D&D General Chris just said why I hate wizard/fighter dynamic

[Faolyn]

I'm not saying Rangers are Anti-Nature.
But the original point of the ranger class is to protect humaniods in civilization from stuff in the wild.

That's pretty much what I said.

Only I envision them as being more pro-nature in the sense that they're also defending natural creatures against the unnatural ones, and they're not going to let someone bulldoze the forest as a method of getting rid of the monsters.

 

[Minigiant]

That's pretty much what I said.

Only I envision them as being more pro-nature in the sense that they're also defending natural creatures against the unnatural ones, and they're not going to let someone bulldoze the forest as a method of getting rid of the monsters.

My point is the original rangers would be 100% into bulldozing the forest to get rid of the monsters. Original rangers were Man first Man Second then maybe Nature.

That's why an elf couldn't be a ranger back in the day. Their reverence to nature held them back.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's why an elf couldn't be a ranger back in the day. Their reverence to nature held them back.

Pfft...

They also couldn't be Druids! How the heck does that hold water with your argument?

They also couldn't be Paladins, Assassins, Illusionists, or Monks...

Once Unearthed Arcana came out, most could be Rangers. Even Dark Elves...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Elves couldn't be druids...

Damn, old D&D is hella weird.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Elves couldn't be druids...

Damn, old D&D is hella weird.

It was a balance thing to try to keep humans (who got nothing else in terms of racial features) appealing.

But it really didn't make any sense 99% of the time, so Unearthed Arcana changed it.

 

[TwoSix]

Players enjoy having the buttons to push that just give explicit permission to do things. When you introduce players to games that fix the issues, like 13th age, many players feel something is missing.

Similarly when you try to give people the buttons to push but make them more narrative so they don't explicitly need to be tied to magical effects a lot of players tend to rebel then as well.

This is a very succinct summary of the issues.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is a very succinct summary of the issues.

Yeah, the "effect guaranteed" style of magic in D&D has been set in stone for nearly 50 years, and it is not going away. You could not realistically change magic that fundamentally and slap the name D&D on the cover. That said, many D&D variants can and do make those changes. I love the DCC magic system referenced above, for example. But any official game called D&D is going to keep how magic works more or less the same.

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah, the "effect guaranteed" style of magic in D&D has been set in stone for nearly 50 years, and it is not going away. You could not realistically change magic that fundamentally and slap the name D&D on the cover. That said, many D&D variants can and do make those changes. I love the DCC magic system referenced above, for example. But any official game called D&D is going to keep how magic works more or less the same.

To me the issue is less the guarantees or the effects and more the levels you get them. A lot of bonkers effects are low level so if you can mitigate using slots for combat enough...

 

[Mordhau]

To me the issue is less the guarantees or the effects and more the levels you get them. A lot of bonkers effects are low level so if you can mitigate using slots for combat enough...

And the number of slots you get, which makes some of that powerful low level stuff like Disguise Self feel trivially cheap after a while.

 

[Mordhau]

I find the guaranteed nature of the effects matter because of how much they contrast with skills in terms of flat D20 rolls.

I see this in player planning, and in the kinds of plans players instinctively don't make in comparison to other games like Savage Worlds where the dice have more of a bell curve and there are ways to mitigate failure with metacurrency.

In D&D a plan that involves multiple steps involving skills rolls is a bad plan, "I'm going to climb the wall, sneak across the courtyard, knock out one of the cultists, steal their robes and then infiltrate the inner sanctum during the cult leaders sermon" is not a good plan if the DM is going to ask you to roll for each of those things. It's bad to the extent that players will probably not put it forward in those terms, so it's easy to miss the issues.*

"I'm going to spider climb up the wall, cast disguise self so I look like a cultist and walk into the inner sanctum (and then Misty Step out if things look dicy)" is a workable plan. You're guaranteed to at least do the necessary thing to get to the next stage. At some point you may need to roll a skill, but the less rolls the less possible points of failure, the more workable the plan.

Spells, and magic items have always been the main problem solving devices of D&D. If the players have access to these they'll come up with something. If they're relying on skills...well you'd better be prepared for a lot of failing forwards.


*There are ways to mitigate this of course, by either rolling once for the entire plan (pretty unsatisfying if you fail though) using some kind of skill challenge (not present in 5e).