D&D 5E 5th edition Ranger: Why does every class have to have it's own schtick?

[Sacrosanct]

What is the Ranger's schtick?

Wildnerness survival.

What are some of the wildernesses in D&D?

Wild woods
Enchanted sylvan forests
Massive deserts
The Underdark
Demonic plains

What beasts live in these wildernesses?

Wild woods- Deer, bears, wolves, giant weasels
Enchanted sylvan forests- blink dogs, displacer beasts, giant owls, unicorns
Massive deserts- camel, flying snakes, swarmss of insects
The Underdark- giant rats, striges, swarms of bats
Demonic plains- death dogs, demonic bears, nightmares,

What intelligent life in these wildernesses?

wild woods- bandits, druids, scouts, orcs, gnolls, green dragons
Enchanted sylvan forests- dryads, spirites, treants, hags
Massive deserts- sphinxes, mummies, blue dragons, yaun ti
The Underdark- drow, mind flayers, beholders, gray dwarves
Demonic plains- .... DEMONS? maybe...

What hazards are in these wildernesses?

Wild woods- forest fires, quicksand
Enchanted sylvan forests- portals to the Feywild
Massive deserts- Extreme heat and cold
The Underdark- Desecrated ground, poison spores, drakness
Demonic plains- Extreme heat and cold, demonic plants and fungi

Why do ranger have magic at low levels?

Because you have meet all the above at level 2 in this edition and you aren't expected to run away.

Poor fighters, barbarians, monks, and rogues. They better not ever choose an outlander or hermit background, because they'd have no choice but to run away all the time whenever they dare venture outside of a city.


Or maybe your assumption is not correct, and rangers don't need magic at low levels, because those mythical creatures all existed in those environments since day 1, and rangers managed just fine for decades. You seem to be mixing up what you want, with what is needed.

 

[Minigiant]

Poor fighters, barbarians, monks, and rogues. They better not ever choose an outlander or hermit background, because they'd have no choice but to run away all the time whenever they dare venture outside of a city.

Outsider and hermit lets you stay less than a week away from civilization. Without healing items and defensive measure, one snake could take you out without magic or a nearby town to buy antitoxin from. Deity help you if a dragon, fey, or giant found you and you lacked magic.

If you actually want to live out in the wild alone and not simply axe all threats to death, you needed to be a ranger or druid.

Or maybe your assumption is not correct, and rangers don't need magic at low levels, because those mythical creatures all existed in those environments since day 1, and rangers managed just fine for decades. You seem to be mixing up what you want, with what is needed.

Have you play older editions? You know why rangers didn't need magic back them until level 8.

Because until level 8, you really couldn't kill those horrible monsters. Anything that wasn't an animal or a humaniod was to ran away from at full speed. An old D&D MM describes a dragon fight where 60% of the party died round 2 as a success.

This is where the ranger's bonus damage to giants-types came in.
Animals were easy to kill.
Lesser "giant-types' like "goblins, orcs, and gnolls" took bonus damage.
Giants were scary but but took bonus damage. They also were just sacks of HP.

Rangers could kill anything that wasn't a walking PC-killer in 1-3 rounds. It's the 4e model of "survival by killing everything". Who needs magic when you "Twin Strike" everything dead on the first combat round?

And that's the thing. You were not intended to fight the "scary monster with abilities" until name-level. You ran from them. Or avoided them completely Coincidence that rangers and paladins got magic at those levels and fighter where practically immune to magic and dealt crazy damage at those levels.

When 3e took out the "run away from anything scary" element of low level D&D, they had to give everyone a boost. Mages could choose spells. Fighter got feats. Rogue damage became reliable and usuable multiple times. And paladins and rangers got their magic early.

Otherwise, no one could fight dragons at level 5 and not high tail it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Outsider and hermit lets you stay less than a week away from civilization. Without healing items and defensive measure, one snake could take you out without magic or a nearby town to buy antitoxin from. Deity help you if a dragon, fey, or giant found you and you lacked magic.

If you actually want to live out in the wild alone and not simply axe all threats to death, you needed to be a ranger or druid.

And yet in the game world, millions of people who are neither ranger or druid spend their entire lives living out in the wilds. Or are you trying to argue that anyone the PCs might meet who lives in the wild must be a ranger, druid, or have some other similar power? That seems....pretty odd.

And what are you talking about that hermit or outlander background lets you stay less than a week from civilization? Have you read those backgrounds? That's where you "spend your formative years", and where you grew up, where you spent most of your life. Not less than a week.

Have you play older editions? You know why rangers didn't need magic back them until level 8.

Because until level 8, you really couldn't kill those horrible monsters. Anything that wasn't an animal or a humaniod was to ran away from at full speed. An old D&D MM describes a dragon fight where 60% of the party died round 2 as a success.

This is where the ranger's bonus damage to giants-types came in.
Animals were easy to kill.
Lesser "giant-types' like "goblins, orcs, and gnolls" took bonus damage.
Giants were scary but but took bonus damage. They also were just sacks of HP.

Rangers could kill anything that wasn't a walking PC-killer in 1-3 rounds. It's the 4e model of "survival by killing everything". Who needs magic when you "Twin Strike" everything dead on the first combat round?

And that's the thing. You were not intended to fight the "scary monster with abilities" until name-level. You ran from them. Or avoided them completely Coincidence that rangers and paladins got magic at those levels and fighter where practically immune to magic and dealt crazy damage at those levels.

When 3e took out the "run away from anything scary" element of low level D&D, they had to give everyone a boost. Mages could choose spells. Fighter got feats. Rogue damage became reliable and usuable multiple times. And paladins and rangers got their magic early.

Otherwise, no one could fight dragons at level 5 and not high tail it.

I have played 1e as my preferred edition from 1981 until 2012 (with the introduction of 5e playtest). You are clearly mistaken in just about every assumption here. For one, plenty of monsters required magical weapons to hit, so your earlier claim of more resistant monsters in modern editions required rangers to have magic sooner is objectively untrue. Secondly, a level 4 PC in 1e was called a hero, and for a reason. A 4th level party could take on a dragon. IIRC, a white dragon's HD was 4-7. So not only could you, but it did happen.

Yes, you avoided combat when you could, but you are very mistaken that you couldn't take on "scary" monsters until you reached name level. As I just said above, most of the game was played, and most of the adventures published were before name level. Do you think we all just ran away from everything all the time for most of our gaming?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

And D&D isn't a "high-magic universe"? How do you figure that?

DMG pp. 23-24. D&D can be as low- or high-magic a universe as the DM wishes.

And Fighters and Rogues don't cast spells, but I have never played a game of D&D where they didn't use magic. The magic they used came from magic items, but that's still using magic.

Anyone can use magic items, if they can find them. That's not really relevant to class design, is it? Spellcasting ability is what we're talking about here.

Most examples of putting spells in a subclass has been a variation of: "A Hunter, A Beast Master, An Ambusher, and One that gets spells for those that want magic." Considering that the survey that WotC just took said that the majority of players want more magic, that seems a little backwards. It should be all subclasses get magic except for the one that can't.

Or they can put the spell-less Ranger variant in then, I think, everyone would be happy. (Ok, probably not everyone, but more people.)

The subclass system is a simple way to balance variant characters against each other in terms of abilities -- saying, "You don't get that ability because you get this ability instead." It is not a way to balance variant characters against each other in terms of population numbers. It's not like all the subclasses have to be equally popular. 5E put the "monk classic", "paladin classic", and "rogue classic" into subclasses, after all, and while I don't have data on this, I suspect those subclasses are much more popular than the others. If there's a "ranger classic" subclass with magic that the majority of players take, then so be it; system working as intended.

But I'm not married to a particular approach. Spells-vs-other could be a separate decision point, too, like how warlocks get two decision points for pact and patron. You could even do something clever like have the ranger pick two archetypes instead of one, letting players mix and match whether they want spells and/or a pet and/or other abilities. I'm open to ideas. The important thing is just that there's a real option.

 

[Minigiant]

And yet in the game world, millions of people who are neither ranger or druid spend their entire lives living out in the wilds. Or are you trying to argue that anyone the PCs might meet who lives in the wild must be a ranger, druid, or have some other similar power? That seems....pretty odd.

No, what I'm saying is if you didn't have nature magic, you could not live far from a town. D&D doesn't let you mix antitoxin so if a snake bit you and you couldn't cast a spell to remove poison, you might die of poison.

D&D doesn't let to talk down an owlbear so if you didn't have a spell to calm it, you had to fight the owlbear.

D&D doesn't let you create potions without magic so if you were attacked by wolves, you were injured when another predator appeared.

And what are you talking about that hermit or outlander background lets you stay less than a week from civilization? Have you read those backgrounds? That's where you "spend your formative years", and where you grew up, where you spent most of your life. Not less than a week.

And what features let you survive out there.

Hermit is just Medicine, Religion, and herbalism kit. To bad there are not rules for gathering materials for you herbalism kit.

Outlander is Athletics Survival and an instrument. Even less yo keep wolves, snakes, and owlbears at bay. Forget fey and dragons.

The fluff says you can survive out there. The crunch doesn't. Nothing in those backgrounds keeps an owlbear, chimera, or giant snake from eating you.

Your class keeps you alive in the wilderness. If it doesn't, you need a town nearby to trade with for resources.

If you are a outlander fighter and a giant snake attacks you while hunting what are your options.

A) Hit it with your sword and get poisoned.
B) Hit it with your sword and get poisoned.
or
c) Hit it with your sword and get poisoned.

I have played 1e as my preferred edition from 1981 until 2012 (with the introduction of 5e playtest). You are clearly mistaken in just about every assumption here. For one, plenty of monsters required magical weapons to hit, so your earlier claim of more resistant monsters in modern editions required rangers to have magic sooner is objectively untrue. Secondly, a level 4 PC in 1e was called a hero, and for a reason. A 4th level party could take on a dragon. IIRC, a white dragon's HD was 4-7. So not only could you, but it did happen.

Yes, you avoided combat when you could, but you are very mistaken that you couldn't take on "scary" monsters until you reached name level. As I just said above, most of the game was played, and most of the adventures published were before name level. Do you think we all just ran away from everything all the time for most of our gaming?

1) Needing magical weapons is not the same as needing magical spells.

2) I didn't say you can't kill a dragon at low levels. I said party members would die. It was like part of the design. If you engaged scary monsters back then, someone likely died. So you either needed a party member who could kill them quickly or help you avoid the monster: a ranger or druid.

3) The point was that Pre-3e heavily discouraged actually fighting the "scary monsters" until you had tons of gold, magic item, or hit name level. When it forced to fight these monsters, they offered a weakened version or assumed someone's player died.

4) 5th doesn't assume that you "run away or lose a friend". So it gives you the tools to win against such monsters earlier than previous editions.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

No, what I'm saying is if you didn't have nature magic, you could not live far from a town. D&D doesn't let you mix antitoxin so if a snake bit you and you couldn't cast a spell to remove poison, you might die of poison.

D&D doesn't let to talk down an owlbear so if you didn't have a spell to calm it, you had to fight the owlbear.

D&D doesn't let you create potions without magic so if you were attacked by wolves, you were injured when another predator appeared.

Okay, first of all, I think you need to take another look at how poison and healing work in 5E, because having no magic is not an obstacle in either case. Secondly, you are laboring under the misapprehension that PCs can only do that which the book explicitly allows, which is an attitude that the 5E writers have bent over backwards to avoid.

The fluff says you can survive out there. The crunch doesn't. Nothing in those backgrounds keeps an owlbear, chimera, or giant snake from eating you.

Your class keeps you alive in the wilderness. If it doesn't, you need a town nearby to trade with for resources.

My players' party consists of an outlander rogue, outlander(ish) fighter, and criminal rogue/barbarian. No magic spells whatsoever. They have been spending almost all their time in the forest on account of they have a knack for making powerful enemies in cities. Do I need to tell them that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, they got eaten by monsters months ago?

So it gives you the tools to win against such monsters earlier than previous editions.

The only "tool" to win against a monster with a high challenge rating is to be high level yourself. A 2nd-level ranger with magic can't beat a dragon any more than a 2nd-level rogue without magic. And a 20th-level rogue without magic can beat a giant snake just as easily as a 20th-level ranger with magic. This idea that magic makes the difference is completely bogus -- and if it were true, it wouldn't validate your case, it would just mean that the game system was wildly imbalanced.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay, first of all, I think you need to take another look at how poison and healing work in 5E, because having no magic is not an obstacle in either case. Secondly, you are laboring under the misapprehension that PCs can only do that which the book explicitly allows, which is an attitude that the 5E writers have bent over backwards to avoid.

Actually no.
If the game doesn't have a feature in it, the feature is not assumed. If the DM is adding it into the game, they are patching the game and thus admitting that the game is missing that element. By RAW, you need certain items or certain spells to produce certain effects.

An individual DM can do whatever they want but nothing they do is intended to be expected. The DM can do anything in their own fashion at any level of power as the DM wishes.

The second you need a DM to fix it, it means it isn't true by the rules.

My players' party consists of an outlander rogue, outlander(ish) fighter, and criminal rogue/barbarian. No magic spells whatsoever. They have been spending almost all their time in the forest on account of they have a knack for making powerful enemies in cities. Do I need to tell them that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, they got eaten by monsters months ago?

Depends on how soft or harsh your forest is.
Depends on how mundane or fantastic your forest is.

One forest could have wolves and bandits as the biggest threat. Another owlbears. Another green hags. And another green dragons.

You really can't live comfortably in a forest with green dragons or green hags in it without a large stock of items, some magic items, or spellcasting.

The only "tool" to win against a monster with a high challenge rating is to be high level yourself. A 2nd-level ranger with magic can't beat a dragon any more than a 2nd-level rogue without magic. And a 20th-level rogue without magic can beat a giant snake just as easily as a 20th-level ranger with magic. This idea that magic makes the difference is completely bogus -- and if it were true, it wouldn't validate your case, it would just mean that the game system was wildly imbalanced.

Killing the monster is the opposite of what you do because it only works if you are strong as or stronger than it

You avoid it and recuperate from attacks when you fail to and run away. You ask animals and trees of its moment. You give yourself immunity or resistance to its attacks. You ward yourself from its sight. You use additional movement to stay steps ahead of it. This gives you time to migrate to someplace else, travel far to a big enough town to get help, or survive long enough for the buddies that you called for to arrive.

The more fantastic the wilderness is, the more fantastic the people living it it must be with their survival skills.

Either...
1) Neither your character's skills nor the wilderness is particularly fantastic (4th edition and early levels of 1st and 2nd edition rangers, 5th edition outlander PCs)
2) Both your character's skills and the wilderness are very fantastic (many MMORPGs)
3) The wilderness is rather fantastic, your character gets magic spells to compensate (5th edition, 3nd edition, high level 1st and 2nd edition rangers. All druids)

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If the game doesn't have a feature in it, the feature is not assumed.

The game doesn't have any rules for digestion and defecation. Does this mean that nobody poops?

By RAW, you need certain items or certain spells to produce certain effects.

Hit point recovery and Constitution saving throws are not among those "certain effects".

Killing the monster is the opposite of what you do because it only works if you are strong as or stronger than it

I'm sorry, I thought you said "win".

*checks*

You did say "win".

You avoid it and recuperate from attacks when you fail to and run away. You ask animals and trees of its moment. You give yourself immunity or resistance to its attacks. You ward yourself from its sight. You use additional movement to stay steps ahead of it. This gives you time to migrate to someplace else, travel far to a big enough town to get help, or survive long enough for the buddies that you called for to arrive.

I note that you have cleverly inserted magical actions into your description, but none of them are actually necessary. All you've said amounts to "you run away", which mundane PCs can and do accomplish.

Let me put this another way. Do animals need magic to live in the wilderness? Are the forests of your world devoid of rabbits and squirrels because they've all been eaten? Or can they survive in spite of being bite-sized and delicious because they have keen senses, quick legs, and good hiding places?

 

[Minigiant]

The game doesn't have any rules for digestion and defecation. Does this mean that nobody poops?

Pooping has not major impact on the game.

Crafting offensive, defensive, and utility items does. There are rules for crafting. It costs resources of a gold amount.
There aren't rules for bypassing the resource requirement for crafting in the book that I know of.

I'm sorry, I thought you said "win".

*checks*

You did say "win".

You win wilderness survival by surviving.

This is either by killing the threat (which requires higher levels or special items) or avoiding it (which for the higher level threats requires magic spells or special items).

I note that you have cleverly inserted magical actions into your description, but none of them are actually necessary. All you've said amounts to "you run away", which mundane PCs can and do accomplish.

Let me put this another way. Do animals need magic to live in the wilderness? Are the forests of your world devoid of rabbits and squirrels because they've all been eaten? Or can they survive in spite of being bite-sized and delicious because they have keen senses, quick legs, and good hiding places?

Rabbits and other rodents as a species survive be having more babies than the owls and wolves and foxes can eat.

Same with deer and other big herbivores. However they don't reproduce enough to sat a dragon. Therefore when a dragon liars, it eats them all. That's how you know a dragon is near. All the deer, cattle, horses, camels, etc are dead.

Owls, wolves, and other predators survive by not being primary food sources or resources for stronger and smarter being. They die out when they become threat to the humanoids or the humanoids overhunt.

Barbarians and savage humanoids like orcs and goblins form groups which are strong than most beasts and individuals. However when a dragon, major fey, true giant, or something else appears they either pledge loyalty, leave the area, or are massacred. Hag covens don't play games.

It takes a lot to live alone a true D&D wilderness. Without some really powerful abilities, some major player can appear and kill you before you can leave or get help. D&D is stubborn and locks all of these into spells. Anti-srcying spells. Movement spells. Resistance spells. Recovery spells. Reconnaissance spells. Detection spells. Hindrance spells. Alarm spells. Trap spells.

The issue is many DMs and many adventure writers makes there wilderness usually soft. Sure there isn't always a dragon, fey lord, major giant, or archmage in the area. But it is hard to believe that in truly wild areas that you can live there for 10-30 years and never see one.

 

[El Mahdi]

Pooping has no major impact on the game.

Seems to me that it depends on each individual game. There are scenes in fiction I could see playing out in a similar manner in a D&D game.

An assassin catching their target using the jakes.

Sneaking into a castle through the jakes.

Getting into a walled city through the sewer.

Identifying scat in the wilderness.

Tyrion shooting his father with a crossbow while on the toilet. (Game of Thrones)

Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez) serving a warrant in an outhouse...by shooting him while he's relieving himself. (Young Guns)

Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) taking refuge in an outhouse during a gunfight, then taking the opportunity for a Constitutional... (also Young Guns)


As long as it's a potty point plot point, seems to me it could have a major impact.