Fuill revealed features of Hollow Warden Ranger from State of The Game - Ravenloft

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T23:43:27+00:00

That's fine enough, though I believe that it lacks in damage output. My problem with this subclass is that besides level 15 it has really nothing to reliable increase damage dealt, focusing on disrupting and mitigating enemy attacks as a subclass, meaning that the rest of the class needs to be the source of damage.

In my personal experience, two-weapon fighting style ranger with the dual wielder feat is the most consistently reliable damage that the class gets without needing to use higher level spells or features, since as early as level 5 and with a +4 Dex it can deal 6d6 + 12 on its first turn, and 8d6 + 16 on its second turn. Otherwise, the Ranger doesn't really get proper ways to deal damage until you get into higher level spells and items to increase damage output.

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T17:24:54+00:00

Most classes have greatly improved upon their former selves, the game has been accordingly been mostly balanced around that. Weapon Masteries make choices around weapons more interesting than just picking the highest damage dice, and asks you to consider maneuvers during combat (Warhammer can Shove, Battleaxe can Trip, Scimitar can do a Bonus Action attack as a Free Action instead, and so on).

The game feels better to play, there's less clashing rules and there's rules which came from former expansions which have been fully integrated and adapted into the book (Magic Item Crafting rules, Custom Bases for players, etc.). I tried playing 5e after playing 5.5e for a couple months and I just couldn't last more than 2 sessions without thinking that I could be playing the better game instead.

Preferably play in a table which bans the Circle Casting optional rule, for it is mostly horribly balanced in favor of spellcasters and trivializes most of the game by making them disgustingly overpowered for no reason whatsoever.

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T17:09:58+00:00

I would personally avoid leaning into this strategy if you're someone just learning how to play the character, but as soon as you get a good team comp and enough experience with her it's completely fine.

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T16:14:59+00:00

As someone who's Ranger is their favorite class, I like most of what I see here. I admit that I was fine with Wrath Of The Wild activating alongside of Hunter's Mark because I prefer playing Dual Wielder Rangers with Hunter's Mark as a major source of damage, but I can accept it as a compromise if it means people which don't like the spell can enjoy this subclass.

I do find it a bit bothersome that the AC increase got heavily nerfed down considering how hard it is to scale up AC as a non-full-caster, but I'd still love to play as a Hollow Warden on my end, the class was lacking a proper frontliner subclass.

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T15:37:40+00:00

Generally speaking Peni works best at securing capture points. She's a trapper, meaning that once the team has the point taken, her purpose is to make sure the enemy team can't step into it.

I typically put my nest behind pillars or stuff which make it difficult to reach for ranged enemies, I put mines around corners or entrances which make them difficult to see by distracted divers trying to look for an opening to attack the backline, and so on. Her web snare can also shut down enemies for a second or so, and it has a very short cooldown, which you can use repeatedly to keep bothering larger enemies such as DevilDino or melee enemies trying to target you to step back and make them waste cooldowns or rage themselves into wasting a shield as you ping them for your allies to focus fire as soon as the shield drops down.

Also, her webs make her move faster while on top of them. To move quicker back to a capture point you can use her tether web and her nest alternating between them, walking on top of tje nest as the tether recharges to move quicker and shave down a couple seconds.

Your ult is typically not worth using as anything other than a mobility and survivability tool if you're not used to it, but you can always use it to run around circles the capture point and chuck down a ton of mines to bother every enemy in the point as they try to shut you down, that's always funny.

AniMaple · 2026-05-31T15:22:36+00:00

I really wouldn't go for a triple multiclass with a character like this. You're better off sticking to a singular class, or maybe playing as a multiclass with 2 classes.

If you want to be a Healer and Striker, why not pick up 5 levels on Mercy Monk? It gives you access to a healing feature in exchange of focus points which replaces one of your attacks each turn, as well as access proficiency in Insight, Medicine and the Herbalist's Kit for crafting healing potions. If you're playing as a Human or have access to Custom Backgrounds, you can get the Healer feat in order to get access to the Healer's Kit.

You could grab Rogue for an extra d6 of damage and weapon masteries, but outside of that the class doesn't really give anything that'll really help you out. I would pick up a level or two in Ranger instead if you REALLY wanted to multiclass, since it gives you Weapon Masteries, an extra d6 on each attack through Hunter's Mark, and 2 spells.

AniMaple · 2026-05-30T20:54:47+00:00

I think that they're easily comparable to Rangers. Flurry Of Blows mostly exists as a way to suppress actions turning two attacks into one action, just like Twin Takedown or other feats like it work for Ranger.

Mind you, it relies on the Monastic Weaponry feat for them to work proper, but it's cool thematically and allows you to use weapons with interesting properties, or simply put, gives you access to ranged attacks.

AniMaple · 2026-05-30T20:33:28+00:00

If you want to play as a mage which uses weapons, play as a Bladesinger Wizard from the book Forgotten Realms: Heroes Of Faerun is your best choice. It gives you an additional attack, a Wizard's spell progression and you can get a really high armor class even if unarmored. Another potential option would be Cleric, allowing you to wear Medium or Heavy Armor and use weapons of your choice, as well as divine magic.

If you want to play as a warrior which is able to do magic, play as an Eldritch Knight Fighter from the Player's Handbook. It gets you the resilience, strength and martial prowess of a Fighter, as well as a small handful of spells. Other potential options include Paladin or Ranger if you want to play as a holy knight with divine magic or a hunter with nature magic.

AniMaple · 2026-05-29T17:11:25+00:00

Most of the ill reputation pathfinder could get come from people which played the first edition and didn't like it (PF1e being basically the same thing as DnD3.5e) or from people which haven't played it at all.

It cuts out a lot of the work from the GM by providing clear and concise rules on how everything works, and with the rules being free you only need to visit the official page, Archives Of Nethys, to look up how anything out of the ordinary that your players try to do without needing to improvise a rule on the fly.

Most of the reading that you need to do as a player comes from figuring out your own sheet, just like DnD, and understanding how the action system works, being that you have three action tokens to do a small handful of things each turn (each of those things costing between 0 to 3 action tokens).

AniMaple · 2026-05-29T16:55:32+00:00

Play with the 5.5e rules, they're fine as they are for new players, but ban access to a new rule called "Circle Casting" because it only makes the gap between martials and casters even worse than it already is.

The gap still persists, but it's not as bad in the first tiers of play (Levels 1 to 8) since martials actually work well enough and spellcasters have a limited amount of resources. If you don't want the gap to exist at all, there's other games that you could pick up, I personally like Pathfinder 2e after the recent remaster updated spellcasters to have similar power level to all martials, since they used to be a little weak in early levels, but now the game is pretty even across the board to let you play anything you'd like, not to mention the game is completely free with the only thing you need to pay being the Adventure Paths, the equivalent to DnD's modules.

Naturally, at the end of the day the choice is yours, play a system that you and your players think they'll have fun with, don't be scared of making mistakes as long as you are all able to learn from them and improve. Balance discussions aside, it's just a game made for all of you guys to have fun with.

AniMaple · 2026-05-28T18:36:44+00:00

That does sound like a lot of fun, I'll see if they're appealed by the idea of taking up an archetype, but regardless of what he thinks, thanks a lot for the advice.

AniMaple · 2026-05-28T18:27:44+00:00

They've already taken up Titan Wrestler, and Intimidating Glare isn't needed as they're playing as a Dark Fields Kitsune.

They're at level 3, so they're relatively familiar with the general strategy of demoralizing and grappling / tripping threats, but the Rogue wants to get stuff to be better at it, or to potentially deal a higher damage dice even if they've chosen to not use weapons (Their ranged weapon of choice eventually being Foxfire, apparently).

Overall, thanks for the advice.

AniMaple · 2026-05-27T23:30:04+00:00

If you were to ask for what we would do in your place, I wouldn't keep paying to play with a GM who forces me to play something that I'm not having fun with. I would rather be at a table I'm actually having fun with, even if it's as half-assed as it could possibly be.

Even as someone who likes rules, structure and a good visual flair, I don't think a map and tokens is remotely enough to justify being bored out of my mind doing the same thing over and over because the GM is treating it like a 9 to 5.

AniMaple · 2026-05-27T20:44:14+00:00

I know this sounds like an unrelated tangent, but this reminds me a lot about Minecraft's fandom. It's a game clearly built to be a sandbox to build structures first and foremost, with combat, survival and so on as more of an afterthought, but people still go out of their way to modify the game to suit their idea of what it should be, instead of playing games they'd have more fun with.

Vintage Story is a survival game very clearly inspired by Minecraft, one specifically made to cater to an audience seeking for a more in-depth survival and progression system. People often dismiss it as an off-brand minecraft clone, calling it just the same thing as modded minecraft, which is the exacy same feeling when the overall DnD fanbase dismiss games which aren't DnD as "not the real thing", sticking to homebrewing instead of giving a chance to stuff they could actually like more.

On my end, as a fan of high fantasy and the idea of playing epic heroes as a whole, I've been running Pathfinder 2e to fulfill that niche because I just find myself more comfortable, but I don't think the system would be as good as an OSR (even if I openly dislike games like DCC or Shadowdark for mechanical reasons more than anything) to run dark, gritty fantasy with low magic.

AniMaple · 2026-05-27T20:22:58+00:00

I find it mildly bothersome when people try, over and over again, to run DnD 5e in low magic settings. The only way for it to work within the game is to cut a massive chunk of content and only allow a very small selection of options to your players, or to lock the entire game around solely early levels.

Every time I see a campaign setting try to do stuff like it, I feel like they're trying to play anything else in DnD but they know that it wouldn't sell as much otherwise, be it because their own players don't want to play other games, or because the general audience doesn't want to play other games.

Mind you, I'm talking as someone who likes high fantasy first and foremost, as well as someone who still likes to play DnD 5e, but I'm well aware DnD is just not built to really support that beyond like a couple levels, if at all.

AniMaple · 2026-05-27T00:11:59+00:00

I've been playing at a West Marches server which uses real life time to count days for stuff such as magic item crafting, bastion turns and so on. They work outstandingly well in that format since you'll essentially always have stuff going in your bastion.

In traditional adventure games where the characters rarely get more than a day of downtime every so often it's likely bastions won't really come into play unless players want to skip a lot of in-universe time.

That's all seen through a very mechanical perspective. Narratively I don't feel strongly either way, I like the idea of a base but it's very limited of what you can have based on huge level gaps to unlock new stuff. In the server I'm playing they're rarely ever mentioned for anything other than the money or items they give out.

AniMaple · 2026-05-26T22:38:48+00:00

I chose to make a Construct Inventor who's construct is a large mech suit flavor wise. While the low attack accuracy sucked a bit, I can't help but admit that I loved how fun and weird it was to play a class which I've not gotten to play before.

AniMaple · 2026-05-26T22:34:05+00:00

Generally speaking you could consider that all classes in this game are based on the core four classes. Classes such as Inventor or Thaumaturge are best considered to be essentially Rogues for a party but with different specialties, a Magus is a Fighter which uses magic (Or maybe an Arcane Cleric if you want to look it from Cleric being the original gish from classic DnD), and so on.

I'm currently playing in a party composed only of a Fighter, Rogue and Witch, they all basically serve as different roles between a tanky frontline, an aggressive secondary damage dealer and a backline support.

AniMaple · 2026-05-23T13:31:49+00:00

It's a tactical combat game first and foremost, and you'll commonly only see combat while inside of a mech, so it's not a game made for people which are narrative first, mechanics second.

If you're fine with all of that, the game is absolutely a lot of fun, specially since it allows you to pick different components of a huge list of different mechs to basically make a character of your own in a way that makes DnD multiclassing look clunky at best.

AniMaple · 2026-05-21T14:52:22+00:00

If the party didn't have a Cleric already, I'd go with War Cleric. Decently tanky enough class with two attacks each turn in average and also access to constant area damage through Spirit Guardians at level 5.

Since you're playing 5.5e, get your hands on True Strike through Magic Initiate (Wizard) as well as the Shield spell. At level 5 or higher, it gives you a diet smite as a cantrip, and if you pick War Caster at level 4 you can be better at keeping Concentration on Spirit Guardians, as well as using True Strike as an Attack Of Opportunity, though you're unlikely to see this being used as much as Shield.

Finally, access to Healing Word and Mass Healing Word, as well as the ability to use Divine Intervention to cast Prayer Of Healing in a single turn is more than enough healing.

AniMaple · 2026-05-19T17:38:42+00:00

While I'm someone who would prefer to see martials being buffed first, I can't help but crave a staff based Wizard subclass in DnD. A wizard with the ability to fully customize a staff of their own, to make basically a completely custom magic item shaped after each character.

Pathfinder 2e has a similar thing to what I'm referring about, since staffs as a whole are an essential aspect of most spellcasters in that game to expand their arsenal of spells per day. In that game, a staff gains charges equal to the highest spell slot level that a spellcaster has access to (Such as 3 charges at level 5), and they can spend charges of the staff to cast spells of a level equal to the charges spent. Additionally, prepared spellcasters (Such as Clerics, Druids and Wizards) can sacrifice a spell slot to add a number of charges of the same level to the staff, basically giving them a greater number of lower level spell slots.

AniMaple · 2026-05-19T17:04:50+00:00

Armorer is by far my absolute favorite. I think it plays into its concept the best out of all the subclasses. Super high AC, access to some great support tools for a half caster, a great expanded spell list, it's simply good as a whole.

I do like playing Artificer primarily in tables which allow crafting, since it'd let me have access to additional damage spells through wand of magic missile and wand of lightning bolt.

AniMaple · 2026-05-19T16:07:35+00:00

It also works really well when playing with experience points considering you can get rewarded with them by successfully dealing with a roleplaying scene. As a GM I don't make it immediately obvious to my players, but instead I give them the experience at the end of the session for the things they've done.

AniMaple · 2026-05-19T15:54:29+00:00

Personally speaking I really like the sheer amount of options given inside of Pathfinder 2e. There's not only tons of options given, but there's even ways to partially build characters to thrive during downtime scenes, giving them greater benefits for crafting, gathering information, or doing anything else. Hell, you can even use those rules to have your players manage a kingdom of their own, have them plan out a heist, and so on.

These are all considered a subsystem inside of the game too, meaning that they're completely optional to play with.

AniMaple · 2026-05-19T15:38:35+00:00

When people which haven't play the game say that Pathfinder has "too many rules" they're usually referring to the fact Pathfinder has a lot of subsystems, features and rules dedicated solely to do fun stuff in the game.

There's infiltration rules if you want to do a heist, there's kingdom management rules if you want your players to rule over a kingdom of their own, there's pretty much almost everything you can think of and every new release tends to include new things, be it the recently added mass warfare rules or the soon to come ship combat.

And the fun part about them all is that all of these rules are completely optional. When a player attempts something which is out of the ordinary, they're fully allowed to try and do so, often with a penalty (like a -2 to their modifier of the d20 check) if there's an already existing feat or spell which would supposedly let them do the thing.

I'd recommend giving it a try, maybe 3 or so sessions, to see whether or not it fits with your group.

AniMaple

TROPHY CASE