Ranger - D&D 2024 Class Optimisation Guide (5.5e)

Protectors of the natural world, learn how to optimise the much improved ranger class for D&D 2024.

Protectors of the natural world, rangers tend to live apart from organised society, preferring the serenity of forests, plains, mountains and other parts of nature. Where druids preserve nature primarily through magic, rangers do so primarily through martial abilities, but enhanced with some amount of magic.

Like paladins, rangers are half-casters. Their spells lack the clout of a wizard or cleric, but they can enhance their abilities to scout, explore and fight. And these are the areas where rangers tend to excel.

In fact, the 2014 ranger was largely maligned for having a variety of features that failed to provide much use in actual play. Rangers had the flavour of wilderness explorers, but in a game that tends to tackle exploration much less, these features tended to perform poorly.

The 2024 ranger tackles many of these issues by including features that are actually functional in normal play. No more favoured enemies that you might never encounter or natural explorer abilities that just aren’t needed by most tables. The 2024 ranger may not be the incredible transformation that the monk has seen, but it is at least no longer a weak option compared to the other classes.

My article below will take you through how rangers work, where their strengths and weaknesses lie as well as tactics and optimal builds you can incorporate into your character.

At a glance

Strengths

Weapon damage dealers
Supplement martial prowess with spells
Have a fair bit of out of combat utility
Make good scouts
Have some healing capabilities

Weaknesses

Not quite as tough as the other dedicated martials (especially paladins and barbarians)
They’re only half-casters so lack the magical clout of more specialised casters
Have a lot of demands on their bonus action

What’s changing for rangers in D&D 2024?

Ranger beast master — Ranger: Wizards of the Coast

The ranger gets some major changes to its features in the 2024 version, taking a lot of ideas from the optional features in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. I’ve summarised these changes below:

Weapon mastery – Rangers have weapon mastery abilities allowing them to make their attacks more tactical and useful.
Fighting styles – Rangers now have access to all the fighting style options.
Spellcasting – Rangers now get their spellcasting ability at level 1 (instead of level 2) and have an expanded spell list.
Favoured enemy – Now gives you free uses of hunter’s mark allowing you to target anyone as a favoured enemy (rather than an enemy type that you might never encounter).
Deft explorer – New feature that gives you expertise in a skill and 2 new languages known.
Roving – Another new feature that gives you exploration mechanics that will also aid you in combat by giving you an extra 10ft of movement as well as a climb and swim speed.
Expertise – You now gain another 2 skill expertise helping you keep up a bit with rogues and bards in the utility department.
Tireless – Allows you to give yourself temporary hit points and more easily recover from exhaustion.
Relentless hunter – You no longer lose concentration on hunter’s mark when you take damage.
Nature’s veil – Turn yourself invisible for a turn with a bonus action.
Precise hunter – Gain advantage on attacks against creatures marked by your hunter’s mark.
Feral senses – A slight wording tweak to this feature for clarity, but you have blindsight of 30ft.
Foe slayer – Damage from hunter’s mark now deals 1d10 damage instead of 1d6.

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Tactics

Rangers can fill a wide range of roles, without being the most proficient in any particular discipline (other than perhaps exploration). This means you’ve got skills in melee and ranged combat, spellcasting, out of combat utility, scouting, healing and various other areas. Great if you want to be something of a jack of all trades, but challenging if you want to excel in a single discipline.

Below are some tactics you can use as a ranger:

Hunter’s mark – With free uses of hunter’s mark and upgrades to it through subclass and class features, it can easily become a staple of your combat. And it is pretty good. The challenge for rangers is finding ways to balance its burden on your concentration and bonus action. To make it more effective though, the best thing to do is deal more attacks (as it deals extra damage on each hit made). Part of this comes from your extra attack at level 5, but dual wielding can also help here. By taking a weapon with the nick weapon mastery property and the dual wielder feat, you can be making 3-4 attacks per turn (depending on whether your bonus action is available). That’s 4d6 extra damage from hunter’s mark each turn instead of the usual 2d6 you’d get at level 5. You can check out my guide to hunter’s mark for more details on how to best use this spell.
Skill master – Rangers are now much better with skills gaining expertise in 3 skills by level 9. This places them more in the echelons of rogues and bards when it comes to skills. Now you can be extremely good at things like perception and stealth that rangers should always have been excellent at. With this in mind, as the party creates their characters and you determine what skills characters should have, prioritise important skills for your ranger who can become a genuine expert in some of these areas.
Hiding – At level 14, rangers can use their bonus action to become invisible for a turn. This is even better than a rogue’s hide cunning action (though kicks in at a considerably higher level) as it works automatically. Use it to gain advantage on attacks, manoeuvre out of danger and enforce disadvantage on attacks against you.
Consider grappling – Rangers can use hunter’s mark with unarmed strikes. Combining this with things like the tavern brawler origin feat, grappler feat and the unarmed fighting style can make you a highly effective grappler, especially if you lean into a strength build. This is a little harder with a ranger, but medium armor and 14 dexterity will give you sufficient AC. Check out my guide to unarmed strikes for more info on how this all works.
Quick – Rangers are faster than most classes. Use your ranger to get places faster. In combat, if you need to close down enemy wizards or archers, a ranger is a decent option for this. On top of that, being able to easily climb and swim adds to their ability to move around easily.
Backup healer – Rangers aren’t proper healers, but they do have some healing spells in their repertoire. I’d consider having a healing spell on standby in case you need to recover an ally in the heat of battle.
Choose your spells wisely – Rangers aren’t blessed with a huge range of spells so you’ll need to be careful how you use them. You can check out my ranger spell guide for more advice on what spells to choose.
Cantrips or weapon attacks – For your fighting style, you can choose to take an option called druidic warrior which lets you take 2 cantrips. The question is, which is better for dealing damage, cantrips or weapons? I’ll assume you’ll be wanting to use hunter’s mark quite often so that will mean needing a cantrip that requires a spell attack roll. The highest damage form of this on the druid’s spell list is poison spray (1d12 damage increasing to 4d12). You can see how average damage shifts in the table below as extra attacks and extra cantrip damage come into play. What is very clear is that cantrips, with just a single attack roll, perform more poorly than weapon attacks, particularly with hunter’s mark involved. Of course, if you can get eldritch blast somehow (perhaps with a level dip in warlock), that becomes a different story.

Level	Greatsword	Dual wielding scimitars	Poison spray
1	13.5	20	10
5	29	33	16.5
11	31	36	23
17	31	36	29.5
20	35	42	31.5

When dual wielding, I’ve assumed using the nick weapon mastery property and two weapon fighting feat. I’ve not included the dual wielder feat for another attack with your bonus action as this is difficult to rely on for a ranger with competing needs for their bonus action, particularly with hunter’s mark. I’ve also assumed a fairly expected growth in ability scores focused on whichever score will be most useful to the weapon being used.

Optimising a ranger

ranger DnD 2024 — Ranger: Wizards of the Coast

Rangers are primarily martial warriors, but need to mix combat prowess with spellcasting acumen and a large measure of skilfulness. This can lead to a bit of strain on your character options, making your build a little extra important.

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. Building for dexterity tends to be easier to make an optimal build as it prevents you sacrificing other ability scores to squeeze strength in.
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. However, there are features, especially in the ranger subclasses, that do rely on your wisdom, particularly if you opt for the fey wanderer or gloom stalker.
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. Of all the spellcasting classes, rangers are some of the more likely to be on the front lines and it’ll be a rare party that has enough martials to always let you just whip out a bow and shoot from the back. Having said that, this is probably the ability score to cut back on if you intend to go for a strength build.
Strength: You can opt for a strength build if you want. But you also can’t just dump dexterity as the best armor you can get is medium so you’ll want a 14 in dexterity even on a strength build.

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	8	12
Dexterity	15	15
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	15	14
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

I’d consider the following when picking a species for a ranger:

Resilience: Rangers have decent resilience, but it’s probably on the lower end for the martial classes. Boosting this will help you survive toe to toe with enemies when needed.
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 too, so this can give you a bit more flexibility. One thing to be aware of here is that cantrip damager tends to be weaker than what you can do with weapon attacks (as shown previously).
Damage dealing: A large part about being a ranger is focusing on a single target to take them down quickly. Traits that can enhance the damage you deal will help here.
Utility class: Rangers are pretty great at skills with the option for expertise. While not so great at face skills, anything to do with sneaking, scouting or exploration works nicely for you.

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 saves you wasting spells slots and investing in healing spells.
Dwarf (2024): A good choice if you want to play a melee ranger. You’ll get an extra hit point per level, 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. 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.

Backgrounds

Your background will give you an origin feat, ability score increases and skill and tool proficiencies.

The most important thing though, is to ensure you have the right ability score improvements (usually dexterity, wisdom and constitution).

Below I’ve included the backgrounds that work well for a ranger.

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

Largely your choice here will depend on your build. Farmer works well for a strength build, criminal is good for a scout, soldier is best for pure damage, while guide suits a more spellcasting focus. You could even go for sailor if you want to go for an unarmed build.

Choosing your subclass

Which subclass you choose comes down to how you want to play and the kind of ranger you want to embody. Below you can find my guides for each of the ranger subclasses. Or check out my ranger subclass guide.

Beast master

These rangers have a deep connection and affinity with the creatures of the animal kingdom. Their bond is so great with these beasts, that they can summon a particularly powerful animal to become their primal companion. Beast masters nurture and train these creatures, helping them develop and grow.

Beast master

Fey wanderer

Not all rangers are the lonely, brooding types that skulk around forests and mountains, staying out of sight and out of mind. Some rangers are enigmatic individuals with a cool charisma and a certain mystical charm about them. Fey wanderers exude these characteristics and more.

Fey wanderer

Gloom stalker

The antithesis of the fey wanderer, gloom stalkers draw their magic from the shadowy mirror plane known as the Shadowfell. Wreathed in darkness and shadow magic, these rangers are experts at ambushing their targets, stalking them in the dark, then pouncing on them with deadly precision.

Gloom stalker

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.

Hunter

Winter walker

Rangers that dwell in frigid lands, becoming resistant to the cold while drawing upon it’s powers.

Winter walker

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. When you hit level 19 you can pick up an epic boon feat too. You can pick up additional epic boons each time you level up beyond level 20 too.

I’d suggest the following feats for a ranger:

Origin feats

Lucky – With things like stealth and slightly higher damage attack rolls, landing these can often be important. Lucky will help you succeed on important rolls
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 of you want to help out the whole party.
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, especially if you don’t have a rogue or bard in the party. You could grab acrobatics over athletics this way. And maybe even grab sleight of hand so you can fill in for the lack of a rogue.
Tough – If you want to play a melee ranger, or sacrificed your constitution a bit when it came to ability scores, then this can help toughen you up a bit.

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 though.
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. This is more useful when playing with DMs that provide a lot of cover.
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 or acrobatics.
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. Useful as you may be targeted more than most if you’re on the front lines. Just be aware that concentration with hunter’s mark stops being an issue at level 13 with your ranger feature at that level.

Fighting style feats

Your options here are mainly going to depend on how you want to approach fighting. Most rangers will likely want to be shooting, in which case, take the archery fighting style, or maximising damage by dual wielding with the two weapon fighting style.

Other fighting styles are perfectly viable depending on your build though. You can check out my full guide to fighting style feats for more advice.

Epic boon feats

Boon of combat prowess – More accurate attacks is handy for a melee warrior.
Boon of dimensional travel – Teleport every turn to get where you need to be in combat.
Boon of energy resistance – 2 damage resistances and the opportunity to turn damage back on your aggressor can be decent, especially if you can tailor it to the next day’s enemies.
Boon of fate – Turn failed d20 tests into successes.
Boon of fortitude – More resilience for a martial class is handy.
Boon of recovery – Survive longer by restoring hit points (including when you get knocked to 0hp).

Weapons

The weapons you choose will depend largely on how you want to fight and what weapon mastery properties you want to be using. However, rangers tend to be best with the following types of weapons:

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 though, I’d suggest ignoring dual wielder and take nick so your bonus action is free.
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. You could also consider daggers if you’d rather throw using your dexterity and have the nick property for that extra attack.

Approaches like sword and shield (for extra protection), two-handed weapons (for greater damage per hit) or unarmed fighting (for grappling) are viable for rangers, but harder to build for. Often, classes like fighters, paladins and barbarians are able to outperform with these weapon types.

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

Most rangers will likely want to focus on dexterity, in which case, studded leather is your best option.

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 may want to just go for a dexterity build.

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

Ranger builds

Circle of stars druid — Centaur ranger: Wizards of the Coast

There are a bunch of different builds you could go for with a ranger. I’ve given a few ideas below you can use for your character. Feel free to adapt these where it fits for your character, there’s no single way to create a top build for your character.