Incenjucar
Legend
I'm not sure how that can be measured.
Mostly I just see a lot of folks who think stuff I did as a child was magical.
D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?
- Thread starter Horwath
- Start date
Mostly I just see a lot of folks who think stuff I did as a child was magical.
I think you can do most of those things with ability checks, magic just does (and should) make it easier.
People climb Mount Everest regularly, and they represent some of the best mountain climbers in the world. But an overweight middle aged couch potato could do it better and easier by just teleporting up there if magic existed here. The game fiction should preserve the same kind of disparity between non-magic and magic methods. Magic is physicis-breaking. You should be able to accomplish things through magic that can't be attempted at all without magic and with magic, you should be able to do things that can be done faster, easier and better than any mortal could though non-magical means.
IMO Rangers specifically should be able to do the things you mention with magic and do it near-flawlessly. Other PCs should be able to do or attempt it and there are already classes, subclasses or builds that can either do those things or excel in those things with skill checks or other abilities, but they should not approach the level of proficiency, ease or effectiveness that someone can achieve by using magic to accomplish it.
Last edited:
Vaalingrade
Legend
Magic needs to get its big, robed butt out of everyone else's way.
D&D magic is like those attention-seeking influencers getting int he way of Tour de France cyclists and causing them all to crash because it's the one that needs ALL the attention and no one else can have any.
It's measuring in 50 years of D&D skipping chunks of wilderness and survival stuff and still forcing low level wilderness stuff to still be outright magic
In other news, tonight I think I cracked the code on the whole "Getting Lost sucks ass" part, and ironically I did so by going more realistic with the travel rules for my game.
In actual wilderness navigation, theres a phenomenon called the drift error. Essentially, because even with highly precise navigation equipment or omnipresent landmarks to navigate towards, it generally isn't possible to travel and perfectly straight lines when you're on untamed terrain. You eventually drift off course and your final path, at its most precise, will be quite wiggly, and with less precision, this drift effect can be pretty pronounced, especially over long distances without course correction.
And this is something Ive actually noticed in the survival games I like to play, so its a very real effect.
So, to translate that into a TTRPG, I've started working on implementing Travel Drift as a mechanic.
The basics of how it works is that for every 12 miles (two hexes) travelled, you accumulate a Drift error of 1, which will drive you into either a leftward or rightward adjacent hex if you continue past that 12 miles.
Now, whether or not you actually travel that 12 miles or more will depend, as it will vary upon whether or not you have a specific course you wish to take, and if you have such a course, how well the skill checks go.
So how does that work? In comes the Pathfinding skill, and two particular Travel Tasks that fall under it: Pathfind and Navigate.
Pathfind is used to find efficient routes through the terrain you're travelling in, and is what provides the Party with their Pacing, which is the measure of how many miles the party manages to travel in a given Expedition turn, equal to whatever you rolled on your 2d10 skill check. However, you also gain a bonus to Pacing with a degree of success system, with your result compared to the Terrain Modifier (basically a DC thats set by region and/or Hex), up to a max of 15 additional miles if you get 10 over the Terrain mod. But if you roll even higher, every set of 5 above 10 you get reduces your drift error by 1.
You don't actually have to roll Pathfind, however, to travel. The Party could instead Meander, and just wander aimlessly, which they can do at a rate of 1 Hex per turn.
The other is Navigate, which is more or less self-explanitory. This one can't provide you any additional Pacing (though it will provide the base amount if you or someone else doesn't Pathfind; if both are used, the highest result determines your base Pacing), but it can directly impact your Drift error. The DOS here is based on being within 3 of the Terrain Modifier; come within 3, you keep your course. Roll more than 3 below the TM, you take a drift penalty of 1 for every 5. Roll above the TM, you take a drift reduction of 1 for every 5.
So, long story short, getting "lost" when you're actively pathfinding doesn't actually happen. Instead, becoming lost is simply a function of not knowing where you actually are. This can happen when you're Pathfinding, if the party travels an excessive distance without checking themselves (this is something Im still contemplating a range for), but most often will occur when leaving the other ends of places the party can't really keep their bearings in, like long dungeons, especially dense forests, etc, and is a condition to be cured by navigating your way out of it, looking for landmarks to center yourself. This Im still working on as well, but the idea will be that its a confluence of Pathfinding check (Find Bearing) and actively moving through the world. Basically, the longer you're out there lost, the more likely you will be to find your way. (As unlike hapless city folk, you'll be assumed as an adventurer to have some basic knowledge with the skill, as you will with all of them, so you can't stay lost forever...unless something sets itself against you, that is, and there will be options there. Like getting your own Wizard to shout back at the Mountain to stop bothering you just because some white-robed moron on a tower somewhere has gone power hungry)
So by setting up these particular rules (amongst the great pile of them going into Adventuring, including Exploration, Travel, Survival, and Time) this gives a lot of fodder to build class abilities on for not just the Ranger, but also the other Nature classes, as well as some choice others, like the Barbarian.
In actual wilderness navigation, theres a phenomenon called the drift error. Essentially, because even with highly precise navigation equipment or omnipresent landmarks to navigate towards, it generally isn't possible to travel and perfectly straight lines when you're on untamed terrain. You eventually drift off course and your final path, at its most precise, will be quite wiggly, and with less precision, this drift effect can be pretty pronounced, especially over long distances without course correction.
And this is something Ive actually noticed in the survival games I like to play, so its a very real effect.
So, to translate that into a TTRPG, I've started working on implementing Travel Drift as a mechanic.
The basics of how it works is that for every 12 miles (two hexes) travelled, you accumulate a Drift error of 1, which will drive you into either a leftward or rightward adjacent hex if you continue past that 12 miles.
Now, whether or not you actually travel that 12 miles or more will depend, as it will vary upon whether or not you have a specific course you wish to take, and if you have such a course, how well the skill checks go.
So how does that work? In comes the Pathfinding skill, and two particular Travel Tasks that fall under it: Pathfind and Navigate.
Pathfind is used to find efficient routes through the terrain you're travelling in, and is what provides the Party with their Pacing, which is the measure of how many miles the party manages to travel in a given Expedition turn, equal to whatever you rolled on your 2d10 skill check. However, you also gain a bonus to Pacing with a degree of success system, with your result compared to the Terrain Modifier (basically a DC thats set by region and/or Hex), up to a max of 15 additional miles if you get 10 over the Terrain mod. But if you roll even higher, every set of 5 above 10 you get reduces your drift error by 1.
You don't actually have to roll Pathfind, however, to travel. The Party could instead Meander, and just wander aimlessly, which they can do at a rate of 1 Hex per turn.
The other is Navigate, which is more or less self-explanitory. This one can't provide you any additional Pacing (though it will provide the base amount if you or someone else doesn't Pathfind; if both are used, the highest result determines your base Pacing), but it can directly impact your Drift error. The DOS here is based on being within 3 of the Terrain Modifier; come within 3, you keep your course. Roll more than 3 below the TM, you take a drift penalty of 1 for every 5. Roll above the TM, you take a drift reduction of 1 for every 5.
So, long story short, getting "lost" when you're actively pathfinding doesn't actually happen. Instead, becoming lost is simply a function of not knowing where you actually are. This can happen when you're Pathfinding, if the party travels an excessive distance without checking themselves (this is something Im still contemplating a range for), but most often will occur when leaving the other ends of places the party can't really keep their bearings in, like long dungeons, especially dense forests, etc, and is a condition to be cured by navigating your way out of it, looking for landmarks to center yourself. This Im still working on as well, but the idea will be that its a confluence of Pathfinding check (Find Bearing) and actively moving through the world. Basically, the longer you're out there lost, the more likely you will be to find your way. (As unlike hapless city folk, you'll be assumed as an adventurer to have some basic knowledge with the skill, as you will with all of them, so you can't stay lost forever...unless something sets itself against you, that is, and there will be options there. Like getting your own Wizard to shout back at the Mountain to stop bothering you just because some white-robed moron on a tower somewhere has gone power hungry)
So by setting up these particular rules (amongst the great pile of them going into Adventuring, including Exploration, Travel, Survival, and Time) this gives a lot of fodder to build class abilities on for not just the Ranger, but also the other Nature classes, as well as some choice others, like the Barbarian.
It is a fantasy game. Magic is what the game should be about IMO.
Discounting Monks for a minute (because they are complicated), the PC classes should be broken into two groups: mundane classes (Fighter Rogue and Barbarian) and magic classes (everyone else). Ranger should clearly be part of the second IMO.
The magic classes should be the ones that get the physics-breaking abilities and the mundane classes should have grounded abilities. Subclasses or feat options should allow the mundane classes to dabble in magic and be a bit more extraordinary if they want to.
Also I disagree that magic should be robed thematically. I love what 5E did allowing you to combine heavy armor and magic in a way that was either prohibited or difficult in most other editions.
Incenjucar
Legend
Fantasy is not just about spellcasters. D&D isn't Harry Potter.
Its not actually clear at all. For instance, in my game the Ranger is both a Martial and a Nature class, and in that context Nature (and Divine) can be members of any of the 4 class types. Hence the inclusion of the Druid, the Beastmaster, and the Hedge Mage as the Caster, Summoner, and Psionic respectively.
The necessity of the Ranger being magical simply isn't a fact.
Shardstone
Hero
What are you talking about
My game. I haven't actually gone through and designed these particular classes yet (technically, I did the Ranger first but its so out of date now so I don't count my first go), but the ideas Im carrying into their designs are already in place.
Rangers in particular differentiate from the other Martials in the game by being an AOE damage dealer from the start, and as a secondary role a martial healer. Where most classes will only be able to engage one or two foes at a time, the Ranger will be able to take on many more from level 2, and this will only get more potent as time goes on, and when other classes catch up to basic ability (when the party starts running into and facing Hordes and even entire Armies), the Ranger will diversify, with their healing becoming more prominent, but also in new ways to wreak havoc on the battlefield (like my previously mentioned Eyes of the Outlands ability from pages ago; the Ranger basically chucks a pebble in the woods and 20 dragons (or some other horde of creatures) come rampaging through the Rangers enemies.
And meanwhile the Ranger differentiates itself from the other Nature classes by way of its core ability, Call of the Wild (each nature class has a variation on this), which sets the Ranger up to use the Wilderness as a shield for the party. (Whereas the Druid uses it as a Sword, and the Beastmaster and Hedge Mage as a bit of both and neither)
