A lot of the problems with the ranger where overstated and even so they have been fixed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Ranger's are in a fantastic place and if you like the Fantasy Archetype of ranger, you should 100% play the ranger. You'll love it. I agree with the sentiment that the Subclasses in the Players Handbook are not great, with the notable exception of the Beast Master Ranger but only if you use the Beast Master Pets presented in Tasha's. The Players Handbook options for pets (technically in the Monster Manual) make the Beast Master a mess (although this is debated by some). Honestly, if you want to play a ranger, Tasha's is probably a must have. It did such a good job of fixing a lot of the frustrations players had with the Ranger. Before Tasha's I was considering a Gloomstalker Ranger for my next character. Now, I'm almost certainly going to be making a Beast Master Ranger using the new pets from Tasha's.
I'm reading through Tasha's right now and I am a little unclear of something. It states: "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 to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action." Attacking is in its stat block, so does that mean you can now attack with your beast as a bonus action? If so, this would be game changing for me.
Yep. And with that, Beast Master fixed. I think it's only intended to work with the new beasts presented in the Primal Companion section, Beasts of the Land, Air, and Sea.
While the new subclasses all seem great I'm not sold on the revised Beastmaster for flavor reasons. Considering you now have borderline unlimited freedom with character stats and can make anything with a 1/2 challenge rating a sidekick the three options for beasts seems very limiting. Like if I wanted a small walrus would that be a beast of the land even thought those can climb like a cat? Why is your beast of the sea shark able to breathe on land? Why is the beastmaster's goat's horns doing slashing damage, etc. Of all things this should have been something you can apply template traits to the base beast stats to at least get it approximately similar to your animal. I'm sure you can homebrew most of these problems away but in Adventures League I expect there are going to be some really mismatched choices going on.
if you prefer power play/min max your build then ranger might not be the best class to pick.
Personally for RP purpose Ranger is one of the most interesting (mainly because not many ppl play them).
If you can discuss with your DM about the lore of their world then you can adjust your background/favored enemies to the settings and become more relevant. I think this is one of the main issue with ppl playing ranger, they create their character without consulting the DM so their selected favored enemies ended up being useless (other skills and proficiencies are like this as well).
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Yep. And with that, Beast Master fixed. I think it's only intended to work with the new beasts presented in the Primal Companion section, Beasts of the Land, Air, and Sea.
While the new subclasses all seem great I'm not sold on the revised Beastmaster for flavor reasons. Considering you now have borderline unlimited freedom with character stats and can make anything with a 1/2 challenge rating a sidekick the three options for beasts seems very limiting. Like if I wanted a small walrus would that be a beast of the land even thought those can climb like a cat? Why is your beast of the sea shark able to breathe on land? Why is the beastmaster's goat's horns doing slashing damage, etc. Of all things this should have been something you can apply template traits to the base beast stats to at least get it approximately similar to your animal. I'm sure you can homebrew most of these problems away but in Adventures League I expect there are going to be some really mismatched choices going on.
if you prefer power play/min max your build then ranger might not be the best class to pick.
Personally for RP purpose Ranger is one of the most interesting (mainly because not many ppl play them).
If you can discuss with your DM about the lore of their world then you can adjust your background/favored enemies to the settings and become more relevant. I think this is one of the main issue with ppl playing ranger, they create their character without consulting the DM so their selected favored enemies ended up being useless (other skills and proficiencies are like this as well).