They should just make a summoner class, then make Fiend Summoner, Beast Summoner and Elemental Summoner as subclasses. It's such a unique playstyle that doesn't really work perfectly as subclasses for others.
I saw someone once make a Ranger "fix" by giving every single Ranger subclass a pet of some kind. Beastmaster and Drakewarden stayed the same but Fey Wandered gained a Fey companion, the Swarmkeeper got an actual swarm etc. It was a cool idea but I think a full on summoner class would be better. Personally, I have sometimes allowed my players to take the Beastmaster subclass on top of their existing class and subclass. I had a Fighter that found a wolf and wanted to tame it so to simplify things, I just allowed them to be a Beastmaster Fighter. With a few tweaks, it was actually very fun and balanced.
Another option: Be a spellcaster and reflavor the spells as pets/pokemon. Each creature could be a single spell, or you can decide which spells you expect to select and come up with the creatures you'll find/etc. that will have up to 4 of those spells tied to them. This way you can probably maintain a team of 6 with occasional swap-outs for certain spells if going for the full pokemon vibe. And you don't even need to worry about any kind of dice roll or DM control on which creatures you find, since they are literally just your prepared slots. You can flavor catching new creatures at anytime if you want it to play out a specific way.
No. You can't reflavor anything. If you're summoning a creature to do its "special attacks" the enemies have to be able to attack that creature because... it's there. So you already have to change rules, it's not just a reflavor.
@@caurd It's a spell. Enemies can't attack your spells. It doesn't mater what form the spell takes. I can shoot a fireball from my hand or send out a creature that burps one up. The spell gets fired regardless. I'm not saying that the creature goes on to do other things in battle like a familiar. It can only fire off the specific spell(s) it functions as and nothing else. The creature isn't mechanically real, and flavoring it into existence doesn't magically make it mechanically real. Not every class casts spells the same way. A druid casting cure wounds might be them creating a salve from plants. Can that be stolen from them to prevent them from using it? Can artificers have their flavored gadgets targeted, preventing their spells from working? Their flamethrower made from tinker tools can be destroyed, removing their ability to cast fire bolt? They're required to have some kind of object, with every spell gaining a material component. But mechanically the spell is still a spell.
@@UltimateMustacheX Yes, that's literally the point. Spells can't be attacked, obviously, and so you can't just narrate them as "creatures that appear and do magic." There are spells based on summoning creatures with their own abilities, and obviously they can be attacked. You can't just put whatever description you want on a spell, it has to be coherent. And it's NOT coherent that you summon a creature and that creature can't be attacked, so no, you can't represent a fireball as a fire lizard that's next to you and that spits fire, because the logical narrative answer would be to kill the lizard to make it stop doing it.
@@caurd So does the other reflavoring I mentioned for the druid/artificer not work? I've seen that style of flavor for druid quite often, and the artificer literally has it built into the text. So if they can reskin spells however they like, including objects, then any spellcaster can do the same. You saying is has to be coherent makes no sense. You're casting magic. It doesn't matter the method you do so. If you're specifically trying to match the pokemon design as closely as possible, then that would obviously require changes to properly work, since you as the trainer are actually getting attacked in dnd. Sure you could homebrew actual mechanics to better match the pokemon game-style, but simply saying the pokemon return to their pokeballs between attacks requires no homebrew. You won't always be spamming the same spell over and over, so re-sending them out each time you call out their particular move works perfectly fine, if the idea of a fake creature standing next to you between turns is so off-putting to you.
@@UltimateMustacheX Well, it's very simple... yes, you can interact with an artificer's invention or a druid's herbs. The material components can obviously be broken or stolen. And, aside from this, the game is a role-playing game, not a video game, it's not Final Fantasy. You can't just stick to the mechanics and say "they can't attack my summoned creature because that's not mechanical and it's just flavor." No, the narrative is above the rules, and the narrative and the rules have to be coherent with each other. Therefore, NO, not just anything will do to describe your spells.
The Battle Smith has the blueprints for a fix in their main class, if the Steel Defender had infusion options and gained slots as it levels up, it'd show the Battle Smith is constantly tinkering and improving their companion. Personally, I don't mind the bonus action to attack for the Battle Smith because they generally do not have bonus action abilities or spells other than smites. The Defender also leans better into mounted combat because it's reaction Deflect Attack combined with Mounted Combatant means that every round, 1 attack on you has disadvantage. At level 11 the spell storing item can hold enlarge/reduce and the Defender holds concentration, which thanks to Veer mean's there are very few ways to make it check concentration. If you are incapacitated, the Defender can attack, because it can attack, it can use Arcane Jolt to bring you up. The 2024 rules changed Veer in Mounted Combatant from redirecting the attack from the mount to you, to "you can force an attack that hits your mount to hit you instead" which sounds like the attack is to the mount's AC and you take the damage, which doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd argue that it could be interpreted as the attack has to hit your mount, then beat your AC. There are also other changes stating you only gain advantage on creatures within 5ft of your mount that are smaller than your mount, which means ranged weapons and weapons with reach no longer have advantage. It might just be better to revert to 2014 Mounted Combatant. Regardless, as an artificer you can exploit that by crafting the Saddle of the Cavalier which makes all attacks on your mount are disadvantaged and you can't be knocked off your mount which could tie in with the Leap Aside Ability.
Since the steel defender is a creature you could hand it attunement items you create with infusions, so they could use a good few. Since you pick the Defender's asortment of limbs, a humanoid one should be very capable of wearing most gear you hand over to it.
So math... Beastmaster pet is 1d8+2+wismod, assuming capped wis that's 11.5 average. Since wisdom build Shillelagh, would be 2d6+wismod, which is 12. That would SEEM to mean that the pet does a slight amount less damage, but that's only with the top tier Shillelagh. At every level below 17 the pet will do more. Then at 11 it is attacking twice EACH TIME IT IS COMMANDED. That means the ranger gives up one attack and gains two. Effective, the Beastmaster will have 5 attacks at that point. No GWM, but that's very solid damage. Also, right from level 3 the Beastmaster gets both the bonus action attack and ALSO (the word also is literally in the description) can exchange an attack to command the pet to attack. That means the pet IS a high value combat mechanism, considering the decent hp and ac of the pet. At level 7 the pet becomes a LOT more durable with the ability to BA dodge without giving up any offense. This boost in defense makes the Ranger better at holding concentration than most martials, since his pet getting hit doesn't affect his concentration at all. The idea that a Beastmaster pet isn't his primary combat tool is simply incorrect.
This is the answer! BM pet is the primary source of damage for the Ranger if you want to be a BM! Or you can be a Gloomstalker/Assad and do actual good damage.
By level 17, a warlock with a single invocation deals 1d10+champs 4x at range and thus drastically decreased risk of HP loss. Ignoring hit chance, that averages a DPR of 10.5 four times or 44 damage, with no resources expensed. 22-24 is low DPR by level 11.
@NevisYsbryd luckily, if you math, you'd know that 22-24 is with his BA alone. ...and he can do it again if he gives up one of his attacks. ...and then he can still attack one more time. ...without expending resources, while also improving the group's action economy and providing a decent hp sponge.
I had a friend who played a gender bent Edward Elric who was a battle smith artificer and his steel defender was his version of Alphonse. To let it scale more my brother the dm let it also follow side kick rules from Tasha’s. Sadly the dreaded scheduling issues prevented us from seeing how effective that plan was
You lost me around the 5min mark when you were saying the Ranger does not lose anything for its pet to gain power. But the Ranger does. They have to literally give up their attack and/or their bonus action for their pet to do ANYTHING!
For me, having a pet should be ranger's class unique feature, to add him his uniqueness that seems it lacks...and beast masters should be the rangers version of moon druid circle, every druid can shapeshift, moon druid just do it better... Same for beast master for the ranger Hunters mark is cool, but is the only main ability that requires concentration I don't understand why is cool for druids and clerics to add 2d8 to their weapons damages always but for ranger is too much adding 1d6 from a spell plus 1d4 for some subclasses...
My solution would be to make the pc the "pokemon". Just reskin a fitting species into a monster and use a npc or sidekick as the trainer and skill user.
This is what I would do, Give the trainer the companion stats if you really want to have them as a separate entity. Most issues can be fixed with minor tweeks and a crapton of flavour is freestyling.
One of my preferred methods is to allow a player to use the sidekick system introduced in Tosha’s. Typically beasts must follow the warrior sidekick role. The only caveat to this is this rule that I introduce. The companion in Combat. In combat, the companion acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a Bonus Action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. If you have the Incapacitated condition, the companion acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action. Allows for players to have pets, and I can scale combat because I know the progress of the warrior sidekick.
I didn't classify familiars as permanent pets (I also didn't add that bit of info into the video), but they also suffer from the same issues except they have all the utility of a regular familiar and more. So they're pretty good at what they do.
@@2ndlevelfighter id specifically call the pact of the chain familiar an equal to other pets. they come back even when they die and can make attacks in exchange for one of your own attacks.
Summons are the worst aspect of casters in my book. I think they should be handled like swarms and not individual units. It just takes so long to resolve and brings combats to a screeching halt as one player resolves his 8 wolves' attacks... with advantage. Those casters can barely manage their own character sheets, let alone adding 1 to 32 or more on top of it!
Well our party adopted a carnivorous plant, Not the weirdest thing I've seen in said campaign, But even I must admit that feeding it a living soul was weird. I feel like it made sense at the time, but it seems weird in retrospect.
Weird take, but maybe summoners and pet classes could be great if they were limited to characters with MAXIMUM stats. I.e. you can be a "martial" class that gets big creatures but no spells and your strength/dex are no more than 13. OR, you can do summons and some spells but your maximum wis/int is 13. Needs more work because of multi class but we need some classes that make use of characters with truly sucky stats.
They should just make a summoner class, then make Fiend Summoner, Beast Summoner and Elemental Summoner as subclasses. It's such a unique playstyle that doesn't really work perfectly as subclasses for others.
I saw someone once make a Ranger "fix" by giving every single Ranger subclass a pet of some kind. Beastmaster and Drakewarden stayed the same but Fey Wandered gained a Fey companion, the Swarmkeeper got an actual swarm etc.
It was a cool idea but I think a full on summoner class would be better.
Personally, I have sometimes allowed my players to take the Beastmaster subclass on top of their existing class and subclass. I had a Fighter that found a wolf and wanted to tame it so to simplify things, I just allowed them to be a Beastmaster Fighter. With a few tweaks, it was actually very fun and balanced.
Another option: Be a spellcaster and reflavor the spells as pets/pokemon. Each creature could be a single spell, or you can decide which spells you expect to select and come up with the creatures you'll find/etc. that will have up to 4 of those spells tied to them. This way you can probably maintain a team of 6 with occasional swap-outs for certain spells if going for the full pokemon vibe. And you don't even need to worry about any kind of dice roll or DM control on which creatures you find, since they are literally just your prepared slots. You can flavor catching new creatures at anytime if you want it to play out a specific way.
No. You can't reflavor anything. If you're summoning a creature to do its "special attacks" the enemies have to be able to attack that creature because... it's there. So you already have to change rules, it's not just a reflavor.
@@caurd It's a spell. Enemies can't attack your spells. It doesn't mater what form the spell takes. I can shoot a fireball from my hand or send out a creature that burps one up. The spell gets fired regardless. I'm not saying that the creature goes on to do other things in battle like a familiar. It can only fire off the specific spell(s) it functions as and nothing else. The creature isn't mechanically real, and flavoring it into existence doesn't magically make it mechanically real.
Not every class casts spells the same way. A druid casting cure wounds might be them creating a salve from plants. Can that be stolen from them to prevent them from using it? Can artificers have their flavored gadgets targeted, preventing their spells from working? Their flamethrower made from tinker tools can be destroyed, removing their ability to cast fire bolt? They're required to have some kind of object, with every spell gaining a material component. But mechanically the spell is still a spell.
@@UltimateMustacheX Yes, that's literally the point. Spells can't be attacked, obviously, and so you can't just narrate them as "creatures that appear and do magic." There are spells based on summoning creatures with their own abilities, and obviously they can be attacked.
You can't just put whatever description you want on a spell, it has to be coherent. And it's NOT coherent that you summon a creature and that creature can't be attacked, so no, you can't represent a fireball as a fire lizard that's next to you and that spits fire, because the logical narrative answer would be to kill the lizard to make it stop doing it.
@@caurd So does the other reflavoring I mentioned for the druid/artificer not work? I've seen that style of flavor for druid quite often, and the artificer literally has it built into the text. So if they can reskin spells however they like, including objects, then any spellcaster can do the same. You saying is has to be coherent makes no sense. You're casting magic. It doesn't matter the method you do so.
If you're specifically trying to match the pokemon design as closely as possible, then that would obviously require changes to properly work, since you as the trainer are actually getting attacked in dnd. Sure you could homebrew actual mechanics to better match the pokemon game-style, but simply saying the pokemon return to their pokeballs between attacks requires no homebrew. You won't always be spamming the same spell over and over, so re-sending them out each time you call out their particular move works perfectly fine, if the idea of a fake creature standing next to you between turns is so off-putting to you.
@@UltimateMustacheX Well, it's very simple... yes, you can interact with an artificer's invention or a druid's herbs.
The material components can obviously be broken or stolen. And, aside from this, the game is a role-playing game, not a video game, it's not Final Fantasy. You can't just stick to the mechanics and say "they can't attack my summoned creature because that's not mechanical and it's just flavor." No, the narrative is above the rules, and the narrative and the rules have to be coherent with each other. Therefore, NO, not just anything will do to describe your spells.
The Battle Smith has the blueprints for a fix in their main class, if the Steel Defender had infusion options and gained slots as it levels up, it'd show the Battle Smith is constantly tinkering and improving their companion. Personally, I don't mind the bonus action to attack for the Battle Smith because they generally do not have bonus action abilities or spells other than smites. The Defender also leans better into mounted combat because it's reaction Deflect Attack combined with Mounted Combatant means that every round, 1 attack on you has disadvantage. At level 11 the spell storing item can hold enlarge/reduce and the Defender holds concentration, which thanks to Veer mean's there are very few ways to make it check concentration. If you are incapacitated, the Defender can attack, because it can attack, it can use Arcane Jolt to bring you up.
The 2024 rules changed Veer in Mounted Combatant from redirecting the attack from the mount to you, to "you can force an attack that hits your mount to hit you instead" which sounds like the attack is to the mount's AC and you take the damage, which doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd argue that it could be interpreted as the attack has to hit your mount, then beat your AC. There are also other changes stating you only gain advantage on creatures within 5ft of your mount that are smaller than your mount, which means ranged weapons and weapons with reach no longer have advantage. It might just be better to revert to 2014 Mounted Combatant. Regardless, as an artificer you can exploit that by crafting the Saddle of the Cavalier which makes all attacks on your mount are disadvantaged and you can't be knocked off your mount which could tie in with the Leap Aside Ability.
Since the steel defender is a creature you could hand it attunement items you create with infusions, so they could use a good few. Since you pick the Defender's asortment of limbs, a humanoid one should be very capable of wearing most gear you hand over to it.
So math...
Beastmaster pet is 1d8+2+wismod, assuming capped wis that's 11.5 average.
Since wisdom build Shillelagh, would be 2d6+wismod, which is 12.
That would SEEM to mean that the pet does a slight amount less damage, but that's only with the top tier Shillelagh. At every level below 17 the pet will do more. Then at 11 it is attacking twice EACH TIME IT IS COMMANDED. That means the ranger gives up one attack and gains two. Effective, the Beastmaster will have 5 attacks at that point. No GWM, but that's very solid damage.
Also, right from level 3 the Beastmaster gets both the bonus action attack and ALSO (the word also is literally in the description) can exchange an attack to command the pet to attack. That means the pet IS a high value combat mechanism, considering the decent hp and ac of the pet. At level 7 the pet becomes a LOT more durable with the ability to BA dodge without giving up any offense. This boost in defense makes the Ranger better at holding concentration than most martials, since his pet getting hit doesn't affect his concentration at all.
The idea that a Beastmaster pet isn't his primary combat tool is simply incorrect.
This is the answer!
BM pet is the primary source of damage for the Ranger if you want to be a BM! Or you can be a Gloomstalker/Assad and do actual good damage.
By level 17, a warlock with a single invocation deals 1d10+champs 4x at range and thus drastically decreased risk of HP loss. Ignoring hit chance, that averages a DPR of 10.5 four times or 44 damage, with no resources expensed. 22-24 is low DPR by level 11.
@NevisYsbryd luckily, if you math, you'd know that 22-24 is with his BA alone.
...and he can do it again if he gives up one of his attacks.
...and then he can still attack one more time.
...without expending resources, while also improving the group's action economy and providing a decent hp sponge.
I had a friend who played a gender bent Edward Elric who was a battle smith artificer and his steel defender was his version of Alphonse. To let it scale more my brother the dm let it also follow side kick rules from Tasha’s. Sadly the dreaded scheduling issues prevented us from seeing how effective that plan was
You lost me around the 5min mark when you were saying the Ranger does not lose anything for its pet to gain power. But the Ranger does. They have to literally give up their attack and/or their bonus action for their pet to do ANYTHING!
For me, having a pet should be ranger's class unique feature, to add him his uniqueness that seems it lacks...and beast masters should be the rangers version of moon druid circle, every druid can shapeshift, moon druid just do it better... Same for beast master for the ranger
Hunters mark is cool, but is the only main ability that requires concentration
I don't understand why is cool for druids and clerics to add 2d8 to their weapons damages always but for ranger is too much adding 1d6 from a spell plus 1d4 for some subclasses...
Definitely better than having hunter's mark as their core feature!
My solution would be to make the pc the "pokemon". Just reskin a fitting species into a monster and use a npc or sidekick as the trainer and skill user.
This is what I would do,
Give the trainer the companion stats if you really want to have them as a separate entity.
Most issues can be fixed with minor tweeks and a crapton of flavour is freestyling.
One of my preferred methods is to allow a player to use the sidekick system introduced in Tosha’s. Typically beasts must follow the warrior sidekick role. The only caveat to this is this rule that I introduce.
The companion in Combat. In combat, the companion acts during your turn. It can move and use its Reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action unless you take a Bonus Action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. If you have the Incapacitated condition, the companion acts on its own and isn’t limited to the Dodge action.
Allows for players to have pets, and I can scale combat because I know the progress of the warrior sidekick.
where is pact of the chain warlock?
I didn't classify familiars as permanent pets (I also didn't add that bit of info into the video), but they also suffer from the same issues except they have all the utility of a regular familiar and more. So they're pretty good at what they do.
@@2ndlevelfighter id specifically call the pact of the chain familiar an equal to other pets. they come back even when they die and can make attacks in exchange for one of your own attacks.
I had this exact thought and Soul Binder also I thought was exactly what I was looking for
One word solves your problem: Eldamon
Summons are the worst aspect of casters in my book. I think they should be handled like swarms and not individual units. It just takes so long to resolve and brings combats to a screeching halt as one player resolves his 8 wolves' attacks... with advantage. Those casters can barely manage their own character sheets, let alone adding 1 to 32 or more on top of it!
Well our party adopted a carnivorous plant,
Not the weirdest thing I've seen in said campaign,
But even I must admit that feeding it a living soul was weird.
I feel like it made sense at the time, but it seems weird in retrospect.
The conjure creatures are over powered but no hit points or ac. Glass cannons
I wholly think it's what you do with em as to whether or not they suck.
Weird take, but maybe summoners and pet classes could be great if they were limited to characters with MAXIMUM stats. I.e. you can be a "martial" class that gets big creatures but no spells and your strength/dex are no more than 13. OR, you can do summons and some spells but your maximum wis/int is 13.
Needs more work because of multi class but we need some classes that make use of characters with truly sucky stats.
Purple Dragon Knight change is now a pet subcass i dont like it very much
"you dont suddenly lose your ranger power"
what power? if any class could use the pokemon fantasy treatment its ranger
they should rebuild ranger as the pet class and give them a bunch of subclasses for different styles and types of pet.