D&D 5E Why are non-caster Ranger themes so popular?

[Tales and Chronicles]

Don't forget Knock, Spider Climb, Mirror Image, Alarm, Silent Image, Sleep, etc.

Which arent even on the arcane trickster's spells list! grumble grumble

 

[Minigiant]

Clearly, invisibility and teleportation are completely useless to rogues!

It's not that they are useless. It's that they don't need them. There is viable no spell stealth.

The isn't such for recovery, control, damage, resistance, etc in D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not that they are useless. It's that they don't need them. There is viable no spell stealth.

The isn't such for recovery, control, damage, resistance, etc in D&D.

Have you told fighters there is no non-spell damage, and barbarians there is no no-spell resitance?

 

[Minigiant]

Have you told fighters there is no non-spell damage, and barbarians there is no no-spell resitance?

Umm.. that's the point.

The community gives fighter and barbarian Nonspell aspects of their class features.

The community won't even allow rangers to craft snare traps without casting a spell.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, if it suits the class’s narrative, then yes.


Honestly, from the way you talk about this, I don’t think there’s a way to satisfy both sides here. One group doesn’t want to cast spells as a ranger, but they want to get something else cool in its place. The other group doesn’t want to have to give up spellcasting to get whatever other cool things the ranger can do. There’s just no way to satisfy both of those desires that isn’t going to be a compromise no one is truly happy with. And thus, we have the 5e ranger.

A shared resource could do it, I truly believe, but we’d have to find a way to do that that isn’t spells or points.

If spellcasting as a subclass option is off the table, then I think modeling the ranger after the warlock is probably the least-bad way to go. Instead of invocations you could have wilderness knacks or whatever, and instead of spell slots you have… some sort of power point. It’s not my favorite solution, but like I said, it’s an ok compromise. At least with the warlock model it’s effectively an encounter resource instead of a daily one. And, you could make it feel less power point-y if you tied its default use to something (maybe a Hunter’s Mark type feature), and then your wilderness knacks could allow you to spend “uses of” that ability to do something else (which could include casting certain spells) instead, like how the UA wildfire druid could spend “uses of wildshape” to summon a pet. I don’t think it’s ideal for anyone, but under the parameters you’ve laid out, I think it’s the least bad option.

Yeah something like that could work.

I don’t think a rogue subclass is capable of satisfying the folks who want a non-spellcasting ranger, any more than a spellcasting subclass for the non-spellcasting ranger would be for the folks who want a spellcasting ranger. I don’t like the idea of two classes that are basically the same but one casts spells and the other doesn’t any better though.

Yeah neither is a good solution.

I mean, like, any wilderness/survivalist-related abilities that aren’t just +x on a subset of d20 rolls would be nice for a start.

Ok fair.

I get what you mean, being really good at tracking, in and of itself, doesn’t make a ranger. That’s exactly why a fighter with the outlander background or a scout rogue don’t scratch the ranger itch. If it’s just “the same survivalist stuff anyone can do but with higher numbers,” it doesn’t feel ranger-y. The ranger needs to be able to do things, actively, that make them more than just a real good lumberjack. And I get that that’s what spellcasting satisfies for some.

The problem for many others though, I think, is the vibe of D&D’s magic. Saying “abracadabra” to make the plants grow doesn’t feel like doing ranger things, even though some of the effects on the ranger spell list, do. Hunter’s Mark, Cordon of Arrows, Flame Arrows, Pass Without Trace, Longstrider, Speak With Animals; these are all effects that feel right for the ranger to be able to do. But being spells makes them feel wrong. It’s too ungrounded, too wizard-y, or at best druid-y. The ranger should be able to do these things because they’re preternaturally gifted at what they do, not because they know the right magic words.

Ah ok. It makes more sense to me now. I don’t have that “magic words” reaction at all to them casting spells, so it’s just a good way to represent what they do, combined with how magical D&D nature is.

I agree that would be the best solution, but like @doctorbadwolf said, they don’t want to have to give up spellcasting to have a pet or whatever (and I assume Find Familiar wouldn’t cut it for them).

A familiar would have to have ways to get buffed into a legitimate combat pet to do the trick, yeah.

The only way I’d be down for a Ranger without the Spellcasting trait or soemthing like it, would be a Ranger with enough magical base class features/options that I can make a Ranger that is just as magical as the current one.

 

[Laurefindel]

If spellcasting as a subclass option is off the table, then I think modeling the ranger after the warlock is probably the least-bad way to go. Instead of invocations you could have wilderness knacks or whatever, and instead of spell slots you have… some sort of power point. It’s not my favorite solution, but like I said, it’s an ok compromise. At least with the warlock model it’s effectively an encounter resource instead of a daily one. And, you could make it feel less power point-y if you tied its default use to something (maybe a Hunter’s Mark type feature), and then your wilderness knacks could allow you to spend “uses of” that ability to do something else (which could include casting certain spells) instead, like how the UA wildfire druid could spend “uses of wildshape” to summon a pet. I don’t think it’s ideal for anyone, but under the parameters you’ve laid out, I think it’s the least bad option.


I don’t think a rogue subclass is capable of satisfying the folks who want a non-spellcasting ranger, any more than a spellcasting subclass for the non-spellcasting ranger would be for the folks who want a spellcasting ranger. I don’t like the idea of two classes that are basically the same but one casts spells and the other doesn’t any better though.

I think spell slots are not necessarily a bad thing as long as 1) ranger can do wilderness tricks without resorting to spells and 2) said spell slots can be used to fuel other abilities/features other than spells, not unlike a paladin's smites are not "spells" per se but use spell slots as a resource. Balancing smites and spells then becomes easier, and different character builds could lean toward one or the other without relying (too much) on subclasses.

My half-warlock ranger was created post-eberron RftlW, so it included a few "you can use this feature once until you finish a long rest or spend a spell slot of level 1 or more" formulation, especially among the wildercrafts (the ranger's "invocations").

It was also created pre-Tasha, so I might find new insights there... Hum, time to revisit my ranger variant I think. [edit] oh, and the new drachenwarden UA will help standardise my Beast Master's animal companions too.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If your DM is still using foraging as a valid exploration challenge at level 8 and you aren't one on the barren planes of Hell or the Abyss, then your DM is doing it wrong and doesn't understand the concept of tiers.

That's kinda the point.

A level 11 ranger is Super Ranger, the most badass ranger within 1000 miles. He or she isn't some random outdoorsman in a cabin.

The 0e ranger hade wizard and cleric spells do similutedArargorn's badassery. And Aragorn lived in Candyland compared to the Forgotten Realms. Imagine how much magic a ranger knight in LOTR would have if the orcs had Eye's of Gruumsh, stormborn barbarians, hexblades, and necromancers riding zombie griffins.

Though there is one problem with that: What if I chose to pick a Ranger because I really want to do this wilderness adventure stuff and be good at it? But if it turns into an after-thought after a few levels... I might feel like my character's niche is irrelevant.

I don't know if there is a solution to it, because once you fight dragons and demons more or less regularly, should adventures in the wild still matter? Or is there a way to reframe the wilderness to have something relevant with tracking, foreaging and so on even at high levels?

Other things you never seem to grow out off - Fighters always have to fight. Rogues always have locks to pick and traps to disable and sneak around. Wizards always need their spells and they become even more defining at higher levels, because suddenly you might be able to fly or teleport or turn rock to mud. But the "ranging" part of the Ranger that distinguish him from the Barbarian, Fighter or Rogue seem to stop making sense.

 

[MarkB]

Though there is one problem with that: What if I chose to pick a Ranger because I really want to do this wilderness adventure stuff and be good at it? But if it turns into an after-thought after a few levels... I might feel like my character's niche is irrelevant.

I don't know if there is a solution to it, because once you fight dragons and demons more or less regularly, should adventures in the wild still matter? Or is there a way to reframe the wilderness to have something relevant with tracking, foreaging and so on even at high levels?

Other things you never seem to grow out off - Fighters always have to fight. Rogues always have locks to pick and traps to disable and sneak around. Wizards always need their spells and they become even more defining at higher levels, because suddenly you might be able to fly or teleport or turn rock to mud. But the "ranging" part of the Ranger that distinguish him from the Barbarian, Fighter or Rogue seem to stop making sense.

I don't think it's that they stop making sense so much as that they start getting glossed over. Fighting, picking locks and dealing with traps are seen as being part of the adventure - but wilderness travel is seen as being what happens on the way to the adventure. And once a group's established a baseline competency at it, it tends to start getting relegated to being just the red-line-on-the-map cutscene from the Indiana Jones movies.

It takes a particular group and playstyle to make the travel and exploration the focus of the adventure on an ongoing basis. Whether this is the cause or the effect of exploration being a poorly-supported pillar of the game is, of course, a whole other discussion.

 

[Jmarso]

I missed this thread when it started and I read the first couple pages of replies and the last page, but not the 8 pages in between, so forgive me if I'm repeating what someone else has already said.

My issue with rangers as half casters as written is that they basically become druids with no weapon/armor restrictions. Which is fine if that is what you want your rangers to be. In another thread I posted my version of a 'martial ranger' with no spellcasting ability. I haven't actually tried it out in a game yet, so I don't know how well it actually works/plays.

That said, I'm not opposed to rangers having a limited amount of druidical magic- I like the 2E solution which was not to give it to them until much higher levels, like 8th or 9th IIRC. So that might be another thing to house rule if you want to try it: take the whole ranger spell chart and shift it so that it doesn't begin until 9th level. That's making the ranger a 'quarter caster' or maybe even less, and still satisfies all the tropes about Aragorn types using healing magic and such. In LOTR, he was clearly 'high level' even the very first time he broke out the athelas after the attack on Weathertop.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The community won't even allow rangers to craft snare traps without casting a spell.

Are you implying that rangers can't craft mundane snare traps because there is nothing in their class mechanics that specifically discusses snare traps?

Any reasonable DM should adjudicate favorably for any PC Ranger looking to set a snare trap via mundane means.

The design decision for 5e was to make things like this simple. A rule for every possible action leads us down a path which one might find... er... makes things very un-5e, IMO.