Aptitude Test for Ranger's Apprentices

[Hand_of_Vecna]

A character has all of the ability requirements to be a 1e Ranger (Strength, Wisdom, Dexterity Constitution), higher actually. Except she has a 11 intelligence (1e Ranger requires a 13 Int) though she has extensive knowledge of wild plants, better than any apprentices and even most of the low level Rangers of the lodge.

A successful apprentice Ranger has been portrayed as not understanding why she was rejected.

The physical stats are easy to test in flavorful ways: Combat trials, obstacle course, marches through the woods with heavy loads.

Wisdom: testing patience, observing them under stress in the wilderness, reading signs (precursor to tracking).

How do you think the head of the lodge filtered her out for having an average intelligence when her knowledge would make her seem "smart" in many trials of the sort a potential apprentice Ranger would be given?

[Telok]

Riddles. Not really a good intelligence test but commonly used in oral history traditions.

They really depend on certain shared contexts, usually cultural, and often on unwritten or implied rules. If the character is an outsider faced with a word riddle that depends on a local double meaning or mispronounciation of a word then a fail would be the only result anyways.

Had someone drop one on me years ago that involved a minute long blather with "night", "knight", and "not", all accented towards sounding like "nawht". There were genuinely confused when I reacted badly and told them "write it down or go away".

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Not a bad idea. It doesn't scream Ranger to me, but adapting to unexpected situations fits the 1e Ranger.



Had someone drop one on me years ago that involved a minute long blather with "night", "knight", and "not", all accented towards sounding like "nawht". There were genuinely confused when I reacted badly and told them "write it down or go away".

I've heard that one, it was a "fair" in Middle English.

[Silly Name]

I am not particularly familiar with the 1e Ranger, but off the top of my mind, some "tests of the mind" that the character may have failed:

Knowledge of monster lore and proper hunting techniques: her intuition and herblore could have shored up at first, but the character clearly didn't know what the strength and weaknesses of certain monsters she would be expected to fight were, and when asked to plan an hunting expedition her plans were mediocre.

Philosophy/Ethics: If the Lodge is rooted in some specific ethics code, the character may have failed to grasp it fully and failed a test in which she was asked to make a seemingly straightforward question that would have revealed her character and adherence to the code of conduct of the lodge - for example, if the Rangers are closely aligned with Obad-Hai, that deity's values can be quite extraneous to city-dwellers and even most "civilised" people in general, which is where she might have slipped.

Craftmanship: One possible test could involve crafting your own armaments and equipments while alone in the wilderness, left with only a small knife. The character may lack the know-how on how to make herself a good bow even if she can identify the best type of wood for it, and thus failed with survival test.

Intuition and quick-thinking: This really depends on how you interpet WIS vs INT, but it's possible the character's average INT score could be represented as a lack of creativity and ingeunity, which would be demanded of any good ranger. Instead of being able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, which is a must to survive the wilderness, the character tends to fall back on traditional approaches and folk wisdom, something that the head of the Lodge may have picked on and identified as a fatal flaw if the character pursued the path of the ranger. Again, this option really depends on how you define INT and WIS, but it's a possibility.

[solidork]

Orienteering is the closest thing to "math" that we did in the wilderness portion of Boy Scouts, but I don't know if they'd have compasses accurate enough for that in your world.

A common competition would be to have a compass and a set of instructions (like, travel 100 yards at 37 degrees, then 10 yards at 120 degrees, etc) and they measured how long it took you to reach the correct end location.

You could always do a memory test, playing the classic card game or something similar.

[Satinavian]

How about navigation by stars. You need to remember the constellations for this.

[Vahnavoi]

1st Edition AD&D intelligence score is explicitly analogous to an IQ score. The way to measure that is to ask a person a series of questions requiring general reasoning ability and timing the effort.

Examples of what the question might concern include pattern detection ("which image comes next in the series?"), logic ("given X and Y, is Z true or false?"), mechanical reasoning ("if you pull this lever, which way do the scales tip?"), physical reasoning ("if you turn a boat's rudder this way, which way does it turn?"), vocabulary ("list as many four letter words ending in "O" as you can remember"), etc.

Several tasks already mentioned would be topical. One way to do this without any written tests would be to just give a person a puzzle made out of wood or metal and see if they can solve it within one hourglass or one candle. If you want to be evil, you can get your hands on a real one and make the player solve it.

[Telok]

1st Edition AD&D intelligence score is explicitly analogous to an IQ score. The way to measure that is to ask a person a series of questions requiring general reasoning ability and timing the effort.

Its also within margins of error when testing by the game system, or even 20th century methods. There's basically no real way short of wizards max spells known per level or direct magic use to decide, unless you run dozens of trials and do a stats analysis. Of course you could always say the character is allergic to trees (not insane as I used to be terribly bad with western red cedar pollen when I was young) and say that applying to be a ranger with an alleegy is a -2 int penalization.

[tyckspoon]

Possible answer: They -don't- know the character doesn't satisfy requirements, because they don't have any meaningful way to test for an Intelligence score. They take the character in to attempt to train as a Ranger; the character just levels as a Fighter instead. Nobody knows they aren't actually a Ranger unless/until they advance to the point where they should be developing a demonstrable Ranger-only ability and fail to perform it.

[Vahnavoi]

Its also within margins of error when testing by the game system, or even 20th century methods.

Int 13 stands for roughly 84 percentile. Modern methodology is not required to notice only one out of five candidates solve a block puzzle in the time a candle takes to burn out. Aptitude testing as a general idea is way older than 20th century. The most famous ancient reference? The Gordian Knot. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot)

[Pauly]

Kim’s game for memory.

Orienteering. Use of stars/sun/landmarks etc for navigation and dead reckoning (such as counting steps) for distance.

Problem solving. Such as how to get over this river with this seemingly inadequate supply of materials.

Prediction. Able to accurately forecast tomorrow’s weather by signs from today’s weather and animal behavior Able to say and explain why if the coming storm will hit this area, pass over or divert on a different course.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Lots of great ideas. I agree Silly Name, the Int/Wisdom division is tricky and your suggestions are good, but most really skirt that line and for me mostly fall on the Wisdom side.

Knowledge: A possibility, though I'm not sure if they would want all their apprentices to come with all that knowledge vs. have them learn over a lengthy apprenticeship.

Philosophy: 1e Rangers are a lot like the Prestige Ranger if you're more familiar with that

"Rangers are a sub-class of fighter who are adept at woodcraft, tracking, scouting, infiltration, and spying. All rangers must be of good alignment, although they can be lawful good, chaotic good, or neutral good. A ranger must have a Strength score of at least 13, Intelligence of at least 13, Wisdom of at least 14, and Constitution of at least 14. "

So philosophy/ethics to make sure you are Good Aligned could double as a test of intellectmaking sure you can express your stance. More Wisdom imo, but refined word choice might be a lesser test of Int.

Craftsmanship could makesense, especially tied into a unstructured test. Like giving them a task and seeing if they craft a tool to achieve the task without being told to.

"Craft a bow and kill a deer" isn't a test of intelligence isn't a test of intelligence it's a test of wether you've been taught how to craft a bow. "Kill a deer" and I give you no bow and you take the initiative to craft a bow or a trap or a spear and a deer call would be a proof of your intelligence.

Solidork

Orienteering:

That's good. Actually you can combine the direction of a shadow with the time of day to get a pretty accurate direction, so one extra step.

Satinavian

Navigate by stars:

Also good. Anyone could learn this, but memorizing it quickly would be a good int test.

Vahnavoi

I'd prefer to keep the trials seeming relevant to Rangers. What will happen next, is probably the best of the bunch for that as it could be framed as studying signs and observing men and animals. This feels like a lot of that is "common sense" or intuition though. I would expect this to be a test of Int+Wisdom.

I also agree with Telok that a 11 int 15 wisdom candidate would be within the margin or error of a crude "IQ test" that 13 int 14 Wisdom characters are supposed to pass.

A reasonable possibility Tykspoon. Meeting all other requirements she could be accepted and become a Fighter with some wilderness lore possibly washing out late in the apprenticeship program.

Currently in game she's been taken under the wing of a Ranger PC after one or more times being refused at "apprentice tryouts" at the lodge, so we'll see where things go. One possibility is becoming a Warden which is like Druid except with Alignment anygood instead of any neutral and they have a close relationship with Rangers.

Vahnavoi:

A lot of people would argue the Gordian knot is a wisdom test. Knowing when to stop trying to think through a problem and return to monke.

Pauly:

Some of these have been covered. Problem solving like the wolf, goat, cabbage problem maybe done literally would work well.

Weather/natural world prediction is another excellent test, but as with many others leans more to Wisdom than Intelligence imo. Also in the game's opinion Weather Prediction Non-weapon proficiency (Wis).

Thank you all.

[Pauly]

"Rangers are a sub-class of fighter who are adept at woodcraft, tracking, scouting, infiltration, and spying. All rangers must be of good alignment, although they can be lawful good, chaotic good, or neutral good. A ranger must have a Strength score of at least 13, Intelligence of at least 13, Wisdom of at least 14, and Constitution of at least 14. "

…

Pauly:

Weather/natural world prediction is another excellent test, but as with many others leans more to Wisdom than Intelligence imo. Also in the game's opinion Weather Prediction Non-weapon proficiency (Wis).

Thank you all.

I would argue that weather prediction is INT based especially if you can explain why rather than based on your gut feeling, but if the game treats it as WIS based then best not to treat as INT based for this test.

Tracking
Identifying different creatures, not just species but size, sex etc. Testing whether this is the creature we are looking for or if it is another one of the same type. To make it more INT based predictions on what the creature is going to do and where it will go based on the signs observed. From there getting ahead of the creature and building a trap to capture it.. Jim Corbett’s books on tracking man eating tigers and leopards are a great source on how this is done. The identification part might be more WIS based, but extrapolating from that is more INT based.

Having done a little amateur tracking in my youth, another INT based component is “what do you do when you’ve lost the trail of a intelligent target who knows they are being tracked?”. If someone is actively covering their tracks then you have to make inferences based on terrain, the target’s intentions, what method they used to avoid leaving tracks. You can always do expanding circles until you find their tracks again, but the best trackers make targeted searches.

Infiltration. Make a plan for a party of rangers to infiltrate an orc camp to gather i formation. Doing the infiltration tests other skills, but making a plan for others to follow leans into INT. Especially if there are some creative non obvious elements that could be deployed, or flaws in obvious standard approaches for this situation that a smart person should spot.

Spying. The INT portion is more memory than anything else.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Great idea. Reminds me of a hunter safety course where we walked around and were shown a bunch of targets and asked to gauge the distance and whether to take a shot.

[Vahnavoi]

@Hand_of_Vecna: the real term for that interpretation of the Gordian Knot would be an insight puzzle. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight) However, in real life, the ability to solve these kinds of puzzles correlates with general intelligence, and hence IQ, more than anything. Real life insight and intuition are not so set apart from general intelligence as D&D Intelligence score is from D&D Wisdom.

But, I wasn't proposing using that specific puzzle. Any physical puzzle that requires enough general intelligence that only one out of five candidates pass would do. I brought Gordian Knot up only to show that the idea of using puzzles as cognitive aptitude tests is very old.

[Pauly]

The other thing to mention is that the apprentice in INT 11, trying to make an INT 13 test. That’s like a B- student trying to qualify for a course that requires a B+ average.

There will be parts of the test she passes with flying colors. There will be more parts of the test she passes, but not at a high enough level to progress to the next stage. There will be few if any she outright fails.

The end outcome should be ‘not quite good enough’, not ‘abject failure’.

[Slipjig]

Actually, I think we've missed an obvious one: somebody with a 12+ INT can speak three languages. Granted, the guild would still need a way to separate out the 12 INT applicants from the 13+ crowd, but your 11-INT applicant could be disqualified as soon as they find out she only speaks two languages.

Though I would say that this stat-based gatekeeping makes very little sense unless membership in a formal organization is a requirement for taking a class. And that makes no sense for the class whose skillset is basically, "I know how to take care of myself in the wild."

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Fun idea 11 is actually 2 languages not 1. That would make a lot of sense in most games though.

As it happens this world is under a single empire with a unified language. There's an old tongue for nobility and scholars, but knowing it takes an in character reason beyond a high Int.

[Vahnavoi]

Though I would say that this stat-based gatekeeping makes very little sense unless membership in a formal organization is a requirement for taking a class. And that makes no sense for the class whose skillset is basically, "I know how to take care of myself in the wild."

That's not what a ranger is in 1st edition. A ranger, in context, is implicitly part of a special group, similar to rangers in Lord of the Rings or several real military organizations, with extra restrictions, responsibilities and privileges compated to a common fighter.

As for stat-based gatekeeping, well, real militaries do this because they found out the hard way that soldiers who lack basic capabilities cannot do their jobs. This goes double for special units, such as, again, various real ranger troops. So saying such limits make no sense except for formal unit memberships is in fact backwards. In truth, the limits make sense for formal unit memberships because there are actual functional limits - some people just lack the intelligence to survive and carry out military operations in the wilderness.

[Slipjig]

That's not what a ranger is in 1st edition. A ranger, in context, is implicitly part of a special group, similar to rangers in Lord of the Rings or several real military organizations, with extra restrictions, responsibilities and privileges compated to a common fighter.

Nothing in the 1e text about Rangers suggests that are part of an elite organization. In fact, they are expressly forbidden from gathering in groups larger than three or owning anything that can't be carried either on their person or on their mount. They are fighters who get bonuses to tracking, an increased chance of surprising their opponents, and a little magic at higher levels.

Aragorn is clearly AN inspiration for the class, and if you wanted to play a 1e character based on him you would play a Ranger. But 1e Rangers are not LOTR's Rangers of the North.

[Vahnavoi]

Those things that are forbidden, are forbidden in a way and sense that only makes sense as agreement between rangers, or between rangers and some body governing rangers. This is similar to how a paladin's code ties them to other paladins and religious organizations, a druid is tied to a druidic circle, thieves and assassins to their guilds, clerics to their deities and religions, monks to monastic order, bards to the bardic colleges, etc..

[Silly Name]

Nothing in the 1e text about Rangers suggests that are part of an elite organization. In fact, they are expressly forbidden from gathering in groups larger than three or owning anything that can't be carried either on their person or on their mount.

Don't those limitations at least imply that each Ranger is part of a wider organisation? Who tells each new Ranger that they ought to follow those restrictions, why do they follow them at all (in-universe)?

[Hand_of_Vecna]

As with most things in 1e, it is very vague but I also think that the restrictions on Rangers point to a larger organization. Otherwise Rangers from distant masters wouldn't recognize each other for the purposes of the limits on the number of Rangers who can work together.

In our own game this is explicit and there is a Patron who's priests are based on the Druid class, but with Alignment:any Good, so he's the one giving Druid spells to high level Rangers.

[Slipjig]

Don't those limitations at least imply that each Ranger is part of a wider organisation? Who tells each new Ranger that they ought to follow those restrictions, why do they follow them at all (in-universe)?

I mean, if that's headcanon explanation, sure. But you are adding worldbuilding that isn't in the actual rules. But if we're going that route, it could also be that people inclined to gather in large groups never develop the Ranger skillset to begin with, and owning too many material possessions implies a settling down that would rob them of the connection to the wild they need to maintain their skills.

Actually, if we're extrapolating worldbuilding from the rules, the fact that anyone who switches to a non-Good alignment instantly becomes an ex-Ranger strongly implies that who gets to be a Ranger is determined by an omniscient deity, who is probably also the one who lays down the other requirements for Ranger-dom. That would make being a Ranger a calling, and that may or may not involve ever meeting any other Rangers.