Just curious what people have against the subclass. Mathematically it seems pretty good in terms of damage. Thematically a lot of people get really excited about it. And yet I see a lot of people complain about it.
The problem is it uses up your action to command the beast companion. In the end it is at best a disjointed weapon and never feels like you actually gained a companion that fights alongside you.
You can still make a weapon attack after level 5 if you command the beast to attack. It's a little awkward until then though having to make a choice. My girlfriend is playing one in our new session so I guess I'll get to see how plays.
Even after getting the attack at level 5 you still have the same problem DxJxC brought up. Then there are plenty of arguments to be made as to the survivability of your Beast Companion.
I also argue that combined with the lackluster base Ranger features, you start with a "meh" class, add a "meh" subclass and you get a "meh x2" character. The Hunter, Gloomstalker or Horizon Walker built to mitigate the weaknesses of the base class is alright if all you care about is DPS or combat capabilities.
Oooh I see what you're saying now. The decision to have your pet attack or you attack twice is basically a pointless decision until level 11. Depending on what pet you took and what weapon you're using, you might even be better off ignoring your pet altogether until then. After 11 I think the subclass actually makes at least some sense but prior to it I agree that it's pretty bad. It looks like the UA ranger fixes a lot of the issues you mentioned. The only issue I see there is the game mechanics surrounding it are a little more advanced.
I'm DMing a game and my girlfriend chose to be a ranger because she got excited about the pet aspect. She doesn't care as much about the mechanics part as I do so I think she'll still have fun. I'm a little worried that the shepherd druid in the group might steal her thunder though.
As far as Beast Master vs Shephard stepping on each others toes, it is basically similar goals with different approaches. It is not too dissimilar to the approaches taken by the Eldritch Knight vs. War Mage, or Necromancer Wizard vs. Oathbreaker Paladin.
I feel the Revised Ranger is a good enough quick fix for all Rangers even if doesn't quite fix everything as the higher level Ranger features are still lacking. If you want to use the RR on DnDBeyond you will have to homebrew feats to replace the base features. The character sheet ends up getting cluttered but is still usable.
If you want a more in-depth, nuanced fix, my recommendation involves an almost complete overhaul of the class which essentially takes the PHB BeastMaster and Hunter features, makes portions of them a part of the base class, and then new subclasses to make those features better.
I'm not sure whether or not the Beastmaster's pet gets a reaction or not. But if according to RAW it doesn't get a reaction, I would house rule that the pet does get a reaction. That will help her enjoy the Beastmaster a bit more.
The Beast Master isn't great in combat but it used to be a lot worse and it's still carrying some of that stigma. Before the Nov 2018 errata, it wouldn't take any actions unless commanded and it didn't have any means of getting magical attacks. Now it defaults to the Dodge action and its attacks become magical at 7th level.
As DxJxC points out, having the beast doesn't feel like an upgrade for damage compared to other subclasses like the Hunter which gain a reliable damage boost at 3rd level. There's still some perks depending on your choice of companion. For example, a wolf gets free advantage (which you might not have) if you or any of your friends are within 5 feet of the same monster, and it has a free chance to knock them prone as part of the same attack. A companion like a flying snake can weave in and out of a monster's reach using Flyby and gets short range blindsight.
Your beast can also provide some tactical benefits like engaging a weak enemy that isn't being engaged by anyone else so it can't make ranged attacks without disadvantage or it can't make a beeline for a spellcaster trying to maintain a spell.
I feel a lot of people overlook the fact that certain companions have strong utility outside of combat, and exploration is supposed to be the ranger's niche more than pure damage dealing. A wolf practically has permanent advantage on their passive perception thanks to Keen Hearing and Smell.
At higher levels you'll probably need a bit of help from the party keeping your pet alive against monsters with powerful breath weapons or area spells. Spells like Mage Armor and Warding Bond can help significantly in that department.
Again, it's not amazing but with the last errata I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. The Champion subclass for the Fighter is incredibly weak and it's still the most popular subclass for fighters in D&D Beyond.
I'm not sure whether or not the Beastmaster's pet gets a reaction or not. But if according to RAW it doesn't get a reaction, I would house rule that the pet does get a reaction. That will help her enjoy the Beastmaster a bit more.
The rules tell you your companion doesn't need to be commanded to take reactions.
I would like to suggest a few likely reasons why the Champion Fighter retains popularity while the BM Ranger does not.
A) Champion is easy to learn and easy to use. BM Ranger is one of the most difficult subclasses to make work in a combat setting going by the PHB rules. The errata do not help much in this regard for new players, who often get confused by the Ready action.
B) "What You See is What You Get" with the Champion. However, a lot of people who like the idea of a Ranger with a trusty wolf/panther/badger sidekick get very disappointed once they realize they need to lose an action to get their animal friend to engage in combat. And by the time that extra attack kicks in at 11th level, the companion's hit points can't keep up with the rest of the party. If the Animal Companion got sold to us primarily or exclusively as an exploration or social RP feature, people would be a lot more forgiving. Whether this is a problem of communication between devs and players or a problem of lack of playtesting is not for me to say.
C) Many people who pick Champion do so for the early crit bonus and then multi-class out. The Fighter in general is one of the best classes to multi-class out of b/c the base class is designed with a lot of goodies: armor and weapon proficiencies, a fighting style and 2nd Wind from level 1; Action Surge at level 2; etc. Not to mention that sweet CON proficiency for spell-casters. The early level features of the Ranger class in general and the BM Ranger in particular are lackluster. So why pick it when the Pact of Chain Warlock gets you a more useful familiar and the Paladin or Bard eventually gets you a sweet flying ride via Summon Greater Steed?
Oh, I get why the Champion doesn't get looked at the same way, but I bring it up to show that the way something is perceived doesn't always line up with its objective value.
People love Improved Critical because critting feels great, but objectively it's barely any better than not having a subclass. You could pick Battle Master or Arcane Archer and spam your maneuvers or shots with no strategy whatsoever and still end up doing more extra damage than a Champion does rolling 19s randomly, and you get useful side effects on top of that. You could go Eldritch Knight and just spam Shield when you're hit and do almost the same damage but fare significantly better at tanking. You could go Cavalier and keep a target on lockdown. It's not even a good choice for multiclassing because just about anything besides Eldritch Knight will give you more perks.
Remarkable Athlete only helps with stuff you're not good at and comes at a level where the party's got 4th level spells and they're far more likely to sidestep environmental hazards with magic.
An extra fighting style at 10th level is neat but the offensive styles are mutually exclusive and you're still settling for a 1st level class feature at a point where other subclasses have ramped up their features significantly. Like, a Battle Master's got 5d10 per short rest to work with at that point and your latest trick is stacking +1 AC with one of the other Fighting Styles or stacking Protection with Dueling...which still isn't as good as a Cavalier's Unwavering Mark and Warding Maneuver.
The only noteworthy feature Champions get is Survivor and that doesn't happen until 18th level.
I guess part of my point is that if the Champion subclass was attached to the Ranger base class, a lot fewer people would pick it. The low level base Fighter is superior to the low level base Ranger due to both its features and its flexibility, being easy to multi-class into and out of.
Also, I don't know that I agree that "objective" measurement is very useful when the main part of what we are discussing is perception. Expectation forms a major part of perception. Maybe a lot of people who play Champion don't have very high expectations for the subclass in the first place. Maybe they enjoy that Vegas style crap shoot of rolling for crits more than they enjoy the tactical positioning intricacies and teamwork that allow the Battle Master or Cavalier to really shine. Maybe they just don't have their own copy of the PHB but enjoy hanging out with friends and cracking jokes. If that's the case, why would they want to drain their brain about picking through fiddly combat maneuvers?
So getting back to the OP's main question, I guess what I'm saying is that certain play styles and therefore certain classes and subclasses match well with certain players. The Champion fills the niche of being easy to pick up and play for almost anyone (though not necessarily enjoyable for everyone), but the Beast Master has more emotional expectations attached to it b/c IRL a lot of people form firm attachments to their dog/cat/snake/parrot but the rules around keeping that pet alive in D&D are obscure or overly limiting to people who have those expectations. This mismatch between what gets sold to us and what actually playing one entails naturally leads to a lot of confusion and frustration.
It sounds like there are three options. Leave it alone, use the UA one, or home brew it a little. I think the UA one is too mechanically convoluted so I think we'll leave that one alone. I also don't like having it have its own turns. I think that leaves homebrewing it or leaving it alone and offsetting it with magic items and such.
What do you think about home brewing it to move the pet command to the bonus action when she takes the attack action? Mathematically it's a little better in terms of damage but would actually fall behind after swift quiver would come online. It would certainly feel better from 3 to 5 and the campaign is only taking us to 6 unless we continue with the same characters later. Do you see any major reasons why this would be a bad idea?
I'm not sure what we could do about upping the survivability of the pet though. Maybe just give the pet magic items or something that provide hit points or proficiency in saving throws. Maybe up the armor class.
I just don't want my girlfriend to get frustrated with her class. It's the first character she made herself and I'm hoping this is something we get to do together for a long time!
Part of the problem I see with beastmaster is that it's "marketed" towards people that want an animal companion to join them on their quest as a partner of sorts, but the mechanics of it seem to be based on the idea that the companion will die at least 2-3x more often than a PC. If a player wanted a companion to be their partner, I would instead recommend find familiar, find steed, or battle smith artificer.
As some people have suggested on other threads, homebrewing a few fixes is probably the best way to go to retain the Ranger-to-animal-companion synergy. Some ideas include:
* Allow the companion to get death saving throws.
* Let the companion get increased hit dice, not just an increase in hit points, after level 4. If you feel that is too powerful, you can reduce the size of the die.
* Give the Ranger access to the Aid spell from the Cleric list when she gets 2nd level spells and the Warding Bond spell when she gets access to 3rd level spells.
* To increase combat options without breaking the action economy, retain the part about the Ranger needing to give an attack command to the animal companion as a replacement for the Ranger's own Attack action before 5th level, but enable the animal companion to keep repeating that same action for 1 attack to any enemies next to it or next to the Ranger.
That isnt a homebrew. Any creature can make death sales if it makes sense to keep track of it. Important NPCs, certain bosses, allied NPCs, pets, (non-spell) familiars, and animal companions can and should get saves.
Part of the problem I see with beastmaster is that it's "marketed" towards people that want an animal companion to join them on their quest as a partner of sorts, but the mechanics of it seem to be based on the idea that the companion will die at least 2-3x more often than a PC. If a player wanted a companion to be their partner, I would instead recommend find familiar, find steed, or battle smith artificer.
I don't think those fulfill quite the same fantasy though. Find Familiar is more of a pet or scout than a combat sidekick, Find Steed would require at least 3 levels in Paladin and is designed to be a mount, and as cool as the Artificer's Iron Defender is, I don't think it really scratches the itch of having an animal as your sidekick.
As some people have suggested on other threads, homebrewing a few fixes is probably the best way to go to retain the Ranger-to-animal-companion synergy.
Personally I just give them an Expanded Spell List in line with the new subclasses in Xanathar's Guide, with spells that help keep the beast alive. Raising the pet's HP to match the Ranger's feels like a bit of a cop-out.
Expanding the spell list by itself without increasing HD does not do much for the companion's survivability - or it does only through a large expenditure of spell slots by party members. This means that on a short rest, while the rest of the party is recovering 10+ HD at mid-tier play, the animal companion is still sitting on a piddly #. So then any animal companion getting into combat can expect to either bite the dust or require an inordinate amount of healing resources devoted to it from the party's healers. I don't see how that is exactly a good fix.
Also, the reality is the subclass, by RAW, remains below average for most combat situations unless the DM is quite lenient towards player, gives extra spells not in the PHB, does not target the animal companion explicitly, and the player goes into it knowing a lot about the action economy and picks from a small list of animal options. If that is your view of it being fixed, I cannot agree with you.
I believe the problem is that you must give the beast a specific order EVERY TURN. I would think a generic order to attack our enemy, or stay by __ and take the help action once at the begining of the fight and allowing the beast to act on it's own would solve most of this problems. Even summoned undead can be made to do this, making them much better than a beastmasters pet. This is a simple fix without lots of rules.
Just curious what people have against the subclass. Mathematically it seems pretty good in terms of damage. Thematically a lot of people get really excited about it. And yet I see a lot of people complain about it.
The problem is it uses up your action to command the beast companion. In the end it is at best a disjointed weapon and never feels like you actually gained a companion that fights alongside you.
You can still make a weapon attack after level 5 if you command the beast to attack. It's a little awkward until then though having to make a choice. My girlfriend is playing one in our new session so I guess I'll get to see how plays.
Even after getting the attack at level 5 you still have the same problem DxJxC brought up. Then there are plenty of arguments to be made as to the survivability of your Beast Companion.
I also argue that combined with the lackluster base Ranger features, you start with a "meh" class, add a "meh" subclass and you get a "meh x2" character. The Hunter, Gloomstalker or Horizon Walker built to mitigate the weaknesses of the base class is alright if all you care about is DPS or combat capabilities.
Oooh I see what you're saying now. The decision to have your pet attack or you attack twice is basically a pointless decision until level 11. Depending on what pet you took and what weapon you're using, you might even be better off ignoring your pet altogether until then. After 11 I think the subclass actually makes at least some sense but prior to it I agree that it's pretty bad. It looks like the UA ranger fixes a lot of the issues you mentioned. The only issue I see there is the game mechanics surrounding it are a little more advanced.
I'm DMing a game and my girlfriend chose to be a ranger because she got excited about the pet aspect. She doesn't care as much about the mechanics part as I do so I think she'll still have fun. I'm a little worried that the shepherd druid in the group might steal her thunder though.
Any advice?
As far as Beast Master vs Shephard stepping on each others toes, it is basically similar goals with different approaches. It is not too dissimilar to the approaches taken by the Eldritch Knight vs. War Mage, or Necromancer Wizard vs. Oathbreaker Paladin.
I feel the Revised Ranger is a good enough quick fix for all Rangers even if doesn't quite fix everything as the higher level Ranger features are still lacking. If you want to use the RR on DnDBeyond you will have to homebrew feats to replace the base features. The character sheet ends up getting cluttered but is still usable.
If you want a more in-depth, nuanced fix, my recommendation involves an almost complete overhaul of the class which essentially takes the PHB BeastMaster and Hunter features, makes portions of them a part of the base class, and then new subclasses to make those features better.
I'm not sure whether or not the Beastmaster's pet gets a reaction or not. But if according to RAW it doesn't get a reaction, I would house rule that the pet does get a reaction. That will help her enjoy the Beastmaster a bit more.
The Beast Master isn't great in combat but it used to be a lot worse and it's still carrying some of that stigma. Before the Nov 2018 errata, it wouldn't take any actions unless commanded and it didn't have any means of getting magical attacks. Now it defaults to the Dodge action and its attacks become magical at 7th level.
As DxJxC points out, having the beast doesn't feel like an upgrade for damage compared to other subclasses like the Hunter which gain a reliable damage boost at 3rd level. There's still some perks depending on your choice of companion. For example, a wolf gets free advantage (which you might not have) if you or any of your friends are within 5 feet of the same monster, and it has a free chance to knock them prone as part of the same attack. A companion like a flying snake can weave in and out of a monster's reach using Flyby and gets short range blindsight.
Your beast can also provide some tactical benefits like engaging a weak enemy that isn't being engaged by anyone else so it can't make ranged attacks without disadvantage or it can't make a beeline for a spellcaster trying to maintain a spell.
I feel a lot of people overlook the fact that certain companions have strong utility outside of combat, and exploration is supposed to be the ranger's niche more than pure damage dealing. A wolf practically has permanent advantage on their passive perception thanks to Keen Hearing and Smell.
At higher levels you'll probably need a bit of help from the party keeping your pet alive against monsters with powerful breath weapons or area spells. Spells like Mage Armor and Warding Bond can help significantly in that department.
Again, it's not amazing but with the last errata I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. The Champion subclass for the Fighter is incredibly weak and it's still the most popular subclass for fighters in D&D Beyond.
The rules tell you your companion doesn't need to be commanded to take reactions.
I would like to suggest a few likely reasons why the Champion Fighter retains popularity while the BM Ranger does not.
A) Champion is easy to learn and easy to use. BM Ranger is one of the most difficult subclasses to make work in a combat setting going by the PHB rules. The errata do not help much in this regard for new players, who often get confused by the Ready action.
B) "What You See is What You Get" with the Champion. However, a lot of people who like the idea of a Ranger with a trusty wolf/panther/badger sidekick get very disappointed once they realize they need to lose an action to get their animal friend to engage in combat. And by the time that extra attack kicks in at 11th level, the companion's hit points can't keep up with the rest of the party. If the Animal Companion got sold to us primarily or exclusively as an exploration or social RP feature, people would be a lot more forgiving. Whether this is a problem of communication between devs and players or a problem of lack of playtesting is not for me to say.
C) Many people who pick Champion do so for the early crit bonus and then multi-class out. The Fighter in general is one of the best classes to multi-class out of b/c the base class is designed with a lot of goodies: armor and weapon proficiencies, a fighting style and 2nd Wind from level 1; Action Surge at level 2; etc. Not to mention that sweet CON proficiency for spell-casters. The early level features of the Ranger class in general and the BM Ranger in particular are lackluster. So why pick it when the Pact of Chain Warlock gets you a more useful familiar and the Paladin or Bard eventually gets you a sweet flying ride via Summon Greater Steed?
Oh, I get why the Champion doesn't get looked at the same way, but I bring it up to show that the way something is perceived doesn't always line up with its objective value.
People love Improved Critical because critting feels great, but objectively it's barely any better than not having a subclass. You could pick Battle Master or Arcane Archer and spam your maneuvers or shots with no strategy whatsoever and still end up doing more extra damage than a Champion does rolling 19s randomly, and you get useful side effects on top of that. You could go Eldritch Knight and just spam Shield when you're hit and do almost the same damage but fare significantly better at tanking. You could go Cavalier and keep a target on lockdown. It's not even a good choice for multiclassing because just about anything besides Eldritch Knight will give you more perks.
Remarkable Athlete only helps with stuff you're not good at and comes at a level where the party's got 4th level spells and they're far more likely to sidestep environmental hazards with magic.
An extra fighting style at 10th level is neat but the offensive styles are mutually exclusive and you're still settling for a 1st level class feature at a point where other subclasses have ramped up their features significantly. Like, a Battle Master's got 5d10 per short rest to work with at that point and your latest trick is stacking +1 AC with one of the other Fighting Styles or stacking Protection with Dueling...which still isn't as good as a Cavalier's Unwavering Mark and Warding Maneuver.
The only noteworthy feature Champions get is Survivor and that doesn't happen until 18th level.
I guess part of my point is that if the Champion subclass was attached to the Ranger base class, a lot fewer people would pick it. The low level base Fighter is superior to the low level base Ranger due to both its features and its flexibility, being easy to multi-class into and out of.
Also, I don't know that I agree that "objective" measurement is very useful when the main part of what we are discussing is perception. Expectation forms a major part of perception. Maybe a lot of people who play Champion don't have very high expectations for the subclass in the first place. Maybe they enjoy that Vegas style crap shoot of rolling for crits more than they enjoy the tactical positioning intricacies and teamwork that allow the Battle Master or Cavalier to really shine. Maybe they just don't have their own copy of the PHB but enjoy hanging out with friends and cracking jokes. If that's the case, why would they want to drain their brain about picking through fiddly combat maneuvers?
So getting back to the OP's main question, I guess what I'm saying is that certain play styles and therefore certain classes and subclasses match well with certain players. The Champion fills the niche of being easy to pick up and play for almost anyone (though not necessarily enjoyable for everyone), but the Beast Master has more emotional expectations attached to it b/c IRL a lot of people form firm attachments to their dog/cat/snake/parrot but the rules around keeping that pet alive in D&D are obscure or overly limiting to people who have those expectations. This mismatch between what gets sold to us and what actually playing one entails naturally leads to a lot of confusion and frustration.
It sounds like there are three options. Leave it alone, use the UA one, or home brew it a little. I think the UA one is too mechanically convoluted so I think we'll leave that one alone. I also don't like having it have its own turns. I think that leaves homebrewing it or leaving it alone and offsetting it with magic items and such.
What do you think about home brewing it to move the pet command to the bonus action when she takes the attack action? Mathematically it's a little better in terms of damage but would actually fall behind after swift quiver would come online. It would certainly feel better from 3 to 5 and the campaign is only taking us to 6 unless we continue with the same characters later. Do you see any major reasons why this would be a bad idea?
I'm not sure what we could do about upping the survivability of the pet though. Maybe just give the pet magic items or something that provide hit points or proficiency in saving throws. Maybe up the armor class.
I just don't want my girlfriend to get frustrated with her class. It's the first character she made herself and I'm hoping this is something we get to do together for a long time!
Part of the problem I see with beastmaster is that it's "marketed" towards people that want an animal companion to join them on their quest as a partner of sorts, but the mechanics of it seem to be based on the idea that the companion will die at least 2-3x more often than a PC. If a player wanted a companion to be their partner, I would instead recommend find familiar, find steed, or battle smith artificer.
As some people have suggested on other threads, homebrewing a few fixes is probably the best way to go to retain the Ranger-to-animal-companion synergy. Some ideas include:
* Allow the companion to get death saving throws.
* Let the companion get increased hit dice, not just an increase in hit points, after level 4. If you feel that is too powerful, you can reduce the size of the die.
* Give the Ranger access to the Aid spell from the Cleric list when she gets 2nd level spells and the Warding Bond spell when she gets access to 3rd level spells.
* To increase combat options without breaking the action economy, retain the part about the Ranger needing to give an attack command to the animal companion as a replacement for the Ranger's own Attack action before 5th level, but enable the animal companion to keep repeating that same action for 1 attack to any enemies next to it or next to the Ranger.
That isnt a homebrew. Any creature can make death sales if it makes sense to keep track of it. Important NPCs, certain bosses, allied NPCs, pets, (non-spell) familiars, and animal companions can and should get saves.
Well, some DMs don't give them out b/c it's not explicitly spelled out in the PHB, so it's effectively a houserule.
I think it's important to recognize that in this particular case the perception of the subclass isn't necessarily aligned with its current reality.
I don't think those fulfill quite the same fantasy though. Find Familiar is more of a pet or scout than a combat sidekick, Find Steed would require at least 3 levels in Paladin and is designed to be a mount, and as cool as the Artificer's Iron Defender is, I don't think it really scratches the itch of having an animal as your sidekick.
Personally I just give them an Expanded Spell List in line with the new subclasses in Xanathar's Guide, with spells that help keep the beast alive. Raising the pet's HP to match the Ranger's feels like a bit of a cop-out.
The PH explicitly says the DM can allow important NPCs to make death saves; the bit about monsters dying at 0 is just a shortcut for speed of play.
If the DM doesn't consider a Ranger's animal companion important enough for death saves, they're a jerk.
Expanding the spell list by itself without increasing HD does not do much for the companion's survivability - or it does only through a large expenditure of spell slots by party members. This means that on a short rest, while the rest of the party is recovering 10+ HD at mid-tier play, the animal companion is still sitting on a piddly #. So then any animal companion getting into combat can expect to either bite the dust or require an inordinate amount of healing resources devoted to it from the party's healers. I don't see how that is exactly a good fix.
Also, the reality is the subclass, by RAW, remains below average for most combat situations unless the DM is quite lenient towards player, gives extra spells not in the PHB, does not target the animal companion explicitly, and the player goes into it knowing a lot about the action economy and picks from a small list of animal options. If that is your view of it being fixed, I cannot agree with you.
I believe the problem is that you must give the beast a specific order EVERY TURN. I would think a generic order to attack our enemy, or stay by __ and take the help action once at the begining of the fight and allowing the beast to act on it's own would solve most of this problems. Even summoned undead can be made to do this, making them much better than a beastmasters pet. This is a simple fix without lots of rules.
Is there a good solution to these issues?