Best Feats for Horizon Walker Ranger 5e
by Prince Phantom
Oof, I’ve seen neutered subclasses before but this is just sad. I’ll start with the good. A few nice spells like Misty Step and Banishment, Etherealness for one turn is a neat trick, and that’s all I’ve got. Everything else is laughably bad.
A bonus action to do a tiny bit more damage when we’d rather just take a bonus action attack feat, a feature that forces us to spread damage around to get the most out of it, and the big capstone is…. Uncanny Dodge. Just, why? Why did you take a concept as cool as this and do absolutely nothing with it? This will genuinely feel like a subclassless Ranger at most tables, especially because we need to ignore some of its features to play optimally. For example:
Best Feats for Horizon Walker Ranger 5e
Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter (ASAP): Please pretend that Planar Warrior doesn’t exist. A d8 damage (if we even hit) is not worth your bonus action when Crossbow Expert exists. It’s not even worth it at 11th level when it becomes 2d8. I will also not hear any arguments about how taking Crossbow Expert requires one of our feat selections and Planar Warrior doesn’t. Planar Warrior required your subclass selection. That’s a much higher price to pay than a feat, and to be honest, you got ripped off. Oh and feel free to take Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master instead if you want to play melee, none of our features incentivize us to prefer one over the other, but ranged Rangers are more optimal.
Magic Initiate (Lv 8): A good choice if no one in your party has a familiar, but looses a lot of its luster if someone does. Picking up a few good utility cantrips also helps us feel like we can contribute more out of combat. If your party already has a familiar, you might consider…
Fey Touched/Shadow Touched (Lv 8): We do get Misty Step through our subclass, so I rate Fey and Shadow Touched pretty evenly. Silvery Barbs is what keeps Fey still competitive with Shadow, as the best 1st level spell we are getting from the latter is probably Silent Image. Take whichever fits the theme of your build better.
Alert (Lv 12): Our 11th level feature is potentially interesting, allowing us to attack up to three creatures with our action plus another with Crossbow Expert, giving us about 15-20 damage to up to 4 creatures assuming all our attacks hit with Sharpshooter. To be clear, focused damage is much better than spread damage, but this sorta functions like a mini-Fireball every turn assuming we have enough targets, which works well with going first in initiative. It allows us to either completely pick off fodder enemies or weaken stronger ones to be taken out more quickly by our allies. The other aspects of Alert are nice to have as well.
Ritual Caster (Lv 12): We should have enough Wisdom for this, and the increase in utility that the long list of rituals brings is very nice. Even better since the only utility feature we get from our subclass is the ability to… detect portals? Please, if you have played in a game where that has been vitally important let me know. I’ve yet to meet the person who has played in that campaign.
Tough/Lucky (Lv 16): Sadly, we can’t really make up for your horrible capstone with our feat selection. These two are decent defensive feats, Tough giving us more survivability and Lucky helping dodge crits and boost saving throws. Pick which is more useful to your character.
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