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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7471749" data-attributes="member: 37579">But who decides what is a “heavy wound”?We must be remembering a different 3.5e. People hated having to buy the same rules again. Sales were half that of the 3.0 books. Games stores were saddles with numerous 3.0 books they couldn’t give away and many were driven out of business. And the audience was divided between those who updated and did not updated.Doing it for a single class would be a terrible idea.Heck, WotC isn’t even doing the Updates that 4e did, adjusting things for balance. Because people didn’t like that. If it’s not overtly broken and wrecking people’s campaigns it does not need to be fixed. Great Weapon Fighting is more of an issue. Except the options prior have been additive. They haven’t replaced content in people’s games. Also… not ever DM allows the newest accessories. Many just play PHB only games. So yeah, that does cause issues. And making an optional “core” element will cause tension and friction at the tables.Adventurer’s League is irrelevant.There are less than 2500 Wizards Play Network stores running AL in North America. Less than 0.5% if games are AL. And, of those, only a fraction will play rangers. And only a fraction of that fraction of those will want to play the ranger but not like it.It’s an irrelevant number. There are likely more people playing online via Rol20 and Fantasy Grounds. You’re better off asking “but what about the VTT?!?l” Because the tabletops suddenly have to worry about adding a new ranger to their systems, coding alternate class features, and somehow paying for that development time without charging for a second version of the ranger. Plus confusion from players over how their class might have been stealth updated. VTT are ten times as relevant as Adventurer’s League. (Literally. Roll20 alone has 36k games.)See my argument about all the many, many things that could be changed for the “play experience”.Singling out the ranger is largely arbitrary. Seriously. Why the ranger? Well, it’s the least well received when you poll the entire audience and ask how happy they are. But why not fix the class that is actually played less? That seems more relevant. Or the feats played least? The spells cast least? Why not fix the options considered overpowered, needing them a little? All those would be equally good for balance. You can make a case for any change.Can we improve it? Sure. But, again, we can do the same thing for the fighter, monk, sorcerer, barbarian. Likely a few wizard and cleric options, Again, by “widely accepted” you mean “less than half”.There are new options. There are dozens. I linked a popular one above.It’s not that the mechanics don’t work. They work just fine. It’s that the damage output doesn’t meet the output in a white room simulation. The class just doesn’t meet some arbitrary bar for optimizers. People HAVE an iconic class. And lots and lots of gamers are playing it and happy. Being in the top 66% of classes, likely one out of every three tables has a ranger. Because, brace yourself, not everyone cares about the mechanics. (I’d argue that most people don’t.) The tone and feel of the class is often more important. The story. And that works just fine.</blockquote>

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