PHB Ranger Beastmaster Fix

[Bringer]

RANGER'S 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 that has a chaIlenge rating of 1/4 or lower (the hawk, mastiff, and panther as examples).

Add your proficiency bonus to the beast's AC, DC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in.Your beast becomes proficient with Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Its hit point maximum equals its normal maximum plus an additional amount of hit points equal to four times your ranger level. The beast recovers half these additional hit points on a short rest.

The beast obeys your commands as best as it can. It takes its turn on your initiative, though it doesn't take an action unless you command it to. On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move (no action required by you).

You can use your action to verbally command it to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action. Once you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make one weapon attack yourself when you use your action to command the beast to take the Attack action.

Furthermore, you can use a bonus action to command the beast to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action on its turn.

While traveling through your favored terrain with only the beast, you can move stealthily at a normal pace. If your animal companion is ever slain, the magical bond you share allows you to return it to life. With 8 hours of work and the expenditure of 25 gp worth of rare herbs and fine food, you call forth your companion’s spirit and use your magic to create a new body for it. You can return an animal companion to life in this manner even if you do not possess any part of its body.

You can never have more than one animal companion at a time.


SHARE SPELLS
Beginning at 7th level, when you cast a spell targeting yourself, you can also affect your beast companion with the spell if the beast is within 30 feet of you. Furthermore, your beasts attacks are now considered magical.

BESTIAL FURY
Starting at 11th level, once per turn, when you you command your beast to take the attack action, it can make two attacks.


MAGICAL BOND
Starting at 15th level, for every 10 years that pass, your beast only ages 1. Furthermore, you and your beast can communicate telepathically whether or not you have a common language. The communication is possible over any distance, though it can't extend to other planes of existence. Lastly, while your beast is within 60 feet of you, it has resistance to all damage.


edit: revisions

[Citan]

1. Speaking about a "fix" implies there was a problem in the first place. And since all of your post is about mechanics, then it should require Beastmaster to have a balance problem. Thing is, it doesn't. Problem is in the way it's played that feels clunky, which only a small part of your post adresses.
2. Your version is a munchin's wet dream, overpowered from start to end, making, sorry to say, this proposition too ridiculous to be even worth testing.

Fear not, though, because it doesn't require much to come back into the "powerful yet reasonable" range.

A: level 3
- Replenish 4*Ranger level HP every short rest? Seriously? Drop that.
- You got rid of size and CR limitation, yet adding so much? Same. Drop that.
- Get extra attack with bonus action or action? At level 3? It's equally stupidly overpowered. Drop that.
You'd rather keep the PHB action economy, just pushing "increase" bonus action step by step so you can order Attack as bonus action at level 11 and push Bestial Fury at level 15.

B: level 7: Keep the PHB and stack Share Spell on it.

C: 11: Add the "bonus action attack".

D: Unlimited telepathy, retarted aging, and resistance to all damage? You don't want Wish with that while you're at it?
You'd rather put something like free reaction movement/attack when one of you makes a successful attack against a close target.

EVEN like this, it still pushes Beastmaster on the level of optimized Fighter.
Your version? Same level of brokenness as Theurgy Wizard.

[Naanomi]

A way to resurrect in some way is a big deal, from experience: nothing is more disheartening than playing a Beastmaster with a dead pet, outside of your favored terrain, when not fighting your favored enemy... most of your unique class features (and your entire subclass!) are removable in not-uncommon circumstances

[Bringer]

1. Speaking about a "fix" implies there was a problem in the first place. And since all of your post is about mechanics, then it should require Beastmaster to have a balance problem. Thing is, it doesn't. Problem is in the way it's played that feels clunky, which only a small part of your post adresses.
2. Your version is a munchin's wet dream, overpowered from start to end, making, sorry to say, this proposition too ridiculous to be even worth testing.

Fear not, though, because it doesn't require much to come back into the "powerful yet reasonable" range.

A: level 3
- Replenish 4*Ranger level HP every short rest? Seriously? Drop that.
- You got rid of size and CR limitation, yet adding so much? Same. Drop that.
- Get extra attack with bonus action or action? At level 3? It's equally stupidly overpowered. Drop that.
You'd rather keep the PHB action economy, just pushing "increase" bonus action step by step so you can order Attack as bonus action at level 11 and push Bestial Fury at level 15.

B: level 7: Keep the PHB and stack Share Spell on it.

C: 11: Add the "bonus action attack".

D: Unlimited telepathy, retarted aging, and resistance to all damage? You don't want Wish with that while you're at it?
You'd rather put something like free reaction movement/attack when one of you makes a successful attack against a close target.

EVEN like this, it still pushes Beastmaster on the level of optimized Fighter.
Your version? Same level of brokenness as Theurgy Wizard.

Where there is smoke there is fire. You do realize Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls addressed the dissatisfaction of the beastmaster right?

You do realize that by raw the beast can only recover using their hit die, right? At level 20 a wolf would have 80 hp, and on a short rest it'd have... two hit die to expend. That is a problem.

I didn't get rid of the CR or size limitation. Not sure where you got this from.

You know the extra attack thing is present in the phb, right? I just made it so the Ranger or the beast can use the extra attack instead of just the Ranger.

Bonus action attack is the simplest solution to have the ranger and beast attack in cohesion without giving the beast its own action, which hurts action economy. The revised ranger unearthed arcana gave the beast its own actions, and I felt that was too much.

Telepathy with beast and beast slowed aging are ribbons this late in the game. Resistance to damage is necessary because beast only has 60 hit points at level 15, and a single dragon breath can knock your beast unconscious.

[MagneticKitty]

I like this one more than the book. But still feels clumbsy due to the book mechanics of having to command the beast. You get to the problem of the beast not defending itself unless you command it. A real animal would attack if it was hit. It would make more sense to have to command which target to go after, but the beast fights that until you tell it to change targets or the target is dead. Get rid of bonus attack extra attack and maybe bonus action to command the beast.

I play a revised beastmaster with a wolf. At level 9 my wolf has like 49 hp.. which feals bad, man. I'd just use the hit dice type from your creature and roll it like a player. Wolf is d8. So (8 + con ) at level 1... With + 1d8 +con per level with option to take average. It needs something to not just die all the time. Which sets you back a day resummoning it all the time. This is a tough case to crack

[Citan]

Where there is smoke there is fire. You do realize Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls addressed the dissatisfaction of the beastmaster right?

1. You do realize that by raw the beast can only recover using their hit die, right? At level 20 a wolf would have 80 hp, and on a short rest it'd have... two hit die to expend. That is a problem.

2. I didn't get rid of the CR or size limitation. Not sure where you got this from.

3. You know the extra attack thing is present in the phb, right? I just made it so the Ranger or the beast can use the extra attack instead of just the Ranger.

4. Bonus action attack is the simplest solution to have the ranger and beast attack in cohesion without giving the beast its own action, which hurts action economy. The revised ranger unearthed arcana gave the beast its own actions, and I felt that was too much.

5. Telepathy with beast and beast slowed aging are ribbons this late in the game. Resistance to damage is necessary because beast only has 60 hit points at level 15, and a single dragon breath can knock your beast unconscious.
1. Nop, per your own words, a panther for random example would have somewhere short of 100 HP, because you add bonus HP to normal HP. So 80 plus 13 (average) or up to 24 (3d8).
And why wouldn't you make your pet quaff potions, stand in a Healing Spirit, or have someone else heal it whatever way?
Irrelevant argument here. If you dislike it, you'd better use the Revised Ranger's "extra hit die per level". But recovering every HP per short rest is far overboard.

2. Yeah sorry, didn't see you put it right at the top. My bad.

3. Nop, not the same at all. At no time does the PHB gives "one more attack" through bonus action, for balance reason.
YOUR version in the other hand, at least as you currently write it...

- Gives extra attack as bonus action right at level 3 (in addition to giving everything else possible at level 3). Nothing really disturbing here except that you get basically, if you so wish, both benefits of two-weapon fighting (your attack, beast attack, so 2 attacks) and shield at the same time.

- Gives the same "action" as PHB, but also "beast can take a weapon attack" WHEN RANGER TAKES THE ATTACK ACTION.
So, Extra Attack + free beast attack + bonus action beast Attack means 4 frigging attacks at level 5.
You just pushed a level 5 Beastmaster nearly on-par with a level 20 Fighter and far above a ki-consuming lvl 5+ Monk or spell-consuming 5+ Bladesinger Wizard, permanently.

- Stacks the Share Spell on this while pushing it extremely early (at level 7), meaning a Ranger could easily multiclass into Land Druid.
Now Ranger Hasting himself + beast = 6 attacks per turn. Congrats, you're dealing more damage than an optimized Sharpshooter level 20 Fighter. Still not satisfied? Fear not.

- Stacks the MultiAttack feature on this without even blinking, with a poor choice of words, meaning when you ask your beast to "take the Attack action" (whether as an action or as a bonus action), per your 'RAW' it can make two attacks. Congrats, you now pushed the deal to 7 attacks, or still 5 without Haste.

FIVE (or seven with reactions). FRIGGING. ATTACK. EVERY. ROUND. AT LEVEL 15. Possibly 7-9 at level 20 if immediately multiclassing Land Druid.

4. Confer previous point. It was a very bad choice, you didn't believe me, I guess you will now.
If you're annoyed with how things go in PHB, just push the bonus action Help, Dash and Disengage at level 3 and bring the "order beast to make one weapon attack as bonus action when you take Attack action" at level 7.

5. Nop: telepathy at unlimited range is not anything exceptional, but it is a great boon for scouting.
The problem is not here though, it's in resistance to all damage.
You are just giving a free permanent Warding Bond to a creature with ~100 HP, excluding any of the several buffs people could boost it with depending on party composition (Aid, THP from any source), with a very shallow limitation (60 feet is large).
By the way, it's funny how you can't do your own maths: beast at level 15 should have somewhere short of 80 HP already since you add bonus to base HP.
And if you really think you'd gonna be fighting some powerful creature, then you have some information to build upon to prepare, hiring NPCs or questing for magic items.
Worst case, since you'd be probably in the range of AOE too (I mean, considering all you write about the beast, you won't let it risk life alone would you?) a simple Absorb Elements will be enough to ensure your beast survives.
And since you put a hassle-free 100% guaranteed survival anyways...

I'll say it again: as written in your opening post, it's completely breaking balance. Nobody has anything to say about you using it in your own games. Your games your rules and it may be great fun for everyone at your table.

But as far as sharing it as a material for anyone and everyone to use, it's a good draft at best. You obviously didn't take multiclass, feats, magic items or even plain party help into account. But that is a hard requirement of any homebrew, unless you put a big, clear fat disclaimer on top saying "BEWARE UNTESTED / UNBALANCED MATERIAL" in which case it's one's responsability to use it or not.
I know it's annoying to hear, and I hope I don't sound discouraging especially since it's nice of you to share homebrew ideas, but you can't avoid that truth. That's why I suggested these cuts.

[mephnick]

Really all the class needs is pet survivability, so I just give the Beastmaster:

- HP bump - first level HP is 16 or normal (whichever is higher) and every level goes up by 5.

- Save Proficiency in it's two highest stats

- The ability for the Ranger to share HD with it's pet for the sake of healing

- The pet's action counts as the Attack action for the purposes of two weapon fighting

Of course I also gave it and the Hunter bonus spells to put them in line with the XgtE classes.

This is enough to "fix" the subclass in my experience, though it's weakness is quite overstated to begin with.

[Bringer]

1. Nop, per your own words, a panther for random example would have somewhere short of 100 HP, because you add bonus HP to normal HP. So 80 plus 13 (average) or up to 24 (3d8).
And why wouldn't you make your pet quaff potions, stand in a Healing Spirit, or have someone else heal it whatever way?

Notice how in that specific instance, I said "You do realize that by raw the beast can only recover using their hit die, right? At level 20 a wolf would have 80 hp, and on a short rest it'd have... two hit die to expend. That is a problem."

I was speaking from a purely raw perspective, a level 20 beast companion has 80 hit points, and the Panther could only recover 3d8 of those hit points on a short rest, and then proceed to only get half of it's hit die back on a long rest. That isn't sustainable or balanced at all.

Using my fix, at level 20 the Panther would have 93 hit points instead of 80, and that still doesn't fix the fact it didn't have enough hit die left.

Also, healing spirit is completely bonkers broken out of combat, and I have seen no respectable DM allow a player to abuse the spell in such a fashion.

And you shouldn't need potions to make your subclass viable.



Irrelevant argument here. If you dislike it, you'd better use the Revised Ranger's "extra hit die per level". But recovering every HP per short rest is far overboard.


I suppose the short rest recovery should be half the bonus HP instead of all of it.

I didn't like the extra hit die per level because the Ranger would then have to keep track of two pools of hit die, which is sort of annoying, and I'd like to this fix to be more streamlined compared to the revised ranger.



3. Nop, not the same at all. At no time does the PHB gives "one more attack" through bonus action, for balance reason.
YOUR version in the other hand, at least as you currently write it...

- Gives extra attack as bonus action right at level 3 (in addition to giving everything else possible at level 3). Nothing really disturbing here except that you get basically, if you so wish, both benefits of two-weapon fighting (your attack, beast attack, so 2 attacks) and shield at the same time.

And Revised Ranger gets a beast with its own attack action. My way has the ranger give up its action or bonus action to attack.

Also note the Ranger uses bonus action for a lot of its spells and base class features. A bonus action is no small tax on the Ranger.



- Gives the same "action" as PHB, but also "beast can take a weapon attack" WHEN RANGER TAKES THE ATTACK ACTION.
So, Extra Attack + free beast attack + bonus action beast Attack means 4 frigging attacks at level 5.
You just pushed a level 5 Beastmaster nearly on-par with a level 20 Fighter and far above a ki-consuming lvl 5+ Monk or spell-consuming 5+ Bladesinger Wizard, permanently.

You misread, then.

Once you have the Extra Attack feature, you or your beast can make one weapon attack when you take the attack action or when you use your action to command the beast to take the Attack action. Furthermore, you can use a bonus action to command the beast to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action on its turn.

I specified the extra attack only works on action command, not bonus action command.

At level 5, no matter what, there's only three possible attacks.

Ranger attack, beast extra attack, beast bonus action attack
Beast attack, beast extra attack, beast bonus action attack
Ranger attack, Ranger extra attack, Ranger bonus weapon attack(if using two weapon fighting)

The combination doesn't matter, no more than three attacks(incidentally, revised ranger could get four attacks at level 5 if using two weapon fighting)








- Stacks the Share Spell on this while pushing it extremely early (at level 7), meaning a Ranger could easily multiclass into Land Druid.
Now Ranger Hasting himself + beast = 6 attacks per turn. Congrats, you're dealing more damage than an optimized Sharpshooter level 20 Fighter. Still not satisfied? Fear not.


Beastmaster Ranger multiclassing is never a good idea, as it causes the beast to lag behind. It'd take 5 levels of Land Druid to get haste on the Ranger.



- Stacks the MultiAttack feature on this without even blinking, with a poor choice of words, meaning when you ask your beast to "take the Attack action" (whether as an action or as a bonus action), per your 'RAW' it can make two attacks. Congrats, you now pushed the deal to 7 attacks, or still 5 without Haste.


The beast could make five attacks if the Ranger pours all of it's action economy into the beast, yeah. Command to attack, extra attack, bonus action command to attack.

I agree this is a slight problem. Might put a "once per round" at the beginning of this ability, so it can only trigger on the attack action command or the attack bonus action command, not both.



FIVE (or seven with reactions). FRIGGING. ATTACK. EVERY. ROUND. AT LEVEL 15. Possibly 7-9 at level 20 if immediately multiclassing Land Druid.


5 level dip to Land Druid(that's one deep pool), and you were mistaken about my early wording on the level 3 feature.


4. Confer previous point. It was a very bad choice, you didn't believe me, I guess you will now.
If you're annoyed with how things go in PHB, just push the bonus action Help, Dash and Disengage at level 3 and bring the "order beast to make one weapon attack as bonus action when you take Attack action" at level 7.

My point is allowing the beast to attack using your own action or bonus action is a much more cleaner, streamlined solution compared to giving the beast its own action, and having to wait until level 7 to fight in cohesion with your beast isn't very fun(especially since statistically, most games end around level 10)




5. Nop: telepathy at unlimited range is not anything exceptional, but it is a great boon for scouting.


Level 15 is tier 4 gameplay. Scouting is a non-issue at this point.


The problem is not here though, it's in resistance to all damage.
You are just giving a free permanent Warding Bond to a creature with ~100 HP, excluding any of the several buffs people could boost it with depending on party composition (Aid, THP from any source), with a very shallow limitation (60 feet is large).


100 HP is exaggerating. Level 15 would be 60 HP + Panther's 13 hit points. 73 HP isn't 100.

The beast is the Ranger's subclass features. It isn't fun when subclass features stop working because a single dragon breath one shots. An adult green dragon(CR 15, balanced against a party of 4 level 15's) could end the beast companion in a single round. One poison breath against the entire party, and then a single legendary action to finish off the beast, and then oh looky, the Ranger now doesn't have a subclass until the next long rest.




By the way, it's funny how you can't do your own maths: beast at level 15 should have somewhere short of 80 HP already since you add bonus to base HP.

I kept the math minimal because everyone picks different companions, even the squishy avian bird companions.




And if you really think you'd gonna be fighting some powerful creature, then you have some information to build upon to prepare, hiring NPCs or questing for magic items.
Worst case, since you'd be probably in the range of AOE too (I mean, considering all you write about the beast, you won't let it risk life alone would you?) a simple Absorb Elements will be enough to ensure your beast survives.
And since you put a hassle-free 100% guaranteed survival anyways...

Not all Ranger's take the absorb elements spell, and in tier 4 gameplay(where resistance to all damage kicks in) powerful creatures are likely to be all you're going to fight. Also, the Ranger shouldn't need to quest for magic items to make the subclass viable.



Anyway, here are my proposed revisions.


1. The beast recovers half of its additional hit points on a short rest. So at level 20 the beast will heal 40 hit points on short rests.
2. The beast can no longer use the Ranger's extra attack. So at level 5, the Ranger has to make at least one of the three attacks.(Ranger, Ranger, Beast, or Beast, Ranger, Beast or with two weapon fighting Ranger, Ranger, Ranger)
3. Bestial Fury only kicks in once per turn.


I still think the resistance to damage is necessary in tier 4 gameplay. The beast will die and will die fast otherwise, and having your subclass being locked until the next long rest is no fun.

[Citan]

Really all the class needs is pet survivability, so I just give the Beastmaster:

- HP bump - first level HP is 16 or normal (whichever is higher) and every level goes up by 5.

- Save Proficiency in it's two highest stats

- The ability for the Ranger to share HD with it's pet for the sake of healing

- The pet's action counts as the Attack action for the purposes of two weapon fighting

Of course I also gave it and the Hunter bonus spells to put them in line with the XgtE classes.

This is enough to "fix" the subclass in my experience, though it's weakness is quite overstated to begin with.
This seems pretty balanced. ;)
I do have a problem understanding your bit about pet's action counting as Attack action for the purpose of two-weapon fighting: you mean that if you order your beast to take Attack action with your own action, it enables the "dual-weapon fighting" bonus action attack? Seems a nice idea. :)




You misread, then.

Once you have the Extra Attack feature, you or your beast can make one weapon attack when you take the attack action or when you use your action to command the beast to take the Attack action. Furthermore, you can use a bonus action to command the beast to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action on its turn.

I specified the extra attack only works on action command, not bonus action command.

No, I did not.
Your intent was understandable enough, but the way you wrote it initially made my interprestation extremely plausible and actually the most literal reading.
You just went and edited your post after the fact to correct it, like nobody would see it, since I didn't fully quote the opening post.
This is plain dishonesty.

(By the way, nothing legitimates any DM to forbid you of using Healing Spirit out of combat to heal your creature. It's 100% RAW and just a nice way to conserve resources, but absolutly nothing breaking. I'll say it strong, this is bad DMing).

For what is worth, I think your changes make it balanced enough, even if I still would not use it as is.

[mephnick]

This seems pretty balanced. ;)
I do have a problem understanding your bit about pet's action counting as Attack action for the purpose of two-weapon fighting: you mean that if you order your beast to take Attack action with your own action, it enables the "dual-weapon fighting" bonus action attack? Seems a nice idea. :)
.

Yeah, sorry. That's what I meant. Either if you making the attack allows the BA attack.

[Bringer]

No, I did not.
Your intent was understandable enough, but the way you wrote it initially made my interprestation extremely plausible and actually the most literal reading.
You just went and edited your post after the fact to correct it, like nobody would see it, since I didn't fully quote the opening post.
This is plain dishonesty.


Yes, you did.

My edits were removing the wording that allowed the beast to use the Ranger's extra attack, making it so only the Ranger can use it.

Making the beast only recover half of the additional hit points instead of all of them.

And making Beastial Fury once per turn.

And lastly separating the action to command beast and bonus action to command beast into separate paragraphs, as that seemed to confuse you when in the same paragrah.

Since I made the post, the singling out of using the "action" to command the beast has always been there underlined.

Considering you accused me of removing the beasts CR and size limitation earlier, I would assume this was more your lack of attention to detail when reading. I don't like being accused of dishonesty, I have nothing to prove here.

[stoutstien]

Why don't we remove the whole ranger/ pet action sharing then work from there. Let them have a pet that can move, attack or whatever without the ranger blowing their own actions. So what if that could be three attacks at lv 3. Hunters can do that or add extra damage.
Give the pet proficiency in all saves and match rangers hp total/ HP dies. Boom now it can stay alive.
Normalize stat array to let the pet be customizable. With the ability to share beast Master stat increases as they level up.
Replace mid level class features with pet mini feats like knock down or mobility enhancer.
Keep spell share.
Now I want to sit down and actually hammer this out