Help, my player is starting a ranger in a strong party!

[Lvl45DM!]

So one of my players decided his Shadow Monk High Elf Noble was gonna snort the bloodstone that their current BBEG is using to make a legion of zombies. So he dead, and animated and will now be fighting the party. Which yknow, is awesome.

But my player has expressed a desire to play a Half Orc Beastmaster ranger. Now Im relatively new to 5e and have never played or played with a ranger before, but yknow, I hear things.

Apparently Ranger sucks. Apparently, Beastmaster sucks HARD. Does it/Do they? How bad? Like in 3.5 terms is it/are they Ranger bad Fighter bad, Monk bad or Samurai level bad?

If bad, what specifically are its weaknesses?

Currently the rest of the party is a Dwarf Tempest Cleric, Dwarf Mutant Blood Hunter, Gnome Artillerist Artificer, Elf Sharpshooter Fighter, Dragon homebrew Oath of the Sun Paladin, Human Bear Totem Barbarian and a Human Lore Bard who kinda just toots on his bagpipes. Oh and a Lizardman Battlemaster NPC that I have following the party because we have a few mates who drop in occasionally.

This player is the first to have a character die, and he has a specific character concept he wants to play. I dont want him screwed over by bad design. I mean I dont want to mollycoddle him either.

[micahaphone]

Hunter ranger is fine. Xanathar rangers are even better. Beastmaster isn't great, but if you look at the recent Class Features Variants Unearthed Arcana you'll see some great options that'll easily bring a ranger (esp a beastmaster) up to speed.

Link to the pdf:
https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-ClassFeatures.pdf

Edit: holy crap, you have 8 to 9 players? That's crazy! I could never DM for that many.

[Snowbluff]

Beastmaster Ranger is kinda bad how ranger is kinda bad in 3e. That is to say, it doesn't really excel at anything, as ranger has some pretty bad drawbacks compared to the other half casters, and the pet can be a bit vulnerable to some spells. However, there are some upsides, such as having more HP on the table to soak. Treantmonk did a video on how to do decent damage with one at least, but I would loan your ranger an Amulet of the Claw to buff the pets damage output.

Personally, I wouldn't permit it out of hand due to the large table size, but some people enjoy pet classes, such as myself.

[Lvl45DM!]

Personally, I wouldn't permit it out of hand due to the large table size, but some people enjoy pet classes, such as myself.

Yknow thats a solid argument.

Stupid people who moved away and therefore we got new players but then moved back

[AttilatheYeon]

UA conclave of beasts is good. Other than that, i'd stear him away from beastmaster. By t2, he'll be ignoring his pet in combat or eating table time trying to use it and not being able to do anything meaningful. Or, muck up a beast for him that does something interesting without having to do a lot of damage, like a flying monkey that gives him advantage on attack rolls at range because it flings its poop at targets on command.

[ImproperJustice]

UA Revised Ranger is good, as others have said.

It makes the pet a little more durable and versatile. Especially if the GM allows the ASI to be taken as feats.

A Panther with Mobile or a Giant Snake with Sentinel can demand some attention from the enemy while the Ranger lets loose with an arrow or two.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

The beastmaster is considered the weakest option of the ranger due to main reasons: the beast having low hp and the issues of action economy. This thread really does explain a lot and provides some solutions.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...le-as-it-seems

What your player should understand is that the animal companion is not an attack buddy that they can send out to fight for them and they just sit back to watch. What the beast companion however is good at doing is using the combat options from the rule book like the help action. If they are wanting something to fight on their behalf and just watch, your player is better off waiting until they get Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Beings.

Your group already has enough damage dealers and tanks but seems to lack more stealth and scouting options that the beastmaster could greatly fill. Never underestimate the power of an animal companion that has great mobility options combined with spells like Beast Sense.

[djreynolds]

A ranger is a ranger.

1st decide am I dex or strength based?

Half orc... assuming strength based.

Now decide TWF or S&B or great weapon.

With beastmaster I would take polearm/sentinel master with a wolf.

They fight in tandem. If you attack the wolf... You get a reliable reaction attack every round. Either from encroachment (10ft) or sentinel. And when the wolf dies just get another animal companion... because you're a heartless half orc. Thor used eat his goats you know... they of course came back to life.

Also with class variants you can cast warding bond. The new class variants are really good.

But so is a giant poisonous snake.

The damage of the snakes is really good actually.

Just actually play even a PHB beastmaster. Commit to it. It's not bad. It is IMO very engaging and challenging.

In a large party you can experiment and have fun.

An archery based ranger can use his beast just to force movement.

Encourage your player to have fun and just play.

[sithlordnergal]

I'll be honest, the PHB Ranger isn't great...and the PHB Beastmaster is terrible. I'm also not a fan of the Revised Ranger Beastmaster, as it changed from being ok to something I would personally never play. As for how bad the PHB Ranger is...well...I used to always play Rangers, they were my favorite class in DnD...I have never played a PHB Ranger in 5e because I feel they are such a terribly made class. The entire class can be summed up as "Oh hey, that looks like a really cool ability, I wish I could use it." In 3.5 terms, I'd put them as Ranger and/or Fighter levels of bad. Rangers can occasionally do really neat things if the time is right, but everyone will do a better job at it.

As for what's bad...well...there is a lot of it that's bad, ranging from poor mechanics, to poor abilities, to poor PHB subclasses. However, I think the three biggest offenders from the standard PHB Ranger are these:

Spoiler: Natural Explorer, Favored Enemy, Spell Casting

Show

Natural Explorer is an amazing ability that is horribly balanced. It is one of those abilities where its either game breaking or 100% useless. It sort of requires the player to know what sort of terrain they're going to be adventuring in for the majority of the campaign, or for the DM to shoehorn in their favored terrain in order to let them feel useful. Because if they choose the wrong terrain, then the ability does nothing.

And even if they are in the right terrain, the ability still feels like it does nothing. It allows players to ignore difficult terrain while traveling, you never get lost outside of magical hi-jinks, you remain "alert to danger" while doing things like foraging, it allows you to find twice the amount of food when you do forage, and you're better at tracking creatures. With the exception of the tracking, most of those benefits are passive and remove the need to make Survival checks. Which on the one hand is great and super powerful...but on the other hand it weakens the travel aspect of DnD even further, and that section was already weak as it is. You no longer have to worry about getting lost while traveling to your destination, unless you're constantly being befuddled by magic 24/7.

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Favored Enemy is similar to Natural Explorer in that if you choose the wrong Favored Enemies, then you basically do nothing with the ability for the entire game. However, unlike Natural Explorer, Favored Enemy doesn't give you that many benefits. All Favored Enemy does is grant you advantage on Wisdom(Survival) checks to track your enemy, Intelligence checks to recall info about a Favored Enemy, one language that your Favored Enemy can speak, which is removed if your choices can't speak, and at level 20 you get to add your Wisdom modifier to a SINGLE attack against a Favored Enemy.

These are, to put it frankly, terrible. First of all, most of these abilities supposedly help you be a better tracker, but the problem is they don't help you be a better tracker. All they do is grant you advantage with two types of checks. One of those checks likely uses a Ranger's dump stat, Intelligence, and the other can be granted to you for free by literally anyone with proficiency in Survival. You end up in a position where a Bard, Rogue, or any Human with the Prodigy feat can be a better tracker then the Ranger, and they can track anything while Ranger can only track 3 creatures, or 6 Humanoids. All in all, Favored Enemy is super lackluster, and is only worth it if you wanna speak more languages. That is the only thing it gives you that is unique that no other class can replicate...only they can replicate it with Comprehend Languages, Tongues, or Eyes of the Runekeeper.

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And finally we have spellcasting. Now, Ranger spells are actually decent on their own. You have some really good ones, I won't deny that. However, they still have issues with spell casting due to two reasons. First, they are a half caster, so they don't really have many spell slots to spare. Second, they only learn a specific number of spells. In fact, the Ranger has the prestigious honor of being the class with the fewest spells known. At level 20 a pure Ranger will know a grand total of 11 spells. Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights learn more spells than the Ranger does. The two 1/3rd casters that act as the magical subclasses of two martial classes get to have more spells than the Ranger, a supposed half caster. Which...I guess it balances out. Rangers have fewer spell slots, and they know fewer spells.

Compare that to the Paladin, the only other Half Caster in the 5e PHB. They get to have prepared spells, so they can swap out their spells on the fly at the end of every long rest. And they get to smite with those spells.

Now, the standard PHB Ranger does have a lot more issues than just those three. But almost all of those issues can be boiled down to "lackluster abilities that act as ribbons instead of actual class abilities". I mean seriously, at level 10 you get a weaker version of Pass Without Trace that lets you add +10 to stealth checks after spending a minute to set up, and you lose it if you move, take an action, or take a reaction. That's level 10...5 levels after you can cast Pass Without Trace.


Luckily the UA Ranger fixes a lot of those issues. Natural Explorer becomes a usable ability that gives more than just passive benefits that let you automatically succeed at things. And if I'm reading it right, its an ability that can be used in all terrains, not just the ones you pick.

Same with Favored Enemy. Its still limited to enemies that you select, so it could end up useless, but its closer to the 3.5 Favored Enemy. It gives you +2 to damage rolls, not singular roll but rolls, against your Favored Enemy, while keeping the advantages and languages you gain. It also gets buffed at level 6 to a +4 to damage, and you have advantage on saving throws against your Favored Enemy.

Level 20 still needs to be fixed, as it is still absolutely terrible, but that only comes up if you have a single classed Ranger going from levels 1 to 20. I'd also change up Hide in Plain Sight, as its still just a worse version of Pass Without Trace. But overall, I'd say the UA Revised Ranger is better in almost all categories.

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As for the Beastmaster, it suffers a similar bad design as the PHB Ranger, and sadly the UA Revised Ranger did not do a good job on improving it. It did fix a lot of the action economy issues, but the Beastmaster has a lot more issues then just that. Let me put it this way, a Pact of the Chain Warlock ends up having a stronger, more reliable companion than a Beastmaster. I kid you not here. A Pact of the Chain Warlock with an Imp familiar will generally do a lot better than the UA Beastmaster or the regular Beastmaster. And for more reasons then you think. Not only can the Imp do more, but the Imp is easier to replace. If a Beastmaster's companion dies, it costs 50 gold and 8 hours to replace it. If a familiar dies, it takes 1 hour and 10 gold.

As such, I would advise the following revisions to the Revised Beastmaster. Basically throw out every single ability after level 3, and use these instead:


Level 3: The companion may make a single attack against a creature using their reaction if the ranger makes an attack.

Level 6: The beast companion's attacks are considered magical for the purposes of bypassing magic weapon resistance and immunity.

Level 9: The beast may make one additional attack when it attacks with its reaction

Level 12: Beast Defense

Level 15: Increase the damage dice of the beast's attacks by one. d4 becomes a d6, d6 becomes a d8, ect., up to d12.

---

Those changes would make the Beastmaster worth it, and keeps the Beast Companion useful at all levels. I know the UA has that silly worry that a Beast Companion could somehow "outshine" the party's Fighter and Barbarian, but I can assure you they really really won't. The Beast companion still has less damage, less hp, and lower AC then the Fighter and Barbarian.

Even if you get a Croc as your beast companion, which starts with a 1d10 attack and uses d10 hit dice, giving you the best CR 1/2 beast companion available, it will have less Hit Points and do less damage then a Barbarian or Fighter. The ONLY excpetions to this are when the Barbarian and/or Fighter decide to purposely make bad characters. At which point that is the fault of the player's playing those characters, not the beasts.


EDIT: If you do get concerned about the Beast Companion out damaging the fighter, just remove the ability to add its proficiency bonus to damage. I feel its a good compromise since the Beast Companion is a very easy target to kill. Even if you have a blackbear at level 20 with a 20 con to max out its hp at 210...the kind of creatures you face at that level can kill it pretty easily

[CTurbo]

The US Revised Beastmaster Ranger is just fine. With that many players, pretty much anything will work anyway. I say let him use Revised and go for it. He'll have fun. I recommend Panther or Wolf.

[da newt]

The best use of beastmaster I have seen is for small races to use as a mount. Otherwise, I've never seen a beast companion serve a purpose in any useful way.

I'd try to convince the player to pick a different subclass, and allow them to have a pet for flavor using the PHB beast companion rules.

[carrdrivesyou]

Vanilla Beastmaster is the 3.5 Spellthief of 5e. Total trash IMO. the Revised ranger versions are pretty solid though, about on par with most monks in terms of combat and utility, though YMMV depending on stats and how the player does.

[DSCrankshaw]

Hunter ranger is fine. Xanathar rangers are even better. Beastmaster isn't great, but if you look at the recent Class Features Variants Unearthed Arcana you'll see some great options that'll easily bring a ranger (esp a beastmaster) up to speed.

Link to the pdf:
https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/d...ssFeatures.pdf

Edit: holy crap, you have 8 to 9 players? That's crazy! I could never DM for that many.

I second this one. This is different from the older revised ranger, and at least as good. Just be aware that there are options for all classes here, some of which will change how they play a lot (Spell Versatility especially), but if you allow the ranger to use his options, the other players will want their class options as well.

[stoutstien]

Overall the BM isn't nearly as horrid as it looks on paper and depending on the level they are starting at, a few magical items + barding goes along way to improve the staying power of the beast. Also now that it's been updated so if they don't get a command they auto dodge is a big help.

The beast can attune up to three items like anyone else so it give you as DM the ablity to buff it up if you fell it isn't in the same range as the rest of the party.

Also make up an expanded subclass spell list for both the PHB options. Don't know why they haven't done it officially.

[djreynolds]

At lower levels the damage of a beastmaster pet is very good.

At 3rd level... You might sit back and simply assist.

There really is armor for beasts you can get.

The revised rangers beasts are awesome but limited in selection... still can get a wolf.

The variants are beefier but lose out on the variety of specific beasts... really generic. You are still adding your proficiency to damage and to hit and AC. Hits points are more and now you just use you BA for its attacks.

I feel in such a large party, this might actually be a huge boon to a beastmaster.
Plenty of healers in the group and the beast can even plant itself in front a concentrating caster as a guard.

Beastmaster uses can be akin to spiritual weapon. The beast can be a tactical challenge. Flaming sphere is similar as well.. as it forces a creature in its path to do something.

A beast just dodging forces the enemy to waste movement to avoid it or to attack it.

IMO players gravitate to beastmaster because they want a challenge. Hexblade multiclassed are not challenging in the least.
It becomes boring. Beastmaster requires work to be "good".

The beasts die.... yes. You're still a ranger with 2 attacks and good spells. You can get a new beast.

[CTurbo]

I'm curious what level these characters are, and the method for stats. Point buy, standard array, or rolling for stats? Rolling for stats could help. You could also allow them to take a companion with a CR1 or CR2 rating. I have allowed a payer to have a CR3 Owlbear as his companion once, and it was strong, but it did not break anything.

Think Dire Wolf instead of Wolf or Tiger instead of Panther.

[djreynolds]

I'm curious what level these characters are, and the method for stats. Point buy, standard array, or rolling for stats? Rolling for stats could help. You could also allow them to take a companion with a CR1 or CR2 rating. I have allowed a payer to have a CR3 Owlbear as his companion once, and it was strong, but it did not break anything.

Think Dire Wolf instead of Wolf or Tiger instead of Panther.

CTurbo has excellent point.

At my table.... if your wolf say at 10th level would have 40hp... you can swap him for a dire wolf which has 37hp.

So now at 10th level you have a dire wolf with 40hp and a bit more in terms attack.

From +4/7dmg/11 strength save dc ac13

To +5/10/ 13 strength save dc. Ac14

And then place your proficiency modifier on the dire wolf... It's not a huge improvement but it's nice and really easy to implement

[Man_Over_Game]

OP, how open are you to making a solution? Using Unearthed Arcana or Homebrewery?

[Chaosmancer]

I had a player who went with the Revised Ranger Beastmaster and being a prepared caster instead of a spells known caster. (just take paladin rules and replace Cha with Wis).

It worked well, she was never really the star in terms of damage or anything else, but she was solid and had a ton of fun, plus her wolf never felt like it was dragging the party down.

Since the Class Variants I did a homebrew blending them all together, but I haven't tested it yet.

[Christew]

I'd look at the Battle Smith Artificer as a base on which to redesign the Ranger's animal companion. Vanilla Beast Master sucks hard because its companion doesn't scale and it has to use its action to command. The Iron Defender is an example of much cleaner pet design. Reflavor to be a wolf or somesuch and rock on.

[KorvinStarmast]

Apparently Ranger sucks. Apparently, Beastmaster sucks HARD.

Currently the rest of the party is a Dwarf Tempest Cleric, Dwarf Mutant Blood Hunter, Gnome Artillerist Artificer, Elf Sharpshooter Fighter, Dragon homebrew Oath of the Sun Paladin, Human Bear Totem Barbarian and a Human Lore Bard who kinda just toots on his bagpipes.

1. Nope. Ranger is fine. (Beastmaster has some problems in implementation)
2. In a seven person party, a Hunter Ranger will do fine. If you go vHuman, take Sharpshooter and Archery Fighting style. When fighting big monsters that are bags of HP, your Collosus Slayer feature gives you an additional die of damage on anything you hit once it has taken damage already. That's kind of nice.

Shoot things, and occasionally cast spells.

I prefer the Gloom Stalker Ranger (from Xanathar's Guide) but that's a matter of taste.

[FinnS]

Just wanting second all the opinions that the phb BM is absolutely horrid and probably the worst class in the entire game honestly.
The revised Ranger Beast Conclave from the UA is many times better even if it still might be a little underpowered compared to some other subclasses. As mentioned upgrading the armour with some barding on your pet and once that pet starts scaling it actually becomes quite good.
The hardest thing to deal with as a martial class with the Beast conclave is never getting Extra Attack. Besides that though the class is actually pretty solid.

Where it really shines though, and I have played this personally, is when you combine it with the Cavalier class out of Xan's, play a halfling or any small-sized race that your DM allows really. You ride your companion to become an absolute terror on the battlefield.
You have to kind of take it easy and pick your spots earlier levels but once you start getting into the mid level game and everything starts coming together, man fun as hell!

[Witty Username]

Here is a guide for some advise on this subject.

The only change I would make to the beastmaster rules is allow general commands in combat. "Kill that guy" should mean you don't need to keep telling your beast to attack every turn.

[Lupine]

Recently, I've been working with a friend on redoing the ranger from the bottom up. It's not done yet, and I still have to figure out how to share it while keeping my privacy, but here's what I can say:
First, its not that hard to take the aspects you like from the two UA improvements for ranger, and hammer out something you like and think will be cool.

I would suggest, if you want to make the minimum possible change, allow the ranger's companion to have a cr of "1/4 of your ranger level or lower."

As others have mentioned, companions die often, and this allows the ranger to experiment with various fighting techniques, keeping the game fresh for the character throughout the whole journey. It's a fairly safe move: a CR 5 beast doesn't make a big difference at 20th level, but its a helluva lot better than a cr 1/4.

[loki_ragnarock]

Ranger is mostly fine, it's just missing a couple of spells to really help it out in the conceptual space it works in best. Beast Master is okay if you think of their subclass features as giving more out of combat utility than in combat utility.

So the Ranger does a couple things that many other characters can't do effectively. Where a Rogue is capable of being stealthy, a Ranger is capable of making a party stealthy. Pass Without Trace makes that flatfooted, plate-clad Paladin a perfectly stealthy smite-boy, something he can't do on his own, and something the rogue really can't impart to him. A ranger can get everyone into the ideal position, in addition to being a modestly effective scout in his own right.
Likewise, the Ranger has a couple of abilities that a standard rogue won't be able to emulate effectively; battlefield control. Spike Growth lets you turn an area into a serious hazard for your enemies, and has the potential to be difficult to detect. Cordon of Arrows (much maligned by people I know) is a concentration free, long duration spell that lets you get the drop on unknowing enemies, effectively granting a free attack against the enemies that enter the area and doubles as a way to detect the presence of invisible foes. Plant Growth allows a ranger to instantly, without concentration, produce an area of ultra difficult terrain. Wind Wall can nullify enemy ranged attacks. Grasping Vine lets you use a bonus action to move enemies around the battlefield *regardless of their size category*.

Rangers are the kings of the ambush. Sure, a rogue can sneak in without any help... but he'll be doing it without any help. The ranger can get his whole team into an ideal position. Further, he can create the ideal position. The strategy that best suits them is drawing the enemy out into a vulnerable position, rather than running door kicking assaults. When you start thinking about rangers as monsters with lair actions that have a highly portable lair, you can start getting into the mindset that best suits them. If you're relying on Hunter's Mark, you've already lost.

Quite simply, if your ranger is going strength, tell him to ignore Hunters Mark. Grab a longsword, use it one handed, and grapple up to drag an enemy through space after space along the edge of Spike Growth. An extra 6d4 from 15 ft of movement coupled with the battlefield control is going to outclass the 1d6 per attack you're getting from Hunter's Mark.

Ranger is about using what you got to create the ideal conditions for a combat. Can wizards, druids, and bards do it better? Yes, but not while also packing the same at will damage capabilities that a ranger brings to the table. Other martials don't even come close in that regard.
I'd like to see more ranger exclusive spells that capitalize upon this theme. Xanathar's spells give one other tool to this particular kit in the form of Snare, a no concentration, lasts 8 hours, set and forget debilitation trap that applies *exactly* the kind of condition a character relying on attack rolls wants in play.
The tools they have came with can be damned effective for those who really think about their campaign as asymmetric warfare. You play rangers like Tucker played kobolds, but they can move that dungeon to any level they like.

Beastmaster really only needs one thing to make it viable; a spell to resurrect their pet with a minimum of resource loss.

And with that, and only that, the Beastmaster suddenly becomes a paragon of the ranger described above. Yes, that companion will die. Over. And over. And over. But it also gives the ranger the tool he needs to draw in the baddies to the zone of misery that the ranger had prepared for the things his beloved pet is running from. Hopefully he selected one with a high move speed.
Ruthless and effective. What more could you want?