Introduction
The Ranger’s subclasses support a wide variety of play styles, making individual Rangers feel very diverse. While they rarely shift the Ranger’s role within the party, they still make the experience of playing a Ranger very different from subclass to subclass.
For legacy subclasses, see our 2014 Ranger Subclasses Guide.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.
The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.
Ranger Subclasses
PHB)
(Beast Master, not beastmaster. You master beasts. You don’t beastmast.
The iconic pet build, the Beast Master Ranger commands a powerful beast in combat, allowing them to be in two places at once, making them very effective as a Striker and potentially as a Defender. The unusual action economy and tactics take some emphasis off of Hunter’s Mark, making Druidic Warrior builds an effective choice.
Beast Master Ranger Subclass Guide
Unlike summoned pets which other classes might use (Dancing Item, Wildfire Spirit, etc.), your pet sticks around all the time. You don’t need to summon it or whatever. However, like any other member of your party, it needs food, healing, rest, etc.
The abilities to easily revive your beast with any spell slot and to replace the beast after a Long Rest mean that your beast is functionally disposable. If it dies in combat, or if you need to change beasts to change tactics, doing so is nearly as easy as casting a new summon spell.
Commanding your beast monopolizes your Bonus Action. This directly conflicts with casting Hunter’s Mark, which is a significant problem for the Ranger, but your beast’s damage is good enough to make up the gap. This gets a little messy when you pick up Bestial Fury at level 11 and your beast also benefits from your Hunter’s Mark damage bonus, but by that point your beast’s attacks are more impactful than Hunter’s Mark. Expect to use Hunter’s Mark only in encounters against big single foes, otherwise you’ll waste your Bonus Action to move it around when you should be commanding your beast.
- : Simple and iconic. With 40 ft. land and climb speed, this thing can get around very quickly. The damage will match or exceed a weapon, and Charge allows your companion to knock foes prone if they can get a running start.
- : Only viable in aquatic campaigns. 5-foot land speed is not enough for your sharktopus to hobble around on land and be effective in combat. If you can somehow get its speed up to reasonable amount (look for spells like Longstrider with long durations which don’t require Concentration), you may be able to make this work on land. If you can do it, the Beast of the Sea’s attacks grapple when they hit, which is a powerful option not normally available to players.
- : 60-foot fly speed and Flyby. Less hit points than the other options, but with the ability to remain perpetually out of melee reach that’s less of a problem. The damage is also slightly lower than Beast of the Land, but Beast of the Land deals 6.5+PB on average and the Beast of the Sky’s 5.5+PB isn’t noticeably lower. Having a flying companion discourages you from using your companion as a Defender by interposing itself between you and your enemies, but Beast of the Sky’s AC is just as good as the other options and if your companion’s hit points are looking problematic it can use Flyby to withdraw to safety.
: Your defining feature,
your companion is equal parts pet and weapon. It has a separate pool of hit
points to draw damage away from you and the rest of your party, and its
attacks do as much damage as yours do. Your beast’s stats are based on your
Wisdom modifier, so strongly consider building around Wisdom.Making your companion’s attacks deal Force damage lets you bypass nearly all damage resistances. Resistance to non-magic weapon attacks is common and becomes more common as you gain levels.
: The Bonus Action
options are fantastic. Disengage will let your companion move out of melee
safely, but you want it in melee tanking hits for your less durable party
members. Help will give you or an ally Advantage on a high-value attack.
Most of the time you’ll default to Dodge, which will significantly improve
your beast’s durability.- : Double your beast’s damage output. The bonus damage from Hunter’s Mark is mostly a consolation prize for giving up your beast’s attacks for a turn in order to cast Hunter’s Mark. Don’t rush to cast it just to get the 1d6 damage.
- : This is a fantastic way to share buff spells. You can use options like Cure Wounds, but don’t expect to cast those frequently.
Can the Beast Companion Take the Bestial Strike Action Twice?
Some people may ask how the companion gets two attacks. It’s not perfectly clear, so let’s take a look at the rules, and you and your table can come to an informed agreement about how to handle things.
From the 2024 Player’s Handbook:
“…unless you take a Bonus Action to command it to take an action in its stat block or some other action. You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Beast’s Strike action.”
Because the beast shares your turn, it performs the command you give it immediately. The confusion comes from the word “also” in the second sentence.
You can interpret the text to mean that using a Bonus Action is the primary way to command your beast, but you also have the option to command your beast by replacing an attack, but you can only command it to take the Beast’s Strike action rather than commanding to do something else, such as Disengage. This means that you can use your Bonus Action for things like spellcasting, which is helpful if you plan to cast Hunter’s Mark to benefit from the second half of the Bestial Fury feature.
But, if that was the intent, the word “instead” should have been used in place of “also”. “Also” means that you can do both, and there’s no further text preventing you from doing so. This creates a specific-beats-general situation where, RAW, you can command it as a Bonus Action and also command it to use Beast’s Strike as part of your Attack Action. This creates one of two outcomes when the player spends their Bonus Action and then also replaces an attack to command their beast:
- The beast takes one specified Action and then also takes the Beast’s Strike action despite having only one Action.
- The player has effectively wasted either their Bonus Action or the attack that they’ve traded.
We want to say that the DnD design team would not leave a rules trap in the text which caused players to needlessly waste a resource for no benefit, but we’ve been running RPGBOT for well over a decade. Yes, they would do exactly that. Not intentionally, but they’re human beings.
We’re mostly certain that the RAI is for this to provide flexibility so that you can make your beast attack once per turn with either your own Attack or your Bonus Action, but the RPGBOT optimization panel has voted and we agree that, RAW, this language makes the most sense interpreted to mean that your beast can attack twice. If they were aiming for flexibility instead, they shouldn’t have used “also” and had the second command option be a separate sentence. But, just like with any unclear rules text, we encourage you to discuss this with your own group and and arrive at a decision that works for your table.
PHB)
(Tricky and challenging, yet very effective, the Fey Wanderer Ranger is an excellent subclass with a lot to offer to players who know how to use it to its fullest. You can play this subclass like a typical Ranger the same way that you would play a Hunter, but you’re going to miss out on a lot of what really makes the Fey Wanderer shine. It’s built to lean into a Wisdom-based Druidic Warrior build with more emphasis on spellcasting and Face skills than your typical bow-wielding damage monster.
Dreadful Strikes only applies once per target per turn, but if you can hit multiple targets, they’ll all take the bonus damage. It also applies on Opportunity Attacks (Hunter’s Mark does, too, but it’s still really nice). The one drawback is that it doesn’t work quite as well as Hunter’s Mark does when focusing on a single target, so Hunter’s Mark may still be worth casting.
Because this applies once per target per turn, you’re motivated to attack multiple targets if that’s an option. Ranged weapons work best for this, though they may be difficult for the high-Wisdom build expected of the Fey Wanderer. More likely you’ll want to use spells like Zephyr Strike and two-weapon fighting to quickly move between and attack multiple targets.
: This roughly matches
Hunter’s Mark, but with a lot of advantages. The most obvious benefit is
that it’s free, but it doesn’t stop there. There’s no action cost. It stacks
with Hunter’s Mark’s damage bonus. The damage is psychic, which is rarely
resisted.- : A strange choice mechanically, but the theme makes sense. Your save DC won’t match a full spellcaster unless you’re using Druidic Warrior to build around Wisdom, and Charm Person doesn’t give you any visual indication that it worked, so you need to be extremely cautious when using it. You don’t get enough spell slots to cast it repeatedly just to be absolutely sure that it worked.
- : The best teleportation option in combat.
- : This will lag far behind summons cast by full spellcasters. Your summoned Fey’s AC and hit points will make it frail, and their relatively small number of attacks will mean that their damage isn’t as impactful as you probably want. Still, if you’re built around Druidic Warrior, this is a much better use of Concentration than Hunter’s Mark. Also see the Fey Reinforcements feature, which lets you shorten Summon Fey’s duration in order to remove the Concentration requirement.
- : Less of a go-to combat teleportation option than Misty Step, but it has better range and doesn’t require line of sight, so it’s more powerful outside of combat or if you need to completely escape an encounter. You’ll still get more frequent use out of Misty Step thanks to its Bonus Action casting time and lower-level spell slot requirement, but Dimension Door can get you through walls and locked doors.
- : Situational. Not a great option in combat, but out of combat this provides a passably safe way to scout an area or to trick other creatures if mundane stealth won’t do the trick for some reason.
: The vast majority
of the options are only situationally useful, but you do get Misty Step,
which is good on exactly 100% of characters.- : One Face skill and you add your Wisdom modifier to all Charisma checks on top of any Charisma modifier. This is enough to make you an effective Face without high Charisma, but a little bit is still a great idea. You don’t want 8 Charisma dragging you down.
The obvious use case is to take charm/fear effects from your enemies and essentially redirect them back at your enemies. That works great, and can lead to scenarios like dragons being frightened by their own Frightful Presence. To make this as effective as possible, you want allies in your party who can reliably pass saving throws against charm/fear effects. These are nearly always Wisdom or Charisma saves, so high scores in those ability scores and proficiency in the saves both help, but also look for racial traits like Brave and class features like Aura of Protection.
The less-obvious use case is using this offensively. If you have allies who can produce charm/fear effects (often spellcasters, but there are non-spell options too), you can capitalize on any creatures who pass saves against your allies’ abilities and force another creature to save against Beguiling Twist.
: Hilarious and very
effective, but likely difficult to use to its greatest potential.The second benefit allows you to cast a shorter version of the spell without the Concentration requirement, but that’s a really hard prospect with the Ranger’s limited pool of spell slots.
Note that the free casting per day doesn’t use a spell slot, so it doesn’t conflict with casting a leveled spell on the same turn. That’s rarely going to be an issue with the Ranger’s limited spellcasting, but it can be a very powerful tactical option.
: Summon Fey once per
day for free without the 300gp material component. The fey’s attack bonus is
based on your Spellcasting Modifier and the spell is heavily dependent on
spell level, both of which are hard prospects for many rangers. But even if
it’s not quite as effective offensively as something summoned by a full
spellcaster, it’s still an effective pet for up to an hour per casting.- : Misty Step for free several times per day, and you can even bring a friend along! This makes it easy to rescue your friends from grapples or restraints, and you become very hard to keep in one place during combat.
PHB)
(The Gloom Stalker Ranger is a fantastic Scout, especially in environments with little light where Umbral Sight makes them near-permanently invisible. But that invisibility is by far the subclass’s greatest highlight. The spell list is disappointing, and their Dread Ambusher damage boost gets to few uses per day that you would be forgiven for forgetting that it exists.
Gloom Stalker, not Gloomstalker. You stalk the gloom. You don’t “gloomstalk”.
- Dread Ambusher:
- : A modest boost to your mobility on turn one. Great for rushing into melee.
- : Dismal. 2d6 damage that only scales up to 2d8 at level 11. A typical Ranger will have 14 Wisdom, so you’ll get to use this twice per Long Rest. You might think “That’s fine, I’ll just raise my Wisdom!”, but it is absolutely not worth the effort. Stalker’s Flurry at level 11 improves this considerably, but, until then, you’re going to save this for critical hits.
- : Initiative bonuses are always nice.
- : Situational.
- : A fantastic way to rest safely, and normally exclusive to artificers and wizards. But rangers get very few spell slots, and spending one to take a Short Rest safely is a high cost for the Ranger. Do your best to avoid needing this.
- : It’s unlikely that you have sufficient Wisdom to make any spell which allows a saving throw reliable, so you’ll want to save this for encounters with numerous weak foes.
- : Amazing on any stealthy character. Ideally you’ll never need this because you can rely on Umbral Sight, but if your enemies pull out a torch you can cast Greater Invisibility and remain unseen.
- : Situational, but very helpful when your party needs to go somewhere where the locals are unfriendly.
: 4 of these spells
are pretty good and one of those is a Wizard/Artificer exclusive. Now, you
too can decide that you need an extra-dimensional pocket to short rest in.
This only isn’t rated higher because Disguise Self and Fear care about your
spell save DC which won’t be as good as a dedicated caster.Invisibility at this level normally comes at great cost: a relatively high-level spell slot, Concentration, and a prohibition against doing nearly anything aggressive with it. This has none of those costs, it just only applies when something is only able to see you because of its Darkvision. This means that we should be trying to be in darkness in combat as much as is physically possible. Work to make sure that everyone else in your party can function without light as well so that enemies are relying on Darkvision wherever possible.
While it is incredible, Umbral Sight does have limitations. The feature specifies that it only works in darkness. That means that it doesn’t work if there’s dim light (candles, etc.). It must be actual darkness. It also doesn’t work on things that can perceive you because of truesight, tremorsense, blindsight, etc. Only Darkvision. With that said, in the right conditions, this is one of the best class features in the game.
: Getting free Darkvision is
fantastic on its own, but invisibility to Darkvision is absolutely crazy.
Most creatures that will ambush you using Darkvision won’t have a light
source in their possession, so you functionally have Improved Invisibility.
Even if an enemy finds a light source, if you extinguish it, you’re right
back to invisibly murdering them.- : Additional saving throw proficiencies are always welcome, especially when they’re for a commonly-targeted save.
- Stalker’s Flurry: The damage scaling is so small that I’m
surprised they bothered to add it at all. You’re here for the rider effects
on Dread Ambusher, which are both fine, but you won’t get to use them enough
times per day for them to feel impactful.
- : Nice if enemies happen to be adjacent to each other. Capitalizing on this is a good idea even if you’re attacking a creature that’s not currently target by Hunter’s Mark.
- : Good, but you probably don’t have the spell save DC to make this reliable.
- : It only works once per round because it consumes your Reaction, but that’s often plenty. The Gloom Stalker thrives on being unseen, so this is powerful insurance if your enemies manage to attack while you’re not in total darkness and also not running Improved Invisibility.
PHB)
(The iconic Ranger, the Hunter adds almost no complexity to the Ranger, instead complementing the class’s core tactics with mostly passive features. The only part of the Hunter which requires you to take additional actions is Superior Hunter’s Defense. This makes the Hunter very accessible and easy to play. Unfortunately, most of the Hunter’s features provide very minor benefits and the rest won’t be consistently useful, so the subclass’s decision points only present the illusion of choice. The Hunter’s best options are at their best in melee, but ranged builds may find little value here.
None of this specifies “damage”, so RAW it appears that you also know if the target has any condition immunities. Unfortunately, Advantage/Disadvantage on saves against a condition aren’t considered Resistance/Vulnerability in 5e.
: You’re going to be running
Hunter’s Mark in nearly every encounter, so you’re going to know the
Immunities/Resistances/Vulnerabilities of most of the creatures that you
face. Of course, you probably can’t do anything with that information since
you’re going to be dealing Piercing damage almost exclusively.- Hunter’s Prey: You can change your choice on a Short or
Long Rest, but realistically there is no reason to do so.
Because this works once per turn, it also works on Opportunity Attacks. This is very helpful for melee builds, making you a bit scarier to move past even for enemies that aren’t the target of Hunter’s Mark.
: Enemies will spend
very little time in combat at full health, and then they’ll be below
full health for the rest of their lives, so this damage is easy and
consistent. It’s not a ton of damage, but it’s very reliable and doesn’t
require any real effort.The timing of Horde Breaker alongside the Cleave mastery is slightly complex, but doesn’t create issues. Horde Breaker applies when you make the attack, while Cleave doesn’t apply until after you hit. This means that you can hit the same secondary target with both Horde Breaker and Cleave after making a single attack against your primary target. But none of that actually matters because Cleave only exists on Strength-based weapons and Strength-based Rangers don’t work.
: This is basically the
same as the Cleave Weapon Mastery, except that you can’t have already
attacked the secondary target. Since you’re stuck focusing on the target
of Hunter’s Mark and can’t easily switch targets, you’re going to have a
lot of trouble consistently attacking enemies that are within 5 feet of
each other. Opportunities to use Horse Breaker will be vanishingly rare.
- Defensive Tactics: You can change your choice on a Short
or Long Rest, but you’re almost certainly going to try Escape the Horde,
realize that it’s not making an impact unless you’re deliberately drawing
Opportunity Attack, then switch permanently to Multiattack Defense.
- : If you’re relying on hit-and-run tactics or if you’re built to fight at range, this is a good choice. However, Multiattack Defense may still provide better overall protection. If enemies get into melee with you and hit you with Multiattack, Multiattack Defense will protect you against more attacks than Escape the Horse will when you try to move away on your next turn.
- : Almost every enemy that relies on weapon attacks will have multiattack by now. This will provide consistent defense against those creatures. If you’re fighting in melee, this is a great choice. If you’re fighting at range, this will rarely be useful.
- : 1d6 extra damage per turn. This is not mathematically significant. It’s nice that it works on every turn so that it also applies with Opportunity Attacks, but it’s still not enough damage to make a big difference and it also requires that you have a valid secondary target.
- : A fantastic defensive option. Many enemies can only deal one damage type per turn (a dragon’s breath, a spell, a weapon), and the ones that deal multiple types are typically doing something like hitting you with a mace that does 1d6 bludgeoning and a mountain of fire damage or something. This is going to mitigate a ton of damage.