D&D 5E The Ranger: You got spellcasting in my peanut butter!

[Li Shenron]

I see several people saying theyd like an option for the Ranger that does not involve spell casting.

I have no problem with that idea.

I am however not sure how it differs from a fighter with maybe the archery combat style and the Grizzly Adams background. (Or whatever gives you Survival and Animal Handleing.)

I mean to say, what feature would you want in such a ranger that the fighter with appropriate skills lacks? An Animal Companion? Tracking? A trusty halfling sidekick?

One possibility is to take Ranger spells and just turn them into non-magical abilities.
Make each Ranger know as many of them as the number of prepared spells for the standard Ranger. Then let them use these either at-will or once per short rest (depending on what's more appropriate for the spell).

Some of them are situational to the point that even if you allow them at-will, it may rarely come up more than once in a day. Others you might want to increase the casting time in order to make sense at-will.

There might be a few however which may be problematic, particularly combat-oriented spells, so I would remove them outright (unless you are willing to accept a non-magical ability that is limited to 1/day).

All in all, I'd do a complete run-down of all Ranger spells and decide one-by-one. There aren't that many anyway.

 

[1of3]

I don't really see a problem. If you want to flavor your Ranger non-magically, do it. Goodberry, Hunter's Mark, Find Traps, Pass without Trace, them arrow spells can all be used without looking outright magically. It might even work for Cure Wounds depending on your take on HP.

 

[Raith5]

I don't really see a problem. If you want to flavor your Ranger non-magically, do it. Goodberry, Hunter's Mark, Find Traps, Pass without Trace, them arrow spells can all be used without looking outright magically. It might even work for Cure Wounds depending on your take on HP.

My beef with spell using Rangers is that these things should not spells but skills. Their connection with wilderness is their knowledge and skill - not their ability to do supra natural things. The fact the Rangers have to cast spells to things like find herbs, avoid traps, hide better are the kind of things that wilderness and outdoorsy folk in our mundane world do all the time strikes me as weird. Kind of undermines the whole thing of being a ranger to me - early editions of D&D be damned.

For me the heart of Rangers rests on the choice of fighting style and or having pets. I also I like the 4e mechanism of quarry to represent focus on one target - preferably having a quarry intersect with favoured enemy (another core aspect of Rangers). Maybe some kind of ambush ability could work as well.

 

[1of3]

But what does it matter? Imagine someone gave you a character and told you: These are your very special ranger abilites. You can use them x times before you sleep. They are so very special, you do not even need to roll dice. That's how awesome you are.

Would this be the problem? If so, yeah, I could understand because it's mechanics..

Otherwise it's only in the name "spell". And that's not important.

 

[Gargoyle]

But what does it matter? Imagine someone gave you a character and told you: These are your very special ranger abilites. You can use them x times before you sleep. They are so very special, you do not even need to roll dice. That's how awesome you are.

Would this be the problem? If so, yeah, I could understand because it's mechanics..

Otherwise it's only in the name "spell". And that's not important.

Works for me, especially since some ranger spells are often easily explained as non-magical; things like goodberry and create water are just their ability to forage well. More obviously magical spells like spike growth, fog cloud, and daylight can be left off their list.

It doesn't seem enough though. To compensate for the ones spells that are more powerful and aren't easily explained without magic, you can easily add a feat or two, perhaps one feat when you would have gotten 2nd level spells, and another when you would have gotten 4th level spells. Turning rangers into the "feat" class, would suite the image of a ranger as a warrior that relies on skill more than brute force. Even one extra feat is a lot in 5e and might be enough.

The cool thing is that I could see a third subclass of ranger that is completely non-magical released in a future official product. I think there is enough demand for it, and that it will be easier for them to design once this edition has been out for a while.

 

[variant]

But what does it matter? Imagine someone gave you a character and told you: These are your very special ranger abilites. You can use them x times before you sleep. They are so very special, you do not even need to roll dice. That's how awesome you are.

Would this be the problem? If so, yeah, I could understand because it's mechanics..

Otherwise it's only in the name "spell". And that's not important.

If they aren't supernatural then why are they limited per day? Why are there different levels of them? Spells like Alarm, Animal Friendship, Cure Wounds, Detect Magic, Fog Cloud etc. are magical.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The cool thing is that I could see a third subclass of ranger that is completely non-magical released in a future official product. I think there is enough demand for it, and that it will be easier for them to design once this edition has been out for a while.

That's what people are asking for here...

It's not exactly unreasonable!

Another approach would probably be to simply remove the spells and give a Ranger the class features of both Hunter AND Beastmaster (and, perhaps, an extra attack at 10). That'd probably work as a quick fix for the issue.

As for "A Fighter with a Background!", well, variant, who I rarely agree with, is quite right, imo, to simply say "no" - Historically, Rangers have a bunch of abilities which Fighters can't emulate and which are non-magical (not every ranger has all of these).

Animal Companion
Animal Friendship/Wild Empathy (Animal Handling is the weak-sauce version of this)
Pass Without Trace
Move through Difficult Terrain
Ultra-Tracking
Favoured Terrain
Favoured Enemies
Extra skills
Quarry
Evasion/Improved Evasion
Improved Stealth-type abilities

Now, in 5E, some of those are MIA, but that's because Rangers have so many spells. Take away the spells, and there's space for them to come back. Others are present, but available only to Rangers, not Fighters (improved Tracking and Stealth abilities, for example).

In general the "You could just play a themed Fighter!" logic that is used in this sort of dismissive argument (not so much by the OP, but certainly by some others here) is very faulty, because by the same logic, you could eliminate most classes, if you just ignore the specific stuff they get - I mean, Bard can be F/M/T MC, Ranger can be F/Druid MC, Sorcerer and Warlock are just themed Wizards, Paladin is just a F/Cleric MC, Barbarian is just a themed Fighter, etc. etc.

Sure, one could, but the reason those classes have existed since the 1970s is that people WANT specifics, they want separate classes. Wanting a non-magic Ranger isn't unreasonable, and sub-class would be the best way to deliver it. That it's not in the main PHB is unsurprising given that, 5E, for better or worse, seems to want most classes to have access to magic, either by default, or via a sub-class. As you say, it's very likely to be something we see later.

 

[Minigiant]

My beef with spell using Rangers is that these things should not spells but skills. Their connection with wilderness is their knowledge and skill - not their ability to do supra natural things. The fact the Rangers have to cast spells to things like find herbs, avoid traps, hide better are the kind of things that wilderness and outdoorsy folk in our mundane world do all the time strikes me as weird. Kind of undermines the whole thing of being a ranger to me - early editions of D&D be damned.

For me the heart of Rangers rests on the choice of fighting style and or having pets. I also I like the 4e mechanism of quarry to represent focus on one target - preferably having a quarry intersect with favoured enemy (another core aspect of Rangers). Maybe some kind of ambush ability could work as well.

The issue is this only works with 3e style skills. With charts and tables and needing to roll a 15 to pick herbs and +10 to the DC if it's in a desert and +5 to the DC for superior healing herbs.

When Monte/Mearls and Co choose to use simple skills, there became only 3 options.

1. A General Rangering section of the PHB that all characters can use that includes tracking, weather prediction, herbalism, foraging, avoiding natural monsters, avoiding natural obstacles, and making camp.
2. A Ranger only class feature of the above.
3. Spells that do (1) or mimic them.

D&D did 2&3 for 1e and 2e. 3e and 4e did 1 and 3 via the Survival skill tables and spells/rituals.

THEN you have to deal with the issue that none of the above are valid obstacles after level 8 or so.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't really see a problem. If you want to flavor your Ranger non-magically, do it. Goodberry, Hunter's Mark, Find Traps, Pass without Trace, them arrow spells can all be used without looking outright magically. It might even work for Cure Wounds depending on your take on HP.

That's a good idea.

My beef with spell using Rangers is that these things should not spells but skills. Their connection with wilderness is their knowledge and skill - not their ability to do supra natural things. The fact the Rangers have to cast spells to things like find herbs, avoid traps, hide better are the kind of things that wilderness and outdoorsy folk in our mundane world do all the time strikes me as weird. Kind of undermines the whole thing of being a ranger to me - early editions of D&D be damned.

If they aren't supernatural then why are they limited per day? Why are there different levels of them? Spells like Alarm, Animal Friendship, Cure Wounds, Detect Magic, Fog Cloud etc. are magical.

The key is to find spells that can be described as non-magical abilities.

Spells with a duration of 8+ hours would be easy. Technically you're casting them at the beginning of your adventuring day and most of the time they get you covered until the end of it. This is the same as saying you have them always active (like a non-magical ability) if you just consider that slot permanently used up.

Spells like Goodberry could be refluffed/explained as "you just only find (not create) up to X goodberry per day, because there aren't more to find in this area". If the fact that tomorrow you can use it again tomorrow in the same place bothers you, refluff it as mushrooms

You can push more spells towards the same explanation, if you're willing to add randomness to the explanation of limitations. For instance, you can cure only up to Y hit points per day, but that's not because of you, that's just the statistical result of the fact that not every wound is something you can cure. Maybe the Wizard's received damage this time was not a wound but the orcs just scared the willies out of her, and that you cannot cure.

Some times the spells are tough... how do you explain a spell that grants you a one-time single super-bonus to shooting an arrow? This is as stretched as it can be but how about saying that this is an ability that requires both a Ranger's skill and a lucky strike? You get only 1-2 per day because that's the best luck you can have. But it doesn't work on the first 1-2 tries every day then stops working... you have been trying all the time already.

 

[Minigiant]

That's a good idea.





The key is to find spells that can be described as non-magical abilities.

Spells with a duration of 8+ hours would be easy. Technically you're casting them at the beginning of your adventuring day and most of the time they get you covered until the end of it. This is the same as saying you have them always active (like a non-magical ability) if you just consider that slot permanently used up.

Spells like Goodberry could be refluffed/explained as "you just only find (not create) up to X goodberry per day, because there aren't more to find in this area". If the fact that tomorrow you can use it again tomorrow in the same place bothers you, refluff it as mushrooms

You can push more spells towards the same explanation, if you're willing to add randomness to the explanation of limitations. For instance, you can cure only up to Y hit points per day, but that's not because of you, that's just the statistical result of the fact that not every wound is something you can cure. Maybe the Wizard's received damage this time was not a wound but the orcs just scared the willies out of her, and that you cannot cure.

Some times the spells are tough... how do you explain a spell that grants you a one-time single super-bonus to shooting an arrow? This is as stretched as it can be but how about saying that this is an ability that requires both a Ranger's skill and a lucky strike? You get only 1-2 per day because that's the best luck you can have. But it doesn't work on the first 1-2 tries every day then stops working... you have been trying all the time already.

The other way is to simply choose which all day buffs a spell less ranger. Take choice out the equation.

At Xth level a ranger gets once per short rest Goodberry if in a area with natural flora within a mile.
At Xth level a ranger gets Find Traps at will in wilderness
At Xth level a ranger and his allies are under the effects of Pass without trace and only higher level rangers can find Tim.
At Xth level a ranger is under the effects of Freedom of Moment or Hide from Undead. If the ranger uses it, they cannot use it again until they take a rest to get all greased up.

Etc etc