Tasha's Revised Beastmaster Guide: D&D

Looking at the Beastmaster Ranger in Tasha's

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The PHB Beastmaster Build:

To see the final version of this build:

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:30 Build Options
5:22 Level 1
10:28 Levels 2 and 3
14:07 Levels 4 and 5
18:34 Levels 6 and 7
19:12 Levels 8 and 9
23:11 Levels 10 and 11
26:20 Levels 12 and 13
28:53 Levels 14 and 15
30:05 Levels 16 and 17
32:19 Levels 18-20
35:35 Damage Analysis and wrap up

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[johngleeman]

I'm glad the beastmaster ranger is now in a good place. It is undoubtedly one of the most popular character archetypes out there, in the US and abroad. Now none of the fans of the man of the woods and their faithful animal companion have to feel like a poor man's crossbow fighter any longer.

[pencilbender]

Man I just gotta say I love how many videos you're making on 5e!

Used to read your guides a few years back when I played 3.5, and I switched over to 5e around the time you started uploading 5e content on your channel. I appreciate your insights and really love how much you upload!

[CitanulsPumpkin]

The best feat for upping the damage of shillelagh is magic initiate and picking either booming blade or green flame blade. The downside of that is using your action to cast a cantrip interferes with the way taking attack actions now works with beastmaster pets.

Edit: the best workaround to make Conjure animals friendly to your fellow players that I've seen was in an Acquisitions Incorporated stage show.

In the game Mike Krahulik ran where he parodied PubG with "Wizard Unkown Battleground" Morgan Webb used conjure animals twice. Once to give all four members of her party Crocodiles to ride as they crossed a lake. And then to summon 4 panthers to fight the final boss.

And the key to making that spell party member friendly is that they had all the players at the table roll for one of the panthers. So it felt like she gave everyone an extra attack against the boss when the panthers' turn came around.

So the fix I like for conjure animals is it always summons one beast per party member, and everyone at the table rolls for one of the summons.

[kazebaret]

I believe that at 17th level is when the clause "you can use one of your attacks or your bonus action to command the creature" really shines, in combination with Swift Quiver of course. If you use one of your attacks to command your beast, you can make one attack + 2 attacks as a bonus action (Swift Quiver), and your beast makes two attacks. Is it 3 attacks + 2 beast attacks better or worse than your 4 attacks? I believe it is, especially if you enhanced your beast somehow.

[rallaa]

Oh wow. Nature's Veil with Steel Wind Strike is genius.

[chillycharizard]

I just love how iconic this Ranger build is, extremely archetypal

[jeremyrezek]

Something interesting I found while making a similar build for Tasha's beastmaster is that for level 4 (but only level 4 from what I see), you will actually do slightly more by having the beast give the help action as opposed to making an attack. It is super close (literally .2 more per round ) but it does bring forth the idea that if you have a character in your party that is fishing for crits and doesn't want to expend a resource to make sure they have advantage (or they won't get access to that until later in their career) you might find it more beneficial for the beast to flyby and deliver the help action as opposed to attacking. Just something to consider based on party makeup.

[gregbowen]

A note on multiclassing for heavy armor on a STR ranger: you still need 13 DEX to multiclass into or out of ranger, so it's not a huge savings. The heavily armored feat does still allow dumping DEX on a single-class ranger.

[bryankia]

Well done as usual. The part that I really appreciate is when you get to the end there is talk of versatility and options. So many times builds come down to doing the same thing over and over. I would much rather see something like this where the numbers are good AND the player has lots of interesting options.
Have the best day.

[arsov]

Something nice for the algorithm: A comment for support. Thanks for the video.

[intrinsical]

I wonder what you guys think about using the Fastieth from Eberron: Rising from the Last War as a Beastmaster's companion? It has a pretty high to-hit and is pretty iconic for dino-riding halfling nomads of the Talenta Plains.

[dustinsmith]

I really like the idea of a spell-less ranger. I also like the idea of a more subclass focused class where most of your class features are in the subclass.

[evans]

Since my DM allows '' auto casting '' buffing cantrips while the PCs have reasson to expect a combat(also he allows enchanting with cantrips, provided that we have time) i think im going for wisdom ranger for the different ranger vibes

[Grorl]

Wouldn't bonus action spells still be useful, since you can substitute an attack for your beast. Although, it would seem that bonus action spells will be best utilized at level 11. Where if you cast a bonus action spell, you can still attack 1 time and have the pet attack twice with your other attack. So, 3 attacks and a bonus action spell seems like a viable way to go about it. Even running numbers, a bonus action spell, sure you miss out on a beast attack, but you still get 2 attacks before 11 and deal decent damage beforehand.

[aarons.]

I think a small think about the Shillelagh spell that may have been overlooked, is that its a Bonus Action Cantrip. Being a Bonus Action means you can cast it with little to no time outside of combat and as a Cantrip, it can be cast an unlimited number of times. Meaning you could effectively have the Shillelagh spell active almost indefinitely, and just say you refreshed it right before any combat. Exception to this being, if combat happens to take more than 10 rounds (equivalent to the spells 1 minute deration.), then you might need to recast it on your 11th turn, but likely by then the combat is pretty much over, so just let your companion mop up the rest while you sit back and cast spells or switch to ranged combat.

[JuckiCZ]

Fantastic idea with nature's veil + steel wind strike combination! This is realy briliant!

[weirdwizard]

I know this is an older video, but one option I'd like to mention for the Wisdom Ranger build would be Magic Stone for Ranged attacks alongside Shillelagh. It's a little fuzzy, but tweets from Jcraw at least seem to suggest that extra attack would allow throwing two stones with your extra attack. Just like Shillelagh this wouldn't be ideal for the beastmaster build, although for both cantrips there remains the option of sacrificing one of your attacks for the beast when you initiate each cantrip, or just leaving the beast to dodge that turn. Non-optimal, but still might be fun to play a sort of "Nature Guardian" Ranger who entirely uses Wisdom and beasts to fight, and could ignore Dex aside from at least a base 14 for medium armor.

Magic Stone is super forgettable though, and subject to rulings, so I figured I'd throw it out there. Some DMs, for example, would allow the range to be 60/120 when using a sling to shoot the stones, since having the sling reduce your base range from the spells default 60 is kinda dumb.

Regardless of all of that, thanks for the video. It makes me happy to see Beastmaster Ranger in a good place, and it's nice to see the math and optimization broken down like this.

[binolombardi]

Custom lineage-small size.
15 wisdom point buy, +2 racial, +1 fey touched. Spell choice dissonant whispers.
14 constitution, 14 dexterity.

Druidic warrior fighting style, primal savagery and create bonfire. Magic stone may work pretty well too since you can activate it and still get some use out of it when extra attack arrives. You could use your bonus action on the first turn to activate the stone, next turn using a bonus action spell like ensnaring strike or hail of thorns. Doesn’t feel great, but if the first attack lands you can give up an attack to let the beast go twice at level 11

Ride the land beast, use your bonus action to charge a creature, possibly dealing extra damage and probing them regardless of size. cast dissonant whispers on the same creature, if they fail you and your beast take opportunity attacks as it moves away, potentially at advantage if creature was proned.

Favored foe works with your primal savagery.

[PlanetOfTheApes]

I know it's cheap as can be, but a level of Peace Cleric combined with Archery Combat Style will give you an average of +4.5 to hit once per turn, almost entirely offsetting the penalty of Sharpshooter for attacks that benefit from it, and will make some of your beast's attacks more accurate as well. And when you add Bless, things get absolutely ridiculous. Also, to deal as much damage as possible, I would just rely on Conjure Animals rather than Summon Fey which, to be honest, sucks. That would allow you to free up two ASIs (Fey-Touched (Wisdom) for Crossbow Expert (for when your beast dies or enemies get in melee range of you) and Lucky are great choices). Casting Bless regularly would also allow the party's Cleric, assuming there is one, to concentrate on Spirit Guardians without having to worry he's gimping the party by not casting Bless. Also, starting with a level of Peace Cleric would get you proficiency in Wisdom saves, which seems more important than Proficiency in Dexterity saves, as you can cast Absorb Elements.

[sixty]

Really like this build.

Its probably the simplest way of putting together a beastmaster ranger, and definitely the simplest way to play it, and despite that, it pulls decent damage right the way through, while giving some simple buttons to hit out of combat.

Would 100% recommend this to new players, especially since so many of them like the archetype, and it always feels bad to have to steer them away from it.