Horde Breaker. Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
Effectively shooting 2 arrows simultaneously, as demonstrated by many Hollywood archers.....(I think Legolas was showing off when he did three!)
I am playing a Ranger/Rogue in my current campaign.
Going for 12 Rogue Assassin, 8 Gloom Stalker Revised Ranger
‘Start with Rogue to get 4 skills, expertise, Thieves Cant’ and Thieves Tools, then 5 levels of Ranger, after that the rest of Rogue levels, taking Ranger when Greater favored enemy and wisdom saves become more important.
Take Sharpshooter at lvl 5 (Ranger 4) and by level 6 you will have Opening round bonus action Hunter’s Mark (HM), Attack, extra Attack, Dread Ambusher. You’ll have advantage on initiative and on all attacks on any enemy that hasn’t gone so you can take sharpshooter on all 3:
4d8 Longbow +3d6 HM +1d6 Sneak +30 +DEX as far away as 600ft, ignoring all but total cover.
By lvl 8 you pick up assassinate, assuming you get surprise that turns to:
8d8 Longbow +6d6 HM +4d6 Sneak +30 +DEX from the safety of 600ft.
Shoot, move, hide, shift HM and drop everything before it can touch you.
At a theoretical 20, you can open combat with 8d8+18d6+45 (Dex 20), an average of ~150 or more damage.
Our last known information from the 2016 Revised Ranger article says "If this iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it, grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook." That is why people keep asking for the next version.
During the same twitter feed, Jeremy Crawford answered "There is no plan to release a new version of a core class."
Looks like they must not have got enough interest in the Revised Ranger to continue. That's very sad, as the PHB beast master ranger is really quite horrible, and to my knowledge there is NO way to put in the Revised Ranger into D&D beyond as it is a class and not a subclass.
Our last known information from the 2016 Revised Ranger article says "If this iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it, grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook." That is why people keep asking for the next version.
During the same twitter feed, Jeremy Crawford answered "There is no plan to release a new version of a core class."
Looks like they must not have got enough interest in the Revised Ranger to continue. That's very sad, as the PHB beast master ranger is really quite horrible, and to my knowledge there is NO way to put in the Revised Ranger into D&D beyond as it is a class and not a subclass.
Yeah, given the analytic value of DDB, you would think they would add the revised ranger to DDB and Wizards could use that to gauge player use of it. My guess is that most (more than 60%) of players would immediately switch to the revised. I remember a poll on who is using it and the results were that 90% of respondents were using revised.
Our last known information from the 2016 Revised Ranger article says "If this iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it, grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook." That is why people keep asking for the next version.
During the same twitter feed, Jeremy Crawford answered "There is no plan to release a new version of a core class."
Looks like they must not have got enough interest in the Revised Ranger to continue. That's very sad, as the PHB beast master ranger is really quite horrible, and to my knowledge there is NO way to put in the Revised Ranger into D&D beyond as it is a class and not a subclass.
Yeah, given the analytic value of DDB, you would think they would add the revised ranger to DDB and Wizards could use that to gauge player use of it. My guess is that most (more than 60%) of players would immediately switch to the revised. I remember a poll on who is using it and the results were that 90% of respondents were using revised.
Even the latest Morgaen, a character played on Acquisitions Inc with Chris Perkins, uses the Revised Ranger now at the live events. I think they are very cautious to disrupt the simplicity of the current system though, and will look for ways to address issues without actually having alternate versions of things found in the PHB.
Not having revised ranger is basically means one of my players will never get to use D&D Beyond.
I understand the policy of not putting old UA into DDB because it'll get out of hand very quickly, but there needs to be an exception made for this. This is a CORE class that will never be officially updated that numerous creative directors within D&D have admitted they missed the ball on.
As mentioned above, even Perkins is using the revised ranger. Is there NOTHING we can do?
Our last known information from the 2016 Revised Ranger article says "If this iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it, grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook." That is why people keep asking for the next version.
During the same twitter feed, Jeremy Crawford answered "There is no plan to release a new version of a core class."
Looks like they must not have got enough interest in the Revised Ranger to continue. That's very sad, as the PHB beast master ranger is really quite horrible, and to my knowledge there is NO way to put in the Revised Ranger into D&D beyond as it is a class and not a subclass.
I think you're taking that tweet out of context. The last time the Revised Ranger was brought up in any meaningful capacity was during the 11/27/2017 Sage Advice episode on Dragon Talk. The take-away is that they're not going to replace the Player's Handbook Ranger and won't release a whole alternative version either, but they're still looking at letting you swap out some class features. Starting at 37:37:
Jeremy: "As for the Revised Ranger, it is in a different category because it's something we haven't done otherwise, which is put out almost kind of a redo of a core class. It - the Revised Ranger definitely has its fans, but the longer that the Unearthed Arcana process went, uh, leading up to the release of XGtE, the more I noticed that actually the Revised Ranger was causing confusion. That having a second version of a class in the Player's Handbook - for the people who are of it - were always wondering "wait, does this thing work with the Revised Ranger or the Player's Handbook Ranger?
...
And then there's also the issue - that might surprise many of our listeners, particularly those that are fond of the Revised Ranger - that most of our fans have no idea it exists. And, and actually, many of our players love the Player's Handbook Ranger. So the conundrum is we don't want to release a version of the Ranger that takes away the Ranger that many people are enjoying. And even if you look at D&D Beyond play statistics, a lot of people play the Player's Handbook Ranger.
...
The other thing that we found, the more we looked carefully at the Revised Ranger feedback, is something I suspected going into that whole thing: really, dissatisfaction with the Player's Handbook Ranger is mostly about the Beast Master. My philosophy when it comes to stewardship of the game is "If something is broken, just fix the broken thing and move on." Because it gets really dangerous when you start messing around with things around the broken thing, because then you can start destabilizing the game. Again you can start taking things away from people - and they like those things. Because that's the other thing - not just for D&D players but for us as humans - we often forget the thing we don't like someone else loves. And the thing we love, you're always going to meet somebody who has no interest in it or who thinks it's the worst."
Greg Tito: "And it's important the thing that you mentioned I wanna make sure we highlight here: there is an audience of folk who follow UA ... but that's not the entire D&D audience."
Jeremy: "No."
Greg Tito: "The entire D&D audience is much larger. And while it might feel like the UA releases are a big part of your D&D fandom are a big part of your D&D fandom it's not true for everyone else. If we start to fragmentize that, it can lead to more problems: "You just took that away because of a Revised Ranger that came out based on Unearthed Arcana feedback.""
Jeremy: "Which is not fully representative of everybody, which is why we get feedback from multiple channels. So we're still looking at how to proceed, it's most likely with the Ranger going to be a lot more targeted revision, and will be optional. Like basically here's a swap out - you can take this Beast Master thing and use another thing in its place. ... And going at it at that angle I've been developing the possibility for us developing a few swap outs for several classes in the Player's Handbook. Because we know there are certain features that people aren't crazy about, not just in the Beast Master but in the Way of the Four Elements for the Monk, there's some dissatisfaction in a few features in the Sorcerer. We could look at presenting alternative versions of just those features and let you just cleanly swap them out with no other effect on the class and no ripple effect elsewhere. If we do anything like that though, it of course will go through the feedback process, we'll show it in Unearthed Arcana, nothing will become official without giving us feedback.
...
And this is all why we're taking our time. I know some people are really jazzed about some of the changes in the Revised Ranger, but we have to be really cautious with it. And I also don't want to sow confusion. One of the biggest things that's important to us is that people always know where the ground is beneath them when they come to play D&D. They get the Player's Handbook, that's the baseline of the game, they have what they need and they can play. I don't want a bunch of hoops that people want to jump through or other bits of confusion: 'will the real Bob please stand up?' "
Not having revised ranger is basically means one of my players will never get to use D&D Beyond.
I understand the policy of not putting old UA into DDB because it'll get out of hand very quickly, but there needs to be an exception made for this. This is a CORE class that will never be officially updated that numerous creative directors within D&D have admitted they missed the ball on.
You have my sympathies, but at the same time the base class is fine and it's not like WotC wasn't up front about the Revised Ranger being playtest content.
yeah, that's the challenge. She's using the beast conclave. With the recent upgrades to DDB I'm able to get 16 of my players into DDB now, she's the only one who can't :(
You can homebrew a ranger subclass for your player, using the tools on D&D Beyond. You can add everything that you need to make that class sufficiently powerful. :)
yeah, that's the challenge. She's using the beast conclave. With the recent upgrades to DDB I'm able to get 16 of my players into DDB now, she's the only one who can't :(
You could homebrew a few feats to integrate the missing features of the PHB Beast Master, and then give those feats to her character on the sheet.
...I used a homebrew feat to upload the beast stats on the sheet, with a tracking for the HP. I am a fan of the PHB version, so I just used that feat but I think you just need a few more.
Besides homebrewing a subclass, someone (I think Mephista?) mentioned in another thread that they also change the name of any obsolete PH Ranger actions to IGNORE. They'll still show up, but at least you can tell apart the revised version of the feature from the PH version.
Must have been someone else. My group uses a homebrew spell that works on the same level as the paladin mount spells, and simply banned the Beastmaster subclass.
I am torn on the direction of the class. I think that Crawford misunderstands the complaints on the main chassis, and thinks the people who point out the issues are upset about damage output or combat effectiveness. I think the main issues are with the overall design of the skills and exploration traits, and their general ineffectiveness. Do new players who want to play a Ranger in a small party notice the ineffectiveness? It probably depends... if there is a Druid or a Rogue in the party, the Ranger will likely feel outpaced. If the party plays for an extended period of time, the Ranger has weaknesses that show, but most players do not notice it.
He is right, that DND needs to remain simple and adding variant classes or traits is too confusing to the average player. I think that if the general consensus to the average player doesn’t merit a full revision, he is right that they should not add multiple source materials to play a single class. However, they do have things they add regularly that would not be off design plans (feats and spells), and if they keep certain things in mind with the Ranger, they could actually mask the general issues with the class if they admit they exist.
First, they need to be aware that Favored Enemy and the Terrains are basically ribbons and the core features in the class. No other class gets so many filler traits that remain offline for extended periods of time. Primeval Awareness also goes unused, so we are just Paladins (Fighting Style and Spells) but with all other abilities just providing general flavor. These allow the class to function in combat, and when the flavor is working you somewhat notice it, but it’s just not good game design. Beastmaster also brings its own host of problems that should be addressed as well, and is a subclass that so many new players want (everyone has a first time player that wants a pet) and it almost always disappoints. This combined with the Ranger chassis usually results in the DM granting cooler magic items to offset the lack of used traits.
As someone who's played a beastmaster Ranger, let me say this about the main chasis - when favored enemy and natural terrain actually work, they kick butt. They're very powerful, and you can feel it. Expertise in perception rolls is the most obvious. When I played this during Lost Mines, I loved how the majority of the time I basically knew everything there was to know. Tracking those goblins back to the cave? Double proficiency on everything I rolled. I knew everything there was to know about the goblins, pretty much, no chance of losing them, and I rocked any and all perception checks when dealing with their hideout. I couldn't be surprised, I found all the hidden passages/compartments. if I had taken a ranger through Out of the Abyss and taken Underdark for my terrain? I'd basically be getting Expertise in every single INT and WIS check from level 1. That's huge. FE (fiends) would have been a big help as well; you could put a wizard to shame with your extraplanar knowledge here.
The main problem I encountered was having the wrong terrain and having the wrong Favored Enemy. I didn't have FE (human), which bit me in the butt, and I felt the loss of the bonus when entering the last dungeon(coastal terrain). Wrong picks hurt, so its kind requires some metagaming which picking. There needs to be something to retrain, or fix bad choices. Another issue, such as with that theoretical Out of the Abyss campaign? FE and NE picks after level 1 are kind of redundant, because there's not a lot of variety in terrain here, and the variety of enemies was simply too large to matter beyond the general demon lords, so level 6 ended up as a dead level.
There's also some questions regarding cities and caves - some DMs will consider urban environments to be separate terrain, and there's the question of what kind of terrain a cave falls under. This is something that really should have been addressed in the book. I personally ruled that caves are mountain terrain, and cities count as the terrain they exist in - it feels wrong to have elven forest cities and dwarven cities not count as forest and mountain terrain, respectively, so I extended the same to human cities.
I don't think I've ever used Primeval Awareness. I can kind of see a use for it, if you're overlooking a camp of orcs and want to know if they have any demons or undead in the mix for help, but its really niche. Its also the same level as your subclass, so getting a minor ability is fine. I don't think anyone really notices its loss.
The main point I'm making is that the Ranger abilities, when they're on, are really, really good. Certainly they won't be outpaced by a druid or rogue in my personal experience. I imagine that a lot of people are finding that out, so they're actually quite happy with them. Sure, you should get more picks and kinda need to metagame your choices, but they're not ineffective in the slightest. Rangers are not an intuitive class - they require a player to be a bit genre savvy and have some game mastery to use well. Which may or may not be a separate issue, but has no bearing on how mechanically effective FE and NE are.
P.S. In my personal experience, you'll mainly rely on plains (random encounters while traveling, maybe human cities) and mountains (cave dungeons as well as actual mountains) with forests as a third; these tend to be the most commonly encountered environments, as well as the home for the big three races (human, elf, dwarf). Other terrain trend to be special campaigns (underdark campaigns, or playing in Icewind Dale, or a pirate game, etc), so you should know that in advance. For early favored enemy picks, I've found that humans and goblinoids are the most common at early levels. Even in an orc-heavy campaign, I've personally found that goblins end up making an appearance as part of the orc army. By level 6, you should have a feel of the campaign and what the main antagonists of the game will be.
As someone who's played a beastmaster Ranger, let me say this about the main chasis - when favored enemy and natural terrain actually work, they kick butt. They're very powerful, and you can feel it. Expertise in perception rolls is the most obvious. When I played this during Lost Mines, I loved how the majority of the time I basically knew everything there was to know. Tracking those goblins back to the cave? Double proficiency on everything I rolled. I knew everything there was to know about the goblins, pretty much, no chance of losing them, and I rocked any and all perception checks when dealing with their hideout. I couldn't be surprised, I found all the hidden passages/compartments. if I had taken a ranger through Out of the Abyss and taken Underdark for my terrain? I'd basically be getting Expertise in every single INT and WIS check from level 1. That's huge. FE (fiends) would have been a big help as well; you could put a wizard to shame with your extraplanar knowledge here.
The main problem I encountered was having the wrong terrain and having the wrong Favored Enemy. I didn't have FE (human), which bit me in the butt, and I felt the loss of the bonus when entering the last dungeon(coastal terrain). Wrong picks hurt, so its kind requires some metagaming which picking. There needs to be something to retrain, or fix bad choices. Another issue, such as with that theoretical Out of the Abyss campaign? FE and NE picks after level 1 are kind of redundant, because there's not a lot of variety in terrain here, and the variety of enemies was simply too large to matter beyond the general demon lords, so level 6 ended up as a dead level.
There's also some questions regarding cities and caves - some DMs will consider urban environments to be separate terrain, and there's the question of what kind of terrain a cave falls under. This is something that really should have been addressed in the book. I personally ruled that caves are mountain terrain, and cities count as the terrain they exist in - it feels wrong to have elven forest cities and dwarven cities not count as forest and mountain terrain, respectively, so I extended the same to human cities.
I don't think I've ever used Primeval Awareness. I can kind of see a use for it, if you're overlooking a camp of orcs and want to know if they have any demons or undead in the mix for help, but its really niche. Its also the same level as your subclass, so getting a minor ability is fine. I don't think anyone really notices its loss.
The main point I'm making is that the Ranger abilities, when they're on, are really, really good. Certainly they won't be outpaced by a druid or rogue in my personal experience. I imagine that a lot of people are finding that out, so they're actually quite happy with them. Sure, you should get more picks and kinda need to metagame your choices, but they're not ineffective in the slightest. Rangers are not an intuitive class - they require a player to be a bit genre savvy and have some game mastery to use well. Which may or may not be a separate issue, but has no bearing on how mechanically effective FE and NE are.
P.S. In my personal experience, you'll mainly rely on plains (random encounters while traveling, maybe human cities) and mountains (cave dungeons as well as actual mountains) with forests as a third; these tend to be the most commonly encountered environments, as well as the home for the big three races (human, elf, dwarf). Other terrain trend to be special campaigns (underdark campaigns, or playing in Icewind Dale, or a pirate game, etc), so you should know that in advance. For early favored enemy picks, I've found that humans and goblinoids are the most common at early levels. Even in an orc-heavy campaign, I've personally found that goblins end up making an appearance as part of the orc army. By level 6, you should have a feel of the campaign and what the main antagonists of the game will be.
In general, we are in agreement. I think my complaint is with the design of these given abilities and the nature of the player needed to make them work. I think we both agree that if you are a Ranger who picked a Favored Terrain, and then your campaign enters a new arc for a few levels and you say, travel the planes, you will suddenly not be using at least one ability all of them time.
My suggestion to address these issues is not to revise the class or features, as I think it’s clear that will disrupt to simplicity of 5e. What I do think they should focus on is developing specific things (mostly spells) that are Ranger specific and designed to help alleviate the issues.
For example, could the Ranger possess a spell similar in power to Mage Armor (8 Hour, 1st Level, Not Concentration) that could be “Attune to Nature” and for the duration you can call your current environment one of your Favored Terrain? It would cost a valuable spell slot, but I feel it would alleviate the issues in certain campaigns when your Ranger really wishes they picked a different choice. Heck it could even be a ritual long hour casting and people would still probably be happy to have it in those situations.
I also think a smart design decision would be to make these ribbons provide indirect benefits. While the Revised Ranger made it a bit too Combat focused, I think there could also be some spell design with the ribbon choices in mind. For example, a spell could have a base effect and receive a small bonus (increased duration, range, or more potent effects) while used against your Favored Enemy or within your Favored Terrain.
Again, I am just suggesting things because basically Crawford is saying “It’s good enough that most new players don’t notice many issues” and I’m saying that “but the issues that do exist can have minor repairs in future releases within the current design scheme and you will continue to have happy players, since they will eventually notice the problems”
I see both sides on the Revised Ranger but because it looks like they won't make it official, I'd love the ability to add it in D&D Beyond. For kids who want to play with a fuzzy friend, it's a real turn off to be underpowered, and for dads who run their character sheets, would be nice not to rig something up every level.
Is there a way to add revised ranger to my character sheet? Or is it still not available in DnD Beyond? I have a ranger that is supposed to be revised, but noticed it's not an option on the site yet :(
Is there a way to add revised ranger to my character sheet? Or is it still not available in DnD Beyond? I have a ranger that is supposed to be revised, but noticed it's not an option on the site yet :(
Please read the previous posts on this thread, where the situation is fully explained. :)
The short version is - no - the existing Revised Ranger from UA will never be added officially to D&D Beyond. Any future UA releases regarding the ranger class will be added.
Horde Breaker. Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
Effectively shooting 2 arrows simultaneously, as demonstrated by many Hollywood archers.....(I think Legolas was showing off when he did three!)
Roleplaying since Runequest.
I am playing a Ranger/Rogue in my current campaign.
Going for 12 Rogue Assassin, 8 Gloom Stalker Revised Ranger
‘Start with Rogue to get 4 skills, expertise, Thieves Cant’ and Thieves Tools, then 5 levels of Ranger, after that the rest of Rogue levels, taking Ranger when Greater favored enemy and wisdom saves become more important.
Take Sharpshooter at lvl 5 (Ranger 4) and by level 6 you will have Opening round bonus action Hunter’s Mark (HM), Attack, extra Attack, Dread Ambusher. You’ll have advantage on initiative and on all attacks on any enemy that hasn’t gone so you can take sharpshooter on all 3:
4d8 Longbow +3d6 HM +1d6 Sneak +30 +DEX as far away as 600ft, ignoring all but total cover.
By lvl 8 you pick up assassinate, assuming you get surprise that turns to:
8d8 Longbow +6d6 HM +4d6 Sneak +30 +DEX from the safety of 600ft.
Shoot, move, hide, shift HM and drop everything before it can touch you.
At a theoretical 20, you can open combat with 8d8+18d6+45 (Dex 20), an average of ~150 or more damage.
Our last known information from the 2016 Revised Ranger article says "If this iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it, grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook." That is why people keep asking for the next version.
During the same twitter feed, Jeremy Crawford answered "There is no plan to release a new version of a core class."
Looks like they must not have got enough interest in the Revised Ranger to continue. That's very sad, as the PHB beast master ranger is really quite horrible, and to my knowledge there is NO way to put in the Revised Ranger into D&D beyond as it is a class and not a subclass.
Let the Mists surround you...
Yeah, given the analytic value of DDB, you would think they would add the revised ranger to DDB and Wizards could use that to gauge player use of it. My guess is that most (more than 60%) of players would immediately switch to the revised. I remember a poll on who is using it and the results were that 90% of respondents were using revised.
Even the latest Morgaen, a character played on Acquisitions Inc with Chris Perkins, uses the Revised Ranger now at the live events. I think they are very cautious to disrupt the simplicity of the current system though, and will look for ways to address issues without actually having alternate versions of things found in the PHB.
Not having revised ranger is basically means one of my players will never get to use D&D Beyond.
I understand the policy of not putting old UA into DDB because it'll get out of hand very quickly, but there needs to be an exception made for this. This is a CORE class that will never be officially updated that numerous creative directors within D&D have admitted they missed the ball on.
As mentioned above, even Perkins is using the revised ranger. Is there NOTHING we can do?
my west marches campaign wiki: http://solace5e.com/
I think you're taking that tweet out of context. The last time the Revised Ranger was brought up in any meaningful capacity was during the 11/27/2017 Sage Advice episode on Dragon Talk. The take-away is that they're not going to replace the Player's Handbook Ranger and won't release a whole alternative version either, but they're still looking at letting you swap out some class features. Starting at 37:37:
Jeremy: "As for the Revised Ranger, it is in a different category because it's something we haven't done otherwise, which is put out almost kind of a redo of a core class. It - the Revised Ranger definitely has its fans, but the longer that the Unearthed Arcana process went, uh, leading up to the release of XGtE, the more I noticed that actually the Revised Ranger was causing confusion. That having a second version of a class in the Player's Handbook - for the people who are of it - were always wondering "wait, does this thing work with the Revised Ranger or the Player's Handbook Ranger?
...
And then there's also the issue - that might surprise many of our listeners, particularly those that are fond of the Revised Ranger - that most of our fans have no idea it exists. And, and actually, many of our players love the Player's Handbook Ranger. So the conundrum is we don't want to release a version of the Ranger that takes away the Ranger that many people are enjoying. And even if you look at D&D Beyond play statistics, a lot of people play the Player's Handbook Ranger.
...
The other thing that we found, the more we looked carefully at the Revised Ranger feedback, is something I suspected going into that whole thing: really, dissatisfaction with the Player's Handbook Ranger is mostly about the Beast Master. My philosophy when it comes to stewardship of the game is "If something is broken, just fix the broken thing and move on." Because it gets really dangerous when you start messing around with things around the broken thing, because then you can start destabilizing the game. Again you can start taking things away from people - and they like those things. Because that's the other thing - not just for D&D players but for us as humans - we often forget the thing we don't like someone else loves. And the thing we love, you're always going to meet somebody who has no interest in it or who thinks it's the worst."
Greg Tito: "And it's important the thing that you mentioned I wanna make sure we highlight here: there is an audience of folk who follow UA ... but that's not the entire D&D audience."
Jeremy: "No."
Greg Tito: "The entire D&D audience is much larger. And while it might feel like the UA releases are a big part of your D&D fandom are a big part of your D&D fandom it's not true for everyone else. If we start to fragmentize that, it can lead to more problems: "You just took that away because of a Revised Ranger that came out based on Unearthed Arcana feedback.""
Jeremy: "Which is not fully representative of everybody, which is why we get feedback from multiple channels. So we're still looking at how to proceed, it's most likely with the Ranger going to be a lot more targeted revision, and will be optional. Like basically here's a swap out - you can take this Beast Master thing and use another thing in its place. ... And going at it at that angle I've been developing the possibility for us developing a few swap outs for several classes in the Player's Handbook. Because we know there are certain features that people aren't crazy about, not just in the Beast Master but in the Way of the Four Elements for the Monk, there's some dissatisfaction in a few features in the Sorcerer. We could look at presenting alternative versions of just those features and let you just cleanly swap them out with no other effect on the class and no ripple effect elsewhere. If we do anything like that though, it of course will go through the feedback process, we'll show it in Unearthed Arcana, nothing will become official without giving us feedback.
...
And this is all why we're taking our time. I know some people are really jazzed about some of the changes in the Revised Ranger, but we have to be really cautious with it. And I also don't want to sow confusion. One of the biggest things that's important to us is that people always know where the ground is beneath them when they come to play D&D. They get the Player's Handbook, that's the baseline of the game, they have what they need and they can play. I don't want a bunch of hoops that people want to jump through or other bits of confusion: 'will the real Bob please stand up?' "
You have my sympathies, but at the same time the base class is fine and it's not like WotC wasn't up front about the Revised Ranger being playtest content.
yeah, that's the challenge. She's using the beast conclave. With the recent upgrades to DDB I'm able to get 16 of my players into DDB now, she's the only one who can't :(
my west marches campaign wiki: http://solace5e.com/
You can homebrew a ranger subclass for your player, using the tools on D&D Beyond. You can add everything that you need to make that class sufficiently powerful. :)
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If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
You could homebrew a few feats to integrate the missing features of the PHB Beast Master, and then give those feats to her character on the sheet.
...I used a homebrew feat to upload the beast stats on the sheet, with a tracking for the HP. I am a fan of the PHB version, so I just used that feat but I think you just need a few more.
Besides homebrewing a subclass, someone (I think Mephista?) mentioned in another thread that they also change the name of any obsolete PH Ranger actions to IGNORE. They'll still show up, but at least you can tell apart the revised version of the feature from the PH version.
Must have been someone else. My group uses a homebrew spell that works on the same level as the paladin mount spells, and simply banned the Beastmaster subclass.
I am torn on the direction of the class. I think that Crawford misunderstands the complaints on the main chassis, and thinks the people who point out the issues are upset about damage output or combat effectiveness. I think the main issues are with the overall design of the skills and exploration traits, and their general ineffectiveness. Do new players who want to play a Ranger in a small party notice the ineffectiveness? It probably depends... if there is a Druid or a Rogue in the party, the Ranger will likely feel outpaced. If the party plays for an extended period of time, the Ranger has weaknesses that show, but most players do not notice it.
He is right, that DND needs to remain simple and adding variant classes or traits is too confusing to the average player. I think that if the general consensus to the average player doesn’t merit a full revision, he is right that they should not add multiple source materials to play a single class. However, they do have things they add regularly that would not be off design plans (feats and spells), and if they keep certain things in mind with the Ranger, they could actually mask the general issues with the class if they admit they exist.
First, they need to be aware that Favored Enemy and the Terrains are basically ribbons and the core features in the class. No other class gets so many filler traits that remain offline for extended periods of time. Primeval Awareness also goes unused, so we are just Paladins (Fighting Style and Spells) but with all other abilities just providing general flavor. These allow the class to function in combat, and when the flavor is working you somewhat notice it, but it’s just not good game design. Beastmaster also brings its own host of problems that should be addressed as well, and is a subclass that so many new players want (everyone has a first time player that wants a pet) and it almost always disappoints. This combined with the Ranger chassis usually results in the DM granting cooler magic items to offset the lack of used traits.
As someone who's played a beastmaster Ranger, let me say this about the main chasis - when favored enemy and natural terrain actually work, they kick butt. They're very powerful, and you can feel it. Expertise in perception rolls is the most obvious. When I played this during Lost Mines, I loved how the majority of the time I basically knew everything there was to know. Tracking those goblins back to the cave? Double proficiency on everything I rolled. I knew everything there was to know about the goblins, pretty much, no chance of losing them, and I rocked any and all perception checks when dealing with their hideout. I couldn't be surprised, I found all the hidden passages/compartments. if I had taken a ranger through Out of the Abyss and taken Underdark for my terrain? I'd basically be getting Expertise in every single INT and WIS check from level 1. That's huge. FE (fiends) would have been a big help as well; you could put a wizard to shame with your extraplanar knowledge here.
The main problem I encountered was having the wrong terrain and having the wrong Favored Enemy. I didn't have FE (human), which bit me in the butt, and I felt the loss of the bonus when entering the last dungeon(coastal terrain). Wrong picks hurt, so its kind requires some metagaming which picking. There needs to be something to retrain, or fix bad choices. Another issue, such as with that theoretical Out of the Abyss campaign? FE and NE picks after level 1 are kind of redundant, because there's not a lot of variety in terrain here, and the variety of enemies was simply too large to matter beyond the general demon lords, so level 6 ended up as a dead level.
There's also some questions regarding cities and caves - some DMs will consider urban environments to be separate terrain, and there's the question of what kind of terrain a cave falls under. This is something that really should have been addressed in the book. I personally ruled that caves are mountain terrain, and cities count as the terrain they exist in - it feels wrong to have elven forest cities and dwarven cities not count as forest and mountain terrain, respectively, so I extended the same to human cities.
I don't think I've ever used Primeval Awareness. I can kind of see a use for it, if you're overlooking a camp of orcs and want to know if they have any demons or undead in the mix for help, but its really niche. Its also the same level as your subclass, so getting a minor ability is fine. I don't think anyone really notices its loss.
The main point I'm making is that the Ranger abilities, when they're on, are really, really good. Certainly they won't be outpaced by a druid or rogue in my personal experience. I imagine that a lot of people are finding that out, so they're actually quite happy with them. Sure, you should get more picks and kinda need to metagame your choices, but they're not ineffective in the slightest. Rangers are not an intuitive class - they require a player to be a bit genre savvy and have some game mastery to use well. Which may or may not be a separate issue, but has no bearing on how mechanically effective FE and NE are.
P.S. In my personal experience, you'll mainly rely on plains (random encounters while traveling, maybe human cities) and mountains (cave dungeons as well as actual mountains) with forests as a third; these tend to be the most commonly encountered environments, as well as the home for the big three races (human, elf, dwarf). Other terrain trend to be special campaigns (underdark campaigns, or playing in Icewind Dale, or a pirate game, etc), so you should know that in advance. For early favored enemy picks, I've found that humans and goblinoids are the most common at early levels. Even in an orc-heavy campaign, I've personally found that goblins end up making an appearance as part of the orc army. By level 6, you should have a feel of the campaign and what the main antagonists of the game will be.
In general, we are in agreement. I think my complaint is with the design of these given abilities and the nature of the player needed to make them work. I think we both agree that if you are a Ranger who picked a Favored Terrain, and then your campaign enters a new arc for a few levels and you say, travel the planes, you will suddenly not be using at least one ability all of them time.
My suggestion to address these issues is not to revise the class or features, as I think it’s clear that will disrupt to simplicity of 5e. What I do think they should focus on is developing specific things (mostly spells) that are Ranger specific and designed to help alleviate the issues.
For example, could the Ranger possess a spell similar in power to Mage Armor (8 Hour, 1st Level, Not Concentration) that could be “Attune to Nature” and for the duration you can call your current environment one of your Favored Terrain? It would cost a valuable spell slot, but I feel it would alleviate the issues in certain campaigns when your Ranger really wishes they picked a different choice. Heck it could even be a ritual long hour casting and people would still probably be happy to have it in those situations.
I also think a smart design decision would be to make these ribbons provide indirect benefits. While the Revised Ranger made it a bit too Combat focused, I think there could also be some spell design with the ribbon choices in mind. For example, a spell could have a base effect and receive a small bonus (increased duration, range, or more potent effects) while used against your Favored Enemy or within your Favored Terrain.
Again, I am just suggesting things because basically Crawford is saying “It’s good enough that most new players don’t notice many issues” and I’m saying that “but the issues that do exist can have minor repairs in future releases within the current design scheme and you will continue to have happy players, since they will eventually notice the problems”
I see both sides on the Revised Ranger but because it looks like they won't make it official, I'd love the ability to add it in D&D Beyond. For kids who want to play with a fuzzy friend, it's a real turn off to be underpowered, and for dads who run their character sheets, would be nice not to rig something up every level.
Is there a way to add revised ranger to my character sheet? Or is it still not available in DnD Beyond? I have a ranger that is supposed to be revised, but noticed it's not an option on the site yet :(
Homebrew FAQs: FAQ, 101, 102, Snippets, Tooltips, Rollables
Please read the previous posts on this thread, where the situation is fully explained. :)
The short version is - no - the existing Revised Ranger from UA will never be added officially to D&D Beyond. Any future UA releases regarding the ranger class will be added.
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Saw on Sage Advice today that Jeremy Crawford says the Revised Ranger is dead and that they are sticking with the PHB Ranger.
Perpetually annoyed that Eldritch Knights can't use Eldritch Blast, Eldritch Smite, and Eldritch Sight.
They're still considering alternate class features.