Ranger is fundamentally a dreadful class in comparison to all the others within 5th edition. And power creep is not to blame for this fact, as Rangers have actually received some of the stronger subclasses in recent books e.g. Gloom Stalker. So what makes them so utterly horrendous that I felt I needed to write an essay on my Steam profile about it. Well let's find out.


Favored Enemy is immediately a disappointing feature, pushing a character into a niche that they may not have wanted to find themselves in, especially as a first level character. While it is a flavorful feature, it provides very little benefit unless your campaign focuses on an exclusive creature type. The feature also specifies that your future choices should reflect the creatures encountered throughout the campaign, meaning that you only get to benefit from the feature AFTER you've had experiences with that type of creature. The replacement feature introduced in Tasha's is not much better. Favored Foe allows you to mark a creature to take extra damage from your attacks. There are a couple of good points about this feature, such as the damage actually scaling with level, up to a d8, and that it only requires you to land an attack rather than use a bonus action and spell slot like Hunter's Mark does. However every other point of it just makes Hunter's Mark better in every way. Favored Foe damage starts at a d4, and only triggers ONCE per turn, rather than on all landed attacks like Hunter's Mark, which is also a dice better at a d6. Additionally, both require concentration, so no stacking abilities for you. While its certainly an improvement upon Favored Enemy, it's by no means good, and also gets rid of that flavor I mentioned previously.