Beastmaster Ranger Silvered / Magical Weapons

[deathadder99]

I'm DMing an undead heavy campaign for a few friends. In the group is a Beastmaster Ranger who's trying out the new Unearthed Arcana Beastmaster rework. I had a flick through the rules, and there seems to be no way to give the beast magical or silvered weapons. I'm giving all the other characters Silvered Weapons, as all the encounters are Deadly, and a lot of the enemies have resistance to nonmagical/nonsilvered weapons and AFAIK CR is based on a 'Well Equipped' party.

However since the new Beastmaster really needs the pet damage to stay competitive (and it only does 1d4 + 6 damage), I don't want to have that damage halved.

Is there a magical item or a spell that will make the Beastmaster's pet's attacks magical? Or do I have to homebrew something?

Thanks :).

[Lollerabe]

Homebrew. But a beastmaster's pet stays the same, so the ranger could just case the pets claws in silver. Or better yet make hollowed silver claws that can be taken off - dosent seem like a problem.

Everything else is homebrew but you could make a quest for a insignia (or was it talisman?) of claws that adds 1dx elemental damg or whatever to the beasts attack.

I imagine a BM ranger would prefer magical loot that buffed their pets anyway

[TheTeaMustFlow]

There is a magic item in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, called the Insignia of Claws, that effectively makes your natural weapons into +1 weapons. You could give the Animal Companion one of those.

[Shining Wrath]

The ability to do basic dentistry - drill hole, fill with metal - dates back to the Egyptians here on the real world. There's going to be someone out there who can equip the beast's claws and / or fangs with silver and cold iron. Barding is even easier. Magical items have to be acquired in the same way that you handle magic items for the PCs, whatever that is, but some rich eccentric wizard whose familiar wore a choker granting +1 to hit / to damage may in fact be a near-term opponent. :smallsmile:

[Seruvius]

As others have already stated, coating claws/teeth with silver is quite plausible, as are various +x to natural weapon magic items. You could even say fluff it that you fight an evil monk order and their grandmaster has some form of +x to unarmed strike item that would work with the natural weapons. The insignia of claws from HOTDQ grants +1 to unarmed strikes and natural weapons as is, so would be a perfect item for you to either use or use as a base for your own homebrew.
If you don't like the idea of a permanent +x magic weapon for your beastmasters companion, you can always homebrew a 5th edition version of the 3rd edition spell magic fang. Or just allow the spell magic weapon to apply to natural weapons.

On a separate note, the cr of a creature does contain its resistances. at Low levels, for cr calculation having a resistance effectively doubles your HP for cr calculations. Even higher levels (where variety of attack type increases so being able to bypass resistance is also easier) there are still modifiers for the hp part of a creatures cr. (DMG p277). Basically as long as you are fighting creatures of cr up to 4, they are designed/balanced in such a way that their cr is calculated as if they had no resistance but double the HP, so bypassing the resistance actually makes them a weak foe for their cr.