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

[variant]

Game balance. That's a problem with skills - if the skill is too effective, allowing unlimited use becomes problematic in play. This especially goes for things like healing abilities, which can really screw up the hit point economy and adventure pacing if unlimited. It is an artifact of playing a game, such that "realistic simulation" has to take a back seat to the concerns of making the game work.



"Levels" are an out-of-game concept to allow us real world humans to organize things. The character need not know of levels, unless the GM explicitly makes them an in-game concept. It can be simply, "As I learn more, I am able to do more".



Three of the five you list can be re-flavored to not be magical, if you need. Alarm is minor, sound-making traps set around the camp. Animal Friendship? Dude, I'm a ranger. Some animals just *like* me! No magic there. Cure wounds? Well, I have this herbal poultice that does a great job on minor cuts, burns, and strains...

The only times you'll run into issues is with other characters who muss with magic (like, say, Dispel Magic). Which you can still get around in the narrative, if you want, with a little creativity.

Is it absolutely perfect? Nope. Is *any* game absolutely perfect? Nope. RPGs are an exercise in finding your fun, prioritizing, and picking your battles.

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.

 

[Gargoyle]

I have to agree with variant - they have a lot of spells, and those spells are powerful.

You say "their spells are mostly for utility and flavour". Hmm, can't speak for the PHB, but in the Alpha certainly that's not true. They have AT LEAST 3 spells/level which are for DIRECT combat (i.e. damage, area denial, summons, combat protection - except level 5 - they only have 3 spells there, but still 2 are for direct combat), many of which are fairly-to-terrifyingly badass.

That's interesting and actually good to hear. If a ranger must have spells, I prefer them to be more useful than what I saw in the playtest. It does make removing them more problematic, but not impossible.

Not sure my players will care about this issue, but my wife likes playing rangers yet dislikes spellcasting so possibly.

 

[Gargoyle]

They seem very leery to modify anything in the class charts. So subclasses only go in the designated subclass slots.

It keeps things cleaner, which is laudable, but means nobody gets to opt out of spellcasting.

I'd be inclined to ask why spellcasting isn't a subclass for rangers and paladins like it is for fighters and rogues. Should we really be assuming the player sitting down to play a wanderer or knight in shining armor wants spells?

Cheers!
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.

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.

 

[Umbran]

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...

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

It is a game about pretending to be elves, and interact with lots of things that don't actually exist. Sometimes, that means that bits of it will not make so much sense if you look closely. It isn't a seamless representation of how you think things should work - there's duck tape and bondo and thick layers of paint on things to cover the rough bits - like on a movie set or stage, it doesn't look great when you put it under really close scrutiny.

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

 

[Thaumaturge]

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!
<snip>
So, stop looking closely, and enjoy the *result* - which is a cool character that can creep around better than anyone!

This is probably the cost we, collectively, pay for the open playtest. We were all invited to look behind the curtain, so it's harder to pay no attention to the man there.

I think the benefit was probably worth the cost, but it was a cost.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Perhaps. But let us also remember that the ranger has been a spellcaster since 1e. I don't get how, given that history, anyone *expects* a fully mundane ranger.

You don't get that? Really? I think it's always kind of been a thing. Let's look at the Ranger:

1E - No spells until 8th level - which was very far into many campaigns.
2E - No spells until 8th or 9th level, I forget. Again, very far into many campaigns and it was a very small bit of magic (everyone would have quite a few magic items etc. by then).
3.XE/PF - Default was spells from between 4th to 6th level (depending on WIS), but a lot of people disliked this and both 3.XE and PF have no-spellcasting variant Rangers (several in the case of PF, dunno how many for 3.XE).
4E - Ranger does not cast spells. Some powers seem magic-y, and a couple are obviously magic, but all of those can be chosen, or not chosen.
5E - Ranger cast spells from 2nd level, many features of Rangers from previous editions have outright become spells.

So one could have been playing a non-magic Ranger for what, more than a decade, for sure. One could have played Rangers since 1E and never actually cast a spell with them if one was low-level (as was common in Ye Olden Dayes). And hell, didn't even 2E explicitly have options in some official book for non-caster Rangers? Maybe even UA did? I know 2E did, can't remember if it was Complete Ranger or something else.

Now, let me be clear. I am not down on 5E for not including this. I like 5E's Ranger design PERSONALLY. But I am not down on people who dislike it, or who thing merely re-flavouring the spells as not-spells isn't a good fix for them. It's certainly possible to have a non-casting Ranger, and not some kind of wild and hairy idea that no-one has really wanted before.

Also, I think some people would be fine with a "mystical" Ranger, where he had some magical-seeming but not explicitly spell-cast-y abilities, and which did not work on a slot-like basis or X/day basis, so I don't think "no spells" and "fully mundane" are quite the same thing.

All IMO/IME.

 

[Agamon]

Sorry, but no. Just no.

Ok.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Ok.

Yep.

Thaumaturge.

 

[TwoSix]

Game balance. That's a problem with skills - if the skill is too effective, allowing unlimited use becomes problematic in play. This especially goes for things like healing abilities, which can really screw up the hit point economy and adventure pacing if unlimited. It is an artifact of playing a game, such that "realistic simulation" has to take a back seat to the concerns of making the game work.

Any ability with a discrete effect that is limited in its usage must be supernatural. Saying otherwise... that way lies madness, and the 4e power system.

 

[Umbran]

Sorry, but no. Just no.

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 is a game. You have limited game resources, and a structure for your actions. Yes, if you extrapolate that strictly back, it means there are somewhat baroque limits on what a person in the world can do each day. But that's like saying that chess implies that knights on horses move in funny L-shapes all the time. As a game-balance issue, you don't get potent abilities that don't have limits on their use. You get a choice - abilities you can spam without limit, but do very little with each use, or more powerful abilities that have limits on their use. While the Rogue and Fighter classes, which quite mundane in styling an don't use the D&D spell structure, still have major abilities that are rest-based, which means limited uses per day.

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.