D&D 5E Rangers - any news?

[Jester David]

I know this will in all likelihood not be the case based on prior examples, but I hope the lore/flavor is kept to a minimum. This is going to be the first major rules expansion, and given their plans for a much slower release schedule, probably the only one we'll be getting for 2-3 years, so I hope the crunch is center stage.

Devoting 100 pages of a 256-page book and making that the largest chapter would be pretty "center stage". Like the monster section of Volo's Guide to Monsters.
Devoting 150 pages to subclasses and feats would be an amount of content comparable to the PHB. It's almost doubling the content for the game. It's more content than will ever be used at most tables.

I'd rather see 100 pages of new PC content, and a couple other 75-page sections that are fluff and advice heavy, with some DM content as well.
Content that will be fun to read. Content that will be interesting in 5 or 10 years, or interesting for players of any edition (or even Pathfinder players). Like the lore of Volo's Guide to Monsters or the world info of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
After all, a book that's all rules options appeals only to fans of crunch. A book that's 50% rules 50% lore appeals to fans of crunch and fans of fluff.

I think it's more likely three times as much pages once they bloat up the crunch. I think you are too generous in your assessment - if they keep more than half the existing UA material that would be a good haul.

I agree that a few of the options will be declared "not ready for primetime" and dumped.
But there's also likely a few options that were solid out the gate and didn't need the mass feedback of the public concept test that is Unearthed Arcana. The "obvious" stuff that was just given directly to the friends & family private playtesters. The existence of a phoenix sorcerer, the execution of a treachery paladin, or the concept of a warlock that makes a pact with an item need a little feedback to see how people feel. But the

Besides, based on SCAG, they are definitely not shy on drawing out their crunch.

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide was a very different book. It was a world book that had a dash of bonus crunch. Like Volo's Guide to Monsters is a monster book that has a dash of player crunch.
A rules expansion book should have as much expansion of rules as SCAG had FR world lore. They're different books with different needs.
.

Thank you. So, at this time, the revised ranger could just as well not be included in this year's schedule at all, for what we know.

Well… no. We know nothing apart from Mearls saying they're working on "the first major rules expansion". We have no information one way or another.
That and the wave of UA means we're presuming the Fall 2017 book will be crunch heavy. But it might not be.

"No info" is the answer to the question I asked for, then.

Yup.
Because there's not some secret repository of news or tell-all interview that didn't make it onto the front page of ENWorld. And no one has broken their NDA. We're not holding out on ya, man.


Getting back to your OP:

* will ranger subclasses be called conclaves now? It was strange that only Rangers used the same archetype term as fighters.

That does seem to be the case. They seem to have been outright renamed.

* or are ranger archetypes the term for subclasses compatible with the PHB chassi, while ranger conclaves is the term for subclasses compatible with the revised ranger?

Based on the current (and thus in flux) design, it looks like most conclaves will be designed for both, having an optional 5th level feature (currently Extra Attack).

I think the design of the revised ranger was explicitly done to ensure compatibility between subclasses

And how does the spell-less ranger fit into all of this?

*shrug*
You know as much as I do.

Ideally, they will officially present a new Ranger complete with all the "conclaves" that officially makes it through, and then the spell-less ranger will be an alternative that still worsk regardless of which conclave you pick. Either that, or it's a conclave of its own (more or less a separate class if you think about it), which is also fine.

I think they're testing the scout as a fighter and/or rogue subclass to replace the spell-less ranger.

 

[Dualazi]

Devoting 100 pages of a 256-page book and making that the largest chapter would be pretty "center stage". Like the monster section of Volo's Guide to Monsters.
Devoting 150 pages to subclasses and feats would be an amount of content comparable to the PHB. It's almost doubling the content for the game. It's more content than will ever be used at most tables.

I'd rather see 100 pages of new PC content, and a couple other 75-page sections that are fluff and advice heavy, with some DM content as well.
Content that will be fun to read. Content that will be interesting in 5 or 10 years, or interesting for players of any edition (or even Pathfinder players). Like the lore of Volo's Guide to Monsters or the world info of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.
After all, a book that's all rules options appeals only to fans of crunch. A book that's 50% rules 50% lore appeals to fans of crunch and fans of fluff.

Alternately, a book of only 50% stuff that I'll actually use just gets forgotten about till I buy it second-hand for half the price. Which, incidentally, is why I haven't bought volo's.

This new method of splitting the books would not ruffle my feathers at all if we were seeing a release schedule on par with prior editions, but we're not. That's fine, but that means that this book had better be able to tide me over until the next offering however many years later. It's also not acceptable to me to say that the presence of the DM's guild allows for the creation of an inferior product crunch wise, it's like saying you can buy a crappy video game that can be modded to be good. I'd rather just buy a good game in the first place.

Also "it's more content than will ever be used at most tables" is disingenuous, since it assumes people will want to experiment with every class and build. If you have someone who only plays casters, they'll run out of options far quicker.

Lastly, what could the advice/lore even entail? I'm reasonably willing to bet the book is setting agnostic for the most part, the only thing I can think of off hand would be additional magic items, but that is also more crunch.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Volo's is selling like hotcakes on Amazon, apparently, so it seems that their strategy is paying off on that one. I find myself very curious what else we would get in a Big Book of Crunch; the most obvious route is Elminster's Guide to the Planes or whatever, allowing some new monsters and world information, but that does then limit the logical player contents.

 

[Jester David]

Alternately, a book of only 50% stuff that I'll actually use just gets forgotten about till I buy it second-hand for half the price. Which, incidentally, is why I haven't bought volo's.

If you want crunch, limited crunch is better than no crunch.


Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide was pretty useless to me, as I play homebrew. But it was fun to read. I've paid more for less interesting books. And one of my players is almost certain to pick the swashbuckler rogue, so it will see actual play at my table, which is more than I can say about a third of my Pathfinder hardcovers or many other RPG books I've purchased over the years.

Volo's Guide to Monsters was great as a DM, giving me lots of ideas for adventures. Even if I hadn't turned to the last half of the book with the monster statblocks, it would likely have a larger impact on my campaign than the DMG and Tome of Beasts combined.
Really, you only ever need 60 monster: a sneaky monster, a tough monster, and a caster monster for levels 1 through 20. If even that, given monster chart by level in the back of the DMG. It's the lore and stories of a monster than make them interesting, that make you want to use them at your table.

This new method of splitting the books would not ruffle my feathers at all if we were seeing a release schedule on par with prior editions, but we're not. That's fine, but that means that this book had better be able to tide me over until the next offering however many years later.

I like reading RPG books for fun. With fewer D&D books, I just buy other systems' books.
I can read and theorycraft to my heart's content.
And for all intents and purposes, it has as much impact on my game as most releases for 3e and 4e did back when I was playing those editions.

It's also not acceptable to me to say that the presence of the DM's guild allows for the creation of an inferior product crunch wise, it's like saying you can buy a crappy video game that can be modded to be good. I'd rather just buy a good game in the first place.

Not sure how they're related.
The D&D team slowed down their release schedule back in 2011 for the final years of 4e and kept it slow during the first couple years of 5e, well before the DMsGuild was a thing.

Also, your analogy is flawed. Just because the DMsGuild is unofficial doesn't make it crappy. There's nothing magically about the team at WotC that makes their content somehow inherently superiour. This discussion is taking place in a thread about the ranger after all.

Also "it's more content than will ever be used at most tables" is disingenuous, since it assumes people will want to experiment with every class and build. If you have someone who only plays casters, they'll run out of options far quicker.

Between clerics and wizards alone there are way more subclasses than barbarian, rogue, fighter, and ranger. Combined.
There are currently 24 or 25 full caster options. Even if you lose a character every five levels and end campaigns at level 15, that's enough for eight campaigns. Playing weekly and levelling every 2 1/2 sessions, that's enough content for five-and-a-half years of gameplay. Just what we have in hardcover books already. WotC simply does not need to double that every year or six months. That's needless. That's content for the sake of content.

If they do release a big book of subclasses this fall with just 100 pages of new subclasses, that's probably all the subclasses we'll ever need for 5e. That's functionally enough content for the entire lifespan of the game. Any additional content is largely mastabatory. And likely subject to diminishing returns and weaker sales.

Lastly, what could the advice/lore even entail? I'm reasonably willing to bet the book is setting agnostic for the most part, the only thing I can think of off hand would be additional magic items, but that is also more crunch.

Depends on the theme of the book. I'm sure it won't be "the big ass book of crunch." That's boring. And it's not going to be "PHB 2". It will have some kind of hook that identifies it.

Even if it's something simple like "The Adventurer's Handbook" it might contain advice on adventuring: basic strategies and tactics. Lighting, food, setting watch, mapping, marching order, etc. Expanded rules and options for exploring. Hexploration. Advice on designing characters to fit certain party roles. Maybe some famous adventuring companies, detailing mercenary companies, assassins' guilds, bardic colleges, wizards academies, thieves' guilds, etc. Maybe some sample organizations of those types from the Realms.

And that's just one idea. It could be a Hacker's Guide, Dungeon/Wilderness Survival Guide, Psionics Handbook, Planar Heroes Handbook, Volo's Guide to Adventurers, etc.

 

[Blue]

When will we see a consolidation of all these ideas into a coherent whole?

I mean:
* will ranger subclasses be called conclaves now? It was strange that only Rangers used the same archetype term as fighters.
* or are ranger archetypes the term for subclasses compatible with the PHB chassi, while ranger conclaves is the term for subclasses compatible with the revised ranger?
* which I hope is not the case, because I would much prefer if the game takes a step forward and officially presents a way to use all subclasses with the revised ranger

Then there are relatively minor issues already brought up; the revised ranger gains a terrible amount of useful stuff already at first level, some of which are close to supernatural in ability and power. There are some subtle and some not subtle differences ebtween favored enemy; let's hope for a single unified favored enemy definition going forward.

And how does the spell-less ranger fit into all of this?

Ideally, they will officially present a new Ranger complete with all the "conclaves" that officially makes it through, and then the spell-less ranger will be an alternative that still worsk regardless of which conclave you pick. Either that, or it's a conclave of its own (more or less a separate class if you think about it), which is also fine.

I mean, I appreciate the ability to bring in a real animal companion that isn't remote-controlled very very much, but I can't see myself offering the option if I started a new campaign today. There are simply too many rough edges and questionmarks.

So I wonder - anyone got a guess as to when we might see the finalized result in official print?

"Coherent whole" - if you are waiting and requiring them to change the PHB ranger, they've already made it clear they aren't going to invalidate it. If you mean something else I am missing it, can you clarify.

The most recent UA article indicates clearly that those subclasses are compatible with either ranger. It makes no mention of other ranger subclasses, were there any that followed the normal ranger advancement? (e.g. not the spell-less ranger.)

It's been brought up that UA is fairly early in the design process to get community feedback. Polishing the final design, including multiclass balancing (to reduce cherry-picking at 1st and low levels) is at a later stage in the process.

I'm unsure of the issue with a casting class having something with supernatural flavor.

Who says the previously presented spell-less ranger fits into anything? Nothing says that any option moves forward. Perhaps the new concept for the spell-less ranger was built on the rogue chassis and presented at the end of the article. Mechanically, the game has a skilled martial skirmisher framework already, it had background support to be a "ranger" and with the UA it has additional subclass support as well. There seems little to indicate that they would want to design a subclass that takes major abilities away from the main class.

 

[Dualazi]

If you want crunch, limited crunch is better than no crunch.

This is true…if the lesser crunch is priced/sold accordingly. That’s really my big problem here, if Wizards wants to make fewer monsters or less crunch, that’s on them, but my frustration stems from the fact that they essentially sell it bundled with stuff I don’t want. If they had a Volo’s-lite where I could just buy the monster section alone I’d already own it.

Volo's Guide to Monsters was great as a DM, giving me lots of ideas for adventures. Even if I hadn't turned to the last half of the book with the monster statblocks, it would likely have a larger impact on my campaign than the DMG and Tome of Beasts combined.

I suspect we have wildly different viewpoints and experiences then, as this beggars disbelief from my camp.

Really, you only ever need 60 monster: a sneaky monster, a tough monster, and a caster monster for levels 1 through 20. If even that, given monster chart by level in the back of the DMG. It's the lore and stories of a monster than make them interesting, that make you want to use them at your table.

This part is just disingenuous though. No, while lore and story are integral parts of the game, they do not brush off the mechanics to the sidelines. What constitutes a ‘tough’ monster? Is it one with high HP/AC? Strong Regen? Multiple lives/phases? All of these can lead to radically different fights and experiences with the game, which is no less important or desirable than having a well fleshed out world and story.

I like reading RPG books for fun. With fewer D&D books, I just buy other systems' books.
I can read and theorycraft to my heart's content.
And for all intents and purposes, it has as much impact on my game as most releases for 3e and 4e did back when I was playing those editions.

For those of us without the time to homebrew new systems/classes/subclasses, this is undesirable. Also somewhat misses the point, for those of us who want to maximize rules expansion in a book that speculatively will be about exactly that, then the profusion or absence of 3rd party material is irrelevant, in the same way that Tome of Beasts being released didn’t make me less disappointed in Volo’s.

Also, your analogy is flawed. Just because the DMsGuild is unofficial doesn't make it crappy. There's nothing magically about the team at WotC that makes their content somehow inherently superiour. This discussion is taking place in a thread about the ranger after all.

You mean aside from their many years working in the hobby and their larger playtesting capability? And yeah, they dropped the ball in a couple of places (ranger, elements monk etc.) but I doubt 5e would be seeing this resurgence if the product wasn’t noteworthy.

Between clerics and wizards alone there are way more subclasses than barbarian, rogue, fighter, and ranger. Combined.
There are currently 24 or 25 full caster options. Even if you lose a character every five levels and end campaigns at level 15, that's enough for eight campaigns. Playing weekly and levelling every 2 1/2 sessions, that's enough content for five-and-a-half years of gameplay. Just what we have in hardcover books already. WotC simply does not need to double that every year or six months. That's needless. That's content for the sake of content.

The difference is that the subclasses for martials tend to change the gameplay more radically than casters, which off come off as simply having a different coat of paint. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see a storm cleric be uninterested in playing a nature cleric in a subsequent campaign.

If they do release a big book of subclasses this fall with just 100 pages of new subclasses, that's probably all the subclasses we'll ever need for 5e. That's functionally enough content for the entire lifespan of the game. Any additional content is largely mastabatory. And likely subject to diminishing returns and weaker sales.

If so, great. Saves us the trouble of waiting years for the next release, although I hope that new full classes will be included as well, which seems likely given the mystic and artificer floating around.

Depends on the theme of the book. I'm sure it won't be "the big ass book of crunch." That's boring. And it's not going to be "PHB 2". It will have some kind of hook that identifies it.

Even if it's something simple like "The Adventurer's Handbook" it might contain advice on adventuring: basic strategies and tactics. Lighting, food, setting watch, mapping, marching order, etc. Expanded rules and options for exploring. Hexploration. Advice on designing characters to fit certain party roles. Maybe some famous adventuring companies, detailing mercenary companies, assassins' guilds, bardic colleges, wizards academies, thieves' guilds, etc. Maybe some sample organizations of those types from the Realms.

And that's just one idea. It could be a Hacker's Guide, Dungeon/Wilderness Survival Guide, Psionics Handbook, Planar Heroes Handbook, Volo's Guide to Adventurers, etc.

I’d welcome more rules for much of what you mentioned, better exploration rules of subsystems would be amazing. Much of the other stuff would be a drag though, I don’t need any help making organizations or communal groups like adventuring companies or guilds.

 

[Li Shenron]

Sure, but not everything from UA will be in the fall expansion book, surely?

No word on revised rangers since back when...? Or perhaps more to the point, no tweets?

I mean: essentially you're saying there is no info and all we can do is hope that the expansion book has a theme that doesn't exclude revised rangers?

Maybe you weren't directly referring to my post, but anyway I think it's very likely if not almost certain that the expansion book will contain the revised Ranger class, because they have already put a lot of design effort and multiple UA rounds to it, collecting a lot of feedback.

My guess is that the revised Ranger which will be published will be either identical to the last UA article, or having only some fine-tuning. That latest version clearly indicate that they decided to have high compatibility with the PHB version, and I think that's a winning move, because it doesn't alienate all those players (me included) which don't want anything in the PHB to become obsolete. Revising core stuff and introduce incompatibilities is exactly the kind of thing that fractures the fan base, and they don't want to do that, until they are already preparing the ground for 6e. The latest UA Ranger does an awesome job at satisfying both those who wanted a revision and those who don't want it, with the exception of the kind of gamers who are never satisfied at anything until the day they are officially hired as D&D designers.

On the other hand, the spell-less Ranger variant is in a much more difficult position. It is not compatible and it is not clear how many gamers actually want it. We know that when WotC designed 5e they ran a lot of surveys, and on this specific issue they concluded that the PHB Ranger should have had spellcasting. They could have handled it like the Fighter and Rogue which have a spellcasting subclass but spells are not part of the base class. Even as a fan of spellcasting Rangers, I think this would have been a better solution, but apparently their surveys indicated it was the way to go.

Back to the expansion book, it's hard to tell how much of the previous UA material will make it into the book. Personally I wish for all of them, because even those which I don't need can be useful to someone else. I am not even sure if everything UA would fill such book, or if WotC would need to come up with even more stuff to reach their target page count.

 

[Horwath]

New print of the Ranger could be in PHB2( if it makes to printing) or DnD5.5e.

With the rate of editions, 5.5e could come in late 2017/early 2018. 3 to 4 years is enough for edition fine polishing.

Then wait for 6th edition around 2022/23.

 

[CapnZapp]

New print of the Ranger could be in PHB2( if it makes to printing) or DnD5.5e.

With the rate of editions, 5.5e could come in late 2017/early 2018. 3 to 4 years is enough for edition fine polishing.

Then wait for 6th edition around 2022/23.

Lolwut?

 

[Horwath]

Lolwut?

Well, I just made my prediction when the "new" ranger will see the printing outside online UA.

if they print new PHB too soon, people will feel robbed that the game they bought lasts only 2 years.

After 4 years we can expect whole new ranger as it was in: ranger 3.0-> ranger 3.5