1st-level ranger feature, which replaces the Favored Enemy feature and works with the Foe Slayer feature
When you hit a creature with an attack roll, you can call on your mystical bond with nature to mark the target as your favored enemy for 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell)
The first time on each of your turns that you hit the favored enemy and deal damage to it, including when you mark it, you can increase that damage by 1d4.
You can use this feature to mark a favored enemy a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
This feature's extra damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class: to 1d6 at 6th level and to 1d8 at 14th level.
This is definitely an improvement from Favored Enemy, but it doesn't improve rangers a whole ton. I definitely wish that rangers could get hunter's mark for free like the Favored Foe CFV UA. This basically is a worse hunter's mark for free, still with concentration, but it scales slowly to higher damage.
It can work in conjunction with Hunter's Mark, essentially giving you free damage when you don't want to use the spell slots or might need them for other things. If they were going to do it this way, it would have been nice to allow the Ranger to concentrate on a Ranger Spell so that the Ranger could keep Fog Cloud or Ensnaring Strike up while benefiting from Hunter's Mark lite. Having the concentration work with Ranger spells does prevent the Hex/Hunter's Mark combination, which was likely a concern with the UA version.
The damage buffs are set so that many MC builds won't be able to take advantage of them while the number of uses will continue to scale with character level.
For people who find no value in Favored Enemy, this seems like it's a good step up, particularly if DMs allow other Ranger spells to be concentrated while using this.
A) they do not not build features because combining them in MC would break things and B) saying this is a great ability to use over Favored Enemy if your DM completely ignores the fact that it is concentration is the epitome of the flaw with the Ranger, it has a lot of cool abilities IF you just take whats there and ignore or add parts to it. Congratulations!
If they don't consider MC with features why ever have anything scale off of class levels instead of character level. They do scale cantrips and proficiency regardless of class. Many class specific features only scale according to class level, which isn't necessary unless they are factoring MC into the equation.
Class features are designed to work off of the levels of that class because getting to have all the features of a class by having 1 level in it would break the game, but no they never look at a feature and say, "well, we can't have this feature because if some one mc's it will be too strong". They design features and subclasses and balance them assuming the player will take that class from 1-20. They only balance against other features, how someone can mc never factors in. There are videos of every creator at Wizards saying this.
It is free damage. Wait. Do you mean trigger on each hit?
What is free damage? Favored Foe requires concentration, so no - it isn't free, using it means no hail of thorns, no hunters mark, no flame arrows, etc
I don’t think the leaks are accurate. If they are, the beast master is going to be CRAZY damage output!
I haven't seen the details on the beast master primal forms, but based on the variant I remember reading it is hardly CRAZY damage. Can you explain your thought process?
Is everyone sure it is a long rest reset for favored foe? What if it was a short rest reset?
Who cares if it resets on a short rest, it is still inferior to Hunter's Mark, I agree that making HM concentration less based on Wis was probably too strong, but this is too weak. Just give it to them as free damage each turn, is 1d4 levels 1-5, d6 6-13 and a d8 at 14+ going to break anything?
LOL! Sorry. I didn’t see the “Just give it to them...” from the above.
I don’t think the leaks are accurate. If they are, the beast master is going to be CRAZY damage output!
I haven't seen the details on the beast master primal forms, but based on the variant I remember reading it is hardly CRAZY damage. Can you explain your thought process?
3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger's Companion feature
You magically summon a primal beast, which draws strength from your bond with nature. The best is friendly to you and your companions and obeys your commands. Choose its stat block - Beast of the Land, Beast of the Sea, or Beast of the Sky - Which uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in several places. You also determine the kind of animal the best is, choosing a king appropriate for the stat block. Whatever kind you choose, the beast bears primal markings, indicating it's mystical origin.
In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn nto command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the attack action to command the beast to take the attack action. if you are incapacitated, the beast can take any cation of its choice, not just Dodge.
If the beast has died within the last hour, you can use your action to touch it and expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher. The beast returns to life after 1 minute with all its hit points restored.
When you finish a long rest, you can summon a different primal beast. The new beast appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, and you choose its stat block and appearance. If you already have a beast from this feature, it vanishes when the new beast appears. The beast also vanishes if you die.
So at level 11 with a beast that does 6 +2 + 4 (from proficiency bonus) twice when it takes the attack action (assuming the rest of the subclass features don’t change as well), the new wording (according to this “leak” which is typed because it has two errors) allows the ranger to take the attack action and have the beast take the attack action with a bonus action command (that is how the beast master will benefit from the new favored foe feature, btw). Let’s say the ranger is using a rapier and the dueling fighting style. That’s a total of 42 average damage. WITHOUT hunter’s mark, favored foe, or anything.
Quote from Jhfffan>>This is definitely an improvement from Favored Enemy, but it doesn't improve rangers a whole ton. I definitely wish that rangers could get hunter's mark for free like the Favored Foe CFV UA. This basically is a worse hunter's mark for free, still with concentration, but it scales slowly to higher damage.
It can work in conjunction with Hunter's Mark, essentially giving you free damage when you don't want to use the spell slots or might need them for other things. If they were going to do it this way, it would have been nice to allow the Ranger to concentrate on a Ranger Spell so that the Ranger could keep Fog Cloud or Ensnaring Strike up while benefiting from Hunter's Mark lite. Having the concentration work with Ranger spells does prevent the Hex/Hunter's Mark combination, which was likely a concern with the UA version.
The damage buffs are set so that many MC builds won't be able to take advantage of them while the number of uses will continue to scale with character level.
For people who find no value in Favored Enemy, this seems like it's a good step up, particularly if DMs allow other Ranger spells to be concentrated while using this.
A) they do not not build features because combining them in MC would break things and B) saying this is a great ability to use over Favored Enemy if your DM completely ignores the fact that it is concentration is the epitome of the flaw with the Ranger, it has a lot of cool abilities IF you just take whats there and ignore or add parts to it. Congratulations!
If they don't consider MC with features why ever have anything scale off of class levels instead of character level. They do scale cantrips and proficiency regardless of class. Many class specific features only scale according to class level, which isn't necessary unless they are factoring MC into the equation.
Class features are designed to work off of the levels of that class because getting to have all the features of a class by having 1 level in it would break the game, but no they never look at a feature and say, "well, we can't have this feature because if some one mc's it will be too strong". They design features and subclasses and balance them assuming the player will take that class from 1-20. They only balance against other features, how someone can mc never factors in. There are videos of every creator at Wizards saying this.
And no other feature in the game allows for something that was previously a concentration ability to stack with another concentration ability. Why would they change this for Rangers, especially when Warlocks would be looking at that change and saying, "When is that going to happen for me?" and that's regardless of MC playing into it.
Sure a concentration spell can't survive past this being implemented, but how many of those spells would you want be ok casting before marking and then mark on the hit. Hail of Thorns ends after the first hit with it anyway and you could mark the creature with that hit and get that extra damage. Lightning Arrow doesn't even need a hit to do its thing, just an attack. Swift Quiver could be used for a minute and then transition to this to thin out the ranks of minions and then focus on the boss, regardless of the number of spell slots that you've used. Flame Arrows is limited to a number of arrows before it ends and can be used like with Swift Quiver (and Hunter's Mark).
The point is that it's free damage that you weren't getting before with Favored Enemy, even if it doesn't stack with everything or work exactly like Hunter's Mark. You have to use concentration, but you don't have to use a spell slot and nothing prevents you from taking Hunter's Mark with this and using each when it's more useful for you.
I understand that it's not what everyone who wanted a "fix" wanted, but it's giving more flexibility and utility to people who weren't using Favored Enemy or treating it as a flavor based ribbon ability.
In other words, is there a silver lining in it? Is the cup half full or half empty? From the sound of things from a couple of threads I've been in, the cup was dry before. Admittedly, I didn't see a problem before because I started to see what the mechanics were telling me that the Ranger wanted to be. It took me a while to come around to that point of view.
There's always the option of doing what you did before. Sure it isn't exactly what you want but was it good enough? Ranger 5/Rogue X Scout with Outlander gets you a lot of the same flavor. Ranger 3-4/FighterX gets you some of that flavor in a more martial damage package. Ranger 5/DruidX gets you more spellcasting from the deal. If the spells that are gated further into Ranger are what you're after why do they always have to be used with each other? Nothing says that you have to always have Hunter's Mark up and if you want that equivalent, you can always go rogue 3-4 for your 2d6 or rogue 5-6 for your 3d6.
I apologize if this is coming off as patronizing (apparently there is a problem with my tone), but how much has all of the complaining helped the Ranger thus far (what are we 6-7 years into 5e)? I appreciate the disappointment yet again, but acknowledging the disappointment and trying to find the silver lining seems to be the best way forward until the next "fix" comes along that will undoubtedly fall short.
I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
This would further strengthen my resolve that hide in plain sight is a two part ability and really good!
I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
This would further strengthen my resolve that hide in plain sight is a two part ability and really good!
It's incredibly powerful under the right circumstances. A lot of people use "situational" as a way of decrying a spell or feature, but they forget that everything on the sheet is situational. Some situations might come up more often, in which case something which affects the rare situations might be a lot stronger to make up for its infrequent use. In the case of Favored Foe, assuming the leak is accurate, I think it might be too weak. It's considerably weaker than a 1st-level spell it directly competes with and lacks any benefit outside of combat. It only benefits one pillar, as opposed to Favored Enemy impacting the other two.
That said, the pillars can blend together. Say there's a monster terrorizing a village and farm community. The locals have some tales, but not a lot of solid information. They probably know it comes from a nearby forest, but that forest is also home to other dangers. Now the exploration pillar is inexorably linked to the combat pillar: you can't kill what you can't find. And, maybe, the monster is also causing problems for the forests other denizens. You can fight, or you can negotiate. Heck, you might even be able to negotiate with the monster.
I'm running a group through Dragon of Icespire Peak on Sundays. They weren't strong enough to kill the manticore, but they did convince it to find another place to take up residence.
Great. This thread is now filled with those people from the two most recent Underpowered Ranger threads. This feature sucks, in my first post reviewing it I misread it, thinking that it applied to every attack. This feature sucks so hard that if this is the real ability, I will probably just start going back to the Favored Foe UA feature, but with it being limited to prof. bonus/long rest.
It's nice to see that at this point, WotC has given up on the 5e Ranger class as much as I have.
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I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
This would further strengthen my resolve that hide in plain sight is a two part ability and really good!
It's incredibly powerful under the right circumstances. A lot of people use "situational" as a way of decrying a spell or feature, but they forget that everything on the sheet is situational. Some situations might come up more often, in which case something which affects the rare situations might be a lot stronger to make up for its infrequent use. In the case of Favored Foe, assuming the leak is accurate, I think it might be too weak. It's considerably weaker than a 1st-level spell it directly competes with and lacks any benefit outside of combat. It only benefits one pillar, as opposed to Favored Enemy impacting the other two.
That said, the pillars can blend together. Say there's a monster terrorizing a village and farm community. The locals have some tales, but not a lot of solid information. They probably know it comes from a nearby forest, but that forest is also home to other dangers. Now the exploration pillar is inexorably linked to the combat pillar: you can't kill what you can't find. And, maybe, the monster is also causing problems for the forests other denizens. You can fight, or you can negotiate. Heck, you might even be able to negotiate with the monster.
I'm running a group through Dragon of Icespire Peak on Sundays. They weren't strong enough to kill the manticore, but they did convince it to find another place to take up residence.
From what I've heard, Dragon of Icespire Peak might be a good attempt by WotC to add emphasis onto the social and exploration pillars for encounter resolution as people have regularly said that it's tuned too hard for groups, especially new ones that would be an obvious target for a starter set. I think that the Young Adult Green Dragon encounter was supposed to fulfill that role in LMoP, but the description provided combat victory details that made it seem as if it might be less important that they do resolve it otherwise.
Great. This thread is now filled with those people from the two most recent Underpowered Ranger threads. This feature sucks, in my first post reviewing it I misread it, thinking that it applied to every attack. This feature sucks so hard that if this is the real ability, I will probably just start going back to the Favored Foe UA feature, but with it being limited to prof. bonus/long rest.
It's nice to see that at this point, WotC has given up on the 5e Ranger class as much as I have.
Nice to see you, too. I mean it is posted in the Ranger Forum and the CFV was supposed to be the "great fix for the broken ranger" (paraphrased) so of course we were going to see what showed up.
Quote from Jhfffan>>This is definitely an improvement from Favored Enemy, but it doesn't improve rangers a whole ton. I definitely wish that rangers could get hunter's mark for free like the Favored Foe CFV UA. This basically is a worse hunter's mark for free, still with concentration, but it scales slowly to higher damage.
It can work in conjunction with Hunter's Mark, essentially giving you free damage when you don't want to use the spell slots or might need them for other things. If they were going to do it this way, it would have been nice to allow the Ranger to concentrate on a Ranger Spell so that the Ranger could keep Fog Cloud or Ensnaring Strike up while benefiting from Hunter's Mark lite. Having the concentration work with Ranger spells does prevent the Hex/Hunter's Mark combination, which was likely a concern with the UA version.
The damage buffs are set so that many MC builds won't be able to take advantage of them while the number of uses will continue to scale with character level.
For people who find no value in Favored Enemy, this seems like it's a good step up, particularly if DMs allow other Ranger spells to be concentrated while using this.
A) they do not not build features because combining them in MC would break things and B) saying this is a great ability to use over Favored Enemy if your DM completely ignores the fact that it is concentration is the epitome of the flaw with the Ranger, it has a lot of cool abilities IF you just take whats there and ignore or add parts to it. Congratulations!
If they don't consider MC with features why ever have anything scale off of class levels instead of character level. They do scale cantrips and proficiency regardless of class. Many class specific features only scale according to class level, which isn't necessary unless they are factoring MC into the equation.
Class features are designed to work off of the levels of that class because getting to have all the features of a class by having 1 level in it would break the game, but no they never look at a feature and say, "well, we can't have this feature because if some one mc's it will be too strong". They design features and subclasses and balance them assuming the player will take that class from 1-20. They only balance against other features, how someone can mc never factors in. There are videos of every creator at Wizards saying this.
And no other feature in the game allows for something that was previously a concentration ability to stack with another concentration ability. Why would they change this for Rangers, especially when Warlocks would be looking at that change and saying, "When is that going to happen for me?" and that's regardless of MC playing into it.
Sure a concentration spell can't survive past this being implemented, but how many of those spells would you want be ok casting before marking and then mark on the hit. [Tooltip Not Found] doesn't even need a hit to do its thing, just an attack. Swift Quiver could be used for a minute and then transition to this to thin out the ranks of minions and then focus on the boss, regardless of the number of spell slots that you've used. Flame Arrows is limited to a number of arrows before it ends and can be used like with Swift Quiver (and Hunter's Mark).
The point is that it's free damage that you weren't getting before with Favored Enemy, even if it doesn't stack with everything or work exactly like Hunter's Mark. You have to use concentration, but you don't have to use a spell slot and nothing prevents you from taking Hunter's Mark with this and using each when it's more useful for you.
I understand that it's not what everyone who wanted a "fix" wanted, but it's giving more flexibility and utility to people who weren't using Favored Enemy or treating it as a flavor based ribbon ability.
In other words, is there a silver lining in it? Is the cup half full or half empty? From the sound of things from a couple of threads I've been in, the cup was dry before. Admittedly, I didn't see a problem before because I started to see what the mechanics were telling me that the Ranger wanted to be. It took me a while to come around to that point of view.
There's always the option of doing what you did before. Sure it isn't exactly what you want but was it good enough? Ranger 5/Rogue X Scout with Outlander gets you a lot of the same flavor. Ranger 3-4/FighterX gets you some of that flavor in a more martial damage package. Ranger 5/DruidX gets you more spellcasting from the deal. If the spells that are gated further into Ranger are what you're after why do they always have to be used with each other? Nothing says that you have to always have Hunter's Mark up and if you want that equivalent, you can always go rogue 3-4 for your 2d6 or rogue 5-6 for your 3d6.
I apologize if this is coming off as patronizing (apparently there is a problem with my tone), but how much has all of the complaining helped the Ranger thus far (what are we 6-7 years into 5e)? I appreciate the disappointment yet again, but acknowledging the disappointment and trying to find the silver lining seems to be the best way forward until the next "fix" comes along that will undoubtedly fall short.
I get that people want a silver lining, and honestly 98% of the changes they are doing to the ranger features I like, this one just confuses me though. Adding ANOTHER concentration option just seems like at this point they are being deliberately obnoxious. And I agree, it seems as though for years these complaints fell on deaf ears - but the fact that they have basically replaced all the low level core ranger features suggest they are finally acknowledging that people want to love this class, they just want to be able to use official features instead of home brew every single time and this goes along way to that goal. Honestly I am not even mad at Favored Foe, but it is the only new option I wont use because honestly it is less useful than Favored Enemy
I wasn't talking about you, @Jhfffan, sorry if it appeared like I was targeting you. I have no gripe with you. It's the other two that are hailing the ranger's apparent "perfection" that I'm more annoyed by.
I sure hope that this leak is not real, but given WotC's track record with leaks and "fixing" classes/subclasses, I suspect that this is genuinely what we are getting.
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I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
This would further strengthen my resolve that hide in plain sight is a two part ability and really good!
It's incredibly powerful under the right circumstances. A lot of people use "situational" as a way of decrying a spell or feature, but they forget that everything on the sheet is situational. Some situations might come up more often, in which case something which affects the rare situations might be a lot stronger to make up for its infrequent use. In the case of Favored Foe, assuming the leak is accurate, I think it might be too weak. It's considerably weaker than a 1st-level spell it directly competes with and lacks any benefit outside of combat. It only benefits one pillar, as opposed to Favored Enemy impacting the other two.
That said, the pillars can blend together. Say there's a monster terrorizing a village and farm community. The locals have some tales, but not a lot of solid information. They probably know it comes from a nearby forest, but that forest is also home to other dangers. Now the exploration pillar is inexorably linked to the combat pillar: you can't kill what you can't find. And, maybe, the monster is also causing problems for the forests other denizens. You can fight, or you can negotiate. Heck, you might even be able to negotiate with the monster.
I'm running a group through Dragon of Icespire Peak on Sundays. They weren't strong enough to kill the manticore, but they did convince it to find another place to take up residence.
From what I've heard, Dragon of Icespire Peak might be a good attempt by WotC to add emphasis onto the social and exploration pillars for encounter resolution as people have regularly said that it's tuned too hard for groups, especially new ones that would be an obvious target for a starter set. I think that the Young Adult Green Dragon encounter was supposed to fulfill that role in LMoP, but the description provided combat victory details that made it seem as if it might be less important that they do resolve it otherwise.
Yes and no. Chris Perkins is still the primary author, and he loves to throw challenging combats where enemies fight to the death at the hands of the players. There's little in the way of guidance on how to play certain encounters, as well. It doesn't hold hands and expects either for the players to sort it out or for an experienced DM to teach them the tools. And if you're a new DM, I think it does a poor job of teaching. That said, it does come with some limited character creation rules that are intended to teach players the basics. And I think they do a decent job.
The 4 common races are included, along with all the subraces aside from drow and variant human
Five classes (bard, cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard) and 2 archetypes for each
Five backgrounds (acolyte, criminal, entertainer, sage, and soldier)
Unfortunately, there are also no random encounter tables for exploring beyond Phandalin. There is some exploration, but not for overland travel. It's relegated to being location-based. Which is fine, these are the "essentials" of the game. But it's a little disappointing that it's both less and more than what's in LMoP.
I don’t think the leaks are accurate. If they are, the beast master is going to be CRAZY damage output!
I haven't seen the details on the beast master primal forms, but based on the variant I remember reading it is hardly CRAZY damage. Can you explain your thought process?
3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger's Companion feature
You magically summon a primal beast, which draws strength from your bond with nature. The best is friendly to you and your companions and obeys your commands. Choose its stat block - Beast of the Land, Beast of the Sea, or Beast of the Sky - Which uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in several places. You also determine the kind of animal the best is, choosing a king appropriate for the stat block. Whatever kind you choose, the beast bears primal markings, indicating it's mystical origin.
In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn nto command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the attack action to command the beast to take the attack action. if you are incapacitated, the beast can take any cation of its choice, not just Dodge.
If the beast has died within the last hour, you can use your action to touch it and expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher. The beast returns to life after 1 minute with all its hit points restored.
When you finish a long rest, you can summon a different primal beast. The new beast appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, and you choose its stat block and appearance. If you already have a beast from this feature, it vanishes when the new beast appears. The beast also vanishes if you die.
So at level 11 with a beast that does 6 +2 + 4 (from proficiency bonus) twice when it takes the attack action (assuming the rest of the subclass features don’t change as well), the new wording (according to this “leak” which is typed because it has two errors) allows the ranger to take the attack action and have the beast take the attack action with a bonus action command (that is how the beast master will benefit from the new favored foe feature, btw). Let’s say the ranger is using a rapier and the dueling fighting style. That’s a total of 42 average damage. WITHOUT hunter’s mark, favored foe, or anything.
You're going to have to break that down, because I am unclear how a d8+7 (assuming 20 Dex) + 2 pet attacks for 2d6+4+8 (assuming the pet adds pb, which the variant features PDF does not even show) = 42? Even if you rolled max damage it only gets you to 39. A fighter at that level can do 3d12+15 (+45 if using great weapon master) and a rogue could do a d8+6d6+5 , so I am not seeing CRAZY damage here. Is it comparable, sure.
Quote from Jhfffan>>This is definitely an improvement from Favored Enemy, but it doesn't improve rangers a whole ton. I definitely wish that rangers could get hunter's mark for free like the Favored Foe CFV UA. This basically is a worse hunter's mark for free, still with concentration, but it scales slowly to higher damage.
It can work in conjunction with Hunter's Mark, essentially giving you free damage when you don't want to use the spell slots or might need them for other things. If they were going to do it this way, it would have been nice to allow the Ranger to concentrate on a Ranger Spell so that the Ranger could keep Fog Cloud or Ensnaring Strike up while benefiting from Hunter's Mark lite. Having the concentration work with Ranger spells does prevent the Hex/Hunter's Mark combination, which was likely a concern with the UA version.
The damage buffs are set so that many MC builds won't be able to take advantage of them while the number of uses will continue to scale with character level.
For people who find no value in Favored Enemy, this seems like it's a good step up, particularly if DMs allow other Ranger spells to be concentrated while using this.
A) they do not not build features because combining them in MC would break things and B) saying this is a great ability to use over Favored Enemy if your DM completely ignores the fact that it is concentration is the epitome of the flaw with the Ranger, it has a lot of cool abilities IF you just take whats there and ignore or add parts to it. Congratulations!
If they don't consider MC with features why ever have anything scale off of class levels instead of character level. They do scale cantrips and proficiency regardless of class. Many class specific features only scale according to class level, which isn't necessary unless they are factoring MC into the equation.
Class features are designed to work off of the levels of that class because getting to have all the features of a class by having 1 level in it would break the game, but no they never look at a feature and say, "well, we can't have this feature because if some one mc's it will be too strong". They design features and subclasses and balance them assuming the player will take that class from 1-20. They only balance against other features, how someone can mc never factors in. There are videos of every creator at Wizards saying this.
And no other feature in the game allows for something that was previously a concentration ability to stack with another concentration ability. Why would they change this for Rangers, especially when Warlocks would be looking at that change and saying, "When is that going to happen for me?" and that's regardless of MC playing into it.
Sure a concentration spell can't survive past this being implemented, but how many of those spells would you want be ok casting before marking and then mark on the hit. [Tooltip Not Found] doesn't even need a hit to do its thing, just an attack. Swift Quiver could be used for a minute and then transition to this to thin out the ranks of minions and then focus on the boss, regardless of the number of spell slots that you've used. Flame Arrows is limited to a number of arrows before it ends and can be used like with Swift Quiver (and Hunter's Mark).
The point is that it's free damage that you weren't getting before with Favored Enemy, even if it doesn't stack with everything or work exactly like Hunter's Mark. You have to use concentration, but you don't have to use a spell slot and nothing prevents you from taking Hunter's Mark with this and using each when it's more useful for you.
I understand that it's not what everyone who wanted a "fix" wanted, but it's giving more flexibility and utility to people who weren't using Favored Enemy or treating it as a flavor based ribbon ability.
In other words, is there a silver lining in it? Is the cup half full or half empty? From the sound of things from a couple of threads I've been in, the cup was dry before. Admittedly, I didn't see a problem before because I started to see what the mechanics were telling me that the Ranger wanted to be. It took me a while to come around to that point of view.
There's always the option of doing what you did before. Sure it isn't exactly what you want but was it good enough? Ranger 5/Rogue X Scout with Outlander gets you a lot of the same flavor. Ranger 3-4/FighterX gets you some of that flavor in a more martial damage package. Ranger 5/DruidX gets you more spellcasting from the deal. If the spells that are gated further into Ranger are what you're after why do they always have to be used with each other? Nothing says that you have to always have Hunter's Mark up and if you want that equivalent, you can always go rogue 3-4 for your 2d6 or rogue 5-6 for your 3d6.
I apologize if this is coming off as patronizing (apparently there is a problem with my tone), but how much has all of the complaining helped the Ranger thus far (what are we 6-7 years into 5e)? I appreciate the disappointment yet again, but acknowledging the disappointment and trying to find the silver lining seems to be the best way forward until the next "fix" comes along that will undoubtedly fall short.
I get that people want a silver lining, and honestly 98% of the changes they are doing to the ranger features I like, this one just confuses me though. Adding ANOTHER concentration option just seems like at this point they are being deliberately obnoxious. And I agree, it seems as though for years these complaints fell on deaf ears - but the fact that they have basically replaced all the low level core ranger features suggest they are finally acknowledging that people want to love this class, they just want to be able to use official features instead of home brew every single time and this goes along way to that goal. Honestly I am not even mad at Favored Foe, but it is the only new option I wont use because honestly it is less useful than Favored Enemy
I am confused by concentration and the way the damage is set up. Having the damage apply to all attacks or dropping the damage would have been nice. It might be like Jounichi1983 said about making the power level be about the same and that's what they felt was the target.
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I don’t think the leaks are accurate. If they are, the beast master is going to be CRAZY damage output!
Class features are designed to work off of the levels of that class because getting to have all the features of a class by having 1 level in it would break the game, but no they never look at a feature and say, "well, we can't have this feature because if some one mc's it will be too strong". They design features and subclasses and balance them assuming the player will take that class from 1-20. They only balance against other features, how someone can mc never factors in. There are videos of every creator at Wizards saying this.
What is free damage? Favored Foe requires concentration, so no - it isn't free, using it means no hail of thorns, no hunters mark, no flame arrows, etc
I haven't seen the details on the beast master primal forms, but based on the variant I remember reading it is hardly CRAZY damage. Can you explain your thought process?
LOL! Sorry. I didn’t see the “Just give it to them...” from the above.
Yep! The leak I saw on one of the pages...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/jk4e0q/tashas_leaky_cauldron_paladin_and_ranger/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
...said...
Primal Companion
3rd-level Beast Master feature, which replaces the Ranger's Companion feature
You magically summon a primal beast, which draws strength from your bond with nature. The best is friendly to you and your companions and obeys your commands. Choose its stat block - Beast of the Land, Beast of the Sea, or Beast of the Sky - Which uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in several places. You also determine the kind of animal the best is, choosing a king appropriate for the stat block. Whatever kind you choose, the beast bears primal markings, indicating it's mystical origin.
In combat, the beast acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn nto command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the attack action to command the beast to take the attack action. if you are incapacitated, the beast can take any cation of its choice, not just Dodge.
If the beast has died within the last hour, you can use your action to touch it and expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher. The beast returns to life after 1 minute with all its hit points restored.
When you finish a long rest, you can summon a different primal beast. The new beast appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, and you choose its stat block and appearance. If you already have a beast from this feature, it vanishes when the new beast appears. The beast also vanishes if you die.
So at level 11 with a beast that does 6 +2 + 4 (from proficiency bonus) twice when it takes the attack action (assuming the rest of the subclass features don’t change as well), the new wording (according to this “leak” which is typed because it has two errors) allows the ranger to take the attack action and have the beast take the attack action with a bonus action command (that is how the beast master will benefit from the new favored foe feature, btw). Let’s say the ranger is using a rapier and the dueling fighting style. That’s a total of 42 average damage. WITHOUT hunter’s mark, favored foe, or anything.
And no other feature in the game allows for something that was previously a concentration ability to stack with another concentration ability. Why would they change this for Rangers, especially when Warlocks would be looking at that change and saying, "When is that going to happen for me?" and that's regardless of MC playing into it.
Sure a concentration spell can't survive past this being implemented, but how many of those spells would you want be ok casting before marking and then mark on the hit. Hail of Thorns ends after the first hit with it anyway and you could mark the creature with that hit and get that extra damage. Lightning Arrow doesn't even need a hit to do its thing, just an attack. Swift Quiver could be used for a minute and then transition to this to thin out the ranks of minions and then focus on the boss, regardless of the number of spell slots that you've used. Flame Arrows is limited to a number of arrows before it ends and can be used like with Swift Quiver (and Hunter's Mark).
The point is that it's free damage that you weren't getting before with Favored Enemy, even if it doesn't stack with everything or work exactly like Hunter's Mark. You have to use concentration, but you don't have to use a spell slot and nothing prevents you from taking Hunter's Mark with this and using each when it's more useful for you.
I understand that it's not what everyone who wanted a "fix" wanted, but it's giving more flexibility and utility to people who weren't using Favored Enemy or treating it as a flavor based ribbon ability.
In other words, is there a silver lining in it? Is the cup half full or half empty? From the sound of things from a couple of threads I've been in, the cup was dry before. Admittedly, I didn't see a problem before because I started to see what the mechanics were telling me that the Ranger wanted to be. It took me a while to come around to that point of view.
There's always the option of doing what you did before. Sure it isn't exactly what you want but was it good enough? Ranger 5/Rogue X Scout with Outlander gets you a lot of the same flavor. Ranger 3-4/FighterX gets you some of that flavor in a more martial damage package. Ranger 5/DruidX gets you more spellcasting from the deal. If the spells that are gated further into Ranger are what you're after why do they always have to be used with each other? Nothing says that you have to always have Hunter's Mark up and if you want that equivalent, you can always go rogue 3-4 for your 2d6 or rogue 5-6 for your 3d6.
I apologize if this is coming off as patronizing (apparently there is a problem with my tone), but how much has all of the complaining helped the Ranger thus far (what are we 6-7 years into 5e)? I appreciate the disappointment yet again, but acknowledging the disappointment and trying to find the silver lining seems to be the best way forward until the next "fix" comes along that will undoubtedly fall short.
I love favored enemy.
I think what a lot of people are getting hung up on is they think these alternate features are supposed to be better than whatever it is they're replacing. And that line of thinking is just plain wrong. If a feature was obviously better than its counterpart, then there'd be no point in offering the choice
“No power creep! It will ruin the game!”
”This is no better than the other thing!”
This would further strengthen my resolve that hide in plain sight is a two part ability and really good!
It's incredibly powerful under the right circumstances. A lot of people use "situational" as a way of decrying a spell or feature, but they forget that everything on the sheet is situational. Some situations might come up more often, in which case something which affects the rare situations might be a lot stronger to make up for its infrequent use. In the case of Favored Foe, assuming the leak is accurate, I think it might be too weak. It's considerably weaker than a 1st-level spell it directly competes with and lacks any benefit outside of combat. It only benefits one pillar, as opposed to Favored Enemy impacting the other two.
That said, the pillars can blend together. Say there's a monster terrorizing a village and farm community. The locals have some tales, but not a lot of solid information. They probably know it comes from a nearby forest, but that forest is also home to other dangers. Now the exploration pillar is inexorably linked to the combat pillar: you can't kill what you can't find. And, maybe, the monster is also causing problems for the forests other denizens. You can fight, or you can negotiate. Heck, you might even be able to negotiate with the monster.
I'm running a group through Dragon of Icespire Peak on Sundays. They weren't strong enough to kill the manticore, but they did convince it to find another place to take up residence.
Great. This thread is now filled with those people from the two most recent Underpowered Ranger threads. This feature sucks, in my first post reviewing it I misread it, thinking that it applied to every attack. This feature sucks so hard that if this is the real ability, I will probably just start going back to the Favored Foe UA feature, but with it being limited to prof. bonus/long rest.
It's nice to see that at this point, WotC has given up on the 5e Ranger class as much as I have.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
From what I've heard, Dragon of Icespire Peak might be a good attempt by WotC to add emphasis onto the social and exploration pillars for encounter resolution as people have regularly said that it's tuned too hard for groups, especially new ones that would be an obvious target for a starter set. I think that the Young Adult Green Dragon encounter was supposed to fulfill that role in LMoP, but the description provided combat victory details that made it seem as if it might be less important that they do resolve it otherwise.
Nice to see you, too. I mean it is posted in the Ranger Forum and the CFV was supposed to be the "great fix for the broken ranger" (paraphrased) so of course we were going to see what showed up.
I get that people want a silver lining, and honestly 98% of the changes they are doing to the ranger features I like, this one just confuses me though. Adding ANOTHER concentration option just seems like at this point they are being deliberately obnoxious. And I agree, it seems as though for years these complaints fell on deaf ears - but the fact that they have basically replaced all the low level core ranger features suggest they are finally acknowledging that people want to love this class, they just want to be able to use official features instead of home brew every single time and this goes along way to that goal. Honestly I am not even mad at Favored Foe, but it is the only new option I wont use because honestly it is less useful than Favored Enemy
I wasn't talking about you, @Jhfffan, sorry if it appeared like I was targeting you. I have no gripe with you. It's the other two that are hailing the ranger's apparent "perfection" that I'm more annoyed by.
I sure hope that this leak is not real, but given WotC's track record with leaks and "fixing" classes/subclasses, I suspect that this is genuinely what we are getting.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Yes and no. Chris Perkins is still the primary author, and he loves to throw challenging combats where enemies fight to the death at the hands of the players. There's little in the way of guidance on how to play certain encounters, as well. It doesn't hold hands and expects either for the players to sort it out or for an experienced DM to teach them the tools. And if you're a new DM, I think it does a poor job of teaching. That said, it does come with some limited character creation rules that are intended to teach players the basics. And I think they do a decent job.
Unfortunately, there are also no random encounter tables for exploring beyond Phandalin. There is some exploration, but not for overland travel. It's relegated to being location-based. Which is fine, these are the "essentials" of the game. But it's a little disappointing that it's both less and more than what's in LMoP.
You're going to have to break that down, because I am unclear how a d8+7 (assuming 20 Dex) + 2 pet attacks for 2d6+4+8 (assuming the pet adds pb, which the variant features PDF does not even show) = 42? Even if you rolled max damage it only gets you to 39. A fighter at that level can do 3d12+15 (+45 if using great weapon master) and a rogue could do a d8+6d6+5 , so I am not seeing CRAZY damage here. Is it comparable, sure.
I am confused by concentration and the way the damage is set up. Having the damage apply to all attacks or dropping the damage would have been nice. It might be like Jounichi1983 said about making the power level be about the same and that's what they felt was the target.