D&D General Which Edition Had the Best Ranger?

[John R Davis]

Ad&d 1st hands down. Mass of hps at 1st level, extra damage. Awesome companion potential Multiclass to start as a Ranger/Cleric and you have a great build.
Can I play one now please!

 

[Aldarc]

1e all the way. The class has more or less been crap ever since.

4e was probably the closest in subsequent editions to making the Ranger a fighter subclass. It's a separate class, but a Martial class, much as the Fighter, Rogue, and Warlord. In some regards, you could even see these four classes as four expressions of a basic "fighting man".

 

[Helldritch]

We saw UA as simply a collection of stuff we'd either already decided to adopt, modify or ignore when it first came out in Dragon magazine over the previous several years.

Very little in UA was truly new.

Agreed that a lot of UA was a rehearse from old articles of Dragon Magazine. As for using only some of the rules in it. I/We did too only picked what was good. Yet, As I said, I was and still is very active in the RPG community of my area. A lot, and I really mean a lot, of people I have met were considering the UA as the epitome of AD&D book. If you were not allowing fully it, you were not playing the game as it was meant to be.
Why do you think that I am so cold on the Tasha's book of ...? I see it as an other UA of 1ed. Not fully playtested materials that have been rushed out. This time it was not for financial reasons but to appease some of the accusation WotC has been receiving.

Been DMing since the early 80s. Won't be the last time I'm called heartless. Those folks can feel free to find another DM

And again, the "It is an official book!" syndrome was already in existence at the time. I was one of the rare ones that hold his ground and said no. Yet, some players of the community were accusing me of not playing the game as it was supposed to be exactly for the reason I mentionned above. It was an official book after all. I was really glad when second edition came around. But got disheartened very fast with the amount of material that was getting out. Too fast for my little pockets...

Hell, even in Toronto and Montreal, you were supposed to play with that damn book. It did have some good things. But most of the book had not been tested enough and it showed.

I will agree with you in that I never saw a 1e Ranger that didn't have a very high Dex, I'll also say that I have never seen a DM allow anything except a few spells from 1e UA after reading Cavalier and Barbarian, the two most party disruptive classes ever printed.

I think I attribute the high Dex 1e rangers to us wanting to optimize TWF for the giant class damage bonus. That was the only reason to take the class over a fighter/mage or a mage/thief to us because it could really benefit from 4-5 high stats.

I also wonder if other tables did more with 1e rangers as woodsmen than we did. At the time, none of us had read Tolkien so I don't think we put much stock in it. Remember the entirety of the 1e ranger's abilities are: good with surprise, could track, and a single line that says, "Rangers are a sub-class of fighter who are adept at woodcraft, tracking, scouting, and infiltration and spying." That's literally it. Everything else is high level spell stuff. I seriously don't remember playing rangers as woodsmen or even really scouts until 2e. We thought of them more like Texas rangers who fought the lawless giant class enemies on the frontier.

Yeah, same round here. But the high dex rangers that I saw were not at my table (I got, maybe three?). It was in other tables that I saw lots of them. I was not allowing the UA rolling method. Paladins, Monk and Rangers were very rare at my table. I never felt the need to restrict Paladins because they were overpowered. This is simply because cavaliers were simply not allowed (or any of the classes in UA). I only used the new demi-humans limitations (and I lowered a lot of the side requirement to get a bit higher. 19 strength, 18 in intelligence and wisdom to get a, elf to 12th level? Really?) These classes requirement were already hard to achieve.

But still, many were using the UA because it was an official book. The "official book" syndrome is really a thing. Yes with people that have been at your table for a long time, a DM can get away with not allowing some of the stuff. But the game is as much theirs as it is their players' too. We're in this for everyone's enjoyment.

 

[ph0rk]

I voted for 2e, but I really liked the Fighter Scout 5e UA. I've tried to make rangers many times, and I almost always make a fighter instead.

I like the 5e Horizon walker, but that's rather far afield from what I think most people envision when they think of a ranger.

 

[Voadam]

Giants don't come in "Forest" or "Wood" versions in these parts, bucko.

But Hill and Stone Giants are common-ish there; Mountain and - in the north - Frost a bit less so...

2e's Voadkyn (from Monstrous Compendium 5 for Greyhawk and later the Monstrous Manual) not classic enough for you?

 

[Undrave]

Why do you think that I am so cold on the Tasha's book of ...? I see it as an other UA of 1ed. Not fully playtested materials that have been rushed out.

They're been testing the subclasses for like... 2 years or something??? And a bunch of stuff is reprints from other books.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Agreed that a lot of UA was a rehearse from old articles of Dragon Magazine. As for using only some of the rules in it. I/We did too only picked what was good. Yet, As I said, I was and still is very active in the RPG community of my area. A lot, and I really mean a lot, of people I have met were considering the UA as the epitome of AD&D book. If you were not allowing fully it, you were not playing the game as it was meant to be.
Why do you think that I am so cold on the Tasha's book of ...? I see it as an other UA of 1ed. Not fully playtested materials that have been rushed out. This time it was not for financial reasons but to appease some of the accusation WotC has been receiving.


And again, the "It is an official book!" syndrome was already in existence at the time. I was one of the rare ones that hold his ground and said no. Yet, some players of the community were accusing me of not playing the game as it was supposed to be exactly for the reason I mentionned above. It was an official book after all. I was really glad when second edition came around. But got disheartened very fast with the amount of material that was getting out. Too fast for my little pockets...

Hell, even in Toronto and Montreal, you were supposed to play with that damn book. It did have some good things. But most of the book had not been tested enough and it showed.


Yeah, same round here. But the high dex rangers that I saw were not at my table (I got, maybe three?). It was in other tables that I saw lots of them. I was not allowing the UA rolling method. Paladins, Monk and Rangers were very rare at my table. I never felt the need to restrict Paladins because they were overpowered. This is simply because cavaliers were simply not allowed (or any of the classes in UA). I only used the new demi-humans limitations (and I lowered a lot of the side requirement to get a bit higher. 19 strength, 18 in intelligence and wisdom to get a, elf to 12th level? Really?) These classes requirement were already hard to achieve.

But still, many were using the UA because it was an official book. The "official book" syndrome is really a thing. Yes with people that have been at your table for a long time, a DM can get away with not allowing some of the stuff. But the game is as much theirs as it is their players' too. We're in this for everyone's enjoyment.

Yeah, I know where you're coming from, and the official book crowd does exist. However, I think the difference is that with 1e UA, it clearly wasn't even remotely tested at all. Just a bunch of gonzo stuff thrown in with no consideration how that impacts pre-existing campaigns and characters. I really don't think that's the case with Tasha's.

Even so, unless you're playing AL, you can omit whatever you want. It's your game. Anyone who doesn't like that can either DM themselves, or find another table. No one is entitled that a DM cater to their wishes if it runs counter to what the DM wants. No one is entitled to have someone DM for them. it's all about agreement at the table that if you play in a DM's campaign, you agree to their terms. If they are a bad DM, then they will eventually have no players.

 

[CleverNickName]

It was, in The Strategic Review Issue #2.

In fact, literally every class included in the 1e PHB was previously published for OD&D, though the bard and the ranger were only in The Strategic Review rather than the original booklets and supplements.

Well don't leave us hanging-- tell us about it! What was the Strategic Review ranger like?

 

[Helldritch]

Yeah, I know where you're coming from, and the official book crowd does exist. However, I think the difference is that with 1e UA, it clearly wasn't even remotely tested at all. Just a bunch of gonzo stuff thrown in with no consideration how that impacts pre-existing campaigns and characters. I really don't think that's the case with Tasha's.

Even so, unless you're playing AL, you can omit whatever you want. It's your game. Anyone who doesn't like that can either DM themselves, or find another table. No one is entitled that a DM cater to their wishes if it runs counter to what the DM wants. No one is entitled to have someone DM for them. it's all about agreement at the table that if you play in a DM's campaign, you agree to their terms. If they are a bad DM, then they will eventually have no players.

And... I might have no chance to deny the book access to my hands. Our Fridaynight D&D is not AL stuff. BUT it is following AL rules to the letter (well, as we understand them) as the store owner wants us to do it that way. Yes it does give the store owner free publicity and to us it helps the hobby to constantly grow with new blood. So in a sense, it might not impact my table but it will impact it at our FN D&D. And you know how it is to play with two different rule sets... It is not cool, man not cool.

Ho and by the way. My players absolutely loved the Depths of Felk Mor.

 

[Monayuris]

Well don't leave us hanging-- tell us about it! What was the Strategic Review ranger like?

This blog post has a rundown:

Rangers! An Exciting New D&D Class

Strategic Review #2 featured the first appearance of the Ranger class, by Joe Fischer. I think it’s one of the few pieces of OD&D that Gygax didn’t have a hand in writing. Gygax say…

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