D&D 5E (2014) It's official, WOTC hates Rangers (Tasha's version of Favored Foe is GARBAGE)

[Ristamar]

Don't mind me. I'm here to add to the "dumb meme" pile.

 

[Charlaquin]

The concept of the ranger is popular. The execution of it in 5e up to this point isn't.

The data says otherwise. The ranger is well-liked, just less well liked than what WotC aims for.

 

[Lanefan]

My guess as to the highly varying degrees of enjoyment different players seem to get when runnng a Ranger lies with the different adventure types being run by said players' DMs.

Rangers seem to be something of a throwback, in that - rather than trying to be 'balanced' for all types of situations - there's certain adventures or situations where they're going to thrive (e.g. wilderness, exploration) and others where they're going to take more of a back seat (urban, dungeon crawls). The player of a Ranger in a game where there's loads of wilderness adventuring is far likelier to have fun with it than the player of a Ranger in a campaign where much of the adventuring is fighting undead in the city sewers.

Personally I don't mind this idea, where some classes are more all-or-nothing and others are always baseline-useful and don't vary much from that.

Which means, as it always has, that it's on the DM to mix up the adventure types in a campaign so that a second-string character in one adventure can be the star in the next.

 

[Gradine]

I mean, dumb memes are a pretty good antidote to overblown and overdone hyperbole.

 

[Minigiant]

You now figured that out?

WOTC hated rangers since 3.0.

The truth is

1. Ranger is an exploration class.
2. WOTC doesn't know how to do exploration that interacts with class features outside of traps.
3. So Ranger was given 2 ribbon exploration features at level 1.
4. If you swap out a class feature, you should expect one of similar power in its place.
5. If you swap a exploration ribbon for a combat class feature, that combat class feature will be weak.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm mostly referring to people posting dumb memes instead of even trying to have a discussion.

Agreed. It's annoying.

I also agree with your take on this change. It also replaced the UA Favored Foe with a more complicated and convoluted mechanic.

Between the Revised Ranger and Class Variant UAs, I have all that I need to fix the ranger.

 

[NotAYakk]

Right. The goal of the ranger changes has always been to close the perceived gap in efficiency between rangers and other combatants (which is mostly focused on the Beastmaster), to address the problem of favored enemy and favored terrain being useless except in specific campaigns, and to prevent rangers from completely obviating exploration challenges. These alternate features accomplish those goals. It doesn’t make the ranger a top-tier damage dealer, but that was never one of the goals.

No, it doesn't.

For one thing, as many people have noted, the feature becomes pretty bad past level 1. At level 1, the Ranger is still dominated by other classes.

A barbarian 2/day gets +2 damage per hit and resist BPS and d12 HD at the cost of a minor action per minute plus a ribbon (unarmored defence)
A ranger 2/day gets +1d4 damage once/round on one foe, plus a ribbon (explorer)
A (duelist) fighter gets heavy armor, +2 damage per hit and second wind.
A paladin gets a heavy armor, 5 HP heal and evil-dar.

(at level 1, expertise is a ribbon; expertise starts getting good at higher proficiency levels).

The gap is smaller, but the ranger is still the worst d10+ HD character at combat at level 1.

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Then, this feature becomes worse and worse every level. Hunter's mark competes with it for concentration (as does every other concentration spell), and besides the spell slot (which gets cheaper) and the minor action it does the same job better; HM scales with hits.

So you trade a feature (favored enemy) for one that becomes obsolete in a handful of levels anyhow. While remaining bottom of the barrel as a weapon user at level 1.

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Sure, you say, the ranger is better. Why am I complaining?

If I go to a hospital with a gunshot wound, and they fix my hangnail, I'll complain as well.

"Why are you complaining? Your hangnail is better!"

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A retrofit that is dip-resistant would be to make it not require concentration as of level 6.

That still leaves Rangers as among the worst combatants at level 1. But you can't win them all.

 

[Minigiant]

No, it doesn't.

For one thing, as many people have noted, the feature becomes pretty bad past level 1. At level 1, the Ranger is still dominated by other classes

Not really.
The ranger's biggest issue is that people don't play it how its archetype is supposed to be played. No one reads the ranger class description.

The ranger is not great at that archetype but neither are other classes. Save for the Bard and Druids everyone sucks at rangering.

The problem is many see it as an alternative fighter or variant paladin. The ranger fails at that.

WOTC made a crappy ranger but too many approach the class like a fighter. Probably because WOTC built a bad ranger so no one knows what a ranger is supposed to do.

 

[Umbran]

Nice to know some people in this thread are apologists for bad design.

You post on an open messageboard, and don't expect a few people goofing around?

Do I need to post a "this are serious business" meme?

 

[cbwjm]

This seems fine to me, it even gets better as you level up. Maybe it could have been per short rest so that you'd have more chances to spread the damage around, but otherwise it seems fine.