Is the Beast Master Broken? Examining D&D’s Most Misunderstood Archetype
One of Dungeons & Dragons archetypes has been the subject of more internet debates and angry Facebook posts than any other. It seems as though almost everyone who has laid eyes on the Beast Master, the second archetype for the ranger class in the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, has some sort of problem with it. Ever since the Player’s Handbook release in 2014, social media has echoed with the outcry of “The Beast Master is broken!” It’s one of the most polarizing topics of this edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and the debate needs to be settled. Is the Beast Master broken?
The answer is yes, the Beast Master is broken.
But perhaps that’s a misleading statement. The Beast Master may be broken, yet that word may not mean what you think it means. Gamers use the word “broken” as a catchall for a litany of disparate complaints, which is great for discovering that a problem exists, but terrible for actually addressing that problem. If you’re a Dungeon Master and you want to try and fix the broken Beast Master’s at your table, you need to know exactly what you’re fixing. And if you’re a player who thinks the Beast Master is broken, you’d better figure out exactly what’s wrong so you can work with your DM to make your experience more fun.
What's Wrong with the Beast Master?
In D&D, we call a part of the game broken because it’s one of three things: not fun to play (or literally unplayable), not fun to play with, or not fun to adjudicate as a Dungeon Master. Of all these complaints, it is the first that dominates this discussion; people just don’t like playing Beast Masters. These three qualities are completely subjective, of course, but they have been so pervasive (and even extending to the ranger class as a whole) that even Wizards of the Coast has taken note of them and released several new visions for the ranger and the Beast Master for public playtesting through Unearthed Arcana.
One common complaint is that the Beast Master isn’t fun to play because it isn’t as powerful in combat as other classes, or even other ranger archetypes. The reasons cited are usually that the animal companion is too weak numerically, it can’t act in combat unless the ranger spends an action to command it, and (now that Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has been released) it doesn’t get any bonus ranger spells. Since so many of Dungeons & Dragons’ rules and player options are geared towards combat, concerns of being underpowered in combat are of primary concern for most players.
So what is a player (or a player-conscious Dungeon Master) to do?
When I ran Princes of the Apocalypse around its release in 2015, one of my players decided to play an air genasi Beast Master with a hawk companion (reskinned as an osprey, but that’s neither here nor there). Even then, I had caught wind of the foul press surrounding the Beast Master, and wanted to make sure my ranger player wasn’t walking into a trap option. We talked it over and eventually decide to give her hawk companion a few buffs to make it more powerful in combat. We decided on two things: first, it could attack independently after being directed to attack a creature. Second, we opted to give it one fighter level for every four levels she had in ranger. These changes seemed perfectly reasonable.
By 20th level, this bird had probably killed more creatures than anyone else in the party, and my players had taken to calling her companion “Murder Bird.” It became a badass animal companion, but I emerged from that campaign feeling that maybe I had put my thumb on the scale a little too hard.
Dan Dillon on Fixing What's Broken and Learning What Isn't
That campaign has been over for about a year now, but I’ve been thinking about how I could have made my ranger player’s experience smoother. I decided to speak with Dan Dillon, a game designer who has created Fifth Edition-compatible adventures and player content for Kobold Press, an excellent adventure for the D&D Adventurer’s League, and has even contributed to an undisclosed project with Wizards of the Coast. He’s also a moderator of a Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition Facebook group boasting over 100,000 members, and is a battle-scarred veteran of the Beast Master arguments there. He’s seen every viewpoint imaginable on this issue, he's played a Beast Master ranger from 1st to 20th level, and judging by his headshot, he's probably a Beast Master himself! He’s the perfect person to ask for insight.
One of the first things I asked Dan about was if we could separate signal from noise on this argument. What criticism of the Beast Master are valid, and what criticisms are simply off-base? The first thing he told me was he played his ranger without any house rules and was incredibly effective. He suggests that people who have had “awful experiences with the Beast Master” might need to reread the Beast Companion feature in the Player’s Handbook and be sure they aren’t missing any of the myriad little buffs the animal companion gets. Most of the perceived mechanical weaknesses of the Beast Master come from an incomplete understanding of the Fifth Edition rules.
Most of my woes in my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, Dan assures me, came from my player selecting a CR 0 animal companion. Of course a CR 0 hawk isn’t going to fight very well, it only does a few points of damage! I didn’t need to give it fighter levels in order to give it more hit points, it gets more hit points naturally as the ranger levels up. It even gets to attack and take aiding actions without consuming the ranger’s action as the ranger gets more class features! Rather than haphazardly throwing buffs on this weak animal, it would have been simpler to just insist that my ranger player use a CR 1/4 beast instead.
But some of these mechanical woes were not without precedent. A quick reading of the Beast Master archetype shows that the Beast Companion class feature suggests taking a hawk (or a mastiff or a panther) as an animal companion! Dan says that it’s “setting [a player] up for failure…you should not take challenge rating 0 beasts. But if you do want to do that, work with your DM and ask if you can just have a falcon companion that you’ve trained,” and choose a ranger archetype like Hunter instead.
That said, this option isn’t available to people with rules-adherent DMs or those who are a part of Organized Play. That is a flaw of the Beast Master; it’s inflexible. If you want its combat ability to be on par with similar characters, you need to know what the good options are and optimize your build (yuck). This may be a fun puzzle for veteran gamers, but poses a discouraging barrier to entry for new players. Not only do you need to know how disastrously poor at fighting a CR 0 beast is compared to a CR ¼ creature, but you have to know what books to look in (including asking the DM to let you use the Monster Manual or even the monster appendix for Tomb of Annihilation), and then you need to do a bunch of calculations to improve its stats. It’s not impossible, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, either.
Dan’s recommended animal companions are flying snakes for flight without sacrificing much damage, wolves for pack tactics and their keen senses, giant poisonous snakes for swimming and truly incredible damage and accuracy, and pteranodons if you’re playing in Tomb of Annihilation. If you’re playing a halfling or a gnome, you can use this flying dinosaur as a mount. That’s incredible!
If you want a second opinion, the gentlemen at Nerdarchy have a video on their 5 favorite Beast Master companions.
Also note, according to admins the D&D Adventurer’s League, where character builds are limited to the Player’s Handbook plus one other book, monster stat blocks do not count as your +1. So, if you really want to optimize your Beast Master, you can use the beasts in Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Tomb of Annihilation while still using another book.
Taking all that into consideration, the Beast Master is in a strong place mechanically. Dan says one underappreciated aspect of the Beast Master is that its animal companion simply adds another body to the players’ side, allowing rogues in the party to Sneak Attack more often, other players to get advantage more often (through the Help action and possibly Pack Tactics), and by allowing the ranger seriously improved battlefield control, as the animal companion can attack enemies on the other side of cover the ranger can’t shoot behind, get on top of elevated terrain if it can fly, and even serve as a mount if your ranger is Small and the companion is Medium.
But don’t think for a moment that the Beast Master is perfect. While it's possible that the incredible outcry over this archetype is all due to people not reading the Player’s Handbook closely enough or the archetype requiring too much system mastery, it's more likely that there are some problems with the archetype that a close reading of the rules can't solve. One of Dan’s chief concerns is that, unlike the trio of new ranger subclasses presented in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, the Beast Master (and the Hunter) lack bonus spells to supplement their “very tiny number of spells known [as compared to paladins who prepare spells like a cleric].”
Maybe in a future article on D&D Beyond, Dan could show us the bonus spell lists for Beast Masters and Hunters that he's house ruled to improve their power level in games he runs.
Final Verdict
I never directly asked Dan if the Beast Master was “broken” or not. That’s not what I wanted to learn from him, because I knew from the word go that the Beast Master was broken, I just needed to learn how it was... and how it wasn't. As it turns out, the Beast Master is not broken mechanically; it’s broken in a subtler, more insidious way. A way that’s harder to fix than changing a few calculations and printing errata.
In fact, the Beast Master is quite mechanically sound, if played in a certain way. The rub is that most players have no idea what this specific way of having fun as a Beast Master is! The Beast Master is one of the most complex and choice-dependent archetypes in the entire Player’s Handbook, but the book provides no help on how to navigate its many incredibly important choices. Spellcasters like wizards and clerics face a similar problem, but there’s a significant difference: most of the spells a spellcaster picks aren’t central to their identity. If you’ve ever seen Critical Role, try to imagine Vex’ahlia without her bear Trinket. If Pike, the party cleric, didn’t like a spell she chose, she could switch it out the next morning with no trouble; specific spells aren't part of her identity, but Trinket is essential to Vex’s character.
This highlights another problem of the Beast Master that, while it doesn’t strictly make the archetype weaker in combat, does make it less fun to play: animal companion death. For most Beast Masters, their animal companion is like another character in terms of emotional weight, but the game rules don’t treat it that way. While most player characters in D&D are expected to be resurrected if they die (after a certain point), all the Player’s Handbook has to say if an animal companion dies is: “If the beast dies, you can obtain another one by spending 8 hours magically bonding with another beast that isn’t hostile to you, either the same type of beast or a different one.” It expects you to do the equivalent of rolling up a new character named Bob II after your first character, Bob, was killed by a wandering monster.
For players that invest emotionally in the lives of their animal companions, like Laura Bailey and her ranger Vex’ahlia, this just isn’t fun. If you’re playing at home and not in the Adventurer’s League where strict adherence to the rules is necessary, consider this house rule that Dan and I hashed out about in our conversion: “As a Beast Master, you can spend 8 hours performing a ritual of resurrection that returns your dead animal companion to life if it died of means other than old age.”
Even if you don’t use this house rule, the animal companion should at least be able to roll death saves. The Player’s Handbook says “special nonplayer characters” are supposed to fall unconscious and roll death saving throws when reduced to 0 hit points, just like player characters. You’re just being a jerk if you don’t consider animal companions special NPCs.
If the Beast Master’s problem is one of system mastery and misplaced emotional expectations, what is the best way to “fix” this “broken” archetype in play? If you’re a player, you’re practically there already just because you’ve read this article. Choose a powerful animal companion when you first choose this archetype, and make sure you’re communicating well with your Dungeon Master about little rules interactions like whether or not animal companions get death saving throws.
If you’re a Dungeon Master looking to make life easier for a player who wants to be a Beast Master, then start by talking with your player about what kind of beast they want to choose. If it’s something small like a hawk, a squirrel, or some other inconsequential CR 0 creature, consider letting that player play as a Hunter ranger instead with a minor noncombatant companion instead.
The Beast Master may be broken, but clear communication and a little ingenuity can fix it. Happy hunting!
James Haeck is a D&D fan, frequent paladin player, and a lover of roleplaying and tactical combat in equal measure. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his two animal companions, Mei and Marzipan, and writes as a freelancer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurer's League, Kobold Press, and EN Publishing. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Great article! I enjoyed the read and thought your style of writing was eye catching and kept me in the read! Thanks for bringing attention to other places outside of your stuff. I have always thought the same, that the beast master was lame, but after reading this I really want to try one out!
Thanks!
How much of this advice applies to the UA revised ranger? One of the things it does is improve the beastmaster (now called the beast conclave) by limiting the options of animal companions and other mechanical and stylistic benefits such as the ranger only getting one attack but the companion getting to attack after the ranger as a reaction.
I have not run into these questions, as I am a relatively new DM and none of my players have chosen the Beast Master archetype. I have not either. I guess you have highlighted one reason why. I appreciate the insight and I look forward to reading more of your articles.
We recently began Curse of Strahd. One of my players is playing a beast master. Luckily, he wants to have a wolf as a companion. I was already planning to implement this house rule "it could attack independently after being directed to attack a creature." I may review other archetypes and see what extra spells they get... I may decide to add some bonus spells as well. Luckily, this player isn't overly concerned with power in combat. He just really wants to be a beast master.
One additional house rule that I am considering is that the companion will automatically attack the same creature as the ranger, unless commanded otherwise... this is roughly the same action that the companion would take if its master goes down. It is working to defend its master at all times.
Great article.
I think I might use a Beast Master now...
Great Article! What would make me play a Beastmaster is being allowed to have a Bear! I just want a bear! Writing this, I realized I should probably just ask my dm
Good analysis. I've always felt like player perception of what the class should be versus what the class actually was was the source of most of peoples problems with it. A Master of all beasts as opposed to a Master of 'my best friend beast spot who'll be at my side forever.' I've thought more than once reading people explain how it was bad just hadn't read it properly or hadn't actually played it. (Or maybe just had a harsh DM.)
The class could be easier to play, and live up to expectations better.
Wow. Just.... terrible. I'm sorry, to whomever wrote this article, but I just can't agree with anything you've written here. It does not match my playgroup's experience at all, nor from the other groups I've chatted with.
And I advice anyone reading this to take it all with a giant grain of salt. There are a number of mechanical issues at play that this article isn't really touching on at all, some of which will be very relevant depending on how your game operates, some of them which won't. Don't use anything said here to base any kind of houserules on.
Awesome hot take, James! I love the Beast Master and I'm glad to see if getting some respect from designers I know and trust!
I'm currently playing a level 15 Drow Beast Master Ranger with a panther companion named Shae'Dor. It has come to my attention that you should build your character more around the beast itself. Instead of thinking that you need to make yourself more powerful. You both are a team and therefore should choose feats and spells and items that will add to both your effectiveness.
For me starting out at low levels 1-2 I choose abilities and tactics that would help my ranger out more because I didn't have my beast yet. Now once I got 3rd level I obtained my beast (Shae'Dor the panther) I was allowed to still be a little selfish and choose abilities that impacted me. I noticed as I leveled I wasn't doing as much damage or wasnt as useful in combat as others (albeit we have a rogue and barbarian in the party) so I began to look up why that might be and people just were saying it was underpowered and not a good class in 5e. This was around the same time UA ranger was released the new beast conclave archetype. I was around level 10 or so. Played it till about level 14 and it was fine at first, but after awhile the class felt repetitive and boring ya he had more HP and better saving throws and was able to dish out more damage. But he lacked versatility and most of his features only affected him in combat and didn't address out of battle concerns (ex. sharing spells or being able to take actions even if he didn't attack to aid himself or allies.)
I switched back to the RAW Ranger build upon reaching level 15. Now keep in mind as I leveled I would switch my spells constantly as it is the only time the ranger is allowed too unlike a wizard cleric or paladin. The reason for this constant change in spells was to find a perfect balance that not only affected me positvely but also worked in tandem with my beast. Also most people don't realize this about the panther but it can knock any sized creature prone with its pounce ability. So if I cast jump on myself my beast also obtains the effects of the spell due to share spells 15th level beast master feature. Then he can jump around knocking a bunch of enemies down creating a control type build.
What I'm trying to convey is that the ranger in my opinion is the best out of combat class in the game. But at the same time one of the most versatile. They have a bunch of features that work outside of combat and also inside of combat. They also make exploring and adventuring more safe and quick for any party. And are the best scouts in the game. When you pick a beast you should think about what abilities spells or feats in the game will add to that certain creatures inate abilities already. Then just keep building that way dont be selfish and keep trying to make your ranger more powerful. You need to think of your beast as an extension of the class and also do things to benefit it just as much as you are being benefited.
My only gripe with the build is that the beasts attacks aren't ever treated as magical for overcoming resistances. And also the fact that they lack domain spells like the 3 new archetypes in xanathars. I think they should be allowed like Beast Bond, Beast Sense, and stuff like that as domain spells.
I hope people found this helpful and I'd be glad to answer anyones questions about my amazingly fun Beast Ranger build. That can do a lot in the game besides be charismatic! Lol
There are some good points in the article though so I disagree with Mephista about that
Basically from what I know about this discussion, Beast master isn't broken as long as you avoid these hundred and one trap options.
Which indicates to me that maybe it's broken.
While this is a very well written piece, I do have a few comments to consider:
First and foremost, a lot of the issues that people have with Beast Master and just in general boils down to Action Economy. During battle, there's only so much one person can do on their turn. It's also something that vexes many DMs with their attempts to make bosses, who just end up being overwhelmed because PCs will have 3-5+ actions (dependent on party size) while the boss itself has maybe one or two. This is largely why legendary actions exist to begin with- to help with that, but it's not a perfect system. With that said... I would like to comment on various things brought up throughout the article.
"...We talked it over and eventually decide to give her hawk companion a few buffs to make it more powerful in combat. ..."
Right, so that's essentially you agreeing that fundamentally speaking the class itself is broken and needed adjustments made so as to shore up its weaknesses. That in itself sort of defeats the purpose of the point you argue.
"...might need to reread the Beast Companion feature in the Player’s Handbook and be sure they aren’t missing any of the myriad little buffs the animal companion gets. Most of the perceived mechanical weaknesses of the Beast Master come from an incomplete understanding of the Fifth Edition rules."
Again, boiling back to what I was saying, it's boiling down to action economy that's allowed in 5E. Yes, you can use your action to command your animal companion to Attack/Dash/etc, but that's requiring YOUR action. It then begs the question... why not use your own action to do this? Of course you can argue that it prevents you from being in harm's way, but again, that's stemming from a lack of appropriate utilization, options or viable alternatives for the companion itself.
"The first thing he told me was that he when he reached 20th level as a Beast Master ranger, he played it without any house rules and was incredibly effective."
I don't think this is a fair comparison to make. Generally if you would have any sort of character reach level 20, you would be hard-pressed to argue that ANY class is not effective; as at that point it is pretty much assumed (and outright shown) that level 20 PCs are basically gods.
That said, this option isn’t available to people with rules-adherent DMs or those who are a part of Organized Play. That is a flaw of the Beast Master; it’s inflexible. If you want its combat ability to be on par with similar characters, you need to know what the good options are and optimize your build (yuck).
Right... new players or those who play in organized play would most certainly NOT have the ability (or knowledge for newer players) to fiddle with the system so as to make sure that Beast Masters have the same abilities of any other class/archetype. Your point here seems extremely muddled as you then go onto say that those in AL can just look in the right books in order to find a better creature. This sounds identical to the sense of optimizing a build that you decried earlier.
"Taking all that into consideration, the Beast Master is in a strong place mechanically. Dan says one underappreciated aspect of the Beast Master is that its animal companion simply adds another body to the players’ side, allowing rogues in the party to Sneak Attack more often, other players to get advantage more often (through the Help action and possibly Pack Tactics), and by allowing the ranger seriously improved battlefield control, as the animal companion can attack enemies on the other side of cover the ranger can’t shoot behind, get on top of elevated terrain if it can fly, and even serve as a mount if your ranger is Small and the companion is Medium."
Again, all this seems extremely situational and ultimately redundant with 5E's approach to the action economy. Why use your action to use the Help command when you could for example use your bonus action to cast Ensnaring Strike? You could then follow up with a normal attack roll, thereby providing your party with advantage AND providing the enemy with disadvantage on dex saves and preventing any sort of escape.
"If you’ve ever seen Critical Role, try to imagine Vex’ahlia without her bear Trinket. If Pike, the party cleric, didn’t like a spell she chose, she could switch it out the next morning with no trouble; specific spells aren't part of her identity, but Trinket is essential to Vex’s character."
I can, quite easily in fact, as often times Trinket is not relevant to combat. As VM began to reach above level 12-13, Trinket became more of an RP piece for Vex, as opposed to a viable combat asset. In fact, for the most part Trinket isn't even in battle, but safely in Vex's necklace because otherwise Trinket would get one-shotted and fall in battle. This is also bearing in mind that Laura and Matt gave Vex a combination of the PHB Beast Master as well as the Unearthed Arcana: Revised Ranger version of Beast Master.
Ultimately, it seems like your argument is boiling down to the fact that as a DM, you should be balancing the archetype yourself mechanically. I feel that if you as a DM have to change things within the rules because its too weak indicates an inherent failure in making that mechanic viable. This is especially bad for new players or players who aren't good with balancing themselves, or even those in organized play who wouldn't have the ability to make such adjustments. While I appreciate the fact that you are advocating for more usage for Beast Master, but a lot of the examples or instances you've utilized simply boils down to balancing it yourself. If anything that confirms that it's indeed broken.
My primary concern with the Beast Master as presented in the PHB is that the Ranger's attacks outstripe those of the companion the vast majority of the time, and that the action economy of the BMRanger is clogged.
The Ranger can more easily benefit from magical wepons with special effects, while a beast companion's natural attacks don't significantly improve. In addition, Hunter's Mark, one of the key spells for improving damage as a ranger , does not benefit the companion. The beast's attacks, damage, and ability DCs don't improve nearly enough to be effective on higher Challenge foes, making a ranger more likely to use what options they have within the core ranger abilities.
There are additional complications as well; many BMRanger features rely on the use of the bonus action to make the beast act. Meanwhile, a large number of the Ranger's attack-augmenting spells are bonus actions, which already conflicts with one of the most classic of ranger styles: two-weapon fighting.
The end result is much like what we saw in Critical Role, that Vex rarely used Trinket in combat to attack, if at all, and Trinket became more of a roleplay tool in much the same way that a hireling or pet would, and frequently added additional obstacles in environments less suited to a creature of that size (namely indoors, or accessing tight spaces or ladders). While the added obstacles add an interesting challenge, I feel it is unfair to the Beast Master to face all of these challenges and restrictions for their choice of subclass. While the damaging capabilities of the class may be on-par with other options, the complexity and long-term effects of a major choice can have devastating results for a less experienced player who wants a certain style and aesthetic.
I think that a lot of the perception of being broken comes from looking at the other options for companions, particularly summoning spells.
For instance, a necromancer wizard can use a single 3rd level spell slot to control 4 skeletons, which provides a better meat shield and offensive battery than the animal companion. The 5th level spell lets them throw TEN coins into the air, command them to kill something, and then watch it get done five times faster than a beast companion could ever do it. Even better, the wizard gets to boss around all these minions as a bonus action, and doesn't even require that unless they want to change targets.
That last part is what really rubs people the wrong way. You've got an animal companion and you're so bonded it's like the two of you are one, he's a valued member of the team...but he needs you shouting at him to do his job every step of the way. Meanwhile, ever other class's companions know how to follow orders for more than six seconds.
Fantastic article! This will be my recommended read for any players wanting to roll a Beast Master.
Also very much like the idea of house-ruling a CR 0 companion under the Hunter ranger instead of Beastmaster for players wanting an essentially non-combatant pet.