D&D 1E Ye Olde Ranger of Editions Past (1E-4E)

Just a small remark: the 3.0 Ranger did have a pet, starting at 4th level. If wasn't written then explicitly in the class progression chart, but it could be obtained by casting the Animal Friendship spell.

 

[Mephista]

This concept is so foreign to me. Was the thief holding the party back because there weren't locks to pick?

The rogue had major issues in 3e when they couldn't sneak attack the undead. That was a problem of play. I won't say they're "holding the party back" but they're certainly better off less involved in combat than they'd otherwise be. A 3e paladin involved in a game where there were actually very few outright evil enemies (say, battles against slaadi or agressive neutral characters) was cutting off a good chunk of the paladin's abilities.

Having mismatched enemies was never fun. That was a lesson we learned a whiel back. Even in 5e, we have issues where we're having mismatched Favored Terrain. People don't like having to choose something that's up to the whim of the GM.

 

[TerraDave]

Meant to xp, not laugh (on my phone).

Also, the 1e ranger had awesome followers in the DMG. Storm giant comes to mind. Ability score requirements where an important balancing factor.

 

[Gadget]

Many of you seem to be missing the point. The 5e Ranger has a "favored enemy" option as a ribbon feature, but the real successor to this is the Hunter's hoard breaker vs Colossus slayer ability. It hearkens back to the more broadly applicable 1e bonus, rather than a game of guess-what-the-DM-will-throw-against-you-when-even-he-does-not-know of 3.X.

 

[Minigiant]

I think you are not going to worry too much in 5e then, since the Ranger is not really a "slayer" of his favored enemies. All she gets is FE's language proficiency, advantage to tracking and to knowledge checks. A generous DM can at best let you use the latter to get some clue on combat strengths and weaknesses, but overall these benefits are not that relevant to the combat phase.

I was talking about the proposed Slayer ranger Zardnaar well... proposed.

Favored enemy is best if minor and narrow or major and broad.

Major and narrow ties up to much of the PC's resources into something that might not appear and weaken the party.
Minor and broad is just too much work for too little benefit.

 

[The Hitcher]

Where have all the comments gone? The 3E ranger was one of the big points of complaint that led to 3.5. It got to the point where there was a site dedicated to designing alternative ranger rules, called The Ranger Project. I know, because I made it =)

 

[AverageCitizen]

In 3e/3.5 rangers got pets at level 4. In 4e there were multiple rangers, the one from 4e Essentials got a spell for each utility power (in common with the assassin from that book), which I thought worked very well for what it was.

 

[AverageCitizen]

Many of you seem to be missing the point. The 5e Ranger has a "favored enemy" option as a ribbon feature, but the real successor to this is the Hunter's hoard breaker vs Colossus slayer ability. It hearkens back to the more broadly applicable 1e bonus, rather than a game of guess-what-the-DM-will-throw-against-you-when-even-he-does-not-know of 3.X.

In the playtest that decision point, between horde-breaker and colossus-slayer, was called favored enemy. Considering that, I actually like the way it is in the book, since it is just the non-combat extension of that choice.

 

[Jester David]

Many of you seem to be missing the point. The 5e Ranger has a "favored enemy" option as a ribbon feature, but the real successor to this is the Hunter's hoard breaker vs Colossus slayer ability. It hearkens back to the more broadly applicable 1e bonus, rather than a game of guess-what-the-DM-will-throw-against-you-when-even-he-does-not-know of 3.X.

Kinda.
That's what those powers started as: abilities designed to help combat a certain creature types but also able to provide genetic benefits. But, now the abilities are super generic so they're related to that design very literally in name only.

 

[RotGrub]

Great post Zard,

It think it might be important to note that 2e had the Beast-Rider kit from the fighters handbook that was a rather popular choice for rangers.

There was also the Rangers handbook which had the Beastmaster and several other great kits.

I think it's hard to compare a 5e class to it's equivalent class using only the PHB from other editions. The 5e class section contains sub classes (kits or PrCs). So it's really not a fair comparison.

 

[shager]

My group and I are scratching our heads at all this Ranger business. Personally, the Hunter Ranger in 5e is about the best implementation of it that I've seen. It does what it needs to do thematically, and they are absolutely invaluable for the adventuring party traveling overland distances.