5e Beastmaster

>
Were you referring to yourself? Sorry, but the game was written from the ground up around the math of the characters without magic items and that's why magic items are largely hidden away in the DMG away from the players. The only two classes with built in magical attribute physical attacks are monks and moon druid. Everyone else either must use magic spells or rely on a responsible DM to give them magical weapons.

There are magical items in LMoP, are you seriously arguing that an adventurer is expected to get to level 20 without picking up a magical weapon? Were you dropped on your head :/?

>I'm not going to say that you're incorrect about Sorclock being the highest "DPS" in the game, but statements like "Beastmaster ranger remains the worst path in the game" is discrediting the class and the game when in reality, Ranger has a lot more functionality than the Warlock does overall.

Path of the tome? Ritual castings? Even path of the chain gets a familiar that is arguably a better scout than the ranger's beast. Not to mention devil sight, on command change self, the benefits of having high CHA for social situations. "A lot more" is overselling it. Especially for a non-wilderness game.

>Assumed magic items for everything but my particular pet case
>Only what is written in the books is possible
>"DPS" = Best class
Video games have literally rotted your mind into a slurry and let it drain out your yeast infected vagina-face.

this.
The main thing is lettting the animal not stand around like a dumbass if the ranger doesn't give up their attack.

Given that as a GM I couldn't even justify that in fluff, I just go with 'unless commanded, your companion behaves as a trained animal of it's type'.

The only correct way to play one is as a halfling or a gnome and using it as a super tanky mount (barding + proficiency to ac = good luck faggit).
Bonus points if you get your dm to let you have a vulture or pteranodon as your companion.

>There are magical items in LMoP, are you seriously arguing that an adventurer is expected to get to level 20 without picking up a magical weapon? Were you dropped on your head :/?

>One adventure module dictates the entire design philosophy of the game
Nah. In fact, even if you want to use that rubric, most of the magic items can EASILY be missed. I know this for a fact having run that adventure twice, and both parties on their own missed an entire half of the magical items period. They are nice additions to the party, but it's not how bounded accuracy was founded on nor does it meet any of the design philosophies of the game.

Maybe you should look into it more than not at all?

>Path of the tome? Ritual castings?
The number of ritual spells in the entire game barely enter into the double digit range, and I think only one of them ever goes about 3rd level in general.

I'm not trying to say that the Warlock is useless either. I'm just saying that the ranger offers more than the warlock on average as a stand alone class.

Jesus Christ D&D 5e is fucking atrocious. Like, seriously irreconcilably awful. Easily the worst edition in the game.

It makes Dungeon World look playable in comparison.

Veeky Forums how do we fix this utter garbage?

>That sounds pretty beast master-y

OP's problem is not with the fluff fitting, it's with the viability of the class.

>Video games have literally rotted your mind into a slurry and let it drain out your yeast infected vagina-face.

Not him but fuck you, where do you think those video games came from? Fucking Dungeons and Dragons, faggot. D&D has been doing this shit since long before vidya and dealing damage in combat is an important function of any class.

Please keep using these arguments, though. I guarantee you if we were discussing class viability in 3.5 or 4e you'd be tripping over yourselves to show how substandard it was n damage and combat potential.

>in the game
>not changing your bait to "industry"

>HP is 6x Ranger level instead of 4x
>Commanding a beast is a bonus action instead of an action, and the beast will continue its last order until it receives a new one, or can no longer take said action

The only changes you need. This would put Beastmasters solidly into mid tier imo.

I was with ya till the end, then you had to go all homophobic.

But still- agreed, people should reread the write-up for this build. Also it could be better written.

>non sequitur about combat in D&D
>proving they know nothing by listing damage as most important in 3.5
And I thought 4e didn't include role playing rules because they were unnecessary? You are just proving my point that your shitty table's dungeon crawler should use a different system or just use the best DP-fucking-R classes and nothing else.

Yikes, this thread is just awful. I regret ever having laid eyes on it.

k.

>Assumed magic items for everything but my particular pet case
>Only what is written in the books is possible

Why are you putting words in my mouth? Again, and don't think too hard on this point, you may hurt yourself, why does Moon Druid and Monk get magical unarmed attacks and not the beat master pet?

>>"DPS" = Best class

Never said that either. You sure have a better time arguing with a straw-man. I'd say Wizard, Bard or Fighters are the 'best classes', but all a hunter does is DPS with a little utility. Well, that's the same thing a warlock does? Isn't it natural to compare the classes?

I guess not if you're a sperg

>>One adventure module dictates the entire design philosophy of the game

Name one official module for DnD 5e that doesn't have magical weapons by 5th level? Would you seriously ever run a game where no matter how high level your party got you wouldn't have magical weapons for them? This is pretty weak.

>The number of ritual spells in the entire game barely enter into the double digit range, and I think only one of them ever goes about 3rd level in general.

There are ritual spells up to lvl 5 I believe. Some very useful (find familiar, identify).

>I'm not trying to say that the Warlock is useless either. I'm just saying that the ranger offers more than the warlock on average as a stand alone class.

We'll agree to disagree on that. I'd say it's based on the campaign (more wilderness and tracking better ranger will do).

Basically all of Adventurer's League.

Stop playing 5e if you're looking for mechanically interesting and fulfilling class design.

This user gets it. I don't expect the game to be perfectly balanced, but how did Beast-master ever make it through testing?

Same with 4 elements monk.

I'm not familiar with those.

Even if I say I believe you, would you yourself personally run a game beyond 9th level without allowing your characters at least the possibility of getting a magical weapon?

Are you familiar with the Giant Poisonous Snake?

Or the flying snake.

No opportunity attacks.
60 fly speed.
And blindsight.
Pair that with an obscuring area of effect and you're in business!

I'm starting to see what people mean when they say 5e CR scaling is fucking retarded.

You jackasses realize half of this thread is one guy arguing with himself just to start shit, yeah?
Just checking.

>Name one official module for DnD 5e that doesn't have magical weapons by 5th level
Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The first magical weapon doesn't show up until Level 8, and it's an evil great sword in an adventure that was made from the ground up to be played by Lawful Goods.

Out of the Abyss has you running QUITE a fair distance without even NORMAL weapons, let alone magical shit unless the DM throws you a bone and lets you encounter Dawnbringer SUPER early in the mess.

Curse of Strahd, you're not going to be picking up any magic weapons or equipment until you hit up Castle Ravenloft, and Castle Ravenloft is a deadly area for level 10s and up. You CAN technically go in and raid it early.

Also what says. When I was DMing for AL, the only magic item I ever got to hand out was a +1 Rapier, and that was INCREDIBLY easy to miss and it was a level 3 adventure.

Also, for some added snarkiness: You're pretty weak.

>There are ritual spells up to lvl 5 I believe. Some very useful (find familiar, identify).
There is ONE ritual spell up that high, and its Leomund's Tiny Hut. And I believe ritual magic even skips level 4 entirely.

>We'll agree to disagree on that. I'd say it's based on the campaign (more wilderness and tracking better ranger will do).
I agree its based on the campaign, but I would say a large majority of games take place in the wilderness. Though I will extend that another large majority of games involves politicking which gives the Warlock the advantage over there.

Consider this with the flying snake: You get to add your ranger proficiency to damage with the animal's damage.

Meaning that's 1 damage + proficiency, then 3d4 + proficiency.

>Rangers receive no combat benefit vs favored enemy

Forget the beastmaster for a second, what the hell happened here?

WotC made a decision that was basically "We don't want the ranger to be really useful against one type of enemy, and then not all that useful against other types of enemies. Instead, we wanted them to be useful against all enemy types. Which means that we can't tie in a lot of the ranger features into favored enemy".

Also, Favored Enemy is a kind of archaic mechanic to begin with. I'm actually glad for the change.

I like the flavor of the old favored enemy, You hold a grudge against dragons because one burned down your village? Well no one is better at killing them than you.

Then why is their capstone only a small bonus to favored enemy? You could give it to them at level 1 and it would change little.

I think a big issue with the ranger is that they overvalued its utility features, and it suffers in both combat and non-combat due to that.

To me, that doesn't make sense.

>I really hate this ONE dragon so I perfectly know how to fight ALL dragons! Not accounting for difference of personality or size or type or...

The capstone thing is frankly weak and a mistake in my opinion, but so are half of the capstones in the game.

I disagree with the utility features as well, especially including their spell list. But I will agree that it sort of depends on the DM to how useful they'll be. I hold the same opinion of the Wot4E Monk. I think that Monk is great and fun to play with if you know that your DM is the type who hands out a lot of short rests in between fights. If your DM is running a campaign using the realistic & gritty healing rules though, man, you're so fucked.

I think the biggest thing Wot4E monk needs is just more Ki points so it can use the feature more reliably. That sort of ties into the short rest issue, but it's mainly a matter of how the abilities are costed.

I think you are right that it depends a lot on the DM how useful their utility will be, though they also have an issue in that they really need Hunter's Mark to be more reliable in combat, but that also eats up a lot of their spells to use for utility. Their utility focusing mostly on nature and survival also means they often lack situations where it comes up.

>I think the biggest thing Wot4E monk needs is just more Ki points so it can use the feature more reliably.
Problem with that is a lot of the features are stated to be cast as much as a spell of similar level on an equal level character. So then the problem lies in "If the Monk casts a Burning Hands ability at level 1, how do we stop him from doing that more than the Wiz/Sorc at level 1?"

In general, I just think Wot4E Monk plays differently than most people suspect. Wot4E Monks are supposed to be Monks with slightly better crowd control features than its other archetypes as a sort of back up ability. Whereas I think the problem most people have with him is they try and play him as Aang from Last Airbender. Which is partially WotC's fault, because they sort of hype him up a bit too much.

Give the beast more HP and make it less of a fucking action sink. Maybe allow larger beasts, too.

It's the one outright bad archetype in the game. 4elements at least has cool tricks.

>It makes way of the four elements monk look playable in comparison.
Beast Master: gets a companion that gets progressively better over time.

Four Elements: gets prestidigation and four spells ever that have to be cast using your fightan resource.

Well, that's the thing, is that Elemental monks don't get burning hands at level 1. The spells they get tend to come much later, and they usually cost a solid 3-5 ki for any given ability. Even at max level with 20 ki, you're looking at maybe 4 mid-level spells per fight. That might sound like a lot, but it's not much different than a wizard blowing all their high level spell slots on fireball or whatever.

I think giving Element monks more Ki gives them a bit more breathing room and turns that back up ability into something they can use more often without burning up their standard features.

Man, the whole path is broken.

Waiting until level 17 for flamewall? Whoop-de do. Meanwhile if you have a sorc/wizard he's had better crowd control for 10 levels.

It needed more signature abilities like water whip, and less over-costed copies of spells that you're never gonna care to burn the Ki points on.

The con save is super easy to make and poison damage is one of the worst types in the game?

Neither of these is better than a basic wolf. And the basic wolf isn't very good.

>Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Can't comment on this (everyone tells me it's garbage so I never bothered).

>Out of the Abyss
That's not entirely true. You can technically get all your starting gear in the first area, or steal some from the guardhouse. Depends on how you play it, and this adventure has a lot of magic goods (including as you say the opportunity to get a +2 sword almost right out of the gate).

>Curse of Strahd
It's sandbox-y so it depends but there are at least two magic weapons outside of raven-loft. Depending on your luck you may get the sunsword also way before you hit ravenloft.

Anyway the point is this: There's still no good reason not to give the beast pet at least magic attacks. At RAW it's fucking terrible, and I say this as someone who ran for a beast-master ranger for months.

Talk with beasts is another thing that should have come with the path. Stupid when the totem barbarian is the best guy in the party to talk with the rangers pet...

Flying snake doesn't allow a save.

Just use chain pact warlock as an example and make similar features for the ranger.

5th edition Ranger Core.

Favored Enemy benefits: bonus to Wisdom/Tracking checks and speak a language your favored Enemy does. At level 6 and 14, pick another favored enemy.

That's it.

Oh wait, I'm wrong. 5E Rangers can add their Wisdom modifier to the attack or damage roll on their favored enemies.

AT LEVEL FUCKING TWENTY.

Their capstone ability is that they are FINALLY better in combat against something labeled as a FAVORED ENEMY.

This as retarded an SJW...
>5E Rangers, not even once.

So Rangers have problems, obviously, but let's run a little experiment; I bet that this thread actually has nothing to do with that at all and discussion isn't even the point and finding alternatives isn't something OP and those bumping the thread with shit talking want either.
In fact I'm guessing most people (assuming there's that many at all) just want to stir up shit and that this is a good topic to use.

My guess is that within the next....let's say seven posts of this one, someone else will bump the thread by going on a long rant about how much Ranger sucks, something already established by several other posters in this thread and thus adding functionally nothing to it except inflammatory remarks.

Rangers are clearly intended to be multiclassed with something else, why else would their capstone be so lackluster?

There's very little reason to use ranger as an MC. You want archery? Fighter. You want minor spells/hunter's mark? Warlock with hex. Skills? Rogue or bard. Ranger doesn't really offer anything another class doesn't do better

Flying snake don't care.

The monk's spell path progression is a 1/3rd caster, I believe, much like Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight.

Thank you for posting this so I didn't have to.

>Curse of Strahd, you're not going to be picking up any magic weapons or equipment until you hit up Castle Ravenloft

The PTSD man... half the party is melee damage dealers with no magical weapons. Somehow we keep running into hordes of Vampire Spawn pre-lvl 5.

Somehow we survived every encounter just by the skin of our teeth but damn did it hurt.

Kinda feeling this to be honest. Playing a 7th lvl melee Ranger right now and it always feels like I should have put 2 lvls into fighter.

Not that I hate it though, Colossus slayer and Multiattack Defense are neat and I am looking forward to Whirlwind Attack. I wish though I could use Colossus Slayer on every attack or at LEAST every attack when it's a favored enemy. The Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer are great just for Roleplay and if you want to play the Hunter type. Would recommend Observant as a feat just so you can add to it.

>This as retarded an SJW...
lol

Honestly what Beastmaster ranger needs is a "leading shot" kind of thing, where if the Beastmaster attacks an enemy that beast is within range of, it gets an opportunity attack, allowing at best four attacks a turn, three from the beast.
And/or vice versa, so there's at least some proper combination teamwork play into the archetype.

It doesn't make the pet less terrible, but it does make the unit as a whole more viable.
Dip some levels into rogue for added TEAMWORK

>I am looking forward to Whirlwind Attack
I hope you realize you can't move between attacks
sageadvice.eu/2014/09/17/whirlwind-attack/

>nerf to whirlwind attack
That's exactly what makes rangers great, nerfing one of their best things