Ranger Class

[Somna]

I know they are pegging Rangers for the ranged attack specialists, but I think it would be interesting to also give them the option to be shapeshifting fighters as well.

[Wulfic]

I know they are pegging Rangers for the ranged attack specialists, but I think it would be interesting to also give them the option to be shapeshifting fighters as well.

 

No. I hope there will be no shapeshifting and stupid stuff like that what u can see in DnD. DnD is the least making sense fantasy setting in the World IMHO I prefer Westers or Adventuria much much much much more than Faerun which has only a cool name of the continent.

[Somna]

I know they are pegging Rangers for the ranged attack specialists, but I think it would be interesting to also give them the option to be shapeshifting fighters as well.

 

No. I hope there will be no shapeshifting and stupid stuff like that what u can see in DnD. DnD is the least making sense fantasy setting in the World IMHO I prefer Westers or Adventuria much much much much more than Faerun which has only a cool name of the continent.

 

When all the classes are being given magical abilities, I wish you the best of luck with that hope. If you're lucky, either it won't pop up or it would be kicked over to Barbarians.

[Tsuga C]

If you're lucky, either it won't pop up or it would be kicked over to Barbarians.

 

If player wildshaping is included, I'd wager that it'll be for druids. Rangers and barbarians will likely have their own abilities and are generally considered more "martial" in nature than the druid, but the druid is the class that embodies becoming one with the primeval world. If any class can become a stealthy great cat, a raging bear, or a tireless wolf, it'll be the druid.

[AGX-17]

I know they are pegging Rangers for the ranged attack specialists, but I think it would be interesting to also give them the option to be shapeshifting fighters as well.

 

....What? Either you're not familiar with the concept of a Ranger or you've confused the tradition of a Ranger having a trusty animal companion with the Druid class' traditional affinity for shape-shifting into animals.

[Somna]

I know they are pegging Rangers for the ranged attack specialists, but I think it would be interesting to also give them the option to be shapeshifting fighters as well.

 

....What? Either you're not familiar with the concept of a Ranger or you've confused the tradition of a Ranger having a trusty animal companion with the Druid class' traditional affinity for shape-shifting into animals.

 

Or maybe I'm wondering if they're going to not going to make the name necessarily match what people assume it does.

 

We already have evidence that Priests are going to be more like Paladins and Paladins are going to be more like Warlords. So it would be appreciated if you didn't reply back with a response that's a more polite version of "you're either stupid or delusional."

[Sandro G Meier]

Well, IMO, Ranger usually should be kind of a survival type warrior, and aside the D&D rules, I'd better ranger got non/low spellcasting skills.

Let's talk about more commonly, for a ranger, normally, s/he should have either or both melee skill and archery - the basic point of survive.

And a low/medium rank healing skill which not good as cleric and druids, and as a difference, normally, their healing need use some external materials, such as herbs, bandage,medicine etc. And not the spells. Which in the other hand, cause them had a good knowledge of herbalism(may as good as druid, or not such good as them but can be developed later...)

Extra damage will deal with some familiar enemies, components(human,animal etc.)

Then, like most of you guys been mentioned, a trap set(even disarm) skill and tracking skill is the points of the class. And hiding skill, of course, I know it sounds a bit like rogue, but actually it is, a rogue is actually a city survivor.

So in particular, For those players set characters, which exactly your character, not companions. The choice of melee or range can be set as, let's say, 2 points, for example, to spend on this two parts for making this class have extra bouns than others, and the difference is, you can spend 2 points on one mechanic(I don't know if this words going right,sorry about my English) to get a extemely advance on that mechanic. And you can spend 1 point on each to get a balanced ranger. And for companion, it comes more easily, they may provider two or more ranger who have different types, but that depends on the storyline and some else...

And for the hiding, I'd say it should be a little different from rogue, as a ranger or a survivor normally can use the enviroment wisely, so if they can got a camouflage skill which related to hiding that would be great.(like pretend as a bush, a wolf(I mean not shape shifting))

Last, let's talk about the animal skills, first of all, the ranger must have a deep knowledge about the animals, which help to identify their features, the weakness,the strength, and may be what they like to eat. So relate with this, a trap skill can be used wisely. For example, You meet plenty of wolves, what you do is put some trap over one side, use the meat as a bait, so you don't have your characters taking risk, or you may throw the meat to the place away from your path, some them may run away for the meat, and you can pass through or kill them one by one when them focusing on meat, or even them wil fight theirselves for the meat....

Second, pet and animal companions, normally a animal charming/control skill, or summoning skill can be added with no doubt, And for the pets or someone mentioned permanet animal companions, I think that could be kind of idea. But I prefer get a pet from storyline(like doggy in Arcanum and Fallout), which have more should I say feeling about that...

 

 

------sorry for such a long term......

Edited December 11, 2012 by Sandro G Meier

[Chilloutman]

I think that main think that ranger have to some unique mechanic to step aside from barbarian/warrior/thief. Yes wilderness bonuses are must but it would criple ranger in rest part of a game and it can be 3/4 of game indoors/caves.

So Bow - yes ranger should probably be master of bow - even when I am not big fan of them but bow can be used by warrior as well.

Melee fighting - I think ranger should be quite good at swordfighting, maybe with dualwield (especialy dagger in off-hand) and spears! (I hope they make spearfighting viable option as in most IE games spears are soo weak)

Sneak - This makes much sense as well as ranger is somehow scout - I would call it camouflage for ranger and enable it only in outdoors locations, but still thief is master here.

BeastMastery - On other hand rangers pet is quite unique mechanic for ranger (ok I know druids are even better at this but i think that druid have much more unique posibilities than ranger so I would leave pet to him) and I would like posibility to focus on beastmastery. But this is hard to implement, in most RPGs I played animal companion were in better situation distraction, in worser situation hindrance

Monsters Lore - this could be real unique mechanic for ranger - it should be similiar to favoured enemy, but instead of choosing it, ranger should gain more bonuses against monster type depending on how many he already slain. It would make sense that when ranger meet new monster he dont know how to deal with him better than other class, but he study his pray and learn his weakness so next time he would be prepared. It would make him great at cleaning cannon fodders and not too overpower when fighting more unique monsters

Edited December 11, 2012 by Chilloutman

[Osvir]

Monsters Lore - this could be real unique mechanic for ranger - it should be similiar to favoured enemy, but instead of choosing it, ranger should gain more bonuses against monster type depending on how many he already slain. It would make sense that when ranger meet new monster he dont know how to deal with him better than other class, but he study his pray and learn his weakness so next time he would be prepared. It would make him great at cleaning cannon fodders and not too overpower when fighting more unique monsters

 

Didn't read everything, this caught my attention. I like.

[Jobby]

For me Chilloutman has pretty much got what i would expect the ranger to be, i especially like the idea of the ranger only being good at stealth in the wild, the pet idea is good aswel.

 

In regards to making the pet useful i think you would have to give it non-combat uses in order to avoid having some ridiculously overpowered dog devouring giant orcs.

 

Perhaps the pet could be incorporated with a tracking mechanic to give an idea of how far away and in what direction the mobs are?

Scouting perhaps? monsters and other animals might not be instantly hostile towards it?

Perform simple actions such as levers and doors that may be useful if for some reason the pet can access areas that you cannot?

Throwing weapon retrieval?... Clutching at straws now i think lol.

 

Monster lore also seems like a pretty good way of incorporating the favoured enemy trait.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Jobby

[AGX-17]

I think that main think that ranger have to some unique mechanic to step aside from barbarian/warrior/thief. Yes wilderness bonuses are must but it would criple ranger in rest part of a game and it can be 3/4 of game indoors/caves.

 

I'd count caves as a wilderness/natural environment. A forest can be just as confining as a castle hallway depending on the density of trees and the topography of the area.

Edited December 12, 2012 by AGX-17

[Diagoras]

Hmm, if rangers are marksman specialists, it might be interesting to see how they get built as sharpshooters with wheellock rifles. Bit of a Minuteman/American irregular vibe, quite possibly.

[AGX-17]

I would throw out all the weird preconcieved notions that various d&d systems have put on rangers. Dual-wielding makes no sense (to limit to rangers, or have them magically good at it). Wilderness skills do make some sense, make them be useful. Some degree of stealth makes sense. Divine magic doesn't really make sense.

 

Having said that, when it comes to class design, I put more emphasis on function than style. An inferior fighter who gets free dual wield, a pet, and some druid spells isn't defined enough for me. I actually like the idea of rangers being the premier archers of PE, because it gives them an actual role that isn't better filled by some other class. And it makes a ton of sense for a self-sufficient character who spends all his time outdoors. I don't have a problem with dual wield, but I don't think it should be a class-defining ability (seems more fitting for barbarians).

 

While dual-wielding is historically accurate for barbarians in the real world, there are also dual-wielding fighting styles present historically in later periods of European and Asian history.

 

Which is why I don't get why there's usually a penalty for dual-wielding two weapons but not for using a shield. It takes training to use a shield and sword together correctly/effectively, and there were rapier/dagger fighting styles developed in the renaissance (primarily centered on dueling,) and Japan's most famous samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, went undefeated using his own originally developed dual-wielding fighting style. The common thread in all of them was that the "off-hand" weapon was used for both offense and defense.

 

It couldn't protect you from archers, but these were fighting styles for skirmishers, duelists and wandering ronin. Hell, the Japanese didn't even use shields. They had large, tripod-mounted shield-like barricades to protect the front lines from archers, but the common soldier was a pikeman equivalent and the samurai saw shields as supremely cowardly, which is why the use of a dual-wielding technique grants the benefits of a shield in a duel or general/small fight (the sort an RPG party of adventurers would be engaging in,) without the cowardly (but pragmatic, not that honor is compatible with pragmatism anyway,) implications of shield use. And it goes without saying that a samurai bringing a bow and arrows to a duel would be grounds for hara-kiri.

 

All that said, dual wielding doesn't really fit a ranger, as ranged combat is implicit in the class' name. A knife for short-range self defense is what sounds sensible, but not deliberately running around with two knives and little/light/no armor.

Edited December 12, 2012 by AGX-17

[ReyVagabond]

First i want to get rid of all my expirience of D&D and the old games, to awnser this.

 

Rangers should be woodsman warriors, with pets, yes pets. wolfs, ravens, etc.

the Game should not have heavy Weapon expertice lala D&D.

With that in mind, Rangers are good with bows and knifes and short sords, axes, all woodsman weapons.

 

Using the Bow from range and then switching to a axe dager in close range.

 

with the animal companion distracting. atacking flanking , and with many abilities to help them in battle.

 

Now outside battle, they should be good, at traking, bathering resourses, lowering the time for the party to move in map travel, and all cool stuff like that.

 

All classes should be cool and bring something unique to the table. and a balance to Combat where not one class is much more powerfull that another in any given level.

[FlintlockJazz]

While having a bonus for wilderness stealth could work I wouldn't want them to only be able to stealth in natural environments, that just seems arbitrary and senseless to me. I would also actually like the possibility of city-rangers to be a possibility like the stalker kit in BG2, since they would work well as bounty hunters and can easily see a 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' style ranger with his little mongrel dog following after him while he seeks bond-jumpers in city ghettos.

Edited December 13, 2012 by FlintlockJazz