D&D 5E What are the Roles now?

[pemerton]

I also don't think "train an animal to fight" is, or even should be, a purely magical effect. Real-world cultures did it all the time--the forebears of the modern Rottweiler (probably) included the preferred breed of war dog in ancient Rome. In a setting where things that are physically impossible in our world are achievable by purely "mundane" characters like Fighters, I fail to see why Rangers HAVE to be magical in order to have a well-trained war animal. Or, in other words, I don't think it's a supernatural bond, and I think several of the class-specific "spells" the 5e ranger gets should just be abilities. This is almost surely a matter of taste.

I mentioned this in the L&L retrospective thread.

There are a number of abilities that D&D has, traditionally, categorised as magical rather than mundane because that was a way of rationing them: the ability to blind, maim etc; the ability to befriend or persuade people; the ability to have an animal companion; the ability to urge on one's companions (ie hp recovery); etc.

4e broke away from this in some respects. 5e has generally gone back to it.

I think this tradition is part of what makes it hard to model fictional archetypes and fictional stories using D&D.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Technically the PHB says 8 hours, if you're talking about replacing your companion. Personally, I'd say that as long as the master lives, the pet lives, because killing a Beastmaster Ranger's animal companion is a BS move in a game that lets a character specialize in "has a combat pet."

That said, though? I don't necessarily know that I would call it "supernatural" (recognizing that, yes, such a term is quite squishy in D&D Land). When bears, wolves, etc. are as dangerous as they are, and capable of taking down clearly not-real-world-natural, capable-of-overt-magical-feats enemies, the issue is more about making one your friend, and all of that sort of thing is perfectly well-handled by the Nature skill. But then again, I was very pleased with 4e's move of making many things that used to be "spells" simply uses of skills (e.g. Detect Magic is just an Arcana check, Animal Friendship is just a Nature Check, etc.) so...yeah, I still don't think that task is so special and powerful that it outright requires overt, declarative, resource-consumptive spellcasting ability.

Okay, 8 hours then. By "zero to hero" I wasn't referring to simply making one your friend--it's the fact that over the course of 8 hours, the bear/wolf/whatever gains up to 80 HP, +6 to AC/to-hit/damage (and maybe saves, I forget).

 

[pemerton]

Personally, I'd say that as long as the master lives, the pet lives, because killing a Beastmaster Ranger's animal companion is a BS move in a game that lets a character specialize in "has a combat pet."

over the course of 8 hours, the bear/wolf/whatever gains up to 80 HP, +6 to AC/to-hit/damage (and maybe saves, I forget).

Aren't these two things related? As in, the power-up is all about giving the animal friend "plot armour". Is there any reason it can't be interpreted in that way (rather than as a literal power up within the shared fiction)?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Aren't these two things related? As in, the power-up is all about giving the animal friend "plot armour". Is there any reason it can't be interpreted in that way (rather than as a literal power up within the shared fiction)?

I don't understand the question. Clearly you are interpreting it that way, and I don't know what evidence could possibly stop you from doing so. "Plot armor" doesn't seem like a falsifiable proposition to me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, I was mostly thinking of 4e when I said that, where the default ranger has no magical abilities at all, and even the "Martial/Primal" subclass only had Primal-keyword (aka "magic") utilities.

Ah, I missed that because there /was/ a Beastmaster Ranger in 4e. One of the Martial Power books.

I also don't think "train an animal to fight" is, or even should be, a purely magical effect. Real-world cultures did it all the time--the forebears of the modern Rottweiler (probably) included the preferred breed of war dog in ancient Rome.

5e's resolution system is pretty open-ended. Your ability to train up an animal through 'mundane' means is limited only by your DM's judgement, in that sense. DMs are even encouraged to create new Backgrounds. 'Beast-tamer' or something could be one. Either way, your non-caster Ranger could have an animal. Not an Animal Companion in the in 3.x sense, but an animal they keep around.

In a setting where things that are physically impossible in our world are achievable by purely "mundane" characters like Fighters, I fail to see why Rangers HAVE to be magical in order to have a well-trained war animal.

D&D has often leaned towards the physically possible being inaccessible to fighters, but yeah, no reason anyone should need a ranger spell to have a pet. Even a dangerous wild one. Just, y'know, hope your DM finds the idea plausible, since he'll be setting the DCs.

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand the question. Clearly you are interpreting it that way, and I don't know what evidence could possibly stop you from doing so. "Plot armor" doesn't seem like a falsifiable proposition to me.

Well, maybe there's some aspect to the mechanics, or some mechanical interaction, that I've missed, that rules out the buffs being purely metagame rather than ingame.

If the buffs can be interpreted as purely metagame, then there is no "zero to hero" in 8 hours problem: the PC befriends a bear, or wolf, or whatever, and then the creature gets metagame buffs that ensure it will have the desired weight in play, while (in the fiction) just being a normal animal (I'm thinking along the line of the Phantom's wolf Devil or his horse Hero, in contrast to Shadowfax who is clearly a superior horse in the fiction and not just at the meta-/story level).

 

[Hussar]

I don't understand the question. Clearly you are interpreting it that way, and I don't know what evidence could possibly stop you from doing so. "Plot armor" doesn't seem like a falsifiable proposition to me.

Perhaps I can help.

If you had an animal companion wolf standing beside a regular wolf, is there any in game method to distinguish between those two?I mean, are there any actual physical changes to the animal companion wolf that would explain the extra hit points and AC?

 

[SirAntoine]

Just to go off on a tangent as I sit here, coffee in hand while trying to wake up, I realise that after reading the Elves of Alfheim gazetteer (again) that the role of the basic dnd elf might best be emulated by the bard. As many know, the basic elf class archetype was a class that was skilled in combat and magic but who halted their magic studies at 10th level while still increasing their combat ability. Elves of Alfheim brought in the Tree keeper class that let an elf focus on the magical abilities instead.

Although the bard class has musical abilities which may not mesh well with the basic archetype, the subclasses of lore and skald fit well with a basic elf and their decision to focus more on their magical or combat skills.

Multi-classing gets it done in my opinion, but I'd rather have the elf class back.

 

[SirAntoine]

Perhaps I can help.

If you had an animal companion wolf standing beside a regular wolf, is there any in game method to distinguish between those two?I mean, are there any actual physical changes to the animal companion wolf that would explain the extra hit points and AC?

I think it might be nice if there are some distinguishing characteristics which could be observed, but they aren't necessary. As a character's hit points increase, for example, they don't get bigger or fiercer.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, maybe there's some aspect to the mechanics, or some mechanical interaction, that I've missed, that rules out the buffs being purely metagame rather than ingame.

If the buffs can be interpreted as purely metagame, then there is no "zero to hero" in 8 hours problem: the PC befriends a bear, or wolf, or whatever, and then the creature gets metagame buffs that ensure it will have the desired weight in play, while (in the fiction) just being a normal animal (I'm thinking along the line of the Phantom's wolf Devil or his horse Hero, in contrast to Shadowfax who is clearly a superior horse in the fiction and not just at the meta-/story level).

But there are people, plenty of them, who view HP as a metagame construct too. In spite of all evidence to the contrary (fungibility of HP via Vampiric Touch, the fact that contact poisons trigger on a "hit" and not on reaching 0 HP, the fact that HP function while you are asleep, etc., etc.) there are people who view HP degradation not as actual physical injury but rather as a kind of luck depletion, and who prefer to play as if real physical injury doesn't occur until you reach 0 HP. I don't understand it and I don't agree with it, but it can't actually be falsified because that's just the way they like to play it. Any evidence I could possibly come up with for the animal companion, such as fact that you can fully heal a 7th-level necromancer off a 20th level ranger's wolf (using Vampiric Touch) after bonding even though before bonding the necromancer would regain barely 12% of his HP from the animal--any of that evidence is subject to the same kind of player interpretation. If you want to view that apparently-physical difference as a form of plot armor that makes the wolf more metaphysically nourishing but not actually any different than a regular wolf... I mean, how could I falsify that? It's your magic elf-game, you can interpret it any way you want to even if it makes no sense to me.

If you're willing to propose a standard of evidence, I could see whether I can find evidence to meet that standard, but your original question was whether there was any reason you could not interpret it as "plot armor," and I have no idea how you'd ever prevent someone from interpreting it that way if they are inclined to do so.