D&D 5E Why are non-caster Ranger themes so popular?

[Minigiant]

What does "The Community" have to do with adjudicating actions at our table?

DMs are part of the community. And many of they don't know what a easy, medium, or hard survival/nature/ranger check is.

Is making a healing poultice equivalent to a healing spell easy, medium, or hard?
Is finding ingredients for an antidote easy, medium, or hard?
Is foraging a cure for a disease easy, medium, or hard?
Is crafting improvised weather gear or traveling gear for natural enviroments easy, medium, or hard?
Is calming a wild aggressive beast easy, medium, or hard?
Is taming a nonhostile wild beast easy, medium, or hard?
Is making a makeshift ghillie suit or other camoflauge easy, medium, or hard?
If concentrating a bane poison easy, medium, or hard?
etc etc

Every DM will give you different answers becuase the game designers didn't and the community never made a lick of consensus.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

DMs are part of the community. And many of they don't know what a easy, medium, or hard survival/nature/ranger check is.

Is there some kind of poll or other data proving your point that “many don’t know”?

Because setting DCs is basic DMing according to the DMG. With bounded accuracy in 5e, it’s pretty hard to mess things up too much using 10, 15, 20 as your baseline DCs, regardless of your experience.

Is making a healing poultice equivalent to a healing spell easy, medium, or hard?
Is finding ingredients for an antidote easy, medium, or hard?
Is foraging a cure for a disease easy, medium, or hard?
Is crafting improvised weather gear or traveling gear for natural enviroments easy, medium, or hard?
Is calming a wild aggressive beast easy, medium, or hard?
Is taming a nonhostile wild beast easy, medium, or hard?
Is making a makeshift ghillie suit or other camoflauge easy, medium, or hard?
If concentrating a bane poison easy, medium, or hard?
etc etc

Every DM will give you different answers becuase the game designers didn't and the community never made a lick of consensus.

How many different games with different DMs do you play in as a Ranger each week or month that you see such wild variation? I only wish I had time for such a dilemma!

 

[Minigiant]

Yes there is, it is right in XGE under Thieves Tools:

Traps: Just as you can disable traps, you can also set them. As part of a short rest, you can create a trap using items you have on hand. The total of your check becomes the DC for someone else's attempt to discover or disable the trap. The trap deals damage appropriate to the materials used in crafting it (such as poison or a weapon) or damage equal to half the total of your check, whichever the DM deems appropriate.

So rig a a heavy crossbow to shoot at someone who walks through the door and it is 1d10, poison the bolt with purple worm poision and it does another 12d6 poision with a save of 19. Create a trap with alchemists fire and it is 1d4 per turn until extinguished. Rig a building to fall over on someone, or fling someone off of a cliff .... well your DM will have to creative, but that is a lot of damage.

This method is far better and more flavorful than assigning some random numerical value based on level - "A Ranger can craft a trap that does 1d6 damage for every 2 levels" .... that would be silly and immersion breaking.

Well one that's the XGE so you are talking 3 years after the PHB. And Rangers don't even get thieves tools. And again, it doesn't scale with the game. Now I wasn't suggesting a random number or table.

My preference would be

At level 9, a ranger can spend a minute to double the damage of an element of a trap if they have the correct tool proficiency. alchemist's supplies or brewers supplies for alchemist's fire or explosives, mason's tools for fallen opjects and traps, poisoner's kit for poisons, smith's tools for weapons, and thieves tools for anything else.

At the 13th level, a ranger can spend 5 minutes to triple damage this way. At 17th level, a ranger can spend 10 minutes to quadruple damage.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

This method is far better, far more flavorful and "more real" than assigning some random numerical value based on level - "A Ranger can craft a trap that does 1d6 damage for every 2 levels" .... that would be silly and immersion breaking.

Why? Sneak attack scales with level, regardless of the dagger used. Fireball scales regardless of the bat poop quality.

THIS is why non-magical classes cant have nice things. The insistence on a sham immersion for a game that is terrible at simulation to begin with.

 

[Minigiant]

How many different games with different DMs do you play in as a Ranger each week or month that you see such wild variation? I only wish I had time for such a dilemma!

my first game with every DM is as a ranger unless banned or unable to roll the stats. I've played... a lot of... ranger.

 

[ECMO3]

Concord: Who the Rangers are aligned with.

• Druids
• Fey
• Loners
• Military
• Priests

Each conclave and concord would grain an additional favored enemy/terrain as well as give class features appropriate to the tier. Players who want Non-spell-casting rangers would just have to conclaves and concords that don't grant spellcasting (Beastmasters, Hunters, Loners, Military)

This is overly restrictive.

What if I want my Ranger to be a madam who runs a brothel or what if I want her to be a lord in the order of the Gauntlet, or work with pirates from Luskan or the Arcane brotherhood?

This is my main problem with a lot of discussions on class, they take things that should not be defined or related to the character's class and they want to roll those story elements into the class.

 

[Minigiant]

This is overly restrictive.

What if I want my Ranger to be a madam who runs a brothel or what if I want her to be a lord in the order of the Gauntlet, or work with pirates from Luskan or the Arcane brotherhood?

This is my main problem with a lot of discussions on class, they take things that should not be defined or related to the character's class and they want to roll those story elements into the class.

It's actually not that restictive.

What kind of ranger are you?
In your ranger training, who was your patron, trainer, or ally? I even gave a "None" option in loner to double up on your Conclave abilities. Wizards would be a option book subclass like Dragons.

 

[ECMO3]

Is making a healing poultice equivalent to a healing spell easy, medium, or hard?

1 day, 25gp, no check required. XGE page 130

Is finding ingredients for an antidote easy, medium, or hard?

DC 15 XTE page 82, although Iwould adjust this for terrain (harder in desert or ocean, easier in forrest or jungle, impossible on Avernus or in the lower dark)

Is foraging a cure for a disease easy, medium, or hard?

I don't think there is such thing that cures disease in 5E. You need lessor restoration or lay on hands for that. Also there was no real life anti-biotics in the middle ages, so I don't think there is an argument that there should be a non-magical way to do this.

That is not to say you should not homebrew it, I would start with rules for crafting a scroll of lessor restoration and go from there.

Is crafting improvised weather gear or traveling gear for natural enviroments easy, medium, or hard?

DC 10 or 15 covered on XGE page 81 or 83 or 85 depending on what gear specifically you are talking about.

Is calming a wild aggressive beast easy, medium, or hard?

Depends on the DMs call and what you mean by aggressive. This is a bit silly, it is like asking how hard is it to row across the river - well is the river the mississippi or is it rapids.

Is taming a nonhostile wild beast easy, medium, or hard?

You can't put a DC on a question like this. It is like asking how hard is it to persuade someone. Persuade someone to bum you a cigarette - probably easy, persuade a cop to let you go-hard, persuade a king to give you his kingdom-impossible

Considering this. Wolf Cub - Easy, Elephant-medium, Rino-impossible

Is making a makeshift ghillie suit or other camoflauge easy, medium, or hard?

I would say this is disguising yourself to look like surroundings and as such give it a DC 15 from page 81 in XGE.

If concentrating a bane poison easy, medium, or hard?
etc etc

Poison is covered separately, basic poision can be created with poisioner's kit, or you can extract other poision from a creature with a DC20 check. Concentrating a poison is not something that can be done RAW.

Every DM will give you different answers becuase the game designers didn't and the community never made a lick of consensus.

The game designers addressed most of these things explicitly and what they didn't the DM is supposed to make a judgement on.

Further having rules does not mean every DM won't do it differently. Most of the DMs I have played with have different rules for Mage Hand Legerdemain and none of them will allow my Arcane Tricksters to use Mage Hand Legerdemain explicitly RAW - Specifically they don't let me steal things off of enemies in combat as a bonus action and they don't let me attack then then pour oil on another creature as a bonus action every turn even though the rules explicitly say you can do this. Some of them make me string several turns and bonus actions together, some don't allow it all and some allow it but alter it (so the oil does not light automatically when hit by fire damage).

For this reason it is kind of silly to make up hard and fast rules for all these things.

 

[ECMO3]

It's actually not that restictive.

What kind of ranger are you?
In your ranger training, who was your patron, trainer, or ally? I even gave a "None" option in loner to double up on your Conclave abilities. Wizards would be a option book subclass like Dragons.

Who says I trained to be a Ranger at all? For the most part the class and subclass should provide the mechanics, not the character. I realize some elements need to be tied to a story but most of it should not be.

What if I want the mechanics of a "loner" but I want to play a flamboyant socialite ladies man who knows women in every city?

 

[ECMO3]

Why? Sneak attack scales with level, regardless of the dagger used. Fireball scales regardless of the bat poop quality.

THIS is why non-magical classes cant have nice things. The insistence on a sham immersion for a game that is terrible at simulation to begin with.

But the dagger always does 1d4 and it does that whether it is a 1st level Rogue or a 20th level fighter wielding it. The fireball is magic and really has no place in a discussion on scaling non-magic abilities.

I would be ok with a Rogue adding sneak attack damage if she used a finesse or missile weapon for crafting the trap, I think most DMs would. Just like most DMs would be ok with adding an ability bonus to trap damage depending on what ability you used to fashion it.

By the way I craft traps all the time in my games, usually when taking a long rest in a non-secure area so it is something that is used a lot. Suggesting there are not rules on it is just silly.