Base Class: Ranger
Those who take the mantle of Beast Master have an unbreakable bond with their animal companion. Together, they protect both civilization and the wilds alike from threats wherever it may arrive.
Creator's Note: The intention of this homebrew is to improve the shortcomings of the official "Beast Master" subclass for the Ranger class. In the books after the PHB, WotC have changed their philosophy on how they make the ranger subclasses without making updates to the original two. Plus, with the addition of the artificer class, specifically the battlesmith subclass and how they control their companions, just added to how bad this subclass had really was. WotC did return and try to fix a few of beast master's short comings in the class feature variant UA, but I still felt that even after those changes the beast master still lagged behind. So here's my attempt in fixing the beast master without making an entirely new beast master archetype from the ground up.
Beast Master Magic
Starting at 3rd level, you learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Beast Master Spells table. The spell counts as a ranger spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.
Beast Master Spells
| Ranger Level | Spell |
|---|---|
| 3rd | Animal Friendship |
| 5th | Animal Messenger |
| 9th | Conjure Animals |
| 13th | Dominate Beast |
| 17th | Hold Monster |
Animal Friend
At 3rd level, most beasts do not see you as a threat unless you give them a reason to believe you are. You gain proficiency in the Animal Handling skill if you don’t already have it. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make with this skill.
Ranger’s Companion
At 3rd level, you gain an animal companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower. Add your proficiency bonus to the animal companion’s AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals the hit point number in its stat block or four times your ranger level, whichever is higher. The animal companion has a number of hit dice (d8s) equal to your ranger level which it can spend during a short rest, all other rules apply for spending Hit Dice to regain hit points.
The animal companion obeys your commands as best as it can. It takes its turn on your initiative. On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move (no action required by you). You can use your bonus action to command it to take one of the actions in its stat block, or the Dash, Disengage, Help, Hide, or Search action. If the animal companion has multi attack, you can only choose one of the attacks from the stat block. If you do not issue a command, the animal companion takes the Dodge action. When you take the Attack action, you can substitute one of your attacks so your animal companion can attack instead. If you choose to do so, your animal companion cannot take an Attack action on your bonus action.
If you are unable to issue a command, the animal companion acts on its own, focusing on protecting you and itself. The animal companion never requires your command to use its reaction, such as when making an opportunity attack.
While traveling through your favored terrain with only your animal companion, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
If your animal companion dies, you can obtain a new companion by spending 8 hours magically bonding with a beast that isn’t hostile to you and that meets the requirements.
Never Alone
Beginning at 7th level, with your companion at your side, neither of you have to fear about facing hardships alone. While you are within 60 feet of you animal companion, you both gain advantage against the frightened condition.
In addition, the animal companion's attacks now count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Bestial Fury
Starting at 11th level, when you command your animal companion to take the Attack action, the animal companion can make two attacks, or it can take the Multiattack action if it has that action. When you take the Attack action, you can substitute one or both of your attacks so your animal companion can attack instead. If you choose to do so, your animal companion cannot take an Attack action on your bonus action.
Joined Spirits
Beginning at 15th level, your animal companion is always under the effects of the beast bond spell. Also, when a spell is cast on you or your animal companion, you can choose to have the spell affect both you and your animal companion if you are within 30 feet of each other.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 19, 2020Giving the player higher CR beasties as they level up can be a bit rude to the rangers who wants to have one companion from level 3 that allways stays by their side, since then it might feel like they are not playing optimally. We want the player to feel attached to their companions, and it be unwise to more or less force them to abandon their friend, when 3.5e did this they gave low CR companions more special abillities than high CR companions, consider doing something similar. You should also tread very carefully when allowing the ranger to have higher CR companions, these monster stat blocks are not designed to work alongside the players, and future monsters released by wizards of the coast could seriously mess up your careful design
Furthermore here are some ideas i have played arround with when i tried to make a revised beast master, you might find them insightful or you might not, i am no genious and my ideas are untested, but here they are:
-since an animal companion needs your bonus action to do anything at all, giving the ranger multiple animal companions would not ruin combat in the same way conjure animal does, since Only one of your companions can attack in a given turn. This also let's the ranger have companions with more exploration utillity as well as Ones Good at combat, and might make it more acceptable to have bigger animals that cannot be brought into dungeons or indoors. It would also make their poor hit point maximum more managable since you can have backup companions ready
-some animals can force their targets to make saving throws, or force their targets to make checks against a set dc to escape. These DC's probably ought to scale at least a little bit
-the revised ranger had the idea of letting the beast gain an abillity score increase whenever you do so via the ranger class, similar means of customisation could make your companion feel like more of an individual than just an stronger example of its species, perhaps you could give them fighting style options or options similar to the hunter or whatever
-instead of having an ressurection mechanic or alongside it, you might arrange it so when you summon something via conjure animals or summon beastial spirit, you can have that something become your animal companion, also allowing some beast masters to never have a permanent companion at all an rely on such spells whenever possible
-allow the ranger to release an companion from their service to the ranger, even if it kinda breaks the lore
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 19, 2020Thanks for your opinion and critique, well... here's a few responses to what you said;
Again thanks for letting me know what you thought, when I went to the forums I didn't get much of a response on this. So this was a great help for me. I am also looking into doing some other things I can do with the next update such as, the ranger can choose higher CR companions as they level, but still thinking about that one (currently up to CR 1/2 at level 7, then CR 1 at level 13 or 15.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 18, 2020seems a bit weird for a lover of animals to also have dominate beast but that is a small thing, also depending on the animal the player chose the animal can have incredibly high attack bonuses and damage bonuses, even ones that might out-do dedicated fighters in per hit damage (this is why i think normal beast master was not quite as bad as some others say), so bestial fury now becoming an constant improved swift quiver spell you might start dishing out some ludicris DPS that completely leaves the fighter in the dust. (look at for instance the fastieth from ebberon: rising from the last war, your 3rd level ranger has an companion with an +8 to hit and deals 1d8 +6 damage on a hit)
Also this fails to adress what seems to be one of the biggest concerns people had with the beast master: it has poor hit points and it is very hard to find a new companion once the old one dies, while its armor class can if you selected the right animal and trained it in use of light armor be quite ludicris and higher than what most other player characters can acchive, no beast eligible for ranger's companion has any save proficiencies and since it has worse health than the typical wizard they can and will die, and then for the rest of the adventure you are without your subclass gimmic
overall i quite like what you have done with the subclass, but there might be some problems with it. May i also suggest allowing the ranger to share their more exploration focused features to their companion? allowing the animal companion to benefit fully from natural explorer, land's stride, hide in plain sight, vanish, feral senses and favored enemy could solidify the companion as not just an mindless tool in combat but an true ally in all your efforts, similarly it might be a fun feature to grant your companion two free proficiencies like the revised ranger once did