D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?

[Emberashh]

I would summarize that as: the Ranger class is someone who "wields" the terrain (rather than someone who "adapts" to the terrain).

This concept has high tier potential, including summoning high tier creatures in the terrain, inflicting high tier damage and conditions, and similarly mobility/barrier (including teleportation) and detection/stealth within the terrain.

If you want to go the adaptation route you need to have a terrain system that is just as deeply varied and remixable as monsters, and that in turn means your fiction is going to edge towards the more overtly magical, because even with soft mundaneity, theres only so much you can actually do with real environments without creating a gonzo world. So, you'll end up setting those gonzo worlds as separate planes and dimensions or whatever.

And what do you know, now you're circling back to the same thing 5e already does that makes Rangers as they exist make sense all the way into the epic tiers by expecting such high level characters to be Multiversal heroes. Makes a hell of a lot more sense to be as good at survival and travel as the OG Ranger was when the places you face fundamentally aren't inhabitable by conventional life, so it takes a great deal of skilled ability to survive there, the kind of skilled ability that makes mundane Bubblegum forests a tonal mismatch to what the party should even be concerned about.

Ive said it before, Ranger as a concept only breaks down if you expect the exact same wilderness to be an appropriate challenge at level 1 and level 20, and unless you're going to embrace the video game method of level scaling, that just isn't going to happen.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The ranger conquers nature. They are not native to it, but they have learned to survive within it, and to help others do so. Where the druid attunes themselves with nature, the ranger attunes nature with themselves.

I really think this is off base.

The Ranger doesn’t conquer nature, they move as part of nature, like a wolf or a hawk. They don’t reshape the land and flora to their will, like Druids do. They hunt the things that should not exist, and that threaten both wilds and civilization. They’re a bridge.

Frankly they should have a small bit of Druid pretty much explicitly.

 

[Charlaquin]

I really think this is off base.

The Ranger doesn’t conquer nature, they move as part of nature, like a wolf or a hawk. They don’t reshape the land and flora to their will, like Druids do. They hunt the things that should not exist, and that threaten both wilds and civilization. They’re a bridge.

Frankly they should have a small bit of Druid pretty much explicitly.

I strongly disagree. Rangers are scouts and survivalists. They don’t protect nature, they protect people (including themselves) from nature.

 

[Emberashh]

They don’t protect nature, they protect people (including themselves) from nature.

I prefer to replace from with with.

 

[Charlaquin]

I prefer to replace from with with.

I’ll stick with from.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Of everything the ranger gets, the only way they protect people with nature is occasionally getting an animal to fight with them. Otherwise they're using tools and knowledge to negate nature or in the cast of spell rangers, actively editing reality to subvert it.

 

[Yaarel]

I’ll stick with from.

Of everything the ranger gets, the only way they protect people with nature is occasionally getting an animal to fight with them. Otherwise they're using tools and knowledge to negate nature or in the cast of spell rangers, actively editing reality to subvert it.

This character concept that "negates" nature, can only be as high a tier as the nature itself is.

So, if the wilderness is a low tier adventure, levels 1 thru 4 or levels 5 thru 8, the wilderness Ranger can never be a higher tier, conceptually.

In other words, such Ranger would need to abandon the wilderness to function at a higher tier, thus be a completely different kind of character concept.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This character concept that "negates" nature, can only be as high a tier as the nature itself is.

God, wouldn't it be amazing if we could have some fantastic nature?

Like an animal that's like, I don't know a combination between and own and a bear, or a falcon and a lion? And they're actually acknowledged and mechanically treated like animals?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I strongly disagree. Rangers are scouts and survivalists. They don’t protect nature, they protect people (including themselves) from nature.

No. First, they are only scouts and survivalists in terms of skill set, their actual purpose is to protect the civilization and the wilds from the unnatural things that hide in the wild and prey upon both.

A nature scout without that element of both protecting people and the land from anathema is a Rogue with the Scout subclass.

 

[Charlaquin]

This character concept that "negates" nature, can only be as high a tier as the nature itself is.

So, if the wilderness is a low tier adventure, levels 1 thru 4 or levels 5 thru 8, the wilderness Ranger can never be a higher tier, conceptually.

In other words, such Ranger would need to abandon the wilderness to function at a higher tier, thus be a completely different kind of character concept.

There’s no reason wilderness has to stop at low tier. It’s a fantasy game, you can easily have enchanted forests, cursed caverns, etc in mid tier and other planes of existence in high tier.