Design Approach

Skip this page if you want to get to the mechanics.

There are dozens of approaches to the ranger, some simple, some complex.

I have seen alterations so simple as to give the beast more HP, or to give the ranger prepared spellcasting instead of spells known. I’ve seen folks that call the ranger in the Player’s Handbook absolutely unplayable who completely revamp it, and I’ve seen folks who state that it is not only balanced, but that even the Beast Master archetype is fantastic (There is the occasional pteradon-riding halfing out there that insists on pummeling home their effectiveness).

Wizards of the Coast has released an official revised ranger in their September 2016 Unearthed Arcana article, one that revamps the Beast Master while also tweaking the core class features, though they admitted that multiclass considerations did not have a big influence on their design.

Why do this, then? Why not just take one of the many approaches out there that works?

There are multiple answers:

First and foremost, some of the ideas here don’t reflect the needs of the average campaign. I was inspired largely by the monsters in the online web serial Twig written by Wildbow and wanted to have ranger companions that had been surgically or magically altered to fight alongside the ranger.

I was also inspired by the minimalistic alterations of /u/Leuku on the Beast Master, via the Reddit post “What the Beast Master Needs is Accounting”.

I wanted to take design ideas from the Revised Ranger, but wanted to dial back the power so that multi-classing as a ranger wouldn’t unbalance the metagame.

Finally, I got the idea that it would be more interesting for the player and more easily compartmentalized for the designer to create specific beasts with the Beast Master in mind. The current design philosophy is to take beasts made for combat and to adapt them to be a beast companion, which makes sense if you solely have the wilderness as your source for animal companions.

In Twig, scientists start experimenting with animals, creating specialized creatures for war, for tracking, for spying, and the like. This is even done within the Forgotten Realms to some extent – we see Earth Cultists that ride young bulettes and ankhegs, we see Dragon Cultists that have figured out ways of creating Guard Drakes through Tiamat’s influence, and we see a plethora of synergies between creatures and NPCs that can be used as a flavor basis for the Beast Master.

While I like portions of the Revised Ranger, I overall found the revival mechanics to be too far removed from who I imagined a ranger to be – it seemed more inspired by Full Metal Alchemist or by a powerful cleric than any ranger I’d seen or read about in fantasy.

I’m aware that my preferences won't apply to the majority of games. There certainly players who love reviving their beast so that it will never die (allowing them to place it in more strategic but potentially callous positions in battle). All of the above simply provides a backdrop explaining why I created this. I hope folks find it illuminating.

A documentation of specific changes can be found below. Much of the text is simply adapted from the multitude of work that has already been done.