D&D General What is the Ranger to you?

Xeviat · Jul 13, 2019

CapnZapp said:
As for a rangery counterpart to Paladin smiting; two ideas:

Infuse Trap. Make a snare or place a bear trap. Spend a slot to make the trap magical. Since trap damage is way less direct or assured than smites, damage should be way higher. I suggest three times as high, meaning 1d20 (instead of 1d8) plus an extra d20 for each higher spell level. Plus 1d20 extra against your favored enemies (mirroring the smite undead bonus).

Idea 2: Infuse Poison. Much like a smite, spend a spell slot for extra damage, in this case 1d12 poison damage. At maybe level 12, gain ability to infuse psychic poison for +1d8 Psychic instead (since far too many high-level foes are immune to poison).

This way, if you care about DPR you can pick the Ranger. If you don't care about DPR, nothing will have changed since you will keep casting the actual Ranger spells.

I'm still very tempted to remove Hunter's Mark and Hex as spells and make a version of them into Ranger and Warlock features. I like the idea of expending a spell slot to mark a target, gaining some benefits to tracking them and also dealing more damage with attacks against them. I'd rather see something like that for an equivalent to Paladin smiting.

Finding the balance point would be tough, though.

CapnZapp · Jul 13, 2019

Xeviat said:
Finding the balance point would be tough, though.

That's WotC's job

Xeviat · Jul 13, 2019

CapnZapp said:
That's WotC's job

I live up the freeway from WotC. Consider all my work to be my application. LOL.

bedir than · Jul 13, 2019

CapnZapp said:
As for a rangery counterpart to Paladin smiting; two ideas:

Infuse Trap. Make a snare or place a bear trap. Spend a slot to make the trap magical. Since trap damage is way less direct or assured than smites, damage should be way higher. I suggest three times as high, meaning 1d20 (instead of 1d8) plus an extra d20 for each higher spell level. Plus 1d20 extra against your favored enemies (mirroring the smite undead bonus).

Idea 2: Infuse Poison. Much like a smite, spend a spell slot for extra damage, in this case 1d12 poison damage. At maybe level 12, gain ability to infuse psychic poison for +1d8 Psychic instead (since far too many high-level foes are immune to poison).

This way, if you care about DPR you can pick the Ranger. If you don't care about DPR, nothing will have changed since you will keep casting the actual Ranger spells.

Couldn't these just be Ranger Spells?

Xeviat · Jul 13, 2019

bedir than said:
Couldn't these just be Ranger Spells?

The point of making something a class ability is to make it more readily visible that the ranger is expected to/can use their spell slots to increase their damage. Divine Smite could have been a spell.

I'm thinking about changing Hunter's Mark to be a 1 time damage spell. You mark a target. You gain bonuses on perception and survival checks to notice and track them. The next time you hit them, they take +2d8 damage. Higher level castings last longer and have a higher damage bonus. Hex could be similar, except you get some kind of bonus when the creature dies, or some kind of bonus when the damage goes off (I do like the idea of it reducing someone's max HP by 2d8, and then giving you health when it dies).

Xeviat · Jul 13, 2019

After talking with my partner about it, and with some thoughts in the thread I started on if classes should have automatically proficient skills (rangers get class abilities that use stealth, but you could conceivably build a ranger without stealth proficiency), she asked if the ranger was big enough to be a class.

It's interesting, because I haven't been asked the same question about the Paladin, who is a similarly tight character archetype. I feel like 5E successfully expanded the Paladin, but I'm not sure the Ranger got expanded. It's a narrow archetype. It's an interesting thought.

Garthanos · Jul 13, 2019

I think for most people outside of our circle ranger means movie Aragorn

Xeviat · Jul 13, 2019

Garthanos said:
I think for most people outside of our circle ranger means movie Aragorn

Or archers with pets if they play WoW.

FrogReaver · Jul 13, 2019

Xeviat said:
After talking with my partner about it, and with some thoughts in the thread I started on if classes should have automatically proficient skills (rangers get class abilities that use stealth, but you could conceivably build a ranger without stealth proficiency), she asked if the ranger was big enough to be a class.

It's interesting, because I haven't been asked the same question about the Paladin, who is a similarly tight character archetype. I feel like 5E successfully expanded the Paladin, but I'm not sure the Ranger got expanded. It's a narrow archetype. It's an interesting thought.

The problem with Paladin isn't that it's a narrow concept it's that the cleric arguably fills the archetype of Holy Warrior better. IMO.

Xeviat · Jul 14, 2019

FrogReaver said:
The problem with Paladin isn't that it's a narrow concept it's that the cleric arguably fills the archetype of Holy Warrior better. IMO.

That's actually why I've always wanted to turn to cleric into an unarmored, non-weapon using Priest. I can at least play more spell focused clerics now, but there is a lot of thematic overlap between a war cleric and a paladin.