That's beside the point. The issue is that setting up the ranger to be the "explorer" class while the other classes get to sit around doing nothing. Which is boring and something that should be minimized.
Perhaps rangers should get an improvement to their fighting style once they hit 9th or 11th level.
Exploration can't become a vital part of the game due to the way things are right now. Because doing so would necessitate having a ranger in the party who either does little when the party isn't exploring (boring for the ranger's player) or is the only one doing anything (boring for everyone else).
Having expanded exploration rules would not nessesitate other party members being left with nothing to do or that non- rangers cannot also make Good explorer, nor does the ranger having a focus on exploration mean it cannot also excell in other areas of the game, but exploration should be central to the ranger, as of right now you are better off playing a rouge, druid or barbarian if you wanna be a survivalist and explorer. An expansion to that area of the game in a similar way to how Ghost of saltmarch changed boat travel would be how to go about this
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Expanding "exploration" means that utility classes like Wizards, Bards, Rogues, certain Clerics and frankly, anyone with the Survival skill can flex their stuff. The PHB base Ranger is currently inordinately focused on wilderness exploration in very particular situations (favored terrain). Its possible to expand on Exploration rules as a gaming mechanic or as a storytelling tool while also improving the base Ranger's combat abilities. These do not have to be mutually exclusive ideals.
Quote from Positron49>>I’m saying there is a problem here, and while at work on my phone I can’t pinpoint it exactly. Someone needs to check some things..
First, the AC shouldn’t matter because the chances of using Foe Slayer remains the same between AC 16 to 30 enemies. Because Foe Slayer can be used after a roll is made, it is “waiting” for certain ranges of rolls. These ranges have an equal chance of popping up and are arbitrary. If you are fighting a dragon with a 27 AC and you gave a +14 to hit, you are waiting to roll a 9-12 (if +4 Wisdom). If you always use sharpshooter then that range is just 5 less, and you are waiting to roll those numbers. Either way it’s a 20% chance to trigger a good reason for Foe Slayer. Your damage increase you get from triggering a hit from Foe Slayer is equal to your damage of an attack.
This means that over 20 Attacks, Foe Slayer is getting a boost equal to your average damage 4 times. You then can break down the rounds. If you are not using Swift Quiver, you get 2 Attacks a round. You are increasing a damage roll by 4 on the other 6 rounds then. Assuming 24 average damage with sharpshooter.... that is 120 damage increased over 10 rounds or 12/round. That’s getting dangerously close to sneak attack.
Now where it gets ahead is Swift Quiver, I’ll give you that. Because 4 Attacks in a turn makes Foe Slayer come up more often in a round, which means it’s more likely to turn a miss into a hit and not default to increasing the damage roll.
EDIT: the reason I am pointing out why it looks good under your circumstances is because +5 Wisdom means 25% chance to trigger Foe Slayer. And Swift Quiver gives you 4 Attacks. This is the perfect scenario for it because you get to guarantee an extra attack worth of damage on average every turn in this way, and add sharpshooter to it. I would point out that this obviously isn’t even on all the time. Sneak Attack you get off most rounds and ranges between 3.5-17.5 extra damage a round depending on your level in Rogue (and fires off on reactions, so doubles on opportunity attacks), and is controlled by the player when it goes off, not the DM and creature types.
The issue here is your assumptions that you’re using.
- The AC absolutely does matter. If your chance to hit is 10% on an attack that does 10 damage, your average damage is 1. If you give that same attack a 30% chance to hit, your average damage is now 3. That’s 300% more than your original attack.
If your chance to hit is 5%, your average is now 0.5. But at 25% chance to hit your average damage is 2.5. 500% more than your original.
That means that a flat bonus like Foe Slayer has a pronounced effect on harder to hit enemies (or with things like Sharpshooter).
- You can’t do a straight across conversion. 20% chance of using Foe Slayer for 1 attack? That means that there’s an 1-(0.8*0.8) = 36% chance of using it per round and adding at least 100% to your overall damage that round (2 hits instead of 1, for example). And you can add 4 damage to the second attack that round if you don’t use it at all.
But you keep comparing apples to oranges. You want to compare the damage to a 100% hit rate. You can’t say “it only adds 12 damage per round”, but then not even compare what the actual damage would be in that scenario. This is why it’s vitally important to compare to the actual base damage. For example - let’s say you got 1 hit instead of 0. Now that “24 damage” is an infinite % more damage.
You can have a 25% chance to miss on a regular round, and have that reduced to a 9% chance on a round using Foe Slayer. And it also means you can have a round where you hit twice is normally a 25% chance, is now 45%. Sneak attack isn’t even close, as I’ve calculated before.
I can’t implore enough for you to read the Spreadsheet calculations. I did the calculations step by step so you could go through and review them at your pleasure. I don’t see the point of trying to come at this in anecdotal ways when the formulae are right there for you to look at.
Expanding "exploration" means that utility classes like Wizards, Bards, Rogues, certain Clerics and frankly, anyone with the Survival skill can flex their stuff. The PHB base Ranger is currently inordinately focused on wilderness exploration in very particular situations (favored terrain). Its possible to expand on Exploration rules as a gaming mechanic or as a storytelling tool while also improving the base Ranger's combat abilities. These do not have to be mutually exclusive ideals.
Not to mention tool proficiencies, cooks utensils to make meals for your companions during their adventures, carpenter's tools to make a temporary bridge or boat, cobbler's tools and Weavers tools to keep your clothes in top condition for braving the wilds, poisoner's kit to make poison from the plants and animals you kill, healers supplies to gather healing herbs etc etc, so overall this be Most exiting for the artificer i Think
Also rangers do not need much improvements to combat, offensively they are better than barbarians and defensively they are quite fine, getting a Free hunters mark without concentration is a fine enough boost to keep them going, the problem is that their Only exploration abillity is natural explorer and a handful of spells, it would be cool if alongside more stabby focused abillities they got minor ribbon abillities providing minor benefits to exploration, not major stuff but small things, similar in power to storm guide.
Also while applying any kind of combat bonus to favoured enemy is stupid, it could be cool if more interaction / exploration stuff was tied to it like evading lair effects, having a chance to spot creatures with the false appearance trait like mimics, gargoles and animated objects, and lastly the abillity to evade their special senses like tremmorsense and truesight
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I would very much disagree that their defensive capabilities compare well with a Barbarian or a Paladin. Barbarians get resistance to all sorts of weapons while in Rage mode and can't concentrate on spells and largely don't need any spells. A melee Ranger is still a half caster and needs to maintain concentration for a lot of their more powerful spells. The fact that they never get any boosts to concentration checks is part of the problem with the current design. It pushes players to choose a ranged Ranger or into builds that front-load all the damage at the beginning of combat, like Gloom Stalker/Assassin. Compare that to a Paladin. Paladins get access to heavy armor (assuming no STR dump), which doesn't impair their core abilities and they get a boost to ALL saving throws starting at level 6 with Aura of Protection that also protects nearby allies. A built-for-Sharpshooter Ranger is okay with that, but not melee build Rangers.
I would very much disagree that their defensive capabilities compare well with a Barbarian or a Paladin.
I too would disagree if somebody Said that, good thing i didint, i Said they were fine, of Course the rangers defensive capabillities pale in comparison to the two tankiest classes in the god damm game, lower your standards a bit, they are much better defensively than say a warlock or wizard, mostly on par with the fighter
As for the concentration dilemma, well their armor class tends to be decent especially early on where gold is scarce and nobody can afford plate, and you can try to minimize the problem with war caster, but it is indeed a problem
I dont Think they made the design of half casters with the goal of making them decent at concentration in mind, for the palladin it was an legacy abillity that just happened to help with that and artificers just happen to be proficient in con.
That Said it would make a lot of sense for them to have proficiency in constitution since it helps deal with poisons, diseases and exhaustion (particularly exhaustion levels from dehydration or sleep deprivation), all things that are important for an nature person to fight off i Think, an ranger doing ranger related activities in natural enviorons would Most likely find themselves making more con saves than str or dex saves
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
That Said it would make a lot of sense for them to have proficiency in constitution since it helps deal with poisons, diseases and exhaustion (particularly exhaustion levels from dehydration or sleep deprivation), all things that are important for an nature person to fight off i Think, an ranger doing ranger related activities in natural enviorons would Most likely find themselves making more con saves than str or dex saves
Well, we agree on that.
Re: Saving throws. The thing is Fighters automatically get CON saving throw prof. from Level 1. So EKnights, for example, don't need Warcaster as much Rangers, but benefit more from it b/c EKs also get cantrips. Pure Rangers get no cantrips, but if they want to go the melee route, will often need to take Warcaster or Resilient - CON anyway. A melee Arcane Trickster Rogue does not have CON save proficiency, but Rogues have more ASIs anyway and spending one on Warcaster means they can choose to cast as a reaction. Again, Rangers don't have access to cantrips. What's frustrating about this is that the devs already know about this problem and already know how to fix it. That's why Bladesigners and War Magic Wizs get boosts to concentration baked into their subclasses. They could do that for Ranger as well.
Are the Tasha’s (leaked only at time of posting this) variants going to change the ranger class in terms of being underpoweredfor any of you?
I have never thought the ranger to be underpowered. I do think some of the abilities are too situational. A little over a year ago I wrote a proposed fix for Natural Explorer...
Natural Explorer You are particularly familiar with environments in which you have honed your craft and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one environmental group as favored terrain:
While in any favored terrain you gain the following benefits: • You ignore difficult terrain. • You have advantage on initiative rolls. • On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel. • Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. • Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. • If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace. • When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would. • While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.
This way by high level, every environment is favored, looking back on it I would probably take out the below, but otherwise think it still works well. I do like the new options in Tasha's though and think the more universal options work better. I plan to use them on my ranger.
• On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.
Having a bunch of abilities that are too situational is one of the most common ways for a character class to be underpowered. An ability that you can never actually use is functionally identical to not having an ability.
I have a very firm opinion that anyone who has played a ranger in a game knows that their strength and contribution to a party and the game itself far exceeds that which is assessed on paper. It could have been written better, but when the player is playing the character and using its abilities well and as intended the ranger class and all subclasses do more then well. They do as well as all other classes. Better than some. I love it that people compare (in a negative manner) rangers to fighters, paladins, rogues, and druids all at the same time. I see that as testimony to their greatest strength.
Having a bunch of abilities that are too situational is one of the most common ways for a character class to be underpowered. An ability that you can never actually use is functionally identical to not having an ability.
The rest of the ranger chassis is strong enough to ensure that it's not underpowered, provided the player building the character doesn't take trap options.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I've been playing a single-classed gloomstalker built for archery for the last several months. I haven't had any issue whatsoever - with a sorlock, GWF fighter, cleric, and rogue. My ranger has been holding its own in every area - combat, support, exploration. Rangers have a lot of tricks up their sleeves for many different situations and I always have something to contribute. I don't know if I'm the best at anything, but I'm better than most at just about everything. I never feel like I don't have something to do to help move the story along. YMMV, and to be honest I was on the fence about trying out a ranger when I started, but he's ended up being one of my favorite characters to play.
The new stuff in Tasha's (except for FF which I likely won't take) is great. While I think the optional Favored Foe change is a bit clunky design-wise, I really like the additional options presented. I thought one of the drawbacks of the rangers was that their limited number of spells known made taking 'nature-y' things like 'speak with animals' would be difficult. That's been fixed in Tasha's. Also all of the explorer boons like movement, expertise in a skill like survival, and temp hit points plus exhaustion mitigation via short rests are absolutely awesome.
I mean, play what you like. I've DMed a bunch and played everything from warlocks, bards, clerics, fighters, wizards, and paladins. My experience with playing the class over several levels has been nothing but fun, and I think Tasha's only makes them better.
Has anyone played a campaign where the ranger(s) was allowed to prepare spells like a druid or paladin?
My gut tells me that, due to the utility and breadth of their spell list, being a prepared caster would make rangers a bit too above the curve, balance wise.
The ranger is a great class to role play. It has a couple of level ups that feel slightly disappointing, but don't most classes?
You can choose to go in different ways with it, melee, range, magic, skills-monkey, tank etc etc. The problem often comes if (like me) you want your character to be the best at everything, all at once!
Mostly beastmaster....with poor animal companion choices. The other ranger archetypes are generally solid, although they have poorly designed class features.
When picking an animal companion, if the intent is for the animal companion to FIGHT with you, you have to remember you're sacrificing one of your own attacks for the companion to do it's bit. SO, you have to pick a companion that has an attack equal to, or better than your own attack that you're sacrificing. Now, there ARE some good companions out there that are /worth/ sacrificing your attack for...but many of the available choices are poor picks. The animal companion dies easily, and IIRC the RAW is that when you get a new companion, the DM has a vote in what you get...so the DM might only give you crap options if your easy to kill companion, dies.
Factor that in with the fact that new players who don't know how to tell a good choice from a bad one...make 'bad' choices (though no fault of their own) and feel that the class sucks rather than the choices they made with the class they picked. Ranger sucking is more of a perception than a reality.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Ranger sucking is more of a perception than a reality.
Well, they are rather Concentration stuck. They can either do the one thing guaranteed to be useful, or use the rest of their list of stuff they could do.
IMO, that’s the real issue they face is that Hunter’s Mark requires concentration. If it was weaker, maybe 1d4, but Concentration-free, they would have a totally different reputation.
That's beside the point. The issue is that setting up the ranger to be the "explorer" class while the other classes get to sit around doing nothing. Which is boring and something that should be minimized.
Perhaps rangers should get an improvement to their fighting style once they hit 9th or 11th level.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Having expanded exploration rules would not nessesitate other party members being left with nothing to do or that non- rangers cannot also make Good explorer, nor does the ranger having a focus on exploration mean it cannot also excell in other areas of the game, but exploration should be central to the ranger, as of right now you are better off playing a rouge, druid or barbarian if you wanna be a survivalist and explorer. An expansion to that area of the game in a similar way to how Ghost of saltmarch changed boat travel would be how to go about this
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
You can have a scout (rogue), druid or barb and it would work as exploration focused.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
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Ranger_Danger chars allways sucks at decyphering codes and calling the MotherLand.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
Expanding "exploration" means that utility classes like Wizards, Bards, Rogues, certain Clerics and frankly, anyone with the Survival skill can flex their stuff. The PHB base Ranger is currently inordinately focused on wilderness exploration in very particular situations (favored terrain). Its possible to expand on Exploration rules as a gaming mechanic or as a storytelling tool while also improving the base Ranger's combat abilities. These do not have to be mutually exclusive ideals.
The issue here is your assumptions that you’re using.
- The AC absolutely does matter. If your chance to hit is 10% on an attack that does 10 damage, your average damage is 1. If you give that same attack a 30% chance to hit, your average damage is now 3. That’s 300% more than your original attack.
If your chance to hit is 5%, your average is now 0.5. But at 25% chance to hit your average damage is 2.5. 500% more than your original.
That means that a flat bonus like Foe Slayer has a pronounced effect on harder to hit enemies (or with things like Sharpshooter).
- You can’t do a straight across conversion. 20% chance of using Foe Slayer for 1 attack? That means that there’s an 1-(0.8*0.8) = 36% chance of using it per round and adding at least 100% to your overall damage that round (2 hits instead of 1, for example). And you can add 4 damage to the second attack that round if you don’t use it at all.
But you keep comparing apples to oranges. You want to compare the damage to a 100% hit rate. You can’t say “it only adds 12 damage per round”, but then not even compare what the actual damage would be in that scenario. This is why it’s vitally important to compare to the actual base damage. For example - let’s say you got 1 hit instead of 0. Now that “24 damage” is an infinite % more damage.
You can have a 25% chance to miss on a regular round, and have that reduced to a 9% chance on a round using Foe Slayer. And it also means you can have a round where you hit twice is normally a 25% chance, is now 45%. Sneak attack isn’t even close, as I’ve calculated before.
I can’t implore enough for you to read the Spreadsheet calculations. I did the calculations step by step so you could go through and review them at your pleasure. I don’t see the point of trying to come at this in anecdotal ways when the formulae are right there for you to look at.
Not to mention tool proficiencies, cooks utensils to make meals for your companions during their adventures, carpenter's tools to make a temporary bridge or boat, cobbler's tools and Weavers tools to keep your clothes in top condition for braving the wilds, poisoner's kit to make poison from the plants and animals you kill, healers supplies to gather healing herbs etc etc, so overall this be Most exiting for the artificer i Think
Also rangers do not need much improvements to combat, offensively they are better than barbarians and defensively they are quite fine, getting a Free hunters mark without concentration is a fine enough boost to keep them going, the problem is that their Only exploration abillity is natural explorer and a handful of spells, it would be cool if alongside more stabby focused abillities they got minor ribbon abillities providing minor benefits to exploration, not major stuff but small things, similar in power to storm guide.
Also while applying any kind of combat bonus to favoured enemy is stupid, it could be cool if more interaction / exploration stuff was tied to it like evading lair effects, having a chance to spot creatures with the false appearance trait like mimics, gargoles and animated objects, and lastly the abillity to evade their special senses like tremmorsense and truesight
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I would very much disagree that their defensive capabilities compare well with a Barbarian or a Paladin. Barbarians get resistance to all sorts of weapons while in Rage mode and can't concentrate on spells and largely don't need any spells. A melee Ranger is still a half caster and needs to maintain concentration for a lot of their more powerful spells. The fact that they never get any boosts to concentration checks is part of the problem with the current design. It pushes players to choose a ranged Ranger or into builds that front-load all the damage at the beginning of combat, like Gloom Stalker/Assassin. Compare that to a Paladin. Paladins get access to heavy armor (assuming no STR dump), which doesn't impair their core abilities and they get a boost to ALL saving throws starting at level 6 with Aura of Protection that also protects nearby allies. A built-for-Sharpshooter Ranger is okay with that, but not melee build Rangers.
I too would disagree if somebody Said that, good thing i didint, i Said they were fine, of Course the rangers defensive capabillities pale in comparison to the two tankiest classes in the god damm game, lower your standards a bit, they are much better defensively than say a warlock or wizard, mostly on par with the fighter
As for the concentration dilemma, well their armor class tends to be decent especially early on where gold is scarce and nobody can afford plate, and you can try to minimize the problem with war caster, but it is indeed a problem
I dont Think they made the design of half casters with the goal of making them decent at concentration in mind, for the palladin it was an legacy abillity that just happened to help with that and artificers just happen to be proficient in con.
That Said it would make a lot of sense for them to have proficiency in constitution since it helps deal with poisons, diseases and exhaustion (particularly exhaustion levels from dehydration or sleep deprivation), all things that are important for an nature person to fight off i Think, an ranger doing ranger related activities in natural enviorons would Most likely find themselves making more con saves than str or dex saves
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Well, we agree on that.
Re: Saving throws. The thing is Fighters automatically get CON saving throw prof. from Level 1. So EKnights, for example, don't need Warcaster as much Rangers, but benefit more from it b/c EKs also get cantrips. Pure Rangers get no cantrips, but if they want to go the melee route, will often need to take Warcaster or Resilient - CON anyway. A melee Arcane Trickster Rogue does not have CON save proficiency, but Rogues have more ASIs anyway and spending one on Warcaster means they can choose to cast as a reaction. Again, Rangers don't have access to cantrips. What's frustrating about this is that the devs already know about this problem and already know how to fix it. That's why Bladesigners and War Magic Wizs get boosts to concentration baked into their subclasses. They could do that for Ranger as well.
Are the Tasha’s (leaked only at time of posting this) variants going to change the ranger class in terms of being underpoweredfor any of you?
I have never thought the ranger to be underpowered. I do think some of the abilities are too situational. A little over a year ago I wrote a proposed fix for Natural Explorer...
Natural Explorer
You are particularly familiar with environments in which you have honed your craft and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one environmental group as favored terrain:
Inhospitable: Arctic/Desert/Mountain
Natural: Forest/Grassland/Swamp
Urban: Coast/Cities/Towns
Desolate: Dungeon/Ruins/Underdark
While in any favored terrain you gain the following benefits:
• You ignore difficult terrain.
• You have advantage on initiative rolls.
• On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.
This way by high level, every environment is favored, looking back on it I would probably take out the below, but otherwise think it still works well. I do like the new options in Tasha's though and think the more universal options work better. I plan to use them on my ranger.
• On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.
Having a bunch of abilities that are too situational is one of the most common ways for a character class to be underpowered. An ability that you can never actually use is functionally identical to not having an ability.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I have a very firm opinion that anyone who has played a ranger in a game knows that their strength and contribution to a party and the game itself far exceeds that which is assessed on paper. It could have been written better, but when the player is playing the character and using its abilities well and as intended the ranger class and all subclasses do more then well. They do as well as all other classes. Better than some. I love it that people compare (in a negative manner) rangers to fighters, paladins, rogues, and druids all at the same time. I see that as testimony to their greatest strength.
The rest of the ranger chassis is strong enough to ensure that it's not underpowered, provided the player building the character doesn't take trap options.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I've been playing a single-classed gloomstalker built for archery for the last several months. I haven't had any issue whatsoever - with a sorlock, GWF fighter, cleric, and rogue. My ranger has been holding its own in every area - combat, support, exploration. Rangers have a lot of tricks up their sleeves for many different situations and I always have something to contribute. I don't know if I'm the best at anything, but I'm better than most at just about everything. I never feel like I don't have something to do to help move the story along. YMMV, and to be honest I was on the fence about trying out a ranger when I started, but he's ended up being one of my favorite characters to play.
The new stuff in Tasha's (except for FF which I likely won't take) is great. While I think the optional Favored Foe change is a bit clunky design-wise, I really like the additional options presented. I thought one of the drawbacks of the rangers was that their limited number of spells known made taking 'nature-y' things like 'speak with animals' would be difficult. That's been fixed in Tasha's. Also all of the explorer boons like movement, expertise in a skill like survival, and temp hit points plus exhaustion mitigation via short rests are absolutely awesome.
I mean, play what you like. I've DMed a bunch and played everything from warlocks, bards, clerics, fighters, wizards, and paladins. My experience with playing the class over several levels has been nothing but fun, and I think Tasha's only makes them better.
Has anyone played a campaign where the ranger(s) was allowed to prepare spells like a druid or paladin?
My gut tells me that, due to the utility and breadth of their spell list, being a prepared caster would make rangers a bit too above the curve, balance wise.
@crzyhawk
what would you consider the trap options?
@FrankReynoldsGaryGygax and @Moruvai
well said.
The ranger is a great class to role play. It has a couple of level ups that feel slightly disappointing, but don't most classes?
You can choose to go in different ways with it, melee, range, magic, skills-monkey, tank etc etc. The problem often comes if (like me) you want your character to be the best at everything, all at once!
PS - Rangers suck, because they can ;)
Mostly beastmaster....with poor animal companion choices. The other ranger archetypes are generally solid, although they have poorly designed class features.
When picking an animal companion, if the intent is for the animal companion to FIGHT with you, you have to remember you're sacrificing one of your own attacks for the companion to do it's bit. SO, you have to pick a companion that has an attack equal to, or better than your own attack that you're sacrificing. Now, there ARE some good companions out there that are /worth/ sacrificing your attack for...but many of the available choices are poor picks. The animal companion dies easily, and IIRC the RAW is that when you get a new companion, the DM has a vote in what you get...so the DM might only give you crap options if your easy to kill companion, dies.
Factor that in with the fact that new players who don't know how to tell a good choice from a bad one...make 'bad' choices (though no fault of their own) and feel that the class sucks rather than the choices they made with the class they picked. Ranger sucking is more of a perception than a reality.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Well, they are rather Concentration stuck. They can either do the one thing guaranteed to be useful, or use the rest of their list of stuff they could do.
IMO, that’s the real issue they face is that Hunter’s Mark requires concentration. If it was weaker, maybe 1d4, but Concentration-free, they would have a totally different reputation.
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