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.
Or maybe I misread. My Apologies there. In any event, this is much more relevant when talking about lvl 5-7 characters when in fact a beast with 20-28 HP can easily be wiped with one AoE spell. I think in these cases the ranger character would blow all his spell slots casting cure wounds or feeding gooseberries to his poor pet just to keep him upright.
Look at avg hit points of lvl 5 PC. If your lvl 5 PCs laugh at a fireball you are doing IT wrong.
People want me to give more details? Sure, lets do that. I'll talk about my personal experience.
So, I wanted to play a stealthy ranger type, who walked along with their pet in the shadows before pouncing on people, an emphasis on melee and stealth. So, Wood Elf Ranger, level 1. I took goblins and orcs for favored enemy, and forests for my terrain. We were playing Lost Mines, and ran into a goblin ambush. Here's where Natural Explorer helped - expertise on Perception. Still, we detected the ambush, and survived, killing a few goblins, and the rest fled. First session and eager to try out my other new skill, favored enemy, made an INT check, rolled badly, got GM pity, and was told some info about likely a nearby goblin den. Scouted around, found trail. Leveled up.
Second level, I bounced between TWFing and duelist; archery wouldn't let me "pounce." Reading a bit ahead, I thought that my pet was going to be taking one of my attacks, as if I was using one to do a Push or Grapple. For some reason, that was in my head, and yes, I know now I should have read closer. Still, I decided that I didn't want a shield, and having one hand empty was silly, so I went with TWFing. Picked out my spells - i think it was entangling strike and longstrider, been a while.
Anyways, short rest, second level, headed to goblin cave. Snuck up, killed some goblins from surprise. Asked if cave would be considered forest terrain, since no "cave" listed. Debated back and forth if Underdark should count for caves for a bit. The whole favored terrain (urban) came up again. Eventually decided to let it count as forest for now (probably pity that there's so many options, and changing terrain). Which was pretty awesome again - Natural Explorer let me do an awesome Animal Handling check. So far, I was loving the Ranger. I could scout ahead, identify enemies, help everyone set up a surprise attack, and we could do it without alerting the entire cave. Our tiefling warlock killed a room full of goblins with a good set up Burning Hands spell. Our bard did some healing. We had a human fighter with Polearm Mastery, and they were having a blast and kept stabbing everything for massive damage each turn.
Cleared the goblin cave, no one died, and we happily continued on with the plot, leveling to 3. Now, here's where things got complicated for me. Naturally, I wanted a sneaky pet too that could scout with me. Despite the drizzt jokes that ensued, I decided on panther. It had stealth, and we could work together fighting, I figured. It fit the concept. So, got a pet and speak with animals spell. Did some socializing in town. I just remember being bored and having my character play with the new pet, bonding, instead of dealing with people; the warlock and bard handled social-fu. I remember being distinctly unhappy in town since all my abilities wouldn't work at this point.
Anyways, we started moving to deal with some human thief guild. Got into a fight, and... At this point, we had issues. According to the DM, I couldn't both fight with my weapons, and order the panther to fight. I had to do one or the other. My brand new, shiny friend? Had to sit and do nothing for the entire encounter. It was either him, or the ranger. And that. Was. Lame. Completely unfun. There was no advantage to having my pet at all, and couldn't have anything for the next two levels. Well, not "no" advantage - the extra perception was nice, and I kept Speak With Animals up to keep appraised. But in any combat situation, he was dead weight, and in social situations, a handicap (no one likes a giant wild animal around when trying to play diplomacy).
So, we attacked thief hideout. I really had no advantages here from my class other than Two Weapon Fighting. Not orcs or goblins, definitely not a forest (inside a house). My elven perception was high enough from my wisdom and proficency to spot things thankfully. Started to feel like my character was made out of fragilium, as I needed to serve as the front line. Not a lot of ability to sneak or scout well here. This dungeon was just wading through rooms, keeping relatively quiet so we won't alert everyone, and fighting monsters. A typical dungeon crawl, prepare standard 2 melee, 2 back caster formation to fight.
After this, we had some random wilderness encounters while traveling around. I don't think there was any point where the panther picked up anything with perception that another PC didn't. At this point, I was content to jjust leave the cat behind and do everything myself. Couldn't fight, the perception wasn't helping, and despite being stealthy, Mask of the Wild let me make hide checks that the panther couldn't, so I was sneaking in spots the cat couldn't be around to Help me, and the party bard was giving me Inspiration for higher checks if it became necessary, whereas we couldn't spare the Inspiration for the panther.
We eventually got to the last stage at level 4, and we had decided to keep going after the Lost Mines were over. Ranger was hit-or-miss for me; sometimes, I could rock out some awesome skills thanks to Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer, and sometimes I raw sword / skills. The sea-cave was actually pretty cool, and we had fun exploring it, despite no goblins, orcs, or forest bonuses. Had a little elf-on-drow tension go on, which is always a blast. And, finally, the run was over, and we hit level 5.
Now, this is where I had been waiting patiently with my pet. I figured, hey, now we can actually do stuff together. I get to fight with my two weapons, the panther gets to attack once, and we're all happy. The two level waiting period was kind of annoying, but I wanted to see if maybe now it could work. Later on, we found out that, by a strict reading of the rules, two weapon fighting actually doesn't work with pets, but we ignored that. I was already having issues with never using Entangling Strike, or any of the bonus action Ranger spells. Still, I was looking forwards to trying out the panther like I originally planned.
Our story started turning towards a standard orc-invasion, dark lord rising. So, we were sent out to investigate some orcish raids. It was pretty fun, getting the tracking and everything again, until we got into a fight. The orcs had assassins and thunder clerics as well as barbarians, so it was a rather difficult fight. Here's what I learned -
The panther could do decent damage, but it wasn't that much more than I could do with an attack with my sword. It served as extra HP, but likewise, it needed our bard or myself to heal it back up; there was no stamina dice to replenish its own life. Occasionally, its pounce attack knocked someone down, but it was on the low side (less than 50% of the time) and I couldn't always angle for that running distance - dungeon walls got in the way, and fairly often, it meant I had to suffer an opportunity attack to back away. The panther never actually died in the several fights we had fighting the orc raiding party, but it came close, needing Healing Word, hogging resources, and that kind of did upset the rest of the group.
Once I hit level 6, and was picking out my favored enemies and favored terrain, I looked ahead and glanced at what I would have gotten at level 7. Use bonus action... when not attacking to do other things... and I'm not using my main mode of attack. At this point, I just gave up on the character - it was proving to be too frustrating.
Yes, the action economy was an issue, but that is putting things lightly. Not being able to attack with the pet until level 5 (nearly half the levels of the average game), is a huge deal. I could have had the panther Help someone, but our fighter was pumping out three attacks a turn already, our warlock two eldritch blasts, and bard using Vicious Mockery. Wouldn't be that big of a help for anyone. When all is said and done, I would have been better off with the hawk. Yes, that CR 0 critter that the article above claimed was setting up for failure. Sure, it can't deal a lot of damage, but damage isn't a huge thing with the Companion anyways - I'd been better off with Duelist, Hunter Marks, and a shield, and then using Speak with Animal to make my hawk into an aerial scout. Unlike the flying snake, hawks are common enough to not raise anyone's suspicion, and don't exactly make people as nervous as a giant cat or poisonous critter with wings.
Would system mastery have fixed the above issues? Not really. This was just until level 6, and filled with unavoidable frustration. Nothing solves that level 3&4 no-use problem except house rules. Surviving was an issue. Damage would have become a problem as the game continued - not just because a lack of ways to deal with resistance to non-magic, but having a magic weapon meant my elf's damage would surpass the Companion's until level 11. And even then it depends on the magic item in question, or if you're using a spell to buff your own attacks. You can solve range or mobility issues by taking a flying critter, but you have to keep an eye out for damage there too if the pet gets too far ahead, while someone throwing knives or shooting arrows is still with the group.
Now, while all this might change at higher levels, the lower levels are difficult, and it may very well depend on the DM's mindset. Playing a high level beastmaster might work for some games, and be crap with a different playstyle. That's something you have to take into account as well.
Well, I'm seeing a lot of posts take issue with this article and being called out for not being specific. I'm not sure how fair this is, because this article is not very specific in and of itself. I'm sure that your experience and the experience of Dan Dillon holds absolutely true for your tables, but I question how useful that is to the rest of us. There is a perception that any citation of numbers and general combat effectiveness comes from a place of a number obsessed power gamer. This is simplistic and inaccurate. Damage numbers and class features are simply the skeleton that supports the body of any given home game. Yes, we all love story and character development, but these things control the plot to some extent. They are worth factoring in for every game of 5e no matter how much you favor RP. That being said, I'm going to try to make a concise list so that I don't generate the feeling that I am unreasonably dumping on this article.
1. The majority of choices for a beast companion have no range option or a severely limited one. With this in mind, the health pool and armor class of an animal companion are completely inadequate. The longer a game goes on, the more this will show as a damning weakness. Some others have cited barding as a possible solution for one of these things. This is not so bad, but for one it doesn't suit every animal companion. Also, it just adds to the problem of this class needing to be played in a specific way that is cited in the article. There are an awful lot of stories about people either losing their pets or desperately holding them back to keep them safe. This is especially true of Vex from Critical Role who you decided to cite in your article. Trinket the bear became a joke at that table for his uselessness. We all still loved him, but that was because he was a big friendly bear. He was a non factor in combat.
2. Animal companions' attacks are worse than their rangers. Beasts cannot proc Hunter's Mark, Lightning Arrow, or any other damage ability you might attach to your attack. They do not even have the chance to get a magic weapon. They cannot ever use one. While the presence of these weapons varies from table to table, the idea that they will NEVER have one is a pronounced weakness compared to the ranger. There's more, like the idea that the beast cannot benefit from the ranger's feats (sharpshooter), but the point is clear. The option to use attacks for the beast is a poor one.
3. The transportation issue. Again, we will cite Vex from Critical Role. That bear was a problem to move more times than I can count. Matt had to home brew an item solution for it. If you have a bear, a mule, or some other terrestrial four legged animal they cannot climb ladders. They cannot go up a rope. Some of them won't even be tolerated in the inn where you're staying. I'm looking at you, Giant Poisonous Snake. This is a problem that almost can't be overstated. It comes up a lot, and it makes other characters resent the animal companion.
4. Your animal companion is largely unskilled. While there are some exceptions (see the wolf and panther for two beasts with perception and stealth), the bulk of animal companions can't do all the things your ranger can do. You have perks like being able to travel at a normal pace, stealthily (only in your favored terrain!) with just your companion. This doesn't really suit people with snakes or mules as pets. The 5e team has stated in the past that the ranger is supposed to be able to take independent action, but realistically you are going to want to leave that pet with the group if you are scouting.
5. At no time do you address the general ranger features of the PHB. These features are hyper specific, and need to be paid more attention to than most other class features. I really think that they did SUCH a good job changing Natural Explorer for the UA, and it REALLY irks me that anyone is thinking of leaving the old Natural Explorer instead. Perhaps you don't like those features. I don't know, they never came up. They're an important part of the class that you didn't mention.
6. Lastly, you made a mistake in your article. The animal companion can never attack without using the ranger's action. I think you were thinking of being able to attack once when you have your beast attack if you have the Extra Attack feature. I wouldn't normally nit pick this, but I have concerns about why this article is appearing.
In one of the recent interviews before Xanathar's came out, Jeremy Crawford was asked about the revised ranger appearing. His response set off some alarm bells for me. He said something to the effect of "People are saying the Hunter was fine, and that maybe all these problems are about the Beast Master." This was in regards to the UA Ranger feedback. Now, this article comes along and I can't help but feel that they are prepping us for giving up on the Revised Ranger. I really hope I'm being cynical.
Awesome. At work now, but I'll read through the deets soon. Thanks for the extra info, Mephista.
A house rule I would potentially let a player use (or ask if I could use myself) is letting the companion use the additional attack when the ranger gets it through leveling. I'm not sure if this is already a thing in the player's handbook, but I have never seen it done before, in my limited experience playing and my watching Critical Role. While it limits what the ranger can do as an individual, it helps strengthen that bond with the creature. I also would push for a CR 1/4 beast like outlined in the article.
Now I may have to make a beastmaster... hmm...
Haeck doesn't even play Ranger. Why is he writing about it? He found one person to get personal experiences from and ran with it. As I said in the beginning: disappointing.
honestly the low health of the best is my biggest gripe. Having only 4 health for each level makes it even squishier than a wizard with +0 constitution. That really limits its usage because what you'd imagine is being an archer in the back while your beast is in the fray hitting people behind cover when in practice the beast would be hiding behind you because it dies from anyone giving it any attention (not the playstyle I'd want). I'd honestly be alright with giving the beastmaster ranger less health and increasing the health of the beast to something more melee-friendly
Great article, I will be using the techniques discussed if I have a player that opts for Beast Master.
I hate that definition of rules lawyer because it is very inaccurate as to what rules lawyering is. Lawyers practice and study the law using everything they know about it so that they are able to get the outcome they want or their client wants. A judge takes the arguments presented before them, the law as written, the law as intended when it is unclear and how they interpret the law when it is unclear. Lawyering requires a bias for or against something while judging requires neutrality and trying to come to a fair conclusion.
Rules judging which is what most DMs do, or at least try to do, is making a judgement call based on RAW, RAI, how they interpret the rule and what possible reactions could happen because of the ruling. You can play the rule as intended or based on outside sources and still be rules lawyering. If a rule is clearly written the intention should also match. When a rule is written unclearly then a judgement must be made based on what I said above.
Rules lawyering is when you use the RAW, RAI and how you interpret the rule to gain something out of it while continuing to argue the point. A DM who uses RAW, RAI and how they interpret the rule to give a player an advantage or hindrance just because they want it that way is rules lawyering. A DM makes a ruling one way but not another way in the same situation with similar enough variables but they don't want players to use a rule in that way is also rules lawyering. It doesn't have to be anything broken but something minor. A rules lawyering DM is someone who says yes or no to someone because they want to say yes or no without actually considering everything else. A rules lawyering player will use every argument at their disposal to get something they want.
Even with your description we still do not rules lawyer as when something is not clearly stated such as if barding allows proficiency or not the DMs are left to decide. It really is not different from any home game other then putting limitations on what we are able to do in order to keep the experience as close to the same as possible so that people are able to move around from one table to another with ease and have the same expectation of how the game will be ran. It also keeps DMs from giving out or allowing completely ridiculous things and expect some other poor DM to allow it on their table because someone else allowed it. I mean it would be like some new player to your group expecting that they can bring a character that is completely broken because their other DM allowed it.
As a DM I do not lawyer I judge things based on what I said before on rules judging. In any competitive setting those that making calls based on the rules have either official or judge in their title. Never do you see a lines lawyer in tennis because they don't argue the rules they make judgements based on the rules. It is the players job to lawyer the rules and the judges job to make a decision based on the factors. Players have bias because they want to win while the judges are impartial (at least should be) since the outcome of the match doesn't have an effect on them (at least shouldn't).
That is why I hate that definition of rules lawyering because playing the rules are written isn't lawyer but just playing by an agreed upon set of rules that everyone is able to understand. People play 5th edition, pathfinder, Lot5R, etc because that is the rule set they want to use. Once a home game has established all of its rules they are playing game by they are now using the rules they have written even if it is not written because they agree to use the rules in that way. Once you agree to play using rules in some way it is like using the RAW because you typically will not deviate from that way in similar situations. With AL playing RAW as much as possible it allows everyone to be able to play using an agreed upon set of rules that makes it so that they don't have to spend an entire day having to learn every single rule that is not in the book or end up being confused/frustrated as they have no idea what is going on. It would be like trying to play chess but depending on who or where you played it was completely different game. Eventually you would be confused and frustrated to the point of never playing public games or any games at all.