Favored Enemy Replacement/Hunter's Mark Improvement

[Jeffrio]

The Favored Enemy feature is really hit or miss. If you choose beasts then never (or rarely) fight a beast: congrats you've just lost a major part of the Ranger class. I've seen things like "replace it over a long rest" which seems a little silly lore-wise and also a bit overpowered.

Another issue is Hunter's Mark. It is a powerful spell (able to proc 3 times per turn if you dual wield, 4 times per round with reaction, dealing 3d6 and 4d6 extra damage respectively) so it's a sort of must-choose and must-use for Rangers. This makes the very few spells known for Rangers be taken up by a boring spell and since it takes concentration it also prevents the casting of other spells like Hail of Thorns and Lightning Arrow. This makes the Ranger class become "Hunter's Mark then attack" for the entire combat over and over which is tedious and bland in my opinion.

These may be less of an issue than I am making them out to be but I wanted to see if I could come up with an alternative for anyone who felt the same way. I think, however, I made the abilities a bit too strong. If there are any balancing suggestions anyone has I would be grateful if you would mention them. So here are my suggested changes:

Hunter's Mark

First off remove the Favored Enemy/Greater Favored Enemy features. Instead give them the ability Hunter's Mark (and remove Hunter's Mark from the spell list) at level 1.
Hunter's Mark: As an Action you can mark a target as your prey. Whenever you hit the target with a weapon attack it does an additional d4 damage to the target. This die increases to a d6 at level 9 (and to a d8 at level 17?). The Mark last for 8 hours or until the creature dies. If you (or your beast companion) land the killing blow on the Hunter's Marked creature you can immediately move the Hunter's Mark to a new enemy, no action required. If you see your Hunter's Marked target fall by any other means you can use your reaction to move the Hunter's Mark.
At level 6 you gain advantage on any checks made to track or otherwise find your Hunter's Marked target.


And since Primeval Awareness relies on Favored Enemy to work:

Primeval Awareness

"Revised Ranger first paragraph" and if you have a part of a creature's body or something they have worn in the past 24 hours and focus for one minute (as if concentrating on a spell), you can tell if they are within 5 miles of you and know their general direction and distance and which direction they are heading at the time of using this ability (last point is iffy). If the target is within 300 feet of you, you learn that but cannot gain any more details about their location.
Maybe limit to WIS mod/long rest or 1/short rest but that seems sorta... useless to since they don't really need to use it more than once.


Again I would appreciate anyone who points something out that I'm missing or suggests a fix or just tells me this is a straight up bad idea (preferably giving me reasons why).

[Vogie]

Hunter's Mark

First off remove the Favored Enemy/Greater Favored Enemy features. Instead give them the ability Hunter's Mark (and remove Hunter's Mark from the spell list) at level 1.
Hunter's Mark: As an Action you can mark a target as your prey. Whenever you hit the target with a weapon attack it does an additional d4 damage to the target. This die increases to a d6 at level 9 (and to a d8 at level 17?). The Mark last for 8 hours or until the creature dies. If you (or your beast companion) land the killing blow on the Hunter's Marked creature you can immediately move the Hunter's Mark to a new enemy, no action required. If you see your Hunter's Marked target fall by any other means you can use your reaction to move the Hunter's Mark.
At level 6 you gain advantage on any checks made to track or otherwise find your Hunter's Marked target.



I like this idea, but you're making it too complicated... actually, worse, because you're wanting a full action to mark them. I'd just use the wording of the spell, mixed with the wording of Hexblade's curse which has a not-dissimilar feature.

Starting at first level, as a bonus action, You choose a creature you can see within 90 ft and mystically mark it as your quarry. The target is marked for 1 minute, during which you gain the following benefits:

You deal an extra 1d6 damage to the target whenever you hit it with a weapon attack
If you concentrate on this feature with a bonus action action, You gain advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it this turn.
If the target drops to 0 hit points before this feature ends, you can concentrate on this feature as a bonus action to mark a new creature. You can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest. At level 5, the duration increases to an hour. At level 10, the duration lasts for 8 hours, and the mark may be applied or moved by a reaction rather than a bonus action. At level 17, the duration lasts for 24 hours.

[Grognerd]

Another option is to avoid the time-limits and/or restrictions on the number of times this can be used per day, and instead limit it in other ways. The thought that comes to my mind is something like this:

Remove the Favored Enemy/Greater Favored Enemy features, and replace them with something like this:
Nature's Warrior
You can harness your familiarity with your surroundings to maximize your attacks, forcing enemies to expose themselves to your attacks or expend more effort in avoiding them. When attacking while in one of your favored terrains, you add 1d4 damage to each of your weapon attacks. This increases to 1d6 at 9th level and 1d8 at 17th level.

This gives the bonus without making you keep track of number of uses, refreshes, etc., but still restricts the feature since it is only effective in the Ranger's favored terrains. Within their preferred environs, the Rangers get to be boss. In unfamiliar terrain, they are "ordinary" warriors.

You don't have to modify Primeval Awareness with this option, since that feature relies on favored terrain, not favored enemy.

[Thanatos 51-50]

How does this pick up the slack of the out-of-combat features of Favoured enemy, like bonuses to tracking and speaking the enemy's languages?
Unless I'm reading this wrong, you need to see the target to mark it, which makes tracking bonuses only apply if the enemy escapes.

[Jeffrio]

I like this idea, but you're making it too complicated... actually, worse, because you're wanting a full action to mark them. I'd just use the wording of the spell, mixed with the wording of Hexblade's curse which has a not-dissimilar feature.

Starting at first level, as a bonus action, You choose a creature you can see within 90 ft and mystically mark it as your quarry. The target is marked for 1 minute, during which you gain the following benefits:

You deal an extra 1d6 damage to the target whenever you hit it with a weapon attack
If you concentrate on this feature with a bonus action action, You gain advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it this turn.
If the target drops to 0 hit points before this feature ends, you can concentrate on this feature as a bonus action to mark a new creature. You can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest. At level 5, the duration increases to an hour. At level 10, the duration lasts for 8 hours, and the mark may be applied or moved by a reaction rather than a bonus action. At level 17, the duration lasts for 24 hours.


Yeah, I agree I made it too complicated. I was trying to account for the damage bonus at low levels (by making it a d4) and increase it slightly at higher levels (by making it a d8). I made it an action since this version wouldn't require concentration and would allow the Ranger to output more DPR with use of spells so they would have to start with a lost turn first, but that was not well thought out.

I think this version would be better:

As a bonus action you can mark a target within 90 feet that you can see. This mark grants an extra d6 damage to all weapon attacks you hit against the target. It lasts for 24 hours or until the creature dies. You can move this mark to another creature within 90 feet using your reaction when the marked creature dies. If there is no creature within 90 feet of you, you must use a bous action to reapply the mark.

About the reaction vs bonus action vs no action, I made it a free action (nonaction? I don't know the proper term for 5e) originally since otherwise it is the exact same issue as the hunter's mark spell (it prevents the casting of other spells because it uses a bonus action to move).



You can harness your familiarity with your surroundings to maximize your attacks, forcing enemies to expose themselves to your attacks or expend more effort in avoiding them. When attacking while in one of your favored terrains, you add 1d4 damage to each of your weapon attacks. This increases to 1d6 at 9th level and 1d8 at 17th level.

This was made with Revised Ranger in mind. If you aren't familiar with it, they no longer have favored terrain and instead have natural explorer. But that would be a good alternative on original Ranger.


How does this pick up the slack of the out-of-combat features of Favoured enemy, like bonuses to tracking and speaking the enemy's languages?
Unless I'm reading this wrong, you need to see the target to mark it, which makes tracking bonuses only apply if the enemy escapes.

I forgot to put it at the level 6 ability. I meant to put

At level 6 you have advantage on any checks you make to track or otherwise find your marked target. You gain proficiency in Survival. If you already had proficiency in Survival you instead have Expertise.

Thank you for the reminder

The extra languages could still remain but I'm not sure how that would fit lore wise. It's one thing that gets removed unfortunately.

Sorry it took so long to respond. Got stuff to do

[Grognerd]

This was made with Revised Ranger in mind. If you aren't familiar with it, they no longer have favored terrain and instead have natural explorer. But that would be a good alternative on original Ranger.


Ah. You didn't specify that in the original post.

[Jeffrio]

Ah. You didn't specify that in the original post.

Oh, yeah. You're right. I put the "Revised Ranger's first paragraph" thing and forgot to specify that the other stuff was also Revised Ranger based. Woops

[Thanatos 51-50]

Right, you still only get the bonus to tracking them after you have been in combat, marked them and let them get away. This doesn't help you track that orc warband or find that dragon's layer. It helps you find one of the several dudes you fought that either beat you and left, or were already losing and successfully ran away, and this seems like a problem to me, especially since these are the only benefits of the Favoured Enemy class feature in core, and all UA does is add a flat +2 damage bonus on top of it.
This also removes the potentially very powerful advantage on saving throws from the Greater Favoured Enemy class feature in exchange for... less than an monk fist worth of damage? That... doesn't seem worth it to me, and severely hinders my Ranger's survivability when in their element.

Why not just give Rangers the scaling Hunter's Mark as a essentially cantrip from level one?