In this appendix, I will explain if each core issue mentioned in the preamble is valid and how it is addressed with this Ranger Rework.

No Strong Core Identity Agreed. Rangers are supposed to be the “best explorers”, but what does that mean exactly? Is it simply tracking? Making sure that the party does not run out of rations? These two roles are situational at best and not compelling for a class’ main purpose. To address this issue, I defined “being good at exploration” as “being good at surviving in the wilderness”. That not only entails tracking and foraging, but also surviving against all the dangers of the wilderness, such as poisons, diseases, random encounters, ambushes, and unpredictable foes. When travelling, a Ranger should make the party feel safer, and not simply enable the party to save some coin by not buying rations. Combat-wise, the Ranger did not have its own niche. Its role was an ineffective split between the Rogue and the Fighter. I asked myself the question: How would the harshness and unpredictability of the wilderness shape a Ranger’s fighting style? The Ranger’s adversaries are often monsters that range unpredictably in numbers, strength and type. Rangers can only survive by improvising and adapting to their surroundings. Instead of simply fighting head on, they would use everything at their disposal to exploit their enemies’ weaknesses and downplay their strengths. I settled on the role of a martial character with an arsenal of utility and battlefield control powers. Many of the Ranger’s spells already focus on that: fog cloud, entangle, spike growth, wind wall, etc. As such, I guided my combat-oriented features to better enable the support of these spells in combat.

Too Many Ribbon Features Agreed. The fact that one of the Ranger’s core features was Favoured Enemy, a ribbon ability, made the class seem very unattractive. The solution of the Revised Ranger does not work either, as adding combat bonuses limited to a situational ability made the class very lopsided. At first, I wanted to make Favoured Enemy give concrete mechanical bonuses that can apply in any situation but synergized very well against specific enemies (similar to the design principle behind Favoured Terrain). Then I came to the realization that all of the Hunter subclass’ abilities do that already. Therefore, I removed that feature entirely. Unlike others, I do not believe that Natural Explorer was a ribbon ability. It mostly seemed that way because few tables follow the wilderness survival rules that closely.

Weak in Combat Disagree. If you do the math, even without any feats, Rangers completely outperform the other classes in DPR until level 11. From level 11 onwards, it is consistent with the highest DPR classes in the game. For instance, at level 5, the Ranger with TWF, Colossus Slayer, and Hunter’s Mark can consistently deal 3 x (1d6 + 5) + 3d6 + 1d8 which averages at 40.5 damage per round. That is already above the 40 average damage (disregarding crit) that a fighter has from level 11 to 19. The reason why they seem weak is that Ranger’s damage output does not increase much past level 5, which makes sense since they already deal way too much damage early on. This Rework addresses this issue by subtly rebalancing the damage output to be on average lower in the earlier levels and slightly higher in the later levels. BTW, Hunter’s Mark and Colossus Slayer are not even situational abilities, since players usually only focus on marked creatures and the 3 attacks per round almost guarantee that Colossus Slayer will be triggered. The lengthy duration of Hunter’s Mark also almost guarantees that the Ranger can almost always have it active during combat. In fact, Rangers even sometimes find themselves unable to expend all spell slots by the end of the day.

No Exciting High Level Abilities Agreed. Other than Feral Senses, the high level abilities are either too weak (Foe Slayer), weaker version of spells (Hide in Plain Sight vs Pass Without Trace), or weaker copies of other classes’ abilities that come way too late to be exciting anymore (Vanish). I replaced them for the most part with features that better support the martial controller role. The rebalancing of the damage should also make the later levels more exciting.