D&D 5E Convince me that the Ranger is a necessary Class.

Minigiant said:

This is why 5e should have a dedication Skills and Tools chapter.

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yes

Minigiant said:

Not as in depth or fiddly as 3e but each skill having 2-4 dedicated DCs and usages that ranged the entire spectrum of the base game.

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no, we need to go deeper than 3.5e with skills

and since skills do not scale +1 per level, but +1/2 per level at best, we need to move away from +5 per category DC on skills.
+3 after 10 would be a good scale
DC: 5,10,15,20,25,30,35, should go to;
DC: 5,10,13,16,19,22,25,

Minigiant said:

If I were to ever make a simple dungeon crawler, I always thought that I'd just have every skill have its own page of its description and the core range of usages and the associated DCs for it. This would allow me to decrease the number of classes as you could "Create a Class" by choosing a set of skills.

Then you wouldn't "need" a ranger.

You could make a Beastmaster by creating a priest and summon your companion with Nature, tame it with Animal Handling, and heal it with Medicine or Religion.

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or having universal subclass progression and having beast master be a universal subclass.

Minigiant said:

You could make a Hunter by creating a fighter and getting your bonus damage with Survival, Maneuvers with Athletics, and sneaking with Stealth.

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probably,
or again a universal subclass.

1st level:
proficiency in 3 skills from list: Nature, Investigation, Medicine, Animal handling, Perception, Survival, Stealth
advantage on Survival checks from tracking

3rd level:
expertise in 3 skills from the 1st level list
darkvision: +60ft
+10ft movement
poison resistance

6th level:
climb speed
swim speed and breathe water
ignore difficult terrain
cold and fire resistance

10th level:
halve effective exhaustion levels
resistance to acid, lighting and thunder damage
astral step: prof bonus per day, Bonus action teleport equal to your move speed.

14th level:
immunity to fire and cold
astral resistance: radiant, necrotic and psychic.
astral step is 1mile

now, this is 2 minute hatchet job at making a subclass with exploration and endurance theme.

Horwath said:

no, we need to go deeper than 3.5e with skills

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How much deeper than 3.5e?

Corinnguard said:

This approach could work for all of the classes, not just the Ranger class. Make every class into a package of skills.

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Horwath said:

or having universal subclass progression and having beast master be a universal subclass

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That's essentially what I'd do if I were making a whole new dungeon crawler RPG

Each Skill would attached to the Companion, Knack, Maneuver, Trick, or Spell systems.

You learn and cast spells with Arcana, Nature, & Religion. You get a companion with Diplomacy, History, or Animal Handling. You get Maneuvers with Athletics, Acrobatics, or Intimidation. Etc.

GrimCo said:

Cause, RAW, most skills suck and aren't worth paper they are printed on. While 5e did go in rulings over rules direction, that left skills vague on purpose compared to 3.5 where skills had precise dc for precise tasks, that left lot of room for house rules on how they work and what you can or can't do with them.

FE: Heal let you stabilize, treat poison (skill DC=poison save DC), speed up recovery of hp or ability damage, treat disease (skill DC= disease save DC). Medicine, on the other hand, you can try to stabilize or diagnose illness, but not cure one, and no fixed DC (up to DM), even prof with herbalist kit doesn't let you outright heal/cure. Handle animal in 3.5 had neat list of cool tricks you can teach to animal or train it for specific purpose. 5e version - calm down a domesticated animal, keep a mount from getting spooked, or intuit an animal's intentions, again, DCs are up to DM to decide.

What we need is list of fixed and specific stuff you can do with each skill.

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God no please. The most concrete skills should get us how they were in 4e, and even that is too specific and thus restricted.

I despise trying to do something that makes sense in the game and being stopped by, “Well the skill doesn’t list that as something you can do.” So the hell what??

doctorbadwolf said:

I despise trying to do something that makes sense in the game and being stopped by, “Well the skill doesn’t list that as something you can do.” So the hell what??

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Or even the opposite: "no, GM, you can't let that player use the skill that way because that's covered by Feat X (which no one here has anyway, but still!)".

As the GM, I can decide to dish out advantage for cool player ideas whenever I damn well please.

Bae'zel said:

Or even the opposite: "no, GM, you can't let that player use the skill that way because that's covered by Feat X (which no one here has anyway, but still!)".

As the GM, I can decide to dish out advantage for cool player ideas whenever I damn well please.

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I’ve never seen that happen. That’s wild.

doctorbadwolf said:

I’ve never seen that happen. That’s wild.

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It's a little too common. Especially when your table has been allowing X, and then some book publishes a feat that allows you to do X, and there's a sudden discussion about how you can't do X anymore without the feat. And just what CAN you do, if not X? How much is allowable without stepping on the toes of the feat? Etc.

Sometimes it's not even new, just baked into the system from the start. I remember all the arguments about the Grappler feat, specifically about the line:

• You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.

Well, pinning someone is something anybody can do, not even just wrestlers or martial artists. So how do you arbitrate this thing that anyone can do, but also has an existing feat? The thing anybody can do now must, by necessity, be worse than the feat to justify the existence of the feat. Etc.

Seramus said:

It's a little too common. Especially when your table has been allowing X, and then some book publishes a feat that allows you to do X, and there's a sudden discussion about how you can't do X anymore without the feat. And just what CAN you do, if not X? How much is allowable without stepping on the toes of the feat? Etc.

Sometimes it's not even new, just baked into the system from the start. I remember all the arguments about the Grappler feat, specifically about the line:

• You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.

Well, pinning someone is something anybody can do, not even just wrestlers or martial artists. So how do you arbitrate this thing that anyone can do, but also has an existing feat? The thing anybody can do now must, by necessity, be worse than the feat to justify the existence of the feat. Etc.

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I recall this being especially bad in 3e. Feats for things like grappling should enhance your ability to do it rather seemingly require the feat to grapple. I can understand some effects being locked behind special training (feats) but so.etimes they go overboard

Seramus said:

It's a little too common. Especially when your table has been allowing X, and then some book publishes a feat that allows you to do X, and there's a sudden discussion about how you can't do X anymore without the feat. And just what CAN you do, if not X? How much is allowable without stepping on the toes of the feat? Etc.

Sometimes it's not even new, just baked into the system from the start. I remember all the arguments about the Grappler feat, specifically about the line:

• You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.

Well, pinning someone is something anybody can do, not even just wrestlers or martial artists. So how do you arbitrate this thing that anyone can do, but also has an existing feat? The thing anybody can do now must, by necessity, be worse than the feat to justify the existence of the feat. Etc.

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I could never tolerate this line of thinking if it came up. I’d just shut it down immediately.

The Battlemaster doesn’t mean you can’t try to disarm someone. Obviously.

doctorbadwolf said:

God no please. The most concrete skills should get us how they were in 4e, and even that is too specific and thus restricted.

I despise trying to do something that makes sense in the game and being stopped by, “Well the skill doesn’t list that as something you can do.” So the hell what??

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No no no. Your complaint might as well exist in the current system too. You can run into a GM who says that since some particular skill does not have any concrete rules about what it can do, it can't do anything.

I'd rather have a defined base line of things each skill can do rather than some fluff text that doesn't mean anything.

Seramus said:

It's a little too common. Especially when your table has been allowing X, and then some book publishes a feat that allows you to do X, and there's a sudden discussion about how you can't do X anymore without the feat. And just what CAN you do, if not X? How much is allowable without stepping on the toes of the feat? Etc.

Sometimes it's not even new, just baked into the system from the start. I remember all the arguments about the Grappler feat, specifically about the line:

• You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.

Well, pinning someone is something anybody can do, not even just wrestlers or martial artists. So how do you arbitrate this thing that anyone can do, but also has an existing feat? The thing anybody can do now must, by necessity, be worse than the feat to justify the existence of the feat. Etc.

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Consider: Without this feat, would it be possible to pin someone? Can you be sure, as a player, that you are able to attempt to pin someone? How? Since there are no rules for it without this feat it is impossible to say that "anybody can do".

In fact one could argue that since the feat exists and anybody can take it, anyone can effectively pin (as long as they have the feat).

Rules are power. If you have no rules, you have no power.