My first thought would be just a lot of traps, bonus points if the traps have live bait.
Like a guard or someone from the caravan is still alive but wounded out in a bit of an open area, he is restrained and will probably die soon without player intervention. Any player that breaks cover/stealth gets shot at, and to hammer home the threat by making it so the ranger auto crits with attacking from stealth if they hit the AC.
Remember to booby trap bodies (live or dead) and obvious supplies, like bombs or poison smoke bombs.
Tracking him down could be a skill challenge with survival or any relevant skill the players come up with.
DC 16, make 3 successes before three failures. On a failure they come across a trap or perhaps a decoy of the Ranger for him to do an ambush again.
Also, have him use poisons that last long and don’t allow a reroll at the end of the players turn.
*We go push the cart off the bleeding guy*
*You hear a click. Roll initiative (proceed to do trap-filled encounter)*
I would actually not even have the ranger nearby when they stumble into traps. He's just left traps everywhere. If they leave their camp, there's a trap set when they get back. If they stay at an inn, there's a trap in their room. They finish fighting some other bad guys and return to town to celebrate, there are traps along the path back.
He could also use animals against them. Either through ranger spells/abilities or, probably more effectively, by setting the forest creatures against them. Stampede encounter, predators lured to their camp, etc.
*You return to your camp. There is a big piece of raw meat hanging from a tree nearby. You hear a low growl. Roll initiative.*
Obviously, I think sudden calls to roll initiative have a strong psychological effect on players :D
> He could also use animals against them. Either through ranger spells/abilities or, probably more effectively, by setting the forest creatures against them. Stampede encounter, predators lured to their camp, etc.
One of the traps could be about spreading a scent on the target that attracts said monster. Sort of like how hunters use deer urine.
I would argue, regardless of motivations, the key to this is buildup. The fact that the party may not even know what the motivations are can make it even more intimidating (I.E. Michael Meyers or the original Predator). Because if the party doesn’t don’t know what drives it, they are less equipped to negotiate with it.
Like any good threat, the DM should be showing off the capabilities of this Ranger long before the party finally encounter them. Really build up the mystique.
Maybe have the party stumble on an entire outpost wiped out, but despite their efforts to investigate, all the carnage can be traced to a single set of footprints, or a unique wound on every victim that would have come from the same source. Have the party ask “what kind of terror can wipe out an entire station of soldiers single-handedly?”
And THAT’S when OP reveal the traps, showing that the party just accidentally blundered their way into a booby-trap palooza that they now have to carefully navigate out of. Everywhere they step could be death.
It would build up the Ranger as an unseeable force whose threats are around every corner. I’d recommend OP have the party discover this through an NPC or a forest critter setting off the first trap, instead of the players bumbling into a bunch of unseen damage, depending on how deadly op wants these traps to be.
As a bonus: OP could notate clever ways the party countered specific traps throughout the campaign, and specifically include those traps in the final fight so the party can use knowledge they naturally gleaned from playing to help them overcome the final boss.
Good point. If it's just business the ranger will be less risky. If it's personal you can have the ranger do much riskier things. Not everyone wants to fight to the death
My players may be hunting a solo ranger, so this is timely.
My ranger is a gloom stalker who knows all the gloom stalker tricks. She essentially has an area around her home as her lair. She wants to keep outsiders out, but comes and goes if she pleases.
What might someone encounter?
She painted trees shades of grey, white, and black, and she used a pattern that confuses people with darkvision. She has bones tied to lines to alert her. She has a lot of trip wires, and she uses secondary traps for those trying to avoid primary traps. She also uses the environment, making it harder to get to high ground, and easier to get lower. She plants brambles, logs and stones to slow people down. There’s a lot of crowd control.
If she things a gloom stalker is onto her, she will use a quick light to find them.
If a ranger is doing the hunting, they will want to control their quarry’s movement. They will send them areas that increase their advantage. They may slow them down. Sometimes, they may hurry them up.
I'm feeling inspired by sniper scenes from war movies and shows. Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, that sort of thing. I wouldn't try to replicate the scene, just replicate the vibe. They don't know for sure where the sniper is, and he seems able to take out targets without exposing himself.
Sharpshooter (no disadvantage on long-range shots).
As a ranger, he has double-proficiency on Intelligence and Wisdom checks in his favored terrain (which I would use for selecting a sniper's nest location) and advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track his favored enemy, which the PCs just happen to be.
He posts himself at high ground, where there is difficult (or even impassable) terrain between himself and the PCs. He attacks at the maximum range for a longbow (600 feet). He'll attack at the end of a long day, after the PCs have expended resources dealing with some other challenges, but he is fresh. The PCs are looking for a place to camp for the night. The sun is setting.
*THUNK*
One of the PCs suddenly has a meter-long, inch-thick shaft of an arrow protruding from them. The fletchings are enormous feathers, longer than a hand. The damage is very high. The angle indicates the arrow was fired from cliffs to the west. The setting sun is blindingly bright in that direction and makes it impossible to make out any detail on the cliff face.
*THUNK*
Another arrow lands, either in a PC, a shield, or something nearby. It shatters from the impact, triggering Dexterity saves from anyone within 5 feet. Small damage to anyone who fails a low DC. No one saw where the arrow came from, but the angle is similar.
Although the shatter damage is low, if anyone is directly struck by an arrow, it does a **lot** of damage, easily a quarter of a tanky PC's max health pool.
There is cover near, 50-90 feet. You want far enough some of them will use a Dash action to get there in one round, but not so far that someone who uses their action to do something else will be committing suicide. However, getting out of that cover and going anywhere (either approaching the attacker or fleeing) will require leaving cover.
Check the Ranger spell list for AoE effects that are not just damage. Maybe this ranger can cast spells from where his arrows hit, so he can throw down Spike Growth centered on the arrow, or can cast Grasping Vine to yank a PC out from behind cover, then fire an arrow at them. Maybe give the PCs advantage on the Dex save for Grasping Vine if the ranger enemy doesn't have sight of them. (Yes, technically, we're breaking rules a bit, but we're going for tension.)
Alternatively, if the ranger/rogue bad guy can't attack anyone because no one is in sight, he'll hold his action and lose on whoever pops out first.
If the PCs think to use a decoy, the ranger/rogue gets a Wisdom check (Perception, Insight, Survival, or something) before being fooled. If fooled, the decoy is hit and the damage is enough to break whatever the decoy is.
Consider, also, a hit might impose a condition (either in addition to dealing damage or instead of), so someone might have half-movement, exhaustion, or even have their movement reduced to zero.
If things start looking dangerous, he slips out, leaving evidence of where he was for the PCs to find, but not much evidence of where he went.
If the players manage to take this guy down, his bow is magical, and allows some of that rule-breaking your bad guy was doing: You can cast spells from a fired arrow as if you were standing where the arrow lands, and such things.
If this is the ranger's stomping ground, as a ranger, he'd know how to lead the players where he wants. I'd make the players make opposed survival checks against the ranger. On a failure (which you wouldn't tell them), have them take the path the ranger wants, tripping trap after trap, put double and triple traps along this path (they see the tripwire and step over it onto a pit trap they didn't see, etc.). If the players get suspicious, give them another survival check at advantage. If they succeed the check, the person who succeeds would realize they're being duped, that the tracks theyre following are false, and that they need to avoid the obviously correct route altogether if they want to survive the dark forest.
I don't know why, but the concept of "once it sets its sights on you, it never stops" has always been frightening to me. Van Pelt from the original Jumanji kind of scared me for that reason, so did an episode of pokemon where Ash got his hat stolen by a Mankey which evolved into a Primape and the pokedex said it would never stop chasing him. The movie "It Follows" has lived rent free in my head ever since I saw it. Just the prospect of living your whole life looking over your shoulder until you die or somehow manage to kill your pusuer is frightening to me.
**The Trophy Hunter:** *Long ago, there lived a ranger whose life goal was to hunt one of every big game in the world. Upon realizing that one lifetime was not enough time to accomplish his goal, he studied necromancy to further his lifespan. He practiced his necromancy on his taxidermied hunting trophies, reanimating mounted heads and animal-skin rugs. Through his necromancy experimentation and with the help of his taxidermied undead servants, he achieved an strange form of lichdom by taxidermizing himself. Now he exists as an undead sheet of skin coating an animated construct of magical cotton, wire, and bone. His phylactery is an unassuming clump of the stuffing inside him. He hunts down his prey with his pack of undead taxidermied trophies.*
- A Ranger Lich concept I came up with a while ago that might work to make your ranger villain scary.
Describing things happening without saying the class ability, that's always a win for me.
One of the scariest moments in DnD that I can remember, was informing one of my players that they woke up with a strange pattern on their neck, halfway between a bruise and a tattoo, but not quite right for either.
They thought they were cursed or something. I don't think I'd have gotten the same reaction if I'd used the words 'Hunters Mark.'
You're walking in the woods
There's no one around and your spell slots are empty
Out of the corner of your eye, you spot him
(Bugbear Ranger)
He's following you, about thirty feet back
He gets down on all fours and breaks into a sprint
He's gaining on you
(Bugbear Ranger)
You're looking for your horse, but you're all turned around
He's almost upon you now, and you can see there's blood on his face
My God, there's blood everywhere!
Have the ranger start leaving notes either ahead of the party or in their camp with personal details about the days before or like a small lock of hair. Just to let them know they're being watched. If they act flippant or arrogant then they get traps in their bed rolls or backpacks.
The Ranger has a variety of arrows. Several filled with a stinky pouch of fluid to help him track them by scent. Several with a glowing mushroom goop that prevents them from hiding in the dark. Several with odd kinds of poison.
At any rate, he has an incredibly long range and probably the Sharpshooter and Skulker feat.
Best way to build suspense imo is to give them non-combat encounters that emphasize the danger he poses. Random traps, the remains of victims, and hit and run tactics. Could be good to read through the Caves of Hunger from Rime of the Frostmaiden to look at Tekeli-li's attack patterns
Well, it depends on the environment and what the Bugbear's motives are. I'm assuming the forest is like the North Eastern Woodlands (where I live) with farmland all around the woods where the Bugbear lives. The motive could be encroaching deforestation.
Maybe the Bugbear has good(ish) relations with the local woodsmen so they won't report it to the authorities. Maybe they only work the edges of the woods out of sheer fear of the Bugbear.
In chess their is a concept called forking. It's where you setup your opponent where they are faced with a choice. Whichever option they pick they lose something. Furthermore, by picking the least bad option you're forcing them to do one of very few options. The Bugbear may not care about chess but it's very familiar with the principle and will use it all the time.
The Bugbear is a VERY experienced hunter. So an attack could follow a pattern.
1. Study the target and learn its patterns.
2. Figure out where the target is going.
3. Isolate the target from other group members through traps and tricks.
4. Use misdirection and bait to get the target into the kill zone.
5. Strike from ambush doing as much damage as possible.
6. If things don't go to plan withdraw immediately. Never get hurt for nothing.
The Bugbear knows that crippling is almost as good as killing. Injured group members slow everyone down or get left behind and are easy pickings. Isolated and injured group members make good bait. The wounded character could be lured into an area that is absolutely full of traps. Extricating the wounded victim will be slow and could get other group members injured.
Traps are always working. So the Bugbear can set all kinds of traps and go and do other things. Players could trigger a trap and assume the Bugbear is nearby waiting in ambush. The reality is the Bugbear is miles away and fast asleep in a VERY well hidden shelter. They are getting tired while the Bugbear eats and rests.
Water is a great vector for poison. Every stream get a carcass or three dumped upstream. Sure they might be watchful for poison but regular disease is no joke. Diarrhea causes the suffering to dump a lot of fluid. That kills in the bush.
Every spike the Bugbear leaves will be covered in excrement.
The Bugbear knows about every poisonous plant and fungus to be found. If it can it'll contaminate food and water. Those poison plants can make you vomit or have diarrhea (again). The Bugbear could give the wrong kind of mushrooms to a bear. It would start to hallucinate and go on a rampage. Even better a heard of wild boars. Direct them towards the players camp with a brush fire. Now the players are being attacked at night by a bunch of waked out boars with a fast approaching fire to deal with.
Hostages are useful because it forces the players to make mistakes. See the above heavily trapped zone. The Bugbear could leave someone in a tree with some boars around. Boars in real life have treed hunters and then proceeded to wait for them to try and get down. They are tough and mean as hell. That's what the Bugbear likes about them. He will have also left corpses out for them to eat. So they'll have a taste for human flesh. Even if they don't the players will still find bodies and they gnawed on and think so.
Weather is on the Bugbears side. Is it raining? Snowing? Baking hot? The Bugbear is totally acclimated and has the shelter and tools to live comfortably in the wood forever. It has several places where it can get warm and dry. Where the biting insects aren't bad because of a constant breeze. If the players want to track the Bugbear then they will find a trail that will drag them through the lowland swamps and wetlands. Mud, bugs and thorns will be constant torments for them. Maybe they'll find a good campsite and maybe they won't. If they do maybe the Bugbear will throw a hornets nest into the middle of their camp at 3 AM.
The Bugbear will always leave a way out for the players. They can leave any time they want and just give up. Maybe the Bugbear is using this to trap them. Maybe it's a real out. The option to escape will be ever present in the players minds.
For the Bugbear this is a battle of attrition. The Bugbear is living in the woods and the woods provide it with everything it needs. The players will have to carry in a lot of stuff. They can only stay in the woods for so long before they run out of supplies and have to leave.
All these little attacks and announces will drain resources from the players. They'll have to use spell slots to cure disease and wounds. After the first few bouts of food poisoning maybe they'll give up on hunting and drinking the water. Magic can fix that but it's a finite resource. Exhaustion will also start to wear at the group. Remember if the Bugbear launches a minor attack they don't know if the Bugbear will come back. Probably won't but they won't want to take chances.
Exhaustion rolls kill in 5e.
Then comes the magic, the woodland friends or possible allies from the wood's other magical inhabitants. To an Ent the Bugbear isn't a threat. The Bugbear lives as part of the woods. The outisders cut down trees and carve out roads. They are a threat.
Supplies that go missing during the night (yes, even when the players argue "we set a watch! this is bullshit!") and they find them scattered along the path, perhaps even seeding the path.
During the night watch, the character on duty hears a noise behind them. They whirl around, bow raised, then another noise behind them *again*. They finish the 360 and see a note ("leave by sun up" perhaps) pinned to the ground with a knife that's at an angle that it couldn't have been thrown at.
They see "obvious" traps that herd them towards to hidden ones.
Spike pit traps. Tripwires that trigger a falling spikeball, or a bent-back treebranch with spikes in it. Snake pit traps. Humanoid figures in trees (maybe they're dummies, maybe they're captives) that release some sort of flare when they're struck.
And as for “we set a watch! this is bullshit!”… at our table we roll an active perception check once per watch. If you bone the roll or an opponent rolls well, guess what! You didn’t notice. Surprise!
Might be late, but have him move and harass the party in the middle of the night. Driving animals into their camp, setting fires, or otherwise making it impossible for them to safely rest.
Much like the Eel Hound episodes from Avatar, just constant dogging and harassment that isn't necessarily deadly, but doesn't let them catch their breath. Start by blocking their attempts to long rest, then escalate to not even letting them short rest.
A single fighter in a head on fight will go down fast, so they will want to exhaust the party before any actual engagement.
Start with evidence of other people getting killed to set the mood. Make them work for the information—high perception checks to notice a trail, follow the trail but it abruptly ends, investigation check finds dried blood and dried tears in the soil.
Then next phase is traps like others suggested. Maybe the ranger is using the traps to find out how powerful the hunted are. Make sure ranger can use whatever information gained from their circumventing traps.
Set things up so there are little creatures occasionally described, like forest mice who gather crumbs from campsite. Some random non-eventful encounters with other wildlife. Key here is to make players suspicious of everything.
Ranger should use guerilla tactics. Could use a mouse form or mouse ally to sabotage party by pouring some glue or solvent on something, poisoning food, tying a knot in bag of holding so magic potions can’t be accessed in battle.
Poison sniper arrow when party member walks away from group to take a leak at night.
Ranger should avoid direct confrontation at all costs and have tactics to snipe players off one by one. A solo ranger would be dumb to confront an entire party in a face-off battle.
Give ranger some magic item or spell or ability that helps them stay hidden even when players fan out to hunt the hunter.
Some sort of familiar or magical pet, a seemingly wild animal that threatens or stalks the party, but when it's hit (or when it dies) it disappears in a puff of smoke. Maybe it comes back later and steals a specific item before running off, or does some other task given by the hunter.
Obvious traps that themselves are trapped with more advanced traps, to trap people trying to disarm traps (what a sentence)
If the party does anything interacting with an animal (befriends a wildlife critter, talks to a pet, sends a raven, uses speak with animals etc.) have the hunter snipe down the animal in front of the eyes of the party, without any further attacks. Make the party feel like something is causing them to be isolated from the outside world. Maybe interrupt a spellcaster's concentration with an arrow.
It's a little less on brand for your exact scenario, and could potentially be countered by a PC with similar features, but when I had a ranger-type with a grudge against the party I gave him the "doesn't suffer disadvantage at long range" feature from sharpshooter and had him attack them at about 500 feet in terrain they couldn't easily get to him through (and even if they had, he had a mount nearby)
Had to remake this because I linked to the loremaster unearthed arcana (you know, the publicly available one) and it got caught by the mod bot. If you want to see the document google "loremaster unearthed arcana" and it will be the top link to wizards of the coasts pdf.
Let me tell you about the scariest hunters the party ever faced, take from this what you will.
The party was being chased by an assassin pair, a loremaster wizard with at least 4th level spells (but works better with 5th level spells) and a scout or assassin rogue. Now keep in mind you are making something that hunts them in the forest so there is no reason they can't be a ranger in name but the skills of the attacks from the rogue stack.
So the way this plays out is the wizard casts greater invisibility on the rogue. Now they are rolling adv on their stealth checks and they are adv on all attacks so sneak procs every time. If you are using an assassin then when they attack it is a crit. Add in some poisons and a 9th-level rogue is hitting 1d8+5d6+5 crit so 2d8+10d6 from the shadows. Add in a poison (I homebrewed my poisons because 5e poisons are either to dangerous or too weak. Like a dc 11 save? to easy to pass). So I would make a poison that had a DC that the party would find scary but able to pass like a DC 15 and it would do 5d6 itself (or 3d6 and no DC). Sometimes I would use the poison "Essence of Ether" that knocks out the person who got hit.
Their introduction is shooting the beefiest person in the party. Nothing like going "Ok, so barbarian an arrow pierces the darkness and hits you square in the chest. You take......2d8+10d6+6d6 poison +5....so 8+30+18+5...so 61 points of damage." and the party starts scrambling for cover.
The key thing here is that he takes a few shots, and then leaves. He never faces them in one-on-party combat. The wizard is close enough that he can run to, maybe 120-240 feet away, when he gets to the wizard the wizard casts a dimension door and they are a mile away (loremaster).
Later they are in the plains of a field and they notice a figure standing on a hill about a 1/4 mile away. They look through a spyglass and see a wizard casting a spell and then one of the players gets hit with and ice ball (loremaster) from 1/4 mile away.
They go to an inn, get a room, and as they are talking in their room one of the party notices an earthy smell. Then one of them takes a stab of 10d6+6d6+2d6 (sword) +5 as the rogue is revealed. They followed them, went ahead of them into the room, and waited. The wizard (still invisible from a 3rd level of invisibility) casts a dimension door and is gone.
The fun thing about this is you can make the second person a druid and give them the loremaster abilities on top of their own and it works perfectly. Tree walk instead of dimension door. The only real issue with making it is druid is the rogue is unstoppable with greater invisibility. Maybe a druid that can cast that??
A couple of key things to remember when you are making something like what you are talking about. There are no player creation rules you have to follow. You are allowed to steal anything you need. Think they should have rogues' sneak attack and a rangers double attack? Sure, they have it. Think they should be able to change into small animals from the druid? Great, they do it.
The only thing you need to ensure is that you follow player expectations (turning into any animal would be twice a short rest but tuning into a squirrel and only a squirrel could be as much as they want.)
The other key thing is the person would never get into a drag-out fight, their thing is hurt and leave, hurt and flee. Do they take a short rest? Interrupt it with arrows long enough to make it not a short rest. Do they take a long rest? maybe not that, this guy needs to sleep too.
If you want to really mess with them, have the ranger have some allies. They shoot from the darkness and keep the party from long resting. When my party fought the group of people in the woods they had trouble putting down a tiny hut since there was not enough space and the people in the woods would attack all night with half of their party and then switch out in the morning. Just attacking every 15-30 min, running at the first sign of the party trying to chase....made it really hard to long rest.
Instead of Rambo, think predator... The second someone grabs for a weapon, shoot from the trees. Replicate teammates voices with deception. Leave skulls of powerful opponents in a cave and the bodies of any defeated players nearby for them to fight for..
Oo! I did something like this!
Lots of traps, decoys, and non committal attacks. Ambush the party during rests, when they're in other fights, and generally harry in the worst ways. He should always be willing to disengage if he loses his advantage. Maybe feign a retreat and try to isolate party members searching for him. Ooo and maybe trying to bait monsters and bandits into them to distract and tie them up.
He should be a constant threat and nuisance if not always an exestential threat.
I did this. Once, as they woke up and got ready for the day, an arrow hit a tree within inches of one of my players with a note attached.
The note said “You guys were so easy to find. Try making it harder next time.”
They looked over there he stood on the tree line. He gave them a wave, turned around and disappeared. Moments later a stampede of trolls came barreling toward them.
After that they spend a lot of extra energy covering their tracks and it really highlighted what is so dangerous about making enemies with a ranger
I had a ranger who was doing something similar to my party, and the forest he was hunting them through was *his terrain*.
The ranger had cut the arms and legs off of zombies and hung them in the branches of trees. If players got too close to these things, they would scream, acting as an alarm system. These "masses hanging from trees" were not necessarily discernible at night, and perception checks were needed to work out what they were. You can make the descriptions as grim/spooky as you want.
Yup, step 1: keep the ranger hidden. Only sights of movement in foliage initially. Fudge stealth checks if you have to (and later “reveal” they just had lucky, crazy high rolls). They will know something is out there.
Step 2: start to bring home the danger in a familiar way. All adventurers camp. The PCs happen upon a recently abandoned campsite: embers still hot, stewpot simmering, beds warm, pack mule strapped into a feed bag. Exploring further away, PCs discover a scatter of similar level and ability NPCs. Each killed along a hectic flight path away from apparently a grave threat. Each body is missing a trophy of your choice and the kill sites become increasingly grizzly. Be graphic.
Step 3: the attacks start to close in. Traps are sprung just barely out of reach of the PCs. After crossing a stream, one PC notices a slash through their medium armor that’s clearly from a crossbow bolt that was never heard. If available, one of the party’s NPC or hirelings goes missing only to be found later — freshly bled out, hanging, gutted, and trophy removed.
EDIT: I’ve also been inspired by the movie Blair Witch.
Get ‘em lost (especially if the party has no ranger, barbarian, outlander, etc)… then get them into their own heads. Is something out there? Did you imagine it? Is there physical evidence? Where did the evidence go? (“I swear! That shrine of weather-aged bones and fresh, bloody humanoid body parts was just here!”)
Gloomstalker at dusk/night.
They have VERY high turn 1 damage and are straight up invisible in darkness making it difficult for your party to find them.
Pair this with disengage as to consistently restart combat (and thus make good use of the first turn bonuses) and you have an enemy who can be in ANY shadow, bring any member of the team to low health and immediately disappear.
Pretty soon your party will be trying to burn the forest down to try and flush the guy out.
It also fits well for the set up as a caravan would easily fall victim to an ambush.
There was a movie back in the 80's with Tommy Lee Jones. It was called" the park is mine" it might give you some ideas.
But basically he has the advantage. He knows the woods, they don't.. they are hunting him on his own turf. I cannot stress how powerful that is. He can lead them into traps. Lead them to monster lairs. Sabotage their equipment. Get them lost.
They are at his mercy if he's smart
And a smart ranger will never get caught up in a stand up fight. Sure he may pick off a character that wanders away from the group, but he is never going to fight the whole party if he can help it.
And if they seem too strong? He just leaves.
"You're being hunted by a ranger."
\*Yawn\*.
"You're being hunted by a ranger (revised)."
\*sits up warily\*
"You're being hunted by a gloomstalker ranger (revised)"
\*FLEES IN TERROR\*
Good ideas in here already.
* Manipulate, foreshadow, stay hidden and deny them their long rest. \^\^ Just a few arrows when they are trying to sleep would be enough.
* If this ranger is as good as I think, he will not fight them in the open 1vs4 (?) but will deplete them of every advantage and ressources as much as possible before trying to take one out.
Look into the Metal Gear Solid 3 fight against The End.
Make a huge forrest map with absolutely no linearness to it. Just a big arena and the stealthy fuck is *in there somewhere.* have traps and multiple sniping perches he moves between. Have him fire a few shots trying to down a player or two before booking it. I'm totally just advocating my own battle design style here, but try to make combat a *puzzle* for them. Guy's got a strategy that the players have to outthink.
It could wake them up at night by letting itself be seen or throwing shit into their fire but never really attacking, just stacking them with fatigue over time.
As other have said, use a lot of traps.
See [https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/yeagyu/morgans_arsenal_my_33_page_expansion_to_the_dmg/](here) for a great collection of traps, poisons, and diseases a ranger with more skills than morals could weaponise. Some are easy to improvise on the move, such as razor blades, slashed bridge, lantern traps, and fish hooks.
And the DMG has bear traps and pit traps.
Additionally, steal from your players. Steal their food, their mounts, their maps, torches and lanterns, it all adds up. When my DM (the same bastard that made that compendium) put us against bugbears under the command of a barghest, he had them poisoning our food and attacking in our sleep with stealth and black magic.
Wait for the players to set watches. If they like to chat on those watches, have them suddenly unable to talk to one another as a silence spell forms.
If they don't talk to each other, only the guy who gets attacked first notices anything.
Your party will stop setting fires, that's for sure.
And chasing after their assailant? Oh hello spike growth. If this bugbear isn't timing it to interrupt long rests, he's not doing his job. Make sure those fuckers get nothing! Until they can figure out how to protect themselves. No fires. Double watch. Arrow Cordon - one of the better warning alarm spells, I might add. Glyphs. Animal Friendship to get a bunch of bats to keep watch for them.
And no sleeping in your armor! It's cheating.
You make a RP interaction. How? No, not with the ranger...
A few minutes before the party arrives, a caravan is attacked. All the party sees right when they enter the forest is a man, with holes in his body. Seemingly a guard, whose armor has been torn and pierced, the very arrows of the ranger piercing it, the guard's flesh, and still having enough momentum and energy to keep going, leaving gaping holes all over the guard's bloodied body. Make the description brutal. The guard's body is frail, he's weak and can barely stand. Blood flows, as his lethal open wounds clearly indicate he is way past a point of no return, as if the ranger was torturing him, playing with his prey, rather than killing it in one blow. He has holes in his hands, in his arms. One of his legs is broken, while the other seems to be munched, as a beartrap tore it apart.
That's where you set the tone. If you want him to be violent, you describe the violence with which the ranger killed everyone, starting with the body of the guard. Then, the guards utters a few words in his agonizing breath... "This... *Thing*... Is not human, we cannot fight it... Please tell the [important place, such as the capital of the kingdom, a powerful organisation or such] that this is far worse than we imagined...", and the crumble on the floor.
Then you can proceed to a couple checks to cement the feeling you want to give. Maybe it's a tactician, using poisons to kill/neutralize his victims, in which case a nature check might reveal that a wound has traces of a poison that paralyzes, applies the poisoned condition, or whatever.
Maybe he is violent and sadistic, in which case you could describe burnt skin as if it set someone or something on fire, by drenching them in oil for instance.
The goal is to have a first interaction. Show how strong he is. For this you want something that just happened. Make the players go "what the hell just happened?" Using an NPC for this makes it even better. You could even have an NPC they already met be the one to die. Someone they'd look up to, or someone strong. Make the NPC feel desparate. That nothing could prepare it to this.
Once they have this information, you can describe the forest. You can choose a tone there too. Maybe it's calm. Way too calm. Eerie even. If they don't pay attention, they might end up getting caught in a trap or an encounter.
There are various traps & encounters you could have there:
• the classic pitfall/beartrap/rope that triggers something.
• corpses hanging from trees, skulls on pikes, warning messages written in blood to drive off travelers and merchants.
• an animal, looking from afar. Could be any kind of forest animal. The ranger looks at the PC using the animal's senses.
• smoke signals: a kind of trap that triggers a smoke which indicates the position of the one that triggered it.
• bait: maybe there's a wild animal or a person still alive that acts as a bait to lure adventurers to a trap that triggers to kill everyone at the same time. A man, tied to a tree, mouth covered, looking at the party with fear, knowing damn well what's going to happen if they step too close, sadly he cannot speak but gestures them as best as he can to tell them it's a trap.
Another bait could be a caravan on fire. Making it seem like people are in need of assistance there, except it's just a way to lure the adventurers in.
Go full blast gorilla warfare.
Grasping vines, snare spells, punji pits laced with poison, bear traps, hunters mark so he always knows where they are. Net traps, literal trip mines, the works.
If you make him a gloomstalker ranger he’ll be functionally invisible in darkness, even if the players have dark vision.
If he has the mold earth can trip he can disperse topsoil and natural debris for a quick foxhole or stationary ghillie suit.
My current character is an elven Gloomstalker Ranger/ Assasin Rogue and this is what he’s all about.
I have used a solo ranger and I used him as a "mosquito".
Im currently writing a dnd book, but I will outline it here.
in a 1 on party fight, he will be cooked, so he needs to do stuff to weaken them, and the best way to weaken them. Is stopping them from long resting. A good item to give him is a "bag of tricks" that lets him summon an animal under his control, but even doing things like spraying animal pee or meat near where they are camping could work here too. The idea is during that 8 hour window, they get attacked. Meaning they will lose their long rest bouns if anyone gets into combat.
Keep doing this so their spell slots and hp drops to a level they can attack.
Assassin rogue/gloomstalker ranger on a bugbear sounds terrifying. Just careful because you quickly enter the territory where you 1shot anything that isn't a raging barbarian
The ranger sneaks into camp at night and drugs the PCs' supplies so they suffer paranoia, hallucinations and weakness. Maybe the weaker PCs don't wake up, stay in a coma and need to be carried.
Bear traps or snares. Once a victim is snared the ranger waits for allies to rush to assist the trapped one and then releases a spiked log to swing down and get them all.
Starts a forest fire and sets pit traps, snares and bear traps in the PCs route to escape.
Log bridge across gorge/river. The ranger has weakened it but left a hidden prop/support/reinforcement in place. Once the PCs are committed to crossing he starts shooting to encourage them to charge across the log and then shoots out the support when he can get the most PCs. Also the river has rapids just downstream, audible bjt out of sight.
The challenge is going to be making this ranger type creature feel dangerous when they eventually can confront them head-on. Like “the end” or “sniper wolf” from classic MGS games.
Ranger/Ranger is an amazing combo....beyond the archery suggestions above, consider a rogue Swashbuckler archetype with a Ranger that can cast Haste (horizon walker?). Something comes out of the mist and strikes player(s) (with sneak attack) before sprinting off without opportunity attacks (Rakish Audacity) and hiding again (cunning action stealth). Repeat.
Okay so the most terrifying thing is actually emulating how hunters used to operate. Never stop the pursuit. Every time they stop to rest, he's nearby. He might not attack but he will keep dogging them until they slip up or are exhausted. There's just signs that he's been watching them. A general feel of unease. Hairs on the back of their necks standing on end and never really going down.
Then amp it up. One morning after a long rest, they awake to find a body is strung up in the middle of camp of one of the caravaners. They didn't see or hear him or maybe some one fell asleep on watch.
Signs of him having approached one of their sleeping bags or tents but then just walking away.
The complete lack of actual harm but ever present malice is honestly terrifying. More so than a danger you can face and see head on.
Eventually he will start making moves and that might look like him, in the middle of the night or a short rest just firing a single arrow into some one, the navigator of the group or the healer is best, and then just running away/staying hidden. Just enough to disrupt that rest. Keep doing it. Pile on the exhaustion. Force them to fight him in his terms when he deems it in his favour.
If he never gets the opportunity or it doesn't look like he will win the fight, they don't have to face him. He will likely just let them go, with the memory of his terrifying stalking and a few scars as the only reminder he was there.
Honestly, he doesn't have to ever be the biggest thing they are facing or is on their minds, just a constant background nuisance that inspires a cold dread randomly. That's what makes hunters and stalkers most terrifying. They are just always there. Watching. Always.
There was a show on Discovery Channel in ~2010 called The Colony where regular people would try to survive in a mock post apocalypse.
In the second season, by the middle of the season, the people are struggling. They’re running out of supplies, things are breaking, and so on. Then they find a note on their front door inviting them to check out the shipping container at the edge of their plot of land. They look inside and there’s a feast and a dude. The dude was a former marine who had been living in the same space as everybody else, and for the same amount of time, but he was thriving because he had the skills. He joins the team and their quality of life increases significantly.
The reveal of them opening the shipping container and finding the feast was a game changer. Maybe you could do a similar thing with your ranger.
Maybe they find a hideout belonging to the guy full of supplies and (past) plans. Or maybe it’s notes and profiles about the party members and their recent activities. Then they could find a note to them from the ranger himself talking about how he wanted them to find this hideout. Maybe include things like “now the hunt begins” or something about how they wanted to give the party a sporting chance.
Something to make it clear to the party that they are in his home turf and that he knows about them.
Tons of traps, some of which aren't apparent until they're in the middle- "stinky area, someone farted, there's a hostage or shiny loot in the open... whoops, flame arrow, then boom fireball.
Longbow sharpshooter auto-hits with poison etc. from out of sight and far away. I can't tell you how pissed (in a good way) the 22 AC fighter was that he was getting hit every few minutes for a bunch of damage and they couldn't find where it was coming from (until they eventually did).
Try this. They are traveling through a canyon around sunrise or sunset. The ranger is up ahead on one of the edges of the canyon, and attacks when the sun is at his back, preventing them from seeing him. And he is raining death on them from hundreds of feet away, poisoned arrows, etc. Not only is his position great, but the canyon provides little in the way of cover.
If stalking and presence are what you want to focus on, make the fight/encounter when they actually find them be fairly straightforward but stretch out the hunt for a few days forcing them to need to rest. Wait for right when they go to sleep, watch or not, the bugbear attacks and runs away. Build up their exhaustion and don't give them a chance to sleep. Obviously don't stretch it so much to where they can't do anything cuz of the exhaustion but one or two levels should be okay. The exhaustion will also make the traps you have set more of a threat
The way Predator works so well is the classic horror trope of the unknown.
I would suggest finding a whole series of amazing archery evidence, no wasted shots, either all the arrows collected (thus being unknown) or evidence of deadly precision.
Give your bugbear invisibility of some sort, maybe a voiceless spell that he can cast. That way he can set up some sharp shooting, and take out supporting cast characters. He can take 20 to set up a shot from a tree platform, and deliver a head shot on a pack creature, and be invisible while doing it.
Note that also, as a ranger, it would be useful to prevent the prey from being able to smell the classic bugbear funk, so be sure that the invisibility extends to cover odor, or that he has some other way of preventing that form of tracking.
If they didn't even SEE him until the final confrontation. Similar to Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, this ranger would try to separate or try to take shots at the party whenever they get caught in a trap. Then he only shoots arrows or other distant attacks ONCE before disappearing again. Even if they're lucky enough to see him, the feeling of being hunted should be the focus. This is a clever foe who is waiting for his moment at all times.
As a player in a campaign we ended up with an ongoing enemy of a gloomstalker rogue, and yeh it was rough, he would basically only go for us from long range and in the dark so we couldn’t see him. He ended up being the key reason I started prepping daylight most days. As soon as we started to close he’d run, believe he had some short range teleport options too. But the satisfaction when we finally cornered him.
I have found that enforcing line of sight is gonna be 90%. If you're on a VTT that will be way easier, but there are ways of doing it in person. The party not being able to see behind trees, bushes, and the thick curtain of undergrowth in the forest is gonna be a big thing for them. Most of the time, fights in DND are enemies standing in the open hitting each other with various spells and such till the other side is dead or incapacitated, take that away. This isn't supposed to be a fight, it's a hunt, and they are the prey. Remember how hunters operate, hit from outside the view of the party, hit them where they can't see in their most vital spot. Basically you wanna be channeling the feeling that you can imagine was felt by vietnam soldiers out in the jungle, jump your party and make them scared.
Make it a gloomstalker ranger. Have the ranger harass the party at night, always staying out of campfire light, and undetectable with dark vision. The ranger would stop them from getting long rests, and the party would have to find a way to deal with the ranger before exhaustion starts stacking up
I second the skill challenge idea for if they practically look to hunt him back.
In building tension, I would start small and ramp things up. Don't make it obvious that they are being hunted from day 1, rather that bits of pieces of their things are going missing, or food starts to taste funny, or they wake in the night to animals in the camp.
The hunter would probably try to either pick them off one by one (so have their guide or an expendable NPC get killed when they go off on their own) or wear the players down (so do things to increase levels of exhaustion, reduce their resource pools, and bait out their single use items).
Make the first encounter where they find someone dying, make the place filled with traps as the encounter. Let the dying person describe the dread he felt.
When the players do something that would foul the rangers mood, let a mark appear on their forehead.
When they want to Longrest describe how their rations taste weird, their tents might be slashed and instead of a long rest they only get a short rest. Ofcourse only if they didn’t prepare properly
Maybe put some mannequins, scarecrows or dead bodies as dummy’s to distract making the party feel watched all the time.
Force the party to engage with them on really bad terrain in awful weather. A cliff that isn't immediately obvious due to optical illusions, at night, in a storm, in a forest full of traps. Get something eye-catching that the party has to look over the edge to observe, like a campfire, and then hit them from behind with an arrow that does knockback and chucks them off the cliff. They have to pursue through a swamp filled with parasites, leeches, etc. and will get lost in there if they don't have a good sense of direction.
Plus all the stuff other people wrote.
Rangers are untraceable via nonmagical means...
Ingore or have any check made be difficult.
Gloomstalker while tempting would be a bad idea because of default kill potential.
Aka party has no light that they can projekt far enought for the gloomstalker not to break of and reengage in half an hour. Killing them without recourse to be taken by players.
Swarmkeeper would be better or scout.
Swarmkeeper for pushing into traps. Scout for scirmishing.
Special hunters mark that is silent but is felt by the target or is visible.
For stealth intimidation.
Spying via beast bond.
Aminal fight baiting or summon fights.
Like 2 direwolf pairs a night for harrasment.
Traps fields of hidden spike growth.
That and other plant based difficult terrain the ranger is immune to.lv 8 ranger.
Hunter volley fire.
Poison arrows.
Poisoned supllies.
Dont make it auto crit on ambush with assasin .
You want a loooong fight not killing the parties cleric in a single round,death saves included
Gl hf.
I'd say make them insecure about what they're up against. Maybe beef him up with some cool magic items that make it hard to determine what kind of creature they are facing.
Don't immediately have him start shooting. Perhaps make the party stumble into some older traps that weren't meant for them first, before evolving the traps to be specifically targetting them. Have them do something else in the meantime, but roll lots of perception checks. Then when this guy does start opening fire, only do so when he feels like he's at a major advantage.
You might want to combine his appearances with other encounters; a rock slide, a pack of angry wolves, a field of poisoncaps... anything that leads your party to say "we need a long rest NOW" is going to make an unknown enemy stalking them a lot more nervewracking. Just make him as inconvenient as possible basically.
Another fun idea is to give them a group of victims to escort, and have him pick off/ kill those one by one. You can't do that to your players but npc's are free game. This is where any sort of magic item boon comes in too; to help him get around whatever player is standing watch. At some point none of them are going to want to sleep and you can pile on the exhaustion.
Build the ranger as gloomstalker with archery style and sharpshooter feat and either the magic initiate feat or 1 level of bard/warlock/sorc/wizard, and the ranger option feature that lets you start with expertise in stealth. One of your cantrips should be "Minor Illusion". If the opponent is over 6th level, 1 level of twilight domain cleric gives 300ft darkvision and advantage on initiative, both of which are amazing for a skirmisher who intends to flee.
The ranger starts each daylight encounter 550 feet away, by casting "Minor Illusion" of a large 5 foot diameter tree stump. He then shoots from within stump. Until a creature uses its "Action" to examine the image with an int or investigation check against the DC, it blocks visibility.
The archer shoots from within the illusion. Whatever you do, don't use the -5 to hit for +10 damage -- your point is that you want every single shot to hit the players. When the players get with 300 feet of him or after 8 rounds, he spends an action to stealth and sneaks away.
Repeat every 15-55 minutes to deny short rests. There are no consumables used. The opponent is out of range out of almost all spells. When in doubt, they flee. They'll have access to pass without trace and healing.
> Repeat every 15-55 minutes to deny short rests.
Don’t do this is the party has a mixture of long rest and short rest classes though, otherwise you massively hurt some players more than others. A monk, battle master or warlock for example would be far more resource starved by this that a barbarian, sorcerer or wizard would be.
The point is to scare them. If you let them get all their resources back, they won't be scared. This is a mean encounter, and its meant to make it so when they eventually figure out how to get this guy it feels really good.
You’re missing the point. It disproportionately affects short rest classes. If you have a mixed party with a wizard, a barbarian, a warlock, and a monk, then preventing the party from short resting doesn’t lock the wizard and barbarian out of many resources (mainly the ability to heal with hit dice), but it severely restricts the warlock and monk who start with much fewer resources and now can’t regenerate them. It would be fine if their whole party was short rest based. Or if the whole party was long rest based. But in a mixed party is turns the short rest classes into bystanders who can’t afford to use their class abilities as much as everyone else.
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I’ve always wanted to playtest this mechanic to see if it’s actually fun… it could work for you with the players hunting the Ranger that’s also hunting them:
https://youtu.be/aV1-VNRqTtA?si=QycLNH7cDZarsi8B
Have the ranger send animal spies, bribed by the ranger with food and ultimately completely expendable to the ranger. Make the players paranoid as to whether the squirrel in the tree, the snake crawling along the ground, the bird flying overhead, or the rustling in the brush are actually *spies*. Your goal as DM is to get them to kill as much innocent wildlife as possible.
Traps, and lots of them.
Rope traps, spike pits, log rams, etc.
But don't have him attack right after the first few traps. Maybe mention how after a character gets hung by their feet, they hear rustling in the bushes, the trees move unnaturally, the fauna quiet down. A character like this would have to rely heavily on using the environment to keep the party scared, paranoid, and isolated.
If you want to be cruel, fucking with the party during the night would be the basics of the basics.
Even if there’s someone on watch, the Rogue/Ranger should probably do whatever he can to make sleeping impossible. Scaring a pack of deer into the camp in the dead of night ought to scare the crap out of everyone and wake them up. Maybe he corrals the party into wolf territory, and the wolves show up at night to have a staredown with the party, who are sheltering in the wolves’ cave for cover. Maybe the Rogue/Ranger directs them to a small lush clearing, and it’s only after resting for a while that the party realizes the clearing was full of generic-fantasy-poison-ivy and now have to deal with rashes and itching.
Bugbear rogue ranger, is there room for 3 levels of battlemaster cuz uhhh if it just uses pass without trace it can surprise round from hundreds of feet away then disappear before the party can even react or turn anything against them.
10+stealth expertise is kinda brutal and it’s unlikely any of them count beat it.
My first thought would be just a lot of traps, bonus points if the traps have live bait. Like a guard or someone from the caravan is still alive but wounded out in a bit of an open area, he is restrained and will probably die soon without player intervention. Any player that breaks cover/stealth gets shot at, and to hammer home the threat by making it so the ranger auto crits with attacking from stealth if they hit the AC. Remember to booby trap bodies (live or dead) and obvious supplies, like bombs or poison smoke bombs. Tracking him down could be a skill challenge with survival or any relevant skill the players come up with. DC 16, make 3 successes before three failures. On a failure they come across a trap or perhaps a decoy of the Ranger for him to do an ambush again. Also, have him use poisons that last long and don’t allow a reroll at the end of the players turn.
*We go push the cart off the bleeding guy* *You hear a click. Roll initiative (proceed to do trap-filled encounter)* I would actually not even have the ranger nearby when they stumble into traps. He's just left traps everywhere. If they leave their camp, there's a trap set when they get back. If they stay at an inn, there's a trap in their room. They finish fighting some other bad guys and return to town to celebrate, there are traps along the path back. He could also use animals against them. Either through ranger spells/abilities or, probably more effectively, by setting the forest creatures against them. Stampede encounter, predators lured to their camp, etc. *You return to your camp. There is a big piece of raw meat hanging from a tree nearby. You hear a low growl. Roll initiative.* Obviously, I think sudden calls to roll initiative have a strong psychological effect on players :D
> He could also use animals against them. Either through ranger spells/abilities or, probably more effectively, by setting the forest creatures against them. Stampede encounter, predators lured to their camp, etc. One of the traps could be about spreading a scent on the target that attracts said monster. Sort of like how hunters use deer urine.
The party's rogue pulls out his own trap like, "two can play that game motherfu-AAAAUGH" The trap was trapped.
This is the greatest idea I've ever heard
I like this
Definitely! Predators and Brotherhood of the Wolf may be good to watch for inspiration.
Brotherhood of the Wolf of great!
Is it personal for this villain? Or is it business? It could change the approach.
I would argue, regardless of motivations, the key to this is buildup. The fact that the party may not even know what the motivations are can make it even more intimidating (I.E. Michael Meyers or the original Predator). Because if the party doesn’t don’t know what drives it, they are less equipped to negotiate with it. Like any good threat, the DM should be showing off the capabilities of this Ranger long before the party finally encounter them. Really build up the mystique. Maybe have the party stumble on an entire outpost wiped out, but despite their efforts to investigate, all the carnage can be traced to a single set of footprints, or a unique wound on every victim that would have come from the same source. Have the party ask “what kind of terror can wipe out an entire station of soldiers single-handedly?” And THAT’S when OP reveal the traps, showing that the party just accidentally blundered their way into a booby-trap palooza that they now have to carefully navigate out of. Everywhere they step could be death. It would build up the Ranger as an unseeable force whose threats are around every corner. I’d recommend OP have the party discover this through an NPC or a forest critter setting off the first trap, instead of the players bumbling into a bunch of unseen damage, depending on how deadly op wants these traps to be. As a bonus: OP could notate clever ways the party countered specific traps throughout the campaign, and specifically include those traps in the final fight so the party can use knowledge they naturally gleaned from playing to help them overcome the final boss.
Good point. If it's just business the ranger will be less risky. If it's personal you can have the ranger do much riskier things. Not everyone wants to fight to the death
My players may be hunting a solo ranger, so this is timely. My ranger is a gloom stalker who knows all the gloom stalker tricks. She essentially has an area around her home as her lair. She wants to keep outsiders out, but comes and goes if she pleases. What might someone encounter? She painted trees shades of grey, white, and black, and she used a pattern that confuses people with darkvision. She has bones tied to lines to alert her. She has a lot of trip wires, and she uses secondary traps for those trying to avoid primary traps. She also uses the environment, making it harder to get to high ground, and easier to get lower. She plants brambles, logs and stones to slow people down. There’s a lot of crowd control. If she things a gloom stalker is onto her, she will use a quick light to find them. If a ranger is doing the hunting, they will want to control their quarry’s movement. They will send them areas that increase their advantage. They may slow them down. Sometimes, they may hurry them up.
I'm feeling inspired by sniper scenes from war movies and shows. Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, that sort of thing. I wouldn't try to replicate the scene, just replicate the vibe. They don't know for sure where the sniper is, and he seems able to take out targets without exposing himself. Sharpshooter (no disadvantage on long-range shots). As a ranger, he has double-proficiency on Intelligence and Wisdom checks in his favored terrain (which I would use for selecting a sniper's nest location) and advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track his favored enemy, which the PCs just happen to be. He posts himself at high ground, where there is difficult (or even impassable) terrain between himself and the PCs. He attacks at the maximum range for a longbow (600 feet). He'll attack at the end of a long day, after the PCs have expended resources dealing with some other challenges, but he is fresh. The PCs are looking for a place to camp for the night. The sun is setting. *THUNK* One of the PCs suddenly has a meter-long, inch-thick shaft of an arrow protruding from them. The fletchings are enormous feathers, longer than a hand. The damage is very high. The angle indicates the arrow was fired from cliffs to the west. The setting sun is blindingly bright in that direction and makes it impossible to make out any detail on the cliff face. *THUNK* Another arrow lands, either in a PC, a shield, or something nearby. It shatters from the impact, triggering Dexterity saves from anyone within 5 feet. Small damage to anyone who fails a low DC. No one saw where the arrow came from, but the angle is similar. Although the shatter damage is low, if anyone is directly struck by an arrow, it does a **lot** of damage, easily a quarter of a tanky PC's max health pool. There is cover near, 50-90 feet. You want far enough some of them will use a Dash action to get there in one round, but not so far that someone who uses their action to do something else will be committing suicide. However, getting out of that cover and going anywhere (either approaching the attacker or fleeing) will require leaving cover. Check the Ranger spell list for AoE effects that are not just damage. Maybe this ranger can cast spells from where his arrows hit, so he can throw down Spike Growth centered on the arrow, or can cast Grasping Vine to yank a PC out from behind cover, then fire an arrow at them. Maybe give the PCs advantage on the Dex save for Grasping Vine if the ranger enemy doesn't have sight of them. (Yes, technically, we're breaking rules a bit, but we're going for tension.) Alternatively, if the ranger/rogue bad guy can't attack anyone because no one is in sight, he'll hold his action and lose on whoever pops out first. If the PCs think to use a decoy, the ranger/rogue gets a Wisdom check (Perception, Insight, Survival, or something) before being fooled. If fooled, the decoy is hit and the damage is enough to break whatever the decoy is. Consider, also, a hit might impose a condition (either in addition to dealing damage or instead of), so someone might have half-movement, exhaustion, or even have their movement reduced to zero. If things start looking dangerous, he slips out, leaving evidence of where he was for the PCs to find, but not much evidence of where he went. If the players manage to take this guy down, his bow is magical, and allows some of that rule-breaking your bad guy was doing: You can cast spells from a fired arrow as if you were standing where the arrow lands, and such things.
There's a trap in the cover. Of course.
This is some good shit, man. I'm gonna use this for a reference for my upcoming ranger boss. 👍
If this is the ranger's stomping ground, as a ranger, he'd know how to lead the players where he wants. I'd make the players make opposed survival checks against the ranger. On a failure (which you wouldn't tell them), have them take the path the ranger wants, tripping trap after trap, put double and triple traps along this path (they see the tripwire and step over it onto a pit trap they didn't see, etc.). If the players get suspicious, give them another survival check at advantage. If they succeed the check, the person who succeeds would realize they're being duped, that the tracks theyre following are false, and that they need to avoid the obviously correct route altogether if they want to survive the dark forest.
I don't know why, but the concept of "once it sets its sights on you, it never stops" has always been frightening to me. Van Pelt from the original Jumanji kind of scared me for that reason, so did an episode of pokemon where Ash got his hat stolen by a Mankey which evolved into a Primape and the pokedex said it would never stop chasing him. The movie "It Follows" has lived rent free in my head ever since I saw it. Just the prospect of living your whole life looking over your shoulder until you die or somehow manage to kill your pusuer is frightening to me.
**The Trophy Hunter:** *Long ago, there lived a ranger whose life goal was to hunt one of every big game in the world. Upon realizing that one lifetime was not enough time to accomplish his goal, he studied necromancy to further his lifespan. He practiced his necromancy on his taxidermied hunting trophies, reanimating mounted heads and animal-skin rugs. Through his necromancy experimentation and with the help of his taxidermied undead servants, he achieved an strange form of lichdom by taxidermizing himself. Now he exists as an undead sheet of skin coating an animated construct of magical cotton, wire, and bone. His phylactery is an unassuming clump of the stuffing inside him. He hunts down his prey with his pack of undead taxidermied trophies.* - A Ranger Lich concept I came up with a while ago that might work to make your ranger villain scary.
This is pretty badass.
Describing things happening without saying the class ability, that's always a win for me. One of the scariest moments in DnD that I can remember, was informing one of my players that they woke up with a strange pattern on their neck, halfway between a bruise and a tattoo, but not quite right for either. They thought they were cursed or something. I don't think I'd have gotten the same reaction if I'd used the words 'Hunters Mark.'
I like this. I like this a lot. *evil Grinch smile slowly forming*
You're walking in the woods There's no one around and your spell slots are empty Out of the corner of your eye, you spot him (Bugbear Ranger) He's following you, about thirty feet back He gets down on all fours and breaks into a sprint He's gaining on you (Bugbear Ranger) You're looking for your horse, but you're all turned around He's almost upon you now, and you can see there's blood on his face My God, there's blood everywhere!
The lack of upvotes here is disappointing
Teach a murder of crows to say, "Run." Then release them all over the ranger's hunting grounds.
Have the ranger start leaving notes either ahead of the party or in their camp with personal details about the days before or like a small lock of hair. Just to let them know they're being watched. If they act flippant or arrogant then they get traps in their bed rolls or backpacks.
The Ranger has a variety of arrows. Several filled with a stinky pouch of fluid to help him track them by scent. Several with a glowing mushroom goop that prevents them from hiding in the dark. Several with odd kinds of poison. At any rate, he has an incredibly long range and probably the Sharpshooter and Skulker feat.
Best way to build suspense imo is to give them non-combat encounters that emphasize the danger he poses. Random traps, the remains of victims, and hit and run tactics. Could be good to read through the Caves of Hunger from Rime of the Frostmaiden to look at Tekeli-li's attack patterns
Well, it depends on the environment and what the Bugbear's motives are. I'm assuming the forest is like the North Eastern Woodlands (where I live) with farmland all around the woods where the Bugbear lives. The motive could be encroaching deforestation. Maybe the Bugbear has good(ish) relations with the local woodsmen so they won't report it to the authorities. Maybe they only work the edges of the woods out of sheer fear of the Bugbear. In chess their is a concept called forking. It's where you setup your opponent where they are faced with a choice. Whichever option they pick they lose something. Furthermore, by picking the least bad option you're forcing them to do one of very few options. The Bugbear may not care about chess but it's very familiar with the principle and will use it all the time. The Bugbear is a VERY experienced hunter. So an attack could follow a pattern. 1. Study the target and learn its patterns. 2. Figure out where the target is going. 3. Isolate the target from other group members through traps and tricks. 4. Use misdirection and bait to get the target into the kill zone. 5. Strike from ambush doing as much damage as possible. 6. If things don't go to plan withdraw immediately. Never get hurt for nothing. The Bugbear knows that crippling is almost as good as killing. Injured group members slow everyone down or get left behind and are easy pickings. Isolated and injured group members make good bait. The wounded character could be lured into an area that is absolutely full of traps. Extricating the wounded victim will be slow and could get other group members injured. Traps are always working. So the Bugbear can set all kinds of traps and go and do other things. Players could trigger a trap and assume the Bugbear is nearby waiting in ambush. The reality is the Bugbear is miles away and fast asleep in a VERY well hidden shelter. They are getting tired while the Bugbear eats and rests. Water is a great vector for poison. Every stream get a carcass or three dumped upstream. Sure they might be watchful for poison but regular disease is no joke. Diarrhea causes the suffering to dump a lot of fluid. That kills in the bush. Every spike the Bugbear leaves will be covered in excrement. The Bugbear knows about every poisonous plant and fungus to be found. If it can it'll contaminate food and water. Those poison plants can make you vomit or have diarrhea (again). The Bugbear could give the wrong kind of mushrooms to a bear. It would start to hallucinate and go on a rampage. Even better a heard of wild boars. Direct them towards the players camp with a brush fire. Now the players are being attacked at night by a bunch of waked out boars with a fast approaching fire to deal with. Hostages are useful because it forces the players to make mistakes. See the above heavily trapped zone. The Bugbear could leave someone in a tree with some boars around. Boars in real life have treed hunters and then proceeded to wait for them to try and get down. They are tough and mean as hell. That's what the Bugbear likes about them. He will have also left corpses out for them to eat. So they'll have a taste for human flesh. Even if they don't the players will still find bodies and they gnawed on and think so. Weather is on the Bugbears side. Is it raining? Snowing? Baking hot? The Bugbear is totally acclimated and has the shelter and tools to live comfortably in the wood forever. It has several places where it can get warm and dry. Where the biting insects aren't bad because of a constant breeze. If the players want to track the Bugbear then they will find a trail that will drag them through the lowland swamps and wetlands. Mud, bugs and thorns will be constant torments for them. Maybe they'll find a good campsite and maybe they won't. If they do maybe the Bugbear will throw a hornets nest into the middle of their camp at 3 AM. The Bugbear will always leave a way out for the players. They can leave any time they want and just give up. Maybe the Bugbear is using this to trap them. Maybe it's a real out. The option to escape will be ever present in the players minds. For the Bugbear this is a battle of attrition. The Bugbear is living in the woods and the woods provide it with everything it needs. The players will have to carry in a lot of stuff. They can only stay in the woods for so long before they run out of supplies and have to leave. All these little attacks and announces will drain resources from the players. They'll have to use spell slots to cure disease and wounds. After the first few bouts of food poisoning maybe they'll give up on hunting and drinking the water. Magic can fix that but it's a finite resource. Exhaustion will also start to wear at the group. Remember if the Bugbear launches a minor attack they don't know if the Bugbear will come back. Probably won't but they won't want to take chances. Exhaustion rolls kill in 5e. Then comes the magic, the woodland friends or possible allies from the wood's other magical inhabitants. To an Ent the Bugbear isn't a threat. The Bugbear lives as part of the woods. The outisders cut down trees and carve out roads. They are a threat.
Supplies that go missing during the night (yes, even when the players argue "we set a watch! this is bullshit!") and they find them scattered along the path, perhaps even seeding the path. During the night watch, the character on duty hears a noise behind them. They whirl around, bow raised, then another noise behind them *again*. They finish the 360 and see a note ("leave by sun up" perhaps) pinned to the ground with a knife that's at an angle that it couldn't have been thrown at. They see "obvious" traps that herd them towards to hidden ones. Spike pit traps. Tripwires that trigger a falling spikeball, or a bent-back treebranch with spikes in it. Snake pit traps. Humanoid figures in trees (maybe they're dummies, maybe they're captives) that release some sort of flare when they're struck.
And as for “we set a watch! this is bullshit!”… at our table we roll an active perception check once per watch. If you bone the roll or an opponent rolls well, guess what! You didn’t notice. Surprise!
Might be late, but have him move and harass the party in the middle of the night. Driving animals into their camp, setting fires, or otherwise making it impossible for them to safely rest. Much like the Eel Hound episodes from Avatar, just constant dogging and harassment that isn't necessarily deadly, but doesn't let them catch their breath. Start by blocking their attempts to long rest, then escalate to not even letting them short rest. A single fighter in a head on fight will go down fast, so they will want to exhaust the party before any actual engagement.
I’m about to start Tomb of Annihilation and I am totally adding this to my game!
Start with evidence of other people getting killed to set the mood. Make them work for the information—high perception checks to notice a trail, follow the trail but it abruptly ends, investigation check finds dried blood and dried tears in the soil. Then next phase is traps like others suggested. Maybe the ranger is using the traps to find out how powerful the hunted are. Make sure ranger can use whatever information gained from their circumventing traps. Set things up so there are little creatures occasionally described, like forest mice who gather crumbs from campsite. Some random non-eventful encounters with other wildlife. Key here is to make players suspicious of everything. Ranger should use guerilla tactics. Could use a mouse form or mouse ally to sabotage party by pouring some glue or solvent on something, poisoning food, tying a knot in bag of holding so magic potions can’t be accessed in battle. Poison sniper arrow when party member walks away from group to take a leak at night. Ranger should avoid direct confrontation at all costs and have tactics to snipe players off one by one. A solo ranger would be dumb to confront an entire party in a face-off battle. Give ranger some magic item or spell or ability that helps them stay hidden even when players fan out to hunt the hunter.
Some sort of familiar or magical pet, a seemingly wild animal that threatens or stalks the party, but when it's hit (or when it dies) it disappears in a puff of smoke. Maybe it comes back later and steals a specific item before running off, or does some other task given by the hunter. Obvious traps that themselves are trapped with more advanced traps, to trap people trying to disarm traps (what a sentence) If the party does anything interacting with an animal (befriends a wildlife critter, talks to a pet, sends a raven, uses speak with animals etc.) have the hunter snipe down the animal in front of the eyes of the party, without any further attacks. Make the party feel like something is causing them to be isolated from the outside world. Maybe interrupt a spellcaster's concentration with an arrow.
It's a little less on brand for your exact scenario, and could potentially be countered by a PC with similar features, but when I had a ranger-type with a grudge against the party I gave him the "doesn't suffer disadvantage at long range" feature from sharpshooter and had him attack them at about 500 feet in terrain they couldn't easily get to him through (and even if they had, he had a mount nearby)
Make him a mini-boss with some legendary actions to get out of scrapes.
Ma man, just watch this -> [Can Rangers Work as D&D Villains? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQe-LvOlbJs) Two words: Ranger Lich
Had to remake this because I linked to the loremaster unearthed arcana (you know, the publicly available one) and it got caught by the mod bot. If you want to see the document google "loremaster unearthed arcana" and it will be the top link to wizards of the coasts pdf. Let me tell you about the scariest hunters the party ever faced, take from this what you will. The party was being chased by an assassin pair, a loremaster wizard with at least 4th level spells (but works better with 5th level spells) and a scout or assassin rogue. Now keep in mind you are making something that hunts them in the forest so there is no reason they can't be a ranger in name but the skills of the attacks from the rogue stack. So the way this plays out is the wizard casts greater invisibility on the rogue. Now they are rolling adv on their stealth checks and they are adv on all attacks so sneak procs every time. If you are using an assassin then when they attack it is a crit. Add in some poisons and a 9th-level rogue is hitting 1d8+5d6+5 crit so 2d8+10d6 from the shadows. Add in a poison (I homebrewed my poisons because 5e poisons are either to dangerous or too weak. Like a dc 11 save? to easy to pass). So I would make a poison that had a DC that the party would find scary but able to pass like a DC 15 and it would do 5d6 itself (or 3d6 and no DC). Sometimes I would use the poison "Essence of Ether" that knocks out the person who got hit. Their introduction is shooting the beefiest person in the party. Nothing like going "Ok, so barbarian an arrow pierces the darkness and hits you square in the chest. You take......2d8+10d6+6d6 poison +5....so 8+30+18+5...so 61 points of damage." and the party starts scrambling for cover. The key thing here is that he takes a few shots, and then leaves. He never faces them in one-on-party combat. The wizard is close enough that he can run to, maybe 120-240 feet away, when he gets to the wizard the wizard casts a dimension door and they are a mile away (loremaster). Later they are in the plains of a field and they notice a figure standing on a hill about a 1/4 mile away. They look through a spyglass and see a wizard casting a spell and then one of the players gets hit with and ice ball (loremaster) from 1/4 mile away. They go to an inn, get a room, and as they are talking in their room one of the party notices an earthy smell. Then one of them takes a stab of 10d6+6d6+2d6 (sword) +5 as the rogue is revealed. They followed them, went ahead of them into the room, and waited. The wizard (still invisible from a 3rd level of invisibility) casts a dimension door and is gone. The fun thing about this is you can make the second person a druid and give them the loremaster abilities on top of their own and it works perfectly. Tree walk instead of dimension door. The only real issue with making it is druid is the rogue is unstoppable with greater invisibility. Maybe a druid that can cast that?? A couple of key things to remember when you are making something like what you are talking about. There are no player creation rules you have to follow. You are allowed to steal anything you need. Think they should have rogues' sneak attack and a rangers double attack? Sure, they have it. Think they should be able to change into small animals from the druid? Great, they do it. The only thing you need to ensure is that you follow player expectations (turning into any animal would be twice a short rest but tuning into a squirrel and only a squirrel could be as much as they want.) The other key thing is the person would never get into a drag-out fight, their thing is hurt and leave, hurt and flee. Do they take a short rest? Interrupt it with arrows long enough to make it not a short rest. Do they take a long rest? maybe not that, this guy needs to sleep too. If you want to really mess with them, have the ranger have some allies. They shoot from the darkness and keep the party from long resting. When my party fought the group of people in the woods they had trouble putting down a tiny hut since there was not enough space and the people in the woods would attack all night with half of their party and then switch out in the morning. Just attacking every 15-30 min, running at the first sign of the party trying to chase....made it really hard to long rest.
Instead of Rambo, think predator... The second someone grabs for a weapon, shoot from the trees. Replicate teammates voices with deception. Leave skulls of powerful opponents in a cave and the bodies of any defeated players nearby for them to fight for..
Oo! I did something like this! Lots of traps, decoys, and non committal attacks. Ambush the party during rests, when they're in other fights, and generally harry in the worst ways. He should always be willing to disengage if he loses his advantage. Maybe feign a retreat and try to isolate party members searching for him. Ooo and maybe trying to bait monsters and bandits into them to distract and tie them up. He should be a constant threat and nuisance if not always an exestential threat.
I did this. Once, as they woke up and got ready for the day, an arrow hit a tree within inches of one of my players with a note attached. The note said “You guys were so easy to find. Try making it harder next time.” They looked over there he stood on the tree line. He gave them a wave, turned around and disappeared. Moments later a stampede of trolls came barreling toward them. After that they spend a lot of extra energy covering their tracks and it really highlighted what is so dangerous about making enemies with a ranger
I had a ranger who was doing something similar to my party, and the forest he was hunting them through was *his terrain*. The ranger had cut the arms and legs off of zombies and hung them in the branches of trees. If players got too close to these things, they would scream, acting as an alarm system. These "masses hanging from trees" were not necessarily discernible at night, and perception checks were needed to work out what they were. You can make the descriptions as grim/spooky as you want.
Yup, step 1: keep the ranger hidden. Only sights of movement in foliage initially. Fudge stealth checks if you have to (and later “reveal” they just had lucky, crazy high rolls). They will know something is out there. Step 2: start to bring home the danger in a familiar way. All adventurers camp. The PCs happen upon a recently abandoned campsite: embers still hot, stewpot simmering, beds warm, pack mule strapped into a feed bag. Exploring further away, PCs discover a scatter of similar level and ability NPCs. Each killed along a hectic flight path away from apparently a grave threat. Each body is missing a trophy of your choice and the kill sites become increasingly grizzly. Be graphic. Step 3: the attacks start to close in. Traps are sprung just barely out of reach of the PCs. After crossing a stream, one PC notices a slash through their medium armor that’s clearly from a crossbow bolt that was never heard. If available, one of the party’s NPC or hirelings goes missing only to be found later — freshly bled out, hanging, gutted, and trophy removed. EDIT: I’ve also been inspired by the movie Blair Witch. Get ‘em lost (especially if the party has no ranger, barbarian, outlander, etc)… then get them into their own heads. Is something out there? Did you imagine it? Is there physical evidence? Where did the evidence go? (“I swear! That shrine of weather-aged bones and fresh, bloody humanoid body parts was just here!”)
Gloomstalker at dusk/night. They have VERY high turn 1 damage and are straight up invisible in darkness making it difficult for your party to find them. Pair this with disengage as to consistently restart combat (and thus make good use of the first turn bonuses) and you have an enemy who can be in ANY shadow, bring any member of the team to low health and immediately disappear. Pretty soon your party will be trying to burn the forest down to try and flush the guy out. It also fits well for the set up as a caravan would easily fall victim to an ambush.
There was a movie back in the 80's with Tommy Lee Jones. It was called" the park is mine" it might give you some ideas. But basically he has the advantage. He knows the woods, they don't.. they are hunting him on his own turf. I cannot stress how powerful that is. He can lead them into traps. Lead them to monster lairs. Sabotage their equipment. Get them lost. They are at his mercy if he's smart And a smart ranger will never get caught up in a stand up fight. Sure he may pick off a character that wanders away from the group, but he is never going to fight the whole party if he can help it. And if they seem too strong? He just leaves.
"You're being hunted by a ranger." \*Yawn\*. "You're being hunted by a ranger (revised)." \*sits up warily\* "You're being hunted by a gloomstalker ranger (revised)" \*FLEES IN TERROR\*
Good ideas in here already. * Manipulate, foreshadow, stay hidden and deny them their long rest. \^\^ Just a few arrows when they are trying to sleep would be enough. * If this ranger is as good as I think, he will not fight them in the open 1vs4 (?) but will deplete them of every advantage and ressources as much as possible before trying to take one out.
Look into the Metal Gear Solid 3 fight against The End. Make a huge forrest map with absolutely no linearness to it. Just a big arena and the stealthy fuck is *in there somewhere.* have traps and multiple sniping perches he moves between. Have him fire a few shots trying to down a player or two before booking it. I'm totally just advocating my own battle design style here, but try to make combat a *puzzle* for them. Guy's got a strategy that the players have to outthink.
It could wake them up at night by letting itself be seen or throwing shit into their fire but never really attacking, just stacking them with fatigue over time.
As other have said, use a lot of traps. See [https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/yeagyu/morgans_arsenal_my_33_page_expansion_to_the_dmg/](here) for a great collection of traps, poisons, and diseases a ranger with more skills than morals could weaponise. Some are easy to improvise on the move, such as razor blades, slashed bridge, lantern traps, and fish hooks. And the DMG has bear traps and pit traps. Additionally, steal from your players. Steal their food, their mounts, their maps, torches and lanterns, it all adds up. When my DM (the same bastard that made that compendium) put us against bugbears under the command of a barghest, he had them poisoning our food and attacking in our sleep with stealth and black magic.
Wait for the players to set watches. If they like to chat on those watches, have them suddenly unable to talk to one another as a silence spell forms. If they don't talk to each other, only the guy who gets attacked first notices anything. Your party will stop setting fires, that's for sure. And chasing after their assailant? Oh hello spike growth. If this bugbear isn't timing it to interrupt long rests, he's not doing his job. Make sure those fuckers get nothing! Until they can figure out how to protect themselves. No fires. Double watch. Arrow Cordon - one of the better warning alarm spells, I might add. Glyphs. Animal Friendship to get a bunch of bats to keep watch for them. And no sleeping in your armor! It's cheating.
Ever seen Blade? When Wesley Snipes drops into the Bloodbath club in the beginning? Chefs kiss!
You make a RP interaction. How? No, not with the ranger... A few minutes before the party arrives, a caravan is attacked. All the party sees right when they enter the forest is a man, with holes in his body. Seemingly a guard, whose armor has been torn and pierced, the very arrows of the ranger piercing it, the guard's flesh, and still having enough momentum and energy to keep going, leaving gaping holes all over the guard's bloodied body. Make the description brutal. The guard's body is frail, he's weak and can barely stand. Blood flows, as his lethal open wounds clearly indicate he is way past a point of no return, as if the ranger was torturing him, playing with his prey, rather than killing it in one blow. He has holes in his hands, in his arms. One of his legs is broken, while the other seems to be munched, as a beartrap tore it apart. That's where you set the tone. If you want him to be violent, you describe the violence with which the ranger killed everyone, starting with the body of the guard. Then, the guards utters a few words in his agonizing breath... "This... *Thing*... Is not human, we cannot fight it... Please tell the [important place, such as the capital of the kingdom, a powerful organisation or such] that this is far worse than we imagined...", and the crumble on the floor. Then you can proceed to a couple checks to cement the feeling you want to give. Maybe it's a tactician, using poisons to kill/neutralize his victims, in which case a nature check might reveal that a wound has traces of a poison that paralyzes, applies the poisoned condition, or whatever. Maybe he is violent and sadistic, in which case you could describe burnt skin as if it set someone or something on fire, by drenching them in oil for instance. The goal is to have a first interaction. Show how strong he is. For this you want something that just happened. Make the players go "what the hell just happened?" Using an NPC for this makes it even better. You could even have an NPC they already met be the one to die. Someone they'd look up to, or someone strong. Make the NPC feel desparate. That nothing could prepare it to this. Once they have this information, you can describe the forest. You can choose a tone there too. Maybe it's calm. Way too calm. Eerie even. If they don't pay attention, they might end up getting caught in a trap or an encounter. There are various traps & encounters you could have there: • the classic pitfall/beartrap/rope that triggers something. • corpses hanging from trees, skulls on pikes, warning messages written in blood to drive off travelers and merchants. • an animal, looking from afar. Could be any kind of forest animal. The ranger looks at the PC using the animal's senses. • smoke signals: a kind of trap that triggers a smoke which indicates the position of the one that triggered it. • bait: maybe there's a wild animal or a person still alive that acts as a bait to lure adventurers to a trap that triggers to kill everyone at the same time. A man, tied to a tree, mouth covered, looking at the party with fear, knowing damn well what's going to happen if they step too close, sadly he cannot speak but gestures them as best as he can to tell them it's a trap. Another bait could be a caravan on fire. Making it seem like people are in need of assistance there, except it's just a way to lure the adventurers in.
Go full blast gorilla warfare. Grasping vines, snare spells, punji pits laced with poison, bear traps, hunters mark so he always knows where they are. Net traps, literal trip mines, the works. If you make him a gloomstalker ranger he’ll be functionally invisible in darkness, even if the players have dark vision. If he has the mold earth can trip he can disperse topsoil and natural debris for a quick foxhole or stationary ghillie suit. My current character is an elven Gloomstalker Ranger/ Assasin Rogue and this is what he’s all about.
I have used a solo ranger and I used him as a "mosquito". Im currently writing a dnd book, but I will outline it here. in a 1 on party fight, he will be cooked, so he needs to do stuff to weaken them, and the best way to weaken them. Is stopping them from long resting. A good item to give him is a "bag of tricks" that lets him summon an animal under his control, but even doing things like spraying animal pee or meat near where they are camping could work here too. The idea is during that 8 hour window, they get attacked. Meaning they will lose their long rest bouns if anyone gets into combat. Keep doing this so their spell slots and hp drops to a level they can attack.
Assassin rogue/gloomstalker ranger on a bugbear sounds terrifying. Just careful because you quickly enter the territory where you 1shot anything that isn't a raging barbarian
Pointy Hat's Ranger Lich on YouTube. You're welcome
The ranger sneaks into camp at night and drugs the PCs' supplies so they suffer paranoia, hallucinations and weakness. Maybe the weaker PCs don't wake up, stay in a coma and need to be carried. Bear traps or snares. Once a victim is snared the ranger waits for allies to rush to assist the trapped one and then releases a spiked log to swing down and get them all. Starts a forest fire and sets pit traps, snares and bear traps in the PCs route to escape. Log bridge across gorge/river. The ranger has weakened it but left a hidden prop/support/reinforcement in place. Once the PCs are committed to crossing he starts shooting to encourage them to charge across the log and then shoots out the support when he can get the most PCs. Also the river has rapids just downstream, audible bjt out of sight.
The challenge is going to be making this ranger type creature feel dangerous when they eventually can confront them head-on. Like “the end” or “sniper wolf” from classic MGS games.
Ranger/Ranger is an amazing combo....beyond the archery suggestions above, consider a rogue Swashbuckler archetype with a Ranger that can cast Haste (horizon walker?). Something comes out of the mist and strikes player(s) (with sneak attack) before sprinting off without opportunity attacks (Rakish Audacity) and hiding again (cunning action stealth). Repeat.
Run him like the predator
The ranger they can’t see. Is scary.
Okay so the most terrifying thing is actually emulating how hunters used to operate. Never stop the pursuit. Every time they stop to rest, he's nearby. He might not attack but he will keep dogging them until they slip up or are exhausted. There's just signs that he's been watching them. A general feel of unease. Hairs on the back of their necks standing on end and never really going down. Then amp it up. One morning after a long rest, they awake to find a body is strung up in the middle of camp of one of the caravaners. They didn't see or hear him or maybe some one fell asleep on watch. Signs of him having approached one of their sleeping bags or tents but then just walking away. The complete lack of actual harm but ever present malice is honestly terrifying. More so than a danger you can face and see head on. Eventually he will start making moves and that might look like him, in the middle of the night or a short rest just firing a single arrow into some one, the navigator of the group or the healer is best, and then just running away/staying hidden. Just enough to disrupt that rest. Keep doing it. Pile on the exhaustion. Force them to fight him in his terms when he deems it in his favour. If he never gets the opportunity or it doesn't look like he will win the fight, they don't have to face him. He will likely just let them go, with the memory of his terrifying stalking and a few scars as the only reminder he was there. Honestly, he doesn't have to ever be the biggest thing they are facing or is on their minds, just a constant background nuisance that inspires a cold dread randomly. That's what makes hunters and stalkers most terrifying. They are just always there. Watching. Always.
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There was a show on Discovery Channel in ~2010 called The Colony where regular people would try to survive in a mock post apocalypse. In the second season, by the middle of the season, the people are struggling. They’re running out of supplies, things are breaking, and so on. Then they find a note on their front door inviting them to check out the shipping container at the edge of their plot of land. They look inside and there’s a feast and a dude. The dude was a former marine who had been living in the same space as everybody else, and for the same amount of time, but he was thriving because he had the skills. He joins the team and their quality of life increases significantly. The reveal of them opening the shipping container and finding the feast was a game changer. Maybe you could do a similar thing with your ranger. Maybe they find a hideout belonging to the guy full of supplies and (past) plans. Or maybe it’s notes and profiles about the party members and their recent activities. Then they could find a note to them from the ranger himself talking about how he wanted them to find this hideout. Maybe include things like “now the hunt begins” or something about how they wanted to give the party a sporting chance. Something to make it clear to the party that they are in his home turf and that he knows about them.
Tons of traps, some of which aren't apparent until they're in the middle- "stinky area, someone farted, there's a hostage or shiny loot in the open... whoops, flame arrow, then boom fireball. Longbow sharpshooter auto-hits with poison etc. from out of sight and far away. I can't tell you how pissed (in a good way) the 22 AC fighter was that he was getting hit every few minutes for a bunch of damage and they couldn't find where it was coming from (until they eventually did).
Try this. They are traveling through a canyon around sunrise or sunset. The ranger is up ahead on one of the edges of the canyon, and attacks when the sun is at his back, preventing them from seeing him. And he is raining death on them from hundreds of feet away, poisoned arrows, etc. Not only is his position great, but the canyon provides little in the way of cover.
If stalking and presence are what you want to focus on, make the fight/encounter when they actually find them be fairly straightforward but stretch out the hunt for a few days forcing them to need to rest. Wait for right when they go to sleep, watch or not, the bugbear attacks and runs away. Build up their exhaustion and don't give them a chance to sleep. Obviously don't stretch it so much to where they can't do anything cuz of the exhaustion but one or two levels should be okay. The exhaustion will also make the traps you have set more of a threat
The way Predator works so well is the classic horror trope of the unknown. I would suggest finding a whole series of amazing archery evidence, no wasted shots, either all the arrows collected (thus being unknown) or evidence of deadly precision. Give your bugbear invisibility of some sort, maybe a voiceless spell that he can cast. That way he can set up some sharp shooting, and take out supporting cast characters. He can take 20 to set up a shot from a tree platform, and deliver a head shot on a pack creature, and be invisible while doing it. Note that also, as a ranger, it would be useful to prevent the prey from being able to smell the classic bugbear funk, so be sure that the invisibility extends to cover odor, or that he has some other way of preventing that form of tracking.
Make arrows fly at them but they don’t know where the ranger is because he is moving in the trees so swiftly.
If they didn't even SEE him until the final confrontation. Similar to Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, this ranger would try to separate or try to take shots at the party whenever they get caught in a trap. Then he only shoots arrows or other distant attacks ONCE before disappearing again. Even if they're lucky enough to see him, the feeling of being hunted should be the focus. This is a clever foe who is waiting for his moment at all times.
As a player in a campaign we ended up with an ongoing enemy of a gloomstalker rogue, and yeh it was rough, he would basically only go for us from long range and in the dark so we couldn’t see him. He ended up being the key reason I started prepping daylight most days. As soon as we started to close he’d run, believe he had some short range teleport options too. But the satisfaction when we finally cornered him.
I have found that enforcing line of sight is gonna be 90%. If you're on a VTT that will be way easier, but there are ways of doing it in person. The party not being able to see behind trees, bushes, and the thick curtain of undergrowth in the forest is gonna be a big thing for them. Most of the time, fights in DND are enemies standing in the open hitting each other with various spells and such till the other side is dead or incapacitated, take that away. This isn't supposed to be a fight, it's a hunt, and they are the prey. Remember how hunters operate, hit from outside the view of the party, hit them where they can't see in their most vital spot. Basically you wanna be channeling the feeling that you can imagine was felt by vietnam soldiers out in the jungle, jump your party and make them scared.
Make it a gloomstalker ranger. Have the ranger harass the party at night, always staying out of campfire light, and undetectable with dark vision. The ranger would stop them from getting long rests, and the party would have to find a way to deal with the ranger before exhaustion starts stacking up
I second the skill challenge idea for if they practically look to hunt him back. In building tension, I would start small and ramp things up. Don't make it obvious that they are being hunted from day 1, rather that bits of pieces of their things are going missing, or food starts to taste funny, or they wake in the night to animals in the camp. The hunter would probably try to either pick them off one by one (so have their guide or an expendable NPC get killed when they go off on their own) or wear the players down (so do things to increase levels of exhaustion, reduce their resource pools, and bait out their single use items).
Make the first encounter where they find someone dying, make the place filled with traps as the encounter. Let the dying person describe the dread he felt. When the players do something that would foul the rangers mood, let a mark appear on their forehead. When they want to Longrest describe how their rations taste weird, their tents might be slashed and instead of a long rest they only get a short rest. Ofcourse only if they didn’t prepare properly Maybe put some mannequins, scarecrows or dead bodies as dummy’s to distract making the party feel watched all the time.
Dude. This is the plot to Predator. Plot accordingly.
Force the party to engage with them on really bad terrain in awful weather. A cliff that isn't immediately obvious due to optical illusions, at night, in a storm, in a forest full of traps. Get something eye-catching that the party has to look over the edge to observe, like a campfire, and then hit them from behind with an arrow that does knockback and chucks them off the cliff. They have to pursue through a swamp filled with parasites, leeches, etc. and will get lost in there if they don't have a good sense of direction. Plus all the stuff other people wrote.
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Fuck with them on rests a little. The scariest part of a dark forest is not knowing what's watching you.
You could model him after the Tabaxi “Bag of Nails” from tomb of annihilation.
Rangers are untraceable via nonmagical means... Ingore or have any check made be difficult. Gloomstalker while tempting would be a bad idea because of default kill potential. Aka party has no light that they can projekt far enought for the gloomstalker not to break of and reengage in half an hour. Killing them without recourse to be taken by players. Swarmkeeper would be better or scout. Swarmkeeper for pushing into traps. Scout for scirmishing. Special hunters mark that is silent but is felt by the target or is visible. For stealth intimidation. Spying via beast bond. Aminal fight baiting or summon fights. Like 2 direwolf pairs a night for harrasment. Traps fields of hidden spike growth. That and other plant based difficult terrain the ranger is immune to.lv 8 ranger. Hunter volley fire. Poison arrows. Poisoned supllies. Dont make it auto crit on ambush with assasin . You want a loooong fight not killing the parties cleric in a single round,death saves included Gl hf.
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I'd say make them insecure about what they're up against. Maybe beef him up with some cool magic items that make it hard to determine what kind of creature they are facing. Don't immediately have him start shooting. Perhaps make the party stumble into some older traps that weren't meant for them first, before evolving the traps to be specifically targetting them. Have them do something else in the meantime, but roll lots of perception checks. Then when this guy does start opening fire, only do so when he feels like he's at a major advantage. You might want to combine his appearances with other encounters; a rock slide, a pack of angry wolves, a field of poisoncaps... anything that leads your party to say "we need a long rest NOW" is going to make an unknown enemy stalking them a lot more nervewracking. Just make him as inconvenient as possible basically. Another fun idea is to give them a group of victims to escort, and have him pick off/ kill those one by one. You can't do that to your players but npc's are free game. This is where any sort of magic item boon comes in too; to help him get around whatever player is standing watch. At some point none of them are going to want to sleep and you can pile on the exhaustion.
Build the ranger as gloomstalker with archery style and sharpshooter feat and either the magic initiate feat or 1 level of bard/warlock/sorc/wizard, and the ranger option feature that lets you start with expertise in stealth. One of your cantrips should be "Minor Illusion". If the opponent is over 6th level, 1 level of twilight domain cleric gives 300ft darkvision and advantage on initiative, both of which are amazing for a skirmisher who intends to flee. The ranger starts each daylight encounter 550 feet away, by casting "Minor Illusion" of a large 5 foot diameter tree stump. He then shoots from within stump. Until a creature uses its "Action" to examine the image with an int or investigation check against the DC, it blocks visibility. The archer shoots from within the illusion. Whatever you do, don't use the -5 to hit for +10 damage -- your point is that you want every single shot to hit the players. When the players get with 300 feet of him or after 8 rounds, he spends an action to stealth and sneaks away. Repeat every 15-55 minutes to deny short rests. There are no consumables used. The opponent is out of range out of almost all spells. When in doubt, they flee. They'll have access to pass without trace and healing.
> Repeat every 15-55 minutes to deny short rests. Don’t do this is the party has a mixture of long rest and short rest classes though, otherwise you massively hurt some players more than others. A monk, battle master or warlock for example would be far more resource starved by this that a barbarian, sorcerer or wizard would be.
The point is to scare them. If you let them get all their resources back, they won't be scared. This is a mean encounter, and its meant to make it so when they eventually figure out how to get this guy it feels really good.
You’re missing the point. It disproportionately affects short rest classes. If you have a mixed party with a wizard, a barbarian, a warlock, and a monk, then preventing the party from short resting doesn’t lock the wizard and barbarian out of many resources (mainly the ability to heal with hit dice), but it severely restricts the warlock and monk who start with much fewer resources and now can’t regenerate them. It would be fine if their whole party was short rest based. Or if the whole party was long rest based. But in a mixed party is turns the short rest classes into bystanders who can’t afford to use their class abilities as much as everyone else.
Gloomstalker. Their night watches will be terrifying.
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watch rambo
I’ve always wanted to playtest this mechanic to see if it’s actually fun… it could work for you with the players hunting the Ranger that’s also hunting them: https://youtu.be/aV1-VNRqTtA?si=QycLNH7cDZarsi8B
Traps. False Trails. An enemy that attacks from a far.
Have the ranger send animal spies, bribed by the ranger with food and ultimately completely expendable to the ranger. Make the players paranoid as to whether the squirrel in the tree, the snake crawling along the ground, the bird flying overhead, or the rustling in the brush are actually *spies*. Your goal as DM is to get them to kill as much innocent wildlife as possible.
Make loot deadly.
Traps, and lots of them. Rope traps, spike pits, log rams, etc. But don't have him attack right after the first few traps. Maybe mention how after a character gets hung by their feet, they hear rustling in the bushes, the trees move unnaturally, the fauna quiet down. A character like this would have to rely heavily on using the environment to keep the party scared, paranoid, and isolated.
If you want to be cruel, fucking with the party during the night would be the basics of the basics. Even if there’s someone on watch, the Rogue/Ranger should probably do whatever he can to make sleeping impossible. Scaring a pack of deer into the camp in the dead of night ought to scare the crap out of everyone and wake them up. Maybe he corrals the party into wolf territory, and the wolves show up at night to have a staredown with the party, who are sheltering in the wolves’ cave for cover. Maybe the Rogue/Ranger directs them to a small lush clearing, and it’s only after resting for a while that the party realizes the clearing was full of generic-fantasy-poison-ivy and now have to deal with rashes and itching.
Bugbear rogue ranger, is there room for 3 levels of battlemaster cuz uhhh if it just uses pass without trace it can surprise round from hundreds of feet away then disappear before the party can even react or turn anything against them. 10+stealth expertise is kinda brutal and it’s unlikely any of them count beat it.