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[Ranger] Storm Speaker Archetype
🕑 Added 2022-09-26 14:02:00 +0000 UTCI struggled with designing this subclass for a long time because many of my ideas were already implemented in other subclasses. I nearly scrapped it, but I perservered and finally found something unique and interesting.
Storm Speaker Design
This ranger is designed around positioning: bringing your enemies close together to benefits you and your allies. All features are built around this philosophy and the Storm Speaker will shine in the right hands.
Storm Speaker Features Overview
- Storm Speaker Magic - The spells offered all relate to the design goal: thunderwave, gust of wind, and control water can push enemies around the battlefield; call lightning summons a storm and targets enemies clustered together.
- Stormborn - At 3rd level, the ranger gains some flavor/utility. Thaumaturgy is a must because of its dominating presence, especially its "make your voice loud" choice appropriate to a Storm Speaker. The other feature removes disadvantage caused by storms, which is required for a ranger who deals in storms.
- Voice of Thunder - Also at 3rd level, the Voice of Thunder grants the ranger the option of extra damage (standard) or pushing. The push is part of the mobility setup and will help allies either catch them in area of effect spells or escape grapples. This feature in particular favors dual-wielding rangers, who can attack one more time to ensure extra damage or extra pushes (note that the push option has no limit unlike the extra damage).
- Cyclone Step - At 7th level, the ranger gains a thematically appropriate teleportation feature (as lightning do). However, in addition to teleporting, this feature also pulls enemies closer together, again part of the setup. Eventually, the ranger will be able to combo this with call lightning and the 11th level feature.
- Surge of Lightning - At 11th level, the extra damage increases slightly, but more importantly it now deals splash damage with no save. The ranger can use any enemy-moving feature at their disposal (Voice of Thunder, Cyclone Step), spells, etc) to gather enemies, then deal damage to all of them.
- Mighty Tempest - Finally, 15th level grants the Storm Speaker some great condition immunities and a reaction-based damage reduction to top it off. d10 may be less important nowadays since newer monsters tend to have higher single-hit damage output, but a d10 every turn can be quite useful. Not to mention because the redirected lightning/thunder damage automatically hits, a clever party could use theoretically split some damage to auto-hit a group of enemies... ;)
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![[Ranger] Storm Speaker Archetype](https://img10.patrefans.com/storage/12/kz/rd/563145-019e84be-9e78-701d-8782-a523b4666ba4.png)
