Skeleton Hotel's Ranger
(Version: public test v0.1)
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Contents
Credits
Skeleton Hotel — Writing, document layout, page background/overlay images
Wizards of the Coast — Original D&D 5e ranger class
Special fonts used: TeX Gyre Pagella, TeX Gyre Adventor, Universalis ADF
Special thanks to all of my friends who've helped over the almost 2 years I've been iterating on this design, by providing suggestions and feedback, participating in playtesting, and more. To name a few of them:
To Danny: sorry that Oswald lost his kinda-busted Hunter's Mark copycat feature, his initiative bonus, and his bonus action Hide.
To Vitor: I forgive you for inadvertently having that bone devil crit Warden and drop him from near-full to 0 hit points in a single turn, before I even got to playtest any of his special combat abilities whatsoever.
To Freya: you may have been about a year and a half late on fulfilling your promise of reading my rough draft. But your thorough feedback was worth the wait.
Other Info
Providing Feedback
If you're reading this from my post on Reddit, I would love to see your thoughts in the comments! Tell me about what you like/don't like, what you think seems weak/balanced/too strong, or how it fits/doesn't fit with your own wants and expectations out of a ranger. Don't feel like you need to cover your opinion on every individual aspect; laser-focused thoughts on one or two features is just as helpful, if not moreso, than a general review of many features.
Otherwise, if you want to contact me, generally I can be most easily reached via my twitter: https://twitter.com/Skeleton_Hotel
Copying/Sharing this Document
Sharing this document is fine so long as it remains unaltered, but please do not copy in order to edit and re-publish my work or any of its contents without my explicit permission. And of course, if you do share it, don't claim my work as your own!
Ranger
Class redesign by Skeleton Hotel
The Ranger
— Spell Slots per Spell Level —
| Level | Proficiency Bonus |
Features | Spells Known |
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +2 | Expertise, Primeval Focus (one use), Natural Explorer |
— | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2nd | +2 | Fighting Style, Spellcasting, Unwearied Journey |
3 | 2 | — | — | — | — |
| 3rd | +2 | Ranger Archetype, Land’s Stride | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | — |
| 4th | +2 | Ability Score Improvement | 4 | 3 | — | — | — | — |
| 5th | +3 | Extra Attack, Primeval Focus (two uses) | 5 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — |
| 6th | +3 | Expertise | 5 | 4 | 2 | — | — | — |
| 7th | +3 | Ranger Archetype Feature | 6 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — |
| 8th | +3 | Ability Score Improvement, Traceless | 6 | 4 | 3 | — | — | — |
| 9th | +4 | Feral Senses | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — |
| 10th | +4 | Land’s Stride Improvement, Unerring | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | — | — |
| 11th | +4 | Ranger Archetype Feature, Primeval Focus (three uses) |
8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
| 12th | +4 | Ability Score Improvement | 8 | 4 | 3 | 3 | — | — |
| 13th | +5 | — | 9 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | — |
| 14th | +5 | Weird Prescience | 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 | Primeval Focus (four uses) | 11 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 19th | +6 | Ability Score Improvement | 12 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| 20th | +6 | Ranger Lord | 12 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Quick Build
You can make a ranger quickly by following these suggestions. First, make Dexterity your highest ability score, followed by Wisdom. (Some rangers who focus on thrown or two-handed melee weapons make Strength higher than Dexterity.) Second, choose the outlander background.
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) leather armor, (b) a chain shirt, or (c) scale mail
- (a) any two simple or martial weapons, or (b) a martial weapon and a shield
- (a) a dungeoneer’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack
- (a) a longbow and a quiver of 20 arrows, (b) a light crossbow and a case of 20 bolts, or (c) five javelins
Expertise
At 1st level, choose two of your skill proficiencies. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of the chosen proficiencies.
At 6th level, you can choose another two skill proficiencies to gain this benefit.
Primeval Focus
Your keen instincts and awareness allow you to more reliably land strikes and evade danger. When you miss with an attack roll, you can grant yourself a bonus to the roll equal to 5 + your Wisdom modifier, potentially turning the miss into a hit.
Alternatively, if you are hit by an attack while you're not incapacitated, you can grant yourself a bonus to AC equal to 5 + your Wisdom modifier for that attack (no action required), potentially causing it to miss.
Once you use this feature (whether to enhance an attack or your AC), you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest. The number of times you can use this feature before a rest increases with your ranger level: two uses at 5th level, three uses at 11th level, and four uses at 18th level. Regardless of your number of uses, you can't add this feature's bonus to the same attack roll—or your AC—multiple times at once.
Natural Explorer
Accustomed to wild, untamed environments, you move and traverse long distances with exceptional ease. Climbing and swimming don’t cost you extra movement.
In addition, you receive the following benefits while traveling:
- You can move stealthily while traveling at a normal pace, instead of only at a slow pace.
- Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
- You have advantage on saving throws against exhaustion caused by prolonged or otherwise strenuous travel (such as during a forced march).
For rules on traveling and related activity, see chapter 8 of the Player’s Handbook.
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.
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 of the Player’s Handbook for the general rules of spellcasting and chapter 11 for the ranger spell list.
Spell slots
The Ranger table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your ranger 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
Spell attack modifier
Ritual Casting
You can cast any ranger spell you know as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag.
Spellcasting Focus
You can use a druidic focus (found in chapter 5 of the Player’s Handbook) as a spellcasting focus for your ranger spells.
Unwearied Journey
Starting at 2nd level, your tireless will and resilience help you to weather extended periods of adventuring. Whenever you spend one or more of your ranger Hit Dice to regain hit points, you add a bonus equal to 2 + your Wisdom modifier (minimum of +1) to the number of hit points you regain from each die.
Ranger Archetype
At 3rd level, you choose an archetype that you strive to emulate, such as the Hunter. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 7th, 11th, and 15th level.
Land's Stride
Starting at 3rd level, moving through nonmagical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can
also pass through nonmagical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.
In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such as those created by the entangle spell.
Once you reach 10th level, even magical difficult terrain doesn’t cost you extra movement to move through.
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.
Favored Enemies
While some rangers are generalists when it comes to the monsters they face, many are specialized in dealing with certain creatures in particular. A ranger’s favored enemy might be a broad category of creatures (such as giants, fey, or monstrosities), a specific species (such as mind flayers), or even an opposing faction (such as a violent criminal organization or a cult of the demon prince Orcus).
As you consider your ranger’s backstory and personal ties, talk to your DM about your ranger’s favored enemies (if any) and the events that led your ranger to focus on them in the first place. If you're undecided, the DM might be able to provide suggestions for enemies that would be especially relevant to the campaign.
Having a favored enemy doesn’t automatically grant you any specific benefits or bonuses against them. However, your ranger might possess special knowledge or insight that helps you with certain matters related to your enemies, at the DM’s discretion. For example, if giants are your favored enemy and your party is ambushed by trolls, the DM might decide you know some of their unique strengths and weaknesses: “You recall that trolls rapidly regenerate their wounds, but exposure to fire stops them from healing temporarily.” If your favored enemy is an evil empire that threatens to conquer your tribe’s homeland, the DM might decide you have information that could help you infiltrate one of their military camps: where the least-guarded areas tend to be, how to mimic the soldiers’ dialect and customs to better disguise yourself among them, or the like.
Extra Attack
Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Traceless
Starting at 8th level, you can't be tracked by nonmagical means, unless you choose to leave a trail.
Feral Senses
At 9th level, you gain preternatural senses that help you locate and attack unseen enemies. You can take the Search action as a bonus action on each of your turns.
In addition, when you attack a creature you can’t see, your inability to see it doesn’t impose disadvantage on your attack rolls against it.
Unerring
At 10th level, your combat intuition has become so honed that your attacks seldom falter. Whenever you make an attack roll that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat the number rolled on the d20 as if it were instead equal to half your ranger level (rounded down) if doing so would make for a higher result.
Weird Prescience
By 14th level, you’ve developed an inexplicable ability to foresee impending peril and ready your defenses in a split second. So long as you aren’t incapacitated, any critical hit against you becomes a normal hit.
In addition, you can’t be surprised except when you’re incapacitated by something other than natural, nonmagical sleep. If you’re sleeping naturally when combat begins, you awaken just before initiative is rolled.
Ranger Lord
At 20th level, when you start your turn in combat and have no uses of Primeval Focus remaining, you regain one use.
Appendix A: Expanded Spell List
Preface
The following is an optional supplement to the main ranger class redesign presented in this document. The primary reason I've chosen these spells is not so much to "buff" the class overall, but to better enable specific roles and themes that many prospective players associate with the ranger—mobility, detection, infiltration, elemental magic, etc.—should a player wish to lean into them. My hope is that this will go a long way in helping individual rangers distinguish themselves, without needing to add any new, intimidatingly choice-heavy features to the base class.
If you decide to use this expansion, treat the spells on the Expanded Ranger Spells list as if they were included on the ranger spell list (in addition to those already on the ranger spell list). All spells can be found in the Player's Handbook, except where otherwise noted.
*See Elemental Evil Player's Companion or Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Expanded Ranger Spells
1st Level
- Detect Evil and Good
- Expeditious Retreat
- Find Familiar
2nd Level
- Invisibility
- Magic Weapon
- See Invisibility
- Spider Climb
3rd Level
- Clairvoyance
- Elemental Weapon
- Glyph of Warding
- Meld into Stone
4th Level
- Conjure Minor Elementals
- Dominate Beast
- Elemental Bane*
- Hallucinatory Terrain
5th Level
- Conjure Elemental
- Passwall