Legolas is looking a little Gandalf, these days.
You can’t help but feel a little sorry for the old Ranger—it’s a class that was much-maligned in the initial 2014 release of the D&D Player’s Handbooks for a lacklustre suite of features, then polished to a mirror sheen with supplements like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Now, in 2024, it looks like we’re having the exact same conversations about the poor sod again. Rangers just can’t catch a break.
Late last month, the blog post 2024 Ranger vs. 2014 Ranger: What’s New was met, for the most part, with an icy reception.
In case you don’t speak fluid min-max, here’s the breakdown: Many of the new and exciting features from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything have been stripped back. Hunter’s Mark, a now-mandatory ranger’s spell that deals Force damage (which is a buff, as Force is a rarely-resisted damage type), is now a core class feature—and the focus of the entire package.
What’s more, the Ranger has replaced a bunch of its interesting, though undertuned class features with extra spells and skill expertises. This has, in a word, frustrated the living daylights out of players—mostly because it signals a return to the 2014 Ranger woes—except this time, instead of hyper-specific features that never get used, it’s all looking a little bland and underpowered.
The offloading of design responsibility onto spells is a considerable bugbear in particular, however, in a recent interview with ScreenRant, lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford sought to put players’ minds at ease by saying hey, don’t worry, those Ranger spells are better now:
“While there are certain things like Hunter’s Mark that required concentration in 2014 and continue to require it in 2024, there are other things that used to require concentration that no longer do. And we were particularly mindful of that for classes like the Ranger that have key features that require concentration.”
Concentration is a label applied to certain spells that requires you to roll to maintain them whenever you take damage, as well as making them automatically drop off when you’re incapacitated—ie, knocked out or stunned.
Crawford’s response here feels a little backwards, if I’m being honest—the only reason these spells need to be stripped of their concentration requirements is because Hunter’s Mark, a spell which deals a piddly 1d6 force damage on every hit to one target, has concentration in the first place.
It’s a doubling down in the face of the main critique—that the Ranger’s class features are, for the most part, being whittled away in favour of dull skill expertises and spellcraft.
Spells, spells, spells
(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast via GameInformer / Art by Tyler Jacobson)
Let’s just run down the list of major changes, real quick:
Favoured Enemy now lets you cast Hunter’s Mark twice per long rest for free, with uses increasing as you level up. In other words, “this feature no longer focuses on tracking and recalling information about certain creature types”.Natural Explorer, which gave you terrain-based bonuses, has been replaced by one of the options from the Tasha’s Cauldron version of the Ranger: one skill expertise, two languages.Primaeval Awareness, which lets you track certain creatures, is gone. Instead, the post reassures, you get more access to spells—sort of like Tasha’s Primal Awareness feature.Land’s Stride, which gave you movement bonuses, has been replaced by another skill Expertise.Not a replacement, but at level 9 you get—you guessed it—two more skill Expertises.At level 13, you can’t lose concentration on your Hunter’s Mark via incoming damage anymore.At level 17, you get advantage against the target of your Hunter’s Mark via Precise Hunter—that sounds good on paper, but it’s a really, really late level to get the feature, especially when you can achieve the same effect with Nature’s Veil three levels earlier (albeit at a limited capacity).Your capstone level 20 ability, the coup de grace of the entire class, is an increase in your hunter’s mark damage from 1d6 (one six-sided die) to 1d10. That is an average damage increase of two. At level 20.
There are some other general nerfs when compared to the Tasha’s Cauldron Ranger, too. Hide in Plain sight, an admittedly hyper-niche feature, has been replaced with something that gives you temp HP. Nature’s Veil from the Tasha’s Cauldron Ranger has been shoved from level 10 to level 14—which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s easily 10-30 sessions based on the pace of your game.
Meanwhile, the feature Vanish, which previously let you hide as a bonus action and had the cool flavour of making you untraceable by non-magical means, has been replaced entirely by Nature’s Veil.
So to sum it all up—a lot of the admittedly undertuned, but flavourful features have been replaced with Expertise in skill checks and spells. Hunter’s Mark is the new core ranger mechanic, and the big buff it gets as you level up is, basically, more free castings. Perma-advantage against one enemy is nice, but at level 17 you have a billion different ways of snagging advantage anyway—including one of your own damn features.
The 2024 revised rules have done some fun things to other classes like the Fighter—and I think Weapon Masteries, which the Ranger does get, are a huge boon to the martial core of the game. But this proposed Ranger feels like it misses its mark entirely.
I’m certainly not alone. Prominent D&D YouTuber XP to level 3 has a similar breakdown (a mechanical one, not an emotional one) in the aptly named video New Ranger Bad: “It’s giving ‘is this an april fools joke?'” he says, referencing the infamous ‘Do you guys not have phones?’ blunder surrounding the Diablo Mobile fiasco of 2018. “You guys have spells, right? You guys can just cast spells, it’s the same thing!”
Currently retired D&D and FF14 YouTuber/Streamer JoCat pipes up in the comments with what we’re basically all thinking at the moment: “goddammit not again”. Another player writes: “‘You can gain greater awareness of the world around you by learning to use your f*cking eyes’—WotC getting rid of Primeval Awareness, 2024, colorized”, referencing the blog’s suggestion that you just take Expertise in Perception, instead.
Responses weren’t great from other communities, either. “I don’t understand why they tripled down on [Hunter’s Mark] as the Ranger’s main feature and then decided to solve none of the issues surrounding the spell. It’s genuinely baffling,” writes user bobbifreetisss on the dndnext subreddit. “Crawford, my dude, you’re the head game designer. If you think no concentration on HM is too broken because of multiclassing, then come up with a new signature ability?”
“No one put a gun to Crawford’s head and told him this level 1 spell had to be the Ranger’s entire identity,” the thread’s author replies.
Look, in the same way that Tasha’s Cauldron offered new supplements and erratas, I’m confident that—even if Wizards is too locked-in to course correct at this point—future books will do a semi-decent repair job. At the same time, there’s a hefty dose of schadenfreude in the fact the Ranger is headed for botch job territory once more. Time is a flat circle. As scheduled, the first of the new 2024 ruleset should arrive September 17.
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