Optional Ranger Variant

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Overview & Creation

This is a non-magic variant of the ranger class meant for those who'd like to safely navigate the wilds of the world without being accused of witchery.

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Class Features

1st level

  Favored Enemy   Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy commonly encountered in the wilds. Choose a type of favored enemy: beasts, fey, humanoids, monstrosities, or undead. You gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with weapon attacks against creatures of the chosen type. Additionally, you have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them. When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice, typically one spoken by your favored enemy or creatures associated with it.   Natural Explorer   You are a master of navigating the natural world, and you react with swift and decisive action when attacked. This grants you the following benefits:   • You have advantage on initiative rolls.   • On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.   In addition, you are skilled at navigating the wilderness. You gain the following benefits when traveling for an hour or more:   • Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.   • Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.   • Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.   • If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.   • When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.   • While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.   ~  

2nd level

  Fighting Style   At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.   • Archery: You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.   • Defense: While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.   • Dueling: When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.   • Two-Weapon Fighting: When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.   Primeval Awareness   Beginning at 2nd level, your mastery of ranger lore allows you to establish a powerful link to beasts and to the land around you. You have an innate ability to communicate with beasts, and they recognize you as a kindred spirit. Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas to a beast as an action, and can read its basic mood and intent. You learn its emotional state, whether it is affected by magic of any sort, its short-term needs (such as food or safety), and actions you can take (if any) to persuade it to not attack. You cannot use this ability against a creature that you have attacked within the past 10 minutes. Additionally, you can attune your senses to determine if any of your favored enemies lurk nearby. By spending 1 uninterrupted minute in concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell), you can sense whether any of your favored enemies are present within 5 miles of you. This feature reveals which of your favored enemies are present, their numbers, and the creatures’ general direction and distance (in miles) from you. If there are multiple groups of your favored enemies within range, you learn this information for each group.   ~  

3rd level

  Hunter’s Prey   At 3rd level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.   • Colossus Slayer: Your tenacity can wear down the most potent foes. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, the creature takes an extra 1d8 damage if it’s below its hit point maximum. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.   • Giant Killer: When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provided that you can see the creature.   • Horde Breaker: Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon     Animal Companion   At 3rd level, you learn to create a powerful bond with a creature of the natural world. Select a single beast of CR 1/4 or lower to be your companion. The creature you select adds your proficiency bonus to their attacks as opposed to their own, and receives ability score improvements as you do (at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19). If the beast's maximum hit points are fewer than 18, their maximum HP becomes 18. Whenever you gain a level in this class, your companion gains maximum HP equal to 1D10+CON (or 6+CON). During combat, your companion shares an initiative with you and follows your commands to the best of its ability, though its turn is separate from your own (you just decide who goes first). During your turn, when you take the attack action, you may forgo one of your attacks and have you beast companion attack instead (Note: your companion may attack on their turn as though they were any other creature, without you needing to burn an action to instruct them).   ~  

4th level

  Ability Score Improvement   When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.   ~  

5th level

  Extra Attack   Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.   Coordinated Attack   Beginning at 5th level, you and your animal companion form a more potent fighting team. When you use the Attack action on your turn, if your companion can see you, it can use its reaction to make a melee attack. ~  

6th level

  Greater Favored Enemy   At 6th level, you are ready to hunt even deadlier game. Choose a type of greater favored enemy: aberrations, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fiends, or giants. You gain all the benefits against this chosen enemy that you normally gain against your favored enemy, including an additional language. Your bonus to damage rolls against all your favored enemies increases to +4. Additionally, you have advantage on saving throws against the spells and abilities used by a greater favored enemy.   ~

7th level

  Defensive Tactics   At 7th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.   • Escape the Horde: Opportunity attacks against you are made with disadvantage.   • Multiattack Defense: When a creature hits you with an attack, you gain a +4 bonus to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the turn.   • Steel Will: You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.   ~  

8th level

  Fleet of Foot   Beginning at 8th level, you can use the Dash action as a bonus action on your turn. Additionally, you ignore difficult terrain.   ~  

9th level

  Beast’s Defense   At 9th level, while your companion can see you, it has advantage on all saving throws.   ~  

10th level

  Hide in Plain Sight   Starting at 10th level, you can remain perfectly still for long periods of time to set up ambushes. When you attempt to hide on your turn, you can opt to not move on that turn. If you avoid moving, creatures that attempt to detect you take a −10 penalty to their Wisdom (Perception) checks until the start of your next turn. You lose this benefit if you move or fall prone, either voluntarily or because of some external effect. You are still automatically detected if any effect or action causes you to no longer be hidden. If you are still hidden on your next turn, you can continue to remain motionless and gain this benefit until you are detected.   ~  

11th level

  Multiattack   At 11th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.   • Volley: You can use your action to make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon’s range. You must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and you make a separate attack roll for each target.   • Whirlwind Attack: You can use your action to make melee attacks against any number of creatures within 5 feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target.   ~  

12th level

  Ability Score Improvement   ~  

13th level

  Storm of Claws and Fangs   At 13th level, your companion can use its action to make a melee attack against each creature of its choice within 5 feet of it, with a separate attack roll for each target.   ~  

14th level

  Vanish   Starting at 14th level, you can use the Hide action as a bonus action on your turn. Also, you can’t be tracked by nonmagical means, unless you choose to leave a trail.   ~  

15th level

  Superior Hunter’s Defense   At 15th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.   • Evasion: When you are subjected to an effect, such as a red dragon’s fiery breath or a lightning bolt spell, that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on a saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.   • Stand Against the Tide: When a hostile creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to force that creature to repeat the same attack against another creature (other than itself) of your choice.   • Uncanny Dodge: When an attacker that you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to halve the attack’s damage against you.   ~  

16th level

  Ability Score Improvement   ~  

17th level

  Superior Beast’s Defense   At 17th level, whenever an attacker that your companion can see hits it with an attack, it can use its reaction to halve the attack’s damage against it.   ~  

18th level

  Feral Senses   At 18th level, you gain preternatural senses that help you fight creatures you can’t see. When you attack a creature you can’t see, your inability to see it doesn’t impose disadvantage on your attack rolls against it. You are also aware of the location of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you, provided that the creature isn’t hidden from you and you aren’t blinded or deafened.   ~  

19th level

  Ability Score Improvement   ~  

20th level

  Foe Slayer   At 20th level, you become an unparalleled hunter. Once on each of your turns, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack roll or the damage roll of an attack you make. You can choose to use this feature before or after the roll, but before any effects of the roll are applied.  
 

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Starting Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:   (a) scale mail or (b) leather armor   (a) two shortswords or (b) two simple melee weapons   (a) a dungeoneer’s pack or (b) an explorer’s pack   (a) a longbow and a quiver of 20 arrows or (b) a shortbow and a quiver of 20 arrows

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