D&D General What is the Ranger to you?

[Garthanos]

Thats a system thing, not a Ranger thing.

Yeh a 5er system thing.

Conceptually, in DnD, the impossible is magic, which generally involves either spells or some other limited resource. Also 5e isn’t really built to ever have characters be Demi-gods simply by virtue of gaining sufficient level.

They took the flavor text of 4e Tiers but they lie through their teeth unless of course you do magic then the top comes off.

Only certain people could speak with animals.

Nothing magical about the guy from the Lake city just a skil his family taught as a heritage. And yes they learned language dialects and didnt speak every single one that doesnt make it magic.. it makes it even more like a skill.

Middle Earth characters can’t ever become godlike by virtue of learning enough stuff.

And 5th edition ones dont either but 3rd pretty much might (esp if you were a Cleric/Druid ) from all I have heard and so did 4th and AGAIN if you are a caster all bets were off in 1e and 2e as well. 4e made it equitable across the board.

 

[Garthanos]

Also 5e isn’t really built to ever have characters be Demi-gods simply by virtue of gaining sufficient level.

5e characters feel petty

1. Heroic tier: Levels 1-10.
   
   • Characters may have impressive skills, but operate on a basically human level.
     
   • Adventures take place in local environments - dungeons, towns, forests.
     
   • Threats are mostly part of the local ecology, or summoned or created. (Natural creatures, other sapient species, created mechanisms, plants.)
2. Paragon tier: Levels 11-20
   
   • Characters now have extreme, near-superhuman levels of their lead skills. They can accomplish things no ordinary human could (and make very difficult skill DC rolls!)
     
   • Adventures take place in a wider arena. They may save entire kingdoms, not just local villages. Their growing reputations will make them major players, even if birth and rank don't. They might lead guilds, be involved in court politics, or command soldiers.
     
   • Enemies also exist on a larger scale. Extraplanar threats become more common, and less likely to have to be summoned first. Players may meet dragons, invading warlords (and their armies), elemental or demonic creatures, colossal magical beasts.
     
   • Characters gain powers from a 'paragon class' - a development of the 'prestige class' idea from D&D 3e. The paragon class gives tightly-focused powers related to a specific concept of how to play the character's main class. (For example: A druid who specialises in driving animals berserk. A warlock who steals life from opponents. A barbarian who becomes more and more like a bear.)
3. Epic tier: Levels 21-30
   
   • Characters can accomplish awesome and impossible things with skills alone, before they even bother to use their class powers. Which are increasingly powerful.
     
   • Adventures are routinely extra-planar - if the characters even make their homes on their original world any more - and threats are ancient dragons, powerful planar entities, titans, or the like. Entire worlds or areas of existence may be at stake.
     
   • Each character progresses towards an 'epic destiny' - chosen by the player at L21. They gradually gain extra powers appropriate to this destined ending. (For example: becoming a god, or a transcendent energy-entity, or a heroic legend, or an immortal traveller.)
     
     
     Doing the impossible with skills alone were on the list.

 

[Psyzhran2357]

If you want to play 3e so much, why not, you know, play 3e rather than complain about 5e?

 

[Garthanos]

The 5e Monk's Ki is explicitly magic, and one of the three PH1 sub-classes does not use Ki to power spells.

Monks and Ki piss me off but that is 4e legacy snap back I am sure.... it means life force or breath (which was considered by medieval types pretty much the same)

The fighter is a class which uses Ki.

If you remove the stupid ethnocentric garbage

 

[doctorbadwolf]

[MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] you know I’m an old 4venger, you don’t have to tell me how cool 4e is.

This is a thread about the ranger conceptually, though, not about the relative merits of different system’s design philosophy.

And yes, in the 4e era I was regularly bugging the designers for magical options for the Ranger. They finally did it in essentials, adding a bunch of primal utility powers to the ranger list, and making it easy for a phb ranger to pick up Wilderness Knacks, but I would have still preferred to also see some primal weapon based attack and defense powers, and some Ranger specific rituals.

 

[Garthanos]

@Garthanos you know I’m an old 4venger, you don’t have to tell me how cool 4e is.

This is a thread about the ranger conceptually, though, not about the relative merits of different system’s design philosophy.

The design impact relates... very closely ... my rendering of an AD&D ranger early in this thread means an entirely different thing than a direct translation even if we came up with a what looks like a perfect one.

The ranger made out of a 4e fighter I posted earlier will be able to do many many nature and athletics based things that the 5e ranger will never get to do ... starting with improvised application of skill to things which would be impossible. Because the games paradigm doesn't need him doing spells do to awesome schtuff

explicit spells instead of subtle magic is almost limiting (though the explicit ones like practices and rituals are more efficient)

Its trivial to let someone improvise a ritual in 4e too

And yes, in the 4e era I was regularly bugging the designers for magical options for the Ranger. They finally did it in essentials, adding a bunch of primal utility powers to the ranger list, and making it easy for a phb ranger to pick up Wilderness Knacks, but I would have still preferred to also see some primal weapon based attack and defense powers, and some Ranger specific rituals.

I agree more ranger styled rituals wouldn't be bad but I ended up making quite a number of martial practices styled in a way that definitely works for rangers ... Double back, Animal Tongues, and others

5e is supposed to be the game of house rules.. making avian, canine and a bunch of other simple languages available should be an easy sell but I hear from you THAT AINT no D&D in fact that is what I heard a lot from you are you regressing?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Monks and Ki piss me off but that is 4e legacy snap back I am sure.... it means life force or breath (which was considered by medieval types pretty much the same)

The fighter is a class which uses Ki.

If you remove the stupid ethnocentric garbage

Ki = SU

Ki = Psionics

Ki = Magic

Martial Arts <> Martial.

 

[Garthanos]

Martial Arts <> Martial.

Yeh its male bovine excrement.

Just like Samurai <> Knight only because bigotry has been engaged.

 

[billd91]

Yeh its male bovine excrement.

Just like Samurai <> Knight only because bigotry has been engaged.

Unless you consider it cultural appropriation to try to understand it by an inherently western European framework.
So is it an enlightened position to take or an unenlightened position to take? Kind of depends on the reasons. (sort of like whether or not something is a lawful or chaotic action - as I free associate into the topic of another recent thread...)

 

[Garthanos]

Unless you consider it cultural appropriation

Stop do not pass go...

Although it wasn't actually the word "bigotry" i wanted its more like creating distinctions just for their own sake.

Class in the game it is like you are a human its incredibly broad about what it describes and about what you can do. Culture is a low impact difference with regards to the above. (like humans with low amounts vs high amounts of melanin in their skin unless you are hunting really really deep like looking for sickle cell anemia its probably not important)

The same can be said about the difference between the Samurai and the Knight If you want to guess if the character is celebrated or not for his writing poetry it might and it might not be a reasonable pattern match