Summary
Rangers are a curious case inDungeons & Dragons. They’re often considered the weakest class of the game, or at least one of the weakest, due to a mix of features that aren’t the best and the fact that the class has many good features that happen outside of combat, like tracking enemies or getting around hostile environments.
Still, with updates from books like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and stronger subclasses like Gloom Stalker - or just proper optimization - a ranger can still be a powerful class. This means you may have to make things harder in your game if it feels too easy for your ranger player, to the point they’re not having fun.
We only recommend using the tips here if your player is having an easy time and is not enjoying the lack of difficulty. Our goal is to only help increase challenge, not to create unbeatable situations for your player that counters all their features and renders them useless. Be mindful of when to apply these tricks, and don’t overdo it.
1Be Aware Of Their Weapon Choices
That Changes How They Fight
Similar to fighters, paladins, and barbarians, rangers are proficient with all weapons, giving them a lot of versatility in their weapon choice. During our fighter discussion (you cancheck it here), we mentioned this would cause one of the following scenarios for weapon choices: a two-handed weapon, a one-handed weapon with a shield, a ranged weapon, or dual-wielding (which can be two melee weapons, two ranged, or one of each). While they’ll likely have more than one weapon type, like a bow and a rapier or a sword and javelins, their Fighting Style is a good indication of their priority.
When dealing with melee-focused characters, you can either surround them and surround them (especially if flanking rules apply) so they won’t hit many enemies at once, or you can make ranged enemies who have an easy time attacking while staying far from the ranger.
When dealing with a ranged character, you can still use ranged attacks and take cover to prevent being hit back or surround them with melees again. To make sure they’ll have a harder time escaping your melee monsters, give them a lot of movement, combined with different movement types or things like teleportation abilities to keep up with the ranger.
2Add Traversal And Hunting Challenges
Fight Them In Their Playground
If you want to give your game unique variety, let your ranger shine, and at the same time make things harder for them, you can use hostile environments, like jungles, deserts, and whatnot, in your sessions.
Rangers have bonuses when dealing with these places, allowing them to navigate the area masterfully. Even if they forsook some of these bonuses to get Tasha’s ranger variation, they’d still have some, such as climbing and swimming speed, immunity against nonmagical difficult terrain, and even the ability to get rid of exhaustion through a short rest.
You can let these features shine and challenge them through places like enchanted forests, mixing natural obstacles with magical ones. You can use magical plants (which they’ll still have an advantage on saving throws), wildlife that is tougher to chase because of magical abilities, or put situations like hard surfaces to climb that may begin collapsing as the ranger is climbing or strong currents in the water to challenge their swimming. And you can punish failed rolls with exhaustion depending on the level, fully aware they can get rid of that with ease later.
3Pay Attention To Their Subclass
They Vary A Lot
Because rangers were considered underwhelming in the past, they received many subclasses in different books - this is how the famous Gloom Stalker came to be. But the relevant part here is that they can vary a lot from one another, meaning that, depending onwhich subclass your ranger has,their playstyle will change significantly.
Hunters, Horizon Walkers, Monster Slayers, Swarmkeepers, and Gloom Stalkers are more aggressive, with the latter one also having great stealth mechanics, though some of them also have utility and support. Fey Wanderers, Beast Masters, and Drakewardens can summon creatures onto the battlefield, and having an extra creature to deal with (or multiple) can affect the game’s balance a bit. Still, it also depends on the type of build your player created, so pay attention to how they fight during simple encounters so you can balance things accordingly whenever you want a harder fight to occur.
Some players get very attached to the creatures they can have. That said, Beast Masters creatures can be killed and replaced, but depending on your player, killing their pet can create a tense situation. We’d recommend homebrewing a mechanic where they have a nature spirit or something that can transform into an animal ally, so if they get killed, the player just needs to use the feature again to give them a new body. That way, you’re able to go hard on the animal companion without creating awkward situations.
4Create Perceptive Enemies
Rangers Are Good At Hiding
Between a good Dexterity bonus, possible proficiency in Stealth (which could be further improved through Deft Explorer), Pass Without Trace, and being momentarily invisible, rangers can be very stealthy - and that’s from the main class alone, without subclasses.
While letting your ranger have their moments to sneaky around is always good, if you want a particular boss to be extra challenging, you should significantly bump their Wisdom and Perception. You can also rely on magical defenses, like an Alarm spell, or use features that don’t rely on sight, like Blindsight or Truesight.
5Use Magic
They Can’t Do Much About It
Another effective way to deal with them is magic. They are proficient in saving throws that use Strength or Dexterity, but that’s about it - unless they get extra things from species, multiclassing, and whatnot.
You can use spells that poke their Constitution, Intelligence, or Charisma (they won’t have proficiency in Wisdom saving throws, but it can still be a good bonus since it’s their spellcasting ability). They also don’t have things such as Counterspell orDispel Magic,so they won’t stop your spells - someone else in the party might, though, so be careful anyway.
