Crossbow Expert/SS Ranger (hunter?) for Dragon Heist/Dungeon of the Mad Mage

[Willie the Duck]

So my lovingly crafted bard died last week during the first session of Dragon Heist. Deciding not to wildly jerk towards a safe-but-boring build or the like, I decided I want to make a flavorful character. I've decided on a ranger who moonlights as a bartender when he's being all citified. So he goes about using whip and hand crossbow (DM imposes disadvantage on attacks attempting to not kill when you drop someone to 0 if it is with a sword/mace/etc., but not whips, so that helps people that aren't monks or grapplers be able to fight in city limits without quickly heading off to jail).

Here is the thing-I've pretty much never played characters with the PAM, GWM, CE, and SS brand of obvious powerhouse feats (I have used sentinel once or twice). I've seen them in action, and although they aren't quite as overpowered as sometimes stated (or at least there are plenty of other good avenues to power), they still feel a little cheap to me.

But I kinda want to try playing a character who uses a rain of hand crossbow bolts (even in melee, because of how ridiculous it is). So I am thinking of playing a hunter archetype Vuman ranger with CE and then SS as his feats. Dex would stay at 16 for a long time, and he might even dip into support classes like cleric or druid for some utility spells.

My question is whether this is 1) too weak (because hunter ranger is week), or 2) too strong (because CE/SS is quite strong)? Those are inherently subjective, so pretty much asking for gut check responses. The rest of the party is high elf evoker2, half orc diviner1/fighter1, human (nonvariant) hexblade 2 and high elf rogue 2. Having died, I will be coming in as a level 1.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[darknite]

I haven't seen much 'weak' about a hunter ranger. The main issue would be getting those two keystone feats and putting points into Dex. Maybe be variant human for the starting feat?

[Wildarm]

If you're keen on a SS/CE build I would do a straight up VHuman battlemaster Fighter 8+. It'll get you the feats you need, archery fighting style, 20 Dex, 2nd wind and precision attack to make sure you hit even with a -5 attack penalty. Go further in fighter for extra attacks at that point or branch out to whatever you want. Anything that adds extra dice to each of attacks would be the most optimum from a DPS point of view. Hunter Ranger with hordebreaker wouldn't be a bad choice.

[Man_Over_Game]

For a similar, optimized playstyle that doesn't rely on feats but has comparable damage, really consider Horizon Walker.

The Bonus Action damage you get, combined with the fact that it converts all damage from the attack into unresisted Force damage, is really effective at ranged attacks, and can still be applied to a Whip for some powerful synergies. Perhaps he's a traveler who decided to stop traveling and work at the inn he rested at, or perhaps it was a talent he was keeping suppressed all of his life and tried to lead a life of tranquility.

Either way, this is a pretty effective option for someone who wants to use a whip and a long range weapon. Since feats are a major concern for Rangers, this gets rid of any of those problems and lets you pick whatever race you want.

For comparison's sake, your two Crossbow Expert shots, with a modifier of +3, would have (1d6 + 3)x2, or roughly 13 damage. However, a Heavy Crossbow's shot by a Horizon Walker has 1d10 + 3 + 1d8, or roughly 13 damage. In addition, you can use that weapon at 100 feet at the cost of the 1d8 (meaning you still do about 8.5 damage), where the Hand Crossbow would have disadvantage. This does make Sharpshooter a bit worse, but it adds a bit more versatility in your playstyle, and allows you to use your whip very effectively.

[Keravath]

For a similar, optimized playstyle that doesn't rely on feats but has comparable damage, really consider Horizon Walker.

The Bonus Action damage you get, combined with the fact that it converts all damage from the attack into unresisted Force damage, is really effective at ranged attacks, and can still be applied to a Whip for some powerful synergies. Perhaps he's a traveler who decided to stop traveling and work at the inn he rested at, or perhaps it was a talent he was keeping suppressed all of his life and tried to lead a life of tranquility.

Either way, this is a pretty effective option for someone who wants to use a whip and a long range weapon. Since feats are a major concern for Rangers, this gets rid of any of those problems and lets you pick whatever race you want.

For comparison's sake, your two Crossbow Expert shots, with a modifier of +3, would have (1d6 + 3)x2, or roughly 13 damage. However, a Heavy Crossbow's shot by a Horizon Walker has 1d10 + 3 + 1d8, or roughly 13 damage. In addition, you can use that weapon at 100 feet at the cost of the 1d8 (meaning you still do about 8.5 damage), where the Hand Crossbow would have disadvantage. This does make Sharpshooter a bit worse, but it adds a bit more versatility in your playstyle, and allows you to use your whip very effectively.


The main issue with horizon walker is the 30' range limit on Planar Warrior and the fact that it uses your bonus action.

Planar warrior adds a d8 for the cost of a bonus action while cross bow expert removes the point blank disadvantage for firing with opponents adjacent, removes the loading property on cross bows and allows firing a hand crossbow as a bonus action. The bonus action attack from the hand crossbow will do d6+stat which has higher damage than planar warrior.

In addition, when combined with sharpshooter, a hand crossbow can hit at 120' without disadvantage. Although not as good as a long bow or heavy crossbow, 120' is usually sufficient for most combats.

Finally, if you have advantage or a low AC target, crossbow expert allows for an extra bonus action attack using sharpshooter for an extra 10 damage that is not possible with planar warrior.

Horizon walker is a very good and flavorful ranger archetype ... it works well with several builds but if you are looking for optimized damage, crossbow expert will do more. However, planar warrior would work with the whip or other melee weapon if you are building a melee ranger.

[Willie the Duck]

I haven't seen much 'weak' about a hunter ranger. The main issue would be getting those two keystone feats and putting points into Dex. Maybe be variant human for the starting feat?

Good to know about the hunter not being too weak, although I am banking on a little weak, since I am taking what I otherwise would consider 'cheeZe' as my feats. All of the PHB rangers are frustrating in how few spells you know. Any of the XGTE rangers get small but usually very useful extra spells. The hunter, well, I'm seriously tempted to dip Cleric or Druid1 for wis+1 or Wis+3 extra spells memorized.


If you're keen on a SS/CE build I would do a straight up VHuman battlemaster Fighter 8+...

That... actually seems like it would overpower the rest of my group and make it not so fun for all involved. My group are not optimizers (very much of the 'oh boy, now I can cast Fireball!' type), and if I lean too hard on the OP, it becomes the Willie the Duck show real quick. Battlemasters with precise and GSM or SS is just... woosh! If it can be defeated by hp depletion...


For a similar, optimized playstyle that doesn't rely on feats but has comparable damage, really consider Horizon Walker.

I like the concept of the horizon walker. I did consider it but...


The main issue with horizon walker is the 30' range limit on Planar Warrior and the fact that it uses your bonus action.

Yeah, the bonus action. My character concept is the whip and 'pistol'-alikes. It is that, not Sharpshooter, which is the core of the concept (SS mostly for 120' range without disadvantage, more than the -5/+10).

Thanks guys! Additional opinions are welcome, as are skill and background/concept ideas!

[djreynolds]

Well you will be going from level 1 with Dragon Heist

1. you can get darkvision at 5th level as a spell, if you grab human variant

2. I would grab sharpshooter asap, for ignoring 3/4 cover and the range will be helpful, before any ASI

3. I like Crossbow expert, but you will need your BA for stuff like hail of thorns, I found the fighting can become cramped and you can catch multiple enemy in your sights. Hunter's mark is awesome, but hail of thorns is quite good

4. Horde breaker is very useful, I like colossus slayer, but horde breaker is a free attack in cramped spaces

5. IMO 1 level of war cleric goes very far, even with a 16 in wisdom, that's +3 times a day you launch an attack, you can grab bless, divine favor. But knowledge cleric could be beneficial as well. And channel divinity will make sure SS lands

6. alarm and cordon of arrows are actually useful, if you feel a "tail"

7. The spells are all right, you might find beast sense and speak with animals useful, for scouting... assuming no one has find familiar

8. If you are willing to keep dex at 16, grabbing bless will help out with SS -5

9. Hail of thorns, and lightning arrow will be excellent to have, as will pass without a trace. A level of cleric will go far, preparing cure wounds and healing word.

Good luck

[Hecuba]

Are you expecting the character to carry over to other campaigns, or are we strictly looking at the prescribed levels 1-5ish for Dragon Heist?

Personally, I like Gloom Stalker more than Hunter at low levels: the Hunter options will generally get you higher damage over the entire fight, but Dread Ambusher helps you front load to remove priority targets.

If you're looking to play a ranger at higher levels, however, I find I like lore bard more for my rangering than any actual ranger build. Pick up some combination of: Hunter's mark, hail of thorns, swift quiver, tenser's, Haste, and (if you want to replicate a Hunter beast companion) the palading mount spells.

[Willie the Duck]

4. Horde breaker is very useful, I like colossus slayer, but horde breaker is a free attack in cramped spaces
That is what I am thinking.


5. IMO 1 level of war cleric goes very far, even with a 16 in wisdom, that's +3 times a day you launch an attack, you can grab bless, divine favor. But knowledge cleric could be beneficial as well. And channel divinity will make sure SS lands

A lot of the clerics look nice for a 1 level dip. Grave domain for bonus action ranged Spare the Dying, Life domain for free memorized Bless, and Improved healing (although we do not use boosted Goodberry and Healing Spirit is 1 person/round), Light domain for Faerie Fire (and Burning Hands, I guess) and Wis/day disadvantage on opponent's attacks, War for Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, and wis/day bonus attacks (if I weren't to take xbow expert).


Good luck

Thank you!


Are you expecting the character to carry over to other campaigns, or are we strictly looking at the prescribed levels 1-5ish for Dragon Heist?

Personally, I like Gloom Stalker more than Hunter at low levels: the Hunter options will generally get you higher damage over the entire fight, but Dread Ambusher helps you front load to remove priority targets.

If he survives, he will continue on through. I agree that a GS would be optimal for an underground mass dungeon crawl potentially dealing with a lot of monsters using darkvision and or a mad wizard who might lob a bunch of wis-save spells and such. However, someone in the group has already played on recently. Also seems a little metagamey to start out as one, before we even know we're ever going underground.


If you're looking to play a ranger at higher levels, however, I find I like lore bard more for my rangering than any actual ranger build. Pick up some combination of: Hunter's mark, hail of thorns, swift quiver, tenser's, Haste, and (if you want to replicate a Hunter beast companion) the palading mount spells.

Are rangers really so bad that the best way to play one at high levels is to reskin something else? That makes me sad. :-(

[djreynolds]

Wait on crossbow expert to see what you DM is dropping outside of the what's there

It is a good archetype, with a cleric in the party, you can regularly hit with SS

Another idea is, with all the streets corners and distances, 2 levels of rogue for cunning action could prove very helpful

Undermountain will take you to 20th level so crazy builds can work. Ranger 12, fighter BM4, rogue 4 could fly

Play it by ear, in early play cleric abound spamming bless, once 5th level hits here come spirit guardians and the blessings cease. So then is a good point to grab cleric.

SS can change a battle, 600ft is very far, that's up to 5 rounds of peppering fools and dropping spike growths in the wake

The ranger spells are very good at forcing the enemy to move where you want them to right into the smiting paladin/hexbalde just fresh off a rest or wizard and his fireball

[Willie the Duck]

Wait on crossbow expert to see what you DM is dropping outside of the what's there

C'mon, spoilers, man! Damn, I can't unsee that. Okay, so there's either a great bow in there or no hand crossbows. Well, that does change things, which I guess is okay, since I can have other bonus actions and not feel like it is wasting a 1d6+13 SS/hxbow shot.



It is a good archetype, with a cleric in the party, you can regularly hit with SS
Another idea is, with all the streets corners and distances, 2 levels of rogue for cunning action could prove very helpful

Undermountain will take you to 20th level so crazy builds can work. Ranger 12, fighter BM4, rogue 4 could fly

Play it by ear, in early play cleric abound spamming bless, once 5th level hits here come spirit guardians and the blessings cease. So then is a good point to grab cleric.

I would be the cleric, and only for a dip, so it'd be me putting up bless, then standing back and shooting (/lobbing thorns, war cleric bonus attacks, what-have-you) while others do their front line fun.


SS can change a battle, 600ft is very far, that's up to 5 rounds of peppering fools and dropping spike growths in the wake

The ranger spells are very good at forcing the enemy to move where you want them to right into the smiting paladin/hexbalde just fresh off a rest or wizard and his fireball

Alright. That sounds like the kind of fun I was looking for, as opposed to just churning out -5/+10 attacks as fast as possible. Cool.

[djreynolds]

Hail thorns at 5th level, theoretically can be used twice on a turn and upcasted. Some DMs will say no, but you're only casting once each round.

1. 2 ranged attacks (bow or even a dagger), bonus action cast Hail of thorns

2. Next round shoot off and with hail of thorns, BA cast hail thorns again, next arrow does hail of thorns

This can be done dueling daggers and handaxes... you may few of them

We just started the dungeon, I have no idea about equipment. I always, personally, wait.
Crossbow expert is awesome, take it.
Heavy crossbows are AWESOME, so are hand crossbows

[Willie the Duck]

Okay, so just take SS first on general principle. I can dig that. Sorry for making assumptions.

Hail of thorns is a solid spell. That, ensnaring strike and hunter's mark are clear winners. But wow have you sold it.

[Man_Over_Game]

Heavy crossbows are AWESOME, so are hand crossbows

It's important to note that, outside of Crossbow Expert, or some odd syntax related to one-handed weapons (I'm looking at you Swords Bard), Hand Crossbows cost more, deal less damage, and have less range than a Light Crossbow, and still require a free hand to load (meaning that the one-handedness is generally useless).

Not even the Light feature is applicable to anything, because Light is only used in reference to Two-Weapon-Fighting, which explicitly calls out the fact that you can only use it with a melee weapon.

Light is worthless, one-handedness is worthless, so you might as well be packing a Heavy Crossbow if you can afford it, or a Light Crossbow on a budget.

While it doesn't quite match what you're 100% looking for, a Longbow has 50/100 more range, but only deals 1 less damage and has no requirement to deal with Loading. Going Crossbow, your range is limited, and while the Bonus Action economy from Crossbow Expert is good, it competes with your Bonus Action, so make sure to avoid anything that uses your BA.

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I find that Crossbows are only useful for builds that are either limited to having a single attack per round (Like Rogues who can get Martial Proficiency), or are a class that has no use for a bonus action, don't need much range, and are using Crossbow Expert (Fighters, Rogues).

In most other circumstances, a bow requires much less investment and outperforms Crossbows tremendously in costs and range.

[sithlordnergal]

I have a hunter Ranger in the group I am DMing. They're perfectly fine if you aren't in a group of rabid optimizers. Even then you're going to bring some pretty decent skills to the table. Alsooo, depending on how the DM is running stuff, you might be able to upgrade that Hand Crossbow to a Pistol, which is basically a Handcrossbow that does 1d10 and can be heard 300 feet away.

Looks like you'd be more or less fine with your build, and adding some Cleric spells would be a good way to go. I'd avoid Druid, unless you can chat with your DM and convince him that Druids are able to use metal armor and shields in this edition, per PHB.

[Hecuba]

Are rangers really so bad that the best way to play one at high levels is to reskin something else? That makes me sad. :-(

They're OK-ish, except Beast Master. The variant revision a bit better, but I have some people I play with that are more finicky about that than they are about UA content in general.
There's just nowhere where they shine, and they've lost some of their conceptual space to other classes (or to the anemia of the Beast Master subclass, which really is quite bad).

Heck, you barely have to reskin in some cases - if you're not specifically including "archer" in what you're looking for, then Oath of the Ancient's Paladin will get you:
A martial character with partial casting
natural Druid-light flavoring
meaningful pets (find steed/find greater steed explicitly include mastiff and dire wolf respectively if you want hunting dogs)
If you were going to be a stab-it-y-ranger instead of a shoot-it-y-ranger, you're pretty much already there.
If you do care about the archery angle but don't care about druid-light, you're also competing with arcane archer and eldritch knight.

For my 2 bits, given then subclass structure of 5e in general, the better designing-in-a-vacuum direction would have been to fold Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, & Barbarian into 2ish classes. Obviously, that's not an issue because D&D isn't designed in a vacuum and classes come with legacies.

They've made good job making solid conceptual space for 3 of those 4 to accommodate that, but the ranger's space suffers because (to an extent) it's wedged between the other 3 (and Druid).

[Willie the Duck]

In case anyone is interested--I chose the vuman ranger with crossbow expert feat. Fit the theme over anything else. Maybe I will do a non-handcrossbow ranger and do more different things with the bonus action next time a gloom stalker or horizon walker would be more appropriate.

The rest of the party each leveled up in the same classes (rogue, hexblade warlock, wizard, wizard) with the wizards choosing evoker and war wizard, respectively.

I have now leveled up to L2, rolling 9 on hp, so I'm feeling pretty good about probably making it to L3+ (unless there is a party wipe). As I figured, spells known is a big issue (I can't remember right now which spells I took, but I know it genuinely hurt having to choose). I probably will choose a level of cleric just to flesh that out (and give a bit of flavor, and delay CE/SS shinanegans until the wizards are casting fireball, etc.). Have to decide between Life (+3-4 hp per spell helps, even if we don't do +3hp to each goodberry, and healing spirit is 1 PC/rnd, maybe even more important), light (faerie fire and wis/day defensive on a reaction) or grave (bonus action ranged autostabilize sounds really useful with this party :smalltongue:). Either Sune of Kelemvor would make sense for the character, thematically.

Next session is this Saturday, and I am tentatively hopeful that the party is finding their groove in this citified adventure. Looks like the DM is liberally borrowing from stuff outside the adventure book, and we're having fun (which is all that matters).

[Vogie]

I'd do Monster Hunter Ranger with a single level Grave Cleric dip - you get a more reliable d6 ability than horizon walker, you have that hunter feel, but with bonus spells. Since you can't use Goodberry & Healing spirit cheese, Grave cleric allows you to keep your teammates alive without spending healing spells (and maximizes their impact when you do), while netting you more spell slots and spells known.

[Willie the Duck]

Hmmm. Good advice mechanically, wouldn't fit rp-wise. The party really aren't 'monster hunters.' Grave domain is a possibility. He's been leaning in my mind towards either Sune (he is a redhead), or Kelemvor (his mom died in the past year).

[Vogie]

Hmmm. Good advice mechanically, wouldn't fit rp-wise.

Just because the subclass is called Monster Slayer, doesn't mean the character is a Monster Slayer. They could be a veteran marksman, like a sniper, or just raised as a hunter from generations of hunters, or maybe a mentalist who enjoys fighting, like RDJ's Sherlock Holmes using Bartitsu.