Hunter Ranger: D&D 2024 (5.5e) Optimisation Guide

Hunt your prey with deadly precision with this warrior subclass for the ranger, updated for D&D 2024.

What is the hunter?

Deadly warriors capable of striking with devastating precision. Hunters may hunt prey, but they do so in order to protect and preserve the natural world. This might be killing monsters that threaten to maim, poachers and slave traders that seek to enslave or any other myriad of dangers that threaten the planes of existence.

While gloom stalkers and fey wanderers lean into the magical elements of a ranger and beast masters enlist the aid of an animal companion, hunters rely primarily on their own martial skill. They possess enhanced attacks and defensive capabilities making them hit harder and survive longer in combat. Hunters are combat specialists and one of your best options for melee rangers too.

Aaragorn most closely resembles a hunter with his keen tracking skills, wilderness survival and a focus on weapon combat over spellcasting. You could also look to Robin Hood as a stereotypical example of this subclass.

Hunters were originally released in the 2014 Player’s Handbook and in I’m tackling the updated version in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. With major changes to the ranger class and some other improvements to this subclass, this guide will take you through everything you should consider when building a hunter character.

At a glance

Half caster, half martial class
Solid utility class that leans into the exploration elements of the game
The most warrior-like ranger that hits harder and survives better than any other ranger

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

Hunters don’t change much from their 2014 counterparts, but they do get the following updates:

Hunter’s prey and defensive tactics now give you less options, but you can change them with a rest.
You get a brand new feature at 3rd level called hunter’s lore, allowing you to know the resistances, vulnerabilities and immunities of any creature marked by your hunter’s mark.

Related articles

Hunter features

Hunter’s lore – Lv3

How it works

You know the resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities of any creature marked by your hunter’s mark.

Tactics

Another reason to have an active hunter’s mark placed on your enemies. And another reason to apply this to big, nasty enemies that might benefit more from these types of things.

Hunter’s prey – Lv3

How it works

Choose one of the following options to enhance your attacks. You can change your choice each rest:

Colossus slayer – Once per turn, deal an extra d8 damage from a weapon attack to a creature that’s already taken damage.
Horde breaker – Make another weapon attack against a creature next to the one just attacked.

Tactics

Colossus slayer will average an extra 4.5 damage per turn whereas horde breaker will average something like an extra 7.5 damage per turn (assuming a d8 weapon with +3 to damage). This obviously goes higher as you improve your dexterity/strength.
This would make horde breaker seem better, however, colossus slayer is easier to land. It’s not hard to find a creature that’s taken damage (you can even do it yourself with your first attack). Horde breaker relies not only on adjacent enemies, but means spreading your damage between targets (which isn’t usually optimal) and you still have to make a subsequent weapon attack, which could miss. This makes choosing between these features tricky, but if you expect to have easy advantage and to be fighting lots of enemies (especially in small spaces), go for horde breaker. Otherwise, I’d go for colossus slayer.

Defensive tactics – Lv7

How it works

Choose one of the following options to improve your defense. You can change your choice each rest:

Escape the horde – Opportunity attacks have disadvantage against you.
Multiattack defense – When a creature hits you with an attack roll, they have disadvantage on all other attack rolls against you this turn.

Tactics

Escape the horde feels like it won’t happen that often. If you’re a ranged build, you shouldn’t have to move out of melee range all that often. If you’re a melee build, you should be built to not need to do this that often.
This leaves multiattack defense which feels like it’ll happen enough to be useful at mid to higher levels. By level 7, you should be getting reasonable use out of this to make it your go to option.

Superior hunter’s prey – Lv11

How it works

Apply damage from hunter’s mark to another nearby creature as well. This is basically just another reason to have a continuous use of hunter’s mark being used.

Superior hunter’s defense – Lv15

How it works

Use a reaction to become resistant to the damage type used against you until the end of the current turn.

Tactics

Resistance is great and many damage types should be repeated by the same group of enemies so this feels like a worthwhile use of your reaction (even just for one attack).
If you are hit by something rare that doesn’t seem common among the enemies you’re fighting, you may not want to bother resisting that (unless the damage is really high). Otherwise, just keep using that reaction to protect yourself. Halving damage against you is better than most reactions can accomplish, including opportunity attacks.

Building a hunter

Hunters are at their best when you’re dealing as much damage as possible. For this reason, you want to turn them into a bit of a warrior build with some spellcasting and skills to supplement this.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Dexterity: You’ll need this for ranged attacks, a decent AC and to have strong stealth skills. You can also opt for finesse weapons in melee if you want to avoid investing in strength altogether.
Wisdom: The effectiveness of your spells rely on this so needs some investment. Having said that, if you intend to mainly use hunter’s mark and other spells where your spellcasting ability doesn’t matter too much, you might get away without investing in this too much on a hunter, though you may have to suffer with a poorer perception as a result.
Constitution: You’ll need the resilience from this as a potential frontline warrior. It’ll also help you maintain concentration on the likes of hunter’s mark. And you’re likely to be making a lot of concentration saving throws, especially if you’re jumping headlong into melee combat.
Strength: You can opt for a strength build if you want. Hunters are probably the best ranger subclass to do this with but it does mean an awkward spread of ability scores to invest in as you can’t just dump dexterity.

Options to avoid

Intelligence: Of little worth to a ranger.
Charisma: Unfortunately, you don’t have enough space to invest in charisma and face skills, so should leave this to others.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	10	12
Dexterity	15	15
Constitution	15	14
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	14	13
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: Acrobatics will often be better for a ranger with their bigger focus on dexterity, but isn’t an option as standard. Athletics is a decent option though, especially if playing a strength build.
Perception: Crucial skill for a scout and highly used.
Stealth: Strong option for a scout and a class relied on for skills.
Insight: A good skill for social situations. You may pick up on things your companions don’t.
Investigation: Great option for an exploration class.

Options to avoid

Survival: It feels like if anyone should have this, it’s a ranger. The problem is it just comes up too rarely to be of much use.
Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much value.
Nature: Another rarely used skill.

Species/race

There are a few things to consider when choosing a species for a hunter:

Resilience: Hunters, more than any other ranger subclass, are good at mixing it as frontline martials. You’re not as tough as a barbarian or a paladin though so resilience traits can be really handy.
Innate spellcasting: As a spellcaster, you can repeat cast spells and have the wisdom to back this up. Rangers tend to have a limited repertoire of spells, so enhancing this tends to be a good option.
Damage dealing: Hunters are primarily about dealing weapon damage. The more your species helps with this the better.
Utility class: Rangers are something of a utility class. Species that can aid this are usually a good option.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness. For celestial revelation, I’d lean on inner radiance for the extra damage. Necrotic shroud requires decent charisma which you’ll struggle for. However, temporary flight is always useful. Expect to use this for accessing hard to reach places and enemies or to launch projectiles from the safety of the skies. A bit of healing is a decent emergency option too.
Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get much in the way of AoE damage as a ranger, especially with the option of being a frontline martial. This makes a Dragonborn’s breath weapon a useful tool. You can use it in place of just one of your attacks too. Temporary flight again lets you get to hard to reach enemies. Plus there’s a resistance for better durability.
Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a frontline warrior. And for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
Goliath (2024): Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. For a hunter, the durability of the stone giants, knocking enemies prone with hill giant and extra damage from fire giants are all great options.
Human (2024): A great option if you want to lean more into the utility aspects of a ranger. An extra skill and a feat will help here, while a regular supply of heroic inspiration is always useful.

Options to avoid

Any race can work well for a hunter so there are no bad options here.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Primarily, you want to focus on increasing key ability scores (mainly dexterity and constitution, but wisdom is also important, and strength can be too) with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for a hunter:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Criminal	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Alert	Sleight of hand, stealth	Thieves tools
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guide	Dexterity, constitution, wisdom	Magic initiate (druid)	Stealth, survival	Cartographer’s tools
Sage	Constitution, intelligence, wisdom	Magic initiate (wizard)	Arcana, history	Calligrapher’s tools
Sailor	Strength, dexterity, wisdom	Tavern brawler	Acrobatics, perception	Navigator’s tools
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	One kind of gaming set

Criminal, farmer and soldier probably lean best into what you want from a hunter with origin feats and ability scores that work well with the more combative nature of the subclass.

Feats

At 1st level, you can grab an origin feat through your background and from level 4, you can pick up a general feat (or another origin feat if you want) instead of an ability score increase.

General feats are all half feats now as they give an ability score increase and the traits of a feat. But you’ll need to give up the +2 from a standard ability score increase to get them.

Below are some feats I’d recommend for a hunter:

Origin feats

Alert – Going early in combat is always handy to get some damage in before your enemies do.
Lucky – More ways to be reliable at important rolls is universally beneficial.
Magic initiate – Grab some more spells, including a couple of cantrips. Things like minor illusion and guidance are good for a stealthy, utility class while something like thunderclap and thunderwave are great for melee combat. You should have the wisdom to back these spells up too.
Musician – A universally great feat for dishing out heroic inspiration. Great for altruistic rangers. Plus you can ensure you have some heroic inspiration available too.
Savage attacker – Decent enough damage dealing feat to make your attacks a little more powerful.
Skilled – You may find you need a lot of skill proficiencies as subterfuge tends to require a lot of skill proficiencies. You could grab acrobatics over athletics this way too. And maybe even grab sleight of hand so you can work as a backup rogue.
Tough – Hunters are the most combat-focused of the ranger subclasses, but you’re not as tough as some other martials. This will help here by giving you more HP.

General feats

Defensive duelist – Better AC at the expense of your reaction is a strong option if you’re wielding a finesse melee weapon. Less good if you expect to be shooting a bow a lot. If you intend to play at a high level, this will also conflict with superior Hunter’s defense so this is a low to mid level feat only.
Fey-touched – Misty step is great for escaping danger as well as getting into it and even for exploration too; all things you’re likely to get involved in as a ranger. You get another spell too, just make sure you go for the wisdom increase.
Great weapon master – Excellent option for a strength build if you just want to deal more damage. You’ll get to land extra attacks occasionally with your bonus action too, though that can be hard to balance with your other bonus action demands.
Inspiring leader – Great for granting temporary hit points to the party. Go for the wisdom increase to make this work best.
Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
Sentinel – Good for a melee ranger, especially if you’re fighting with an ally.
Shadow-touched – Invisibility is great for a stealthy class plus you get an extra spell. Make sure you increase your wisdom for this.
Sharpshooter – Great for a primarily ranged ranger.
Skill expert – Great for becoming more of a skill expert. Plus you can get proficiency (and even expertise) in a skill you don’t normally have access to, like sleight of hand.
War caster – You’re mainly here for improved concentration (important for maintaining hunter’s mark and some of your other spells), which is enough to be honest.

Weapons

The weapons you choose will depend largely on how you want to fight and what weapon mastery properties you want to be using:

Pure damage: Go for two-handed weapons like a greatsword, greataxe, glaive, halberd or maul. Just be aware you’ll need to go for a strength build of you want to do this which can be a little more challenging.
Sword and shield: If you want to go heavier on defense, you’ll need a one handed weapon like a longsword, battleaxe, morningstar or warhammer. If you’re going with a finesse build, rapiers, scimitars and shortswords can all work instead.
Two weapon fighting: If you want to fight with two weapons for the extra offhand attack, you’ll need to use light weapons. Handaxes, shortswords and scimitars are best for this. To make this work best, you’ll want to invest in things like two weapon fighting, dual wielder and/or the nick weapon mastery property. With so many demands on your bonus action, I’d suggest ignoring dual wielder and take nick so your bonus action is free. Take two weapon fighting to increase your damage output a bit too.
Ranged: A longbow is likely your best option here. Crossbows need reloading which is no good once you get an extra attack (unless you take crossbow expert). If you’re strength based, you could go with thrown weapons like a trident or handaxes if you want to dual wield or take a shield.

If you want some help choosing a weapon mastery property, you can check out my weapon mastery guide to work out how best to utilise these properties.

Armor

If you’re a strength build, go for 14 dexterity and take medium armor. Half plate is tempting as it gives the best AC, but disadvantage on stealth checks is poor for a subclass so reliant on stealth. That means a breast plate is your best option for medium armor. Having said that, if you want to be stealthy, you should probably just go for a dex build and take light armor (studded leather is best).

If you want some extra protection, a shield is a good option but it will diminish your damage output.