D&D 5E (2024) Ranger playtest discussion

[Bill Zebub]

There is nothing in the concept of Spells Known that says that you should know fewer spells than a spells caster can prepare.

I suspect it’s the same number as the amount of wood a woodchuck can chuck.

 

[SkidAce]

Is it really possible to say that any one feature was the primary driver? Isn’t it more likely that there were a number of desired characteristics, and the designers saw an opportunity to meet several of them at once?

From what I remember, spontaneous casting WAS the main driver, many people in the day were complaining that the bookish vancian studying caster didn't fit their vision of their "sorcerer".

So they made one.

 

[Bill Zebub]

From what I remember, spontaneous casting WAS the main driver, many people in the day were complaining that the bookish vancian studying caster didn't fit their vision of their "sorcerer".

So they made one.

Ok. I don't assume much of a cause-effect relationship between what people are saying in my chosen Internet communities and what WotC designers decide to do, but I don't have proof one way or another.

 

[Staffan]

Tomato tomato. There were only spontaneous spells known and non-spontaneous spells prepared.

Sure, but the important part was spontaneous magic. Vancian magic is a frikkin' pain to deal with, and the sorcerer offered an alternative (albeit underpowered because they were conservative in balancing it). Also, almost no fictional portrayals of spellcasters that aren't based on D&D or a derivative, or the actual Dying Earth books by Jack Vance, have Vancian casting.

I'd guess it's actually more common to have entirely spell-less magic in fiction, and instead have some kind of freeform system based on various aspects.

This happens if and only if you restrict the number of spells known so that a spells prepared caster can prepare as many spells as a spells known caster can know. If you do that then yes it's worse because spells prepared can do literally everything spells known can and more.

The full casters in 5e are bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer and wizard (and sort of warlock, but they're weird so we're ignoring them). 5e wizard and druid gets level + stat bonus spells prepared. So does the cleric, but they also get two fixed additional spells at each spell level up to 5 from their domain (so basically level*2 + stat bonus until level 10).

The bard for the most part has level+3 or level+4 spells known (level+2 at level 20, but we can ignore that). That's pretty close to where a wizard or druid is, but with the disadvantage of not being able to swap them out. But the poor sorcerer starts out at level+1 up until 11th level, at which point they only add 1 spell every other level. That is really bad.

And looking at the half-casters, paladins have level/2 + stat bonus, and get 2 more per spell level for their Oath. Rangers have level/2+1 spells known, and don't inherently get more from their sub-class. Many of the later sub-classes do give one spell known per spell level (but not the ones in the PHB), and the alternate version of Primal Awareness gives an additional one per spell level, which still puts them below a paladin's spells prepared (unless the paladin only has a +1 or lower Charisma bonus).

So, I guess in practice you could balance spells known against spells prepared by juggling the numbers. In practice, that's not what happens, and instead prepared casters have as many or more spells available as known casters.

The 5e PHB went a step further. On average the Spells Known casters knew approximately two spells per spell level they had of levels 1-5 while the spells prepared casters could prepare three spells per spell level. This made Spells Prepared casters awful. And lead to people hating Spells Prepared because WotC hamstrung almost all the Spells Prepared classes.

I think your last two sentences are supposed to refer to Spells Known casters, because otherwise they make no sense.

There is nothing in the concept of Spells Known that says that you should know fewer spells than a spells caster can prepare.

Right. But given equal numbers, spells known is inferior to spells prepared, because a prepared caster can prepare for different circumstances while a known caster has a fixed number of spells available, so they have to pick the most generically useful ones. And the numbers aren't equal in practice – they're skewed in favor of prepared casters.

 

[gorice]

The DMG does not encourage the DM to sculpt the adventure, the setting and the campaign to the specific PCs presented, and IMO that's a good thing. Why would the world care about who decides they want to try to save it?

It's a matter of preference. Not every game is 'heroes save the world in a prepared adventure'. Some players are interested in exploring certain themes or challenges, and character choice is often an indication of that. For groups that want to play that way.

 

[Lojaan]

This actually made me think a little.

I think there should be a place for the non-magical outdoorsman. I also think there's room for the magical one.

I also don't think there's all that much room for variation (in the sub-class sense) in the non-magical version. So perhaps that's better left to a fighter subclass, a rogue sub-class, or either. Which would then leave the ranger as the magical version, with subclasses leaning in different magical directions. What I would like to see, to perhaps prevent this kind of argument from being a constant nuisance over the next decade, is that they put the non-magical Scout (or whatever they decide to call it) in the PHB, so there's something to point to when people want to play a non-magical outdoorsperson.

I think this is a very good idea. Give them bonus longbow & heavy crossbow proficiency at level 3, tweak the features a bit (they probably dont need more expertise from the subclass) and let this be the non-magical ranger. This could even end up being the default "archer" archtype.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is it really possible to say that any one feature was the primary driver? Isn’t it more likely that there were a number of desired characteristics, and the designers saw an opportunity to meet several of them at once?

Not in 3e where the sorcerer originated, IMO. It really did just look like a wizard with a different way to learn and cast spells. They even shared a spell list! The differences were entirely mechanical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's a matter of preference. Not every game is 'heroes save the world in a prepared adventure'. Some players are interested in exploring certain themes or challenges, and character choice is often an indication of that. For groups that want to play that way.

That's great! I'm still happy it's not the default.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Right. But given equal numbers, spells known is inferior to spells prepared, because a prepared caster can prepare for different circumstances while a known caster has a fixed number of spells available, so they have to pick the most generically useful ones. And the numbers aren't equal in practice – they're skewed in favor of prepared casters.

Here we agree and it was a very poor choice.

It was, however, one Tasha's reversed. Both the two Tasha's sorcerer subclasses and the Tasha's ranger with a Xanathar's or Tasha's subclass know more spells than an equivalent spells prepared caster can prepare.

The bard by contrast was always about the level of the spells prepared casters and we didn't hear remotely as many complaints about them. Especially because (unlike the sorcerer) they had a lot going on other than casting.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I am happy to see the Ranger spellcast at level 1. Cantrips too!

I hope the Paladin will do so also, using the same spell table.

I didn't like it at first, being someone who doesn't particularly like spellcasters at the best of times (and I particularly prefer rangers without spells).

But even with all that said... it's growing on me.

(And I totally agree that Paladins should use that table).