First, just a reminder that the UA Revised Ranger was officially dropped from further development by the WoTC design team. It has not seen further updates since 2018 (even before the release of XGTE!). Second, many commenters have pointed out that commanding the Tasha's Beastmaster's beast twice to attack probably does not generate additional attacks (as it doesn't give the beast extra actions). This is a well-reasoned correction. Thanks!
does it change your ranking opinion? or the better action economy that make useful the area denial of a semi tank beastmaster is still worth the "A" rank?
@@adeptmage2293 i think its like this: Bonus A: beast attack twice ranger attack twice, for a total of 4 attacks at lvl 11, or Bonus A: spell with BA speed, Ranger attack once and give beast attack action, beast attack twice. a total of 3 attacks and the chance to use a BA spell.
@@jcdenton2187 Gloomstalker deep enough to get the darkvision invisibility and then rogue otherwise for those sweet sweet advantage sneak attacks, beautiful
Rangers problem is how situational it is as a class. Its a class almost designed around running modules instead of homebrew as you can build a ranger to fit in with the module (ie running Straud build one who fights well in swamps and against the undead, or SKT build one who fights well in mountains and against giants) and be great where as homebrew you dont know what to expect so half your features are useless
@@zacharyrodriguez4348 Base ranger is garbage that would have greatly benefitted from the Hunter Archetypes. Abilities which would have made the original Beast Master not so bad. But then they would have had only 1 archetype at start.
@@niratcire Revised ranger has a much better beast companion and allows black bear. Your go too if you want to do this subclass or the Tasha version as you can make beast of the land a bear if you want.
Attacking with your beast is “the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals” XD Thanks for all the laughs Dungeon Dudes! Love the comedy both here and in your Drakkenheim series.
I think it might be die to homebrew rules. Or the fact that their DM allowed them to have higher CR beasts (allowed by RAW). The entire subclass can be fixed by allowing beast companions to roll their own initiatives and add their stat block's CON mod to their HP.
Or they bit grass and took it for spamming help actions and flanking. Giant poisonous snake also adds a lot of damage in campaigns that cover low levels only.
Although it can be flying one, so if you play small race, you can have flying mount as soon as lvl three. I for instance, play with Halfling on Pteranodon, and it is awesome!
One thing that's incorrect here is that you can't sacrifice your attack AND use your bonus action to have your beast attack. Both options read that they let you command them to take an action. It's still a creature and can therefore still only take a single action on its turn. As such, you can't command it twice to take two actions during its turn. The "sacrifice your attack" option is still great, though, because it means you can still make effective use of bonus action spells. Primarily something like guardian of nature. Regardless of that, I still think the revised beast master is amazing. It's so much more effective than the old beast master it's uncanny. I think it's easily an A or even S tier.
Yeah, I was gonna point out that misinterpretation of the rules too I wonder if not attacking four times would change the dudes' ranking of the new Beastmaster
I guess it theoretically makes it a little worse. Since you can't really make a beast master focussed around attacking many times with the beast. But the beasts are all generally good. And they do decent damage and are tankier. But it's still a great subclass. You get a good way to weaponize your bonus action. Sure, doesn't work with hunters mark. But then again, you can use other spells. Also, you can benefit of this bonus action regardless of whether or not you have attacked yourself (in contrast to a horizon walker or a monster hunter) In comparison: A battlesmith's steel defender only ever gets one attack that does less damage than any of your beasts on average. Of course, the steel defender makes up for it with a decent reaction. Also, share spells has always been a fantastic feature. You just didn't have a good enough beast to use it. But using guardian of nature for primal beast form on the beast (and great tree on yourself) gives your beast +1d6 attack and advantage on all attacks
Without searching through stat blocks while on my lunch break, don't quite a few beasts get multiattack, in regards to OG BM? If it does, then two attacks at lv3 is pretty good, right? Same as new BM taking both action and bonus action to get those same two attacks?
I mean, in TCoE lets you swap out almost every other early level feature for something else whenever you gain a ability point improvement, so the same logic could be aplied to favorite terrain and favorite enemy. Or just replace them.
@@DHTheAlaskan This is homebrewed into my game. After an hour in a new terrain, the ranger can choose to apply the natural explorer features. The DM even let us consider "urban" an attunable environment, which was a fun vibe. The ranger was RPing that people are still animals, and can be tracked just the same.
I think that it should perhaps be a bit more than just a short rest to switch out but yeah I think natural explorer with the ability to switch it out with a bit of effort is way better than deft explorer.
Yeah, a lot of "defenses" of the Beastmaster treat it like ablative armor. Send it out, get it killed, keep going. Which is the exact opposite of what people want to do with that class.
Yeah... I always ask to have it reflavored into an animal totem spirit. So instead of death is simply sheds the corporeal form and the ritual is to provide a new physical body.
I always tell my players that Ranger is the class that was made for multiclassing. Thematically the Ranger is meant to be a guardian of a particular area but, by the very nature of the game itself, the Ranger is forced out of their Favored Terrain and travels to other areas. Their skills as a Ranger are useful but eventually they realize they need to learn new skills to survive. For example: Aragorn is a Ranger who multiclassed into Fighter. His hunting and tracking skills were useful but he needed more combat skills since they were in a war. Anyway just thought I’d put in my two cents.
thats a good evocative and storry friendly way to tell your players that the ranger is a decent martialbase that they need to improve themselfs. but as a gamedesigner i can't really se it as anything other than bad design since all classes should be able to stand on their own feet.
Aragorn is played by a guy who came up to the DM and said "Hey, remember when we got lost in the Mirkwood for six sessions? That's not happening anymore. My new guy is 80 years old and has walked all of Middle Earth. They call him Strider because of just how much he walks!"
I'd love if Favored Terrain had a Totem Barbarian style feature. Oh you chose Desert? Fire resistance, adv on survival. Forest? Climbing speed, adv on nature and survival related to tracking and hunting beasts. So it's more about how you've learned to adapt to your situation based on where you learned to hunt.
*runs to grab popcorn* let’s see how this goes. Edit: I completely agree with everything you guys said here. Pretty much everything from the Hunter class should have simply been part of the base Ranger class to begin with and Beastmaster was basically worthless until the Tasha revision. On a similar note, I think that the Fighter class (though there's nothing actually wrong with it) would benefit from taking some if not most of the features from the Champion and Purple Dragon Knight subclasses and making those part of the base class.
to be fair, putting Champion and PDK features in base Fighter would probably make the actually good fighter subclasses (Battlemaster, Echo/Eldritch Knight) way too broken. i can only imagine the destruction a Half-Orc (Savage Attacker) Battlemaster with Improved Critical could cause.
@@jayhill8892 eh. it's not as strong as it could be but it's certainly still good, with all its ASIs (you get 3 ASIs prior to level 11) you can take advantage of feats like GWM, Polearm Master, or XBE, and probably still have 20 str/dex depending which build you go for. with champion's features added, at their respective levels, let's say you pick the Eldritch Knight archetype. that means by level 3 you'd have: 1d10 + 3 extra hit points per long rest (2nd Wind) Action Surge Crits on 19/20 2 wizard cantrips 3 first-level wizard spells Weapon Bond now imagine you're playing a half-orc with Savage Attacker for better crit damage, or a v human with which you took any of the aforementioned feats, or even Lucky to improve your chances of landing a crit. crit fishing is a very niche playstyle that requires multiple different synergies to work well, and i think being able to fish for crits while also having spells, an echo knight, maneuvers, superiority dice, etc. is a little broken. i agree with you that champion is a lackluster subclass, but it's not quite lackluster enough to warrant being merged with the base class imo. especially since you mentioned fighters need help below level 11, but once they cross that threshold they become incredibly powerful.
@@jayhill8892 just realized i wrote way too much lol. to summarize, i think champion is weak on its own but with racial/feat synergies it's really good, so adding it to base fighter would make existing A-S tier subclasses broken
Guys, they didn't change the title because that's an action and uploading the video is another action. It was done like that because we're talking about Beast Master here. . . . Yeah, I have no idea. I'll show myself the exit for the terrible joke
@@travisdonaldstanley6420 Yeah, this is why I disagree with their "C" rating. I think "B" is more accurate. I do not think this subclass has any "traps" unless you make the wrong choices.
@@gregevans4126 Thanks for the feedback. I gave up on these guys long ago. They are very intelligent and I applaud their drive, but they are so biased towards magic and some of the things they say are wrong to me.
With a few tweaks and some additional options, Hunter could've been an awesome martial Ranger. If we get a revised Hunter for 5.5, I would love to see them go all in on it being the archetype with no bonus utility or magic, just a set of powerful combat features. It could work as the "Drizzt archetype" if they went all in on that.
"The pact of the chain has a better pet" So does the paladin. Level 5 Pally mounted on a warhorse kicks ass. At higher level it gets a griffon. This is a design flaw at every level. Complete failure by the designers of the game.
Find Steed is just an amazing spell. Played a paladin a campaign and being able to summon a warhorse opens up a huge amount of options for a level 2 spell. The mobility a mount offers is fantastic even without the mounted combat feat. The mount even lasts more than 24 hours means you can summon one during downtime and then prepare a new spell the day after and still keep the horse.
Step 1: Cast Find Steed or Find Greater Steed Step 2: Mount Steed Step 3: Cast a Smite spell Step 4: Dismount Steed. You and your steed can now make a smite attack each. Alternatively, choose to let your steed act independently and step 4 is unnecessary.
Ans theorycally It can also Stack (If not wrong) making the Monster Slayer basically a lvl5 rogue with 3d6 extra damage (Hunters Mark, Pray of the Slayer and the New feature).
@@avichaid6021 and because it doesn’t stack, foe slayer is decent enough that HM doesn’t need to be taken to keep with on damage output. This frees up the spell knowledge for something else. I love that!
@@goaftertheway I've kept both in my arsenal even if I can't use them at the same time. Hunters mark is saved for bosses where the little bit of extra damage it offers ca be worth the spell slot. But I agree, love the addition.
@@Turai12 that’s fair. I get it and may grab it at higher levels. HM is significantly more powerful being every hit vs once a turn. Not to mention the d4 vs d6. However for lower levels I just like that I have a spell known slot reserved for something for Ranger-Flavor IMO like alarm, good berry, beast bond or speak with animals. Cure wounds and hail of thorns or ensnaring strike seam like the other staples.
I've been playing a Revised Ranger with the Gloomstalker subclass for well over a year now, but I did ask about picking up the Summon Beast spell from Tasha's, which my DM allowed. Just with that spell and ordering the little Fae Beast Spirit about, it really was like I was a better Beastmaster than the PHB Beastmaster.
The new beast master has actually given me an interest in playing a ranger. Also, I really like that idea of a beast master that fights with a quarterstaff using Shillelagh. Reminds me of a character from The Last Apprentice novels who fought with a staff and had these 2 hounds with him. He would feed them the hearts of witches he had killed, as witches will otherwise rise as a form of undead when killed. Cremation also works. P.S. I'm not done with the novels yet, so no spoilers.
Same the only thing I would ask my DM is can I use the Favored Foe text from the original UA revision because it makes the hunters mark spell from the class not require my concentration
@@brianhalligan9268 Hunter's mark is kinda bad on a beastmaster since you dont attack often and the beast doesnt trigger it. Tasha's one is kinda good since you most likely attack once a round and it trigger once a round too and it doesnt take concentration but rather act like you do for the purpose of loosing it on being hit! So, you can still concentrate on other spells!
I started feeling defensive because I'm playing a Hunter in my current campaign, but then I started to think about it. Most of the reasons he is effective are because of the Sharpshooter Feat and the Archery Fighting Style. Horde Breaker, the only subclass feature I've unlocked so far, is useful and comes up frequently, but it pales in comparison to what the same campaign's Oath of the Ancients Paladin can do with his auras. The other reason he's useful, utility spellcasting and healing, are core Ranger features, not from the archetype. Yeah, I've gotta say, I agree that it's not a good subclass. I'd put it as a B instead of a C, but your ruling isn't unreasonable, given that there are some bad choices in there. I'm hoping my GM will let me swap archetypes at my next ASI, because since we started the campaign we got the books for Xanathar's and Tasha's and all the other, much more interesting Ranger subclasses, and I'd like to try them out.
You can't really compare features across classes that way. If you look at other Ranger subclasses, the Hunter is actually pretty strong. I think the community is spot on with a toss between A and B, a C rating is... questionable.
The thing is, Hordebreaker, Multiattack Defence, & Volley are literally the correct options to take. Everything else is a trap. Hordebreaker is a free attack to enemy buddy, Multiattack defence scales wonderfully at higher levels to try and stop that fucking dragon tearing you to shreds, Volley is situational but your charcter can create the situation that it becomes useful, and its a way to obliterate groups of enemies without relying on fire damage from fireball. You get those abilities, its a B tier. Everything else, its C. I agree with their ratings, you are just avoiding their traps.
@@RagerRagerRagerRager I would argue that the Hunter should be measured by its best optional abilities, not by the average - as it is literally the choice of the player, nothing keeps you from picking the strongest combo. So looking at the video, I feel some kind of inconsistency- as a similar argument could be made for example for the battlemaster, but if you look at the fighter tier list, the dungeon dudes do not make any caveat with their S-tier ranking because one could pick some of the weaker maneuvers. Furthermore, I have to say that I definitely disagree with what you describe as the 'literally correct options'. I'd consider Colossus Slayer the superior choice at 3rd level, and at 7th level it is reasonable to say that Escape the Horde might be more useful depending on the group and the Ranger you're playing. Whirlwind Attack is clearly weaker than Volley, but an obvious choice if you're playing a melee Hunter, and Evasion vs. Uncanny Dodge isn't a clear one either.
One of my players plays a Beastmaster. I've changed up a lot of things to make it a better subclass for him, namely, he has a Wyrmling (admittedly one with a homebrew statblock) as the companion, and it has its own turn in combat. it's worked out really well and there's an adorable father daughter bond going on between them
The only good thing going for Hunter ranger imo, is that Colossus Slayer doesn't use your bonus action. That means a lot when you want to have it free for Hunter's Mark/other bonus action spells/two weapon fighting/crossbow expert. What I wish Tasha's beasts let you do was choose Small or Medium for any of the given stat blocks. SCAG mentioned how Ghostwise halflings rode giant owls and letting Beast of the Air be a Medium creature would let you do that. And it would let you have Small land animals too, which is something that, while easier to convince a DM to allow, would be nice to have as a RAW option.
One absolutely minor correction at 16:30 rituals take 10 minutes + the normal time to cast the spell. So ritual casting find familiar takes an hour and 10 minutes not just 10 minutes. This doesn't change anything important in the video it just is to correct a very common error. I'm loving the videos that you guys make! I hope you keep up the great work and have a spectacular rest of your day :)
Fey Wanderer, Gloomstalker, and the revised Beastmaster have given the ranger some of the most mechanically-supported subclasses in the game, in my opinion. Great flavor, but more importantly, the ability to do the things you should be able to do based on that flavor. The hardest part of my next character is going to be choosing between the three.
I'm a simple man, I see an opportunity to rag on 5e Ranger and I click. Even the title isn't given as much attention as the other videos, just like 5e Ranger :^)
@@Hesauce I rag on Ranger because I love Ranger. Played one all the way to level 12, and then either died or got KO'd literally every fight up until level 17 when the campaign ended. And that was WITH the Revised Ranger
The PHB Beast Master Ranger was my first ever character I used in D&D, I wish Tasha's was out at the time so I could've used the revised version. Regardless I still had a bucket load of fun and I still love the hell out of this amazing role-playing game
I once actually thought of a way to make the beastmaster viable. Yeah, the PHB one. It's super niche... But can be amazing. Be a halfling. Take a pteranodon companion. A cr 1/4 creature, medium size, with a flying speed Now you don't need to care about it attacking anymore. The pteranodon can just take the dodge action each turn, while you rain arrows down from above. And it gets better. After 5th level you can take two levels of rogue. Halflings can hide behind medium creatures. (And since your enemies are looking at you from below you're technically behind your mount). Now you can hide as a bonus action then attack with advantage every round.
Thank god Tasha's came out right before I started playing D&D. I always felt drawn to the Beastmaster when reading about the different classes and subclasses but it obviously stinks. Then I found a game on the LFG subreddit right when Tasha's came out and suddenly I could realize my character ideas that I had tucked away.
Loving this series! REALLY REALLY REALLY hoping you guys will go back once it's all over and look at all the sub-classes you gave a 'D' ranking and make recommendations on how to improve them, even if it's recommending others' fixes.
hi, recently found your channel and have been listening to the subclass guides. Great Stuff! your comments on hunter, and a few other like champion in the fighters, kind of solidified a thought I have. all classes have at least one subclass which is for all intents and purposes the "default" class, if you were coming from older editions (fighter champions, rogue thieves, paladins of devotion, barbarian berserkers, etc.). while they might not be as exiting or unique as some of the other options, is is very nice to have an "old school" default. most of the other subclasses remind me of the old add2e "brown series" that offered kits to transform your class into something more/different. and, on that note, on bards...well, the last time bards were this awesome was the original add1e bard that was actually a 20th level character (the first prestige class, if you will) that required you to take levels in fighter, their, and wizard. happy gaming guys!
The Hunter also notably has the most decision points of any ranger subclass, allowing you to tailor your build to your play style and your role in the party. Despite mostly focusing on offensive options, the Hunter is arguably the most durable ranger archetype, as it has the most options to directly prevent the Ranger from taking damage. Something that I think people may miss. Swarmkeeper is probably my fave, but Hunter honestly is not too bad.
I think the fact that it uses your bonus action instead of an action to command the beast makes the class just drastically better by itself. Also the fact that it scales with you makes it definitely better. You can get items that boost your wisdom or depending on the wording the dm's discretion something that increases your spell attack bonus could, not always but could, increase the beasts power makes it so much better.
Favored Foe: no concentration; Deft explorer: another expertise (maybe at lvl 6??); Additional ranger spells: dispel magic (maybe find familiar); all subclasses get a exclusive spell list; Beast master: printed errata to the lvl 7 ability "your companion's attacks are magical" --------BAAAM, all rangers become awesome.
I’ve been running a BM Ranger for this current campaign for probably around 8 months and it ridiculously limited. And I’ve had more fun playing without a pet than the short periods of time I did have one. I had a panther at level 3 and the RO was great, and she was actually holding her own I combat. She was excellent for scaling trees and chasing out enemies. When she died, every pet following was essentially useless. All my wolves got one shot by orcs. And I just have not used a pet since. But I’m gonna talk to my DM about revised BM and it seems much more fun. Going into it I wanted my pet to be more of the center of attention from me in combat. Thanks for the great video! The utility a pet can potentially have with pouncing, incoming an enemy prone, and then having a bite, and claw attack. Then having three following attacks with advantage is HUGE.
The new Beast Master is really good, because it gives you a weaponized bonus action. This means you don’t need CBE, which also means you can use other ranged weapons such as long bows (like the a long range), or muskets/other guns (for bigger damage), or hell, even some melee weapons (such as the greatsword), as you don’t rely on the Hand Crossbow for a weaponized bonus action.
I don't understand why 5e didn't make Hunter part of the base Ranger, and Champion part of the base Fighter. Their features are neat, but nowhere good enough as a whole subclass and are boring on their own.
another nice review - now anxious to learn of your "part 2" to bring everything into comparison! overall, seems like everyone adores the concept of Ranger and also most of the subclasses, but ... so frustrating that just a few key powers are missing or weak
I will say to Jill's credit playing as Veo: She utilized spells well to amp up damage and get out of tricky situations. Outside of action surge for the extra attacks, I don't know that playing a fighter would have been better necessarily.
Well, after watching, at least I have the satisfaction of being validated for my soul crushing disappointment The trade deal quip rendered me unconscious
Oooh, we're about to see another D rank! Edit: Just a little correction regarding Find Familiar, it has a cast time of 1 hour, so it takes 1 hour 10 minutes to cast as a ritual, not just 10 minutes. Doesn't change the verdict (obviously).
Ranger subclasses are actually pretty strong (excluding beastmaster); the base class is the problem when it comes to overall power. The base class only gets 4 real things when it comes to improving overall strength. Fighting style, spells, extra attack, and their 20th level ability. I suggest checking out this UA to see how much value they put behind a Ranger’s spellcasting; and also see their mentality about how each class was made. They acknowledged in this that a Ranger derives most of their potency from their subclass. Also, If you use the spell-less version of the Ranger presented here, you’ll see beast master function substantially better. dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/modifying-classes
@@jacobjensen7704 Oh yeah, tashas changes most things. It’s really weird how if Rangers have the subclasses with the expanded spell lists and the tashas change to primeval awareness they have more spells known than a sorcerer from the PHB.
I gotta agree 100% with your comments on the Beast Master & Revised Beast Master. I just converted my UA Beastmaster to the official Tasha's version and it's awesome. Also the beast is situational - it's easy to swap it out. Going into a forest? Bring an eagle! Hunting across plains? Summon a wolf. That bonus action attack is superb.
I know this is an older video, but it really highlights a thing that comes up in a lot of this channel's otherwise-phenomenal videos. I think a big part of the split we see between your rankings vs. the community rankings here is the strain the rating criteria put on the system. The breakdown of each tier is in absolute terms. Game-changing, strong, decent, limited, and trap. Having played with or DMed for multiple Hunter Rangers, I can't see its features as "rarely come up" and "don't synergize", so B seems like it should be the lowest possible placing. And it seems like that was acknowledged in your discussion. However, at the same time, you're placing classes on this *absolute* scale based on how they compare *relative* to each other. So we end up with "Later subclasses got better, so it's a C." Those two sets of criteria, one relative and one absolute, directly conflict with each other. That's the reason for the difficulty with the Swashbuckler's placement. Trying to reconcile the absolute power ("It absolutely satisfies the criteria for S") vs. relative rankings ("How can we put this in S while Arcane Trickster exists?") lead to a lot of dissonance. Wavering between the two and trying to go halvsies just washes out the meaning of both. Personally I think relative rankings remove more utility than they add. If I want to know which subclasses add significantly to the base kit, knocking otherwise-good choices down because of one super-option makes the rankings worthless to me. And if we're going to apply relative criteria consistently, a class getting a really *bad* new subclass should boost all the other ones *up*. Plus, absolute rankings are already relative: they show us which classes are higher than the others. If I want to know whether Gloomstalker is better than Hunter, I can look at the list and see that one is in S and the other isn't. If you want more nuance, you can always make each tier ordered within itself so that people can see that Arcane Trickster is ahead of Swashbuckler. If the entire meta of the game moves on and leaves a big chunk of the old options behind, then I think it makes sense to re-evaluate those old options. But that's more a case for a broad recategorization, not for knocking something down because its little sibling is cooler. Anyway, it's just a thing I've noticed in a lot of these videos. This is some of the best D&D content out there, but they sometimes hit a snag due to that split focus.
I’ve enjoyed your content, for a while, even though I’ve never played D&D. I’ve read & watched some D&D content and campaigns. Just recently my eldest son expressed some interest, so I set about gearing up to DM. He chose ranger beast master. Watching this has clued me into implement the revisions from Tasha’s cauldron of everything for his character. Keep up the great work.
The first character I ever played in D&D was Loraella; a Wood Elf Ranger that my DM had on stand-by and let me use for the campaign she ran (it started off as Dragon Heist but quickly turned into Curse of Strahd). I took Hunter as my Conclave down the line because I focused on the PHB for simplicity, but that didn't stop me from having an amazing time. While better options have definitely come along, I'll never forget how Loraella helped form my love for D&D.
My first 5e character was a Mountain Dwarf Hunter... he was the absolute MVP of the campaign for the first 6 levels or so. He did massive damage a lot of times with Hunters mark and colossus slayer and smart tactics. I eventually multi-classed him into a war god cleric and he was pretty much one of the most powerful characters in the party.
Monty said it best. They took away so many stuff that made this class iconic. As a Ranger player in earlier editions I was looking forward to play one in 5e but after reading the PHB I was like no what have they done. And I picked another class to play. And so for Ranger to get the overhaul it deserved I feel relieved.
I usually give the Beastmasters option on how they want to attack with their pet. If they don't command them to attack, the pet will just attack the closest enemy in its range with the standard (2d4+2 or whatever) on their own without using an action from the BM, if it has not received any other commands, like disengage or help or sth. If the BM commands the attack the pet can add beast master bonus to its attack and other stuff. It might not be much, but it's still better than what it is.
@@katherineminor3402 The mechanical best for combat Beastmaster Ranger that isn’t a Halfling sharpshooter on the back of a pterodactyl is a Strength based Ranger who is a variant Human with great weapon master and a poisonous snake that’s medium sized. This allows the snake to get advantage, and this makes the snake better than the Ranger at dealing damage at early levels. Making a character like this is non intuitive however, so most people will probably will make bad decisions on picking which beast companion they want that isn’t good for combat or exploration. It sucks that so many people think that the choices of Ranger subclasses in the PHB are be good at combat or have a pet when that doesn’t have to be the case. Also all the monk subclasses prior to TCoE sucked making it even more infuriating that the prior subclasses didn’t get a boost in terms of optional features to make them ok. The TCoE monk subclasses are ok though.
I don’t have friends to play this game with I can’t stand playing it online. I wouldn’t play this class first if I did, but I have full intentions of watching all of these videos.
As a DM, I have noticed that at some point every ranger player is going to feel like they are doing nothing for the party or even themselves.....except the Hunter. Hunter is allways good and usually that is a bad thing but not here.
I like also 3 additional options from Tasha: At long rest you can resummon beast companion and choose new type. So when party goes to sea.. Ranger just spend night and have water companion.. or when they need flying scout he can have it after one night. And when beast dies, there is no problem.. 2 minutes and 1lv spell slot and its up and running again. And then, when you became incapacitated you can just controll the beast and do anything, cause it gains its free will and can do anything you want to. This seems pretty important changes too.
I built a revised beast master. I thought long and hard about going Druidic Warrior and having my ranger seem like some of the stores if Odin with the Beast of the Sky looking like Hunginn or Muninn, but I struggled to find any obvious flaws with building it with one fighting style over another. This revised beast master is so tempting it made me roll a ranger for the first time in 5e.
Some English dialects include a glide (the "y" sound) before the "oo" following sounds like "s", "t", or "n" (suit, Tuesday, news, etc.), while others, including general American, only have that feature after non-coronal consonants (mute, pure, cute, fury, etc.).
I had a moment with my Gloomstalker which saved my life. I realize it’s early for that subclass to be mentioned, but I got excited The bard had blindly dimension doored us into free fall. I cast Rope Trick when at a spot above ground where a fall was sublethal, stalled my fall, and rescued the bard from splatting on the ground. Yay! Never used rope trick more than once before... I’ll never use it better.
On the criticism of Hunter being a kind of “generic ranger”, a good number of classes have a similar paradigm for a subclass (Berserker Barbarian, Champion Fighter, Loremaster Bard, Land Druid, Open Hand Monk, Devotion Paladin, Thief Rogue, Life Cleric) so I’m not sure how valid of a criticism I’d consider that
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First, just a reminder that the UA Revised Ranger was officially dropped from further development by the WoTC design team. It has not seen further updates since 2018 (even before the release of XGTE!). Second, many commenters have pointed out that commanding the Tasha's Beastmaster's beast twice to attack probably does not generate additional attacks (as it doesn't give the beast extra actions). This is a well-reasoned correction. Thanks!
does it change your ranking opinion? or the better action economy that make useful the area denial of a semi tank beastmaster is still worth the "A" rank?
@@nicolasvillasecaali7662 We think it's still great.
@@DungeonDudes 👍
So the beast gets 3 attacks instead of 4 at level 11?
@@adeptmage2293 i think its like this:
Bonus A: beast attack twice
ranger attack twice, for a total of 4 attacks at lvl 11, or
Bonus A: spell with BA speed,
Ranger attack once and give beast attack action, beast attack twice. a total of 3 attacks and the chance to use a BA spell.
"I wish my beast could be a mount"
Halfling Ranger stares at you strangely.
Gnome and goblin join the fray.
All hail the Toad Knight
Small Race + 3 BotS Beastmaster Ranger/17 Cavilier
Don't forget that mounted combatant can be paired with defensive duelist!
Grung Ranger croaks menacingly
@@EricDMMiller holy crap, that's a riot!
We went from "paladins are all good" to "dear god please give me a good ranger"
Gloomstalker with Tasha's revisions seems pretty decent and pairs well with a Rogue.
@@jcdenton2187 Gloomstalker deep enough to get the darkvision invisibility and then rogue otherwise for those sweet sweet advantage sneak attacks, beautiful
Almost like the baseline Paladin class is really good and the baseline Ranger leaves a lot to be desired.
Rangers problem is how situational it is as a class. Its a class almost designed around running modules instead of homebrew as you can build a ranger to fit in with the module (ie running Straud build one who fights well in swamps and against the undead, or SKT build one who fights well in mountains and against giants) and be great where as homebrew you dont know what to expect so half your features are useless
@@TheSilverPhoenix100 That's why it's up to the DM to communicate with their players what to expect
Hunter REALLY should have been base Ranger features.
What the difference?
@@zacharyrodriguez4348 Base ranger is garbage that would have greatly benefitted from the Hunter Archetypes. Abilities which would have made the original Beast Master not so bad. But then they would have had only 1 archetype at start.
@@zacharyrodriguez4348 All of the features from Hunter should be incorporated into other Rangers
Guys Ranger is good. Combat is only a third of the game. You want a ranger in your party when you're exploring. Also dnd ain't a competition
@@GrumpigBacon ranger isn't even good for exploration. It does nothing interesting all it does is make overland travel easy.
"I don't think there's any bear avaible"
Trinket: *moans disappointed*
Wasn't Trinket originally in their old campaign? And that was the Pathfinder ranger I thought. I don't know how that ranger was.
To be fair, Trinket the bear is not allowed according to the rules: medium beast with cr
Tbf, Trinket became more of a liability after a while.
@@ClarkyClark Bidet and indeed he was ported from pathfinder.
@@niratcire Revised ranger has a much better beast companion and allows black bear. Your go too if you want to do this subclass or the Tasha version as you can make beast of the land a bear if you want.
I remember playing a standard beast master in a friend's game. The druid did literally everything I could much better than I did.
Attacking with your beast is “the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals” XD Thanks for all the laughs Dungeon Dudes! Love the comedy both here and in your Drakkenheim series.
They have obviously not heard of the Transatlantic Trade Agreement :)
I want to chat with whoever gave Beastmaster an S ranking.
And get them to refer for self-harm!
I think it might be die to homebrew rules. Or the fact that their DM allowed them to have higher CR beasts (allowed by RAW).
The entire subclass can be fixed by allowing beast companions to roll their own initiatives and add their stat block's CON mod to their HP.
Those people ,like me were probably playing a heavily home brewed version of it.
Or they bit grass and took it for spamming help actions and flanking. Giant poisonous snake also adds a lot of damage in campaigns that cover low levels only.
Its sad that the Cavalier is a better Beast Master than the Beast Master.
“Beast Master is the 2020 of D&D subclasses ... til it got revised” Truer words never spoke.
I can't wait to see what holds in 2020 revised. 😂
I did lol at this comment.
Funny how changing just ONE feature turned Beast Master from a dumpster fire to a really good subclass option.
What a difference a bonus action makes eh?
@@reloadpsi because you can use your main action for spells and regular attacks
Action economy am I right?
Small correction: Beast Master‘s Companion is "no larger than medium", so the elk or the giant lizard or even the horses are actually not allowed.
Horses are large? Fuck, this *is* a disaster....
Although it can be flying one, so if you play small race, you can have flying mount as soon as lvl three. I for instance, play with Halfling on Pteranodon, and it is awesome!
@@VivaLaDnDLogsI mean I ain't exactly taller than a horse,
So makes sense to me.
Kelly's t-shirt is showing his good taste.
I was thinking the same thing!
Gorillaz?
One thing that's incorrect here is that you can't sacrifice your attack AND use your bonus action to have your beast attack. Both options read that they let you command them to take an action. It's still a creature and can therefore still only take a single action on its turn. As such, you can't command it twice to take two actions during its turn.
The "sacrifice your attack" option is still great, though, because it means you can still make effective use of bonus action spells. Primarily something like guardian of nature.
Regardless of that, I still think the revised beast master is amazing. It's so much more effective than the old beast master it's uncanny. I think it's easily an A or even S tier.
Commenting for the sake of visibility. Great rules knowledge!
Yeah, I was gonna point out that misinterpretation of the rules too
I wonder if not attacking four times would change the dudes' ranking of the new Beastmaster
Their ranking seems almost entirely based on their incorrect understanding, so I'd say yes.
I guess it theoretically makes it a little worse. Since you can't really make a beast master focussed around attacking many times with the beast. But the beasts are all generally good. And they do decent damage and are tankier.
But it's still a great subclass. You get a good way to weaponize your bonus action. Sure, doesn't work with hunters mark. But then again, you can use other spells. Also, you can benefit of this bonus action regardless of whether or not you have attacked yourself (in contrast to a horizon walker or a monster hunter)
In comparison: A battlesmith's steel defender only ever gets one attack that does less damage than any of your beasts on average. Of course, the steel defender makes up for it with a decent reaction.
Also, share spells has always been a fantastic feature. You just didn't have a good enough beast to use it. But using guardian of nature for primal beast form on the beast (and great tree on yourself) gives your beast +1d6 attack and advantage on all attacks
Without searching through stat blocks while on my lunch break, don't quite a few beasts get multiattack, in regards to OG BM? If it does, then two attacks at lv3 is pretty good, right? Same as new BM taking both action and bonus action to get those same two attacks?
I allow the ranger to “attune” to a terrain type and be more mutable.
Spend an hour to appreciate the scenery and get a feel for the terrain. Yeah I'd do the same thing.
I mean, in TCoE lets you swap out almost every other early level feature for something else whenever you gain a ability point improvement, so the same logic could be aplied to favorite terrain and favorite enemy.
Or just replace them.
@@DHTheAlaskan This is homebrewed into my game. After an hour in a new terrain, the ranger can choose to apply the natural explorer features. The DM even let us consider "urban" an attunable environment, which was a fun vibe. The ranger was RPing that people are still animals, and can be tracked just the same.
@@Skkorm I really like that concept. With urban settings you essentially go people watching.
I think that it should perhaps be a bit more than just a short rest to switch out but yeah I think natural explorer with the ability to switch it out with a bit of effort is way better than deft explorer.
The main thing that I hate about beastmaster is it is so casual about if your pet dies, when this is a real animal that you have formed a deep bond to
Tasha's casts Revivify on the Ranger and the Beastmaster in particular
If you want to be devastated just roleplay it
Yeah, a lot of "defenses" of the Beastmaster treat it like ablative armor. Send it out, get it killed, keep going.
Which is the exact opposite of what people want to do with that class.
Yeah... I always ask to have it reflavored into an animal totem spirit. So instead of death is simply sheds the corporeal form and the ritual is to provide a new physical body.
@@XoRandomGuyoX That was my fix too. Then the revised ranger's hour to reincorporate makes more sense.
I always tell my players that Ranger is the class that was made for multiclassing. Thematically the Ranger is meant to be a guardian of a particular area but, by the very nature of the game itself, the Ranger is forced out of their Favored Terrain and travels to other areas. Their skills as a Ranger are useful but eventually they realize they need to learn new skills to survive. For example: Aragorn is a Ranger who multiclassed into Fighter. His hunting and tracking skills were useful but he needed more combat skills since they were in a war. Anyway just thought I’d put in my two cents.
Love that!
thats a good evocative and storry friendly way to tell your players that the ranger is a decent martialbase that they need to improve themselfs. but as a gamedesigner i can't really se it as anything other than bad design since all classes should be able to stand on their own feet.
Im new to it. I went hunter then multiclassed into an Assassin Rogue, looking forward to using my new Assassin skills next game.
Aragorn is played by a guy who came up to the DM and said "Hey, remember when we got lost in the Mirkwood for six sessions? That's not happening anymore. My new guy is 80 years old and has walked all of Middle Earth. They call him Strider because of just how much he walks!"
I'd love if Favored Terrain had a Totem Barbarian style feature. Oh you chose Desert? Fire resistance, adv on survival. Forest? Climbing speed, adv on nature and survival related to tracking and hunting beasts.
So it's more about how you've learned to adapt to your situation based on where you learned to hunt.
I love how it isn't called "ranger subclass rankings part 1", it is just called "ranger part 1"
They know.
They fixed it
Beastmaster from PHB: "It stinks." -The Critic
This description is too nice to the subclass.
@@SirStanleytheStumbler I'm certain others will be more harsh.
"It fucking sucks goat testicles."
There. I fixed it.
@@JakeLovesSteak well said
UWU
"Ranger part 1"
Yeah, it's clear i'm way too early for this video
Yup
I automatically knew what they meant so I didn't even realize it was incomplete
*runs to grab popcorn* let’s see how this goes.
Edit: I completely agree with everything you guys said here. Pretty much everything from the Hunter class should have simply been part of the base Ranger class to begin with and Beastmaster was basically worthless until the Tasha revision. On a similar note, I think that the Fighter class (though there's nothing actually wrong with it) would benefit from taking some if not most of the features from the Champion and Purple Dragon Knight subclasses and making those part of the base class.
to be fair, putting Champion and PDK features in base Fighter would probably make the actually good fighter subclasses (Battlemaster, Echo/Eldritch Knight) way too broken. i can only imagine the destruction a Half-Orc (Savage Attacker) Battlemaster with Improved Critical could cause.
@@timob1681 That's a very good point, but I still feel that the fighter class could still use some help prior to level 11.
@@jayhill8892 eh. it's not as strong as it could be but it's certainly still good, with all its ASIs (you get 3 ASIs prior to level 11) you can take advantage of feats like GWM, Polearm Master, or XBE, and probably still have 20 str/dex depending which build you go for. with champion's features added, at their respective levels, let's say you pick the Eldritch Knight archetype. that means by level 3 you'd have:
1d10 + 3 extra hit points per long rest (2nd Wind)
Action Surge
Crits on 19/20
2 wizard cantrips
3 first-level wizard spells
Weapon Bond
now imagine you're playing a half-orc with Savage Attacker for better crit damage, or a v human with which you took any of the aforementioned feats, or even Lucky to improve your chances of landing a crit. crit fishing is a very niche playstyle that requires multiple different synergies to work well, and i think being able to fish for crits while also having spells, an echo knight, maneuvers, superiority dice, etc. is a little broken. i agree with you that champion is a lackluster subclass, but it's not quite lackluster enough to warrant being merged with the base class imo. especially since you mentioned fighters need help below level 11, but once they cross that threshold they become incredibly powerful.
@@jayhill8892 just realized i wrote way too much lol. to summarize, i think champion is weak on its own but with racial/feat synergies it's really good, so adding it to base fighter would make existing A-S tier subclasses broken
@@timob1681 Excellent points. So maybe not all of the Champions' stuff, but maybe some of the PDK's stuff would be good to merge into the basic class.
Guys, they didn't change the title because that's an action and uploading the video is another action. It was done like that because we're talking about Beast Master here.
.
.
.
Yeah, I have no idea. I'll show myself the exit for the terrible joke
Sorry, you'll have to wait until your next turn to move. And have to spend your action to do so.
*Beast master intensifies*
This is fantastic, and you should feel incredibly proud!
needs to be top comment
I’m pretty sure there’s a Feat in Tasha’s for that.
Just sub into fighter for 2 levels and action surge for that phat ad revenue.
Then realize you would be better off going all fighter.
"Just play a Fighter with a bow, its way better"
Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.
Or scout, or hexblade, or bow paladin, or wizard with -4 to con and int, in general if it has a pulse it's better than ranger
Fightet champ with the bow is awesome
Yes
@@someguynamedsomething9612 Raw bow paladin doesn’t work smite raw only works with melee. If your dm allows it of course it’s amazing
It's so nice to see how much the Beastmaster was fixed. I've always wanted to play a Falconer type character & maybe now I will.
I'm running to the fridge for a drink before I start watching this one. It's going to be an emotional ride
I absolutely love my hunter ranger. Probably my favorite character ive played. Played it for a few years and we have gotten to lvl 15
It's not bad.
The Colossus doesn't scale, but you can fire off several arrows in one spot!!
@@travisdonaldstanley6420 Yeah, this is why I disagree with their "C" rating. I think "B" is more accurate. I do not think this subclass has any "traps" unless you make the wrong choices.
@@gregevans4126
Thanks for the feedback.
I gave up on these guys long ago.
They are very intelligent and I applaud their drive, but they are so biased towards magic and some of the things they say are wrong to me.
Love how raw and honest the discussion on the Hunter became
With a few tweaks and some additional options, Hunter could've been an awesome martial Ranger. If we get a revised Hunter for 5.5, I would love to see them go all in on it being the archetype with no bonus utility or magic, just a set of powerful combat features. It could work as the "Drizzt archetype" if they went all in on that.
"The pact of the chain has a better pet" So does the paladin. Level 5 Pally mounted on a warhorse kicks ass. At higher level it gets a griffon. This is a design flaw at every level. Complete failure by the designers of the game.
Find Steed is just an amazing spell. Played a paladin a campaign and being able to summon a warhorse opens up a huge amount of options for a level 2 spell. The mobility a mount offers is fantastic even without the mounted combat feat. The mount even lasts more than 24 hours means you can summon one during downtime and then prepare a new spell the day after and still keep the horse.
Step 1: Cast Find Steed or Find Greater Steed
Step 2: Mount Steed
Step 3: Cast a Smite spell
Step 4: Dismount Steed. You and your steed can now make a smite attack each.
Alternatively, choose to let your steed act independently and step 4 is unnecessary.
@@Hadaron do Smite spells target "only yourself"
@@thegreatninjaman
Yep. They have a range of self and last until your next attack.
Another great point about TCoE is that the optional class feature makes Hunter’s Mark optional and no longer required.
Ans theorycally It can also Stack (If not wrong) making the Monster Slayer basically a lvl5 rogue with 3d6 extra damage (Hunters Mark, Pray of the Slayer and the New feature).
It doesn't stack.
The foe slayer feature specifically says it requires your concentration. And hunter's mark is also a concentration spell
@@avichaid6021 and because it doesn’t stack, foe slayer is decent enough that HM doesn’t need to be taken to keep with on damage output. This frees up the spell knowledge for something else. I love that!
@@goaftertheway I've kept both in my arsenal even if I can't use them at the same time. Hunters mark is saved for bosses where the little bit of extra damage it offers ca be worth the spell slot. But I agree, love the addition.
@@Turai12 that’s fair. I get it and may grab it at higher levels. HM is significantly more powerful being every hit vs once a turn. Not to mention the d4 vs d6. However for lower levels I just like that I have a spell known slot reserved for something for Ranger-Flavor IMO like alarm, good berry, beast bond or speak with animals. Cure wounds and hail of thorns or ensnaring strike seam like the other staples.
I've been playing a Revised Ranger with the Gloomstalker subclass for well over a year now, but I did ask about picking up the Summon Beast spell from Tasha's, which my DM allowed. Just with that spell and ordering the little Fae Beast Spirit about, it really was like I was a better Beastmaster than the PHB Beastmaster.
This is exactly hat I'm thinking of doing but I wonder what are the advantages to going full beast master instead, other than 1 less spell slot?
The new beast master has actually given me an interest in playing a ranger.
Also, I really like that idea of a beast master that fights with a quarterstaff using Shillelagh. Reminds me of a character from The Last Apprentice novels who fought with a staff and had these 2 hounds with him. He would feed them the hearts of witches he had killed, as witches will otherwise rise as a form of undead when killed. Cremation also works.
P.S. I'm not done with the novels yet, so no spoilers.
Don't forget to read the sequel series, the Starblade Chronicles.
Fuckin' love Last Apprentice/Spook's Apprentice.
Same the only thing I would ask my DM is can I use the Favored Foe text from the original UA revision because it makes the hunters mark spell from the class not require my concentration
@@brianhalligan9268 Hunter's mark is kinda bad on a beastmaster since you dont attack often and the beast doesnt trigger it. Tasha's one is kinda good since you most likely attack once a round and it trigger once a round too and it doesnt take concentration but rather act like you do for the purpose of loosing it on being hit! So, you can still concentrate on other spells!
You - Beastmaster Ranger
Me *laughing in Battlesmith Artificer*
Laughing in circle of shepherd druid
@@someguynamedsomething9612 Shepherd + TCoE = Pokemon Druid
@@someguynamedsomething9612a conjure animals with a paladins crusaders mantle is truly a beautiful sight to behold
Laughs in Kobald Beastmaster Ranger who gets advantage on every attack because the beast activates pack tactics.
@@madwolfx13_71 laughs in Kobold Cavalier Fighter who gets advantage on every attack because the mount activates pack tactics.
I started feeling defensive because I'm playing a Hunter in my current campaign, but then I started to think about it. Most of the reasons he is effective are because of the Sharpshooter Feat and the Archery Fighting Style. Horde Breaker, the only subclass feature I've unlocked so far, is useful and comes up frequently, but it pales in comparison to what the same campaign's Oath of the Ancients Paladin can do with his auras. The other reason he's useful, utility spellcasting and healing, are core Ranger features, not from the archetype.
Yeah, I've gotta say, I agree that it's not a good subclass. I'd put it as a B instead of a C, but your ruling isn't unreasonable, given that there are some bad choices in there. I'm hoping my GM will let me swap archetypes at my next ASI, because since we started the campaign we got the books for Xanathar's and Tasha's and all the other, much more interesting Ranger subclasses, and I'd like to try them out.
You can't really compare features across classes that way. If you look at other Ranger subclasses, the Hunter is actually pretty strong. I think the community is spot on with a toss between A and B, a C rating is... questionable.
The thing is, Hordebreaker, Multiattack Defence, & Volley are literally the correct options to take. Everything else is a trap. Hordebreaker is a free attack to enemy buddy, Multiattack defence scales wonderfully at higher levels to try and stop that fucking dragon tearing you to shreds, Volley is situational but your charcter can create the situation that it becomes useful, and its a way to obliterate groups of enemies without relying on fire damage from fireball. You get those abilities, its a B tier. Everything else, its C. I agree with their ratings, you are just avoiding their traps.
@@RagerRagerRagerRager I would argue that the Hunter should be measured by its best optional abilities, not by the average - as it is literally the choice of the player, nothing keeps you from picking the strongest combo. So looking at the video, I feel some kind of inconsistency- as a similar argument could be made for example for the battlemaster, but if you look at the fighter tier list, the dungeon dudes do not make any caveat with their S-tier ranking because one could pick some of the weaker maneuvers.
Furthermore, I have to say that I definitely disagree with what you describe as the 'literally correct options'. I'd consider Colossus Slayer the superior choice at 3rd level, and at 7th level it is reasonable to say that Escape the Horde might be more useful depending on the group and the Ranger you're playing.
Whirlwind Attack is clearly weaker than Volley, but an obvious choice if you're playing a melee Hunter, and Evasion vs. Uncanny Dodge isn't a clear one either.
Dnd isn't just about combat, though.
Broke my heart reading rogue scout subclass for first time and realized they out rangered the ranger!
"You immediately become proficient in nature and survival, then get expertise in both."
Yeah, just a bit.
Hunter is the ranger version of Champion fighter.
I like how Tasha’s gives you a chance to make your beast a sidekick...
One of my players plays a Beastmaster. I've changed up a lot of things to make it a better subclass for him, namely, he has a Wyrmling (admittedly one with a homebrew statblock) as the companion, and it has its own turn in combat. it's worked out really well and there's an adorable father daughter bond going on between them
"The Beastmaster Ranger is the 2020 of D&D 5e subclasses"
Perfect!
The only good thing going for Hunter ranger imo, is that Colossus Slayer doesn't use your bonus action. That means a lot when you want to have it free for Hunter's Mark/other bonus action spells/two weapon fighting/crossbow expert.
What I wish Tasha's beasts let you do was choose Small or Medium for any of the given stat blocks. SCAG mentioned how Ghostwise halflings rode giant owls and letting Beast of the Air be a Medium creature would let you do that. And it would let you have Small land animals too, which is something that, while easier to convince a DM to allow, would be nice to have as a RAW option.
One absolutely minor correction at 16:30 rituals take 10 minutes + the normal time to cast the spell. So ritual casting find familiar takes an hour and 10 minutes not just 10 minutes. This doesn't change anything important in the video it just is to correct a very common error.
I'm loving the videos that you guys make! I hope you keep up the great work and have a spectacular rest of your day :)
Fey Wanderer, Gloomstalker, and the revised Beastmaster have given the ranger some of the most mechanically-supported subclasses in the game, in my opinion. Great flavor, but more importantly, the ability to do the things you should be able to do based on that flavor. The hardest part of my next character is going to be choosing between the three.
I'm a simple man, I see an opportunity to rag on 5e Ranger and I click. Even the title isn't given as much attention as the other videos, just like 5e Ranger :^)
You done me proud.
You're gonna make my Ranger loving brother cry!
@@Hesauce I rag on Ranger because I love Ranger. Played one all the way to level 12, and then either died or got KO'd literally every fight up until level 17 when the campaign ended. And that was WITH the Revised Ranger
The artist must suffer for the art. That's why it's called *pain* ting
this hurts me feelings
We're currently playing a Fey Wanderer ranger from Tasha's it's pretty cool
We? You are legion?
I like that you guys tackled the revised material from tasha's and included in the description a shortcut to each of the subclasses discuss.
Who else wants to play a game where everyone plays the WORST subclasses in the game and purposely makes their stats bad?
The B team!
I am dming my first campaign thanks to you two, so I want to say how grateful I am for your videos and positivity.
The PHB Beast Master Ranger was my first ever character I used in D&D, I wish Tasha's was out at the time so I could've used the revised version. Regardless I still had a bucket load of fun and I still love the hell out of this amazing role-playing game
I once actually thought of a way to make the beastmaster viable. Yeah, the PHB one. It's super niche... But can be amazing.
Be a halfling. Take a pteranodon companion. A cr 1/4 creature, medium size, with a flying speed
Now you don't need to care about it attacking anymore. The pteranodon can just take the dodge action each turn, while you rain arrows down from above.
And it gets better. After 5th level you can take two levels of rogue. Halflings can hide behind medium creatures. (And since your enemies are looking at you from below you're technically behind your mount). Now you can hide as a bonus action then attack with advantage every round.
Any DM that would let you get away with hiding behind your flying mount for combat tricks like SA or Advantage every round is a bad DM. :P
Thank god Tasha's came out right before I started playing D&D. I always felt drawn to the Beastmaster when reading about the different classes and subclasses but it obviously stinks. Then I found a game on the LFG subreddit right when Tasha's came out and suddenly I could realize my character ideas that I had tucked away.
Loving this series! REALLY REALLY REALLY hoping you guys will go back once it's all over and look at all the sub-classes you gave a 'D' ranking and make recommendations on how to improve them, even if it's recommending others' fixes.
Another day, another video where Monty manages to change Kelly's ideas ahahah
He probably took a few levels in Bard
hi, recently found your channel and have been listening to the subclass guides. Great Stuff! your comments on hunter, and a few other like champion in the fighters, kind of solidified a thought I have. all classes have at least one subclass which is for all intents and purposes the "default" class, if you were coming from older editions (fighter champions, rogue thieves, paladins of devotion, barbarian berserkers, etc.). while they might not be as exiting or unique as some of the other options, is is very nice to have an "old school" default. most of the other subclasses remind me of the old add2e "brown series" that offered kits to transform your class into something more/different.
and, on that note, on bards...well, the last time bards were this awesome was the original add1e bard that was actually a 20th level character (the first prestige class, if you will) that required you to take levels in fighter, their, and wizard.
happy gaming guys!
The Rangeriest Ranger that ever Rangered.
aaaahhhhh it's finally here!!! I've been waiting for the ranger parts since you started this series
The Hunter also notably has the most decision points of any ranger subclass, allowing you to tailor your build to your play style and your role in the party.
Despite mostly focusing on offensive options, the Hunter is arguably the most durable ranger archetype, as it has the most options to directly prevent the Ranger from taking damage. Something that I think people may miss. Swarmkeeper is probably my fave, but Hunter honestly is not too bad.
Totally agree.
These guys hated it. 😢
I think the fact that it uses your bonus action instead of an action to command the beast makes the class just drastically better by itself. Also the fact that it scales with you makes it definitely better. You can get items that boost your wisdom or depending on the wording the dm's discretion something that increases your spell attack bonus could, not always but could, increase the beasts power makes it so much better.
Favored Foe: no concentration; Deft explorer: another expertise (maybe at lvl 6??); Additional ranger spells: dispel magic (maybe find familiar); all subclasses get a exclusive spell list; Beast master: printed errata to the lvl 7 ability "your companion's attacks are magical" --------BAAAM, all rangers become awesome.
Hexblade dip part 2. No thanks.
Current TCoE ranger is very cool as it is
@@PedroHISilva why the dip? for an extra d4 and the expertise? you could dip into rogue
I’ve been running a BM Ranger for this current campaign for probably around 8 months and it ridiculously limited. And I’ve had more fun playing without a pet than the short periods of time I did have one.
I had a panther at level 3 and the RO was great, and she was actually holding her own I combat. She was excellent for scaling trees and chasing out enemies. When she died, every pet following was essentially useless. All my wolves got one shot by orcs. And I just have not used a pet since. But I’m gonna talk to my DM about revised BM and it seems much more fun. Going into it I wanted my pet to be more of the center of attention from me in combat. Thanks for the great video! The utility a pet can potentially have with pouncing, incoming an enemy prone, and then having a bite, and claw attack. Then having three following attacks with advantage is HUGE.
Highest rated ranger subclass: just fighter with a bow
The new Beast Master is really good, because it gives you a weaponized bonus action. This means you don’t need CBE, which also means you can use other ranged weapons such as long bows (like the a long range), or muskets/other guns (for bigger damage), or hell, even some melee weapons (such as the greatsword), as you don’t rely on the Hand Crossbow for a weaponized bonus action.
No class is more dependent on its subclasses then ranger in my opinion. The base phb ranger really needed more juice.
I don't understand why 5e didn't make Hunter part of the base Ranger, and Champion part of the base Fighter. Their features are neat, but nowhere good enough as a whole subclass and are boring on their own.
WotC needs to stop shoehorning Rangers into being Druid/Fighter/Rogues by recognising that they don't need to be spellcasters.
another nice review - now anxious to learn of your "part 2" to bring everything into comparison! overall, seems like everyone adores the concept of Ranger and also most of the subclasses, but ... so frustrating that just a few key powers are missing or weak
I will say to Jill's credit playing as Veo: She utilized spells well to amp up damage and get out of tricky situations. Outside of action surge for the extra attacks, I don't know that playing a fighter would have been better necessarily.
Thank you gentlemen, long overdue! Best speed on the Horizon Walker/Gloom Stalker please! ;-)
Not discussed - The Chip & Dale Rescue Ranger.
Ohh there once was a Kobold named Task , the Red . He shot all his enemies until they where dead
Well, after watching, at least I have the satisfaction of being validated for my soul crushing disappointment
The trade deal quip rendered me unconscious
Oooh, we're about to see another D rank!
Edit: Just a little correction regarding Find Familiar, it has a cast time of 1 hour, so it takes 1 hour 10 minutes to cast as a ritual, not just 10 minutes. Doesn't change the verdict (obviously).
Let's see how disappointed we are with this class today xd
Ranger subclasses are actually pretty strong (excluding beastmaster); the base class is the problem when it comes to overall power. The base class only gets 4 real things when it comes to improving overall strength. Fighting style, spells, extra attack, and their 20th level ability.
I suggest checking out this UA to see how much value they put behind a Ranger’s spellcasting; and also see their mentality about how each class was made. They acknowledged in this that a Ranger derives most of their potency from their subclass.
Also, If you use the spell-less version of the Ranger presented here, you’ll see beast master function substantially better.
dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/modifying-classes
Not at all. After Tasha's, I think Ranger is quite the excellent class.
@@jacobjensen7704 Oh yeah, tashas changes most things. It’s really weird how if Rangers have the subclasses with the expanded spell lists and the tashas change to primeval awareness they have more spells known than a sorcerer from the PHB.
@@Exisist5151 oof. Sorcerers getting shafted again.
At least they become OP after level 5.
@@jacobjensen7704 Not really them getting shafted and more getting left behind by powercreep
I gotta agree 100% with your comments on the Beast Master & Revised Beast Master.
I just converted my UA Beastmaster to the official Tasha's version and it's awesome. Also the beast is situational - it's easy to swap it out. Going into a forest? Bring an eagle! Hunting across plains? Summon a wolf.
That bonus action attack is superb.
The problem with rangers for me is that a rogue/fighter MC is arguably more effective than just ranger alone.
3-4 levels in Scout and Fighter is objectively better if you don't want spellcasting.
Wood elf arcane archer with a few levels of rogue - arcane trickster for a bit of magic...
A rogue/fighter doesn't get the phenomenal spell list that a Ranger will.
@@Jvstm rangers having magic is a bit strange
I know this is an older video, but it really highlights a thing that comes up in a lot of this channel's otherwise-phenomenal videos. I think a big part of the split we see between your rankings vs. the community rankings here is the strain the rating criteria put on the system.
The breakdown of each tier is in absolute terms. Game-changing, strong, decent, limited, and trap. Having played with or DMed for multiple Hunter Rangers, I can't see its features as "rarely come up" and "don't synergize", so B seems like it should be the lowest possible placing. And it seems like that was acknowledged in your discussion.
However, at the same time, you're placing classes on this *absolute* scale based on how they compare *relative* to each other. So we end up with "Later subclasses got better, so it's a C." Those two sets of criteria, one relative and one absolute, directly conflict with each other. That's the reason for the difficulty with the Swashbuckler's placement. Trying to reconcile the absolute power ("It absolutely satisfies the criteria for S") vs. relative rankings ("How can we put this in S while Arcane Trickster exists?") lead to a lot of dissonance. Wavering between the two and trying to go halvsies just washes out the meaning of both.
Personally I think relative rankings remove more utility than they add. If I want to know which subclasses add significantly to the base kit, knocking otherwise-good choices down because of one super-option makes the rankings worthless to me. And if we're going to apply relative criteria consistently, a class getting a really *bad* new subclass should boost all the other ones *up*.
Plus, absolute rankings are already relative: they show us which classes are higher than the others. If I want to know whether Gloomstalker is better than Hunter, I can look at the list and see that one is in S and the other isn't. If you want more nuance, you can always make each tier ordered within itself so that people can see that Arcane Trickster is ahead of Swashbuckler.
If the entire meta of the game moves on and leaves a big chunk of the old options behind, then I think it makes sense to re-evaluate those old options. But that's more a case for a broad recategorization, not for knocking something down because its little sibling is cooler.
Anyway, it's just a thing I've noticed in a lot of these videos. This is some of the best D&D content out there, but they sometimes hit a snag due to that split focus.
"...I don't think there's any bears."
Did I just hear a not-so-subtle dig against Trinket? 😂
Beast Master is 2020 of DnD subclasses that was Purrr-Fect. It made me burst laughing so hard that Neighbours knocked on the wall xddd
Kelly with that beautiful Now Now shirt though... hopefully he'll be wearing it for the Sorcerer's episode...
I’ve enjoyed your content, for a while, even though I’ve never played D&D. I’ve read & watched some D&D content and campaigns. Just recently my eldest son expressed some interest, so I set about gearing up to DM. He chose ranger beast master. Watching this has clued me into implement the revisions from Tasha’s cauldron of everything for his character. Keep up the great work.
3 months ago: Druid Subclass Tier Ranking in Dungeons and Dragons 5e
now: Ranger Part 1
I see improvement
Nar man this should have been one video
The first character I ever played in D&D was Loraella; a Wood Elf Ranger that my DM had on stand-by and let me use for the campaign she ran (it started off as Dragon Heist but quickly turned into Curse of Strahd). I took Hunter as my Conclave down the line because I focused on the PHB for simplicity, but that didn't stop me from having an amazing time.
While better options have definitely come along, I'll never forget how Loraella helped form my love for D&D.
Everyone is gansta until my whip dual-wielding hunter does whirlwind attack or my beastmaster enters a combat with his pet goat
19:29 As someone who just started playing D&D a few months ago, I feel very seen by this moment.
Video needs a new title "Dumping on the Beastmaster Ranger: Part 1"
My first 5e character was a Mountain Dwarf Hunter... he was the absolute MVP of the campaign for the first 6 levels or so. He did massive damage a lot of times with Hunters mark and colossus slayer and smart tactics. I eventually multi-classed him into a war god cleric and he was pretty much one of the most powerful characters in the party.
A sub class doesn't get moved from one rank to another because other subclasses came out. It just means others join it in that same rank.
Unless it's the Twilight and Peace domains, which moved every other cleric subclass one tier down to illustrate the power creep
Monty said it best. They took away so many stuff that made this class iconic. As a Ranger player in earlier editions I was looking forward to play one in 5e but after reading the PHB I was like no what have they done. And I picked another class to play. And so for Ranger to get the overhaul it deserved I feel relieved.
30 min video on two subclasses... this should be good.
I usually give the Beastmasters option on how they want to attack with their pet. If they don't command them to attack, the pet will just attack the closest enemy in its range with the standard (2d4+2 or whatever) on their own without using an action from the BM, if it has not received any other commands, like disengage or help or sth. If the BM commands the attack the pet can add beast master bonus to its attack and other stuff. It might not be much, but it's still better than what it is.
Here so early the full title hasn’t loaded in yet
“Wouldnt it be cool if you could switch your abilities around”
*hey maybe that could be a good redone version of the hunter*
Hunter is basically is for the full Drizzt build, thats all they looked at when they made it, and Beastmaster was a always bad before Tasha's
Except drizzt has all the abilities.
Poorly designed? Yes. Bad? Not if built correctly.
If built properly, a pre-TCoE Beastmaster Ranger is better than the best built Monk pre-TCoE.
@@mariusbrandon2617 how exactly is it "built properly "
@@katherineminor3402 The mechanical best for combat Beastmaster Ranger that isn’t a Halfling sharpshooter on the back of a pterodactyl is a Strength based Ranger who is a variant Human with great weapon master and a poisonous snake that’s medium sized. This allows the snake to get advantage, and this makes the snake better than the Ranger at dealing damage at early levels. Making a character like this is non intuitive however, so most people will probably will make bad decisions on picking which beast companion they want that isn’t good for combat or exploration. It sucks that so many people think that the choices of Ranger subclasses in the PHB are be good at combat or have a pet when that doesn’t have to be the case. Also all the monk subclasses prior to TCoE sucked making it even more infuriating that the prior subclasses didn’t get a boost in terms of optional features to make them ok. The TCoE monk subclasses are ok though.
I don’t have friends to play this game with I can’t stand playing it online. I wouldn’t play this class first if I did, but I have full intentions of watching all of these videos.
As a DM, I have noticed that at some point every ranger player is going to feel like they are doing nothing for the party or even themselves.....except the Hunter. Hunter is allways good and usually that is a bad thing but not here.
I like also 3 additional options from Tasha: At long rest you can resummon beast companion and choose new type. So when party goes to sea.. Ranger just spend night and have water companion.. or when they need flying scout he can have it after one night.
And when beast dies, there is no problem.. 2 minutes and 1lv spell slot and its up and running again.
And then, when you became incapacitated you can just controll the beast and do anything, cause it gains its free will and can do anything you want to. This seems pretty important changes too.
Hunter is good - You're a Ranger, so be a Ranger!
I built a revised beast master. I thought long and hard about going Druidic Warrior and having my ranger seem like some of the stores if Odin with the Beast of the Sky looking like Hunginn or Muninn, but I struggled to find any obvious flaws with building it with one fighting style over another. This revised beast master is so tempting it made me roll a ranger for the first time in 5e.
“This subclass is Garbage” I think we were all waiting for it xD
I became a Fey Wanderer ranger. I only got into a couple scuffles, but I really dig it
12 seconds in and I had to stop for 5 minutes so I could figure out whether I've been mispronouncing "Tuesday" my entire life.
Some English dialects include a glide (the "y" sound) before the "oo" following sounds like "s", "t", or "n" (suit, Tuesday, news, etc.), while others, including general American, only have that feature after non-coronal consonants (mute, pure, cute, fury, etc.).
I had a moment with my Gloomstalker which saved my life. I realize it’s early for that subclass to be mentioned, but I got excited
The bard had blindly dimension doored us into free fall. I cast Rope Trick when at a spot above ground where a fall was sublethal, stalled my fall, and rescued the bard from splatting on the ground. Yay!
Never used rope trick more than once before... I’ll never use it better.
On the criticism of Hunter being a kind of “generic ranger”, a good number of classes have a similar paradigm for a subclass (Berserker Barbarian, Champion Fighter, Loremaster Bard, Land Druid, Open Hand Monk, Devotion Paladin, Thief Rogue, Life Cleric) so I’m not sure how valid of a criticism I’d consider that
Can't wait for Part 2! Ranger was the first class I ever played, and I've always loved the roleplay aspect of them.