D&D General Ranger Identity Patch (+)

[doctorbadwolf]

replace HM with Divine favor, improve DF damage to d6 at 13th level, 2d6 at 20th level

give rangers advantage on Insight, Perception and Survival at 3rd level.

Hell i wouldnt wait thst long to improve the damage. Make it 11 and i am sold. 9 and i love it.

The need to concentrate for an hour on Hunter's Mark is what convinced me to use the optional Favored Foe class feature for my 2014 Ranger character. You just needed to concentrate for a minute with Favored Foe and you were able to use it a number of times equal to your PB/Long rest. And while the extra damage started out small, it slowly scaled up to a d8 by 14th level.

Would Hunter's Mark be OP if you didn't have to concentrate on it for an hour? Just mark and go!

Nope. Wouldn't be OP at all.

 

[Horwath]

Hell i wouldnt wait thst long to improve the damage. Make it 11 and i am sold. 9 and i love it.

13th level was to mimic level where you would not lose Conc on damage for HM.

 

[Corinnguard]

Make it a fighter subclass, like it originally was.

Back in 3e Unearthed Arcana, the Ranger, the Paladin, and the Bard were depicted as 15 level Prestige classes. Prestigious Character Classes pages 69-72.

Druids had an easier time becoming a Prestige Ranger, but you come become one via multiclassing with the barbarian, fighter or rogue.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

13th level was to mimic level where you would not lose Conc on damage for HM.

Fair

 

[Corinnguard]

A moment I asked Google about how long a person can concentrate on one thing such as the Hunter's Mark spell. I found out that on average that most adults can maintain their focus for about 15 to 20 minutes before their attention span declined and they got distracted by something or someone else. So, concentration works in short bursts. But with training it can last several hours. This suggests that perhaps spellcasters are better than non-spellcasters when it comes to spells that require concentration. They trained themselves.

Time to bring back the Concentration skill?

 

[Minigiant]

A moment I asked Google about how long a person can concentrate on one thing such as the Hunter's Mark spell. I found out that on average that most adults can maintain their focus for about 15 to 20 minutes before their attention span declined and they got distracted by something or someone else. So, concentration works in short bursts. But with training it can last several hours. This suggests that perhaps spellcasters are better than non-spellcasters when it comes to spells that require concentration. They trained themselves.

Time to bring back the Concentration skill?

Long said it was a mistake to remove the Endurance skill.

 

[Horwath]

Long said it was a mistake to remove the Endurance skill.

just use athletics and key it of Con if needs arise for it.

 

[Minigiant]

just use athletics and key it of Con if needs arise for it.

Tangent: using different abilty scores for skills only works if you do it for all skills.

Shifting Athletics off Str off Con futher imbalances the game by nerfing Str.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was talking to my wife the other day about her ranger, and how she often feels at a loss about what to do during social challenges. We do not play in a "no one but the face say anything" way, so it is noticeable when someone doesnt speak up as much with a characters as they normally would.

One thing we decided is that Insight should be usable to convince someone of something, rather than siloing that in persuasion.

If i describe reading someone and using what i glean to push buttons and get them to agree to something, i shouldnt be rolling persuasion. That is insight.

 

[JohnSnow]

I feel like one of the problems is that the Ranger doesn't have anything that is both distinctive and thematic at the same time. A lot of their abilities are highly situational and DM-dependent, and they excel in a pillar of the game (Exploration) that is rarely the focal point. If you don't have a ranger, most DMs gloss over travel. If you do have one and make travel a focus, many of the players other than the ranger are bored. This is bad design. So how do you fix that by designing rangers that are relevant?

First, you have to give the ranger a niche. So what should that niche be? Fighters have the weapons master covered, Rogues are the sneaky skill monkey, and bards are the Jack of All Trades class. So whither to slot the ranger?

1. IMO, Rangers should be the "alert" class - the one that's good for not getting surprised or ambushed. The Rogue may be the best "sneaker/ambusher" in the game, but in order to counter that, what you want is a Ranger.

2. Give Rangers as a class should fairly early on be some of the best in the game (Expertise) with the skills Animal Handling, Medicine, Nature, and Survival, and they should gain proficiency with the Herbalism kit the way Rogues get Thieves' tools. Because they just aren't Rangers without being the best at those things.

3. Combat skills close adjacent to those of fighters, with some kind of encouragement to being a highly mobile skirmisher class. I'd rather see something like the 3.5 Scout's "ambush damage" than Hunter's Mark. Faramir's men are really good at laying an ambush for the Southrons, and rangers as ambushers also fits both the Dunedain and the rangers set up by Robert Rogers in the early days of America.

That, to me, reads "Ranger." I don't totally object to spellcasting, but it should, IMO, be an optional part of the class (with some cool thematic spells), as opposed to a key one. Off the top of my head, you'd want subclasses like this:

Hunter: Specialist monster slayer - Aragorn, Faramir, Drizz't.
Beastmaster: Self-evident - Dar, Tarzan, Mowgli.
Warden (equivalent to Eldritch Knight): Spellcasting - Geralt of Rivia, Grey Wardens from Dragon Age.

Arcane Archer, Fey Wanderer, and Gloom Stalker could all be made to work as well.

Anyway, that'd be my pitch.