Chris Thomasson playtest (Sep-26)

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I thought that it was to emulate Aragorn waving a torch and a sword in his confrontation with the Nazgul.

That's so 2001 ... it was originally two torches, as the sword was broken.


I like a bow-focused ranger as a base option, though I'd like to see multiple ranger options. I thought the TWF ranger assumption was stupid, and so was happy that 3.5 came along with a choice of options. Weapon choice or fighting style choice shouldn't be what defines a character class.

I'm with Wulf, though, on word choice. I hope the blog posts are just a bit sloppy; "blasting" with a bow seems a bit too SWSE for my D&D.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

"The Soul of D&D? It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru

The Soul of D&D? It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric missed with his attack that releases a burst of healing energy and you're holding the line just long enough to let the ranger start blasting the crap out of stuff with his bow...

 

[wgreen]

Maybe it's a plasma bow?

-Will

 

[grimslade]

Maybe the ranger is using the bow because he can down a couple of mooks in the surprise round while scouting. He could charge in with an axe and do the same but he would be in the middle of his enemies and the wizards Sleep spell effect. Smart tactics would be to use the bow and wait for backup.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I thought it was a pretty odd word-choice.

My personal fear is that Ranger is going to be "the other Striker" (which I think is established, and not my fear), aaaaaand he's going to do huge damage with bows, like as if he was an out-and-out nuker, and that damage is not going to be something anyone else will be able to replicate at range w/o magic.

E.g. he's going to have lot of "manuevers" with his bow that, say, a bow-specialized Fighter doesn't have, that will allow him to do +6d6 damage with this shot, and +3d6 damage with those three shot and so on, sigh.

I expect that he'll mostly do extra damage to the bloodied guys. I'm holding out hope that he'll be at least somewhat reminiscent of the Iron Heroes archer.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I thought it was a pretty odd word-choice.

My personal fear is that Ranger is going to be "the other Striker" (which I think is established, and not my fear), aaaaaand he's going to do huge damage with bows, like as if he was an out-and-out nuker, and that damage is not going to be something anyone else will be able to replicate at range w/o magic.

E.g. he's going to have lot of "manuevers" with his bow that, say, a bow-specialized Fighter doesn't have, that will allow him to do +6d6 damage with this shot, and +3d6 damage with those three shot and so on, sigh.

Well, you have to consider this:

The power curve for the Wizard is coming down, and the power curve for the Fighter (to include the Ranger) is going up. Ideally, overall the two power curves will match up pretty closely.

Now, if you want the offensive power of the wizard to scale up pretty regularly-- as much as one full die of damage per caster level in 3rd edition, remember-- then you need to provide a similar way for melee power to scale up. Not a point here and there, but in jumps measured in dice of damage.

3e accomplished this primarily through magic items. A fighter could directly add 1, 2, 3 dice of damage or more to his attack with flaming, holy, or bane weapons, not to mention indirectly with crit multipliers, iterative attacks, rapid shot/flurry, cleave and so on.

Now of course it's not necessary that the fighter's offense scales directly with the wizard, because the fighter's defense is already scaling much faster-- he already has probably 2-3 times as many hit points as the wizard, and much better AC.

But his offense does need to scale up-- at least as fast, relatively speaking, as the wizard's defense is scaling.

So, if 4e is going to get rid of the Christmas Tree effect, those bonus dice still have to come from somewhere.

It's fine by me if they come from class abilities. (That's what sneak attack does, after all.)

So I don't have a problem with the Ranger mechanically "blasting" enemies with his bow. I just don't want "blasting" to be reflected in the fluff. An extra 6d6 of "ambush" damage, sure. An extra 6d6 of "blast" damage, no.

 

[GlassJaw]

So I don't have a problem with the Ranger mechanically "blasting" enemies with his bow. I just don't want "blasting" to be reflected in the fluff. An extra 6d6 of "ambush" damage, sure. An extra 6d6 of "blast" damage, no.

Or it could be a special multishot attack where the ranger splits his single arrow into 6, each hitting a different target, just like Diablo! That would be sweet.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Or it could be a special multishot attack where the ranger splits his single arrow into 2, each hitting a different target, just like Diablo! That would be sweet.

As you imply, we already have this, and it's called Multishot/Improved Multishot

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

One, I disagree on the "hunter, first and foremost" thing. A Ranger is more at home in the wild than a Fighter, but that's not to say he's a "hunter." An NPC Expert with Track and Skill Focus (Survival) is a hunter. A Ranger, to me, is a warrior, first and foremost, one that can go toe to toe with his orc, goblin and giant enemies if need be.

yes, sorry. I mean it's not his profession, it's at home in the wild. Scouting, survival, going deep into enemy territory, find the giant lair and so on; and in doing this I see much more use in the bow than in a more melee approach. Obviously then he is going to have melee weapon, but they are not going to be his primary choice (and this don't mean that he is going to be bad with them, only he is not going to specialize with them)

Two, I don't mind that some people want the option of playing an Archer-Ranger; that's cool and all. I just don't want it to be required.

well maybe a spear ranger? anyhow I don't see him specializing in melee combat (take specialization as a loose reference not the Fighter specialization)

Agreed on these points. This is how a Ranger should be distinguished from a Fighter and Paladin - NOT by a rule-enforced weapon choice.

absolutetly... his best thing is nature-lore, tracking, hiding and so on

 

[Cadfan]

If designing the ranger as an archery based class makes it easier for WOTC to design well made archer rules, I'm ok with it. If its done gratuitously, I'm not.

I have that view on a lot of things. If a swashbuckler who uses a weapon in one hand with the other hand open can be best created in this game through a specific class rather than by a talent tree, go for it. If not, don't.