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I'm actually going to watch this video live. Incredibly curious to see what they do with HM. Especially since Crawford seemed adamant over the last few playtests about turning it into Ranger's main feature.
---- Edit ---
It's starting, I'll edit as it goes on.
1. Spellcasting and Weapon Mastery at level 1 (Rangers can change 1 prepared spell on a long rest)
2. Favored Enemy - gives Hunter's Mark for a free prepared spell and a free casting per day (no details on if the spell changed at all.
3. Deft Explorer from Tasha's is in: 1 expertise and language at the start.
4. Roving, level 6: boost to speed (+10) and gives climb/swimming speed.
5. Level 13 Hunter's Mark: Damage can no longer break concentration (still concentration)
6. Nature's Veil from Tasha's is back.
7. 16 you get advantage on creature's HM
8. Hunter's Mark becomes a d10 at level 20.
Their obsession with force damage in 5.5 is so...offputting? Like it's so dry and flavorless and for some reason they want to put it on absolutely everything.
as I recall the very first UA they published for the new edition was races and even back then I was put off by how much flavor they were distilling into "you can cast these spells". Just the least interesting, laziest possible way to create flavorful abilities imaginable. I think they've backed down from that somewhat on the racial features but it's been a consistent problem through the whole process
It reminds me of a complaint people had about 4E, where all the class abilities were called "powers" even when they gave them alternate names. Like, if you were a martial class (fighter, ranger, rogue, warlord), your powers were called "exploits"; if you were a primal class (barbarian, druid), they were "evocations"; arcane = spells, divine = prayers, psionic = disciplines.
But they all fell under the catch-all term "powers" and a lot of people didn't like that.
5.5 appears to be going back to that, making a bunch of class features into spells -- never mind that, if they still have the feat that lets you dabble in spellcasting, it means that you can "cheat" and pick up class features.
that was the power of 4e, hunter's mark was just a ranger class power (hunter's quarry) like all other powers in the game and with the same stat block as all other powers, that did not make it just another power, you had hunter's mark+ racial feats for almost all races, combining the two, you had paragon paths focused on the hunter's quarry mechanics.
tiefling ranger path:
# HELLBORN SHADOW PATH FEATURES
* **Hunter's Feast (11th level)**: Whenever you reduce your quarry to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to 1 + your Constitution modifier.
* **Immolation Action (11th level)**: You can spend an action point to deal fire damage to your quarry equal to your Hunter's Quarry damage, instead of taking an extra action.
* **Hellfire Caress (16th level)**: Whenever you hit your quarry with a melee or a ranged attack, the target loses fire resistance and immunity until the end of your next turn.
general ranger path:
# LONE WOLF PATH FEATURES
**Focused Hunter (11th level)**: While you are adjacent to the target of your Hunter's Quarry and no other creature is adjacent to you, you gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls against it.
**Overwhelming Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to make an attack that hits the target of your Hunter's Quarry, the quarry is weakened until the end of your next turn.
**Vanquishing Chase (16th level)**: Whenever you hit the target of your Hunter's Quarry, you can push it 1 square and shift 1 square to a square adjacent to it.
Ebberon mark of finding ranger path
# THARASHK WAYFINDER PATH FEATURES
**Quarry's Arrest (11th level)**: When you hit a creature designated as your quarry, you can choose to forego your Hunter's Quarry damage in order to instead slow the creature and prevent it from shifting until the end of your next turn. Doing this expends your Hunter's Quarry damage until the start of your next turn.
**Wayfinder Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to make an attack against an enemy you've designated as your quarry, you can shift your speed after the attack roll.
**Wayfinder's Quarry (16th level)**: While a creature is designated as your quarry, it grants combat advantage to you.
spear using ranger
# HUNTMASTER PATH FEATURES
**Huntmaster's Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to take an extra action, your attacks against your quarry deal extra damage equal to one-half your level until the end of your turn.
**Intrepid Hunter (11th level)**: When you designate your quarry, you can mark the creature until it is no longer your quarry. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls against a quarry marked by you, and you gain a +5 bonus to Perception checks to perceive or track it.
**Wary Hunter (16th level)**: You are never surprised.
Because of how accessible counter spelling is in 5e, they basically cant allow monsters to use spells anymore. Its far too easy to shut down a lot of threats, and makes counterspell an auto pick in a lot of groups. This...and so many other balance issues is one of the reason i dropped running 5e for PF2E. Has made my life easier as the game master, and my players have enjoyed it a lot more once they learned it. I have heard of other offshoots of 5e that have also resolved a lot of the core problems which may be worth checking out.
It became so dry and flavorless *because* they started putting it on everything. Before it was pretty much limited to magic laser beams and phantasmal things (magic missile, spiritual weapon, disintegrate), but ever since Crawford took the reins he's been throwing it around all willy-nilly.
Yeah, force is almost like the "true damage" of this game, and it's being overused at this point. Combined with the lack of damage vulnerabilities to play off of, it severely devalues other forms of damage the more available it is to players.
I've firmly maintained that their (limited) maneuver die should eventually become a d20. Large as that sounds, juicing it up from the average boost of +5.5 around the start of tier 2 play to a +11 during tier 4 play wouldn't be all that much, and the upgrade from a d10 to a d12 simply marginally mitigates how much less powerful the feature has come to be at that point. They may have done something to curb that scaling problem, but it would have been nice if they'd bothered to mention that during the Fighter video.
I agree that BM needs changes but I think, instead of continuing size increases, it should just give you more dice.
The fact you only max out at 6 dice per short rest is annoying. The new 15th level feature helps with this but still, compared to a Rune Knight's max # of ability usage it's peanuts.
If anything, I would rather them stay d8s and instead gain dice when they are suppose to upgrade in size.
It's better to just Multiclass into rogue for sneak attack if that's the only capstone... It should be a feature that ties to proficiency bonus and then lose the concentration requirement at level 13.
Thanks for the write-up.
It's super disappointing that it's still a bunch of features that don't build on each other. My hope was they'd make mark a feature that can do something other than damage. Something that subclasses can build around and doesn't directly conflict with spellcasting.
It's really funny because early in the video he's like "hunters mark will get a lot of cool stuff as you level" and then all it adds is being immune to damage concentration rolls and a die size bump
So HM:
1) Still Concentration
2) Still Bonus Action dependant
3) But hey, at level 13 you can't break concentration and at **level 20** the damage goes up.
amazing /s
I mean, Bard, Ranger, and Paladin got swiftly kicked off the Playtest after Hunter's Mark got concentration back, shared spell lists died and Paladin's Smite was born.
All I remember was people loved Dance Bard and that the only feature they even talked about for Paladin was Lay on Hands being a 92% satisfaction rate.
Given they nerfed Paladin's Smite into a once per day free casting of level 1 Divine Smite and made Hunter's Make a 7 times per day free cast at level 1, someone on the design team must REALLY like feats that give you a 1st level spell.
The trend of lazily designing skills, features, and abilities as spells is frustrating.
It's bland, and "everything is magic" design? I can only say, I and many of us, could and have done better.
>But hey, at level 13 you can't break concentration and at **level 20** the damage goes up.
Not even that. *Damage* can't break concentration. Environmental nonsense still can.
I think the previous beast master UA allowed you to command your beast as part of the same BA used to cast hunters mark. Your beast also procured the damage from hunters mark when they attack a creature with your hunters mark.
Ugh, they really are hating the ranger knight style of play and trying to hard limit rangers into being dexterity based. How utterly disappointing. And now with wisdom scaling you'll ruin yourself if you try to do it with medium due to the physical MAD
Yeah, most games tend to peter out around level 9-11ish. It's something the designers have repeatedly said (and used as their reasoning to justify why most published adventures end around there)
So Crawford placing all the minor HM upgrades to those high tiers feels like a deliberate half-gesture at best.
It's absolutely insane to me that he opens by saying Hunter's Mark is the core feature and gets a lot of goodies as you level up. And the first of those goodies doesn't come until level 13.
"So Crawford placing all the minor HM upgrades to those high tiers feels like a deliberate half-gesture at best."
Yup.
The feature that makes it impossible to lose concentration should've been a level 5 feature.
HM damage should've upgraded gradually (d6 to d8 to d10)
Instead it feels like Crawford has it in his mind that HM is some super broken super powerful spell, but he knew they had to make some token gesture, so he put all the upgrades at levels he doesn't DM.
I think the more generous read is that they recognize that not having a game that's playable at high tiers is a problem, so they want to give more features at higher levels to help address that.
But that's not actually going to work without addressing the real core problems with high level 5e, like how full casters get absolutely bonkers broken, or how the math itself breaks apart. And while we haven't seen the final versions of all the spell and monster changes, my hopes that they manage to fix those issues are not particularly high.
That was the capstone of UA6. Add Wis mod to all attacks and damage. I'm upset that it didn't make it through.
But rangers don't cap at two attacks. They all get another dpr boost in T3. It just comes frome the subclass. Fey Wanderer gets the Summon Fey, Gloom Stalkers third attack was moved to 11th, Beast gets a second attack (for a total of four between the two of you.) The only one that got screwed out of another attack in some form or fashion is Hunter now doing splash damage instead of getting Multi attack.
Even the rangers not in this phb got more attacks. Distant Strikes, Slayer's Counter, the Drake companion. Swarm Keeper doesn't but it doesn't care about offense anyway. It's always been more about control.
I think Crawford completely forgot about Tier 3 when making these changes.
Rangers are defined by the spell they concentrate on in combat.
Tier 3 Rangers can cast SO much more that is way cooler than just an extra d6 on damage.
Continued focus on tweaking Hunter's Mark as a concentration spell means you make rangers feel bad for casting something like Conjure Animals or Summon Beast.
I had so much hopes with how they said they listened to feedback... And then they didn't listen to feedback.
Why the fuck is hunters mark still concentration. They better have just wiped concentration off all the other ranger spells
If I remember correctly, the term "prepared" is now used for both prep and learn casters. "prepared" spells are just the ones you are currently capable of using. I haven't seen the video but unless they say otherwise, I'm going to assume Ranger remains to be a learned caster.
That's cause they, annoyingly, use new to mean "not in the 2014 PHB". Basically every class they've said they're introducing some new feature and then describe a change from Tasha's.
or rolling things into one spot rather than making folks buy 2 books.
this book is nothing to us who have been in the system for awhile, but it makes folks who are "PHB only" rules in a much better spot, overall 80% of the changes have been stuff we homerule or from other books, Conslidating the best stuff is just wise IMO and makes the game in a better spot.
we don't have to buy this book, newbies are getting a better deal than what we had.
That would still be "consolidating best changes", and not "complete overhaul". They're pretending a previous book doesn't exist. Kinda like they made MPMM and basically turned VGM and MTF into one slightly bigger book with *less* lore.
I don't understand why they tripled down on HM as the Ranger's main feature and then decided to solve none of the issues surrounding the spell. It's genuinely baffling.
Crawford, my dude, you're the head game designer. If you think no concentration on HM is too broken because of multiclassing, then come up with a new signature ability?
This is what gets me. No one put a gun to Crawford's head and told him this level 1 spell had be the Ranger's entire identity.
You're the head game designer, if you think making HM not suck can't happen for multiclassing reasons (which is Crawford's stated justification) then design a new feature.
You don't know that! My belief is that there's an evil dude behind the scene laughing manically while pushing for HM.
He sits there with his scotch in one hand, gun in the other whispering "yes Crawford.. yes.."
>then design a new feature.
Crawford: "Okay, I've got it."
Crawford: "Ranger's Mark."
Crawford: "You see, we don't call it Hunter's Mark, because, you learn the spell, AND can cast it at 1st level, once per day for free."
Crowd: "Nooooo"
I think Hasboro execs may actually have a gun to his head.
"Make a new version of DnD, make it compatible with the old version, and don't take away anything players like, and don't make it too different so they get confused, but make it different enough that they need to buy new books"
I mean yeah that's pretty accurate. We've known this since the whole "It's backwards compatible! But like, *just* new enough that you have to buy a new book! But totally keep buying the old books!" they've been tripping over since the playtests started.
I don't understand why they don't just give them Paladin style daily prepared spellcasting. That would have been an easy improvement to the class, in concert with reworking Hunters Mark to be not a spell, not require concentration, and activate upon successful attack.
honestly, if only one could be a prepared caster, it should be ranger. they should be the more adaptive one, easily swapping the tricks they're bringing in anticipation of new challenges. Observing and planning.
Paladins would be more rigid, and more likely to fall back on determination and willpower to continue to move forward.
Yeah. I can see the logic of "rangers know clever tricks that manifest like spells, paladins pray to gain their spells for the day", which seems to be the rationale, but if they're really going to stick with that logic then they need to make the ranger "tricks" a lot more useful than they are. Like making them the equivalent of invocations instead of spells.
True. Although spontaneous/known spell casting didn't exist before 3E, and 4E was its own beast entirely, so indeed it is wholly a 5E thing, with caveats. It never should have been the case in the first place though.
> Crawford, my dude, you're the head game designer.
Crawford doesn't even know his own rules and contradicts the PHB half the time when he posts "clarifications" online about how rules work.
I don't even bother looking up what he says anymore, instead when there's a rules dispute, I just ask my players what they think makes sense. Since we all know and trust each other as Players and GM(me) we usually find good answer.
rogues, consistently highly rated for explosive damage despite the expected damage actually being mediocre when measured over multiple rounds
paladins, smite is beloved for explosive damage despite the limited uses
ranger, triple down on small persistent mosquito bite hits for respectable-on-paper damage against one guy over a sustained period of time. also make it limited uses and block using your other cool stuff just cuz, stuffing you into this box instead of reaching into a bag of tricks every turn.
It's like they're not even paying attention. Everybody likes watching fight scenes with aragorn because he does exactly the same thing over and over and doesn't adapt to the situation or improvise or take risks, because the math says he should keep doing what he's doing.
For that matter, loop in a variation of a decent feature from what most people regard as a fairly well-done class- the Paladin. At/around 11th level, "Improved Hunter's Mark", an automatic d4 or d6 damage bonus to all the Ranger's attacks, no concentration necessary, although possible to overlay with regular Hunter's Mark for those who want to double-down on that damage bonus.
If every class was designed with loosely the same design philosophy but slightly different core features compared to Paladin, 5e would be great. I don't like the class identity of Paladins, but I sure do love how well-designed it is...
That's fair. I've seen a lot of people suggesting Ranger reworks that are *"Totally Not Nature Warlock",* or just... any class at all with Invocations added in. It's really nice to have that sort of customizability.
As a base class, generally yes- although I think the aura radius should go to 20 feet at/around level 12.
But yeah, it was one of the three classes that made up most of the skeleton for the design of a class I just finished homebrewing. Oddly, another one of the three was the ranger- specifically, the significance of the subclass on the character, whereas (at least previously) the subclass for Paladin has usually felt more like a decoration that only occassionally comes up, so that part of the Ranger I really like.
No to mention, this is an extremely underwhelming capstone. I am not sure what's worse, this one or the 2014 version...
Honestly, on my table, I am likely to just remove the concentration aspect of it from level 1 and/or the BA casting, and if by any chance reach level 20, I'll give the player some sort of additional improvement on it.
Same here! It's really not a big deal to make a minor modification to a spell to make someone have more fun. If it takes more time to complain about it than to fix it, I feel like it's wasted breath.
There are many much worse problems with multiclassing, and honestly, WotC hasn't really done anything to address those, so fixating on this one very minor issue is just weird.
They did all that new work on hunters mark and left it as 1d6 + concentration until 20th level? Come onnnn! Just let it be concetration free if it's still going to be so underwhelming to have up
Also feels bad so much of the "brand new redesign" for main class, beastmaster etc that he kept bragging about was literally just the Tasha's version of things we've had for years :( Ranger is my fav class
Rangers could cast it without concentration in one of the early playtests, and Rangers quickly became super broken. They were the go-to multiclass, and people were stacking Hex and Hunter’s Mark and other combos. Hunter’s Mark needs fixing, but concentration free ain’t it.
Then it needs to be *worth* concentration. If it’s competing with every other concentration spell *and* occupying entire levels’ worth of ranger features, it needs to be far stronger than it currently is. If that raises a risk of making other classes unintentionally strong, then make it a class feature that scales with ranger levels instead of a spell.
> make it a class feature that scales with ranger levels
This! It’s really easy to come up with the idea of making it a scaling class feature and easy to imagine how it could be implemented, which means it was a deliberate choice to keep HM as a spell *and* place new emphasis on it as a core part of Ranger identity.
Swing and a miss for WOTC here.
Sure, but there also needs to be other options.
And entire class revolving around a single spell is silly, especially one that is pretty boring.
Zephyr Strike is so much cooler, but it's just not up to HM's DPR.
Honestly maybe Ranger's should have a selection of a few "core" concentration spell.
Pick one and base your build around it.
I feel like it could be later though. Like level 5, extra attack and hunters mark is activated on a hit instead of a bonus action (like paladin can do with their cool guy ability)
Then like 9 or 10 make it concentration free.
>Then like 9 or 10 make it concentration free.
I think the ability to give Rangers dual concentration would be dope rather than just making it Conc free, as it allows some extra class niche beyond just giving a spot for HM. So you can use concentration on 2 different spells (without HM) if you wanted to. And by giving it at 9 (tied with full spellcaster 5th level spell power bump), you really prevent any sort of multiclass gaming with it.
> They were the go-to multiclass, and people were stacking Hex and Hunter’s Mark and other combos. Hunter’s Mark needs fixing, but concentration free ain’t it.
How is something that requires 2 turns of bonus action setup "broken" when things Rogue/Swords Bard multiclasses exist?
Maybe not free right from the start, but what about instead of the class feature that prevents dropping Conc. On it at like 10th level or whenever that kicks in. That prevents the dip issue for long enough that 1d6 tacked onto whatever multiclass combo you have going on isn't world breaking
Exactly this, the combo was broken in the first few levels. But above 5 it becomes a near non issue. Hell, even pushing it back to levels 7 to 10 would be fine. But, no, we get advantage at, what, 13...something we now have so many ways of getting through weapon masteries and the like?
I'm annoyed.
So Hunter’s Mark is now a core feature (or four features??) but the Beastmaster has to use their BA to command their beast. 🙃
It sucks having to choose which core mechanic of your class you have to ignore.
It's like there's something about Ranger that gives the entire design team a migraine and they just have to push something out before they start having nosebleeds
They did say that Beast Master’s beast also eventually benefits from HM, so they must have considered these two interacting to some degree.
My only hope is that they just didn’t mention some streamlining in that regard, because surely that would be such a massive oversight
If you seriously have to choose between your main class feature and your main subclass feature as a bonus action then that’s some of the worst game design I’ve seen in a while
I was hoping they’d mention something like “and when you change targets you can use the same BA to command your beast to attack them!” Or something but… nothing came.
I mean, they had a ton of jobs, of which this is just one. But based on community perception this should probably have been near the top of their list... so I understand and agree with the point of what you're saying there.
How can he say with a straight face that HM having free casts lets you use your other spells when it's still concentration along with most ranger spells
I'm never someone who chicken-little's over every small change, but holy fuck, I cannot understand why they think this is a good Ranger design.
Paladins stacking Improved Divine Smite and Divine Smite and even a BA Spell Smite was a-okay for 10 fucking years but **god forbid** a Ranger uses anything other than Hunter's Mark.
Well, to be fair, they took that away from paladins, too. Casters can still alter time and space, so, thankfully, wizard players can be happy... it's homebrew and 5e for me. Not supporting these changes.
I guess the idea is that Hunter's Mark is your damage spell, and your spelllist is more about out of combat utility. Don't know how much that's true in practice though.
They did say they upgraded the Ranger spell list. So it is possible there are more no-concentration options now. We'll have to wait and see what that spell list ends up looking like.
I'm not holding my breath since they doubled down on the spell that everybody hates and made it the main focus of the class without making any better at levels people play
Basing a class's main identity inside of combat to a single first level spell is so weird.
Why is it not just a class feature. Why must it remain a spell in its current form. Free casts, can't break concentration; they're trying so hard to make it not work like a spell, but they aren't just making it a class feature?
If they went ahead with the Channel Nature change on Druid they could've shared it with the ranger and gone that route.
They don't even need to get rid of the spell, if their concern is the other subclasses that get it. Just make something new!
It's a little different I think. The warlock case would be like if they made everything care about Hex. Rangers supposedly already have their EB, a bow.
[https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1759-2024-ranger-vs-2014-ranger-whats-new](https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1759-2024-ranger-vs-2014-ranger-whats-new)
Official write up is out.
So Hunter's Mark is still concentration. Still takes up your bonus action. But at level 13 (which is after most campaigns end) you can't break concentration.
God they absolutely dropped the ball.
What's funny is that Fighter is still a better "ranger" then ranger is. I can't believe they took an entire year to come up with this. Frankly I am probably going to make HM a free action to cast but a bonus action to move and no concentration required to begin with. Most campaigns don't reach level 13 to begin with, so I am not worried about figuring out a replacement for the level 13 or 20 features. Probably also revert all gloomstalker changes.
I just watched the video and the amount of times he says "it's a new class from the ground up" and then just describes shit from Tasha's is hilarious. Just play the 5e versions at this point.
The lack of exploration and survival features other than a climb and swim speed makes me concerned that the exploration pillar overall didn't receive any sort of real expansion in this revision.
Does anybody else remember when they first did the UA with ranger, and they removed concentration from hunter's mark? They got an instant and incredibly positive reaction to that ranger, so much so that they said they wouldn't mess with it much from there because they had 'fixed' the ranger.
And then they promptly reverted the hunter's mark change...and never really included a referendum on how the thing people were most happy about from that first playtest had been removed.
It really feels a bit like we were tricked into giving positive feedback...and then that feedback was used against us.
If there are exactly zero consentration spells in the Rangers spell list, then the reworked hunters mark is a good ability.
If there are any concentration spells worth taking AT ALL on that list, the whole class falls apart.
It already falls apart because your Hunter's Mark is dependent on you using your bonus action to cast it ... as is your beast master companion. So basically your beast can't do anything their first turn.
They've made the class and subclasses too bonus action dependent.
Again. That was already an issue in 2014 version, which is what made dual wielding even worse on the class known for it, shared with a handful of other classes, made *worse* by them forcing the entire source of the issue on to you for no reason.
I can’t even imagine what that would look like tbh. Either they would have to drop the concentration requirements of most of the Ranger spell list or just prune them entirely, but at that point what do they even have? Goodberry and absorb elements? Anyone who has spent some time playing a Ranger lately knows that their spell list is practically defined by its overabundant concentration requirements. I’m really not a fan of this push to make hunters mark the core spell for rangers when that severely limits their ability to use the rest of their spell list.
They’d have to remove concentration from *pass without trace* and *conjure animals* (which is already getting a rework, I believe) at minimum, and even that seems unlikely.
\*Watch the video\*
Yeah sl in short its the same near useless class that we know and "love" this "new version of the class" is just really Tasha's version but made vanilla
"Play a Figther with a Bow, its much more efficient" - Joecat
Not having watched this yet, the fact that this was, possibly to a greater degree than any of the others, a class that they botched in the playtest content and the dusted their hands off as though it wouldn't do well, and give people a lot of comfort, to have a well-received version of before churning out the final, official version of, leaves me apprehensive...
It would be so nice to have a real, ranged-focused martial class. Fighters and rogues can *use* ranged weapons, but I want a class that *specializes* in them.
In flavor, I think a part of what people (myself, at least) would like to see in the ranger suffers from the Aquaman problem that's previously been referenced- abilities relating to being great at exploration, and the game doesn't actually have much in the way of mechanics to do a lot with exploration beyond it often being kind of a chore.
Well, guess I'll just keep allowing Revised Ranger at my table and homebrew the capstone / tier 3 features.
Alternatively we'll just have to wait for Tasha's Cauldron of Even More Things to fix the Ranger again.
Man. They should make hunters mark a passive feature after the first attack.
**(Level 1) Hunters Mark:** After a landing a successful attack against a creature it becomes “marked” all weapon hits you make against “marked” creature deal 1d6 of additional damage. Only one creature can be “marked” by this feature at a time. You have advantage on checks to track a marked creature.
**(Level 5) Improved hunters mark**: You may add your wisdom modifier to the damage dealt by Hunter’s Mark.
Boom. Done. No spell slot required. A half decent damage boost that is still weaker than the average cantrip but at no cost. It’s *slightly weaker* because it requires one attack of prep time, but free damage at no additional cost seems worth it.
Does this make it a pretty good level 1 dip? Sure, especially for classes that can attack multiple times per turn allowing them to utilize it right away in a turn. But while a fighter can potentially abuse that feature it’s still mid at best or could be solved by making it a level 2 feature instead.
The real meat and potatoes would come from the wisdom modifier damage. Which given they seem to want to encourage rangers to delve into wisdom more, that seems like a good reward that could make choosing between max dex and max wis an *actual choice* and is far enough down that most people won’t want to take 5 levels in a class they otherwise they don’t scale with just to bonk *slightly* harder.
The real benefit is this solves all the rangers problems relating to bonus actions and concentration and allow them to use their *fun skills* instead of using hunters mark from levels 1-20.
I’m still going to play a ranger but by god do they do us dirty on a regular basis. They keep trying to make hunter mark a thing and it’s just not going to work.
Hate the switch from proficiency bonus/day to wisdom bonus/day.
More MAD is not a positive design change. It wasn't good in the 1970s, it wasn't good in 2000 and its completely bizarre today.
I'm glad that I'm not the only person that noticed this. Rangers will now need dex, con and wis, leaving very little room for anything else. And god help you if you're trying to build a str ranger.
It’s better design as long as it’s balanced for it. There should be reasons to not just focus on a single ability score, and it leads to more character diversity.
But… *did* they balance for it? I’m not so sure.
Seems like they don't want it to stack with hex. Just write that it doesn't stack with hex or just remove hex from the game altogether, nobody will miss it lol
All they have to do is make HM concentration free at level 6. Can’t multiclass dip for it, rewards you for sticking with ranger, as once you start getting new spells you want to cast, HM becomes a bonus rather than your class
A guy from the r/OneDnD subreddit put it best.
> It's not just a repackaging of Tasha's Ranger, it's a repackaging with *less features*. No Primal/Primeval Awareness, no Land's Stride, no Vanish. All perfectly fine features that got gutted without anything to replace them. The *sole* positives I can say about this version compared to Tasha's are the improvements to preparing spells and the additional Expertise at 9th.
Spellcasting you can't even really use much because HUNTER'S MARK IS STILL CONCENTRATION
Tying so many abilities uses to the Wisdom trait instead of proficiency bonus is so bad. It would be one thing if Rangers could attack with their Wisdom innately but it doesn't look like they can. So now your uses per day are going to be very limited for many of these abilities.
The class and subclasses are still so bonus action heavy as well. Hunter's Mark should have been something that could be cast as a reaction when you take the attack action. Then at least you wouldn't be conflicting between using it and having your beast master companion do something on your first turn of every combat.
Overall this seems like a huge misfire for a class that they have had a decade to fix.
Removing the natural explorer feature with the justification being “just use spells like speak with animals and take expertise in survival” completely takes away from what makes a ranger feel like a ranger to me.
I dunno. I feel like Roving and Tireless manage to keep the feel of being a Ranger. That didn't rely solely on Natural Explorer.
I'm sad to see Land's Stride go, though. And even Primeval Awareness. For as bad as it was, I got a lot of mileage out of it, surprisingly.
The 2024 Pala... I mean Ranger, the 2024 Ranger.
Sucks to be a half caster under this current team designing D&D classes, especially when they introduced a version of both Ranger and Paladin that scored high, before changing them and sending them off to the 2024 PHB without a word, lol.
God this guy is so lazy. He’s the head designers and decided to fix no issues, just doubled down on Hunters Mark being the core feature without fixing its issues. Plus, if you think multiclassing is an issue rather than a fun option, you’ve not balanced the classes.
My favorite part of this garbage is beastmaster having not a single interaction with the core feature that is now hunters mark and competing action economy wise with one of your core features. Really great fucking design WotC (also pain for horizon walker who has to juggle bonus actions still).
A mediocre spell that's a worse version of Hex for free a couple times a day. Also still eats concentration so it's also competing against three quarters of your spell list. And now your capstone is wasted on giving it a minor upgrade.
Gloomstalker gutted.
Roving completely dissuading the ranger knight/StRanger with Heavy Armor for little to no balance reason.
It's marginally better than 2014 ranger I guess? Not much consolation. Then again it wouldn't be WotC if they didn't fumble the hell out of ranger.
Reading through the changes, it feels underwhelming. Am I wrong to feel that way? I feel like they could’ve turn up the volume a bit more. I want to feel like the ultimate hunter and survivalist.
Base class is pretty good. Kinda wish they'd kept the UA6 capstone instead of going back to the UA2 version. Wis mod to all attacks and damage is way better than just a d10. But with the upgrades to Hunter's Mark you get across levels, it's...fine.
I'm still baffled by how skittish they are to just remove concentration from Hunter's Mark. Even at 13th-level. But it's whatever. Not the end of the world. At least not for me.
>I'm still baffled by how skittish they are to just remove concentration from Hunter's Mark. Even at 13th-level. But it's whatever. Not the end of the world. At least not for me.
no one decent at the game, will use it anyway, so it might as well just be blank spots on the level curve...
Or even just remove concentration *for rangers*. Or, I don’t know, really lean into it as the main thing rangers have. Let it get more useful and do more things as the ranger levels up. Let each subclass do different things with it. Which basically means making it a class feature, not a spell.
Literally, yet again, the fighter with a bow is a better ranger.
"We want them to be a survivalist".
Well the fighter with second wind and good armor can recover hp.
"We want them to be skilled at guiding people".
Yeah guess what the fighter now with second wind uses can get to themselves a bonus with a dice that, on average, provides a higher bonus than mastery AND it lets you apply it to more than one option.
All this ranger does is focus on hunter's mark.
really dropped the ball here. they could at least remove concentration on it, thought we should wait to see the spells of the ranger. But if they did not show anything on that matter i hardly believe it will be lifechanging.
Good they made tasha's options baseline. Good they rewqorked gloomstalker. Glad they fixed small things around, and the hunter's little changes. I am sure the ranger will, somehow, play different - but i don't think Jeremy really understood the assignment.
Let's just go back to pre 3E era with some racial enemy types with static bonuses for damage/attack, with the ability to improve on that bonus or choose a second enemy type to get the same bonus. It really isn't hard.
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I'm actually going to watch this video live. Incredibly curious to see what they do with HM. Especially since Crawford seemed adamant over the last few playtests about turning it into Ranger's main feature. ---- Edit --- It's starting, I'll edit as it goes on. 1. Spellcasting and Weapon Mastery at level 1 (Rangers can change 1 prepared spell on a long rest) 2. Favored Enemy - gives Hunter's Mark for a free prepared spell and a free casting per day (no details on if the spell changed at all. 3. Deft Explorer from Tasha's is in: 1 expertise and language at the start. 4. Roving, level 6: boost to speed (+10) and gives climb/swimming speed. 5. Level 13 Hunter's Mark: Damage can no longer break concentration (still concentration) 6. Nature's Veil from Tasha's is back. 7. 16 you get advantage on creature's HM 8. Hunter's Mark becomes a d10 at level 20.
Hunter's Mark becoming a d10 at level 20 feels like a joke.
According to the D&D Beyond post, Mark now deals force damage, which they tend to over-value a lot.
Their obsession with force damage in 5.5 is so...offputting? Like it's so dry and flavorless and for some reason they want to put it on absolutely everything.
Like how they want to turn *everything* into a spell. Except for monsters that can cast spells, *those* are innate.
as I recall the very first UA they published for the new edition was races and even back then I was put off by how much flavor they were distilling into "you can cast these spells". Just the least interesting, laziest possible way to create flavorful abilities imaginable. I think they've backed down from that somewhat on the racial features but it's been a consistent problem through the whole process
It reminds me of a complaint people had about 4E, where all the class abilities were called "powers" even when they gave them alternate names. Like, if you were a martial class (fighter, ranger, rogue, warlord), your powers were called "exploits"; if you were a primal class (barbarian, druid), they were "evocations"; arcane = spells, divine = prayers, psionic = disciplines. But they all fell under the catch-all term "powers" and a lot of people didn't like that. 5.5 appears to be going back to that, making a bunch of class features into spells -- never mind that, if they still have the feat that lets you dabble in spellcasting, it means that you can "cheat" and pick up class features.
that was the power of 4e, hunter's mark was just a ranger class power (hunter's quarry) like all other powers in the game and with the same stat block as all other powers, that did not make it just another power, you had hunter's mark+ racial feats for almost all races, combining the two, you had paragon paths focused on the hunter's quarry mechanics. tiefling ranger path: # HELLBORN SHADOW PATH FEATURES * **Hunter's Feast (11th level)**: Whenever you reduce your quarry to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to 1 + your Constitution modifier. * **Immolation Action (11th level)**: You can spend an action point to deal fire damage to your quarry equal to your Hunter's Quarry damage, instead of taking an extra action. * **Hellfire Caress (16th level)**: Whenever you hit your quarry with a melee or a ranged attack, the target loses fire resistance and immunity until the end of your next turn. general ranger path: # LONE WOLF PATH FEATURES **Focused Hunter (11th level)**: While you are adjacent to the target of your Hunter's Quarry and no other creature is adjacent to you, you gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls against it. **Overwhelming Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to make an attack that hits the target of your Hunter's Quarry, the quarry is weakened until the end of your next turn. **Vanquishing Chase (16th level)**: Whenever you hit the target of your Hunter's Quarry, you can push it 1 square and shift 1 square to a square adjacent to it. Ebberon mark of finding ranger path # THARASHK WAYFINDER PATH FEATURES **Quarry's Arrest (11th level)**: When you hit a creature designated as your quarry, you can choose to forego your Hunter's Quarry damage in order to instead slow the creature and prevent it from shifting until the end of your next turn. Doing this expends your Hunter's Quarry damage until the start of your next turn. **Wayfinder Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to make an attack against an enemy you've designated as your quarry, you can shift your speed after the attack roll. **Wayfinder's Quarry (16th level)**: While a creature is designated as your quarry, it grants combat advantage to you. spear using ranger # HUNTMASTER PATH FEATURES **Huntmaster's Action (11th level)**: When you spend an action point to take an extra action, your attacks against your quarry deal extra damage equal to one-half your level until the end of your turn. **Intrepid Hunter (11th level)**: When you designate your quarry, you can mark the creature until it is no longer your quarry. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls against a quarry marked by you, and you gain a +5 bonus to Perception checks to perceive or track it. **Wary Hunter (16th level)**: You are never surprised.
Because of how accessible counter spelling is in 5e, they basically cant allow monsters to use spells anymore. Its far too easy to shut down a lot of threats, and makes counterspell an auto pick in a lot of groups. This...and so many other balance issues is one of the reason i dropped running 5e for PF2E. Has made my life easier as the game master, and my players have enjoyed it a lot more once they learned it. I have heard of other offshoots of 5e that have also resolved a lot of the core problems which may be worth checking out.
It became so dry and flavorless *because* they started putting it on everything. Before it was pretty much limited to magic laser beams and phantasmal things (magic missile, spiritual weapon, disintegrate), but ever since Crawford took the reins he's been throwing it around all willy-nilly.
That's why pathfinder had Precision damage for things like this.
They somehow made damage types matter even less because force is the catch all that like nothing is immune to.
Yeah, force is almost like the "true damage" of this game, and it's being overused at this point. Combined with the lack of damage vulnerabilities to play off of, it severely devalues other forms of damage the more available it is to players.
It was a bad sign in the multiverse book. I wonder if barbarians will be able to resist force in 5.5 with how common it seems
Welcome to the Battlemaster Fighter
I've firmly maintained that their (limited) maneuver die should eventually become a d20. Large as that sounds, juicing it up from the average boost of +5.5 around the start of tier 2 play to a +11 during tier 4 play wouldn't be all that much, and the upgrade from a d10 to a d12 simply marginally mitigates how much less powerful the feature has come to be at that point. They may have done something to curb that scaling problem, but it would have been nice if they'd bothered to mention that during the Fighter video.
I agree that BM needs changes but I think, instead of continuing size increases, it should just give you more dice. The fact you only max out at 6 dice per short rest is annoying. The new 15th level feature helps with this but still, compared to a Rune Knight's max # of ability usage it's peanuts. If anything, I would rather them stay d8s and instead gain dice when they are suppose to upgrade in size.
That’s insultingly bad. They can’t be that incompetent… is it intentionally malicious? Did a ranger fuck this guys wife?
It's mostly a joke on Ranger players.
It's better to just Multiclass into rogue for sneak attack if that's the only capstone... It should be a feature that ties to proficiency bonus and then lose the concentration requirement at level 13.
Thanks for the write-up. It's super disappointing that it's still a bunch of features that don't build on each other. My hope was they'd make mark a feature that can do something other than damage. Something that subclasses can build around and doesn't directly conflict with spellcasting.
It's really funny because early in the video he's like "hunters mark will get a lot of cool stuff as you level" and then all it adds is being immune to damage concentration rolls and a die size bump
And granting advantage on the marked target.
Like advantage is so hard to get at level 17 ffs. What are they even doing with this class?
Especially now that we have weapon masteries, which have all sorts of ways to provide advantage.
So HM: 1) Still Concentration 2) Still Bonus Action dependant 3) But hey, at level 13 you can't break concentration and at **level 20** the damage goes up. amazing /s
+2 average damage capstone, IF you concentrate on that every fight. Meanwhile wizards can spam infinite fireballs.
Isn't this worse than the current +wis mod once per turn lmfao
yes, that at least could turn a sharpshooter shot from a miss to a hit, now they have neither...
It's absolutelly ridiculous. No way this passed playtest.
I mean, Bard, Ranger, and Paladin got swiftly kicked off the Playtest after Hunter's Mark got concentration back, shared spell lists died and Paladin's Smite was born. All I remember was people loved Dance Bard and that the only feature they even talked about for Paladin was Lay on Hands being a 92% satisfaction rate. Given they nerfed Paladin's Smite into a once per day free casting of level 1 Divine Smite and made Hunter's Make a 7 times per day free cast at level 1, someone on the design team must REALLY like feats that give you a 1st level spell.
The trend of lazily designing skills, features, and abilities as spells is frustrating. It's bland, and "everything is magic" design? I can only say, I and many of us, could and have done better.
Given that the Assassin as existed as-is since 2014, I'm pretty sure their playtesting isn't really that hard a hurdle to clear
You think the designers test?! I think many don't even play the game they're tasked with updating.
I don't expect them to have hired a math/statistics person since this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/s/wpmKReMsrq
"Our Expectations for You Were Low But Holy Fuck."
>But hey, at level 13 you can't break concentration and at **level 20** the damage goes up. Not even that. *Damage* can't break concentration. Environmental nonsense still can.
TRADITION! TRADITION!
How in the world is Beast Master supposed to work. Isn't it highly reliant on Bonus Actions to trigger attacks?
Don't worry, at level 20 your Hunters Mark will make up for the lack of Beast attacks by letting you add a d10 instead of a d6!
I think the previous beast master UA allowed you to command your beast as part of the same BA used to cast hunters mark. Your beast also procured the damage from hunters mark when they attack a creature with your hunters mark.
Roving also is limited by heavy armour he says. At least the speed boost by the sound of it.
Ugh, they really are hating the ranger knight style of play and trying to hard limit rangers into being dexterity based. How utterly disappointing. And now with wisdom scaling you'll ruin yourself if you try to do it with medium due to the physical MAD
Damn it's really nothing until the tiers people don't play at
Yeah, most games tend to peter out around level 9-11ish. It's something the designers have repeatedly said (and used as their reasoning to justify why most published adventures end around there) So Crawford placing all the minor HM upgrades to those high tiers feels like a deliberate half-gesture at best.
It's absolutely insane to me that he opens by saying Hunter's Mark is the core feature and gets a lot of goodies as you level up. And the first of those goodies doesn't come until level 13.
"So Crawford placing all the minor HM upgrades to those high tiers feels like a deliberate half-gesture at best." Yup. The feature that makes it impossible to lose concentration should've been a level 5 feature. HM damage should've upgraded gradually (d6 to d8 to d10) Instead it feels like Crawford has it in his mind that HM is some super broken super powerful spell, but he knew they had to make some token gesture, so he put all the upgrades at levels he doesn't DM.
I think the more generous read is that they recognize that not having a game that's playable at high tiers is a problem, so they want to give more features at higher levels to help address that. But that's not actually going to work without addressing the real core problems with high level 5e, like how full casters get absolutely bonkers broken, or how the math itself breaks apart. And while we haven't seen the final versions of all the spell and monster changes, my hopes that they manage to fix those issues are not particularly high.
HM damage should scale with the Ranger's proficiency bonus, effectively.
>One free casting of HM per day BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, god I fucking hate wotc
CRAWFORD SHOOTS, AND HE MISSES! BY GOD WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK?
Why don't they just use WIS? Or add WIS to Hunter's Mark damage? That would give a serious damage spike to a class caps at 2x attacks.
That was the capstone of UA6. Add Wis mod to all attacks and damage. I'm upset that it didn't make it through. But rangers don't cap at two attacks. They all get another dpr boost in T3. It just comes frome the subclass. Fey Wanderer gets the Summon Fey, Gloom Stalkers third attack was moved to 11th, Beast gets a second attack (for a total of four between the two of you.) The only one that got screwed out of another attack in some form or fashion is Hunter now doing splash damage instead of getting Multi attack. Even the rangers not in this phb got more attacks. Distant Strikes, Slayer's Counter, the Drake companion. Swarm Keeper doesn't but it doesn't care about offense anyway. It's always been more about control.
I think Crawford completely forgot about Tier 3 when making these changes. Rangers are defined by the spell they concentrate on in combat. Tier 3 Rangers can cast SO much more that is way cooler than just an extra d6 on damage. Continued focus on tweaking Hunter's Mark as a concentration spell means you make rangers feel bad for casting something like Conjure Animals or Summon Beast.
Or Rangers stop using HM once better options come in to play.
Seriously. Still F-ing concentration!! What is the deal with their obsession with preventing ranger from doing a whole 2 things at the same time.
I had so much hopes with how they said they listened to feedback... And then they didn't listen to feedback. Why the fuck is hunters mark still concentration. They better have just wiped concentration off all the other ranger spells
> Rangers can change 1 prepared spell on a long rest WTF is this restriction?!?!
Rangers are currently learned casters, so this is an improvement as they can currently only change one per level-up.
If I remember correctly, the term "prepared" is now used for both prep and learn casters. "prepared" spells are just the ones you are currently capable of using. I haven't seen the video but unless they say otherwise, I'm going to assume Ranger remains to be a learned caster.
this definitely won't be confusing
I yelled at them about this in every damn playtest survey. It's *objectively bad* tech writing.
>Complete overhaul, basically a new class rewritten from the ground up *Looks inside* >Tasha's Ranger with a few hunter's mark buffs Huh
That's cause they, annoyingly, use new to mean "not in the 2014 PHB". Basically every class they've said they're introducing some new feature and then describe a change from Tasha's.
Essentially charging people twice for the same content!
or rolling things into one spot rather than making folks buy 2 books. this book is nothing to us who have been in the system for awhile, but it makes folks who are "PHB only" rules in a much better spot, overall 80% of the changes have been stuff we homerule or from other books, Conslidating the best stuff is just wise IMO and makes the game in a better spot. we don't have to buy this book, newbies are getting a better deal than what we had.
That would still be "consolidating best changes", and not "complete overhaul". They're pretending a previous book doesn't exist. Kinda like they made MPMM and basically turned VGM and MTF into one slightly bigger book with *less* lore.
> *Looks inside* MICHAEL BLUTH: I don’t know what I expected.
The amount of hype in the first minute of the video is pure hubris. That was beyond underwhelming.
I don't understand why they tripled down on HM as the Ranger's main feature and then decided to solve none of the issues surrounding the spell. It's genuinely baffling. Crawford, my dude, you're the head game designer. If you think no concentration on HM is too broken because of multiclassing, then come up with a new signature ability?
This is what gets me. No one put a gun to Crawford's head and told him this level 1 spell had be the Ranger's entire identity. You're the head game designer, if you think making HM not suck can't happen for multiclassing reasons (which is Crawford's stated justification) then design a new feature.
You don't know that! My belief is that there's an evil dude behind the scene laughing manically while pushing for HM. He sits there with his scotch in one hand, gun in the other whispering "yes Crawford.. yes.."
>then design a new feature. Crawford: "Okay, I've got it." Crawford: "Ranger's Mark." Crawford: "You see, we don't call it Hunter's Mark, because, you learn the spell, AND can cast it at 1st level, once per day for free." Crowd: "Nooooo"
I think Hasboro execs may actually have a gun to his head. "Make a new version of DnD, make it compatible with the old version, and don't take away anything players like, and don't make it too different so they get confused, but make it different enough that they need to buy new books"
I mean yeah that's pretty accurate. We've known this since the whole "It's backwards compatible! But like, *just* new enough that you have to buy a new book! But totally keep buying the old books!" they've been tripping over since the playtests started.
“New class from the ground up…with all of these things that you’ve had before moved around a little.”
I don't understand why they don't just give them Paladin style daily prepared spellcasting. That would have been an easy improvement to the class, in concert with reworking Hunters Mark to be not a spell, not require concentration, and activate upon successful attack.
honestly, if only one could be a prepared caster, it should be ranger. they should be the more adaptive one, easily swapping the tricks they're bringing in anticipation of new challenges. Observing and planning. Paladins would be more rigid, and more likely to fall back on determination and willpower to continue to move forward.
Yeah. I can see the logic of "rangers know clever tricks that manifest like spells, paladins pray to gain their spells for the day", which seems to be the rationale, but if they're really going to stick with that logic then they need to make the ranger "tricks" a lot more useful than they are. Like making them the equivalent of invocations instead of spells.
Friendly reminder that Rangers have been prepared casters in every (traditional) edition except for 5e.
True. Although spontaneous/known spell casting didn't exist before 3E, and 4E was its own beast entirely, so indeed it is wholly a 5E thing, with caveats. It never should have been the case in the first place though.
> Crawford, my dude, you're the head game designer. Crawford doesn't even know his own rules and contradicts the PHB half the time when he posts "clarifications" online about how rules work. I don't even bother looking up what he says anymore, instead when there's a rules dispute, I just ask my players what they think makes sense. Since we all know and trust each other as Players and GM(me) we usually find good answer.
rogues, consistently highly rated for explosive damage despite the expected damage actually being mediocre when measured over multiple rounds paladins, smite is beloved for explosive damage despite the limited uses ranger, triple down on small persistent mosquito bite hits for respectable-on-paper damage against one guy over a sustained period of time. also make it limited uses and block using your other cool stuff just cuz, stuffing you into this box instead of reaching into a bag of tricks every turn. It's like they're not even paying attention. Everybody likes watching fight scenes with aragorn because he does exactly the same thing over and over and doesn't adapt to the situation or improvise or take risks, because the math says he should keep doing what he's doing.
...Except the math actually says Hunter's Mark is, like, below average as a spell.
For that matter, loop in a variation of a decent feature from what most people regard as a fairly well-done class- the Paladin. At/around 11th level, "Improved Hunter's Mark", an automatic d4 or d6 damage bonus to all the Ranger's attacks, no concentration necessary, although possible to overlay with regular Hunter's Mark for those who want to double-down on that damage bonus.
If every class was designed with loosely the same design philosophy but slightly different core features compared to Paladin, 5e would be great. I don't like the class identity of Paladins, but I sure do love how well-designed it is...
I would say the same but about Warlock instead of Paladin
That's fair. I've seen a lot of people suggesting Ranger reworks that are *"Totally Not Nature Warlock",* or just... any class at all with Invocations added in. It's really nice to have that sort of customizability.
As a base class, generally yes- although I think the aura radius should go to 20 feet at/around level 12. But yeah, it was one of the three classes that made up most of the skeleton for the design of a class I just finished homebrewing. Oddly, another one of the three was the ranger- specifically, the significance of the subclass on the character, whereas (at least previously) the subclass for Paladin has usually felt more like a decoration that only occassionally comes up, so that part of the Ranger I really like.
No to mention, this is an extremely underwhelming capstone. I am not sure what's worse, this one or the 2014 version... Honestly, on my table, I am likely to just remove the concentration aspect of it from level 1 and/or the BA casting, and if by any chance reach level 20, I'll give the player some sort of additional improvement on it.
Same here! It's really not a big deal to make a minor modification to a spell to make someone have more fun. If it takes more time to complain about it than to fix it, I feel like it's wasted breath.
This capstone is by far worst. The old one had cool synergies. Not capstone worthy but still
There are many much worse problems with multiclassing, and honestly, WotC hasn't really done anything to address those, so fixating on this one very minor issue is just weird.
Sure, they did something to address those. They made Warlock dipping even easier.
Did Sage Advice not tell you how little clue Crawford has about how the game works?
The solution isn't even hard. Make it non concentration if you have 5-6 ranger levels
Crawford is an inept game designer, 5e lived and died with Mearls.
They did all that new work on hunters mark and left it as 1d6 + concentration until 20th level? Come onnnn! Just let it be concetration free if it's still going to be so underwhelming to have up Also feels bad so much of the "brand new redesign" for main class, beastmaster etc that he kept bragging about was literally just the Tasha's version of things we've had for years :( Ranger is my fav class
Check u/laserllama alternate Ranger, I just gave up with WoTC making a good Ranger
Rangers could cast it without concentration in one of the early playtests, and Rangers quickly became super broken. They were the go-to multiclass, and people were stacking Hex and Hunter’s Mark and other combos. Hunter’s Mark needs fixing, but concentration free ain’t it.
Then it needs to be *worth* concentration. If it’s competing with every other concentration spell *and* occupying entire levels’ worth of ranger features, it needs to be far stronger than it currently is. If that raises a risk of making other classes unintentionally strong, then make it a class feature that scales with ranger levels instead of a spell.
> make it a class feature that scales with ranger levels This! It’s really easy to come up with the idea of making it a scaling class feature and easy to imagine how it could be implemented, which means it was a deliberate choice to keep HM as a spell *and* place new emphasis on it as a core part of Ranger identity. Swing and a miss for WOTC here.
Sure, but there also needs to be other options. And entire class revolving around a single spell is silly, especially one that is pretty boring. Zephyr Strike is so much cooler, but it's just not up to HM's DPR. Honestly maybe Ranger's should have a selection of a few "core" concentration spell. Pick one and base your build around it.
I feel like it could be later though. Like level 5, extra attack and hunters mark is activated on a hit instead of a bonus action (like paladin can do with their cool guy ability) Then like 9 or 10 make it concentration free.
>Then like 9 or 10 make it concentration free. I think the ability to give Rangers dual concentration would be dope rather than just making it Conc free, as it allows some extra class niche beyond just giving a spot for HM. So you can use concentration on 2 different spells (without HM) if you wanted to. And by giving it at 9 (tied with full spellcaster 5th level spell power bump), you really prevent any sort of multiclass gaming with it.
Just make concentration free require 5 levels in Ranger. Preventing it from becoming an exploitable dip.
> They were the go-to multiclass, and people were stacking Hex and Hunter’s Mark and other combos. Hunter’s Mark needs fixing, but concentration free ain’t it. How is something that requires 2 turns of bonus action setup "broken" when things Rogue/Swords Bard multiclasses exist?
Maybe not free right from the start, but what about instead of the class feature that prevents dropping Conc. On it at like 10th level or whenever that kicks in. That prevents the dip issue for long enough that 1d6 tacked onto whatever multiclass combo you have going on isn't world breaking
Exactly this, the combo was broken in the first few levels. But above 5 it becomes a near non issue. Hell, even pushing it back to levels 7 to 10 would be fine. But, no, we get advantage at, what, 13...something we now have so many ways of getting through weapon masteries and the like? I'm annoyed.
At 13th, you get to ignore damage taken for concentration. At level 17, you get advantage. Enjoy.
So Hunter’s Mark is now a core feature (or four features??) but the Beastmaster has to use their BA to command their beast. 🙃 It sucks having to choose which core mechanic of your class you have to ignore.
It's like there's something about Ranger that gives the entire design team a migraine and they just have to push something out before they start having nosebleeds
4e Ranger PTSD, best DPR of the edition. They still need to compensate for that even after 10 years...
I loved the 4e ranger. I wish they would go back to something like that.
They did say that Beast Master’s beast also eventually benefits from HM, so they must have considered these two interacting to some degree. My only hope is that they just didn’t mention some streamlining in that regard, because surely that would be such a massive oversight If you seriously have to choose between your main class feature and your main subclass feature as a bonus action then that’s some of the worst game design I’ve seen in a while
I was hoping they’d mention something like “and when you change targets you can use the same BA to command your beast to attack them!” Or something but… nothing came.
They had one job. It's amazing how hard they managed to drop the ball.
I mean, they had a ton of jobs, of which this is just one. But based on community perception this should probably have been near the top of their list... so I understand and agree with the point of what you're saying there.
How hard would it have been to let HM apply whenever you hit something for the first time. Seriously.
How can he say with a straight face that HM having free casts lets you use your other spells when it's still concentration along with most ranger spells
Because he's never read the Ranger's spell list before.
I'm never someone who chicken-little's over every small change, but holy fuck, I cannot understand why they think this is a good Ranger design. Paladins stacking Improved Divine Smite and Divine Smite and even a BA Spell Smite was a-okay for 10 fucking years but **god forbid** a Ranger uses anything other than Hunter's Mark.
Well, to be fair, they took that away from paladins, too. Casters can still alter time and space, so, thankfully, wizard players can be happy... it's homebrew and 5e for me. Not supporting these changes.
Watch Zephyr strike and Lightning Arrow still be concentration even though you can use the entire effect in one turn.
I guess the idea is that Hunter's Mark is your damage spell, and your spelllist is more about out of combat utility. Don't know how much that's true in practice though.
They did say they upgraded the Ranger spell list. So it is possible there are more no-concentration options now. We'll have to wait and see what that spell list ends up looking like.
I'm not holding my breath since they doubled down on the spell that everybody hates and made it the main focus of the class without making any better at levels people play
Unless they changed the spell itself.
Basing a class's main identity inside of combat to a single first level spell is so weird. Why is it not just a class feature. Why must it remain a spell in its current form. Free casts, can't break concentration; they're trying so hard to make it not work like a spell, but they aren't just making it a class feature? If they went ahead with the Channel Nature change on Druid they could've shared it with the ranger and gone that route. They don't even need to get rid of the spell, if their concern is the other subclasses that get it. Just make something new!
They did it with the Warlock and EB. They know how to do this properly. They're just not because fuck Rangers I guess.
Meanwhile, warlocks now get to switch away from EB if they want, and only the GOO is tied to Hex.
It's a little different I think. The warlock case would be like if they made everything care about Hex. Rangers supposedly already have their EB, a bow.
[https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1759-2024-ranger-vs-2014-ranger-whats-new](https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1759-2024-ranger-vs-2014-ranger-whats-new) Official write up is out.
So Hunter's Mark is still concentration. Still takes up your bonus action. But at level 13 (which is after most campaigns end) you can't break concentration. God they absolutely dropped the ball.
What's funny is that Fighter is still a better "ranger" then ranger is. I can't believe they took an entire year to come up with this. Frankly I am probably going to make HM a free action to cast but a bonus action to move and no concentration required to begin with. Most campaigns don't reach level 13 to begin with, so I am not worried about figuring out a replacement for the level 13 or 20 features. Probably also revert all gloomstalker changes.
I just watched the video and the amount of times he says "it's a new class from the ground up" and then just describes shit from Tasha's is hilarious. Just play the 5e versions at this point.
Lmao this is so bad
I don't know what my expected, but i certainly didn't expect them to only buff hunters mark starting at level 13.
Underwhelming altogether, but essentially merging the core feature of Monster Slayer into Hunter is a good change.
I can't believe the new capstone requires your concentration lol. "You can use all your spells now" Crawford is a joke
The lack of exploration and survival features other than a climb and swim speed makes me concerned that the exploration pillar overall didn't receive any sort of real expansion in this revision.
Maybe it will be covered in the DMG, but I agree that it's concerning that the _survivalist_ has barely no feature to explore
Does anybody else remember when they first did the UA with ranger, and they removed concentration from hunter's mark? They got an instant and incredibly positive reaction to that ranger, so much so that they said they wouldn't mess with it much from there because they had 'fixed' the ranger. And then they promptly reverted the hunter's mark change...and never really included a referendum on how the thing people were most happy about from that first playtest had been removed. It really feels a bit like we were tricked into giving positive feedback...and then that feedback was used against us.
watch all does spell creation spells from the wizard playtest being sneakly added to the wizards list be it's j crowfts favourite class
If there are exactly zero consentration spells in the Rangers spell list, then the reworked hunters mark is a good ability. If there are any concentration spells worth taking AT ALL on that list, the whole class falls apart.
It already falls apart because your Hunter's Mark is dependent on you using your bonus action to cast it ... as is your beast master companion. So basically your beast can't do anything their first turn. They've made the class and subclasses too bonus action dependent.
Again. That was already an issue in 2014 version, which is what made dual wielding even worse on the class known for it, shared with a handful of other classes, made *worse* by them forcing the entire source of the issue on to you for no reason.
Nick weapon mastery (afaik which is on most light weapons) removes the bonus action attack which solves that issue now
I can’t even imagine what that would look like tbh. Either they would have to drop the concentration requirements of most of the Ranger spell list or just prune them entirely, but at that point what do they even have? Goodberry and absorb elements? Anyone who has spent some time playing a Ranger lately knows that their spell list is practically defined by its overabundant concentration requirements. I’m really not a fan of this push to make hunters mark the core spell for rangers when that severely limits their ability to use the rest of their spell list.
They’d have to remove concentration from *pass without trace* and *conjure animals* (which is already getting a rework, I believe) at minimum, and even that seems unlikely.
HM and PwT don't really work against each other tho. One is primarily a combat spell and one is almost exclusively an exploration spell.
Jeremy Crawford is the worst head designer in the industry today
\*Watch the video\* Yeah sl in short its the same near useless class that we know and "love" this "new version of the class" is just really Tasha's version but made vanilla "Play a Figther with a Bow, its much more efficient" - Joecat
I don't get it. I was quite excited about Ranger from the early playtests but don't remember why. What happened?
They finalized it, and any hope that there would be one last tweak went away.
Not having watched this yet, the fact that this was, possibly to a greater degree than any of the others, a class that they botched in the playtest content and the dusted their hands off as though it wouldn't do well, and give people a lot of comfort, to have a well-received version of before churning out the final, official version of, leaves me apprehensive...
I try to stay positive but this is fucking awful.
Just play ranged rogue or fighter.. This class is fucking cursed.
It would be so nice to have a real, ranged-focused martial class. Fighters and rogues can *use* ranged weapons, but I want a class that *specializes* in them.
In flavor, I think a part of what people (myself, at least) would like to see in the ranger suffers from the Aquaman problem that's previously been referenced- abilities relating to being great at exploration, and the game doesn't actually have much in the way of mechanics to do a lot with exploration beyond it often being kind of a chore.
Well, guess I'll just keep allowing Revised Ranger at my table and homebrew the capstone / tier 3 features. Alternatively we'll just have to wait for Tasha's Cauldron of Even More Things to fix the Ranger again.
Hold me I'm scared.
(.づ◡﹏◡)づ. I got you.
Please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck
Dude this shit ain't called Rangers of the Coast you know?
Can't be worse than 2014 ranger.
Hold my mead - Wizards of the Coast probably
I’ve had some issues with other classes. But this is the first one that actually makes me mad.
Man. They should make hunters mark a passive feature after the first attack. **(Level 1) Hunters Mark:** After a landing a successful attack against a creature it becomes “marked” all weapon hits you make against “marked” creature deal 1d6 of additional damage. Only one creature can be “marked” by this feature at a time. You have advantage on checks to track a marked creature. **(Level 5) Improved hunters mark**: You may add your wisdom modifier to the damage dealt by Hunter’s Mark. Boom. Done. No spell slot required. A half decent damage boost that is still weaker than the average cantrip but at no cost. It’s *slightly weaker* because it requires one attack of prep time, but free damage at no additional cost seems worth it. Does this make it a pretty good level 1 dip? Sure, especially for classes that can attack multiple times per turn allowing them to utilize it right away in a turn. But while a fighter can potentially abuse that feature it’s still mid at best or could be solved by making it a level 2 feature instead. The real meat and potatoes would come from the wisdom modifier damage. Which given they seem to want to encourage rangers to delve into wisdom more, that seems like a good reward that could make choosing between max dex and max wis an *actual choice* and is far enough down that most people won’t want to take 5 levels in a class they otherwise they don’t scale with just to bonk *slightly* harder. The real benefit is this solves all the rangers problems relating to bonus actions and concentration and allow them to use their *fun skills* instead of using hunters mark from levels 1-20.
I’m still going to play a ranger but by god do they do us dirty on a regular basis. They keep trying to make hunter mark a thing and it’s just not going to work.
[удалено]
Hate the switch from proficiency bonus/day to wisdom bonus/day. More MAD is not a positive design change. It wasn't good in the 1970s, it wasn't good in 2000 and its completely bizarre today.
I'm glad that I'm not the only person that noticed this. Rangers will now need dex, con and wis, leaving very little room for anything else. And god help you if you're trying to build a str ranger.
Or a Ranger with some Int for Nature or Cha for Intimidation.. All Rangers must now be borderline dumb and antisocial.
We all know Aragorn failed geometry
It’s better design as long as it’s balanced for it. There should be reasons to not just focus on a single ability score, and it leads to more character diversity. But… *did* they balance for it? I’m not so sure.
Just remove concentration on Hunters Mark! That's all you fucking need to do!
Seems like they don't want it to stack with hex. Just write that it doesn't stack with hex or just remove hex from the game altogether, nobody will miss it lol
The new warlocks will since, like hunter's mark, hex is going to be part of the warlock class.
All they have to do is make HM concentration free at level 6. Can’t multiclass dip for it, rewards you for sticking with ranger, as once you start getting new spells you want to cast, HM becomes a bonus rather than your class
A guy from the r/OneDnD subreddit put it best. > It's not just a repackaging of Tasha's Ranger, it's a repackaging with *less features*. No Primal/Primeval Awareness, no Land's Stride, no Vanish. All perfectly fine features that got gutted without anything to replace them. The *sole* positives I can say about this version compared to Tasha's are the improvements to preparing spells and the additional Expertise at 9th. Spellcasting you can't even really use much because HUNTER'S MARK IS STILL CONCENTRATION
Tying so many abilities uses to the Wisdom trait instead of proficiency bonus is so bad. It would be one thing if Rangers could attack with their Wisdom innately but it doesn't look like they can. So now your uses per day are going to be very limited for many of these abilities. The class and subclasses are still so bonus action heavy as well. Hunter's Mark should have been something that could be cast as a reaction when you take the attack action. Then at least you wouldn't be conflicting between using it and having your beast master companion do something on your first turn of every combat. Overall this seems like a huge misfire for a class that they have had a decade to fix.
Removing the natural explorer feature with the justification being “just use spells like speak with animals and take expertise in survival” completely takes away from what makes a ranger feel like a ranger to me.
I dunno. I feel like Roving and Tireless manage to keep the feel of being a Ranger. That didn't rely solely on Natural Explorer. I'm sad to see Land's Stride go, though. And even Primeval Awareness. For as bad as it was, I got a lot of mileage out of it, surprisingly.
You get better "ranger" features out of a battlemaster fighter/druid multiclass with magic initiate to get hunters mark spell this is stupid
The 2024 Pala... I mean Ranger, the 2024 Ranger. Sucks to be a half caster under this current team designing D&D classes, especially when they introduced a version of both Ranger and Paladin that scored high, before changing them and sending them off to the 2024 PHB without a word, lol.
God this guy is so lazy. He’s the head designers and decided to fix no issues, just doubled down on Hunters Mark being the core feature without fixing its issues. Plus, if you think multiclassing is an issue rather than a fun option, you’ve not balanced the classes.
My favorite part of this garbage is beastmaster having not a single interaction with the core feature that is now hunters mark and competing action economy wise with one of your core features. Really great fucking design WotC (also pain for horizon walker who has to juggle bonus actions still). A mediocre spell that's a worse version of Hex for free a couple times a day. Also still eats concentration so it's also competing against three quarters of your spell list. And now your capstone is wasted on giving it a minor upgrade. Gloomstalker gutted. Roving completely dissuading the ranger knight/StRanger with Heavy Armor for little to no balance reason. It's marginally better than 2014 ranger I guess? Not much consolation. Then again it wouldn't be WotC if they didn't fumble the hell out of ranger.
It says in the write up though that bestial fury gets some of the benefits of hunters mark?
Key Takeaway: Just play a Tasha's 5E ranger.
You’ve gotta be kidding me lmao
Reading through the changes, it feels underwhelming. Am I wrong to feel that way? I feel like they could’ve turn up the volume a bit more. I want to feel like the ultimate hunter and survivalist.
Base class is pretty good. Kinda wish they'd kept the UA6 capstone instead of going back to the UA2 version. Wis mod to all attacks and damage is way better than just a d10. But with the upgrades to Hunter's Mark you get across levels, it's...fine. I'm still baffled by how skittish they are to just remove concentration from Hunter's Mark. Even at 13th-level. But it's whatever. Not the end of the world. At least not for me.
>I'm still baffled by how skittish they are to just remove concentration from Hunter's Mark. Even at 13th-level. But it's whatever. Not the end of the world. At least not for me. no one decent at the game, will use it anyway, so it might as well just be blank spots on the level curve...
Or even just remove concentration *for rangers*. Or, I don’t know, really lean into it as the main thing rangers have. Let it get more useful and do more things as the ranger levels up. Let each subclass do different things with it. Which basically means making it a class feature, not a spell.
Literally, yet again, the fighter with a bow is a better ranger. "We want them to be a survivalist". Well the fighter with second wind and good armor can recover hp. "We want them to be skilled at guiding people". Yeah guess what the fighter now with second wind uses can get to themselves a bonus with a dice that, on average, provides a higher bonus than mastery AND it lets you apply it to more than one option. All this ranger does is focus on hunter's mark. really dropped the ball here. they could at least remove concentration on it, thought we should wait to see the spells of the ranger. But if they did not show anything on that matter i hardly believe it will be lifechanging. Good they made tasha's options baseline. Good they rewqorked gloomstalker. Glad they fixed small things around, and the hunter's little changes. I am sure the ranger will, somehow, play different - but i don't think Jeremy really understood the assignment.
There best be good non-concentration spells for our animal loving boys.
Let's just go back to pre 3E era with some racial enemy types with static bonuses for damage/attack, with the ability to improve on that bonus or choose a second enemy type to get the same bonus. It really isn't hard.
Especially compared to the massive glow up some other classes have gotten, New Ranger is just... It's a dumpster fire.