D&D (2024) Ranger playtest discussion

[Ruin Explorer]

From your own statement Katniss is a great ranger because she's very good on survival and stealth (and deadly with a bow, i assume).

A Variant Human /Custom Lineage Dex Battlemaster can be expert in Survival and add a d8 to her (already good) Stealth checks.
And be deadly with a bow.

So a very good non-magical ranger.

No lol, you just tied yourself up in your own logic. You're so stressed about trying to emulate Katniss that you're totally failing to see that, in fact, what you've done doesn't make her a good Ranger in D&D terms.

 

[Neonchameleon]

From your own statement Katniss is a great ranger because she's very good on survival and stealth (and deadly with a bow, i assume).

A Variant Human /Custom Lineage Dex Battlemaster can be expert in Survival and add a d8 to her (already good) Stealth checks.
And be deadly with a bow.

So a very good non-magical ranger.

Once more I repeat "What do you think the ranger class is for if it's not covering Katniss, Aragorn, or Drizzt - or even any pre-5e rangers"?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That doesn't mean they think it's right.

That's a key thing. You've played RPGs. Did you immediately think "THAT'S CORRECT!" about every class you read in every RPG? I never did. Jeez it took me YEARS to come to terms with how Clerics worked in D&D, and I'd never played an RPG before that, and only been playing videogames for two years (mostly pretty simple ones).

And I've introduced people to RPGs with 5E (not as many as 4E but w/e), and they are often mildly vexed by the fact that Rangers use spells, because they don't expect it, and it doesn't make sense to them. They have a pre-existing, pre-D&D notion of what a Ranger is. D&D "getting wrong" doesn't change that.

In my experience, the vast majority of players don't know enough about game design to have an opinion on this. They also tend to dislike having to relearn the things they are familiar with already. I don't know if most of them like how the Ranger is currently designed, but I also don't think you know how many of them would prefer for Rangers to ditch spellcasting. I think the people with the best knowledge on this subject are Wizards of the Coast, given their recent PHB class survey. They would know better than anyone else if the majority of players don't want Rangers to have spellcasting. And they've moved in the opposite direction of removing Spellcasting from the ranger.

It demonstrably is the reason for that. It's the reason Rangers don't really have abilities or any kind of consistent identity, and it doesn't even match their own lore, which barely mentions magic.

I think that the reason Rangers don't have good built-in Exploration abilities is that the Exploration pillar of 5e is lacking.

Uh-huh, and your reasoning for this is deeply flawed as I've illustrated.

I think the issue is that some players do like Rangers with magic - but even of them, the 5E Ranger is sometimes seen as excessively magical/magic-heavy. And a lot of what the Ranger can/can't do is because it has magic.

I think if we had a Ranger that only had fairly subtle magic, and wasn't doing stuff like being utterly reliant on magic for combat prowess (as the 1D&D Ranger 100% is), then there'd be less of an issue.

Also, according to all surveys WotC's done, the Ranger needs a pet. It's a huge part of what people expect from a Ranger. And yet it doesn't have one.

And your reasoning is just as flawed as mine is. You don't know what the majority of players want the Ranger to be. You have no evidence that your view is in the majority. Wizards of the Coast has tested out non-spellcasting rangers in 5e before, but for some reason, they have never been official. Wizards of the Coast has survey results to help them design the game.

 

[James Gasik]

Isn't Belgarath more of a mega-Cleric than a Wizard, even though he looks and acts like a Wizard?

Every full caster in 5E is strong in combat and exploration.

Belgarath is a little fuzzy- magic in the Belgariad seems a bit more like psionics, but at least in theory, anyone can use The Will and the Word, it doesn't take any special knack, it's just that the original Wizards were trained by a God personally. That having been said, some people are stronger with magic than others.

By contrast, in The Mallorean, magic is strictly divine in origin.

Another example, Zeddicus Z'ul Zorander from Wizard's First Rule. I was considering the Aes Sedai from the Wheel of Time, but it's another fuzzy example.

Basically, Wizards in other settings are never going to accurately mimic D&D Wizards, since their magic started with Jack Vance and mutated from there. Even Merlin from the second Amber series, despite using explicit Vancian magic, would seem odd compared to a D&D Wizard.

 

[Islayre d'Argolh]

Once more I repeat "What do you think the ranger class is for if it's not covering Katniss, Aragorn, or Drizzt - or even any pre-5e rangers"?

Once more i repeat : in charge of 5.5, i'll immediately change Ranger into a Fighter archetype, i do not see the need for this hero concept to be a full class (i think of it as a "vestigial TSR class").

But if we keep the ranger as a full class, it need to do - from a gameplay POV - something really different than wilderness-trained rogues & fighters. The easiest solution is to give it a little bit of druidic/primal magic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Part of this is that I don't think that anyone today is doing good "incompetent at action" PCs. No one's doing the 'Jackie Chan Underdog' nearly that well and people have got fed up with women being typecast as the Damsel In Distress.

The closest I can think of is Ryan Reynolds?

Even Jackie Chan played competent characters very often, and a lot of his "incompetent" characters were actually specially trained and were kind of making a mockery of their opponents (thinking back to his HK movie career which thanks to Channel 4 I ended up seeing most of in the '90s).

Ryan Reynolds normally plays highly competent characters in action stuff, just not invulnerable ones. Deadpool is extremely competent, but isn't sweating getting shot too much for obvious reasons.

In my experience, the vast majority of players don't know enough about game design to have an opinion on this.

ROFL wth?!?

You don't need to be a game designer to know when something is off, or have an opinion about a class. Or even to understand game design. That's laughable. That's like saying "Most audiences don't know enough about film-making to have an opinion on which movies they like!". Come on.

Absolutely players have opinions on this. Whether you think those are informed opinions is a different matter, but they have them. They expectations of a class called "Ranger", and WotC isn't meeting them. Not in any WotC edition of D&D. WotC THEMSELVES have admitted they have problems getting this right, and have basically apologised about it before!

I think the people with the best knowledge on this subject are Wizards of the Coast, given their recent PHB class survey.

WotC have admitted to repeatedly screwing this up. WotC themselves have also repeatedly said one of the key things audiences expect from a Ranger is a pet. And yet... Where's the bear?

You're making an appeal-to-authority argument when the authority themselves has admitted messing up, and has shown designs of the class that don't match their own surveys lol. That's not a strong or logical argument.

I think that the reason Rangers don't have good built-in Exploration abilities is that the Exploration pillar of 5e is lacking.

That's circular reasoning and not very plausible, frankly. Especially given 5E Rangers had better exploration abilities than 1D&D ones.

And your reasoning is just as flawed as mine is.

I think I've demonstrated that it's not. You appeal-to-authority argument demonstrates more flawed reasoning on your part.

That doesn't mean I'm right! I could well be wrong. But my reasoning on this is demonstrably better than what you're arguing.

Wizards of the Coast has survey results to help them design the game.

Yeah! Ones they've completely ignored, repeatedly! Where's the bear?

 

[Islayre d'Argolh]

No lol, you just tied yourself up in your own logic. You're so stressed about trying to emulate Katniss that you're totally failing to see that, in fact, what you've done doesn't make her a good Ranger in D&D terms.

It does make her a very good non-magical ranger. And that's enough.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Once more i repeat : in charge of 5.5, i'll immediately change Ranger into a Fighter archetype, i do not see the need for this hero concept to be a full class (i think of it as a "vestigial TSR class").

But if we keep the ranger as a full class, it need to do - from a gameplay POV - something really different than wilderness-trained rogues & fighters. The easiest solution is to give it a little bit of druidic/primal magic.

Druids have always had "a little bit of druidic/primal magic". The problem the D&Done ranger has is, even more than the classic 5e ranger, that it's drowning in druidic/primal magic and has more magic than a 2e, 3.0, or 3.5 bard. And turning to Spells Prepared has made it oh so much worse.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Once more i repeat : in charge of 5.5, i'll immediately change Ranger into a Fighter archetype, i do not see the need for this hero concept to be a full class (i think of it as a "vestigial TSR class").

Sure, which shows you don't understand why classes exist.

For you, you think classes are convenient buckets for keeping abilities in. This is not an uncommon idea with people like us on the internet, who like to categorize things and be reductive, but it's a terrible idea and everyone who has ever followed it has made a bad game.

The reality is, classes are for expressing a particular fantasy. A particular way of being. Seeing them as mechanistic buckets to hold abilities is just profoundly not getting it.

And the fantasy of being "A ranger" doesn't including significant or mandatory magic. It does include optional magic, I'd say. The most vital things are being "one with nature", an "animal friend" (whether that means friends with animals generally, or friends with a specific animal), reasonably stealthy in natural environments, and good with a bow. A good "optional extra" would be some Primal or Fey magic. Just like Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster.

 

[ersatzphil]

I think that the reason Rangers don't have good built-in Exploration abilities is that the Exploration pillar of 5e is lacking.

I really think that's the nail on the head. It's hard to have a class who's main sthick is interaction with the Exploration pillar of the game, when that part of the game has so few rules to it. There are several things from the 2014 PHB that strike me as 'threads started that they didn't go anywhere with' - why is 'song of rest' the only character ability that interacts with hit dice?