The Ranger of the 2024 Player’s Handbook is our beloved sword of the wilds, now with more magic, greater martial prowess, and new opportunities to gain Expertise. They can prepare more spells, cast Hunter’s Mark for free several times per day, and receive bonuses to the iconic Ranger spell at higher levels. Several other new features, such as Roving, Tireless, and Nature’s Veil, will look familiar from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.
Read below as we cover what’s new with the 2024 Ranger. If we don’t cover a feature, such as your Ability Score Improvements or Extra Attack, that’s because it remains unchanged from 2014.
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2024 Ranger Class Features Overview

The 2024 Ranger can prepare more spells than the 2014 Ranger could learn. For example, the 2014 Ranger learned their 6th spell at level 9, and the 2024 Ranger can prepare their 6th spell at level 5.
Spellcasting looks a little different in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. All spellcasting classes prepare their spells now, although some classes still change their spells when they level up, just like you’re used to. Spellcasting classes are no longer distinguished by who prepares spells and who learns them, but rather how often a class can change their prepared spells and how many they can change at a time. For example, now the 2024 Ranger prepares its spells when they complete a Long Rest, just like the Druid, but can only swap out one spell per day.
You can also now use a Druidic Focus, an optional class feature from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything that has been made a part of the new Ranger’s Spellcasting feature.
The 2024 Ranger and Hunter’s Mark
The 2024 Player’s Handbook strengthens the Ranger class’s relationship with its trademark spell, Hunter’s Mark. Several of the 2024 Ranger’s base class features—Relentless Hunter, Precise Hunter, and Foe Slayer—all power up your Ranger while Hunter’s Mark is active. Also, the spell now deals Force damage on a hit.
Favored Enemy has seen some significant changes. This feature no longer focuses on tracking and recalling information about certain creature types, or learning their language (though you can learn two new languages with the Deft Explorer feature below). Instead, you can now cast Hunter’s Mark twice per Long Rest without expending a spell slot, and you always have it prepared. This will make it much easier to keep up with the Barbarians, Fighters, and Paladins in damage output without having to spend your precious spell slots to do it.
With the new Spellcasting feature, you could already prepare more spells than before; with the new Favored Enemy, you also prepare the Ranger’s trademark spell for free. You’ll get more free castings of Hunter’s Mark as you level up.
At level 1, you’ll get access to the Weapon Mastery feature, which allows you to use the mastery property of two weapons, which you can swap out during a Long Rest. Mastery properties make combat as a martial character more exciting, more tactically interesting, and—if you take them as an opportunity to get creative with your battle scenes—more cinematic.
Let’s look at the mastery properties for two of the most common Ranger weapons, the Longbow, the Scimitar, and because I want to show Strength-based Rangers some love, the Battleaxe:
- Battleaxe (Topple): I’m a simple guy—the only thing I like better than rolling to attack an enemy is doing it with Advantage. With Topple, you can force enemies to make a Constitution saving throw or be knocked Prone. This can also help protect your allies if you Topple an enemy who was intending to chase after them.
- Longbow (Slow): Use Slow to buy your party some time before the second wave of enemies arrives. Aim for the leg or wing with your Longbow and reduce the target’s Speed by 10 feet. A creature can only suffer from one Speed reduction via the Slow ability at a time.
- Scimitar (Nick): Nick allows you to use the Light property’s extra attack as part of your Attack action instead of your Bonus Action. This keeps your Bonus Action available for spells like Ensnaring Strike and Hunter’s Mark, or for subclass features like the Beast Master commanding their Primal Companion.
Natural Explorer is not a feature of the 2024 Ranger. Instead, if you’d like to be an expert navigator through the woods, the Ranger now gains access to spells that could help with travel (such as Alarm, Goodberry, and Speak With Animals) at level 1 and you can select Expertise in Survival with Deft Explorer at level 2.
Deft Explorer and its benefits from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything have been broken out into their own features for the 2024 Ranger. Now, a level 2 feature, the new Ranger’s Deft Explorer grants you Expertise in one skill plus proficiency in two languages. Overhear the softest twig snap during watch with expertise in Perception, or help the tricksters of the group on their next scheme by picking up Deception.
Fighting Styles function largely the same as before. They are now a type of feat, however, so when you get access to the Fighting Style feature, you can select a feat with the Fighting Style feature as a prerequisite.
The biggest change here is that the optional class feature Druidic Warrior from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is now available to all Rangers. If your Ranger is more magically focused, you can choose Druidic Warrior to learn two Druid cantrips instead of selecting a Fighting Style feat. (Consider the new Starry Wisp spell!)
You also are no longer limited to Archery, Defense, Dueling, and Two-Weapon Fighting. So, now your Ranger can grab a Shield and focus on protecting their allies in the frontlines if they want.
- Beast Master: The Beast Master’s signature feature, Primal Companion, looks very similar to the optional feature from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. However, most of its stats (AC and Beast's Strike damage) now scale with your Wisdom modifier instead of your Proficiency Bonus. With Exceptional Training, whenever you command your companion, it can take the Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action using its Bonus Action. Lastly, Bestial Fury shares some of the benefits of Hunter’s Mark with your Primal Companion once per turn.
- Fey Wanderer: The Fey Wanderer is almost entirely unchanged from its appearance in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. At level 9, Summon Fey is always prepared instead of Dispel Magic. But Dispel Magic now appears on the Ranger spell list, meaning any Ranger can prepare it.
- Gloom Stalker: The Gloom Stalker saw some moderate tweaks. Instead of an extra attack on the first round that deals additional damage, the Gloom Stalkers’s Dread Ambusher now allows them to add extra damage to a hit a few times per day. Stalker's Flurry at level 11 was also tweaked slightly to build off of this change, increasing the damage of Dread Ambusher and allowing you to apply an additional effect when you use it: You can make an extra attack on a nearby enemy or Frighten your target and creatures within 10 feet of it. In addition to imposing Disadvantage on another creature's attack roll, Shadowy Dodge now takes your Reaction and lets you teleport up to 30 feet.
- Hunter: The Hunter has become more streamlined, with Hunter’s Prey and Defensive Tactics granting you two options instead of three. However, you can change those selections every time you take a Short or Long Rest, making you much more adaptable. My favorite change is the new Hunter’s Lore at level 3: You automatically know the Immunities, Resistances, and Vulnerabilities of creatures marked by your Hunter’s Mark spell!
Primeval Awareness is not a feature of the 2024 Ranger. You can still gain greater awareness of the world around you by picking up Expertise in Perception at level 2 with Deft Explorer. You also have more spells now and can swap them more often, so you can access magic like Beast Sense and Locate Animals or Plants more easily.
Formerly a part of the Deft Explorer feature in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Roving has been split off into its own class feature with a slight buff. It now grants an additional 10 feet of movement instead of 5. But it does require you not to wear Heavy armor. It still grants the Climb speed and Swim speed as before.
This situational feature is no longer present in the 2024 Ranger. The increased Speed now found in Roving effectively replaces Land's Stride's avoidance of Difficult Terrain—and does so at an earlier level.
The Ranger gains Expertise in two additional skills! Now you have Expertise in three skills, and can better keep up with Bards and Rogues, who have four.
With Tireless, you can use an action to grant yourself Temporary Hit Points. I love using this feature as soon as literally anything seems "off," because you get several uses per day, and the Temporary Hit Points don’t fade until you complete a Long Rest. As soon as I hear a weird noise, I’m drawing my Scimitar and using Tireless.
This feature is nearly identical to its appearance in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, except now the number of uses is tied to your Wisdom modifier, not your Proficiency Bonus. (As an aside, I like this tweak. The power represents your connection to primal forces, and so does your spellcasting ability modifier.) Just as in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Tireless also allows you to reduce your Exhaustion by one level when you take a Short Rest.
This feature replaces 2014's Hide in Plain Sight (though Rangers who want extra sneakiness can now gain Expertise in Stealth at level 9).
Taking damage can no longer break your Concentration on Hunter’s Mark. If you want to focus on dealing damage, nothing so pedestrian as a Fireball can stop you. You can now only lose Concentration on Hunter’s Mark if you become Incapacitated, you die, or you cast another spell or activate another effect that requires Concentration.
Replacing 2014's Vanish, Nature's Veil lets you turn Invisible as a Bonus Action! This invisibility lasts until the end of your next turn, granting you Advantage on any attack rolls you make during that time.
This feature is nearly unchanged from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but the number of uses now equals your Wisdom modifier instead of your Proficiency Bonus. Just as with Tireless, I personally like this tweak; turning Invisible is presumably an act of magic, and the Ranger uses Wisdom for their spellcasting.
If a creature is marked by Hunter’s Mark, you have Advantage on attacks against them. By this level, you have six free castings of the Hunter’s Mark spell, so if you want to focus on dealing damage, Precise Hunter will help you slay your enemies.
You now have Blindsight out to 30 feet. Enemy mages slinging spells from behind the cover of Invisibility aren’t safe from you any longer. This isn’t new per se—the 2014 Ranger could also perceive Invisible creatures within 30 feet—but the 2014 Player’s Handbook’s language wasn’t quite as streamlined or easy to understand. These types of tweaks are designed to make players’ lives easier.
Gain an Epic Boon feat! Epic Boons are feats that require you to be at least level 19. You will have twelve to choose from. You can select any Epic Boon you like, but the 2024 Player’s Handbook recommends:
- Boon of Dimensional Travel: Increase one ability score by 1 (up to a maximum of 30), and immediately after you take the Attack or Magic action, you can teleport up to 30 feet.
Hunter’s Mark now deals 1d10 Force damage on a hit instead of 1d6. Between Favored Enemy giving you free castings of this spell, Relentless Hunter protecting your Concentration from being broken, and Precise Hunter giving you Advantage on marked targets, the level 20 Ranger is now a master combatant.
Dominate the Battlefield with Primal Magic
The 2024 Player’s Handbook is now available on the D&D Beyond marketplace, which means it's time to set out on new adventures with fresh or familiar characters!
The 2024 Player’s Handbook makes it easier for your Ranger to feel like a primal warrior, a guardian of the wild places, and a deadly hunter. You’ll have Expertise in more skills, more prepared spells, new tactical options in martial combat, and your Hunter’s Mark will benefit from additional bonuses. The 2024 Ranger is versatile, skilled in exploration, utility, melee and ranged combat, and primal magic.
We’re delighted to share with you the changes to fifth edition D&D that appear in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Make sure to keep an eye out on D&D Beyond for more useful guides on using the wealth of new options, rules, and mechanics found in the 2024 Player's Handbook!

Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.
This article was updated on August 13, 2024 and August 28, 2024 to issue corrections or expand coverage for the following features and subclasses:
- Deft Explorer: Fixed typos and clarified that Natural Explorer's primary benefit of doubling your Proficiency Bonus for certain checks has been absorbed in Deft Explorer's Expertise benefit.
- Ranger Subclass (Beast Master): Clarifed scope of changes between Tasha's Cauldron of Everything's Primal Companion and the new Primal Companion.
- Ranger Subclass (Gloom Stalker): Fixed typo. Also added that Shadowy Dodge allows you to teleport up to 30 feet after the attack hits or misses.
- Roving: Clarified that Land's Stride avoidance of Difficult Terrain is effectively replaced by Roving's increased Speed.
- Hide in Plain Sight: Clarified that this was replaced by Tireless, and the extra stealthiness can be granted by Expertise in Stealth and level 9.
- Relentless Hunter: Clarified that you can still lose Concentration on Hunter's Mark if you cast another spell that requires Concentration.
- Nature's Veil: Clarified that this absorbed the primary benefit of 2014's Vanish.
Something i'm realizing is that the only reason hunter's mark needs concentration is because of the tracking side of it, to which i feel is fair but also annoying. I'd honestly think it would've made more sense to have that part of hunter's mark be put into the based class, that way it adds to the flavor of ranger. Then in proxy, they could either (1) remove concentration on the spell all together or (2) have it scale better with higher level spell slots. I think the fact that you just have a free casting of it, but don't gain 1 use back on a short rest was wasted potential, they could've even tied subclass features to expending a use of it.
I'm personally still gonna play the ranger, but I feel everyone's plight about the state of it. My only hope is the the discourse will get WOTC to change this version of the ranger now, listen to the input of people online, and then send the book out. Cause they did that with spelljammers after the whole Hadozee controversy, I don't see why they don't do that here in this instance.
I'm not sure this trade is worth it. Beast probably will use ranger's spell attack modifier to hit which will be much lower than ranger's chance to hit. Plus ranger probably will have any magic weapon with bonus damage. It seems to me that dpr difference is insignificant. But ofc you have this trade option.
Looks like no one will ever 20th level a Ranger again. How unfortunate.
I'd say the trade is worth it to apply Hunter's Mark twice. As for the spell attack modifier, you could take Druidic Warrior and make a WIS build with Shillelagh.
SMH. OK, I'm a Ranger bigot, & I fully accept this is a vast improvement over the 2014 Ranger, & generally builds off of the Tasha's Ranger, BUT, what is this fetishisation of Hunter's Mark?
One of the appeals of Rangers is their versatility & that's been acknowledged as having it as an expert class (thank you!). One of the historic criticisms of Rangers though was over dependence on Hunter's Mark - yes I get all the new whistles & bells make it a little more interesting, BUT it also locks you into just one spell even more now & over a 3-4 year campaign, it's limiting, repetitive & tedious & WotC has just doubled down on it. AND it's damage doesn't even scale in the same way a simple cantrip does until level 20? Mr Crawford, if you really want us to use this spell all the time with all the free castings, you could have at least made it viable at higher levels. (& tbh, with that many free castings, why didn't you just bite the bullet & make it a non-concentration Ranger exclusive cantrip that scales?)
DM's out there - do your Ranger players a favour & house rule the HM is not concentration & allow them to fully utilise the diversity that the class & subclasses allow the Rangers to bring to your game - the Ranger will have more fun, so will the others players at your table and so will you.
The problem is that all these "options" are too weak and limiting. And also boring.
For now, other 2024 classes can do a ranger's job better than a ranger while having a larger pool of toys to play with.
Ranger has become stronger compared to his 2014 version, yes. Unfortunately for him, we are talking about the PHB 2024 and Ranger is not even close to the updated 2024 versions of other classes. Both power and versatility.
Btw Shilelagh is another bonus action eater, lmao.
So the ranger need to use hunter's mark (a not vary good lvl 1 spell) to get any thing from 3 of there class features. They need to concentrate on that spell so they can't use any other concentration spells.
Rangers capstone is on average +6 damage that becomes force instead of weapon damage if you hit all of your attacks.
I do not understand why they feel that Hunter's mark needs to be the rangers whole identity.
All the other classes have become better but my feeling is that rangers are even worse then they were 2014.
Is Hunter's mark once per turn or not? That is the question that determines whether I play this class.
Don't forget the subclass features tied to it as well in Beast Master and Fey Wanderer
Why are they weak, Treantmonk has done calculations with the playtest 6 version of the ranger (which is mostly what we got here, with some HM improvements), and it has dealt more damage than the paladin, rogue and champion fighter. Ranger has a ton of utility simply by having spells to play with, and he also gets martial goodies (fighting style, weapon mastery...). There are a ton of options to mix and match, so you can easily make an effective ranger. Also, we haven't even seen their spell list, it might include lots of non concentration spells.
I just gave you an example for solving the MAD problem, ofc it has some downsides. But that's the beauty of it, you can do a lot of stuff.
Btw, treantmonk also said rangers are a lot stronger than rogues, and rogues were well received.
This isn't particularly meaningful. The rogue chassis has always been weak in terms of damage, that's not saying much. Any class with extra attack has always been able to outdamage the rogue just by virtue of extra attack, feats, and minimal support from the base class.
What we don't know yet, and treantmonk can't say yet (NDA), is:
On the last point in particular, rangers have always have pretty powerful subclasses. I actually have little doubt that rangers will be fine damage-wise, once you look at their whole package (though I'm a little worried about hunter). What is disheartening and confusing is this emphasis on HM, which is (a) not great, and (b) doesn't play well with other fun things the ranger might like to do. Treantmonk also said in his review that rangers probably would only use HM if they didn't have anything better to use their BA/concentration on. Does that feel good as a core class mechanic? Does that feel good to have features sunk into? Does it feel good when the class design is pushing a subpar ability that prevents you from doing other fun things in your class or species? Does it feel good to have a class that succeeds despite its signature base class features, rather than because of them? That's where the frustration is coming from: this seeming dev obsession with an ability that just isn't that good and doesn't play nice with elements of the rest of the class (from features to spells), yet is occupying significant feature space and budget. The extremely underwhelming capstone really doesn't help: even if it won't matter in 99% of games, the perception of it is significant, confusing, and frustrating. If the capstone won't matter, why not make it something badass and awesome? Overall, the whole package just communicates a class design that is clunky, innumerate, and divorced from what ranger players actually want from their class and tried to communicate in the playtest.
The ONLY explanation that I can think of to how they've continued to ruin this class is they MUST think that Spellcasting is going to be CRAZY.
welp, guess we have to wait another 10 years for a shoot at a good ranger class then
maybe they forgot that ranger was a thing.... AGAIN
Yep, as Silverblade1234 correctly noted, Chris said that in most cases he would probably concentrate on something more useful than HM. And he said this several times. Plus, he said several times that good features for HM wont be available until very high levels. Levels, where rangers already have more interesting options to concentrate on. Finally, he didn't say he liked the changes. If Chris's opinion is so important to you, maybe you should look at it from different angles.
On the whole, I think I regret pre-ordering.
I agree but I love the Epic Boon at 19 and honestly how often do you really play a character at level 20?
Look at how they massacred my boy
clerics, druid, and paladins get a free always on damage bump. blade locks and moon druids are still better fighters then the ranger. the rangers entire class now revolves around a 1st level spell. zephyr strike, hail of thorns, conjure volley/ barrage, lighting arrow, flame arrows, elemental weapon, summon beast. all great spells that rarely ever get used because of hunters marks. it still uses a bonus action so its get in the way of crossbow expert and two weapon fighting.
I like so many of the changes and I'm stoked to play more rangers, but I feel like Precise Hunter should be the level 20 ability instead of Hunter's Mark. It feels so game changing as opposed to the slight dmg bump.