This conversation may degenerate quickly, but I hope to give it a try so I might learn something.
There appears to be a consensus that 5e is as balanced a version of D&D as have ever been produced. But let's face it, that doesn't mean everything is optimally balanced. I read often that if you give this character this one extra boost that would unbalance the game, and this is thrown around by all kinds of folks over the most trivial proposed homebrew ideas.
The easiest area to explore this is among the "fighter" classes, Barbarian, Fighter and Paladin, and their subclasses. It gets a lot harder to evaluate when you compare wizards with clerics, and rogues with druids.
There are some major areas of function that we should be able to agree on. Of course the first is the # of sides on you hit dice. A d10 character is better than a d6 character. But how might we quantify these differences.
First I'd like to get your help in creating a list of these functional areas to measure. I'll throw in a handful and ask anyone interested in helping me understand the balance of the current D&D system ...
Sides on your Hit dice
Can you wear armor, light armor, medium armor and heavy armor
Can you use only simple weapons, simple ranged weapons, a selection of martial weapons (and what is their damage die) or all martial weapons and ranged weapons
Class Feats (other than spell casting)
Spell casting: none, 'half-caster', full caster (and maybe a rating on your classes spell list)
Languages
Anything else ... ?
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Honestly, I think it's too complicated to break it all down due to class features. They are apples to oranges comparisons and they may synergize with and/or compliment other features in the class and the subclasses. Rage and Sneak Attack are both ways to deal damage, but when you try to calculate how much damage they add to compare them, the variables quickly become overwhelming. How long are the fights? What are the options for getting advantage? Does the rogue have a melee partner? Is the barbarian doubling as a tank? What weapons are they using? What other feats or features or options related to those weapon choices are being utilized?
I'm afraid there's no code to crack. The designers spitball it, the community playtests it, and adjustments are made based on a lot of playing.
Not trying to sound discouraging. It's fun to dive into the system and find the patterns within. I'd suggest you establish a few metrics of what it means to be effective - something like offensive and defensive power, in-combat control, social skill, exploration utility, potential to specialize in a certain metric, flexibility to cover any metric... I don't know. These seem all over the place to me but the game is so open and can be so different form table to table that it's really hard to figure out even what yardstick you're measuring with.
I would stay away from nerfing anything and focus on buffing lack luster classes by role. Any buffs should be focused on class identity and not just raw power increases.
Yeah, it's the old "which is the best gun/sword/car" argument. The easy answer is that it depends on what you need it for. If you play a game of court intrigue with focus on investigating a murder mystery the Bear Totem barbarian might not be optimal. On the other hand, if you play a game of intense, on-going action with little or no time for short or long rests then your spellcasters will have a hard time. That said, playing a fish out of water can be a fun thing sometimes. I recommend the book "Gallow's Thief" for anyone who wants to play a Fighter in a high society game.
Honestly, that's one of the things I like about RPGs, both as a player and a DM, to create characters and stories that fit together and that are both challenging and rewarding. :)
I was reading a thread about why many players considered Rangers to be underpowered. I thought if we could break it down we could find one or two areas to boost the ranger to make it balance. However, I agree that there is little likelihood we could balance all character classes using an arbitrary standard with such disparate abilities.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I was reading a thread about why many players considered Rangers to be underpowered. I thought if we could break it down we could find one or two areas to boost the ranger to make it balance. However, I agree that there is little likelihood we could balance all character classes using an arbitrary standard with such disparate abilities.
Unfortunately the Ranger is a special case of design mismatch between the class and the game systems themselves. Specifically, the design philosophy of "the 3 pillars" really only has 2 pillars -- combat and roleplay. The 3rd pillar, exploration, was meant to be the thing that Rangers did better than everyone else, which shows pretty effectively in the intent behind the Natural Explorer class feature, as well as Land's Stride letting you move through nonmagical difficult terrain for free and Hide in Plain Sight letting you camouflage. But it all falls apart for several reasons:
Most stories and campaigns don't focus on the survival aspects, even for things like tracking rations, let alone complications from traversing an unexplored wilderness.
Mechanically, the usefulness of all the thematic abilities is extremely thin or highly situational, even generally suboptimal.
There are too many possible terrain types, and not enough choices to make from them. Choose 3 out of 8 and hope you actually get to be relevant.
This is then compounded by the limitations of the combat centric mechanics, as well. Extreme demand for the Bonus Action due to Hunter's Mark alone conflicts with the majority of the rest of the Ranger spell list. Favored Enemy has the same problems as Natural Explorer of too many options and not enough selections from them. No Heavy Armor proficiency makes melee hazardous, pushing you to use exclusively bows instead of mixing back and forth as intended. Add to this that the most iconic subclass makes the phrase "hot garbage" look like a compliment and you overall have a disaster.
Simply put, the Ranger as a class really needs a complete rewrite. The concept behind it is definitely worth pursuing, it just doesn't mechanically fulfil that concept. The Variant Class Features options in UA basically fix all of these issues (except the Beast Master subclass, which does get improved, but not fixed). But ultimately it's not the same thing as a rewrite, which means certain DMs will not allow it because "oh it's optional, the base is fine". And who knows whether or not these features are going to be AL legal, which consumes the majority of WotC's focus despite its relatively niche participation rate.
I was reading a thread about why many players considered Rangers to be underpowered. I thought if we could break it down we could find one or two areas to boost the ranger to make it balance. However, I agree that there is little likelihood we could balance all character classes using an arbitrary standard with such disparate abilities.
Unfortunately the Ranger is a special case of design mismatch between the class and the game systems themselves. Specifically, the design philosophy of "the 3 pillars" really only has 2 pillars -- combat and roleplay. The 3rd pillar, exploration, was meant to be the thing that Rangers did better than everyone else, which shows pretty effectively in the intent behind the Natural Explorer class feature, as well as Land's Stride letting you move through nonmagical difficult terrain for free and Hide in Plain Sight letting you camouflage. But it all falls apart for several reasons:
Most stories and campaigns don't focus on the survival aspects, even for things like tracking rations, let alone complications from traversing an unexplored wilderness.
Mechanically, the usefulness of all the thematic abilities is extremely thin or highly situational, even generally suboptimal.
There are too many possible terrain types, and not enough choices to make from them. Choose 3 out of 8 and hope you actually get to be relevant.
This is then compounded by the limitations of the combat centric mechanics, as well. Extreme demand for the Bonus Action due to Hunter's Mark alone conflicts with the majority of the rest of the Ranger spell list. Favored Enemy has the same problems as Natural Explorer of too many options and not enough selections from them. No Heavy Armor proficiency makes melee hazardous, pushing you to use exclusively bows instead of mixing back and forth as intended. Add to this that the most iconic subclass makes the phrase "hot garbage" look like a compliment and you overall have a disaster.
Simply put, the Ranger as a class really needs a complete rewrite. The concept behind it is definitely worth pursuing, it just doesn't mechanically fulfil that concept. The Variant Class Features options in UA basically fix all of these issues (except the Beast Master subclass, which does get improved, but not fixed). But ultimately it's not the same thing as a rewrite, which means certain DMs will not allow it because "oh it's optional, the base is fine". And who knows whether or not these features are going to be AL legal, which consumes the majority of WotC's focus despite its relatively niche participation rate.
I wouldn't say the Ranger is underpowered, per se. It's just that most of the other classes are, compared to the Ranger, just better at a lot of things. And Like @drag0n_77 mentions, the things that the Ranger IS good at doesn't show up that much. A lot of this can easily be fixed by the DM, for example, lower DCs for certain ability checks when in your favoured terrain, actually using exploration as an important part of the game and so on. Also, giving Ranger players a hint on what favoured enemies/terrains that might be usefull for the campaign is a nice thing to do.
This however is not an optimal solution since it requirers the DM and players to fix the game's "problem" (and I use the term 'problem' loosely) which really shouldn't be neccessary. I wouldn't say that the situation is as bad as drag0n_77 makes it seem though, but I'm guessing that's probably due to subjective differences. :)
My adive to you MusicScout, if you want to make the the Ranger worthwhile as a player, is to ask the DM what favoured enemies/terrains that will be useful for the game and also which subclass/es that works best. If you're the DM, give this information to a player who wants to play a Ranger.
The problems I find with ranger are with the design philosophy of the types of exploration tools they get. In particular:
Since its class features are so pigeonholed by terrain and creature types, they can't be very good because the devs have to assume that you won't be engaged with those types most of the time. It would probably feel worse if they were great features that you could hardly ever use.
On top of that, they have a system where you choose the best option (most important favored terrain and enemy) first, then as you gain class features that simply allow you to choose another option you are just choosing worse and worse options (since you've already picked the "best" options).
To choose terrains and enemies in the first place requires either meta knowledge such as a chat with the DM or guessing (along with that bad feeling that comes along with guessing wrong).
This however is not an optimal solution since it requirers the DM and players to fix the game's "problem" (and I use the term 'problem' loosely) which really shouldn't be neccessary. I wouldn't say that the situation is as bad as drag0n_77 makes it seem though, but I'm guessing that's probably due to subjective differences. :)
Both of your level 1 features are completely useless if you pick the wrong thing. They remain useless if your DM doesn't decide to be nice and make your "wrong" choices (which at level 1 should be driven by your backstory) actually relevant. If you don't consider that a glaring problem with the class, I'm not sure what to tell you.
I agree with an idea I have heard before to improve the Ranger: hunters mark should not be a spell to choose. It should be a class feature that every Ranger gets.
This however is not an optimal solution since it requirers the DM and players to fix the game's "problem" (and I use the term 'problem' loosely) which really shouldn't be neccessary. I wouldn't say that the situation is as bad as drag0n_77 makes it seem though, but I'm guessing that's probably due to subjective differences. :)
Both of your level 1 features are completely useless if you pick the wrong thing. They remain useless if your DM doesn't decide to be nice and make your "wrong" choices (which at level 1 should be driven by your backstory) actually relevant. If you don't consider that a glaring problem with the class, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Like I said, this is not really a problem if you actually *communicate* with your DM. But yeah, if you willfully choose features that you know aren't going to be useful in the campaign or if the DM doesn't tell you if you pick a class/race/whatever that will be useless in the campign, then that is a problem. It's not really a problem that has to do with the ranger class, though.
I was reading a thread about why many players considered Rangers to be underpowered. I thought if we could break it down we could find one or two areas to boost the ranger to make it balance. However, I agree that there is little likelihood we could balance all character classes using an arbitrary standard with such disparate abilities.
Mathematically, rangers are fine. They are /not/ underpowered. There are a few problems with the ranger, but none of them are truly related to /balance/. Even the much maligned beastmaster can be made to perform adequately.
With rangers, the first issue is class features. They're poorly implemented, but have little effect on balance. Let's look at favored enemy; here's what you get: You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them.
Big F-ing deal. This is a lame class feature that is /rarely/ important, but it being stupid doesn't hurt the ranger's overall performance. It's just lame.
Natural explorer. Gives a lot of fringe benefits that most DMs don't bother to track anyways because tracking those things slows the game down for little benefit. For example, rangers can forage for food. I've not played with a group that tracked rations since the 90s. Most of the wilderness junk just never gets used. That makes it lame.
Spells. Not a very large list, most of them use conc, and it's mostly expected that one of the spells will be hunters mark. ranger spells aren't BAD, they just aren't exciting and interesting.
Primeval awareness. Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one ranger spell slot to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you (or within up to 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn’t reveal the creatures’ location or number.
Lame. I know something's out there but no idea where or what direction? It doesn't hurt me that this sucks, but it does suck.
Additional favored enemy. First of all, I already picked the favored enemies that I really hated. Now I am picking from the list of previously rejected creatures. Still not hardly useful.
Land's stride. Occassionally useful. it's not lame, but it's nothing to be excited about either.
Hide in plain sight: Nice, until you realize you can't move. Rarely going to be useful.
Vanish. This is nice. Wish I could do this at level 2 like a rogue can though rather than wait til level 14.
Yet another favored enemy at 14. My opinion on this should be clear by now, but whatever you pick has already been rejected twice at this point. It's like picking the last kid for your football team at school.
Feral Senses is pretty nice. Nothing bad to say about it.
level 20...FINALLY your favored enemies provide something useful, even if it's not all that great.
So, from the base ranger, you get a bunch of class features that are not impactful or fun generally. They add or subtract nothing materially from the mathematical balance of the class.
Now, we'll talk about the REAL issue with rangers, other than the fact that their class features are poorly designed and boring/useless. Beastmasters. Everyone and their brother wants to play a G0DD@Mn3d beastmaster. Beastmasters rely on their pets....and most pets SUCK. You're using one of your own attacks to make your pet attack, and when you look at the stats on /most/ of the pets, it's lower to hit and lower damage than the ranger would do swinging his sword. Now, you can dumpster-dive through the pets and find a few good ones (such as giant poisonous snake), but your average player isn't going to do that. They grab something /cool/ (which is generally B A D), then get frustrated when it doesn't hit anything and dies easily. That doesn't mean the ranger sucks, it means they made poor choices.
The other ranger archetypes perform nicely mathematically, even if their base features are...uninspiring. Beastmasters don't suck if you put a proper amount of thought into it, but most do not.
TL/DR: Rangers aren't underpowered but could use some tweaks. Beastmasters require more thought and attention to detail than most players are willing or able to invest and suffer accordingly, and as the most popular archetype unfairly color the perception of players that rangers are weak.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
The Variant Class Features options in UA basically fix all of these issues
The UA ranger variants need some serious work. For instance, the Tireless feature is wildly unbalanced at first level. If your ranger has 16 Wis (which they will because of how broken this is), they can buff themselves for total 3d10 + 9 temp HP every LR. That's 25.5 on average. With 14 Con your level 1 ranger has effectively 37.5 HP. Meanwhile a level 1 barbarian (16 Con) has 15 HP, effectively 30 after accounting for rage. So at level 1 rangers would be better tanks than barbs, when that's the barb's specialty.
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This conversation may degenerate quickly, but I hope to give it a try so I might learn something.
There appears to be a consensus that 5e is as balanced a version of D&D as have ever been produced. But let's face it, that doesn't mean everything is optimally balanced. I read often that if you give this character this one extra boost that would unbalance the game, and this is thrown around by all kinds of folks over the most trivial proposed homebrew ideas.
The easiest area to explore this is among the "fighter" classes, Barbarian, Fighter and Paladin, and their subclasses. It gets a lot harder to evaluate when you compare wizards with clerics, and rogues with druids.
There are some major areas of function that we should be able to agree on. Of course the first is the # of sides on you hit dice. A d10 character is better than a d6 character. But how might we quantify these differences.
First I'd like to get your help in creating a list of these functional areas to measure. I'll throw in a handful and ask anyone interested in helping me understand the balance of the current D&D system ...
Sides on your Hit dice
Can you wear armor, light armor, medium armor and heavy armor
Can you use only simple weapons, simple ranged weapons, a selection of martial weapons (and what is their damage die) or all martial weapons and ranged weapons
Class Feats (other than spell casting)
Spell casting: none, 'half-caster', full caster (and maybe a rating on your classes spell list)
Languages
Anything else ... ?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Honestly, I think it's too complicated to break it all down due to class features. They are apples to oranges comparisons and they may synergize with and/or compliment other features in the class and the subclasses. Rage and Sneak Attack are both ways to deal damage, but when you try to calculate how much damage they add to compare them, the variables quickly become overwhelming. How long are the fights? What are the options for getting advantage? Does the rogue have a melee partner? Is the barbarian doubling as a tank? What weapons are they using? What other feats or features or options related to those weapon choices are being utilized?
I'm afraid there's no code to crack. The designers spitball it, the community playtests it, and adjustments are made based on a lot of playing.
Not trying to sound discouraging. It's fun to dive into the system and find the patterns within. I'd suggest you establish a few metrics of what it means to be effective - something like offensive and defensive power, in-combat control, social skill, exploration utility, potential to specialize in a certain metric, flexibility to cover any metric... I don't know. These seem all over the place to me but the game is so open and can be so different form table to table that it's really hard to figure out even what yardstick you're measuring with.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
It doesn't make sense to balance across classes that do very different things.
Instead focus on balancing sets of classes with role overlap.
-Martials (Paladin, Fighter, Monk, Ranger)
-Casting (Druid, Cleric, Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, Warlock)
-skill/utility based (Ranger, Bard, Rogue)
I would stay away from nerfing anything and focus on buffing lack luster classes by role. Any buffs should be focused on class identity and not just raw power increases.
Yeah, it's the old "which is the best gun/sword/car" argument. The easy answer is that it depends on what you need it for. If you play a game of court intrigue with focus on investigating a murder mystery the Bear Totem barbarian might not be optimal. On the other hand, if you play a game of intense, on-going action with little or no time for short or long rests then your spellcasters will have a hard time. That said, playing a fish out of water can be a fun thing sometimes. I recommend the book "Gallow's Thief" for anyone who wants to play a Fighter in a high society game.
Honestly, that's one of the things I like about RPGs, both as a player and a DM, to create characters and stories that fit together and that are both challenging and rewarding. :)
I was reading a thread about why many players considered Rangers to be underpowered. I thought if we could break it down we could find one or two areas to boost the ranger to make it balance. However, I agree that there is little likelihood we could balance all character classes using an arbitrary standard with such disparate abilities.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Unfortunately the Ranger is a special case of design mismatch between the class and the game systems themselves. Specifically, the design philosophy of "the 3 pillars" really only has 2 pillars -- combat and roleplay. The 3rd pillar, exploration, was meant to be the thing that Rangers did better than everyone else, which shows pretty effectively in the intent behind the Natural Explorer class feature, as well as Land's Stride letting you move through nonmagical difficult terrain for free and Hide in Plain Sight letting you camouflage. But it all falls apart for several reasons:
This is then compounded by the limitations of the combat centric mechanics, as well. Extreme demand for the Bonus Action due to Hunter's Mark alone conflicts with the majority of the rest of the Ranger spell list. Favored Enemy has the same problems as Natural Explorer of too many options and not enough selections from them. No Heavy Armor proficiency makes melee hazardous, pushing you to use exclusively bows instead of mixing back and forth as intended. Add to this that the most iconic subclass makes the phrase "hot garbage" look like a compliment and you overall have a disaster.
Simply put, the Ranger as a class really needs a complete rewrite. The concept behind it is definitely worth pursuing, it just doesn't mechanically fulfil that concept. The Variant Class Features options in UA basically fix all of these issues (except the Beast Master subclass, which does get improved, but not fixed). But ultimately it's not the same thing as a rewrite, which means certain DMs will not allow it because "oh it's optional, the base is fine". And who knows whether or not these features are going to be AL legal, which consumes the majority of WotC's focus despite its relatively niche participation rate.
I wouldn't say the Ranger is underpowered, per se. It's just that most of the other classes are, compared to the Ranger, just better at a lot of things. And Like @drag0n_77 mentions, the things that the Ranger IS good at doesn't show up that much. A lot of this can easily be fixed by the DM, for example, lower DCs for certain ability checks when in your favoured terrain, actually using exploration as an important part of the game and so on. Also, giving Ranger players a hint on what favoured enemies/terrains that might be usefull for the campaign is a nice thing to do.
This however is not an optimal solution since it requirers the DM and players to fix the game's "problem" (and I use the term 'problem' loosely) which really shouldn't be neccessary. I wouldn't say that the situation is as bad as drag0n_77 makes it seem though, but I'm guessing that's probably due to subjective differences. :)
My adive to you MusicScout, if you want to make the the Ranger worthwhile as a player, is to ask the DM what favoured enemies/terrains that will be useful for the game and also which subclass/es that works best. If you're the DM, give this information to a player who wants to play a Ranger.
The problems I find with ranger are with the design philosophy of the types of exploration tools they get. In particular:
Both of your level 1 features are completely useless if you pick the wrong thing. They remain useless if your DM doesn't decide to be nice and make your "wrong" choices (which at level 1 should be driven by your backstory) actually relevant. If you don't consider that a glaring problem with the class, I'm not sure what to tell you.
I agree with an idea I have heard before to improve the Ranger: hunters mark should not be a spell to choose. It should be a class feature that every Ranger gets.
Like I said, this is not really a problem if you actually *communicate* with your DM. But yeah, if you willfully choose features that you know aren't going to be useful in the campaign or if the DM doesn't tell you if you pick a class/race/whatever that will be useless in the campign, then that is a problem. It's not really a problem that has to do with the ranger class, though.
Mathematically, rangers are fine. They are /not/ underpowered. There are a few problems with the ranger, but none of them are truly related to /balance/. Even the much maligned beastmaster can be made to perform adequately.
With rangers, the first issue is class features. They're poorly implemented, but have little effect on balance. Let's look at favored enemy; here's what you get: You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them.
Big F-ing deal. This is a lame class feature that is /rarely/ important, but it being stupid doesn't hurt the ranger's overall performance. It's just lame.
Natural explorer. Gives a lot of fringe benefits that most DMs don't bother to track anyways because tracking those things slows the game down for little benefit. For example, rangers can forage for food. I've not played with a group that tracked rations since the 90s. Most of the wilderness junk just never gets used. That makes it lame.
Spells. Not a very large list, most of them use conc, and it's mostly expected that one of the spells will be hunters mark. ranger spells aren't BAD, they just aren't exciting and interesting.
Primeval awareness. Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one ranger spell slot to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you (or within up to 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn’t reveal the creatures’ location or number.
Lame. I know something's out there but no idea where or what direction? It doesn't hurt me that this sucks, but it does suck.
Additional favored enemy. First of all, I already picked the favored enemies that I really hated. Now I am picking from the list of previously rejected creatures. Still not hardly useful.
Land's stride. Occassionally useful. it's not lame, but it's nothing to be excited about either.
Hide in plain sight: Nice, until you realize you can't move. Rarely going to be useful.
Vanish. This is nice. Wish I could do this at level 2 like a rogue can though rather than wait til level 14.
Yet another favored enemy at 14. My opinion on this should be clear by now, but whatever you pick has already been rejected twice at this point. It's like picking the last kid for your football team at school.
Feral Senses is pretty nice. Nothing bad to say about it.
level 20...FINALLY your favored enemies provide something useful, even if it's not all that great.
So, from the base ranger, you get a bunch of class features that are not impactful or fun generally. They add or subtract nothing materially from the mathematical balance of the class.
Now, we'll talk about the REAL issue with rangers, other than the fact that their class features are poorly designed and boring/useless. Beastmasters. Everyone and their brother wants to play a G0DD@Mn3d beastmaster. Beastmasters rely on their pets....and most pets SUCK. You're using one of your own attacks to make your pet attack, and when you look at the stats on /most/ of the pets, it's lower to hit and lower damage than the ranger would do swinging his sword. Now, you can dumpster-dive through the pets and find a few good ones (such as giant poisonous snake), but your average player isn't going to do that. They grab something /cool/ (which is generally B A D), then get frustrated when it doesn't hit anything and dies easily. That doesn't mean the ranger sucks, it means they made poor choices.
The other ranger archetypes perform nicely mathematically, even if their base features are...uninspiring. Beastmasters don't suck if you put a proper amount of thought into it, but most do not.
TL/DR: Rangers aren't underpowered but could use some tweaks. Beastmasters require more thought and attention to detail than most players are willing or able to invest and suffer accordingly, and as the most popular archetype unfairly color the perception of players that rangers are weak.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
The UA ranger variants need some serious work. For instance, the Tireless feature is wildly unbalanced at first level. If your ranger has 16 Wis (which they will because of how broken this is), they can buff themselves for total 3d10 + 9 temp HP every LR. That's 25.5 on average. With 14 Con your level 1 ranger has effectively 37.5 HP. Meanwhile a level 1 barbarian (16 Con) has 15 HP, effectively 30 after accounting for rage. So at level 1 rangers would be better tanks than barbs, when that's the barb's specialty.