Ranger Guide - Classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

do you want to hunt the most dangerous game will you brave the fiercest wilds from the darkest forests to the deepest dungeons to the mountains of old are you an eagle-eyed tracker and a peerless Archer were you born to be wild then maybe the Ranger class is right for you [Music] greetings adventurers my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes on today's episode we're taking a look at the wilderness explorer class of the Ranger in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition the Ranger has been one of the most popular classes in the Dungeons & Dragons game it's a very interesting hybrid class that combines both marshal power and natural magic and we're gonna show you the best tips and tricks to survive in the great outdoors as the Ranger so the range is probably one of the most popular classes that you can play in Dungeons and Dragons the archetype itself is is exceptionally popular amongst avid everybody in all editions yeah and I think the biggest reason why the Ranger remains such an enduring archetype is because Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings is the prototypical example of the Ranger so the biggest hero from the biggest fantasy series that introduces so many people to this game it's no wonder this is one of the most popular classes and archetypes to play and what a cool character in the movie you see him shooting bows like Legolas but wielding a sword like Boromir you see him do a little bit of everything tracking people through the woods yes he does yeah he's a hero yeah him and the range of the north really kind of embody that wide range of skills and capabilities that the Ranger brings to the table which i think is part of why it's such an interesting class to play because you get this class that can fill many different party roles such as you can be the big damage dealer if you love rolling a boatload of dice the Ranger gives you that opportunity to wade into battle with two swords or a bow and take out your quarry also being the sharpshooter and basically in my at my table we have a we have a ranger who basically works as the sniper yeah in the party and it's a it's a really cool archetype to explore at the same time the Ranger also has a lot of interesting diversity that they bring because they're proficient in a lot of skills they're an amazing tracker and monster hunter and they get magic so they can have healing magic and spells that they can use in all sorts of interesting ways because they get that little touch of Jurek magic your Ranger might be a grizzled guerrilla warrior fighting in the jungles they could be a defender and protector of nature of the natural world or they might be a ruthless bounty hunter um they simply could just be an archer or an explorer or that canny sort of Beastmaster friend of animals type they're really diverse and they have so many different approaches that you can bring to that Ranger so the Ranger is also incredible because there's so much pop-culture references that you can draw on for inspiration when you're creating your character the main one of course being Aragorn from Lord of the Rings who like we said before does so much in that movie such as tracking and fighting and archery in close combat and you can just use that as really the archetype for your ranger class so there's a lot of other options as well of course another famous example from The Forgotten Realms is Drizzt Do'Urden the dark elf ranger who comes up from the underworlds of menzo Berezin and has a panther animal companion fights with two scimitars often copied often imitated but never with the poise that the original has and what about just going back to the classics with Robin Hood Robin Hood was a ranger he lived in the wilderness fought with a bow take from the rich give to the poor I don't know hunter may be a bit of a thief as well in there but I think he's a pretty good example of Ranger I think if I were opening up a little more to other pop culture examples Lara Croft in her more recent incarnations especially in the newer games is absolutelly arranger even the predator himself is a ranger although alien Ranger yeah another good example from something more pop culture he is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games she's a total survivor in the wilderness particularly in the first book she's a fantastic Archer she knows how to live in the wilderness so that's a really great example of a character that's thrust into into a survival situation and excels two examples from Game of Thrones that I really like are Jon Snow and Ygritte yes Jon Snow of course wants to be a ranger his whole life he gets the ghost as out there hunting through the wilds I think another one maybe a bit more controversial is I would say Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher games is absolutely a ranger at least in part he kind of has more magical abilities than what the D&D Ranger has but everything he does from monster hunting to tracking through the wilds is just pure Ranger yeah so you can draw inspiration from any of these are kind of mix-and-match another great one though that we almost forgot about is Green Arrow if you're into comic books he survived in the wild for a long time to learn his abilities goes back and decides to be a superhero but based on his wilderness survival training yeah so there's a lot of different ideas inspiration that you can come to I would even say you know if you're a fan of nature shows you love the legacy of Crocodile Dundee or any of those great Australian outback sort of hunters you can really bring those in to D and E as well and if it especially if you're looking for more of a comedic or caricature take character or something that's even more grounded than in the real world as well so you've chosen the Ranger as your class what ability scores should we be looking at I feel like there's an obvious one here yeah I think first and foremost with the Ranger dexterity is going to be the go-to ability score it supports both the archetypes dual-wielding with light melee weapons and of course archery as well what would your next one be they do have a bit of spell casting yeah which is driven by your wisdom score um Rangers spell casting is not as dependent on the wisdom score as other classes because oftentimes the Ranger spells are supporting their martial abilities or spells that don't really rely on attack rolls and saving throws for their effects but wisdom still gives you a perception and a lot of really great tracking ability absolutely and that's the other reason to keep that score high and start boosting that one up if you can you'll probably be competing with feats to boost your wisdom after you bring your dexterity up but having that high attack stat and then having a good wisdom score is going to be important down the line I think at that point Constitution is the next one and maybe you might want your Constitution higher than your wisdom as a ranger you have a d-10 hit thigh which it's a pretty beefy which does make you really really beefy but having those extra hit points really helps especially because a lot of the Rangers best spells are based on concentration so that'll just help you keep those spells up and running and after that I really think that it's a toss-up between where you want to go if you want to have more rugged survival of skills and you want to be like proficient in athletics as a skill you'll probably want to increase your strength a little bit if you want to have that monster knowledge and embody that monster hunter intelligence will probably be another one that you'll want some nature right you can choose nature as a skill if you have high intelligence yeah an investigation and aids in your ability to track I think that charisma is almost universally going to be the dump set you lived in the wild your whole life you're not very charismatic yeah I could see like if you go back to our examples like Lara Croft would be kind of the one that goes against that trend she's very charismatic but she's more the exception than the rule I think most Rangers are probably gonna have a pretty low charisma score and are going to be that one that makes the rough rude comments during the social interactions if you do decide to make your charisma score your lowest score it you're gonna have to then think about how you're gonna roleplay your character in social interactions because it really sucks to be the one that just sits there silently like a lone wolf and doesn't have anything to say what races make the best Ranger well um I hate to mention it again right off the bat but the variant human is pretty strong variant humans gonna be good in a lot of different cases yeah yeah besides that I mean the what else what else make excellent Rangers they're kind of archetypal they're kind of the Legolas to your Aragorn yeah um they're proficient in perception they get the dexterity and the wisdom booths that you really want to get early on they get faster speed and better movement through difficult terrain earlier - they really make fantastic Rangers the what elves are also awesome because they have this ability to hide in natural habitats like wilderness camo as I call it yeah that makes the halflings really good for this - because they also have a similar dexterity boost and the halfling luck is just an amazing trait but your small size gives you lots of hiding options and especially if you're gonna be an archer with the halfling you're not really worried about being able to wield the biggest weapons either so it's really perfect if you want to be that ambush master going beyond the players handbook I would say that race is like uh - Baxi make really good Rangers - yeah and anything else that's going to give you that really critical boost to the dexterity score if you're done headmaster will let you plan Eric okra the bird people they are such a race if you read their lore Rangers are really important in their society and being able to fly as a pretty huge advantage I probably wouldn't let a player start from level one as an era Kokura Ranger that would be like a character I bring in from higher levels how about weapons and armor for the Ranger pretty great amazing you get you're proficient in every weapon in the game yeah and you are proficient 'i'm armor and shield so you had everything but heavy armor yes and i mean if you're trudging through the wilderness tracking things you're probably not wearing heavy armor anyway so it would set yeah because your dexterity is going to be really high and with your skill proficiencies you're probably gonna want to choose skills like acrobatics stealth and other skills that are gonna be impaired by your ability to wear heavy armor so usually you're gonna have that light armor carry finesse weapons like rapier short swords and scimitars and robably a bow probably a bow or crossbow whatever you prefer and what about saving throws for the ranger you're also proficient in dexterity saving throws right right saving throws oh that's interesting yeah yeah but it works dexterity saving throws will save you from boatloads of damage yeah right from getting hit by fireballs or falling down hits all those natural sort of hazards that you run into in the wilderness mm-hmm what are the best feats for for a ranger that's actually that's it oh well no I got one sharpshooter yeah we talked to a sharpshooter earlier in the straight-up if you're interested in being a damage dealer with a ranger the Sharpshooter feat is probably your first starting point it lets you take a minus five penalty to your attack role for a +10 bonus to your damage role and man oh man does that damage add up really quickly and this is the main reason why if you're playing a ranger you should probably think about being a bow wielding ranger rather than a sword wielding you can do a bit of both but you want that bow handy and you want to take sharpshooter so that you can do that yeah damnit yeah it really adds up especially when you start layering on top things like Hunter's quarry and hunters mark that really give you all this extra damage plus sharpshooter and negates cover and it takes the range of your range attacks out to the maximum range of your weapon so you those disadvantages normally associated with being the wild IE monsters that can hide behind bushes and cover now you're an eagle eye you got this what other feats work really well for the Ranger if you want to go all out damage dealer you're going to want to take crossbow expert and do the bonus action reload the crossbow and get that extra attack in there yeah the crossbow expert sharpshooter combo is the penultimate range damage-dealing combination in the game and Rangers are a great chasis for that I mean we have lucky and alert but anybody benefits from lucky yeah I think alert really takes your initiative into the overdrive yeah you might want to pick up resilient Constitution so that you have that proficiency in Constitution saving throws for keeping your spells a going at the same time yeah um and there's some cool other feats like healer and Dungeon delver which kind of give you that extra utility that you might want to consider if you want to diversify what your ranger can do so as a ranger you've got a lot of big decisions to make with your class there's kind of four different things that you have to decide about after you pick your race and your skills you're gonna have to pick your fighting style you're gonna have to pick your favorite terrain you're gonna have to start picking your favorite enemies and you'll have to start picking your spell's this means that as a ranger as your leveling up almost every level brings you lots of new choices and you kind of have to commit to them when you level up unlike other classes that might be able to swap in and out their spells or classes that don't get new abilities at every level the radar actually gives you a lot of choice yeah now in regards to fighting style we mentioned earlier there is archery is probably the best bet yeah because the archery fighting style gives you plus two bonus to hit with range weapons which offsets the penalty of sharpshooter making it just taking it really into overdrive in terms of the damage of deals yeah but you can play a ranger that does close combat yeah in which case the dual wielding fighting style is really really good that's what I would probably take the two weapon fighting feet as well especially at lower levels to I've been fighting with hunters mark is a really efficient combination at dealing with lots and lots of damage so if you are playing a low level campaign the dual wielding Ranger is actually really really good it's not until I would say you get into there really my levels like over perky my 10th level that the dual-wielding really starts to drop off when you're choosing things like your favorite enemy and your favorite terrain for wilderness explorer I really think that this is the time to talk to your DM yeah you want it you want to make sure that the favorite enemy that you pick is going to be relevant for the campaign if you're like my favorite enemy is orcs and the campaign has none of that in it then you've really kind of wasted that choice yeah I think the Giants dragons and fiends tend to feature in a lot of campaigns another choice that is almost good at every level of the game is undead yeah um and you so you really can't go wrong if you're DN is being cagey with you and saying those things because you're probably gonna fight Giants you're probably gonna fight undead if you choose dragons know that that's probably only gonna happen like five or six times over the course of the campaign but when you have it you'll really enjoy it as far as favorite terrain that I think is one where the Dungeon Master really has to help you out yeah like where where's the campaign gonna take you is that something that's gonna be relevant you want to know like if you pick mountains or coastal or woods or Plains yeah you know the worst thing that you want to have happen is that you choose like grasslands and you spend your entire campaign in a dungeon or in some extra planar dimension where that ability doesn't really get a chance to shine yeah so the Ranger has two main archetypes that show up in the players handbook and then there were more added in with XANA thar's guide to everything three archetypes added in centaurs guide to everything and I'm just gonna come out come out and say it if you want to play a ranger you should really really consider the archetypes and Zanna thar's guide to everything the players had what ones are really really good but I think that the Ranger is one of those classes that really benefitted a lot from a second pass in Xander's guide to everything yes so the ones that are presented in The Player's Handbook are the hunter and the Beast I think that a lot of people find what the Beast Master the animal companion isn't as strong as it is as he is you want it to and it's because of this other thing that you have to babysit sometimes it can be very effective in combat um as you level up as a hunter your Beast does get to add some of your proficiency bonuses to its roles mm-hmm as well as you eventually get an ability that you can let the beast attack and then you can attack as a reaction or the Beast can attack for you as well the Beast is a cool partner to go with a melee focused Ranger as well because you can kind of like encircle a foe together or an archer who can send the Beast ahead to kind of fight while you smite from far beyond and then the hunter what do they excel at that's more like the tracking and will the hunter really 100 Conclave Rangers you get three choices at each major level and the hunter gets these cool abilities eventually like whirlwind attack and volley fire where you get to attack either everybody in melee or make a ranged attack against everybody you can see which is pretty cool yeah they also get that really awesome Colossus Slayer choice yes were you dealing extra d8 points of damage to any foe that has already taken damage but that's only once per round but still every little bit helps so the hunter really does get that extra damage if we look at the archetypes and Zanna thar's guide to everything the one that stood out to me right away was the gloom stalker Ranger yeah the gloom stalker raid away gives you dark vision yeah um and makes you invisible to other creatures with dark vision gloom shocker to me is kind of a bridge between I'm playing a ranger but I kind of want to be rogue like and the fact that like yeah I didn't the darkness kind of an assess and that's the way I picture the glooms doctor Ranger well the gloom sucker also the gloom sucker is probably the most popular one now because the biggest ability that against be on the dark vision and the hunt and the unparalleled stealth really is that right off the bat you get this ability where you get an extra attack during the first round of combat and you get to add your wisdom modifier to your initiative so you get the drop on people and you have this absolutely explosive first turn of combat you get to make a ton of attacks I also just really like the inclusion of rope trick is one of the spells that they get yeah and this is something that all three of those amethyst guide to everything Ranger archetypes get extra spells that don't count against the spells known and in the case of the gloom stocker they get greater invisibility as well and deny self they get some really useful spells what are the other two archetypes in Santa Fe so the first thing I look to is the horizon Walker also pretty cool yeah the horizon Walker is a great choice if your DM is gonna take you out beyond the Material Plane because they get a cool ability that turns their attacks into force damage so they can bypass a lot of magical resistances mm-hmm and eventually they get some cool teleportation abilities with their spell casting their high-level ability lets them do that Nightcrawler thing where you teleport in between every single one of your attacks the monster under is one that I think is probably the least popular of the three but it kind of lets you do that very Geralt of Rivia idea where you know a lot about the specific creatures that you're fighting and you can attune your attacks to their weaknesses I think that it's probably the weakest of the three introduced in xanthus guide to everything but it has a really cool concept so the Rangers do have some limited spell casting ability that can really help them out in battle what are some of those that we're gonna be recommending today you know will you get up to fifth level spells if you stick with the Ranger class all the way generally you get about half the level spells as a full caster yeah but all of them are really useful and some of them will be useful for your Rangers entire career and a lot of them have to do with hunting tracking or trapping I thought yeah and of course the first one we've mentioned a few times already is hunter's mark you should always say hunter's mark it allows you to do extra damage to your mark every time you hit your mark target you deal an extra one to six points of damage and you get advantage on checks to track them afterwards it's a first level Ranger spell it's gonna be your bread and butter you're gonna use it throughout your entire career it's also the bonus action to cats yeah so the only thing that I will say with hunter's mark is that if you take crossbow expert does compete with that extra attack it's one of those things that you want to get going early in the combat and so Rangers will have this thing of like you have a lot of things that you could do with your bonus action between the crossbow expert shot or your dual wielding shot or moving hunter's mark hunter's mark also has that other feature where once the target dies you can then reapply it with your bonus action so it's gonna it's almost a class feature but another one that I see come up a lot at my table is spike growth spike growth is really deadly yeah it does a lot of damage if you if you plant that in the right place and the enemies have to trudge through your spike growth and they can't notice it there they it's hard to notice yeah and it deals a lot of damage yeah the other big one I think for Rangers especially is passed without trace sookie sookie her stealth missions or sneaking into places or even escaping pass without trace is an annoying spell because it's a flat ten bonus to a flat +10 bonus to all your party members stealth checks no matter if they're passing with a trace as in moving silently or hiding just remember that even though it makes our stealth checks really really good it doesn't make them invisible that's important they can't just walk out into the open with a +10 to their stealth and expect me not to be you still need something to hide behind um the next third level spell I love it and I actually think that once you get this spell it's going to compete with hunters mark its conjure animals hmm and the reason why is you can summon a challenge rating to monster or to challenge rating one monsters or a bunch more of a lower level but you can concentrate on Kandra animals for an hour which means you could use it for more than one battle so even if you're not a beast Master Ranger conjure animals is a great way for a high level ranger to still feel like you're calling out animals from the wild to help you and I like it because you can cash counter animals prior to combat so that you can benefit from say that big pair of dire wolves that you summoned or the big polar bear which some of them a lot of high damage attacks which will get you more damage than what hunters mark would have um the thing to worry about with it is that they have hit points and they can die mm-hmm and there you could lose your concentration on it really really quickly um and sometimes their attack bonuses aren't high enough to really support those things especially later on yeah the also thing being is technically you don't get to choose what conjure animal summons that's chosen by the dn so you say I want to summon a challenge rating to my animal and then your DM takes the beast probably I would assume based on like the location that you're in what is yeah yeah but it's something that I'd be willing to work with players on I'm pretty permissive when it comes to Ranger summoning these animals because I like to imagine them calling forth the same animal in the same location and being like a spiritual manifestation of that animal cool conjurer woodland beings which summons fake creatures most famously known for summoning a horde of Pixies oh yes yes the Nazis which again because the player actually doesn't get to decide what they summon with this the DM is the one that chooses what appears so you might get a bunch of cool fake heat creatures like dryads or Pixies or you might just get a bunch of sprites nonetheless it's still a useful spell and always worth packing I think another spell that you should probably take as a ranger if Swift quiver yeah Swift quiver is a fifth level spell so it comes online with really late in the game but lets you make two ranged attacks with your bonus action so if you decided not to take crossbow expert or want to double down on crossbow expert it's a great way of having a really explosive and to a combat encounter that said it's up to you to decide whether or not it's better or worse than having hunters mark up if you've taken sharpshooter it almost certainly is because that's like four attacks coming in per turn yeah yeah it's a lot of damage it's totally worth it um Rangers also get a wide range of healing spells you get pure wounds and lesser restoration so I find that those are useful ones to pack and bring along another really simple one it's a first-level spell long Strider increases your speed by ten feet yeah and it lasts for like an hour so you can just have a forty foot movement speed as a ranger so you kind of have this good mix of like utility healing damage-dealing kind of kind of a nice mixed bag yeah you have to choose them carefully because you're limited to the number of spells that you know you do get to change some of them out whenever you level up but the Ranger spell casting is really not to be underestimated I think a lot of people look at the Ranger class and they see that it doesn't make the four attacks that the fighter does or doesn't have the raw on melee power of the Paladin and they sell it short but the Ranger spells actually contribute a lot of utility a lot of battlefield control and a lot of extra damage so don't underestimate just how much those can have an effect so we've taken a look at a lot of the mechanics of playing the Ranger but what about role play what are some of the ideas that are gonna really bring your character to life what are the questions you need to ask more than just the inspiration you're gonna get from the pop-culture references mentioned earlier but what sort of things should we be looking at to roleplay our Ranger I think the first question that you want to ask yourself as a ranger is what is your relationship to nature like and were you born in the wilds or were you someone that adopted the wilderness as their new home yeah Rangers in some way shape or form are tied to the wild because they either learn their skills there they were raised there but you don't necessarily have to be born and raised by a pack of wolves there are other options yeah the Ranger is distinct from classes like the Barbarian and the druid who the druid is someone who is one with nature but the Ranger is a master of nature and that means that you could be a completely civilized person that maybe it was part of a military organization but you're part of the Scout corpse or you're an explorer that is going off into the Uncharted lands to find out what's there so your Ranger might have grown up as a noble right and has now gone out into the wilderness to make a new fortune and that's an archetype that our own history is filled with examples of rugged wilderness explorers who came from civilize the plans and were trailblazers in that respect this doesn't mean that you can't play the wild child Ranger which is also just a great way to go if if you're short on ideas just having a ranger that was like born and raised in the wild a little bit more animalistic just learned from the wolves in the wild how to track how to fight and I think that this is going to inform your choice of favorite terrain whereas on the other hand your favorite enemy might be another source of inspiration for your ranger your ranger mites have sworn vengeance against their favorite enemies or they might be just an expert bounty hunter or monster slayer who relies on their knowledge of that situation to gain the upper hand against the foes that there's leg yeah a great role play for a ranger is just somebody like a bounty hunter you get hired to deal with those those monster problems that nobody else can and you have trained and you've honed your skills to be able to track hunt and destroy these monsters in their territory and I think that is a great point for fitting your Ranger into the rest of your party because as a ranger you're the wilderness guide like you're your connection to the party could be that the party hired you to help them survive in the forest to navigate through a desert to climb to the top of the mountain and then you became friends with them right you might have been someone that was protecting say the parties wizard as they were going through a dangerous swamp and the two of you then became friends as a result of that so finding way to connect on your role as a ranger who has a lot of useful skills to the rest of the group is really really key the reason for this I think is that the Ranger is one of those classes that's really prone to lone wolf styles of characters and this is something that can be a lot of fun in the right campaign but often really hamstrings good role-playing and I like to recommend that new players especially avoid the lone wolf kind of archetype and think of ways that your Ranger might be more social even if they're still gruff on the edges you could even go more more real-life and talk about US military or even the Wild West as archetypes yeah there's great archetypes of like the Army Rangers or Scout companies in militaries I also like to think of like guerrilla fighters that are surviving in jungle warfare or wilderness environments like that or even like the Wild West people who survived on the frontier and sometimes if you just want interesting ideas watch a bunch of nature documentaries and follow the people as they explore with animals because you can find interesting role-playing ideas they're always full of these weird quips yeah so we hope that our guide on the Rangers helps you find the thrill of the hunt and when you head out to face the wilds of nature may your Swift arrows always find their mark and of course if you have any awesome stories about playing Rangers in your Dungeons & Dragons campaigns or any tips or tricks of things that you found really really worked maybe there was a spell or feat that we miss in this episode we would love to hear about it in the comments tell us about it right down below if you're looking for a great campaign module to play a ranger in we have our review of tomb of annihilation right over here now of course Rangers are a very action heavy class so we have a guide to all the actions you could take in combat right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 356,601

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, ranger, hunter, gloom stalker, sharpshooter, crossbow expert, feats, skills, archetypes, class, elf

Id: AUIK7749NlY

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2018