UA is a mine field of good and bad ideas that leave me pulling my hair out, particularly since some fulfill interesting niches (like the artificer) while others are just cluster fucks (the mystic).
Basically UA is just throwing stuff at the wall, getting feedback and anything that's actually worth anything will get a reworked version in a book later (for instance Xanathar's)
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I can certainly see the plus of UA in that it gets ideas in front of the power gamers and you get quick feedback on what is broken, but on the other hand it shows that the internal team just doesn't have the bandwidth to really test this stuff in house thoroughly.
the big downside of the UA revised ranger... it doesn't totally fit to the new ranger options. Like I can't just make a ruling that we use revised ranger now because folks might want to go Horizon Walker or something else out of xanathar's and there's no equivalent in the revised ranger (unless I'm missing some updates), and revised ranger doesn't come up in D&D Beyond either I don't think. I think two of my ranger players have used the revised ranger and one of them is doing it explicitly because they are playing a beast master and the revised beast master is noticeably better than the PHB beast master.
The Revised Ranger only changes the base chassis and the Beast Mastery subclass, nothing in it to bugger up any other subclass. Oh, other than the Extra Attack oversight but I think they addressed that in other ranger UA's that released after that said to just give everybody except the Beast Conclave Extra Attack.
The Revised Ranger only changes the base chassis and the Beast Mastery subclass, nothing in it to bugger up any other subclass. Oh, other than the Extra Attack oversight but I think they addressed that in other ranger UA's that released after that said to just give everybody except the Beast Conclave Extra Attack.
Not gonna lie been a while since i'd checked, totally forgot that the 5th level conclave feature was there so they could give everyone but the beast master extra attack. I totally forgot that it didn't get extra attack, and it explicitly strips multi attacks from beast companions.
Dear fuck that's garbage, what if it's a fight where the enemies are flying or something and the beast can't close to melee? You're just down to single ranged attacks with almost no damage add.
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
Revised Beast Master that's basically a Pokemon trainer, and as they level up they can have access to more animal companions, and while they can only have one active at a time, they are able to swap between them as a bonus action on their turn.
Just have their hit dice represent loyalty, and when they take too much damage they nope out for the rest of the day. You can only have X dice of animal friends divided as you choose.
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
Yeah, but they do call out that you can (with DM discretion of course) use most any cr 1/4 or less beast, just like the normal ranger.
Depending on the nature of your campaign, the DM might choose to expand the options for your animal companion. As a rule of thumb, a beast can serve as an animal companion if it is Medium or smaller, has 15 or fewer hit points, and cannot deal more than 8 damage with a single attack. In general, that applies to creatures with a challenge rating of 1/4 or less, but there are exceptions.
So your flying snakes and pteranodons are still viable choices.
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
I gave my beast master the ability to blow a third level spell to swap pets instantly, or revive his current pet, and he loves it
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
I gave my beast master the ability to blow a third level spell to swap pets instantly, or revive his current pet, and he loves it
Im really liking the idea of multiple companions with some inability to use them all at once. Third level spell sounds real fuckin reasonable for this capability.
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
PHB beast master can attack twice with a damage add (hunters mark) or up to 4 times without (swift quiver). That puts them around or slightly lower that fighter DPS
IMO the only real modification that the PHB beastmaster needs is to let hunters mark count as a “spell cast on yourself” that then applies to your companion at level 15.
Edit: and i would reword the “attack action” to be, rather than a separate action to give your beast an attack but part of your attack action. That way you could bonus action off hand attack even if you gave up your attack for your beast companion
That's like a big problem though, flying enemies and enemies you can't easily or safely close to are a basic challenge. Like if you're fighting yougoloths and they continually teleport away from melee situations so your beast companion can never really close the revised beast master becomes little better than a first level rogue as far as damage output goes. At least the PHB beast master is able to attack twice when in this situation. Hell there's a number of flying animal companions the PHB beast master can get that can keep a damage add solid through the basic challenge of flying enemies.
I gave my beast master the ability to blow a third level spell to swap pets instantly, or revive his current pet, and he loves it
Im really liking the idea of multiple companions with some inability to use them all at once. Third level spell sounds real fuckin reasonable for this capability.
rangers dont get 3rd level spells until mid-tier, and blowing one for this purpose costs them in terms of damage, but it lets them be adaptable - ambushed by wyverns? cast a spell and your wolf is now an eagle
the ranger in my game likes it so much that I'm actually surprised its not a RAW spell
If this
iteration of the ranger, or a future revision of it,
grades high enough, our plan is to present it as a
revised ranger in a future D&D sourcebook.
Players can select the original ranger or the
revised version, though DMs will always be free to
use only one or the other. Both will be legal for
D&D Adventurers League play, and players of
existing ranger characters will have the option to
swap to the revised version.
The document says it will become legal If it gets published in another source book. They have since said that's not happening.
Sounds like wizards is a chimera that literally can't decide whether it wants a functioning class or a version of favored enemy that is useless.
I don't see the word "become" in that text. I only see conditions on it getting into a book not its legality, which I imagine is because a core class has never been reworked and they've already sold a million books and don't want to oopsie phb 1.1.
The slim errata for the phb they published is widely unknown and usually ignored. But if it isn't AL legal, I will use it and still let players use it because its a much better realization of the class. I can only imagine the hangup is a hesitation about revisions. The other martial classes IE Barb and Fighter are both better options for kickpunching.
Alas, just the finnicky nature of the medium I guess. More power to you if you want to suffer through PHB Ranger.
I'm not sure I even consciously did it but the ranger in my game can either attack twice or attack once and let his beast attack twice and I thought thats what the revised ranger allowed, owell
For favored enemy I really like what mike mearls mentioned as a possibility, making favored enemy something you declare *to a specific enemy*, something like a vengeance paladin's oath
The best implementation of Favoured Enemy I've seen is from a homebrew fork of Pathfinder. Basically, the Ranger gets a quarry ability that provides them bonuses against a single target they can declare. Favoured enemy gives them those bonuses permanently against all enemies of the chosen type. They don't stack, you just use the higher of any bonuses if that comes up.
Quarry (Ex): At 2nd level, you are a deadly hunter. As a partial action (or a swift action at 8th level and above) you can denote one target within your line of sight as your quarry, with the following effects:
You gain an insight bonus equal to half your class level on attack rolls against your quarry, and on Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Perform (acting), Stealth, and Survival checks when using these skills against your quarry.
Successful attacks against your quarry deal additional damage equal to twice the attack bonus.
If you wound your quarry and it subsequently escapes, you know the direction in which your quarry lies, and the approximate distance to it (to within 10%). This knowledge can potentially be defeated by nondetection, mind blank, etc. This subsumes the Consecrated Harrier’s implacable hunt prestige class feature from Complete Divine.
As a full round action, you can automatically determine the presence or absence of your quarry in a cone extending 10 ft. x the attack bonus granted by thus ability. A second round of concentration tells you the location and status (exhausted, fatigued, unhurt, etc.) within that cone.
You can have no more than one quarry at a time. You can dismiss this effect at any time as a free action, selecting a new quarry as normal. This ability supersedes the Consecrated Harrier’s “implacable hunt” prestige class feature, from Complete Divine, the Ranger Guide’s “ranger’s focus” variant class feature from the Advanced Player’s Guide, and the Slayer’s “studied target” class feature from the Advanced Class Guide
Favored Enemy (Ex): Select a type of creature from among those listed on the table below (if you choose humanoids or outsiders as a favored enemy, you must also choose an associated subtype, as indicated on the table). Against creatures of that type, the following apply:
You always treat all creatures of the designated type as Quarry (q.v., minimum bonus +1), without needing to use that class feature. This is an exception to the rule against having only one quarry at a time.
Your favored enemy bonus applies as a competence bonus to Knowledge or related skill checks when attempting to identify favored enemies and their weaknesses. You can make such checks untrained.
If you have chaotic outsiders and oozes as a favored enemy, you can deal precision damage against oozes.
If you have constructs and undead as a favored enemy, these creature types are no longer immune to any feats, fighter talents, or ki powers you possess that normally allow a Fortitude save. In addition, constructs and undead damaged to less than half their full hp total by your attacks take penalties as if fatigued; those to below one-fourth as if exhausted. This subsumes the Bane of the Clockwork variant class feature, from Dragon magazine (issue 351).
Having a favored enemy of any type makes you eligible for Hunter feats (Appendix C).
1 Includes any creatures capable of casting arcane spells or using invocations or spell-like abilities, per the variant described in Complete Mage,
2 In the HOMEBREW setting, this includes orcs, goblins, hill dwarves, wood elves, etc. This broad category emulates the 1st edition ranger’s bonus against “giant class” opponents.
3 In the HOMEBREW setting, this includes humans, mountain dwarves, high elves, halflings, etc.
4 Choose one type of organization: e.g., churches, police departments, criminal gangs, etc.
5 Includes slave owners, per the Steel Falcon prestige class in Andoran: Spirit of Liberty.
Creatures with certain bloodlines, domains, mysteries, initiations, and so on (Chapter 3) that are derived or themed for certain types also count as that creature type for purposes of being considered favored enemies. For example, a ranger with favored enemy (fey and plants) would gain his or her favored enemy bonus against clerics with the Plant domain, druids with the Verdant Lord iniitation, incarnates with the Nature or Wood mystery, and sorcerers with the Fey or Verdant bloodline.
Favored enemies not listed can be allowed by player and referee agreement, using the ones shown above as guidelines. If a specific creature falls into more than one category of favored enemy, the bonuses do not stack; you simply use whichever bonus is higher.
You may select this lore multiple times; each time, choose a new favored enemy type from the table.
That's how the monster slayer's ( XGTE Ranger subclass) feature works. Not a spell slot, not concentration, just I don't like you in particular. I like it. Basically a weaker hex that can be reused.
So, what this discussion seems to be suggesting is that if you want to play a beastmaster ranger, use the UA one with the 5th level extra attack and an option to swap out one pet for another (but you can only have one active pet at a time). Potentially you could also use a spell to change your pet into a different creature if you don't want to figure out the logistics of where your zoo of pets are located and why you don't use more than one at a time.
But hunters mark sucks and eats up a concentration slot for a more interesting spell anyway
Hunter's Mark is fine. Sometimes you want other spells sure, but Hunter's mark is still 1d6/attack on a class that can get 2 to 4 attacks per round(against a single target, 2 to 5 if we're counting multiple).
Sounds like wizards is a chimera that literally can't decide whether it wants a functioning class or a version of favored enemy that is useless.
I don't see the word "become" in that text. I only see conditions on it getting into a book not its legality, which I imagine is because a core class has never been reworked and they've already sold a million books and don't want to oopsie phb 1.1.
The slim errata for the phb they published is widely unknown and usually ignored. But if it isn't AL legal, I will use it and still let players use it because its a much better realization of the class. I can only imagine the hangup is a hesitation about revisions. The other martial classes IE Barb and Fighter are both better options for kickpunching.
Alas, just the finnicky nature of the medium I guess. More power to you if you want to suffer through PHB Ranger.
I personally prefer the UA Ranger and allow its use in all my home games, but regarding Adventurers League (And I'll stop harping on about this after this post) it is explicitly illegal according the AL Player's Guide. If you're running AL and letting a player use the UA Ranger you're doing them a disservice as when they try and play with another DM they will be well within their rights to tell that player their character is illegal and to take a hike.
EDIT: Regarding Ranger revisions - Matt Colville will be launching his D&D stream soon and one of his players is playing a ranger. Finding the class lacking, Matt has made his own revisions to it. No real hints so far, but I'll be interested to see what he does with it.
I'm not sure I even consciously did it but the ranger in my game can either attack twice or attack once and let his beast attack twice and I thought thats what the revised ranger allowed, owell
For favored enemy I really like what mike mearls mentioned as a possibility, making favored enemy something you declare *to a specific enemy*, something like a vengeance paladin's oath
Truly, visionary design work: Uhhh this class feature isn't working what if I just changed it to a class feature a different class has that you like.
But hunters mark sucks and eats up a concentration slot for a more interesting spell anyway
Hunter's Mark is fine. Sometimes you want other spells sure, but Hunter's mark is still 1d6/attack on a class that can get 2 to 4 attacks per round(against a single target, 2 to 5 if we're counting multiple).
Yeah, Hunter's mark is almost certainly going to end up being way more damage per spell slot than any other spell you're likely to cast. It's basically the default use of level 1 ranger slots - Rangers have good spells but only like three or four of them, and those just become the only ones you're ever gonna cast anyway, particularly since it's clear that the math that's supposed to keep Rangers competitive with other classes for damage is built on the assumption that you have Hunter's Mark up all the time. Ranger isn't really a spellcasting class in any practical sense, it's a martial class whose 4e striker feature got turned into a spell.
The immediate problem with changing favored enemy to a declared effect a la Oath of Enmity (aside from the fact that you're just aping Oath and/or Hexblade Curse again instead of actually designing different features for your different classes) is the same problem you have with bonus-action Hex and bonux-action Hexblade curse in Warlocks: You end up with two core class features that you want active every turn crowding for the same piece of your action economy so they feel clunky and don't synergize well, and it'd be doubly annoying because they already made this exact mistake the first time around in the thing he's talking about copying. If you're gonna copy+paste your previous work and call it a new thing at least fix the parts you fucked up the first time around.
I'm not convinced there's any real problem with the UA solution to favored enemy in the first place - it's mostly fine as a feature, the PHB version is too narrow/situational, you fix it by making it apply to slightly more things. The root problem problem with the PHB ranger, as others have already mentioned, is just that it's too finicky and situational - most of its headliner features are conditional on top of conditional on top of conditional and it makes the class feel bad. It's a pile of pointless features because the class is held hostage to a bunch of Iconic ideas about being a Classic DnD Ranger, and can't acknowledge that those ideas were mostly bad and served no real purpose except to let some Lord of the Rings fan play as his Original Character Shmaragorn the Ranger in the 70s. The fact that it also lags in a damage a little is more insult to injury than the actual problem with the class.
I've been mulling over letting a ranger just apply the hunters mark after hitting a target with an attack if they're a hunter, and after their pet hits a target if they're a beast master, if they want to switch it to something else while that target is alive they have to use a bonus action
Forcing every ranger to take hunters mark, on the assumption that they must always have hunters mark up to be competetive, I would ask the question of why is it even a choice? Why give the rangers a wide variety of utility spells, that they cannot switch out on a long rest (because you should have picked paladin if you wanted to be good!)
No, you were right, it isn't AL legal. I googled it and Mearls and Crawford shot that down. I am not angry at any PA posters for this oddity by Wizards, just confused by their ... lack of clarity.
I just rejected that the Ranger was bad because revised is good but yeah PHB Ranger is a joke. In the end, I just want everyone to enjoy dnd and I want halfling with pet bear to be a viable choice mechanically since it's already op in the rp department.
funny thing is the local AL does allow revised ranger for beast master because they mistakenly think its allowed and nobody is cruel enough to tell them otherwise
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Hit dice rules went well. One person used theirs to add damage and rolled max. One turned a miss into a hit and one unfortunately used one to try to turn a miss into a hit but rolled a 1. Thems the dice.
1099: Siege of Jerusalem. Cleric and Barbarian feel kinda a bit guilty about their actions last sentence. My Rogue has gone into a nihilistic depression when drunk. Evil Paladin shrugs and moves on.
Arriving with the army at Jerusalem, the city is fortified and a siege would be very costly. My scout tried to infiltrate the city, but did not manage to find an entrance. We did get some info from overhearing the locals (one of his buddies speaks the language), found some walls that were recently damaged and managed to stay mostly undetected (sorry other buddy that caught an arrow). So moving back to camp, the generals started to plot and we got to act as advisors (followed by mass combat). Cleric, Barbarian and Paladin were part of the main attack using siege weaponry to attack the weakened walls. Scout with group of archers attacked the guards on the walls from another side. A magical artifact we found earlier helped breach the wall for the main attack and the main force ran into 2 high level generals protecting the city (while mass combat continues).
We had to stop in mid-combat due to snow/traffic times IRL, but at the moment we stopped Cleric and Paladin were facing off with a high level sorceror (who somehow managed to lose his CHA save on the Cleric's Banishment spell by rolling a 1 (a 5 would have been enough to save)) while the Barbarian is fighting a high-level Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin? (some martial class at least), while my scout was moving in for a sneak attack.
1, maybe 2 sessions to go.
DM told me later that she hadn't expected us to breach the walls, but we still had the oneshot artifact from an earlier session and Paladin, quite rightly, thought it was a good time to use it.
Alright I got Acererak's spell list for my TOA game, the one he has in the book is stupid
Cantrips (at will): mage hand, ray of frost, shocking grasp, chill touch
1st level (at will): magic missile, shield, identify, detect magic, comprehend languages, absorb elements
2nd level (at will): blindness/deafness, detect thoughts
3rd level (at will): animate dead, counterspell, dispel magic, lightning bolt, speak with dead
4th level (3 slots): blight, greater invisibility
5th level (3 slots): cloudkill, legend lore, telekinesis
6th level (3 slots): circle of death, disintegrate, globe of invulnerability
7th level (3 slots): finger of death, plane shift, teleport, forcecage, delayed blast fireball
8th level (2 slots): power word stun, dominate monster
9th level (2 slots): power word kill, wish, time stop
I more or less copied a suggested list I found online that makes sense for Acererak's personality. I could see him using telekinesis to grab something across the room or legend lore any time a random thought about a legendary creature or item pops into his head
I hope my players dont all get disintegrated! They're going to be in for a *nasty* surprise when Acererak instantly detonates a delayed blast fireball and circle of death on top of the entire group after time stopping
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I think the back-up character I am actually going to present to my DM for approval is a Monk of Tranquility (from Unearthed Arcana), as our group has no actual healer besides our Druid (who would probably prefer to not have to shoulder that responsibility).
The idea I've had for a while is they'd be a former headhunter for a warlord who would chase down his master's prey, drag them back to him, and them personally execute them. After that, he recognized his evil ways and became a pacifist monk who only wants to heal (to try to outweigh all the deaths he caused in his former occupation).
My initial thoughts are: Variant Human (although that can be changed) Revised Spell-less Ranger 2/'Way of Tranquility' Monk X.
The hurdle in my mind is that I'd really like to attach the Lightning Lure & Shocking Grasp cantrips to him, but doing so via Magic Initiate will still key them to either Intelligence or Charisma (and neither will likely be very big scores). I could key them off of Wisdom with a single level in Arcane Cleric but that'll only push my Monk levels back even more. If I can put in at least a 13 to Charisma I could also dip a single level into Sorcerer for those two cantrips & two more (likely Gust & Thunderclap).
I just really like the idea of in his former life he would go all Lord Raiden on dudes and electrocute them till their eyes/mind/heart exploded.
So my options are:
-- V.Human Revised Spell-less Ranger 2/'Way of Tranquility' Monk 5 Str 8, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12
Magic Initiate (Feather Fall, Lightning Lure, & Shocking Grasp)
-- V.Human Revised Spell-less Ranger 2/Arcane Cleric 1/'Way of Tranquility' Monk 4 Str 10, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 14, Cha 8
Spells (Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Guidance, Light, Lightning Lure, Magic Missile, Purify Food and Drink, Shocking Grasp, & Spare the Dying)
-- Half-Elf 'Giant Soul' Sorcerer 1/Revised Spell-less Ranger 2/'Way of Tranquility' Monk 4 Str 8, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14
Spells (Booming Blade, Feather Fall, Fog Cloud, Gust, Lightning Lure, Shocking Grasp, Thunderclap, & Thunderwave)
So I bought the Arcane spell card set last night because I want to use some more spellcasting enemies in my campaign, but man, trying to come up with tactics for spellcasters is kinda tough! I feel like I'm taking too much time trying to figure it out.
Does anybody have general advice for effectively running spellcasting enemies?
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Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Not gonna lie been a while since i'd checked, totally forgot that the 5th level conclave feature was there so they could give everyone but the beast master extra attack. I totally forgot that it didn't get extra attack, and it explicitly strips multi attacks from beast companions.
Dear fuck that's garbage, what if it's a fight where the enemies are flying or something and the beast can't close to melee? You're just down to single ranged attacks with almost no damage add.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yeah, but they do call out that you can (with DM discretion of course) use most any cr 1/4 or less beast, just like the normal ranger.
So your flying snakes and pteranodons are still viable choices.
I gave my beast master the ability to blow a third level spell to swap pets instantly, or revive his current pet, and he loves it
Im really liking the idea of multiple companions with some inability to use them all at once. Third level spell sounds real fuckin reasonable for this capability.
PHB beast master can attack twice with a damage add (hunters mark) or up to 4 times without (swift quiver). That puts them around or slightly lower that fighter DPS
IMO the only real modification that the PHB beastmaster needs is to let hunters mark count as a “spell cast on yourself” that then applies to your companion at level 15.
Edit: and i would reword the “attack action” to be, rather than a separate action to give your beast an attack but part of your attack action. That way you could bonus action off hand attack even if you gave up your attack for your beast companion
Halfings/gnomes are still good!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
rangers dont get 3rd level spells until mid-tier, and blowing one for this purpose costs them in terms of damage, but it lets them be adaptable - ambushed by wyverns? cast a spell and your wolf is now an eagle
the ranger in my game likes it so much that I'm actually surprised its not a RAW spell
The Adventurers League content catalogue literally says it isn't.
Edit:
The document says it will become legal If it gets published in another source book. They have since said that's not happening.
I don't see the word "become" in that text. I only see conditions on it getting into a book not its legality, which I imagine is because a core class has never been reworked and they've already sold a million books and don't want to oopsie phb 1.1.
The slim errata for the phb they published is widely unknown and usually ignored. But if it isn't AL legal, I will use it and still let players use it because its a much better realization of the class. I can only imagine the hangup is a hesitation about revisions. The other martial classes IE Barb and Fighter are both better options for kickpunching.
Alas, just the finnicky nature of the medium I guess. More power to you if you want to suffer through PHB Ranger.
For favored enemy I really like what mike mearls mentioned as a possibility, making favored enemy something you declare *to a specific enemy*, something like a vengeance paladin's oath
Hunter's Mark is fine. Sometimes you want other spells sure, but Hunter's mark is still 1d6/attack on a class that can get 2 to 4 attacks per round(against a single target, 2 to 5 if we're counting multiple).
I personally prefer the UA Ranger and allow its use in all my home games, but regarding Adventurers League (And I'll stop harping on about this after this post) it is explicitly illegal according the AL Player's Guide. If you're running AL and letting a player use the UA Ranger you're doing them a disservice as when they try and play with another DM they will be well within their rights to tell that player their character is illegal and to take a hike.
EDIT: Regarding Ranger revisions - Matt Colville will be launching his D&D stream soon and one of his players is playing a ranger. Finding the class lacking, Matt has made his own revisions to it. No real hints so far, but I'll be interested to see what he does with it.
Truly, visionary design work: Uhhh this class feature isn't working what if I just changed it to a class feature a different class has that you like.
SOLVED
Yeah, Hunter's mark is almost certainly going to end up being way more damage per spell slot than any other spell you're likely to cast. It's basically the default use of level 1 ranger slots - Rangers have good spells but only like three or four of them, and those just become the only ones you're ever gonna cast anyway, particularly since it's clear that the math that's supposed to keep Rangers competitive with other classes for damage is built on the assumption that you have Hunter's Mark up all the time. Ranger isn't really a spellcasting class in any practical sense, it's a martial class whose 4e striker feature got turned into a spell.
The immediate problem with changing favored enemy to a declared effect a la Oath of Enmity (aside from the fact that you're just aping Oath and/or Hexblade Curse again instead of actually designing different features for your different classes) is the same problem you have with bonus-action Hex and bonux-action Hexblade curse in Warlocks: You end up with two core class features that you want active every turn crowding for the same piece of your action economy so they feel clunky and don't synergize well, and it'd be doubly annoying because they already made this exact mistake the first time around in the thing he's talking about copying. If you're gonna copy+paste your previous work and call it a new thing at least fix the parts you fucked up the first time around.
I'm not convinced there's any real problem with the UA solution to favored enemy in the first place - it's mostly fine as a feature, the PHB version is too narrow/situational, you fix it by making it apply to slightly more things. The root problem problem with the PHB ranger, as others have already mentioned, is just that it's too finicky and situational - most of its headliner features are conditional on top of conditional on top of conditional and it makes the class feel bad. It's a pile of pointless features because the class is held hostage to a bunch of Iconic ideas about being a Classic DnD Ranger, and can't acknowledge that those ideas were mostly bad and served no real purpose except to let some Lord of the Rings fan play as his Original Character Shmaragorn the Ranger in the 70s. The fact that it also lags in a damage a little is more insult to injury than the actual problem with the class.
Forcing every ranger to take hunters mark, on the assumption that they must always have hunters mark up to be competetive, I would ask the question of why is it even a choice? Why give the rangers a wide variety of utility spells, that they cannot switch out on a long rest (because you should have picked paladin if you wanted to be good!)
I ask the same of Eldritch Blast for warlocks
I just rejected that the Ranger was bad because revised is good but yeah PHB Ranger is a joke. In the end, I just want everyone to enjoy dnd and I want halfling with pet bear to be a viable choice mechanically since it's already op in the rp department.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Arriving with the army at Jerusalem, the city is fortified and a siege would be very costly. My scout tried to infiltrate the city, but did not manage to find an entrance. We did get some info from overhearing the locals (one of his buddies speaks the language), found some walls that were recently damaged and managed to stay mostly undetected (sorry other buddy that caught an arrow). So moving back to camp, the generals started to plot and we got to act as advisors (followed by mass combat). Cleric, Barbarian and Paladin were part of the main attack using siege weaponry to attack the weakened walls. Scout with group of archers attacked the guards on the walls from another side. A magical artifact we found earlier helped breach the wall for the main attack and the main force ran into 2 high level generals protecting the city (while mass combat continues).
We had to stop in mid-combat due to snow/traffic times IRL, but at the moment we stopped Cleric and Paladin were facing off with a high level sorceror (who somehow managed to lose his CHA save on the Cleric's Banishment spell by rolling a 1 (a 5 would have been enough to save)) while the Barbarian is fighting a high-level Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin? (some martial class at least), while my scout was moving in for a sneak attack.
1, maybe 2 sessions to go.
DM told me later that she hadn't expected us to breach the walls, but we still had the oneshot artifact from an earlier session and Paladin, quite rightly, thought it was a good time to use it.
I more or less copied a suggested list I found online that makes sense for Acererak's personality. I could see him using telekinesis to grab something across the room or legend lore any time a random thought about a legendary creature or item pops into his head
I hope my players dont all get disintegrated! They're going to be in for a *nasty* surprise when Acererak instantly detonates a delayed blast fireball and circle of death on top of the entire group after time stopping
Does anybody have general advice for effectively running spellcasting enemies?
Humanoid spellcasters should act as their personality acts.
Though if you want their combats to be even CR then they probably need to open with their biggest spell