Ranger Vs Druid

[Hadesman]

I'm a newbie to D&D but I've managed to narrow down my choices to ranger or druid. Can someone explain to me the pros and cons of the class?

[Juntao112]

The ranger is a skilled warrior who specializes in wilderness survival, hunting down specific enemies, and commonly fights with either two weapons or a bow. He has a relatively weak animal companion and limited spellcasting.

The druid is a caster who worships and protects nature. He has a strong animal companion, can turn into monsters, and has very strong spellcasting.

Druids are much more powerful than rangers in terms of class features.

[Answerer]

Druid pros:
Better companion
Better front-line combatant once Wild Shape is gained
Much better spells

Ranger pros:
A very good basic chassis (full BAB, 6+Int skills, etc.)

The Druid is far-and-away the superior class in almost every way. Unless you're angling for something that requires BAB or a ton of skills as a prerequisite, there's literally almost nothing a Ranger can do better than a Druid, unless you get specific.

For example, yes, a Ranger probably makes a better archer on the face of things. But what is an archer? A ranged damage-dealer? Oh, in that case, the Druid wins hands down by using spells. Etc. Anything the Ranger can do, the Druid can do better, by using spells.

Making a very-powerful Druid is as simple as taking Natural Spell at 6th level. Making a very-powerful Ranger requires diving through dozens upon dozens of books to try to fish out the absolute best bonuses, feats, and Ranger spells, to try to shore up the class's myriad weaknesses.

Basically, what it comes down to is that in 3.5, spells trump all, and basic "chassis" stats (HD, skills, BAB) are not nearly as important as Wizards originally thought they were. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of feats -- the staple of martial characters -- are pretty much awful. So when they take the Druid, halve the levels of his Animal Companion and spells, and take away Wild Shape, in order to give him some bonus feats and better HD/BAB/skills, they take away some of the most powerful abilities in the game to give him some of the most mediocre abilities in the game.

Finally, the Ranger suffers terribly for basically not knowing what it is. The authors do not appear to have had a clear idea on what a Ranger was supposed to be or how it was supposed to play. They gave it a choice of two fighting styles that rely on bonus damage to maximize the power of their many attacks, but the Ranger doesn't get said bonus damage. They wanted the idea of the connection to nature a la the Druid, but they felt like it had to be lesser than the Druid to justify the character being more martial, so they nerfed those things into oblivion. So on and so forth.

[demigodus]

If you are allowed a lot of sources/splat books, then whatever you want to do as a ranger, a druid of the same level can do it better. If you are restricted only to core, then MOST things you can do as a ranger the druid can do better. Also the druid can excel at some stuff that you can't even dabble in.

As a ranger, if you decide to be pretty good at something, you are stuck with that. As a druid, if you decide to be awesome at the ranger's shtick today, you can be awesome at something completely different tomorrow.

^ not quite true at low levels, but mostly true starting at around level 6.

However, a druid takes more work/book keeping. It takes a lot of work at character creation to make an effective ranger. It takes a lot of work during play, and a ton of pieces of paper to keep track of everything, to make an effective druid.

Also, if you take a druid to its full potential, you might piss off the rest of your party (since you essentially become a one man show).

[DEMON]

As stated before, Druid is a lot more powerful than the Ranger (actually Druid is one of the TOP classes in the entire game to the point of being able to break the game if he so intends). However, I don't think that should be the case with you as you have stated you are a new player.

On the other hand, Ranger has it's uses, especially when ACFs come into play, as they allow you to trade in your weaker class abilities and grab something different in their stead.

To put it differently, almost anything a Druid can do a Ranger can do to a certain extent, while not to outshining the rest of the group and making them feel useless.

It all depends on the group composition and what you're expect to be doing with your character

[Fyermind]

At level 1 comparing a ranger and druid:

Ranger Pros:
Free Track (this is really a hit or miss type of thing. Usually I find it completely useless)
+1 BAB this means you are more likely to hit that a druid, and can qualify for feats like exotic weapon proficiency or weapon finesse. Generally neither of these are useful.
Favored enemy you can do extra damage against a single very specific enemy and get minor bonuses on checks that won't likely come up considering your fluff says you hate them. If you know what you will be fighting, this is good. otherwise, it is meaningless.
Martial weapon proficiency: Rangers can use bigger swords and deal a little more damage. This is meaningful at this level. Greatswords are the only way a ranger can hope to keep up with the druids animal companion for damage dealing potential at level 1.

Druid Pros:
Animal companion (sure a ranger will get a weaker version of this in three levels, but the ranger's will never be relevant)
Your animal companion is stronger than a ranger in melee. If you picked a riding dog (and you probably did) and trained it for war, it has free track (just in case you thought you'd need it) deals decent damage, and has more HP than the you or the ranger. If your DM lets you customize your animal companion, taking your choice of skills, feats, flaws, do so. You can end up with some fantastic companions this way.
Spells: at level one you don't cast very many spells, but you get some of the best. Entangle is fantastic and in core. If this game allows campaign setting specific material you could take greenbound summoning or ashbound (feats), and just win everything with summon nature's ally. additionally spells like lesser vigor are great for out of combat healing. You only have enough spells to cast at a few key moments each day, but they are very useful, and will be more applicable than anything the ranger can offer except the +1 to hit.

The differences above compound with level. A druids animal companion and/or summons are stronger than the ranger at least until the druid gets wild shape and becomes personally stronger than the ranger in terms of melee.

[Story]

Spells also give you a lot more versatility even at 1st level. Need to sneak past some wolves? Hide From Animals. Constantly getting stuck in blizzards? Snowsight and Know Direction.

[DEMON]

It's fairly obvious Druid is overpowering the Ranger at every level. At higher levels it's even more obvious. But disregarding the Big 4, Rangers are among the best core classes. Regarding the Big 4 - Druids are part of this elite club :smallsmile:

While Druid's animal companion kicks ass better than some core classes, Ranger's version is soon reduced to a blood splatter on a Frost Giant's club.
But then again, I can think of at least 5 things you can trade the little sucker for, if all sources are allowed. Or you can just grab some bird and use him as a scout or something (improving your role as a party scout).

Same goes for track, trading it for trapfinding gives you a new role to fill. Even Wild Empathy can be traded for at least 2 other options which might come into play more often.

Ranger's spells on the other hand are far from the solve-anything kind, full casters have at their disposal, they're more of a little helpers every now and then.

Also, a Ranger is a bit more free with multiclassing, as losing a caster level, or gimping his animal companion even more isn't that much of a problem for him, allowing him to dip Scout for example go Swift Hunter, or just dip Fighter and make a decent archer build - at level 2 an archery orient Ranger get's Rapid Shot, allowing him to kill his enemies twice as fast (though the Druid gets 2 attacks per round as well and since level 1, considering his potent fluffy sidekick). At level 6, you get Manyshot, which is a prereq. for Greater Manyshot, Swift Hunter's 2nd best friend.

Or you could just give up the weapon styles and get Wildshape, weaker than the Druid's version, but not until level 8, IIRC.

So once again, for the OP, it all boils down to what power level you're playing at and what you (are) expect(ed) to do with your character.

[Aasimar]

In most 'normal' games, the druid isn't played to that level of effectiveness though.

It is, theoretically, game-breakingly powerful, like wizard, sorcerer and cleric.

Most gamers don't play that way though.

[Hiro Protagonest]

In most 'normal' games, the druid isn't played to that level of effectiveness though.

Low-op wolf companion is still at least as good as low-op fighter. Plus they have Scent. And better senses in general. And are faster.

[Juntao112]

And smarter.

[Ranting Fool]

As above with one thing to add. If you are new to D&D a ranger will be a lot easier to get your head around with a lot less book keeping.

Druids can swap spells for summoned monsters (Meaning you'll need to know what they are and what beast-y is best for what fight, making sure you have these details on sheets easy to hand so as not to bug everyone by endlessly having to find the monster you want)
Spells are awesome! But then you have to know which ones to pick (But at least you can always swap them for summons) and there are a LOT of choices if all books are open to you.
Shape shifting is awesome! And again there is a lot of choice and you'll want to have sheets of stats (just like with summons)

What is everyone else picking?

[nedz]

Ranger is a good class.
It is solid in combat, has good skills, reasonably class features and some spells.

Druid is more powerful, but then casters are.
It's reasonable in combat, though quite weak to begin with.
It has poor skills, very strong class features and is a full caster.
It probably has a weaker spell list than Cleric or Wizard, but not by much.

It depends what you want to play really.
As a new player I doubt that you would find casters to be more powerful until you learn which spells to prepare each day.

You will also find that Druids require more work since you have

An animal companion to run.
A set of summoned monsters to choose, and then run.
Spells to choose, and then cast.


Rangers are more about scouting and fighting.

So a much steeper learning curve with the Druid.

[Acanous]

I remember a Ranger/Rogue/Barbarian build that got 11 attacks per round by lv 6. Every third round was spent reloading, yes, but the sneak attack dice were great when applied to ranged combat (You can deal sneak attack damage to foes within 30 feet with a feat)

Still not better than a Druid at many things, but better at dealing damage at that level.

[Immabozo]

For a new player, trying to wrap your head around the game, I might go with something less complicated than the Druid, although powerful, as has been mentioned, is a lot to handle.

Although if you like jumping head first into it, that wont be a problem and Druid is a solid choice.