D&D General Ranger Identity Patch (+)

[Minigiant]

i'd rather go for broad applicability, the idea of a ranger, or most any skill based character really, swapping out their 'specialty' on a dime doesn't sit right with me, it's like, oh you spent the best part of your life until now surviving in the mountains studying how to kill giants, but after an afternoon of reading you're just as prepared to traverse the jungle and take down undead but have forgotten everything you knew about mountaineering and giant slaying.

The rub is

1) What fits the ranger modus operendi in most sources of media

is not

2) What is good in D&D

Its sorta like the Full Martial Grounded Fighter problem.

A realistic grounded fully martial fighter sucks in D&D without magical item requirements.

A realistic orcslayer sucks in D&D without magical item requirements if they face a dragon.
A realistic dragonslayer sucks in D&D without magical item requirements if they face orcs.
A realistic arctic ranger sucks in D&D without magical item requirements if they range the forest
A realistic forest ranger sucks in D&D without magical item requirements if they range the arctic.

So either the ranger is:

1) a minor dragonslayer and a minor orcslayer
Or
2) a slayer who can switch from a major dragonslayer or a major orcslayer
Or
3) a major general slayer who has a tiny bit of dragonslayer and orcslayer

History dictates the community hates anything else

 

[Horwath]

So either the ranger is:

1) a minor dragonslayer and a minor orcslayer
Or
2) a slayer who can switch from a major dragonslayer or a major orcslayer
Or
3) a major general slayer who has a tiny bit of dragonslayer and orcslayer

History dictates the community hates anything else

or axe the whole concept of "slayer of X".
that is a good background story and really bad mechanic in game.
have ranger be Slayer of everything, best tracker, best identifier of creatures,

 

[Minigiant]

or axe the whole concept of "slayer of X".
that is a good background story and really bad mechanic in game.
have ranger be Slayer of everything, best tracker, best identifier of creatures,

Slayer of Everything?

Sounds like Hunter's Mark

 

[Horwath]

Slayer of Everything?

Sounds like Hunter's Mark

if it's not a spell and without concentration? why not.

 

[CreamCloud0]

personally i'm fine with the ranger leaving the 'slayer of X' archetype behind, it has some use but it's not essential.

 

[Minigiant]

personally i'm fine with the ranger leaving the 'slayer of X' archetype behind, it has some use but it's not essential.

if it's not a spell and without concentration? why not.

Well if you get rid of Slayer of X or Master of Y terrain, there isnt much left in the ranger identity worth its own class if you dont force exploration mechanics OR hard on the overtime magic

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

A ranger can be.

1. An arctic survivalist
   1. Cold resistance
   2. Self heals
   3. Endurance
2. A monster hunting archer
   1. Archery
   2. Mobility
   3. Tracking
3. A roving dragon slayer
   1. Variable Resistance
   2. Anti Fear
   3. Stealth
4. A patrolling forest warden
   1. AOE
   2. General damage
   3. Perception
5. A mystic houndmaster
   1. Beast buffs
   2. Magical attack
   3. Animal Handling
6. A wandering blademaster
   1. Melee
   2. Language
   3. Intimidation
7. A lord of the conclave
   1. Defense
   2. Far communication
   3. Persuasion

Thats more than most subsystems allow. Except for spells.

mostly i think ranger ought to be designed like the warlock was with it's multiple customization avenues: pact boons, subclass and invocations, because part of what defines the ranger archetype in my eyes is it's versatile skillset, it's more of more martial counterpart to the bard: a jack of all trades with a few greater specialities within that pool of skills than something with a specific defined set, so a ranger class needs the versatility to let individual rangers dedicate themselves to specific facets within their branching skillset, this would be the primary use of ranger 'pact primal boons' and invocations, your primal boon gives you a small perk to one classic archetype: weapons, magic, skills or familiar, and your invocations let you pick more extra abilities and improvements to various areas of your general skillset (we all know how warlock invocations work i don't need to explain this really do i?)

I feel like one of the problems is that the Ranger doesn't have anything that is both distinctive and thematic at the same time. A lot of their abilities are highly situational and DM-dependent, and they excel in a pillar of the game (Exploration) that is rarely the focal point. If you don't have a ranger, most DMs gloss over travel. If you do have one and make travel a focus, many of the players other than the ranger are bored. This is bad design. So how do you fix that by designing rangers that are relevant?

What if the ranger, being a master of hunting monsters using knowledge and skill, has a feature that bypasses damage resistence and at high level even immunity?

I would diagnose the problem a little differently than others: while it's pretty well understood what the vibes of a ranger are, the actual implementation can involve a lot of things. For example, I think rangers need access to all of these:

1. Archery
2. Two-weapon fighting
3. Druid magic
4. Favored enemies
5. Wilderness exploration mastery
6. Animal companions

Forgive me if this is too vague, I've just finished a treatment and I'm up to my eyeballs on morphine right now...

The bits quoted are the most...relevant?... in this discussion I think for me, at least in terms of sort of laying out the various competing problems.

I've got this vague idea that the solution might be going in a more different direction, kinda like @CreamCloud0 suggested. Maybe starting with the Warlock framework and rebuilding the Ranger around that. I also think that @Minigiant listing of the 4e setup was a really nice encapsulation of the... subclasses?... that the "base" warlock framework Ranger would then operate off of. Also bearing in mind minigiant's (partial) list of everything a Ranger could be.

Towards that end, in addition to working from a warlock framework for building/structuring the Ranger, I've got this notion of something that might be an interesting alternative to a bunch of the powers/spells issue... the Binder.

With the various Vestiges that were created for the Binder, you could potentially have a rather versatile and "swappable" character, without a massive increase in rules complexity... I think. So at the moment, my rather unformed thinking is that the warlock frame provides a lot of the basic structure to the Ranger class, with minigiant's lists kind of setting up the subclass path that a Ranger can go down, and then a Vestiges-type system providing the fine-tuning for abilities/skills/powers.

The source of the vestiges in this case would be Animal Spirits or some-such thing. I don't think that'd encroach on any of the other classes significantly but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, if I'm completely off-base, my apologies. I just thought I'd offer up a possible solution that might work by taking a completely different approach.