The latest Unearthed Arcana class variant features for Rangers & Fighters gets a breakdown! – Now with the replacements
THIS IS A AN AUTOMATIC CAPTION TEXT from YouTube, so it’s not “perfect”.
My advice is to use it just to help people like me that are not english speaking, to understand the Video/Podcast
in this UA, here is where,

particularly, when you look

at a class like the Ranger,

we’ve been able to give alternatives

that people have been hungry for.

We have gotten feedback for a while

that people would like an

alternative to Favored Enemy

in the form it had in

the Player’s Handbook,

an alternative to Natural Explorer

and some of the other

features, and so, here,

we’ve offered up some alternatives.

They’re really saucy.

– They are very good, I will have to say,

especially if you’re playing

a Horizon Walker, where,

sometimes, the Favored Enemy

still made perfect sense,

but if you’re a Horizon Walker,

you go through a lot of terrain. (laughs)

– [Jeremy] Yes, yeah.

– Maybe some terrain isn’t listed, right?

– [Jeremy] Yeah, yeah.

– But ooh, Hunter’s Mark,

without concentration,

and without, so, (chuckles)

and it’s not even a bonus action, right?

– [Jeremy] Well, we don’t mess

with how you cast the spell.

– Yeah, yeah, that’s right, so, yeah,

so Hunter’s Mark, you can just do it.

You get spell components,

doesn’t take a spell slot,

and this is remarkable because

this kind of frees you up

to do smites now, which

Rangers have as well,

which I thought was very clever.

– So, yes, one of the

enhancements we do in this article

is adding spells to certain

classes, spell-less.

We’ll see what people

think of these additions,

and we’ll see if they make

it into a publication.

Again, this is a thing on

the buffet that a group

has to decide if they’re

gonna turn on or not.

This is not, these are not sort of errata

to the Player’s Handbook.

This would be–

– [Todd] This is UA.

– This is UA.

– This is a test session.

– And, no, but even if it, again,

makes it into a publication,

this is not an add-on

to the PH, this is, here’s an option

that your group may or may not turn on.

Now, I am really fond of what

we’ve done for the Ranger.

Like all UA material,

when we do class design,

we have not optimized

it for multi-classing.

So I do, I should say that

there is a good chance

that Deft Explorer and Favored Foe,

if they make it to our

next level of development,

there will be some tweaking to make it

so that they are not too juicy

of an option for everyone

to just dip into Ranger for one level.

– Oh, yeah, yeah, because a hunter,

immediately when I saw Hunter’s Mark,

what didn’t require

concentration, I’m like,

can I just do Variant Human, then get Hex,

and now layer Hex on top of Hunter’s Mark?

I’m like, no, because,

just because it doesn’t

require concentration

doesn’t make it not a concentration spell,

and that’s how I was just

fighting in my brain.

I don’t know–

– [Jeremy] But, no, actually, the–

– Oh, really?

– The game doesn’t have a concept

of a concentration

spell as an abstraction.

– [Todd] Okay, okay, so it doesn’t.

– No, the game is like,

you’re either concentrating

on a spell or you’re not.

– Okay, okay, that’s

interesting ’cause Hex

on top of Hunter’s Mark is mean. (laughs)

– [Jeremy] But again, I–

– But not optimized for multi, yeah.

– Yeah, it’s not optimized

for multi-classing,

and so the not having to

concentrate, that is an example

of something that is likely to change

in the next phase of development.

We often, and this is not only true

for this Unearthed Arcana,

but also for our subclasses,

we will often put things

out that are more potent

than we would end up publishing.

I’ve mentioned before, it is

actually far easier for us

to produce something that is

more powerful than we want,

and then, but see, do

people like the concept,

and simply rein in the power,

rather than producing something

that’s super underpowered

and because often to address that,

you don’t just fiddle with the numbers,

you often have to come up with new design,

which then has to go back

into playtesting, so in a way,

it’s actually more efficient

for us to present something

that’s overpowered and

then just have to turn some

of the numbers down.

Now, I also want to talk

about the primal beasts

for the Beastmaster.

– Oh, I love how you’ve done this,

because this is something

you and I have talked before.

You have now started to

include the stats for creatures

within the classes themselves,

and this is a great example of that.

Not only that, but you also provided

kind of the best ones, right?

Everyone chooses an owl, right?

Because you can do a flyby

and stuff like this, but yeah,

so you provided these awesome choices

for the Beastmaster, so.

– So part of the philosophy

behind what we did

with the Beastmaster companions

is I did not want us,

with this Unearthed Arcana,

to go too deeply into subclasses.

Part of that is because

that would have been a road

that would have no end, because the game

has many, many subclasses,

and it really would’ve

gone far beyond the point

of this UA, which was, its main goal

is provide some cool

options for base classes.

That said, I did want us

to give the Beastmaster Ranger something

because we know, in survey after survey,

this is the subclass where

people are most hungry

for some new options.

And so I had this aha moment,

’cause I was racking my brain,

how can I give people what they want

without actually changing

what’s in the Player’s Handbook?

And I realized, well, we actually do it

through the creature, because it’s funny,

technically speaking, what’s

in this UA is not a change

to the Beastmaster at all.

These are simply two

additional monster stat blocks

that the Ranger is free to partner with

as a part of their companion feature.

And they are designed

to work with everything

in the Beastmaster subclass as written.

I mean that was one of the

other design goals I gave

to myself and to Dan

Dillon and Ben Petrisor,

is whatever we design, again,

unless we make an explicit

exception, has to work

with the Player’s Handbook,

and the person needs to be able

to open the PH, look at

one of these options,

and have the two seamlessly lock together.

So people might wonder,

when they look at, say,

these new Beastmaster

companions, and then compare them

to, say, the Battle Smith’s Steel Defender

or the recent Wildfire Spirit,

they’ll notice that some of the scaling

that is in those other creatures

is not in these new Beastmaster

companion creatures.

The reason for that is the

scaling is in the Beastmaster,

and these creatures are designed, again,

to work seamlessly with

the Beastmaster feature.

You still use every word in it,

pair it to these stat blocks,

and you’re good to go.

I wouldn’t be surprised

if people give a thumb up

to these creatures, and I hope they do

because I think they’re a lot of fun.

I wouldn’t be surprised

if we ended up designing

another creature or two

to give Rangers a few more options.

I would also love to explore

doing this kind of thing

for other places in the

game, where you summon things

or befriend things, because it allows us

to design exactly the thing

that the person needs.

Anytime we throw the door wide open,

and I think you and I have

talked about this before,

to just, hey, go loot the Monster Manual.

First off, almost all of that’s designed

just for the Dungeon Master.

– [Todd] Exactly.

– So it is always risky when

we do that, and it also means

we end up having to be

way more conservative

in our design than we tend to be.

The Beastmaster is very conservative

because we’re so generous on just,

as long as you meet the CR specification,

go loot all of our monster books.

If we bring that, basically,

if those doors get closed,

we can then actually be way more generous

because we know exactly

what we’re giving you.

What I don’t know is if

we’ve talked about the fact

that this approach was actually

in the D&D Next playtest.

This was actually how we

originally wanted pet classes

and also the Druid’s Wild Shape to work.

– [Todd] Well, no, I didn’t know that.

– Yes, there was at least

one draft of the Druid

where the B stat blocks were in the class

and they were customized for the Druid.

At the time, it was too alien to people

who were used to being able

to go to the monster book

and get it, and between that point

and the book’s publication,

there wasn’t time for us

to get it right, so we

reverted to the classic way

of doing it ’cause it’s like,

well, it has been the way

D&D has done it for decades.

We will, and that, often, in playtesting,

if there’s not time to

make the new thing work,

you then have to revert to

the old thing you know works.

So what’s funny is this has

actually been an approach

I have wanted to be in the game

since before fifth edition even came out,

and now we’ve just, we’ve

had time to get people

used to it and to also do a better job

of showing the advantages of it,

because anytime you just

change something in a game,

the audience needs time to warm up to it,

to see, oh, I get it, that

I’m getting something cool

by going down this new path,

and really, this entire UA

is about providing some new

paths that I hope people,

when they start exploring, will see,

oh, this is really neat, I’m

seeing my character in a way

I’ve never seen them before.

– Yes, I’ve actually

experienced this multiple times,

especially with the Ranger.

Originally, my own character

started as a Ranger,

and this feels like very

much back to where he started

all those years ago, but

things I really liked,

incorporating a little

bit of the Bowmaster,

those abilities with fighters,

so now that you have,

you can actually get a bonus

to Deception, I believe,

and so, you can be a

very clever fighter now,

and now I can play this fighter

that isn’t just muscle and

swords and everything else.

I feel like there’s like more lead way

to customize the fighter a little bit.

– That is an example of us leaning more

into what’s actually in the

writeup of the Battle Master,

in the Player’s Handbook,

where we actually talk

about the Battle Master as

not just a person of brawn,

but also a person who has gone

through rigorous training,

and so the flavor text

is all there for it,

but when you get to the maneuvers

in the Player’s Handbook,

it’s all about combat,

and we wanted to show

that no Battle Masters, and

anyone else who has access

to maneuvers, can, as a part

of their training as a warrior,

have refined other aspects of themselves.

I mean, and people who

have been in militaries

in our own world know this to be true.

I mean, many people,

especially who have gone

through officer’s training,

are extremely well-spoken and

have all sorts of training

that has nothing to do with just combat.

And they’re also great

soldiers, but there’s more.

And so we wanted, in these options,

to show, and there’s more.

Maneuvers are also so fun and so versatile

that we wanted to give

all fighters the option

of dipping into them,

which is why we offer up

this new fighting style,

Superior Technique,

that allows any fighter,

if this option is turned on

in their campaign, to snag a maneuver.

Anyone can already do that

in the Player’s Handbook

using the Martial Adept feat.

– [Todd] Yeah, we can do the

feat, but now this is like–

– But, and not every

group use feat uses feats.

– [Todd] That is also true.

– So, also some of the

options in this document

are about giving people

some of the versatility

that feats provide without

having to use feats.

Because we know that a sort

of narrow majority of groups

don’t actually use

feats, and so, basically,

communicating to people, well, hey,

all the versatility

you want is right there

in the feat system.

That isn’t actually a

satisfying path for some groups

because some groups don’t want to interact

with the feat system.

This is another way for a group

to get some of that versatility

without having to dip into feats,

and also without having to multi-class,

because there are also many people

who love just playing a

single-class character.

@ToddKenreck chats with @JeremyECrawford about the replacements, enhancements & new spells for Fighters, Rangers & their animal companions! https://t.co/zXfUt5O4eB pic.twitter.com/H93j8g4kL4

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) November 7, 2019