Hello everyone. A long time lurker here and a first time poster. I am quite excited about 5E and i can't wait to start a campaign as soon as my group (DM and players) are ready to transition. I have only lilited experience with 2E and 3E, but we have played 4E for almost 2 years now.
Having read about 1E and 2E, i have some ideas i'd like to experiment with for my new character. In 4E i played an MC Warlord with (warrior of the wild MC feat), but my dream has always been 1E ranger and 2nd Edition Ranger Justifier. As 5E seams more close to 2E in overal feel, i would like to try and make Justifier version in 5E, using multiclassing, features and/or feats.
Does anyone have any creative ideas and suggestions as to what might be the best ways/combination of doing it, without making the character too much useless?
For those not familiar with the justifier, here is the kit description in 2E:
"Description: Some expeditions are so demanding and some foes so dangerous that they require
the attention of a highly trained specialist whose combat skills far exceed those of the typical ranger.
Enter the Justifier, a master tactician whose military instincts, fighting versatility, and steely nerves
places him in the first rank of elite warriors.
Though the Justifier specializes in neutralizing monsters, his skills qualify him for a wide range
of adventures. He may organize guerilla forces and lead them into hostile territories. He may stage
reconnaissance operations to gather information concerning enemy strength and logistics. He may
execute strikes against monster lairs, rescue hostages, or eliminate tribal leaders or spell casters. For a determined Justifier, no job is too difficult, no enemy too formidable.
Requirements: Justifiers must have minimum scores of 14 in Strength and Dexterity. They must
be human and of lawful good alignment.
Primary Terrain: Any.
Role: Justifiers boast extensive training in weapon use, scouting, warding, and outdoor survival.
Some learn these skills in a regular standing military, others are trained by military orders. A few
highly motivated individuals are self-taught..... A Justifier’s companions will find him disciplined, focused, and unyielding in his determination to accomplish his objectives. He socializes little, preferring instead to keep his body strong with punishing exercise and his mind sharp with quiet meditation. A natural leader in combat situations, he fights with grim intensity and fearless perseverance.
Secondary Skills: Armorer, Bowyer/Fletcher, Forester, Hunter, Trapper/Furrier, Weaponsmith.
Weapon Proficiencies: Recommended: Bow (any), crossbow (any), dagger, sling, spear, sword
(any). .
Nonweapon Proficiencies: Bonus: Survival; in addition to having this proficiency in his primary
terrain, the Justifier receives the proficiency in an extra terrain of his choice (see also, Special Hindrances).
Recommended: Alertness*, Blind-fighting, Bowyer/Fletcher, Camouflage*, Endurance,
Falconry*, Hunting, Mountaineering, Navigation, Riding (Land-based), Rope Use, Running, Set
Snares, Swimming, Weaponsmithing.
Armor/Equipment: A Justifier has no special armor or equipment requirements. Though most
Justifiers prefer light armor, such as leather, they can wear any type of armor and still hide in shadows
and move silently
Species Enemy: Any. A Justifier is more respected by his enemies than other rangers, and therefore
suffers only a -2 penalty on encounter reactions with his species enemy, and no penalty if there
is a formal truce.
Weapon Specialization: Because of his extensive combat training, the Justifier must use some of
his initial proficiency slots to take one weapon specialization. The weapon of specialization is taken from the list of recommended weapons.
Stealth: The Justifier receives a +5% bonus to his chance of hiding in natural surroundings and to
his chance of moving silently.
Tactical Advantage: This ability allows the Justifier and his companions to gain a combat advantage
by studying the enemy and exploiting their weaknesses. The Justifier must spend at least a full,
uninterrupted turn secretly observing an enemy or group of enemies prior to making an attack. At the
end of this period, the Justifier makes a Wisdom check. If successful, the Justifier has correctly
assessed the enemy’s weaknesses and is able to maximize the timing of an attack. The Justifier and
his party automatically surprise the enemy and gain the initiative for the first round. A Justifier can
attempt to gain a tactical advantage only once in a particular encounter.
Special Hindrances:
Limited Proficiencies: The Justifier’s mastery of weapons and combat comes at the expense of
learning other skills. For this reason, he receives only one nonweapon proficiency slot at 1st level (in
addition to his Survival bonus). He acquires additional proficiency slots at the normal rate.
Limited Spell Use: Because the Justifier devotes less time to the study of magic than to the
military arts, he has less access to spells than other rangers. The Justifier doesn’t acquire spells until he reaches 10th level. Table 46 shows the Justifier’s spell progression.
Coordinated Attack: The Justifier can use this ability, in conjunction with a trained animal follower,
to inflict maximum damage on an opponent. The animal follower must have been trained to
attack on command"
End of quote.
Personally, this reminds me strongly of sime kind of Fighter-Battle Master and Ranger-Hunter hybrid (read the tactical advantage part), but would like to hear your thought about it as well, especially thepossible progresion lines and class/stat/feat selections.
Cheers and many regards!
Yeah, multiclassing fighter battle master and ranger would go a long way for that. Assuming your starting at level 1, the problem is choosing when to take the levels. I wanted to do a low level Multiclass, between paladin and barbarian, and your going to run into a problem i hit. After you take subclass at level three, your one level away from ASI, and two levels away from your Extra attack feature. Its really hard for a melee character to be effective and delay that Extra Attack. It hurts, and hurts hard. My advice would be to take your first five levels in ranger, get your Favored Enemy and Terrain, and if you want to start as a human, go variant with battle master feat. gives you one superoirty die you can use once per short rest. Then when you start taking your fighter-Battle Master levels, you will have a bonus die and two extra manuvers. My 2cp
Good points there. As i don't have the feel for 5E yet, i have no idea of how to progress the levels. I don't even know if i should start as ranger or fighter yet, nor how much MC-ing would hurt the character's utility. Back in 4E it was realitively easy to fall behind the power curve, especially in heavily mini-maxed party. Hoever in 5E, with it's bound accuracy and lower stat caps, i think RP-ing (at least in the mid-long run) won't hurt the performance that much. You do make an excellent point about that extra attack. If it wasn't for that, i would consider MC even at lvl4 or earlier.
Another thing i don't yet know, is if our DM would allow us to roll our stats, or will we have to use arrays. If for example we roll, and i get a decent values for my str/dex wis/con, i may consider dropping some stat increase for a more RP minded feats, like Resilient (i.e. resilient constitution would even be useful game wise, as at would help concentration checks if the ranger got into melee). But, with standard arrays, i just don't know. Have much do stats matter in an actual campaign?
I suggest starting as fighter at level 1, solely because fighters have good saves, and the best equipment proficiencies in the game. Not only that, you can take armored as your fighter trait, and then take your respective weapon trait from ranger 2.
MCing in 5e is much more valuable than MCing and the majority of hybrids in 4e were. Losing out on your capstone feature is almost always worth the utility you get from multiclassing, especially since many campaigns don't even hit 20 anyway.
So you recommend i start with fighter 1 and then proceed to ranger 5? I was under impression that MC is best done i groups of 4 or 5, depending on class features.
Also, as there is no weapon specialization in 5E, i am in a bit of a dilema on how to express the "mastery of weapons and combat comes at the expense of learning other skills....Limited Spell Use: Because the Justifier devotes less time to the study of magic than to the military arts, he has less access to spells than other rangers". I know MC-ing will naturally decrease the casting ability, but how can i improve the "mastery of weapons"? With feats? And what weapon style would you guys recommend?
You could also work something out with your DM. If the battlemaster sub-class is balanced for a fighter, it's probably balanced for a ranger. That's kind of the spirit of 5e. Don't be ashame to make your own stuff!
Unfortunately my DM isn't all that hot for improvisations. Maybe it's the overal lack of experience or just a personal preference on his part, i can't really say. He is known for occasionaly rewarding unothodox approaches, but mostly likes to stick with the books. And as we recently had a little argument over whether we should roll stats or use arrays, i would not like to antagonize him any further.
Anyway, i started playing with the leveling mechanics on a piece of paper and my first itteration went something like this:
6 levels in fighter (3 to get the archetype; one more for the stats, another for the extra attack and the last one for the 2nd set of stats)
4 levels in ranger (3 for the feature and another one for the stat increase)
The good thing is that the final product somewhat resembles Justifier. The bad thing is, i don't get to play the ranger until level 7. As we are probably going to start at lvl1, getting there might take some time. Actually i'm pretty certain it will 
, if we even survive that long. Another bad thing is, Know Your Enemy kicks in at fighter lvl7, just short of my 6 levels, but this can't be helped as it's just the way the class works.
So, F6/R4 might not be the best option. Any suggestions? And how would you go about the stat distribution? My original vision was to make him sort of an elite heavy skirmisher. Starting the fight at range, but closing in for the melee, or engaging in melee when the enemies close after the ambush. As a result i had the intent of making it a melee class first and an archer second. Probably 16STR 14DEX after all the modifiers (if i went with an array). I would also need to keep the wisdom at 14. One more question, what do you think better serves the Justifier role, an 11th level ranger multi attack, or an 11th level fighter extra attack?
I'm sorry to hear that. What is it that you want from the ranger? It doesn't seem to be the spells so why not stick to a plain fighter? You don't have class skills anymore so you can take a hunterish background
Some of the features the ranger offers are really close to the above descriptions or at least the way i interpet them. Like the favored terrain doubling the profficency bonus for using the skills when there (i.e. stelth skill). Also taking favorite terrains that include mountains, forests, swamps or coasts seam to resonate well with the Justifier's Mountaineering, Navigation, Rope Use, Running, Set Snares, Swimming skills. Other features in Natural explorer also work well with Justifier (like Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel or you remain alert are good representation for guerilla force ogranizers). Land's stride is not mandatory or directly connected to this class, but i think it adds up well to teh overall guerilla-special forces feel. Hide in plain sight and vanish too, though these come at a far too high level for me to consider at this point.
Of the archetype features, the hunter's Colossus' Slayer or Horde Breaker seam like a good representation of a warrior that hunts the enemies on their own turf (though i still can't decide which one works better role wise). In the defensive tactics feature, Steel Will illustrates the mental discipline very well and Escape the Horde again seams like created just for the guerilla aspect of the class. The level 11 Multiattack is a bit of a mixed bag as i am not sure if it works with class role that well. Especially when compared with the fighter's alternative of a 3rd attack. As there are no specializtaions, mastery and grand mastery in weapon use now, i think the fighter's ultimate 4 attacks can be used as a rough approximation for this missing feature, thus a Justifier as half way between a figher and a pure ranger, maybe should get a 3rd attack eventually? This would probably lead to a total number of levels taken to be Fighter 11 or 12 and ranger 8 or 9? However if i can if i can fit the multi attack into the concept successfuly, then the opposite may work as well (Ranger 12 Fighter 8)?
@Gnarl
I made the follwing hybrid class, to present to my DM and see if he will play ball. In essence i tried to keep the overal end results of the MC, but avoiding the "pack leveling" sequence. In order not to OP the class, i decided to delay some of the features the classes get and altogether lose some, I.E. the cap feature. To make it shorter this is the table for the justifer:
1st Fighting Style, Natural Explorer
2nd Favored Enemy, Second Wind
3rd +2 Ranger Archetype (Hunter),
4th +2 Ability Score Improvement Martial Archetype (Battle master)
5th +3 Extra Attack, Action Surge. Primeval Awareness
6th +3 Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer improvements Spellcasting 2 2
7th +3 Ability Score Improvement, Martial Archetype feature (K n o w Y o u r E n e m y) 3 3
8th +3 Ranger Archetype feature (D e f e n s iv e T a c t ic s) , 3 3
9th +4 Land’s Stride 4 4 2
10th +4 Natural Explorer improvement, Ability Score Improvement 4 4 2
11th +4 Hide in Plain Sight 5 4 3
12th +4 Martial Archetype feature (I m p r o v e d C o m b a t Su p e r io r i t y) 5 4 3
13th +5 Ability Score Improvement 6 4 3 2
14th +5 Favored Enemy improvement, 6 4 3 2
15th +5 Vanish 7 4 3 3
16th +5 Ability Score Improvement 7 4 3 3
17th +6 Ranger Archetype feature (Su p e r io r H u n t e r ’s D e f e n s e) 8 4 3 3 1
18th +6 8 4 3 3 1
19th +6 Ability Score Improvement 9 4 3 3 2
20th +6 Extra Attack 9 4 3 3 2
So how about it guys? Does it seam too powerful? Or too weak? Should i re-order some of features? What i tryed to do here is esentially merge the classes in an arithmetic way. Thus if the fighter gets 4 attacks and the ranger 2, the justifier gets 3; if the fighter gets 7 ability score improvements and the ranger 5, the justifer gets 6. I would probably get something similar with the skills available. In return, the justifer loses multi attack and feral senses, but gets fighter's armor proficiences. Also, the justifer doesn't get spell casting till level 6 and stays 6 levels behind the regular ranger at all times. Any feedback is welcomed!
Mixing two archetypes can't be a good idea. I would go the easier route, using the ranger as a main-class and adapt the Battlemaster subclass to the ranger, so in the end shift the 10th level traits to 11th level and leave the 18th level traits out (means you stick to d10 in martial dice). With spellcasting and other ranger options, this is plentiful. ;)
Kentus wrote: