D&D 5E The Dual Wielding Ranger: How Aragorn, Drizzt, and Dual-Wielding Led to the Ranger's Loss of Identity

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not a game designer, but I agree with some of the criticism of rangers that's been expressed here. I've never really been comfortable with ranger spells, mostly because they seem to have been tagged on without really adding anything: usually, by the time the ranger has access to them, power levels have increased to the point where they don't offer any real benefit. Favoured enemy seems too specific for a particular role to be such a key feature of the class.

See, I disagree with taking spells out of the ranger. First of all, doing so really does just push them to just being a fighter or rogue, which I don't want. Secondly, I feel a better solution is more ranger exclusive spells that are designed better. No body looks at the paladin spell list and says "Well, by the time I get these they are all worthless, paladins just shouldn't have spellcasting"

One thing I've seen that I think works pretty well is giving them more spells that make weapon attacks, like a slightly rewritten Steel Wind Strike (which should never have been designed to make it better for wizards than it is rangers) and more and better spells for archery, like improving Lightning Arrow.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Haven't read the whole thread, but the MOST important thing that came out of UA, which survived in 2e, was Weapon Specialization. While this doesn't really relate directly to the Ranger per-se, what it DID do was create the first route in D&D to focusing on a specific weapon (or weapons) of choice. Prior to this time there was no special reason for a character to use one specific weapon. Sure, there was weapon proficiency and non-proficiency penalty, but all the melee classes had an adequate array of choices. Now and then a character might eschew a weapon due to not being able to use it really well, but there was no motive to specifically favoring one, except maybe that it was a powerful magic item.

Once specialization existed, and double specialization, etc. then the characterization of PCs changed. Most every fighter type character would specialize, why not? It was a free bonus! Of course you could now use less types of weapons well, but in general the reasons to switch weapons were fairly limited anyway, and bashing skeletons with your sword when you got +2 and extra attacks for half damage was probably a better idea than switching to a mace and doing slightly more damage per attack but getting less of them and hitting less.

This was a pivotal moment in the evolution of D&D melee/ranged combatants. Perhaps few used UA much, but a lot of people lifted that one rule, it was popular! And of course 2e obliged by porting it over pretty much verbatim.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the word "ranger" has always meant different things to different people.

For LotR fans it means "like Aragorn"; for others it means "uses a ranged weapon"; or a "park ranger" - protector of the wilderness; or "Texas ranger" - a travelling lawman; or a type soldier.

The class should be renamed wobfazler. What is a wobfazler? A wobfazler is as a wobfazler does.

I don't really agree with this whole idea that the archetype is not clear and distinct. Think about that English language word, 'ranger', it evokes a concept of traveling, and of traveling in remote places. Also of hunting and scouting. US Army Rangers are guys that go in front of the rest of the army, they find the enemy, they discover the lay of the land, and employ surprise and deception specifically as tactics (partly because they are likely to be outnumbered, being scouts). A Texas Ranger was a guy who rode around in a semi-settled frontier area and hunted down criminals, etc. Park Ranger is closely related to these as well, enforcing park rules and looking out for people in a wilderness or remote setting. Even the use by JRRT of the term 'Ranger' to describe Aragorn and the other Dunedain of Arnor is built on this same idea. Then you have adjacent concepts, like Robin Hood, who's never described as a 'ranger', but is certainly a guy who wanders a wilderness seeking justice.

So, there IS an archetype. Like all archetypes it has many varied instantiations and a complex genesis, but it exists. It is also ancient, as we have many 'heroic hunters' going back into ancient myth, and in many cases, like Odysseus, they sought justice or righted wrongs (admittedly against his own family, but as a king he was also a justice enforcer). He's also a bowman, a trait he shares with Artemis, Orion, etc. who all share some of these traits.

Obviously Aragorn was the specific model of the OD&D/1e ranger class. However, stuff like dual wielding wasn't all that oddball and its addition in UA/2e was not some tectonic shift. I dragged out the character sheet for my old Ranger PC, which was created in the early 80's under 1e. His weapon proficiencies are Bastard Sword, Hand Axe, and Longbow. He lacks a shield and I guess my idea was, because he had a high DEX (why? I don't know) that he would use a bow and dual wield in melee so he didn't need to equip a shield (and can easily chuck the axe and then wield the sword two-handed I guess). UA just seems to have let me double down on those options, I guess.

The character was never fully converted to 2e. There are a number of subtleties here WRT 2e. In 2e ONLY fighters, NOT WARRIORS, can specialize or double specialize, unlike UA, so a Ranger CANNOT DO THIS AT ALL. Thus 2e rangers have no 'archer' feature of any kind at all. Instead they get the 'no penalty to dual wield', which generally is a smaller benefit if you have a high dex, but is pretty useful for most rangers. Note that dual wielding was available to any PC in 1e, but is ONLY allowed to Warriors and Thieves (or maybe all rogues) in 2e. So, 2e's ranger really is a focused dual wielder, no specific archery focus was intended, though the DEX prereq does mean they are likely to be decent archers. Technically the 2e ranger is mostly a downgrade of the 1e ranger. They lost specialization, 2d8 starting hit points, and some of their spell-casting ability, though the focus on a declared enemy was good (I did pick up that aspect for my character due to his backstory, but I think we had actually already included something similar in our game before 2e).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But thieves, especially in 2e, were not warriors.

So the Dual Wielding Warrior had to go somewhere and the Ranger was chosen.

Right, but Rogues are specifically called out in 2e as the only other class which can dual wield besides fighters, AT ALL. In 2e all other classes (cleric and wizard) are thus excluded (I mean, not a really big deal but its there). Given the way dual wielding rules work, and the fact that Thieves cannot use a shield, they are actually basically just as good as a Ranger at doing it in 2e, they just don't need the 'no matter what your dex is' part, since they will surely have at least a 16 normally.

But personally, I think there really IS a decent possibility that one little bit was tossed onto the 2e ranger simply because it fit with Drizz't. Or maybe it fit AND they needed 'something extra' to give the Ranger, since they already took away a LOT that they had in 1e... (and especially in UA).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But personally, I think there really IS a decent possibility that one little bit was tossed onto the 2e ranger simply because it fit with Drizz't. Or maybe it fit AND they needed 'something extra' to give the Ranger, since they already took away a LOT that they had in 1e... (and especially in UA).

D&D General - Dual-Wielding and The Ranger, Part 2: On the Unappreciated Genius of Zeb

Last week, I began to research a topic that I had not looked into before- while I had previously looked into the history of the Ranger class, I had never before thought about the issue of the evolution of the Ranger from OSR/AD&D into 2e. More specifically, the question of whether of not Drizzt...

www.enworld.org

I went into this in Part 2.

TLDR; naw. The "maybe Drizzt" doesn't check out- but the designer of 2e had already "beta tested" a dual-wielding, dex-based martial class in OA.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Was this true before 4e? It seems to me that 4e's transformation was what really caused this particular dissatisfaction. Which really brings up another issue. It seems like each edition adds (or subtracts) something more or less completely new to ranger, and since someone will probably like what they did that edition there is now one more thing to make people unhappy about.

It probably would have worked better if they had tried to develop a stronger class identity from the whole Aragorn thing, rather than keep experimenting with new identity ideas. I think there was enough there to work with that a new D&D conceptual archetype could have been refined. Here are some thoughts.

-Full warrior. Heavy armor should probably be on the menu, and your choice of Strength or Dexterity focus.
-Magical. With their history of both divine/primal and arcane magic, they could even be the baseline "gish" class some would like. It doesn't have to go that far though. Being a dabbler also would be fine.
-Protector/Guardian/Warden. Conceptually they protect and guard something from something else. Part of this would include great sentry-like awareness. Things like being harder to surprise and having tracking skills would go with this aspect.

And that could probably have been the foundation. An alert warrior who uses magic to assist in guarding something (subclasses allow further definition).

That seems plenty strong enough that it could have become established in D&D lore, and D&D-inspired fantasy. I mean we have mystical unarmed martial artist monks and shapeshifting druids established now because of D&D, and this seems as strong as those.

PERFECTLY describes a straightforward 4e ranger build. Focus on STR and wear heavy armor, then pick up Ritual Casting (I am pretty sure there's at least one MC feat that will give it to you, along with some other goodies). You can also add some powers from whatever MC caster class you got, if you really want. This is a very solid and reasonably optimal character. It will dual wield as a matter of course, though I think you can fold in the spiked buckler if you want a bit of shield in there too. You'll be passable with a bow, assuming your DEX is not dumped, but not great with it, similar to most fighters. You could also use the MP2 'chuck-n-charge' build, which is pretty good too, though that probably pretty much mandates light armor.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Dual wielding as we are talking about does not predate Drizzt.

Dual wielding the tomahawk (hand axe) and knife (dagger) in the offhand do predate Drizzt and they are available in 1E for every character class except Cleric (who could not wield daggers or axes). They are not Ranger specific and were most often depicted on thieves and fighters in both the novels and sourcebooks. This is not dual wielding as I am speaking of it, we are talking about 2 of any one handed weapons (two swords, two maces, a sword and a hammer), which started for Rangers in 2E.

No class, including Rangers, could dual wield anything other than hand axes and daggers in the offhand. This was the case up until 2E and as noted above Drizzt, dual wielding scimitars, was published in a 1E sourcebook.

This is not accurate. NO rule in AD&D allows off-hand wielding of a larger weapon. You can wield any weapon usable in one hand as your primary weapon, and the secondary must be a 'smaller' weapon. Ranger is not exempt from this rule, they are simply excluded from the attack penalties when in light armor. While this might tend to make it a good option, a sword-and-board, or two-hander type of ranger is a perfectly good option. Since they have no specialization they are free to mix and match as the tactical situation dictates.

In fact, yes, you could dual wield a dagger and a tomahawk in all of AD&D, though a few classes lost this ability in 2e, technically (druids being the one that might actually matter). It wouldn't have been a good choice though, you'd be better with a bigger main weapon, there's no reason to stick to dagger, except for the edge case of a 1e Magic User (pretty unlikely to come up!). 1e clerics could, IMHO, technically dual wield a mace and a throwing hammer, though I cannot say I have ever seen it done.

 

[Minigiant]

See, I disagree with taking spells out of the ranger. First of all, doing so really does just push them to just being a fighter or rogue, which I don't want. Secondly, I feel a better solution is more ranger exclusive spells that are designed better. No body looks at the paladin spell list and says "Well, by the time I get these they are all worthless, paladins just shouldn't have spellcasting"

One thing I've seen that I think works pretty well is giving them more spells that make weapon attacks, like a slightly rewritten Steel Wind Strike (which should never have been designed to make it better for wizards than it is rangers) and more and better spells for archery, like improving Lightning Arrow.

To me there are too few defense buff spells.

There really should be some arctic, swamp, or desert spells that give defensive buffs and exploration bonuses like Hunter's Mark. Like a sand shield that shades you from the blistering sun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Beastmaster ranger was a result of 3e Druid being OP OP.

Most D&D clones, MMOs, and fantasy games shifted beast companions to ranger from druids after Druidzilla. also 3e ranger was weak so ranger players utilized their weak beast buddy more whereas druids could easily forget they exist

4e's beastmaster build works QUITE well actually. I know people complained about the fact that the companion is not a combat powerhouse, but the reasons for that are fairly obvious, and you gave up very little to get the companion.

In terms of 1e or 2e, you can simply create a henchman as a beast, its not a big deal. 1e DMG doesn't really give you a rule to recruit one, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It goes back farther and deeper than that.

Originally it was just Fighters and Magic-Users out of Chainmail. Arneson came up with hybrid fighter magic-users with some unique things to execute a Doctor Van Helsing character concept for a player to be a foil to a vampire bad guy side character. So we got a hybrid who used crosses to repel vampires and did healing.

Thieves were a variant of magic users with variant non magical spells for thief abilities and a touch of fighter (some weapons and light armor) to balance out their less powerful spell variants.

I am a fan of the two class concept. Fighters are not dumb and unskilled conceptually there.

All of the big 4 are pretty solid basic archetypes. You have the fighter, the mystery worker (cleric), master of arcane knowledge (wizard), and the trickster (thief). They are all pretty solid and attested over the whole range of legends, myths, and literature. I thought 2e's approach was pretty coherent here, all classes are sub-classes of Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, or Priest 'super classes'. Within each of these archetypes you could potentially implement a whole range of more specific character types. You can definitely argue which of these are 'needed' and which are more superfluous, but it isn't necessary that each and every one be entirely unique. They can overlap a bit here and there. Later 2e introduced kits, which was the start of what is now WotC pattern D&D, classes plus added 'modules' that may or may not be class-specific or super-class specific in different cases.

Of course WotC D&D also did away with the idea of the super-classes. I think that was mainly a mechanical thing, there is just nothing that NEEDS to be put there specifically. When I designed my own 4e-like game I considered the creation of 'archetypes' as super-classes, but it just didn't add that much. It was more confusing and complicated vs useful.