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

[evileeyore]

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

Sadly he wasn't hiding behind the curtain when he touched me in my "This is where I stop believing in a game about Pointy Eared peeps tossing about magical fire" place.

So, stop looking closely, and enjoy the *result* - which is a cool character that can creep around better than anyone!

No I get all that.

It's just this is where in 5e I went "Sigh" and shook my head. Hey, I made it past levels and classes and alignments at least this time.


And it's waaay better than the lols I've been getting while making FFG Star Wars characters... or the occasionally mind-warping geometry some Star Wars ships have... GR75's "command module is less than 3 meters across and houses a crew of 6"... the horror, the horror...

 

[Kinak]

Yes, since the base ranger gets spells, subclass might not be the right technical term. I would bet that we could still see a non-spellcaster ranger as a variant class at some point with a different class chart, or a similar class with another name such as Hunter.

Yeah. I know my players wouldn't be happy until that got released, but none of them want to play 5e, so it's a moot point.

I think the reason for the difference is that they worked on these classes with the mindset that each one is its own entity and tried to make each one its own thing rather than saying "we're going to structure classes this way". I actually like that approach, but of course don't agree with how every little thing turned out.

I'd have actually liked a bit more of that, honestly. We might still see some alternate resources squirreled away, though

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Thaumaturge]

Here's a thought - if there's a spell point variant in the DMG, you may get a lot closer to your goal. Only use spells that you can style appropriate to your desire - spell levels and slots go away - you just have a pool of points giving you only an overall limit on the game/narrative power you can throw about in a day. This even works as an in-world thing. If you work hard on a given day, you eventually get fatigued. Colloquially, we'd say you get, "brain fried". You're up and awake, but your ability to concentrate and be creative and do useful work diminishes. The "spell points" become a limited pool of cognitive ability and attention that needs rest to replenish on occasion.

Mearls has mentioned the spell point variant will be there, so odds are good.

And I really like this idea. I don't necessarily have a problem with spellcasting rangers. But I really like the idea of different classes having different ways of expressing their spells. Making the ranger, paladin, eldritch knight, and arcane trickster (and maybe not even all of those) use spell points while the traditional spellcasting classes use the neo-vancian system seems like a neat way to differentiate them.

Thaumaturge.

 

[GrumpyGamer]

The Ranger should be a spellcasting class. I see no reason why they could not add a scout subclass to either the thief or the fighter that would provide what people are asking for in future books (as much as I don't want to see future books).

 

[Minigiant]

The thing I find the most lolworthy about 5e's "mechanically enforced class skills" is the Ranger and Rogue don;t even have to be good at those skills and yet they can automagically be better at them in those narrow mechanically enforced ways...


A Ranger with no Survival, Athletics, or Stealth proficiency is yet better at moving in and hiding in wilderness than anyone else... I guess Animal Handling, Perception, and [Knowledge] Nature really pays off.

You don't have to be good at something to know how to do something others can't.

I know how to solder plumbing but I am not good at soldering larger diameter pipe cleanly.
Plenty of sports players have bad fundamentals but are really good at one thing.
A ranger can know the procedure for all the ranger stuff. He just sucks at most of it.

Every ranger knows how to track and do so perfectly in decent conditions. Every ranger at high levels knows how to make camouflage. Every experienced ranger knows how to move, attack, and hide. Every ranger however does not automatically know how to predict the weather, train a wild dog, or actually hide well.

 

[Xodis]

So you are limited to how many traps you can setup around the camp and you can somehow designate a person who can't set off the alarm no matter what? Also the person who sets off the alarm can't hear it?

Animals like the ranger, but only a few times per day and you can only make a few poultices per day?

Also for some strange reason, if you setup a trap, you can't make as many poultices or befriend enough animals.

Sorry, but no. Just no.

Its the power of the poultice, it can heal wounds and animals love it. If I heal you I have no treats for the woodland creatures. Im running low on it though because I had to use some of the materials I make it with to set up that tra.....alarm.... (That is actually a noise trap on the bushes that most people will think is just the wind).

 

[DEFCON 1]

I would not be surprised if you could just strip out Ranger spellcasting and replace it with the Fighter's Martial Archetype system (and what I presume are the martial maneuvers and dice they get at 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th) and end up with a pretty balanced Ranger at your table if you wanted to build it.

Would that impinge too much on your campaign's Fighter? Maybe. But if you really wanted the Ranger's class features rather than the Fighter's other class features (like Fighting Style, Second Wind, Action Surge, Extra Attacks, Indomitable, extra Ability Score Improvements etc.)... it'd be a pretty good trade-off at the end.

 

[Andor]

I think I get it.

Abilities lie at the intersection of skills, spells, class abilities, feats, etc. And these all mean different things to different people. I don't see any particular difference between a spell and a supernatural ability, but some people clearly do. To my mind anything that doesn't represent skill, presumably implies some supernatural effect. If it's magic it may be a spell or it may not. I couldn't tell you the difference.

Further what is 'supernatural' varies between people. Passing without a trace seems supernatural to me, but someone whose never done any tracking might not see any reason why skill isn't sufficient to erase all traces of someone passing. (Possible over hard terrain, not so much in snow...)

Plus what people expect the ranger to be seems to vary wildly based on their tastes in literature and when they started playing the game. Someone who came in with the 3e ranger sees things very differently than those who started in 1e.

Rangers in D&D have always had this sort of awkward relationship to the supernatural, and debate about whether they should cast spells is nothing new. For my money the Ranger has pretty solidly gelled into someone who is a good fighter, wilderness oriented, and has some mojo going on. If you want to drop the Mojo, then you drop the class and fulfill your woodsy-warrior vibe with other means. Maybe your fighter with wood skills isn't as good as the ranger, and that makes sense becuase he isn't using all the tools in the rangers kit. Should someone who refuses to study with the druids to learn woodcraft be as good as someone who does?

Doesn't mean he's incompetant though.

 

[nnms]

Of the classes we have seen so far, are there enough class features front loaded at level 1 that anyone who wants a non-magic ranger can take it for a level or two and then switch to multiclassing rogue or fighter? Or have class features been too distributed across all levels?

The main issue as I see it is this: We all have ideas in our head about what a given class should be. And to a degree everyone is going to find something about some class that doesn't match what the given person wants that class to be. I for one, don't like rage focus of barbarians. I've never seen going into a berzerker rage as the defining act of a barbarian type character in any fantasy fiction. Often they are the most level headed and cold in their violence. So I have to deal with barbarians being explicitly rage focused in 5E. What are my options?

- Find a way to cobble together other classes and multiclassing, background and maybe feats to make the kind of character I would want that I feel is not represented by the rules.
- Find a third party take on the class that does represent it my way.
- Write such a class myself from scratch
- House rule the existing one to give it something else in favour of the class feature we don't want.
- Find another game to play that doesn't "get it wrong"

It sucks if your favorite class from previous editions isn't quite represented the way you would like it. I get that. The question is what's your plan to deal with it? The PHB is in print and they're not going to change it for your preferences now. It's done.

 

[Dausuul]

You show a desire to interpret the game rules as literal limitations on a person in a world. Sometimes, it helps us to consider them that way, but really, the rules *aren't* themselves literal game-world physics. They are there to govern game flow, and limit how often special stuff shows up in the resulting narrative.

Let me ask you - if you were playing chess, would you ask why you can't move *all* your pieces in one turn? I mean, they're supposed to be representations of units on a battlefield, and on a *real* battlefield you don't have to take turns! No, you don't ask that. Those are the rules of the game. They are structured that way because that's what makes the game an interesting challenge. The rules of chess are *NOT* an accurate simulation of warfare.

The same logic applies to D&D.

It most certainly does not! D&D is not an abstract strategy game. If this logic applied to D&D, there would be no need for "rulings over rules." Chess doesn't need a DM.

At its core, D&D is a game of pretend. It's not all that different from when one kid says "I'm Batman!" and another says "Well, I'm Wonder Woman!" and they start fighting imaginary criminals. The rules exist to help the kids decide what happens when the imaginary Joker throws imaginary razor-edged playing cards at Batman. When the kids start debating whether Batman can dodge the playing cards, the rules offer a common ground and a set of tools with which to reach an answer. Sometimes, strict adherence to the rules produces silly results, in which case the kids can say "That's silly" and ignore them. This is one of the reasons Rule Zero was invented. But in most cases the rules provide decent answers.

Because the rules are tools for answering questions about the fiction, however, they can't be separated from it. When the rules say that Batman can only throw 3 Batarangs per day, that is a statement about the fictional world. It shouldn't be necessary for the kids to dream up ad hoc rationalizations for why Batman is choosing not to throw any more Batarangs. The rules have no authority over what Batman chooses to do, only over the results of his decisions.