D&D General What is the Ranger to you?

Tony Vargas · Jul 3, 2019

Celebrim said:
For me the standard in a base class is that you could have a group of six players show up for session 0, and each one wants to play a character with the same class, but each player wants to play an obviously distinctive character with their own separate shtick.

For some classes it's fairly obvious how you could do that. You could have six wizards for example each of which has their own school or theme of magic that they specialize in.

But they'd hardly play differently at all - especially with opposition schools being ancient history - and they'd all be high-INT bookish occultists.

There is a fix here, but it's a radical one. I think you have to pull back from your preconceptions and ask if something like Paladin is a subclass of some base class, what base class is it really a specific implementation of.

A Paladin is dedicated to a deity. So is a Cleric. They could both be sub-classes of a broader, IDK, "Faithful" class that includes cloistered priests who are pure magic-users, and ruthless inquisitors and violent zealots and so forth.

You could compose a whole party of such sub-classes and cover all the traditional bases.

Ratskinner · Jul 4, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
The Ranger is more distinct and interesting than the Fighter, or Cleric. The Fighter isn’t even a concept. It’s completely redundant, and the least interesting of all the things it is similar to. It’s literally “good at fighting”, which also every weapon using character option.

I don't disagree about the fighter, that's part of why I think it makes more sense to have paladin and ranger as Fighter subclasses. Of course, some of that depends on how much "fluff" you want wrapped into class.

I would argue against that "Ranger is more distinct" idea. He really hasn't been, historically. He's gone from being a slightly Jack-of-all-Trades heavy fighter with a weird penchant for crystal balls and psionics to a lightly-armored either dual-wielder or shooter....possibly with a pet or not. At various times, he has cast Magic User spells at others Druid Spells or his own special spells which are certainly not encounter powers! The only thing that is somewhat consistent is the "woodsy" part, and that has varied in its depth as well. Aragorn to Drizz't (sp?) to Legolas....they all seem like warriors first, to me.

Xeviat · Jul 4, 2019

Celebrim, I like your style. It's an interesting idea. If I had had the time and made my 4.9 Edition that I wanted to, one of my goals was to make each class have a play mechanic that differentiated them from other classes. I also had the goal to make each class be able to be at least three of the 4 roles, with a goal that the core four (cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard) could be either of the roles. Your role would be largely dictated by your subclass.

Like what you said, it would have allowed a party of all one class to be different, but each class would have unity.

In my ideas, I was going to have the ranger have a pet, and their class play style would be having two units. A melee ranger with a bear would play differently from a ranged ranger with a hawk, for instance.

After reading everything here, the ranger does feel less and less like it really has it's own broad identity. That's why that identity has changed as much as it has.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 4, 2019

Ratskinner said:
I don't disagree about the fighter, that's part of why I think it makes more sense to have paladin and ranger as Fighter subclasses. Of course, some of that depends on how much "fluff" you want wrapped into class.

I would argue against that "Ranger is more distinct" idea. He really hasn't been, historically. He's gone from being a slightly Jack-of-all-Trades heavy fighter with a weird penchant for crystal balls and psionics to a lightly-armored either dual-wielder or shooter....possibly with a pet or not. At various times, he has cast Magic User spells at others Druid Spells or his own special spells which are certainly not encounter powers! The only thing that is somewhat consistent is the "woodsy" part, and that has varied in its depth as well. Aragorn to Drizz't (sp?) to Legolas....they all seem like warriors first, to me.

Thats all mechanical execution. The concept has remained more or less the same. I won’t get further into here, bc I’m not willing to have the same discussion in two concurrent threads, but feel free to read my thoughts in detail in the “What is the ranger” thread.

Beyond that, the Fighter isn’t a good basis for anything, because even a core class should have some sort of identity. “I fight good” isn’t an identity.

Better IMO for the game and for paladin and ranger players that they be allowed the full design space of a purpose built class, rather than being saddled with whatever painfully bland and neutral beige mechanics they build together to claim is a class and call it “Fighter”.

DEFCON 1 · Jul 4, 2019

You'd think with all these complaints about unnecessary classes that the Basic Rules document would be more popular and more often used than it is.

Which is why I suspect that the truth is people have ideals in their head about their "best" D&D game, but no one actually follows through because they realize their "best" D&D game isn't actually all that good. LOL.

Mercule · Jul 9, 2019

Garthanos said:
4th edition changed my mind, or that added another layer, I had many years where I didnt like classes. I like the way classes and roles supported one another in 4e. The roles were with us in the ealiest D&D (for me the blue book) but there were innadequate mechanics to represent them. The defender fighter was described in 1e the Warrior Lord in 2e and neither really had anything to make it so... And living up to the promises of the earlier editions was for me as cool as anything. 4e even helped me grok other D&Disms like single attribute based actions were ok (they describe a performance style not every quality involved just one that characterizes it)

Funny enough, the roles classifications was one of the things about 4E that really turned me off. Especially when you got to, say, fighters. Fighters are the best at straight-up combat. That means both in terms of dealing damage and in soaking it. A rogue may be somewhat better at dealing it -- in a narrow band of cases. A barbarian may be better at soaking it -- in a narrow band of cases, but mostly just in exchanging AC for HP. But a fighter should be better at both, for the vast majority of cases. Sometimes, the "role" of a character (or class) is "non-combat" and trying to define a class based on its combat role is wholly inappropriate. The rogue, for example, shouldn't be the DPS king. It's the class that beats everyone else for non-combat, non-magic approaches (without denying that D&D has a lot of combat and magic).

Not trying to engage in an edition war. Just interesting how the same constructs can have radically different effects on different people.

Garthanos · Jul 9, 2019

Mercule said:
Funny enough, the roles classifications was one of the things about 4E that really turned me off. Especially when you got to, say, fighters. Fighters are the best at straight-up combat. .

See the problem I see is that the roles are not as locked down as people took them to be. The 4e fighter is probably the most badassed in melee combat of any class various features even work toward Striker as the secondary role for instance did you know if an enemy ignored the fighters mark and or just try to not engage him he will very much be doing striker class damage? Most every martial class is a flavor of fighter nor as locked down in that regards as other editions (The ranger doesn't even have to have Nature as a trained skill but can, and on topic with a few selections and feats can drip with it ).

Also my very first exposure to 4e was someone building a Monk ... this was before a monk class was released using the Ranger class. The flexibility of the classes and acceptability of player selected flavor was front and center.

Tony Vargas · Jul 9, 2019

Mercule said:
Not trying to engage in an edition war.

Not-Try harder next time. ;P

DEFCON 1 said:
You'd think with all these complaints about unnecessary classes that the Basic Rules document would be more popular and more often used than it is.

It might be more popular and more often used than you think it is...

Garthanos said:
See the problem I see is that the roles are not as locked down as people took them to be. The 4e fighter is probably the most badassed in melee combat of any class various features even work toward Striker as the secondary role for instance did you know if an enemy ignored the fighters mark and or just try to not engage him he will very much be doing striker class damage? Most every martial

...nod, unless the Fighter were in a duel, then his defender features did absolutely nothing. The Roles were verymuch designed around the assumption of a party cooperating and supporting eachother. The power of the Defender, and especially, Leader roles flowed to the rest of the party. Strikers & Controllers were vulnerable and lacked saying power without them.

Garthanos · Jul 9, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
The Roles were very much designed around the assumption of a party cooperating and supporting each other. The power of the Defender, and especially, Leader roles flowed to the rest of the party. Strikers & Controllers were vulnerable and lacked saying power without them.

Inuyasha loses most of his badass unless he has someone to protect... Interesting thought.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 9, 2019

Mercule said:
Funny enough, the roles classifications was one of the things about 4E that really turned me off. Especially when you got to, say, fighters. Fighters are the best at straight-up combat. That means both in terms of dealing damage and in soaking it. A rogue may be somewhat better at dealing it -- in a narrow band of cases. A barbarian may be better at soaking it -- in a narrow band of cases, but mostly just in exchanging AC for HP. But a fighter should be better at both, for the vast majority of cases. Sometimes, the "role" of a character (or class) is "non-combat" and trying to define a class based on its combat role is wholly inappropriate. The rogue, for example, shouldn't be the DPS king. It's the class that beats everyone else for non-combat, non-magic approaches (without denying that D&D has a lot of combat and magic).

Not trying to engage in an edition war. Just interesting how the same constructs can have radically different effects on different people.

Rogues are better at non magical noncombqt solutions than anyone else in 4e, and the Fighter is both the best tank and in the top tier of damage dealers.

4e did what you’re saying the game should do.