Hi guys,
I finally got around to formally writting up my homebrew Beast Master Ranger. We've been playtesting this since 5e came out and it works really great! Thought I would share it with you. Hope you like it.
A Better Beast Master Ranger
Ranger Subclass: Beast Master
The Beast Master archetype embodies a friendship between the civilized races and the beasts of the wild. United in focus, beast and ranger work as one to fight the monstrous foes that threated civilization and the wilderness alike. Emulating the Beast Master archetype means committing yourself to this ideal, working in partnership with an animal as its companion and friend.
Beast Master Summary
- (level 3) Gain a Beast Companion. You can cast Speak with Animals at will. Gain the bond Protector of Beasts.
- (level 5) You can cast Beast Sense at will. You gain the Revivify (Beasts only) spell.
- (level 7) Gain a second Beast Companion. Your Beast Command die increases do 1d6.
- (level 15) Gain a third Beast Companion. Your Beast Command die increases do 1d8.
Friend of Beasts.
At 3rd level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures. You gain another beast companion at level 7 and level 15. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a CR of 1 or lower (You can find a list of beasts here: http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/monsters/). Your beast companion has the game statistics listed in the MM, except as below:
- Beast Hit Points = (your Ranger level + the Beast’s CON modifier) x 4.
- Beast Proficiency Bonus = your Ranger Proficiency Bonus, used for all the beast's attacks, skills, saves, etc.
- Beast Attack Bonus = Beast STR or DEX modifier + your Proficiency Bonus.
- Beast Skills and Saves = relevant Beast Ability Modifier + your Proficiency Bonus.
- Shared Hit Dice. When the Ranger spends Hit Dice during a Short Rest to recover hit points, the ranger's beast companion also benefits from the rest and regains the same number of hit points.
If your Beast Companion dies, you can create a bond with another beast by spending 8 hours magically bonding with it.
Beast Commands.
Your beast companion knows several commands and obeys them the best it can. Giving a command is a Bonus Action, and the Beast must be able to hear and understand your commands. The beast can take its Move as a part of any command given to it. It acts on your Initiative and knows the following commands:
- Attack. Your beast companion helps you attack a creature. On your next successful attack, you deal an extra +1d4 damage to the creature. Alternatively, if your beast has a special attack (i.e. knockdown, poison, pounce, etc.), you can choose to apply the special attack's condition effect instead of the extra damage. If the special attack requires a saving throw, the target still gets to make one.
- Defend. Your beast companion guards and protects a creature you choose. If that creature suffers damage, reduce the damage received by 1d4. At your option, any remaining damage from the attack can be taken by the beast instead of the creature it is guarding.
- Distract. Beasts are great at distracting creatures from important tasks (e.g. barking loudly, flapping wings in your face, or walking on your keyboard). The target creature suffers a -1d4 penalty on an Ability Check they are trying to perform. Depending on the nature of the distraction, your beast companion might provoke an Opportunity Attack from the creature.
- Make Friends. Beasts often have subtle ways of communicating with each other. You gain a +1d4 bonus on your next Wisdom (Animal Handling) check to interact with a beast.
- Move. Your beast companion moves as you direct it on your turn.
- Retreat. Your beast companion takes the Disengage or Dodge Action.
- Scare. A fearsome and wild animal can be useful in negotiations. You gain a +1d4 bonus on your next Charisma (Intimidate) check against a creature your beast is threatening.
- Sniff Traitors. Your beast companion's natural instincts warn you against potential treachery. You gain +1d4 bonus on your next Wisdom (Insight) check to judge the intentions of a creature.
Your Beast Command bonus die increases to 1d6 at level 7 and 1d8 at level 15.
Bond: Protector of Beasts.
At 3rd level, you gain a new Bond. If you violate this Bond, your Beast Companion(s) might leave you.
Protector of Beasts. I fight to protect Beasts from harm, and treat them as equals.
One with Beasts.
At 3rd level, you can cast Speak with Animals at will, without expending a spell slot.
At 5th level, you can cast Beast Sense at will, without expending a spell slot.
Revive Animal.
At 5th level, you cast Revivify as a 1 hour Ritual that only targets Beasts.
I like it, Ramzour! Thanks for sharing.
Also, it's great to see you posting here again.
pukunui wrote:
Hi Ramzour,
I like how your Beast commands preserve action economy.
This would be fun to playtest. It seems to give the ranger many choices.
Cheers.
Rhenny wrote:
The scare, distract and make friends actions could be simplified by just letting the beast use aid another with specific skills
kalil wrote:
Cool ideas, but I'm not sure it'll work. I feels complex. Some feedback:
- It suffers from the same problem that the current BM ranger faces, in that its attacks scale with character level but its HP scales with class level, and its ability to heal itself during rests does not scale
- The number options it grants is a bit OP; compare it to the Battle Master fighter, which has to choose two add-on actions from a large selection
- Controling 3 beasts and yourself at level 15 is an order of magnitude more complex than other classes
- Having a huge stable of beasts and the ability to constantly train them doesn't feel to me like a tightly-knit bond, it feels like commanding an army of meat shields
- Beast Commands should have some range requirement to them (how does my wolf help me shoot people 100 yards away with a longbow?)
- It needs to be clearer about the beast's action economy, especially re: reactions and acting independently (e.g. if you get knocked out)
The Attack command could do with some improved wording. The way it is written it can be read as allowing the ranger to make his attack as part of the command, which is obviously(?) not intended since the command is a bonus action. The attack should probably be worded like "your beast assist you with your next attack. If you attack and hit before the end of your turn you deal +1d4...".
Alternatively the beast could just be allowed to use the aid another action for your attacks rolls against an enemy that the beast is adajecent to. If you feel that is too powerful, maybe add the requirement that the beast must have advantage on its attack rolls against the target to do so. But tbh, I dont think spending your bonus action and risking your pet's life for advantage on attack rolls is particularily overpowered. Barbarians gets it all the time, and all arcane casters can get a pet that uses the aid action in combat (via the Find Familiar spell) so at least there is precedence. The familiar even does it without spending your bonus action 
RCanine wrote:
kalil wrote:
Based on some of your comments, I updated the Beast Master text for clarity:
-- Giving a command is a Bonus Action, and the beast must be able to hear and understand your commands.
-- Attack: your beast companion helps you attack a creature. On your next successful attack, you deal an extra +1d4 damage to the creature.
Thanks again for all the feedback! More is definitely welcome. Playtesters are even more welcome!
Have you had a look at the mounted combat rules? They have two different "modes" that you can use. Might be an inspiration.
Lokiron wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Lokiron wrote:
I honestly feel that the beastmaster subclass needs to be dropped all together and that a henchman mod needs to replace it. Adding more creatures for the beastmaster will only slow down combat(kinda like how summoning tons of things with spells does). Henchman should be a template that gets added on to creatures or npcs that give them hitdice and a sort of progression that matches their master.
I still think you need revivify beast.
That said, i like the action economy of these.
mellored wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Wow.... nice design and well thought out. Definitely need a "Raise Companion" or beast or something option. I would like to see the "Animal Handling" skill incorporated somewhere but I can't see where to do that without it being "out of place".
SterlingRat wrote:
mellored wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
There's nothing that says it can't be a 1st-level ranger spell with a casting time of 1 hour (or whatever). With a "cast in higher level slots" feature to reduce the casting time based on the slot expended.
ChrisCarlson wrote:
I was thinking maybe the multiple pets could be treated as a swarm (a pack). You can order one action (attack) and the pack attacks everything in the general direction you pointed or (aid) and the pack assists all of your allies in the pack's space. That way it doesn't bog down with "wolf 1 attack the second goblin on the left; wolf 2 sit in front of me and guard me." Also that way the multiple companions are just sitting around while the one is attacking. The higher level the beast master the bigger the pack.
Ramzour wrote:
mellored wrote:
RCanine wrote:
When I say a henchman mod it would be a system for specializing henchman for different classes and add a template to them to add hitdice and some sort of progression tied to the PC. The type of henchman would be decided by class and background. You would see a fighter with maybe a guardsmen or knight henchman whereas the ranger would get a wolf or panther ( maybe a weretiger at higher levels like 2nd edition).
masterfat78 wrote:
1.) Is the beast proficient in it's good saves or yours? Or does it have prof bonus to all saves?
2.) What is th epoint of even using the MM entires if the only attack they can do is to boost your damage by 1dx for a single attack? Also can you swap out the 1d4 for poison specials becaus a few of the spoison specials do a heck of alot more than 1d4 damage.
3.) Yeah I'm pretty underwhelmed by this, I think the original weaksauce beast master is more appealing.
If you wanna fix the beast master you have to address it's core issues. Primary of which is that they got lazy and tried to make a quick and dirty template for any of the weaker beasts to be companions. What you need to do is have the companion creature stats and proficiences be hand crafted for the sub-class because there's just too much variety in the beasts even of similar sizes and/or crs for quick and dirty to cut it.
rampant wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
pukunui wrote:
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Ok see the problem is I don't see where you gave the creature an independent turn. When dealing with a companion critter you have to state stuff like that explicitly, or you did and I'm going blind.
Cleaning up some of the language around which saves and skills the beast gets your prof bonus to would help as well since again you never specify.
Ok now with the assumption that the critters get their own turns this is dramatically better than the original sub-class. In fact It's probably flat out better than most classes. Because we're looking at easily 8 attacks per round here. Maybe not the best attacks in the game but significant and accurate ones. Especially since beast attacks can have nasty at-will riders.
Some major issues you need to clean up: Beast HP, needs to scale with level instead of ranger level, I suggest (5+beast con mod)*PC character level, or the beast's whichever is higher.
Next up is healing, well unless the intent is that the ranger is burning all his spells to heal his beasties, in that case it's fine but you might wanna mention that somewhere. Otherwise they need an HD pool or the ability to heal when the ranger spends HD to heal, or something.
Finally you need to look at critter DCs. One of the major issues the core beast master has is that while the creature level sup attacks and damage it's special abilities fall to the wayside and this encourages the ranger to pick soley for DPR and toughness, which is boring and part of the balance issue between various beasts. You're making the same mistake with your version.
rampant wrote:
MIght be simpler to just say that the Beast uses your prof bonus instead of it's own then. That way it only applies to things it would be applying it's prof bonus to in the first place.
DCs might have to be specially noted but you had to do that anyway. While houserules are obviously subject to scrutiny it's also harder to get clarififcation on them if you're confused so I try to be very clear and explicit with them.
Letitng the Beasts HP scale with character level is pretty much essential for a multi-class character to work, you're still loosing plenty by not advancing as a ranger, or even by missing out on higher level sub-class abilities in this case.
As for 8 attacks, well lets say you're going for the whole tarzan/ george of the jungle thing and want a troop of apes that have raised you since you rparents' airship crashed and killed them while stranding you out in the wilds, each ape companion get sit's own turn right? so it can use it's multi-attack ability and get two attacks. You get three of them, and the ranger gets 2 attacks for themselves, so 4*2=8.
rampant wrote:
I've updated some wording of the Beast Master subclass based on rampant's suggestions.
When you say 'all the beasts saves and skills' that's where the problem is because that could also mean that the beast is getting your prof bonus to ALL its saves. Say 'instead of it's own' or somehting that makes it clear that it's not getitng to apply the prof bonus to anything new (aside from maybe DCs).
And um actually ysince this sub-class gives you the followers anyhthing they do falls under class feature issues. So yeah this sub-class is handing out between 1 and 6 extra attacks per round. There was a reason the original beast master was so awkwardly set up, they were trying to avoid handing out too many extra attacks. They borked htings up completely of course but it wasn't arbitrary stupid like with wizards and clerics.
A follower or hench gained outside the bounds of a feat or class ability is of course going to be increasing the character's power, however they are by definition outside the system for making a character. THis is a sub-class which falls under the auspices of class design constraints.
As for trade offs in multi-classing. I'm not saying there shouldn't be, I'm saying that beast HP is not one of the things that needs to be traded. Especially since you allow their offense and saves to scale with level instead of ranger level. The value of a given amount of HP decreases as you level scaling the companion HP is'nt increasing it's power, it's maintaining it.
rampant wrote:
Ok how exactly do you see this many beasts playing out in combat? Are they gonna sit around doing nothing when the ranger isn't using them? because That doens't make a damned lick of sense. So basically you're saying that all the extra attacks are okay because the ranger isn't the one targetign them? Really?
rampant wrote:
Because you keep contradictiong yourself.
THis subclass give you three beast companions, GIVES. DO they or do they not have their own action pools beyond the bonus action team-work ability you created?
rampant wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
rampant wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
rampant is operating with the assumption that beasts gained from the subclass are in the player's control.
Ramzour operates with the assumption that the beasts are less special compared to wild beasts and so do not engage in combat by their own initiative. At least the DM is in his right to make that call.
I must say that I, to a degree, find it odd that beast allies will not defend their master (peer?) from harm. Would they not defend a member of the pack?
Comparing the beasts to henchmen will make the subclass only available in games where the DM allows henchmen. That may be problematic to some.
Lokiron wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Lokiron wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Lokiron wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Disallowing the recruitment of npcs to pad out a group is not bad DMing per se. Henchmen can be a pain. However, npcs can add to the story. There is also a difference between an npc who sole purpose is to soak up some hits and dish some damage and npcs whose personalities and backgrounds add to the game. Once again, this could come down to implementation of the beast companions' personalities. Go in with a clear understanding of what those personalities are.
We have loads of npc henchmen in our group. They cost money to keep (they don't feed temselves), and they are certainly not dragged to their deaths in dungeons every 5 minutes. One is a mute warrior who basically carries the elf wizard's gear, one is doppelganger with divintory powers who adopts the guise of an old man, one is a teenage girl with a love of horses, one is a noblewoman in disgrace because of what she did when she was possessed by a demon, one is a teen fisherman with a crush on one of the PCs, one is a griffin mount, one is a paladin's steed, one is an alcoholic gnome employed to carry the cleric of olidammara's booze, two are familiars, one is a foul-mouthed parrot that belonged to a gang of smugglers, one is a hunting hawk, one is a reformed slaver married to a PC, and then we have surviving smugglers and guards from the keep of Adlerweg who man the smuggling ship.
How dull and empty would our campaign be if I had banned henchmen?
Go Lassie!
A beast companion GRANTED by a class feature is by definition a class feature itself and thus cannot be treated as a normal henchman or camp follower because it's PART OF YOUR CLASS!.
LordTwig wrote:
rampant wrote:
What you don't get is that a creature bound to the PC BY A CLASS FEATURE has to be a lot more detailed and codified even if it isn't perfectly unde r the PC's control you have to go into detail about how it behaves, just tellign the DM to handle it is roughly akin to having the DM say when afighter uses action surge, or when a barbarian rages instead of the PC.
rampant wrote: