adv as normal).
The purpose of this spell is to cover all the tracking related stuff, predicated on you initially finding it. It also serves to amp up the monster knowledge aspect (which woefully under utilized in most games), which can work as a platform for other similar skills that sub-classes can play off of. Like allowing a broad bonus to creatures of the same type, giving them weakness to a damage type, etc. The spell slot scaling is two fold intended..... A. duration and range increase for campaigns that demand a big game hunt mentality, or against creatures which abuse stealth to escape. B. has enough justification to be cast during combat as way to tackle a single major threat.
Both of these share a common theme in how they're meant to be the Ranger "locking in" on its enemy. Hunter's Prowess is versatile and puts emphasis on being able to focus damage on one thing at a time, while most spell casters will usually go wide on damage. Predator's Focus is carefully predicated on not trivializing the initial process of finding a threat, but making it extremely difficult to lose track of it once you encounter it. The latter also differentiates in that as it scales up, it offers valuable information about a fight (or potential fight).
The power tuning wasn't carefully considered..... since I don't have time to do that much theory crafting.... But the it should get across the basic idea. If you're gonna build a class to be dependent on a single sustained effect/spell like that, you have to make them worth using. The only sort of sunk cost fallacy issue is that if you upcast Pred Focus with a high level spell slot, and the monster runs, you're hamstung on spell use unless you're willing to drop concentration. To that end, since its a core ranger feature, I would make one of the higher level class features the ability to stop and resume concentration of these two spells specifically. Giving you the ability to cast another concentration spell, and then resume the Prowess or Focus after you're done with it. This would address arguments of effect stacking if it were a just a class ability.
What if Hunter's Mark was eliminated as a spell, and was made into a feature exclusive to the Ranger class? Now, I know this sort of thing has been floated many times by many people. But what I'm proposing is that Hunter's Mark stays exactly the same, except for two things: First, it is no longer a spell- it is a feature with the same number of uses as listed in Favored Enemy. Because it is no longer a spell, the option to upcast it to increase its duration would be gone. Instead, you would use another one of your "uses" of it to do that. Two uses increases it to 8 hrs. Three uses increases it to 24 hours. And Second, Hunter's Mark would now function as a Resource for subclasses, in the same way thst things like Bardic Inspiration, Channel Divinity, Wildshape, or even Second Wind work for their respective classes and subclasses.
How exactly it could be used in the subclasses is something I haven't fully worked out. But what I do know is that Hunter's Mark loses its luster in mid- and high-level play. I was thinking it might be nice if players had options for using it at those tiers of play, other than for the d6 of damage and tracking (the subclasses would uses the "uses" of Hunter's Mark, without necessarily adhering to the spells requirements. I.e., concentration might not be required to expend a use of your Hunter's Mark to, say.... increase your Primal companion's size by one category for one minute, giving it strength check advantage, speed increase, and increased damage [as an idea thst just occurred to me].)
Let me know what you think of this idea. Does anyone have some ideas on how the subclasses could be amended to include such a mechanic? And what kind of subclass features would you add?
I think looking at the new Winter Warden Ranger is a good idea of what could be done with Hunter's Mark. It gives you benefits at 3rd and 15th level that turn the spell from a simple 1d6 into something more. By doing so it transforms it into a feature worth concentrating on at higher level.
A number of the new playtest subclasses have used Hunter's Mark as a feature, and the main complaint most people make is that it then forces them to constantly use Hunter's Mark instead of other spells in order to use their subclass features. Look at the Hollow Warden from the Horror Subclasses UA, which is built almost entirely around using Hunter's Mark to augment your character. The augmentations are cool as hell, but if I want to cast Zephyr Strike or Summon Beast, I give up about 80% of my class features.
I think the problem is the class is already built too much around Hunter's Mark in the first place. If the class spell list was less laden with desirable concentration-based spells, that might mitigate the issue as it is, but I can think of a dozen Ranger spells that I consider far more essential in most circumstances.
Ultimately, the issue is, whoever is creating all these classes is too hung up on keeping true to old BS. Early Rangers were built around having Favored Enemies, which was extremely limiting and everybody hated it. So they were like, "Okay, the Ranger fans liked dealing extra damage, but they didn't like it being tied to a specific creature type. So we should spend three editions revamping the feature." They probably should have just accepted it was a bad feature and replaced it with something more functional and class-specific. But they didn't. So here we are, with this Frankenstein's monster of a class feature that hampers more than helps, trying to find a way to make IT work, rather than trying to replace it with something that does.
Will someone dumb hunters mark down. My ranger has it. I want to know the mechanics.
The basic idea is that you cast it on a target, and then every time you hit that target with an attack while the spell is active, you deal extra damage. If the target dies before the spell runs out, you can move it to another target without having to cast the spell again.
It also provides advantage on ability checks you make to try to find or track the target, but in my experience this rarely comes up in practice, and it's mostly about the extra damage.
pronouns: he/she/they
The big error is consolidating everything into Hunter's mark. Hunter's Mark should, in practice, be broken up into two spells, and one of those spells should be self targeted. Hear me out.
Hunter's Prowess. Target: Self, 1 Min Concentration: Designate 1 one creature you can see (or locate) at the start of your turn. Until the End of your turn, that creature takes 1d6 force damage whenever you hit with an Attack Roll. You also have Advantage on any Wisdom (Perception or Survival) check you make to find it. Upcasting: 3+ - increase damage to 2d6, 5+ increase damage to 3d6.
This is the straight forward version you get free castings of as a core Ranger feature, and is meant to get the benefits intended by Hunter's Mark, but foregoes the long term tracking option. The advantage is to help seek out targets prone to hiding or going invisible mid-combat. Upcasting makes you a beast in single target damage, since you can't change target until next turn. Since its good stand alone now, bolting extra on it via sub-classes can amplify it to levels that can logically compete with even spell casters.
Predator's Focus lv1: Target: 1 Creature, 60ft, 1 Min, Concentration: Target one Creature you can see. You glean insights into the creature, and can learn more as you observe it. Knowledge checks against the creature are made with Advantage, and can make an attempt when casting the spell. Until the spell ends, you can use a Magic Action to know the general direction of the creature as long as its within 1 mile of your location, and on the same plane. If the creature moves to a different plane, the effect does not end, but you can only track it to its last known location. If it reappears on your plane before the effect ends, you can begin locating it again. If the creature becomes invisible, you have a +3 bonus and advantage to locate it if it is within your line of sight.
UpcastL lv2: In addition - When cast learn the creature's type, learn one of its resistances, and the spell's duration is increased to 1 hour.
Upcast lv3: In addition- When cast you can attempt a DC16 Knowledge check to learn one of its Legendary Resistances or Legendary Actions. Duration increased to 4 hours. Range increases to 4 miles.
Upcast lv4: In addition- If the creature becomes invisible, it is not invisible to you. You Crit on a 19 or 20 on attack rolls against the target. Duration increased to 8 Hours. Range increases to 10 miles.
Upcast lv5: Allies within 30ft of you gain the following benefits. The targeted Creature can not be invisible to you, you crit on a 19 or 20 on attack rolls, flanking gives a +2 bonus to attack rolls (in addition to adv as normal).
The purpose of this spell is to cover all the tracking related stuff, predicated on you initially finding it. It also serves to amp up the monster knowledge aspect (which woefully under utilized in most games), which can work as a platform for other similar skills that sub-classes can play off of. Like allowing a broad bonus to creatures of the same type, giving them weakness to a damage type, etc. The spell slot scaling is two fold intended..... A. duration and range increase for campaigns that demand a big game hunt mentality, or against creatures which abuse stealth to escape. B. has enough justification to be cast during combat as way to tackle a single major threat.
Both of these share a common theme in how they're meant to be the Ranger "locking in" on its enemy. Hunter's Prowess is versatile and puts emphasis on being able to focus damage on one thing at a time, while most spell casters will usually go wide on damage. Predator's Focus is carefully predicated on not trivializing the initial process of finding a threat, but making it extremely difficult to lose track of it once you encounter it. The latter also differentiates in that as it scales up, it offers valuable information about a fight (or potential fight).
The power tuning wasn't carefully considered..... since I don't have time to do that much theory crafting.... But the it should get across the basic idea. If you're gonna build a class to be dependent on a single sustained effect/spell like that, you have to make them worth using. The only sort of sunk cost fallacy issue is that if you upcast Pred Focus with a high level spell slot, and the monster runs, you're hamstung on spell use unless you're willing to drop concentration. To that end, since its a core ranger feature, I would make one of the higher level class features the ability to stop and resume concentration of these two spells specifically. Giving you the ability to cast another concentration spell, and then resume the Prowess or Focus after you're done with it. This would address arguments of effect stacking if it were a just a class ability.
That is a nice improvement, but as both have concentration they still are not usable with a lot of other things as well.