The Monster Slayer Comes To 'Xanathar's Guide To Everything'
Todd Kenreck: The Monster Slayer is a specialist when it comes to taking down the most dangerous monsters in the D&D multiverse. I talked to Jeremy Crawford about this new subclass for the Ranger in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
Jeremy Crawford: The Monster Slayer in the Ranger is a subclass that's basically all about letting you play Van Helsing. This is the Ranger who is the pro at hunting down, not only creatures of the night vampires, werewolves, et cetera, but is also the bane of evil spell casters. This is the Ranger who is a bit more bookish we imagine than the typical Ranger. The one who knows all sorts of interesting tidbits about different monsters and how to defeat them.
This subclass actually started in the Unearthed Arcana process as a fighter subclass. People responded pretty well to it, but as we worked on it we really felt that the subclass would be even better as a part of the Ranger class. Where the class would gain access to a number of the Ranger's magical abilities, the Ranger's favorite foe abilities, these sorts of things that all were a natural fit for this person who is the best at hunting down these vial creatures.
The subclass itself, I think, is super fun. It has a number of additional spells, it knows all about trapping other worldly creatures. Spells like magic circle, hold monster, also banishment to send foe creatures off to other plains. Probably my favorite bit in this subclass is it's ability to foil a dark spell casters magic. Now, people can already do this in the game using counterspell. This Ranger can do it just using a particular class feature.
On top of that it also works against other people who are trying to teleport away. So this is one of the few characters in the game where as long as the foe is close enough this Ranger has a chance to magically foil the persons ability to suddenly teleport out of a battle and get away, because again, this is the Van Helsing figure who is going to stop that creature of darkness. That creature of darkness who can normally escape from others, not from this Ranger.
This Ranger also has early on an ability, and this goes back to the idea that this Ranger knows potentially a little bit about every monster, the ability to discern whether a monster has damage immunities, damage resistances, condition immunities, that sort of thing. So this is then going to be the character who can help the group figure out how do we stop this monster that has been bedeviling us? None of our weapons work against it, that sort of thing. Whereas this is the character who is more quickly going to figure out we need to use silvered weapons, or we need a magical weapon, or stop using fire, that kind of thing.
Now many groups figure these sorts of things out through trial and error, and then they remember them because, oh we fought these creatures before, we know they're immune to these sorts of attacks. This is the sort of character, the Monster Slayer, who in contrast has the potential to figure those things out upon first meeting a monster. This chance is really representing the fact that this Monster Slayer is assumed to been doing studying before their adventuring, and during. Always learning new things about monsters.
As a lover of especially old hammer horror films, and pretty much gothic horror stories of any sort, and in October I have kind of an endless of those things at night. Given that taste of mind this is a Ranger subclass I'm particularly excited about.
Todd Kenreck: You can pre-order Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and earn pre-order bonuses as well by clicking on the video link in this video description. I'm Todd Kenreck, thank you for watching.
Linked video is currently the Divine Soul Sorcerer.
Monster Slayer linked below.
Monster Slayer Youtube Link
So this Ranger subclass will be a good "Geralt of Rivia" kind of character?
The video is currently for the Divine Soul Sorcerer not the Monster Slayer Ranger. Here is the link to the correct video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHd8UhCqmFQ
Besides this, I really love the class!!! Seems perfect for a Ravenloft campaign.
I currently play as revised ranger/ fighter: monster slayer multi-class just because the thought two fit very well together. However I do have concerns about this new class from the outlines of the UA.
The main one being the lack of escalating damage or defense in the class as a hole in later levels. The PHB ranger has nothing to increase these in the core class and the revised ranger stops at level 6 and only on two creature types at that. One could argue that because its a half caster class you have to rely on spells to fill that gap. However most the ranger spell are utility and buff spells and those that are damage orientated are based on range attacks, forcing the class to focus on range weapons to be most effective. Save hunters mark which is a staple for the class at the moment and something Slayer's eye interferes with; having to use a bonus action to use and move both. As one that likes to play a melee ranger I find this frustrating with my lack of options.
So the archetypes themselves have to help towards increasing damage and defense through level up, the hunters conclave being the best example of this. Which leads me to the concerns of the current state of the sub-class as of the UA. The monster slayers archetype requires you to be close to the creature for most of features and that doesn't work well for range weapon rangers, nor does it for melee rangers because of the reasons stated. So it seems to me that Slayers eye damage increase needs to escalate at later levels, similar to fighters superiority dice or bardic inspiration. That or the sub-class could use a smite type ability that they can spend spell slots on in order to focus melee damage on the creature. Additionally all of the defensive buffs are based on defending spell casting abilities and not on defending physical attacks from a creature. Which in itself seems weird for a monster slayer; not all of them will be casters. So perhaps having some small bonus to AC against the creature you have focused with Slayer's Eye would also be a nice addition.
Regardless all in all I'm excited to see and play this class when its released in full and get to play a RAW monster slayer.
So Van Hellsing, Geralt of Rivia, and Dean Winchester? I know what I'm playing next! :D
That's actually what I'm doing right now. My friend is making a Sam and I'm going Dean. LOL.