Look, there’s a lot to absolutely love about 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. However, there are some serious deficiencies that we can only ignore for so long. And with Shane’s love of the grossly underpowered Ranger class and Brownie’s anger at unfair working conditions as an adventuring party member, it was inevitable that Unqualified Experts would have to tackle the elephant in the room of 5E class problems: the Beast Master subclass of ranger.
There are many options to go with this, so without any delay:
There are many videos complaining about the beast master ranger in 5E. This fixing the beast master ranger video is Brownie approved for creating a better adventuring ranger.
Does Pathfinder Hold the Answers to Fixing Beast Master?
Pathfinder has options for beast companions, and this can be a great idea to help fix the beast master. Have a support guide. Have specific improved stats, hit points, or particular feats for animal companions. While I know 5E and Pathfinder are very different systems of tabletop role playing games, in this case this could make a beast companion strong enough to survive a fireball and actually bring something to the table.
Braden looks at specific potential boosts at various levels to bring the beast master up to par at least with other ranger classes.
Small Changes Could Fix 5E’s Beast Master Ranger
There are many little things that can make a huge difference when it comes to the beast master sub-class. There are many obvious little things that, when added together, could make a difference. Speak with animals should be an automatic at some point. Automatic bonuses to animal handling also makes sense.
Creating “companion bonuses” that come at certain levels from that special bond between ranger and beast. All of these are easy little changes that could make a big difference, and we go through even more in the video.
Braden does a deeper dive on some of these and more. The idea of a beast master not with one beast, but who has mastered a pack is super interesting, as well.
Tarzan: More Beast Master Than Barbarian?
Tarzan is a wildman in the barbarian sense, but you can make the argument this is what a beast master could look like. Creating a sub-class of beast master that is more barbaric, wild, and in the Tarzan tradition could be an incredibly intriguing, interesting, and unique way to create a different and fun to play sub-class of beast master ranger that works.
Where Do We Find These Alternate Beast Master Builds?
Many of the minor ideas can be quickly home brewed into a campaign, and I’ve already used some of the Pathfinder options for the campaign I ran for 5E. You need a DM willing to house rule to do this, but it is doable.
As for full from scratch builds…YES.
We ARE going to release a larger article doing just that and when those posts are done we’ll make sure to link them here for you to see!
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Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.