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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7634568" data-attributes="member: 6775031">They tried really hard to separate the mechanics of a class out from its narrative identity, because they wanted to leave character identity as a matter of background. The reason it doesn't work is because class mechanics exist as a reflection of that identity. A wizard that isn't a scholar is a contradiction in terms; being a scholar is the entire reason why a wizard can cast spells. A ranger that isn't an outlander is not really a ranger, narratively speaking.As with most things in this edition, there are too many ideas competing for space, and the net result is a patch-work of mediocre ideas that fails to hold up under scrutiny. They need backgrounds as an independent variable, because fighters don't otherwise have an identity; but rangers do already have an identity, and giving them a background on top of that should either be redundant or contradictory. They ended up going with mechanical consistency (everyone gets a background), because they weren't willing to consolidate the ranger into the fighter class, where it obviously belongs.By my best guess, the reason why rangers don't have stealth as an automatic skill (and wizards don't have arcana) is because they wanted to give you flexibility with picking which skills come from your class and which skills come from your background, and/or because they didn't want to lock you into anything when multi-classing. (A thief who multi-classes into ranger will probably already have stealth.) It's not because they ever anticipated a ranger might not take stealth; that would be crediting them with far too much foresight.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7634568, member: 6775031"] They tried really hard to separate the mechanics of a class out from its narrative identity, because they wanted to leave character identity as a matter of background. The reason it doesn't work is because class mechanics exist as a reflection of that identity. A wizard that isn't a scholar is a contradiction in terms; being a scholar is the entire reason why a wizard can cast spells. A ranger that isn't an outlander is not really a ranger, narratively speaking. As with most things in this edition, there are too many ideas competing for space, and the net result is a patch-work of mediocre ideas that fails to hold up under scrutiny. They need backgrounds as an independent variable, because fighters don't otherwise have an identity; but rangers [I]do[/I] already have an identity, and giving them a background on top of that should either be redundant or contradictory. They ended up going with mechanical consistency (everyone gets a background), because they weren't willing to consolidate the ranger into the fighter class, where it obviously belongs. By my best guess, the reason why rangers don't have stealth as an automatic skill (and wizards don't have arcana) is because they wanted to give you flexibility with picking which skills come from your class and which skills come from your background, and/or because they didn't want to lock you into anything when multi-classing. (A thief who multi-classes into ranger will probably already have stealth.) It's not because they ever anticipated a ranger might [I]not[/I] take stealth; that would be crediting them with far too much foresight. [/QUOTE]

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