D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?

Clint_L · Jul 20, 2023

Minigiant said:
Legalos' noncombat abilities were 100% racial. That's Race based.

Still look more like D&D magic than anything Aragorn can do, except his healing hands thing.

Minigiant said:
Aragorn;s noncombat abilities were mostly stuff that if he taught a human or halfling , they could physically and mentally learn. That's Class Based.

Fighter class based.

Minigiant said:
Legolas in 5e is a Elf Fighter with an Elf racial Feat.
Aragorn is 5e is a Human Ranger with just ASI.

I don't get it. Which class uses heavy armour? Which class is primarily ranged? Which class is primarily melee? Which class is the soldier and general? Which class is the scout?

As I posted above, you can get to Aragorn a lot easier through fighter than through ranger. He's basically a battle master fighter with the healer feat.

Or he's a ranger. With the heavily armoured feat. And unusually high strength. And the martial adept feat. Who doesn't use spells. Or a bow very often. Or an animal companion. And so on.

Minigiant · Jul 20, 2023

Clint_L said:
Still look more like D&D magic than anything Aragorn can do, except his healing hands thing.

D&D 5e elves have innate magic. 5e 2024 even more so.

The 5e 2024 elf can cast Pwt as any class and profiecent with Perception. That's Almost all of Legolas' Rangeriness accounted.

Clint_L said:
Fighter class based.
I don't get it. Which class uses heavy armour? Which class is primarily ranged? Which class is primarily melee? Which class is the soldier and general? Which class is the scout?

As I posted above, you can get to Aragorn a lot easier through fighter than through ranger. He's basically a battle master fighter with the healer feat.

Or he's a ranger. With the heavily armoured feat. And unusually high strength. And the martial adept feat. Who doesn't use spells. Or a bow very often. Or an animal companion. And so on.

Heavy Armor is just a feat away. If all that separates a Fighter from a Ranger in one's eyes then a Ranger can is not needed as a a 5e fighter can wear any armor effectively and go Str or Dex, melee or ranged.

Legolas and Aragorn can both be classifed as fighters or rangers. Really the main difference is Legolas' combat ability is Dex based and noncombat is elf based whereas Aragorn's combat is Str based and noncombat is mostly skill based with a little racial.

---
Which all goes back to the crux of the issue. To make a Ranger separate from the Fighter, one has to give Ranger an exclusive suite of skills and/or magic. But in 5e, only one has been decided to scale in core. A spell-less Ranger needs fully fledged subsystem separate from the Fighter or it is redundant.

Necrofumbler · Jul 20, 2023

Dausuul said:
Same way we have a warlock invocation that lets you cast silent image at will, without overshadowing the wizard who is limited by slots when casting that spell.

Many utility spells are primarily limited, not by casting resources, but by opportunities to get good use out of them. Animal friendship is a great example. It is a highly situational spell and its benefits are usually modest. Having it at-will means it will get used more often in marginal situations, where a benefit exists but is too minor to justify burning slots; but the overall balance impact will be small, for the exact same reason.

Disagree on Animal Friendship.

It STRONGLY depends on campaign type.

If it's a standard story-driven campaign book or dungeon crawl, I agree. Utility rather limited.

If it's a "PCs sent into the SHADOWLANDS OF MUCHO UNDEADS and must escape from there!" campaign, then the utility is absolutely NIL.

If it's a custom-made campaign with a variety of stuff, but a more mundane approach to encounters, then utility increases a good chunk. Think of all the places using guard dogs. Alll the wold encouhnter in forestss. And so on.

But if it's a gritty Hollow World survivalist campaign with a strong emphasis on wilderness traveling from place to place (by opposition to urban adventures, or big dungeon crawls), basically a campaign where the "traveling" parts of the adventures are not limited to the one "obligatory" rnndom encounter and then it's just "After 3 more weeks, you just reach the place!", but instead are adventures unto themselves, thus a solid third or probably more of all enemy encounters will end up actuallly being with Beasts, then this spell becomes INVALUABLE, especially at Tier I or Tier II (because at Tier III or better, we know the party can easily kick any T-Rex's butt anyway.)

James Gasik · Jul 20, 2023

Necrofumbler said:
Disagree on Animal Friendship.

It STRONGLY depends on campaign type.

If it's a standard story-driven campaign book or dungeon crawl, I agree. Utility rather limited.

If it's a "PCs sent into the SHADOWLANDS OF MUCHO UNDEADS and must escape from there!" campaign, then the utility is absolutely NIL.

If it's a custom-made campaign with a variety of stuff, but a more mundane approach to encounters, then utility increases a good chunk. Think of all the places using guard dogs. Alll the wold encouhnter in forestss. And so on.

But if it's a gritty Hollow World survivalist campaign with a strong emphasis on wilderness traveling from place to place (by opposition to urban adventures, or big dungeon crawls), basically a campaign where the "traveling" parts of the adventures are not limited to the one "obligatory" rnndom encounter and then it's just "After 3 more weeks, you just reach the place!", but instead are adventures unto themselves, thus a solid third or probably more of all enemy encounters will end up actuallly being with Beasts, then this spell becomes INVALUABLE, especially at Tier I or Tier II (because at Tier III or better, we know the party can easily kick any T-Rex's butt anyway.)

Sure but that goes for any ability. In the right campaign, a humble ribbon feature can be invaluable (ha, stupid ghosts, I can't be aged magically!) and the most powerful spells can be useless (stupid fire giants and their stupid immunity to all my fire spells!).

I don't think you can design around "yeah but if the campaign heavily features undead, Clerics and Paladins are really strong!". If the DM is making a campaign that has a strong focus on a particular feature, then they should adjust the mechanics to fit that campaign. Trying to design something on the possibility that you might be in a mega-dungeon, a vast untracked wilderness, or hob-nobbing with nobles and court intrigue is kind of putting the cart before the horse.

Minigiant · Jul 20, 2023

You know it's unfortunate that the community didn't support 4e roles.

Because if 5e had expanded roles to Combat, Exploration, and Social roles then the Exploration and Social pillars would have received at least a generic mechanical skeleton. Like if 5e had a basic system could to AIME's Journeys system with their roles.

These are the Exploration rolls when I DM

Camper- Rolls Investigation to access a campsite
Disarmer- Rolls Sleight of Hand or Survival to disarm traps
Guide- Rolls Survival to map the path or track a quarry
Healer- Rolls Medicine to heal wounds and keep party at max HP
Herbalist- Rolls Nature to deal with plants and rocks
Hunter- Rolls Survival to manage rations and forage for new ones
Scout - Rolls Stealth to find paths around enemies or create ambushes
Speaker- Rolls Persuasion to deal with fey and other natural intelligent beings
Tamer- Rolls Animal Handling checks to deal with animal
Watcher-Rolls Perception to look out for ambushes and traps

IF these roles existed and had a basic mechanical skeleton and scale then you could have the spellcasting Ranger class that uses magic to adjust to any role and a spell-less Strider class that perfects a couple roles with high skill bonus.

This is why skill challenges for Exploration should have been core.

Charlaquin · Jul 21, 2023

nevin said:
If you gather people to play DND because they want to play DND isn't playing a horror game bait and switch? Unless of course you tell them upfront it's a horror game. Every DM i've ever had try that has started the DND game and then sucked the poor souls through into Ravenloft and then Cried when the game fell apart and we started another one with another DM.

This has nothing to do with what I was talking about, which was getting groups to play something other than D&D.

Horwath · Jul 21, 2023

Example how favorite terrain could add permanent advantage that can be useful in more situations but best for that terrain:

Arctic:
Gain cold resistance.
Gain advantage on saves and checks for slippery surfaces, no movement penalty on them

Coast:
Cold resistance.
Swim speed and water breathing

Desert:
Fire resistance
You can survive twice as long without food and water

Forest:
+10 ft move speed
Climb speed

Grassland:
+10 ft move speed
You can Dash as a Bonus action

Mountain:
Climb speed
Cold resistance
Altitude adaptation

Swamp:
Swim speed
Poison and Disease resistance and advantage vs them.

Underdark:
+60ft darkvision
no penalty on checks because of low light

Urban:
+2 languages
+2 skills from: History, Investigation, Insight, Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion.
+1 Expertise for one of those skills

nevin · Jul 21, 2023

Senior_WotC_Janitor · Jul 21, 2023

DEFCON 1 said:
If you want to go through all these grandiose efforts to change baseline Dungeons & Dragons, why are you even bothering to play Dungeons & Dragons in the first place?

Because not you and not anybody else gets to decide what baseline D&D is or isn't.

nevin · Jul 21, 2023

you mean people stick to baselines in D&D? your messing with us right?

D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?

What type of ranger?

Spell-less Ranger

Spellcasting Ranger

Clint_L

Legend

Minigiant

Legend

Necrofumbler

Sorry if I necro some posts by mistake.

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun

Minigiant

Legend

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)

Horwath

Legend

nevin

Hero

Senior_WotC_Janitor

Explorer

nevin

Hero

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