How integral to the identity of the Ranger class is the use of

I don't even consider "Ranger" as a class outside of D&D.

>>53312200
Granted it is something that appears as a quantified concept in vidya.

>>53312235
Appears more often in vidya, I mean.

>>53312150

When you think about it anyone can be an expert woodsman but not everyone goes out of their way to make a wizard who is knowledgable about the woods because then you assume they are a druid.

The problem with class based games is that you're expected to stay within a role and those role defines your character mechanically and narratively in a lot of cases

>>53312150
>magic
its proportional to the level of magic in the setting.
>key elements
>only as a playable class
Warrior's to-hit package with stealth and some battle endurance.

It's not. The spell list is a shitty substitute for 'natural' abilities and skills, like taming animals, crafting traps, making healing poultices or talking to animals.

I don't use magic as a ranger. But I find most magic to be lame as hell.

>>53313185
But if these 'natural' abilities are in fact explicitly supernatural instead of simply seeming so to a layman, why not make them spells? How else would you do them?

>>53312150
It keeps them from being "rogue, but with tracking and handle animal."

>>53312150
Although a no-magic ranger should be an option, I see the ranger's spells as part of being self-sufficient.
Learning a little bit of utility magic related to your job makes you so much more productive, it's insane that 99% of NPCs can live their entire lives without even seeing any magic!
>muh rare talent
>muh years of study
Oh, I just hit level 2! I multiclass into wizard and learn magic overnight :^)

>>53312150
Ranger has always been a kind of dumb archetype.
Same with any fighter variants like barbarian or monk.

>>53312150
Very little, especially if use of magic can be obtained outside of classes.

>>53312150
Shit. The fact that the ranger has magic is a bummer. The class was never good, and relying on magic makes it even worse.
He was suppose to be a special kind of fighter, a mishmash of fighter and rogue, and instead he is poor man's druid the bugaloo.

The real problem with rangers is one of role.

Are they just fighters specialized with a tiny taste of rogue skills, a focus on ranged weapons, and some exploration abilities? A jack of all trades doesn't really fit into modern min-maxing party dynamics.

>>53312150
The most important trait of the ranger in fiction is that they negate certain types of challenges and don't always show up. So they can guide you through the darkest wilderness, but then they run off and you're further into the dark than you would have gotten without their help.

In D&D and most RPGs that take from it, the Ranger class is "whoops we forgot to make archery a first-class citizen everywhere else." Though magic hybrid characters smooth out the game a lot, I can't really complain about any excuse to include one.

>>53313340
By not hiding 100% of magic behind wizard spells while leaving the rest of the world 100% mundane.

File: kZeLlbDjVRA.jpg (61KB, 642x792px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 642x792px

>>53314048
>Oh, I just hit level 2! I multiclass into wizard and learn magic overnight :^)
>not making multiclassing a quest onto itself

>>53314048
Level-by-level multiclassing is a horrid mistake and an abomination.

>>53318791
I made it work in my homebrew. Turns out the secret was to allow people to take levels in "found a bitchin' sword" or "motivated by revenge" in addition to things like ranger and wizard.

I mean, that and balancing class levels against each other instead of just trying to balance class vs class.

>>53318271
Time to retroactively be born a sorcerer!

>>53312150
A ranger is a woodsman.

Thanks thread. You just helped me quantify how my homebrew should handle what the Ranger class does.

>>53319067
What concepts won?

>>53319101
None from here, more as I was thinking of a post I came to terms with what I felt should define the class to make it different from Fighter, Rogue and Druid.

File: 3f35b613f275eab217949d07e6e02e9b.jpg (47KB, 564x732px) Image search: [Google]

47KB, 564x732px

>>53312150
I lowkey hate the D&D concept of a ranger - it represents the worst of its habit of forced lore and flavor.

"A guy who travels the woods" shouldn't be an archetype. Outdoor skills should be an element of other classes, Forest Paladins and Forest Barbarians and shit. In a sense they already are. Rangers are offered as an awkward redundancy with some tempting mechanical strengths that don't do much for the actual concept.

I think they should have been something akin to the rogue, a more general character based on perception, savvy, and adaptation. They should be the know-the-enemy types, the guys who find the answer in new situations and the weaknesses of new monsters. They are hunters, but that need not be limited to hunters of the forest with the exception of the occasional Urban reflavor in later supplements. They are just hunters of prey, whatever their prey may be. They can track, deduce, and survive in the environment(s) that they know and perhaps figure out how to do so in new environments. I like them having a little bit of magic as an option perhaps, but it should be tightly controlled in theme like the spell lists of the 3.5 assassin prestige class. Small buffs and heals and things that could be potentially reflavored as mundane abilities.

tldr Rangers shouldn't just be "woodsman with nonsensically specific combat gimmicks and also magic"

>>53319131
Word

>>53313340
magic != spells

and if you really want to get into the myths, abilities like talking to animals or bathing in dragon blood to become invincible are natural, not magic.

File: wc2-ranger-vs-berserker-full.jpg (304KB, 1021x1200px) Image search: [Google]

304KB, 1021x1200px

>>53312150

Not very much at all. In my mind, an entirely mundane ranger is still a ranger and they can live their entire career without learning a single cantrip. It's the survivalism that ultimately defines them. That, and using a ranged weapon, be it a gun or a bow.

Pass Without Trace in DnD is the most Important Ranger spell. If you replicate that spell with an ability, you don't need spell casting.

Rangers do 2 major tasks, track things and make sure the party isn't being tracked. That discipline can be just as deep as fighting can. In a Homebrew, I'd give the ranger more scrying and anti-scrying abilities as the party scales in level. As it is, Rangers only make sense at the lower levels of DnD.

>>53312150
>key elements of rangers

They are paladins that dual weild in the woods.

Instead of smites they sometimes use a bow.

Instead of hating undead they hate whatever races that have been fucking up their forest.

Fuck ranger spell-casting. I'm sorry but I really just hate it. I understand where it comes from, though, and I don't mind it to some degree. A ranger should have a few tricks up his sleeve like entangle or minor healing.

The problem is that ranger is just a shittier fighter, and for people to be okay with playing a shittier fighter you need to give them class features that make them happy with that. The problem is, rangers get neither fighter feature, nor rogue sneak attack. So they can't fulfill either of their potential combat roles. Personally, I would give fighter sneak attack that increases every 3rd level (1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 19th) and give them a single favored enemy they get bonuses against in combat. Their spellcasting would be an optional archetype. They would get tracking and survival skill as usual.

The problem is that I loved playing rangers because I loved playing an outdoorsy character, but no one ever would give me the spotlight to play my ranger. Yeah, it was okay for the psion to get an entire fucking session dedicated to him just wandering off and doing a whole sidequest himself while the rest of us sat and listened, but if I want 5 minutes to RP my character, I get shit on? Fuck off.

>"Oh we are camping for the night? Can I roll to see how good of a camping spot I find?"
>"Sure anon"
>"Okay now can I roll to hunt?"
>"Nah we'll just eat our trail rations that we never mark off using so 3 days rations have lasted us the entire campaign"
>"Oh ok well I want to go hunt"
>"ok ok you find some rabbits"
>"well maybe I can find some fish in the stream nearby as well as clean fresh mountain spring water?"
>"uhh bro we have create water"

I know I should just fuck off and play Ryuutama or whatever, but it annoys me that I am basically useless due to characters cheating and also magic users being able to do everything.
>>53324043
>As it is, Rangers only make sense at the lower levels of DnD.

Very true, sadly.

Another ranger story, from the same group

> play elf ranger
> go hunting
> party sorc who is 4 levels lower wants to come along
> grudgingly agree since at least he isn't wearing armor
> on the way back, dire boar shows up
> i hide, getting something like a 32 for my Hide check
> stupid-ass sorcerer decides to climb a tree and shoot magic missiles at the dire boar
> boar rams tree, knocks him down
> sorc gets gored
> finally I realize he is about to die and I run to save him
> engage boar, deal 30 or so damage to it. It does about the same to me
> my standard fighting arrangement is -2 atk +2 AC for my deadly defense, mixed with TWF
> decide to go -4/+4 just in case
> it actually matters and saves me
> finish off the boar
> meanwhile, stupid ass sorcerer is running away not even casting spells while boar is focused on me

This was in the same adventure they mocked my ranger for being "useless." The sorc could have had invisibility and been fine but he didn't pick that spell.

Rangers should be converted into witchers

>>53325788
this. this. this.

>>53312150
>what do you consider the key elements of the identity of the Ranger in fantasy RPGs?

Dual wielding, wilderness survival, and a mysterious past, ...but hobbits are optional.

>>53312150
Old-school D&D rangers could learn low-level arcane and divine magic because they were dabblers, treating spells as tools and picking up anything that seemed useful in the wilderness.

>>53319131
And their fluff was "protectors of frontier settlements, who specialize in fighting large enemies and in turning any kind of creature into an ally, no matter how weird (unlike fighters who are limited to recruiting humanoids)".

>>53325788
No. Take your shitty video game crap back to /v/. Rangers are a fine class concept, they have just been shittily executed in every edition since AD&D. Oh, they were pretty good in 4th, too.

I think it sorta makes sense. You become so intimately familiar with nature that it imparts on you a small sorcerer-like spellcasting ability rather than the wizard-like spellcasting ability of the druid. As soon as you start actively studying nature magic instead of it being a side effect of whatever it is you're doing, then you're crossing into druid territory.

Still a little too niche to be a class feature though, imo. It gets a little silly when you have people like Minsc using cure magic.

>>53325788
You shouldn't confuse a mutant with special racial abilities who rely on alchemy, with their multiclass to function as Witchers.

>>53312150

'Wilderness Scout' are the only real core concepts in the identity of the ranger. The rest, from animals to weapons to magical utility, should vary case by case.