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Message: <blockquote data-quote="auburn2" data-source="post: 8243357" data-attributes="member: 6855259">Thanks for the call out.  However I disagree and I will post my reasons here.  Unlike you I am an avid Drizzt follower and have read on the order of 10,000 pages of Drizzt novels.  Here is my rebuttal:A. Timing - The Crystal Shard was out well before the 2nd edition PHB, and was a much better seller, further Salvatory and the forgotten realms were being pushed and advertised in Dragon magazine as well around the same time (maybe before?) Crystal Shard was published.  More or less immediately after that book Drizzt overtook Aragorn as the Archetype for a Ranger.  Cook was soliciting input from fans in Dragon magazine starting in 1987 and continuing right up until printing.  Finally I don't think anything was being rigorously playtested in 2E in the 80s and the draft of the Crystal Shard would have been available to some of the 2E designers well before it was published as a book.B. Drizzt design thin and not focused on rules:  I get what your saying, but wielding 2 weapons absolutely is a dark elf trait and recognized as such in Drizzt.  It is called out in both the Fiend Folio and in the Unearthed Arcana you mention being specific to dark elves.  Further, Salvatory might not have put much effort into the rules in general, but he did when it came to 2-weapon fighting and actually put it in print.  Drizzt did not learn to be a Ranger in the Underdark, he learned to be a Ranger from Montillo, a blind human Ranger. This was long after he learned to fight with 2 scimitars.  During this training Montillo asked him if he wanted a dirk or hand axe to use in his offhand (which is straight out of 1e rules for everyone except dark elves).  Drizzt replies that he uses two Scimitars.  Montillo, who is like the Ranger of Rangers in the surface world says that is an odd style.  Drizzt replies that it is not so odd in his homeland (the land of the Drow who the rules say can do this).  This is actually a conversation in a Salvatory Drizzt novel.  If dual wielding was part of the Ranger class I think Montillo would have heard about it long before he met Drizzt and Salvatory specifically tied it to Drizzt Dark elf heritage.  As an aside Salvatory makes other references to several quirky d&d rules in the early novels as well, this dies down in the latter novels.C. Cook doesn't know.  That is all he had to say but it is fundamentally different from "no it wasn't".  If he doesn't know, then he does not know what inspired the idea.  Where did this dual wielding Ranger come from?  This remains unanswered following Cook's explanation.  Maybe the idea came from a fan.  Maybe it came from one of his designers.  Wherever it came from, I am pretty confident that person got it from Drizzt.Finally - What is obvious is at some point someone said "A Ranger should wield 2 weapons".  What was the inspiration for this?  Aragorn didn't do it.  Legolas did not do it.  Further, why the Ranger and not the Fighter or the Rogue - both of which it actually fits better as an archetype if not for Drizzt.  Someone had to come up with that idea, no one involved can say how or why and that someone just happened to come up with it at the same time the most famous Ranger in history burst on the scene?</blockquote>

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