Beastmaster Ranger vs. Battlesmith Artificer? Nerd Immersion
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2024
- In my final discussion video based on conversations I had with Jeremy Crawford at D&D Live 2019, I brought up the UA artificer subclasses. The Battlesmith Artificer has a more traditional "pet" mechanic and I was curious what the philosophy was behind it. The way it mechanically handles the pet makes it better in almost every way when compared with the Beastmaster Ranger as it exists currently. Jeremy provided me with insight on the process of how this came to be.
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Not just the Beastmaster, the Ranger class as a whole needs a total rework.
Not letting the past hold you back should have nothing to do with refusing to make old content playable and comparable to new content. The mentality of just forging onward is what creates power creep.
So true...
This. The answer crawford gave was for the question of "why did you make the artificer so powerful in comparison to the beastmaster" while the question being asked was "why dont you update the beastmaster, seeing that the artificer is this powerful in comparison"
campaigns have to make it past level 10 to experience power creep
Not only did you necro a 3 year old comment but you did it while very wrong 🤣
Power Creep in this instance refers to newer content being better than older content.
Utility in the present should be a goal, (I'd like to experience 5e content as a Ranger PC myself) and not making/declaring content past content as an excuse to abandon classes or races because community uproar needs to be managed or contained. Very sad. The Battlesmith Artificer looks interesting though.
I think the Beastmaster can be fixed with just a couple of tweaks:
1. Instead of just taking one beast from the books, have two or three templates for a beast to create. For example, a small sized beast that can fly, a medium sized built for agile combat (Wolf/Panther) and a large one that can be used as a tanky mount. Three sets of stats, and choosing from a limited number of skills, like the type of attack (Bite, Claw, Stinger), or movement abilities (climbing/swimming).
2. Instead of needing orders every turn, use common sense. A beast trained to attack will continue to attack the target on each turn until new orders are issued, no need to waste the extra attacks on repeating an order every 5 to 10 seconds.
3. Allowing barding for the pet. Using common sense, it can be tailored like this: Small sized pet can get armor for the same cost as a humanoid can, it just weights half as much; a medium sized pet can get armor for twice the cost of humanoid type due to the modifications; a large pet gets armor as the book states, 4 times the price and twice as heavy.
4. Let the pet earn ability score improvements and feats, if only to improve survival chances.
It would never be as good as a PC, but at least it'll be better than the original.
Precisely my thinking. You can customize your character, why not the beast? It gives you a utility especially if you are playing with a smaller than normal group ergo 2 or less players kinda like when it's feasible to use gestalt characters for low player games. Besides, look at all the other classes that get numerous companions, I'm looking at you Walock with your skeleton army. Hell you could even flavor it where instead of recasting the spell like warlocks do for keeping minions, you could very easily be like, ok so you didn't feed the animal today or interact with it outside of combat today, now every time you want to take a separate action with it, roll a D20, evens he obeys, odds he ignores you. The longer it goes, evens/odds and anything below 5 fails then 10. After that if the abuse and neglect continues the animal straight up abandons you. It would take some testing but I see it being feasible.
Honestly even just allowing higher Cr companions as you level could fix it. That way giving up your attack could actually be decent. I know that wouldn’t be liked by players who get attached with their companion.
Unique companions that can be flavoured as anything makes a really good fix tho, it gets around the weakness of having certain companions be straight up better as it’s a unique 3 pet system that can be balanced within itself. It also allows them to control the scaling easily. Even without barding adding proficiency to its AC would be enough I think, or maybe even give the different sizes armour proficiency’s so that barding isn’t even a thought it’s a built in thing from the get go no need to add a system for getting barding for each companion.
It does lose out on one thing tho... the unique abilities some companions had. The big spider for downing targets needed alive, the crabs grappling, the flying snakes cool factor and poison farming. Maybe give them the ability to choose the form of a creature within a certain Cr and steal an action from the stat block (but keep the rest separate) in order to add a more mechanical representation of different pets while also adding crazy customization
You have a really good idea!
They took the opportunity to improve and fix the beastmaster with the class feature variants UA. They provided improved companion options that are more in line with what the Battle Smith provided as a companion. So far the feedback on the UA has been overwhelmingly positive, so it is highly likely it will make it into an official book.
Im gonna make a homebrew beastmaster ranger for my campaigns on par with what abilities artificer has, and then give the rangers pet an edge over the artificer, because a BEASTMASTER should have the best PET system. Its their entire concept, and to have another class whoms concept is different entirely and outclass it with a single ability is just insulting.
I guess they did finally get around to making changes needed for Beast Masters. Seems pretty good to me now.
Firstly not letting the past hold back the flow of the game is just begging for power creep. There are a lot of thing where power creep is good and/or acceptable, Like video games series like borderlands as the sandbox improves the newer player characters look like they could mop the floor with the older ones. Which is great to play. Power creep is bad when there are overlaps like how both BM Ranger and Artificer both exist at the same time as it devalues something. Wizards aren't making 'video games', they're making 'DLC'. power creep is unhealthy for a co-operative story telling game. Where your fun is directly proportional to being part of the team, when you can feel like dead weight.
Secondly if I may be so bold to throw my under experienced hat it the ring of game design, especially with the likes of Jeremy Crawford. But I think beast-master can be fixed pretty easily and without a lot of hassle just by beefing up the phb one and giving it the UA selection criteria, better hit point scaling, and a spell list which focuses on logistical weaknesses on having a medium or large sized pet. The core ranger class isn't weak by any means (it out paces a fighter from level two with hunters mark until level 11 by which it already has conjurer animals which is god tier in action economy), it's the sub-classes that let it down. The pet in beast master is too weak and the hunter is good though if you're allowed to play the Ua one there is no reason not to for the extra damage from favorite enemy and various other boons.
Mainly just give the ranger the Companion's bond trait from UA asi make the pet functional. Make commanding them to attack a bonus action (no reaction), only one attack no multi-attack and give the ranger back extra attack at 5th. (monks get three attacks at level 2, why not let the little halfling whose only thing is he has a bear actually use the bear.)
The rest of the class abilities are the phb ones because they're better imo.
EXCEPTIONAL TRAINING
Beginning at 7th level, on any of your turns when
your beast companion doesn't attack, you can use a bonus action to command the beast to take the Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action on its turn.
(Great ability, help action is great for your giant owl if you don't want to be mounted, the usefulness of this is only limited to the PCs creativity. Make the bear in his adorable breastplate barding dodge and you don't have to worry about him getting swarmed.)
BESTIAL FURY
Starting at 11th level, your beast companion can
make two attacks when you command it to use the
attack action.
Give them magic natural weapon attacks at this level too.
SHARE SPELLS
Beginning at 15th level, when you cast a spell targeting
yourself, you can also affect your beast companion with the spell if the beast is within 30 feet of you.
Lol "I cast Polymorph and my character proclaims, "MAN BEAST CLONE! FANG OVER FANG!" But really this is a super powerful capstone if you use it right, honerable mentions are enlarge, lesser restoration, cure wounds, protection from energy, guardian of nature, polymorph, darkvision. More DM dependent are zephyr strike, ensnaring strike, and if you have a pet ape LIGHTNING ARROW!!!... But they might take some convincing.
Next a spell list; 1st Beast bond, 5th Enlarge/Reduce, 9th Revivify, 13th polymorph, 17th commune with nature.
This might seem too strong but someone in the party needs spells like this to counteract the complications a panther, elk, bear, wolf brings to the table, might as well be you. You'd probably take beast bond anyway. Reduce answers the age old problem of how do we get the dire wolf up to the dragons cave - put the puppy in a bag, and enlarge is a great spell to have for rp or combat. Revivify... strong pick, but you're not just gonna let sugar muffin go before his time. Polymorph because sometimes a bear isn't the best choice (was thinking guardian of nature for the synergy with shared spells, but you can take that yourself and this helps with taking them to weird places. Also this could maybe step on the toes of a moon druid so idk, but at this point they do have elemental shapes so... Commune with nature is really only here to fill space you already have enough great spells so this is your token 5th with a little utility that the druid had for the last 6 levels, lets try not to get greedy.
what power creep? most campaigns end around lvl 10 because dm's dont want their players to become lvl 20 gods. if "power creep" is really such a prevailing threat to d&d, dm's will eventually just do away with leveling and have players remain at lvl 1.
Honestly the new beast master ranger fix honestly is so good man.
great video my dude, keep it up the good work
I think we need more content creators outside the Wizards community trying to dissect how stuff like the Beastmaster and the 4 Elements Monk made it into the PHB we got.
I really like that they haven't let past mistakes keep them from making new releases how they should be. I would say to Jeremy Crawford, "dont worry about who's happy and who's not (when it comes to the Beastmaster) just do it right and that's good enough"
so basicly he's just like... yeah instead of fix things that are broken we're just going to power creep till we have feature bloat and then jump ship and start all over with 6e. great. thats been the massive complaint people have had with DND for ever now.. you know that it just seems that all of the expansions inevitably eclipse the power of the original material to the point that the entire game has to be re balanced around that and it suffers for it because now players who want to play a subclass from the PHB are at a inherent disadvantage compared to someone who wants something from an expansion because of the significant difference in power.. PHB+1 rules are only a band-aid BTW and don't actually fix the issue. they just hamper creativity in allot of situations. I can still build a barbarian rogue multiclass killing machine straight from the PHB
For the Hunter I don't have anything, I instead give them the Warrior Sidekick for the Ranger Companion.
Every class does ranger better than the actual freaking ranger XD
The biggest thing is that, d&d isn't a video game, so they can't just magically "update" something, without printing it in a new book, which would cost people more money AND create a bit of more confusion for newer players who have the phb, like myself. And a pdf isn't the answer because the original is still in the phb and, again newer players, may not know to go look for it. You also can't errata it, since like I mentioned, that would mean buying ANOTHER book.
There really isn't any great way to avoid power creep in this instance, and at least there's a "proper beast master" class now, to some extent.
Guess you got your wish in Tasha's with the beast master companions being similar to the steel defender.
AND the Paladin gets a warhorse better than either of them that can act for free.
m fix for beast master is to just cherry pick features from the ranger subclass and revised ranged conclaive subclasses. You can wind up with a powerful build that way, the beast can attack twice as an action and once as a reaction, so this ranger winds up making 5 attacks including all of that. I think its a solid fix
Thanks for the insight on this. Its nice to hear about the Wizards perspective on new material and not adhering to old concepts.
I think the only way we get major changes to the core classes is by doing a 5.5 edition the other change i would love is all characters get a +1 to an unmodified stat ot aa feat and get rid of human variant
Human variant makes sense for most things. Some people make their kids practice violin every day since they were five, if you live in a world with zombies and dragons and mindflayers your ex-military dad might just drill you on the crossbow enough loading it is second nature or you can hit vitals like crazy despite cover. I don't think it takes much away from other classes and taking standard human in some cases can feel like wasting three points. like if you rolled all evens
I agree with Crawford. No change will ever fix the beast master because people have such a skewed perception of it. Truth be told I think the revised ranger may have made things worse. I personally think the time would be better spent on trying to maximize the gains of the tools the class already gives and actually understand the mechanics of the class as a whole. You can home brew it all you want, but at the end of the day the PHB Beast master is what we are stuck with and I honestly think people need to give it a fresh look because they might find something that they missed.
Honestly the idea that it's skewed is in itself flawed. It actually is that bad. Wizards started whining about people calling it out and now there's this "skewed" narrative.
I wonder if you combine the beast master ranger and battle smith Artaficer then you could get the best of both classes just a thought
I mean, you could also have a Battle Master Artificer with only 13 Intelligence and high Dexterity and Wisdom who was given their Steel Defender because they have great potential.
Here is the way that i have fixed the beastmaster/Artaficer battlesmith problem brought up in this great video ddb.ac/characters/36433040/tMRIoj
What I hear is feel free to make house rules. The people who work at wizards of the coast get hurt by workplace drama as well; and rules loyars hurt the game on so many levels.
Tasha entered the chat
First of all, I agree with your thinking about how should be handle the content onwards. If the new content will have advances in comparision to old mechanics (Battlesmith using a similar, yet improved, Beastmaster Pet mechanic), the loop should be closed with getting something with Beastmaster done. Most games that rely on constant balance or in adding new content are always taking old stuff and trying to keep everything at a "Same Level".
There are many other games (MMORPGs, MOBAs among others that might get out of my mind now) that once there are a new Design Philosophy on the things brought in new books, they try to add that same style to the older content.
And about the Beastmaster. I prefer many of the features that were published in the original version (+Errata patches). It is a complicated situation but, things that could change for good could be:
1.- As @Marco Espinosa wrote, limiting the companions to a template (or series of it) could make things got handle better.
2.- Taking away the "You can have a companion but you are restricted EXPLICITLY from the beginning" mentality of the subclass and replacing it with any other thing could do a favor about it.
Aside from that, you gained a new subscriber. Have a good time in RUclips!
It's was fine then. It's fine now.
Although some Beast Master Spells would be nice. That's homebrew for ya.
I would like Level 1 and level 2 Ranger abilities to be massaged. I like the openness of UA Ranger for level 1 and 2 and the finished look of Xanathars for level 3 onward. I hate having to choose something before the campaign even starts and just presuming it will never come up.
your dm should really just tell you what works. if you're a vampire hunter you have no business getting hired or sent to fight a dragon by some random dude.
Seems like that philosophy makes all the new stuff better than old stuff. Why get the old stuff then? Seems like patching the old stuff is a better option. Updating books ppl alrdy bought would kinda suck but making the game better is good lol.
Power Creep sells the new books, always has. I bought a book in 3.5 just for one feat.
If you remember 4th edition, the most recent books had classes that outright outclassed the originals.
It's not news.
That is a great philosophy and all, but it is kind of bullshit at the same time. Not letting the past affect the future is fine, but when that philosophy actively makes a better version of a previous class/race/subclass, then the philosophy is an issue. It is effectively saying the past does not matter. Which is hilarious considering that if the past did not matter, they would stop publishing older material. They have the opportunity to improve and fix older classes/races that have been left behind by newer material that is just flat out better.
Fans can be annoying. I understand. There are times when you have to ignore them because some of their ideas are just awful (look at all the Homebrew stuff that is unbalanced and broken). However, they also have good ideas. You at least need to listen and show an effort that you are listening and trying to understand where they are coming from.
Wizards has annoyed the hell out of me for a while now. I feel like they have gotten out of touch with their fan base. They have also kind of alienated older fans and other fans with some of their philosophies and comments. Treating them like they do not matter because they have new fans or giving horrible justifications for new designs (like 5E being simplified because older editions were too complex for women to understand). At this point, I feel like I am going to have to act like Wizards and just ignore them on some of their very stupid policies and do whatever I want.
100% they are going to have power creep. Many new subclasses are just outright better than the old ones, and it is very likely we are going to end up with a pretty bland game where each class has like 1 or maybe 2 of the more recent subclasses that are worth playing, while pretty much all the others are subpar and only for RP-focused games.
This philosophy is more of an ideology. Radicals have little love for the old. Embrace the power creep of MMOrpgs.
I at least D&D would put in revised ranger as an option
What I expected clicking on this video: A rundown on the strengths and weaknesses of the artificer battlesmith vs the ranger beastmaster.
What I got clicking on this video: 11 minutes of a man being super salty and unable to let go of the second worst thing to happen to d&d archery.
I like the beast master ranger but it is a bit underpowered. Somebody please convince them to upgrade the beast master ranger!
Casting "Dispel Rule Lawyers" ....D&D is what the DM makes of it and what the players can agree. Change the class rule if it doesn't work. This has been true since Original D&D. This isn't Championship Tournament X-Wing lol.
I think Mr. Crawford hates the complaints and believes the class is fine as is and has no real interest in fixing the ranger, at all. It'd be simple to just print an alternate ranger class in a supplement, with a header saying "Use either this or the original version, not both, and official products will use the original" Done.
that's just the revised ranger ua
Poor Chris.
Eh, PHB Beastmaster is fine because you're not limited to a CR level maximum.
In a world (5th edition) where 'balance' seems to be the watchword, the Beastmaster is ridiculous. D&D Beyond charts the races, classes, and sub-classes that are created. Far and away the Human Fighter is the most popular and for several good reasons. Human (and by that I mean the Variant because why would you use the other?) Looking at the metrics, the Beast-Master of ANY race is at or near the bottom of the list. The fact that you can now build a BETTER Beast-Master without actually using the class is silly. The math says it. The players say it. The text says it. For Jeremy Crawford to simply ignore the issue means that they aren't concerned which is a shame. They should want ALL of their products (and let's face it, that's what we're buying) to be good.
Maybe they're just saving certain improvements for the next eventual Edition lol
If every new book updates current subclasses the game is going to get WAY too confusing. I love the concept of beastmaster, but it's mechanics are bad. That being said the same way that swift action is a proto bonus action that was added into 3.5 and didn't revise the existence classes, but was there in the start of 5e as the bonus action, it's entirely possible for revisions to classes and subclasses to happen in whatever the next edition is when it happens.
With the advent of a digital source, it's easy to have a set standard, unless you remove racial abilities like what's happening with the Triton in the new Theros book.
Beastmaster works the way I think they intended it. Your weapon is your companion and unless that animal is taken out your turns are commanding it. I usually play them as a whip user. I even had one with a goblin who had the mounted combatant feat and pair it with a wolf, that wolf always had advantage. The issue is that people want it to be the hunter from WoW and it just isn't meant to be.
i think the problem with that, is that if you want it to be a class that is built around only commanding the pet (which i think is a fine, if not ideal, design path) you need the pet to be strong enough to compete with even your own damage, let alone any other class's damage.
think like shepherd druid or something, they can justify their turns/concentration being consumed by minion control bc it makes up for it. playing beastmaster and spending your turns commanding your pet does not
No, the issue is that people want the subclass to be somewhat progressively more playable as you level up and given better options to do the thing they designed it to, a common ranger problem.
Also why do some older dnd players decide to obnoxiously blame criticism of flagrantly weak design on people playing (insert video game here)?
It doesn't help any argument and really only makes dnd's older community look ironically like a bunch of young dweebs who perceive asking wotc to actually attempt to lightly support past content as a lack of game knowledge.
I'd argue to not change it. a lot of people get the PHB to get into dnd, and having one of the classes reworked, just makes the source material out dated, best to save changes for 6e.
People can still play Beastmaster, its under powered but its playable, and if thats the play style you want, go for it.
If you play in any game where the dm doesn't hold your groups hand it isn't playable not only do you not contribute to the party you create a weak link any intelligent enemy will exploit.
That's very obtuse, especially considering free or low price pdf could be used.
If they printed a whole new phb then it's because they wanted not because of just one update.
Gameplay style?
I don't believe that people new to dnd wants to pick a class only for it to be consistently underpowered.
Sorry, Ted, but that's bullshite. I understand not wanting to fix anything from the PHB because that's the past, but not fixing the PHB sorcerer subclasses are why they won't grant thematic spells or bonus spells to new subclasses. Mike M. has said that, Jeremy has said that, it's "good enough" as is. So they're not consistent with their own rules unless the rule is make sure the sorcerer has the fewest spells known of ANY of the full caster classes. Thanks for nothing, Crawford!!
Fine with the philosophy. It's just that the original ranger with it's subclasses are so shitty that they are in practice unplayable. I almost feel like taking a pair of scissors and cutting them out of the PH and burning them. The revised ranger limited to just those two subclasses could have done a lot to fix the issue, especially if it were released as an errata and put in every new PH printed going forward. I can't believe there are any 5e players anywhere who "like the original", seems like a complete BS reason to me. I could btw. tell that this is a touchy subject for you as well, since in your intro just before the NI logo your right hand went towards the right side of your screen, presumably to take yet another drink of whiskey to plough through this subject yet again.
A shockingly accurate description of my feelings on all accounts
Hunter also sucks balls. I love ranger (mostly gloom stalker) and had a guy at my table play a ranger hunter and omg he gave up and had that his ranger "leave" the group and revert back to a dang fighter.. he had asked my advice on what to play and ignored it (yes this was a year or more ago) and because of that 1 thing he says all ranger classes suck. till i brought a revised ranger using the gloom stalker to the table and showed him what a properly built ranger can do. best part is the game i brought a gloom stalker into was taking place in the under dark. guess who had more kills between my tiefling gloomstalker (6)/rouge (5)/fighter(1) with a hand crossbow (yes sharpshooter and crossbow expert) vs his pure level 12 human fighter champion (defense/dueling, shield master and sentinel feats)..
I don't really think there's any reason to go back... Just like everything in d&d it's an ever evolving modular toolkit you can piece together at will without Wizard's permission. Take every improvement to companion mechanics you love about battlesmith and just cut and paste it into beastmaster. They're your "legos"... You can build what you want with them ;) i think that was Jeremy's point about not going back and fixing the unfixable... BUT if they fix "mechanic a" with battlesmith, and "mechanic b" with something else and address the issues ad-hoc in other classes everyone ends up with a codified and scaled set of examples they can cobble together into the "PERFECT BEASTMASTER" wizards could never roll out for every player with a full class overhaul. If homebrew is the inevitable outcome because there's no consensus on a real fix, just starting at homebrew is the only one step solution... It's good enough to be adaptable as-is, so turn the old adage on its head and "don't break what ain't fixed" xP
I have arrived from the future. They fixed it.
That's a shitty way to look at the game... It just becomes eternal powercreep when they aren't willing to be retroactive with existing classes. It feels horrible to look at the new stuff and then compare it to how awful the old stuff is. If you have a new mechanic, say bonus actions as an example. All classes deserve to be updated to reflect this. Period. The past isn't holding you back, not a single bit. It honestly sounds like an excuse to be summed up as. "We don't feel like dealing with it. Just Homebrew it."
meh...I mean yeah the beast master is objectively worse than comparable classes and its sad to see the revised ranger gone... BUT I feel like people tend to forget we're talking about DnD here. It's a game you're supposed to play WITH your friends (including the DM). And while you might not feel as powerful being a beast master in the same party with a battle smith, they still each enable different fantasies and character archetypes. It's not impossible as a DM to come up with challenges that let each class get some time in the spotlight, also WOTC has always encouraged homebrew so there's nobody stopping you from bringing the beast master in line with the battle smith pet. While I don't want to dispute the fact that this subclass is comparatively weak while at the same time being quite rule heavy and complicated, I think its still strong enough to go through a 1-20 campaign without being a liability to the party and fulfilling a satisfying character arc.
The beast master is not unplayable and someone who likes the idea of a ranger with a pet should still play it...and will most likely have good time doing so. I don't believe online discussions about something being over- or undertuned should affect someones decision to play their favourite PC concept.
I always get this feeling when reddit demands buffs or reworks for beast master or four elements monk:
Is it weaker? Yes! .... Is it fun? Yes! .... Is it still strong enough? Honestly, yes!
Yeah WOTC could do something...but they don't need to imo.
It's a bullshit answer for someone who doesn't want to mess with something. Not being able to please everyone as an excuse for not taking action is childish. Don't open a business if your goal is to please everyone. You won't be able to. Just understand the people won't play that class so you might as well not print it. Or...their DM will have to let them change it. Mind you...I'm cool with the basic idea of tweaking anything...but..it's a little hard for a DM to manage an infinite number of options.
That philosophy is how power creep happens.
Seems like wizards almost treats D&D like they have MTG this whole time... not surprising really..
A lot of well dressed whining. Waaah people were mean on the internet! I'm not going to do my job!
just sounds lazy to me.
SOUNDS good. Horse shit. WoC's version of progress is reminiscent of RA Salvatore's books after he was forced to advance time 100yrs. The world teetered between believable and bazaar (fantasy), and people loved that position. Then in order to force a more comprehensive overhaul for product development, they insisted that the world be opened to complete absurdity. With every supplement, they are making obsolete the more practical challenges in the original world, abandoning the balance that made the beginning popular. And why? Laziness. It's easier to ignore balancing rules all together when introducing new products. They expect more from the GMs than they expect from themselves.