D&D General Rangers should be built on a primary and secondary stat

[DEFCON 1]

Just for funsies a little while ago I did my own "What would the game look like if we removed Constitution?" write-up... and substituted 'Perception' as the CON replacement ability. So the third physical stat was now all the sensory (and extra-sensory) organs taking in information, and thus I would then use Perception as the Ranged attack stat (as Aim would be its primary "thing"). People always want to reduce Dexterity's ubiquity, and giving Ranged attacks to a different stat would be a good first step towards that. And Perception was an intriguing option for that (and it didn't hurt removing it from the skill list, as its easily the most popular and taken skill in the game.)

What adding in Perception as an actual ability score did was allow me to then take the 15 most-standard/popular classes in the game (the base 12 plus Artificer, Psion, and Warlord) and assign them to each of the 15 ability score pairs to make every class MAD. What I ended up with looked like this:

STR/DEX: Barbarian
STR/PER: Ranger
STR/INT: Warlord
STR/WIS: Fighter
STR/CHA: Paladin

DEX/PER: Rogue
DEX/INT: Artificer
DEX/WIS: Monk
DEX/CHA: Sorcerer

PER/INT: Psion
PER/WIS: Druid
PER/CHA: Warlock

INT/WIS: Wizard
INT/CHA: Bard
WIS/CHA: Cleric

Now granted, this did lock in a few classes to certain directions thematically that they otherwise used to have multiple ways of going (for instance the Warlord would now be more like a Tactician now that it no longer really had a CHA option, and the Ranger would be more fighterish than rogue now that they were STR-based without a DEX option.) But at the end of the day I didn't really concern myself with those locked-in directions as this was purely for "What if?" entertainment on my part and its never actually happening so it doesn't matter. But it did give an interesting direction where things could go if there was ever a bigger slaughter of D&D sacred cows down the line.

 

[mellored]

IMO if your going to do that, might as well make it the whole system.

And spells/features require a minimum attribute to cast.
I.e.
Hunters Mark take 1 Wisdom.
Crossbows take 1 Dex
Longbows take 2 Dex
Trick shots take 3 Dex.
Fireball takes 3 Intelligence.
Dominate Person is 6 Charisma.
Action Sugre takes 2 Constitution.
Rage takes 3 Strength
....

Mix and match.
That's 30 "classes" each a combination of 2 attributes. 36 if you allow single attribute class.

 

[Corinnguard]

It's a shame they won't work on dnd beyond.

I agree. If they did work on D&D Beyond, everyone would be using Laser Llama's work in their campaigns instead of WoTC's stuff.

 

[Corinnguard]

I'm still baffled how we have so few half-casters, and yet people are still determined to remove the few we have and turn them into subclasses. I'd rather have more half-casters, not less.

How would making the Ranger into a subclass be any better than it is now? Especially when the classes that it could be made into a subclass have so few levels going to a subclass to begin with.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

We could remove ranger (the primal half caster bowman) and make it into subclasses.

And then add seeker (the primal half caster bowman) as a full class.

That way the ranger crowd can argue over there and leave us who want a primal half-caster class in peace.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

half casters need synergy
their other abilities need to build on their spell list.

Paladins' do
Artificers do
Rangers do not.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The Shaman Class by laserllama

The Shaman Class by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

The Shaman: Expanded by laserllama

The Shaman: Expanded by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

Will these do for the Shaman?

Only downside to this is that society is a lot more sensitive to cultural appropriation now, so the idea of a 'shaman' class could easily be dead forever even if 5.5e is going to start adding new classes. Even totem barbarian got reworked to remove every mention of that in 5.5e.

 

[Corinnguard]

half casters need synergy
their other abilities need to build on their spell list.

Paladins' do
Artificers do
Rangers do not.

Is this why the new Ranger Class relies so heavily on Hunter's Mark?

 

[Horwath]

1, 3, 7, 13, 15, 18.

Six levels gives more range for design, and putting in break points of 2, 4, 6, 3, 3 makes plenty enough room at low levels for the core class to assert itself while allowing the subclass to better define the late-game progression when the core class is mostly just expanding on where it already stands!

I would avoid giving anything new to super high levels, almost no one plays them, maybe I would even remove new subclass feature at level 14,
subclass peaks at level 10, after it's just more or better usages of already gained abilities.
IE, Battlemaster would get Relentless at level 10, but with a d6 die, that is upgraded to d8 at 15th level

 

[Steampunkette]

I would avoid giving anything new to super high levels, almost no one plays them, maybe I would even remove new subclass feature at level 14,
subclass peaks at level 10, after it's just more or better usages of already gained abilities.
IE, Battlemaster would get Relentless at level 10, but with a d6 die, that is upgraded to d8 at 15th level

Bard Archetypes are the absolute worst archetypes to design... And it's not because they get a slot at high end.

There's just not a lot of room to tell a story across 3 archetype slots at 3, 6, and 14.

Even if players rarely level from 1 to 20, the archetype's narrative is important to spell out, mechanically. Both for aspirational purposes (You know you'll never get past 12 but if you did, you could do more cool stuff!) and for high end gaming purposes (One-Shots, but also the people who DO level up that high getting interesting rewards is important!)