The Ranger
An alternate version
The Ranger
| Level | Proficiency Bonus |
Features | Spells Known |
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +2 | Expert Skirmisher (d6), Traveler of the Wilds | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2nd | +2 | Fighting Style, Spellcasting | 3 | 2 | — | — | — | — |
| 3rd | +2 | Ranger Archetype, Experienced Tracker | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | — |
| 4th | +2 | Ability Score Improvement | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | — |
| 5th | +3 | Extra Attack | 5 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — |
| 6th | +3 | Expert Skirmisher (d8), Relentless Combatant | 5 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — |
| 7th | +3 | Ranger Archetype Feature | 6 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — |
| 8th | +3 | Ability Score Improvement, Vanish | 6 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — |
| 9th | +4 | — | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — |
| 10th | +4 | Traveler of the Wilds improvement, Expert Skirmisher (d10) | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — |
| 11th | +4 | Ranger Archetype Feature | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
| 12th | +4 | Ability Score Improvement | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
| 13th | +5 | — | 9 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — |
| 14th | +5 | Expert Skirmisher (d12), Extra Attack (2) | 9 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — |
| 15th | +5 | Ranger Archetype Feature | 10 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | — |
| 16th | +5 | Ability Score Improvement | 10 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | — |
| 17th | +6 | — | 11 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 18th | +6 | Feral Senses | 11 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 19th | +6 | Ability Score Improvement | 12 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| 20th | +6 | Foe Slayer | 12 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Class Features
As a ranger, you gain the following class features:
Hit Points
- Hit Dice: 1d10 per ranger level
- Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
- Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per ranger level after 1st
Proficiencies
- Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields
- Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons
- Tools: None
- Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity
- Skills: Choose three from Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Stealth, and Survival
Equipment
You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
- (a) scale mail or (b) leather armor
- (a) two shortswords or (b) any martial weapon
- (a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack
- any ranged weapon, with 20 ammunition for it
Expert Skirmisher
Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience in combat situations. Once per turn, you may perform one of the following skirmish maneuvers:
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain any expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Your skirmish die changes when you reach certain levels in this class. The die becomes a d8 at 6th level, a d10 at 10th level, and a d12 at 14th level.
Traveler of the Wilds
You are a master of navigating the natural world, you gain the following benefits when traveling for an hour or more:
- Difficult terrain doesn't slow your group's travel.
- Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
- While tracking other creatures, you also learn their approximate number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
- When traveling in a group, others may substitute your proficiency level for their own on any check to forage, navigate, track, or keep watch, if it is higher.
Beginning at 10th level you can replace any roll of less than 10 with a 10 for any check to forage, navigate, track, or keep watch, adding your bonus as normal.
Fighting Style
At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can't take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.
Archery
You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Defense
While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
Dueling
When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Two-Weapon Fighting
When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.
Great Weapon Fighting
When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
Spellcasting
By the time you reach 2nd level, you have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells, much as a druid does. See chapter 10 for the general rules of spellcasting and end of this document for the ranger spell List.
Spell Slots
The Ranger table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell's level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest. For example, if you know the 1st-level spell animal friendship and have a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell slot available, you can cast animal friendship using either slot.
Spells Known of 1st Level and Higher
You know three 1st-level spells of your choice from the ranger spell list.
The Spells Known column of the Ranger table shows when you learn more ranger spells of your choice. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 5th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level.
Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the ranger spells you know and replace it with another spell from the ranger spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.
Spellcasting Ability
Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your ranger spells, since your magic draws on your attunement to nature. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a ranger spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.
Spell Save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus +
Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus +
Ranger Archetype
At 3rd level, you choose an archetype that you strive to emulate: detailed in the Players Handbook at the end of the ranger class description, and in other published materials. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 11th, and 15th level.
Experienced Hunter
Beginning at 3rd level, You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about all creatures.
Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Extra Attack
Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. The number of attacks increases to three when you reach 14th level in this class.
Relentless Combatant
Beginning at 6th level, your skirmish dice recharge on a short or long rest.
Vanish
Starting at 8th level, you can use the Hide action as a bonus action on your turn. Also, you can't be tracked by nonmagical means, unless you choose to leave a trail.
Feral Senses
At 18th level, you gain preternatural senses that help you fight creatures you can’t see. When you make an attack roll against a creature you can’t see, your inability to see it doesn't impose disadvantage on your attack rolls against it.
You are also aware of the location of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you, provided that the creature isn't hidden from you and you aren't blinded or deafened.
Foe Slayer
At 20th level, you become an unparalleled hunter. You can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack roll or the damage roll of any attack you make. You can choose to use this feature before or after the roll, but before any effects of the roll are applied.
Multiclassing
Multiclass Rangers require a Strength OR Dexterity score of 13, and a wisdom score of 13. For the purpose of spell slots add 1/2 your ranger level rounded down when determining your caster level.
Ranger Spells
1st Level
- Absorb Elements
- Alarm
- Animal Friendship
- Beast Bond
- Divine Favor
- Snare
- Speak with Animals
- Longstrider
- Jump
- Detect Magic
- Hail of Thorns
- Goodberry
- Fog Cloud
- Ensnaring Strike
- Detect Poison and Disease
- Cure Wounds
- Zephyr Strike
2nd Level
- Healing Spirit
- Locate Object
- Darkvision
- Cordon of Arrows
- Spike Growth
- Find Traps
- Animal Messenger
- Silence
- Protection from Poison
- Pass without Trace
- Barkskin
- Locate Animals or Plants
- Beast Sense
- Lesser Restoration
3rd Level
- Flame Arrows
- Daylight
- Wind Wall
- Speak with Plants
- Lightning Arrow
- Conjure Animals
- Nondetection
- Water Walk
- Plant Growth
- Water Breathing
- Conjure Barrage
- Protection from Energy
4th Level
- Guardian of Nature
- Grasping Vine
- Locate Creature
- Conjure Woodland Beings
- Stoneskin
- Freedom of Movement
5th Level
- Tree Stride
- Swift Quiver
- Conjure Volley
- Commune With Nature
- Steel Wind Strike
Additional Spells
Primeval Awareness (Ritual)
Divination
- Casting Time: 1 Min
- Range: 5 Mi
- Components: V, S
- Duration: Instantaneous
You attune your senses to determine what creatures lurk nearby. By spending 1 uninterrupted minute in concentration, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 5 miles of you, and their general direction: aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn't reveal the creatures' precise location or number.
Premise
The Ranger is a very iconic class, but most of the core PHB features are flavorful, but largely meaningless in most games. On the other hand, the revised ranger was too front loaded, and arguably too powerful, especially as a dip.
The goal of this text is to provide the ranger with meaningful features, that remain in keeping with the theme of the ranger as a master tracker, combatant, and tactician.
History
So what is the ranger? Well, in AD&D it was a fighter subclass that gained access to lower level druid and magic user spells. Additionally they got special tracking features, and could specialize in a single weapon. They also gained surprise easier, and were more difficult to surprise. Rangers in this edition all had to be 'good'.
In AD&D 2e, they added some animal features, and the concept of a favored enemy. They also had some skills limited by the type of armor they wore, edging them away from heavy armor, though in this edition they were still proficient with it. Spellcasting was of the lower level priest type. And the introduced the concept of recruiting followers and animal followers.
In 3rd edition, the Favored enemy term was added, and the ranger gained it's own spell list, rather than a subset from other classes. The animal companion became more of a solid class feature, where they gained a single specific companion rather than the ability to recruit many, including other humanoids. This edition dropped the race and alignment restrictions of old, and is probably closer to what the modern player expects of the class.
4th edition deviated much more from the style of the other editions; Never having played it, I don't understand it as well from the description. But it classed them as martial strikers. This seems to have focused them on single target damage, and hit and run type fighting, with some ability to aid in skill checks.
Concept
I don't think it is necessary or desirable to replicate every feature from prior editions, but it's important to look at in understanding what players may expect or desire the class to do.
Based on the prior editions, and admittedly some of my own leanings, the ranger needs to be a primarily martial character with notable magic abilities. They should have features relating to tracking, survival, and exploration, falling somewhere between fighter and druid in overall ability theme.
Favored enemy is a concept some will find important, but revised ranger has shown us that adding too much flat damage from it is a bit too much. Animal companions may or may not be important to a player, depending on the edition their concept originated in, as such it is important that it exist, but perhaps not as a base feature. The PHB ranger has shown us that simply giving bonus' to tracking and lore of favored enemies is really not enough for most people to enjoy it. Additionally, I think it is flat out a bad feature. You require a player to make a decision about what to pick, which can then sometimes never come up based on setting, which feels really bad. An issue shared with favored terrain.
The PHB has also shown us that while action economy is important when considering the companion, requiring the action of the player to command the beast while their character does nothing is too much of a cost. It can also be problematic that much of the survival aspect can be gotten from the outlander background.
You may also notice hunter's mark is missing from the spell list. This is intentional. Using an almost mandatory spell to keep up on damage, aside from being terrible design, also precludes the ranger using many, more interesting concentration spells. I am attempting to compensate for the lost damage somewhat with built in class features instead.
Play notes
While many will point to the beastmaster as an even larger flaw, archetypes are specifically not addressed in this release. This class is, for the time being expected to be played with published archetypes as written unless specially noted.
If you use this class, it replaces the base ranger class features entirely, and is intended to work with any official ranger archetypes. UA archetypes are not considered in it's design. If you choose to allow UA archetypes I can make no statement about how well or poorly it may work.
Creating a Ranger
Consider in your concept where you came from, and what sort of enemies you might have fought. Your home and upbringing might have a significant impact on what spells and skills you would have learned as well. If you were a hunter for your village you might have focused on scouting and combat skills, where someone raised in a remote monastery might have learned more about healing and medicine.
Quick Build
To quickly generate a playable ranger, Make Dexterity your highest ability score, and wisdom your second. (It can also be valid to choose strength, if you plan to use melee weapons) Choose a shortsword for your melee weapon, and leather for your armor. Outlander is a thematic background choice.