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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 6668169" data-attributes="member: 6683613">I think it relevant to note that this is the very first sentence of the class description. And also noteworthy:  nowhere is there any mention of enemy specialization.  This tells me a lot about how Gygax himself defined the class conceptually.  If his mechanical implementation fell short of the mark -- well, it'd hardly be the only time that happened in 1E.Well, first of all, that's not quite accurate:  the tracking improves when you're outdoors, and druidic magic certainly also qualifies as "related to woodcraft".  Secondly, you say that "only" these abilities could be considered related to woodcraft, but the 1E ranger only has seven unique abilities:  (1) a damage bonus against giants; (2) surprise; (3) tracking; (4) druid spells; (5) magic-user spells; (6) scrying; and (7) attracting followers.  That's three out of seven already, and you and I both seem to agree implicitly that (5), (6), and (7) were silly and ought to be discarded.  And thirdly, for gameplay reasons already covered in this thread, the ranger's abilities really shouldn't depend on being in the woods.Okay, now we're getting somewhere.Is there any other core class that's "unique" in the way you describe?  Does the fighter or rogue or barbarian have any distinctive ability that does not resemble the literary characters and archetypes upon which the class is based?  Ought they to?  Is the barbarian a lesser class because all its abilities are pretty recognizably the common denominator of Thor, Hercules, Cú Chulainn, and Conan?  Would it be a good idea to give the barbarian, I dunno, let's say a breath weapon, to make the class more unique?  Could we then say, "Conan may not breathe fire, but in D&D, barbarians breathe fire, and Conan is irrelevant to that"?The closest another class comes to having an ability unique to D&D, I'd say, is Vancian magic.  But at bottom that's just a mechanical implementation of the concept of "magic", which of course is ubiquitous among literary mages.  Anyone writing a mage class would have to find some rules for magic, and since magic doesn't actually exist and it works very differently in different stories, there's not really any guide for a "right" way to do it.  So the arbitrariness here is a necessity.  It's not analogous to the uniqueness of the favored enemy ability, or our hypothetical barbarian breath weapon.In short, I don't think D&D is trying to be unique in its class system.  On the contrary, I think it's trying to be as universal as possible.  And I think, given the game's open-ended nature and its position in the market as the go-to fantasy role-playing game, this is the correct approach.  It makes sense for Final Fantasy to say, "In our universe there are these special warriors called 'dragoons' who are defined by their distinctive leaping spear attack", because Final Fantasy is only trying to tell one story and trying to make that story unique to their brand.  But D&D is trying to provide a platform for players to tell their own stories, in their own worlds.  The core rules should provide for just that:  the common core of fantasy tropes.  The uniqueness of the stories should come from DMs' imaginations and campaign setting guides.If we're going to restrict the discussion to the FRPG context, ranger-archetype classes still very seldom have a favored enemy ability.  Outside of D&D, I can only think of one game that does:  Heroes of Might and Magic 5.  Final Fantasy's ranger doesn't have one in any of its incarnations that I've played.  The Warcraft franchise's rangers and hunters don't have one.  Torchlight's vanquisher and outlander don't have one.Heck, even within D&D itself... what's Drizzt's favored enemy?  Drow, I guess, though his archnemesis is human so maybe not?  Minsc's?  Canonically, it changes from gnolls to vampires between games!  Belkar's?  Not a clue... humans, perhaps?  For all these guys, it just doesn't come up that often in the story.  That tells me something about how important favored enemy is to the ranger class.  Can you imagine a wizard character whose ability to cast spells never came up?If Grendel is universally despised, Beowulf's opinion is hardly distinctive, is it?Are you implying that fighters and barbarians must always use the same tactic because they don't have favored enemy?One shows up in the first sentence of the First Edition flavor text, and is shared by all the class' archetypal relatives.  The other doesn't and isn't.  That's not an arbitrary distinction.  That's precisely the distinction we should be making in determining what identifies the class.This is what's arbitrary.  And circular.  "The ranger has the abilities it has because it has them."What is this?  Realism in D&D?  By realistic logic, every class should have favored enemy.  No fighter or rogue is really going to be equally talented against every foe, either.  There is nothing distinctive about the fact that the hunter has expertise with one animal over another.  That's just a boring universal of professions.  What is distinctive is the fact that the hunter has expertise with animals.  That's what the class should emphasis.</blockquote>

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