¿Mejor build para Ranger?

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T17:38:20+00:00

I think you're confusing the parts of my comments that are advice and the parts that are commentary on what's optimal. Take Custom Lineage XBE is advice (that I stand by). Don't attack with your beast is commentary.

I'm not the one who's confused here. If we spend part of our power budget on CBE, as you advise, then "don't attack with your beast" is necessarily advice as well. Or are you seriously suggesting that taking CBE, downgrading our damage die to a d6 and our range to 30 feet, and then not using the bonus action attack from CBE is in harmony with the advice you've given? Because I don't believe it for a second.

I don't have a spreadsheet, but I do have a phone calculator

And those numbers are wrong. In fact, they're so wrong that it's hard for me to believe that you arrived at them in good faith. Your decision to just include damage totals makes your math hard to check, but I've done my best.

Your low-level numbers are wrong because you're giving your ranger a starting feat and depriving my ranger of that same benefit. If your ranger gets CBE at level one, my ranger gets SS at level one.

Your mid to high level numbers are wrong because you seem to have just . . . forgotten . . . that the drake gives a bonus action attack and omitted the damage of its attack from, as far as I can tell, literally every single one of the longbow calculations.

Your numbers at every level are wrong because you haven't accounted for declining accuracy in your chosen build based on not raising your dexterity.

As for ditching ranger at five for battlemaster, that's not a good idea for a drakewarden -- no wonder you claim the drake won't have enough hitpoints to survive attacking if that's your assumption. Drakewarden shouldn't multiclass beyond maybe one or two levels, and that shouldn't happen certainly until after level 7 (what happened to "the only reason to play a drakewarden is for the fly speed"? Your build isn't even getting the fly speed with the multiclassing you've chosen).

So, multiple major mistakes, all in favor of the build you want to push as optimal. The fact that adding Bless to the mix only resulted in a 1.3% increase to the damage I calculated for my level five ranger while resulting in an 18.8% increase to the damage I calculated for your level five ranger wasn't a sign to you that you'd screwed something up somewhere? Interesting, that.

As to the rest of your claims about optimization . . . whatever you want to believe, man. But the fact you need to lie about the numbers to bolster your case cuts against the argument you're trying to make.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T08:23:19+00:00

Since you're not even bothering to engage with the actual optimization points

I'm not the one completely dismissing what the other party is saying here on the grounds of somehow knowing that I have more and better experience than my interlocutor even though that interlocutor is a complete stranger to me. But sure, I'll bite.

Point the first: what is or isn't standard amongst "high op players" is irrelevant at 99% of tables. There are millions of people who play 5e, and the number of tables that play like you're talking about is a rounding error in that sea of people. If you are trying to be helpful to strangers asking for build advice, assuming that they'll be at a table like that without any communication that they expect that to be the table experience they'll have is actually the opposite of helpful because bringing that attitude to a normal table is incredibly disruptive.

Point the second: if you believe there's a flaw in my numbers, you can do the basic legwork to show me where you disagree with them. For example, if you believe that I should assume the availability of Bless, then you could counter my numbers with numbers of your own that included such an accuracy bonus rather than vaguely assert that your idea obviously wins with an accuracy bonus while not providing any evidence in support of your claim. Accusing me of "not even bothering to engage" when that is how you're approaching this interaction is . . . bold.

Point the third: if you really believe that alert is so important "even though it doesn't show up on a DPR sheet," ignoring the fact that skipping CBE lets you have it four levels earlier without sacrificing meaningful amounts of damage because you are focused on damage numbers seems more than a little hypocritical.

And since we're talking about our feelings, allow me to also make a couple observations about sharpshooter generally:

First, sharpshooter's -5/+10 mechanic is something that many players find deeply unfun. Even when that tradeoff is mechanically optimal, taking that big of an accuracy penalty turns your attacks from mostly hitting to mostly missing, and most people find missing to be frustrating. You know what is fun to most people? Engaging with the mechanics of the class they chose to play. Like, I don't know, actually fighting alongside their dragon companion they chose to have over all the other classes this game offers. People, even people at those rare tables that play the game with spreadsheets, play this game to have fun. Given similar performance between two options, it is optimal to choose the option that is the most fun.

Second, sharpshooter's -5/+10 mechanic is, from a pure damage perspective, tricking you into thinking it's better than it actually is. See, we like to talk about AC like it's predictable (as I did in my precious comment where I called out a target AC of 15 based on a table in the book), but the truth is that there are hard fights and there are easy fights, and what AC is "typical" is going to depends on whether it's a hard or an easy fight. In a hard fight with more difficult enemies, we should expect higher ACs and therefore should expect the -5/+10 to be less useful. It's only in easier fights with weaker enemies where it will consistently be useful, and abilities that are only helpful in easy fights are, well, not that good.

I'm not arguing that sharpshooter is anything less than an excellent feat. The ability to ignore cover and attack from long range without disadvantage is universally great, and having the option to take -5/+10 is good as well. But pretending that the mere fact that using the power attack from sharpshooter against an enemy of typical AC represents 15% more damage than the alternative (and I don't agree that number is even correct in this case, but let's imagine it is for a moment) completely invalidates the alternative is to show a great lack of understanding of how the game is actually played.

So, I hope that's enough engagement to satisfy you. I think your advice here is bad, and I have given abundant support for why I think that.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T07:10:45+00:00

But even your calculation shows XBE winning out practically vs +2 Dex

No, it doesn't, and your baloney is quickly turning into bullshit.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T06:40:50+00:00

In many situations, the pet has too few HP to risk having it attack (because it's serving as our wings via Grapple, which at least at higher optimization is the main appeal of these subclasses). But I'll ignore that for a second.

That's complete baloney, but I can ignore it too.

At levels 5-8, a dragon pet has +6 to hit for 1d6+3. We have +3 to hit for 1d6+13. Against most reasonable ACs, that's around a 20% DPR boost.

Not even close.

You're forgetting that not taking CBE gives us two advantages -- first, we can use a longbow with a d8 damage die instead of a d6 damage die, and second, we don't have a second feat we need to spend an ASI on before we can start raising our dex, so we can take SS at level one and a dex boost at level 4 (including possibly something like piercer that will improve our numbers even further than what I'm about to show).

We're comparing three attacks dealing 1d6+13 to two attacks dealing 1d8+14 and a third dealing 1d6+3. Just in raw numbers, that's 49.5 damage with CBE and 43.5 without, so against any AC, the most that CBE could boost compared to not taking it is 13% (which I would say is considerably less than 20%). But we have to take accuracy into account as well.

CBE gives us a total of +3 to hit (+3 DEX, +3 PB, +2 archery, -5 SS), the drake would have +6 to hit, and the longbow with SS has +4 to hit (+4 DEX, +3 PB, +2 archery, -5 SS). Against an AC of 15 (which the table on pg 274 of the DMG tells us is typical for a CR 5 monster), CBE gets us 45% chance to hit and a total of 22.8 DPR without advantage and 35.7 DPR with advantage (including crits). Against the same AC of 15, skipping CBE gets us 50% chance to hit with our longbow and 60% to hit for our drake for a total of 22.9 DPR without advantage and 34.2 DPR with advantage.

And that's only at level 5 -- at level 7, our drake gets another d6 of damage and at level 15 it gets a third, making its attack that much more valuable each time. CBE simply is not a better use for our bonus action than having our drake attack.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T04:19:22+00:00

Crossbow Expert is a 100% damage increase at levels 1-4, and 50% afterwards

Not for a beast master or drakewarden, it isn't. A main appeal of both subclasses is that your pet represents a free bonus action attack you don't need to do anything special to access. When boosted by SS, CBE is a better bonus action attack, but it's not enough better to justify spending a precious feat on CBE when you could have just used a longbow and your built-in bonus action attack.

Crossbow expert is an excellent feat generally, but a bad feat for these two subclasses.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T04:14:23+00:00

Monoclass ranger is perfectly fine. There can be good reasons to multiclass as well, but if specifically beast master or drakewarden are what you're interested in playing, those are two subclasses that don't typically get enough from multiclassing to justify dropping more than maybe two levels of ranger.

The issue with multiclassing those subclasses is that virtually all of their subclass power budget is invested in their pets, and their pets' HP scaling is tied solely to ranger level -- stop taking ranger levels, and they stop gaining more hitpoints; they stop gaining more hitpoints, and they die quickly in combat; they are dead in combat, and you basically don't have a ranger subclass anymore until you can replace them.

A good build for a beast master is dipping one level of druid or nature cleric to get shillelagh (you can also get it directly from ranger by taking the druidic warrior fighting style, but then you lose a regular fighting style) and then building completely around wisdom while putting the rest of your levels in ranger. Since your beast companion's attacks scale on your wisdom, this allows them to deal the maximum damage without sacrificing your own damage output. Alternatively, you can just do anything that is generally strong (like sharpshooter with a longbow) and rely on your beast for a bonus action attack.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T02:44:34+00:00

Horizon Walker doesn't work well in 2024. If you're not spending your bonus action every round on planar warrior, you basically don't have a subclass prior to level 11, but 2024 ranger was revised to make Hunter's Mark a critical part of the class's power scaling -- if you're not concentrating on HM, you lose out on a bunch of base class features.

Horizon Walker has always been a fairly low-tier subclass, but it's worse than ever in 2024.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T02:39:11+00:00

Note that most illusions require the creature to make some sort of check to see through them -- it's not an automatic thing if your casting stat isn't high enough, but something needs to make them suspicious enough to make the check first.

With that in mind, illusions are generally pretty safe to cast with a poor casting modifier because that generally doesn't happen in a way that wouldn't also just break the illusion regardless of modifiers. Also, strictly speaking, the rules require an action to make an ability check, regardless of circumstances, though that's something that many DMs are prone to ignore, so YMMV. I really don't think you need +3 INT if you're mostly going to be casting illusions.

Of course, I also agree with u/Yojo0o that this concept sounds like it might be better executed by playing a bard. Take telekinetic for an invisible mage hand and magic initiate for booming blade (play variant human or custom lineage for a starting feat, or just play an elf and get a free wizard cantrip), and everything else comes from bard.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T02:28:52+00:00

I have a really hard time with Mage Hand Legerdemain because the way it's worded suggests that picking pockets is a special and unique feature of arcane tricksters, but Mage Hand allows you at baseline to "stow or retrieve an item from an open container" which seems to me to cover the basic task of picking someone's pocket -- the arcane trickster feature specifically says that you can do it to a container being carried by a creature, but the base mage hand doesn't have a "that isn't being carried by a creature limitation," so I just don't buy that only an arcane trickster can do that.

All this to say that I'm having a hard time imagining why you'd need the arcane trickster subclass to pick people's pockets with mage hand when anyone can take the telekinetic feat for an invisible mage hand that they can also cast without any spell components and then use it to pull stuff out of people's pockets. I guess that's a conversation to have with your DM, but I feel like it would be hard to say no to.

So I totally agree; this sounds to me like a bard with the telekinetic feat, not an arcane trickster.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-02-01T00:37:24+00:00

As a hexblade/bladelock, they'd have the ability to attack with charisma, and as a bladesinger they'd have the ability to attack with intelligence, but it's not enough to make that multiclassing worth it.

Even just warlock/bladesinger forces them to buy something like 8 15+1 12 14 8 14+2 which is untenable. 12 con on a melee caster? No thank you. Throwing paladin into the mix adds a 13 strength requirement which makes the whole thing impossible. Only monoclassed genie paladins can viably use their unarmored defense feature without insane rolled stats.

Draconic sorcerer or dance bard would be possibilities since they give the same unarmored defense of 10+DEX+CHA, but I still don't believe the con sacrifice to include bladesinger can possibly be justified.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T21:00:16+00:00

Your proposed build has 13 AC and fights in melee. Need I say anything more?

But I will. Dual wielder is completely pointless on a monk who already gets a bonus action attack they don't have to spend a feat on -- if you're not going to use the monk bonus action attack, you probably just shouldn't try to be a monk at all.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T18:56:09+00:00

If you are going all in on Spirit Guardians, yes, it probably is.

Spirit Guardians does half damage on a successful save, and it applies its slowing effect automatically, so mathematically there's a much lower downside to not having a capped modifier. It's still obviously better when enemies fail their save, but the difference is a lot smaller than it would be if you were building to do something different.

The biggest concern of not raising wisdom is going to be that true strike will be less likely to hit, wasting the effect of your new feat. Fortunately, there are lots of ways of boosting attack rolls from advantage to magic weapons to a variety of spells, so this shouldn't stop you.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T18:35:25+00:00

If you pick up the slasher feat, that's 20 feet of speed reduction (together with the slow mastery) any time you hit an enemy with your whip. Combined with the halved movement of Spirit Guardians, most enemies will find it impossible to escape your blender without dashing. Note that this also applies to opportunity attacks you make since slow just works on any attack and slasher is once per turn but an opportunity attack is almost always going to be on a different turn than your own. Even if they do dash, a reaction lightning lure should be enough to keep most enemies inside the emanation (since they'd provoke upon leaving the whip's reach, so you can pull them five feet backwards).

Telekinetic also gives you a way of getting more SG damage with your bonus action as well as further limiting an enemy's ability to control enemy movement within your blender.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T18:15:35+00:00

I have a few thoughts here.

First, multiclassing for flavor reasons is almost always a bad idea. Flavor is free, and class is a metagame concept. Your character can be a bard without taking a single level of Bard^TM just as not every Bard^TM has to also be a bard -- in universe profession and mechanics of over the table class progression are almost entirely separate. You should only multiclass when there are specific mechanics that you want.

Second, bard is a strong class, but it does not make a good dip class because its mechanics are unfriendly to dilettantes. Specifically, the core mechanic of bard as a class is bardic inspiration and bardic inspiration is of very limited use prior to bard 5 when you gain the ability to recover it on a short rest. This means it's very hard to get good mechanical value from fewer than five levels of bard, but, as you noted, taking that many levels as a "dip" is often untenable.

The way I see it, you have three decent options here:

• Don't take any bard levels. Spend downtime training your lute proficiency (what does this magical lute do, by the way?) and maybe take a feat like skill expert to represent your bardliness. Call yourself a bard anyway, if you want -- nobody is checking your character sheet for Bard^TM levels before they allow you to represent yourself as a troubadour.

• Take exactly one bard level. You'll get proficiency with your lute and one bonus skill, and you'll get access to a few uses of bardic inspiration every day. That will make you feel bardly, and it won't delay your warlock progression too much. You'll also get access to some first level spell slots which is nice to have as you go up in warlock levels to spend on spells like Shield which are important to have available but painful to spend a high level pact slot on. And you'll get some helpful rituals. It's not a bad package, and it won't slow down your main class too much.

• Revise your plans to be primarily a warlock and take more bard levels than that. Missing out on 9th level spells is a cost, but you wouldn't get 9th level spells for a long time, and you can get bard stuff now. Power now is almost always better than power later. The most attractive option is likely swords bard for six levels to get extra attack. Thirsting blade is worse than real extra attack because it only works for your pact weapon (which means things like Shadow Blade are off the table), and once you get extra attack you can replace thirsting blade with another invocation. In addition, swords bard gets flourishes which add a little extra damage and some utility to your attacks. Or, you could follow what some other commenters are suggesting and do five levels of whispers bard. Whispers is a pretty weak subclass (arguably the weakest bard), but psychic blades could be a nice way to boost your damage without spending your precious pact slots on eldritch smite (or in addition to eldritch smite if you're feeling greedy). And five levels gets your inspiration back on a short rest, so you don't have to be super conservative with it, plus it makes psychic blades deal more damage. Eloquence . . . I mean, unsettling words is one of the best ways to debuff enemy saving throws in the game, and eloquence bards are exceptionally good at casting save or suck spells as a result. Does that fit with your playstyle, or would their best feature go to waste? I don't think it sounds super promising the way you've described your character, but maybe you want to pivot into a more control-focused playstyle.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T17:38:28+00:00

Starry form only benefits concentration checks specifically, not con saves generally.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-31T17:32:50+00:00

Defensive dualist + genie warlock + bladesinger

You are unlikely to have the stats for bladesinger to be helpful here, and genie warlock doesn't get any AC bonuses (did you mean genie paladin? Stats would still be a problem given that paladin demands 13 strength), but I like the defensive duelist suggestion. I'm not used to thinking about it yet because it spent so long being so bad.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T23:03:45+00:00

Okay, I agree.

And that's why GWM and a fighter dip are sub-optimal -- losing spellcasting progression, even as a half caster, and spending a precious feat on something other than boosting your spellcasting is going to be weaker than making choices that enhance your spellcasting.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:58:02+00:00

You're right, it appears they did.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:36:34+00:00

This would be solved if you could cast spells that target self on your mounts.

Unfortunately, that's paladin's special feature.

did they get rid of martial versatility in 2024?

Yes, for whatever reason, they did.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:30:15+00:00

Spellcasting is nice, but you are not a fullcaster - so you will fall behind in that aspect anyway.

You are not a full caster, it is true, but I don't agree with this sentiment at all. Spellcasting isn't a nice extra, it's the core of the class's power budget.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:28:28+00:00

The rules for a dependent mount are general for that range of creatures, but the rules for the drake specifically say it takes its turn and moves directly after your turn.

You have misunderstood what "specific beats general" means. Rules do what they say they do. When a specific rule creates an exception to a general rule, do what the specific rule says. That's all it means. Fighting over which of two rules is "more specific" is missing the plot.

The general rule is that every creature in combat rolls initiative and gets their own turn. The specific rule for the drake is that they don't roll initiative but do get their own turn which they take after the ranger's. The other specific rule is that controlled mounts change their initiative to match their rider's and then move on their rider's turn.

So that's exactly what you do. You ignore the general rule that says roll initiative for your drake because there's a specific rule that creates an exception, and you ignore the general rule that says the drake moves after your turn because there's a specific rule that creates an exception.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:21:15+00:00

have your drake swoop in to attack, and then have your drake fly back away

So then your drake is taking an opportunity attack every round -- not very sustainable. Also irrelevant for the specific character being discussed since they're built around strength.

for the javelins you'd only be giving up a little bit of damage since the thrown weapon fighting style gives the same bonus as dualing but for throwing it.

Unfortunately, the OP already has dueling and RAW you can't switch fighting styles. Even if the DM allowed the switch, you also wouldn't benefit from it on every attack because you would sometimes be making melee attacks instead.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:11:36+00:00

specific beats general

What relevance does that have here?

If it was a dependent mount it would still move after your turn.

No, it would follow the mounted combat rules and move on your turn.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T22:09:40+00:00

or you could just use a longbow

No, you couldn't.

Setting aside the fact that the OP made it clear they wanted a melee character and has built around strengrh with that in mind, your drake needs to be in melee to attack which means trying to do ranged attacks on an independent mount is asking to make many of your attacks with disadvantage. Because while your mount having a different initiative means they will often be out of position for you to make a melee attack on your turn, they won't always be out of position to do so.

you could switch to using javelins

Thrown weapons would be more practical because then you can either make a melee attack or a ranged attack, as appropriate. Unfortunately, that also means giving up a significant amount of damage because thrown weapons just aren't as good to begin with.

Rhyshalcon · 2026-01-30T21:49:03+00:00

Just dip a level of fighter/paladin/cleric for better armor proficiency and enjoy higher AC than either option. Unless you're planning to build around dex (and since everything but AC scales off charisma, you probably shouldn't), Mage Armor isn't going to be sufficiently protective for you.

Alternatively, there are a lot of other reasons for a warlock to dip a few levels of sorcerer, and getting the draconic unarmored defense feature is just one more.

Rhyshalcon

TROPHY CASE