D&D 5E Fictional examples of Rangers

[Micah Sweet]

Elyas Machera, Ex warder, runs with wolves, stalker, hunter and general all round good guy.

That's a good one! Also, he was Perrin's Obi-Wan.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Most likely older. Wikipedia's entry on park ranger (Park ranger - Wikipedia) puts in 13th-14th century. The term makes an appearance in Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender in 1579. Tolkien would have at least known the Spenser references, possibly more.

The Avatar from Ultima IX looked like a middle-aged park ranger. Does that count?

 

[Islayre d'Argolh]

There is also the military ranger . . . military units that patrol, or range, over the landscape as scouts and guides. This meaning seems to have evolved into rangers-as-commandos . . . highly skilled, mobile troops who insert themselves into a landscape for all sorts of missions, including scouting, guiding, ambushing, assassination . . .

Tolkien's ranger, the basis for the D&D class, seems to evolve the word a bit further into solitary soldiers who roam the wilderness dealing with threats to citizens . . . monsters, orcs, servants of the Dark One . . . There's also the elven connection . . . Aragorn and the Rangers of the North were close allies to the House of Elrond and received training there . . .

Rangers aren't survivalists . . . but certainly employ wilderness survival skills in the course of their jobs. They aren't protectors of nature, not really, although modern park rangers might just view that as legitimate aspects of their jobs, and certainly have a reverence and love of nature. They have no connection to druids (IRL) or other "primal" or nature-serving specialists.

Very interesting !

I strongly suggest to take a look at the movie the Hunted from 2003

Even more than J. Rambo in First Blood, L.T. Bonham is the archetypal Ranger in a "real world setting".

 

[aco175]

I view modern Army Rangers as having little to do with D&D ranger. I served with the 1st Ranger Battalion in the 90s and know that we appropriated the term from older days. Darby's Rangers were set up in the French and Indian War with him outfitting and training a group for special missions. Modern Rangers have taken some of his guiding principals like everyone being on guard at sunrise and moving in single file to hide your numbers.

I may throw in the Bible's Noah as a ranger, but could be a cleric.

 

[TheSword]

That's a good one! Also, he was Perrin's Obi-Wan.

I’m working my way through the series for about the fourth time... Two rivers battle is still spine tingling.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It has been an interesting evolution, to be sure. I don’t really see druids protecting nature either, personally. Again, the idea that nature needs protecting is a fairly modern one. In my book, druids worship nature (or nature gods, or nature spirits... to a commoner from settled society, they all look like the same thing). They’re viewed as kooky and potentially dangerous for treating something as wild and unpredictable as nature with religious reverence. You might play a druid with the angle of being the enlightened madman who realizes what he threat humanity poses to nature and does indeed seek to protect it, but that’s not generally their angle.

Really? I've mostly ever seen Druids played as protecting nature from civilization. Viewing the establishment of new settlements as inherently disruptive to nature, seeing how armies deforest in order to supply troops, farms being set up where once were a copse of trees, the pollution of cities (cities have been polluted garbage dumps for as long as they've existed), etc, and saying "F no, Imma stand against all of that."

Often that mindset is tempered, but it's still there.

 

[Charlaquin]

F

Really? I've mostly ever seen Druids played as protecting nature from civilization. Viewing the establishment of new settlements as inherently disruptive to nature, seeing how armies deforest in order to supply troops, farms being set up where once were a copse of trees, the pollution of cities (cities have been polluted garbage dumps for as long as they've existed), etc, and saying "F no, Imma stand against all of that."

Often that mindset is tempered, but it's still there.

Fair point.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I get what your saying, but technically he's a Blood Hunter. But maybe he's multi classed?

If it weren't fore the special magic, Blood Hunter would make sense as a subclass of ranger, just one that leans more on the 'favored enemy' part than the 'natural explorer' part.

 

[Minigiant]

Really? I've mostly ever seen Druids played as protecting nature from civilization. Viewing the establishment of new settlements as inherently disruptive to nature, seeing how armies deforest in order to supply troops, farms being set up where once were a copse of trees, the pollution of cities (cities have been polluted garbage dumps for as long as they've existed), etc, and saying "F no, Imma stand against all of that."

Often that mindset is tempered, but it's still there.

Well most D&D settings are in the Classical-Medieval-Renaissance Era were there is a LOT of wilderness and few big cities.

So druids would not need to defend nature that much. The wild was winning and you need a massive physical and financial effort to cut through it.

But Rangers. You needed them to defend you from nature. There's hordes, giants, cultists, and dragons in nature. Someone has to scout them out, track them down, discover their intentions, and possibly kill them.

Rangers in fiction would be rare. You really would have to make a everpresent wilderness danger in the setting. So you'd only see them in settings with D&D inspiration.


Settings like ASOIAF that have named ranger orgs are rare. The author has to make a wilderness threat and create a group to stop them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

So who are your archetypal Rangers?

The concept of the frontier is key to the 5e ranger. The ranger is on the borderland between "civilization" and the land of monsters beyond. 5e PHB:

Warriors of the wilderness, rangers specialize in hunting the monsters that threaten the edges of civilization - humanoid raiders, rampaging beasts and monstrosities, terrible giants, and deadly dragons. They learn to track their quarry as a predator does, moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble.​

To me that immediately suggests the Western, and a particular sort of Western hero, not the law officer but the rugged, self-reliant frontiersperson -

Natty Bumpo of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales
Legends told about Kit Carson, Davy Crockett and similar figures.