Best Feats for Monster Slayer Ranger 5e
by Prince Phantom
How Xanathar’s managed to contain both the best Ranger subclass and also the two worst is a conundrum I will never solve. The Monster Slayer is a confused, jumbled up mess of abilities that fail to have any cohesion. None of the abilities build off of each other in meaningful ways, some are just outright bad and encourage sun-optimal play, and Hunter’s Sense would be a cool ability in any other TTRPG where vulnerabilities actually ever come up.
This leaves us with a subclass that sorta cares about focused DPR and also sorta cares about fighting spellcasters, and it ends up being bad at both of those things. Much like Horizon Walker, this will feel like a subclassless ranger most of the time, so picking out feats that are uniquely good for this is not going to be easy.
Best Feats for Monster Slayer Ranger 5e
Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter (ASAP): Please pretend Slayer’s Prey doesn’t exist in most combats. It will only be good at higher levels if you are fighting a spellcaster or another type of creature that forces saves a lot like a Beholder. For this to deal more damage in a fight than attacking with Crossbow Expert instead that turn, you would need to attack the same target 5-6 rounds in a row. Please do your best to recall the last time you did that in an actual game. We take Sharpshooter because obviously we do, we want to actually contribute somehow. Our features do work slightly better at range so I’d go for these over a heavy weapon build.
War Caster (Lv 8): We have good concentration spells at every spell level that we want to have up during most combats. As a half caster, we don’t have the spare slots to be recasting them every turn, and any turn we spend setting up a spell is a turn we don’t shoot our enemies in the face 3 times with Sharpshooter. Melee builds will appreciate the other two bullet points more, but they might still come up depending on your build for ranged characters.
Resilient (Lv 8): Because of the nature of what kinds of creatures force Wisdom saves, there’s a good chance that is probably a boss monster that we’ve sacrificed some overall damage to our our Slayer’s Prey on to gain the benefit of Supernatural Defense. This means we will probably be adding a d6 to a lot of our Wisdom saves. Constitution saves, in contrast, come from pretty much any type of enemy, sometimes even more often from fodder. This means we will get that d6 on Constitution saves less frequently. For this reason as well as protecting our concentration, I’d take this for Constitution over Wisdom.
Fey Touched (Lv 8): No real synergies or reasons here beyond this just being a really good feat. Misty Step and Silvery Barbs both fill holes in our spell list, and they are some of the best spells at filling those holes. Silvery Barbs is especially useful as some Rangers may find themselves not having much use for their 1st level slots beyond Goodberry at later levels.
Ritual Caster (Lv 12): We have the Wisdom necessary, so why not increase our utility tenfold? Grab an Unseen Servant, familiar and Phantom Steed and make the Wizard wonder when we snuck a peek at their spellbook.
Tough/Lucky (Lv 16): Yep, literally no feats synergize with our abilities. We are already filling out our sheet with filler feats that are just generically good for all characters. Generally I’d take Lucky over Tough, but if you find yourself going down a lot, the extra hp might be necessary.
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