Oh, the Ranger. A class that has always struggled a bit on both a conceptual and mechanical level. Generally, I've found that a lot of the power of the class comes from its subclasses, though this puts a lot of pressure on those subclasses to be good - a lackluster Wizard subclass isn't too much of a problem because you've still got the Wizard spell list, but a Ranger really needs some oomph.
Rangers as a whole also struggle a little bit because the class fantasy is kind of ambiguous: are they meant to be expert monster-hunters, always ready and knowledgeable about the prey they pursue? Or are they meant to be the class that never gets lost, always leading the way through the wilderness? I think the former fantasy is the one that feels more universal to any kind of D&D game, but the latter seems to be the one that WotC's design has tended to focus on.
From the release of Xanathar's to the 2024 PHB, the class was fairly dominated by the Gloom Stalker subclass, with its profound nova capabilities. But Gloom Stalkers were both reprinted in 2024 and also had that capability significantly nerfed. The Ranger itself also got a pretty significant mechanical overhaul, both with several optional features in Tasha's and also in the 2024 PHB, though many have argued (and I think I largely agree) that these didn't really go far enough to empower the class (with particular controversy surrounding the design to center things so much on a 1st level concentration spell).
All this being said, the Ranger actually has a lot of potential in its subclasses, where different environments, different prey, and different hunting techniques can all serve as inspiration for subclasses.
The ones we're going to look over here are the Horizon Walker, the Monster Slayer, the Swarmkeeper, and the Drake Warden. That's among the fewest subclasses to examine (both the Gloom Stalker and the Fey Wanderer were reprinted in the PHB).
Horizon Walker: No
Here's one that I feel a bit conflicted about. I do like the idea of a plane-hopping Ranger. But it's also kind of niche. This is very much built for an exploration-heavy campaign, and specifically one that involves a lot of planar portals, which is a small fraction of campaigns. I could see this being part of a (better) Planescape supplement, but it's a little tough outside of that "setting."
Monster Slayer: Yes
Readers of this blog will know that I have an adoration of the Gothic monster-hunter, the Van Helsing (more of the Hugh Jackman movie version than the actual character from Dracula) archetype. While in theory this could be used to hunt any monster (including all the classic monstrosities,) that's great because it makes the Monster Slayer work in any campaign, even one that doesn't have vampires and werewolves. It's also a subclass that always felt like it had some cool ideas that didn't totally come together to be powerful enough. Now, one big caveat: some of its features were folded into the Hunter subclass in the PHB, so there's a risk of some redundancy. We'd probably want a fairly extensive mechanical overhaul.
Swarmkeeper: No
Don't get me wrong: I really like the Swarmkeeper. But I think it's a niche enough concept and mechanically it's fine (to the extent than any Ranger subclass is fine,) and so I think we're good to leave it as is.
Drakewarden: No
Again, I think the reason here is more that it's probably fine as is. I for sure believe that giving Rangers multiple pet-commanding subclasses makes sense. Many people come to the Ranger from World of Warcraft's Hunter class, which famously allows you to tame pets from among the beast-type creatures across the world, and so to many, the Beast Master is already the "obvious" Ranger subclass (which is part of why 2014's version, which was so underpowered, soured people on the Ranger as a whole). There's a bit of weird scaling with the Drakewarden - it doesn't just use your spell attack modifier for its attacks like the new Beast Master does - but I think we don't really need to revisit this one.
So yeah, I think there's plenty of additional space to explore here, and I don't think that class should be weighed down by what came before.
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