Class is back in session. This week, we go on the hunt for a class that strikes a balance between skirmishing, survivability, and stealth. That’s right, it’s time to look at the ranger class’s Hunter archetype.
Story of the Hunter
“Silence your hounds,” the ranger snarled. She didn’t even deign to glance over her shoulder at the perplexed houndmaster behind her.
“Beggin’ your pardon, milady, but Stella and Claire ain’t even makin’ any noise at all,” the houndmaster said, a look of confusion upon his face. Indeed, his two muscular pit bulls were standing quietly at his side. Their posture was alert, but their jaws were slack and their tongues lolling out happily.
“You lack the ears of our prey,” the ranger replied. Her voice was quiet beyond a whisper. It was the merest hiss of a noise, and the perplexed houndmaster had to step closer and strain his ears to make her out. “Such a beast can hear a cockroach scuttling across the forest floor half a league away. Those mutts’ panting is like the wingbeats of a dragon to it.” She paused for a moment and sniffed the air, then turned and stared directly at the houndmaster, her golden eyes gleaming at him, cat-like, in a way that set his teeth on edge. “Stay here,” she hissed. “Guard our camp. Make not a sound.”
She then turned away, without awaiting a reply. She muttered an imperceptible incantation, nocked an arrow in her longbow, and leapt into the trees. Even as she tore through the canopy, she seemed to melt away into the shadows of the leaves, which made not even the faintest sound as they rustled. The instant she passed out of sight, there was no trace that she had ever been there.
The Hunter archetype doesn’t have a lot of roleplaying hooks built into its concept in the same way that a paladin’s Sacred Oaths or a warlock’s Otherworldly Patron does, but it’s still easy create a hunter with a cohesive thematic vision. If you feel like the roleplaying suggestions provided by paladin and warlock subclasses are more like constraints than guidelines, then you may appreciate the relative narrative freedom that the Hunter archetype offers.
What can a Hunter be in D&D? The answer is up to you. The idea of a big game hunter-turned-adventurer is a fairly obvious route. Many ranger players like to flavor their character as a bounty hunter, tracking down people rather than monsters. Others like to aim at greatness by being a dragon-hunter or giant-hunter, all takes on the broader niche of monster hunter—though that niche is more specifically addressed by the Monster Slayer ranger archetype in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
The Hunter ranger archetype is adept at dealing massive damage in quick bursts, and can specialize in either fighting hordes of small enemies, or in focusing on single large targets. Legolas, as portrayed in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy, can be represented by a wood elf ranger with the Hunter archetype. (Aragorn, though he is called a “ranger” throughout the books and the films, is really more of a fighter, when you get right down to it.) Hunter truly is the most iconic manifestation of the ranger class, and any fictional ranger from Robin Hood to Tarzan could be classified as a Hunter.
Hunter Features
Rangers who emulate the Hunter archetype are master skirmishers and survivalists, and are known for passing through the wilderness with the silence of a panther stalking its prey. The ranger gains four subclass features starting at 3rd, 7th, 11th, and 15th level. You can read all of the Hunter features for free in the D&D Basic Rules. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:
- Choose from three different ways of gaining additional damage or attacks against solitary foes, giant foes, or numerous foes.
- Choose from three different defensive options, such as making it harder for opportunity attacks to hit, or making it harder for creatures to hit you with consecutive attacks.
- Chose one of two different superior offensive options, such as making a volley of shots against any number of creatures within a 10-foot radius, or performing a melee spin attack.
- Choose from three different superior defensive options, such as evading effects like fire breath and lightning bolts, or halving the damage of an incoming melee attack.
Benefits of the Hunter Archetype
Hunters are damage-dealing powerhouses, and can easier fight from afar with bow and arrow, or from close quarters with a weapon in each hand. Your subclass features are immensely useful to you, providing both additional offense and defense in combat. While they don’t provide you with any non-combat tools, the ranger class is so stuffed full of neat, situational bonuses to your exploratory abilities that you’ll never feel like you’re low on non-combat options.
Where the Hunter’s subclass features really shine is in their versatility. With two or three separate options to choose from in each subclass feature, the Hunter archetype allows you to customize your character in any way you want—as long as it sticks to the ranger’s class fantasy of fighting with a longbow or with two light melee weapons in hand.
Drawbacks of the Hunter Archetype
Most of the Hunter’s flaws are endemic to the ranger class as a whole, so feel free to take this iconic archetype without fear. Perhaps one of the most grating flaws, one that you’ll encounter regularly throughout play, is how many ranger spells demand concentration. Hunter’s mark, a spell you will probably be using to deal damage in almost every single combat you enter, is the most egregious offender. Since hunter’s mark is so iconic a spell, it rarely feels like a choice to cast a different spell so much as it feels like a sacrifice.
Nevertheless, Hunters do suffer a small number of flaws unique to their subclass. The customizability provided by the Hunter archetype’s four subclass features is a great way to create a unique Hunter, but once you’ve chosen a path, you’re locked into it. If you choose the Giant Slayer option at 3rd level, but find later on that you’re rarely fighting large enemies, you’ll have to ask your Dungeon Master if you can swap it out. By strict rules as written, that’s not in the cards, meaning that if you play in Adventurers League or in any game where the DM is a strict rules literalist, you’re stuck with a crummy feature.
I recommend any DM in this situation to be generous to your players and allow a way to retrain subclass features, much like you can retrain your ranger spells known whenever you gain a level. Or, perhaps you want it to require undergoing a quest to find a tutor. Either way, simply disallowing feature retraining is needlessly antagonistic, and I urge you to let your Hunter players retrain their features within reason.
Suggested Build
If you’re building a Hunter archetype ranger from 1st level, be aware that you won’t gain your subclass until 3rd level. When creating your character, you should choose a race that gives you a bonus to Dexterity, Constitution, or Wisdom—ideally at least two of the three. You can play a ranger that focuses on Strength instead of Dexterity, and uses large melee weapons instead of dual-wielding light weapons or shooting a bow, but it’s definitely nontraditional. For this reason, playing a wood elf or a stout halfling are your best bets; both give a large bonus to Dexterity and a small bonus to Constitution or Wisdom, and give some useful traits, as well.
Humans, hill dwarves, and forest gnomes are also useful and interesting choices of race for rangers.
As usual, your character’s background is up to you. Some rangers were born in civilization and felt the call of the wild from an early age, while others have lived in the wilderness their entire lives. As such, Outlander or Hermit would be a fairly standard starting background for a ranger, while choosing soldier, acolyte, or sailor could be an interesting way to “play against type.”
Select EQUIPMENT when creating a character. Choose scale mail if you’re playing an unusual ranger with low Dexterity; otherwise, choose leather armor. Also, unless you have a specific reason to want a simple melee weapon, choosing two shortswords is a good route to go. If you want to emulate Drizzt Do’Urden and play with two scimitars, try to convince your DM to allow you start with two scimitars instead of shortswords. An explorer’s pack is great for rangers in the wilderness, and you have no choice but to accept a longbow.
At 1st level, figure out which you enjoy more: fighting in melee with a shortsword in each hand, or fighting from afar with your longbow. Once you know your preference…
Fighting Style
Your first major build decision comes at 2nd level, when you have the option to choose your Fighting Style. Rangers have several options, but the best two options for you are either Archery or Two-Weapon Fighting. Archery gives you a serious accuracy bonus when fighting with ranged weapons (not just bows!) and Two-Weapon Fighting grants you a small damage bonus while dual wielding. Archery is probably the better style in a vacuum, but your character concept should supersede what is mechanically “optimal.”
Defense is a perfectly reasonable fighting style if you have mediocre defenses, but generally speaking, investing in offense is better for rangers. Only consider the Dueling fighting style if you’re playing an unusual Strength-focused ranger with a one-handed melee weapon and a shield.
Spells
Your second major decision comes at 2nd level, too! You first gain the ability to cast spells at this level, drawing from their own unique spell list. While your spell selection is more limited and you gain access to more powerful spells more slowly than “full caster” classes, you balance it out with your robust combat arsenal. Take this time before you gain your subclass at 3rd level to feel out what your role in the party is. That way, when you do gain your subclass, you’ll know what spells your party needs you to have access to on a regular basis.
When you reach 2nd level, you learn two 1st-level spells from the ranger spell list. Unlike some other spellcasting classes, once a ranger learns a spell, they know that spell forever. You can "trade out" one known spell for another spell on your spell list when you gain a level, but that's it. From here on out, you learn one new ranger spell at 3rd level, and at every odd-numbered level thereafter. You also gain access to a new spell level at 5th level, and every four levels thereafter. This is where retraining spells becomes important; if you know low-level spells that just aren’t useful to you anymore, you can swap them out for higher-level spells one-by-one to adapt to rising challenges.
As an offense-focused subclass, you’ll want to start by picking two spells labeled OFFENSE at 1st level. From there, you can be the judge of what spells you need to best support yourself and your party. Picking up a few spells labeled DEFENSE or SUPPORT over time couldn’t hurt, but you’ll want to make sure that your offense is always top-notch. As mentioned above, a large number of ranger spells require concentration, and you can’t have more than one concentration spell active at a time, so be careful.
Note that this list only includes some spells from the Player's Handbook, so if you want to choose more unusual spells, or have other sources like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you'll have to do a little self-directed research. This list is just here to get you started if this is your first time playing an Hunter archetype ranger.
- Alarm (DEFENSE)
- Cure wounds (SUPPORT)
- Ensnaring strike (OFFENSE/DEFENSE)
- Hail of thorns (OFFENSE)
- Hunter’s mark (OFFENSE)
- Speak with animals (SOCIAL)
Feats
Rangers don’t gain a huge number of feats like fighters do, and since you will want to make both your Dexterity and Wisdom as high as possible, you may not have the chance to take many feats. If you don’t mind leaving your Wisdom on the low end, or just want to shore up some of your weak points, taking a feat or two at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, or 19th level can be a huge boon.
Crossbow Expert is amazing if you wield a heavy crossbow instead of a longbow. It makes your ranger seem a bit less elegant and a bit more brutish, but with this feat, the perks are worth it. Even if you aren’t using a crossbow, not having disadvantage on ranged attacks while in melee combat is pretty slick.
Defensive Duelist lets you use your reaction to try to parry an incoming attack. This can be very useful for dual-wielding rangers, even if you can only use it once per round.
Dual Wielder is a good choice if you’re, well, dual wielding. It ups both your offense and your defense, so what’s not to love?
Mobile is a stellar feat choice for dual-wielding rangers, allowing you to whiz about the battlefield with impunity.
Ritual Caster helps augment your limited spell slots and spells known, making this an unusual, versatile, and surprisingly handy feat to have.
Sharpshooter is all but necessary for archery rangers. Your damage will skyrocket with this feat in hand, especially since you gained an accuracy boost from your Archery fighting style.
War Caster can help you conserve your precious spell slots when faced with saves to maintain concentration, but it’s mostly useful for melee fighters, since archery-focused rangers tend to not bear the full brunt of combat.
Multiclassing
As a post-script, ranger is a great class to multiclass out of, especially if you sense that your campaign will go into the mid-level range, but not into high levels. Rangers get their 5th-level spells at level 17, and those spells rock, but their 20th level capstone ability is only so-so. If you don’t care much about ranger magic but want to be a mighty, fighty, sneaky assassin, ranger multiclasses well with rogue. Multiclassing into fighter also gives you some rock-solid combat traits. Likewise, multiclassing into druid gives your spells an additional kick in much the same way that fighter levels can improve your combat abilities.
If you want more advice for building a ranger, check out Ranger 101. Have you ever played a Hunter archetype ranger? What advice would you give to players that want to play this subclass?
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Nice review of the Hunter. To those complaining the Hunter is weak, it'd like to offer a little historical perspective: I've played every edition of D&D, and have spent hundreds of hours optimizing/breaking the game in every edition since 2.0. Unequivocally, 5e is the most balanced system D&D has ever had. Every class has its unique abilities; those abilities are, for the most part, well spaced out over 20 levels, and every class and even every race is playable and fun. That's not an easy task for a designer. Remember 3.5E? That was a great RPG. You could also break it six ways from Sunday, because balance is hard. Classes and other options will never be perfectly balanced. Some will always pack more of a punch than others.
On roleplaying the Hunter, I'd suggest it as a good build for a kensai: it's an agile, lightly armored warrior that can be spookily accurate with a bow and/or dish out a whirlwind of melee attacks. For additional flavor, one might select spells like jump and expeditious retreat to reflect the kensai channeling their ki.
On multiclassing, I do think a dip into fighter is very helpful to the Hunter. The second fighting style means you can pick up both Ranged and Two-Weapon, or, if specializing is more your speed and you're using UA, Ranged and Close-Quarters Shooting for a massive +3 to ranged attacks within 30ft.
Another finesse for your elven ranger would be to snag the Great Weapon fighting style sometime after picking up Revenant Blade. Now you can use your GWF on a finesse weapon, which pushes your average damage (sans modifiers or bonus damage dice) with each end of the double scimitar to 6, better than a two-handed longsword and just a hair below a greataxe (if you're considering this option, be sure your ranger fighting style is something other than Two-Weapon Fighting, because the double scimitar gets the damage bonus on the bonus attack regardless, making it redundant for this build.)
I didn’t mean to comment and now I cannot uncomment. So...anyway...
Great article. Legolas never cast any spells so he would probably be a fighter too.
Noting that this was a primer on Hunters rather than on Ranger subclass balance in general, or the Ranger in even broader general against other classes...
Hunter is the 'default' Ranger, the one the game suggests you take if you just want the purest version of the archetype, and as such it's honestly a little fitting that it's one of the simpler options. I will note, I strongly believe in the idea that DMs should refit in a Domain Spells list for both Hunter and Beastmaster; the presence of those extra spells on the expanded-content subclasses feels like a real kick in the pants for the PHB classes. One can Google "Ranger subclass spell lists" or the like and track down Semi-Official Recommendations, but whether you use those or invent your own spell list, anyone not playing AL (and frankly no one should ever play AL unless it's the only game in town) could benefit from matching the base capabilities of the other classes.
That said? There's an argument to be made for the Hunter focusing more on pure martial talent. A lot of people bag on Rangers for not being mechanically strong or Fyte Monsters, but that doesn't matter if your DM is willing to work with you and if a Hunter is what you want to play. The subclass offers nice combat utility which helps offset the base class's somewhat thin combat options, and furthermore a number of its special functions feel like cool combat tricks a master skirmisher might know. Let's face it - Volley is awesome, Stand Against the Tide is such a great way to flip certain creatures the bird finger by forcing them to execute their big fat super stronk attacks on their own minions, and telling multiattackers to piss off (within reason) is cool.
There's value to the subclass, and the amazing thing about tabletop RPGs in general and D&D 5e in particular is that the game's core mechanic - the guy with the books who's running the show - can fix stuff. Want Hunter's Mark to stop being concentration because every flippin' Ranger spell in the book is concentration? Sure, let's try it. Want to expand the Hunter or Beastmaster spell lists the same way Slayer, Walker, and Stalker get to? Why not, only fair. Don't like Favored Enemy/Terrain being roleplay-y features more than Win Fyte Moar features? Do something about it.
Like James said. Legolas it up.
Side note: props for including Ritual Caster on the suggested feats list. A lot of people forget it exists, but it's such a cool thematic fit for frontier wildmen in tune with the Primal Forces of Creation. Not only Rangers, but also Barbarians in tune with the wilds or other characters with that sort of spiritual connection. It may not be Yet Another GWM/PAM Reaction Attack Cheese Max Deepser, but nobody needs any more of those. Rangers who act like Rangers, on the other hand? Masters of the wildlands with an unrivaled sense of the land? Worth at least twelve vHuman Fighter Halberdiers that are utterly worthless outside of initiative.
Can't you delete your posts by going on tools?
This response is merely my opinion. As I assume, people may or may not agree with what I have to say and that is completely fine. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and just because it may or may not agree with my feelings, does not invalidate theirs.
With that being said...
Reading through various "build advice" threads in forums and on discord, the general consensus is that the Ranger is under powered. That is, fighter builds can surpass the ranger in both melee and archery and with the ranger class' "meh" spell abilities, the opinions are that better options exist. I personally enjoy the ranger class, but would find it more interesting to read an article about them that is able to back up the statement "a great class" rather than the statement "a great class to multiclass out of."
In my opinion, every class in D&D should have that thing that makes their class unique and shine, as it was intended. With the rangers from the PHB, your choices pretty much puts you onto the path of two distinct cookie cutter types: Legolas or Drizzt. The Ranger class from the PHB is hands down (no matter how many times people swear "the vast majority" prefer the PHB version), is the most disappointing class in the entire edition. They had a perfect solution (again merely my opinion) in the revised ranger, but again the vast majority of a closed group of friends and family of WotC employees said nope we like the PHB version, the thing we already spent money printing in a book and can't take back now.
"meaning that if you play in Adventurers League or in any game where the DM is a strict rules literalist, you’re stuck with a crummy feature." This just makes me cringe. "Stuck with a feature that doesn't fit your campaign" would have been a much better choice of words. Now you've labeled Giant Slayer as a crummy feature on top of calling the Hunter archetype a great class to multiclass out of.
Again, when you compare the ranger class to other classes, this is literally what if feels like. You look around the table and all the other classes have these great abilities that say "I am a member of the class because this is our thing" and the ranger can only say that if the entire adventure is nothing more than walking around in the wilderness otherwise their "thing" is "I shoot stuff with my bow, or slash things with my weapons"
"Rangers who emulate the Hunter archetype are master skirmishers and survivalists, and are known for passing through the wilderness with the silence of a panther stalking its prey..." With the right feat, or spell, any class can do this."
Exactly. Even if you manage to sneak up on your prey, now what? We go back to two options: I shoot it with my bow, or I run out and attack with my swords - which any class can do, and most can do it with a lot more options than the class in which this is supposed to be "their thing"
"Most of the Hunter’s flaws are endemic to the ranger class as a whole..." ; "one of the most grating flaws, one that you’ll encounter regularly throughout play, is how many ranger spells demand concentration..."; "Since hunter’s mark is so iconic a spell, it rarely feels like a choice to cast a different spell so much as it feels like a sacrifice." I understand the entire paragraph is about the Hunter's flaws... OK. Honesty is good. Would have been helpful to include examples on how to work with/around the limitations. You've basically pointed out that there is only one useful spell in the entire class.
Take the ranger out of combat. What do you have left?
Overall, I find this article geared more to highlight the limitations of the Ranger class, rather than highlighting the strengths and uniqueness of the Ranger class.
In my opinion, the entire class is so lackluster (when compared to every other class), it is nothing but limitations and leaves the player (especially in an adventurer league situation) asking "why did I ever choose to be this class"
I haven't played AL, but see your point. Through the various editions, everything that made the Ranger class, in general, has been made available to every other class. There isn't anything special left. "While they don’t provide you with any non-combat tools, the ranger class is so stuffed full of neat, situational bonuses to your exploratory abilities that you’ll never feel like you’re low on non-combat options." When statements that are more about limitations, than usefulness, are in the middle of a section about "benefits" the story is pretty much told.
Once upon a time the Ranger class was the hardest to level, but there were rewards. Now it isn't as bad to level up, but all the rewards are gone.
Since these articles are about drumming up interest in their topics, I simply decided to point out most of the article succeeds only in screaming, "Run away, Run far away!"
Nice really the article.
As a countervailing opinion for people reading this thread specifically (since it's clearly gone well beyond the scope of simply the Hunter subclass).
Revised Ranger is boring as hell. Yes, it's mechanically much more powerful but it accomplishes this by sacrificing every last inch of flavor and style the base Ranger had. Revised Ranger dispenses entirely with the Master of the Wilds feel of the Ranger in exchange for a generic damage bonus against humanoids and a bunch of overpowered crap that kicks in on first turn of combat. While I still hold out hope for a 5.5e that patches the base game some, I'm one of those that would play PHB Ranger over Revised Ranger most any time I played Ranger. Revised is stronger, at the cost of its soul. Especially since a big chunk of its 'Stronger' is simply "you gain half of Cunning Action at level 8, and the other half at level 14"
Merely my opinion, of course.
There's room to patch the Ranger, and especially the Hunter and Beastmaster, but Revised went too far in the direction of making mechanical minmaxy optimizers happy. There's a middle ground to be found, and hopefully we'll get a 5.5e that finds it.
Just above the Fighting Style section, you mention the starting equipment, and how you have no choice but to have a longbow. If playing as a Small race (gnome, halfling, etc), it might be worth mentioning how any DM should be strongly encouraged to allow swapping out the longbow for a shortbow for such rangers, since that longbow will be useless to them...
@Katharsis:
The problem mechanical people have with the Ranger class is that both Favored Terrain and Favored Enemy are 'fluff' abilities. They work as well as the DM lets them work, and they aren't built in such a way as to allow a player to throw more dice at a problem. Mechanical people are very well known for the general idea that if a feature does not give you more rolls or bigger rolls, then the feature is dead weight. Classic example would be the Monk's 'Tongue of Sun and Moon' ability allowing them to understand any spoken language. Mechanical optimizers frequently lament it as a completely dead level and an XP tax on acquiring the Monk saving throw proficiencies, while more fluff-oriented folks look at it and go 'holy SHIT that's strong' because some of the applications of always understanding any spoken word you can hear are profound.
In what practice I've had with the game, Favored Terrain/Enemy is more of a negotiation between the DM and the player than a hard-and-fast thing. The written benefits are anemic but if you're not playing AL (and again, nobody should ever, ever play AL unless it's the only way they can play), it's usually worth talking to your DM about specific instances in which your Favored knowledge can help you. Optimizers want more dice, Revised Ranger gives them more dice, so they like Revised better. People more interested in the story of the game, and in what their abilities inform both the player and the DM they should be able to do, tend to prefer the PHB Ranger.
I take a little bit of issue with these very broad-strokes generalisations, even though I do agree with most of your points. Any time you make clear, obvious statements about a group of people you take a serious risk of completely ignoring the actual experiences of those people. Most people I've played with have cared about mechanics and roleplay in a mostly-balanced way; that's what this hobby is, after all. Most players (that I've met) would absolutely take a mechanical debuff for a really nice roleplay moment, but would also bend character just a little to get a really nice mechanical synergy. In any case, I've never met anyone who considers "Tongue of the Sun and Moon" completely useless, though I do understand that it often seems a lot less special in a system that still has that blasted Tongues spell. In that vein, it's helpful to consider that a lot of what the Ranger does get from their cool exploration buff stuff can be either A: Completely area-restricted and B: Replaced by spells that they actually have access to. Goodberry is another Tongues for me; a spell that exists to waive roleplaying opportunities for parties not prepared for them. That's a valid way to play, but it does make the Ranger feel a lot less cool when their main contribution to survival is something anyone could do with a spell, feat or background.
My Biggest issue with the PHB Ranger is and always has been because it doesn't actually encourage you to roleplay in the way it says it does. It's not just "mechanical people" who don't like it, because this game is entirely reliant on mechanics and roleplay working together; it's not para-rp and it's not a wargame either (and I've had amazing experiences with the former so I'm not putting them down). The mechanics of the PHB Ranger actively get in the way of the roleplay, in my opinion, and they don't even have the grace to be good mechanics. It's hard to easily excuse the poorly-considered features just by having a good DM, because what your idea of a good DM is differs from a lot of people, probably. Not that I disagree with you about that btw; just that this is a hobby with a lot of variation. The game is supposed to support the DM, not be fixed by them, no matter whether they're about average or actually amazing (so long as they're not terrible).
That said, I don't think the Unearthed Arcana Ranger necessarily fixes the problem; it certainly restricts the player less, which is nice, and doesn't rely on having a good DM either. It's a step in the right direction for roleplayers but I agree that it's a little mechanically overtuned and easily-exploited. I wouldn't call it boring; certainly, its version of the Beastmaster being actually playable is a huge boon to having an engaging experience... However, certain aspects are a little... easy, I suppose. I like the idea of the favoured terrain being de-emphasised in favour of a more versatile set of skills, but I don't like that it's gone altogether. Equally, getting those bonuses against all Monstrosities or all Dragons is reasonable, but all Humanoids is a little over the top; what kind of wilderness do you live in that taught you to fight a Goliath the same way you'd fight a Halfling, an Elf and a Dwarf? Plus, the UA Beastmaster, while better, does sort of feel like you get a free second character in some ways. Xanathar's Guide is a much better step, in my opinion, though that does mean that you don't get a good Beastmaster;.
Thank goodness the Battle Smith has an excellent companion; effective, but doesn't just give you an extra turn either.
Plus, every proper optimiser I've met trusts numbers and never dice, and also doesn't play 5e because you can't actually optimise 5e further than was intended. It's not a min-maxer's game; even high-level Wish shenanigans are strictly contained by fickle dice. You can do some very cool things, break the game a little here and there, but nothing too over-the top and I like that a lot.
Final bit: I am a huge believer in restriction breeding creativity, but the PHB Ranger has too many leaks to be restrictive in creative ways; you just end up picking the only option that lets you actually play a character who feels like a part of the team.
Also, sorry James. I know you were probably expecting this but, still, I'm sure probably none of us meant to turn this article into another hotbed for Ranger salt/discussion/saltysalt.
Can't wait to see how you try and gussy up the beastmaster archetype into something that sounds worth giving up half your class features for a thing that get's one-shot by any monster you face.
The point of the 101 series is to provide advice on how to play a specific subclass on its own merits, to people who are interested in playing that subclass. It's not a comparative analysis of classes or subclasses; it's an internal analysis of which features, spells, and so on will best support the fantasy of the class and subclass you're playing.
To be fair James, they know that. They're just being sour over the Ranger thing. I'm honestly not sure comments should even be open on some of these articles, though there's been a few interesting notes between discussions. The Hunter is a pretty straightforward subclass choice for Rangers, doesn't need a ton of gussying to make useful. it's a nice, simple "be better at what you do" option that should be readily available for most of the more basic classes.
@Nitro Nina (because screw the internested quotes system on this website)
Restriction does breed creativity, but it has to be the right restrictions done the right ways. Neither Ranger is flawless in this regard, but the Revised removes restrictions without incentivizing creativity. The treatment of the subclasses in Xanathar's guide does indeed help (I have the biggest ladyboner for the Horizon Walker myself), but it doesn't cure mechanical people's woes with the base class and it doesn't help the Hunter or Beastmaster. Like James said, this particular series is focused on helping people who come to the table dead-set on being The Hunter...but a DM should be prepared for that player seeing what other Rangers can do, seeing what the fighters and rogues and palladalladingdongs can do, and helping that player figure out what he can do instead of regretting his character choice. Part of that is pointing out that just because someone else can cast a spell that does something you do does not mean you being able to do it innately, without the spell slot, is a waste. Part of that is also pointing out how the Hunter's mechanically simple abilities can fit the story of a character.
Say your player wants to make a dragonslayer, a warrior dedicated to avenging the destruction of his village at the hands of a marauding red. He takes the Hunter subclass and gets Colossus Slayer as he learns to take advantage of the weaknesses in massive creatures' guards, moving on to learn Multiattack Defense as he studies his foes and learns how best to avoid their savage melee capabilities before eventually culminating in Evasion to protect himself from his foes' deadly breath attacks. Helping them see what they can do and pointing out where they may be underutilizing their abilities is part of being a proper DM.
Maybe that's because "favored enemy damage" isn't a thing? :)
What would you say about animal companions, not just for rangers, but also for other classes. Would love to see a post about that.
Sometimes you just need to take a breath and accept the class is not the strongest. Rangers are still good for tracking, doing nature things, providing okay dps, and healing support.
If you want your legolas to drop some ooc nature benefits and magic for more punch, roll a dex fighter.
A lot of complainers in the comments
@Yurei1453
I... almost completely agree. Hm, I feel like I might have misunderstood what you meant before. I find that the Revised Ranger does incentivise some level of creativity in its version of the Beastmaster particularly. Unless the revised Beastmaster is a different version I'm unaware of? I'm a little newer to the online side of things with this edition; I had honestly just assumed that Wizards' policy on SRDs meant that there was no point until I found out about D&D Beyond. Anyway, sorry if I went on a bit of a tirade; I felt a bit like you were saying that anyone who has issues with the PHB Ranger just disliked it for mechanical reasons, when all of my issues with it (other than the Beastmaster) are to do with roleplay. Probably not a fair assumption on my part; I was very sleep-deprived.
I also have basically no issue with the article. It feels a bit "make the best of bad", but that's not James' fault at all for me; I actually don't dislike the Hunter subclass as Ranger+, even if it would have been nice for the Hunter to be all the flavour-fun monster-hunting stuff with the damage options as part of the base class.