With the release of Tasha's, a new way to play Rangers has snuck in. I've spent a number of weeks playing around with the various ways to set things up for a new type of Ranger (some of you may have noticed me asking for some advice here, and I've also asked around a bit on the West Marches server I play in, The Forged Concordance). While something roughly this build was possible before, it would have required multiclassing twice and a loss of ASI, while just being all around more clunky. I believe what we have on our hands here is something that adds a very different flavour to a melee based Ranger while still being cohesive and will let you stand out at your DnD table when the ball gets rolling.
I recognize that its entirely possible that somebody else has already come up with this combination before I did, but I've... not really seen any discussion on it around DnD Beyond or show up in any of the DnD youtubers who I watch. So if it is already out in the wild, its not wide spread and most likely doesn't have a guide breaking it down.
I also recognize that its entirely likely that a Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter build probably has a damage output. What I believe I have here is something that's still viable damage output wise even if not fighting for top DPS Ranger build option, while being different from other Ranger builds.
Branches
To be more specific with this new Ranger playstyle, there's actually two ways to set this up: a 1 level dip and an 8/12 split. While the two options are similar to start off, by the end the pieces surrounding the core components are quite different and lead into different "branches" of this playing style. For simplicities sake I'll refer to these two ranches as "Ranger Build" and "Hybrid Build" respectively.
Core Components
The list of the core components list is short, but as the pieces fall into place the general style of the build should make sense:
Ranger Starting Point (Any subclass, but which ones are better than others will depend on the Branch you choose). You can technically start in Cleric but the Ranger has better saves for a Melee focused build.
Druidic Warrior -> Shillelagh. In short for this to work without becoming heavy MAD, you must taking this fighting style and you must have Shillelagh as one of your cantrips. It won't be important until a later level so technically speaking if Martial Versatility is allowed in your game you can start with a different fighting style and then switch over to Druidic Warrior once you have everything you need if you feel the need, but one way or another you will need Druidic Warrior and Shillelagh.
Arcana Domain Cleric dip/split -> Booming Blade cantrip. This is the only way to get Booming Blade to key off of Wis. Only need a 1 level dip to get it which is great if you primarily want to be playing a Ranger but just want to change things up a bit. Going either 8 or 12 levels in Arcana Domain is not bad either, hence the two different Branches.
Quarterstaff. Should really go without saying given that we took Shillelagh, but yes this is going to be your primary weapon. Can have another weapon you use instead if you like as you build your way up through the early levels but we're not going to have any Str and minimal Dex so beyond the first few levels its not going to be recommended.
War Caster Feat and Polearm Master Feat. Bread and butter for Booming Blade Builds. Yes they still work like how they used to before Tasha's, that has been clarified and confirmed.
Medium Armour + Shield. Our Dex is most likely not going above 14. It has no reason to thanks to Shillelagh allowing for Wis to be our attack stat. Therefor to maximize AC you're going to want Medium Armour. Likewise we're also going to want a Shield as we're aiming to be in the thick of things most of the time. This does mean we have to be careful about spells with an M component as both hands are going to be full, but its actually not nearly as much of a problem as some may think at first glance. But this means we're rocking 18-19 AC, and squeezing in another +1 or +2 is possible depending on the routes taken. Most likely just +1, but +2 is technically possible before accounting for magic items.
General Combat Concept
If you're going with the Ranger Build, you're more or less doing Ranger things but with Booming Blade. Use Booming Blade for your regular attack action whenever it makes sense to do so, use the combination of War Caster and Polearm Master to hit people moving into your range with Booming Blade, if they were going to move past you they are no longer going to do so unless they want to take the additional damage. You also get to have a couple of level 1 Cleric spells every day at the ready that you can swap out daily for a little bit more flexibility within your party makeup and needs. This is basically for people who want to feel like they're playing a better Ranger without doing the same old same old GWM/Sharpshooter stuff.
With the Hybrid Build, you're looking to do a lot of Ranger stuff, but also leverage some Cleric aspects like Spirit Guardians. Run up to a guy and Booming Blade him: he moves out of Spirit Guardian range he takes extra Booming Blade damage. He stays still to avoid the Booming Blade and he's taking Spirit Guardian damage. You also get more spell slots: a Ranger 12/Cleric 8 split gets a 6th and 7th spell slot while a Ranger 8/Cleric 12 split also gets an 8th slot. You also get access to Channel Divinity, Spellbreaker, Potent Spellcasting (which combines with Booming Blade for extra damage), an extra Cleric cantrip, two Harness Divine Powers, Destroy Undead, and potentially a little bit of Divine Intervention. This is for people who want something that's fairly unique in terms of blend of martial and magic frontlining, with no real dead levels outside of maybe Ranger 5 where you get Extra Attack as at best its equal to Booming Blade depending on where you get what level. This is also for people who like Rangers but want to have options outside of "Hunter's Mark and a few other odds and ends" for spells. You go Hybrid Build, your Hunter's Mark use is probably cut in half.
Also in either case you're having at least 2 Druid Cantrips, 2 Wizard Cantrips (that count as Cleric), and 3 Cleric cantrips. And you get Ritual Casting along with the Domain Spells. That's a lot of additional flexibility for a Ranger who normally only gets 2 cantrips at at most.
Level Progression Pathing
Ultimately, this comes down to your preferences and bit with what your party needs in the short term. I would personally recommend getting Ranger up to 8 to grab the two feats that really let this build swing, then dip into Cleric. From there it depends on how many Cleric levels you want and when you want certain Cleric features over certain Ranger features. Alternatively you could grab the Cleric dip at level 5 if you're a Variant Human.
Stat Spread
So given these core pieces, how should we go about point distribution? Depends a bit on your game's method of character building as well as the race you pick but roughly speaking:
Standard Array: 8/14/13/10/15/12. Wisdom is the highest priority, and Dex is capping out for us at 14 so getting it there right off the bat is great. Naturally want as much Con as we can. The 8, 10, and 12 can be sorted around as much as you desire though keep in mind you have proficiency in Str so your Str saving throws should be alright.
Point Buy: 8/14/15/8/15/10. This is a rough guide as the numbers are going to vary a bit depending on the race you pick and their stat bonuses but you get the picture: aim for 14 dex, as much Wis and Con as you can, pick one other category to not be 8.
Rolling: This is a bit more tricky given the nature of rolling for stats. Ultimately keep in mind your race and your primary goals. It should end up Wis highest, Con/Dex next highest, Int/Cha after that, and Str as dump.
Races
This is going to be assuming you can't freely swap the stat bonuses around for the races. If you can pick virtually whatever you like. For those of you not in that situation however I'm going to point out the standout, or at least interesting, options. For them to be worth even considering they need to have +2 Wis, or +2 Dex/Con and +1 Wis with a few exceptions. I'll be using the following colour scheme for this section and following sections:
Fantastic Option: Should be one of your first choices Good Choice: A perfectly reasonable option that's still above average Average: Pros and Cons balance out, nothing wrong with taking it but its not optimal Niche: In certain campaigns/party makeups this might be a worthwhile option but generally its not. Alternatively it has one thing at least worth mentioning and maybe you'll like to play off of it in particular Bad: I can't make you not take it but I really highly recommend against it
Given the sheer number of races I'll only be going over Average and up
Hill Dwarf: Con+2/Wis+1, Darkvision, Dwarven Resistance, and extra HP are all fantastic. 25 movement speed hurts a melee focused character a tad.
Wood Elf: Dex+2/Wis+1, Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses, 35 movement speed, Mask of the Wild are all great things. Almost makes the Fantastic cut, could be argued as such for games where you know you're going to be one of the main frontliners and you pick the right Ranger subclasses to complement the 35 movement speed.
Pallid Elf: Dex+2/Wis+1, Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses, Incisive Sense, Blessing of the Moonweaver. While I'd ultimately rate it slightly below Wood Elf, free Invisibility once a day is great and everything else are solid upsides.
Mark of Detection Half Elf: Wis+2/Any+1, Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, Deductive Intuition, Magical Detection, Spells of the Mark. This is a fantastic list. Perfect stat bonuses, dark vision, free detect magic, all good stuff. The spell list itself is lackluster, but even if it didn't exist at all this would be an excellent choice.
Ghostwise Halfling: Dex+2/Wis+1, Lucky, Brave, Nimble, Silent Speech. 25 movement hurts, but its a decent package all together. Lucky is never a bad thing to have.
Lotusden Halfling: Dex+2/Wis+1, Lucky, Brave, Nimble, Children of the Woods, Timberwalk. Children of the Woods gives you some free casts of some Ranger spells you might like to use now and then and don't require the M part.
Mark of Healing Halfing: Dex+2/Wis+1, Lucky, Brave, Nimble, Medical Intuition, Healing Touch, Spells of the Mark. Stuck with a group that expects anybody with any amount of Cleric to at least pitch in with the healing but don't want to use your spell selection on Cure Wounds or Lessor Restoration? Congrats you can do one of those for free once a day. Even if you plan on actually healing every now and then, a free Cure Wounds is great for a minor patch up out of combat. If there's a dedicated healer in the body this race drops in utility a tad but if its a bunch of off-healers this race is fantastic for helping you do your part to pitch in.
Human: You can actually take advantage of the +1 to all stats if you're using point buy and its not horrible on standard array. With point buy you can set up a 10/14/16/10/16/10 spread and still have one point left over which you can put into any of the 10s. And with standard array you're looking at a 9/14/15/11/16/13 spread which is hardly what you can call bad. But it adds nothing special other than removing negative modifiers.
Variant Human: +1Any/+1Any, Free Feat and Skill. Yeah this goes without saying, best choice for this build period. You only really need to get Wis to 20 so you're free to use ASIs on skills fairly early on with other races... but why not have the two core feats taken care of by level 4 so you can go crazy ASAP? And have room to get some extra feats for fun? Only downside is no Darkvision but depending on your Ranger subclass that might stop mattering after level 3.
Mark of Finding Human: +2Wis/+1Con, Darkvision, Hunter's Intuition, Finder's Magic, Spells of the Mark. Got a DM that bans Variant Human but allows any other type of Human? Pick this. Free Hunter's Mark is a no brainer, Darkvision is good, and you get Faerie Fire off of the Spells of the Mark.
Mark of Handling Human: +2Wis/+1Any, Wild Intuition, Primal Connection, The Bigger They Are, Spells of the Mark. Not much of real value outside of the stat modifiers, but it can make your Ranger feel more Rangery with no penalty for doing so.
Mark of Passage Human:+2Dex/+1 Any, 35 movement speed, Intuitive Motion, Magical Passage, Spells of the Mark. Think Wood Elf but slightly better. Free Misty Step is really hard to argue with, as is the ability to add Misty Step and Dimension Door to your spell list. If you're a Gloomstalker this is Fantastic, if not its Good but the lack of Darkvision may trip you up.
Mark of Sentinel Human: +2Con/+1Wis, Sentinel's Intuition, Guardian's Shield, Vigilant Guardian, Spells of the Mark. What saves this from being merely average are the once a day free Shield, Counterspell, and Bigsy's Hand. The Shield spell will save you given that you're on the frontline, Counterspell and Bigsy's Hand are both something Rangers and Clerics can't normally have but have fantastic utility. If your party has multiple sources of Counterspell this race falls off, but if it doesn't its a good pick.
Lizardfolk: +2Con/+1Wis, Bite, Cunning Artisan, Hold Breath, Hunter's Lore, Natural Armor, Hungry Jaws. The main draw of Lizardfolk is Natural Armour. And while it's certainly helpful for you at first, the moment you got good medium armour you're going to ditch it. You have no Str so Bite and Hungry Jaws are worthless. Cunning Artisan can save you a small bit of money by getting you your shield or making items to sell. Hold Breath is nice but not great, Hunter's Lore is a nice bonus but not a must have. Nothing wrong with taking a Lizardfolk but you can do better.
Firbolg: +2Wis/+1Str, Firbolg Magic, Hidden Step, Powerful Build, Speech of Beast and Leaf. Firbolg Magic is nice, Hidden Step is alright, Powerful Build is nice, Speech of Beast and Leaf is certainly flavourful for a Ranger. The +1 Str is doing you no favours however, leaving this ultimately more of a flavour pick than a build pick but nothing is really harming you that badly in taking a Firbolg
Water Genasi: +2Con/+1Wis, Acid Resistance, Amphibious, Swim, Call to the Wave. A free resistance is always good, breathing water and swimming is good, spells aren't so great. If you're on a sea based adventure this goes up in value.
Githzerai: +2Wis/+1Int, Mental Discipline, Githzerai Psionics. Free Shield once a day is the only thing this has going for it, the +1Int is useless.
Kalatar: +2Wis/+1Cha, Dual Mind, Mental Discipline, Mind Link, Severed from Dreams. If you're a Gloomstalker, Dual Mind means after a certain point you can just laugh whenever your DM asks for a Wis Save which is what can push this race into Fantastic despite the +1Cha being useless. Free resistance is good, immunity to a handful of spells is good, Mind Link is good. A lot of good things in general.
Kenku +2Dex/+1Wis, Expert Forgery, Kenku Training, Mimicry. Wanna challenge yourself while playing DnD? Go ahead and do that with this build and pick up the Kenku. Realistically only the Kenku Training is of noticeable value.
Loxodon: +2Con/+1Wis, Powerful Build, Loxodon Serenity, Natural Armor, Trunk, Keen Smell. Powerful Build is nice, Loxodon Serenity is nice, Natural Armor is in the same boat as the Lizardfolk's where its only good until you get Medium Armour, Keen Smell is nice. What can skyrocket Loxodon's value, is if the DM agrees with your interpretation of the restrictions of Trunk and agrees that it can be used to hold M components of spells. By RAW it can't be anything precise like S components or using a magic item or a weapon, but it can hold items up to 5 times your strength score. Do you really do anything with M components other than hold them in range? If the DM goes with it this widens up the amount of spells you can use by quite a lot.
Wildhunt Shifter: +2Wis/+1Dex, Darkvision, Keen Senses, Shifting (advantage on Wis Checks), Natural Tracker, Mark the Scent. If only this wasn't the worst Shifting Feature by far. Its very much on the Average/Good border. Darkvision is good, Keen Senses and Natural Tracker are nice. But Mark the Scent is very niche and Shifting is realistically just a pile of extra HP for you as its hard to reliably use it for Wis Checks.
Simic Hybrid: +2Con/+1Any, Darkvision, Animal Enhancements. Good stat bonuses, Darkvision, and pick enhancements that suit your game the best. Most likely Manta Glide/Carapace but that's plenty good.
Vedalken: +2Int/+1Wis, Vedalken Dispassion, Tireless Precision, Partly Amphibious. Alright this is a weird one to be sure. The stat bonuses are really not super helpful. However, Vedalken Dispassion is amazing and single handedly makes Vedalkens at least worth a look, doubly so if you're rolling for stats. And if your DM is crazy enough to let you swap out your stat boosts to +2Wis/+1Dex this is arguably the second best choice behind Variant Human. You can effectively narrow the range of the penalty for your meh/bad Int/Cha scores by a fair bit when it comes to saving throws, and if you're a Gloomstalker you get to laugh when the DM asks for a Wis Save. It also means that for almost any saving throw situation you have something giving you a boost (Proficient in Str/Dex, War Caster for Concentration, V.Dispassion for Int/Wis/Cha).
Warforged: +2Con/+1Any, Constructed Resilience, Sentry's Rest, Integrated Protection, Specialized Design. If you're a martial class Warforges are almost always good. Free resistance is good, free immunity is great, immunity to a few spells is good, Sentry's Rest is a great thing for the party as you can take all of the watch duty, +1AC is fantastic. If you have a feeling that you're going to be the main frontliner, Warforged goes up in value.
Additional Feats
There are two situations where you can reasonably get more feats than War Caster and PAM: Variant Human and If you started with a +2 Wis race and maxed Wis out for 17 at start. Maxing out Wis is important and you have 5 ASI with 2 already spoken for. Technically speaking every Booming Ranger can get a 3rd feat if they want, but not until literally level 20 at which point it doesn't really matter what you take and you might be better off just going for +2 Con instead for the concentration and HP boost. For the previously two mentioned situations however, we can look at a 3rd feat that can be taken mid game, though with different criteria/thoughts behind them: The +2 Wis race has to take a feat with +1 Wis added to it, and V.Human can take any feat but may want to lean towards ones without a score bump as they most likely will never even the bump out.
+2 Wis Bonus Feat Options:
Fey Touched. Get a free Misty Step and Divination/Enchantment 1st Level Spell with one free cast each. That can be a free Hunter's Mark, or it can be access to Hex.
Shadow Touched. Free Invisibility and Illusion/Necromancy 1st Level Spell with one free cast each. I'd go with False Life for a free temp HP boost every day.
Skill Expert. Another proficiency and get an expertise.
Telekinetic. Mage Hand (or super Mage Hand if you already have it), shove people around as a bonus action to keep them closer to you or force them to move to hit you after you hit them with Booming Blade on your turn.
Telepathic. Give orders mentally, free Detect Thoughts.
Observant. Read lips and more Passive Perception.
V.Human Bonus Feat Options:
Crusher. This is the big one, as if V.Human wasn't already the best race option. You could almost classify this as a third Branch for Booming Ranger. You don't care you're throwing away a +1 Str or Con. Once per turn (meaning your turn or on your reaction) when you hit a creature with bludgeoning damage you get to move them 5 feet away. No save. With Booming Blade this is nuts on reactions. Not only do you hit them with Booming Blade on their turn, you also shove them back 5 feet. If they still want to hit you on their turn, they have to take the extra Booming Blade damage by moving 5 feet. Also if you get a critical with a bludgeoning weapon attack everyone gets advantage against the target until the start of your next turn but that's just a bonus.
Alert. If you're going Gloomstalker, you now have a combined +10 to initiative. And you can't be surprised, and hidden enemies don't get advantage on you.
Eldritch Adept. Congrats, you now have Devil Sight. Or you have Fiendish Vigor which you keep casting until you get the max temp HP whenever you want it.
Elemental Adept. We're banking heavily on Thunder damage, ignoring Thunder resistance is quite nice. And no more 1s on Booming Blade rolls.
Fighting Initiate. Blind Fighting, Defence, Interception, and Protection are all valid options. Particularly the first two.
Lucky. Its the Lucky feat. What more do I say?
Mage Slayer. You are going to be having a high degree of mobility, you may be able to properly use this feat.
Magic Initiate, in case you really wanted another 2 cantrips
Mobile. Works quite well with our whole game plan.
Savage Attacker. Should work with the weapon attack part of Booming Blade for more consistent damage output.
Shield Master. Boost your Dex save, negate damage on successful Dex saves, occasionally knock people down.
Tough. You're a frontliner, more HP is always good.
Resilient. If you really wanna make sure you never drop concentration, add proficiency in Con saves on top of War Caster.
Ranger Subclasses
This is where things start to depend more on if you're going Ranger Build or Hybrid Build. I'm assuming Favoured Foe/Deft Explorer/Primal Awareness/Nature's Veil in all cases, which means given the two Branches we have to work with we're looking at Ranger features up to Level 8, Level 12, and then Level 19 for determining the usefulness of a Subclass for a Booming Ranger. I'll ranking each Subclass by each cutoff point with the colour chart, H8, H12, R19 respectively in terms of value of stopping your Ranger levels at that point (or see it as ranking levels 3-8, then 9-12, then 13-19 while trying to balance what you lose for not continuing with what you gain by having more Cleric levels instead). This section is admittedly the most subjective of them all and can vary a lot based on the game you're in. Take this all with a grain of salt and use more as a general guide for if you have absolutely no idea. But the short answer is you can't go wrong with Gloom Stalker, Fey Wander, or Swarmkeeper no matter what type of Booming Ranger you build.
Beast Master (Tasha's) H8/H12/R19
In short, your pet wants as many Ranger levels as possible. The one level dip is a really nice way to keep your own weapon damage up, and the fact you're focusing heavily on Wis also really helps your pet out. This is an all or nothing subclass not really suited for multiclassing beyond 1 level dips.
Fey Wanderer H8/H12/R19
Dreadful Strikes (3rd): psychic damage is good but the bonus damage is the lowest of the lot, starting at a 1d4 and only increasing to a 1d6. Doesn't require a bonus action though. Fey Wanderer Magic (3rd): Misty Step and Dimension Door are excellent, Dispel Magic can be useful. However unless you're going Ranger Build you're only getting Misty Step. Otherworldly Glamour (3rd): Adding Wis to Cha check is pretty solid, another skill proficiency is good Beguiling Twist (7th): The first half is nice but not amazing for a subclass feature. Because you have a high spell DC however, the second half is situational but more powerful than it normally would be. Fey Reinforcements (11th): Holy crap, concentration free minion if you cast it before a battle, no material component, one free cast a day. Even if it doesn't really fit your build who cares this is just fantastic free minion to absorb hits at the absolute worst. Misty Wanderer (15th): 5 free Misty Steps and you can bring a buddy with you. Don't think I have to explain why this is fantastic.
Gloom Stalker H8/H12/R19
Gloom Stalker Magic (3rd): Generally speaking a more niche list. Greater Invisibility is great level 13, Disguise Self always has a bit of utility and its added to your list for free, Rope Trick can be an emergency hidey hole for your party until the Wizard gets Hut. Dread Ambusher(3rd): Bonus to initiative, first round extra movement + extra attack + extra damage on extra attack. It starts to drop off a little bit once your cantrips get powerful enough but its never a bad option, particularly against targets that you know are going to be difficult to hit and you might prioritize the multiple swings over the higher potential damage Umbra Sight (3rd): Darkvision or increased Darkvision, and making other creatures not see you with Darkvision so you can get more attacks at Advantage for Booming Blade. Technically speaking a minor downside in that your party members can't see you in darkness but who cares that's rarely going to matter. Iron Mind (7th): Proficiency in (most likely) Wisdom Saving throws. While investing heavily in Wis. Is is great. You have proficiency in Str/Dex/Wis, and then War Caster for concentration checks. There's a lot of things you can shake off. Stalker's Flurry (11th): Redo a weapon attack each turn if you miss. Booming Blade calls for a weapon attack. There is room for interpretation here, if your DM rules that you can't keep Booming Blade going while redoing the weapon attack this falls off in usefulness a fair bit. If the DM rules that it works for Booming Blade this is amazing. Shadowy Dodge (15th): Its fighting with your Polearm Master reaction, but its certainly not a bad option to have at all.
Horizon Walker H8/H12/R19 (H8 penalized for missing Haste)
Horizon Walker Magic (3rd): Literally none of these are bad. Haste at 9 is amazing and makes stopping your Ranger levels at 8 highly questionable Detect Portal (3rd): If you're lucky you'll use this once in a campaign Planar Warrior (3rd): Needs your bonus action but makes all of your damage Force damage and adds 1d8/2d8. Very much worth the bonus action to activate frequently. Ethereal Step (7th): Basically a fancy Misty Step but you use your movement options instead of teleporting once per short rest. Prevents you from taking damage most likely until next turn, but you also can't use your reaction to deal damage or be healed by a party member. Requires some thinking but otherwise good. Distant Strike (11th): On paper, this is great. 10 ft teleport with each Attack, and get an extra attack if you targeted two different enemies. The problem is it doesn't work with Booming Blade, and its generally better for a ranged fighter than a melee fighter due to the teleport happening before the attack and not after. Its still not useless but the situations where you take real advantage of this are few and far between. Spectral Defense (15th): Fighting for your Polearm Master reaction slot, but when you need it its a great emergency button. More consistent than Shadowy Dodge but it still means you're taking damage.
Hunter H8/H12/R19 (Penalty for no additional spells granted)
Hunter's Prey (3rd): Its fairly simple here. Did you take Colossus Slayer? Enjoy the free extra 1d8 on most attacks outside of the first round, no bonus action needed. Did you take Giant Killer or Horde Breaker? That was a mistake. Defensive Tactics (7th): Both Escape the Horde and Multiattack Defence are solid options. Don't take Steel Will. Multiattack (11th): Neither option is of either value. Take Whirlwind Attack and fear the day you actually use it. Superior Hunter's Defense (15th): Evasion and Uncanny Dodge are great if showing up a tad later than you would like. Don't touch Stand Against The Tide.
Monster Slayer H8/H12/R19
Monster Slayer Magic (3rd): Its a bit of a weird list. Protection from Evil and Good is good, Banishment is good, Hold Monster is good but showing up really late for being actually useful. Hunter's Sense (3rd): Taking a full action is rather steep. And it really depends on if your DM normally gives out some of this information or not. But in a homebrew heavy campaign it can have its uses? Slayer's Prey (3rd): Only 1d6 extra damage but it sticks to the target without concentration, but it requires a bonus action. Its a mixed bag to be sure and is kinda reliant on you taking more levels in this subclass for its full potential. Supernatural Defense (7th): The fact it's tied to Slayer's Prey is... weird. Makes Slayer's Prey more important but also means this ability itself is more narrow in its scope. Still, extra 1d6 to saving throws and grapple escapes is pretty good. Magic User's Nemesis (11th): If this could be used more than once a short rest this would be fantastic, free counter spell with no spell slot that keys off of your good spell DC. But you only get one shot per short rest and that really limits it. I'd argue in any Ranger build not focusing on Wis this would fall into niche territory. Slayer's Counter (15th): Kinda like Supernatural Defense where the fact its tied to Slayer's Prey both helps Slayer's Prey and hurts this ability. Being able to force the spell effect to go through is great, it would be even better if we could use a ranged weapon.
Swarmkeeper H8/H12/R19
Gathered Swarm (3rd): Straight bonus damage provided you hit as the only condition, shoving them vs your Spell DC, or free disengage? Fantastic. Swarmkeeper Magic (3rd): While not an amazing spell list, you get another cantrip and none of the spells are bad, just maybe slightly lackluster for their level. Withering Tide (7th): Miniature flight/hover for a minute. Its combat use is going to be rather limited but its a way to perhaps sidestep some difficult terrain. Mighty Swarm (11th): Hey you know all of those good ability options you got at 3rd level? We just made them better. More damage, gain prone for advantage, half cover when you want it. Swarming Dispersal (15th): This is the horizon walker's 15th level but better. Resistance + teleport. Limited number of uses yes, but if you have to use it more times than your proficiency bonus between long rests you may be doing something wrong.
Cantrips
Given how many Cantrips you get, its worth organizing them a bit in advance so you can plan properly. Keep in mind, we generally don't want M components for Ranger spells, Clerics can use their shield as a spellcasting focus to get around some Ms
Druid Cantrips (Minus Shillelagh)
Control Flame: Rarely Useful Create Bonfire: Wish it wasn't concentration, but its generally good to have at least one source of fire damage, Dex save is alright Druidcraft: Stereotypical Druid cantrip, occasionally knowing the weather is helpful Frostbite: Inflicting disadvantage is great, low damage and Con save is not so great Guidance: Spell itself is good, might be better saved for a Cleric cantrip slot. Could take it early and then swap it out with your last Ranger level before the Cleric dip Gust: No real use Infestation: M component, not worth putting the weapon away for Magic Stone: Ew concentration and bonus action. Buuuut its one of the few sources of ranged blunt damage in the game? Take if you know your DM likes skeletons in early game. Mending: No in combat use, probably better as a Cleric cantrip pickup. One of those cantrips that's rarely useful but when it is its important bigtime. Mold Earth: Minor utility Poison Spray: Good damage dice, but poison and Con save. Early game only if at all. Primal Savagery: If you go War Caster first, this can be a bridge between then and when you have Polearm Master for Booming Blade. Not great, but not horrible as a reaction spell option early on. Eventually switch it out. Produce Flame: Light source if you have no Darkvision, and ranged fire attack. Valid option. Resistance: M component, concentration, weak effect. No thanks. Shape Water: can be used as a way to carefully get across some bodies of water by freezing and unfreezing. Slow but it works. Thorn Whip: If it wasn't for the M this would be Fantastic. If you get a Ruby of the War Mage you should pick this up so you can keep fleeing enemies in range. Thunderclap: Your one AoE option, and its a Con save. Not that's good, but it exists.
Cleric Cantrips
Guidance: You have 3 of these cantrips and limited options to choose from. This is also, ya know, good. Light: You probably already have a source of light, or Darkvision Mending: See it on Druid cantrip list, probably your 4th Cleric cantrip Resistance: Still bad Sacred Flame: Dex save or take good radiant damage. Good. Spare the Dying: Its overrated. Not horrible, but overrated. Thaumaturgy: Weak utility spell, but only Clerics can have it. A bit stronger than some other ones. Told the Dead: Very good cantrip. High potential damage. Word of Radiance: AoE Con save is pretty bleh
Wizard Cantrips (only listing noteworthy ones outside of Booming Blade, too many to go through)
Chill Touch: Stop healing, make undead miss more, decent damage, great range Firebolt: Good damage, great range, fire damage Green-Flame Blade: Thanks to exact wording it can be used with War Caster + PAM as long as you only let it hit one target. However that means on reactions its always going to be dealing less potential damage than Booming Blade. On the other hand when used on your turn it can sometimes hit multiple targets and sometimes you face monsters immune to thunder damage. Lightning Lure: How Thrown Whip would work in our build if it wasn't an M component. Less range but its fantastic for grabbing people and throwing them back into our Spiritual Guardians range, should work with War Caster I believe? Just not off of PAM. Mage Hand: A good utility spell that every party should have at least one member rocking Mind Sliver: Psychic damage and hurts their next saving throw. Excellent. Ray of Frost: Decent way to slow down an enemy so you can catch them next turn Shocking Grasp: If you want an emergency "get out of range for free" card this is your best option
Ranger Spells
For this section, we need to keep in mind the two Branches as they will impact spell usefulness a little bit. A Ranger Build will only have the standard among of Ranger spellslots while a Hybrid Build will get to upcast beyond the standard Ranger limit. We also still need to keep in mind that mid-combat Ranger M spells are not our friend unless we get lucky with a Loxodon or we're able to talk the DM into giving us a Ruby of the War Mage pretty quickly. Also keep in mind that stopping at level 8 limits you to level 2 Ranger spells, and level 12 limits you to level 3 Ranger spells. Any mentioned for level 4 and 5 are only for the Ranger Build.
Level 1
Absorb Elements: Fantastic. A reaction spell to keep us alive more, offset the fact that our Dex save is going to be slightly lower than a normal Ranger's, and because we focus on melee we can actually make use of the bonus damage next turn. Alarm:Certainly not a first pick, but it is a ritual spell and we get ritual casting. If at some point you feel your party badly needs this and you have your Cleric dip you could take it. Animal Friendship: Flavourful yes, useful no Beast Bond:Most of the time its useless. If you're a Beast Master you might get some use early on from it Cure Wounds: Good? Yes. But better as a Cleric spell. But at the same time if you need healing in the party you can't wait for your dip to grab it. Detect Magic: Its a ritual Cleric spell. You can cast it as a ritual at will once you're a Cleric and you always have it as an Arcana Domain Cleric. Don't waste a Ranger slot on it. Detect Poison and Disease: The number of situations where you're in a game where you want to detect poisons that aren't magical and thus picked up by Detect Magic are next to zero Ensnaring Strike: While its a concentration and bonus action spell which means it has a lot of competition, being able to pin an enemy down for extended periods can be useful. Can hit them with this, and then next turn drop Spirit Guardians to make sure they're hit at least once and it is a small bit of extra damage. Or use it to safely get away from a tough enemy. Entangle: Generating difficult terrain that can also restrain targets? Pretty solid. Concentration hurts a bit. Fog Cloud:Concentration and you can't really take advantage of it. Its mainly an escape button. Goodberry: Pocket emergency "get back up" buttons that also mean your party doesn't need to worry about rations. Depends on if your DM cares about rations a bit, but not a bad spell. Hail of Thorns: We don't use ranged weapons Hunter's Mark: Obviously good. You won't be using it quite as much as a typical Ranger because your bonus action is going to be used a lot, and if you go Hybrid Build you'll also be concentrating on Spiritual Guardians, but you should always pick this spell. Jump: Not needed. Longstrider:Not great but it does last an hour and its not concentration. If you find you're having difficulty getting into melee range quickly enough or you want to have insane movement speed with a Gloomstalker Wood Elf... 50 movement speed on first round of combat if Longstrider was already up? Its at least a fun option to look at. Searing Smite: Concentration and bonus action conflicts, but at least 1d6 extra damage and a chance to continue the 1d6 damage repeatedly or chew up an opponent's action to take care of it. You can combine it with Booming Blade as well. Snare: Too precise, to limited in use Speak with Animals: Not a spell to grab early on, but because you can ritual cast it, you can force the DM to give you a lot of information about the area or what lays ahead. Not detailed, precise information no, but enough to work with. Zephyr Strike: Bonus action and concentration, but no enemy reactions, giving yourself advantage, gain an extra 30 feet of movement one turn? All good stuff.
Level 2
Aid: Aid is fantastic and its a shame its not used more. Increases hit point maximum which means it can still combo with temp HP. Can argue for using it as a Cleric spell instead, but it lasts 8 hours and upcasting it is fine. If the party has more HP they need to be revived less. Animal Messenger: Too niche Barkskin: You already have better AC than this Cordon of Arrows: Bad damage, why are you carrying arrows anyways? Darkvision: You probably already have this taken care of one way or another. Probably. Enhance Ability: Neat, not needed Find Traps: No. Gust of Wind: M spell, not super effective, effect goes against what we want Healing Spirit: Very nice healing spell for patching things up, giving the whole party a small top off. Scales nicely. Lessor Restoration: Decent spell. Probably better as a Cleric spell but if nobody in the party is rocking it no reason it can't be you. Locate Animals or Plants:Very limited in use... but its a ritual spell and there's not that many must haves at Level 2 for our Ranger playstyles. Locate Object: More broad in targeting than Locate Animal or Plants, but its not ritual and has a smaller range. Magic Weapon: We already make our weapon magical, without needing concentration. Also you get this if you go for a Hybrid Build automatically with Arcana Domain. Pass Without Trace: Fantastic spell for helping your party sneak around. Protection from Poison: Very niche, but it does grant a damage resistance Silence: On one hand, muting enemy spellcasters is good. On the other hand, see that bit about no thunder damage? That's a problem for us. Spike Growth: Damage and difficult terrain is good, as is the range, but its an M component spell. At best we'd be casting it before combat. Summon Beast: Worth putting your weapon away for. Another body to absorb damage, deal damage, upcasts with our Cleric slots well
Level 3
Conjure Animals: Not as good as Summon Beast, and it can very wildly by how your DM handles it. But it can generate a whole flock of bodies to aid you. Conjure Barrage: Not really our thing to be doing, but we're lacking AoE options and this one is relatively cheap. Does require an M part however. Daylight: Don't need it Elemental Weapon: Bit of a weird choice, and I think you'd have to cast it before Shillelagh based on the wording, but you might be able to make it work. Its an extra 1d6 damage each hit and hopefully hitting elemental weaknesses if you pick it up. Flame Arrows: We don't use ranged Lightning Arrow: We don't use ranged Meld into Stone: Save it for Cleric ritual casting Nondetection: Don't need it Plant Growth: Depends on your location too much, but when it works its a great way of slowing the enemy down to keep them in Spirit Guardians range Revivify: Any character that can take Revivify should unless you already got 3 sources of it in the party Speak with Plants: Very niche, if you want more information on an area you could go with this? Summon Fey: One of the weaker summoning spells but its still a very good spell Water Breathing: Combine with your Cleric ritual casting and your party no longer fears water. Water Walk: Same general idea as above, but Clerics can learn it and frankly Water Breathing is more useful Wind Wall:Can occasionally be useful to disrupt an enemy formation/plan, but its an M spell and concentration.
Level 4
Conjure Woodland Beings: If your DM lets you get away with choosing the free polymorph beings, congrats you win. Even if they don't allow that however, still a very powerful spell. Dominate Beast: Not a lot of beast type enemies left by this point, but if it works on what beast enemies you run into by this level it can be helping out a lot Freedom of Movement: Keep your speed up, can't be paralyzed, can't be restrained, break out of restrains easily. All good stuff and its not even concentration. Grasping Vine: Lack of damage or restraining kills it Stoneskin: Showing up far too late Summon Elemental: Pretty solid summon
Level 5
Commune with Nature: Combining this with ritual casting can let you constantly get a whole lot of information about large areas. Conjure Volley: See Conjure Barrage Greater Restoration: Pretty reasonable spell to have, multiple party members with it is hardly bad either Steel Wind Strike: Fantastic spell for sticking with Ranger. The M component is simply your weapon so no difficulties there. Good damage, hits multiple targets, and lets you teleport. Swift Quiver: We don't use ranged. Tree Stride: You could theoretically combine this with Plant Growth. Probably not worth it, but you could. Wrath of Nature: Has a wide range of variance, but it can do a whole lot for you.
Cleric Spells
Unlike Ranger spells, you can swap these out freely each day so I'm not going to go into detail about them. Pick the ones that suits your situation. However, I will list a few in particular you should keep on your person.
Bless. Bless is simply good. If you're ever in a situation where you need to focus more on party support rather than damage, this is the spell you're dropping. You and the team Cleric can get the entire party Blessed and ready to go.
Guiding Bolt: Good damage, long range, gain Advantage
Inflict Wounds: You're all about high damage, and this is one of the highest damage spells you can use.
Healing Word: A good way to squeeze out a little bit of healing to somebody with your bonus action
---Level 2 and Above for Hybrid Builds---
Spiritual Weapon: it uses your bonus action but it lets you be quasi in two places at once
Spirit Guardians: this is the whole reason why you went for Hybrid Build, and its where most of your 3+ level slots are going
Spirit Shroud: if you don't need AoE at all, Spirit Shroud may be of more use to you than Spirit Guardians. Add damage, reduce movement speed
Banishment: just a fantastic spell period
This is my first time trying to make a guide like this. Please feel free to (nicely) provide feedback/corrections/additions.
I am currently playing a Forest Gnome Gloom Stalker/Arcana Cleric who uses the Boom. I did not go the Druidic fighter shillelagh route, but went with conventional shield and spear with Polearm Master. Current 4/1. Note I do not recommend the Gnome part necessarily. The advantage on the non physical saving throws is great, but gnomes are difficult.
Advantages: Chill Touch means not having to carry a bow and figure out the don/doff shield rules. Sheath your sword. 120 ft range is far better than any thrown weapon. With Umbral Sight on the Gnome I have 90 ft Darkvision so I can Chill Touch with Advantage from a fair distance in the dark. Chill Touch stops regenerating Hit Points.
AC. I am up to 19 AC with breastplate and shield and defense fighting style. I can stand in front and get missed a lot. Since melee Rangers can't get out of combat easily (no cunning action) its critical to either fire from distance or have an AC to hold up.
Bless. We don't have a cleric so the ability to bless in the right fight is huge. And when you upcast bless so you get 4 party members you can put out a ton of damage. We ran into an Umber Hulk and between the ability to hit its high AC and make the every round saves it probably saved the party.
PAM master attacks. The reaction attacks are awesome to help whittle down a mob, and the spear butt is great when you get to add Hunter's Mark to it.
Extra Upcastable slots. There are a ton of spells that work so much better when cast at higher level. Healing Spirit cast one level higher is healing 2d6 instead of 1d6. And you have no choice but to upcast something into those slots. Enjoy.
Detect magic - Ritual. Ritual casting is great. In general adding the cleric spells means you don't feel as boxed in by the spells known mechanic, and the ritual mechanic saves spell slots.
Negatives I have seen so far with my Booming Ranger:
1. The Boom is not quite as useful until you get warcaster if you prioritize Polearm Master first. Sacrificing two attacks once you get to 5th level Ranger (2nd attack and 1d4 Polearm attack) if you have Hunter's Mark going is a large sacrifice. Your Reaction attacks can't use the Boom until you get Warcaster so if you are 5/1 you have another 3 levels to get the Boom back going again. NOTE when you are 1/1, 2/1, 3/1 the BOOM is great and makes you much stronger.
2. Delaying extra attacks is painful. 4/1 with PAM is painful as you can tell you don't have extra attack and you gave up 2nd level spells to do this. BUT... usually the other spells you have gotten from Arcana make up for it.
3. The decision after 5/1 is hard. You NEED warcaster. Do you go to 5/4, or 8/1? Anything in between and you delay warcaster and the boom goes mostly silent.
4. BOOM is LOUD. As soon as you start booming you will attract attention. Stealth and infiltration becomes difficult.
I had a Polearm Master & Warcaster build before that used Booming Blade, I would check with your DM that your game will have regular and tactical combat - otherwise you might as well not bother. Sure enemies approaching you will suffer a hit, but in a year and a quarter of campaign, only two enemies ever provoked an opportunity attack from me.
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D&D, Youth Work and the Priesthood sadly do not typically interact... I do what I can!
A thought on feats. If you go fey touched ponder taking Hex instead of Hunter's Mark. Most of the rules are the same, but you get the Hex on ability checks, and Hex adds to your ranged cantrips and guiding bolt as well instead of just weapon attacks. You lose the tracking ability, but honestly I haven't used that yet.
I am not sure the best build (for Ranger/Arcana Cleric) is Boom yet from playing it, but I am not doing the shillelagh approach either. On the shillelagh front you are severely bonus action cramped with getting things prepped and using PAM. For this reason I have chosen not to go Shield Master in the future. I will almost always have something better to do with my bonus action.
By the way nice work going through this all. From playing it, its a really fun build, and if you are in a party with no cleric you can add back in a lot of those abilities with minimal cost and still feel like a Ranger. (except for the Boom not being stealthy, not very Rangery, but its a lot of fun).
I had a Polearm Master & Warcaster build before that used Booming Blade, I would check with your DM that your game will have regular and tactical combat - otherwise you might as well not bother. Sure enemies approaching you will suffer a hit, but in a year and a quarter of campaign, only two enemies ever provoked an opportunity attack from me.
100% agree. You will get attacks as enemies move in with PAM. Think every other round in the beginning of a fight. But I have never gotten an opp attack in any other way.
Wow you committed a lot of time to breaking this down. Couple questions:
1. Why does it matter if Booming Blade comes from the Wisdom spellcasting stat if it doesn’t affect it?
2. I thought with the changes, Booming Blade no longer worked with Warcaster, was I wrong?
1. Good question! Probably should have been worded slightly better on my part: everything being tied to Wis (spell casting, and melee attacks) is to keep the build from getting MAD heavy. Remember, Booming Blade requires a melee attack to hit first, and if you go Hybrid you are also using Spiritual Guardians a lot and thus want a high DC. So the Wis tying is to ensure high accuracy on your Quarterstaff attack while keeping your spell outputs at high as possible. Most Rangers only want the 13/14 Wis and mostly ignore damaging spells/spells that need a good DC, hence the meme about them only using Hunter's Mark. Booming Ranger aims to use spells effectively. If we weren't using Shillelagh we'd have to spread stats highly among Dex, Con, and Wis, with both Dex and Wis wanting to hit 20 which leaves no room for traits, possibly high Str as well if you aren't using ranged/finesse weapons. With both melee and spells tied to Wis we only need one stat maxed out (and Dex only needs to hit 14 for max AC).
Its also to me, the best way to fit in PAM. You're other realistic option is a Spear unless you want to give up a Shield in which case your AC is not great for frontlining.
2. As explained by Elfdope, they do actually still work. The part that doesn't work with the old combo anymore is Spell Sniper, that got killed due to the wording change. You also have to make sure that it only hits one target, so Green-Flame Blade is weaker.
And I certainly agree that you need PAM to get the reaction attacks. Enemies rarely move out of engagement range without a way to disengage.
Thanks for the feedback you two, particularly Elfdope since you helped out in the initial topic. Do agree that you're Bonus Action heavy, though at the same time I feel if you're going Hybrid instead of Ranger you're not trying to get Hunter's Mark out there as much which helps to alleviate things.
Yeah Booming Blade is not affected in the least by whatever your spellcasting stat is - you could pick it up from a racial trait and it would still be Wisdom to hit thanks to Shillelagh.
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D&D, Youth Work and the Priesthood sadly do not typically interact... I do what I can!
Awesome stuff Niddo. Really appreciate all the effort you put into this. Happy to see you so enthused about the Crusher interactions. I love that shit.
Cheeky: You're absolutely right about Booming Blade. No wisdom necessary. BUT, the arcana cleric does have potent spellcasting at level 8. If that is something that the player thinks they will get to in their campaign, then it makes sense to use the domain to pick up the attack cantrips.
Niddo: Unfortunately, I think that means the guide should be opened up quite a bit, unless you want to change it from being about Booming Rangers in general to specifically Booming Ranger/Arcana Clerics. A Booming Ranger could be multi-classed in a number of ways to get BB, or just grab it from a race/feat.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like this is a guide for Shillelagh Rangers as much as its about Booming Blade. This archetype could easily support a strength build using a different weapon with enough wisdom to qualify for the classes. Elfdope's character is a great example.
Considering Shillelagh Rangers are much more viable now with Druidic Warrior, I think this could be an interesting direction to take the guide that cares about demonstrating Ranger builds that present something different than the typical.
Why WIS? It doesn't seem you are using WIS much beyond the attacks anyway....so why not just build a STR Ranger and get more damage/range/attacks with a Halberd?
If you are going for stuff like Spirit guardians you would need quite a few levels for this to "come online" as it were...especially with the feat tax of the build. You have 2 feats to get this to work (War Caster and PAM) which means you are keeping your main stat (WIS in this case) at 16 for a LONG time.
Ranger 3/Cleric 5 to get to Spirit Guardians which means level 8 ...meaning you have 1 ASI/Feat in there.
If you go straight ranger to 8 then to cleric...then you really are not benefiting from that extra WIS at all.
All in all its an interesting build...but seems like its generally worse than just going with STR options to achieve the same goal. At least with STR you can swing twice with extra attack.
What I would compare this to:
Level 8 STR Ranger: V. Human
You pick Hunter Ranger and PAM as your starting feat.
At lv. 4 ASI you pick up Sentinel
At lv. 8 ASI you move STR to 18.
You still make things stop in their tracks when they enter your reach (now 10 ft instead of 5ft)
You do more damage on the first round of combat (Halberd = 2d10+8 damage + 2d6 (hunters mark) + 1d8 Colossus = 30.5 average damage ) vs (Staff = 1d8+3 Bludgeoning + 1d8 Thunder + 1d8 Colossus= 16.5 average damage ) and you can actually use the PAM BA attack on subsequent turns where as you can never use the BA PAM attack with the Boomer Blade build as you do not use the Attack action...you use the Cast a Spell action which will not proc the PAM attack per the feat.
Bascially you would have to be able to consistently get Spirit guardian off BEFORE combat started to get close to the same damage as you would get to add 13.5 damage (3d8) to the damage of the Boomer blade build but that still puts at about even or behind the STR build.
Now if you are talking utility you are one level away as a ranger to getting Conjure Animals and other 3rd level ranger spells vs. you have all the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level cleric spells which is going to be more verstiale and give you quite a bit of extra help to the party.
If THAT is the focus of the build it makes sense as it does add a lot to the party....but honestly I would rather just pick V.Human, pick druid initiate, and go full cleric as I would be one level away from 5th level cleric spells which are crazy good.
Honestly I guess I am struggling to see the appeal of this build.
My read on why Wisdom is to minimize the MAD nature of the Ranger. A strength Ranger ends up with Str (as high as it can go), Dex (to 14 for medium armor), Con (for hit points), and Wis (for spells). Trying to get all those in the 14+ range is MAD so you have to sacrifice one of them. This build removes Str from the equation, so you can concentrate on Dex, Con, and Wis with no real impact on your ability to hit or do damage.
I agree that the Boom might be less advantageous at certain levels. The Variant human is really easy to see how it works. Its a little harder with others as you wait for warcaster to come on line at 9th level. The shillelagh build in general (regardless of booming blade) is a very interesting deviation from the normal strength based melee ranger and no longer requires a feat to pull off. The combination with Arcana cleric is pretty advantageous for a one level dip, and long term the Ranger/Cleric hybrid has always been an interesting build. When you add in that you can get Shillelagh to max your wisdom and feed into that hybrid gets interesting.
For my character its not about straight damage. Its about utility to the party. We don't have a cleric and I despise the spells known mechanic for Rangers. Going with the arcana/booming blade/chill touch augments my damage and simplifies my hands. I also get a bunch of cleric spells that help the party and increase my options on what to cast on a daily basis.
My read on why Wisdom is to minimize the MAD nature of the Ranger. A strength Ranger ends up with Str (as high as it can go), Dex (to 14 for medium armor), Con (for hit points), and Wis (for spells). Trying to get all those in the 14+ range is MAD so you have to sacrifice one of them. This build removes Str from the equation, so you can concentrate on Dex, Con, and Wis with no real impact on your ability to hit or do damage.
I agree that the Boom might be less advantageous at certain levels. The Variant human is really easy to see how it works. Its a little harder with others as you wait for warcaster to come on line at 9th level. The shillelagh build in general (regardless of booming blade) is a very interesting deviation from the normal strength based melee ranger and no longer requires a feat to pull off. The combination with Arcana cleric is pretty advantageous for a one level dip, and long term the Ranger/Cleric hybrid has always been an interesting build. When you add in that you can get Shillelagh to max your wisdom and feed into that hybrid gets interesting.
For my character its not about straight damage. Its about utility to the party. We don't have a cleric and I despise the spells known mechanic for Rangers. Going with the arcana/booming blade/chill touch augments my damage and simplifies my hands. I also get a bunch of cleric spells that help the party and increase my options on what to cast on a daily basis.
At that point if its utility....why not just go full cleric? You would have much more utility as a full cleric than this hybrid as you would get higher level spells and more cleric class features.
I just do not see why this would be better than a Booming Blade Full Cleric that uses heavy armor.
I did say up front this probably isn't dealing as much damage as some of the super optimal builds. The fact that it gets close to matching the optimal builds while Spirit Guardians is up frankly I feel is a good achievement given I only started playing DnD back in Sept. As for advantages for going with this instead of pure Cleric: more HP (better for frontlining), Roving, and frankly Ranger Subclasses have better abilities for frontlining than most Clerics do while still having a high amount of utility. More than enough I feel to be a fair trade (little bit lowered utility, more frontline bulk). I also feel this is still extremely good for Beast Master Ranger because Beast Master wants to go all in with Wis but doesn't particularly want to get Ranger level 20 because its a pretty bad capstone.
I did end up with some tunnel vision on this one however due to building for the West Marches I'm in in particular. Having at least off healing is extremely helpful there. If I was to expand this out a bit more while dropping the healing, combing with Eldritch Knight is very interesting. Should be able to Booming Blade + followup attack if invested enough in Eldritch Knight. Or use the Level 6 ASI on a different Fighter Subclass to get Booming Blade one way or another. I looked at other sources for grabbing Booming Blade and its... mixed. The problem is the multiclassing with Sorc or Warlock requires 13 Cha which hurts the whole point of focusing on Wis to avoid MAD issues.
Trying to expand this out to just Shillelagh Ranger is obviously doable but uh, massive in scope and would take more free time than I have access to.
There are some racial options to make this a single class build: high elf, high half elf, v human/custom lineage with magic initiate. You already mention magic initiate, but I think it should be given more emphasis as a way to enable the whole build, not just add utility to it.
EK's have been doing this routine forever, so it's certainly not new information that absolutely needs to be added. That's a big part of why I mentioned that it's really Shillelagh that is the unique aspect of the guide. Absolutely agree that is a lot of work. I'm certainly not trying to do it lol. I think it could be touched upon in a more obvious way without writing a whole thesis about it.
I think wizard is worth mentioning. The ritual casting adds an immense amount of utility and intelligence actually boosts some quintessential ranger skills (investigation and nature). I think it can be worked in a way that makes up for needing 13 intelligence.
Optimus: I think it's much more useful to compare this idea to other Rangers, as opposed to single classed Clerics. Most of these builds will start with 5 levels of ranger I imagine, simply setting up extra attack and explorer skills. The booming blade attacks happen almost exclusively on AoO's, just like the EK builds that use this tactic. I think cleric has plenty to offer to the ranger kit that makes it contend with the weaker spots in the Ranger leveling.
Funnily enough though, I just submitted a build to Yurei's Throwdown that is built around this concept without stressing extra attack. Made me chuckle when I saw this thread. I'm actually quite fond of it, but I'm not going to say it's better than a straight cleric or straight ranger. Just a cool collection of abilities. I really like how swarmkeeper plays with the cantrip attacks, and I had a lot of fun with the character and flavoring non ranger spells through the lens of his swarm.
I built it to be solid at 3 (level 1 and 2 are a mess anyways. Loveable, but a mess), come online at 5 and play well through tier 2 and 3 without caring much about the endgame power level. Is it a powerhouse? Nah. Do I think it could be super fun at the table? Hell yeah. I think that is a lot of what this multiclass has going for it.
Going Wizard is technically a possibility, specifically Bladesinger I feel with the ability to use a Cantrip as part of Extra Attack, but the score distribution gets messy fast. While you strictly don't need more than 13 Int, so many things key off of it for Bladesinger that it feels bad to not invest more in it. But then you need Wis, Int, Dex, and Con going and it gets awkward. Before including race bonuses you're looking at 8/14/12/14/8/15. You can probably get away with only 14 Int as it means Bladesong gives you a Shield when active, so maybe -1Int +1Dex for the initial stats and then +1Wis/Int for V.Human stats, but its still begging for a lot of things. Honestly if you're going to combine Ranger and Bladesinger you're better off dropping Shillelagh, going 8/15/12/15/8/13, +1Dex/Int, and going from there.
Maybe Abjuration? Not amazing but it keys off of a lot of non-damaging stuff and its features are extra HP basically. War Wizard is non-horrible but Power Surge just sucks.
Cantrips - Booming Blade, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation
Spells - Find Familiar, Detect Magic, Identify, Unseen Servant, Shield, Absorb Elements (much better grabbing it here than with a precious ranger spell).
That's a sweet little package if you're that interested in booming blade already.
Diviner is my pick for subclass if you go any further. Nothing like a good old portent. Bladesinger is the exact opposite of what you want because you want the bare minimum of intelligence and your bonus action is clogged enough. Necromancer seems like fun if you know you're going to get to higher levels and are thinking about a lot of wizard levels. You wouldn't mature into an army building necromancer until level 11 unless you don't go for extra attack, but the utility and support value in the spell list up to that point is there. Animate Dead doesn't care about intelligence and as a PAM warrior, you can actively protect your skellingtons as they plink plink away.
I'm a big fan of the Ranger Class. Just for laughs, is it possible for you to sketch out IRL Rangers, like Army Rangers, Texas/Arizona Rangers, Space Rangers, etc.?
Some jokes for you:
The only thing I learned when I tried to whittle was I didn't even have a whittle talent for it.
Hikers in the city must be careful crossing the street...and never cross a bear.
If I commanded a tank I'd call it Rommel-Lama-Ding-Dong
News columnists...column like they see 'em.
Filthy rich or dirt poor - why do both involve soil?
Thieves are stealth-possessed.
If SNL's Dana Carvey's Church Lady was also an interior designer: "Well...Isn't that spatial?"
If it was announced the world would end soon I'd stop recycling.
During the time of the pharaohs when a woman became pregnant she announced she'd begun the process of Mamafication.
Hey, I have much respect for how that Wild Nile civilization planned for the Next Life: Them Gizas left nothing to chance!
Finally (and I hope you're sitting down for this): 19 November is both International Men's Day & World Toilet Day - coincidence, or joyful irony?
Thanks for playing along - May all your rolls be Nat-20's ;)
first where is the arcana domain i need to pick it up.
the build looks interesting with some possibilities - ill try a few builds after i get the arcana domain.
thanks for the puns - they are terrible *in the best way). doing a military ranger/ sf guy is basically just doing a ranger. doing the tx/az ranger is callig for the shootist/ gunslinger which means dm approval but if you get it it shouldn't be that hard.
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Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
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Intro
With the release of Tasha's, a new way to play Rangers has snuck in. I've spent a number of weeks playing around with the various ways to set things up for a new type of Ranger (some of you may have noticed me asking for some advice here, and I've also asked around a bit on the West Marches server I play in, The Forged Concordance). While something roughly this build was possible before, it would have required multiclassing twice and a loss of ASI, while just being all around more clunky. I believe what we have on our hands here is something that adds a very different flavour to a melee based Ranger while still being cohesive and will let you stand out at your DnD table when the ball gets rolling.
I recognize that its entirely possible that somebody else has already come up with this combination before I did, but I've... not really seen any discussion on it around DnD Beyond or show up in any of the DnD youtubers who I watch. So if it is already out in the wild, its not wide spread and most likely doesn't have a guide breaking it down.
I also recognize that its entirely likely that a Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter build probably has a damage output. What I believe I have here is something that's still viable damage output wise even if not fighting for top DPS Ranger build option, while being different from other Ranger builds.
Branches
To be more specific with this new Ranger playstyle, there's actually two ways to set this up: a 1 level dip and an 8/12 split. While the two options are similar to start off, by the end the pieces surrounding the core components are quite different and lead into different "branches" of this playing style. For simplicities sake I'll refer to these two ranches as "Ranger Build" and "Hybrid Build" respectively.
Core Components
The list of the core components list is short, but as the pieces fall into place the general style of the build should make sense:
General Combat Concept
If you're going with the Ranger Build, you're more or less doing Ranger things but with Booming Blade. Use Booming Blade for your regular attack action whenever it makes sense to do so, use the combination of War Caster and Polearm Master to hit people moving into your range with Booming Blade, if they were going to move past you they are no longer going to do so unless they want to take the additional damage. You also get to have a couple of level 1 Cleric spells every day at the ready that you can swap out daily for a little bit more flexibility within your party makeup and needs. This is basically for people who want to feel like they're playing a better Ranger without doing the same old same old GWM/Sharpshooter stuff.
With the Hybrid Build, you're looking to do a lot of Ranger stuff, but also leverage some Cleric aspects like Spirit Guardians. Run up to a guy and Booming Blade him: he moves out of Spirit Guardian range he takes extra Booming Blade damage. He stays still to avoid the Booming Blade and he's taking Spirit Guardian damage. You also get more spell slots: a Ranger 12/Cleric 8 split gets a 6th and 7th spell slot while a Ranger 8/Cleric 12 split also gets an 8th slot. You also get access to Channel Divinity, Spellbreaker, Potent Spellcasting (which combines with Booming Blade for extra damage), an extra Cleric cantrip, two Harness Divine Powers, Destroy Undead, and potentially a little bit of Divine Intervention. This is for people who want something that's fairly unique in terms of blend of martial and magic frontlining, with no real dead levels outside of maybe Ranger 5 where you get Extra Attack as at best its equal to Booming Blade depending on where you get what level. This is also for people who like Rangers but want to have options outside of "Hunter's Mark and a few other odds and ends" for spells. You go Hybrid Build, your Hunter's Mark use is probably cut in half.
Also in either case you're having at least 2 Druid Cantrips, 2 Wizard Cantrips (that count as Cleric), and 3 Cleric cantrips. And you get Ritual Casting along with the Domain Spells. That's a lot of additional flexibility for a Ranger who normally only gets 2 cantrips at at most.
Level Progression Pathing
Ultimately, this comes down to your preferences and bit with what your party needs in the short term. I would personally recommend getting Ranger up to 8 to grab the two feats that really let this build swing, then dip into Cleric. From there it depends on how many Cleric levels you want and when you want certain Cleric features over certain Ranger features. Alternatively you could grab the Cleric dip at level 5 if you're a Variant Human.
Stat Spread
So given these core pieces, how should we go about point distribution? Depends a bit on your game's method of character building as well as the race you pick but roughly speaking:
Races
This is going to be assuming you can't freely swap the stat bonuses around for the races. If you can pick virtually whatever you like. For those of you not in that situation however I'm going to point out the standout, or at least interesting, options. For them to be worth even considering they need to have +2 Wis, or +2 Dex/Con and +1 Wis with a few exceptions. I'll be using the following colour scheme for this section and following sections:
Fantastic Option: Should be one of your first choices
Good Choice: A perfectly reasonable option that's still above average
Average: Pros and Cons balance out, nothing wrong with taking it but its not optimal
Niche: In certain campaigns/party makeups this might be a worthwhile option but generally its not. Alternatively it has one thing at least worth mentioning and maybe you'll like to play off of it in particular
Bad: I can't make you not take it but I really highly recommend against it
Given the sheer number of races I'll only be going over Average and up
Additional Feats
There are two situations where you can reasonably get more feats than War Caster and PAM: Variant Human and If you started with a +2 Wis race and maxed Wis out for 17 at start. Maxing out Wis is important and you have 5 ASI with 2 already spoken for. Technically speaking every Booming Ranger can get a 3rd feat if they want, but not until literally level 20 at which point it doesn't really matter what you take and you might be better off just going for +2 Con instead for the concentration and HP boost. For the previously two mentioned situations however, we can look at a 3rd feat that can be taken mid game, though with different criteria/thoughts behind them: The +2 Wis race has to take a feat with +1 Wis added to it, and V.Human can take any feat but may want to lean towards ones without a score bump as they most likely will never even the bump out.
+2 Wis Bonus Feat Options:
V.Human Bonus Feat Options:
Ranger Subclasses
This is where things start to depend more on if you're going Ranger Build or Hybrid Build. I'm assuming Favoured Foe/Deft Explorer/Primal Awareness/Nature's Veil in all cases, which means given the two Branches we have to work with we're looking at Ranger features up to Level 8, Level 12, and then Level 19 for determining the usefulness of a Subclass for a Booming Ranger. I'll ranking each Subclass by each cutoff point with the colour chart, H8, H12, R19 respectively in terms of value of stopping your Ranger levels at that point (or see it as ranking levels 3-8, then 9-12, then 13-19 while trying to balance what you lose for not continuing with what you gain by having more Cleric levels instead). This section is admittedly the most subjective of them all and can vary a lot based on the game you're in. Take this all with a grain of salt and use more as a general guide for if you have absolutely no idea. But the short answer is you can't go wrong with Gloom Stalker, Fey Wander, or Swarmkeeper no matter what type of Booming Ranger you build.
Beast Master (Tasha's) H8/H12/R19
In short, your pet wants as many Ranger levels as possible. The one level dip is a really nice way to keep your own weapon damage up, and the fact you're focusing heavily on Wis also really helps your pet out. This is an all or nothing subclass not really suited for multiclassing beyond 1 level dips.
Fey Wanderer H8/H12/R19
Dreadful Strikes (3rd): psychic damage is good but the bonus damage is the lowest of the lot, starting at a 1d4 and only increasing to a 1d6. Doesn't require a bonus action though.
Fey Wanderer Magic (3rd): Misty Step and Dimension Door are excellent, Dispel Magic can be useful. However unless you're going Ranger Build you're only getting Misty Step.
Otherworldly Glamour (3rd): Adding Wis to Cha check is pretty solid, another skill proficiency is good
Beguiling Twist (7th): The first half is nice but not amazing for a subclass feature. Because you have a high spell DC however, the second half is situational but more powerful than it normally would be.
Fey Reinforcements (11th): Holy crap, concentration free minion if you cast it before a battle, no material component, one free cast a day. Even if it doesn't really fit your build who cares this is just fantastic free minion to absorb hits at the absolute worst.
Misty Wanderer (15th): 5 free Misty Steps and you can bring a buddy with you. Don't think I have to explain why this is fantastic.
Gloom Stalker H8/H12/R19
Gloom Stalker Magic (3rd): Generally speaking a more niche list. Greater Invisibility is great level 13, Disguise Self always has a bit of utility and its added to your list for free, Rope Trick can be an emergency hidey hole for your party until the Wizard gets Hut.
Dread Ambusher (3rd): Bonus to initiative, first round extra movement + extra attack + extra damage on extra attack. It starts to drop off a little bit once your cantrips get powerful enough but its never a bad option, particularly against targets that you know are going to be difficult to hit and you might prioritize the multiple swings over the higher potential damage
Umbra Sight (3rd): Darkvision or increased Darkvision, and making other creatures not see you with Darkvision so you can get more attacks at Advantage for Booming Blade. Technically speaking a minor downside in that your party members can't see you in darkness but who cares that's rarely going to matter.
Iron Mind (7th): Proficiency in (most likely) Wisdom Saving throws. While investing heavily in Wis. Is is great. You have proficiency in Str/Dex/Wis, and then War Caster for concentration checks. There's a lot of things you can shake off.
Stalker's Flurry (11th): Redo a weapon attack each turn if you miss. Booming Blade calls for a weapon attack. There is room for interpretation here, if your DM rules that you can't keep Booming Blade going while redoing the weapon attack this falls off in usefulness a fair bit. If the DM rules that it works for Booming Blade this is amazing.
Shadowy Dodge (15th): Its fighting with your Polearm Master reaction, but its certainly not a bad option to have at all.
Horizon Walker H8/H12/R19 (H8 penalized for missing Haste)
Horizon Walker Magic (3rd): Literally none of these are bad. Haste at 9 is amazing and makes stopping your Ranger levels at 8 highly questionable
Detect Portal (3rd): If you're lucky you'll use this once in a campaign
Planar Warrior (3rd): Needs your bonus action but makes all of your damage Force damage and adds 1d8/2d8. Very much worth the bonus action to activate frequently.
Ethereal Step (7th): Basically a fancy Misty Step but you use your movement options instead of teleporting once per short rest. Prevents you from taking damage most likely until next turn, but you also can't use your reaction to deal damage or be healed by a party member. Requires some thinking but otherwise good.
Distant Strike (11th): On paper, this is great. 10 ft teleport with each Attack, and get an extra attack if you targeted two different enemies. The problem is it doesn't work with Booming Blade, and its generally better for a ranged fighter than a melee fighter due to the teleport happening before the attack and not after. Its still not useless but the situations where you take real advantage of this are few and far between.
Spectral Defense (15th): Fighting for your Polearm Master reaction slot, but when you need it its a great emergency button. More consistent than Shadowy Dodge but it still means you're taking damage.
Hunter H8/H12/R19 (Penalty for no additional spells granted)
Hunter's Prey (3rd): Its fairly simple here. Did you take Colossus Slayer? Enjoy the free extra 1d8 on most attacks outside of the first round, no bonus action needed. Did you take Giant Killer or Horde Breaker? That was a mistake.
Defensive Tactics (7th): Both Escape the Horde and Multiattack Defence are solid options. Don't take Steel Will.
Multiattack (11th): Neither option is of either value. Take Whirlwind Attack and fear the day you actually use it.
Superior Hunter's Defense (15th): Evasion and Uncanny Dodge are great if showing up a tad later than you would like. Don't touch Stand Against The Tide.
Monster Slayer H8/H12/R19
Monster Slayer Magic (3rd): Its a bit of a weird list. Protection from Evil and Good is good, Banishment is good, Hold Monster is good but showing up really late for being actually useful.
Hunter's Sense (3rd): Taking a full action is rather steep. And it really depends on if your DM normally gives out some of this information or not. But in a homebrew heavy campaign it can have its uses?
Slayer's Prey (3rd): Only 1d6 extra damage but it sticks to the target without concentration, but it requires a bonus action. Its a mixed bag to be sure and is kinda reliant on you taking more levels in this subclass for its full potential.
Supernatural Defense (7th): The fact it's tied to Slayer's Prey is... weird. Makes Slayer's Prey more important but also means this ability itself is more narrow in its scope. Still, extra 1d6 to saving throws and grapple escapes is pretty good.
Magic User's Nemesis (11th): If this could be used more than once a short rest this would be fantastic, free counter spell with no spell slot that keys off of your good spell DC. But you only get one shot per short rest and that really limits it. I'd argue in any Ranger build not focusing on Wis this would fall into niche territory.
Slayer's Counter (15th): Kinda like Supernatural Defense where the fact its tied to Slayer's Prey both helps Slayer's Prey and hurts this ability. Being able to force the spell effect to go through is great, it would be even better if we could use a ranged weapon.
Swarmkeeper H8/H12/R19
Gathered Swarm (3rd): Straight bonus damage provided you hit as the only condition, shoving them vs your Spell DC, or free disengage? Fantastic.
Swarmkeeper Magic (3rd): While not an amazing spell list, you get another cantrip and none of the spells are bad, just maybe slightly lackluster for their level.
Withering Tide (7th): Miniature flight/hover for a minute. Its combat use is going to be rather limited but its a way to perhaps sidestep some difficult terrain.
Mighty Swarm (11th): Hey you know all of those good ability options you got at 3rd level? We just made them better. More damage, gain prone for advantage, half cover when you want it.
Swarming Dispersal (15th): This is the horizon walker's 15th level but better. Resistance + teleport. Limited number of uses yes, but if you have to use it more times than your proficiency bonus between long rests you may be doing something wrong.
Cantrips
Given how many Cantrips you get, its worth organizing them a bit in advance so you can plan properly. Keep in mind, we generally don't want M components for Ranger spells, Clerics can use their shield as a spellcasting focus to get around some Ms
Control Flame: Rarely Useful
Create Bonfire: Wish it wasn't concentration, but its generally good to have at least one source of fire damage, Dex save is alright
Druidcraft: Stereotypical Druid cantrip, occasionally knowing the weather is helpful
Frostbite: Inflicting disadvantage is great, low damage and Con save is not so great
Guidance: Spell itself is good, might be better saved for a Cleric cantrip slot. Could take it early and then swap it out with your last Ranger level before the Cleric dip
Gust: No real use
Infestation: M component, not worth putting the weapon away for
Magic Stone: Ew concentration and bonus action. Buuuut its one of the few sources of ranged blunt damage in the game? Take if you know your DM likes skeletons in early game.
Mending: No in combat use, probably better as a Cleric cantrip pickup. One of those cantrips that's rarely useful but when it is its important bigtime.
Mold Earth: Minor utility
Poison Spray: Good damage dice, but poison and Con save. Early game only if at all.
Primal Savagery: If you go War Caster first, this can be a bridge between then and when you have Polearm Master for Booming Blade. Not great, but not horrible as a reaction spell option early on. Eventually switch it out.
Produce Flame: Light source if you have no Darkvision, and ranged fire attack. Valid option.
Resistance: M component, concentration, weak effect. No thanks.
Shape Water: can be used as a way to carefully get across some bodies of water by freezing and unfreezing. Slow but it works.
Thorn Whip: If it wasn't for the M this would be Fantastic. If you get a Ruby of the War Mage you should pick this up so you can keep fleeing enemies in range.
Thunderclap: Your one AoE option, and its a Con save. Not that's good, but it exists.
Cleric Cantrips
Guidance: You have 3 of these cantrips and limited options to choose from. This is also, ya know, good.
Light: You probably already have a source of light, or Darkvision
Mending: See it on Druid cantrip list, probably your 4th Cleric cantrip
Resistance: Still bad
Sacred Flame: Dex save or take good radiant damage. Good.
Spare the Dying: Its overrated. Not horrible, but overrated.
Thaumaturgy: Weak utility spell, but only Clerics can have it. A bit stronger than some other ones.
Told the Dead: Very good cantrip. High potential damage.
Word of Radiance: AoE Con save is pretty bleh
Wizard Cantrips (only listing noteworthy ones outside of Booming Blade, too many to go through)
Chill Touch: Stop healing, make undead miss more, decent damage, great range
Firebolt: Good damage, great range, fire damage
Green-Flame Blade: Thanks to exact wording it can be used with War Caster + PAM as long as you only let it hit one target. However that means on reactions its always going to be dealing less potential damage than Booming Blade. On the other hand when used on your turn it can sometimes hit multiple targets and sometimes you face monsters immune to thunder damage.
Lightning Lure: How Thrown Whip would work in our build if it wasn't an M component. Less range but its fantastic for grabbing people and throwing them back into our Spiritual Guardians range, should work with War Caster I believe? Just not off of PAM.
Mage Hand: A good utility spell that every party should have at least one member rocking
Mind Sliver: Psychic damage and hurts their next saving throw. Excellent.
Ray of Frost: Decent way to slow down an enemy so you can catch them next turn
Shocking Grasp: If you want an emergency "get out of range for free" card this is your best option
Ranger Spells
For this section, we need to keep in mind the two Branches as they will impact spell usefulness a little bit. A Ranger Build will only have the standard among of Ranger spellslots while a Hybrid Build will get to upcast beyond the standard Ranger limit. We also still need to keep in mind that mid-combat Ranger M spells are not our friend unless we get lucky with a Loxodon or we're able to talk the DM into giving us a Ruby of the War Mage pretty quickly. Also keep in mind that stopping at level 8 limits you to level 2 Ranger spells, and level 12 limits you to level 3 Ranger spells. Any mentioned for level 4 and 5 are only for the Ranger Build.
Level 1
Absorb Elements: Fantastic. A reaction spell to keep us alive more, offset the fact that our Dex save is going to be slightly lower than a normal Ranger's, and because we focus on melee we can actually make use of the bonus damage next turn.
Alarm: Certainly not a first pick, but it is a ritual spell and we get ritual casting. If at some point you feel your party badly needs this and you have your Cleric dip you could take it.
Animal Friendship: Flavourful yes, useful no
Beast Bond: Most of the time its useless. If you're a Beast Master you might get some use early on from it
Cure Wounds: Good? Yes. But better as a Cleric spell. But at the same time if you need healing in the party you can't wait for your dip to grab it.
Detect Magic: Its a ritual Cleric spell. You can cast it as a ritual at will once you're a Cleric and you always have it as an Arcana Domain Cleric. Don't waste a Ranger slot on it.
Detect Poison and Disease: The number of situations where you're in a game where you want to detect poisons that aren't magical and thus picked up by Detect Magic are next to zero
Ensnaring Strike: While its a concentration and bonus action spell which means it has a lot of competition, being able to pin an enemy down for extended periods can be useful. Can hit them with this, and then next turn drop Spirit Guardians to make sure they're hit at least once and it is a small bit of extra damage. Or use it to safely get away from a tough enemy.
Entangle: Generating difficult terrain that can also restrain targets? Pretty solid. Concentration hurts a bit.
Fog Cloud: Concentration and you can't really take advantage of it. Its mainly an escape button.
Goodberry: Pocket emergency "get back up" buttons that also mean your party doesn't need to worry about rations. Depends on if your DM cares about rations a bit, but not a bad spell.
Hail of Thorns: We don't use ranged weapons
Hunter's Mark: Obviously good. You won't be using it quite as much as a typical Ranger because your bonus action is going to be used a lot, and if you go Hybrid Build you'll also be concentrating on Spiritual Guardians, but you should always pick this spell.
Jump: Not needed.
Longstrider: Not great but it does last an hour and its not concentration. If you find you're having difficulty getting into melee range quickly enough or you want to have insane movement speed with a Gloomstalker Wood Elf... 50 movement speed on first round of combat if Longstrider was already up? Its at least a fun option to look at.
Searing Smite: Concentration and bonus action conflicts, but at least 1d6 extra damage and a chance to continue the 1d6 damage repeatedly or chew up an opponent's action to take care of it. You can combine it with Booming Blade as well.
Snare: Too precise, to limited in use
Speak with Animals: Not a spell to grab early on, but because you can ritual cast it, you can force the DM to give you a lot of information about the area or what lays ahead. Not detailed, precise information no, but enough to work with.
Zephyr Strike: Bonus action and concentration, but no enemy reactions, giving yourself advantage, gain an extra 30 feet of movement one turn? All good stuff.
Level 2
Aid: Aid is fantastic and its a shame its not used more. Increases hit point maximum which means it can still combo with temp HP. Can argue for using it as a Cleric spell instead, but it lasts 8 hours and upcasting it is fine. If the party has more HP they need to be revived less.
Animal Messenger: Too niche
Barkskin: You already have better AC than this
Cordon of Arrows: Bad damage, why are you carrying arrows anyways?
Darkvision: You probably already have this taken care of one way or another. Probably.
Enhance Ability: Neat, not needed
Find Traps: No.
Gust of Wind: M spell, not super effective, effect goes against what we want
Healing Spirit: Very nice healing spell for patching things up, giving the whole party a small top off. Scales nicely.
Lessor Restoration: Decent spell. Probably better as a Cleric spell but if nobody in the party is rocking it no reason it can't be you.
Locate Animals or Plants: Very limited in use... but its a ritual spell and there's not that many must haves at Level 2 for our Ranger playstyles.
Locate Object: More broad in targeting than Locate Animal or Plants, but its not ritual and has a smaller range.
Magic Weapon: We already make our weapon magical, without needing concentration. Also you get this if you go for a Hybrid Build automatically with Arcana Domain.
Pass Without Trace: Fantastic spell for helping your party sneak around.
Protection from Poison: Very niche, but it does grant a damage resistance
Silence: On one hand, muting enemy spellcasters is good. On the other hand, see that bit about no thunder damage? That's a problem for us.
Spike Growth: Damage and difficult terrain is good, as is the range, but its an M component spell. At best we'd be casting it before combat.
Summon Beast: Worth putting your weapon away for. Another body to absorb damage, deal damage, upcasts with our Cleric slots well
Level 3
Conjure Animals: Not as good as Summon Beast, and it can very wildly by how your DM handles it. But it can generate a whole flock of bodies to aid you.
Conjure Barrage: Not really our thing to be doing, but we're lacking AoE options and this one is relatively cheap. Does require an M part however.
Daylight: Don't need it
Elemental Weapon: Bit of a weird choice, and I think you'd have to cast it before Shillelagh based on the wording, but you might be able to make it work. Its an extra 1d6 damage each hit and hopefully hitting elemental weaknesses if you pick it up.
Flame Arrows: We don't use ranged
Lightning Arrow: We don't use ranged
Meld into Stone: Save it for Cleric ritual casting
Nondetection: Don't need it
Plant Growth: Depends on your location too much, but when it works its a great way of slowing the enemy down to keep them in Spirit Guardians range
Revivify: Any character that can take Revivify should unless you already got 3 sources of it in the party
Speak with Plants: Very niche, if you want more information on an area you could go with this?
Summon Fey: One of the weaker summoning spells but its still a very good spell
Water Breathing: Combine with your Cleric ritual casting and your party no longer fears water.
Water Walk: Same general idea as above, but Clerics can learn it and frankly Water Breathing is more useful
Wind Wall: Can occasionally be useful to disrupt an enemy formation/plan, but its an M spell and concentration.
Level 4
Conjure Woodland Beings: If your DM lets you get away with choosing the free polymorph beings, congrats you win. Even if they don't allow that however, still a very powerful spell.
Dominate Beast: Not a lot of beast type enemies left by this point, but if it works on what beast enemies you run into by this level it can be helping out a lot
Freedom of Movement: Keep your speed up, can't be paralyzed, can't be restrained, break out of restrains easily. All good stuff and its not even concentration.
Grasping Vine: Lack of damage or restraining kills it
Stoneskin: Showing up far too late
Summon Elemental: Pretty solid summon
Level 5
Commune with Nature: Combining this with ritual casting can let you constantly get a whole lot of information about large areas.
Conjure Volley: See Conjure Barrage
Greater Restoration: Pretty reasonable spell to have, multiple party members with it is hardly bad either
Steel Wind Strike: Fantastic spell for sticking with Ranger. The M component is simply your weapon so no difficulties there. Good damage, hits multiple targets, and lets you teleport.
Swift Quiver: We don't use ranged.
Tree Stride: You could theoretically combine this with Plant Growth. Probably not worth it, but you could.
Wrath of Nature: Has a wide range of variance, but it can do a whole lot for you.
Cleric Spells
Unlike Ranger spells, you can swap these out freely each day so I'm not going to go into detail about them. Pick the ones that suits your situation. However, I will list a few in particular you should keep on your person.
This is my first time trying to make a guide like this. Please feel free to (nicely) provide feedback/corrections/additions.
I am currently playing a Forest Gnome Gloom Stalker/Arcana Cleric who uses the Boom. I did not go the Druidic fighter shillelagh route, but went with conventional shield and spear with Polearm Master. Current 4/1. Note I do not recommend the Gnome part necessarily. The advantage on the non physical saving throws is great, but gnomes are difficult.
Advantages:
Chill Touch means not having to carry a bow and figure out the don/doff shield rules. Sheath your sword. 120 ft range is far better than any thrown weapon. With Umbral Sight on the Gnome I have 90 ft Darkvision so I can Chill Touch with Advantage from a fair distance in the dark. Chill Touch stops regenerating Hit Points.
AC. I am up to 19 AC with breastplate and shield and defense fighting style. I can stand in front and get missed a lot. Since melee Rangers can't get out of combat easily (no cunning action) its critical to either fire from distance or have an AC to hold up.
Bless. We don't have a cleric so the ability to bless in the right fight is huge. And when you upcast bless so you get 4 party members you can put out a ton of damage. We ran into an Umber Hulk and between the ability to hit its high AC and make the every round saves it probably saved the party.
PAM master attacks. The reaction attacks are awesome to help whittle down a mob, and the spear butt is great when you get to add Hunter's Mark to it.
Extra Upcastable slots. There are a ton of spells that work so much better when cast at higher level. Healing Spirit cast one level higher is healing 2d6 instead of 1d6. And you have no choice but to upcast something into those slots. Enjoy.
Detect magic - Ritual. Ritual casting is great. In general adding the cleric spells means you don't feel as boxed in by the spells known mechanic, and the ritual mechanic saves spell slots.
Wow you committed a lot of time to breaking this down. Couple questions:
1. Why does it matter if Booming Blade comes from the Wisdom spellcasting stat if it doesn’t affect it?
2. I thought with the changes, Booming Blade no longer worked with Warcaster, was I wrong?
Booming Blade still works with Warcaster and with Pole Arm Master with a few exceptions:
1. Can only use a 5 ft reach weapon
2. Have to use a physical weapon (no shadow blades or psi daggers
3. Can't do distant type mods to increase the range. Also can't use Bugbear arms.
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2020/11/16/the-booming-blade-spell-continues-to-work-with-the-war-caster-feat/
edit: (it looks like shadow blades from the spell may be possible since it is still a physical object, depends a little on DM ruling)
Negatives I have seen so far with my Booming Ranger:
1. The Boom is not quite as useful until you get warcaster if you prioritize Polearm Master first. Sacrificing two attacks once you get to 5th level Ranger (2nd attack and 1d4 Polearm attack) if you have Hunter's Mark going is a large sacrifice. Your Reaction attacks can't use the Boom until you get Warcaster so if you are 5/1 you have another 3 levels to get the Boom back going again.
NOTE when you are 1/1, 2/1, 3/1 the BOOM is great and makes you much stronger.
2. Delaying extra attacks is painful. 4/1 with PAM is painful as you can tell you don't have extra attack and you gave up 2nd level spells to do this. BUT... usually the other spells you have gotten from Arcana make up for it.
3. The decision after 5/1 is hard. You NEED warcaster. Do you go to 5/4, or 8/1? Anything in between and you delay warcaster and the boom goes mostly silent.
4. BOOM is LOUD. As soon as you start booming you will attract attention. Stealth and infiltration becomes difficult.
I had a Polearm Master & Warcaster build before that used Booming Blade, I would check with your DM that your game will have regular and tactical combat - otherwise you might as well not bother. Sure enemies approaching you will suffer a hit, but in a year and a quarter of campaign, only two enemies ever provoked an opportunity attack from me.
A thought on feats. If you go fey touched ponder taking Hex instead of Hunter's Mark. Most of the rules are the same, but you get the Hex on ability checks, and Hex adds to your ranged cantrips and guiding bolt as well instead of just weapon attacks. You lose the tracking ability, but honestly I haven't used that yet.
I am not sure the best build (for Ranger/Arcana Cleric) is Boom yet from playing it, but I am not doing the shillelagh approach either. On the shillelagh front you are severely bonus action cramped with getting things prepped and using PAM. For this reason I have chosen not to go Shield Master in the future. I will almost always have something better to do with my bonus action.
By the way nice work going through this all. From playing it, its a really fun build, and if you are in a party with no cleric you can add back in a lot of those abilities with minimal cost and still feel like a Ranger. (except for the Boom not being stealthy, not very Rangery, but its a lot of fun).
100% agree. You will get attacks as enemies move in with PAM. Think every other round in the beginning of a fight. But I have never gotten an opp attack in any other way.
1. Good question! Probably should have been worded slightly better on my part: everything being tied to Wis (spell casting, and melee attacks) is to keep the build from getting MAD heavy. Remember, Booming Blade requires a melee attack to hit first, and if you go Hybrid you are also using Spiritual Guardians a lot and thus want a high DC. So the Wis tying is to ensure high accuracy on your Quarterstaff attack while keeping your spell outputs at high as possible. Most Rangers only want the 13/14 Wis and mostly ignore damaging spells/spells that need a good DC, hence the meme about them only using Hunter's Mark. Booming Ranger aims to use spells effectively. If we weren't using Shillelagh we'd have to spread stats highly among Dex, Con, and Wis, with both Dex and Wis wanting to hit 20 which leaves no room for traits, possibly high Str as well if you aren't using ranged/finesse weapons. With both melee and spells tied to Wis we only need one stat maxed out (and Dex only needs to hit 14 for max AC).
Its also to me, the best way to fit in PAM. You're other realistic option is a Spear unless you want to give up a Shield in which case your AC is not great for frontlining.
2. As explained by Elfdope, they do actually still work. The part that doesn't work with the old combo anymore is Spell Sniper, that got killed due to the wording change. You also have to make sure that it only hits one target, so Green-Flame Blade is weaker.
And I certainly agree that you need PAM to get the reaction attacks. Enemies rarely move out of engagement range without a way to disengage.
Thanks for the feedback you two, particularly Elfdope since you helped out in the initial topic. Do agree that you're Bonus Action heavy, though at the same time I feel if you're going Hybrid instead of Ranger you're not trying to get Hunter's Mark out there as much which helps to alleviate things.
Yeah Booming Blade is not affected in the least by whatever your spellcasting stat is - you could pick it up from a racial trait and it would still be Wisdom to hit thanks to Shillelagh.
Awesome stuff Niddo. Really appreciate all the effort you put into this. Happy to see you so enthused about the Crusher interactions. I love that shit.
Cheeky: You're absolutely right about Booming Blade. No wisdom necessary. BUT, the arcana cleric does have potent spellcasting at level 8. If that is something that the player thinks they will get to in their campaign, then it makes sense to use the domain to pick up the attack cantrips.
Niddo: Unfortunately, I think that means the guide should be opened up quite a bit, unless you want to change it from being about Booming Rangers in general to specifically Booming Ranger/Arcana Clerics. A Booming Ranger could be multi-classed in a number of ways to get BB, or just grab it from a race/feat.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like this is a guide for Shillelagh Rangers as much as its about Booming Blade. This archetype could easily support a strength build using a different weapon with enough wisdom to qualify for the classes. Elfdope's character is a great example.
Considering Shillelagh Rangers are much more viable now with Druidic Warrior, I think this could be an interesting direction to take the guide that cares about demonstrating Ranger builds that present something different than the typical.
I guess my thoughts are....
Why WIS? It doesn't seem you are using WIS much beyond the attacks anyway....so why not just build a STR Ranger and get more damage/range/attacks with a Halberd?
If you are going for stuff like Spirit guardians you would need quite a few levels for this to "come online" as it were...especially with the feat tax of the build. You have 2 feats to get this to work (War Caster and PAM) which means you are keeping your main stat (WIS in this case) at 16 for a LONG time.
Ranger 3/Cleric 5 to get to Spirit Guardians which means level 8 ...meaning you have 1 ASI/Feat in there.
If you go straight ranger to 8 then to cleric...then you really are not benefiting from that extra WIS at all.
All in all its an interesting build...but seems like its generally worse than just going with STR options to achieve the same goal. At least with STR you can swing twice with extra attack.
What I would compare this to:
Level 8 STR Ranger: V. Human
You pick Hunter Ranger and PAM as your starting feat.
At lv. 4 ASI you pick up Sentinel
At lv. 8 ASI you move STR to 18.
You still make things stop in their tracks when they enter your reach (now 10 ft instead of 5ft)
You do more damage on the first round of combat (Halberd = 2d10+8 damage + 2d6 (hunters mark) + 1d8 Colossus = 30.5 average damage ) vs (Staff = 1d8+3 Bludgeoning + 1d8 Thunder + 1d8 Colossus= 16.5 average damage ) and you can actually use the PAM BA attack on subsequent turns where as you can never use the BA PAM attack with the Boomer Blade build as you do not use the Attack action...you use the Cast a Spell action which will not proc the PAM attack per the feat.
Bascially you would have to be able to consistently get Spirit guardian off BEFORE combat started to get close to the same damage as you would get to add 13.5 damage (3d8) to the damage of the Boomer blade build but that still puts at about even or behind the STR build.
Now if you are talking utility you are one level away as a ranger to getting Conjure Animals and other 3rd level ranger spells vs. you have all the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level cleric spells which is going to be more verstiale and give you quite a bit of extra help to the party.
If THAT is the focus of the build it makes sense as it does add a lot to the party....but honestly I would rather just pick V.Human, pick druid initiate, and go full cleric as I would be one level away from 5th level cleric spells which are crazy good.
Honestly I guess I am struggling to see the appeal of this build.
My read on why Wisdom is to minimize the MAD nature of the Ranger. A strength Ranger ends up with Str (as high as it can go), Dex (to 14 for medium armor), Con (for hit points), and Wis (for spells). Trying to get all those in the 14+ range is MAD so you have to sacrifice one of them. This build removes Str from the equation, so you can concentrate on Dex, Con, and Wis with no real impact on your ability to hit or do damage.
I agree that the Boom might be less advantageous at certain levels. The Variant human is really easy to see how it works. Its a little harder with others as you wait for warcaster to come on line at 9th level. The shillelagh build in general (regardless of booming blade) is a very interesting deviation from the normal strength based melee ranger and no longer requires a feat to pull off. The combination with Arcana cleric is pretty advantageous for a one level dip, and long term the Ranger/Cleric hybrid has always been an interesting build. When you add in that you can get Shillelagh to max your wisdom and feed into that hybrid gets interesting.
For my character its not about straight damage. Its about utility to the party. We don't have a cleric and I despise the spells known mechanic for Rangers. Going with the arcana/booming blade/chill touch augments my damage and simplifies my hands. I also get a bunch of cleric spells that help the party and increase my options on what to cast on a daily basis.
At that point if its utility....why not just go full cleric? You would have much more utility as a full cleric than this hybrid as you would get higher level spells and more cleric class features.
I just do not see why this would be better than a Booming Blade Full Cleric that uses heavy armor.
I did say up front this probably isn't dealing as much damage as some of the super optimal builds. The fact that it gets close to matching the optimal builds while Spirit Guardians is up frankly I feel is a good achievement given I only started playing DnD back in Sept. As for advantages for going with this instead of pure Cleric: more HP (better for frontlining), Roving, and frankly Ranger Subclasses have better abilities for frontlining than most Clerics do while still having a high amount of utility. More than enough I feel to be a fair trade (little bit lowered utility, more frontline bulk). I also feel this is still extremely good for Beast Master Ranger because Beast Master wants to go all in with Wis but doesn't particularly want to get Ranger level 20 because its a pretty bad capstone.
I did end up with some tunnel vision on this one however due to building for the West Marches I'm in in particular. Having at least off healing is extremely helpful there. If I was to expand this out a bit more while dropping the healing, combing with Eldritch Knight is very interesting. Should be able to Booming Blade + followup attack if invested enough in Eldritch Knight. Or use the Level 6 ASI on a different Fighter Subclass to get Booming Blade one way or another. I looked at other sources for grabbing Booming Blade and its... mixed. The problem is the multiclassing with Sorc or Warlock requires 13 Cha which hurts the whole point of focusing on Wis to avoid MAD issues.
Trying to expand this out to just Shillelagh Ranger is obviously doable but uh, massive in scope and would take more free time than I have access to.
There are some racial options to make this a single class build: high elf, high half elf, v human/custom lineage with magic initiate. You already mention magic initiate, but I think it should be given more emphasis as a way to enable the whole build, not just add utility to it.
EK's have been doing this routine forever, so it's certainly not new information that absolutely needs to be added. That's a big part of why I mentioned that it's really Shillelagh that is the unique aspect of the guide. Absolutely agree that is a lot of work. I'm certainly not trying to do it lol. I think it could be touched upon in a more obvious way without writing a whole thesis about it.
I think wizard is worth mentioning. The ritual casting adds an immense amount of utility and intelligence actually boosts some quintessential ranger skills (investigation and nature). I think it can be worked in a way that makes up for needing 13 intelligence.
Optimus: I think it's much more useful to compare this idea to other Rangers, as opposed to single classed Clerics. Most of these builds will start with 5 levels of ranger I imagine, simply setting up extra attack and explorer skills. The booming blade attacks happen almost exclusively on AoO's, just like the EK builds that use this tactic. I think cleric has plenty to offer to the ranger kit that makes it contend with the weaker spots in the Ranger leveling.
Funnily enough though, I just submitted a build to Yurei's Throwdown that is built around this concept without stressing extra attack. Made me chuckle when I saw this thread. I'm actually quite fond of it, but I'm not going to say it's better than a straight cleric or straight ranger. Just a cool collection of abilities. I really like how swarmkeeper plays with the cantrip attacks, and I had a lot of fun with the character and flavoring non ranger spells through the lens of his swarm.
I built it to be solid at 3 (level 1 and 2 are a mess anyways. Loveable, but a mess), come online at 5 and play well through tier 2 and 3 without caring much about the endgame power level. Is it a powerhouse? Nah. Do I think it could be super fun at the table? Hell yeah. I think that is a lot of what this multiclass has going for it.
Boccob's Beekeeper
Maru Kazan -- Fighter (Eldritch Knight) 7/ Ranger (Swarmkeeper) 4/ Cleric (Arcana) 9
8 | 14 | 16 | 10 | 20 | 10
Species: Custom Lineage [The Falthir: Darkling Fey-Touched (+2 Wisdom, Darkvision, Sylvan)]
Background: Custom Background [Sage Background Feature (Animal Handling, Nature, Elvish, Brewer's Supplies)]
AC: 20 (25 with Shield Spell)
HP: 175
Key Equipment: Half-Plate, Shield, Quarterstaff, Brewer's Supplies
Languages: Common, Sylvan, Elvish, Gnomish, Dwarvish
Skills and Tools: Animal Handling, Arcana, Insight, Nature, Persuasion, Survival, Brewer's Supplies
Ranger Spells: Shillelagh, Mold Earth, Mage Hand | Entangle, Fog Cloud, Faerie Fire, Longstrider, Zephy Strike, Speak with Animals
Fighter Spells: Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation | Shield, Absorb Elements, Gift of Alacrity, Protection from Good and Evil | Arcane Lock
Cleric Spells: Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Toll the Dead, Spare the Dying, Thaumaturgy, Guidance | Detect Magic, Magic Missile, Healing Word | Magic Weapon, Nystul's Magic Aura, Aid, Calm Emotions, Blindness/Deafness, Hold Person, Lesser Restoration | Dispel Magic, Magic Circle, Spririt Guardians, Revivify | Arcane Eye, Leomund's Secret Chest, Banishment, Stone Shape, Freedom of Movement | Planar Binding, Teleportation Circle, Insect Plague, Mass Cure Wounds, Geas
I really just can't get enough of the swarmkeeper right now. Happy to see it got some love in the OP.
Going Wizard is technically a possibility, specifically Bladesinger I feel with the ability to use a Cantrip as part of Extra Attack, but the score distribution gets messy fast. While you strictly don't need more than 13 Int, so many things key off of it for Bladesinger that it feels bad to not invest more in it. But then you need Wis, Int, Dex, and Con going and it gets awkward. Before including race bonuses you're looking at 8/14/12/14/8/15. You can probably get away with only 14 Int as it means Bladesong gives you a Shield when active, so maybe -1Int +1Dex for the initial stats and then +1Wis/Int for V.Human stats, but its still begging for a lot of things. Honestly if you're going to combine Ranger and Bladesinger you're better off dropping Shillelagh, going 8/15/12/15/8/13, +1Dex/Int, and going from there.
Maybe Abjuration? Not amazing but it keys off of a lot of non-damaging stuff and its features are extra HP basically. War Wizard is non-horrible but Power Surge just sucks.
It could just be one level of wizard.
Cantrips - Booming Blade, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation
Spells - Find Familiar, Detect Magic, Identify, Unseen Servant, Shield, Absorb Elements (much better grabbing it here than with a precious ranger spell).
That's a sweet little package if you're that interested in booming blade already.
Diviner is my pick for subclass if you go any further. Nothing like a good old portent. Bladesinger is the exact opposite of what you want because you want the bare minimum of intelligence and your bonus action is clogged enough. Necromancer seems like fun if you know you're going to get to higher levels and are thinking about a lot of wizard levels. You wouldn't mature into an army building necromancer until level 11 unless you don't go for extra attack, but the utility and support value in the spell list up to that point is there. Animate Dead doesn't care about intelligence and as a PAM warrior, you can actively protect your skellingtons as they plink plink away.
I'm a big fan of the Ranger Class. Just for laughs, is it possible for you to sketch out IRL Rangers, like Army Rangers, Texas/Arizona Rangers, Space Rangers, etc.?
Some jokes for you:
The only thing I learned when I tried to whittle was I didn't even have a whittle talent for it.
Hikers in the city must be careful crossing the street...and never cross a bear.
If I commanded a tank I'd call it Rommel-Lama-Ding-Dong
News columnists...column like they see 'em.
Filthy rich or dirt poor - why do both involve soil?
Thieves are stealth-possessed.
If SNL's Dana Carvey's Church Lady was also an interior designer: "Well...Isn't that spatial?"
If it was announced the world would end soon I'd stop recycling.
During the time of the pharaohs when a woman became pregnant she announced she'd begun the process of Mamafication.
Hey, I have much respect for how that Wild Nile civilization planned for the Next Life: Them Gizas left nothing to chance!
Finally (and I hope you're sitting down for this): 19 November is both International Men's Day & World Toilet Day - coincidence, or joyful irony?
Thanks for playing along - May all your rolls be Nat-20's ;)
first where is the arcana domain i need to pick it up.
the build looks interesting with some possibilities - ill try a few builds after i get the arcana domain.
thanks for the puns - they are terrible *in the best way). doing a military ranger/ sf guy is basically just doing a ranger. doing the tx/az ranger is callig for the shootist/ gunslinger which means dm approval but if you get it it shouldn't be that hard.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.