D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?

[Greg K]

The best version of exploration and why spellcasting rangers kinda works is a game of preparation.

The ranger prepared Alarm, you can all sleep instead of taking shifts.
The ranger prepared Goodberry, you can eat if you lose your supplies and cannot hunt.

As a player and DM, these are the type of spells I don't want in a campaign (and I remove as a DM). Examples of other spells that I remove include Create Food and Water*, Heroes Feast, Rope Trick, and Leomund's Hut.
*If I allow Create Food and Water, the spell is limited to clerics of one particular deity.

 

[Minigiant]

As a player and DM, these are the type of spells I don't want in a campaign (and I remove as a DM). Examples of other spells that I remove include Create Food and Water*, Heroes Feast, Rope Trick, and Leomund's Hut.
*If I allow Create Food and Water, the spell is limited to clerics of one particular deity.

which types of ranger spell do you like and keep?

Because when I say many spell-less ranger fans want a fighter/rogue with Hunter's Mark, many say they don't.

Then many of them suggest homebrewed light armor fighters with more skills and all the utility features stripped out. And I get confused.

 

[Horwath]

The best version of exploration and why spellcasting rangers kinda works is a game of preparation.

The ranger prepared Alarm, you can all sleep instead of taking shifts.
The ranger prepared Goodberry, you can eat if you lose your supplies and cannot hunt.

Instead of tracking equipment or hoping to luck out of a DM's whim of how a skill works, a preparation based system allowed players to guess which problems and complication they might run into and prepare a counter.

This requires, in the ranger's and druid's cases. both the DM to know several types of wilderness problems and the Player to know how their PC can solve them and how well they do it.

D&D would have to create a list ofwilderness obstacles from evel1to level 20. Ten let Rangers and Druid choose to prepare a solution to X or Y number of them.

This is the problem with those spells,

They have replaced most of the skill system with "I win buttons".
There is no challenge, no improvisation.
Either you have the spell and you succeed or you don't and you fail.

I really hope for 2024 that they include massive skill tables of DCs, and what can be done with what check, and what gives advantage and what gives disadvantage.

I.E: at what distance do you have Disadvantage on Perception check?

 

[Charlaquin]

This is the problem with those spells,

They have replaced most of the skill system with "I win buttons".
There is no challenge, no improvisation.
Either you have the spell and you succeed or you don't and you fail.

Agreed!

I really hope for 2024 that they include massive skill tables of DCs, and what can be done with what check, and what gives advantage and what gives disadvantage.
I.E: at what distance do you have Disadvantage on Perception check?

Eew, I hope not! Let the DM use their brain and make judgment calls instead of forcing everything to conform to stock DCs.

 

[Minigiant]

This is the problem with those spells,

They have replaced most of the skill system with "I win buttons".
There is no challenge, no improvisation.
Either you have the spell and you succeed or you don't and you fail.

I really hope for 2024 that they include massive skill tables of DCs, and what can be done with what check, and what gives advantage and what gives disadvantage.

I.E: at what distance do you have Disadvantage on Perception check?

The challenge is guessing the right buttons

However that's a choice in design. Either you do

1) Resource Tracking
2) Skill Expansion via Skill Tables
3) Spells or Tricks Management
4) Something else??
5) A combination of above

 

[Minigiant]

Eew, I hope not! Let the DM use their brain and make judgment calls instead of forcing everything to conform to stock DCs.

Most DMs don't know what the challenges of the wilderness are, how hard they are, and how to do it for 20 levels.

That's why a freeform wilderness system without a vast list of examples or a formula to calculate DCs has never worked for D&D.

 

[Horwath]

Eew, I hope not! Let the DM use their brain and make judgment calls instead of forcing everything to conform to stock DCs.

When you have a table, you have a starting point, it's easier to go +/- 5 than to invent DCs from nothing, maybe missing the mark by 10.

 

[Greg K]

which types of ranger spell do you like and keep?

The only spellcasting ranger's in my campaigns serve as priests for a deity. They will get a mixture of some cleric, druid, and ranger spells. Looking at the SRD (I don't have my PHB handy), the type of Ranger spells they get are
1st Level: Animal Friendship, Cure Wounds, Jump, Long Strider, Speak with Animals
2nd Level: Animal Messenger, Pass Without Trace
3rd Level: Speak With Plants
4th Level: Locate Creature

Because when I say many spell-less ranger fans want a fighter/rogue with Hunter's Mark, many say they don't.

Then many of them suggest homebrewed light armor fighters with more skills and all the utility features stripped out. And I get confused.

What I want for a spell-less/ non mystical rangers is a single class wilderness warrior whom is a survivalist and relentless hunter/tracker:

1. Skilled with weapons (fighting style)
2. An expert in both the wilderness (Favorite Terrain, Expertise in Nature and Survival, unhindered by difficult terrain) and at tracking/hunting down prey ( Hunter's Mark, Favorite Enemy)
3. Is stealthy and fleet of foot ( fast movement- especially in Favorite Terrains),
4. Is skilled at creating poulstices for healing.
5. Does not reskin spells as non-magical abilities
6. Does not have summoned fey/ spirit animal companions

From there they can further specialize further in being an elite hunter, a slayer of supernatural creatures, in being a trap expert, having a beast companion

 

[Horwath]

The challenge is guessing the right buttons

However that's a choice in design. Either you do

1) Resource Tracking
2) Skill Expansion via Skill Tables
3) Spells or Tricks Management
4) Something else??
5) A combination of above

problem with spells is that at most you will have one bad day if you missed your preparation checklist.
Then you just need to endure one day and prepare new spells.

With gear, you need to get new gear, either buy it somewhere near of you are lucky or far away, or after the quest is over after having several miserable days.

With skills, well, you can always hire some NPC with expertise it than skill.

 

[Minigiant]

What I want for a spell-less/ non mystical rangers is a single class wilderness warrior/ hunter/tracker whom is

1. Skilled with weapons (fighting style)
2. An expert in both the wilderness (Favorite Terrain, Expertise in Nature and Survival, unhindered by difficult terrain) and at tracking/hunting down prey ( Hunter's Mark, Favorite Enemy)
3. Is stealthy and fleet of foot ( fast movement- especially in Favorite Terrains),
4. Is skilled at creating poulstices for healing.
5. Does not reskin spells as non-magical abilities
6. Does not have summoned fey/ spirit animal companions

From there they can further specialize further in being an elite hunter, a slayer of supernatural creatures, in being a trap expert, having a beast companion

That's a fighter/rogue with a feat.
Or a straight fighter with 2 feats.
Not a whole class.

You get tools from background, Expertise and Hunter's Mark from a feat.

If your rangers isn't talking to animals, plants, and fey, creating and fortifying a camp, using advanced tracking and detection techniques, enduring extreme and magical wilderness hazards, and dealing with the complexities of the fantastical environment, then you are asking for a a whole new 20 levels of a class.

That's just a low level feat.