Removing Rangers

seasong

First Post
I've never really liked the ranger. It's got nothing to do with balance, either - although front-loaded, I think a ranger can do pretty well without overwhelming other folks.

But I have problems understanding why it is a core class. It's role appears to be woodsy dual-wielding enemy-hunter with spells. Which is a tad specific, I think, for a "core class". Yes, I know that the 3.5 ranger will offer the option to replace that with a woodsy archer enemy-killer with spells.

It's just got too many things in the pot, highly culture-specific things, to be a CORE class. You've got a bit of Jack the Giant Killer, a bit of Drizzt, a bit of Strider, and bit of Mountain Man... most of the alt.rangers seem to be built around focusing on one of these multitude of archetypal roles the ranger tries to split its attention between.

So I think I'm going to just drop it. Someone who wants to play a ranger will be encouraged to play a Druid with Tracking, or a Fighter or Rogue with a grudge against some species, or a dual-wielding Fighter, etc.

Hm. That Druid + Tracking idea looks particularly scrumptious.

Any thoughts?
 

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I agree that the ranger is pretty campaign specific.... just so happens that they tend to be specific to most campaigns :D

For a good few years, my group only played in Lankhmar (which I still can't spell), and there was never a ranger in sight, and we didn't really notice, come to think of it.

I know what you mean by wanting to remove campaign-specific classes and making things very general... but then you house rule everything enough that you may as well be playing d20 Modern, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Just curious, are you also planning on removing barbarians, paladins, or any other core classes?
 

IOC the ranger, fighter and bits of the barbarian (and a bit o'monk) have all been rolled into one class. Our group sat down and discussed how we wanted to handle certain "narrow classes" and probably, like you, decided it didn't need to be specifically rendered in the core classes.

The ranger is essentially a wilderness fighter and everyone and their dog has their own idea of how they should look. Our classes are a little different than 3e's in that you can choose your own class abilities (like class-specific feats you gain every x levels) so that if you want to be "rangerish" - you can and in whatever flavor/degree of ranger you want (sans spells).

Multiclass with a druid makes a whole lot of sense too (and IOC, creates the spellcasting "ranger").

I have more a problem seeing the Bard as a core class myself. He fills such a narrow role in the campaign that I can't help but feel he'c be far better served as a PrC.


Cheers,

A'koss.
 

CombatWombat51: I don't want too many house rules. I've already got my story hour for a classless campaign! My primary problem with the range is that it tries to cram four different visions of what a ranger is into a single package. I'm hoping it won't have a noticeable impact on the setting with/without ranger, since I'm trying to create a logical, consistent D&D world :).

The only other class I'm removing/rewriting is the sorcerer. It overlaps too much with the wizard, and as is the sorcerer is a bit too redundant. I'm rewriting it to be a kind of charismatic warmage (light armor, d6 hit die, and different/more restrictive spell options).

And really, I consider that more heinous a change than dropping the ranger :). The new sorcerer class will impact the world more, anyway :).

I'm making some minor tweaks to a few classes (adept, bard, cleric, monk), but I'm trying to leave the majority of them alone. The ranger and sorcerer are the biggest changes.

Of course, that's for purposes of the rules. Flavor text is undergoing huge changes :D.
 
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A'koss said:
The ranger is essentially a wilderness fighter and everyone and their dog has their own idea of how they should look.

Yeah :). There's just so many roles to fill! I'll be using experts and rogues for most of them, and druids with Tracking for the rest, most likely.

I have more a problem seeing the Bard as a core class myself. He fills such a narrow role in the campaign that I can't help but feel he'c be far better served as a PrC.
Part of this, I think, is the fault of the flavor text. The bard, as written, is a kind of rogueish sorcerer who also has song magic and weapon skills...

I'm considering renaming him (a lot of classes fix up pretty nice when you rename them) to Adventurer - someone who travels, picks up a little bit of everything, and lives more by wit than anything else. More Indiana Jones than Spellsinger. It also helps to re-explain the bardic music as "performance of any sort"; i.e., he could simply tell interesting tales, or be a political orator (in an oppressive land, that's a real adventure, all right).

I may modify the spell abilities to something like +1 spell caster level every other level... and he can pick up different spellcasting classes, just slowly.
 

Personally, I would consider the rogue to be the quintessential "adventurer". After all, he has the skills. (no pun intended :D)

Bardic music & singing spellcasting is huge part of that class and that strikes me as slightly suicidal (not to mention just plain... wiggy) for many adventuring groups. :p

Unfortunately, my players just look at the bard as some kind of bad joke that the guys at TSR cooked up for their own amusement...


A'koss.
 

The rogue certainly does a fine job of it, certainly, but I generally feel that dabbling a bit in magic makes the bard more of a true generalist - most rogues tend to specialize in a few areas.

Anyway, I'll be keeping the bard, although he may undergo some minor tweaks :). Back to rangers! ;)
 
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If you're intent on dropping rangers, it would help to have a variant rogue.

He could lose some of the more urban skills (pick pockets, gather information, use magic device, open locks) and pick up stuff like wilderness lore, animal empathy, handle animal, knowledge (nature), etc.

That way, if someone wanted a wildnerness warrior, they could just be a fighter/rogue.

I rewrote the ranger to be a wilderness warrior with talent trees like those in d20 modern, but based off of Alertness, Endurance, Run, and Track, as I consider these the quintessential ranger feats and ones that are way underpowered.
 

Perhaps the ranger is a bit campaign specific. Just like the Bard, Barbarian and Paladin. Not every setting has people doing magic by music. Not every setting has tribes of uncivilized people. Not every campaign has knightly orders of do-gooders.
 

DonAdam said:
If you're intent on dropping rangers, it would help to have a variant rogue.
That's not a bad idea, although the expert already does this (d6 hit die, light armor, simple weapons, good skill points, pick any ten skills as class skills). And I'm more concerned with societal roles being fulfilled than that a PC class fill it.

A wilderness warrior can be built fairly nicely with a rogue archer or expert/fighter already.
I rewrote the ranger to be a wilderness warrior with talent trees like those in d20 modern, but based off of Alertness, Endurance, Run, and Track, as I consider these the quintessential ranger feats and ones that are way underpowered.
I don't consider Tracking to be underpowered, but I agree with the rest of that. That's a really good selection, now that you've brought my attention to it :). A 3rd level expert NPC (minimum professional level) who is a wilderness hunter should probably have Tracking and Alertness, at a minimum, and I may build a good long-distance running feat that's not underpowered.
Originally posted by The Proconsul
Perhaps the ranger is a bit campaign specific. Just like the Bard, Barbarian and Paladin. Not every setting has people doing magic by music. Not every setting has tribes of uncivilized people. Not every campaign has knightly orders of do-gooders.
As I've mentioned, I don't have a problem with the ranger being a campaign specific archetype, but with the fact that it is a muddled archetype - it tries to be too many things at once.

My setting plans to have grizzled mountain men, deadly forest archers, flourentine warriors, spell casting hermits who know the land, grudge-inclined individuals who hunt a particular species... I just have problems envisioning a setting where a whole class of people are all of these things at once.

From a societal standpoint, too, the individual roles and archetypes above are better suited to other classes: adepts, druids, experts, fighters, rogues.
 

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