My second nitpick is thematic. The Beast of the Air and Beast of the Land have way more personal flavor and utility than the old way of taming whatever you can find and replacing it when it dies. However... I feel like it locks the character into a mystic druid archetype where they're channeling the power of Nature into manifesting as one of two forms. It definitely precludes some of the quirky and fun concepts where you pick animal companions with unique abilities or to fulfill specific roles. There was a huge difference stylistically between a gnome ranger who rides on the back of the wolf companion they were raised with and consider their brother, or the ranger whose snake companion has been specially trained to grapple and restrain enemies in a fight to give the ranger an advantage. Boiling the companion down to a choice between two stat blocks with generic abilities really strips out a lot of the creative grounds that made beastmasters fun to build.
You can still do all those this with a primal beast, just make it a snake or a wolf or whatever, use the stat block from the primal as the base, but have it be whatever. I would argue that there is nothing that says you can't replace the Actions of a primal beast with the Actions of whatever form they take (minus multi-attack)
Beastmaster is a bad subclass. No qualms about such, it is very bad. the idea of it was interesting, but the execution of having it be an actual beast from the monster manual was poor. There were only three options for it. Either a. a beast is made in a module or sorcebook somewhere that can be used and is overpowered. b. every single beast throughout the game has to take beastmaster into consideration during design. c. the subclass was going to be non specific, and won't give much in terms of power. Making it a premade statblock that you can change what it looks like is not a terrible idea. Personally I would rather they had like, 8 options specifically for beastmaster, but I will take what I can get.
Beastmaster is a bad subclass. No qualms about such, it is very bad. the idea of it was interesting, but the execution of having it be an actual beast from the monster manual was poor. There were only three options for it. Either a. a beast is made in a module or sorcebook somewhere that can be used and is overpowered. b. every single beast throughout the game has to take beastmaster into consideration during design. c. the subclass was going to be non specific, and won't give much in terms of power. Making it a premade statblock that you can change what it looks like is not a terrible idea. Personally I would rather they had like, 8 options specifically for beastmaster, but I will take what I can get.
I think they've come up with a pretty elegant solution to the Beast Master's companion choosing clunkiness. Jeremey Crawford said they'd add more if it makes it to the next dev stage.
Just thought about it, how will the expand the spells for other classes on dndbeyond? Will they just code them to work for the new classes? but only if you unlock playtest on your character builder? Or just make it site-wide?
Well, you can start with the two primal beast types, and then easily diversify/homebrew later if the model works (and it’d be hard to be worse than base beastmaster). Beast of water, beast of shadows, beast of storms, beast of fire... it’s not much work for me as a DM to talk to my player who wants a panther to help scout, so they get more stealth tools and lose the charge/flyby option in balance.
I’d also be willing to allow players to take a nonstandard beast, if it’s just changing the appearance of a primal beast - more opportunity for creative RP. Yeah, sure, your Beast can look like an abyssal chicken/young worg/geonid/rat swarm if you can justify it to me, and remember that people will respond to you walking around with a Gazer on a leash differently than an owl on your shoulder.
I mean like, beast of land is a wolf/bear, beast of air is a falcon/eagle, beast of water as a crocodile/shark, beast of scales as a python or anaconda, could work
You might be right. I only said that because I've played campaigns where I didn't get any chances to copy spells and where I've had ample downtime/travel montages. People with different experiences might disagree with me.
My second nitpick is thematic. The Beast of the Air and Beast of the Land have way more personal flavor and utility than the old way of taming whatever you can find and replacing it when it dies. However... I feel like it locks the character into a mystic druid archetype where they're channeling the power of Nature into manifesting as one of two forms. It definitely precludes some of the quirky and fun concepts where you pick animal companions with unique abilities or to fulfill specific roles. There was a huge difference stylistically between a gnome ranger who rides on the back of the wolf companion they were raised with and consider their brother, or the ranger whose snake companion has been specially trained to grapple and restrain enemies in a fight to give the ranger an advantage. Boiling the companion down to a choice between two stat blocks with generic abilities really strips out a lot of the creative grounds that made beastmasters fun to build.
You can still do all those this with a primal beast, just make it a snake or a wolf or whatever, use the stat block from the primal as the base, but have it be whatever. I would argue that there is nothing that says you can't replace the Actions of a primal beast with the Actions of whatever form they take (minus multi-attack)
Modifying the statblock is likely the solution, but it's definitely something that would have to be cleared with the DM, and the way it would work would vary significantly because of that. It also precludes it from being AL-legal, which matters for a lot of people.
The way the Primal Beast is set up it can be literally anything you can imagine as long as it's the appropriate size. Give it a climb speed and it's a leopard or a large monkey. Give it a swim speed and it can be anything from a crocodile to a Creature from the Black Lagoon type monster. It can be a pokemon, a ghostly patronus, a miniature kaiju. I love how open ended that is. And the universal stat block means my players won't "joke pet" themselves into a gameplay corner like they ALWAYS do.
Just thought about it, how will the expand the spells for other classes on dndbeyond? Will they just code them to work for the new classes? but only if you unlock playtest on your character builder? Or just make it site-wide?
That will be the tricky part, it is easy to add a class to a spell, but to show one version of the spell to a character that has playtest content on and another to a character that doesn't will take some work
Well, you can start with the two primal beast types, and then easily diversify/homebrew later if the model works (and it’d be hard to be worse than base beastmaster). Beast of water, beast of shadows, beast of storms, beast of fire... it’s not much work for me as a DM to talk to my player who wants a panther to help scout, so they get more stealth tools and lose the charge/flyby option in balance.
I’d also be willing to allow players to take a nonstandard beast, if it’s just changing the appearance of a primal beast - more opportunity for creative RP. Yeah, sure, your Beast can look like an abyssal chicken/young worg/geonid/rat swarm if you can justify it to me, and remember that people will respond to you walking around with a Gazer on a leash differently than an owl on your shoulder.
I think the Air and Land are a good starting point, I would amend it to say that if you choose a form, such as Wolf, you gain the abilities of that form (except multi-attack), and can use those actions in addition
The entire idea behind the fixed stat blocks for the Beasts of the Air/Land is so that Wizards can account for those stat blocks in the design of the class and allow the character actions and abilities they otherwise couldn't, because they have to try and account for ZE ENTIAH MONSTAH MANUELLE, as well as any other additional beasts they introduce from now until the heat death of the universe, when designing the class.
That means the Beastmaster sucked because Wizards had to be ultraconservative with what it could do or the Beastmaster would've been a rampaging monster thing due to being able to take powerful actions with beasts well out of line with their intended curve. They tried to solve that with the (eminently shitty) Revised Ranger rules by giving players a much smaller list of beasts, and then more powerful things they could do with those beasts. Players ignored the restrictions.
When they introduced the artificer, with its integrated one-statblock critter with a variable appearance, and people loved it (on the Battlesmith, anyways), and then they got heavily positive feedback on the same dealio with the Wildfire Druid, it became clear that baking the critter into the class, using a single statblock that can be fluffed out any way the player likes but which provides a consistent base to plan the rest of the class off of, is enormously better for game design.
Saying "well all right, you can use a primal beast, but it takes the stats/abilities of whatever it looks like if those are better" completely ruins that design and puts us right back at Square 1. Don't be that guy. That Guy is why the Beastmaster is awful right now.
I mean I would rather have a variety of primal beasts designed to be used specifically with this subclass allowing for it to be good, instead of gaining really weak features and getting an animal that actually has the stats of one. I do not think that every animal should be represented as primal beast features, that is much much more restrictive than just flavoring your beast to look like something.
Yeah, a template beast which can pick from a menu of abilities you can socket into it (like the Eidolon in prior editions, or like a pet warlock) is probably the most graceful solution I can see. They already know how to balance a menu through Warlock, and people think they're fun, would be cool if the Beastmaster was a Ranger subclass that had Warlock-type features (which only applied to the beast).
I would suggest one beast chasis (With like a 12/10/12/6/10/6 stats, ranger/level d6 hit die, a d6 bite attack, proficiency in CON and DEX saves and Athletics and Perception, and uses ranger's prof bonus , and then a list of buffs that the ranger can pick more and more of. Maybe give the beast ranger a number of level-locked enhancements like the warlock, which can be used to socket things like:
Claws: Creature gains a second natural weapon, with a d4 damage die.
Multiattack (lvl 6): Creature can use its action to both bite and claw when commanded to attack.
Improved Multiattack (lvl 14): Creature can use its action to bite-claw-claw when commanded to attack
Improved Natural Weapons: Creature's Bite and Claw increase to a larger die (can be taken multiple times)
Tougher Hide: Creature's AC improves by +1 (can be taken multiple times)
Burly: Creature receives +4 Str, +2 Con, -2 Dex
Agile: Creature receives +4 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str, and can use Dex to calculate its natural weapons
Flight (lvl 6): Creature's walking speed is reduced by 10, and gains a fly speed equal to twice walking speed
Swim (lvl 6): Gain a swim speed equal to walking speed
Keen Senses: Creature gets double your proficiency bonus to perception, and blindsight 10'
Big (lvl 6): Creature goes from medium to large, +2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Dex
Little (lvl 6): Creature goes from medium to small, +2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str
Fast: Creature's speeds all get +5'/ranger level divided by 2
any creature abilities, like Pack Tactics, or Charge, those could be addons as well
I dunno, point isn't those specific balance options, its just that something like that would be really really fun for a beastmater, could be used to aproximate any kind of companion they want, all without the danger of the class interacting with published enemies in unforseen ways.
Why would the form of the beast change over time? I would say give them a few primal beasts, and a few options to add to the beast at the level you get it, and the rest be things like just options as improvements, like more hp or extra damage with the beast. make it more about the beast, but not like a shapeshifter.
The entire idea behind the fixed stat blocks for the Beasts of the Air/Land is so that Wizards can account for those stat blocks in the design of the class and allow the character actions and abilities they otherwise couldn't, because they have to try and account for ZE ENTIAH MONSTAH MANUELLE, as well as any other additional beasts they introduce from now until the heat death of the universe, when designing the class.
That means the Beastmaster sucked because Wizards had to be ultraconservative with what it could do or the Beastmaster would've been a rampaging monster thing due to being able to take powerful actions with beasts well out of line with their intended curve. They tried to solve that with the (eminently shitty) Revised Ranger rules by giving players a much smaller list of beasts, and then more powerful things they could do with those beasts. Players ignored the restrictions.
When they introduced the artificer, with its integrated one-statblock critter with a variable appearance, and people loved it (on the Battlesmith, anyways), and then they got heavily positive feedback on the same dealio with the Wildfire Druid, it became clear that baking the critter into the class, using a single statblock that can be fluffed out any way the player likes but which provides a consistent base to plan the rest of the class off of, is enormously better for game design.
Saying "well all right, you can use a primal beast, but it takes the stats/abilities of whatever it looks like if those are better" completely ruins that design and puts us right back at Square 1. Don't be that guy. That Guy is why the Beastmaster is awful right now.
I'm not even a ranger, let alone beastmaster but I really don't like the single statblock. It's one thing to have the single statblock for the battlesmith or wildire druid. They're cool little gimmicks. ( I understand, that like the beastmaster, the entire sub is dedicated to enhancing this cool pet, but blame the stereotypical tropes out there but its a different mindset when looking to take a beastmaster then looking at another subclass that offers a 'pet').
Those who play the beastmaster want to be Beastmasters. Yes, this can very well be an entire class on its own (although I think its a great sub for a ranger). The players want to be able to tame the beasts of wild, not befriend an enchanted spirit.. It does sound very druid-y.
They want to be a lone wolf who only roams with wolves, they want to be a grizzled dwarf with their own grizzly who has been with them between thick and thin.
I mean I did admit I'm not generally a ranger player but the appeal of a beastmaster class to me is the exact variety of all the animals in nature.
And honestly, as a whole, I think (I may be wrong) beasts are the plainest monsters in the manual.. Nothing too crazy, no magic, no insane innate skills that let you turn invisible and insta-kill everyone with a dc 25 int save... Even the crazy abilities like pack tactics and such are all manageable.
I believe that you would be casting the hunter's mark spell innately. Which means you would be casting hunter's mark with your class feature rather that with a spell slot. I think the aim here is to give the ranger more freedom to use their spell slots for something other than hunter's mark.
Well, some Rangers want to be a Beastmaster and level up alongside a single companion, while others want to be a Beastsmaster and have dominion over animals of all sorts. A single template which can be buffed would accommodate both, by either letting you build different beasts with different forms, or continue to enhance/train a single one.
But yeah, I get your point, I was just thinking that these single statblocks are cool, but proliferating the number of single statblocks is going to be bloated, and misses the opportunity to use a mechanic which the Warlock has already playtested and been well received with. And turning Rangers loose on the entirety of published Beast monsters is clearly a balance problem that the writers are trying to move away from.
You can still do all those this with a primal beast, just make it a snake or a wolf or whatever, use the stat block from the primal as the base, but have it be whatever. I would argue that there is nothing that says you can't replace the Actions of a primal beast with the Actions of whatever form they take (minus multi-attack)
Beastmaster is a bad subclass. No qualms about such, it is very bad. the idea of it was interesting, but the execution of having it be an actual beast from the monster manual was poor. There were only three options for it. Either a. a beast is made in a module or sorcebook somewhere that can be used and is overpowered. b. every single beast throughout the game has to take beastmaster into consideration during design. c. the subclass was going to be non specific, and won't give much in terms of power. Making it a premade statblock that you can change what it looks like is not a terrible idea. Personally I would rather they had like, 8 options specifically for beastmaster, but I will take what I can get.
I think they've come up with a pretty elegant solution to the Beast Master's companion choosing clunkiness. Jeremey Crawford said they'd add more if it makes it to the next dev stage.
Just thought about it, how will the expand the spells for other classes on dndbeyond? Will they just code them to work for the new classes? but only if you unlock playtest on your character builder? Or just make it site-wide?
Well, you can start with the two primal beast types, and then easily diversify/homebrew later if the model works (and it’d be hard to be worse than base beastmaster). Beast of water, beast of shadows, beast of storms, beast of fire... it’s not much work for me as a DM to talk to my player who wants a panther to help scout, so they get more stealth tools and lose the charge/flyby option in balance.
I’d also be willing to allow players to take a nonstandard beast, if it’s just changing the appearance of a primal beast - more opportunity for creative RP. Yeah, sure, your Beast can look like an abyssal chicken/young worg/geonid/rat swarm if you can justify it to me, and remember that people will respond to you walking around with a Gazer on a leash differently than an owl on your shoulder.
I mean like, beast of land is a wolf/bear, beast of air is a falcon/eagle, beast of water as a crocodile/shark, beast of scales as a python or anaconda, could work
You might be right. I only said that because I've played campaigns where I didn't get any chances to copy spells and where I've had ample downtime/travel montages. People with different experiences might disagree with me.
Modifying the statblock is likely the solution, but it's definitely something that would have to be cleared with the DM, and the way it would work would vary significantly because of that. It also precludes it from being AL-legal, which matters for a lot of people.
The way the Primal Beast is set up it can be literally anything you can imagine as long as it's the appropriate size. Give it a climb speed and it's a leopard or a large monkey. Give it a swim speed and it can be anything from a crocodile to a Creature from the Black Lagoon type monster. It can be a pokemon, a ghostly patronus, a miniature kaiju. I love how open ended that is. And the universal stat block means my players won't "joke pet" themselves into a gameplay corner like they ALWAYS do.
That will be the tricky part, it is easy to add a class to a spell, but to show one version of the spell to a character that has playtest content on and another to a character that doesn't will take some work
I think the Air and Land are a good starting point, I would amend it to say that if you choose a form, such as Wolf, you gain the abilities of that form (except multi-attack), and can use those actions in addition
The entire idea behind the fixed stat blocks for the Beasts of the Air/Land is so that Wizards can account for those stat blocks in the design of the class and allow the character actions and abilities they otherwise couldn't, because they have to try and account for ZE ENTIAH MONSTAH MANUELLE, as well as any other additional beasts they introduce from now until the heat death of the universe, when designing the class.
That means the Beastmaster sucked because Wizards had to be ultraconservative with what it could do or the Beastmaster would've been a rampaging monster thing due to being able to take powerful actions with beasts well out of line with their intended curve. They tried to solve that with the (eminently shitty) Revised Ranger rules by giving players a much smaller list of beasts, and then more powerful things they could do with those beasts. Players ignored the restrictions.
When they introduced the artificer, with its integrated one-statblock critter with a variable appearance, and people loved it (on the Battlesmith, anyways), and then they got heavily positive feedback on the same dealio with the Wildfire Druid, it became clear that baking the critter into the class, using a single statblock that can be fluffed out any way the player likes but which provides a consistent base to plan the rest of the class off of, is enormously better for game design.
Saying "well all right, you can use a primal beast, but it takes the stats/abilities of whatever it looks like if those are better" completely ruins that design and puts us right back at Square 1. Don't be that guy. That Guy is why the Beastmaster is awful right now.
Please do not contact or message me.
I mean I would rather have a variety of primal beasts designed to be used specifically with this subclass allowing for it to be good, instead of gaining really weak features and getting an animal that actually has the stats of one. I do not think that every animal should be represented as primal beast features, that is much much more restrictive than just flavoring your beast to look like something.
Yeah, a template beast which can pick from a menu of abilities you can socket into it (like the Eidolon in prior editions, or like a pet warlock) is probably the most graceful solution I can see. They already know how to balance a menu through Warlock, and people think they're fun, would be cool if the Beastmaster was a Ranger subclass that had Warlock-type features (which only applied to the beast).
I would suggest one beast chasis (With like a 12/10/12/6/10/6 stats, ranger/level d6 hit die, a d6 bite attack, proficiency in CON and DEX saves and Athletics and Perception, and uses ranger's prof bonus , and then a list of buffs that the ranger can pick more and more of. Maybe give the beast ranger a number of level-locked enhancements like the warlock, which can be used to socket things like:
I dunno, point isn't those specific balance options, its just that something like that would be really really fun for a beastmater, could be used to aproximate any kind of companion they want, all without the danger of the class interacting with published enemies in unforseen ways.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Why would the form of the beast change over time? I would say give them a few primal beasts, and a few options to add to the beast at the level you get it, and the rest be things like just options as improvements, like more hp or extra damage with the beast. make it more about the beast, but not like a shapeshifter.
If I may rant for a moment, I went back and was reading the Beast of the Earth and WHY THE HECK IS THE CON STAT 15?!?!?!?!
Excuse me as my OCD does cartwheels.
: )
I'm not even a ranger, let alone beastmaster but I really don't like the single statblock. It's one thing to have the single statblock for the battlesmith or wildire druid. They're cool little gimmicks. ( I understand, that like the beastmaster, the entire sub is dedicated to enhancing this cool pet, but blame the stereotypical tropes out there but its a different mindset when looking to take a beastmaster then looking at another subclass that offers a 'pet').
Those who play the beastmaster want to be Beastmasters. Yes, this can very well be an entire class on its own (although I think its a great sub for a ranger). The players want to be able to tame the beasts of wild, not befriend an enchanted spirit.. It does sound very druid-y.
They want to be a lone wolf who only roams with wolves, they want to be a grizzled dwarf with their own grizzly who has been with them between thick and thin.
I mean I did admit I'm not generally a ranger player but the appeal of a beastmaster class to me is the exact variety of all the animals in nature.
And honestly, as a whole, I think (I may be wrong) beasts are the plainest monsters in the manual.. Nothing too crazy, no magic, no insane innate skills that let you turn invisible and insta-kill everyone with a dc 25 int save... Even the crazy abilities like pack tactics and such are all manageable.
I believe that you would be casting the hunter's mark spell innately. Which means you would be casting hunter's mark with your class feature rather that with a spell slot. I think the aim here is to give the ranger more freedom to use their spell slots for something other than hunter's mark.
Well, some Rangers want to be a Beastmaster and level up alongside a single companion, while others want to be a Beastsmaster and have dominion over animals of all sorts. A single template which can be buffed would accommodate both, by either letting you build different beasts with different forms, or continue to enhance/train a single one.
But yeah, I get your point, I was just thinking that these single statblocks are cool, but proliferating the number of single statblocks is going to be bloated, and misses the opportunity to use a mechanic which the Warlock has already playtested and been well received with. And turning Rangers loose on the entirety of published Beast monsters is clearly a balance problem that the writers are trying to move away from.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
?warlock