Ranger doesn't belong in modern/current D&D

[Schwann145]

Languages.
(Bear with me here...)

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language? Sure, it's quirky and fun that half the party speaks elven and the other half doesn't, but at the end of the day everyone speaks common and common is all you need. Every party member. Every NPC. Every enemy with the capability to converse with you.

Common covers everything. At best, it might be handy to be able to read an alternate and/or obscure language because the party might stumble upon some ancient runes that need deciphering, or text relevant to the plot that they can't immediately understand. Once in a blue moon.

But never do you find yourself unable to communicate.

Why? Because as neat a concept as it is, it's just too much work for the DM and too little payoff to be worth making sure that you have to jump through hoops to talk to the guy at the market, or whomever.
So common exists, and common is what is spoken.

========

I think we have a long thread about Rangers where no one can even come to a consensus about what they should be, because Ranger exists in the same narrative space as an extra language.
No one is playing that game.

What is a Ranger?
A woodsman? What does that mean in 5e terms? I chop down trees and build log cabins? I whittle knickknacks on the porch for children? I live in the wilds, mastering them, learning all there is to know about the flora and fauna, learning the best ways to traverse the rough and tumble?
All three of these are equally useless skillsets for PCs to bother with in 5e D&D.

"Nature" as a concept, stops being relevant around level 4. A bear is just not scary. No one is getting lost in the woods. No one tracks rations, or worries about whether they have clean safe water to drink. Anyone that needs finding is being found with magic, not footprints and Survival checks.
These things that Rangers exist to solve for are all parts of the game that the community insists on hand-waiving as uninteresting, inconvenient, etc.

Personally, I've always enjoyed the concept of Ranger as a class. But in 20ish years of 3ed+ gaming, I've never seen it actually be relevant to a game. I like the nitty-gritty, keep track of the little details style of play. But the vast majority of the 5e audience doesn't. 5e is actively moving away from that, more and more with each release.
I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. It just is what it is.
But the problem with Ranger is that it exists to fill a hole that... doesn't exist anymore.

(Edit to add: I'm not posting this as any sort of call to action or anything like that. This is more of a criticism of the current state of the game and the direction it's heading. I don't think the Ranger needs to be removed from the game, and would be against that. In fact, I think the game needs to change and place more emphasis on things that would make a class like the Ranger significantly more relevant.)

[Spider_Jerusalem]

My take is actually that common doesn't belong in role-playing games. Removing language barriers is the first of many, many steps that take D&D out of the fantasy genre and moves it a bit more into the stale hollywood-superhero narrative style with each new iteration of the game.

The wilds, as a concept, is fundamental to most of fantasy narrative. It's not a collection of random plants and animals, a green-tiled dungeon with visible skies. Or at least, it shouldn't have to be limited to this.

I do agree that as of now, neither language barriers, nor rangers fit the mechanical ideas behind D&D very well, but that's because the combat pillar of the game is the only thing that is really highlighted. All the other ones have been dimmed little by little behind simplistic checks taking over narration-based decisions.

It doesn't mean there are no workarounds. It's perfectly possible to run games in which both language barriers, terrain exploration and a focus on reacting to the descriptive, role-playing aspect of the game gets as much attention as combat. That's how our group does it, for instance.

In the end, this is a response that mostly agrees with your main points, but, in my opinion, the ranger is not a problem at all, but the shift in focus towards combat in the most recent editions surely is (if the intention is to run a game that has a fantasy-like feeling for everyone involved).

I'm really interested in seeing more points of view in this discussion. It's been long since the last time I took a look at these forums :)

[PhoenixPhyre]

I run games where language matters a lot. I run games where exploration isn't just "find enough food." One of my current games has 2 rangers out of 4 players. So yeah. Disagree.

[Schwann145]

I run games where language matters a lot. I run games where exploration isn't just "find enough food." One of my current games has 2 rangers out of 4 players. So yeah. Disagree.

Well consider me jealous of your table. :smalltongue:
In actual plays, local games, personal games, twitch stream games, etc and so on, and even listening to developers talk about design decisions and seeing how the game evolves with things like UA releases, I just don't see much of it. I think your table is an exception, not the rule.

[Dr.Samurai]

Totally agreed. Even something as simple as languages were removed. If you took Canny and Favored Enemy with the PHB Ranger and Tasha option, you could start out with 3 additional languages at level 1, on top of whatever you get from Race and Background. Even this minor benefit lends itself to the concept of someone that is traveled and comes into contact with many other peoples.


Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language? Sure, it's quirky and fun that half the party speaks elven and the other half doesn't, but at the end of the day everyone speaks common and common is all you need. Every party member. Every NPC. Every enemy with the capability to converse with you.

Common covers everything. At best, it might be handy to be able to read an alternate and/or obscure language because the party might stumble upon some ancient runes that need deciphering, or text relevant to the plot that they can't immediately understand. Once in a blue moon.

But never do you find yourself unable to communicate.

Why? Because as neat a concept as it is, it's just too much work for the DM and too little payoff to be worth making sure that you have to jump through hoops to talk to the guy at the market, or whomever.

So common exists, and common is what is spoken.


Dr. Samurai - https://media.tenor.com/bDAFP7ZMm54AAAAM/stewie-family-guy.gif

All joking aside, the ranger does have a niche. The ranger should be at home in the wilds and in less developed/settled regions. Martin Longbow in the Magician series roamed the region and kept an eye on the borders and the goings-on throughout the lands to report back to the Duke. This type of class should have features that speak to that. I generally agree that the rules are moving away from caring about this stuff, but given that the D&D world has many types of hazards and portals and ruins and monsters, etc etc etc, there should be someone that is ranging the area and keeping an eye on everything and reporting back. This doesn't really fall under the purview of a fighter, as fighters are not expected to be particularly skilled at wilderness and overland travel and identifying creatures. There may be a little bit of overlap with barbarians but barbarians are the warriors of their tribes and defend their people from warring tribes or deadly monsters.

It's in the name. Rangers range. They move and keep moving. They are the eyes and ears of what is happening in the surrounding wilderness, bringing back news to everyone else.

With each edition, it's just more and more up to the DM to bring this type of play into the game.

This is not against you Schwann but I find myself particularly irked more and more these days with the argument that because others are too lazy, uninterested, impatient to engage with a more involved ruleset, we need to keep changing the game to accommodate the lowest common denominator. You are right that many vocal people hand wave away some of these parts of the game. But not everyone does, and I hope at some point the game starts to come back to something a little more thoughtful and engaging.

[Lokishade]

WotC knew that making a class dependent on terrain and enemy specialization would make it cripplingly useless in most scenarios. Which is why the defining characteristics of the Ranger were made next to useless, to mitigate the damage done to the design.

DnD moved away from the megadungeons of yore and embraced the videogames it inspired. Nowadays, a typical campaign will have you globetrotting a la Final Fantasy. No matter what you pick: forest, desert, mountain, etc, will not matter 90% of the time, because there is about a dozen different settings you can be in, and you can only be in one of them at a time. Favored Enemy suffers for the same reasons.

The price to pay for so much diversity in our games is the death of the classical Ranger. It's sad in its own right, but I have no regrets.

At this point, the Ranger should be a Fighter subclass. I cooked one up where he uses trained animals to get bonuses on skill checks like survival, perception and animal handling. I also gave him camouflage and mobility options. It's like a Rogue subclass on a Fighter chassis.

[Sigreid]

Rangers have been popular at my table. Key really to both scouting and not dying to thirst, starvation or the elements when you get away from town.

[Tanarii]

Ranger 'not belonging' in modern D&D is mostly a sign of the poor state of exploration game structures in modern D&D.

I can tell you, Ranger-like characters, minus the casting but with many special features that would be represented as spells in modern D&D, are critical in all Free League Publishing Games except one. That's because they really know how to support exploration. And the one exception is all based around Robots in a deteriorating city, when Scavenging comes to the fore instead, which is roughly in the same conceptual space as Rangers when translated to the campaign environment.

In this regard it's similar to the Martial/Caster problem. The root cause is the classes have been poorly adapted by WotC in the process of turning the original game into 20 levels of 4 member tactical assault squads, Seal Teaming their way through matching linear adventure paths.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

This seems to be thread about the 3 pillars as much as anything.

First, your point of comparison: Languages (the social pillar). We don't really lean into the social pillar as much as other groups from what I gather. However, I have to disagree with this POV. 'Common' is just plain silly for most creatures you're going to meet to have. I suppose it's meant to be a basic trade language for cities, populated mainly by the base species in the PHB. Otherwise, monsters (if intelligent) should speak their own language or language group (Giant, for example). Besides being more realistic, the beauty of not giving Common to every creature you meet is to share out the 'face' role to various members of the group throughout the campaign.

Regarding Rangers: the exploration pillar. D&D is about more than Dungeons. You have to get there, and the exploration pillar is a great part of the game. Hand-waving this bit is boring; for the most part until/ unless the characters have access to long range teleport type spells this should be a critical part of the game. Our experience would indicate this tends to happen more in tier 3, and it correlates with a less interesting game and time to start winding up a campaign.

I get the sense from your post that you're describing trends in the published game as opposed to a personal preference and I suppose I can't disagree entirely. I was surprised when I read the 5eMM for the first time and saw how many creatures had Common listed; that didn't stop me from deleting the entry in practice. On the Ranger thing, published material is a bit of a mixed bag. We've deliberately tended to play material where it's about getting there as much as what happens once you're there. RothFM, OotA, DiA, and GoS (amongst others) all support games where the exploration pillar is front and center. Yes, there is other material, like the many anthologies, where this is not the case.

Is D&D moving in a direction where both Languages and Rangers are out of fashion? I sure hope not.

[paladinn]

The price to pay for so much diversity in our games is the death of the classical Ranger. It's sad in its own right, but I have no regrets.

I think this is very true on several levels. I especially think the new emphasis on diversity and relativism in the game has made the ranger class hard to justify. In 0-3e, and even early 5e, orcs, goblins and trolls were evil, period. So it wasn't a big deal to have humanoids as a favored enemy. But now, Nothing mortal is really evil or really good, so how can you justify opposing an entire species?

[Skrum]

I see what you're saying and I agree, to a point. But I have a slightly different diagnosis - rangers indeed suffer from their "schtick" not really being an important aspect of most games. But their actual problem is that it's taking up their resource space. I.e., when someone wrote the ranger class, they made some decision wherein because rangers could do X (find food, be rangery, whatever), they *don't* get (more useful feature). Thus, they are kinda weak. Rogue suffers from this as well. And yes, I know this is a bit of a hot take, and I know people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork to mention how important rogues skills are, but nah, they don't got it.

My position is having a ranger-themed class and a rogue-themed class are great. They are at least iconic classes within DnD, if not iconic fantasy archetypes. Even if the thing they are known for is of middling use in most games, they deserve a spot in the PHB. But having those iconic features shouldn't come at the cost of being good in other, more applicable ways.

[LudicSavant]

My take in a nutshell:

I've seen the 'why have a Ranger class' sentiment a lot this edition. It reminds me of the 'why have a Paladin class' sentiment from the 3.5e days.

Back then, Paladin didn't have a strong identity of its own. For the most part it had only a singular, one-size-fits-all code of conduct, and mechanically was basically just a worse melee Cleric. It had poor implementation and no strong guiding vision to make it stand out amongst the classes. Indeed, you could have just removed that Paladin from the game and little would have been lost -- any concept you had for a Paladin could be built just as more effectively by a melee Cleric, both in terms of mechanics and flavor.

In 5e, things have changed. Paladins have a stronger and more flexible flavor identity, and have class features that actually matter in the face of other classes. And all of a sudden, people aren't complaining that Paladin shouldn't be a class anymore.

But now we've got people doing that for Ranger, because now Ranger is the one designed with no soul (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25235023&postcount=8).


WotC knew that making a class dependent on terrain and enemy specialization would make it cripplingly useless in most scenarios. Which is why the defining characteristics of the Ranger were made next to useless, to mitigate the damage done to the design.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be, in the hands of a skilled designer.

In fact, you could make a class based entirely around a stronger Favored Enemy concept, and still have it be great to take along on adventures in general, even if they never encounter that monster type. Let me show you what I mean.

Say you are an expert in fighting dragons. You're a DRAGOON now. How do you get better at fighting dragons?

You learn "Jump Good." To combat flying foes, you can jump sky high like a Final Fantasy dragoon, and come crashing down from above to pin your foe to the ground with your lance (or other weapon).

You learn "Fearless Leader." To combat frightening presence, you become utterly fearless, and also good at bolstering the resolve of your allies. You gain immunity to fear and inspiring/leadership abilities.

You learn "Through the Fire and the Flames." To combat breath weapons, you learn to resist elemental attacks, and even guard allies behind you with a shield or a spinning weapon that can disperse AoEs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170101173408if_/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg

And we can go on. To combat their sorcerous abilities, you might get counterspells or other anti-mage tools. And the like.

The point is, even though all of this is really good against dragons, it also helps even if you never fight a dragon. You could go through entire FFXIV story arcs with no dragons and Estinien will still be an absolute unit, even though all his skills are representative of a lifetime spent learning how to beat up dragons, specifically.

It's also more evocative flavorwise. Instead of going "Oh darn, I guess my experience fighting the fey is useless because we're fighting a human enchantress," you go "Ha! You call this an enchantment? I spent 10 years in the court of the Summer Queen!" You don't need to represent being good against a creature group by "+1 to (creature tag)." If anything, it's better not to, because said +1 doesn't really represent a concrete new skill or tactic that the player brings to the table -- it's just the same way you fight literally everything else, except with a +1 bonus. We can do better than that.

[Pex]

This seems to be thread about the 3 pillars as much as anything.

First, your point of comparison: Languages (the social pillar). We don't really lean into the social pillar as much as other groups from what I gather. However, I have to disagree with this POV. 'Common' is just plain silly for most creatures you're going to meet to have. I suppose it's meant to be a basic trade language for cities, populated mainly by the base species in the PHB. Otherwise, monsters (if intelligent) should speak their own language or language group (Giant, for example). Besides being more realistic, the beauty of not giving Common to every creature you meet is to share out the 'face' role to various members of the group throughout the campaign.

Regarding Rangers: the exploration pillar. D&D is about more than Dungeons. You have to get there, and the exploration pillar is a great part of the game. Hand-waving this bit is boring; for the most part until/ unless the characters have access to long range teleport type spells this should be a critical part of the game. Our experience would indicate this tends to happen more in tier 3, and it correlates with a less interesting game and time to start winding up a campaign.

I get the sense from your post that you're describing trends in the published game as opposed to a personal preference and I suppose I can't disagree entirely. I was surprised when I read the 5eMM for the first time and saw how many creatures had Common listed; that didn't stop me from deleting the entry in practice. On the Ranger thing, published material is a bit of a mixed bag. We've deliberately tended to play material where it's about getting there as much as what happens once you're there. RothFM, OotA, DiA, and GoS (amongst others) all support games where the exploration pillar is front and center. Yes, there is other material, like the many anthologies, where this is not the case.

Is D&D moving in a direction where both Languages and Rangers are out of fashion? I sure hope not.

Not having a Common language will just mean more murder-hoboing. It's not a direct cause; it's a facilitator. If PCs can't talk to the NPC then either nothing happens or there's a fight. There's no point to capturing an enemy to question if they can't communicate, so kill everyone. DMs who refuse to have captured enemies ever give information will have the same thing. The Common language is the Universal Translator of science fiction. It's Thingamajig that only exists for verisimilitude of why PCs are talking to people they meet. A language barrier might be fun for one adventure. It's not fun for the entire campaign. Realism can go jump in the lake when it interferes with play.

[Witty Username]

I think this is very true on several levels. I especially think the new emphasis on diversity and relativism in the game has made the ranger class hard to justify. In 0-3e, and even early 5e, orcs, goblins and trolls were evil, period. So it wasn't a big deal to have humanoids as a favored enemy. But now, Nothing mortal is really evil or really good, so how can you justify opposing an entire species?

Given one of my favorite 3.5 Ranger concepts used favored enemy (human), this isn't much of a concern for me.

Hunting and opposing are two different things. A deer hunter, that takes favored enemy (beasts) isn't diametrically opposed to deer by way of intense hatred, they have a goal in mind (usually food, sometimes to express skill) that deer happens to provide.
If you're ranger's focus is controlling a threat, the threats to their locale could be all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.

Favored enemy (elves) because your a veteran of the kinslayer wars.
Favored enemy (Dwarves) because of your prolonged opposition to dangerous mining practices.
Favored enemy (human) because your a bounty hunter after Criminals.

All of these fit Ranger fine. The issue is that the baseline of ranger being reliant on transient things makes for being useless unless you can read the DMs mind or the world is tailored to your whims. Fine for computer games where you can read the strategy guide and pick based on what is in the module. Not great when you get kidnapped by drow and need to escape the Underdark as your next adventure because to biffed rooting out the drow spy.

Note baseline, in AD&D, when Ranger was, as fighter with extra stuff, favored enemy being a sometimes crush a fight was fine. In 5e, Ranger as fighter with somehow less features, and needing favored enemy to keep pace. That not the state of the game, that's just bad class design. Favored enemy on top of a generally effective character, is my preference.

[Tanarii]

I think this is very true on several levels. I especially think the new emphasis on diversity and relativism in the game has made the ranger class hard to justify. In 0-3e, and even early 5e, orcs, goblins and trolls were evil, period. So it wasn't a big deal to have humanoids as a favored enemy. But now, Nothing mortal is really evil or really good, so how can you justify opposing an entire species?
Having an Evil (and can't be changed) Alignment tag isn't necessary to be a Favored Enemy. I've had plenty of players that chose Human or their own Race as one of the two humanoid races you can elect if you choose humanoids.



All of these fit Ranger fine. The issue is that the baseline of ranger being reliant on transient things makes for being useless unless you can read the DMs mind or the world is tailored to your whims. Fine for computer games where you can read the strategy guide and pick based on what is in the module. Not great when you get kidnapped by drow and need to escape the Underdark as your next adventure because to biffed rooting out the drow spy.
I'm fairly sure the Ranger Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer was designed with official play and adventure paths in mind, as well as the overall concept of Tiers. The timing of gaining access to new ones lining up nicely with knowing what adventure path you're going to play allowing for informed level 1 choices, in conjunction with adventure path typical timing for introducing the next new Chapter with new terrain & enemies, is far too much to be coincidental.

[Leon]

I think we have a long thread about Rangers where no one can even come to a consensus about what they should be

Not a problem with the class, its a problem generated by a herd of cats who have very little in common and even less clue about balanced game design.

The direction WotC has gone with the game while not ideal in my mind has not invalidated any class unless your looking thru a very narrow viewpoint, with some thought the flavor of all of them can be made to suit any campaign, the baseline Ranger may well be a Nature theme woodsman but that's hardly the only thing it can be, its just one that they have put in as default and many people cant be bothered to do anything but be default.

Being always able to communicate is just people taking the easy way out and having that be so, I've played in plenty of games across the span of time ive been playing this game and rarely has everything always be able to communicate and the game has been better for it and the the idea that it just makes the PCs go murder hobo is lacking, players in the wrong game are wont to do that not bound by any restrictions to communicate or not. I have run a game where one of the party couldn't even speak the same language as the rest of the party and one of them had to translate thru a shared root language.

[Dr.Samurai]

Not a problem with the class, its a problem generated by a herd of cats who have very little in common and even less clue about balanced game design.

The direction WotC has gone with the game while not ideal in my mind has not invalidated any class unless your looking thru a very narrow viewpoint, with some thought the flavor of all of them can be made to suit any campaign, the baseline Ranger may well be a Nature theme woodsman but that's hardly the only thing it can be, its just one that they have put in as default and many people cant be bothered to do anything but be default.

Being always able to communicate is just people taking the easy way out and having that be so, I've played in plenty of games across the span of time ive been playing this game and rarely has everything always be able to communicate and the game has been better for it and the the idea that it just makes the PCs go murder hobo is lacking, players in the wrong game are wont to do that not bound by any restrictions to communicate or not. I have run a game where one of the party couldn't even speak the same language as the rest of the party and one of them had to translate thru a shared root language.
I'm playing in Against the Giants right now and the giants that we are fighting appear to only speak Giant. Two of us speak Giant, but we can only translate/relay to the others on our turn during combat.

All to say that our DM is tracking language as well, and I think this makes sense and adds to the experience.

[elyktsorb]

I don't think I agree with this. If I can make a detective out of an investigation Rogue, why can't a Ranger be a Ranger? Or the various Rangers people want it to be?

I'm sure there's a way to mechanically represent a Ranger that works.

[Pex]

Not a problem with the class, its a problem generated by a herd of cats who have very little in common and even less clue about balanced game design.

The direction WotC has gone with the game while not ideal in my mind has not invalidated any class unless your looking thru a very narrow viewpoint, with some thought the flavor of all of them can be made to suit any campaign, the baseline Ranger may well be a Nature theme woodsman but that's hardly the only thing it can be, its just one that they have put in as default and many people cant be bothered to do anything but be default.

Being always able to communicate is just people taking the easy way out and having that be so, I've played in plenty of games across the span of time ive been playing this game and rarely has everything always be able to communicate and the game has been better for it and the the idea that it just makes the PCs go murder hobo is lacking, players in the wrong game are wont to do that not bound by any restrictions to communicate or not. I have run a game where one of the party couldn't even speak the same language as the rest of the party and one of them had to translate thru a shared root language.

I stand by what I said. If the DM makes social interaction "talky talky" difficult you will have less of it in the game. The first time a language barrier enters play it's an interesting puzzle to workaround. The 15th time players stop trying.

It's a common trope for there to be writing in a language no one knows on a wall or statue. The DM purposely chose a language no PC knows. Its supposed to be mysterious. I've learned to ignore it. If we're never to know what it reads there's no point to it. Whatever will happen will happen regardless. Kudos to the player who prepared and casts Comprehend Languages. Most of the time the mysterious message now understood won't convey anything useful. It just existed to be mysterious. Once in a while I'll prepare Comprehend Languages "just in case", but even if used doesn't really help. I stop preparing the spell and only use the spell when we obtain a book or note in a language no one knows. It's a facilitator for the players to learn some lore that may or may not help in the plot wrapped up in a ribbon of being in a foreign language.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Not having a Common language will just mean more murder-hoboing. It's not a direct cause; it's a facilitator. If PCs can't talk to the NPC then either nothing happens or there's a fight. There's no point to capturing an enemy to question if they can't communicate, so kill everyone. DMs who refuse to have captured enemies ever give information will have the same thing. The Common language is the Universal Translator of science fiction. It's Thingamajig that only exists for verisimilitude of why PCs are talking to people they meet. A language barrier might be fun for one adventure. It's not fun for the entire campaign. Realism can go jump in the lake when it interferes with play.

I suppose you can have that point of view, though you don't seem to suggest its based on anything but conjecture. In my experience, having actually limited 'Common' it hasn't been the result. The results have been that multiple languages are actually important, having multiple characters with decent Cha and Cha skills is important, keeping some unique enemies (and others) alive who can act as translators is important, some spells become more important. Heck, I've even had characters and npcs drawing pictures to communicate.

Fair enough that what some groups find 'fun' just isn't fun to others. If the OP is right, and both of the things brought up are on the way out, then I'd say that's a shame and reduces fun. But that's me.

[Eldariel]

Many monsters don't speak common. Many giants, fiends, fey, etc. only speak their typical language. Your options are sharply limited if you only know common. Comprehend Languages as a ritual helps but it only enables one-way communication. And if DM doesn't let it matter, that's their fault.

[Arelai]

Yeah. A ranger is just a fighter with some minor magic and skill proficiencies in survival a d medicine.

Mechanically in the game they’re an multi-hitting version of a paladin. Hunters mark instead of smite. Mobility instead of plate armor. Dex instead of str.

[OracleofWuffing]

I have no way to prove it, but I'm guessing the reason why Rangers must exist as a class is because there is one person at WotC that says, "But what about Drizzt?" every time someone tries to bring up the idea of making it a subclass or parceling out its abilities to other classes.

I'll further guess that no one knows why that one person is even there.

[Kane0]

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language?
But never do you find yourself unable to communicate.

Yeah. It happens on a semi-regular basis at my table. It actually was a big factor in one character picking up the Telepathic feat.



"Nature" as a concept, stops being relevant around level 4. A bear is just not scary. No one is getting lost in the woods. No one tracks rations, or worries about whether they have clean safe water to drink. Anyone that needs finding is being found with magic, not footprints and Survival checks.
These things that Rangers exist to solve for are all parts of the game that the community insists on hand-waiving as uninteresting, inconvenient, etc.

That might also have some correlation with the claim that 'ranger should just be a background', or similar.



Personally, I've always enjoyed the concept of Ranger as a class. But in 20ish years of 3ed+ gaming, I've never seen it actually be relevant to a game. I like the nitty-gritty, keep track of the little details style of play. But the vast majority of the 5e audience doesn't. 5e is actively moving away from that, more and more with each release.
I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. It just is what it is.
But the problem with Ranger is that it exists to fill a hole that... doesn't exist anymore.


Perhaps tracking mundane consumables isn't the best way to flesh out the exploration pillar anyways. If exploration gets expanded in a direction that actually sees more play then it would be easier to fit more content into that space.

I think removing the ranger would just continue the spiral rather than solve the problem. Treating the symptoms so to speak.


In 0-3e, and even early 5e, orcs, goblins and trolls were evil, period. So it wasn't a big deal to have humanoids as a favored enemy. But now, Nothing mortal is really evil or really good, so how can you justify opposing an entire species?

Because i'm the one that is really evil.
But also, you can be really good at fighting (or just dealing with) one race/species/creature type without being all -ist about it. That's just kinda the default, quick-and-dirty assumption.



I've seen the 'why have a Ranger class' sentiment a lot this edition. It reminds me of the 'why have a Paladin class' sentiment from the 3.5e days.

I have wondered many a time how many make the mistake of seeing what doesn't work and thinking it cannot work.

[Rukelnikov]

IMO the handwaviness of the exploration is in part another of the problems caused by having a long rest be a full refresh (sans half HDs).

Does it matter if we take some damage during a day's worth of travel? Is it relevant the condition we were in the day before arriving to X? Not really, then why bother with narrating that stuff? It can be fun from time to time, but its ultimately inconsequential.

[Leon]

Yeah. A ranger is just a fighter with some minor magic and skill proficiencies in survival a d medicine.

Mechanically in the game they’re an multi-hitting version of a paladin. Hunters mark instead of smite. Mobility instead of plate armor. Dex instead of str.

What is a paladin but a fighter with a slight religious bent and some related tricks?

What they are all is a set of options that might fit someone's concept better than an alternative does.

[Mastikator]

Languages.
(Bear with me here...)

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language?

Yes.

Several times. And it's rewarding when they DO speak said specific language. (same as with any tool proficiency that suddenly because really useful)

When I DM I make sure to put up language barriers to do this for my players, also because it makes in-game sense that not everything is in common. I make sure that regions and nations use specific languages that are appropriate for them, and that members of those regions and speak primarily their own language and then another one that is appropriate for a neighboring place. This makes translators actually useful and makes the world feel bigger. It also adds to the versimilitude.

As a DM I don't think it's too much effort to assign languages to regions and nations, the payoff is worth it.

===

As for rangers I don't think they need necessarily be married to nature, I think that's extremely narrow. There are and ought to be urban rangers too. If the ranger was removed I'd wonder "where is my druidic half caster?"


"Nature" as a concept, stops being relevant around level 4. A bear is just not scary. No one is getting lost in the woods. No one tracks rations, or worries about whether they have clean safe water to drink. Anyone that needs finding is being found with magic, not footprints and Survival checks.
These things that Rangers exist to solve for are all parts of the game that the community insists on hand-waiving as uninteresting, inconvenient, etc.

Personally, I've always enjoyed the concept of Ranger as a class. But in 20ish years of 3ed+ gaming, I've never seen it actually be relevant to a game. I like the nitty-gritty, keep track of the little details style of play. But the vast majority of the 5e audience doesn't. 5e is actively moving away from that, more and more with each release.

This part I agree with. I think a lot of ranger features exist to defeat obstacles that are only relevant in T1. T2 rangers should get features to defeat obstacles in T2 and T3 and so on. T2 rangers shouldn't deal with bears, they should deal with chimeras and basilisks and the like, big scary monsters, extend their beast-related things to monstrosities. In T3 extend it to dragons and fiends

[BaronCorvo]

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language?

Yes. For instance, you overhear dark elves speaking dark elvish because they think no one else will understand them. Or your barbarian was raised in a village which traded with nearby dwarves so she speaks dwarvish and can read the runes over the doorway without having to ask a wizard to cast Comprehend Languages. In fact there doesn't even need to be a wizard around.



I think we have a long thread about Rangers where no one can even come to a consensus about what they should be, because Ranger exists in the same narrative space as an extra language.
No one is playing that game.

You're playing the wrong games then. If I have to choose between "D&D with Rangers" and "D&D where everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator", it's not a difficult choice. It's not even a choice.

If people find keeping track of how many arrows they have or how many days of rations they have left too taxing - if the most basic math is too hard - then I don't want to play with those people. And if WotC finds making interesting rules for travel and exploration too challenging, then I don't want to play their game anymore. It's not an insoluble problem, Cubicle7 and others have solved it.



These things that Rangers exist to solve for are all parts of the game that the community insists on hand-waiving as uninteresting, inconvenient, etc.

No, just the lazy boring parts of the "community". The people I play with are a lot more interesting than that.

If I wanted to play video games I'd play video games. I don't need to pretend to play video games with paper and pencil and dice.

[BaronCorvo]

I think a lot of ranger features exist to defeat obstacles that are only relevant in T1. T2 rangers should get features to defeat obstacles in T2 and T3 and so on. T2 rangers shouldn't deal with bears, they should deal with chimeras and basilisks and the like, big scary monsters, extend their beast-related things to monstrosities. In T3 extend it to dragons and fiends

Yes. Rangers should be the D&D version of Witchers. An irregular warrior with light or medium armor, skills, a few simple magic tricks, and the ability to assess the weakness of monsters. But those monsters would then have to be more interesting than bags of hit points, and that would mean more work for the game designers so never mind.

Edit: I agree, there should be an urban ranger subclass too.

[animorte]

But those monsters would then have to be more interesting than bags of hit points, and that would mean more work for the game designers so never mind.
Speaking of making monsters more interesting. (“https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25558058&postcount=10”)

Anyway, I think another one of our concerns is immersion within the game itself. People want to be told what the flavor of their character is. But you don’t seem to have as much a problem flavoring the Fighter and Wizard, despite them just being fighting-man and spell-user. Yes, I’m aware of the ”wizards don’t have flavor” thread. The hungry goblins that accidentally killed said Wizard with 1d4 ugly damage might disagree.

[Eldariel]

Not having a Common language will just mean more murder-hoboing. It's not a direct cause; it's a facilitator. If PCs can't talk to the NPC then either nothing happens or there's a fight. There's no point to capturing an enemy to question if they can't communicate, so kill everyone. DMs who refuse to have captured enemies ever give information will have the same thing. The Common language is the Universal Translator of science fiction. It's Thingamajig that only exists for verisimilitude of why PCs are talking to people they meet. A language barrier might be fun for one adventure. It's not fun for the entire campaign. Realism can go jump in the lake when it interferes with play.

In most cases it'll result in sign language, insight checks, trade goods, pidgins, etc. Fighting? Why take the risk? As for prisoners, you can just find someone to interpret, offer the prisoner for a price to some enemy member who you can communicate with, etc. Prisoners are intrinsically valuable when in a conflict.

[animorte]

There are lot of ways to discover and utilize effective communication in many different scenarios with many different types of creatures, not a lot of which would be Ranger specific. Seems a bit of a diplomacy thing.


Prisoners are intrinsically valuable when in a conflict.
*Squints at Eldariel with suspicion.

[Talionis]

I will agree in that Ranger and Paladin are holdovers from past editions and truthfully are Druid/Fighter multi class and Cleric Fighter multi class. It wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate both and just provide them as examples of multi classes that are suggested by WoTC. Possibly just subclasses of one or both.

I’m not sure removing them from the game helps much. But if people thought it simplifies things it would be easy enough to do.

[Intregus182]

I will agree in that Ranger and Paladin are holdovers from past editions and truthfully are Druid/Fighter multi class and Cleric Fighter multi class. It wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate both and just provide them as examples of multi classes that are suggested by WoTC. Possibly just subclasses of one or both.

I’m not sure removing them from the game helps much. But if people thought it simplifies things it would be easy enough to do.

The only way this would work i think is if you were to take a different approach to classes altogether similar to star wars saga edition or PF2 where instead of getting specific class features at certain class levels you instead get to choose a class feature from a small pool of class features.

Which i think would be great but i do not think wotc will go that route.

[Witty Username]

I will agree in that Ranger and Paladin are holdovers from past editions and truthfully are Druid/Fighter multi class and Cleric Fighter multi class. It wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate both and just provide them as examples of multi classes that are suggested by WoTC. Possibly just subclasses of one or both.

I’m not sure removing them from the game helps much. But if people thought it simplifies things it would be easy enough to do.

I would say this might have been true in 3/.5, with the axing of prestige classes in favor of subclasses this is no longer true. Paladin and Ranger are both difficult to represent both as subclasses and multiclass combinations because either the design space is too small or the flavor/mechanics of the subclasses introduced in multiclassing.
The Paladin and Ranger are fine in terms of identity and design space to be full classes. Ranger's perceived identity issues are arguably proof of this, as such disagreements naturally lead to subclasses.

Tinkering with the features internal to the Ranger is the solution to its class woes.

Compare this to barbarian and sorcerer, where either the class identity is small enough to be compressed into a subclass without issues, either by being light on features (barbarian) or by their mechanical identity being nearly identical to another class (sorcerer/wizard).

[Stangler]

The rules of D&D attempt to capture a very wide spectrum of potential gameplay from very low power level to very high power level. I think it can be helpful for there to be a clearer approach to expectations from tier to tier that can't be captured with simple numerical increases. When I DM I talk to the players about this kind of thing and try and impress upon them how much expectations change at higher levels. Basically something that was DC 15 at level 2 is likely automatic at level 10.

The Ranger class itself is always going to be a classic fantasy trope. Everything from Aragorn to the Witcher can be considered a Ranger of sorts. Even the Mandalorian or any bounty hunter is a bit of a Ranger. The desire by players to play a hunter of some sort isn't going anywhere. I do feel like the Witcher is a closer match to the 5e Ranger than Aragorn though.

Increasing the role of environment is a key part in making all of the classes work better. I think lair actions were a good start for adding layers to monsters but I think the idea that the environment itself is a major part of the encounter should be expanded even further. Obviously some tables already do this but more tools/systems and more clear options would go a long way. A castle in a magical world will have counters to magic. A Wizard tower will be extremely magical. Making the environment a major part of an encounter should be a focus of the new DMG.

[Bohandas]

In 0-3e, and even early 5e, orcs, goblins and trolls were evil, period.

I'm pretty sure that "always [x] evil" was for the most part limited to fiends, true dragons, and aberrations. Orcs, for example, were listed as "Often chaotic evil", which is actually two steps below "always", because in third edition's system "usually [alignment]" comes in between "always [alignment]" and "often [alignment]". And furthermore even "usually" only necessarily meant a simple majority (Indeed, there were plenty of canonical villains from races listed in the monster manual as "Usually [chaotic/neutral/lawful] Good")

[Sigreid]

At the end of the day, even in 5e; hand waving food, water, ammunition and navigation is just a table choice.

[Gryndle]

Languages.
(Bear with me here...)

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language? Sure, it's quirky and fun that half the party speaks elven and the other half doesn't, but at the end of the day everyone speaks common and common is all you need. Every party member. Every NPC. Every enemy with the capability to converse with you.

Common covers everything. At best, it might be handy to be able to read an alternate and/or obscure language because the party might stumble upon some ancient runes that need deciphering, or text relevant to the plot that they can't immediately understand. Once in a blue moon.

But never do you find yourself unable to communicate.

Why? Because as neat a concept as it is, it's just too much work for the DM and too little payoff to be worth making sure that you have to jump through hoops to talk to the guy at the market, or whomever.
So common exists, and common is what is spoken.

========

I think we have a long thread about Rangers where no one can even come to a consensus about what they should be, because Ranger exists in the same narrative space as an extra language.
No one is playing that game.

What is a Ranger?
A woodsman? What does that mean in 5e terms? I chop down trees and build log cabins? I whittle knickknacks on the porch for children? I live in the wilds, mastering them, learning all there is to know about the flora and fauna, learning the best ways to traverse the rough and tumble?
All three of these are equally useless skillsets for PCs to bother with in 5e D&D.

"Nature" as a concept, stops being relevant around level 4. A bear is just not scary. No one is getting lost in the woods. No one tracks rations, or worries about whether they have clean safe water to drink. Anyone that needs finding is being found with magic, not footprints and Survival checks.
These things that Rangers exist to solve for are all parts of the game that the community insists on hand-waiving as uninteresting, inconvenient, etc.

Personally, I've always enjoyed the concept of Ranger as a class. But in 20ish years of 3ed+ gaming, I've never seen it actually be relevant to a game. I like the nitty-gritty, keep track of the little details style of play. But the vast majority of the 5e audience doesn't. 5e is actively moving away from that, more and more with each release.
I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. It just is what it is.
But the problem with Ranger is that it exists to fill a hole that... doesn't exist anymore.

by your logic we should then also remove Barbarians (just a fighter variant), Bards, Sorcerers and Warlocks (just a mage variants), and paladins and druids (just cleric variants). Just reduce us back down to fighter, mage, cleric and thief. I am of course, being sarcastic because these "X doesn't belong BECASUE I DON'T GET IT/LIKE IT" bring exactly nothing to the community or the game. If you don't want the ranger, don't use it. Period. Your problem has been solved. Now leave the rest of us to play wtf we want to.

[Sandeman]

I think Rangers have a place in 5ed.
At least they are good storywise, even if they dont get to shine in most campaigns.
Aragorn (chief of the Rangers of the North) and Faramir (chief of the Rangers of Ithilien) were both great charachter concepts in the LoTRs story.
So if your DM doesnt set up adventures that require tracking or other survival checks you can still have that cool storywise background to play on.

[HPisBS]

... In fact, you could make a class based entirely around a stronger Favored Enemy concept, and still have it be great to take along on adventures in general, even if they never encounter that monster type. Let me show you what I mean.

Say you are an expert in fighting dragons. You're a DRAGOON now. How do you get better at fighting dragons?

You learn "Jump Good." To combat flying foes, you can jump sky high like a Final Fantasy dragoon, and come crashing down from above to pin your foe to the ground with your lance (or other weapon).

You learn "Fearless Leader." To combat frightening presence, you become utterly fearless, and also good at bolstering the resolve of your allies. You gain immunity to fear and inspiring/leadership abilities.

You learn "Through the Fire and the Flames." To combat breath weapons, you learn to resist elemental attacks, and even guard allies behind you with a shield or a spinning weapon that can disperse AoEs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170101173408if_/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg

And we can go on. To combat their sorcerous abilities, you might get counterspells or other anti-mage tools. And the like.

The point is, even though all of this is really good against dragons, it also helps even if you never fight a dragon. You could go through entire FFXIV story arcs with no dragons and Estinien will still be an absolute unit, even though all his skills are representative of a lifetime spent learning how to beat up dragons, specifically.

It's also more evocative flavorwise. Instead of going "Oh darn, I guess my experience fighting the fey is useless because we're fighting a human enchantress," you go "Ha! You call this an enchantment? I spent 10 years in the court of the Summer Queen!"...

That would've made for a fun way to design the Ranger's subclasses.

But doing so would still leave the base class feeling kinda bare, though.



This part I agree with. I think a lot of ranger features exist to defeat obstacles that are only relevant in T1. T2 rangers should get features to defeat obstacles in T2 and T3 and so on. T2 rangers shouldn't deal with bears, they should deal with chimeras and basilisks and the like, big scary monsters, extend their beast-related things to monstrosities. In T3 extend it to dragons and fiends

Indeed! Dunno what that'd look like, but it sounds like the right direction to gaze in.

[Lokishade]

My take in a nutshell:

I've seen the 'why have a Ranger class' sentiment a lot this edition. It reminds me of the 'why have a Paladin class' sentiment from the 3.5e days.

<snip>

In 5e, things have changed.

<snip>

But now we've got people doing that for Ranger, because now Ranger is the one designed with no soul (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25235023&postcount=8).

<snip>



I'm not as savvy as you in the history of DnD 3.5.

What were the strengths of the Ranger back in that edition? What worked to make it stand out as a class?

[LudicSavant]

I'm not as savvy as you in the history of DnD 3.5.

What were the strengths of the Ranger back in that edition? What worked to make it stand out as a class?

In 3.5 specifically? It uh, didn't. The developers of 3.5e even expressed regrets that they 'didn't spend enough time' on the Ranger. Core martial classes in 3rd edition in general had it rough in general, really (note: 3.5e had a lot more classes and other game-changing things outside the core books than 5e did).

Other editions, on the other hand, had it fare better.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/128805
https://www.enworld.org/threads/which-edition-had-the-best-ranger.676001/

But really, I think Rangers could use a makeover of their core concept, just like the Paladin had.

[Amnestic]

But doing so would still leave the base class feeling kinda bare, though.



Personally speaking I'm a fan of subclasses getting the meat of the flavour generally. If a subclass is to be evocative of an archetype the harder it leans into that the better. If ranger is meant to be "monster hunter specialist" then giving the bulk of the power to the subclasses for the specific monster type makes sense to me.

Does put a soft pressure to make sure you've got one subclass for each creature type I guess \o/

[HPisBS]

Does put a soft pressure to make sure you've got one subclass for each creature type I guess \o/

Wizard schools: the Witcher edition. lol

[Particle_Man]

I have heard it said that the outlander background basically lets you do the exploration stuff of ranger while also getting the benefits of a completely different class.

Maybe one of the other issues is that it gets a little binary. With no ranger or outlander you can play "uh oh we need to get water and food or we die!" but with an outlander, say, it just gets solved. No roleplay there, really.

[Segev]

I stand by what I said. If the DM makes social interaction "talky talky" difficult you will have less of it in the game. The first time a language barrier enters play it's an interesting puzzle to workaround. The 15th time players stop trying.

It's a common trope for there to be writing in a language no one knows on a wall or statue. The DM purposely chose a language no PC knows. Its supposed to be mysterious. I've learned to ignore it. If we're never to know what it reads there's no point to it. Whatever will happen will happen regardless. Kudos to the player who prepared and casts Comprehend Languages. Most of the time the mysterious message now understood won't convey anything useful. It just existed to be mysterious. Once in a while I'll prepare Comprehend Languages "just in case", but even if used doesn't really help. I stop preparing the spell and only use the spell when we obtain a book or note in a language no one knows. It's a facilitator for the players to learn some lore that may or may not help in the plot wrapped up in a ribbon of being in a foreign language.

When I ran Expedition to the Barrier Peaks at the start of the year, the module noted "alien writing" on the walls of the dungeon. It didn't provide any translation for it; as you note, it was meant to be mysterious. The party had comprehend languages, and, fortunately, I had enough context of what the whole scenario was and what the walls it was on were part of to be able to come up with something believable. This was how the party essentially put together that the whole complex was... ...a crashed and entombed sci-fi space ship.

In Star Trek: Prodigy, the language barrier is a huge plot point for the first few episodes, and it really showcases how powerful, amazing, and magical the Federation universal translator is.

In Stargate: SG-1, they quickly dropped alien languages in everything except "ancient text," because it was just too hard to write around, so the problem is a well-founded one.

[animorte]

Maybe one of the other issues is that it gets a little binary. With no ranger or outlander you can play "uh oh we need to get water and food or we die!" but with an outlander, say, it just gets solved. No roleplay there, really.

Yes, if the land provides.

[Veldrenor]

In fact, you could make a class based entirely around a stronger Favored Enemy concept, and still have it be great to take along on adventures in general, even if they never encounter that monster type. Let me show you what I mean.

Say you are an expert in fighting dragons. You're a DRAGOON now. How do you get better at fighting dragons?

You learn "Jump Good." To combat flying foes, you can jump sky high like a Final Fantasy dragoon, and come crashing down from above to pin your foe to the ground with your lance (or other weapon).

You learn "Fearless Leader." To combat frightening presence, you become utterly fearless, and also good at bolstering the resolve of your allies. You gain immunity to fear and inspiring/leadership abilities.

You learn "Through the Fire and the Flames." To combat breath weapons, you learn to resist elemental attacks, and even guard allies behind you with a shield or a spinning weapon that can disperse AoEs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170101173408if_/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg

And we can go on. To combat their sorcerous abilities, you might get counterspells or other anti-mage tools. And the like.

The point is, even though all of this is really good against dragons, it also helps even if you never fight a dragon.

You could make Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer a dual-subclass system like the warlock's Patron and Pact Boon. Natural Explorer: Mountains would get a climb speed and some resistance to cold, Natural Explorer: Swamp would be better at dealing with diseases and poisons and difficult terrain, Natural Explorer: Forest would be be better at hiding or could ignore cover, stuff like that.

[KorvinStarmast]

Languages.
(Bear with me here...)
No. You are simply wrong. Rangers belong in D&D more than Sorcerers ever did. Still.

[Necrisha]

Maybe I have a vastly different experience with Ranger type characters, given I hated the 5e changes that stripped out Wild Empathy and made it impossible to play a "Mantracker" type bounty hunter. Yes, even with a willing and understanding DM; I am not surprised the combat focus over Ranger's skills and abilities has lead it to seeming lackluster to say the least. Not being able to represent the interplay between a horse mounted tracker watching for cues that his or her horse may have picked up on something that a [insert sentient race here] has not is a pain in the butt now that they've stripped the supporting rules out.

Most people seem to talk about the Witcher a lot in terms of hunting- but how he cares for his horse, and any other animals are every bit as important in terms of a Ranger type character.

I would have liked seeing Ranger go deeper into that direction considering the wealth of animal psychology and how many shows there are now surrounding animal training from the psychological perspective, veterinary medicine, and the like- but one thing that bothers me the most is how much hand waving has been done in that direction. What I always though separated the Ranger from the fighter is highly philosophical- Fighter is about fighting and dominating opponents, but the ranger is about living with the natural world, and working with everything they've learned not only to survive in a basic manner- but to entirely live and live well in a purely natural setting.

Beastmaster was a hamfisted archetype meant to embody the play-style, but it doesn't really work, give you have to be at the third level to gain a whiff of that concept, and I find that irritating.

But yeah, I think they dropped highly defining features in the Ranger class that identify it as a separate class with 5e and now Ranger is having an Identity crisis.

(Edited to correct a spelling mistake)

[Particle_Man]

Yes, if the land provides.

True but if the land does not provide, then being a ranger or outlander doesn't do anything the other classes don't do anyhow. And if the land provides, it is not so much "let us roleplay you hunting the deer, setting traps for rabbits, fishing in ponds, gathering berries and nuts, etc., with exact rolls for how many food units each provides, how long they can last before spoiling if not eaten, how much encumbrance each is, etc." It is more "ok you feed yourself and five others. Done. Moving on . . ."

So like I said, kind of binary.

[Lokishade]

You could make Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer a dual-subclass system like the warlock's Patron and Pact Boon. Natural Explorer: Mountains would get a climb speed and some resistance to cold, Natural Explorer: Swamp would be better at dealing with diseases and poisons and difficult terrain, Natural Explorer: Forest would be be better at hiding or could ignore cover, stuff like that.

Copying the design idea of the Warlock seems great to me.

Heck, I'd even throw in the equivalent of Eldritch Invocations in the mix. Let's call them Conclave Competences, or CC for short.

Want a bear companion? Animal Companion CC.

Want to bring back the "Ranger is the best Dual-Wielder"? Pick from a host of dualwielding CC unique to Ranger.

Want to be a trapper? Trapper CC.

With this setup, you can build your ideal Ranger or even reflavor it all entirely to emulate your favorite anime character.

[Intregus182]

Copying the design idea of the Warlock seems great to me.

Heck, I'd even throw in the equivalent of Eldritch Invocations in the mix. Let's call them Conclave Competences, or CC for short.

Want a bear companion? Animal Companion CC.

Want to bring back the "Ranger is the best Dual-Wielder"? Pick from a host of dualwielding CC unique to Ranger.

Want to be a trapper? Trapper CC.

With this setup, you can build your ideal Ranger or even reflavor it all entirely to emulate your favorite anime character.

Yup....i did this years ago.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mlXa9GSqcdsG__eihM4KcGtEgzRSoKIuUQbj482KFsM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Check it out as a baseline. I made this pre tashas.

[Kane0]

Yup....i did this years ago.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mlXa9GSqcdsG__eihM4KcGtEgzRSoKIuUQbj482KFsM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Check it out as a baseline. I made this pre tashas.

Thumbs up by the way, got a downloadable version?

[Intregus182]

Copying the design idea of the Warlock seems great to me.

Heck, I'd even throw in the equivalent of Eldritch Invocations in the mix. Let's call them Conclave Competences, or CC for short.

Want a bear companion? Animal Companion CC.

Want to bring back the "Ranger is the best Dual-Wielder"? Pick from a host of dualwielding CC unique to Ranger.

Want to be a trapper? Trapper CC.

With this setup, you can build your ideal Ranger or even reflavor it all entirely to emulate your favorite anime character.


Thumbs up by the way, got a downloadable version?

Thanks!

The warlock chassis just works SO good on the ranger.

Post tashas and seeing what 1dnd is briniging ill need to update this to bring it inline with the state of the current game.

[Jak]

~snip~

In fact, you could make a class based entirely around a stronger Favored Enemy concept, and still have it be great to take along on adventures in general, even if they never encounter that monster type. Let me show you what I mean.

Say you are an expert in fighting dragons. You're a DRAGOON now. How do you get better at fighting dragons?

You learn "Jump Good." To combat flying foes, you can jump sky high like a Final Fantasy dragoon, and come crashing down from above to pin your foe to the ground with your lance (or other weapon).

You learn "Fearless Leader." To combat frightening presence, you become utterly fearless, and also good at bolstering the resolve of your allies. You gain immunity to fear and inspiring/leadership abilities.

You learn "Through the Fire and the Flames." To combat breath weapons, you learn to resist elemental attacks, and even guard allies behind you with a shield or a spinning weapon that can disperse AoEs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170101173408if_/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/cw_ag/75436.jpg

And we can go on. To combat their sorcerous abilities, you might get counterspells or other anti-mage tools. And the like.

The point is, even though all of this is really good against dragons, it also helps even if you never fight a dragon. You could go through entire FFXIV story arcs with no dragons and Estinien will still be an absolute unit, even though all his skills are representative of a lifetime spent learning how to beat up dragons, specifically.

It's also more evocative flavorwise. Instead of going "Oh darn, I guess my experience fighting the fey is useless because we're fighting a human enchantress," you go "Ha! You call this an enchantment? I spent 10 years in the court of the Summer Queen!" You don't need to represent being good against a creature group by "+1 to (creature tag)." If anything, it's better not to, because said +1 doesn't really represent a concrete new skill or tactic that the player brings to the table -- it's just the same way you fight literally everything else, except with a +1 bonus. We can do better than that.

Damn. That sounds like a fun ranger to play. Has this been brewed?

[Schwann145]

Based on a couple of reply posts, some people are getting the wrong idea about the intent of my OP.
I've edited the original and I'll post the edit here as well, to add a little clarity on my perspective here. :smallsmile:


I'm not posting this as any sort of call to action or anything like that. This is more of a criticism of the current state of the game and the direction it's heading. I don't think the Ranger needs to be removed from the game, and would be against that. In fact, I think the game needs to change and place more emphasis on things that would make a class like the Ranger significantly more relevant.

[Sorinth]

Yes, if the land provides.

And the question of "if" is quite often determined by rolling a die so there's an interpretation that says Outlander still has the make the normal survival check to forage and the difference is that on success instead of getting 1d6+Wis pounds of food they get enough to feed 6 people.

[animorte]

Yup....i did this years ago.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mlXa9GSqcdsG__eihM4KcGtEgzRSoKIuUQbj482KFsM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Check it out as a baseline. I made this pre tashas.
That looks pretty good, and could use an update (considering TCoE and the following extra-terrestrial prerequisite that gave me a good laugh).

Improved Superiority Dice
Prerequisite: Martian Training Bond, 10th level

I think lots of things could benefit from that Warlock invocations concept. The Battlemaster choosing maneuvers is great. The Artificer learning infusions is cool.


And the question of "if" is quite often determined by rolling a die so there's an interpretation that says Outlander still has the make the normal survival check to forage and the difference is that on success instead of getting 1d6+Wis pounds of food they get enough to feed 6 people.
Yes, there’s that too, a good point to make. I was also referring to the idea of possibly being in a desert, up a mountain, middle of the ocean, etc.

You know, areas that literally may not even have the slightest form of nutrition inside a day’s travel.

[Corran]

Languages.
(Bear with me here...)

Do you ever, ever, find your character needing to be able to speak and understand a specific language? Sure, it's quirky and fun that half the party speaks elven and the other half doesn't, but at the end of the day everyone speaks common and common is all you need. Every party member. Every NPC. Every enemy with the capability to converse with you.

Common covers everything. At best, it might be handy to be able to read an alternate and/or obscure language because the party might stumble upon some ancient runes that need deciphering, or text relevant to the plot that they can't immediately understand. Once in a blue moon.

But never do you find yourself unable to communicate.

Why? Because as neat a concept as it is, it's just too much work for the DM and too little payoff to be worth making sure that you have to jump through hoops to talk to the guy at the market, or whomever.
So common exists, and common is what is spoken.
Off topic since the language example was used as an intro to your main point which is about the ranger, but I couldn't resist pointing a few things about how it can be important knowing languages other than common.
IME it's very rare that it pays off knowing a certain language that is not common, but there is surely potential for the DM to use and make it pay off. Just because the potential may not be used often in our games, the logical conclusion is not that it is a waste of space. Instead it should be that we should explore it more and create for interesting situations.

For example, think of a dungeoncrawl where the pc's have made their presence known. Say they are fighting goblins at their cave base. Knowing the goblin language could be important, even if the goblins do know hot to speak common (another way for DM's to make knowing languages more important is to reduce the number of creatures that can speak common). Speaking goblin could be important because when for example overhearing two goblins talk (in goblin), you will be able to understand that for example the they are sending a small force out from a secret entance to flank you, or that the corridor to the far right is trapped, etc. Knowing goblin could also allow you to convince them to open a barricaded door for you (far from a certain bet, but knowing the tongue opens up this possibility). Knowing a tongue other than common could (at DM's discretion) give you a buff in something like persuasion checks (ie when trying to negotiate or gathering info), if not outright open that possibility for you assuming the one you are talking to does not even know to speak common (again, DM's choice). Heck, scrying becomes a waste of time if you cannot even understand what your targets are talking about. Then there are some very edge cases like using spells like command and suggestion to non-common speakers.

Obviously, knowing the language will pay off the most when it eliminates a language barrier alltogether. There are spells for that but they will not always be at hand. Eliminating the language barrier could do as much as give you the opportunity to even negate an upcoming comflict, and from an in-game-world perpective that's big. So I get why knowing languages besides common may not feel too important if the DM does not make sure that language barriers to exist from time to time, but even then it still has potential even when pc's stick to classic adventuring stuff like a dungeoncrawl.

[deljzc]

Fundamentally, the higher magic the game is, the more martial and menial abilities become less relevant.

That is the side effect of turning D&D into more of a world of warcraft type of game(very action oriented, geared toward combo and burst damage, cool downs and short rest abilities). I mean, that's what I see the game as now.

Not saying that is bad, it appeals more to a generation that grew up with MMORP and the need to be in the action all the time. Low magic games, by definition, are designed to use all these minor abilities a Ranger traditional has to PROTECT the mage classes. The game now is almost the reverse. Mage classes have such a huge tool kit of spells that practically circumvent every environmental or gritty realism challenge.

The only way for the game to adjust is to turn all the other classes into similar spellcasting and burst damage engines (just like MMORP's). I mean, you could turn Rangers into the primary bow wielding class if you wanted, with insane missile damage abilities and take that completely away from a subclass of Warrior. But arguably, the Ranger motif designed around the Aragorn/Strider design that the 1980's D&D game used as the class type doesn't exist anymore unless you decide to run a game similar in style to the 1980's version of the game.

I mean, let's face it, EVERY class uses magic now. For all intents and purposes, Warrior, Monk, Ranger, Barbarian are all magic based classes whose special abilities/feats/level gains all mirror magic ability more than traditional middle age knight, Kung Fu style monk, Conan, or Aragorn from LotR. Any ability that requires a rest to reuse is arguable "magic", otherwise, why need to rest at all to use it?

So the game has redefined so many abilities as "magic" so that traditional mage classes can be active and important participants.

It's just power creep. I'm amazed at how much power creep has entered the game since the 1980's. The game creates superheroes, which is fine for a generation that WANTS to be superheroes in a world of superheroes. And the popularity of the game obviously points to that what players want. So WotC is going to continue to give that to us.

More power creep, more high magic, more superhero style classes. They will just make a Ranger that isn't anything like what we called a Ranger in the 1980's and try to sell it to everyone.

[Tanarii]

Mage classes have such a huge tool kit of spells that practically circumvent every environmental or gritty realism challenge.
It's not just the size of the "tool kit". It's that all the nails and screws get full restocked with just 8 hours of rest, that using a hammer holds no danger of accidentally smacking your own thumb because someone said something right as you were swinging it, and that the "tool kit" now comes with built in user safety gear.

If Multiclassing is allowed, the last is upgraded to six inches of bubble wrap.

[sithlordnergal]

So, I don't think the issues with the Ranger are caused by the Ranger being outdated, the Exploration pillar being "weak", or all the classes having access to magic. The Ranger would still have all of its issues if you took away all magic from the game, and only a small fraction of the Ranger's problems would be solved if you made Exploration the strongest pillar in the game. I think the problem with 5e's Ranger was that, when the designers were making the Ranger, they mistook Travel for Exploration. And while Travel is a part of the Exploration Pillar, it isn't even the biggest part of it.

Think about it. What counts as the Exploration Pillar in this game? Well, I'd say the pillar is used whenever you're carefully exploring a dungeon, rushing through a city to find the hideout of a gang, searching a room for the answer to a puzzle, or traversing the lands. Basically, if you're making some sort of Check, and its not an Attack or Social based check, chances are its related to the Exploration Pillar. Not always, but generally. And the Ranger is supposed to be an expert with that Pillar.

So, what sort of abilities does the base Ranger class have to help them be an expert with all of that? Looking over the Ranger they have Favored Enemy, which occasionally grants bonuses to Skill Checks, and Deft Explorer, which grants one Expertise, some Languages, and bonus Movement options. Oh! They also get three skills they're Proficient in! Everything else on the base class helps with long distance group Travel, is a weak ability, is very niche, or is an ok ability that's hampered by a strict number of uses per day.

Given the Base Ranger's abilities, the Ranger isn't actually an expert on the Exploration Pillar. The Ranger is an expert in Travel. Not only is Travel a small subsection of the Exploration Pillar, but its probably the least fleshed out section. Getting from point A to point B is typically the least interesting part of a game. That's not to say it can't be interesting. If getting from point A to point B requires a hike through a mountain pass during winter, it becomes interesting. But if you're going from point A to point B and you're traveling on a well worn road, or a well known path through the woods...well...its not exactly high risk and the DM might just handwave it.

As for the other abilities...well, lets look them over. We have Favored Enemy and Favored Foe, neither of which is a good ability. Favored Enemy was nerfed from the 3.5 days, where it was already a weak ability with a handy niche, and Favored Foe is basically a weak version of Hunter's Mark that can't be Counterspelled or Dispelled, and can only be used a limited timers per days. Wanna improve either of those? Remove the Concentration on Favored Foe, or just let Rangers add their Proficiency Bonus to damage against their Favored Enemy.

Primeval Awareness and Primal Awareness? Trash abilities. Primal Awareness does give you spells you can cast once per day, but I wouldn't really call the spell selection that ground breaking. As for Primeval Awareness? Never use it, ever. It costs a spell slot and you get to learn that certain creature types are within 1 to 6 miles of you. You don't know where, you don't know how many, just that they're somewhere within a 1 to 6 mile radius.

And the abilities all follow that sort of thing. Now, the subclasses are a bit better, but they still don't help much with Exploration. A few do, but most do not. The best Ranger subclasses typically just make you into a better Fighter, or a Fighter with a strong pet, hence why I see so many people say "turn Ranger into a Fighter subclass". Its also why I see people say Rogues and Druids make better Rangers than the Ranger, cause those two classes actually have class abilities that interact with the Exploration pillar outside of the occasional Expertise and Advantage.


EDIT: If you want to improve the Ranger, give them more abilities that interact with the Exploration pillar. Give the base class an Animal Companion that can be used to scout, like the Druid's wild shape does. Give them skill based abilities, like the Rogue has. Give them abilities that actually help them explore! And do not just rehash Natural Explorer, which is either totally useless, or removes any challenge from the things it interacts with.

[ZRN]

All the OP's points apply even more to (Vancian-inspired) wizards. We've got an entire RPG built around "spell slots," which are a completely alien concept to 99% of fantasy media out there (the exception being stuff that's based on D&D and I guess Vance). It's tedious, logically inconsistent, and adds almost nothing to the game, and unlike rangers, it's not even an attempt to capture some cool fantasy archetype/scenario that people actually like.

[PhoenixPhyre]

All the OP's points apply even more to (Vancian-inspired) wizards. We've got an entire RPG built around "spell slots," which are a completely alien concept to 99% of fantasy media out there (the exception being stuff that's based on D&D and I guess Vance). It's tedious, logically inconsistent, and adds almost nothing to the game, and unlike rangers, it's not even an attempt to capture some cool fantasy archetype/scenario that people actually like.

Agreed. The only thing it allows is the "do everything, no weaknesses, I'm God because I'm so much smarter than you" wizard archetype. Because this is a nerd's game and nerds want revenge against jocks for being mistreated in high school. So now smartness MUST be the path to ultimate power and all you strong/athletic guys can just eat my dust.

[Amnestic]

All the OP's points apply even more to (Vancian-inspired) wizards. We've got an entire RPG built around "spell slots," which are a completely alien concept to 99% of fantasy media out there (the exception being stuff that's based on D&D and I guess Vance). It's tedious, logically inconsistent, and adds almost nothing to the game, and unlike rangers, it's not even an attempt to capture some cool fantasy archetype/scenario that people actually like.

Gonna be at least another edition or two before they slay that sacred animal on the altar of spellpoints.

[Rukelnikov]

Agreed. The only thing it allows is the "do everything, no weaknesses, I'm God because I'm so much smarter than you" wizard archetype. Because this is a nerd's game and nerds want revenge against jocks for being mistreated in high school. So now smartness MUST be the path to ultimate power and all you strong/athletic guys can just eat my dust.

Wizards are usually portrayed as being capable of doing things the fighter types can't, like seeing into the future, teleporting, killing balrogs, etc. The archetype is almost always shown to be amongst the strongest ones in fiction. DnD is a game, and some balance may be required, but its not DnD putting wizards above noncasters, its most fantasy depicting them like that.


Gonna be at least another edition or two before they slay that sacred animal on the altar of spellpoints.

Spell points would only make casters more OP.

[Witty Username]

Gonna be at least another edition or two before they slay that sacred animal on the altar of spellpoints.

Don't spell points just make that issue even worse? One of the few balancing factors of full casters is they only get a few high level slots, being able to "convert" low level slots will just make casters more titanic than they already are.
--
I reject the premise that wizard doesn't belong in D&D.
For one, the idea that martials should be removed from the game is equally valid.
For two, spell slots and vancian casting is solid from a mechanics perspective to create interesting decision points during play, spell point systems mean that your best spells for situation are simply always available.
For three, removing it from the game would drastically reduce the number of available character options available to the game.

[Talionis]

I would say this might have been true in 3/.5, with the axing of prestige classes in favor of subclasses this is no longer true. Paladin and Ranger are both difficult to represent both as subclasses and multiclass combinations because either the design space is too small or the flavor/mechanics of the subclasses introduced in multiclassing.
The Paladin and Ranger are fine in terms of identity and design space to be full classes. Ranger's perceived identity issues are arguably proof of this, as such disagreements naturally lead to subclasses.

Tinkering with the features internal to the Ranger is the solution to its class woes.

Compare this to barbarian and sorcerer, where either the class identity is small enough to be compressed into a subclass without issues, either by being light on features (barbarian) or by their mechanical identity being nearly identical to another class (sorcerer/wizard).
I played a lot of 3.5 so that’s probably where that comes from. I think if you brought the less broken from 5e you could use some of those systems to make it work. But it’s a lot of work for negligibly better.

[Dr.Samurai]

Wizards are usually portrayed as being capable of doing things the fighter types can't, like seeing into the future, teleporting, killing balrogs, etc. The archetype is almost always shown to be amongst the strongest ones in fiction. DnD is a game, and some balance may be required, but its not DnD putting wizards above noncasters, its most fantasy depicting them like that.
The fiction I read have warriors being total badasses and killing enemies and monsters with 1 or 2 swings of the sword, imposing various wounds and conditions on their enemies with weapon strikes, taking down mobs of monsters by themselves, etc.

In the actual game though, it's considered problematic that my tier 3 fighter took out a blinded hill giant by himself, and Bounded Accuracy means that my higher level warrior won't be mowing through a group of lower level monsters.

Not sure why casters get to have this "accurate portrayal" and warriors are left fighting a war of hit point attrition, shaving off monster hit points each turn :smallconfused:.

[Rukelnikov]

The fiction I read have warriors being total badasses and killing enemies and monsters with 1 or 2 swings of the sword, imposing various wounds and conditions on their enemies with weapon strikes, taking down mobs of monsters by themselves, etc.

In the actual game though, it's considered problematic that my tier 3 fighter took out a blinded hill giant by himself, and Bounded Accuracy means that my higher level warrior won't be mowing through a group of lower level monsters.

Not sure why casters get to have this "accurate portrayal" and warriors are left fighting a war of hit point attrition, shaving off monster hit points each turn :smallconfused:.

I'm not against figthing types being powerful, I'm against the notion that casters doing stuff fighting types can't or somehow being world shakingly powerful is something DnD invented.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not against figthing types being powerful, I'm against the notion that casters doing stuff fighting types can't or somehow being world shakingly powerful is something DnD invented.
In most fiction that isn't D&D-based/inspired...casters either don't exist as such or are the bad guys. The whole idea of "wizards" as these bookish nerds is really an offshoot of D&D.

And I have yet to see any evidence that 5e casters, outside of a couple of broken wizard-only spells, are world-shakingly powerful. Except when people import 3e-isms and just let them do all sorts of things "because magic."

[Schwann145]

Spells should be both earth-shaking in their effectiveness and also very fragile and easy to interrupt.
Meanwhile, weapons should be actually deadly and a true threat to anyone facing them.

As the game has progressed over the (actual) decades, somehow we continuously move further and further away from both of these concepts.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Spells should be both earth-shaking in their effectiveness and also very fragile and easy to interrupt.
Meanwhile, weapons should be actually deadly and a true threat to anyone facing them.

As the game has progressed over the (actual) decades, somehow we continuously move further and further away from both of these concepts.

Personally, I prefer when both magic and weapons (and other things) are just different routes to power. And overall the power levels are kept at the "moderate-to-low-level superhero" at the top end. Nobody (IMO) should be changing the world through any single action. The party, acting over a campaign, can certainly change worlds. No issues there. But not simply by writing "I'm a caster" on their character sheet.

Paper-fragile characters are, to me, pointless. And "it's balanced because you never (or only very rarely) get to use it" isn't a good form of balanced. Because it's too easy for it to either (a) never get used (and thus be a power only on paper) or (b) have ways to get around the limits and thus become overpowered. Case (b) is what's happened with current D&D--the restrictions are annoying, so they get loosened. But the power doesn't get meaningfully reduced. The only way to actually balance it is to actually reduce the power to something that works when used as much as possible. Binary "ineffective if you don't have power/overpowered when you do" is bad design 100% of the time. Everyone should sit at a (hypothetical) 4-6/10 in various areas and have resources they can use to temporarily boost up to ~8/10 in some areas. Everyone should always be able to meaningfully contribute in every situation and dominate no situation singlehandedly. Everything of interest should require the active participation of the party working together. If it's something one person can do alone, it's not meaningful or the person is too strong.

[Witty Username]

In most fiction that isn't D&D-based/inspired...casters either don't exist as such or are the bad guys. The whole idea of "wizards" as these bookish nerds is really an offshoot of D&D.

Bad guys, not so much, amoral and supporting roles I see as fair. Arthurian legend for example has magic using characters that run the whole gauntlet.

I think the bookish nerds thing is a recent thing personally, it mostly arose out of the need to differentiate the wizard and the sorcerer from what I can see, (bloodline and talent became codified as specifically sorcerer, with practice and study becoming specifically wizard) and somewhat a narrowing the concept of intelligence to its most banal form.

[Sigreid]

Bad guys, not so much, amoral and supporting roles I see as fair. Arthurian legend for example has magic using characters that run the whole gauntlet.

I think the bookish nerds thing is a recent thing personally, it mostly arose out of the need to differentiate the wizard and the sorcerer from what I can see, (bloodline and talent became codified as specifically sorcerer, with practice and study becoming specifically wizard) and somewhat a narrowing the concept of intelligence to its most banal form.

The bookish thing came because mages in D&D were initially based on Vance's idea of how magic would work. In those books, from what I understand I haven't read them; mages searched for spells and memorized them like writing a scroll into their brain that would be ripped out of their mind with casting. From what I understand, only the most powerful and gifted of mages could hold more than one or two spells in their head after hours or even days of study.

[greenstone]

My feeling is that generally character class should have nothing to do with what you do in the gameworld; it should be mechanics only.

"Ranger" (or bushcrafter or woodsman or wise woman or whatever term you use for it) is an ingame activity. You should be able to do "ranger" stuff ingame as a fighter, mage, cleric, rogue, monk, whatever. The same goes for "thief" and "bard" and so on.

The character class should only be about mechanics. For example, wizards are spells-prepared casters while sorcerers are spells-known casters.

So, I agree that ranger shouldn't be a character class, but I also think abouty 2/3 of the other classes and subclases shouldn't be a character class. :-)

[Witty Username]

The bookish thing came because mages in D&D were initially based on Vance's idea of how magic would work. In those books, from what I understand I haven't read them; mages searched for spells and memorized them like writing a scroll into their brain that would be ripped out of their mind with casting. From what I understand, only the most powerful and gifted of mages could hold more than one or two spells in their head after hours or even days of study.

At least in AD&D that amounted to not being able to use magic if one couldn't read scrolls, if you were a wizard and some issues if you survived to high level, divine magic could still get access to casting with a minimum wisdom. Also, scrolls and books had a broader meaning, somewhat to accommodate settings like Dark Sun, somewhat to accommodate different character astectics. As time has gone on those astectics have largely been lost in favor of the most basic concepts.
But I was more pushing back against the nerd thing, the idea of wizard as "science hero" but fantasy isn't really a thing until modern D&D. Which as far as I could tell began with the advent of the sorcerer (at least as a defining trait of the wizard as opposed to an possible archetype/option of wizard).

[Sigreid]

At least in AD&D that amounted to not being able to use magic if one couldn't read scrolls, if you were a wizard and some issues if you survived to high level, divine magic could still get access to casting with a minimum wisdom. Also, scrolls and books had a broader meaning, somewhat to accommodate settings like Dark Sun, somewhat to accommodate different character astectics. As time has gone on those astectics have largely been lost in favor of the most basic concepts.
But I was more pushing back against the nerd thing, the idea of wizard as "science hero" but fantasy isn't really a thing until modern D&D. Which as far as I could tell began with the advent of the sorcerer (at least as a defining trait of the wizard as opposed to an possible archetype/option of wizard).

In some ways I think it was better when each slot for any caster had to be specifically assigned. It was more limiting, but that helped with everyone getting to feel important and I think you were less likely to spend a spell slot just to do something with magic someone else could have done. When it took a lot longer to replenish your spell slots (1 hour per spell level if I remember correctly) you also had to be a lot more careful how you spent your precocious slots if you were out in the field.

[Tanarii]

Given the Base Ranger's abilities, the Ranger isn't actually an expert on the Exploration Pillar. The Ranger is an expert in Travel. Not only is Travel a small subsection of the Exploration Pillar, but its probably the least fleshed out section. Getting from point A to point B is typically the least interesting part of a game. That's not to say it can't be interesting. If getting from point A to point B requires a hike through a mountain pass during winter, it becomes interesting. But if you're going from point A to point B and you're traveling on a well worn road, or a well known path through the woods...well...its not exactly high risk and the DM might just handwave it.
If Travel is getting from point A to point B, then it's a weakness in the Exploration Pillar. Exploring unknown wilderness used to be a core part of the game, especially in BECMI.

I agree it's still an issue when you have a Ranger who is heavily specialized in Wilderness Exploration in a campaign focused on dungeon crawling and urban crawling, with almost no wilderness crawling. But it's a over-arching issue when the game has no game structures to support any crawling at all. I mean, even if they gave us proper generic structures for point crawling (or other scene/encounter crawling) for dungeon, urban and wilderness, as opposed to old school square, (missing urban structure) and hex crawling, they could at least then tune the Ranger (and probably Barbarian and Druid) features to the wilderness version of it.

[sithlordnergal]

If Travel is getting from point A to point B, then it's a weakness in the Exploration Pillar. Exploring unknown wilderness used to be a core part of the game, especially in BECMI.

I agree it's still an issue when you have a Ranger who is heavily specialized in Wilderness Exploration in a campaign focused on dungeon crawling and urban crawling, with almost no wilderness crawling. But it's a over-arching issue when the game has no game structures to support any crawling at all. I mean, even if they gave us proper generic structures for point crawling (or other scene/encounter crawling) for dungeon, urban and wilderness, as opposed to old school square, (missing urban structure) and hex crawling, they could at least then tune the Ranger (and probably Barbarian and Druid) features to the wilderness version of it.

See, I wouldn't really call exploring an unknown wilderness travel though. Travel is a part of it, but its not actually the major part of it. When you're exploring an unknown wilderness, you might be going to a place yes, but you're doing so much more. You're likely mapping it out, taking notes on where certain important landmarks or resources are found, avoiding the dangers that could be found there. And maybe we're thinking of different things, but I feel that sort of exploration is actually pretty decently covered. Especially when you add in things like Xanathar's. The DMG has some generalized hazards, weather and potential weather effects, while Xanathar's adds in potential encounters, and more than just "X amount of NPC".

So yes, traveling being weak is a weakness of the Exploration Pillar, but every pillar has its own little weaknesses, and I feel like the Exploration Pillar is actually pretty well developed. You can easily make a dungeon/urban/wilderness crawl that's fun, interesting, and dangerous in 5e with little to no social or combat encounters. The core issue with the Ranger is they decided to focus only on the weakest aspect of the Exploration pillar with their base class abilities. If they went a more Rogue-esque route, then Rangers would be much better. Give Rangers Expertise, give them advantage on all Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma checks involving a Favored enemy, make it so Primeval Awareness gives direction and number of creatures. The Druid can explore with Wild Shape, give all Rangers an animal companion they can use to scout in a similar manner, make it smarter than average so it can actually scout properly. Give them actual ways to help explore, not just be really good at traveling from point A to point B.

[Tanarii]

And maybe we're thinking of different things, but I feel that sort of exploration is actually pretty decently covered. Especially when you add in things like Xanathar's. The DMG has some generalized hazards, weather and potential weather effects, while Xanathar's adds in potential encounters, and more than just "X amount of NPC".
Rules for things aren't a game structure. And WotC D&D is completely lacking in game structures outside of heavily detailed ones for combat and a basic one for social.

If you've got experience with pre-WotC D&D, or even pre-2e TSR D&D, you can build them for dungeons and wilderness from the pieces of rules. But that means that classes don't plug into them very well, since they aren't designed with them in mind.

[GloatingSwine]

At the end of the day, even in 5e; hand waving food, water, ammunition and navigation is just a table choice.

The problem with these elements isn't really handwaving them away, it's not having enough scope in how well they are performed to make you consistently want to have a specialist in doing them.

They mostly don't have interesting consequences for failure or degrees of success unless the DM constructs those bespoke for every single instance *and* fits them into the current adventure the party is on so that the consequences of failure don't make everything grind to a screeching halt.


I do think that the modern class fantasy for the ranger should be something basically Geralt shaped instead of the ungodly hybrid of Aragorn and Drizzt we're currently dealing with.

[Eldan]

Honestly, this sounds to me like a gamestyle problem. Almost the same points could be made about every skill. Why does athletics exist, if you can fly at level 5? Why is there persuasion, if we have mind control? Why are there swords, when we have magic missiles?

By that logic, nothing except basic attacks need to exist in the game, since combat's the only element of the game that everyone agrees is essentiall, everything else is just bells and whistles.

Skills are good for two things. They give personality to a character, and they give diversity to the number of problems the GM can set the players, and the problem solving solutions they can find. If a player can track, you can have an adventure where tracking is relevant. If a player knows court etiquette, you can have a court intrigue.

It's not that much work to include for a GM, either. You should already be thinking about your various character's personalities and talents and how they can contribute to the plot. So if you have a player who can track someone through the forest, make sure that comes up every so often! It's the GM's job to make the players feel relevant. They are super easy to write, too, it's just one minor fork in the plot. "Players come to [situation]. If they successfully track the bad guys] through the forest, they arrive there in one hour, just in time to [stop bad thing]. If they don't manage to track them, they have to find an alternate solution, which takes three hours instead and leads to [bad consequence]."

Languages? "The two elven ambassadors are talking to each other, thinking you can't overhear them, this is what they say." "Two of the sailors are whispering in thieves' cant about mutiny. They say they have weapons stowed away behind a bag in..." "The battleplans are written in orc language. Since none of you can read that, you can't predict where the ambush will be set..."
It's only as rare as you want to make it.

And yes, a spell can solve that, but that's a separate problem. A spell can solve everything. A spell can also mind control the guards the bard would rather persuade, a spell can also kill an enemy in one lucky hit, making the fighter unnecessary for that fight.

[GloatingSwine]

Sure, you're going to include things for a ranger to do if someone's playing a ranger, but are you going to include things that need a ranger to do them if nobody's playing a ranger?

If the world doesn't contain reasons for the players to want a survival and tracking specialist when they don't already have them, then those elements of the game will fade into the background and so people won't think "I should play a ranger so we can do all those things this time".

That's why playing up the Geralt fantasy, the hunt and kill dangerous monsters guy, rather than the Aragorn fantasy, the wilderness survival and nature guy, is a better mold for the current ranger (and something people are going to want to do when they come into a game).

[Eldan]

I generally write all my campaigns around my players. I often don't even start writing the plots until I have their backstories and a list of things they want to see happen in the game.

I may occasionally write in a scene of "the bad guys got away, if only you had someone who could track them!" but rather rarely. It's a bit of a "feel bad" for the players, as it's kind of a failure they can't do anything about.

[GloatingSwine]

I generally write all my campaigns around my players. I often don't even start writing the plots until I have their backstories and a list of things they want to see happen in the game.

I may occasionally write in a scene of "the bad guys got away, if only you had someone who could track them!" but rather rarely. It's a bit of a "feel bad" for the players, as it's kind of a failure they can't do anything about.

Yeah, and that's the fundamental problem you get when you build a significant part of a class fantasy around wilderness survival and attach features out of the feature budget to doing it. It's not something you want if you don't have it because most DMs won't make you suffer without it.

Unless you're playing some kind of procedural hex-crawl the survival and exploration bits of the ranger are among the least likely things you're going to miss if you don't have one.

Hence reimagining the character to go deeper on the monster hunter part and pulling back from the survival and nature part.

I would say the idea should be a broad based "research, understand, and prepare against specific foes" feature and then the ability to specialise further than that against certain ones with favoured enemy. (So you get some parts of the favoured enemy against a wider range of things but at the cost of having to prepare in advance and spend some resources, and the full thing and convenience of doing it all the time against your favoured)

[ZRN]

Don't spell points just make that issue even worse? One of the few balancing factors of full casters is they only get a few high level slots, being able to "convert" low level slots will just make casters more titanic than they already are.
--
I reject the premise that wizard doesn't belong in D&D.
For one, the idea that martials should be removed from the game is equally valid.


I'm not saying "casters" should be removed from the game; I'm not even talking about caster vs. martial stuff. And I agree that "nerdy wizard" is a valid archetype that should be represented. I'm talking specifically about the pseudo-Vancian spell slot mechanic.


For two, spell slots and vancian casting is solid from a mechanics perspective to create interesting decision points during play, spell point systems mean that your best spells for situation are simply always available.

It's certainly true that replacing spell slots with spell points, but keeping the rest of the current progression (spell levels, etc) would just make casters more powerful. But, 1, I'm not talking about relative power; I'm talking about how well the mechanics represent archetypes players care about. And 2, it's not like spell slots and spell points are the only games in town, even in 5e! Warlocks make more sense mechanically and they're pulling from the same spell list as wizards.

[Rukelnikov]

Sure, you're going to include things for a ranger to do if someone's playing a ranger, but are you going to include things that need a ranger to do them if nobody's playing a ranger?

If the world doesn't contain reasons for the players to want a survival and tracking specialist when they don't already have them, then those elements of the game will fade into the background and so people won't think "I should play a ranger so we can do all those things this time".

That's why playing up the Geralt fantasy, the hunt and kill dangerous monsters guy, rather than the Aragorn fantasy, the wilderness survival and nature guy, is a better mold for the current ranger (and something people are going to want to do when they come into a game).

Its a matter of styles, there's some people that like including things specifically because the players have features that will allow them to interact with them, and there's people that'd rather write encounters without knowing/taking into account what the PCs will be/are and then the players will have to deal with those however they can. I prefer mostly the later with sprinkles of the former, but its a matter of taste.

My problem with 5e's exploration is that, as a whole, the system has pretty much no lasting consequences, and that was usually one of the most interesting part of exploring in general for me.

[GloatingSwine]

My problem with 5e's exploration is that, as a whole, the system has pretty much no lasting consequences, and that was usually one of the most interesting part of exploring in general for me.

This is just another way of stating the problem. Exploration (in environments the Ranger's skills and features apply) as a system element doesn't have lasting consequences, and so there's no benefit to having class features that interact with it.

If exploration as a system element did have sufficient consequences that you want to avoid them then you'd pretty much have to spread out the class features that interact with it or make ranger a mandatory character.

Having one class archetype being "the survival and wilderness guy" just doesn't work out right.

[Slipjig]

In some ways I think it was better when each slot for any caster had to be specifically assigned. It was more limiting, but that helped with everyone getting to feel important and I think you were less likely to spend a spell slot just to do something with magic someone else could have done. When it took a lot longer to replenish your spell slots (1 hour per spell level if I remember correctly) you also had to be a lot more careful how you spent your precocious slots if you were out in the field.
I'm a hard disagree on this. When I'm putting together my spell list, I know that I'm probably going to burn a high % of my slots on Healing Word. But I like the option to keep at least a couple of utility spells available, along with one or two oddballs like Snare or Skywrite that are extremely unlikely to be used in any given day, but are very fun if they DO come out.

Vancian preparation means choosing between either locking yourself into spamming your optimal spells (boring) or being unable to meaningfully contribute if the utility spells you pick happen to not be useful (lame).

[Eldan]

Yeah, and that's the fundamental problem you get when you build a significant part of a class fantasy around wilderness survival and attach features out of the feature budget to doing it. It's not something you want if you don't have it because most DMs won't make you suffer without it.

Unless you're playing some kind of procedural hex-crawl the survival and exploration bits of the ranger are among the least likely things you're going to miss if you don't have one.

Hence reimagining the character to go deeper on the monster hunter part and pulling back from the survival and nature part.

I would say the idea should be a broad based "research, understand, and prepare against specific foes" feature and then the ability to specialise further than that against certain ones with favoured enemy. (So you get some parts of the favoured enemy against a wider range of things but at the cost of having to prepare in advance and spend some resources, and the full thing and convenience of doing it all the time against your favoured)

But again, that's all class features, in a way. Do you throw a boss who can only be killed by ice damage at a party without cold spells? No. That doesn't mean cold spells are useless. If everyone was illiterate barbarians, I wouldn't make a letter as a clue (unless the quest was "find the wise man"). Reading is not useless.

[Eldan]

This is just another way of stating the problem. Exploration (in environments the Ranger's skills and features apply) as a system element doesn't have lasting consequences, and so there's no benefit to having class features that interact with it.

If exploration as a system element did have sufficient consequences that you want to avoid them then you'd pretty much have to spread out the class features that interact with it or make ranger a mandatory character.

Having one class archetype being "the survival and wilderness guy" just doesn't work out right.

Surely that's an issue ox adventure design. It takes two sentences to write "if the players explore the forest successfully (Nature DC X), they find additional fact Y".

[GloatingSwine]

But again, that's all class features, in a way. Do you throw a boss who can only be killed by ice damage at a party without cold spells? No. That doesn't mean cold spells are useless. If everyone was illiterate barbarians, I wouldn't make a letter as a clue (unless the quest was "find the wise man"). Reading is not useless.

Yeah, though a lot of them are going to have broad applicability and the design of the ranger makes them pre-specialise.

Cold spells are useful against anything that's not immune/resistant to cold, natural explorer (arctic) doesn't help if you're not in the arctic.

Ranger design has a good deal of "only when X" rather than "except when X". And you have to pick X long in advance and can't change it.


Surely that's an issue ox adventure design. It takes two sentences to write "if the players explore the forest successfully (Nature DC X), they find additional fact Y".

Again, that makes the Ranger feel useful but doesn't make the party wish they had one any time they don't.

Like look at the favoured terrain rules for natural explorer.

Double proficiency on Int and Wis when related to your favoured terrain.
Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

Additional favoured terrains at 6th and 10th.

Most of the time, in almost all adventures even ones that go to wild places not having any of that isn't going to matter, not even because it's easy to replicate but because the consequences of not being able to do any of it have to be mild enough that every session 0 doesn't start with the question "who's going to play the Ranger, we're all dead if we don't have one".

They even make it explicit by having this have a swap-out feature (Deft Explorer) which is some basically-useful-all-the-time stuff. It's even in the class rules themselves that what is supposed to be a core fantasy of the class, "the wilderness guy", just doesn't matter enough and needs to have a swap-out.

[Eldan]

I don't think that's a fundamental difference, no.

A wizard has no cold spells. An enemy can only be injured by cold. The wizards class features are now useless.
A ranger can only navigate in the arctic. The game is set in a tropical rainfofest. The ranger's class features are now useless.

It's the same thing. The GM should try to make players useful.

And I don't think it would fundamentally improve rangers if they had the class feature "has a bonus everywhere except in the arctic", i.e. if they had to choose a special terrain they aren't proficient in.

[Rukelnikov]

And I don't think it would fundamentally improve rangers if they had the class feature "has a bonus everywhere except in the arctic", i.e. if they had to choose a special terrain they aren't proficient in.

That can only be true in a game where player have 0 agency.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't think that's a fundamental difference, no.
A wizard has no cold spells. An enemy can only be injured by cold. The wizards class features are now useless.


Because damage is infamously the only thing you can do with spell slots...

[LudicSavant]

I don't think that's a fundamental difference, no.

A wizard has no cold spells. An enemy can only be injured by cold. The wizards class features are now useless.
A ranger can only navigate in the arctic. The game is set in a tropical rainfofest. The ranger's class features are now useless.

It's the same thing. The GM should try to make players useful.

That analogy seems... less than ideal.

There aren't any published enemies that can only be injured by cold. There are an awful lot of places that aren't the arctic in every published D&D setting.

Also, even if you did, hypothetically, create a creature that could only be injured by cold, and the Wizard had no cold spells... they probably wouldn't care and just would do something extremely useful that isn't damage.

[deljzc]

There is a basic problem that magic is by definition going to be much greater in power than normal activities that aren't magical.

Take, for instance, just firing a bow and arrow. Physics state that no matter how much "normal" improvement, firing a bow is just all it is going to be. You can increase fire rate, hit %, even damage to some extent. But at the end of the day, without magical disbelief, you can only get so good at firing a bow.

How could this then possibly compete with "magic"? Fireball? Disintegration Rays? Turning invisible? And even greater and greater spell functions later in the game?

The truth is, it can't. Not without suspending disbelief and turning firing a bow into something crazy unbelievable. This is the superhero motif of martial classes now prescribed by modern D&D.

The only other option (as done by early D&D) was to make magic so weak at early levels that you couldn't survive without the normal fighting and bow skills of skilled individuals PROTECTING your weak ass until you could cast Fireball and all the other great things magic users can do.

But unfortunately, that is not the best model for a game. Who wants to play a game, want to TRY and be a magic-user, and die 50% of the time before level 4-5? And arguably not do much for those first 5 levels anyhow?

And that's also why the game as designed by Gygax kind of capped the levels/game at 11-13. At that point martials were going to lose out to magic users getting the ability to do crazy things.

That was the design of the game.... Martials good at the beginning, protect the magic users because if you wanted to kill a real dragon by the time you got to level 10 (almost the finish of the game), you better have a magic user on your side.

That's not a sustainable game model with today's generation. There isn't the patience or understanding of these long term goals or how to make that fun throughout an entire campaign.

Remember, humans couldn't even be multi-class. And there were huge restrictions against it. The game was simpler and linear.

Now it's all over the place. 25+ races. 15+ classes (and subclasses). Hundreds of class combinations (both dips and otherwise). The game isn't linear. They want the game to be as interactive at level 1 as at level 20. They want all the classes to somewhat be the same strength and activity level. Kind of impossible when you really think about it.

[Slipjig]

I don't think that's a fundamental difference, no.

A wizard has no cold spells. An enemy can only be injured by cold. The wizards class features are now useless.
A ranger can only navigate in the arctic. The game is set in a tropical rainfofest. The ranger's class features are now useless.

That's very different, because an-invulnerable-to-everything-but-cold-damage villain makes EVERYBODY useless except a caster with cold-spells prepared.

Also, in your example the Wizard's spells can still be used throughout the rest of the adventure, he just can't deal direct damage in this one encounter. In contrast, most adventures (and many whole campaigns) take place entirely in only one or two terrain types.

[ZRN]

In contrast, most adventures (and many whole campaigns) take place entirely in only one or two terrain types.

I think the current UA does a fairly elegant job of keeping rangers' status as "best at wilderness exploration" without locking them into specific terrain types. And that makes sense, doesn't it? A rogue player who wants to be a skilled courtier just takes expertise in Persuade and Deception, and maybe has a backstory or Background that mentions growing up in the court which gets him advantage sometimes from a generous DM. Likewise, an "arctic ranger" now gets to regenerate Exhaustion faster and grab Expertise in Survival, so he's able to survive in harsh conditions and find a path through the wilderness...

[Pex]

I'm a hard disagree on this. When I'm putting together my spell list, I know that I'm probably going to burn a high % of my slots on Healing Word. But I like the option to keep at least a couple of utility spells available, along with one or two oddballs like Snare or Skywrite that are extremely unlikely to be used in any given day, but are very fun if they DO come out.

Vancian preparation means choosing between either locking yourself into spamming your optimal spells (boring) or being unable to meaningfully contribute if the utility spells you pick happen to not be useful (lame).

Agreed. Despite what all the haters say spellcaster players are entitled to have their fun, and that includes the ability to cast spells for the fun of it. Though playing an artificer, it was fun cool when I had cast Skywrite to ask a dragon in the area to speak with the party. I remember the days of 2E Vancian casting. As a cleric I could never prepare enough Cure Light Wounds. As a wizard it meant multiple copies of Magic Missile. In college everyone in our gaming group hated Vancian casting, so we developed our own mana point system.

There's nothing wrong with the traditional impactful spells. They're fun too. I enjoy a good Fireball. However, current 5E spellcasting allows for the occasional something else, even if it's just to do something different without making the party The Suck for it for lack of what's needed.

There is a point that rmeoving restrictions over the years has made spellcasters powerful, but not all the restrictions removed were a bad thing to remove. Restrictions as a concept are fine. What they should be is the conundrum of debate, but yes, I will say restrictions that ruin fun should not exist, accepting the subjective nature of what is fun.

[Rukelnikov]

Agreed. Despite what all the haters say spellcaster players are entitled to have their fun, and that includes the ability to cast spells for the fun of it. Though playing an artificer, it was fun cool when I had cast Skywrite to ask a dragon in the area to speak with the party. I remember the days of 2E Vancian casting. As a cleric I could never prepare enough Cure Light Wounds. As a wizard it meant multiple copies of Magic Missile. In college everyone in our gaming group hated Vancian casting, so we developed our own mana point system.

There's nothing wrong with the traditional impactful spells. They're fun too. I enjoy a good Fireball. However, current 5E spellcasting allows for the occasional something else, even if it's just to do something different without making the party The Suck for it for lack of what's needed.

I played mostly spellcasters (~75%) for the past 25 years, gishes are probably my favorite archetype, and I think Vancian preparation made for better balance, it has nothing to do with hating.


There is a point that rmeoving restrictions over the years has made spellcasters powerful, but not all the restrictions removed were a bad thing to remove. Restrictions as a concept are fine. What they should be is the conundrum of debate, but yes, I will say restrictions that ruin fun should not exist, accepting the subjective nature of what is fun.

Sorry, I jumped the gun too quickly. Between the two, I'd sadly lean into 3e style casting, where being Sorcerer like had a cost, rather than 5e style, where Wizards change their list every day and cast like Sorcerers. 5e preparation/casting style is "more fun" in the immediacy, but in the long term, Vancian preparation is more interesting for me.

[KorvinStarmast]

Agreed. The only thing it allows is the "do everything, no weaknesses, I'm God because I'm so much smarter than you" wizard archetype. Because this is a nerd's game and nerds want revenge against jocks for being mistreated in high school. So now smartness MUST be the path to ultimate power and all you strong/athletic guys can just eat my dust. Why the blue text?

Spells should be both earth-shaking in their effectiveness and also very fragile and easy to interrupt.
Meanwhile, weapons should be actually deadly and a true threat to anyone facing them.

As the game has progressed over the (actual) decades, somehow we continuously move further and further away from both of these concepts. While true, what has that got to do with Rangers?

...Vance's idea of how magic would work. In those books, from what I understand I haven't read them; mages searched for spells and memorized them like writing a scroll into their brain that would be ripped out of their mind with casting. From what I understand, only the most powerful and gifted of mages could hold more than one or two spells in their head after hours or even days of study. Yes.

In some ways I think it was better when each slot for any caster had to be specifically assigned. It was more limiting, but that helped with everyone getting to feel important and I think you were less likely to spend a spell slot just to do something with magic someone else could have done. When it took a lot longer to replenish your spell slots (1 hour per spell level if I remember correctly) you also had to be a lot more careful how you spent your precocious slots if you were out in the field. Yes.

[LudicSavant]

There is a basic problem that magic is by definition going to be much greater in power than normal activities that aren't magical.

Take, for instance, just firing a bow and arrow. Physics state that no matter how much "normal" improvement, firing a bow is just all it is going to be. You can increase fire rate, hit %, even damage to some extent. But at the end of the day, without magical disbelief, you can only get so good at firing a bow.

How could this then possibly compete with "magic"? Fireball? Disintegration Rays? Turning invisible? And even greater and greater spell functions later in the game?

The truth is, it can't.

Well, Hawkeye has better tricks than both fireball and disintegration rays in his quiver, and Batman is known to move more undetectably than people with actual invisibility powers.

The conceptual power ceiling for the concept of "magic" may be higher than the power ceiling for the concept of "not magic," but the conceptual ceiling for both is higher than how powerful CR 30 encounters are, so it's not really a relevant issue when it comes to balancing D&D specifically. There is a massive amount of room for martials to be more versatile and capable than they currently are, while still keeping them 'nonmagical.'

The whole 'magic has a higher conceptual ceiling than mundane' doesn't matter because neither is playing anywhere near the ceiling of either concept.

[ZRN]

Well, Hawkeye has better tricks than both fireball and disintegration rays in his quiver, and Batman is known to move more undetectably than people with actual invisibility powers.

The conceptual power ceiling for the concept of "magic" may be higher than the power ceiling for the concept of "not magic," but the conceptual ceiling for both is higher than how powerful CR 30 encounters are, so it's not really a relevant issue when it comes to balancing D&D specifically. There is a massive amount of room for martials to be more versatile and capable than they currently are, while still keeping them 'nonmagical.'

The whole 'magic has a higher conceptual ceiling than mundane' doesn't matter because neither is playing anywhere near the ceiling of either concept.

To build on this, let's bear in mind that since magic is completely made up, it's 100% arbitrary how easy it is to learn compared to nonmagical abilities. And if you're going to have a game with character "levels" in it, it would only make sense that a level 1 fighter is roughly comparable in effectiveness to a level 5 wizard, or else what makes them both "level 5"?

To answer this hypothetical I just posed, AND to circle us back to the OP's topic, I'd say that your "level" is supposed to represent "your ability to help your party undertake the typical activities of a D&D-style adventure/campaign"... and that the goal should be for characters to have abilities that are (a) generally and broadly useful, while still (b) defining that character's unique areas of expertise.

And 5e does a not-terrible job overall! There are plenty of times a typical party needs to wander through the scary woods or trackless wilderness or Plane of Shadow to find their goal, and a UA ranger with expertise in Survival who regenerates Exhaustion quickly does a decent job of guiding the party through that wilderness, without bypassing or negating any gameplay for the group. A wizard can Plane Shift to another dimension, which is really cool, but in effect that means the whole party can Plane Shift, because

[stoutstien]

Well, Hawkeye has better tricks than both fireball and disintegration rays in his quiver, and Batman is known to move more undetectably than people with actual invisibility powers.

The conceptual power ceiling for the concept of "magic" may be higher than the power ceiling for the concept of "not magic," but the conceptual ceiling for both is higher than how powerful CR 30 encounters are, so it's not really a relevant issue when it comes to balancing D&D specifically. There is a massive amount of room for martials to be more versatile and capable than they currently are, while still keeping them 'nonmagical.'

The whole 'magic has a higher conceptual ceiling than mundane' doesn't matter because neither is playing anywhere near the ceiling of either concept.

This is a dichotomy that d&d has never gotten right because it's based on the fact that those who have less explicit mythical or magical abilities have some intangible grittiness and lateral applications of the skills they do have.
To be fair it's not entirely or fall because when they do take a risk and go all in on a thematic yet non-magical approach to a concept like the gloom stalker one of two things happen. It validates a lot of other approaches because they're usually less effective and 9 out of 10 times it just becomes another means of stacking damage values.

[Sorinth]

Ranger as someone who lives in the woods and is good with a bow shouldn't be a class, Ranger as someone who combines martial skill with nature magic that as the PHB states "emphasizes speed, stealth, and the hunt" that's something that deserves to be a class as much as most others.

[sithlordnergal]

Rules for things aren't a game structure. And WotC D&D is completely lacking in game structures outside of heavily detailed ones for combat and a basic one for social.

If you've got experience with pre-WotC D&D, or even pre-2e TSR D&D, you can build them for dungeons and wilderness from the pieces of rules. But that means that classes don't plug into them very well, since they aren't designed with them in mind.

So, perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by structure then. Cause I started in 3.5, and from what I've seen 5e has a decent amount of structure set up for Exploration, be it dungeon delving, exploring the wilderness, or trying to get past a dangerous road.

[Schwann145]

...and from what I've seen 5e has a decent amount of structure set up for Exploration, be it dungeon delving, exploring the wilderness, or trying to get past a dangerous road.

Such as?
To my thinking, a skill roll of 1d20 is about the most minimal and lacking-in-structure thing a designer could deliver for an entire pillar of gameplay... and that's the entirety of both the social and exploration pillars in D&D.
If there's more structure there, I'm not seeing it, myself.

[PhantomSoul]

Such as?
To my thinking, a skill roll of 1d20 is about the most minimal and lacking-in-structure thing a designer could deliver for an entire pillar of gameplay... and that's the entirety of both the social and exploration pillars in D&D.
If there's more structure there, I'm not seeing it, myself.

That's unfair; there's more to it than that. Sometimes they tell you to skip the d20 roll altogether!

[sithlordnergal]

Such as?
To my thinking, a skill roll of 1d20 is about the most minimal and lacking-in-structure thing a designer could deliver for an entire pillar of gameplay... and that's the entirety of both the social and exploration pillars in D&D.
If there's more structure there, I'm not seeing it, myself.

Well, I guess it depends on if you're looking at it from the DM side, or player side. Cause the DM side of things does offer more structure than the player side. The DMG and Xanathar's provides potential environmental hazards, weather effects, potential encounters, details on how many supplies you need, and suggestions on how to expand on the hazards in the book. If you're in a dungeon you have all of that, sans the weather, along with general traps, puzzles, and layout for rooms. And obviously you can use more than that, but it gives a good baseline of how to structure such environments or encounters.

On the player's side, it is a lot more free form and less structured. Though I think that might be intentional. When I see the word "structure", I think "Ah, here are the rules on how to do X or Y". By leaving it a lot more open for players, that allows players to come up with a lot more. Though you still have your basic things, like making a map, keeping track of supplies, an eye out for hazards, ect. And there are ways to improve it on the player's side of things. For example, if we improved Primeval Awareness so that it gave you the type, number, and direction of the creatures you sense within that 1 mile radius, that would let players have a bit more to do with the exploration pillar.

[paladinn]

If anyone is familiar with the Castles & Crusades game, the company that produces it, Troll Lord Games, has a compatible modern/pulp game called Amazing Adventures. While C&C and AA use the Siege mechanic, they've also done a version of AA that is compatible with 5e. It's super-cool, and exactly what I have wanted in a 5e Modern game. And there are tips on using AA with 5e interchangeably.

AA5e has two classes that might be sources for re-imagining the Ranger class. There is a Raider class that, as you might guess, is Indiana Jones. It has D10 HD, Natural Explorer (like the Ranger), Cultural Chameleon that lets one assimilate into a foreign culture, Blindsense, Jack of All Trades, an Extra Attack, Indomitable (like a Fighter); and a subclass gets Favored Weapon (instead of Enemy), 2nd Wind and 2-Weapon Fighting. It's a lot less situational than the btb Ranger.

There's also the Feral concept, which is pretty much Tarzan, including an animal bond/ beastmaster feature and the ability to actually take on animal abilities. It's kind of the beastmaster on steroids.

I think a lot of the perceived problem with the Ranger class is the situationality of the core distinguishing features (favored enemy/foe/terrain). But if you ditch those, what do you really have left? The class identity is all up to the subclasses, many of which have little to do with the class itself. I especially think the Raider could be a good alternative, with relatively little adaptation needed.

[Tanarii]

So, perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by structure then. Cause I started in 3.5, and from what I've seen 5e has a decent amount of structure set up for Exploration, be it dungeon delving, exploring the wilderness, or trying to get past a dangerous road.
If you're willing to do some reading, the Alexandrian has a whole series on it:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures

But if you don't feel like homework*, at it's base, it's the system's game loop tying together one player decision, DM resolution, and the next decision. The individual rules plug in where appropriate to make it a whole.

BECMI had it for dungeon and wilderness exploration, both with the connection to transition to the combat game structure. It also had a domain and mass combat game structure. Free League Publishing has exploration game structures in many of their games, but a really good one in Forbidden Lands, their fantasy RPG. IIRC it was Torchbearer that had a game structure for exploration appropriately named The Grind, since it was designed to grind down the PCs.

RPGs can do it. D&D has even done it. WotC just chose to discard it ... but then didn't replace it with a new & improved game structure. Instead we've got nothing but individual rules scattered all around with nothing to tie them together. And as such most DMs don't know how to use them, most players don't have any idea how to plug into as part of the decision making process, and they're often ignored or handwaved.

*I can't stand it when folks post video links so I wouldn't blame you.