Base Class: Ranger
The Ranger is at home in the wilds, able to act as a capable guide, tracker, or warrior when necessary. As a Beast Master you become a guardian of nature and master of the hunt, bonding with a powerful beast that is trained to fight alongside you.
Beast Companion
At 3rd level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and has a challenge rating of 1/2 or lower. Your DM will have the beast's stat block, or you can find it in the Monster Manual.
- Proficiency: Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, DC, attack rolls, damage rolls, all skill checks, and all saving throws.
- Initiative: The beast shares your initiative and takes its turn during yours. It can move on its own and follows your commands.
- Actions: You can use your bonus action to command the beast to take an action and bonus action, or when you take the Attack action you can sacrifice one attack to command the beast instead. If you are Incapacitated or absent, the beast can take any action of its choice.
- Bonus Actions: Your beast can take the Dash or Disengage action using its Bonus Action.
- Attacks: Your beast's attacks are determined by the creature's stat block, and can add your proficiency bonus to their attack and damage rolls.
- Hit Points: Your beast starts with 20 hit points. For every level your character gains after the 3rd level, your beast’s hit points increase by 1d8 + its Con mod. It also has a number of hit dice equal to your character level and can use them during a short rest to regain hit points.
- Abilities: The beast keeps all abilities except Multiattack, and makes Intimidation skill checks with Strength instead of Charisma. Your beast can sacrifice an attack to Shove or Grapple a creature. The beast grapples using its natural weapons (such as teeth, claws, or talons) but cannot attack while grappling unless it has hands or an innate ability that allows it to.
If your beast dies, you can revive it within 24 hours if it’s spirit is willing. The resurrection requires its body, takes 1 minute of concentration, and returns the beast to life with all its hit points restored.
If you perform the resurrection without the beast’s body, the ritual takes 1 hour and both you and your beast gain a level of exhaustion after the ritual is complete. If the beast suffers a permanent death, you can obtain a new one.
Spirit Bond
At the 7th level, when you cast a spell targeting yourself, you can also affect your beast with the spell if it is within 30 feet of you, and the beast benefits from your spell effects on opponents - such as the damage and detection bonuses from Hunter’s Mark.
In addition, your beast’s attacks count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical damage and attacks.
Bestial Cunning
At the 11th level, when you command your Beast Companion to take the Attack action, the beast can attack twice, or it can use Multiattack if it has that ability.
In addition, your beast can take the Dodge or Help action using its Bonus Action.
Foe Breaker
At the 15th level, your Hunter's Mark spell no longer requires concentration or a target. Instead, choose a creature or humanoid species to mark as your prey. You and your beast gain the benefits of Hunter's Mark against all creatures or humanoids of that type until the spell ends, or is moved to a different species.
In addition, you and your beast have advantage on all Strength and Dexterity skill checks and saving throws against any creature affected by Hunter's Mark.
Previous Versions
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I changed it to be in-line with my newer 2024 Beast Master variant. It is stronger, but has a completely different flavor. I would welcome your feedback on the changes.
As far as a comparison to the Moon Druid - it is my opinion (and correct me if I'm wrong, but most of this community shares this opinion) that Circle of the Moon Druid is the most broken, overpowered subclass in the 2014 version of the game. You essentially have to be able to burn through well over 1000 HP to kill one with all the elemental wild shapes and polymorph spells at level 20, and the way it scales it is generally stronger than many classes as early as level 4 and most definitely by level 8. That's not what I'm balancing against... I'm aiming more for Berserker Barbarian territory.
This seems too weak. Compare this to moon druid, as a moon druid you can transform into a creature cr 1 twice every shortrest. The cr also scales as you level up. The beats starts out with a good amount of health but it's damage and survivability don't scale as much as the moon druids wildshapes. Also even after using both wildshapes the druid is still a full caster while the ranger is a half caster.
This seems like it's better at low levels especially if you pick a flying beast like a Pteranodon, Giant Bat, or a Giant Owl. 60 feet of fly speed is quite strong but if somebody picks something like an Ape for the damage they probably could've just used conjure animals instead.