Jeff Carlsen
Adventurer
I would start with the premise that the ranger is who you want at the front of the party. Let the mechanics evolve from there.
D&D 5E What is/should be the Ranger's "thing"?
- Thread starter Hriston
- Start date
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
The ‘tip of the spear’.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
My reasoning is, primarily, I just don't like it. The fact there is a concept of something even referred to as the "pet class" turns my stomach and offends my RPG sensibilities. IF you want a character with a pet? Great! Have a character who gets and trains a pet. As I said earlier, I blame Wow for the proliferation and acceptance.
Other than catering to a powergaming mentality and playstyle via, "I get to have extra attacks and do more damage and the companion can soak up damage for me"? Nothing really. Having a player option for an animal companion ranger is fine. A subclass, as I said...and we already had.
A lot of people like it. Good for them. I would like to hear about these "lot of fantasy tropes." Because other than Drizzt and people's video game characters, I can't really call to mind...any. Maybe the whole "worg" thing from Game of Thrones, and John Snow (ONE guy among hundreds of "rangers")...but that's fairly recent and, while a popular series, I would hardly think of it as a fantasy trope.
Point is, NONE of this animal [combat] companion nonsense was a thing for the ranger until 3e/modern iterations. People like it and they can have it with the subclass. Which is great. But hardly demands it be the focal/central/defining mechanic of the whole damned class.
The majority, by a significant margin I would dare say, of actual fantasy/D&D-flavored "ranger" archetypes are NOT running around with a wolf/panther/bear on their hip that does whatever they say.
TheCosmicKid
Hero
Assuming that's true, what's the problem with it? Are ideas from WoW automatically bad ideas? If so, why?
You really don't think it's a fantasy trope for characters to have loyal animal companions? I find that hard to believe. Famous horses are too numerous to mention. Odin has two ravens and two wolves, Thor has two goats. Arthur and Charlemagne often have hunting hounds, and Merlin often has a merlin. Fairy tales are full of clever geese and cats and foxes and other animals who lead their masters to good fortune. Tarzan has all sorts of friends, and even John Carter has Woola. Beren and Luthien have Huan. Taran has Hen Wen. The Beastmaster is the Beastmaster. Perrin Aybara has his wolves. Everybody in The Golden Compass has a "daemon", and all the Marat of Codex Alera have companions too. Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Robin Hobb, Tamora Pierce, and the Walt Disney animation department do this over and over again. And pre-Drizz't D&D has the animal friend spell.
This trope is sufficiently well established for the two examples you noticed to be deliberate subversions of it - Drizz't by making the animal a figurine, the Stark children by having some of the animals run off and/or die unexpectedly rather than sticking to their sides the whole story. It's an inherently appealing trope for the same reason people like having pets in real life. It's fine if you don't care for it, but the attitude you're displaying here is (a) unnecessarily hostile and (b) totally futile.
True. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the ones that do.
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steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
Practically none of your examples are of RANGER characters doing this. Gods, magicians, magical/intelligent/talking/helpful animals? Sure. They're all over the place. That is completely irrelevant and has no bearing to the discussion at hand or how/why "animal companion" has somehow become synonymous with the word "ranger" for a certain generation or type of play of RPGer.
Ranged druid is OP and I always have them in games. They are the bane of my existence as a DM. Do soooo much damage. I want to see more beastmaster but it really just seems akward with the action to attack. Is it mostly for Melee rangers Drizzt style with the help action? Great flavor but hardly as powerful as ranged pew pew wood elves and lvl 2 rogue splashes.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
I'm not a fan of the Beastmaster and I definitely agree with you that the animal companion should not be the core of what makes the Ranger unique. I think you're overlooking the obvious precedent however of the 1E Ranger's followers at high levels. There was a chance that the Ranger would attract a bear or a pair of blinkdogs, giant lynxes, or giant owls. Not the same, I know, but perhaps the seed of the idea.
And then there's always Silver, the animal companion of that famous masked man, the Lone Ranger.
edit: I also think a good case can be made for Tarzan fitting the Ranger archetype pretty well, and he had Cheeta.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Okay, now I want to see someone play Taran as a Beastmaster with an 80 HP Hen Wen getting +6 to hit and damage/AC/saves.
