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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 7683193" data-attributes="member: 5100">Part of my ideal solution is to ditch the Barbarian. It appeared out of nowhere in 3E and had no relationship with the 1E Barbarian that came before it. I don't really have a huge problem with the berserker or totem warrior archetypes, but I'm certainly going to side with the Ranger over the Barbarian in a turf war.Don't like that the 2d6 encroaches on the Barbarian's toughness? Tough. The johnny-come-lately can suck it up or get lost.Don't like that the Ranger can soak environmental effects better than the Barbarian? Again, tough. The Barbarian should have thought about that before bringing his sad, pansy butt to the party.In short, the Barbarian can sod off and find his own schtick. The Ranger has had "tough wilderness guy" since the Barbarian was gleam in Gygax's eye.Agreed. The original design was pretty much "add your level to hit and damage for anything vaguely humanoid and not too freakish that you're likely to want to kill". That was simultaneously too broad and too narrow to make a standard power. It generally worked within the assumptions of 1E (lots of orcs, etc.), but not the way the game evolved. I'd say it should be dropped from the core class. I could see a subclass that brought this back, but probably not; it's just too wonky.This can be problematic, but I think the way 5E handles it is workable. Yes, your GM can totally screw you over, but you're going to get fair mileage out of the ability in most games.I emphatically do not want to see any sort of swappable favored enemy or terrain. That's mechanically balanced, but really tanks the flavor aspect of the character. I can't help but to picture, "I spent my youth fighting skirmishes against the desert gnolls. I learned their ways, so that I might use their own tactics against them. The wastes become as comfortable to me as my own mother's bosom. Wait... tritons are raiding the merchant ships of the fertile coast? Let me sleep on it and I'll figure it out." :/Full stop.If you must attach them to Ranger, then make them work. Make them optional, but make them work. I have no opinion on the current Beast Master build because no one in my group can figure out what pets have to do with Rangers. I actually have a player who was going to build a beast master character as a back-up -- until he realized that the power belonged to the Ranger instead of the Druid. That was the end of that.You can do a lot more than just follow someone with tracking. A creative Ranger can ask a lot of very good questions of an area. Go watch The Princess Bride (again, presumably). Although played for laughs, Prince Humperdink does a great job at showing a Ranger's tracking. This ability is better than a lot of divination spells.Archery has been associated with the Ranger since 1E. At the very latest, the Dragon article with the Archer-Ranger class shows that. The TWF Ranger was a wart in 2E that, presumably, came from a certain drow twerp and someone not realizing that he was a dual-wielder because all drow are ambidextrous, not because he was a Ranger. I say "presumably", because there's no other explanation that makes sense. There is absolutely no relationship (pro or con) between TWF and being a wilderness defender (distinctly different from defender of the wilderness). I think that the 5E way of handling fighting styles is the best, yet. Whether it's TWF, archery, or something else, a Ranger's fighting technique should be a footnote.</blockquote>

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