Why play a Ranger?

[Gromm]

In all the time I've been playing 3e, noone has yet to make, or want to make a Ranger. The reasons for this are painfully obvious compared to the other classes.

1) All cool Ranger abilities take forever to get and have limited use, or are achievable with a single level of Ranger.

Two weapon fighting, Ambidex, Tracking, Imp Two Weapon.. they are given at 1st level or require something not related to the class (BAB). Why take more than one Ranger level? Not for the abilities.


2)Rangers can't fight as well as Fighters or Barbarians unless they multiclass- which for this thread defeats the purpose of the class. The class abilities don't compare to a Paladins- all Paladin abilites get better with levels (lay on hands, mount, etc). It takes 5 levels to get a mere +1 bonus for a favor enemy. Assuming you're even fighting that enemy

Fighters get Specialization and tons of Feats, not to mention heavy armor. Barbarians get 1d12hps, Rage, Fast movement and Damage Reductio; not to mention fairly good skills. Paladins get decent skills, great saves, lay on hands, a mount,and immunity to fear/disease.

Rangers admittedly have the best skills of the 4 fighting classes, and arguably the better spell list with later books (though Paladins have some amazing spells like Holy Sword). The skills are nice, but ones probably better served with Rogue levels since you get even more points, sneak attack, and a host of other possible Rogue abilities in the long run vs a couple more favored enemies and maybe a couple points of BAB (which could be gotten with say Ftr or Brb levels just as easily for more gain).


I might have overlooked a couple of things, but these seem to me to be the two big reasons noone plays Rangers. They're better fighters than say Rogues, but not that much better, and Rogues get sneak attack which really evens the playing field in most ways. The only reason to really play them is all the virtual feats, but you get all of those with one level of Rgr- why bother with 2 levels? It seems like Rangers are some sort of mix of Druids, Rogues, and little Fighter- only they aren't too good at any of it. A level 1 Ranger gets 3 virtual feats. A level 2 Ranger gets +1 BAB. Same for Lvl3. And 4. At 5 they get another favored enemy (a very iffy ability anyway, much less 1 whole point of damage at level 5). At 6... nothing. And so on until level 9 where they get ITWF, but they get that if they took Ftr levels the whole way after 1 too.

Compared to every other class they seem to be underpowered and washed out. Other than single level to reap the benefits of the feats has anyone ever really played the character much? I really want to believe that all the classes are equal in thier own way, but it seems like WotC didn't bother to play test the poor old ranger.

I'm looking for some Ranger lovers to renew my faith in the class (not counting Monte's alternative).

 

[turtle]

zzzz.....

 

[hong]

What Turtle said.

This topic has been done to death six million times. No-one can agree on what a ranger is supposed to be, let alone what abilities the ranger should have.

The change I'm making to the ranger is to replace the TWF/Ambidex shtick with one bonus feat every 5 levels, starting at 2nd (ie 2nd, 7th, 12th, 17th). This can be chosen from any feat on the fighter list except Weapon Spec, plus a few others. This works for me. It probably won't work for anyone else, but that's not my problem.

Also, no ranger thread would be complete without a mention of the alt.ranger page. 25 alt.rangers at your service.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Because it is fun!

Sneaking, spellcasting, and fighting, all in one class! And you don`t have to make the boring dungeon exploration thing, tapping into magical traps and similar boring things.
You can more than just swinging your sword and making loud noises all the time because of your full plate and your bad move silently skills
You can have animal companions, live alone in the wilderness and heal yourself by extensive use of Cure Light Wands.
You can fight with two weapon if you wish wituout sacrifying a precious feat or ability score points for Dexterity.
Or you can fight with a weapon and a shield. Whatever you want.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Ysgarran]

What Turtle said.

This topic has been done to death six million times. No-one can agree on what a ranger is supposed to be, let alone what abilities the ranger should have.

True, this has been done to death. Many, many variant rangers running around.

My group uses an alternate ranger by Monte Cook:
http://www.montecook.com/arch_stuff3.html

Ysgarran.

 

[Skaros]

We do too (use the MC ranger). Its overpowered in some ways, but at least now occasionally someone decides to stick it out as a ranger.

In either case though (new or old ranger), the class is more often seen as just one of 2 or 3 classes for a character in our campaign.

We embrace multiclassing, and find that often concepts we come up with for warriors with a wilderness bent are better defined by combinations of fighter, ranger, and other classes (like perhaps psy-warrior or barbarian...maybe monk).

There are a lot of ranger variants out there aside from the MC one too.

Good luck!

-Warren

 

[Xahn'Tyr]

It's amazing how many "character concepts" just happen (purely by coincidence) to be best expressed by taking a single level of ranger and/or monk.

 

[kengar]

The ranger class exists because of Aragorn in LOTR. It's really that simple.

That being said, I think the ranger is a neat class, but I have more of a Storyteller/Roleplayer perspective than some. The ranger is a generalist who you can see as having a logical role in a world. He is a guide, hunter, tracker, scout, etc. He makes a lot more sense as an wandering adventurer than some classes IMHO(Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, Monk, etc.).

The thing is, as with any class, I would look at the kind of person the PC is, then see what class fits that character. It always bothers me a little to hear about how Class X isn't as "good" as Class Y, I understand why folks say that and -in a sense- they are coreect. But I wish it didn't spoil the fun of playing some of those other classes for those who find them intriguing.

Anyway, I didn't intend to write so much IMHO, YMMV, etc.

 

[kreynolds]

Rangers are great to play if you love fighters but hate all those stupid bonus feats they get. Oh, and if you like really sucky spell lists, the ranger is even more worthwhile.

 

[Crothian]

Rangers are great to play if you love fighters but hate all those stupid bonus feats they get. Oh, and if you like really sucky spell lists, the ranger is even more worthwhile.

Rangers have some good spells, they are a good class.

You just don't get many people who will admit it because it's "cool" to say "the Ranger got the Shaft". Rarely, will we see people take a stand and post their own beliefs and thoughts. It's always recycled garbage that we tend to get.

I figure as long as this is a worthless thread might as well get on a soapbox. And the unorginal thought was not directed at kreynolds. Even though we rarely agree, he does seem to think for himself.