D&D 5E What is/should be the Ranger's "thing"?

[TheCosmicKid]

I see the ranger as the guy who is uniquely aware of his environment and capable of exploiting it. He's the one who spots the best place to take cover, fords the river across hidden shallows, and leads his enemies into a deadly morass. Abilities like Natural Explorer and Land's Stride are good starts, but the trouble with their traditional implementation has always been that they place the character's expertise at the mercy of the DM's encounter design. What if the ranger mechanics took a more proactive approach?

Rough sketch:

Lay of the Land
Starting at Nth level, your keen eye for terrain allows you to notice features that may be advantageous to you and your allies. In effect, this allows you to add to the DM's description of environments. At the start of an encounter, you can add one feature from the Lay of the Land list, as appropriate to the terrain type. If you have the opportunity to select and prepare the field of the encounter (for example, choosing where to lay an ambush), you can instead select up to three features.
Starting at Nth level, you can select larger and more significant features from the Improved Lay of the Land list.

Lay of the Land List
Forest: fallen tree, bramble bush, hornet's nest, etc.
Mountain: grotto, loose snow, etc.
Dungeon: etc.
etc.

I'm not entirely sold on this ability philosophically. It's much more narrativist and dissociated than D&D normally goes for, as the player knows he can reshape the battlefield but the character doesn't. However, it does ensure that rangers can be rangers, and bring something to the party that cannot be replicated or even beaten by a rogue who takes Perception and Survival.

Other ideas to reinforce the theme:
- climb and swim speeds.
- just more speed generally - why is the barbarian faster?
- double bonus from cover.
- ignoring cover a la Sharpshooter.
- enemies in difficult terrain have disadvantage on melee attacks.
- enemies who take damage from the environment grant advantage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I see the ranger as the guy who is uniquely aware of his environment and capable of exploiting it. He's the one who spots the best place to take cover, fords the river across hidden shallows, and leads his enemies into a deadly morass. Abilities like Natural Explorer and Land's Stride are good starts, but the trouble with their traditional implementation has always been that they place the character's expertise at the mercy of the DM's encounter design. What if the ranger mechanics took a more proactive approach?

Rough sketch:

Lay of the Land
Starting at Nth level, your keen eye for terrain allows you to notice features that may be advantageous to you and your allies. In effect, this allows you to add to the DM's description of environments. At the start of an encounter, you can add one feature from the Lay of the Land list, as appropriate to the terrain type. If you have the opportunity to select and prepare the field of the encounter (for example, choosing where to lay an ambush), you can instead select up to three features.
Starting at Nth level, you can select larger and more significant features from the Improved Lay of the Land list.

One problem is that larger and more significant features should be easier to spot, not harder. There ought to be dimishing returns. Higher-level rangers might be able to spot smaller-but-maybe-more-dangerous features.

Ultimately, it's an interesting idea but not something I'd want in its current form. Instead, how about a random table in the DMG for generating odd features by-terrain-type, and give the ranger advantage to perceive any such features automatically in their favored and with advantage outside of it? That way non-rangers can take advantage of the features too (which is logical), DMs get some of their work done for them, and rangers have a toy to interact with. Win-win-win.

I've been trying lately to include more environment features in my game, at least one per encounter area (kind of like a FATE "Aspect"), for the players to interact with if they want. A well, a cliff, a chandelier, a small barn, etc. Wouldn't hurt to have a list of such things readily available.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

As far as the size of the features goes, that's part of the dissociation problem. From a gameplay point of view, it's probably a little much for a 1st-level ranger to be able to put a whole river wherever they want - characters have to be pretty high level before they can do that sort of thing with magic, after all. And it's a little underwhelming to level up and discover ever smaller and smaller features. You've been able to put a river wherever you want since you started in the class, and now you can find... a hornet's nest? Even if they're really bad-tempered hornets, that's not exactly an exciting progression. No, for this ability to work, it really has to be the other way around, plausibility notwithstanding. I guess you can imagine that the high-level ranger is so good at maneuvering through the wilderness that he can always keep the river where he wants it to be - it's not necessarily a matter of spotting the feature. But again, having to make up such justifications is one of the reasons I'm not completely sold on this approach.

What I'm envisioning as far as the "Lay of the Land List" goes is something like a greatly expanded version of the Wilderness Hazards list on pp. 110-111 of the DMG, with some notes on each hazard about where it's usually found and a mention of whether you need Improved Lay of the Land (or perhaps there should be more tiers?). I would definitely want to encourage DMs to use the list regardless of whether the party has a ranger.

And yeah, Fate was my main inspiration here.

 

[Nikosandros]

Hiya!

*shrug* IMHO, the 1e Ranger was the best incarnation.

[...] Suddenly, the Ranger wasn't a "wilderness specialist, a loner, a marksman, and a herbalist"....

What I'd like to see them do is put the Ranger back into the "specialist" style class. I want to see them excel at mundane survival in a particular terrain. I want them to drop the silly dual-wielding crap and go back to a more ranged, light-armored type of warrior. [...]
Wow. What a digression! Er...ranger. Yeah. Hmmm.... "Go back to 1e style, nix 2-weapon covert-ops fighter concept, re-embrace light weapon, light armor, and bows/thrown axes/thrown daggers, mundane skills/abilities over magic". Yeah, that.

There's actually nothing in AD&D 1e that makes rangers light-armored or ranged warriors. The surprise abilities of rangers work equally well in plate armor and they do not have any specific skill with ranged weapons.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'd like the ranger having the option to train new favoured terrains during downtime. His primal awareness should be a bit more useful and he should be able to cast all his ritual spells available to his class as rituals. Alarm and animal messenger and so on would be a good complement to his offensively focused non ritual spells.

The ranger is not far off the mark, IMO, but right now you have to chose between flavour and damage. And you have abilities that are lost when you leave for adventuring.

 

[fuindordm]

All the warrior types have a reliable way to do extra damage, and that is their main "schtick". I think that Favored Enemy is the best translation of the ranger's schtick into D&D rules so far, but I also understand its problems as implemented in 3E.

To me, the ranger is the thoughtful hunter. A ranger is willing to spend days tracking and studying the foe, in order to learn its weak points. From a story perspective, I see the ranger arriving in a new location, and getting better and better as they spend more time there and learn about the terrain, and the types of enemies to be found. So instead of a 1st-level ranger being a "dragon hunter" because that sounded cool to the player, I see a 1st-level ranger as an experienced hunter/tracker, who has the training to become more effective against the enemy of the moment, but takes time to get their full bonus.

Mechanics-wise, I would model that as a FE bonus tied to level, and maybe limit the number of simultaneous enemies by Int. A simple bonus to hit, damage, and skills is fine--and has the advantage that rangers don't need to max out Str or Dex to be effective fighters.

Example: Alice the ranger 6 has a maximum favored enemy bonus of +3, equal to their proficiency bonus. Alice arrives by ship to an uncharted island, and does some scouting. She comes across of tribe of lizardfolk and manages to stay hidden, studying them from afar (+1). One the way back she is ambushed by two lizardfolk back from patrol, and fights them at +1 to hit and damage. However, the battle teaches her more about lizardfolk tactics and weaknesses (+2). She goes back to the ship and leads the party past the village, giving everyone in the party +2 on their stealth checks. Farther inland a dinosaur rushes out of the trees and attacks; her favored enemy bonus doesn't help, but since her Int is 14 she can learn from this battle and get a +1 FE bonus for dinosaurs (sustaining 2 FEs simuntaneously). As the party continues to explore the island, every significant interaction with a FE raises her bonus against that FE, to a maximum of +3. After any long rest, she can drop a FE and start learning another.

The hunter's mark spell is a cop-out to give them bonus damage with very little justification.

If we're worried about quadratic scaling, give them their Int bonus to hit, and the FE bonus only on damage--but then be more generous with the FE bonus (1/2 levels for example).

 

[Mephista]

I've always thought the ranger should be a bit of a switch hitter, able to alternate between twin swords and bows.
Maybe they should have weaker fighting styles but get to choose two. Or just get archery and one melee style.

Well, it should be a valid option, in any case. Without feats, it theoretically works out well. The problem is the Ranger magics.

It's general enough that all rangers should likely have it.

Well, Monster Hunter, as far as I'm concerned, is all about the different kinds of Monster Hunters. Beast master is as much of a Hunter as the subclass named Hunter. Any future subclasses should be monster hunter themed as well. That's its stick.

 

[Mephista]

There's actually nothing in AD&D 1e that makes rangers light-armored or ranged warriors. The surprise abilities of rangers work equally well in plate armor and they do not have any specific skill with ranged weapons.

It was 2e that did the light armor stuff.

 

[Sadrik]

All the warrior types have a reliable way to do extra damage, and that is their main "schtick". I think that Favored Enemy is the best translation of the ranger's schtick into D&D rules so far, but I also understand its problems as implemented in 3E.

To me, the ranger is the thoughtful hunter. A ranger is willing to spend days tracking and studying the foe, in order to learn its weak points. From a story perspective, I see the ranger arriving in a new location, and getting better and better as they spend more time there and learn about the terrain, and the types of enemies to be found. So instead of a 1st-level ranger being a "dragon hunter" because that sounded cool to the player, I see a 1st-level ranger as an experienced hunter/tracker, who has the training to become more effective against the enemy of the moment, but takes time to get their full bonus.

Mechanics-wise, I would model that as a FE bonus tied to level, and maybe limit the number of simultaneous enemies by Int. A simple bonus to hit, damage, and skills is fine--and has the advantage that rangers don't need to max out Str or Dex to be effective fighters.

Example: Alice the ranger 6 has a maximum favored enemy bonus of +3, equal to their proficiency bonus. Alice arrives by ship to an uncharted island, and does some scouting. She comes across of tribe of lizardfolk and manages to stay hidden, studying them from afar (+1). One the way back she is ambushed by two lizardfolk back from patrol, and fights them at +1 to hit and damage. However, the battle teaches her more about lizardfolk tactics and weaknesses (+2). She goes back to the ship and leads the party past the village, giving everyone in the party +2 on their stealth checks. Farther inland a dinosaur rushes out of the trees and attacks; her favored enemy bonus doesn't help, but since her Int is 14 she can learn from this battle and get a +1 FE bonus for dinosaurs (sustaining 2 FEs simuntaneously). As the party continues to explore the island, every significant interaction with a FE raises her bonus against that FE, to a maximum of +3. After any long rest, she can drop a FE and start learning another.

The hunter's mark spell is a cop-out to give them bonus damage with very little justification.

If we're worried about quadratic scaling, give them their Int bonus to hit, and the FE bonus only on damage--but then be more generous with the FE bonus (1/2 levels for example).

I think this could be modeled in a couple different ways. The best way is to include the Rangers proficiency bonus as the maximum number of pluses that they can have in play. This would allow a Ranger to specialize in one monster type or they could split their bonuses and add it have in play. This would allow a Ranger to specialize in one monster type or they could split their bonuses and add it to multiple types of monsters. The limitations above where they are learning about the type of monster could perhaps be tied to a nature skill roll. Basically when a situation arises where the player thinks they should get a roll the DM can say well make a nature roll and set the DC to whatever the DM wants based on the situation. The bonus could be added as a damage bonus, or perhaps another bonus dependent on the situation. Maybe a skill roll to hide against them. Or many other situations.

I think it's pretty good to have them go against one type of monster that the player opsin to if nothing else just to call them demon slayer or ghost hunter. I think it's pretty good to have them go against one type of monster that the player opsin to if nothing else just to call them demon slayer or ghost hunter. Perhaps they always have this bonus on and the others they can just attribute their skills gained as Demon Hunter or ghost slayer to whatever they're doing or whatever monster they are currently facing.

Good idea. How about political organizations rather than races and species. I mean jack the giant killer, or van helsing the vampire slayer, what about the Harper going against the zentherium?

 

[epithet]

the spell never mentions anything about training, let alone 'with ease'. It only lasts for 10 minutes, not really enough time to do much training on an Int<4 beast.

The animal handling skill is what lets you do the training. The spell that gives you the ability to communicate with the beast telepathically is what makes it easy.