Quote Originally Posted by nmitchell2 View Post
For anyone that is interested,

The campaign with my Ranger/Monk character has finished. A campaign spanning four continents with a war going on multiple fronts, encounters with everything from mafia weapon dealers to an Adult Ethereal Dragon and her babies, has finally drawn to a close. And what a campaign it was, more testing of the players than their characters. Regardless, my group is evidently one of optimisers (we had a Sorcadin, a Bardlock, an Abjurer with a level in Life Cleric for heavy armour without slowing spell slot progression, an Arcane Trickster/Bladesinger and myself) and I believe my character performed quite admirably, at levels 13+ I felt weak compared to the casters but so does every martial at that point right?

In more detail, I was a Kobold Ranger (Beast Conclave) 14/Monk (Way of the Open Hand) 6 with a Warg as my Animal Companion. I originally intended to ride it into combat but with both of us having Pack Tactics, there was no need so I just worked on keeping close enough together to benefit from it as much as possible and it worked. I had the highest and most reliable sustainable DPR in the party as long as my Warg was alive.

Our next mini-campaign will be a test of some homebrew material, I wanted to try giving the Ranger a limited version of Wild Shape in place of spellcasting (you pick one creature a Moon Druid can Wild Shape into and have its HP and proficiency scale up with you, otherwise it's the same as Land Druid gets). Because it swaps out spellcasting, it doesn't hinder your ability to take archetypes so you can be a Beast Conclave Ranger and get both Wild Shape and an Animal Companion, at the cost of your spellcasting. Personally I think it's great I can see a Bear Totem Barbarian multiclass being really thematic and strong. My friend will be playtesting the Magus class I made as well, looking forward to seeing how it performs and potentially being able to improve it.
That's great! I always love to hear input from actual play, and it seems like that campaign was a blast!