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<blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 6665367" data-attributes="member: 6683613">Hunting and trapping.&nbsp; Scouting and exploring.&nbsp; Searching for somewhere, fleeing from somewhere.&nbsp; Shipwrecked and lost.&nbsp; Sheer misanthropy.&nbsp; Good old-fashioned wanderlust.You know.&nbsp; Reasons.Of course they are.&nbsp; Why not?&nbsp; What else would they be?&nbsp; An outdoorsy background doesn't make a character a ranger any more than a military background makes them a fighter.&nbsp; You say it yourself:&nbsp; a fighter is someone who seeks to excel at fighting.&nbsp; Well, a ranger seeks to excel at ranging.&nbsp; That word doesn't mean &quot;hunt and kill a particular variety of foe&quot;; it means &quot;roam around in the wilderness&quot;.In the context of D&amp;D, devoting yourself to fighting a favored enemy doesn't seem too heroic to me, either.&nbsp; It's simply not consistent with the typical D&amp;D activity of banding together with a party of eclectic heroes and going off on an adventure.&nbsp; NPCs may spend their lives waging a guerrilla war against the orcish tribes, but PCs have grander destinies.&nbsp; Does it really make sense for a 20th-level ranger who has braved the Tomb of Horrors, slain dragons, and battled evil archmages to still identify himself (and be identified by the rules) as the guy who hates orcs?Circular reasoning.Let me rephrase my objection with a concrete example.&nbsp; A village is periodically threatened by human bandits, orcs, gnolls, lizardfolk, and the occasional giant.&nbsp; Does the local ranger think to himself, &quot;I hate gnolls so much!&nbsp; I'm going to go off into the wilds to hunt gnolls!&quot;&nbsp; Or does he hunt them all to the best of his ability?&nbsp; And sure, perhaps you can say that it's the gnolls who killed his parents, so he's got a special hatred for them.&nbsp; But what about the ranger in the next village over?&nbsp; Does she too have some reason to single out one enemy type over all the rest?&nbsp; And what about the next ranger?&nbsp; And the next one?&nbsp; Does everyone in the world who ranges the wild, just by sheer staggering coincidence, also happen to be a racist?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TheCosmicKid, post: 6665367, member: 6683613"] Hunting and trapping. Scouting and exploring. Searching for somewhere, fleeing from somewhere. Shipwrecked and lost. Sheer misanthropy. Good old-fashioned wanderlust. You know. Reasons. Of course they are. Why not? What else would they be? An outdoorsy background doesn't make a character a ranger any more than a military background makes them a fighter. You say it yourself: a fighter is someone who seeks to excel at fighting. Well, a ranger seeks to excel at ranging. That word doesn't mean "hunt and kill a particular variety of foe"; it means "roam around in the wilderness". In the context of D&D, devoting yourself to fighting a favored enemy doesn't seem too heroic to me, either. It's simply not consistent with the typical D&D activity of banding together with a party of eclectic heroes and going off on an adventure. NPCs may spend their lives waging a guerrilla war against the orcish tribes, but PCs have grander destinies. Does it really make sense for a 20th-level ranger who has braved the Tomb of Horrors, slain dragons, and battled evil archmages to still identify himself (and be identified by the rules) as the guy who hates orcs? Circular reasoning. Let me rephrase my objection with a concrete example. A village is periodically threatened by human bandits, orcs, gnolls, lizardfolk, and the occasional giant. Does the local ranger think to himself, "I hate gnolls so much! I'm going to go off into the wilds to hunt gnolls!" Or does he hunt them all to the best of his ability? And sure, perhaps you can say that it's the gnolls who killed his parents, so he's got a special hatred for them. But what about the ranger in the next village over? Does she too have some reason to single out one enemy type over all the rest? And what about the next ranger? And the next one? Does everyone in the world who ranges the wild, just by sheer staggering coincidence, also happen to be a racist? [/QUOTE]

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