Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 6446812" data-attributes="member: 92511">Always! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> Ok cool. I am not familiar with OD&D. So that was informative. Thanks."Got to be a massive spell caster"...beyond 8th level. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Did you gain cleric spells at 8th as an 8th level cleric? If so, then yeah, that would be massive! As a 4th level cleric? Not so much. But still useful. Or was it 1 1st level spell? In which case you would have to be 13/14th level+ to possibly be a "massive spellcaster*."*In this instance I am defining massive spellcaster as having 3rd+ level spells.Either way, there's another example of an edition of D&D [accepting the Strategic Review as canon for OD&D] in which the ranger didn't get spells until 8th and by 17th had suitable magics that might not be useless against "high level" threats/situations.This seems to only further support my point.How many campaigns -of actual play from level 1- ranged up into the mid-teens in those days? Sure, I played in some high level games. Not necessarily campaigns, but one shots or short adventures...like, "Let's make up some high level PCs and spend a few sessions playing Tomb of Horrors or QotDP".  But getting from 1 to 17, I did not, personally, experience. I believe 15th was the highest I ever played straight through and from what I've seen here in threads about this topic [how high did you actually play to?], that's a fairly average experience for BECM & 1e times. Playing from 1 to over [if even to] 17, not so much.So, again, a PC starting from level 1 had to go through 7 full levels of no casting before getting their 1 first spell at level 8. If you continued play with that PC up to 14th level, then you got to be a spellcasting ranger for half of your "career." And then, obviously, that % declined the higher the level you continued on to.How many games did that? How many games, from OD&D-2e, were levels 1-7? or 1-10 or 4-12? You got a little sprinkling of magic for a few levels at the tail end of your campaign...it was nice. A few little tricks you had mastered. Cool beans all around. But certainly not enough to make spellcasting a default motis operandi.Spellcasting was something the ranger received eventually. No one is disputing that.The dispute is in taking that "base/original" and teasing it out to "rangers should have spellcasting all of the time" rather than teasing it out in the other [more sensible to my mind] direction of "rangers should not have spellcasting at all -like fighters, like rogues- with a subclass and/or feat option to add it in later -like the fighter, like the rogue- for the PCs who want their rangers to have spells."Spellcasting for rangers, as I've always understood it [and maybe someone with access to publication from those responsible might have an actual site/quote to share], was introduced to allow the PC to emulate the "healing hands" of Aragorn (and I think there was one or two other minor magical seeming abilities, as Tolkien is decidedly sparse in the use of actual "spells")...working off the mythological concept of a king having healing powers and being directly responsible for and capable of influencing the health and well-being of the land over which they ruled. Just as Aragorn's use of the palantir was translated into D&D as rangers being allowed to use crystal balls (and other scrying magics). It was something, originally, only "magic-users" could do. So a lil' sprinkle of MU was added to the class.Going from those roots to "the point of the ranger is to be a spellcasting fighter"is a huge leap/gap. It simply wasn't...and, as I've been asserting, "should not be." I never heard of anyone choosing to be a ranger because they'd have a few low level spells around level 10. No one said "I want a spellcasting fighter. Ah! Ranger. That's the stuff!"So, as my original and previous posts state and support, 5e missed the mark by defaulting the base ranger to spell use from level 1. [HA! Ranger..."missed the mark." hahaha. hahhhI appreciate unintended wordplay.]I'm not going to loose sleep over it. The Ranger as presented in 5e is certainly playable. It is simply not "the ranger" that I would have expected or preferred, given how well they did with some of the other original classes.Happy Sunday all.</blockquote>

Verification