Would you let a Revised Ranger in Curse of Strahd take Favored Enemy: Undead?

[Trustypeaches]

Basically the title.

My player wants to use the Revised Ranger and while I'm a bit iffy about Natural Explorer I thought it would be alright. But a +4 to all damage rolls against undead (passively) by level 6 seems really unbalanced, especially since this player plans to make use of Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert.

I'm typically not opposed to the power gaming mindset, but this feels on the sorlock side of cheese to me. What would you guys do? Am I overestimating this feature's value?

[Man_Over_Game]

The Revised Ranger is known for being very "frontloaded", meaning to have all of its primary benefits available right off the bat. It's also pretty overpowered, and effectively a "homebrew" class. With it being non-standard, just make some minor modifications.

Change it so that the Favored Enemy bonus deals damage equal to your highest Ranger Spell slot, according to its magic table, assuming it has one. This means that Favored Enemy only starts dealing +1 damage at level 2, but goes up to +5 damage as you level into Ranger. You still keep all the other benefits, which is still more than what Fighter gets in one level.

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Do note that not every enemy in Curse of Strahd is undead. Many are, as well as Strahd himself, but there will be plenty of circumstances where his feature won't be applicable.

[mormon_soldier]

Do you have a reason to disallow it? It's explicitly an option in the rules. If you're uncomfortable with the bonus, you should just disallow revised ranger.

[Trustypeaches]

Do you have a reason to disallow it?
you're uncomfortable with the bonus, you should just disallow revised ranger.You answered your own question.

[Trustypeaches]

The Revised Ranger is known for being very "frontloaded", meaning to have all of its primary benefits available right off the bat. It's also pretty overpowered, and effectively a "homebrew" class. With it being non-standard, just make some minor modifications.

Change it so that the Favored Enemy bonus deals damage equal to your highest Ranger Spell slot, according to its magic table, assuming it has one. This means that Favored Enemy only starts dealing +1 damage at level 2, but goes up to +5 damage as you level into Ranger. You still keep all the other benefits, which is still more than what Fighter gets in one level.

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Do note that not every enemy in Curse of Strahd is undead. Many are, as well as Strahd himself, but there will be plenty of circumstances where his feature won't be applicable.I know not all enemies are undead, and I guess it arguably wouldn't be any more commonly applicable than Favored Enemy: Humanoid (which I wouldn't allow).

If anyone has experience with the revised ranger in general that'd be helpful. I feel like a lot of their features beg for a bit of tweaking, like spreading out Favored Terrain features across levels so it's less frontloaded and nerfing the **** out of primeval awareness.

[8wGremlin]

Played a Gloomstalker hand crossbow revised ranger/fighter in COS and the undead fav enemy wasn't that useful, there are so many other things in Barovia that want to kill you, and whilst feel godly a few times, others it wasn't an issue.
the cleric and paladin were far more damaging and effective.

[solidork]

Someone played a TWF Ranger/Rogue/Barbarian with Favored Enemy: Humanoids for a while in our Princes of the Apocalypse game. He did good damage, but it was just damage.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hmm...How about doing something like this:

"When you make an Attack with your action on your turn against one of your Favored Enemies, you may choose to have advantage to hit. The attack deals bonus damage to that creature equal to your Ranger level, and this damage deals the same type of damage as the weapon. If your attack misses, it instead is considered a hit and only deals the bonus damage from this feature. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until you take a Short or Long Rest".

Scales well at higher levels, incentivizes Ranger On-Hit spells (which don't get enough love as-is), and it's almost as effective against every creature option, since it can only be used once per short rest.

For the Terrain stuff, say that you get the non-travel benefits at level 1, and the others you have to pick.
You get a single travel choice at level 1, and you get another choice for every 3 Ranger levels (So at Ranger level 3, 6, 9, 12, 15).

That way, you can focus on what your Ranger does best right off the bat without being too "extreme". This also allows the DM to still implement reasonable travel challenges that aren't going to be removed just because someone took a single level into Ranger.

[Myth27]

Yes I would allow it, it's a though adventure, the bonus damage is not going to make it much easier

[Trustypeaches]

Alright I think I'll allow it then, nerfing Primeval Awareness down to a favored-enemy oriented Divine Sense and maybe postponing the last feature of Favored Terrain (advantage on targets who haven't moved yet) to Sixth level to ease up the frontloading.

[Angelalex242]

You want to nerf the single weakest class?

...You're a cruel man.

[GlenSmash!]

You want to nerf the single weakest class?

...You're a cruel man.

Wait, Revised Ranger is weak?

I haven't heard that claim before.

[Unoriginal]

Would you disallow someone from taking Dragons as favored enemy in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? Or Giants as favored enemies in Against the Giants?

[Trustypeaches]

Would you disallow someone from taking Dragons as favored enemy in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? Or Giants as favored enemies in Against the Giants?
I'm not familiar enough with either of those modules to tell how often the bonus damage would come up.

That said, I think I might have just reacted this way because CoS frontloads its undead enemies a bit.

[Mr.Spastic]

I think the problem comes more with the fact that revised ranger is more of an over correction than a fix. Your reaction is very common from what I have seen. The easiest solution is to not run any UA as a lot of it has not been balanced super well.

Assuming Level 6ish with 18 dex

To put the damage in perspective they get three attacks(assuming hand crossbow) that are at +4 and deal 1d6+14. Adding 4 to that damage is only about a 20% increase. Taking into account their very low hit chance, I don't think it will be too muck of a problem.

[Nhorianscum]

UA ranger as a single class? Yes, it's the big niche of ranger.

Handbook ranger as a single class? Yes, same shtic.

UA ranger dips? Yeah no.

[KorvinStarmast]

But a +4 to all damage rolls against undead (passively) by level 6 seems really unbalanced, My PHB has nothing about damage bonus in favored enemy. Am I missing an errata?

Oh, wait, it is UA, which is more or less defined as 'not quite balanced yet.'

(though I think +2 to damage to favored is hardly a balance issue).

[Skylivedk]

My PHB has nothing about damage bonus in favored enemy. Am I missing an errata?

Oh, wait, it is UA, which is more or less defined as 'not quite balanced yet.'

(though I think +2 to damage to favored is hardly a balance issue).

More in the title of OP. Revised Ranger, so not phb version.

I'd change primeval awareness and make it wis/long rest until level 5 and provably also have its regards be a function of ranger levels (or given by increments).

I could see myself do something similar to favoured terrain. Perhaps nerf there benefits a bit and allow the terrain (and enemy) to be changed after 24/72 hours or a week.

The last part of favoured terrain (advantage against those who haven't acted) honestly:
A) doesn't belong there (but should be a separate feature)
B) doesn't break much early on

[Trustypeaches]

My PHB has nothing about damage bonus in favored enemy. Am I missing an errata?

Oh, wait, it is UA, which is more or less defined as 'not quite balanced yet.'

(though I think +2 to damage to favored is hardly a balance issue).It becomes a +4 at level 6 when you pick your second favored enemy type.

[Kaibis]

Basically the title.

My player wants to use the Revised Ranger and while I'm a bit iffy about Natural Explorer I thought it would be alright. But a +4 to all damage rolls against undead (passively) by level 6 seems really unbalanced, especially since this player plans to make use of Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert.

I'm typically not opposed to the power gaming mindset, but this feels on the sorlock side of cheese to me. What would you guys do? Am I overestimating this feature's value?

What do the other players think? CoS can be played as a deadly module, or not. We are just finishing up and my Paladin with a sunsword was completely OP at times that we all laughed. Fighting undead was so easy.

None of us minded though. By level 8 the paladin was back in balance, and the sunsword is a utility against vampires rather than the only reason that we win.

Further, as a party that has suited us. We have enjoyed the story more than the threat of death (which we still always take seriously). Some people like to play a game where everything is comfortably possible - what does your party enjoy?

[KorvinStarmast]

It becomes a +4 at level 6 when you pick your second favored enemy type. Still not a balance issue. As CR goes up so do bags of HP.

[djreynolds]

Strahd's spell DC is very high, almost a 20.

The final fight is tough. Let the ranger have the bonus damage. The party will need it