Ranger Subclass Tier Rankings for Dungeons and Dragons 5e (Part 1)

greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are ranking the subclasses available to rangers in dungeons and dragons fifth edition this is part one of our video series on looking at the ranger subclasses and today we're going to be focusing on the two subclasses that have been published in the player's handbook the hunter and the beastmaster ranger we will also be looking at the revisions to the beastmaster ranger added in tasha's cauldron of everything if you look on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria that we use to rank the subclasses we are putting the subclasses against each other and ranking them in that fashion we are not taking into account things like role playing because all rangers have an equal opportunity to be amazingly role played we also will not be taking multi-classing into account as a major factor there are lots of great multi-classing options but they are not what we're focusing on today we will be covering the subclasses presented in xanathar's guide to everything and the new subclasses natasha's cauldron in subsequent videos this video series will not cover any of the subclasses that are only in on after canada but have not been published in a book nor will we be looking at the revised ranger as that project is now completely dead there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling in dungeons and dragons 5th edition rangers choose their subclass at level 3 gaining some new features then as well as at 7th level 11th level and at 15th level so diving on in with the hunter archetype for rangers this is the standard rangery ranger if you wanted to be the most ranger you can be the hunter is the way to go it's really not clear what the lore of the hunter ranger is and how it's different from the baseline ranger maybe we'll get into that when we discuss it at the in a moment but let's see what the features are that the the hunter actually gives you it's pretty interesting as well because with the hunter ranger at every level you get a selection of several different abilities that you can add to your ranger so right away at level three you get three choices colossus slayer giant killer or horde breaker colossus slayer adds a d8 damage once per round to an enemy that isn't at its maximum hit points which works pretty pretty nicely with dual wielding and extra attack as if you use a dual wielded attack or extra attack to damage an enemy then the second attack will get that d8 the d8 only applies once per turn however with giant killer if a large or larger creature within 5 feet of you misses with an attack you can use your reaction to attack them instead and with horde breaker once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack you can make a second weapon attack against another enemy a different one from the first one within five feet of the original enemy with the same weapon so it gives you a bonus attack but you have to spread them out over two targets that are beside each other at seventh level you get defensive tactics you have three choices they are escape the horde multi-attack defense and steal will multi-attack defense is going to give you a plus 4 bonus to your ac if you are hit by one attack and then there's a follow-up attack from the same creature during your turn with escape the horde opportunity attacks made against you are made with disadvantage and with steel wheel you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened at 11th level you gain a multi-attack feature which again is your choice of two different options volley or whirlwind attack with volley you can make a ranged attack against every enemy that is within 10 feet of a point that you can see and whirlwind attack lets you make a melee attack against everybody within your weapons reach both of these options require you using your action to do so and don't interact with other class features like dual wielding or extra attack at 15th level you're going to gain superior hunters defense which again is broken into three options these three options are evasion stand against the tide or uncanny dodge with evasion any time that you have to make a dexterity saving throw if you pass the saving throw you take no damage if you fail at the saving throw you take half damage if you are doing stand against the tides if a creature attacking you misses you can use your reaction to direct that attack to another creature near you and with uncanny dodge if you are hit with an attack you can use a reaction to half the damage so when we come to the hunter with the options presented in the player's handbook these are the first options ever presented to the ranger there was the hunter or the beastmaster and i think it's safe to say that the hunter is the better of the two options the hunter does give a lot of versatility in the design of the ranger although with the addition of some of the classes that have come out afterwards it's safe to say that this is in no way the greatest ranger subclass and the ranger actually did suffer a little bit in its initial introduction into dungeons and dragons fifth edition the hunter subclass has nothing wrong with it in my opinion it actually has some really fun options but they all feel like they're just a little bit of extra ranger on your ranger there's nothing here that makes it stand out as unique or special there's nothing that adds to it in extremely meaningful or game defining ways it's just a bunch of abilities that feel like the rangers should have had all along so for that reason when i look at the hunter ranger yeah it's good but i feel like it lands in the b category there are some people who are just gonna want to play the most rangeriest ranger they can and the hunter might speak to them but at the end of the day there's just so many better options and more unique and interesting options out there that add in really meaningful ways so i think the hunter suffers because of that i agree with you kelly i think that at the outset of dnd5e before we had xanathars and tasha's and the revisions of the beastmaster this was the s tier ranger subclass which is sad that's it's really sad because even though we're not ranking the subclasses on their role playing capability there's no flavor here this could have been abilities that were just given to the baseline ranger and they would be would have been fine and in fact probably the rangers should just get all these abilities i hate the fact that you have to choose between evasion and uncanny dodge at 15th level these those should be the choices at seventh level colossus slayer is the only feature that adds to your single target damage and while it's good it's still only 1d8 damage once per turn which is an extra 5 damage which is a lot low levels but there's no scaling to it at all it doesn't matter like the only benefit of having extra attack is that you're more likely to get that d8 as you gain more attacks the multi-attack powers you could almost never use them because they don't help you out when you are going to try to bring down a single target and with whirlwind attack in particular you need to have three or more enemies within your melee range to make that worth using and if you're surrounded by like three or four enemies as a ranger uh you're in trouble rangers should just get evasion as a baseline class feature and it should be at level seven that feels the right time to get that ability if i give this a b there's no circumstance where it's s tier is it s tier in the right campaign ever this is the problem is and i think we need to look at our own grading system we're going to talk about this because c we advertise there's something here that takes away from the ranger and there's no traps here there's nothing awful it's just like it adds this much to your ranger in so many circumstances whereas other subclasses add this much i actually worry that there are traps here because i don't think that all the options at each level are created equally like colossal slayer is the most broadly applicable of all the choices at level three so much so that the other two feel like the wrong choice the the whirlwind attack one is also one of those ones that it might be the wrong choice because it could put you in a situation where your character is in trouble and even some of the other defensive ones like if the 15th level one your choice is either going to be evasion or uncanny dodge and if you choose that other one you probably made the wrong choice so this is actually a subclass where if you make the wrong choices within the smorgasbord of options that presents you it does have traps at the end of the day like yeah you're right you could you could fall into a trap and there isn't really a situation where i think that this this is a s tier or even a tier subclass for the race no like like and i guess you could look at these options and say okay well here's an opportunity to tailor the ranger for the campaign and that has always been a huge problem with the rangers design with things like favorite enemy and favorite terrain it is so dependent on making the right ranger for your campaign and really what i want to see with a ranger is adaptability like wouldn't it be cool if the ranger could actually change these abilities based on the context and like if they spent 24 hours within a certain area or a day fighting an enemy they could change what these options were i got to ask you the question kelly like i think that with with everything that has come out is it disingenuous to give this a b like should we be dropping this down to a c i i think actually okay during this discussion i think that i would easily say now that that it is a c because i i'm willing to speak to the fact that i really enjoy rangers in concept i love the concept of a ranger oh yeah it's one of my favorite ideas in dungeons and dragons and the ranger is a good class like you can watch drackenheim to see jill as veo kick a ton of ass as a ranger like they're good damage dealers it's a it's a good class but here's the thing jill picked a subclass from xanathar's yeah and i think xanathar's makes good rangers there's a reason why rangers have the reputation they do and it's because the player's handbook did not give us a good enough ranger yeah and i think i would not play a hunter it would not be my first second third or fourth choice so does that make it c i think it makes it c yeah and i i think if you make the wrong choices it's it could be a d yeah yeah so avoid this subclass this yeah this subclass is not your best choice it's not your second or third best choice it's it's a sad example that was presented in the player's handbook that should have done more for the ranger and the ranger's gone through a lot of improvements now but we can almost forget about the player's handbook subclasses well we got one more to talk about i i find it so funny that we're discussing these comments about the hunter which could just be easily applied to the beast master as presented in the player's handbook but maybe let's talk about the beastmaster and see when we look at the beastmaster the beastmaster is the animal companion ranger that everybody in the world wants the ranger to be you get to be that wilderness explorer with your animal buddy who helps you out in combat and exploration does it deliver on that let's talk about what the beastmaster ranger from the player's handbook gets so at level 3 you get your rangers companion this is a pretty beefy ability that lets you choose a monster from the monster manual it has to be a beast little type so it's usually you're looking at the appendix and it has to be a beast with a challenge rating of one quarter or less which includes things like elks certain types of horses wolves panthers you know a lot a lot of your fantasy creature archetypes are all here you're gonna find something appealing to you there's boars i don't think there's any bears that are under challenge rating one quarter um and there's also a bunch of aquatic creatures and things like giant lizards and giant toads and stuff like that that are that are valid choices this is now your loyal companion that follows you on your adventures it acts on your turn during initiative and you add its proficiency modifier to its ac its attack roles its damage roles and all of its saving throws and skills its hit point maximum is determined by either being four times your ranger level or its base hp depending on which one is higher this lands at about a whopping 40 hit points when you reach level 10 which is kind of squishy for your animal companion as we said before it acts on your turn and it obeys your verbal commands during your turn you can command it where to move with no action but otherwise commanding it requires an action from you you can use your action to command your beast to attack dash disengage or help if you do none of these then the creature will take the dodge action once you have the extra attack class feature when you command your beast to attack you can make one weapon attack yourself but note that when you are commanding your beast to attack you yourself are not taking the attack action so this means that things like your own extra attack or dual wielding or feats like crossbow expert or polar master will not trigger because you haven't taken the attack action yourself you commanded your beast to attack but then you are now getting to make one attack yourself if you're incapacitated the animal will protect you and itself and if it dies in combat you can spend an eight-hour ritual to gain a new companion and finally it can use its reaction independent of yours requiring no action from you to use that reaction at level 7 you gain exceptional training which allows you as a bonus action for your companion now to use the dash disengage or help action as long as it hasn't taken any other actions this turn in addition its attacks now become magical for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction at level 11 you gain bestial fury when you attack with your animal companion they can now attack twice and at level 15 you can share spells with your beast if you cast a spell that targets yourself you can have your beast also be affected by that spell so here's the thing about the beast master ranger as presented the beastmaster ranger in its essence is incredible the idea of having a beast companion is amazing this subclass is garbage as presented it's a d it's it's an f it's a complete failure here's here's the thing that i hate most about this subclass and i'm not even going to mince words like i despise this fact the fact that it takes your action to command your beast to do something thus limiting what you can do as the player means that you're stuck with this choice of do i want my 40 hit point bad weak beast to run in and do combat for me or do i want to do it myself and the answer most of the time is you're going to leave your beast at the side and barely do anything until you can eventually bonus action get the help action from them then maybe all that this is really doing is becoming a glorified familiar not that we're comparing across classes but let's be real the pact of the chain warlock gets a better pet than the subclass that is defined by its pet but it's a glorified familiar that you don't have to cast a spell to gain and actually in that respect it makes it worse because if familiar dies you can get it back in 10 minutes by casting the ritual again if you're b size you're out it's out of commission for eight hours and so that is a huge problem on its own and yeah it's a bit tougher it's another body on the board that can potentially absorb an attack or two because it has more hit points than a familiar which usually has like one or four it's still not enough and it and the beasts universally hit like wet noodles yeah they're more robust but at level 10 having about 40 hit points still means if you are trying to use this thing in combat it's gonna take two hits and die yeah like making your beast attack is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals possibly ever like their attack bonus is not great their damage is not great you can use magical weapons and magical armor it's not clear if the beast can the beast can't even benefit from hunter's mark either because hunter's mark only applies to you making your own attacks and it's not even clear from the wording of share spells that the share spells feature that doesn't even compensate for that at least they gave the beast magical attacks and it dodges if you don't command it but quite literally like the best thing that you can do with the beast is command it as a bonus action to take the help action and otherwise having it dodging around as needed well you shoot people with your bow and in that respect that's fine but especially in light of spells like conjure animals and spells like the new sum and beast introduced in tasha's you can play another ranger subclass and just use your spells to summon a beast and the spell version of a summoned beast is way better than uh than what you can get out of this because at least if it dies you just cast conjure animals again or you cast summon beast again and you have something else fighting for you the beastmaster ranger takes one of the most important and valuable tropes of fantasy gaming and turns it into utter trash yep and it's it's an absolute failure there are people out there who i have heard had a lot of fun playing a beast master ranger and that's where i'll point out again that we are not ranking these based on their flavor or role play potential the beast master offers incredible role play but that is the only thing that at all yes and i think that is the biggest danger of the subclass is that there's so many people that love the idea of having a pet they want to have a pet they want to have an animal companion it is a wonderful fantasy archetype and it should be effective it should be good it should be fun and the limitations of this beast the weaknesses of it create this horrible trap that new players who are enamored with the concept they're like why isn't this any good and it's hugely disappointing the biggest design failure of the ranger as a whole is that two things that should have been intrinsic to the rangers class identity were extracted from that identity and made into subclasses i want to go on record and say that again the ranger is not a bad class but here's where the opinion on the ranger came from we've just reviewed the two subclasses that were originally presented to the fifth edition ranger and anybody who played these probably found themselves the weakest player character at the table unless you had a monk in the party [Laughter] but even then the monk was probably doing slightly cooler things than your ranger we had a very strong ranger in our campaigns jill played a fantastic ranger but there were certainly circumstances where jill would have played her character just as well as if her character was a fighter who took sharpshooter and that's true the ranger didn't really define jill's character jill defined the ranger there are problems here there was problems with the design of the initial ranger that have been fixed with the addition of amazing subclasses that we're going to be talking about in another video i would also say the new spells really help and and the spell casting of the ranger is something that people forget about but it actually really does add a lot of power to the ranger as a baseline class the fact that it does have spells like conjure animals and summon beast and conjure woodland beings there's some really fantastic spells on the ranger spell list and it actually raises the stock of the ranger quite considerably i do think that this is a good time to talk about if we do want to like the ranger well we're lucky enough that some great material has come out not only in xanathar's but in tash's guide to everything including what we all were hoping to see and that is taking our favorite ranger subclass the beastmaster and completely revising it from the ground up so let's talk about what tasha's gave the beastmaster and whether or not this improves the beastmaster significantly or not so in tasha's cauldron of everything beastmaster rangers can now choose the primal companion feature instead of the regular beast companion instead of choosing a monster from the monster manual you choose your choice of one of three stat blocks the beast of the land the beast of the sea or the beast of the sky you get to then decide like is it an eagle or a lion or a tiger or a bear or a squid or a shark or whatever it whatever you want to have it be and it has a kind of primal magical sort of connection to you it has a lot of the same underlying features of the creatures that you would have chosen otherwise but there's a really really key difference in how you can interact with it so like before it can move and react on its own but the really distinct change here is that you can now command it with a bonus action and it can use any of the options presented in its stat block as its action when it takes its turn or it can take any other action you might possibly want to give it it's not limited to the very specific action set of dash disengage and help there's a lot more that you can now improvise with the way that you command it as a bonus action furthermore when you take the attack action you can now sacrifice one of your attacks to allow your animal companion to attack this is of course on top of the fact that you can trigger it as a bonus action to attack as well this means that at third level when you take this subclass you can attack and your beast attacks as a bonus action or you can forego your own attack and have your beast attack and then have it attack again as a bonus action this also now interacts with the level 11 feature where when you command your beast to attack it attacks twice so now at level 11 the beastmaster ranger when it commands its beast as a bonus action the beast attacks twice and if you give up one of your two attacks because you have extra attack your beast attacks twice again so at 11th level the new beastmaster can make one attack themself but then have their beast attack four times which is a pretty respectable amount of damage one thing to keep in mind is that the beast may be less accurate in battle because it's using your spell attack bonus rather than its uh initial bonus presented in the original beastmaster however there are ways to make this work for you and with the extra damage output and the extra attacks i still think this is a win well it means now as well with the druidic warrior fighting style that rangers get you could take shelly as a cantrip fight with a quarter staff make wisdom your highest stat as a ranger and have a really accurate beast companion that hits pretty hard it's also the beast of the land is slightly beefier it's five times your ranger level instead of four and i just did some napkin math at level 11 the beastmaster that commands his beast to attack four times by attacking once yourself giving up one of your attacks so it attacks twice commanding it to attack as a bonus action um that's not a plus nine attack bonus if you've got a wisdom of 20 and are using the druidic warrior cantrip and so that's a plus nine to hit at level 11. it's four attacks each dealing 1d8 plus six damage plus a smack of your own that's reasonably accurate and the beasts of the land can charge and pounce and knock somebody prone creating advantage on all those attacks so this is good damage like this is a good damage output and a cool way of envisioning fighting with your trusty wolf and a quarter staff i like that that's neat and even if you're not going the shallow route i still think that the the the changes to the beast and the amount of damage and extra attacks that you get even if you didn't have all of those bonuses you're still going to have a good chance to land most of those attacks and the damage output is significantly better than the original beastmaster yeah the downside of all these attacks is that the beast still can't benefit from hunter's mark um which would be super cool because that would add like another 14 points of damage like i would add a lot of extra damage if the beast could benefit from it i think i think it would be nice if it did i i also do find though that like you have the versatility of choice now depending on the battlefield situation you get to analyze whether it makes more sense to dish out four attacks with your beast and take one yourself or if you have some sort of trick up your sleeve where you making both of your multi attacks and then two more attacks from your beast is going to be more beneficial in most cases sticking your beast on them for four attacks plus your one arrow shot or what have you is going to be a great choice but the versatility is helpful there that if you have a magic item or something else to do or some other way to interact during your turn you still get to use the beast yeah and the beast can take a lot of different actions and as well you can command the beast to attack as a bonus action and you don't even have to attack yourself you could cast a spell or do something else but i think there's some cool play here and i think that the revised beastmaster this new change i think it makes it an a i i definitely agree um this is now one of my favorite subclasses it always was in theory in context and in flavor one of my favorites but now i feel encouraged to actually play it and have fun with it in a way that i don't feel was available to me before i feel like the uh the people who wrote this revised option finally understood what it was the players wanted out of the beastmaster range yes it plays the way you want it to play i think it's going to be really effective again i love the idea of combining it with other spells like conjure animals and summon beast you've got a real menagerie happening there and the advantage of doing that is because you're going to be using your bonus action so much to command your beast it's going to be hard with the beast master as written to make effective use of a spell like hunter's mark which often you need your bonus action to move around so you don't even bother with hunter's mark you just use spells like sum and beast and conjure animals and maybe even entangle which is now a ranger spell and that is super awesome like imagine taking entangle ensnare your foes they're restrained and now you're going to use the beast of the sky you have the flying beast that flies over the entangled attacks your restrained foes with advantage and you shoot them with your arrows i also find the symbol mechanic of giving you three stat blocks is it air water or ground and then you get to have the fun of making up whatever the heck it was if you have a giant toad or an evil angry looking wolf they're both going to be as competent in battle which i think is important because you as the creator and as the imaginer of your character get to decide what fun you want to have with the creature i do wish that there was an option with any of them to be able to take an option to have your beast be a mount yeah like if they're if they said that at level x it can be a large-sized creature or that it increases in size at a certain level because yeah that would be super cool if at 15th level your ranger could get a beast of the sky that was a giant eagle that would be super appropriate for rangers so i think that there's still we're wish listing at this point but i'm really happy with this and i think that oh it breathes new life into the ranger shall we see what our community thinks of the classics yes uh now keep in mind these are our rankings for the subclasses as presented in the player's handbook and also our ranking for the new revised beastmaster however as we go into the community rankings we don't have rankings for the revised beastmaster yet so let's see how our community felt about the two players handbook options okay so looking at the hunter 7.7 percent of our community gave it an s-tier ranking 40 percent gave it an a and 37.3 gave it a b with the remaining 12 percent giving it a c and a sliver for the d tier ranking i think that this is legitimately acknowledging that the hunter was for a very long time perceived as so much better than the beastmaster yeah and i i think it's it's difficult with these because we can see here that it's getting a very high percentage of a and b but i think with the addition of the new subclasses that have all been added in this falls further and further down the scale the longer we go with the ranger yeah i don't think it's a bad subclass by any means i think it is perfectly serviceable and these rankings indicate a very strong positive spin on it you can have an effective character as a hunter and for a long time it was considered the strongest of the ranger subclasses with the beastmaster you are looking at a solid 50 percent that gave it d tier ranking with only 25 percent giving it c and 16 giving it b with a very small amount for a or s it is without a doubt the worst received subclass in dungeons and dragons fifth edition with just over half giving it the lowest possible ranking and another quarter giving it the second lowest yes the garbage pile of the way of the four elements monk the purple dragon knight they bow down before the flaming dumpster fire that is the peacemaster the beastmaster arranger is the 2020 of dnd 5e subclasses until it got revised yeah and that that is something is let's let's put up on screen right now so we have the um we have our rankings and we have the community rankings you can see we were a little harsher on the hunter than the community was but we definitely are in agreeance on the beastmaster i'd be interested in hearing what everybody thinks of the revised beastmaster and if this actually makes the beastmaster a really awesome choice for a ranger subclass now because we think that it does we want to start hearing about what you think about the new subclasses in tasha's cauldron of everything including what you have tried out in your own games so check back and we will have some more questions for you in the comments and in the descriptions below to let us know what your thoughts are at the end of the day the ranger really benefited from the additions added in in later books and they did suffer a lot at the initial output of dungeons and dragons 5th edition i still think they are an extremely fun class to play but i would maybe check out some of the other options presented because both the subclasses in the player's handbook are not your best choice and do not offer a strong and compelling ranger subclass at the end of the day i wish the hunter was just baked into the ranger class as a whole and i think the revised beastmaster is the only choice for beastmaster you should never ever take the beastmaster presented in the player's handbook especially now that they have literally gone on record to say here's a better one that we have fixed sorry about the mistake so this has been our tier rankings of the rangers subclasses presented in the players handbook in dungeons and dragons 5th edition tell us about your experiences with the ranger in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters and their amazing community if you would like to be a part of this awesome awesome place please check us out on patreon by following the links in the description below and don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes of that campaign right up over here and we're still working our way through all these subclasses and ranking them in d5e find more right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 382,151

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

Id: H0lFyhRjbSg

Length: 34min 53sec (2093 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020