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

[Horwath]

Simple question, do you prefer spell-less ranger or spellcasting ranger?

That is, if they could manage to make a decent spell-less ranger. They still need to make decent spellcasting ranger.

 

[Reef]

I chose Spellcasting. Rangers have had magic in some form or other for so long, I feel like it’s part of their identity. And, although I hate to be the first to say it, you all know someone is going to:

If I wanted a Magic-less Ranger, I can easily do so with a Fighter with the right background. Or a Rogue Scout. Or a combo of the two. There’s nothing I need from a “wilderness warrior” that either of those two wouldn’t give me.

What’s missing? Automatic Terrain successes? Extremely specific, hard to balance, and hardly worth basing an entire class around. It’s either too useful, or not useful at all.

 

[Emberashh]

If I wanted a Magic-less Ranger, I can easily do so with a Fighter with the right background. Or a Rogue Scout. Or a combo of the two. There’s nothing I need from a “wilderness warrior” that either of those two wouldn’t give me.

Oh, theres a lot those things don't give you.

The core idea of my take on the Ranger is that they operate with uncanny skill, and through this skill they wield the Wilderness itself as though it were a shield.

Why? Because when Aragorn took the Hobbits off the road as they fled Bree, he wasn't doing it just because they needed to get from A to B. Aragorn was taking them into the Wild, the implication being it'd be safer for them particularly with him as their guide.

And aside from the obvious take from Aragorn of sticking your ear to the ground and sus'ing out the company of Uruks miles away, what else does uncanny skill manifest as in this context?

Well I don't mind sharing some of my design notes for where Im going to be going with it:

Some of those build into each other (intended for how my classes work), but the ideas are on the right track. Alongside a much better execution of the Terrain specialization, and an AOE + Healer combat role, my Ranger is going to be very capable and very much not replicable in some cruddy facsimiles like some other class with a ribbon put on it.

 

[ChameleonX]

The only time I've seen a martial ranger done right is 4e, and that's just because 4e actually allowed martial characters to do superhuman things without them being explicitly magical.

 

[Reef]

I take on it, is that going into the wild is just a high Survival skill. And a lot of what I see people wanting a magic-less ranger to do sounds an awful lot like magic to me. Talking birds and animals into scouting for you? How is that not magic?

I guess what I’m saying @Emberashh, is that I don’t necessarily have a problem with the things you put on your list. I just have trouble saying they aren’t magic. And in that case, fighting against mechanically having them represented by spells is a weird hill to die on.

@ChameleonX sums it up pretty well there. 4e martial ranger worked by doing magical things. They just didn’t call them spells. And at that point, it seems all we’re arguing about is labels.

 

[le Redoutable]

Like bird's flying ability??

 

[CreamCloud0]

i want rangers to have access to magic, what i don't want is for them to have to rely on it to do their basic rangery things but for it to expand and enhance their natural capabilities.

edit: it's the difference between having to use magic to befriend an animal(a wolf or deer in the woods, and not as an 'animal companion') to fight alongside you in battle compared to summoning the nature spirits(elementals) to do the same, one of those should require magic, the other shouldn't.

 

[ChameleonX]

i want rangers to have access to magic, what i don't want is for them to have to rely on it to do their basic rangery things but for it to expand and enhance their natural capabilities.

edit: it's the difference between having to use magic to befriend an animal to fight alongside you in battle compared to summoning the nature spirits to do the same, one of those requires magic, the other doesn't.

One is the Animal Friendship spell, and the other is Conjure Animals.

EDIT: Or just a high DC Wisdom (Animal Handling) check.

 

[Reef]

i want rangers to have access to magic, what i don't want is for them to have to rely on it to do their basic rangery things but for it to expand and enhance their natural capabilities.

edit: it's the difference between having to use magic to befriend an animal to fight alongside you in battle compared to summoning the nature spirits to do the same, one of those requires magic, the other doesn't.

I guess it’s a matter of degrees. Having a trained animal companion isn’t magic. Being able to whistle up animals to help like a Disney Princess is.

Obviously this all just my personal preference. But I just look at all the wilderness abilities and wonder why that just isn’t a use of the Survival skill. Or the Medicine skill, or Animal Handling, Etc. The Rogue Scout takes expertise in those, and to me you’re most of the way to Aragorn.

 

[Clint_L]

There is zero chance of WotC changing the ranger class to be without magic for OneDnD, and if you prefer to make a mundane one you already can through fighter or rogue and name them Shmaragorn all you like. So not really sure why this thread is here instead of on the general DnD forum as a discussion of whether DnD’s vision for Ranger is fundamentally flawed going back to 1979, because we all know that’s what this thread is really about.