Ranger (Aebeolyn)

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Overview & Creation

Rangers are guardians of the wild, hunting creatures that threaten the delicate balance of nature, either through purposefully malicious intent, through accident, or through simple apathy. Alongside their exceptional combative prowess, rangers emphasize speed and stealth above all else.

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Class Features

Favoured Enemy

Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy.   Choose a type of favoured enemy: aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select two races of humanoid (such as gnolls and orcs) as favoured enemies.   You have advantage on attack rolls against your favoured enemies, as well as Survival checks to track those enemies down and Intelligence checks to recall information about them.   When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice that is spoken by your favoured enemies, if they speak one at all.   You choose one additional favoured enemy, as well as an associated language, at 6th level. As you gain levels, your choices should reflect the types of monsters you have encountered on your adventures.

Natural Explorer

At 1st level, you are a master of navigating the natural world, and you react with swift and decisive action when attacked. This grants you the following benefits:

• You ignore difficult terrain.
• You have advantage on Initiative rolls.
• On your first turn during combat, you have advantage on attack rolls against creatures that have not yet acted.

In addition, you are skilled in navigating the wilderness. You gain the following benefits when travelling for an hour or more:

• Difficult terrain does't slow your group's travel speed.
• Your group can't become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while travelling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
• If you are travelling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you forage, you can find twice as much food as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their size, and how long ago they have passed through the area.

Fighting Style

At 2nd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options.   You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.

• Archery: You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
• Defense: While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
• Dueling: When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
• Two-Weapon Fighting: When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.

Ranger Conclave

At 3rd level, you choose to emulate the ideals and training of a ranger conclave: the Beast Conclave, the Hunter Conclave and the Deep Stalker Conclave that is detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 5th and 11th level.

Primeval Awareness

Beginning at 3rd level, your mastery of ranger lore allows you to establish a powerful link to beasts and to the land around you. You have an innate ability to communicate with beasts, and they recognize you as a kindred spirit. Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas to a beast as an action, and can read its basic mood and intent. You learn its emotional state, whether it is affected by magic of any sort, its short-term needs (such as food or safety), and actions you can take (if any) to persuade it to not attack.   You cannot use this ability against a creature that you have attacked within the past 10 minutes.   Additionally, you can attune your senses to determine if any of your favoured enemies lurk nearby. By spending 1 uninterrupted minute in concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell), you can sense whether any of your favoured enemies are present within 5 miles of you. This feature reveals which of your favoured enemies are present, their numbers, and the creatures' general direction and distance (in miles) from you.   If there are multiple groups of your favoured enemies within range, you learn this information for each group.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th and 12th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.   Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking this feature to take a feat of your choice instead.

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Greater Favoured Enemy

At 6th level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy.   Choose an additional type of favoured enemy: aberrations, beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select two races of humanoid (such as gnolls and orcs) as favoured enemies. Your choices should reflect the types of monsters you have encountered on your adventures.   You gain all the benefits against this chosen enemy that you normally gain against your favoured enemy, including an additional language. Your bonus to damage rolls against all favoured enemies increases to +4.   Additionally, you have advantage on saving throws against spells and abilities used by them.

Fleet of Foot

Beginning at 8th level, you can use the Dash action as a bonus action on your turn.

Land’s Stride

Starting at 8th level, moving through non-magical difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You can also pass through non-magical plants without being slowed by them and without taking damage from them if they have thorns, spines, or a similar hazard.   In addition, you have advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created or manipulated to impede movement, such those created by the entangle spell.

Hide in Plain Sight

Starting at 10th level, you can spend 1 minute creating camouflage for yourself. You must have access to fresh mud, dirt, plants, soot, and other naturally occurring materials with which to create your camouflage.   Once you are camouflaged in this way, you can try to hide by pressing yourself up against a solid surface, such as a tree or wall, that is at least as tall and wide as you are. You gain a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks as long as you remain there without moving or taking actions. Once you move or take an action or a reaction, you must camouflage yourself again to gain this benefit.

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Starting Equipment

5d4 x 10gp

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Subclass Options

Beast Conclave

The Beast Conclave archetype embodies a friendship between the civilized races and the beasts of the wild. United in focus, beast and ranger fight the monsters that threaten civilization and the wilderness alike.

Animal Companion

At 3rd level, you gain a companion in the form of a beast of the natural world, which will accompany you on your adventures and which is trained to fight alongside you. With 8 hours of work and the expenditure of 50 gp worth of rare herbs and fine food, you call forth an animal from the wilderness to serve as your faithful companion.   Your normally select your companion from among the following animals:

• An ape
• A black bear
• A boar
• A giant badger
• A giant weasel
• A mule
• A panther
• A wolf

However, your DM might pick one of these animals for you based on the surrounding terrain and on what types of creatures would logically be present in the area. A beast can only serve as an animal companion if it is Medium or smaller, has 15 or fewer hit points, and cannot deal more than 8 damage with a single attack.   At the end of the 8 hours, your animal companion appears and gains all the benefits of your Companion's Bond ability.   If your animal companion is fatally injured during combat, they may perform death saves in the same manner as a Player Character. If they fail three death saves, they are considered "dying" for the next hour in-game, but can be saved with 8 hours of intensive care. If not tended to within that hour, they die.   You can have only one animal companion at a time.

Companion's Bond

Your animal companion gains a variety of benefits while it is linked to you. The animal companion loses its Multiattack action, if it has one.   The companion obeys your commands as best it can. It rolls for Initiative like any other creature, but you determine its actions, decisions, attitudes, and so on. If you are incapacitate or absent, your companion acts on its own.   When using your Natural Explorer feature, you and your animal companion can move stealthily at a normal pace.   When you gain your animal companion at 3rd level, its proficiency bonus matches yours at +2. As you gain levels and increase your proficiency bonus, remember that your companion's proficiency bonus improves as well, and is applied to the following areas:

• Armour Class
• Skills
• Saving Throws
• Attack Bonus
• Damage Rolls

Your animal companion has abilities and game statistics determined in part by your level.   Your companion uses your proficiency bonus rather than its own. In addition to the areas where it normally uses its proficiency bonus, an animal companion also adds its proficiency bonus to its own AC and its damage rolls.   Your animal companion gains proficiency in two skills of your choice, and it becomes proficient with all saving throws. For each level you gain after 3rd, your animal companion gains an additional hit die and increases its hit points accordingly.   Whenever you gain the Ability Score Improvement feature, your companion's abilities also improve. Your companion can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or it can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, your companion can't increase an ability score above 18 using this feature, unless its description specifies otherwise.   Your companion shares your alignment and your ideals, and its bond is always: "The ranger who travels with me is a beloved companion for whom I would gladly give my life."   Your animal companion gains the benefits of your Favoured Enemy feature, and of your Greater Favoured Enemy feature when you gain that feature at 6th level. It uses the favoured enemies you selected for those features.

Coordinated Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you and your animal companion form a more potent fighting team. When you use the Attack action on your turn, if your companion can see you, it can use its reaction to make a melee attack.

Beast's Defense

At 7th level, while your companion can see you, it has advantage on all saving throws.

Storm of Claws, Talons and Fangs

At 11th level, your companion can use its action to make a melee attack against each creature of its choice within 5 feet of it, with a separate attack for each target.

Hunter Conclave

The Hunter Conclave exists as an acceptance of a ranger's purpose as a bulwark between civilization and the terrors of the wilderness. As you walk the path of the Hunter, you learn specialized techniques for use against the most dire of threats, ranging from rampaging ogres to towering giants.

Hunter’s Prey

At 3rd level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.

• Colossus Slayer: Your tenacity can wear down the most potent foes. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, the creature takes an extra 1d8 damage if it’s below its hit point maximum. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.
• Giant Killer: When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provided that you can see the creature.
• Horde Breaker: Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.

Defensive Tactics

At 7th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.

• Escape the Horde: Opportunity attacks against you are made with disadvantage.
• Multiattack Defense: When a creature hits you with an attack, you gain a +4 bonus to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the turn.
• Steel Will: You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Multiattack

At 11th level, you gain one of the following features of your choice.

• Volley: You can use your action to make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon’s range. You must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and you make a separate attack roll for each target.
• Whirlwind Attack: You can use your action to make a melee attack against any number of creatures within 5 feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target.

Deep Stalker Conclave

Members of the Deep Stalker Conclave are at home in the darkest places: deep beneath the earth, in gloomy alleyways, in primeval forests, and wherever else the light dims. Most folk enter such places with trepidation, but a Deep Stalker ventures boldly into the darkness, seeking to ambush threats before they can reach the broader world. Such rangers are often found in the Underdark, but they will go to any place where evil lurks in the shadows.

Underdark Scout

At 3rd level, you master the art of the ambush. On your first turn in combat, you gain a +10 bonus to your speed, and, if you use the Attack action, you can make one additional attack.   You are also adept at evading creatures that rely on darkvision. Such creatures gain no benefit when attempting to detect you in dark and dim conditions.   Additionally, when the DM determines if you can hide from a creature, that creature gains no benefit from its darkvision.

Deep Stalker Sight

At 3rd level, your years of fighting in dim light and total darkness grant you sight similar in effect to that of true darkvision. If you already have darkvision, you increase its range by 30 feet.

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Iron Mind

At 7th level, you have managed to steel your mental fortitude against the magical attacks of your opponents. You gain proficiency in Wisdom saving throws, and you cannot be charmed or frightened by magical means.

Stalker's Flurry

Starting at 11th level, once on each of your turns when you miss with an attack, you can make another attack.

Stalker's Dodge

At 11th level, whenever a creature attacks you and does not have advantage on the attack, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the creature's attack roll against you. You can use this feature before or after the attack roll is made, but it must be used before the outcome of the roll is determined.