Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7680404" data-attributes="member: 1465">First of all: great post! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I played 3e extensively and back then I have seen (although not played myself) many Ranger PCs, and I stand strong in my opinion that the 3.0 Ranger did not lack flavor, identity or power. IMHO it didn't even need the "boost" they gave it with 3.5. But the 3.5 boosted everyone (oddly enough, except the Sorcerer) just to encourage people to jump on board with it. Yes it was front-loaded as other classes were, but the 3e designers did not expect multiclassing to be as immensely popular as it was in 3e, and furthermore they did not expect gaming groups to totally handwave multiclassing restrictions like they did in most cases, and to let anyone freely level-dip without any relation to the story.I don't know how Rangers were done in 4e, but I can't help but notice that from 3.0 to 3.5 the Ranger's identity with relation to HP was revised from "tough" (d10 HD) to "average" (d8 HD), while from 5.0 to 5.5 it's getting revised from "tough" (d10 HD) to "toughest" (2d6 HD). Considering there has been 15 years between this is of course a long shot but IMHO is just another symptom that not even the seasoned designers have a clear idea on the Ranger's identity, because there isn't just one -> the problem is unsolvable and changing and re-changing and re-re-changing the Ranger a million times will never solve it for good.The best they can do in 5e is leverage the subclass system to provide as many identities they can think about, without ret-conning the base class!Hang on in there... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> If you look at the label "favored enemy", the 5e Ranger has a very small feature there: you know the language of your favored enemy, and you have advantage on tracking and knowledge checks. Not only this is tiny, but it doesn't even highlight the part about being your enemies: language and knowledge could more likely represent being friends of them!But if you look at the substance, the broadening you want is already done, except that it is pushed under the Hunter subclass. There you can find abilities which work against your favourite types of monsters but using very broad categories, perhaps even too broad since it's hard to tell which they are <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Here if I were WotC I would design plenty of additional options for Hunter's subclass features in order to support more favored enemies categories. It shouldn't even be difficult to do so, for example protections against common special attacks by undead, elementals, outsiders etc.But the key is to see that the framework is already there, and just realize that despite the labels, favored enemies are not really a feature of the 5e Ranger base class but only of a (flexible) subclass.Well this is a typical problem of D&D, which affects other classes, Fighter first. There is always someone who says "why shouldn't my Fighter (or Ranger, Rogue etc.) be able to learn this?". They want non-magical stuff to be available to everyone, and what you get is inevitably to dilute those classes' identity. You can't have both.I don't think the Ranger needs to be fixed. But expertise would have been a great idea in the first place.More survivability would have been nice. As for combat actions, I am actually quite pleased by what they did for all companions in core. But clearly the idea is exactly what you say i.e. you get your attacks per round and choose which ones are done by you and which ones by the animal. Their choice of defining this using action economy is an unnecessary complication.</blockquote>

Verification