D&D General What is the Ranger to you?

[UngainlyTitan]

In my opinion the 5e ranger is ok conceptually. It is the right place for a D&D ranger it is the implementation details that are the issue. That is why the ranger remains popular on DND beyond despite disssatisfaction.

I think the issues are:

The Bestmaster sucks

I think that Natural Explorer boosts should apply in all natural terrain, otherwise the ranger can be out performed in what they are supposed to be good at by scout focused Rogues and that wilderness exploration play is not a feature at many tables.

The ranger has a number of neat spells but they are all concentration and many are situational.

Finally the Ranger in a fight, while (IMHO) a solid contributor, is chipping away at the enemies and looking at some fighter builds and the paladin and feeling a bit jealous. Particularly after 4e where often an encounter with a ranger in the party was like: initiative, Ranger - hits every enemy does lots of damage...…. Warlord "Ranger do that again" …. Fight over.

 

[Garthanos]

Who has suggested that the Ranger should be shooting magic missiles and levitating things?
Other than you?

OK Walk on Water and cast Silence and Absorb elements to ping their magic missiles back at them is that better?

It seems like you are stuck with being a caster. And honestly more of the spells could be ok t the original ranger was basically anything you felt like including magic missiles and so

However

Many Ranger spells are simply ways of moving fast, or moving quietly or unseen.

None of that can possibly happen except with magic.

Because it seems like skills cannot do anything really good without explicit magic now.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ad populum great... gating skill behind spell casting classes is still the functional design effect... even if you guys all voted Aragorn I mean those with highest nature skills should be able to shoot magic missiles and levitate things and the like.

The effect is narrowing the character design choices.

To be clear this problem seems to happen all over in this latest D&D so its not a ranger specific issue.

But their skills aren’t gated. They’re just also magical.

Mane they don’t shoot magic missiles or levitate things. Those sorts of effects aren’t on their spell lists.

Edit: also, we are talking about the identity of the class. The conceptual identity of a cultural element (which very much includes games) is literally democratic by its fundamental nature. even wotc has recognized that they can get this stuff wrong, in spite of owning the IP, because DnD is a cultural artifact and thus its “true” nature is determined by the users as a group.

 

[Garthanos]

But their skills aren’t gated. They’re just also magical.

They are too gated you have to take this class or likely another caster to do anything interesting with nature skills... those parts were stuck in spells.

This shows how

Many Ranger spells are simply ways of moving fast, or moving quietly or unseen.

None of that can possibly happen except with magic.

Because it seems like skills cannot do anything really good without explicit magic now.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They are too gated you have to take this class to do anything interesting with skills... those interesting parts were stuck in spells.

This shows how

None of that can possibly happen except with magic.

Because it seems like skills cannot do anything really good without explicit magic now.

Most of that is invisible. Regardless, you can do everything that isn’t literally explicitly beyond physical capability using skills. That’s DnD. Skills aren’t magic.

but not all magic has to be spells. Full on conversations with squirrels is magic. There is no skill for that, and it’s not just a language, it’s magic. It’s impossible, therefor magic. But that doesn’t mean it had to be a spell. It could easily have been a function of the Druidic language, and Rangers could have gotten Druidic. Or, rangers could simply have the ability to speak to animals as part of Natural Explorer.

But jumping 30+ feat all you want, over and over, for an hour, is magic. Plain and simple. And it works well as a spell. qnd it makes sense to give that spell to rangers.

 

[Garthanos]

Most of that is invisible. Regardless, you can do everything that isn’t literally explicitly beyond physical capability using skills. That’s DnD. Skills aren’t magic.

but not all magic has to be spells.

It seems that way in 5e

Full on conversations with squirrels is magic. There is no skill for that, and it’s not just a language, it’s magic. It’s impossible, therefor magic.

In tolkien's story the universe itself was magic animals having their own languages was inherently part of the world, You learned a skill. As opposed to magic pasted artificially on top.

 

[Garthanos]

Most of that is invisible.

And yet requires a spell... to do it and that is in a class and you do not just let someone roll a die to do a spell effect

Because everyone knows magic is better.... it can do the impossible

Animal Friendship - This spell lets you convince a beast that you mean it no harm.

 

[Garthanos]

Regardless, you can do everything that isn’t literally explicitly beyond physical capability using skills.

I forgot the mother may I angle...

That’s DnD. Skills aren’t magic.

All the worse for it. When your character is approaching Demigod lovels your skills should be magic IMHO

 

[Tony Vargas]

It seems that way in 5e

The 5e Monk's Ki is explicitly magic, and one of the three PH1 sub-classes does not use Ki to power spells.

So, you've got one sub-class that uses magic that isn't spells. And, three that don't use magic, at all.
Everyone else casts spells.

In tolkien's story the universe itself was magic animals having their own languages was inherently part of the world, You learned a skill. As opposed to magic pasted artificially on top.

Tolkien's magic was mostly very subtle and where it wasnt could have been (or, like Gandalf's fireworks, obviously was) scientific/technological tricks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And yet requires a spell... to do it and that is in a class and you do not just let someone roll a die to do a spell effect

Because everyone knows magic is better.... it can do the impossible

Animal Friendship - This spell lets you convince a beast that you mean it no harm.

Animal Handling. Snapping your finger and making an animal friendly to you is impossible. Doing it the old fashioned way isn’t, but isn’t always going to work. Animal Friendship is just Charm Person for beasts. It’s a thing that skills can also do, but with magic you can do it even with no skill.

So a 5e Ranger can either learn Animal Handling, or learn a spell that bypasses it but costs a limited resource.

All the worse for it. When your character is approaching Demigod lovels your skills should be magic IMHO

Thats a system thing, not a Ranger thing.

Conceptually, in DnD, the impossible is magic, which generally involves either spells or some other limited resource. Also 5e isn’t really built to ever have characters be Demi-gods simply by virtue of gaining sufficient level.

It seems that way in 5e

In tolkien's story the universe itself was magic animals having their own languages was inherently part of the world, You learned a skill. As opposed to magic pasted artificially on top.

Only certain people could speak with animals. It is a skill of wizards and elves, and a few dwarves (though even they could only speak with some ravens who’d been bred to communicate more fully, not with like, all birds). It’s magic.

But more importantly, dnd isn’t middle earth. DnD classes don’t fit in middle earth. Middle Earth characters can’t ever become godlike by virtue of learning enough stuff.