D&D 5E Convince me that the Ranger is a necessary Class.

[Crimson Longinus]

My problem with the Rogue is as a class it is not magical enough to fill what I like about the Ranger. You can get some magic options through Rogue subclasses, but all Rangers get spells (lots of them with Primal Awareness), Favored Foe and Nature's Veil and they can get more magical stuff beyond that through their subclasses.

If we want to put it into a subclass of another class I think a Sorcerer works best, although you would be trading some Ranger abilities for spells that cover similar ground. Artificer could work too I think. Paladin and Cleric might work too, but they have a lot of extra baggage they bring to the table.

I don't think the base concept of ranger i.e. outdoorsy wilderness guy, really requires magic. It is traditionally given magic in D&D, but in every edition people ask for a magicless ranger.

And we already have a full dedicated nature magic class in the druid.

 

[ECMO3]

The Rogue Scout sucks at doing actual rangery stuff.

I thought Scout was really good as a Nature type scout guy. Not enough magic to fill the Ranger role for me, but plenty good in the wilderness.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Ranger and Rogue fullfill the same niche that I have had legendary game designers argue that Robin Hood is a rogue.

If the paragon of ranger is not your class, it is extraneous.

Rogue now covers the skirmisher concept so I would be okay of folding the ranger abilities into it and the stereotypes as sub classes.

Then again my favorite ranger was the 4e version, because i have always preferred the deepwoods sniper version for my rangers.

So I'm asking.

Is the Ranger a necessary Class?

Thing is, you really do not need classes there are game without them but if you do then classes cover basic archetypes. At a minimum one needs 3: the fighter, the magic user, the skilled one.
One could base the whole game around this with all other archetypes as subclasses.
On the other hand, once you have the base 3 then it is an obvious step to get into the hybrid archetypes. Like the fighting wizard or the skilled fighter, the skilled wizard, the holy magic person and so on.
The ranger is one of those hybrids and is around long enough to be part of the core identity of D&D. You do not really need them but if there were not there many would want to be able to build something like them.
I am not sure that it could be easily done within the classic D&D class structure. I think one would need a more complex base class if one was restricting the game to two or three base class archetypes.
The class chassis would become very minimalistic, and the subclasses would be more complex, as would the skill system. The system would probably need a lot more feats and feat trees to get to a similar place in terms of build that the current system would support.

 

[ECMO3]

I don't think the base concept of ranger i.e. outdoorsy wilderness guy, really requires magic. It is traditionally given magic in D&D, but in every edition people ask for a magicless ranger.

And we already have a full dedicated nature magic class in the druid.

For me the Ranger does not require nature, but it does require magic, including some access to Arcane style magic. The current class afford that (even if it encourages you to lean away from it)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For me the Ranger does not require nature, but it does require magic, including some access to Arcane style magic. The current class afford that (even if it encourages you to lean away from it)

I think you're confused.

 

[bedir than]

Aragorn had neither nature magic

As long as we ignore his magic he had no magic, yes

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think the base concept of ranger i.e. outdoorsy wilderness guy, really requires magic. It is traditionally given magic in D&D, but in every edition people ask for a magicless ranger.

And we already have a full dedicated nature magic class in the druid.

Rangers in D&D have magic because D&D doesn't have a skill system with defined effects.

Rangers can't put on ghillie suits, snare trap the orc vanguard, run before the main warband notices, then heal up after battle without SPELLS.

 

[Laurefindel]

Ranger is the outdoors-y, self-dependant, resourceful skirmisher. The rogue has warrior-ized significantly since 1e thief, but the ranger still possess as much conceptual identity as paladin and sorcerer vis-à-vis their cleric and wizard counterparts. Paladin does a better job of distinguishing itself mechanically than the ranger, but conceptually it’s on the same level of « do we really need this class? »

As much as I like my martial-ranger, 5e ranger mostly fails to distinguish itself on the magical side. Would ranger’s hunter’s mark been implemented on the same level as paladin’s smite, we wouldn’t be having this thread every third month.

Barbarian is the class that has rage
Sorcerer is the class that has metamagic
Paladin is the class that has smite
Ranger should have been the class that has hunters mark, rather than the class that has natural explorer.

 

[grimmgoose]

I like the Ranger fine, so I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I gotta mention:

1 - Robin Hood is not the paragon of the Ranger. The Rangers of Dunedin and Aragorn are.

LOTR Aragorn is not a Ranger. In fact, basically every character in LOTR is a fighter (Gandalf would be like a Fighter 5/Wizard 3. LOTR is a bad example to use for D&D classes; LOTR = low fantasy, D&D = probably the highest fantasy you can get.

 

[Tonguez]

For me the Ranger does not require nature, but it does require magic, including some access to Arcane style magic. The current class afford that (even if it encourages you to lean away from it)

can I ask why you think the Ranger needs magic? as it is half the spells on the ranger list could be done with a better Skill system or as basic class abilities (Hunters Mark!)