D&D (2024) One D&D Expert Classes Playtest Document Is Live

The One D&D Expert Class playest document is now available to download. You can access it by signing into your D&D Beyond account at the link below. It contains three classes -- bard, rogue, and ranger, along with three associated subclasses (College of Lore, Thief, and Hunter), plus a number of feats.

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[Olrox17]

The point is that the 4e ranger wasn't automatically the best at it and that is the point of the class. The druid, cleric, shaman beat it at wisdom checks and only the archer competed in Stealth. And it didn't get rituals.

A similar problem happens in 5e as the druid was a better ranger than the ranger due to full casting and Wild shape.

Making the ranger potentially share spells fully with druid exasperates the issue more. Especially since WOTC refuses to give ranger exclusive spells.

Ah, I see what your issue is then. You wanted the 4e ranger to be automatically the best class at wilderness scouting, when it was merely one of the best, alongside a few others (no, not the cleric, that's an exaggeration).

Yes, 4e didn't do a lot of niche protection like that. If you want another example of that, the classic rogue role of sneaking and disarming traps can be accomplished by many other dex based classes with little effort, and rogues also don't get rituals. Does that make the 4e rogue a bad burglar? No, of course not.
Want another example? The wizard is the classic fantasy ritualist, but guess what? Everyone else is just one feat away from also becoming a ritualist, and 4e characters get 18 feats at max level, 19 if human.

In conclusion, I believe you have a problem with a fundamental design decision of 4e, rather than the ranger class in particular.

 

[Minigiant]

The work apparently doesn't count unless WotC does it.

As good as the level up ranger is, it has one major flaw.

 

[Faolyn]

The work apparently doesn't count unless WotC does it.

Well, to be fair, it would be kinda hard to import the LU ranger into o5e without also bringing all of the martial maneuvers as well. So of course the proper response is to simply convert your o5e ranger to LU!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Meaning you don't agree with it?

Meaning that I don't consider it to be nearly the same big deal as some people here on EN World do.

Mainly because I don't see any issues with having multiples of the same class in the same party. So if anyone really needed to avoid "magic" at all cost... you could just play barbarians, fighters, rogues, monks, and paladins that turn all spells into smites.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Because they don't feel like a Ranger. They don't fit the archetype in pop culture of what a Ranger is.

The nonmagical Ranger archetype has a faulty design, too. Gathering food, tracking enemies, befriending animals, scouting, and all of the other "nonmagical Ranger-y things" are just skills. Nature, Survival, Stealth, Perception, and Animal Handling. The "pop culture Rangers" (Katniss, Drizzt, Aragorn, etc) are just Fighters or Scout Rogues that are good at those skills. It's not a big enough archetype for a full class with how 5e is designed.

Let's not forget, the Paladin class was based off of the Knights of the Round Table, Charlemagne's Knights, and the Knights Templar. None of which had magical auras, disease-curing hands, or magical smites. Barbarians are based off of Nordic Berserkers, but they don't have to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms/get super drunk in order to enter their Rage (and let's not forget that Conan the Barbarian is apparently a Fighter/Rogue, too).

Because they stripped out all the flavor to power it up.

They should have Fixed the 2014 ranger features and spells instead of just converting it all to Hunters Mark, Barkskin 2.0, and Invisibility.

They tried to fix the 2014 Ranger features multiple times. It didn't work. So now they're transitioning more towards having Rangers be primal spellcasters to give them a bigger mechanical/thematic niche.

 

[Faolyn]

Meaning that I don't consider it to be nearly the same big deal as some people here on EN World do.

Mainly because I don't see any issues with having multiples of the same class in the same party. So if anyone really needed to avoid "magic" at all cost... you could just play barbarians, fighters, rogues, monks, and paladins that turn all spells into smites.

For me at least, the problem isn't in having multiples of the same party. The problem is that having magic can sometimes feel too fantastic unless the DM also does the worldbuilding necessary to support the magic. And also low-magic worlds are grittier without having to make them dark or mess around with long rests.

 

[Weiley31]

The big problem with Scout is that Rogue is completely the wrong chassis for the archetypical Ranger, who isn't some sort of backstabber/sneak attacker, and is the sort of person who is putting arrows downrange extremely rapidly. If there was a Fighter that ditched armour, got expertise, got nature-related abilities, and so on, that'd be a lot better. But that'd be what the Ranger is, except they gave it a ton of magic instead of actual abilities. It's even lost a bunch of abilities.

Fighter: Scout - DND 5th Edition

dnd5e.wikidot.com

I know it's not exactly what ya mean, but apparently the "non spell ranger" is kinda covered by the Rogue: Scout and the Fighter: Scout.

 

[Weiley31]

What about my pet?

You can have one of my cats, really I am trying to get rid of those dudes. You could call him Guenhwyvar.

More seriously, there are no pet classes in the play test yet, who knows how that will pan out? It would it appear that it will be pretty easy to swap subclasses between classes.

I played a pet Ranger in a 5e game for awhile. I found it very dissatisfying. My wife's druid was much better with a pet.

Honestly, unless OneD&D MANAGES to make a Pet Class worth using, I just jack the Revised Ranger's Animal Companion Option for any "animal companion/minions" for classes. (So, Companion's Bond for scaling/skills).

That method serves the need somewhat. (I can only offer solutions, not answers so YMMV with the suggestion in regard to the subject matter.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fighter: Scout - DND 5th Edition

dnd5e.wikidot.com

I know it's not exactly what ya mean, but apparently the "non spell ranger" is kinda covered by the Rogue: Scout and the Fighter: Scout.

What are you even linking there? Not only is that link unsigned and insecure, that's not official 5E content.

 

[Weiley31]

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Hunter's Mark the same exact method they had in the Variant Options UA that was eventually changed for Tasha's?