Toragar, Minotaur Ranger

We had a sort of session zero last night (with a short introduction) to our Tomb of Annihilation game last night. With other players picking Artificer, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard, I decided we could use a beefy tank character, and so I picked one of the three options I had been looking at - a Ranger.

Yes, Rangers are often... ranged characters who focus on Dexterity, but instead, I'm going to be focusing on a dual-wielding strength-based build. And mostly for aesthetics but also because the stats are good, I went with the Minotaur race from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. (If Joe Manganello can do a Minotaur PC in the Forgotten Realms, so can I.)

First, the build:

We rolled stats, but while I had no negatives, I only had one +2 and a couple +1s and +0s (before racial stat bonuses,) so I invoked our house rule and took the standard array, dumping Charisma. So he's starting with +3 Strength, +3 Constitution, and the +1s to Wisdom and Dexterity, with a +0 to Intelligence and -1 to Charisma.

I do realize, of course, that Rangers, especially Strength rangers, actually need a lot of stats to be high (Dex only needs +2 to max out medium armor, though.) And on top of that, I'm going to want to take the Dual Wielder feat probably as soon as I can.

So:

The plan is to go with two weapon fighting as his fighting style, which allows the offhand strike to add the damage bonus from Strength.

He's currently got four axes - two handaxes and two battleaxes, the latter he'll have to wait for the feat to start using. (He's also got a bunch of javelins for ranged situations.)

The idea then, is that, after level 5, he'll be hitting twice with his main hand battleaxe and once with his off-hand, each hit doing 1d8+3... but wait! There's also Hunter's Mark, which will make it 1d8+1d6+3. That means an average of 11 damage per hit, and thus 33 per turn (assuming all attacks hit.)

Now, he'll also be going Gloomstalker. This has a number of effects. First, it makes choosing a race without Darkvision feel less like a self-handicapping, as Gloomstalkers get Darkvision (and if you're a race that already has it, you get a longer range on it.) But you also get a bonus that could be insane: if you're in darkness, you are invisible to creatures that rely on Darkvision to see you. So as long as the lights are out, you're just invisible, but you can see everyone. It's like the Warlocks' Darkness/Devil's Sight combo but just as a ordinary subclass feature.

The one problem is that our party is: Myself, the minotaur, a Tortle, a Firbolg, and Air Genasi, and a Human. So yeah, we're probably going to be producing light. This might be more powerful situationally than be overpowered given this group.

Conceptually, I'm playing this character as the classic Rambo-style 80s action hero - a veteran of a deeply traumatic and poorly-executed war who went out to the woods to live out a life of solitude only to be called back into action by his superiors. Part of his look is a bandana that he wears on his head (which Heroforge actually has!)

For now I'm leaning into the cliche of it, but as I develop a real backstory, I'll try to figure out some of the nuances.

That said, this is Tomb of Annihilation, so I'm also definitely going to try getting too attached to this character.

Naturally, like any big commitment to a character, I'm feeling a bit of "grass is greener" remorse. One of the other characters I was thinking of playing was a Druid, and I figured it would be fun to play a full caster. But I also think that this should hopefully have some insane damage output. He won't have very high AC, but I'm hoping that with a d10 hit die and +3 to Con he'll at least be a little hard to kill (if I can get him one more point of Dex and up to 4 for the dual wielder feat, he'll have 17 AC. And then with Half Plate I could get that up to 18. 15 at level 1 is respectable.

We haven't had any combat yet, so it'll be at least a session before we hit level 2, but I figure I should start planning out spells now. Obviously, Hunter's Mark is first. But given that we have a Chef (the Tortle Artificer is a Cook Guild Artisan) and I can hunt, we might not want much for food, so Goodberry might not be necessary. (I hope I can pick up a Component Pouch before we leave Port Nyanzaru or else my spells will be limited.)