D&D Ranger 5e Guide

D&D 5e Ranger Overview

The 5e ranger is a master of survival who uses their knowledge of the outdoors to track foes and provide advantages in combat. The common motif around the ranger in DnD 5e is a skilled hunter, tracker, and woodsman, most at home on the fringes of civilization and the first line of defense against threats from the wilds.

Most ranger are played as loners in social settings and will be more than happy to scout out ahead for the party.

The 5e ranger is a controversial class because they are typically deemed as being underpowered. Their early level’s class features provide zero benefits if you are not in the proper environment or fighting the correct monster. This can make your ranger feel limited in their abilities, compared to other versatile classes.

Playstyle

The common motif around the ranger in DnD 5e is that of a skilled hunter, tracker, and woodsman, most at home on the fringes of civilization and the first line of defense against threats in the wilds.

Most ranger are played as loners in social settings and will be more than happy to scout out ahead for the party. While their semi-caster status gives them some versatility, their class features get nerfed quite hard when traveling in environments that are not preferred or fighting enemies that are not their favored type.

Strengths

Rangers are the best of the martial classes against multiple enemies and hordes. Many of the ranger’s combat abilities are designed for attacking multiple foes in a turn. To bolster that role, ranger also have area of effect spells that can damage multiple foes.

Rangers have two other very unique abilities granted at 1st-level: Preferred Terrain and Favored Enemy. The Favored Enemy ability grants the ranger advantages on attacking and tracking their favored enemy. Preferred Terrain helps the ranger and their party survive, travel, and navigate certain environments.

Weaknesses

Many of the ranger’s abilities, including the Favored Enemies and Favored Terrains class features, are highly situational and don’t always mesh well with the campaign’s setting, especially if you are traversing an environment where opportunities to scout are at a minimum.

When ranger are not in their Favored Terrains or dealing with their Favored Enemies, their combat effectiveness and exploration abilities are heavily nerfed, so those abilities are situational at best.

Best Races for Rangers

When choosing a race for your Ranger, it’s important to pick one that complements the playstyle you’re going for, whether you’re building a ranged sniper, melee striker, or roving explorer. To guide you through the variety of options, check out our Guide to Ranger Races.

If you’re looking for a straightforward option with a solid boost to key stats, Wood Elves are an excellent choice. Their +2 Dexterity bonus and proficiency in Perception are perfect for a Ranger who needs to excel in ranged combat or melee combat with a Finesse weapon. Additionally, their natural affinity with the forest enables them to move faster and stay hidden more easily, perfect complements to the Ranger’s toolkit.

Backgrounds

Sticking with the fact that we are going for DEX and WIS for a ranger doesn’t leave us with a ton of options for backgrounds:

• Folk Hero: Animal Handling and Survival are two skills that a ranger SHOULD really be good at. Animal Handling as written is definitely a subpar skill though.
• Urchin: Sleight of Hand isn’t a DEX based skill ranger typically have access to. Stealth is an awesome free proficiency.
• Criminal: Deception proficiency will help offset a dumped CHA stat and can help you face a bit more for your party. Free Stealth proficiency is awesome.
• Outlander: This is another “flavor pick”, similar to Folk Hero. The skill proficiencies aren’t great but the backstory and Wanderer feature certainly make sense for a ranger.

Ability Scores

Ability Score Increases (ASI) at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level.

Prioritize DEX over the other Ability Scores. Once WIS is maxed, the decision is between CON and WIS based on the Ranger Archetype you choose.

STR: This is a definite dump stat for rangers as they can get by with finesse weapons if you want to go melee.

DEX: Seeing as the only armor rangers have access to is light or medium, DEX is your primary means of defense (it’s better to be missed than hit with some extra HP). DEX also plays into your weapon attacks, damage, Initiative, the all-too-common DEX saving throw, and the very important Stealth skill.

CON: If you plan to go for a melee ranger, it is best to forgo WIS in place of CON. This will allow you to maintain concentration on your awesome hunter’s mark spell. If you’re going for a ranged ranger you can save this for after you stack your WIS.

INT: Don’t bother with INT.

WIS: If you plan to go for a ranged ranger, it is best to forgo CON in place of WIS. This will allow you to get your spell save DC and spell attack modifier to a relevant level. If you’re going for a  melee ranger you can save this for after you stack your CON.

CHA: Rangers shouldn’t try to focus on social skills outside of WIS based ones. If you must, the overall effectiveness of the character will suffer.

Ranger Class Progression

1st Level

Hit Points: Rangers have a solid d10 hit dice.

Saves: Proficiency with STR and DEX saves is great. DEX saves are extremely common, STR saves are less so but helpful against being knocked prone and restrained.

Weapon/Armour Proficiencies: Light armor, medium armor, shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons is exactly what the ranger wants to work with.

Skills: Rangers aren’t known for their diverse skillset. They can only choose three of the following eight skills.

• Animal Handling (WIS): Animal Handling as written is a trash skill. If your DM is lenient with the rulings it is definitely a worthwhile skill for rangers to pick up but otherwise avoid this.
• Athletics (STR): Athletics isn’t a super common ask for someone in the ranger’s position. It also doesn’t mesh well with the dumped STR score.
• Insight (WIS): Insight is great for social interactions since it can give you a ton of information on the person you are trying to convince or manipulate.
• Investigation (INT): Investigation can sometimes mesh with Survival, it is best to choose Survival to play to the ranger’s strengths and go with the WIS based skill.
  
• Nature (INT): Nature is an important INT skill. If nobody else in your party has it, it makes sense for the ranger to know what’s up when you’re out in the woods.
• Perception (WIS): We’ve said it before, Perception is the best skill in D&D. Getting proficiency and expertise in this can help make up for your low WIS score.
• Stealth (DEX): If Perception is the best skill, stealth is a close second.
  
• Survival (WIS): Similar to Nature. If you don’t have another savvy woodsman in your party, it is your duty as a ranger to pick this up.

Favored Enemy: You can select your favorite (or least favorite, I guess) creature type and gain some minor bonuses, such as: advantage on tracking them and recalling information about them. This feature is certainly a weak class feature and is where the ranger class begins to go off the rails a little bit.

The creatures to choose for your Favored Enemy vary wildly by campaign, but looking at the Monster Manual shows us that Beasts, Fiends and Undead are very likely to show up. Beasts are likely to show up at lower levels, but you get to choose more favored enemies at 6th and 14th level.

Natural Explorer: Natural Explorer is a stronger passive ability than Favored Enemy but is still extremely situational. You can choose one of eight possible terrains to gain a myriad of bonuses in, but if you’re not in the chosen terrain you are SoL.

2nd Level

Fighting Style:

• Archery: +2 to attack rolls with ranged weapons is exactly what you’re looking for as a ranger and helps offset the penalty from taking Sharpshooter shots.
• Blind Fighting: Blindsight is a decent option to have, but it’s effects can be replicated with spells like darkvision or faerie fire that a number of races or ranger subclasses get access to.
• Defense: +1 to AC isn’t overly exciting but seeing as AC is hard to scale it can make a difference in the early and long game.
• Druidic Warrior: shillelagh and guidance make this an extremely tempting option. If you stack WIS and wield a quarterstaff, you will find that your melee ranger becomes a lot less multi-ability dependent (MAD).
• Dueling: Being able to wield a shield while dealing close to two-handed weapon damage is a very, very tempting option.
• Thrown Weapon Fighting: Being able to draw and throw as part of an attack is really only an issue for very law abiding DMs. Unfortunately, the bonus you get is to damage rather than the attack roll, making this strictly worse than the Archery fighting style.
• Two-Weapon Fighting: While Two-Weapon Fighting can make you hit a lot easier with your offhand weapon, there are some disadvantages to being a dual-wielding fighter. Mainly, the fact that attacking with your offhand takes your bonus action. This doesn’t cause your offhand attacks to scale with your extra attacks. This will cause the damage you output to quickly become overshadowed by something like using a Greatsword or taking the Dueling Martial Archetype.

Spellcasting: Rangers are a semi-caster, this means they only get spell slots up to 5th level and no Cantrips. Their spell list focuses mainly on passive, utility/survival abilities, with the exception of hunter’s mark. Hunter’s mark is to rangers as hex is to warlock. It is their bread and butter extra damage spell that keeps their attacks on a similar level to fighters and their extra attacks.

3rd Level

Primeval Awareness: This is…not a great ability. You can tell when certain creature types are within 1 mile, but not their location or number. Definitely not worth a spell slot 90% of the time.

Ranger Archetype: At 3rd Level, rangers get to choose their Ranger Archetype. A ranger’s Archetype completely defines how the build plays, so choose the one based on a playstyle you might enjoy the most.

4th Level

5th Level

Extra Attack: Extra attacks are the bread and butter of all the martial classes. Like the other semi-caster, the Paladin, Rangers only get 1 extra attack. Luckily, they have Hunter’s Mark to make up for lost damage.

8th Level

Land’s Stride: Being immune to nonmagical difficult terrain will come in handy a couple of times per campaign, but it isn’t a huge game-changer.

10th Level

Hide in Plain Sight: This is great for ambushing creatures, something that Rangers really like to do. It is extremely nerfed by the fact that you have to camouflage after each time you move, making this useless for infiltrations.

14th Level

Vanish: Being able to Hide as a bonus action will be very beneficial for the Rangers, who like to stay at a distance among cover. Being untrackable by nonmagical means can be beneficial as well.

18th Level

Feral Senses: This is great if you have to fight an invisible creature, something that may or may not happen when you are this late into the campaign.

20th Level

Foe Slayer: A great ability, massively limited due to the fact it can only be applied to your favored enemies.

Best Feats for Rangers

Check out our Guide to Ranger Feats.

Best Spells for Rangers

Check out our Guide to Ranger Spells.