What kind of Ranger are you playing that can’t do better than 1d4+10 damage/attack by level 11?!? With a +4 Dex mod, a +1 longbow, Sharpshooter, and the Archery Fighting style a Ranger could do 1d8+17/attack, and that doesn’t even include bonuses from subclasses or Hunter’s Mark which could add a stack of d6s on top of that.
first of all, that should be at 17th level, secondly its 1d4 + 10 plus another 3d6 + 6 poison damage
I have never really thought much about it, but Beast's don't have proficiency with armor. Do they have disadvantage on attacks if they wear barding?
RAW, probably, but up to the DM. Can you train a snake how to use armor?
IRL I don't think you can train a snake to do anything lol
have you heard about a spell called awaken? it is really cool and makes snakes sentient if they were not already, suddenly well suited to be trained in the use of heavy armor. Combine awaken with beast master, teach your companion the ways of the ranger so that your animal companion has an animal companion, repeat the cyckle a few times and you will have an army of super-soldiers in no time with class levels and spellcasting. If an snake can weild an rapier or something with they tail they will be very terrifying with it, especially with the dueling fighting style
Barding just like a mount. Unless you mean how to physically attach it, in which case shhh... 🤫 just go with it.
Ok sure, snake barding. Makes perfect sense.
Magical Mithral snake barding, so it is light, and they can attack in it. Maybe it has to be chainmail?
Don’t you mean Scale Mail? 😉
I laughed way too hard at that
*takes a bow with a flourish*
What do you call it when a guy who isn’t a dad yet makes a dad joke?
"Come here Snakey!" I say while patting my lap, "Time to get into your armor."
"Whose a good snake." takes out leash, "Time for walkies in the dungeon."
the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human
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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
Back to being serious, plate armor on a hamster seems like it should cost more than normal Plate Armor, not because of material used, but because the Blacksmith needs to learn how to make and size armor for a hamster. The ridiculousness that comes along with this is balanced out with the difficulty of actually making hamster plate armor.
(Do snakes have necks that need protecting with armor? Isn't their whole body just a super long neck if they do have one?)
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
"the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human."
No where in that does it say anything about the beast being proficient. It does say Barding is Armor.
The phb says this "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells."
reduced to half by the DC 11 save and reduce that by half again for resistance or completely ignored because at 17th poison is not doing anything to most creatures.
"the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human."
No where in that does it say anything about the beast being proficient. It does say Barding is Armor.
The phb says this "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells."
To be fair here, I have ignored and will continue to ignore the armor proficiency for Beasts because they have it hard enough already.
What kind of Ranger are you playing that can’t do better than 1d4+10 damage/attack by level 11?!? With a +4 Dex mod, a +1 longbow, Sharpshooter, and the Archery Fighting style a Ranger could do 1d8+17/attack, and that doesn’t even include bonuses from subclasses or Hunter’s Mark which could add a stack of d6s on top of that.
first of all, that should be at 17th level, secondly its 1d4 + 10 plus another 3d6 + 6 poison damage.
That only makes it worse, as by then a Ranger most likely has better stuff and access to higher level spells. By 17th level, a regular Ranger (no multiclass shenanigans) should be able to easily average close to 30 damage/attack, and with a little creative multiclassing, even better than that. In other words, a 17th level Ranger should statistically be able to kill its own companion in one turn, without casting anything more that a 1st-level Hunter’s Mark, or something has gone terribly wrong.
"the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human."
No where in that does it say anything about the beast being proficient. It does say Barding is Armor.
The phb says this "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells."
To be fair here, I have ignored and will continue to ignore the armor proficiency for Beasts because they have it hard enough already.
i mean the ranger is supposed to share an magical bond with their companion, so having the beast be particularly easy to train or even allowing the snake to "download" armor training from its masters consciousness would not be super far fetched (okay mabe a little bit)
reduced to half by the DC 11 save and reduce that by half again for resistance or completely ignored because at 17th poison is not doing anything to most creatures.
yes, as you reach higher level powerful undead, fiends, constructs and elementals who are mostly unaffected by poison might become a bit more prevelent, but its not like every single monster you face will be immune or resistant to poison, notable examples in higher challenge ratings is powerful humanoid NPC's with a lot of class levels and any dragon that is nether green nor a skeleton, or in other words almost any dragon
Back to being serious, plate armor on a hamster seems like it should cost more than normal Plate Armor, not because of material used, but because the Blacksmith needs to learn how to make and size armor for a hamster. The ridiculousness that comes along with this is balanced out with the difficulty of actually making hamster plate armor.
(Do snakes have necks that need protecting with armor? Isn't their whole body just a super long neck if they do have one?)
it would not only be four times as expensive however, it would also be twice as heavy as the humanoid plate. An set of armor made for an hamster is twice as heavy as an set of armor made for a human.
also i will throw this out there as another argument for the animal companion: if they could weild weapons, most of them would be OP af ****, for instance if we ignore the obious anatomical difficulties in doing so, an giant poisonous snake ranger companion could be an excellent archer, just as accurate as many player characters and dealing much more damage than them. An fastieth from wayfinders guide to ebberon has both the super duper high dexterity of the giant poisonous snake but also libs that could probably be used to hold things like weapons or tools, so get an bard, cast awaken, train an dinousaur to use the longbow and watch as it does this whole "ranger-ing" for you much better than you.
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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
A quick search through the monster section of DnDBeyond shows 23 tabs of monsters that are Immune to Poison out of 86 total tabs, you are right, only a 1/4 of the monsters in the game are immune to poison.
That's still a big chuck. Beyond that, though, there are a lot of monsters at higher levels that are resistant or immune to nonmagical physical attack. The only way to give an animal companion permanent magical damage is with an item that's only available in the Tyranny of Dragons module, otherwise someone has to cast Magic Weapon on them.
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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.
That's still a big chuck. Beyond that, though, there are a lot of monsters at higher levels that are resistant or immune to nonmagical physical attack. The only way to give an animal companion permanent magical damage is with an item that's only available in the Tyranny of Dragons module, otherwise someone has to cast Magic Weapon on them.
...or you train your giant poisonous snake in the use of the longbow after somebody cast awaken on it, thus fixing both its pitiful damage dice problem whilst keeping their plus to damage intact
What kind of Ranger are you playing that can’t do better than 1d4+10 damage/attack by level 11?!? With a +4 Dex mod, a +1 longbow, Sharpshooter, and the Archery Fighting style a Ranger could do 1d8+17/attack, and that doesn’t even include bonuses from subclasses or Hunter’s Mark which could add a stack of d6s on top of that.
first of all, that should be at 17th level, secondly its 1d4 + 10 plus another 3d6 + 6 poison damage.
That only makes it worse, as by then a Ranger most likely has better stuff and access to higher level spells. By 17th level, a regular Ranger (no multiclass shenanigans) should be able to easily average close to 30 damage/attack, and with a little creative multiclassing, even better than that. In other words, a 17th level Ranger should statistically be able to kill its own companion in one turn, without casting anything more that a 1st-level Hunter’s Mark, or something has gone terribly wrong.
what kind of bullshit shenanigans must you go through to get an damm 30 damage per attack? the highest damage per attack potential probbaly comes from the dueling fighting style and the rapier for ranger, but there its like 1d8 + 2 + 5 damage, if you use longbow and sharpshooter you can deal 1d8 + 15 damage per attack at an devestating cost to accuracy. If we add together modifiers from hunters mark we can get it just a little further but still close to an average of 30 damage? where did you get that metric from? how do you inflate your numbers that high? Also by the time you reach 17th level, the companion has like an ridiculous armor class, even an unarmored giant poisonous snake should at that point have an AC of 20, any companion with decent armor given to them could make that 22 in armor class, so without magic items, assuming the ranger has at this point an apropriate score of 20 in their main abillity score they should have an +11 to hit modifier, meaning they should actiually miss their companion about half the time
if the beast companion had limbs and could weild weapons, they would use those weapons more effectively than any player character, even if that would kinda defeat the point of an animal companion it would lett them deal so much more damage per attack than any player character
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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
A 17th-level Wood Elf Monster Slayer just as an example. 20 Dex, Archery Fighting Style, Bracers of Archery, Longbow, +2, Sharpshooter Feat, Elven Accuracy Feat, Hunter’s Mark.
As anyone who has played 5e for more than two sessions can tell you, gaining Advantage on an attack is not difficult. With Elven Accuracy that’s almost two guaranteed hits, even with Sharpshooter’s -5 turning my Attack bonus from +15 to +10. Using Sharpshooter, with Hunter’s Mark and Slayer’s Prey (subclass ability) those two hits are going to combine to do 2d8 (average 9) + 3d6 (average 10) + 38 = 57 damage on average for those two attacks, or 28.5 damage/attack on average.
That doesn’t include Crits, and with Elven Accuracy, that’s around a 15% chance to crit per attack, or around 30% to crit at least once per turn, (crit around 1ce every three turns on average) so those numbers could much higher.
The worst part about it is, if you use that build on a Battle Master, or heck, even a Champion, it would be more effective than on the Ranger, even without Hunter’s Mark.
A 17th-level Wood Elf Monster Slayer just as an example. 20 Dex, Archery Fighting Style, Bracers of Archery, Longbow, +2, Sharpshooter Feat, Elven Accuracy Feat, Hunter’s Mark.
As anyone who has played 5e for more than two sessions can tell you, gaining Advantage on an attack is not difficult. With Elven Accuracy that’s almost two guaranteed hits, even with Sharpshooter’s -5 turning my Attack bonus from +15 to +10. Using Sharpshooter, with Hunter’s Mark and Slayer’s Prey (subclass ability) those two hits are going to combine to do 2d8 (average 9) + 3d6 (average 10) + 38 = 57 damage on average for those two attacks, or 28.5 damage/attack on average.
That doesn’t include Crits, and with Elven Accuracy, that’s around a 15% chance to crit per attack, or around 30% to crit at least once per turn, (crit around 1ce every three turns on average) so those numbers could much higher.
The worst part about it is, if you use that build on a Battle Master, or heck, even a Champion, it would be more effective than on the Ranger, even without Hunter’s Mark.
yeah elven accuracy for TRIPPLE ADVANTAGE is pretty nice, but you do realize that an 5% chance to crit every turn is about an 26.5% so maybe once every four turns, abd that build derives most of its damage output from the sharpshooter feat, something that most rangers probably will not pick, most others wll probably prioritize increasing their wisdom and dexterity scores and choosing feats more befit their character
if you have like an nearby wizard or warlock who has an familliar who can assist with the help action every turn without sacroficing the action economy, or you use flanking or you use a bonus action to hide every turn, since this build is so heavily reliant on advantage any source of disadvantage should at 17th level probably be kinda crippling against opponents who can grant disadvantage like ones that hide in magical darkness or use wind wall or imposes blindness or are invisible, at the point where most high CR monsters should have AC 19 or higher this build will only hit about half the time if they wanna benefit from sharpshooter and they have both advantage and disadvantage.
Also other than that you wanted to just pick an random example, why did you pick one of the weaker ranger subclasses for this example? its weaker and a fair bit less reliable than the horizon walker and the colossus slayer hunter ranger, like yeah only a average diffrence of 1 hit point but especially with crits involeved that willl add up, eh hunter ranger is not that bad, certainly not the weakest of the subclasses
also there is something that should, at 17th level prove to be an advantage this build has over fighters of the same build: swift quiver, 5th level transmutation for an extra two attacks every bonus action,
At this point in the game, if you are not using feats or you are not actively trying to minmax an archery build for the ranger, getting 20 damage per hit will be kinda rare, and also you people who are not me who i have randomly decided is a single entity have yet to adress the idea of an bow or crossbow manned by your animal companion, yes an hard task but with the right amount of training and specialized design it should be rather possible, especially if you are proficient with smiths and tinkers tools and also friends with an atrificer, so now i am going to showcase just how serious i am about my meme build:
In this, rather unconventional build, where an proficient dimetrodon has an pair of bracers of archery for that sweet proficiency and weilding an +2 longbow designed so that it may be loaded, aimed and fired with only input from the beast, you can make one longbow attack yourself and command your companion to take the attack action, attacking twice at 17th level. If the beastie has an dexterity score of 18 it should have an +14 to hit with this attack, and it should deal 1d8 + 12 damage per attack, and for the sake of argument lets say the ranger is using flame arrows for their concentration to benefit both them and their companion (technically you could use swift quiver instead and have a lot of fun becuase it is unclear if the beast requires your action to take a bonus action). At the same time the ranger makes their one attack, lets say they have a similar build to what you did above here, so sharpshooter feat, 20 dex and using elven accuracy to make up for bad accuracy, 17 + 1d8 + 1d6 so their one attack deals 25 damage on average, and our little snake/ dinosaur powered gun deals an average of 20 damage per attack, so that should be 65 damage per round.
if you instead use swift quiver, with your companion making four attacks per round and you making three attacks per round well assuming that it is in fact allowed for people other than you to use the quiver then it should on average for that single minute where you deal all the damage be about 130.5 damage per round on average. That is probably an kinda high number
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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 don't talk about a Ranger Snake with a Longbow because the idea is too silly in my opinion. Snakes don't have arms. Snakes can't use weapons. The idea of a snake in armor alone is pushing it.
You seem surprised when people have characters that can deal more damage than a CR 1/4 snake but then want to make animal companions that take class levels and use weapons. It hard to take an argument like that seriously.
Your math is a little off, the crit chance is a wee bit higher. Over 3 turns, that’s 18 chances to roll a 20. so I’ll split the difference with you, and we’ll say 1 crit/7 attacks, or 1 every 3.5 turns. Even if your companion has advantage on both of its attacks every turn, your crit% is still higher than its. So simply gearing your Ranger to take care of their own light work instead of having a companion, your better of on that from.
The times when an archer can’t find one target within 600ft (remember sharpshooter) that they don’t have Disadvantage against somewhere on the battlefield are rare. We’ve already learned that your snake will do peanuts against 1/4 of the MM. And then my archer still has spells to fall back on. And again, Sharpshooter wouldn’t be one of the most popular combat feats in 5e if it wasn’t effective, just like Golaryn’s Barbarian with GWM.
I picked Slayer specifically because it’s considered weaker than other Ranger Subclasses. Imagine how much worse that could get. And I rarely see shooters not take Sharpshooter, just like those Barbs, Pallies, and Fighters swingin’ that big lumber usually take GWM.
By 17th level, those fighters have been making 3 attacks/turn for 6 levels without spending their bonus actions to do it. Don’t get me wron, I love Swift Quiver, but let’s be honest, Fighters simply get more attacks.
At this point in the game, if you’re still spreading the focus of your character around instead of having focused on the handful of stuff you want to 733+, then you’re gonna be lackluster at everything. With Pointbuy, you could easily max Dex and Wis and still get both of those feats with ASIs to spare. You have had to dedicate your entire character since 3rd-level to make the companion work, and the first 5th-level Fireball that hits the battlefield is gonna nuke it.
And I haven’t been “not addressing” your gimmicks idea, I’ve been ignoring it. Why would I ever want to jump through all of those hoops to make a companion that is going to see 1 round of combat and then promptly die.You keep going on about it’s AC. How many HP does it have? I want a number. What are it’s Dex/Con/Wis saves? How the eff will AC protect it against an AoE attack?
I don't talk about a Ranger Snake with a Longbow because the idea is too silly in my opinion. Snakes don't have arms. Snakes can't use weapons. The idea of a snake in armor alone is pushing it.
You seem surprised when people have characters that can deal more damage than a CR 1/4 snake but then want to make animal companions that take class levels and use weapons. It hard to take an argument like that seriously.
i mean there is also the dimetridon, an creature from ErftlW or whatever that has limbs.
Your math is a little off, the crit chance is a wee bit higher. Over 3 turns, that’s 18 chances to roll a 20. so I’ll split the difference with you, and we’ll say 1 crit/7 attacks, or 1 every 3.5 turns. Even if your companion has advantage on both of its attacks every turn, your crit% is still higher than its. So simply gearing your Ranger to take care of their own light work instead of having a companion, your better of on that from.
The times when an archer can’t find one target within 600ft (remember sharpshooter) that they don’t have Disadvantage against somewhere on the battlefield are rare. We’ve already learned that your snake will do peanuts against 1/4 of the MM. And then my archer still has spells to fall back on. And again, Sharpshooter wouldn’t be one of the most popular combat feats in 5e if it wasn’t effective, just like Golaryn’s Barbarian with GWM.
I picked Slayer specifically because it’s considered weaker than other Ranger Subclasses. Imagine how much worse that could get. And I rarely see shooters not take Sharpshooter, just like those Barbs, Pallies, and Fighters swingin’ that big lumber usually take GWM.
By 17th level, those fighters have been making 3 attacks/turn for 6 levels without spending their bonus actions to do it. Don’t get me wron, I love Swift Quiver, but let’s be honest, Fighters simply get more attacks.
At this point in the game, if you’re still spreading the focus of your character around instead of having focused on the handful of stuff you want to 733+, then you’re gonna be lackluster at everything. With Pointbuy, you could easily max Dex and Wis and still get both of those feats with ASIs to spare. You have had to dedicate your entire character since 3rd-level to make the companion work, and the first 5th-level Fireball that hits the battlefield is gonna nuke it.
And I haven’t been “not addressing” your gimmicks idea, I’ve been ignoring it. Why would I ever want to jump through all of those hoops to make a companion that is going to see 1 round of combat and then promptly die.You keep going on about it’s AC. How many HP does it have? I want a number. What are it’s Dex/Con/Wis saves? How the eff will AC protect it against an AoE attack?
three sepperate rolls per attack, two attacks per turn, five percent chance to crit with each attack. the liklihood of no crit happening at all during a turn is (19/29)^6, times one hundred if you want it as an exact percentage. if you subtract the result from one, you get the liklihood that at least one of the hits was a critical hit. There is no error in my math, the resulting percentile is 26.49081... rounded to 26.5 for simplicity
yes, bad saves and poor AC is indeed an major flaw, i will admit that, but i feel y'all are overlooking its major strengths. It is indeed an glass cannon, and indeed it is an glass cannon.
And you wanna know why i go through all these hoops? why i mess arround with the beast master despite its obious limitations? becuase it is fun, capital F fun. Becuase building an giant crab whose armor class reaches double digits is fun, becuase having an gosh darn sentient dinosaur by your side that weilds a bow and shoots flaming arrows is just an hillarious visual (an decently powerful), as is using magic stone plus companion, becuase moving arround at mach 7 riding on an flying dinosaur with an 60 ft movement speed while harrasing people with my bow is fun, becuase dealing honestly ludicris amounts of poison damage with my lil snek while also having an infinite giant snake poison supply for the assassin rouge to use with their assasinations or to give to the party before a difficult boss fight is fun, becuase using your giant frog companion to restrain the BBEG letting the nearby evocation wizard fireball them while they have disadvantage on their dex saves all while sparing the frog becuase of sculpt spells is fun (and having the frog EAT an goblin strikes fear into your enemies), especially when the villain must waste their action to suceed, having an weird cow from the underdark with magical dancing lights is incredebly fun, having an giant wolf spider who is almost stealthier than the rouge is hillarious, i have yet to get an opportunity to personally play the subclass, but i feel it has kind of gotten a bit overlooked, becuase it can be really powerful in certain areas, if you hire a skilled enough blacksmith, if you have enough gold and if you have enough time to train them, you could probabaly grant proficiency in special variants of weapons players use designed specifically for use by animal companions, heck if you are an skilled blacksmith yourself or you have an battle smith artificer of great experience in the party.
as for save proficiencies, so what, you have save proficiencies, why is that? is it not the result of skill and training? could you not rather simply pass on said training on to your companion? what is stopping you from teaching an beastie from being proficient in an saving throw?
And beyond that, so what if the beast drops to 0 hit points? you have healing magic, correct? you have pretty high wisdom, correct? and even if it dies, death is hardly final arround these parts is it? have the necromancer cast their gentle repose, and in the meantime start to look for another creature, this is a great opportunity to try something new, something diffrent. And hey, why even use the beast in combat if you think it is so weak, it still got all its movement modes and all of its special senses and all of its special traits, all of whom it may utilize in order to help the party out of combat.
i donno i just kinda like beast master, see it as an bit of an puzzle since yeah it has a lot of weaknesses, but you can probably ovecome them with some clever tactics. I will not claim that it is any stronger than any other ranger subclass, and in fact it is often weaker than most of the really great subclasses ranger has, but in the right circumstance it can be as powerful as you want and honestly there is not all that much wrong with the beast master in its current form.
sorry if i sounded a bit like a brat earlier, i just really kinda like this subclass
and speaking of things nobody asked for, i made a bit of an variant of the beast master i personally think would fix a few of the issues, and i would like ot kindly ask for oppinions on it if it is not too much to ask
(assume that each rule builds on top of the normal beast master ranger) on top of hit points equal to four times your ranger level, each beastie also gain an additional number of hit points equal to your wisdom modifier times your ranger level, you can have an maximum number of companions equal to your wisdom modifier and each animal companion also gains a single skill proficiency and one save proficiency after the 8 hour bonding period, and to make things spicy two superiority dice are given to the ranger, that can only be used for the commander's strike, rally or maneuvering strike maneuvers, where each must target one of your companions. If your ranger has the deft explorer feature, your animal companions gains the benefits you chose for that feature as well. If an beast companion dies, you may revive it like an battle smith, however you must also spend an hit dice to do so
At 7th level their attacks count as magical for overcoming resistance to non magical attacks and each gets to choose an fighting style from +1 ac, +2 to attack rolls or protection, as well as the normal benefits, at 11th level you can split the two attacks made by your companions between all of them, one can make two attacks or two can make one attack each and at 15th level the ranger's superiority dice become D10's and they gain another superiority dice, on top of the share spells featue that works on ALL of your companions
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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 is why I don't take anything you say about Animal Companions seriously. Even in a fantasy world of magic the idea seems ridiculous at best. If you and your DM allow such things, fine, but it not a valid counter point to the actual state of the Beast Master or Beast Companions.
Snakes can't use longbows. Snakes do often have prehensile tails, but these are at most used for grappling. other dinosaurs that don't have digits that can hold weapons can't use weapons.
(also, quick correction, snakes aren't lizards, neither are dinosaurs. They are both types of reptiles, but not lizards.)
"Did you eat Blad again?" I scold, "How many times do I have to tell you. No matter how tasty gnomes are, you don't eat party members!"
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
first of all, that should be at 17th level, secondly its 1d4 + 10 plus another 3d6 + 6 poison damage
have you heard about a spell called awaken? it is really cool and makes snakes sentient if they were not already, suddenly well suited to be trained in the use of heavy armor. Combine awaken with beast master, teach your companion the ways of the ranger so that your animal companion has an animal companion, repeat the cyckle a few times and you will have an army of super-soldiers in no time with class levels and spellcasting. If an snake can weild an rapier or something with they tail they will be very terrifying with it, especially with the dueling fighting style
the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human
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
"Go for the eyes, BOO! FOR THE EYES!"
Back to being serious, plate armor on a hamster seems like it should cost more than normal Plate Armor, not because of material used, but because the Blacksmith needs to learn how to make and size armor for a hamster. The ridiculousness that comes along with this is balanced out with the difficulty of actually making hamster plate armor.
(Do snakes have necks that need protecting with armor? Isn't their whole body just a super long neck if they do have one?)
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
"the players handbook, on barding, states: "barding is armor designed to protect an animals head, neck, chest and body, any type of armor in this chapter can be purchased as barding", this has the werid consequence that making an set of armor for an hamster will cost more and be heavier than that same armor made for a human."
No where in that does it say anything about the beast being proficient. It does say Barding is Armor.
The phb says this "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells."
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
"plus another 3d6 + 6 poison damage"
reduced to half by the DC 11 save and reduce that by half again for resistance or completely ignored because at 17th poison is not doing anything to most creatures.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
To be fair here, I have ignored and will continue to ignore the armor proficiency for Beasts because they have it hard enough already.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
That only makes it worse, as by then a Ranger most likely has better stuff and access to higher level spells. By 17th level, a regular Ranger (no multiclass shenanigans) should be able to easily average close to 30 damage/attack, and with a little creative multiclassing, even better than that. In other words, a 17th level Ranger should statistically be able to kill its own companion in one turn, without casting anything more that a 1st-level Hunter’s Mark, or something has gone terribly wrong.
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i mean the ranger is supposed to share an magical bond with their companion, so having the beast be particularly easy to train or even allowing the snake to "download" armor training from its masters consciousness would not be super far fetched (okay mabe a little bit)
yes, as you reach higher level powerful undead, fiends, constructs and elementals who are mostly unaffected by poison might become a bit more prevelent, but its not like every single monster you face will be immune or resistant to poison, notable examples in higher challenge ratings is powerful humanoid NPC's with a lot of class levels and any dragon that is nether green nor a skeleton, or in other words almost any dragon
it would not only be four times as expensive however, it would also be twice as heavy as the humanoid plate. An set of armor made for an hamster is twice as heavy as an set of armor made for a human.
also i will throw this out there as another argument for the animal companion: if they could weild weapons, most of them would be OP af ****, for instance if we ignore the obious anatomical difficulties in doing so, an giant poisonous snake ranger companion could be an excellent archer, just as accurate as many player characters and dealing much more damage than them. An fastieth from wayfinders guide to ebberon has both the super duper high dexterity of the giant poisonous snake but also libs that could probably be used to hold things like weapons or tools, so get an bard, cast awaken, train an dinousaur to use the longbow and watch as it does this whole "ranger-ing" for you much better than you.
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
A quick search through the monster section of DnDBeyond shows 23 tabs of monsters that are Immune to Poison out of 86 total tabs, you are right, only a 1/4 of the monsters in the game are immune to poison.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
That's still a big chuck. Beyond that, though, there are a lot of monsters at higher levels that are resistant or immune to nonmagical physical attack. The only way to give an animal companion permanent magical damage is with an item that's only available in the Tyranny of Dragons module, otherwise someone has to cast Magic Weapon on them.
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.
...or you train your giant poisonous snake in the use of the longbow after somebody cast awaken on it, thus fixing both its pitiful damage dice problem whilst keeping their plus to damage intact
what kind of bullshit shenanigans must you go through to get an damm 30 damage per attack? the highest damage per attack potential probbaly comes from the dueling fighting style and the rapier for ranger, but there its like 1d8 + 2 + 5 damage, if you use longbow and sharpshooter you can deal 1d8 + 15 damage per attack at an devestating cost to accuracy. If we add together modifiers from hunters mark we can get it just a little further but still close to an average of 30 damage? where did you get that metric from? how do you inflate your numbers that high? Also by the time you reach 17th level, the companion has like an ridiculous armor class, even an unarmored giant poisonous snake should at that point have an AC of 20, any companion with decent armor given to them could make that 22 in armor class, so without magic items, assuming the ranger has at this point an apropriate score of 20 in their main abillity score they should have an +11 to hit modifier, meaning they should actiually miss their companion about half the time
if the beast companion had limbs and could weild weapons, they would use those weapons more effectively than any player character, even if that would kinda defeat the point of an animal companion it would lett them deal so much more damage per attack than any player character
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
A 17th-level Wood Elf Monster Slayer just as an example. 20 Dex, Archery Fighting Style, Bracers of Archery, Longbow, +2, Sharpshooter Feat, Elven Accuracy Feat, Hunter’s Mark.
As anyone who has played 5e for more than two sessions can tell you, gaining Advantage on an attack is not difficult. With Elven Accuracy that’s almost two guaranteed hits, even with Sharpshooter’s -5 turning my Attack bonus from +15 to +10. Using Sharpshooter, with Hunter’s Mark and Slayer’s Prey (subclass ability) those two hits are going to combine to do 2d8 (average 9) + 3d6 (average 10) + 38 = 57 damage on average for those two attacks, or 28.5 damage/attack on average.
That doesn’t include Crits, and with Elven Accuracy, that’s around a 15% chance to crit per attack, or around 30% to crit at least once per turn, (crit around 1ce every three turns on average) so those numbers could much higher.
The worst part about it is, if you use that build on a Battle Master, or heck, even a Champion, it would be more effective than on the Ranger, even without Hunter’s Mark.
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yeah elven accuracy for TRIPPLE ADVANTAGE is pretty nice, but you do realize that an 5% chance to crit every turn is about an 26.5% so maybe once every four turns, abd that build derives most of its damage output from the sharpshooter feat, something that most rangers probably will not pick, most others wll probably prioritize increasing their wisdom and dexterity scores and choosing feats more befit their character
if you have like an nearby wizard or warlock who has an familliar who can assist with the help action every turn without sacroficing the action economy, or you use flanking or you use a bonus action to hide every turn, since this build is so heavily reliant on advantage any source of disadvantage should at 17th level probably be kinda crippling against opponents who can grant disadvantage like ones that hide in magical darkness or use wind wall or imposes blindness or are invisible, at the point where most high CR monsters should have AC 19 or higher this build will only hit about half the time if they wanna benefit from sharpshooter and they have both advantage and disadvantage.
Also other than that you wanted to just pick an random example, why did you pick one of the weaker ranger subclasses for this example? its weaker and a fair bit less reliable than the horizon walker and the colossus slayer hunter ranger, like yeah only a average diffrence of 1 hit point but especially with crits involeved that willl add up, eh hunter ranger is not that bad, certainly not the weakest of the subclasses
also there is something that should, at 17th level prove to be an advantage this build has over fighters of the same build: swift quiver, 5th level transmutation for an extra two attacks every bonus action,
At this point in the game, if you are not using feats or you are not actively trying to minmax an archery build for the ranger, getting 20 damage per hit will be kinda rare, and also you people who are not me who i have randomly decided is a single entity have yet to adress the idea of an bow or crossbow manned by your animal companion, yes an hard task but with the right amount of training and specialized design it should be rather possible, especially if you are proficient with smiths and tinkers tools and also friends with an atrificer, so now i am going to showcase just how serious i am about my meme build:
In this, rather unconventional build, where an proficient dimetrodon has an pair of bracers of archery for that sweet proficiency and weilding an +2 longbow designed so that it may be loaded, aimed and fired with only input from the beast, you can make one longbow attack yourself and command your companion to take the attack action, attacking twice at 17th level. If the beastie has an dexterity score of 18 it should have an +14 to hit with this attack, and it should deal 1d8 + 12 damage per attack, and for the sake of argument lets say the ranger is using flame arrows for their concentration to benefit both them and their companion (technically you could use swift quiver instead and have a lot of fun becuase it is unclear if the beast requires your action to take a bonus action). At the same time the ranger makes their one attack, lets say they have a similar build to what you did above here, so sharpshooter feat, 20 dex and using elven accuracy to make up for bad accuracy, 17 + 1d8 + 1d6 so their one attack deals 25 damage on average, and our little snake/ dinosaur powered gun deals an average of 20 damage per attack, so that should be 65 damage per round.
if you instead use swift quiver, with your companion making four attacks per round and you making three attacks per round well assuming that it is in fact allowed for people other than you to use the quiver then it should on average for that single minute where you deal all the damage be about 130.5 damage per round on average. That is probably an kinda high number
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 don't talk about a Ranger Snake with a Longbow because the idea is too silly in my opinion. Snakes don't have arms. Snakes can't use weapons. The idea of a snake in armor alone is pushing it.
You seem surprised when people have characters that can deal more damage than a CR 1/4 snake but then want to make animal companions that take class levels and use weapons. It hard to take an argument like that seriously.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Your math is a little off, the crit chance is a wee bit higher. Over 3 turns, that’s 18 chances to roll a 20. so I’ll split the difference with you, and we’ll say 1 crit/7 attacks, or 1 every 3.5 turns. Even if your companion has advantage on both of its attacks every turn, your crit% is still higher than its. So simply gearing your Ranger to take care of their own light work instead of having a companion, your better of on that from.
The times when an archer can’t find one target within 600ft (remember sharpshooter) that they don’t have Disadvantage against somewhere on the battlefield are rare. We’ve already learned that your snake will do peanuts against 1/4 of the MM. And then my archer still has spells to fall back on. And again, Sharpshooter wouldn’t be one of the most popular combat feats in 5e if it wasn’t effective, just like Golaryn’s Barbarian with GWM.
I picked Slayer specifically because it’s considered weaker than other Ranger Subclasses. Imagine how much worse that could get. And I rarely see shooters not take Sharpshooter, just like those Barbs, Pallies, and Fighters swingin’ that big lumber usually take GWM.
By 17th level, those fighters have been making 3 attacks/turn for 6 levels without spending their bonus actions to do it. Don’t get me wron, I love Swift Quiver, but let’s be honest, Fighters simply get more attacks.
At this point in the game, if you’re still spreading the focus of your character around instead of having focused on the handful of stuff you want to 733+, then you’re gonna be lackluster at everything. With Pointbuy, you could easily max Dex and Wis and still get both of those feats with ASIs to spare. You have had to dedicate your entire character since 3rd-level to make the companion work, and the first 5th-level Fireball that hits the battlefield is gonna nuke it.
And I haven’t been “not addressing” your gimmicks idea, I’ve been ignoring it. Why would I ever want to jump through all of those hoops to make a companion that is going to see 1 round of combat and then promptly die.You keep going on about it’s AC. How many HP does it have? I want a number. What are it’s Dex/Con/Wis saves? How the eff will AC protect it against an AoE attack?
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At level 20, the Snake has HP: 80 and AC: 20
Saves are Dex +4, Con +1 and Wis +0
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
i mean there is also the dimetridon, an creature from ErftlW or whatever that has limbs.
three sepperate rolls per attack, two attacks per turn, five percent chance to crit with each attack. the liklihood of no crit happening at all during a turn is (19/29)^6, times one hundred if you want it as an exact percentage. if you subtract the result from one, you get the liklihood that at least one of the hits was a critical hit. There is no error in my math, the resulting percentile is 26.49081... rounded to 26.5 for simplicity
yes, bad saves and poor AC is indeed an major flaw, i will admit that, but i feel y'all are overlooking its major strengths. It is indeed an glass cannon, and indeed it is an glass cannon.
And you wanna know why i go through all these hoops? why i mess arround with the beast master despite its obious limitations? becuase it is fun, capital F fun. Becuase building an giant crab whose armor class reaches double digits is fun, becuase having an gosh darn sentient dinosaur by your side that weilds a bow and shoots flaming arrows is just an hillarious visual (an decently powerful), as is using magic stone plus companion, becuase moving arround at mach 7 riding on an flying dinosaur with an 60 ft movement speed while harrasing people with my bow is fun, becuase dealing honestly ludicris amounts of poison damage with my lil snek while also having an infinite giant snake poison supply for the assassin rouge to use with their assasinations or to give to the party before a difficult boss fight is fun, becuase using your giant frog companion to restrain the BBEG letting the nearby evocation wizard fireball them while they have disadvantage on their dex saves all while sparing the frog becuase of sculpt spells is fun (and having the frog EAT an goblin strikes fear into your enemies), especially when the villain must waste their action to suceed, having an weird cow from the underdark with magical dancing lights is incredebly fun, having an giant wolf spider who is almost stealthier than the rouge is hillarious, i have yet to get an opportunity to personally play the subclass, but i feel it has kind of gotten a bit overlooked, becuase it can be really powerful in certain areas, if you hire a skilled enough blacksmith, if you have enough gold and if you have enough time to train them, you could probabaly grant proficiency in special variants of weapons players use designed specifically for use by animal companions, heck if you are an skilled blacksmith yourself or you have an battle smith artificer of great experience in the party.
as for save proficiencies, so what, you have save proficiencies, why is that? is it not the result of skill and training? could you not rather simply pass on said training on to your companion? what is stopping you from teaching an beastie from being proficient in an saving throw?
And beyond that, so what if the beast drops to 0 hit points? you have healing magic, correct? you have pretty high wisdom, correct? and even if it dies, death is hardly final arround these parts is it? have the necromancer cast their gentle repose, and in the meantime start to look for another creature, this is a great opportunity to try something new, something diffrent. And hey, why even use the beast in combat if you think it is so weak, it still got all its movement modes and all of its special senses and all of its special traits, all of whom it may utilize in order to help the party out of combat.
i donno i just kinda like beast master, see it as an bit of an puzzle since yeah it has a lot of weaknesses, but you can probably ovecome them with some clever tactics. I will not claim that it is any stronger than any other ranger subclass, and in fact it is often weaker than most of the really great subclasses ranger has, but in the right circumstance it can be as powerful as you want and honestly there is not all that much wrong with the beast master in its current form.
sorry if i sounded a bit like a brat earlier, i just really kinda like this subclass
and speaking of things nobody asked for, i made a bit of an variant of the beast master i personally think would fix a few of the issues, and i would like ot kindly ask for oppinions on it if it is not too much to ask
(assume that each rule builds on top of the normal beast master ranger) on top of hit points equal to four times your ranger level, each beastie also gain an additional number of hit points equal to your wisdom modifier times your ranger level, you can have an maximum number of companions equal to your wisdom modifier and each animal companion also gains a single skill proficiency and one save proficiency after the 8 hour bonding period, and to make things spicy two superiority dice are given to the ranger, that can only be used for the commander's strike, rally or maneuvering strike maneuvers, where each must target one of your companions. If your ranger has the deft explorer feature, your animal companions gains the benefits you chose for that feature as well. If an beast companion dies, you may revive it like an battle smith, however you must also spend an hit dice to do so
At 7th level their attacks count as magical for overcoming resistance to non magical attacks and each gets to choose an fighting style from +1 ac, +2 to attack rolls or protection, as well as the normal benefits, at 11th level you can split the two attacks made by your companions between all of them, one can make two attacks or two can make one attack each and at 15th level the ranger's superiority dice become D10's and they gain another superiority dice, on top of the share spells featue that works on ALL of your companions
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
The rules prevent the snake from gaining proficiency with Saving Throws and Longbows.
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How does a lizard without hands use a bow?
That is why I don't take anything you say about Animal Companions seriously. Even in a fantasy world of magic the idea seems ridiculous at best. If you and your DM allow such things, fine, but it not a valid counter point to the actual state of the Beast Master or Beast Companions.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Snakes can't use longbows. Snakes do often have prehensile tails, but these are at most used for grappling. other dinosaurs that don't have digits that can hold weapons can't use weapons.
(also, quick correction, snakes aren't lizards, neither are dinosaurs. They are both types of reptiles, but not lizards.)
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms