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The Eyes in the Dark, six eyes that Astor finds watching him and his new BFF. Aka, a super duper evil diety of hunters that has a vested interest in him.

If Astor isn't seeing the Eyes when he's on watch at night, he's getting stuck in a birch grove with them in his dreams. And as someone who can't really feel, he's sort of okay with it, at the moment (as am I, because after happy, nice Watcher, this is my jam).

#dnd #d&d #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #ranger #my art #astor

Huh... First time I've ever seen Hide in Plain Sight used ever.

#ranger #dnd 5e #maybe it happened in the actual campaign too? idk

JuneToon 2026 Day 12: Ranger

#junetoon #junetoon 2026 #yogi bear #ranger #ranger smith

A Watcher-Astor contrast, which you could say is to show how greyscale Astor is compared to Watcher, but I prefer to say is to prove that Watcher is not short.

Watcher was always joked to be short, despite being around 5'9". Astor on the other hand is very short of an elf, roughly 5'5" or so. I just like the idea he's a little guy, and people underestimate him because of that. I had a halfling assassin for that very reason.

#dnd #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #ranger #elf #my art #astor #watcher

Rough ideas I threw down for "Butch" a dnd ranger imma be playing

#oc #digital art #cowboy oc #cowboy doodle #ranger #cowboy ranger #idk what to tag this #enjoy butch #I think despite him literally being an ancient cowboy #I'm going to make him still unsure in his masculinity #like usually hes fine but sometimes it hits and he has to sit and stew with himself #the woes of being a secret oversharer but you've spent your entire life committed to the bit of being mysterious and cool #well no he actually committed his entire life to hunting things #since he is going to be lawful neutral sheriff kinda vibe #anyway ramble over #I'll draw something better for him eventually

I’ll have to figure it out on my own one day as a homebrew, but I wanna get my thoughts out on the Ranger class in D&D.

So in case you don’t know, people hate the Ranger class because they think it sucks mechanically. Almost anything a Ranger does can easily be done by a Fighter or Rogue (or Druid in some cases). And this kinda makes sense because in the early days of D&D, the Ranger was a subset of what is the Fighter class. The Ranger allowed people to play as essentially/technically Aragorn from LotR. And since D&D still owes a lot of its general design to LotR, the Ranger has stuck around, but the way people play the game has changed drastically.

I’m assuming that most people who play the modern versions of D&D don’t really spend much time tracking and going into the fine details of traveling. Most people skip over travel altogether, relegating it to a “and now you’re here and this many hours/days have passed”. But the Ranger was rooted in tracking and traversing. The Ranger at the beginning of 5e had the favored foe and terrain abilities, but those were heavily reliant on your DM giving you access to those things, so hopefully you chose good options. And then as 5e continued, WotC realized people hated those abilities and tried to rework them, so that took away some of the Ranger flavor.

And if you asked someone what they thought a Ranger’s niche might be, they might say either Archery or an animal companion. Now obviously, you don’t have to be an archer to be a Ranger (and in fact, two-weapon fighting was more of the Ranger’s deal before 5e). And in fact, a Fighter or Rogue can end up being a better archer anyways thanks to more Ability Score Improvements and other class abilities. And the animal companion is only relegated to a single subclass. Hell, druids now can have a constant animal sidekick, as can anyone who can cast Find Familiar.

I think the Ranger needs to find a new utility, and my personal thoughts on that are a character class who can control the battle map. Whether it’s through literal terraforming abilities or finding ways to shepherd groups of enemies into a single spot so a wizard can fireball them into oblivion. Hell, the class getting a permanent animal companion could help in controlling enemy placement.

Different subclasses could handle this ability in different ways. The Beast Master can stay, but the animal companion could more easily round up enemies. There could be a terraforming subclass that could make areas of difficult terrain to prevent foes from getting far. Something akin to the Horizon Walker or Fey Wanderer could allow a Ranger to teleport more freely to allow better crowd control. A Gloomstalker-esque subclass could still maintain the shadowy feel and be better at dealing with indoor/confined crowd control. And so on and so forth with ideas like that.

And you can still keep the tracking/traversal aspects. Keep Hunter’s Mark as a class ability like on 5.5e. Maybe bring up invisibility to earlier. Main class ability animal companion like I said before. Maybe a class ability for free uses of Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants. Make it a class that’s just as unique and useful in combat and out.

#D&D #DnD #Ranger #I also have thoughts for like a ‘ Hunter’s Sense’ type ability with enhances to speed and perception #that could work like Rage or the new Sorcerer core ability #and that could also up damage for a ranged attack to give Ranger’s the Ranged damage boost