D&D 5E Let's Tweak the 5E Ranger!

[Minigiant]

Um, again, that doesn't require spells. See, the fault you have is your premise.

I'll try to make this clear again-
A rogue is pretty useless in a "high magic" environment, unless he has magic, because unless he does, he can't do rogue-y things correctly.

That's kind of what you're saying. There's nothing intrinsic about hangin' in the wilderness that *requires* magic. Period. There's some nice stuff, sure. But there's nothing intrinsic to any conception (fantasy or no) about chillin' in the woods.

Again missing the point.
The ranger isn't chilling in the woods of Wester Europe.

Theres dragons, orcs, gnolls, manticores, harpies, owlbears, sprites, lichens, firestorms, wizards, orc shamans, zombie bears, treants, blizzards, giant vipers, goblins, quicksand, tornadoes, bandits, wizards, hags, and evil druids in D&D's woods. Rangers deal with these or run from these alone or with other rangers.

The rogue lacks that responsibility. You don't need magic to open locks, disarm, traps, or sneak.
The fighter lacks those problems too. You don't need magic to hit with swords anymore.

 

[Nebulous]

Theres dragons, orcs, gnolls, manticores, harpies, owlbears, sprites, lichens, firestorms, wizards, orc shamans, zombie bears, treants, blizzards, giant vipers, goblins, quicksand, tornadoes, bandits, wizards, hags, and evil druids in D&D's woods. Rangers deal with these or run from these alone or with other rangers.

"Holy ****! More zombie bears! Run my rangery brothers!!"

Yeah, the D&D universe is not conducive to the survival of anything hardly, as it has ALL of the hardships of Medieval Europe plus the beforementioned beasties.

 

[Mephista]

While i agree in a perfect world this would be great i don't think it will ever be achieved as overlap is bound to happen when both classes base mechanics are i hit the bad guy with my weapon.

I think a little overlap is okay its when a class becomes inferior to another i have issue with.

That's oversimplifying things a bit. If that's the case, then we've narrowed down every class into the orignal three - Fighting Man "I hit stuff with stick," Magic-User "I cast spells," and Cleric "I do both at once!" There's more to it than that, especially when we consider social and explorational aspects - because combat is not the whole of a class. Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue all hit things with a stick, but they each have different out of combat capabilities that change things vastly.

Then again, I find it hard to argue with someone saying that wilderness dude class requires magic- not because magic is cool, or awesome, but because it's realistic. While ignoring the fact that almost all variant rangers proposed (including UA, recently) fix the Ranger by getting rid of the spellcasting.

To be fair, that's because the majority of people who constantly try to fix the Ranger (by introducing a whole new class) are the ones who don't like spells, and the UA was meant to adress them. If the devs had removed spells for the core, then we'd have epople trying to fix the Ranger by adding spells.

As it is, I've seen plenty of people make house rules for minor changes to the current Ranger - it just doesn't get the attention of non-spell rangers, because the material is so much smaller! You'll notice that when they updated the Ranger in Essentials for the 4e line, they added magic. People complained about the spell-less ranger.

 

[Mephista]

Again missing the point.
The ranger isn't chilling in the woods of Wester Europe.

Theres dragons, orcs, gnolls, manticores, harpies, owlbears, sprites, lichens, firestorms, wizards, orc shamans, zombie bears, treants, blizzards, giant vipers, goblins, quicksand, tornadoes, bandits, wizards, hags, and evil druids in D&D's woods. Rangers deal with these or run from these alone or with other rangers.

The rogue lacks that responsibility. You don't need magic to open locks, disarm, traps, or sneak.
The fighter lacks those problems too. You don't need magic to hit with swords anymore.

Honestly, you don't need magic to deal with all that either. And its not like the Fighter and Rogue don't have to deal with all those either. Low level characters deal with minor annoyances near their homes. High level ones deal with a ton of issues.

Rangers tend to have magic, because Strider displayed some magical abilities, and it got worked into the lore, and now the Rangers are showing magical inclinations. They're magic in video games, they're magic in most fantasy D&D clones on TT, they're often treated that way in novels and stories. Its simply the weight of expectations we've developed as a subculture. Not because its somehow critical to the concept.

 

[Minigiant]

Honestly, you don't need magic to deal with all that either. And its not like the Fighter and Rogue don't have to deal with all those either. Low level characters deal with minor annoyances near their homes. High level ones deal with a ton of issues.

Rangers tend to have magic, because Strider displayed some magical abilities, and it got worked into the lore, and now the Rangers are showing magical inclinations. They're magic in video games, they're magic in most fantasy D&D clones on TT, they're often treated that way in novels and stories. Its simply the weight of expectations we've developed as a subculture. Not because its somehow critical to the concept.

No you don't NEED spells. But then you'd need a complex and hardcoded skill system like 3.5 or Pathfinder.

And that's essentially the issue. You can't have a spell-less ranger in a simple skill system without inventing a complex skill system which mimics the spells. That's why the UA ranger sucks at rangering. Its just a bad fighter.

 

[Wrathamon]

No you don't NEED spells. But then you'd need a complex and hardcoded skill system like 3.5 or Pathfinder.

And that's essentially the issue. You can't have a spell-less ranger in a simple skill system without inventing a complex skill system which mimics the spells. That's why the UA ranger sucks at rangering. Its just a bad fighter.

Can you give an example of how the Ability Check systems doesn't work? Or, how the spells make a difference in your example?

 

[Minigiant]

Can you give an example of how the Ability Check systems doesn't work? Or, how the spells make a difference in your example?

Okay.

Wisdom (Handle Animal) only lets you calm domesticated animals, keep a mount from being spooked, or intuit an animal's intentions.
It doesn't let you calm a wild or hostile animal (animal friendship), call or summon a mount from somewhere (conjure animal), or teach animal to relay a message (animal messager).

Using Core rules, most DMs would not let a ranger just say "I call for 8 horses who are suitable and trained for riding and they appear in from of me" without magic or the book saying that rangers can do this.

But conjuring animals and instantly taming beasts are iconic ranger stuff. Same with "conjuring food", healing wounds, detecting and curing poisons and disease, talking to animals, seeing in the dark, breathing underwater, "conjuring natural traps and alarms", and calling fey. D&D tends to not let you do these things without magic or many years of downtime and a lot of gold.

Now you could make 10-20 new proficiencies for all of these things and give them all to rangers but that goes against 5e's simplicity.

 

[transtemporal]

That is a pretty cool ranger design OP.

Usually when people post things like this, you take one look at the abilities and lol. I will continue reading and post a more in depth review later.

 

[Inconnunom]

Using Core rules, most DMs would not let a ranger just say "I call for 8 horses who are suitable and trained for riding and they appear in from of me" without magic or the book saying that rangers can do this.

You can't do this anyways. The DM picks the beasts.

But also you haven't really described a good role or mechanic for rangers that make them unique compared to the other classes. It now sounds like you are arguing for a druid survivalist with a fighter archtype or a fighter survivalist with a druid archtype.

Unfortunately, Rangers do not have a role that is distinctly their own, and that is the issue that WotC designers have.

 

[transtemporal]

I like the redesign OP. Also, I liked that you resisted the urge to keep the extra attack, on top of Mark.

Haven't read the sub-classes yet.

3 observations:
Mark. Cool and I like the favored enemy tweak, but 2 uses/short rest at 9 and 3 uses/short rest at 14 is too strong. For comparison, cleric channel divinity only gets 3 uses/short rest at 18th and that's less powerful than Mark. Paladin Channel Divinity never gets more than 1 use/short rest and that's also less powerful. Although the answer there might be to give them more uses since it is a little miserly.

Tactical Trick. Like the ability, don't like the fighting style option. Paladins and Fighters get one style in 20 levels (or two for the champion). Rangers got one style before, now they could take five styles before they get to 18th.

Wilderness Boon. Like the idea. Changing so they aren't spells is cool but not so keen on the no concentration, since one of the conditions of concentration is that you can only maintain one. No concentration means the character could stack Protection from Energy, Stoneskin and Swift Quiver on everyone in the party for an hour! Weeee!