Recent content by Diamondeye

Rangers are generally associated with archery in the common understanding. Archery goes right along with the concept of a hunter and outdoorsman. In contrast, the fighter has never focused on ranged combat. In 3.5 and 5.0 the fighter has definitely had certain advantages as a ranged combatant...

That's not what "carries no water" means. It means that it's irrelevant. The design of the 1E Ranger imposes no imperative to make successive rangers similar. How "obvious" it is either then or now is unimportant.

That's not what "carries no water" means. It means that it's irrelevant. The design of the 1E Ranger imposes no imperative to make successive rangers similar. How "obvious" it is either then or now is unimportant.

Then the problem is that the fighter is encroaching on the Ranger's territory, not the other way around. It should be the Ranger's thing.

If I can find a way to get someone to play using it, I would test it. This looks like a very good overall Ranger concept. It is not the Ranger I would write, but it is definitely a good one.

1) So what? 2) Pointing out the goalpost-moving is not "splitting hairs". One does not get to say one thing, have that point addressed, subtly change to something else, then call "hairsplitting" on the responder dragging one back to the original point. This is nothing more than a distraction...

They really haven't. As of 2E, easy 2-weapon fighting became their "thing they do in combat." Favored enemy was a nice bonus against selective enemies - it isn't their thing, and there's no real reason it SHOULD BE. It especially should not be when it's explicitly situational and all of the...

The default PHB description covered quite a few humanoids that were clearly not "giants" and were not subject to DM discretion sans houserules. The connection was stated to be "explicit" - i.e. stated outright. It clearly was not stated outright in the book, nor was the average player privy...

There have been 4 intervening versions of the game, and 5 versions of Ranger. The attempt to duplicate Aragorn was abandoned long ago. The fact that this was an original design goal is very little reason to use that as a major point of discussion, nor does it explain how it's "very relevant"...

That depends. There are a lot of edge cases and characters that are rangers to some people but not to others. They don't necessarily need to have the word "Ranger" in their title or description anywhere to be a ranger either. No. There are other games that have used the concept of rangers...

I already addressed this. Aragorn is a literary character; his creation is unrelated to D&D. Simply being characteristics that Aragorn has doesn't logically relate them to one another and especially doesn't do so in the context of D&D. Pointing out that this character ties them together is...

This is why I said "aside from 1E" it was not a defining feature. Yes, I've lookd at 1E. Have you ever even looked at a concept called "reading comprehension"? In the case of 1E, yes, the "favored enemy" was a big character feature, but the Ranger's character features overall made no sense in...

No, in fact I have an excellent idea of it, or I wouldn't have pointed out that it was never a defining feature after 1E, and in 1E it was only defining because it was so broad. Which I already acknowleged. However, a feature being present in 1E is not a reason - by itself - to keep it, and...

Except for the fact that it isn't. Aside from 1E, where the "favored enemy" was really a widely disparate group of vaguely similar bipedal humanoids, Favored Enemy has never been what the Ranger is about, a defining feature, or even terribly important. It's been a minor, secondary feature that...

The Ranger's core ability really should be archery (inc. crossbows). Ranged, nonmagical combat is an area that no other class truly specializes in. You CAN make a fighter do that, but it's not really a fighter "thing". The different subtypes of ranger can then augment that with either A)...