LibriumArcana.Games

I'm gonna do something a bit pretentious. I'm gonna open a discussion on the "soul" of the various character classes of DnD and of course give my opinion. For the purpose of the discussion we're going to go one class at a time and use the main nine from the 3.5 Player Handbook. Apologies to the 4th edition fans.

We'll start with the class that holds the prize place in my mind. The ranger.

Operating in the wild lands, with an deep understanding of his environment, he's fighting a war, alone and with little to no support. He's fighting in his enemies backyard, stalking them, sliding around their guard... and killing them without mercy.

The Ranger the paramount Guerrilla fighter of fantasy, the spec-ops commando. He's not suppose to fight in stand up, conventional fights but to brutally ambush his opponent, kill quickly and fade away, in the bad guy's own living room. He's the first and likely last line of defense for civilization and he does it with little to no support.

Let me trot some of the recent (and not so recent) ranger archtypes to back this up.

The Dunedain: Tolken's rangers, the men of the north engaged in a generation long battle to hold back the minions of Sauron in the wilds away from the settlements of Men and Hobbits. The people they're defending have no clue what's going on and some of them treat the Dunedain with disdain. The war is exhausting and hard on them (it would claim Aragon's father before Aragon's 1st birthday) keep their numbers and resources low until after the War of the Ring ends the conflict. Aragon is the paragon of this group. (See Middle Earth works by Tolken)

The Justicar: When the half fiend Iuz led his legions to war, some got caught behind his lines of advance. Hunted by the undead, hounded by the demonic, only the best survived to hit back. Justicar earned his spurs in this environment hitting the supply lines and reinforcement columns of Iuz. After the war he would continue to operate on the frontier and working for commission if he felt the problem was hurtful to the common good. (See White Plume Mountain, Descent into the Depths of the Earth and Demonweb Pits by Paul Kidd)

Martin: The huntsmaster of an isolated Keep, bastard of an not so unknown father and an elf friend. When his home is laid siege to Martin fights by attacking the besiegers in the woods surrounding the fortress to the point of out stealthing Dark elves and using them as weapons against his enemies. (See Magician Series by Raymond Feist).

What do these guys have in common? Good survival skills, stealth abilities and hitting power. The Justicar for example had to hide out from fucking demons and conduct a one man war against a force made up largely of undead. The Dunedain were fighting Orcs backed up by the WitchKing. Martin was fighting an entire bloody army.

Hit and Run should be the running theme for any Ranger class.

Now it's your turn folks do I have it or am I just crazy? When we reach an general agreement I'll move on to our next class (yes I will take suggestions as long as it's one of the Player Handbook ones).

Okay, let me try to provoke some discussion. Given what I've outlined, should the Ranger class actually cast spells?

frigidmagi wrote:Okay, let me try to provoke some discussion. Given what I've outlined, should the Ranger class actually cast spells?

Depends on how magic works. In vanilla D&D, yes.

To be perfectly honest, it depends on the setting. In some worlds it would make more sense for them to have "pure" skill, in some worlds everyone should know a little magic and anyone as resourcful as a ranger should know more. Then there are worlds where being 'intune' or 'at peace' with nature is a perfuectly good excuess to have druid still magic like the canonicly ranger.

That's ignore those worlds where magic is something infectus or something you steal from dark places - in both of those cases a ranger would be ideally placed to have gotten some unpleasent magic.

Really, its all about the world your dealing with.

Offhand, I'd say no. Unless you specifically make rangers the military arm of a druid order, they should just be survival badasses. Give them the ability to use nature for utilitarian purposes, making poisons, medicines, etc., but don't actually give them spells. There's a wealth of shit a Ranger should be able to do without spells, if done right.

Hotfoot wrote:Offhand, I'd say no. Unless you specifically make rangers the military arm of a druid order, they should just be survival badasses. Give them the ability to use nature for utilitarian purposes, making poisons, medicines, etc., but don't actually give them spells. There's a wealth of shit a Ranger should be able to do without spells, if done right.

Problem is, there's all sorts of half and partial casters in D&D. It is, apparently, reasonably easy to pick ups some magic by rote since a fuck load of classes and prestige classes do it. That's in vanilla D&D. Different magic rules, different answer. Black Company or Iron Kingdoms both have no magic rangers because they don't use standard magic.

The only half or partial casters I can think of from the primary sets are the Ranger, the Paladin, and the Bard. None of them really benefit greatly from spells save the Bard.

That said, including the ability to craft things like alchemy, poisons, etc. would potentially increase their abilities to do some nasty shit, and it would even be a party force multiplier, since potions, salves, and so forth could be passed around inside the group.

I mean really, let's be honest. Being able to dick around with, what, 4th level magic at 20th level is some weak-ass shit. Hell, you even go through your early career without even being able to cast a thing, but suddenly that changes? It totally changes the play dynamic and really the stuff you get isn't that good. I'd rather they focused on the physical aspects rather than the magical.

On the same vein, I think that the Paladin could use a similar sort of overhaul. Bard, I dunno, it works out decently, but whatever.

1st level spells, for Rangers and Paladins, start arriving at 4th level. The heals and the buffs remain useful throughout their careers and scale up. Add in Bards and demicasters are good quarter of the starting classes. Good spell selection for a demicaster is different from a primary.

Then you add in prestige classes like the Assassin and variant classes like the Hexer and you have even more demi-casters. D&D is thick with them. So yeah, I buy them in a vanilla D&D game. Healing spells, spells that make you trail impassable, spells that enhance your movement for hours are all easily available at single digit levels and frankly in a universe where you can apparently pick that shit up on the side, it makes sense that Rangers would.

Vanilla D&D isn't my favorite fantasy setting by a long shot. I'm all over Rangers using poison, snares, ambushes, and not so clean healing with herbs, needles, and thread. There are plenty of settings where that's the case and I tend to run them as a GM because I like them (IK, Black Company, Warhammer Fantasy, etcetera).

Let's keep it vanilla for now.

One thing I was thinking of was replacing the spells with a set of powers or abilities. For example instead of the spell speak to animal (which to be honest I never like anyways) the Ranger would simply have the ability to speak certain animals of his choice (canines, horses or cats for example).

It's very vague I know because it's still a vague idea. Thoughts?

It's fine.