Bolts and Arrows – A Comprehensive Ranger Overview, Part 3: The Swarmkeeper

Thanks to fucubed “Panda” and Seacliff for the kobold template

Okay, I did promise I would do worst to best, but c’mon, I can’t not do my favorite subclass from Ranger (and probably favorite in the whole game) first. I could go on about this subclass for a long while, but I’m here to cover its features, not rave like a lunatic. Oh wait, I kind of already am raving, heh.

The Swarmkeeper is one of the most recent subclasses released for Ranger, appearing in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and is very focused on control, as evidenced by its spell list (I see you Web!) and features, especially its signature feature, Gathered Swarm.

So is the Swarmkeeper effective at what it was designed to do? Let’s take a look, shall we?

Swarmkeeper Magic – Level 3

We’ll start by covering the expanded magic you get from Swarmkeeper. As is with all conclave spells, you gain a 1st-level spell when you first choose the conclave, and more spells when you reach 5th, 9th, 13th, and lastly 17th level in the Ranger.

3rd – Faerie Fire
Faerie Fire is a pretty decent support spell for its level. You’ll have better things to be concentrating on as your levels go up, but for when you get it, Faerie Fire serves its purposes perfectly fine. Advantage generation for you and your allies at the cost of your concentration. Not a bad deal.

5th – Web
This is the spell that hard dominates the expanded spells and more than makes up for the lackluster spells gained at 9th, 13th, and 17th. Web is an incredible control spell, covering a large area, being able to pin flying foes, causing lots of difficult terrain, and enforcing both a save and a check, meaning it’s more difficult for enemies to get out. If you want a better idea of how effective Web is, let’s take the 1st-level spell Entangle. It’s a solid spell, and good for its level. Now think of Web as the older brother who is better at literally everything that makes Entangle good. That’s the effectiveness of Web. This will often be competing with Pass Without Trace when it comes to 2nd-level slots, and quite frankly can compete with Conjure Animals for slots when you reach 9th level, and above. It’s that good of a spell, and one of the best spells for its level (Pass Without Trace being another).

9th – Gaseous Form
It’s… okay? Gaseous Form does take up 3rd-level slots and eats up your concentration, but it does give you some flying speed and the ability to slip into tiny cracks. It’s a “nope I’m outta here” spell, and that’s about all it does. Taking up concentration means you can’t use it defensively after casting a concentration spell, and you can’t cast spells or attacks while Gaseous Form is active, so you can’t be offensive either. You really only use this if you need to escape from a fight or something like that.

13th – Arcane Eye
Not the worst spell in existence, but leaves a bit to be desired. You get a little scout for information up ahead. The only issue is that it’s pretty expensive for its slot, especially since you don’t have that many 4th-level slots when you first get this spell (and later on those slots are better reserved for other spells). If no one in the party for some reason has Find Familiar or Unseen Servant prepared, then uh here’s your really late addition for scouting.

17th – Insect Plague
All the good parts of this spell we could already do with much lower-level spells, which leaves the damage which both isn’t much for the level, and targets a terrible save. Keep in mind that as a Ranger, we have a generally lower save DC than fullcasters, and targeting the worst save at basically all levels except like Tier 1 doesn’t help. Plus, this also eats up concentration on a better spell. Spike Growth and Web both do this spell’s job better.

Gathered Swarm – Level 3

“Once on each of your turns, you can cause the swarm to assist you in one of the following ways, immediately after you hit a creature with an attack:
– The attack’s target takes 1d6 piercing damage from the swarm.
– The attack’s target must succeed on a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC or be moved by the swarm up to 15 feet horizontally in a direction of your choice.
– You are moved by the swarm 5 feet horizontally in a direction of your choice.”

Web is an excellent spell and a great reason to take Swarmkeeper, but the real meat of Swarmkeeper I find is their signature Gathered Swarm. With 3 great features to choose from per turn at no resource cost, there’s a lot to work with here.

– The bonus damage is straightforward. 1d6 (and 1d8 later) isn’t really a ton, but it’s free and costs you nothing to use, not even a bonus action. It is worth using one of the other two bullets most of the time though. However, I must note that the damage is independent of a weapon, meaning the second you come up against something resistant or immune to piercing damage, this bonus damage not being magical means it’s pretty much worthless

– This is the real good part of Gathered Swarm at this level. Strength saves aren’t the most amazing to target (still better than Constitution), but this is completely free, and a creature will eventually fail their save. When that does happen, well, the ability to move the creature up to 15 feet in any (horizontal, mind you) direction is quite strong and allows you easily position an enemy in the right place. Tag team with another controller, like a Warlock using EBARB (Eldritch Blast + Agonizing + Repelling Blast) to keep enemies where you want them to be – like right in your own Web! You’ll want to use this basically all the time unless when accidentally caught in melee.

– This one is some good utility. It might not seem like much, but if you read it closely, you’ll notice that it is your own swarm moving you, not you moving yourself, meaning that it’s forced movement. As such, that means you can get a discount Disengage without actually having to take the Disengage action if you ever accidentally find yourself stuck in melee. While it would technically be better to have the swarm move the target, this is a guaranteed effect with no saves attached. This feature only gets better once we get to 11th level as well. You can also treat this as what is technically a 5-foot increase to your speed. I would like this a bit more if you could also use it on an ally if they were, say within 10 feet of the target creature, but whatever.

Overall, a really good 3rd-level feature. Forced movement that you can fully control, a disengage button, and some straightforward bonus damage all packaged neatly into one feature.

As for the appearance of the swarm itself, the sheer amount of options for flavor honestly rivals what you can do for Eldritch Blast. I myself enjoy having my swarm be a swarm of frost sprites that live within pockets in my cloak.

Writhing Tide – Level 7

“Beginning at 7th level, you can condense part of your swarm into a focused mass that lifts you up. As a bonus action, you gain a flying speed of 10 feet and can hover. This effect lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.”

Honestly, everything you need to know about this feature is already written on the tin, but in short, it’s flying speed. Not a lot of it, but flying speed is flying speed, especially since it also allows you to hover. Proficiency bonus per long rest does mean you need to watch your usage, so use this feature if in an emergency or you really want to cheese the fight with flight – 1 minute should do the trick. Do keep in mind that it does use your bonus action though, so you’re going to definitely lose a bit of damage at the start of combat, and the 1 minute duration means prematurely using this feature is a bit difficult. 1 minute just hits differently when out of combat.

A good use of this feature is to shake up your movement – spend most of your time grounded to maximize your movement, and try to be flying by the end of your turn. If you use the third bullet of your Gathered Swarm while flying, you can technically increase the flying speed from 10 feet to 15 feet.

Overall, it’s concentrationless flight, so we’ll take it. Just try and watch for situations where you think you’ll need the flight.

Mighty Swarm – Level 11

“At 11th level, your Gathered Swarm grows mightier in the following ways:
– The damage of Gathered Swarm increases to 1d8.
– If a creature fails its saving throw against being moved by the Gathered Swarm, you can also cause the swarm to knock the creature prone.
– When you are moved by Gathered Swarm, it gives you half cover until the start of your next turn.”

A wonderful set of improvements to our signature feature. Your priority is still going to be the second bullet, but the third bullet has seen drastic improvement and is now more competitive.

– Unfortunately, the bonus damage has been outscaled by the other 2 bullets. If you still see reason to use the bonus damage, go right for it, but if you see no reason to use the second bullet then you’d be better off using the third bullet, not the first bullet. However, it’s still a little bit of extra damage, something that miiiiiiiiiight be just enough to land the kill.

– An incredible feature got even better. Move the creature AND knock it prone to make sure it stays put? Fantastic. Just be aware of your position if you do choose to knock the creature prone, as you’ll otherwise have disadvantage on your Hand Crossbow attacks unless you’re within 5 feet – or in a position to get within 5 feet. However, taking disadvantage is completely worth it if it means the creature stays put where you need it to be, and plus, it’ll have disadvantage on its own attacks. Additionally, if you’re using heavy obscurement, such as from Fog Cloud, in order to negate advantage on create a flat roll situation, knocking the creature prone means you won’t have to worry about disadvantage at all – remember that no matter how many instances of advantage or disadvantage you have, as long as you have advantage and disadvantage, all instances will cancel each other out, giving you a flat roll situation. Granted, so will the prone creature, but that’s fine since they’re either stuck crawling on the ground or needs to use half its movement to stand up. And remember a quick bit of wording: You decide whether or not to knock the creature prone after they have failed their save, meaning if they had any advantage on saves against being knocked prone, they won’t apply here as the save is not for being knocked prone, it is for forced movement.

– If you don’t need to forcefully move a creature and/or knock it prone, this should be your go-to. Half cover grants a +2 bonus to both AC and Dexterity saving throws, which is very beneficial to us – especially that AC boost, as we can’t really wield a shield due to needing a free hand to load our Hand Crossbow, meaning with Half-Plate, our AC is at best 17, so this will get us to 19 when called for. If you think a Dexterity save might be coming, use this feature as well. As a higher-level feature, the likelihood of DEX saves becomes more and more common, and while the least deadly of the 3 commons saves normally, it still hurts to take the full brunt of, say, a dragon’s breath weapon. Pair this with Absorb Elements or Swarming Dispersal when we get it at level 15.

An excellent 11th-level feature that makes us even better at what we’re supposed to be good at: Control. Prone on command, resourceless self-defense abilities, we’re looking pretty good.

Swarming Dispersal – Level 15

“When you reach 15th level, you can discorporate into your swarm, avoiding danger. When you take damage, you can use your reaction to give yourself resistance to that damage. You vanish into your swarm and then teleport to an unoccupied space that you can see within 30 feet of you, where you reappear with the swarm.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.”

This is a bit of weird one. It’s not bad, but after the excellent feature we got for the last conclave feature, this one can feel a little lacking sometimes. That said, it’s just purely feel. The best way to treat Swarming Dispersal is as an Absorb Elements on a separate resource pool that works against ALL damage types.

I’m still certainly annoyed by it being proficiency bonus per long rest, but this one is okay where it is. It does its job when you need it to, and will also get you out of a jam thanks to the 30-foot teleportation. The situations you would use this are pretty much in the situations you’d use Absorb Elements, with few added on, mainly the situations that Absorb Elements doesn’t cover. This is not a reason to remove Absorb Elements from your known spells though, you should still keep it for emergencies.

Overall, a pretty decent capstone. Definitely not as excellent as the level 11 feature we got, but still solid and useful.

Conclusion

As stated at the start, Swarmkeeper is an excellent subclass that perfectly slots into what it’s designed to be: A controller. With useful features for putting or keeping enemies where you need them to be and the ability to get yourself out of a jam quite readily, it is without a doubt one of the best conclaves for Ranger, especially in a game where control has a massive impact.

So with that, how does it match up to Gloom Stalker? I personally find it’s very close to, if not equal to Gloom Stalker, but they do fill separate niches: While Swarmkeeper excels as the controller subclass, Gloom Stalker is the damage dealer, the one who can persistently nova on Round 1 and destroy enemies. So, it does kind of boils down to preference. Do you want to slam dunk on enemies with damage and surprise? Gloom Stalker. Do you prefer to play a little more passively instead getting enemies into favorable positions? Swarmkeeper. Regardless though, I think most can definitely agree that these two are the two best Ranger conclaves – Hunter is the third.

Hope you enjoyed!

– Mistral Umaimon