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

[kermit4karate]

Older Rangers weren't considered Rangers until they got magic spells to do things that the fan community believe that Rangers needed.

And once they got spells designers would just give them more spells that match the other things they expected Rangers to have.

Personally I think Rangers would be best suited by it being infusion users and crafting items in a downtime that seems more appropriate to how rangers work and more settings. Rangers Hunt and Gather materials to then craft at their camp or their base and they use those against their enemies and to survive the wild.

But that will require artificer to be a core class

Should we start a similar thread for how messed up Paladins are with Divine Smite as a bonus-action spell?

 

[ECMO3]

You just wrote, "gives me anything I'd want from Ranger..." That means things that are important to you, not someone else, so that's it in a nutshell right there. If you don't care specifically about Hunter's Mark, Natural Explorer, Nature's Veil and the other class-specific features, then you're right. Easy to duplicate a Ranger.

For me it is the other way around, Ranger has some specific features (and especially subclass features) that I can't get from another class or can only get in very limited ways that don't work well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

1. Light Weapons Light Armor Warrior
2. Sneaky Skirmisher with Magic Tricks

That’s one part of one class.

1. Beastmaster Warrior
2. Warrior with a Pack of Utility Beasts

Subclass

1. Elemental Magic Warrior
2. Primal Magic Warrior

Spellcasting.

1. Traps and Survival tool Survivalist
2. Exotic Enemy Focused

Not class concepts. Each is one class feature.

Aka

1. I sneak then shoot 3 arrows
2. I create 2 wooden arrows and shoot 2 arrow
3. I shoot 1 arrow and my wolf bites twice
4. I shoot 2 arrows and my rats bite once and search once.
5. I shoot 1 slowing ice arrow and 1 exploding flame arrow
6. I shoot 1 fire arrow and 1 restraining vine arrow
7. i trap a foe in a bear trap then shoot them with an arrow
8. 1 shoot every foe within 30 feet with an arrow

That’s a list of maneuvers and spells.

gnomes IMO ought to be a 'nature spirits' archetype but Wizards likes the tinkerer ideas too much for them to really play into that.

The 4e Gnome was fantastic, and had a very solid identity.

I don't think the Ranger has an identity crisis at all, certainly no more than Bards, Clerics or Paladins.

Yep.

 

[cbwjm]

I've been reading some of my older 3e books, primarily oriental adventures and rokugan and because their magic didn't really fit with the setting of Rokugan, they suggested a bonus feat to replace spellcasting each time a new spell level is gained. I think that worked well in 3e because feats were smaller, but perhaps something similar would work for 5e if you didn't want your ranger to have spells, maybe at levels 6 & 10 they get a bonus feat (not tracking with spell acquisition but matches the fighter progression)

 

[môrgondír]

I enjoyed reading this thread and discovering all of the differing ideas about what constitutes a Ranger.

I also found it very interesting how much people's idea of 'magic' in Tolkien's Legendarium differs.

I think there are a great many types of magic in Tolkien, but they are rarely overt and they can be very subtle - they may be innate, like a Hobbit's ability to disappear which Tolkien suggests only "seems" magical (Concerning Hobbits, LotR I), or found in artifice, where a crafted object (a silmaril, a ring, a sword that glows in the presence of Orcs) is imbued with certain 'magical' properties. Magic is also most frequently found in words or speech (a spoken word opens the West Gate of Khazad-Dûm, the Voice of Saruman), and more importantly, in song (Ainulindalë, Tom Bombadil).

I also believe that the manifestation of magic power or efficacy can run along a scale, where on the low end, "things seem magical" but really aren't (like Hobbits uncanny ability to disappear), to a hurled, exploding pine cone that affects attacking wargs and orcs almost like some kind of fantasy napalm.

Since Tolkien was a philologist and had a great familiarity with mythology his understanding of magic differs from mine, but I nevertheless believe that the subtler "magic" of Tolkien can exist side-by-side with the spellcasting system in D&D, if having both is appropriate or desirable in a particular game world.

When I first read 5E (2024) and encountered Hunter's Mark, it didn't strike me as spell-like at all. I found rather that it struck me like the Hobbit's hiding ability - so uncanny that to observers it "seemed magical". This is the ability of a archer to focus his shot (or strike) on the vulnerable spots of his quarry, a kind of tunnel-vision that requires concentration to achieve optimal efficacy ("aim small, miss small"). This has informed my own archery practice, so to me it made perfect sense that it is something which requires concentration, a kind of ritualistic focus, but not necessarily verbal utterances or somatic gestures.

With all of that said, I don't have a good argument for why Rangers are necessary in D&D, but please don't judge me poorly for that. =)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I can't speak to 3.5E, but that's what particularly gets me as far as 5E goes. I'd say there were a few times where we were really close to an official version of Ranger that was just good, mechanically and thematically, that you wouldn't have to qualify with a bunch of caveats, if they'd only taken some ideas just a few steps further. Like, it's not as if they consistently missed the mark by miles!

Exactly!
I hate 3/.5 and I still regard the 3.5 ranger as the best iteration thus far, except maybe the 5e Revised Ranger from UA. I haven’t seen any 3pp or homebrew Rangers that beat them either.
But it had the same issue as 5e.

Does anyone remember the Revised Ranger from UA? They released it online, allowed people to play it in one season of Adventure League, then pretended it never happened.

EDIT: link is cursed, removed.

Yeah I actually really liked it, and I wish they’d have iterated on it for the 2024 playtest.

Seriously! There's a lot I really like about Revised Ranger, and wish got folded back into later attempts! Particularly the combat centric additions to Natural Explorer, and the animal kinship from Primeval Awareness! It's not an awful crack at it, especially for the time it was offered!

Giving Rangers better initiative, natural explorer with no terrain silo, animal affinity, ability to sense favored enemies*, and the BM companion having its own turn and scaling well, fantastic. I do think that it needed to lose the favored enemy damage bonus but keep the rest of it and make Hunter’s Mark not a spell and do 1d6 and scale up.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean imagine if the Ranger had a feature called "Monster Hunter". By spending your bonus action, you can deal, say, 1d4 additional damage* on all your attacks, and it scales by d4 every 2 levels after the first. Then you have a second feature, "Favored Enemy", that lets you pick a type of creature that you've really trained against, and when damaging these creatures, you deal your Monster Hunter damage without needing to spend a bonus action.

*I'd like to make this force damage to bypass resistance to non-magical weapons, but I know there are people who would wonder exactly how the Ranger is dealing "magical" damage, lol.

Wouldn't that be a better way to give the Ranger bonus damage, reinforce his role, and make Favored Enemy a bonus, instead of making the feature simply unreliable?

This is probably not the thread to suggest changes to the class, but it took me like five minutes to find something better than Hunter's Mark for the Ranger, lol.

I'm sure someone will tell me how horribly unbalanced that is and how it would turn Rangers into damage gods.

 

[kermit4karate]

I mean imagine if the Ranger had a feature called "Monster Hunter". By spending your bonus action, you can deal, say, 1d4 additional damage* on all your attacks, and it scales by d4 every 2 levels after the first. Then you have a second feature, "Favored Enemy", that lets you pick a type of creature that you've really trained against, and when damaging these creatures, you deal your Monster Hunter damage without needing to spend a bonus action.

*I'd like to make this force damage to bypass resistance to non-magical weapons, but I know there are people who would wonder exactly how the Ranger is dealing "magical" damage, lol.

Wouldn't that be a better way to give the Ranger bonus damage, reinforce his role, and make Favored Enemy a bonus, instead of making the feature simply unreliable?

This is probably not the thread to suggest changes to the class, but it took me like five minutes to find something better than Hunter's Mark for the Ranger, lol.

I'm sure someone will tell me how horribly unbalanced that is and how it would turn Rangers into damage gods.

I like it! But I also think the Ranger is fine the way it is.

As for overpowered damage gods, how about a 5e Paladin dumping spell slots into smites?

 

[Minigiant]

That’s one part of one class

Can be

Subclass

Can't be a satisfying subclass with the above

Spellcasting

Can't be a satisfying subclass with both the above
---
Weapons Combat, Companions, and Spellcasting can't be choosable options on one class. It's never satisfying to the plurality in play.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The 4e Gnome was fantastic, and had a very solid identity.

i dont really know much about what the 4e gnome identity was besides 'i'm a monster, Rawr', could you enlighten me?