Ranger Conclave: Monster Slayer 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Lightning crackles outside the candle lit window, elaborately adorned with a stained glass finish depicting a holy relic. In the rain below, a monstrous werewolf flips a carriage aside as it passes under the tower, releasing the horrified horses into the night while the passengers scream in fear. A boot breaks the window open from the inside, raining shards of glass down atop the beast who turns up to face the silver bolt raining from the slayer’s crossbow descending upon it.

Monster Slayers are a classic archetype; they’re armed to the teeth with tools for fighting mythical beasts that the unprepared could never approach. In D&D, the ranger class certainly is the perfect fit for them with their mix of magic and favored enemy mechanics highlighting them as forces of the natural world who thrive at killing the unnatural. The Monster Slayer subclass can deliver this fantasy, but there are some small hiccups that may encourage players looking for this fantasy to go with other generic conclaves like Gloom Stalker or Hunter instead.

3rd Level: Monster Slayer Magic, Hunter’s Sense, and Slayer’s Prey

Monster Slayer’s Magic offers you a free spell at each spell level as you earn the slots. You start with Protection from Evil and Good, a pretty solid utility spell that is great to get for free as you won’t have the “feels bads” as often when you would have prepared it for an encounter that wasn’t against any creatures it could affect. Having a tool to deal with possession and charms and what not for this cheap does definitely fit the monster hunter vibe, too.

Hunter’s Sense is… weird. It's about as meta as a feature can get, but in a way that kind of makes sense for a monster slayer. The problem ultimately with the feature is damage resistances tend to become readily apparent, while their immunities and vulnerabilities tend to be rare to non-existent. Monsters in 5th edition would benefit greatly from more vulnerabilities, but seeing as less than a handful in all the printed books have this, taking advantage of it is going to be challenging. Hunter’s Sense will often feel like a trap, something you end up wasting an action on when a fight starts. That’s not a great place to be.

Slayer’s Prey is the damage bump you get at 3rd like most ranger subclasses. You spend a bonus action and functionally get a free Hunter's Mark on it that does stack with Hunter’s Mark, which is kind of cool. It still only deals the damage once each turn, which makes the d6 damage feel pretty mediocre, and because it takes the same action economy to set up as Hunter’s Mark, likely isn’t something you’re starting with every fight, but instead something that comes down round two on the massive hulk of HP you’re trying to stack up damage on.

5th-7th Level: Zone of Truth and Supernatural Defense

Zone of Truth is a spell I have a soft spot for, and on Monster Slayers, it's PERFECT. I can’t think of a 2nd level spell I’d want more to interrogate the monsters with than this. It doesn’t freely give you the answers, but puts your mark in a spot where they either answer honestly or stay silent, often incurring wrath. Zone of Truth is a fantastic world exploration tool to mess around with, I highly recommend it. It is a massive point for the subclass to me, but if you don’t love this fairly mediocre spell as much as I do, I get it.

Supernatural Defense comes at 7th level, empowering your Slayer’s Prey ability in an interesting way; you get a d6 bonus to saves against their abilities and spells, and a d6 to escape grapples. Neat! I don’t think this feature is particularly potent, but it is a different kind of defensive feature than I’m used to seeing, and does enough at a cheap enough cost that it’ll consistently benefit you in a way you’d want.

9th-11th Level: Magic Circle and Magic-User’s Nemesis

Magic Circle, while a noble effort in creating the occult magical fantasy come to life on the character sheet, is ultimately an underwhelming spell, especially for a 9th level character. It is a flavor home run, giving you a tool to imprison extraplanar monstrosities, but with the cast time of a minute and it not being a perfectly safe catch all to most of these creature type’s attacks and abilities, I just don’t see it being something you’d regularly cast.

Magic User’s Nemesis basically is Counterspell on short rest. That can either be a backbreaking ability critical to your campaign, or the kind of feature you’re using once every adventure and not being too thrilled about it. The range of 60 feet is fairly limiting as well, and it being based on your Wisdom will have the problems of lower spell save DCs rangers tend to have given that Wisdom isn’t the first ability score you’re looking to max out.

It has a ton of potential power, as shutting down a Meteor Swarm before it can happen is a huge boon just for your reaction, but some tables just don’t use that many spells on monsters, and others yet use so many once a short rest just isn’t enough.

13th-17th Level: Banishment, Hold Monster, and Slayer’s Counter

Banishment is a spell you’ll basically always be glad you have access to a few times a campaign. Being able to send something to the shadow realms is a big plus, and even when it costs you a 4th level slot (which is a lot higher a price on a half caster than full) and your spell save DC probably isn’t matching your full caster buddies, any extra casts of a spell that can warp and encounter by removing a threat is pretty great.

Hold Monster, like Banishment, is a save or die that can radically turn the tides of a fight. Paralyzing a target is often akin to a death sentence, as all subsequent hits while their paralyzed crit, and as a character making multiple attacks a round, you can directly benefit from this cast in a way many of the full casters that more commonly use this can’t. Plus, something about pointing at the monster and forcing it to freeze while maintaining intense eye contact is just very on theme to me.

Slayer’s Counter rounds out the class with a new reaction you can weaponize against anything that forces you to make a save. What’s particularly notable is both the condition triggering the attack reaction and the lack of limitations placed on the attack itself. Effects like a dragon’s Frightful Presence trigger this. Some monsters just passively cause creatures nearby to make saves, and when that to you, you get a free reaction attack. In addition, because it doesn’t specify melee weapon attack like many similar features do, you can fire off bow shots or crossbow bolts at anything that forces you to make any kind of save as long as its within shooting distance.

Most upper CR creatures of any notable merit are going to involve some kind of save, making this a particularly interesting ability in the upper tiers that leans you towards specializing at killing one single terrifying threat while the masses that are mainly just attack rolls are other people’s problems.

All Together

Hunter’s Sense and Slayer’s Prey definitely feel to me weak out the gate. Supernatural Defense is a pretty interesting defense upgrade, though, as is Magic-User’s Nemesis and eventually Slayer’s Counter. The spell selection on average is solid, providing you the kind of tools you’d expect a character with a toolbox for handling various monstrous threats with ease, and while Magic Circle may be a bit underwhelming, it's supported by enough other excellent options I think it’ll come to life fairly well.

My main pain point of the option is their 3rd level features. Slayer’s Prey scaling into Supernatural Defense is neat and all, but its innate competition with Hunter’s Mark makes me question if I’d even want to be using it till 7, and even then it’d only be something I’d regularly bust out after marking the dangerous threat still, or when I know it's going to force me to make saves. If it is forcing me to make saves, Protection from Good and Evil seems like it covers a large swath of the effect, too, making it so even within its own subclass there is a tension pulling at the abilities, making them not work better together, but instead compete with each other and leave out a lot of power potential.

I think you can get a Monster Hunter to come together well enough with this subclass, especially if you can get it to level 15. At tables where Magic-User’s Nemesis shines, you’ll probably feel like a badass. I just wish there was a more dynamic and interesting way to handle Hunter’s Sense that could be more useful, and for Slayer’s Prey to be a bit more interesting of a mechanic out the gate that didn’t overlap so much with common ranger spells.

If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.

The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.