Ranger Conclave: Drakewarden 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

How to Train Your Dragon is adorable. Who doesn’t love the idea of going out and making your very own dragon friend to go on adventures with? Who wouldn’t want a giant scaly cat-like lizard friend that can fly you around and roast marshmallows with their fire breath?

Drakewarden takes this concept and offers it to rangers, giving you a little baby dragon that will grow alongside your character as you level up. If you want your own dragon friend to soar around the skies with and fight back to back the forces of evil, Drakewarden is a great way to get that.

3rd Level: Draconic Gift and Drake Companion

Draconic Gift is nearly just a ribbon feature, offering you the Thaumaturgy cosmetic cantrip as a ranger spell, and a free language in addition to learning draconic. Neat!

Drake Companion is where the meat of this classe’s power comes from. Similar to the summon spells presented in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, your drake companion acts immediately after your turn. Unlike those spells, it requires you tell it what action to take with your bonus action, but unlike many other summon spells or companion features, if you go down, the drake can take any action it wants. This is a HUGE quality of life upgrade for allied companions that can lead your drake to be able to save your life or go down swinging where before it’d idly sit around and die.

Out the gate, the drake companion is a small, robust ally with functionally d10 hit dice equal to your level with a bonus 5 HP on top of that. It's quick, with a speed of 40 ft., has a reasonable bite attack, and a damage resistance you pick when you summon it. The biggest reason to go with this companion over any other is its Infused Strikes reaction, which it can use regardless of what commands you give it. This reaction empowers any creature's weapon attack that hits within 30 feet of it for a bonus d6 damage- if you miss with your weapon attacks, it can save the reaction for your fighter or rogue companion. Getting this reaction damage is going to feel akin to attaching a low level sneak attack to anyone's strikes, ranged or melee for free every round.

Getting the ability to resummon it with a 1st level or higher spell slot also makes it an incredibly consistent ally and massive pool of hit points to play with. At 3rd level, it’s got 20 hit points to play with; if all of them are expended, you still have two first level slots to possibly get it back up to full twice. It just takes an action, too, meaning even in combat, you just need to sink a single action to get back a big threatening ally you can immediately use a bonus action command to strike!

Without even scaling it up, this drake companion is going to be a massive boon to your character, but don’t worry. It gets better with age.

7th Level: Bond of Fang and Scale

Bond of Fang and Scale scales up your drake buddy, growing it in size to medium, adding a bonus d6 to its bite damage, sharing the resistance it gets, and granting it a fly speed. If you forgo the fly speed, if you’re medium or smaller, you can mount it and use its 40 ft. ground speed, really selling the tag-team fantasy.

Riding around your drake is going to likely be most effective with a ranged and melee weapon so there’s no window where you’re not making your extra attacks while using its speed to get around. If you want it to be biting, you need to let it move on its turn which technically is immediately after yours, which can make your attack action a bit awkward if you’re lacking ranged options. Rangers do tend to be great at the skirmisher fantasy, though. You shouldn’t have much issue leveraging a ranged and melee option simultaneously aboard your drake that’s empowering one of your attacks each round while also getting in for 2d6+4 damage on its own.

The fly speed only being a boon while unmounted makes it a neat constraint for exploration. It eventually upgrades to allow for mounted flight. Until then, you’ll have to use ropes and clever commands to navigate vertical spaces using this free fly speed. It encourages fighting unmounted, but while still close by. The whole of the feature is just a great upgrade that will feel very natural, and offer a wide variety of playstyles to thrive.

11th Level: Drake’s Breath

Drake’s Breath finally sells you the dragon’s breath feature you’d expect to see on a growing dragon, and in a huge way. Either you or your drake can exhale a 30 ft. cone of acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison, your choice, that deals 8d6 damage to things that fail the save, scaling up to 10d6 at 10th level. You get one use for free, and can spend 3rd level or higher slots to do it again, basically giving you Fireball-like effects.

Fireball at 11th level isn’t revolutionary, but is a major boon to a character who gets a free use of it. Being able to do it from two different potential positions as well is a major upside, and when you consider its attached to an excellent attack based character, it’ll feel like a massive upgrade to open up how you can contribute to a fight.

An important note: regardless if you or your drake releases the breath, you still have to spend your action on it. It takes your action to cause either you or your drake to breathe this way. You can still give your drake an additional command with your bonus action, but you can’t get it to use the drake’s breath with your bonus action.

15th Level: Perfected Bond

Perfected Bond is the final form of your dragon. Its bite now deals a bonus 2d6 damage, its size grows to large, it can now carry you while in flight, and it grants you a new reaction to give you or your drake mount resistance to any damage you take, which is a INCREDIBLE defensive feature.

The empowered bite is a necessary upgrade to keep your damage growing. Its a great continued quality of life upgrade, but I do wish it was an extra attack instead. Can’t have it all, I guess.

Growing the drake to large is unbelievably flavorful and incredibly cool. Getting large consistent allies is fairly rare for 5e, and this represents the final growth stage for your once smaller than you drake companion. It being able to carry you just takes the fantasy presented at 7th level and maxes its coolness factor out.

Topping it off with reflexive resistance is crazy good. You’re getting five to six uses of resistance to any damage each long rest to you or your drake as long as you’re staying within 30 feet of each other. You will start to feel like a bulwark of hit points. Because your drake can come back with just a 1st level spell slot and an action at max HP, you’re highly encouraged to reduce the damage you’re taking. Worried about the 18d8 necrotic damage? Don’t be! You can have resistance to it!

All Together

Drakewarden is an exceptionally well put together subclass. Every element of it grows and improves on itself in a way you’d expect it to while contributing to the typical ranger fantasy in meaningful ways. It gives you a massive new ally, works great alongside both ranged and melee options, encourages and rewards the skirmisher fantasy, and helps mitigate a lot of the pain points the base class tends to feel in the upper tiers. If you love dragons, want a bit more bite to your ranger, or are wanting to dip your toes into summoning, Drakewarden is a superb choice to go with.

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Ranger 5e