The origin of Rangers with Two-Weapon-Fighting

[TerraDave]

Yes, the Drow

This is the story I have seen, more then once. But no, I cannot verify it right now.

1) Unearthed Arcana makes Drow a PC race. They fight with two weapons.

2) Book with ranger drow that uses two weapons is written.

3) David zeb cook picks up on this, and puts two weapon rangers in the 2ed PHB.

Lets do another (and this is more speculative)

1) Unearthed arcana encourages rangers to wear ligher armor.

2) The D&D cartoon comes out full of UA goodness (cavelier, acrobat, a ranger in studed leather).

3) Most of UA goes by the wayside, but David zeb cook, perhaps influanced by the D&D cartoon, puts in rules to strongly encourage rangers to wear studded leather armor. And in 2nd ed there are a lot of playes with rangers in studed leather armor.

 

[diaglo]

armor came with headgear = to the AC of the armor. but what about the guy who found a suit of armor that lacked head gear?

so they had the rule about "intelligent" monsters attacking your unprotected head.

 

[green slime]

oh yeah,

like the fighter rule about getting a free swing for each lvl of experience vs monsters less than 1 HD.

diaglo "cleave, great cleave, whirlwind all rolled up into one" Ooi

*wipes tear away from eye*

*sigh*

 

[green slime]

armor came with headgear = to the AC of the armor. but what about the guy who found a suit of armor that lacked head gear?

so they had the rule about "intelligent" monsters attacking your unprotected head.

LOL! Yes I remember that! But there was also a chance that even the unintelligent would inadvertently hit your head What was it? 1 in 10 chance of an attack versus your AC10 head

 

[Aaron L]

The Crystal Shard came out January 1st, 1988. AD&D 2nd Edition was released middle to late 1989. The Crystal Shard was immensely successful from the get go, if I recall correctly (I have heard lots of horror stories from my friends who were playing at the time of people wanting to play Drizzt clones all over the place), and with the (commonly assumed) attitude of TSR at the time of not bothering with market research and assuming that people would buy whatever they put out "just because the were TSR" (as is the common wisdom nowadays, and is held as the reason for TSR's downfall) and the attitude at TSR of doing it's best to distance itself from Gygax as much as possible (according to several sources), the dual wielding Ranger coming straight from Drizzt is the only logical colclusion I can reach, and a year to include the change in the upcoming game books seems like enough time to me, especially if there was a fan in the development team championing the change, which I believe to be the case.


The 2E Ranger is so drastically different from the 1E Ranger that it's almost staggering, with the two having nothing in common but the name and both having vague "favored enemy" rules (giant-class in 1E, species enemy in 2E.) Considering that almost every other class in 2E was a direct port of the 1E classes (with the exception of the Illusionist where they were trying to make Specialist Mages more uniform), the drastic alteration of the Ranger, which coincidently made it a close match for the abilities and preferred methods of Drizzt, makes it very hard to believe that they weren't trying to remake the Ranger class in his image.

Otherwise it's a case of parallel evolution on par with the old Star Trek:TOS episodes where they would encounter planets that had developed exactly like Earth and had their own Roman Empires and such. In other words, highly, highly unlikely. I'll employ Occam's Razor and hold to my conclusion that Drizzt was the instigating factor in the change.


I've always assumed that they originally had a 2E Ranger much more inline with the 1E version, but ditched it at the last minute in favor of what was eventually put out in order to cash in on Drizzt's popularity... or perhaps someone at TSR at the time was a big fan of the character, and decided to remake the Ranger for 2E as one more way to distance the game from 1E.


Compare the 1E Paladin and the 2E Paladin, and then compare the 1E Ranger with the 2E Ranger. Whereas the Paladins have very little difference between them (discounting Unearthed Arcana Cavalier-Paladins), the differences between the two versions of the Ranger makes my eyes pop. It went from stormtrooper-commando slayer-of-humanoid-hordes with survival skills for behind the enemy lines, to a mystical forest warden and hunter with animal empathy. Now both are good concepts, and I don't want to disparage the later Rangers, but the 2 and 3E versions are just so different from the original conception of the class that I still feel it's loss.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

On this I agree. A whole year between one and the other is plenty of time to chuck in a perceived bone to add what many may find as "cool flavour".

One thing to bear in mind is that the development of 2E had been ongoing for quite some time- there are many discussions in the letters pages of old Dragon magazines devoted to it. The heads of TSR were getting a lot of feedback from players going into 2E- largely, I'd assume, from the letters to Dragon which seems to me to have been the main line of communication between the designers and the fans in those days. It's not entirely inconceivable to me that the Drizzt factor came into play as a result.

My recollection of things is more or less in line with Aaron L's that the Crystal Shard was immensely popular among the fans and was one of the best selling of the book line (which consisted of only a few titles at the time). Again, memory can be fuzzy, but my recollection is that Drizzt was wildly popular and it was always my (and my friends') assumption that Drizzt was the immediate inspiration for the TWF ability of the Ranger in 2E.

I'm curious enough to check when I go home now, though, and I'd suggest anyone else who has a big collection of Dragon magazine back-issues, to go back and read through the columns and see if there is any suggestion of what might specifically have led into things. I know that a lot of the spell school issues/changes that came about can more or less be directly attributed to feedback and suggestions from the people who wrote into the magazine, and I wouldn't be surprised to find suggestions on what to do with the Ranger in there as well.

 

[el-remmen]

Regardless of the origin, the 2E ranger was definitely an improvement to my eyes.

 

[S'mon]

Hm, I like how the C&C Ranger gets away from 'mystic forest warden' and back to 'death-dealing commando' the way Rangers Should Be, IMHO. The C&C version does keep the light armour & stealth skills, but no spells, animal companions, Greenpeace New Age Tree Huggery stuff. And they get back the +1 damage/level against goblinoids/giant types that made the Ranger so well loved!

 

[S'mon]

Incidentally, 1e Fiend Folio Drow can only fight 2-handed with shortsword & dagger combination, per the entry. No dual scimitars or dual longswords like Salvatore's munchkin drow!

 

[Cam Banks]

Personally, I thought R.A.Salvatore was just a fan of Nasir, the two-weapon fighting Saracen ranger guy from Robin of Sherwood.

Cheers,
Cam