D&D 5E (2014) Convince me that the Ranger is a necessary Class.

[Minigiant]

Of course you can

No moreso than anyone else. Not pages of rules.

You only need as many words blurbs as Ranger tropes you want to create.

You can identify plants, beasts, rocks, and other naturally occuring creatures with a Nature (INT) roll.

That's a rule and it's short.

Tropes. Not real world stuff. Being able to track anything, being able to calm beast and listen to trees/the earth, knowing the names and uses of every plant and critter, moving through the wild unimpeded, knowing how to hunt anything, etc.

None of that requires specifics. You don’t need to write down what each herb does, you just give a type of item you can craft from foraging, and make the Ranger better at checks with the skills used to do so.

There No need for technical or real-world knowledge if you contain the rules for creating those tropes in the game.

It's very simple

Either

1) You go freeform and the gamers have to know the games interpretation and gameplay loops for creating those tropes

Or

2) You create specific rules for each trope you want to manifest in the game.

If you want an particularly experienced Ranger to be able to track a Wizard's whereabouts through a portal by identifying the sand or dirt that flew through the portal when he opened it. You have to either:

1) have both the Ranger player or the Dungeon Master identify that this is a manner that you would be able to track the wizard. Then agree that this is allowed for the Ranger.

Or

2) Create a rule that you can roll a Survival (Wisdom) check to track people through portals and teleportation.

Or

How WOTC What do it) Create a Reopen Portal spell.

Nonsense, my friend. The game needs only to tell you how to resolve an attempt to track a creature. Anything else is bonus material.

The game also has to tell you the bounds and limit of that role based on the trope they were trying to emulate.

Because the way D&D works is a player cannot perform a trope unless either The player in DM agree on the trope or the game prescribes the trope in its rules and and the group decides to abide by the rules.

 

[Minigiant]

No. No no no.

Ranger magic is magic. Nature magic. It is emphatically not science. A spell to track better doesn’t need to be written by or for people who understand actual tracking. It just needs to mechanically enhance the ability of the caster to track a creature. That’s it.

No no no Ranger Magic is D&D's Nature science.

Animal friendship is doing double duty of being the druids magic and the Rangers science because wizards of the colts did not want to write two different rules for a similar effect

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No no no Ranger Magic is D&D's Nature science.

Animal friendship is doing double duty of being the druids magic and the Rangers science because wizards of the colts did not want to write two different rules for a similar effect

Absolutely not. Nothing in any D&D book supports this, and the Ranger fantasy is not this, it is a ranging guardian of the borders of the wild with a mystical connection to nature.

Aragorn doesn’t have a science degree, he listens to the earth and knows bloody elf magic (oversimplification but basically).

Rangers should know all about the spirits and fey and monsters of the wilds, and the border towns and such that border the wild, and the natural hazards and all that, but they should neeeeever be quoting geology textbooks. Never. They know how wolves behave from experience and a bond with nature, not because they went to school for it.

 

[ECMO3]

That sounds rather odd to me. A Wizard training a character to be a Ranger.

Which D&D novel is this character in?

Lost Library of Cormanthyr.

Baylee is the main character in the novel and was adopted and trained by a Wizard named Faant Golsway. Golsway also trained at least two other Rangers, one of whom is Baylee's rival and lover. In the book the training part is "backstory" as Baylee and the other two are already Rangers.

 

[Minigiant]

Absolutely not. Nothing in any D&D book supports this, and the Ranger fantasy is not this, it is a ranging guardian of the borders of the wild with a mystical connection to nature.

Absolutely yes.

Many of The Ranger fantasy tropes are

Curing Wounds
Using herbs to restore allies
Calming Animals
Tracking foes
Enduring the elements
Locating objects
Finding and creating shelter
Moving groups stealthily
Moving through difficult terrain and natural obstacles
Fighting wild beats raiders and other wilderness creatures

For most of the Indies existence at least half of those require casting a spell. And half of the remainder is only practical or efficient by casting a spell.

The Ranger class is necessary mostly because for most of D&D's existence it does skill system was not effective.

Either the skills were too limited or restrictive in scope that you could not use them effectively or efficiently.

Or there was no clarity of what the effects the skill roll would actually let you do in affecting the game state.

Like I said very often on this forum The ranger is spell list is just a collection of Ranger tropes and spell form because those rules don't exist anywhere else in the books and a player's ability to roleplay those feats of Rangerdom is not guaranteed that most tables.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Absolutely yes.

Many of The Ranger fantasy tropes are

Curing Wounds
Using herbs to restore allies
Calming Animals
Tracking foes
Enduring the elements
Locating objects
Finding and creating shelter
Moving groups stealthily
Moving through difficult terrain and natural obstacles
Fighting wild beats raiders and other wilderness creatures

For most of the Indies existence at least half of those require casting a spell. And half of the remainder is only practical or efficient by casting a spell.

The Ranger class is necessary mostly because for most of D&D's existence it does skill system was not effective.

Either the skills were too limited or restrictive in scope that you could not use them effectively or efficiently.

Or there was no clarity of what the effects the skill roll would actually let you do in affecting the game state.

Like I said very often on this forum The ranger is spell list is just a collection of Ranger tropes and spell form because those rules don't exist anywhere else in the books and a player's ability to roleplay those feats of Rangerdom is not guaranteed that most tables.

So, the Ranger’s tropes are magical. Glad we agree on that at least.

Anyway, slightly more descriptive text in the rules for skills, more reasonable consumable crafting times and costs (not just a ranger issue), little things like that, would help, and making the NE terrain benefits still require rolls so that something is actually happening when they are used, and that’s it. It doesn’t require a rewrite or anything and it certainly doesn’t require any knowledge of actually doing ranger stuff.

You don’t need rules to track through portals, you just need guidance on using survival to track, including info on fantastical terrains and hazards and such. The DMG really should have expanded on the supernatural environments from Tasha’s. But it doesn’t need to get nitty gritty, it just needs to be usable and have some guidance.

Just put uses for skills into those things (survival as an example of how to figure out the nature of a magical environment and what to do about it, for instance) , and make rangers better at the actions they use those skills and/or give them bonuses to any use of those skills.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Bears and deer are fairly large animals too, in their own right, and the average person would have no idea how to track them.

Bear: put out a picnic basket and hide behind a bush.

Dear: go for a drive at night and wait for one to run out in front of the car.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Baylee Arnvold

Baylee Arnvold was a human archaeologist, explorer and ranger.[1] He discovered the Lost Library of Cormanthyr in the Year of the Banner, 1368 DR.[2] The Lost Library of Cormanthyr

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

This is a good example of why the Ranger class is not necessarily a woodsman/hunter stereotype. Indiana Jones stated as a Ranger? Could be.

In the real world, plenty of people study zoology or oceanography at university in order to study and protect the natural world rather than hunt and kill it. If you meet a Ranger in a National Park it’s probably one of these academically educated people.

I would take that as evidence that Woodsman/Hunter is best treated as a background, not a class.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@Minigiant Lets pivot to a more fruitful discussion wrt The Ranger.

Role in the party, and adversarial challenges that speak to that role.

So, one way to get what you want and what I want, is to keep the skill descriptions fairly simple, fairly easy to remember, etc, light on rules strong on guidance.

And then, push things like traps, but you need survival, perception, nature, etc, to “disarm” them or mitigate them foe the party.

So, a field of grasping roots? Nature to appease them or quiet them long enough to get the group through. Survival to find a path through. Put animal handling DCs in Beast stat blocks for calming, understanding, and befriending, that specific beast, with results specific to that beast.

In short, keep the detailed rules in the text of the challenge that needs those rules.

Meanwhile, let rangers add Wisdom to investigation and nature checks, and bring back knowledge based favored enemy but either make categories broader. beasts and monstrosities could be one category, while fey plants and beasts, fey and humanoids are another, fiends and undead, dragons and monstrosities, etc. each category overlaps with at least one other, so that every creature type us in at least two categories. And you gain a second set at level 6, and a third at 11. And you can study a specific creature or group to gain the benefits against them.

Like if you have the 2024 ranger that, and 2 favored terrains plus the ability to gain the benefits in an area equal to 1 mile per ranger level with some time limit or limited usage, I’d never complain about the class again.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Aragorn doesn’t have a science degree, he listens to the earth and knows bloody elf magic (oversimplification but basically).

elf magic basically is a result of having a middle earth science degree in listening to the earth.

that's what minigiant is trying to say i believe.