D&D General What is appropriate Ranger Magic

[CreamCloud0]

And now in Level Up, we get to see the reverse. A Ranger class putting actual survival abilities before magic use.

I repeat to clarify: I have no issues with rangers having and using magic OR survival abilities, just that their magic should not be used to replace actually having developed survival abilities.

It's more that D&D settings have stunted technology due to magic so rangers use spells because no one invented a decent alarm and stealth suit

I mean the top voting spell on the poll is a grenade arrow but DMs love banning gunpowder.

Yeah i do wish the consensus wasn’t to clamp down so bad on basic technologies in favour of magic being the go-to solution.

 

[Corinnguard]

I repeat to clarify: I have no issues with rangers having and using magic OR survival abilities, just that their magic should not be used to replace actually having developed survival abilities.

It's cool. I read your earlier reply and understood your position. I wanted to point out that Level Up was taking the Ranger class in a different direction than the one WoTC/TSR had established years ago.

 

[Minigiant]

It's cool. I read your earlier reply and understood your position. I wanted to point out that Level Up was taking the Ranger class in a different direction than the one WoTC/TSR had established years ago.

There are different ways to pull the ranger

More Druidic
More Arcane
More Warrior
More Rogue
A bit of Tech
A bit of Artifice

The community can't decide with one and the designers don't make the entire gamut.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Do you think the design is lazy because the community is divided?

One billion percent, yes.

The community's indecisiveness and spiteful rebukes toward good design has caused a lot of terrible choices.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Spell-lesd rangers were printed out since 3e. And in 0e, rangers didn't get magic spells until high levels and mostly just got special rules and exclusive access to cleric and mage magic items as a fighter type.

The issue was constantly that people complained about rangers having special rules. They either didnt agree with the nonmagical rules, didn't want to learn additional rules, or didn't like the siloing and restriction on the roof to give it to the ranger.

So magic was just used and it went from level 10 to level 8 to level four to level two and finally level 1.

I don't recall all these complaints over the 35 years I've been invested in D&D. Just the recent D&D 5e complaints about rangers being underpowered. I'm sorry you've had to deal with that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's more that D&D settings have stunted technology due to magic so rangers use spells because no one invented a decent alarm and stealth suit

I mean the top voting spell on the poll is a grenade arrow but DMs love banning gunpowder.

Again, I must be weird, because I never ban gunpowder unless there's a specific setting reason (which I don't think has ever happened personally).

 

[Micah Sweet]

One billion percent, yes.

The community's indecisiveness and spiteful rebukes toward good design has caused a lot of terrible choices.

I'm not sure there's a consensus on what "good design" is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm not sure there's a consensus on what "good design" is.

I mean we've seen pushback against such basics as 'making the rule concise and clear', 'usable monster challenge reference' and 'a good means of teaching DMs aside from trial and error' being called out, so...

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not sure there's a consensus on what "good design" is.

Good design usually at least defining what you want to design.

Everyone agrees on the vague image on the ranger. The second you talk mechanics, people start complaining.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I'm not sure there's a consensus on what "good design" is.

Good and bad are both inherently subjective. Any time you hear either word the person is stating an opinion. There may or may not be a plurality or majority support of something being good. But it's always subjective. And anytime you have a subjective concept, people will disagree.