D&D General Seeking Input: A moment of prayer for the Ranger

[theBardic life]

I really want to see if the "army scout" idea could work. I have toyed with making a magic-less Ranger and never really arrived at something anywhere as good as what the 5e Barbarian achieves.
Perspective: I'm weird in that I started from 5e and then went towards the OSR, one of the reasons was the "everyone has magic" issue that 5e suffered from.
Side note: Barbarians and Paladins are how i think an alternative fighter work best: mechanically different on alternative axies and I am a bit sad the Ranger doesn't have this feel.

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting. A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

 

[TiQuinn]

I really want to see if the "army scout" idea could work. I have toyed with making a magic-less Ranger and never really arrived at something anywhere as good as what the 5e Barbarian achieves.
Perspective: I'm weird in that I started from 5e and then went towards the OSR, one of the reasons was the "everyone has magic" issue that 5e suffered from.
Side note: Barbarians and Paladins are how i think an alternative fighter work best: mechanically different on alternative axies and I am a bit sad the Ranger doesn't have this feel.

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting. A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

The best version of the Ranger that I’ve seen that fits this bill is from a rules hack for Dungeon World called Unlimited Dungeons. In essence, when the party “Undertakes a Perilous Journey”, the Ranger is able to get extra benefits when they succeed on the role. Similarly, they get abilities to “Scout Ahead” of the party that also yields benefits in terms of information or a tactical advantage. Really great stuff that makes the Ranger feel extremely useful when in a wilderness environment.

The issue is that it’s for a much more narrative style game which is very careful to keep the lanes for each class distinct. One of the issues with 5e specifically and D&D in general is there are few abilities around exploration that don’t get one-upped by a wizard, cleric or druid spell. Also if you don’t emphasize wilderness encounters or overland travel, then the non-magical ranger is going to feel pointless.

 

[theBardic life]

Oh, thanks, that sounds super interesting, I'll check it out.
And you're 100% right about the magic users being able to fill that scouting role. its such a hard balance to try and protect a non-spellcasting niche (e.g. thief skills) while giving the spellcasters enough flexibility.
I wonder if it means that I need to limit class selection and spell selection to protect the Ranger's niche.
But surely I should not need to do that unless the Ranger niche is so weak that it needs such protection?
Side note: I blame this 100% on reading Dritzz as a child

 

[Tonguez]

I really want to see if the "army scout" idea could work. I have toyed with making a magic-less Ranger and never really arrived at something anywhere as good as what the 5e Barbarian achieves.
Perspective: I'm weird in that I started from 5e and then went towards the OSR, one of the reasons was the "everyone has magic" issue that 5e suffered from.
Side note: Barbarians and Paladins are how i think an alternative fighter work best: mechanically different on alternative axies and I am a bit sad the Ranger doesn't have this feel.

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting. A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

The Rogue Scout is an excellent iteration of Ranger - skirmish, mobility, ambush - I'd suggest starting with that and then adding on any other bonuses that work for you

 

[FrogReaver]

I really want to see if the "army scout" idea could work. I have toyed with making a magic-less Ranger and never really arrived at something anywhere as good as what the 5e Barbarian achieves.
Perspective: I'm weird in that I started from 5e and then went towards the OSR, one of the reasons was the "everyone has magic" issue that 5e suffered from.
Side note: Barbarians and Paladins are how i think an alternative fighter work best: mechanically different on alternative axies and I am a bit sad the Ranger doesn't have this feel.

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting. A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

If you want that experience in 5e just play a hidey rogue. Put expertise in stealth, perception and later survival and maybe athletics or nature. Maybe be a wood elf to get perception and some extra move speed.

In the wilderness you basically keep a distance and shadow the party. In combat you use your superior move speed to kite enemies. Stay hidden and rehide whenever possible. Duck behind cover, obstacles and line of sight obscurements when you can. It's a very fun playstyle. Dungeons you make a great person to scout ahead. High speed to fall back if needed, high perception, darkvision, etc.

Someone mentioned scout rogue, but I tried this with assassain rogue and loved it. Shadowing the party and scouting ahead gave plenty of opportunties for the auto crit damage feature from the assassain. Then you just fall back to the party with whatever is still alive chasing you. If lucky you killed the lone guard/ enemy and continue scouting.

 

[FrogReaver]

I really want to see if the "army scout" idea could work. I have toyed with making a magic-less Ranger and never really arrived at something anywhere as good as what the 5e Barbarian achieves.
Perspective: I'm weird in that I started from 5e and then went towards the OSR, one of the reasons was the "everyone has magic" issue that 5e suffered from.
Side note: Barbarians and Paladins are how i think an alternative fighter work best: mechanically different on alternative axies and I am a bit sad the Ranger doesn't have this feel.

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting. A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

To answer specifically on a spell-less Ranger. That's my preference for the Ranger concept as well, but a balltemaster fighter that gets the necessary skills from background and some of the skill enhancing manuevers from Tasha's splat makes for decent take on that concept. And as mentioned above, there's a few ways to play a rogue that also leans heavily into 'army scout' concept.

Monks also can fulfill the 'army scout' playstyle if you lean into it with them.

Between those implementations, I don't know that spell less Ranger in 5e would be different enough or even better than these.

 

[TiQuinn]

Oh, thanks, that sounds super interesting, I'll check it out.
And you're 100% right about the magic users being able to fill that scouting role. its such a hard balance to try and protect a non-spellcasting niche (e.g. thief skills) while giving the spellcasters enough flexibility.
I wonder if it means that I need to limit class selection and spell selection to protect the Ranger's niche.
But surely I should not need to do that unless the Ranger niche is so weak that it needs such protection?
Side note: I blame this 100% on reading Dritzz as a child

I think it needs protection in the same sense that if you have a true “thief” class built around finding and disarming traps, opening locked doors, and climbing walls but then never provide those things in the game, you’re not protecting those abilities. And it’s the same issue: magic can easily do those things too. I think the game doesn’t do a lot to protect the ranger’s exploration abilities.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters? Creating opportunities for cunning wilderness encounters and emphasizes problem-solving and survival skills over spellcasting.

i don't think so, at least not in 5e, as has already been mentioned there's very few things a ranger does that magic doesn't already have a better answer for, plus i'm of the opinion that while rangers are primarily martial their survivalist archetype inclines them to never leaving a tool that's useful, and magic is one hell of a useful tool, it just needs to suplement the abilities they're meant to have rather than outright replace them.

A ranger's true power should lie in their knowledge of the land and their ability to use it to their advantage.
What do you all think?

this i do agree in, i really like what BG3 did with the ranger's favoured foe and terrain, in that your specialties give you permanent capabilities that are always available, if mages are your favoured enemy you gain arcana proficiency, if your favoured terrain is the arctic you gain cold resistance.

if the ranger were to loose their casting then i think their best thing for their class to instead gain would be a list of 'primal invocations' similar to what the warlock and artificer get, more focused and specific packages of abilities that run the gamut of things their archetype is meant to cover, some of which would include some casting capability but specific stuff like 'you have PB/LR uses of cure wounds.'

Edit: the biggest hurdle of ranger in 5e IMO is that ranger premise doesn’t play nice with single subclass design, rangers don’t typically align to single archetype so much as having a handful of smaller ones, but trying to cover all of them in a single class leads to them being bad at all of them, so rangers need something like invocations to let them specialise in specific areas.

 

[GMMichael]

Does stripping magic from rangers return them to their roots as skilled trackers and hunters?

Magic or spellcasting? It looks to me that stripping them of magic is full-on hamstringing them; stripping only spellcasting is close.

I support the "take rogue" suggestions above because the ranger is just broken. Look at the signature Hunter's Mark ability: "You magically mark one creature you can see. . . You also have advantage on any wisdom check you make to find it." So, do I need to see it or not?

Nature's Veil: give yourself the Invisible condition as a bonus action. No mention of trees, shadows, shrubbery . . . and most of its benefit ends if an enemy "can somehow see you." Like when you used your Nature's Veil feature without hiding first? In which case, you didn't need the Nature's Veil to begin with?

 

[haakon1]

In my 3.5e campaigns, we have a no spells and no Favored Enemy homebrew version of the Ranger, like what you described.

But 5e is quite different.