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"If your party refuses to use stealth"

I feel that so much.

Six classes sounds like a lot of effort to almost keep up with a Wizard.

In case anyone doesn't have a DM that allows pass without trace suprise, or doesn't have 20 encounters per adventuring day, ttb also have 2 other ranger builds that can be highly recommended.

This is one of the first character builds where I immediately thought “Yeah, you’d want to make sure your dm understood this character concept fully so that they could adjust the world to accommodate it. It sounds a lot like the dunadine rangers from LOTR

Also umbral sight makes you immune to opportunity attacks "You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach."

11:50 who needs mage armor when you've got scrolls of half-plate!

Ranger is cool as hell because it exists in a fun little middle ground. Enough skills and combat ability and roleplay implication to always be useful and powerful as long as you embrace it. I've been playing a Strength Hunter Ranger focusing mainly on my Wisdom over my Strength for a year and a half now. And my DM is so good at letting me do wild ass Ranger things with my insane Insight and Perception. We encounter things we're not entirely ready for a lot, we're a pretty reckless bunch, but the DM knows we have the understanding and RP understanding to get ourselves out of it. My favourite thing he lets me do is to 'create' vulnerabilities. Enemies with absurd AC are where I shine. That's sort of our style, some enemies just have a certain facet where they are brutally unfair but at least one of our party is equipped with the means, rp or mechanical, to cripple that facet and help us come out on top. We just have to recognise our moments. We're old friends, lotta trust and understanding at our table

First! Ranger is my favorite class, too. I especially love playing a swarmkeeper whose swarm is floating shrapnel and rock (basically an earthbender) using thrown weapon fighting and dipping into fighter for two-weapon fighting for two attacks per turn each of 1d6+5 at a range using hand axes at level 3 with access to extra damage from spellcasting, then the extra swarm keeper damage at level 4.

In addition to being optimized, I feel like this could actually also be a pretty fun character to roleplay. The massive multiclassing as well as 'crazy prepared' element of preparing tons of goodberries, scrolls, and later poisons as well at every turn gives it a kind of 'Fantasy Batman' vibe, doesn't it? Always moving stealthily, striking with incredible speed to tactically remove high-threat targets, and having half a dozen backup-plans ready in case something goes wrong...

Of course, the Gloomstalker/Hexblade/Assassin/Battlemaster levels don't exactly detract from this either. Holy Souly and Life Cleric, not so much, but there's only one level of each, and I'm sure Batman picked up some First Aid training somewhere along the way when he was traveling around the world learning all kinds of badass skills. Either way, playing this character as a grizzled, gravelly-voiced individual driven by vengeance and daddy-issues would be great fun. He'd probably lay specific plans for taking out any of the other members of the party in case they turn out to secretly be agents of the BBEG or get mind-controlled or whatnot, and get in the occasional argument with the charismatic do-gooder Paladin who leads the team...

My casual 15 level dip into other classes for my ranger.

Oh no Gator fainted upwards

What on earth did I just see. This is amazing.

I want to see this build in The Gauntlet!

I have been given the blessing from my DM, I will be playing this in dungeon of the mad mage

could you do the Flagships as a series?

When you accidentally already created most of this build in your campaign without even hearing about it before and your DM stares daggers at you every first turn of combat...

I've been reading TTB for some time, and I'm glad you covered this. I would love to play the Flagship Ranger one day, but I feel like most tables won't let it through 😂

Just an addendum! If your table allows campaign-specific backgrounds, you can get a little extra power out of this build! Customize your background and swap your background's Feature for one that gives a little more power. Pick up a whole extra spell list from the Strixhaven Student backgrounds, including two cantrips and a 1st-level spell that you get a free cast of per day and can cast normally after that. Noteworthy picks: Guidance and Mage Hand from Quandrix, allowing you a Druid or Wizard spell such as Find Familiar, Shield, Faerie Fire, Absorb Elements, or Silvery Barbs (roughly in order of what I recommend!) A familiar, if you don't have an Artificer in your party who can give one to everyone for free, lets you take goodberries to allies in combat without using your action. That's like a free Healing Word! Plus you get cool spells added like Entangle, Vortex Warp and later Haste. If you don't have a healer in the party, picking Witherbloom can be amazing for adding spells like Lesser Restoration, Revivify, Death Ward and later Greater Restoration letting you be a back alley Cleric on top of your normal spell casting, mixing nature and magic to dabble in both dealing death and bringing life. Plus, they can still get all the same picks for their 1st-level spell.

Also of note, for non-Ranger/Druids (especially Life Clerics) this background lets you pick up Goodberry and get a free cast per day. That's 10 HP and food for the whole party because you went to school!

A slightly lesser note, you can get the Tough Feat from Wildspacer for 2 extra HP per level, a solid spell list and a couple cantrips from Izzet Engineer (produce flame, shocking grasp, unseen servant if you're a ritual caster, heat metal, rope trick, conjure minor elementals, Otiluke's resilient sphere and animate objects, plus a few others.) Gruul gives you fire bolt, thunderwave, shatter and conjure animals for some good early-game area nukes and the strongest at-level summoning spell in the game. Dimir gives you mage hand, sleep, pass without trace (craziest spell in the game at current) and arcane eye. But there are also other houses in case there's something particular you want that your class can't normally get access to.

I understand they want the builds to be more accessible, but I really wish they put in a side note on backgrounds for those who are allowed to, and want to, optimize every aspect of their character. Picking a background based on the features I want also helped me make a fast decision, and from there inspired me to build interesting characters who I came to really like and enjoy playing.

(Shout out to Noble (Retainers) Feature which starts you out with 3 completely loyal retainers who serve as attendants, messengers, and a majordomo for you. They don't fight, but they can handle minor tasks, attend you, boost your status in social situations and just be fun to role play with!)

I've been enjoying this ranger for a while, and have a player in game who has loved it too.

Ranger is easily the best platform for PWT since they have a better action / concentration power balance with actually decent round 1 nova.

Having slots to chain goodberries makes this really shine though. It makes the adventures feel so much better when they can keep going through a dungeon and arn’t afraid to take incidental dmg in a fight.

Its a good build when it does things better than anything else, and while it doesn't have the raw dpr of say a shepherd druid, the combo of meaningful dpr + healing + pwt is only possible with the ranger.