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Ranger is currently my favorite martial class, but that's just because I tend to love skill monkey's and skirmishers. I think only Rogues get more skills than they do potentially, and going for Archery and Mobile allows you single handedly pick off targets from range, and then swap to melee with a good 1-hd (rapier, most likely, as your Dex is probably higher than Str) and shield if anything should close with you. I've gone with Dual Wielding short swords too.
Isnt knight for Heavy armor ? This is not needed at all. Those points there are mostly for flavour but i wouldnt go the Heavy armor route . Tho it doesnt matter. Those perks are just roleplay aspects. Its Nice to have Those niche roleplay aspects on the ranger even if they are not that useful
As for Natural Explorer...I tend to avoid Beast Tamer since familiars aren't exactly a Ranger's strong point in my opinion, but it's certainly viable, particularly if you aren't going to choose Beastmaster as your subclass. However, I find I get more utility out of either Urban Tracker or one of the resistances. In particular, there's a lot of fire damage in this game, so if you choose fire resistance and then get the poison resistance ring, you have resistance to two common damage types. OTOH, Bounty Hunter + Urban Tracker is a good skill monkey.
The Ranger is really good - especially if you're looking for a self-sufficient or solo character (can attack at range, can melee, has some utility spells, good hp and ac, decent damage).
In the future, I'll be looking at multiclassing as either a Ranger-Rogue and/or a Ranger-Druid.
^ Facts
Having played D&D since the late 80's, I remember that the issue with the Ranger has always been that they are always on the verge of being OP and too much of a Mary Sue.
As a hybrid class, they are a Fighter-Rogue-Druid, where most other hybrid classes are more like a hybrid of two classes (Paladins are Fighter-Clerics, Druids are Cleric-Fighters, and the Bard is a Wizard-Rogue).
If you make them good at all three (spells, skills/stealth, damage/AC) then they outshine literally everything else in the game. They are equally adept at both ranged and melee combat (even when you specialize in one or the other, Rangers are great for blending both, and with some careful multiclassing you can easily get two Fighting Styles), they come with some good utility spells (Longstrider, Jump, Entangle, etc.), have good hp pool (1d10), can wear medium armor or heavy if you go Knight, and are proficient in all weapons.
Through the years, Rangers have wobbled back and forth from OP to useless, because TSR (or WotC) will put out a version that is OP, then nerf it back to oblivion as they realized they made it too powerful, then buff it again until it's OP, etc.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is that the Ranger has always been a power pendulum, swinging back and forth.
The truth is that it covers too much ground, so you kind of have to limit it for it not to overshadow everything else. It's a melee character. It's a ranged character. It's a caster. It's a skill monkey. It's somewhat tanky and well armored. It's stealthy.
As cliched as it is, one of my first characters is going to be a Ranger-Druid. I'm only going to level Ranger up to 5 (for extra attack), and then put the rest of my levels into Druid for more spells (I want a Ranger with Archery Fighting Style, Moonbeam, Spike Growth, Call Lightning, and the ability to transform into a Dire Raven, all while wearing heavy armor - a Ranger Knight - not sure if I want to go with a shield or a polearm though).
At one point, Ranger was the best (or maybe the only) character that could dual wield a weapon in each hand, and it was OP as hell. I think they were this way in DDO at one point. I remember dual wielding being like the only feature Rangers really had (they didn't even get spells at this point), but it was so good there was no reason to try anything else with them.
Of course now, a Ranger with no spells is just a Dex-Fighter.
If there's one small grievance I have with 5e it is the slightly noticeable bias towards Dex, it gives AC bonuses, Initiative bonuses, is the primary stat to dodge a lot of common AoE attacks, it just does so freaking much.
Yeah, Dex is the god-stat, which gives Dex based classes a bit of an edge. I almost entirely avoid Str builds (just take enough Str for decent carry capacity).
There's almost nothing Str can do that Dex can't do better (except maybe Shove).
Agreed which is problematic and takes away from balance and stat meaning and leads people with a min/max mentality to exploit it.
Heavy Armor doesn't really help if you wind up running into tons of Dex checks from magic attacks, most Dex weapons can output similar damage to heavy Str ones (more in some cases with good dual wielding DPS), bows entirely rely on Dex and throwing weapons aren't even remotely in the same ballpark due to range limitations.
Nevermind that the only native ability score check Str has is Athletics, which is pretty niche overall and Dex has Stealth, which we all know is hilariously broken and can be reinforced with magic.
As a person who tends to favor Str over Dex it is highly disheartening to play 5e at times...
I feel the exact same way my friend. I was always STR leaning in my builds so 5e, though I love the direction, is frustrating to me in this area. It's particularly frustrating when you use RL logic for thinking about strength because we all know that strength is what determines force and impact in combat so adding the dex modifier to an attack roll is just weird asf. It's not like being more dexterous causes the injuries sustained to be worse using a bow or a rapier. You can argue that being dexterous allows you to hit more vital areas (which still shouldn't be at all confused with the force or impact it took to create an injury) or increases your ability to hit at all.
Strength should always be the modifier for additional melee or non magical (or gunpowder based ) ranged damage in my opinion.
It's about the only case where I can see you really need Str, unless you are going for some kind of meme build, like shoving everything to death.