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Grod_The_Giant
2019-07-11, 02:05 PM
Grod’s Revised Ranger

HIT POINTS
Hit Die: 1d10
Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per Ranger level after 1st

PROFICIENCIES
Armor: light armor, medium armor, shields
Weapons: simple weapons, martial weapons
Tools: none
Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity
Skills: Choose three from Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.

STARTING EQUIPMENT
You start with the following items, plus anything provided by your background.

(a) scale mail or (b) leather armor
(a) two shortswords or (b) two simple melee weapons
(a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack
A longbow and a quiver of 20 arrows

Alternatively, you may start with 5d4 × 10 gp to buy your own equipment.



Level
Proficiency
Features
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th


1st
+2
Favored Enemy +1, Favored Terrain







2nd
+2
Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Retraining
2






3rd
+2
Ranger Archetype, Primeval Awareness
3






4th
+2
Ability Score Improvement
3






5th
+3
Extra Attack, Favored Enemy +2
4
2





6th
+3
Favored Enemy And Favored Terrain Improvements
4
2





7th
+3
Ranger Archetype Feature
4
3





8th
+3
Ability Score Improvement, Land's Stride
4
3





9th
+4

4
3
2




10th
+4
Hide In Plain Sight
4
3
2




11th
+4
Ranger Archetype Feature, Favored Enemy +3
4
3
3




12th
+4
Ability Score Improvement
4
3
3




13th
+5
Rapid Retraining
4
3
3
1



14th
+5
Vanish
4
3
3
1



15th
+5
Ranger Archetype Feature
4
3
3
2



16th
+5
Ability Score Improvement
4
3
3
2



17th
+6
Favored Enemy +4
4
3
3
3
1


18th
+6
Instant Adaptation
4
3
3
3
1


19th
+6
Ability Score Improvement
4
3
3
3
2


20th
+6
Foe Slayer, Terrain Master
4
3
3
3
2



Favored Enemy: Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy. Chose one of the five options from the table below. When attacking your favored enemy, attempting a saving throw against one of their abilities, or making an ability check relating to them, you gain a +1 bonus to your roll. This bonus increases by 1 at Ranger levels 5, 11, and 17. You also learn one language spoken by your favored enemies. Upon gaining a new Ranger level, you may choose to replace one of your Favored Enemy choices with another.



Favored Foe
Creature Types
Language


The Civilized
Humanoids
Common, Draconic, Dwarvish, Elvish, Gnoll, Gnomish, Goblin, Halfling, Orc, or Undercommon


The Natural
Beasts, Fey, Plants
Sylvan


Outsiders
Celestials, Elementals, Fiends
Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Celestial, Ignan, Primordial, or Terran


The Unnatural
Aberrations, Constructs, Oozes, Undead
Deep Speech


Monsters
Dragons, Giants, Monstrosities
Draconic, Giant




Favored Enemy, as written, was awful. The choices were so narrow they could easily never come up, the bonuses were even more situational, and none of them did anything to make you better at, you know, fighting your favorite enemy. So I made the choices broader and more thematic, and the bonus a little more useful. Scaling with class level also encourages you to take higher Ranger levels.


Favored Terrain: You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain from the table below. You gain the listed special ability, and when you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain you may roll with advantage. Upon gaining a new Ranger level, you may choose to replace one of your Favored Terrain choices with another.

Beginning at 2nd level, you also have knowledge of additional spells, as shown on the table below. The spells always count as being prepared, and do not count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If they do not normally appear on the Ranger spell list, they count as Ranger spells for you.



Terrain
Ability
Spells


Arctic
You gain resistance to cold damage
Create Bondfire, Ice Knife, Hold Person, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold


Coastal
You gain a swim speed equal to your base land speed
Shape Water, Fog Cloud, Gust of Wind, Water Breathing, Control Water, Scrying


Desert
You gain resistance to fire damage
Resistance, Create or Destroy Water, Dust Devil, Create Food and Water, Hallucinatory Terrain, Insect Plague


Forest
You may attempt to hide while only lightly obscured.
Thorn Whip, Entangle, Silence, Conjure Animals, Dominate Beast, Tree Stride


Grassland
All of your movement speeds are increased by 10ft
Gust, Expeditious Retreat, Warding Wind, Haste, Freedom of Movement, Far Step


Mountain
You gain a climb speed equal to your base land speed
Mold Earth, Jump, Spider Climb, Meld Into Stone, Stoneskin, Wall of Stone


Swamp
You gain resistance to poison damage
Poison Spray, Ray of Sickness, Darkness, Water Walk, Giant Insect, Contagion


Underdark
You gain darkvision to a range of 60ft, or increase your range by 60ft if you already had darkvision
Light, Earth Tremor, Web, Erupting Earth, Stone Shape, Cloudkill


Urban
You may move through squares occupied by creatures without being hindered-- even enemies, although you still provoke opportunity attacks.
Comprehend Languages, Detect Thoughts, Tongues, Charm Monster, Animate Objects




If Favored Enemy was bad, Natural Explorer was worse. There are way too many benefits to remember, they're all tiny, and they add up to "cool, you bypass the exploration bit." I wanted to make your choice more memorable and meaningful, and to provide an opportunity to Rangers to really differentiate themselves.


Fighting Style: At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can't take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.

Archery: You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Close Quarters Shooter (Revised): You don't suffer disadvantage when making ranged attacks while within 5ft of an enemy, and your ranged attacks ignore half and three-quarters cover against enemies within 30ft.
Defense: While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
Dueling: When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Einhander (New): When you are wielding a versatile melee weapon, you deal +1 damage when wielding it in two hands, and +1 AC when wielding it in one hand with no weapon or shield in the other.
Mariner (UA): When not wearing heavy armor or using your off-hand to wield a weapon or shield, you gain +1 AC and a swim and climb speed equal to your land speed.
Two-Weapon Fighting: When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.


Spellcasting: By the time you reach 2nd level, you have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells, much as a druid does.



Cantrips: At 2nd level, you know two cantrips of your choice from the druid spell list. You learn one additional druid cantrips of your choice at 4th level.

I houserule that Paladins get the same bonus; for consistency's sake, if one half-caster gets cantrips the other should too. It's up to you.


Preparing and Casting Spells: The Ranger table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your Ranger spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell's level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

You prepare the list of Ranger spells that are available for you to cast, choosing from the Ranger spell list. When you do so, choose a number of Ranger spells equal to your Wisdom modifier + half your Ranger level, rounded down (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

For example, if you are a 5th-level Ranger, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots. With a Wisdom of 14, your list of prepared spells can include four spells of 1st or 2nd-level, in any combination. If you prepare the 1st-level spell Hunter’s Mark, you can cast it using a 1st-level or a 2nd-level slot. Casting the spell doesn't remove it from your list of prepared spells.

You can change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of Ranger spells requires time spent in study and meditation: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.

Spellcasting Ability: Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your ranger spells, since your magic draws on your attunement to nature. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a ranger spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.


Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier
Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier


tl;dr: Rangers prepare spells now. If Paladins get to do it, Rangers (who use magic for utility more than for power) are doubly justified. Neatly solves the "too few spells" bit too.


Retraining: Beginning at 2nd level, you may retrain your Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain choices, to better reflect your current focuses. Doing so requires a week of intensive study, practice, and meditation for each choice being changed, during which time you must work for at least eight hours a day. To train in a new Favored Enemy, you must have access to appropriate resources such as books, fellow hunters, or live specimens. To train in a new Favored Terrain, you must have regular access to the newly chosen terrain. At the conclusion of the week, you lose benefits of your previous Favored Enemy or Terrain (including language, in the case of a Favored Enemy) and gain the benefits of your new choice.


The original Ranger can get screwed if their Favored Enemy/Natural Explorer choices never come up. Now you can adapt to changing situations.


Ranger Archetype: At 3rd level, you choose an archetype that you strive to emulate from the list of available archetypes. Your choice grants features at 3rd level, and again at 7th, 11th, and 15th level.

Primeval Awareness: Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action to focus your awareness on the region around you. You instantly sense the presence or absence of any of your Favored Enemies within 1 mile. You learn their creature type, approximate distance, direction, and numbers, though no fine detail is gained. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.


Originally, it wasn't worth a spell slot. It was barely worth an action. I tightened the focus to favored enemies, to double down on the thematics, and provided more information to make it worth it. Moving to its own resource means that Rangers will actually use it.


Ability Score Improvement: When you reach 4th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Extra Attack: Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain Improvements: At 6th level, you may pick one additional Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain. Your choice should reflect the types of monsters and situations you have encountered on your adventures.

Land's Stride: Starting at 8th level, moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can also pass through nonmagical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.

In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such those created by the entangle spell.

Hide In Plain Sight: Beginning at 10th level, while at least lightly obscured you may use an action to render yourself invisible for one minute. Attacking, casting a spell, or spending more than half of your movement in a single round breaks this invisibility, but leaving concealment does not.


Being hard to spot as long as you don't move is not a 10th level feature. It's barely a 1st level feature. This is a much more reasonable option for a high-level stealth class.


Rapid Retraining: Beginning at 13th level, you may retrain a Favored Enemy or Favored Terrain choice with only one day of study and training. If you had previously selected that enemy or terrain type, you do not need access to any resources.

Vanish: Beginning at 14th level, you may use your Hide in Plain Sight ability regardless of how obscured you are.


If another class gets the same ability 12 levels earlier, it is not level appropriate.


Instant Adaptation: Beginning at 18th level, you may retrain one of your Favored Enemy or Favored Terrain choices as an action. Once you have done so, you cannot use this ability again until you have completed a short or long rest.

Foe Slayer: At 20th level, you become an unparalleled hunter of your enemies. Whenever you deal weapon damage to a Favored Enemy, you may roll the damage dice twice. If you score a critical hit, roll them four times.

Terrain Master: At 20th level, you become the ultimate master of your domain. When you enter one of your Favored Terrains for the first time since your last long rest, or when you complete a long rest in one, you gain one additional 5th level spell slot. This slot must be used to cast one of the spells granted by your Favored Terrain feature.


Foe Slayer is a notoriously bad capstone. The new version is much more fun. Your terrain focus gets to shine too.



Ranger Archetype Tweaks
Most archetypes are fully compatible, as long as you convert "spells known" to "spells always prepared." The PHB classes get bonus spells to match the subclasses in Xanathar's.


Use the Revised Ranger’s Beast Conclave, with the exception of Coordinated Attack. However, at 3rd level they gain the following extra ability:

Beast Master’s Magic: You learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class. The spells always count as being prepared, and do not count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.

3rd: Animal Friendship
5th: Beast Sense
9th: Conjure Animals
13th: Dominate Beast
17th: Awaken



The Hunter gains the following extra ability:

Hunter’s Magic: You learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class. The spells always count as being prepared, and do not count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.

3rd: Hunter’s Mark
5th: Pass Without Trace
9th: Speak with Plants
13th: Locate Creature
17th: Hold Monster



Alter the Improved Spellcasting ability thusly:

Improved Spellcasting: At 3rd level, you may prepare a number of additional spells equal to your Proficiency modifier, and you gain an additional 1st level spell slot. You gain an additional 2nd level slot at 5th, a 3rd level slot at 9th, a 4th level slot at 13th, and a 5th level slot at 17th.

(It's my homebrew, I'm going to detail how it interacts with my other 'brew, deal with it :smalltongue: The Shooting Star Ranger (a more magic-y Ranger subclass) originally got to swap one spell known around each day; that's redundant now that Rangers prepare spells, so they get extra spells prepared instead)


----------------------


If I'm planning on putting out a book of variant rules and classes, it seems pretty silly not to take my own sort of stab at a revised Ranger. They're not... that bad, I don't think, but they certainly suffer from having crappy trademark features. So, here are my versions of Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer:

Favored Enemy: Choose a type of favored enemy from the table below. When attacking your favored enemy, attempting a saving throw against one of their abilities, or making an ability check relating to them, you gain a +1 bonus to your roll. This bonus increases by 1 at Ranger levels 5, 11, and 17. You also learn one language spoken by your favored enemies.



Favored Foe
Creature Types
Language


The Civilized
Humanoids
Common, Draconic, Dwarvish, Elvish, Gnoll, Gnomish, Goblin, Halfling, Orc, or Undercommon


The Natural
Beasts, Fey, Plants
Sylvan


Outsiders
Celestials, Elementals, Fiends
Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Celestial, Ignan, Primordial, or Terran


The Unnatural
Aberrations, Constructs, Oozes, Undead
Deep Speech


Monsters
Dragons, Giants, Monstrosities
Draconic, Giant


By taking a week of to study and practice, you may replace your favored enemy with a different type. At 6th level, you pick a second type of favored enemy.


Natural Explorer: Choose one type of favored terrain. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, you may roll with advantage. You also gain a special ability and additional spells, as shown on the table below. The spells from your favored terrain always count as being prepared, and do not count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.



Terrain
Ability
Spells


Arctic
You gain resistance to cold damage
Ice Knife, Hold Person, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold


Coastal
You gain a swim speed equal to your base land speed
Fog Cloud, Gust of Wind, Water Breathing, Control Water, Scrying


Desert
You gain resistance to fire damage
Create or Destroy Water, Dust Devil, Create Food and Water, Hallucinatory Terrain, Insect Plague


Forest
You are not affected by difficult terrain
Entangle, Beast Sense, Plant Growth, Guardian of Nature, Tree Stride


Grassland
You may Dash as a bonus action
Longstrider, Invisibility, Haste, Freedom of Movement, Far Step


Mountain
You gain a climb speed equal to your base land speed
Jump, Spider Climb, Meld Into Stone, Stoneskin, Wall of Stone


Swamp
You gain resistance to poison damage
Ray of Sickness, Darkness, Water Walk, Giant Insect, Contagion


Underdark
You gain darkvision to a range of 60ft, or increase your range by 60ft if you already had darkvision
Earth Tremor, Web, Erupting Earth, Stone Shape, Cloudkill


By taking a week of to study and practice, you may replace your favored terrain with a different type. This practice must take place in the new terrain-- you can't train in desert survival skills in a swamp, after all. At 10th level, you may select one additional favored terrain.

----------------------

In terms of other Ranger tweaks, I'd suggest the following, but they're pretty much progressively less important.

Spellcasting: You do not have a list of spells known. Instead, you prepare a number of Ranger spells each day equal to your Wisdom modifier + half your Ranger level, rounded down (minimum 1). The spells granted by your subclass are always prepared, and do not count against this limit.
Hide in Plain Sight: Beginning at 10th level, while at least lightly obscured, you may use an action to render yourself invisible. Attacking, casting a spell, or spending more than half of your movement in a single round breaks this invisibility, but leaving concealment does not.
Rapid Montage: Beginning at 13th level, you may retrain Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer choices in a day, rather than a week.
Vanish: Beginning at 14th level, you may use your Hide in Plain Sight ability regardless of how obscured you are.
Instant Adaptation: Beginning at 18th level, you may retrain your Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer choices as an action. Once you have done so, you cannot use this ability again until you have completed a short or long rest.
Foe Slayer: Beginning at 20th level, when you roll initiative you may designate one creature you are aware of as your quarry. The target counts as one of your favored enemies for the next hour, and you may cast Hunter's Mark on it as though from a first level spell slot. You do not have to provide components or concentrate, but you cannot move the mark once the creature dies. If it was already one of your favored enemies, you may add your full proficiency bonus to attacks, saves, and skill checks against them, not just half. You may only have one quarry at a time.


Also, one supposes, the Hunter and Beast Master need a bit of attention:

The Hunter just needs bonus spells, to match the options in Xanathar's: Hunter's Mark, Pass Without Trace, Speak With Plants, Locate Creature, and Hold Monster.
Unlike other parts of the "official" Revised Ranger, I think the Beast Conclave works perfectly as a Beast Master fix. It loses the 5th level ability, since there's no longer a subclass slot for that, and gains bonus spells: Animal Friendship, Beast Sense, Conjure Animals, Dominate Beast, and Awaken.

Rukelnikov
2019-07-11, 03:07 PM
It's cool, a couple things I noticed:

You put Fey together with the rest of the Outsiders, I think that weakens "Natural" a bit when compared to the other choices, maybe folding Fey together with Natural makes it more appealing, after all if I'm prepping to fight frightening foes in a eerie forest, I'm likely more wary of the Fey than plants and animals.

I think its not the first time you mention sub-abilities by terrain for natural terrail, that sounds cool, however some of them seem to retread some of the problematic points of the PHB feature. Namely stuff like "You can never get lost", "Well, we could have navigated this forest, but since there's a ranger just make one roll to see if there's an encounter in there and lets move on"

Btw, my personal take with Foe Slayer? That's what Favored Enemy should be, from lvl 1. Once per round you get to add Wis to Att or Dam against a FE, capstone could be unlimited times per round.

Evaar
2019-07-11, 03:34 PM
I agree with the above note about adding Fey to Natural.

I think there may be redundancies in some favored terrain options. For example, dwarves gain very little from having swamp as a favored terrain. I think it’s a good practice to add clauses of “if you already have this from another source” then offer an alternate benefit.

Arctic bonuses seem pretty weak. Cold damage saves are relatively rare, and building a fire is thematic but not as difficult to accomplish otherwise as, say, finding water. A fire can typically be built with a cantrip, obtaining drinking water usually takes a spell slot. Maybe throw in something else to shore that up a little?

Talsin
2019-07-11, 03:39 PM
I think Hiding in plain sight would be more based on obscurement rather than cover. Maybe if they are in Light Obscurement or more, they can Hide with advantage? Invisibility doesn't ensure non-detection unless they are also hiding, which isn't always a guaranteed ability unless they cannot be seen - Invisibilty would ENSURE Ranger always being able to hide.

On second thought, the ability to hide if in a favored terrain, regardless of visibility?

Kane0
2019-07-11, 05:28 PM
Favored Enemy: Choose a type of favored enemy from the table below. When attacking your favored enemy, attempting a saving throw against one of their abilities, or making an ability check relating to them, you may roll 1d4 and add it to your roll. You also learn one language spoken by your favored enemies.
At 6th level, you pick a second type of favored enemy.

Nice and simple, I like it. Possibly a bit too strong though, permanently adding +1d4 to all attacks, checks and saves against something like all humanoids starting at level 1?
Possibly convert it into a quarry type ability to designate a target to receive those benefits instead?



Natural Explorer: Choose one type of favored terrain. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, you may roll with advantage. When in your favored terrain, you may attempt to Hide as a bonus action. You also gain a special ability, depending on which you pick:

Arctic: You have advantage on saves against cold damage, and you are always capable of finding enough fuel to sustain a campfire.
Coastal: You gain a swim speed equal to your base land speed, and are aware of changes in the weather up to one hour before they occur.
Desert: You have advantage on saves against fir damage, and you always know the way to the nearest source of water.
Forest: You are not affected by difficult terrain, and you never get lost.
Grassland: Your base land speed increases by 10ft, and you can see twice as far as normal for your race.
Mountain: You gain a climb speed equal to your base land speed, and take no penalty for environmental cold or altitude.
Swamp: You have advantage on saves against poison, and you can detect any poison within 5ft by scent.
Underdark: You gain darkvision to a range of 30ft, or increase your range by 30ft if you already had it, and you always know which way north is.


At 6th level, and again at 10th level, you may select one additional favored terrain.

Not sure how I feel about the bonus action Hide.
Some options seem a touch stronger than others, like Forest vs Underdark or Grassland vs Coastal.



Hide in Plain Sight: Beginning at 10th level, while behind at least light cover, you may use an action to render yourself invisible. Attacking, casting a spell, or moving more than half your speed in a single turn breaks this invisibility.
Foe Slayer: Beginning at 20th level, when you roll initiative you may designate one creature you are aware of as your quarry. The target counts as one of your favored enemies for the next hour. You may only have one quarry at a time.
[/LIST]

Can I use the Dash action when Hiding in Plain Sight to get more movement out of it?
Foe Slayer seems a bit lacklustre if it gives no benefit against something that is already a favored enemy. Perhaps a second die or extra to damage?

Also, while you're at it I think some of the Ranger-only spells need attention. Y'know, make it a complete package with all the other things you're looking at.

Vulsutyr
2019-07-11, 06:31 PM
Level 1 in ranger would be a no-brainer for a skill monkey or face build. +d4 to all checks related to humanoids is like proficiency/expertise in nearly all skills for a low-level intrigue campaign. Insight, all Charisma, all Intelligence, some Perception, Sleight of Hand, opposed athletics (to grapple), Initiative (against humanoid enemies), counterspell checks (against humanoid casters), and probably more. Probably needs to change.

You also need to specify if the +1d4 is added to Initiative when fighting your favored enemy. As written now, it does.

Crgaston
2019-07-11, 07:10 PM
Good stuff... thanks for posting!

The +1d4 to any ability check for Favored Enemy seems a bit much... maybe limit it to Survival, History and Nature?

Would the Underdark Favored terrain feature apply to Gloomstalkers?

Would the Grassland one apply to Darkvision?

Skylivedk
2019-07-11, 08:37 PM
I appreciate your attempt. You do not come close to hitting the mark for my needs. Is much rather use the current Revised Ranger and nerf/change Primeval Awareness than what you have come up with here.

My main points of discontent are:

1) it's weak in combat (at a glance) when not against its favoured enemy
2) favoured terrains are far from equally good (desert is much stronger and swamp is close behind based on the monster's manual)
3) both favoured terrain and enemy are still DM's fiat. I never understood why WotC didn't make those changeable every day/week - or came up with a better design chassis.
4) capstone is also meh

I suggest rebuilding the class around Hunter's Mark or the pet and have subclasses interact with one of those elements.

djreynolds
2019-07-12, 01:28 AM
I like it, but what I would suggest is tying in favored enemy to terrain

Artic terrain gives you favored enemies like ice dragon, frost giant, yeti, etc.

The player would get 1 humanoid, dragon, giant, undead, aberration, fey, etc associated with that terrain

Arkhios
2019-07-12, 01:31 AM
The +1d4 to any ability check for Favored Enemy seems a bit much... maybe limit it to Survival, History and Nature?

In 3.5 and Pathfinder Favored Enemy granted a flat bonus (from +2 to a potential maximum of +10) to skills that would nowadays qualify as Deception, Perception, Sense Motive, Survival, and a respective "knowledge" skill used to identify said creatures. And an equal bonus to damage rolls against those creatures. I don't think +1d4 (or later +1d6) is that much to be honest. It's basically same as spamming Guidance (cantrip) every turn and using it only on ability checks (and never on attacks or saving throws).


I like it, but what I would suggest is tying in favored enemy to terrain

Artic terrain gives you favored enemies like ice dragon, frost giant, yeti, etc.

The player would get 1 humanoid, dragon, giant, undead, aberration, fey, etc associated with that terrain

Sometimes less is more, but sometimes it isn't. While that would certainly widen the spectrum of which creatures you know well based on your favored terrain, it would be somewhat restrictive and "clunky".

And it would make more work for the DM to check each creature separately whether they classify or not depending on the terrain.

By keeping Favored Enemies and Terrains separate features, you leave more room for the DM to work with. I'd say that's more important.
Plus, it's kinda bad to forcibly decide something for the players, instead of giving them more freedom in their decisions.

Kane0
2019-07-12, 02:49 AM
I don't think +1d4 (or later +1d6) is that much to be honest. It's basically same as spamming Guidance (cantrip) every turn and using it only on ability checks (and never on attacks or saving throws).
Except in this case it stacks (which is a big reason guidance is so good), and it is getting applied to attacks and saves (stacking with bless, also a very good spell).

Rukelnikov
2019-07-12, 03:04 AM
Except in this case it stacks (which is a big reason guidance is so good), and it is getting applied to attacks and saves (stacking with bless, also a very good spell).

Yeah, Ranger would overtake Bard and Lock as the Face class with a single lvl dip

djreynolds
2019-07-12, 04:37 AM
Sometimes less is more, but sometimes it isn't. While that would certainly widen the spectrum of which creatures you know well based on your favored terrain, it would be somewhat restrictive and "clunky".

And it would make more work for the DM to check each creature separately whether they classify or not depending on the terrain.

By keeping Favored Enemies and Terrains separate features, you leave more room for the DM to work with. I'd say that's more important.
Plus, it's kinda bad to forcibly decide something for the players, instead of giving them more freedom in their decisions.

You go to Africa on Safari, the guide there knows everything about the place, including where to find water and the animals.

I propose the idea because when I saw the arctic, I envisioned a ranger wearing hide armor and using a harpoon, and he is able to communicate in some manner with all of its residents, friend or foe

Now obviously if this ranger is killing beasts in the artic this should translate to beasts in the jungle.... and there might not be too many undead to come across on a glacier

I like Grod's terrain stuff and I had started a thread on it awhile back, similar to this.

I really like the hide action as a bonus action... that is cool

The favored enemy portion is probably the most difficult, I just like the idea of while in the jungle everything there is your favorite quarry.

That's the issue with ranger, you're trying not to step on the rogue's toes and their sneak attack ability, the paladin's smiting, or the barbarian's rage, or the champion's crit, or BM maneuvers.... which are all essentially extra damage.

The thing about these is that there are no requirements for the damage other than having advantage( buddy within 5ft), or slots or rage or dice left over.

Perhaps favored enemy should tie into you archetype.

I guess there is 2 ways to see the ranger, "while on your mountain everything is your prey" or "I will track this giant from desert to mountains to coast to get it"

Grod_The_Giant
2019-07-12, 09:21 AM
You put Fey together with the rest of the Outsiders, I think that weakens "Natural" a bit when compared to the other choices, maybe folding Fey together with Natural makes it more appealing, after all if I'm prepping to fight frightening foes in a eerie forest, I'm likely more wary of the Fey than plants and animals.
That's fair, yeah. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure Fey even are proper Outsiders in 5e.


I think its not the first time you mention sub-abilities by terrain for natural terrail, that sounds cool, however some of them seem to retread some of the problematic points of the PHB feature. Namely stuff like "You can never get lost", "Well, we could have navigated this forest, but since there's a ranger just make one roll to see if there's an encounter in there and lets move on"
I wanted each terrain to have one generally useful mechanical feature and one fluffy background-type feature; something that would be extremely helpful in that area without running into the "sweep the challenge totally under the rug" thing. It's not an easy balance to strike, given D&D's lack of concrete rules for environmental challenges. Do you (or anyone else) have suggestions for the weaker options?


I think Hiding in plain sight would be more based on obscurement rather than cover. Maybe if they are in Light Obscurement or more, they can Hide with advantage? Invisibility doesn't ensure non-detection unless they are also hiding, which isn't always a guaranteed ability unless they cannot be seen - Invisibilty would ENSURE Ranger always being able to hide.

On second thought, the ability to hide if in a favored terrain, regardless of visibility?
That's not a bad thought.


Nice and simple, I like it. Possibly a bit too strong though, permanently adding +1d4 to all attacks, checks and saves against something like all humanoids starting at level 1?
Possibly convert it into a quarry type ability to designate a target to receive those benefits instead?
It's broad because I wanted it to be simple and easy to remember-- Favored Enemy and (especially) Natural Explorer as written have so many small uses that it's almost impossible to remember them all. I'm not a fan of replacing Favored Enemy with a quarry ability-- it loses pretty much the entire theme of "favored enemy," it infringes a bit on the Paladin as a single-target-damage class, and it's redundant-- Rangers already get Hunter's Mark.

But... yeah, I suppose it is a bit much as it stands-- Arkhios voiced my thought (it's comparable to Bless and Guidance), but you're right about stacking. How 'bout Wis modifier, or half proficiency? Or... advantage on checks against them, and cast Hunter's Mark on favored enemies without a spell slot? A reaction to reroll an attack, save, or check against a favored enemy?


Not sure how I feel about the bonus action Hide.
How so?


Can I use the Dash action when Hiding in Plain Sight to get more movement out of it?
Foe Slayer seems a bit lacklustre if it gives no benefit against something that is already a favored enemy. Perhaps a second die or extra to damage?
Yes, and good idea.


1) it's weak in combat (at a glance) when not against its favoured enemy
You think? I don't find the RAW Rangers have particular problems with killing enemies; it's more about their casting and high level features being weak.


3) both favoured terrain and enemy are still DM's fiat. I never understood why WotC didn't make those changeable every day/week - or came up with a better design chassis.
A retraining option is a good idea.

Makorel
2019-07-12, 11:59 AM
I really enjoy the idea of adding a d4 when dealing with a Favored Enemy. With these widened Favored Enemy categories it makes this ability situationally powerful without being so situational as to never be used while also not being common enough to be used in every situation. I compare it to one of my favorite spells Protection from Good and Evil, which casts a similarly wide net but not so wide as to be the go-to option for every encounter. Protection from Good And Evil also uses a resource. Maybe this should be an ability that can be used WIS-mod times per short or long rest? Or maybe Primal Awareness could be worked into using a spell slot for this ability?

I have a nitpick with the categorization of aberrations in that I would also consider them outsiders and go as far as to say they are the most outside, but calling them unnatural also makes sense and works better for game balance. Also anyone that says fey are "natural" has been indoctrinated by fairy propaganda.

The "Natural" category may be a bit underpowered. Even if you add Fey to it there would only be a single creature above CR 10 for the whole group (Trostani from GGR). balance-wise I feel like they could be lumped in with Monsters, but I also don't think that makes too much sense. It's probably fine just because when you pick your second favored enemy you can't pick the "Natural" category again.

One of my issues with the base Ranger was that I didn't like how it gave you these choices to have marginal benefits for very specific situations and you couldn't even trade them out for other options on a long rest or a level up or anything. With this rework to Favored Enemy I don't think it's necessary to be able to change which ones you're "attuned" to, but I still don't think that Survival Expert: The Class should be incapable of adapting to a new type of terrain. My solution toward this end was to cut out the "Favored Terrain" part and allow Rangers to gain the benefits of Natural Explorer after being in any sort of terrain for an hour.

That being said, I really like how your version of Favored Terrain grants these small, unique, mechanical benefits that shows the Ranger is familiar to a terrain without having to be physically bound to it. It gives the Ranger more customization potential and I can think of a number of character concepts/builds that would appreciate an extra 10 feet of movement or Darkvision and such.

No brains
2019-07-12, 12:07 PM
Is 'light cover' a term you use in supplemental materials? I think 5e has lightly obscured, heavily obscured, cover, two-thirds cover, and total cover.

I suppose standard cover would usually lightly obscure a target, but it may help to say 'light obscurement' so that a bush that provides no structural cover can still get a ruling for concealment. It would also be weird to hide behind and invisble Wall of Force that grants total cover. If you could siphon its invisibility, that's cool!

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-10, 01:07 PM
Update: I've weakened the Favored Enemy benefit a bit (half proficiency instead of a die) and overhauled Favored Terrain. Now, instead of giving a "real" ability and a fluffy one, you get a "real"ability and bonus spells prepared-- both increasing the impact and bringing your total spells prepared up to be equal to the Paladin.

solidork
2019-09-10, 02:00 PM
Granting Expeditious Retreat as a bonus spell is completely redundant when you can already dash as a bonus action. Maybe Longstrider?

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-11, 08:33 AM
Granting Expeditious Retreat as a bonus spell is completely redundant when you can already dash as a bonus action. Maybe Longstrider?
Shoot, you're right-- my bad.

Bjarkmundur
2019-09-11, 03:03 PM
What's tree strike?

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-11, 04:24 PM
What's tree strike?
Definitely not a typo for "Tree Stride," I'll tell you that for sure <shifty eyes>

GnollPaladin
2019-09-11, 04:27 PM
I like the terrain retraining. I have visions of movie montages....

Kane0
2019-09-11, 04:37 PM
Definitely not a typo for "Tree Stride," I'll tell you that for sure <shifty eyes>

5th level spell, works like Grasping Vine but good?

Nidgit
2019-09-11, 05:07 PM
I like the Favored Enemy- it feels like a good specialty without being crucial to the class's effectiveness. What would you think of changing the time to shift Favored Enemy and Terrain to one day as a high level ability? If that's too strong, maybe potentially allowing it for any Terrain or Enemy you've had before? It fits with an experienced Ranger more easily recalling knowledge that they'd learned before.

Tying spells to favored terrain is a super neat idea and one that really improves the class as a whole! It also strikes a good balance between prepared spells and innate spells that works well for the flavor.

That said, a Ranger can now learn up to 30 spells, which feels like way too many to me. For reference, a Paladin can have up to 25 and a Bard gets around 21. I would probably remove subclass spells altogether or downgrade the Terrain spells to Cantrip-1st-2nd, similar to some racial spell boosts. Might move the second Natural Explorer gain to Level 10 too.

Underdark should add 30 ft of Darkvision to those who already have it, not 60 ft. That's more in-line with other class abilities like that.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-12, 07:17 AM
I like the Favored Enemy- it feels like a good specialty without being crucial to the class's effectiveness. What would you think of changing the time to shift Favored Enemy and Terrain to one day as a high level ability? If that's too strong, maybe potentially allowing it for any Terrain or Enemy you've had before? It fits with an experienced Ranger more easily recalling knowledge that they'd learned before.
I could see that. Rangers are kinda sparse at high levels...


Tying spells to favored terrain is a super neat idea and one that really improves the class as a whole! It also strikes a good balance between prepared spells and innate spells that works well for the flavor.

That said, a Ranger can now learn up to 30 spells, which feels like way too many to me. For reference, a Paladin can have up to 25 and a Bard gets around 21. I would probably remove subclass spells altogether or downgrade the Terrain spells to Cantrip-1st-2nd, similar to some racial spell boosts. Might move the second Natural Explorer gain to Level 10 too.
I admit I wrote the feature with the assumption that you'd be using the prepared casting tweak too, but it's only five more than the Paladin and only once the second Natural Explorer kicks in. I think another spell known/spell level is reasonable, given that the Paladin has more raw power and the Ranger is supposed to be more about breadth and utility.

Moving the second terrain choice to 10 is a good idea.


Underdark should add 30 ft of Darkvision to those who already have it, not 60 ft. That's more in-line with other class abilities like that.
K.

Wildarm
2019-09-12, 09:13 AM
The crux of all Ranger balances I've seen has always been how strong and broad do you make favored enemy. If you allow a good favored enemy bonus, it can become overpowering when you apply it to all humanoids. Even with your change to make it half proficiency, it is still quite powerful. +1-3 for all saves from humanoid abilities means that you effectively have a nice save boost vs. spells(the vast majority of casters are humanoids). Couple that with the same bonus being applied to social skills and attack rolls means it is too strong IMO for a single level dip at higher levels.

Consider an alternative, instead of 1/2 proficiency, make it Ranger Level/5 rounded up. Only characters who fully commit to ranger training will gain a +1-4 bonus against their favored enemies. A single level dip in Ranger keeps the bonus a reasonable static +1. Rangers have always suffered from little incentive to go beyond level 5. This might be enough for them to keep pushing as a main class.

Nidgit
2019-09-12, 12:07 PM
^a good point, and a good solution. Another fix might be to follow the Ranger's current status and allow it for only two humanoid species at a time.

A couple quick thoughts on spell selection:

Arctic spells are far more oriented towards combat than the other terrains. Arctic Land Druid offers Slow as an alternative, but I'd suggest including spells that are good for survival or good against creatures that are likely to have cold resistance.

Swamp, Grasslands, and Desert all share Insect Plague as their 5th level spell, which might discourage picking two of those at the same time. Maybe change Grasslands or Desert to something like Farstep or Wall of Light?

Hobbo Jim
2019-09-12, 03:16 PM
This might just be flavor, but may I suggest using "Civilization" or "The Civilized" rather than "men"? To me it fits a bit better with the other themes.

Edit:

I think it might be worth clarifying for "Hide in Plain Sight: Beginning at 10th level, while at least lightly obscured, you may use an action to render yourself invisible. Attacking, casting a spell, or spending more than half of your movement in a single round breaks this invisibility." Do you need to be continually obscured, or just at the start? If i exit a mist, am I still invisible?

As an aside, you say it takes one week of study/training/practice to change your favored enemy/terrain. Depending on how ham you want to go, and if you're putting this into a book, it would be worth saying exactly how much downtime is needed. Can you still work? Can they be done at the same time or does changing both take two weeks? Does it have to be uninterrupted, or could it be done while adventuring? If adventuring, do I keep the previous favored stuff until the 7th day it switches? A lot of this could simply be left up to the DM (and perhaps should be), but I figured it might be worth some thought.

malachi
2019-09-13, 09:26 AM
Swamp, Grasslands, and Desert all share Insect Plague as their 5th level spell, which might discourage picking two of those at the same time. Maybe change Grasslands or Desert to something like Farstep or Wall of Light?

If having Xanathar spells doesn't matter, you could look at these options to replace Insect Plague (and take any 2 that you like)
* Swamp gets Maelstrom (makes watery doom anywhere)
* Desert gets Seeming (goes along with the mirage theme started with Hallucinatory Terrain)
* Grasslands gets Farstep or Steel Wind Strike (to go with the mobility theme)

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-13, 09:48 AM
The crux of all Ranger balances I've seen has always been how strong and broad do you make favored enemy. If you allow a good favored enemy bonus, it can become overpowering when you apply it to all humanoids. Even with your change to make it half proficiency, it is still quite powerful. +1-3 for all saves from humanoid abilities means that you effectively have a nice save boost vs. spells(the vast majority of casters are humanoids). Couple that with the same bonus being applied to social skills and attack rolls means it is too strong IMO for a single level dip at higher levels.

Consider an alternative, instead of 1/2 proficiency, make it Ranger Level/5 rounded up. Only characters who fully commit to ranger training will gain a +1-4 bonus against their favored enemies. A single level dip in Ranger keeps the bonus a reasonable static +1. Rangers have always suffered from little incentive to go beyond level 5. This might be enough for them to keep pushing as a main class.
Thaaaaaat's really smart. I'll probably go by cantrip scaling rules (+1 at first, +2 at fifth, +3 at eleventh, and +4 at seventeenth) since I think that'll be a bit smoother, bt yeah.


A couple quick thoughts on spell selection:

Arctic spells are far more oriented towards combat than the other terrains. Arctic Land Druid offers Slow as an alternative, but I'd suggest including spells that are good for survival or good against creatures that are likely to have cold resistance.
True. Leomund's Tiny Hut, maybe?


Swamp, Grasslands, and Desert all share Insect Plague as their 5th level spell, which might discourage picking two of those at the same time. Maybe change Grasslands or Desert to something like Farstep or Wall of Light?

Fair, yeah...


This might just be flavor, but may I suggest using "Civilization" or "The Civilized" rather than "men"? To me it fits a bit better with the other themes.
I can see that.


I think it might be worth clarifying for "Hide in Plain Sight: Beginning at 10th level, while at least lightly obscured, you may use an action to render yourself invisible. Attacking, casting a spell, or spending more than half of your movement in a single round breaks this invisibility." Do you need to be continually obscured, or just at the start? If i exit a mist, am I still invisible?
You just need to be obscured to start the invisibility-- afterwards you can creep around right in people's faces if you want.


As an aside, you say it takes one week of study/training/practice to change your favored enemy/terrain. Depending on how ham you want to go, and if you're putting this into a book, it would be worth saying exactly how much downtime is needed. Can you still work? Can they be done at the same time or does changing both take two weeks? Does it have to be uninterrupted, or could it be done while adventuring? If adventuring, do I keep the previous favored stuff until the 7th day it switches? A lot of this could simply be left up to the DM (and perhaps should be), but I figured it might be worth some thought.
I'll add a bit more.


If having Xanathar spells doesn't matter, you could look at these options to replace Insect Plague (and take any 2 that you like)
* Swamp gets Maelstrom (makes watery doom anywhere)
* Desert gets Seeming (goes along with the mirage theme started with Hallucinatory Terrain)
* Grasslands gets Farstep or Steel Wind Strike (to go with the mobility theme)
Hmm, good ideas.

Frozenstep
2019-09-13, 10:09 AM
True. Leomund's Tiny Hut, maybe?

Leomund's Tiny Igloo!

Khrysaes
2019-09-13, 10:14 AM
I like the ranger you are making. However, i would have loved to see a "find animal companion" spell, and perhaps a greater, that works much like a find steed spell. Then have the beastmaster have it as an option to cast as a ritual at level 3, even if they dont have the spell level, and give "pack" themed features that would empower the pet, or other allied creatures. Similar to how cavalier is good on a horse but doesnt require one.

This also has the nice bonus of allowing other rangers a pet, if a weaker version. Without relying on multiclassing or feats.

More akin to warlocks improved familiar as the beastmaster and find familiar as the spell. But more powerful.

Nidgit
2019-09-13, 10:50 AM
Regarding the Favored Enemy boosts, it's probably easiest to just pop that into the class summary table the PHB has at the beginning of each class to avoid any confusion. Like where Barbarian has Rage bonuses, basically.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-14, 10:59 AM
Regarding the Favored Enemy boosts, it's probably easiest to just pop that into the class summary table the PHB has at the beginning of each class to avoid any confusion. Like where Barbarian has Rage bonuses, basically.
Agreed. In fact, I went ahead and wrote it up as a full thing-- check out the new first post.

Arkhios
2019-09-15, 12:06 AM
A few things came to mind:

1. Undead can be intelligent and quite a few of them were originally of civilized races. Wouldn't it make more sense to allow the ranger to choose from civilized languages even if your favored enemy choice was The Undead?

2. A fairly popular trope, at least from my point of view, has been an Urban Ranger. Would you add Urban to the Favored Terrains? I could see Urban Rangers fairly common in settings such as Ravnica or even in Eberron (Sharn alone is such a huge city that the entirety of a full 20 levels adventure could never leave its perimeter).

Maybe they could have some additional benefits regarding investigation and such? Or maybe expertise with one skill or tool of their choice? Many urbanites tend to pick a vocation and become masters in it. Besides, not every "skillmonkey" has to be a rogue or or bard. Ranger would be great too.
In a sense you could say that, Ranger is the most roguish class of the warriors, while bard is the most roguish class of spellcasters.

3. Ranger spell list as written is very heavily weighted towards ranged combat, but there are many pop culture characters that would qualify as rangers and are clearly melee types. Wouldn't it make sense to add more spells that would enhance melee ranger's combat prowess, since ranged rangers get all those juicy spells too?

It might require creating a few new spells, admittedly, but I would add at least Elemental Weapon to their list of spells (IIRC, currently it's only on Paladin's spell list by default; might've been on artificer's list too).

4. I was going to suggest swapping the Einhander Fighting Style benefits around (+1 AC when holding the weapon in two hands and +1 damage when holding it in one), but then I realized this might create a loophole for multiclassing with other classes that grant Fighting Styles (especially Dueling).

AdAstra
2019-09-15, 01:20 AM
This is really good in a number of ways. However, I’m pretty well-convinced by this point that favored enemy (in the sense of passive combat buffs against a particular enemy type) is just inherently not a good class feature in this edition, no matter how you balance it. It places too much burden of balance on the dm and the adventure to accomodate. Even when you can change the type, you run into the issue of having to have the “right” amount of enemy diversity, it just shifts it from a campaign issue to an adventuring day issue. Especially when this iteration of it messes with bounded accuracy in a way that no other class ability does.

BUT! I think there’s hope. Why not take a page from either the cleric or the paladin, both classes that have pretty successfully implemented situational bonuses against creature types! You have Channel Divinity, which can be used for other things than just turning, and smites, which have an effect on everything, but an increased effect against certain creature types.

I think there are two big factors here. One is that both of these abilities can be used on/for other stuff, nearly as well in the case of smites, and frequently better in the case of Channel Divinity (which while not ideal, at least works). The other factor is that it’s not a passive buff. You Turn Undead, you Smite (entities commonly representing) Evil. Favored Enemy is something you just have, and that feels very different.

I definitely don’t have a good answer as to what to do about Favored Enemy, though I have some ideas I’d like to share in a while. However, I don’t think that Favored Enemy as you’ve presented it is the way.

Other recommendations would be that the Grassland Favored Terrain is on the strong side (bonus action dash and great spells not normally on the ranger list). The Forest FT is definitely weak, an incremental improvement to a feature you already have, and mostly meh spells that are mostly on your list. Also there is at least one spell (haste from grassland) that overlaps with a conclave spell (horizon walker). Not sure if that’s a concern, but it seems worth taking into account.

Foe Slayer is rather strong, but pretty uninteresting. It also immediately brings to mind a Xbow expert Sharpshooter making 3 attacks at +12 doing 2d6+15 damage each, 4d6+15 with Hunter’s Mark (your wording implies all damage dice are doubled) against their favored enemy. I think the big thing here is just that Favored Enemy is too strong in conjunction with SS, Foe Slayer by itself is probably fine, but here it’s just a stacking buff on top of more stacking buffs. Terrain Master is... fine? If it activates, it’s one limited 5th level spell slot. Not much to say about it, but it really doesn’t feel like mastery of a terrain.

Edit: Also the Einhander style is useless as far as I can tell. +1 damage while two-handing is no better than dueling with one hand, except for marginally better crits. +1 AC is worse than using a shield. Even if this is intended to allow you to switch hands freely, it’s worse than using dueling and a shield.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-09-16, 11:57 AM
A few things came to mind:

1. Undead can be intelligent and quite a few of them were originally of civilized races. Wouldn't it make more sense to allow the ranger to choose from civilized languages even if your favored enemy choice was The Undead?
Intelligent undead are a subset of Undead, and quite a small subset of The Unnatural. I don't think it's really worth it.


2. A fairly popular trope, at least from my point of view, has been an Urban Ranger. Would you add Urban to the Favored Terrains? I could see Urban Rangers fairly common in settings such as Ravnica or even in Eberron (Sharn alone is such a huge city that the entirety of a full 20 levels adventure could never leave its perimeter).

Maybe they could have some additional benefits regarding investigation and such? Or maybe expertise with one skill or tool of their choice? Many urbanites tend to pick a vocation and become masters in it. Besides, not every "skillmonkey" has to be a rogue or or bard. Ranger would be great too.
In a sense you could say that, Ranger is the most roguish class of the warriors, while bard is the most roguish class of spellcasters.
That's a pretty good idea, actually. I'll add it.


3. Ranger spell list as written is very heavily weighted towards ranged combat, but there are many pop culture characters that would qualify as rangers and are clearly melee types. Wouldn't it make sense to add more spells that would enhance melee ranger's combat prowess, since ranged rangers get all those juicy spells too?

It might require creating a few new spells, admittedly, but I would add at least Elemental Weapon to their list of spells (IIRC, currently it's only on Paladin's spell list by default; might've been on artificer's list too).
Elemental Weapon definitely fits, but I'm not sure what else does. Flame Blade, maybe, but it's so bad it's not worth bothering with. Shadow Blade would be nice to have, though I'm not sure of the thematics.


This is really good in a number of ways. However, I’m pretty well-convinced by this point that favored enemy (in the sense of passive combat buffs against a particular enemy type) is just inherently not a good class feature in this edition, no matter how you balance it. It places too much burden of balance on the dm and the adventure to accomodate. Even when you can change the type, you run into the issue of having to have the “right” amount of enemy diversity, it just shifts it from a campaign issue to an adventuring day issue. Especially when this iteration of it messes with bounded accuracy in a way that no other class ability does.
I agree that it's not a fantastic ability, but it's so iconic that it's hard to do much with... maybe have each option grant some sort of special combat action? ie, if Civilization is a favored enemy, you get a disarming strike ability.


Other recommendations would be that the Grassland Favored Terrain is on the strong side (bonus action dash and great spells not normally on the ranger list). The Forest FT is definitely weak, an incremental improvement to a feature you already have, and mostly meh spells that are mostly on your list. Also there is at least one spell (haste from grassland) that overlaps with a conclave spell (horizon walker). Not sure if that’s a concern, but it seems worth taking into account.
I'll look at switching some of those around.


Foe Slayer is rather strong, but pretty uninteresting. It also immediately brings to mind a Xbow expert Sharpshooter making 3 attacks at +12 doing 2d6+15 damage each, 4d6+15 with Hunter’s Mark (your wording implies all damage dice are doubled) against their favored enemy. I think the big thing here is just that Favored Enemy is too strong in conjunction with SS, Foe Slayer by itself is probably fine, but here it’s just a stacking buff on top of more stacking buffs. Terrain Master is... fine? If it activates, it’s one limited 5th level spell slot. Not much to say about it, but it really doesn’t feel like mastery of a terrain.
I can see that, yeah... any suggestions?


Edit: Also the Einhander style is useless as far as I can tell. +1 damage while two-handing is no better than dueling with one hand, except for marginally better crits. +1 AC is worse than using a shield. Even if this is intended to allow you to switch hands freely, it’s worse than using dueling and a shield.
...damnit. It should be, uh... +2 damage, +1 AC? That leaves it somewhere between two-handing and sword-and-board.

Nidgit
2019-09-16, 04:47 PM
I'd lean against getting rid of Feral Senses at 18. It's the one high-level PHB Ranger ability that's actually pretty neat and plays into the "perceptive ranger" trope.

What's the goal of the Einhander fighting style? Versatility to switch between extra offense and defense? I think it would need to be +2 to damage or AC depending on the number of hands you use.

Khrysaes
2019-09-23, 06:50 AM
Okay, after reading the latest version of your ranger, I am inclined to like most of it.

I especially like the bonus features for favored terrain, the scaling of Favored enemy at the tiers, and the retraining. I also like the Vanish feature as I agree, a feature that another class gets 12 levels earlier isn't good.

I am however having some issues with it, concerns, and perhaps recommendations.

Issues:
First, Hunter subclass. The level 15 feature is basically one of two features that the rogue gets 10-8 levels earlier. In fact, I hate that some of the hunter features are melee focused and some are ranged focused. I think that they should be applicable to both, then you just pick which type of effect you want.(collossus slayer and horde breaker are good examples)


Concerns and Recommendations:
First, with the grouping of favoried enemies into large categories, Primeval Awareness should perhaps include the type of favored enemy they are sensing. I think that the Revised Ranger UA wording is great, as it specificies that it reveals which are present, AND you learn it for each group. Also it has a range boost which is nice.

Second, Favored Enemy AND Favored terrain/Retraining. I like these features. However, specifically regarding retraining, not everyone at level 2 will have a week to retrain, if they talk to the DM it may not be a problem, but perhaps allow changing the feature as if they retrain when they level up in the ranger class. Additionally, and this is more flavor than anything. I enjoy the concept of the studious ranger, so perhaps rename it and combine them all into one feature to declog the table.

Third, I like the bonus features of Favored Terrain, but not the bonus spells. Do not get me wrong, I like the bonus spells, but I have concerns about them being attached to a core feature rather than a subclass. Mainly in such that at level 6 with 2 favored terrains and a subclass spell list they get more spell types than a paladin. AND with retraining they can swap out the spells, which is especially powerful when those spells they gain aren't initially on their spell list. Another recommendation would be to add a cantrip to their bonus spells if you include cantrips.

Fourth, the retraining, especially at higher levels when it takes less time, changing languages doesn't make sense. The week one seems finish. Contextually it may be weird.

Fifth, if you are using the beast conclave UA for the beast master, I have 2 recommendations.
1: Make the revival cost of the beast companion a spell slot. This places it inline with the pets for the Artificer, Find Steed, AND Familiar.
2: I always felt that the Beast master's focus should be useful if the beast is dead, so perhaps rewrite some of the features to be a "pack hunter" flavor, and work with the beast companion OR an ally they can see within the same range.

Sixth, I miss Natural explorer from the revised ranger, it combining Land's stride with Favored Terrain and applying to all terrains was nice. I do think that the advantage to initiative and attacks was strong for first level, but that could be solved by moving those aspects to 6th level or removing them.

Seventh, I think that Hide in plain sight will be overshadowed by the deepstalker subclass. This may not be a big deal as the other subclasses could still gain use out of it.


Finally, if you take the Mariner fighting style, you gain no benefit from Coastal or Mountain terrains(maybe a 10ft increase in respective speed if they already have it). Similarly with racial resistances. Although this is an issue with other classes too, so again, may not be a concern.

KorvinStarmast
2019-09-23, 08:25 AM
I like what you have done and the ideas that you have folded in.
As to the fighting styles:

Archery: Good.
Close Quarters Shooter (Revised): I'd rather not mess with a core game mechanic like that.
Defense: Good
Dueling: Good
Einhander (New): Too fiddly for my taste.
Mariner (UA): Pirate Ranger. I like it.
Two-Weapon Fighting: Good.

ZorroGames
2019-09-23, 09:21 AM
With 5e Ranger went from Top 4 chosen classes (0D&D through AD&D/2nd - Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger,) to the “Favorite 5 level Dip” class. Sad. Very sad. 😭

I like this even if it is not going to fly in AL. Wonks of the Coast are never going to admit they screwed the pooch on this class. 🙄

Bookmarking this thread to follow the progress.

strangebloke
2019-09-23, 10:33 AM
I'm in the minority of people who have always seen rangers as being *fine* on the power level front. People always compare a Ranger's average case to the paladin's best case, and so note that the ranger comes up way short. Indeed, if your entire campaign is 15x15 rooms with solo monsters guarding treasure chests, the ranger is basically a waste of space.

but.


Paladins are MAD, Rangers are SAD. A ranged character needs less HP so CON is more dispensable. Almost no Ranger class features actually rely in WIS so Wisdom is dispensable.
Paladins are melee-only, rangers can fight in either domain equally well. A GWF Ranger is better in melee and better at range than an archer paladin.
Paladins have super overpowered spells.... but so do Rangers. Healing Spirit? Pass Without Trace? Guardian of Nature? Swift Quiver? Granted that most of the good low-level ranger spells are also druid spells... but the odds of having both a ranger and a druid in your party are low given how rare they are.
Paladins have absurd single-target burst, Rangers have absurd effectiveness against large groups. A GWF hunter ranger can pretty consistently get four attacks at level 5 as long as they're fighting a horde, and rangers have a lot of good AOE.


ALL THAT SAID. I really like this fix. The Ranger, as it was originally printed, was still a poorly designed class in that many abilities are pointless and/or redundant and don't do what players expect them too. This led to dead levels, which you really can't fix with subclasses. But for more structured critique:

FAVORED ENEMY:

Well, this is definitely stronger! As always, Favored Enemy is a terribly designed ability. It's either a big formless nothing burger that confuses players (this is what it is in the official version) or its really really overpowered if you're fighting 90% one enemy type. So in a campaign like Storm King's Thunder picking "Monsters" is a serious no-brainer. Even without that, I can't seriously see a level 2 ranger picking "monsters" or "outsiders" basically ever, which kind of makes some of these options into traps.

TBH, I think giving ranger more attack bonuses is a mistake. Getting +1-4 to attack stacked on top of the already overpowered archery style... geez. It really strongly pushes you to a sharpshooter/GWM build. I'd keep the bonus to everything that isn't attack rolls. It'd still be very powerful, just not completely overpowered. Allowing too many stackable attack bonuses is against 5e design.

I do like the option to retrain. Very flavorful, although the 8-hour training day is super awkward. The party is never going to want to take a week off just so the ranger can get +2 to his attacks slightly more often. You'll get tons of warforged and elven rangers trying to abuse their lightened rest times to get more training in. I would just make it two hours a day for a week. That way if they're moving into Giant Land the ranger can slowly acclimate himself as they're on the road and then be ready when they actually encounter giants. Once you get to Tier three and there's no more travel beats, the Ranger can switch each day.

FAVORED TERRAIN:

Unequivocally Love this. Disagree with others saying that this one or that one is overpowered. I can see myself picking any of them and switching it around.

PRIMEVAL AWARENESS:

This is good. At later levels I would want to use this to help me pick my favored enemy, but obviously that's not the goal here.

HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT:

Also good. Once again, not overpowered, just enough to be relevant as a stealth character. Kind of starting to be a weak feature at this level though, given the number of blindsight/truesight enemies out there.

VANISH:

I would add a part of this that makes this more effective against blindsight/truesight, since otherwise invisibility kind of tends to be irrelevant at this level. Unsure of what that would look like.

FOE SLAYER/TERRAIN MASTER:

Boy.

This really seems to be leaning too hard into the Favored Enemy/Terrain nonsense. You've acknowledge that its poor design but that it should occupy some space for reasons of tradition, which I agree with. But don't add more abilities that key into it? I don't like these capstones at all. At 20th level, a ranger with these rules will be dealing nearly double times the DPR they otherwise would. That's absurd. It could lead to a really silly 'gotcha' moment where the DM cackles with glee announcing that, "You thought Kelemvor was an Elemental but he's actually a FEEEEYYY!!!"

Obviously capstones never come up but this doesn't seem like an improvement from a design perspective.

Kane0
2019-09-23, 06:37 PM
Grod, seems your avatar is being held hostage.

Khrysaes
2019-09-24, 03:31 AM
I'm in the minority of people who have always seen rangers as being *fine* on the power level front. People always compare a Ranger's average case to the paladin's best case, and so note that the ranger comes up way short. Indeed, if your entire campaign is 15x15 rooms with solo monsters guarding treasure chests, the ranger is basically a waste of space.

This really seems to be leaning too hard into the Favored Enemy/Terrain nonsense. You've acknowledge that its poor design but that it should occupy some space for reasons of tradition, which I agree with. But don't add more abilities that key into it? I don't like these capstones at all. At 20th level, a ranger with these rules will be dealing nearly double times the DPR they otherwise would. That's absurd. It could lead to a really silly 'gotcha' moment where the DM cackles with glee announcing that, "You thought Kelemvor was an Elemental but he's actually a FEEEEYYY!!!"

Obviously capstones never come up but this doesn't seem like an improvement from a design perspective.

I think that it has been mathematically shown that in combat, a ranger is *fine* mechanically.

I believe the general thoughts are that the ranger *feels bad* because anything and everything it can do mechanically, another class does better. The bard can basically do everything the ranger does better and then some.

I think that the ranger's key problems were something along the lines of:

In the PHB, Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer/Terrain are incredibly situational since they may not appear in the game. While these aren't strong mechanically, they are still features that are caveat to DM fiat
Natural Explorer/Favored Terrain is a lot like the Outworlder Background and Good berry spell. They basically ruin the Exploration pillar of the game by simply bypassing it. Looking at all the other classes and their mechanics, most are suited more towards the combat and/or social pillars, and while they can work in the exploration pillar the ranger is *built* for it, and rather than making the exploration pillar more fun it just makes it unnecessary if it wasn't already
The ranger gets features that are the same as other classes, but those classes get them 8+levels earlier.
PHB hide in plain sight is virtually worthless
For some reason they know spells instead of prepare them like in past editions. Additionally, despite being a half caster, they end up knowing less spells than the 1/3 casters of AT and EK. The other half caster, the paladin, gets 10 free spells always prepared because of their subclass, in addition to 15ish prepared spells, the ranger gets 5 for the ones in Xanathar's and 11 known, literally 9 less spells and none of the versatility of preparing them.
The capstone is lackluster.


Wizards has admitted that they messed up with the ranger, namely in that they released 4 UA with varying rangers and features.

So, Grod's ranger is good. It stays in line with the concept of the PHB ranger and works to address the prominent issues without increasing its mechanical power drastically, but increasing its versatility.

I already posted some concerns with Grod's ranger, however it is still much better than the PHB one. Hell, just making the PHB ranger a prepared caster and allowing the changing of Favored Enemy and Terrain makes the PHB ranger better.

The one thing I would rather see in the ranger, more than anything else, would be features that would make people want to engage in the exploration pillar of the game rather than bypass it. However, since most features are built to make life easier, such as *you find double the food* I am not sure the best way to implement it.

The second thing I would like to see are sort of two fold. I would like one combat focused core feature that can work with whatever fighting style the player chooses instead of being tied to the hunter subclass, which I don't like. I would also like to see the archery only spells work with melee to facilitate that. I think in 3.5 rangers got improved combat style and combat style mastery features. I think those could be implemented in 5e too(maybe in different form, but same concept). Make the ranger more combat focused and exploration focused, and make them better at their specific form of combat than the bard. The fighter can be better than the ranger, it is literally in thier name. But the bard should not be. The rogue should be comparable.

Khrysaes
2019-09-24, 06:38 AM
Based on my own and other's feedback, I made some changes to Grod's ranger here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aLsisRKmFWXcy1ZM5gljvwFjbfZE9SeiQHYwsHEyf6Y/edit?usp=sharing


I don't like the current Natural Explorer, Skirmisher's Style, and Improved Skirmisher's Style. I want them to reflect growth in the exploration and combat pillars and would prefer that they improve the natural explorer and fighting style, but I couldn't/didn't think of things and instead just took from the revised ranger/rogue/Grod's ranger

I added evasion to level 9, and wanted improved fighting style and fighting style master(and improvements to natural explorer) at 6 and 10 to reflect on the levels that the 3.5 ranger gets them. Level 11 got moved to 10 because of the archetype feature. I combined Land's stride and the leaving a trail into natural explorer. I also took some features from Revised Ranger over Grod's, like primeval awareness.

Limiting the ranger to one favored enemy and one terrain was intentional.

Please offer feedback.

Fnissalot
2019-09-24, 07:18 AM
Personally, I think the creature types are not the way to do favored enemies. Flat situational bonuses like these are super boring. I would give it a more general alternative to favored enemies. Look at colossus slayer for hunter. It is an ability that always applies but narrative-wise is about slaying giants. If they choose giants, give them something inspired by how giants are mechanically (they have lots of health). Dragons have breath attacks and most of them are dex saves and they have blindsight, give them an attack as a reaction when they succeed on a dex save against whomever caused it or let them hide from blindsight. Undead (or maybe fiends?), your hunter's mark deals radiant damage or maybe counts as being silvered. Plants should just give some fire damage to your attacks?

I like this take on favored terrain as it always applies to some extent.

How about adding some kind of group teleportation ability at around level 14-17 somewhere. The exploration pillar starts being weird at that point due to the spells of other classes, so maybe instead give them an ability that competes at that level. For example:

Waystones
Starting at 14th level, you have become aware of the between-spaces and the wyrd pathways used by fey to slide and slip around the world. The between-space is a twisting maze of a network, ever-changing, looping around. By spending a minute, you and any creature touching you are drawn into between-space. You know the location of any waystone within 12 miles of this one that you have previously touched (or placed your blood on). It takes an hour to move to it. You appear in a random spot within 5 ft of the one you moved to. Any creature that does not know where it is going, spends a 2d12 hours there lost before being thrown out of the waystone it entered.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once). You regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

You can raise a new waystone by spending 2 weeks of downtime shaping it and imbuing it with magic. The stone is connected to the between-space until the stone is either dispelled or disintegrated.

Great Dragon
2019-10-02, 11:46 AM
@Grod: I like your take on Favored Enemies. Wildarm’s idea is good, but I agree with the Cantrip scaling.

Favored Terrain granting appropriate spells = great.

More Fighting Styles to choose from!

Two Cantrips off Druid list is ok (Paladins off Clerics, too)

Rangers and Paladin as prepared casters does make sense, after all their situations can change on a daily basis. They should be able to adapt.

Retraining. While it’s nice to be able to change Enemies and Terrain, I would move it to about 4th level, instead of 2nd. But mostly because it makes the first choice/s be a commitment, and makes the player choose carefully.
Edit: I'm thinking of allowing retraining of the Fighting style could be done after 5th level.
This is mostly for New Player trying different things while learning the game.

Primeval Awareness. Your version does make this feature more worthwhile.

Hide In Plain Sight = very nice.

Instant Adaptation you pre-read my mind!
“I’d also maybe add either another Favored Terrain or (Quick) Retaining at 18th level.”

@Khrysaes: I’ll need some time to get to, read, and consider your changes.

@Fnissalot: I could see Waystones being added to Horizon Walker.

I'll see if I can adapt what I thought up.
My Ranger Ideas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?591658-Ancient-Realms&p=24175299#post24175299)
Post #42 P.E.A.C.H.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-10-05, 01:05 PM
Sorry for lack of responses. Exalted's been eating my brain lately :smalltongue:


What's the goal of the Einhander fighting style? Versatility to switch between extra offense and defense? I think it would need to be +2 to damage or AC depending on the number of hands you use.
Mostly to make one-hand-with-a-sword, one-hand-empty a viable fighting style-- there are a lot of character concepts it fits, but trying to use it hurts mechanically. The idea was to wind up somewhere between sword-and-board and two-handed; more defense than a greatsword but not as much punch. I'm okay if it doesn't really fill a niche, as long as it's not hurting too much.


First, Hunter subclass. The level 15 feature is basically one of two features that the rogue gets 10-8 levels earlier. In fact, I hate that some of the hunter features are melee focused and some are ranged focused. I think that they should be applicable to both, then you just pick which type of effect you want.(collossus slayer and horde breaker are good examples)
Eh... it's a fair complaint. Not sure if I want to rewrite the subclass any more than necessary though.


Concerns and Recommendations:
First, with the grouping of favoried enemies into large categories, Primeval Awareness should perhaps include the type of favored enemy they are sensing. I think that the Revised Ranger UA wording is great, as it specificies that it reveals which are present, AND you learn it for each group. Also it has a range boost which is nice.

Good idea.


Second, Favored Enemy AND Favored terrain/Retraining. I like these features. However, specifically regarding retraining, not everyone at level 2 will have a week to retrain, if they talk to the DM it may not be a problem, but perhaps allow changing the feature as if they retrain when they level up in the ranger class. Additionally, and this is more flavor than anything. I enjoy the concept of the studious ranger, so perhaps rename it and combine them all into one feature to declog the table.

Good idea.


Third, I like the bonus features of Favored Terrain, but not the bonus spells. Do not get me wrong, I like the bonus spells, but I have concerns about them being attached to a core feature rather than a subclass. Mainly in such that at level 6 with 2 favored terrains and a subclass spell list they get more spell types than a paladin. AND with retraining they can swap out the spells, which is especially powerful when those spells they gain aren't initially on their spell list. Another recommendation would be to add a cantrip to their bonus spells if you include cantrips.

They should have more spells than a Paladin. The Ranger is supposed to be less punchy but more versatile than their fellow half caster.

Cantrip is a good idea though.


Fourth, the retraining, especially at higher levels when it takes less time, changing languages doesn't make sense. The week one seems finish. Contextually it may be weird.

Eh. At 13th level your fellow partymates are raising the dead, turning off gravity, and teleporting. Learning a new language in a day is the kind of thing a high-level mundane character should be able to do.


Sixth, I miss Natural explorer from the revised ranger, it combining Land's stride with Favored Terrain and applying to all terrains was nice. I do think that the advantage to initiative and attacks was strong for first level, but that could be solved by moving those aspects to 6th level or removing them.

Natural Explorer was problematic for two reasons-- there are way too many minor bonuses to keep track of, and when you do remember them they have the practical effect of bypassing the parts of the game the Ranger is supposed to shine at. Advantage on checks is a big enough bonus to make you feel good about your expertise without getting too messy.


Einhander (New): Too fiddly for my taste.
The idea is that both bonuses are effectively always on-- you two-hand to attack and return to one hand before the end of your turn. No action cost to putting a hand on your sword or taking it off.


FAVORED ENEMY:

Well, this is definitely stronger! As always, Favored Enemy is a terribly designed ability. It's either a big formless nothing burger that confuses players (this is what it is in the official version) or its really really overpowered if you're fighting 90% one enemy type. So in a campaign like Storm King's Thunder picking "Monsters" is a serious no-brainer. Even without that, I can't seriously see a level 2 ranger picking "monsters" or "outsiders" basically ever, which kind of makes some of these options into traps.

TBH, I think giving ranger more attack bonuses is a mistake. Getting +1-4 to attack stacked on top of the already overpowered archery style... geez. It really strongly pushes you to a sharpshooter/GWM build. I'd keep the bonus to everything that isn't attack rolls. It'd still be very powerful, just not completely overpowered. Allowing too many stackable attack bonuses is against 5e design.

I do like the option to retrain. Very flavorful, although the 8-hour training day is super awkward. The party is never going to want to take a week off just so the ranger can get +2 to his attacks slightly more often. You'll get tons of warforged and elven rangers trying to abuse their lightened rest times to get more training in. I would just make it two hours a day for a week. That way if they're moving into Giant Land the ranger can slowly acclimate himself as they're on the road and then be ready when they actually encounter giants. Once you get to Tier three and there's no more travel beats, the Ranger can switch each day.
Sharpshooter is its own problem. My design philosophy on things like that (developed during my 3.5 days) is that trying to fix broad problems in a relatively narrow fix is not a good plan. Better to drop the feat entirely, or switch it around. Besides, Rangers being *the* archery class is good flavor.


VANISH:

I would add a part of this that makes this more effective against blindsight/truesight, since otherwise invisibility kind of tends to be irrelevant at this level. Unsure of what that would look like.

Good idea.


FOE SLAYER/TERRAIN MASTER:

Boy.

This really seems to be leaning too hard into the Favored Enemy/Terrain nonsense. You've acknowledge that its poor design but that it should occupy some space for reasons of tradition, which I agree with. But don't add more abilities that key into it? I don't like these capstones at all. At 20th level, a ranger with these rules will be dealing nearly double times the DPR they otherwise would. That's absurd. It could lead to a really silly 'gotcha' moment where the DM cackles with glee announcing that, "You thought Kelemvor was an Elemental but he's actually a FEEEEYYY!!!"

Obviously capstones never come up but this doesn't seem like an improvement from a design perspective.
Yeah... I see your point. Let me think about it.


Personally, I think the creature types are not the way to do favored enemies. Flat situational bonuses like these are super boring. I would give it a more general alternative to favored enemies. Look at colossus slayer for hunter. It is an ability that always applies but narrative-wise is about slaying giants. If they choose giants, give them something inspired by how giants are mechanically (they have lots of health). Dragons have breath attacks and most of them are dex saves and they have blindsight, give them an attack as a reaction when they succeed on a dex save against whomever caused it or let them hide from blindsight. Undead (or maybe fiends?), your hunter's mark deals radiant damage or maybe counts as being silvered. Plants should just give some fire damage to your attacks?
I do like that idea, just been having trouble figuring out what they should be...can't be too significant or else dipping will be an issue, but too weak and you get, well, the PHB version of the feature. Humm...

Civilized could be a bonus to Persuade/Intimidate/Deception/Insight; makes sense for them to be a bit of a socialite.
Nature could be... Keen senses? Negating opponent's Keen Senses abilities?
Outsiders could maybe be Protection from Evil and Good style immunity to charm, fear, and possession by outsiders.
Unnatural... immunity to health drain?
Monsters... flat damage does kinda make sense? It's a thematically appropriate but mechanically diverse grouping, makes it kind of hard...



How about adding some kind of group teleportation ability at around level 14-17 somewhere. The exploration pillar starts being weird at that point due to the spells of other classes, so maybe instead give them an ability that competes at that level. For example:

Maybe tie into previous complaints about the capstone and give 'em the ability to teleport through the Feywild?

Ravinsild
2019-10-05, 05:44 PM
This is it. This is what the Ranger should be. They are masters of survival and that means adaptability. Of course they should be able to change over time their Favored Terrain and enemies.

I mean Bear Grills is like a real life Ranger and granted the show may be scripted and some of it may be fake but imagine it’s not. Imagine it’s all 100% real. Of course his survival techniques work in a massive variety of climates and habitats.

Of COURSE a Ranger should be able to adapt to a new situation by retraining and being able to prepare spells and anticipate what’s coming up ahead.

This is genius and it hurts my feelings this isn’t official. This is just it. The master of stealth, survival and adaptability. This is amazing.

strangebloke
2019-10-05, 10:58 PM
Sharpshooter is its own problem. My design philosophy on things like that (developed during my 3.5 days) is that trying to fix broad problems in a relatively narrow fix is not a good plan. Better to drop the feat entirely, or switch it around. Besides, Rangers being *the* archery class is good flavor.

That's fair. I can't imagine running a game with an un-nerfed GWM and SS. They're just too good as printed. Anyway, this would just be one more way to exploit that feat. Doesn't change things anymore than the SS/EA Samurai action surge nonsense.

But I do feel like accuracy/armor scaling is already kind of a problem in 5e where early game fights are too high in variability (high AC relative to attack modifiers, few attacks) and late game fights are too low in variability (low AC relative to attack modifers, many attacks) and for that reason I really am not a huge fan of large attack buffs.

YMMV. In a game without many magical weapons this would be pretty balanced.