D&D 5E Rangers in 5e

[LordArchaon]

I think it's important that someone familiar with any core D&D book from any edition be able to flip open the core books in whatever comes next, and find the class they're looking for. Some base class should be called "Ranger" and something should be called "Paladin" because those are iconic and deserve to be defined and easily grabbed. This is true for any core class to me.

If you want to play a ranger (or any other D&D class that has been "core"), I don't want you to have to pick fighter, and multiclass into druid, or some other combination of class building. I want you to be able to flip through the book, find the ranger entry, and then start determining if you want to tweak it.

I completely agree with this view too! Actually, sum this point of view with [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] 's and you get mine: I want classes to be iconic AND without overlap. That means having classes that are really unique, so that each multiclass gives you another unique and different combination.
To make a pratcial example and stay in topic, if we want to give Rangers some spells, they should either be different from Druid's or have a different casting mechanic or something like that. It's also true that this could make it difficult to multiclass (cause it would be simpler to just say that their levels stack for spellcasting), but there are ways to overcome this. Maybe, their spellcasting would really stack, but right because of that, it would mean enlarging the repertoire for both.
After all, Ranger spells should be more practical than Druid's. A Druid (IMO) has to remain the "Nature Mystic", while the Ranger takes the "Nature Guide" aspect. Granted, a Druid would be a good nature guide too for a bunch of reasons, but he/she should feel much more mystical, and "less practical" than the Ranger in that aspect. Same could be said for Paladin VS Cleric spells. Clerics are the faith's mystics, while Paladins are the practical ones. It's not to say that the two things shouldn't ever overlap in function, it's their "methods" that are different even when accomplishing more or less the same things.

 

[WotC_Trevor]

That's a "denormalizing" of the classes (if you'll pardon a database term), i.e. deliberatley including hybrids for convenience. I agree that it is useful and necessary. However, please note that what was advocated here was not removing the ranger class, but making a ranger/druid multiclass in any proportion a useful character, instead of setting the ratio in the ranger itself.

Or to put it another way, if my wife wants to play a ranger, and fits your criteria above (she does), then she shouldn't need to build a fighter/druid (or some other mix) to work around a set ratio of fighting/spellcasting in the core ranger.

I getcha. I do also want super easy multiclass and character options so you can piece together the idea of the character/roll/class that you envision if it's not a cookie cutter class.

In this case, the simple hunter/tracker ranger seems to me like the best start for a ranger class. Want magic or some other feature? Pick that up as an option as you level, or through a theme, or through multiclassing. I'm hoping we'll be seeing a lot of different options for building the character ideas we want. And I'm fairly certain the guys want to make multiclassing easy and cool, so here's hoping.

 

[Plane Sailing]

With the modularity as a big part of this, it's possible that the ranger could be, at it's core, a nature-based archer guy. So maybe we see some favored enemy type stuff, and some tracking type stuff along with the usual "I kill it with my bow" kind of thing.

For those of us who want something more complex, maybe as you level you can trade out something you would normally get as you progress for some druid like spells, or an animal companion, or two-weapon wielding abilities. I think this is what I would like to see. The core ranger being a wilderness tracker/hunter with options in the same core book to blow him out into the other iconic kinds of rangers we've seen.

Why an archer guy though?

I think that to be a successful archetype it is important to *completely divorce* weapon style etc from the class. Completely. Allow any ranger to choose any martial weapon, like we would allow any fighter to choose any martial weapon (or simple weapon if he prefers!)

The Core Ranger I'd like to see is someone who is good at stealth and ambushes, hardy and able to move quickly (from 3e I'd rather have seen fast movement with the ranger than the barbarian!). Favoured enemy in one form or another has been with the class since the Strategic Review, so keep that in one form or another.

Cheers

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Core functionality as it has been (roughly, with some exceptions due to how combat works in D&D):

Fighter-- arms
Cleric - divine magic
Wizard - arcane magic
Rogue - skirmish&skills

Useful, common hybrids:

Ranger - arms/skirmish&skills, arms/nature or other such mixes
Paladin - arms/divine
Bard - arcane/skimish&skills, occasionally with a dollop of arms
Druid - arms/nature/divine or sometimes nature/divine/skills
Barbarian - arms/nature or arms/skills

Noticably absent as core, but popular concepts:

"Gish" hybrid - arms/arcane
Mundane skilled warrior - arms/skirmish&skills

Also missing to complete the six core hybrids that you get from any two possible mixes, but not terribly popular:

"Wild Lurker" - divine/skirmish&skills or nature/skirmish&skills without heavy arms built in. (I.e. a rogue/cleric hybrid.)

As you can see, the ranger is the most disparate and dissolute class remaining over the editions, with the bard running a close second. As the bard has moved more and more to fill the rogue/wizard hybrid, it has suffered less issues.

The ranger is also hurt conceptually in that the boundaries between nature/primal/divine are fuzzy. One non-intutive way to help the ranger out a lot would be to expand the core functionality classes a bit, and thus go from 4 straight classes and 6 hybrids, to 5 straight classes and 10 hybrids. If everyone gets appropriate skills, even better:

Straight - fighter (arms), rogue (skirmish), wizard (arcane magic), cleric (divine magic--literally channelled from the gods), druid (nature magic).

Then out of the possible candidates for the ranger hybrid, pick one: arms/skirmish, arms/nature magic, or skirmish/nature magic.

Of course, there are other ways you could divide this up too. But however it is divided up, there is too much concentration around "different ways to fight and have some skills and/or nature-related abilities"--not least because so many of the nature abilities are mechanically divine magic.

 

[Kannik]

Ah, the ranger, my favourite example for class confusion.

To me, I say a "Ranger" needs to have several of its possible bits (ie the various ways various people see what a ranger "is") separated from each other such that it not only can cover all bases but also doesn't force someone into the trappings of a "ranger" when all they want is one particular bit of it.

Thus, a ranger ought to have/be a combination of:

A fighting style:

- Lightly Armoured Archer (available whether you are a wilderness warrior or a military archer or something else)

- Lightly Armoured Twin Weapon wielder (also available for a rogue)

- Lightly Armoured Exotic Weapon wielder (also available for martial artist and fighter types)

- Lightly Armoured dextrous fighter (also available for rogues, duelists and swashbuckling types)


and a "ranger" package:

- Wilderness scout, tracker, sneaky type

- Wilderness "paladin" with druidic spells

- Beastmaster

- Nature defender, with specialized hunting knowledge, backup spells, etc


Put several of these together and you'll cover all the bases and allow for more options for all players. Want the traditional Aragorn type who wields a single sword expertly, is a master of the woods and knows herbal lore? Not a problem, pick dextrous fighter and wilderness scout. Want instead to be an uber archer that isn't some guy who never bathes and runs around with wolves in the woods? Not a problem, choose Archer and another military unit option. Want a cleric who's part of an elite infiltration unit for the king? Awesome, choose a cleric class feature and also the wilderness scout. Want to be a guy who has a wolf as your friend? Choose Dual Wielder and Beastmaster. And etc.

For myself, "ranger" describes more the "living in the woods" part than the "specific fighting style" part, and even the "living in the woods" part can have several features to it (ie, mostly I gravitate towards just the scout aspect of it but having the option to be a wilderness paladin or a beastmaster is cool). Ranger is a way of life or a profession more than a way to do things in combat.

By explicitly divorcing combat roles/abilities from other trappings I think we can really let things rip and create sweet characters and abilities.

peace,

Kannik

 

[WotC_Trevor]

Why an archer guy though?

I think that to be a successful archetype it is important to *completely divorce* weapon style etc from the class. Completely. Allow any ranger to choose any martial weapon, like we would allow any fighter to choose any martial weapon (or simple weapon if he prefers!)

The Core Ranger I'd like to see is someone who is good at stealth and ambushes, hardy and able to move quickly (from 3e I'd rather have seen fast movement with the ranger than the barbarian!). Favoured enemy in one form or another has been with the class since the Strategic Review, so keep that in one form or another.

Cheers

Yeah, I dropped it from my most recent post because of some similar thinking. I think it's important, though, to have some kind of schtick for the ranger, but that's covered with the details that you go into. So the bow thing isn't necessary, or wanted by some. Give the ranger some nature, sneaky, and tracking then let the player choose the rest.

 

[LordArchaon]

Again have to mention [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] but this time negatively: I disagree with the above post. Consider them as "hybrid classes" is exactly what kills their interesting side, and uniqueness. If Paladin is just Fighter with limited access to Cleric spells, then just go multiclass/dual-class/hybrid. A Paladin, to be a iconic, to be a true class, has to be different from both Fighter AND Cleric. Granted, it should have similarities, but it should offer an experience that you just couldn't get by simply mixing and matching Fighter & Cleric.

As [MENTION=82759]WotC_Trevor[/MENTION] put it, we should instead focus on what's truly unique about these so called "hybrid" classes, so that they're not hybrids anymore. My Paladin thread to find out this uniqueness is open, too!

 

[JohnSnow]

Yeah, I dropped it from my most recent post because of some similar thinking. I think it's important, though, to have some kind of schtick for the ranger, but that's covered with the details that you go into. So the bow thing isn't necessary, or wanted by some. Give the ranger some nature, sneaky, and tracking then let the player choose the rest.

Just to give some support for not insisting on archer rangers, I'd like to point out that Faramir's Rangers of Ithilien in The Lord of the Rings didn't all use bows. Many did, yes, but some carried spears instead. Although all of them had swords.

I think the key to keeping the ranger distinctive is to remember that rangers are survivors of the wilderness. They carry weapons, and swords are often needed in a world as perilous as that of Dungeons & Dragons, but at least some of their weapons should be those which are useful for hunting as well as fighting - such as spears, or bows.

I'd like to see rangers who mostly use lighter armor - leather, studded leather, hide, ringmail, MAYBE chain or scale. But the heavier armors, like plate and splint (and shields) don't really seem appropriate.

Rangers should have skill in herbalism, tracking, stealth, observation and woodcraft. I also think that having them be skilled in skirmishing and ambush tactics makes sense.

This is not to say that a fighter (or warlord) can't possess some of these skills. In fact, I think that with the right combination of choices, it might be hard to tell a fighter or a warlord from a ranger or a ranger from a rogue at first glance. And frankly, there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, the greatest weaponmasters should be fighters, the greatest woodsmen are probably rangers, and nobody sneaks (and ambushes) quite like a rogue. And that's as it should be.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, I dropped it from my most recent post because of some similar thinking. I think it's important, though, to have some kind of schtick for the ranger, but that's covered with the details that you go into. So the bow thing isn't necessary, or wanted by some. Give the ranger some nature, sneaky, and tracking then let the player choose the rest.

Let the bolded part be the schtick that's a common thread to all rangers. I might agree that archery is a natural fit for rangers (more than I feel dual-wielding ever was), but I would still say let the player decide what combat schtick they want their individual character to have whenever possible.

 

[El Mahdi]

I only want one specific thing for the 5E Ranger: NO SPELLS!