What's an "Aragorn Style" ranger?

[Gentlegamer]

I think a Tolkien style ranger describes an attitude more than a class. Generic rangers were like FR Harpers - it was their duty and mission that made them rangers, not the set of skills and abilities they had.

This is demonstrably false in the case of Aragorn. He was the 'greatest traveller and huntsman in this age of the world,' responsible for tracking down Gollum in the years before the War of the Ring, leading the hobbits through the wilderness, foraging for Kingsfoil by its sent in the dark, and tracking the Uruk-Hai through the stony slopes of the Emyn Muil, among his explicit ranger feats in the text.

 

[Niccodaemus]

I think all of this illustrates the difficultly of allowing players to create their character backgrounds for your campaign. First, they have to understand just what the character class means in your campaign. I'm prone to create backgrounds for player characters, and then let the players tweak them.

Here's a ranger background I came up with for my campaign

Shatterworld: Behind the Scenes: Character Background, Ranger

Basically, character is raised in a small village. Father owns the local sawmill. When character is 12 years old, uncle comes to train him as a ranger.

It raises some interesting questions as to why the parents agreed for their son to be trained as a ranger.

 

[malcolypse]

The definition of Aragorn-Style Ranger is, I believe: A character with 15 levels of Bada$$.

 

[Desdichado]

I only saw the movies, and didn't really see anything that struck me as ranger-y (aside from dual wielding the sword and torch against the ringwraiths).

That's a joke, right? What does duel-wielding have to do with being a ranger, outside of D&D? Aragorn was a ranger because he was the best there was at wandering around in the wilderness. He was the best hunter, the best tracker, and knew everything there was to know about the plant and animal life all over the continent. He was the ultimate outdoorsman.

 

[Rechan]

That's a joke, right? What does duel-wielding have to do with being a ranger, outside of D&D?

The whole point of this discussion was me wanting to understand what an "Aragorn-style ranger" meant within D&D.

 

[Niccodaemus]

I had no idea the ranger had been so mangled and garbled in later editions. The fact that you didn't even see the "ranger-y" type stuff that Aragorn did in LoTR dumbfounds me. Makes me sad.

As an analogy, it would be like taking the Medusa, and reducing her to an upperclass urban species of sentient squirrel that has the spell-like ability to turn people to stone, if they so choose.

Then seeing Clash of The Titans and saying you didn't see anything particularly "Medusa-ish" about her, besides her turning people to stone, which she didn't even need a spell for and couldn't control.


Seems like a harsh analogy, but to me it fully represents the disconnect between the original inspiration for the character and how it has been modified as a particular D&D entity.

 

[Niccodaemus]

Duplicate post

 

[Desdichado]

The whole point of this discussion was me wanting to understand what an "Aragorn-style ranger" meant within D&D.

Totally awesome wilderness skills, mostly.

That's kind of the whole concept behind the ranger to begin with. From long before D&D appropriated the term.

 

[aurance]

Can we stop inferring that people who dislike the writing style of Tolkien have some sort of low-patience/childish interests/love of Twilight/character flaw?

I'm 34, I've read plenty of books of all kinds, including all manner of classics and modern literature. I dislike Tolkien's writing style. That doesn't imply that I have a two second attention span or I only DM parties of sparkly ninja gnomes.

 

[pemerton]

One significant difference between a D&D Ranger and a Dunedain was the prohibition against associating in a group of more than three rangers. Sure, Aragorn preferred to operate alone, but when total war broke out, a large group of them (30? 50?) met him in Rohan, who he then lead through the paths of the dead and then onward.

Yes. I always found this strange. And what balance role did the "no more than 3 rangers" rule play?

Could scry with a crystal ball

Use of scrying devices like the palantir.

In LotR the reason Aragorn can use the palantir is because of his heritage. As the heir of Isildur and Elendil, the palantir's are rightfully his. Conversely, although Denethor is also a dunedain, his use of the palantir is part of what leads to his fall.

In D&D terms, the ability to use a palantir should therefore be part of a theme or bloodline feat, I think, rather than part of the ranger class - even an "Aragorn-style" ranger.

He got a bonus to surprise rolls

<snip>

He didn't get stealth skills

The stealth skills were the bonus to surprise!

He didn't have an animal companion (save perhaps for a henchman)

At 10th level, he got 2d12 followers (which were faitfully loyal and did not count against the CHA allotment of henchmen), to be rolled up on a table in the DMG. Roughly speaking, the fewer the number of followers, the better each follower was. The best was a young copper dragon. It was also possible to get animals like bears, unicorns etc. And followers could also include henchmen types.

One ranger in my old AD&D campaign had 4 followers: a dragon, a brown bear, a human fighter and a human druid.

He got massive bonuses to damage "giant class" monsters which, despite the name, was nearly any humanoid in the MM.

I remeber this being very strong in Against the Giants, in conjunction with a +4 two handed sword and two-handed sword specilisation - 3d6 +4 +2 +10 for level + STR (18/01-50, from memory) for 3d6+16, or about 6 HD worth of damage on a hit - at 2 attacks per round for specialisation.

When I think dangerous man in the wilderness, "sword dancer" isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. I suppose if a drow became a ranger, with the drow's penchant for being graceful blademasters, that particular ranger would be good at two weapon fighting. But I don't see how it follows that this should be the only archetype for rangers who fight in melee.

In the Fiend Folio and Unearthed Arcana, drow had the ability to fight with two weapons without penalty. So Drizzt's two weapon fighting was originally a drow thing, not a ranger thing. I think it was 2nd ed that conflated the two.

EDIT: Alternatively, what [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] said.