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

[Laugh-ing-Coffin]

Ranger and Rogue fullfill the same niche that I have had legendary game designers argue that Robin Hood is a rogue.

If the paragon of ranger is not your class, it is extraneous.

Rogue now covers the skirmisher concept so I would be okay of folding the ranger abilities into it and the stereotypes as sub classes.

Then again my favorite ranger was the 4e version, because i have always preferred the deepwoods sniper version for my rangers.

So I'm asking.

Is the Ranger a necessary Class?

This post is a year old and I'm still sharing my opinion. No the ranger class has never been necessary, they originally belonged as a subclass for the rogues. But people wanted more combat damage potential and a survival and tracker niche which they couldn't justify with just one or two subclass so they made it its own class... Now the rogues have scout as a subclass to kinda fill that rogue gap but it's meh in my opinion compared to the original rogue ranger subclass.

 

[Clint_L]

Ranger could be a rogue subclass, barbarian a fighter subclass, Druid a cleric subclass, and sorcerer a wizard subclass and the game would be better for it IMO. But, tradition.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This post is a year old and I'm still sharing my opinion. No the ranger class has never been necessary, they originally belonged as a subclass for the rogues. But people wanted more combat damage potential and a survival and tracker niche which they couldn't justify with just one or two subclass so they made it its own class... Now the rogues have scout as a subclass to kinda fill that rogue gap but it's meh in my opinion compared to the original rogue ranger subclass.

The original D&D Ranger was a warrior, not a subclass of anything much less the thief. What are you on about?

Ranger has never been a rogue subclass that I can recall, in anything but video games.

 

[GrimCo]

By OP logic, there are decent chunk of classes that are superfluous. Paladin - martial version of cleric. Druid- nature cleric. Warlock- goth cleric (still spell beggar) . Bard - music magic version of rogue. Barbarian - rage fighter. Ranger - fighter with SERE training.

Might as well go with 4 iconic classes - Warrior, Priest, Thief, Mage and just fold others like subclasses or specializations.