Ok, so my DM agreed the PHB Ranger is a bit weaksauce. "Lets try the UA Ranger".
So I'm all Rangering and he's like...uhm, that's too OP. That lets you do what? Wait! I'm all, "Didn't you read the UA Ranger before allowing me to use it?".
So he nerfed the UA Ranger in many ways back down to PHB levels because otherwise "everyone will want to dip into 1 level of Ranger, it gives too much at levels 1".
My counter, "No fighting Style & no spell-casting at level 1. A lot of the other benefits of the class are just fluff/out of combat things. You WANT players that can track and survive and such...don't you? Dipping into other classes for 1 level sometimes gives very nice benefits. Still have to meet the criteria for multiclassing."
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Just trying to start a discussion about the Ranger. Some say the PHB version is a bit bland, others say the UA is to OP. A happy medium where my DM and myself are in agreement.
So my question is, have other players/DM modied the PHB Ranger to their campaign?
This is a side by side comparison of UA versus original Ranger. I am curious what you and your DM found so overpowered for the UA variant. Are you talking about mostly the basic parts of the ranger, or are you talking about the subclasses, or a subclass in particular?
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
A happy medium where my DM and myself are in agreement.
I have a very strong suspicion that this is about as likely as rolling six 18s for a character's stats. :D
I've only been playing 5th edition for a few weeks, but my initial impression is that all the classes and most of the feats are pretty OP. What's that - they can't all be OP?
OK: All the classes make you seem quite powerful straight out of the box. The players at the table love this. As the DM, it allows me to think about throwing something more inspiring than rats at the low level heroes.
Why is your DM worried about everyone taking a level of UA Ranger? - I thought he wanted all the characters to be very similar in abilities and power levels - surely this will homogenise the group pretty effectively.
You complain about him way too much. Offer to DM for a few weeks while he plays a ranger (nerfed or otherwise.) As a DM, I come back to the dark side feeling refreshed after a few sessions of watching someone else try to juggle the fireballs and vorpal swords of player expectation and desire.
The PHB ranger in our group has never played D&D before, but he is not having any trouble making his presence felt, both in combat and the other stuff...
This is a side by side comparison of UA versus original Ranger. I am curious what you and your DM found so overpowered for the UA variant. Are you talking about mostly the basic parts of the ranger, or are you talking about the subclasses, or a subclass in particular?
If this is the same character he's described in other posts on this forum then he is a Hunter 5 / Champion 3 / Scout 7 with max Dex and Sharpshooter so it may not actually be that the Revised Ranger is overpowered but the interaction with other elements of his character.
That said, Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford have stated before that the Unearthed Arcana articles are deliberately designed to be powerful because their opinion is that it is easier to go too far and reign the design back in later passes than to be too weak and add power. Also, Unearthed Arcana classes have not been balanced for multiclassing so I would not expect that version of Natural Explorer to survive in its current form as it is a bit too powerful for a level 1 ability.
Mike and Jeremy have also indicated that a new revision to the Ranger should be coming through UA in the next few months, which would take the form of alternative class features rather than a full base class framework, which would allow you to mix and match features and reduce confusion as to which version is the official version of the Ranger.
Hmm... out of curiosity, lets see what this would have had.
Hunter would give advantage on Initiative, +2 extra damage against favored enemies, advantage to attacks on those not moved yet, ignore difficult terrain, fighting style (archery most likely), spellcasting (including hunters mark), communicate with animals, ASI, extra attack, Colossus slayer
Champion would give FS, Action Surge, Improved Critical, Second Wind.
Scout gives Cunning Action, 4d6 sneak attack, uncanny dodge, expertise, evasion, skirmisher (reaction to run away), nature and survival skills (meh), an ASI.
Sharpshooter ignores cover and gives power attack.
So, two attacks, at -3 but likely with advantage, with a chance to do 2d10+2*5 dex+4d6 sneak+1d8 C.S.+ 2*10 = average of about 60 damage per turn, and about a 20% chance of a crit, before Action Surge. Lots of defensive abilities, with running away from attackers, evasion, and the ability to halve damage taken.
Hmmm.... upon review this is a pretty agile character, but seems to be focused around accuracy fishing the sharpshooter's power attack, likely from far outside of melee range. Without it, the damage drops by a third. I know lots of GMs that don't seem to be able to balance power attack out, and I've heard lots of people complain about the way ranged can kite with little difficulty of getting hurt back. I wonder if this is the reason?
So the level one dip gives you the favored enemy which is now consistently focused on one type rather than picking extra options as you level further. You actually seem to get a useful combat benefit from this favored enemy, but you have fewer options of what you can choose as a favored enemy type.
Natural Explorer gives the handy advantage on initiative, lets you move quickly over uneven ground and the like, and bonus to the first attacks in the round making them a natural ambush oriented class. All these things to me are really cool but many of my experiences have taken place in cities, towns, dungeons, and other artificial environments just as often as in the woods or on top of a mountain. So presume all those functions are applicable 50% of the time which feels good. the previous iteration only gave you closer to a 20% chance (if that) to utilize its perk.
Ya know at this point I'm just throwing things out there since he didn't actually start a conversation, just kinda said something and hoped everyone else would have ideas for him.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
What seems to be the problem, if I'm reading the build right, is that the player wants to keep the advantage on init and first round attacking, but the ST is less interested in it and wants to remove the number of times the player can initiate all the sneak/power attacks at once.
I'm not really sure what can be done, since the GM is trying to break up the combo machine; I do'nt think any amount of compromise is going to work on that. Maybe giving up the Archery FS from both fighter and ranger could work; probably could keep Defense+1, but the archery? I wouldn't count on it
Firstly, what is ST? Sure, I can guess you mean DM figure, but I'm curious. (People often remark on it. "You're a curious fellow," they will say.)
Secondly 2 fighting styles? From the PHB under fighter and ranger and presumably cut and pasted to other angry types: "You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again." (10th level champion overrides this rule.)
Power attack and sneak attack appear to be either diametric opposites or a version of the same thing, depending on your visualisation. Either way, I personally would not allow then to be used at the same time. "Beginning at 1st level, you know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe’s distraction." "You’ve learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits..." Power attack/Great weapon master is melee weapons only.
If I'm correct with the above, then that would chop about a third of the 60 point average damage down (albeit it with an increased chance to hit.)
Personally, I don't like the ability to gain a sneak attack with a missile weapon on a foe engaged in the chaos of combat - it just seems thematically wrong. Maybe I need to go and watch some of Legolas' moves again.
(One of the players at our table has a motto for how the game is played: "Maximum Style!" If faced with a choice between pulling a rug from under a monster's feet and butt-dropping it, or attacking with a sword - that monster is going to lose verticallity! )
Firstly, what is ST? Sure, I can guess you mean DM figure, but I'm curious. (People often remark on it. "You're a curious fellow," they will say.)
Ah, sorry, stands for Storyteller, the World of Darkness nme for GM. Every system has to have its own name, and so easy to mix them up. DM, ST, Marshal, Narrator.....
You can take a second fighting style, just not the same FS option. So, you can take Defensive and Archery, for instance, which is what I presume is happening here, but that is just a guess. Even Champion can't take a single option twice (ie no Defensive x2 for +2 AC).
When I say power attack here, I'm referring to the sharpshooter's ability to take -5 to hit for +10 damage, which does stack with sneak attack, and not Great Weapon Mastery.
Normally, ranged weapons would be suffering some hefty penalties here, but Sharpshooter negates them. If you prefer to maintain that feel, then it's easy enough to ban the feat.
Yes, you can have 3/4 Fighting Styles....just can't pick the same one twice.
It isn't called Power Attack for Sharpshooter; its Precise Shot.
Power attack is just the name from DnD 3.x its effect is understood, as shown by them describing it in the post.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
UA classes aren't meant to be multi-classed until they are balanced for print. So I would make sure your DM knows that so that no one will "dip" into the UA Ranger.
Ok, so my DM agreed the PHB Ranger is a bit weaksauce. "Lets try the UA Ranger".
So I'm all Rangering and he's like...uhm, that's too OP. That lets you do what? Wait! I'm all, "Didn't you read the UA Ranger before allowing me to use it?".
So he nerfed the UA Ranger in many ways back down to PHB levels because otherwise "everyone will want to dip into 1 level of Ranger, it gives too much at levels 1".
My counter, "No fighting Style & no spell-casting at level 1. A lot of the other benefits of the class are just fluff/out of combat things. You WANT players that can track and survive and such...don't you? Dipping into other classes for 1 level sometimes gives very nice benefits. Still have to meet the criteria for multiclassing."
I'm not sure what you're asking here?
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Just trying to start a discussion about the Ranger. Some say the PHB version is a bit bland, others say the UA is to OP. A happy medium where my DM and myself are in agreement.
So my question is, have other players/DM modied the PHB Ranger to their campaign?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DE5zooUR9UPN-KlzIpSB-g0MyhG110divt6uKWwT6vU/edit
This is a side by side comparison of UA versus original Ranger. I am curious what you and your DM found so overpowered for the UA variant. Are you talking about mostly the basic parts of the ranger, or are you talking about the subclasses, or a subclass in particular?
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I have a very strong suspicion that this is about as likely as rolling six 18s for a character's stats. :D
I've only been playing 5th edition for a few weeks, but my initial impression is that all the classes and most of the feats are pretty OP.
What's that - they can't all be OP?
OK: All the classes make you seem quite powerful straight out of the box.
The players at the table love this. As the DM, it allows me to think about throwing something more inspiring than rats at the low level heroes.
Why is your DM worried about everyone taking a level of UA Ranger? - I thought he wanted all the characters to be very similar in abilities and power levels - surely this will homogenise the group pretty effectively.
You complain about him way too much. Offer to DM for a few weeks while he plays a ranger (nerfed or otherwise.)
As a DM, I come back to the dark side feeling refreshed after a few sessions of watching someone else try to juggle the fireballs and vorpal swords of player expectation and desire.
The PHB ranger in our group has never played D&D before, but he is not having any trouble making his presence felt, both in combat and the other stuff...
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Hmm... out of curiosity, lets see what this would have had.
Hunter would give advantage on Initiative, +2 extra damage against favored enemies, advantage to attacks on those not moved yet, ignore difficult terrain, fighting style (archery most likely), spellcasting (including hunters mark), communicate with animals, ASI, extra attack, Colossus slayer
Champion would give FS, Action Surge, Improved Critical, Second Wind.
Scout gives Cunning Action, 4d6 sneak attack, uncanny dodge, expertise, evasion, skirmisher (reaction to run away), nature and survival skills (meh), an ASI.
Sharpshooter ignores cover and gives power attack.
So, two attacks, at -3 but likely with advantage, with a chance to do 2d10+2*5 dex+4d6 sneak+1d8 C.S.+ 2*10 = average of about 60 damage per turn, and about a 20% chance of a crit, before Action Surge. Lots of defensive abilities, with running away from attackers, evasion, and the ability to halve damage taken.
Hmmm.... upon review this is a pretty agile character, but seems to be focused around accuracy fishing the sharpshooter's power attack, likely from far outside of melee range. Without it, the damage drops by a third. I know lots of GMs that don't seem to be able to balance power attack out, and I've heard lots of people complain about the way ranged can kite with little difficulty of getting hurt back. I wonder if this is the reason?
So the level one dip gives you the favored enemy which is now consistently focused on one type rather than picking extra options as you level further. You actually seem to get a useful combat benefit from this favored enemy, but you have fewer options of what you can choose as a favored enemy type.
Natural Explorer gives the handy advantage on initiative, lets you move quickly over uneven ground and the like, and bonus to the first attacks in the round making them a natural ambush oriented class. All these things to me are really cool but many of my experiences have taken place in cities, towns, dungeons, and other artificial environments just as often as in the woods or on top of a mountain. So presume all those functions are applicable 50% of the time which feels good. the previous iteration only gave you closer to a 20% chance (if that) to utilize its perk.
Ya know at this point I'm just throwing things out there since he didn't actually start a conversation, just kinda said something and hoped everyone else would have ideas for him.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
What seems to be the problem, if I'm reading the build right, is that the player wants to keep the advantage on init and first round attacking, but the ST is less interested in it and wants to remove the number of times the player can initiate all the sneak/power attacks at once.
I'm not really sure what can be done, since the GM is trying to break up the combo machine; I do'nt think any amount of compromise is going to work on that. Maybe giving up the Archery FS from both fighter and ranger could work; probably could keep Defense+1, but the archery? I wouldn't count on it
Firstly, what is ST? Sure, I can guess you mean DM figure, but I'm curious. (People often remark on it. "You're a curious fellow," they will say.)
Secondly 2 fighting styles?
From the PHB under fighter and ranger and presumably cut and pasted to other angry types: "You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again." (10th level champion overrides this rule.)
Power attack and sneak attack appear to be either diametric opposites or a version of the same thing, depending on your visualisation. Either way, I personally would not allow then to be used at the same time.
"Beginning at 1st level, you know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe’s distraction."
"You’ve learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits..."
Power attack/Great weapon master is melee weapons only.
If I'm correct with the above, then that would chop about a third of the 60 point average damage down (albeit it with an increased chance to hit.)
Personally, I don't like the ability to gain a sneak attack with a missile weapon on a foe engaged in the chaos of combat - it just seems thematically wrong. Maybe I need to go and watch some of Legolas' moves again.
(One of the players at our table has a motto for how the game is played: "Maximum Style!"
If faced with a choice between pulling a rug from under a monster's feet and butt-dropping it, or attacking with a sword - that monster is going to lose verticallity! )
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Ah, sorry, stands for Storyteller, the World of Darkness nme for GM. Every system has to have its own name, and so easy to mix them up. DM, ST, Marshal, Narrator.....
You can take a second fighting style, just not the same FS option. So, you can take Defensive and Archery, for instance, which is what I presume is happening here, but that is just a guess. Even Champion can't take a single option twice (ie no Defensive x2 for +2 AC).
When I say power attack here, I'm referring to the sharpshooter's ability to take -5 to hit for +10 damage, which does stack with sneak attack, and not Great Weapon Mastery.
Normally, ranged weapons would be suffering some hefty penalties here, but Sharpshooter negates them. If you prefer to maintain that feel, then it's easy enough to ban the feat.
Ah, I mis-read that fighting style rule. D'oh!
Roleplaying since Runequest.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
@RENFAIREMAN
UA classes aren't meant to be multi-classed until they are balanced for print. So I would make sure your DM knows that so that no one will "dip" into the UA Ranger.