The Ranger Design Problem

Rangers pose a great challenge to game designers because their fantasy varies widely from tale to tale. Robin Hood, Aragorn, Legolas, Drizzt, and many others create the frameworks we use to form the image of a Ranger in our minds. They have some similarities, its true, but they have a great many differences as well. On top of these varied images, there have historically been problems with trying to "rulesify" particular characteristics of the Ranger. The premise of favored enemies and terrain is fictionally sound, but we've seen how it can be too niche to be satisfying in gameplay. Rangers essentially needed the DM to throw their favored enemies and terrain at them a bunch or else they have wasted features.

I love Rangers. For a while I was definitely that player. You know, the one who played some variation of "person who is really good with a long range weapon" in every campaign. I played a Ranger and a Scout in 3.5e and I played an Annie Oakley type character in Deadlands. I was a kid, so I had fun, but I still could tell that things like favored foes and favored terrain were pretty niche. Since I didn't know better, it could often feel like I had picked wrong. In actuality, they were just the kind of features that are focused too much on realism without a sense of what makes for fun game mechanics. This continued in 2014's 5e, with the Beast Master in particular being a popular Ranger subclass... that inevitably disappointed because the animal companion was way too fragile.

When the 2024 Player's Handbook released for 5e, many players were hoping to finally have a Ranger that satisfied their fantasies while still keeping up with other classes mechanically. Some of the issues were fixed, in the sense that the designers found mechanical ways to represent Ranger traversal that don't require specific terrain, but other issues have persisted or arisen. The internet has since spoken, and a great number of players have been left unsatisfied on one front or another. Treantmonk recently crunched a bunch of numbers for single target damage of most classes and his math illustrated clearly that, if you care about damage, you are not well served with taking levels in Ranger beyond 5. I personally love rangers, but I also like to keep up with the other players if a fight breaks out, and it seems that except for Tier 1 play in DnD, those two preferences do not coincide.

Now of course, damage isn't everything, but there are other issues in the class's design for me that extend beyond their ability to perform in combat. When I think about those Ranger figures I mentioned earlier, they can be broken down into a few overlapping traits.

• Aragorn and Robin Hood are perhaps the most similar in terms of their familiarity with the woods and use of a longsword and longbow.

• Robin Hood and Legolas are both renowned for their archery skills.

• Legolas (in the films only*) and Drizzt both use a pair of shorter swords. They are also both types of elves, which comes with a bit of inherent coexistence with their environment.

• Drizzt and Aragorn both tend to do more melee fighting, although they remain proficient archers. They are also the two who have animal companions, though Drizzt's panther is much more emphasized than Aragorn's horse.

DnD Rangers have been their own sort of fantasy for a while, but new players in particular tend to be inspired by media when considering class choices for their characters. It can then be incredibly frustrating when they find that the rules don't enable living out these inspirations.

Right from the start there are issues in the sense that using a longsword AND longbow does not play well with the rules. Longswords are Strength based while ranged weapons use Dexterity. Rangers also require decent Constitution for fighting and Wisdom for their skills and magic, so unless you roll up insane stats you have to either be mediocre at archery or trade out the longsword for a finesse weapon. No Aragorns or Robin Hoods. I suppose this is in line with the very early days. Back then everyone rolled stats and you actually could not play a Ranger without meeting specific stat requirements. There are reasons that many of us don't do that anymore though.

"Rangers are a sub-class of Fighting Men, similar in many ways to the new sub-class Paladins, for they must always remain Lawful or lose all the benefits they gained (except, of course, experience as a fighter). Strength is their Prime Requisite, but they must also have both Intelligence and Wisdom scores of at least 12 each, and a Constitution of at least 15." --- The Strategic Review, Vol. 1, No. 2

Nowadays, Rangers generally choose Dexterity over Strength. If you prefer Legolas or Drizzt, you're fine, because Dexterity lets you wield a couple scimitars or short swords while still being able to fire your bow properly, regardless of which is your go to method of attack. I think a big part of that shift is directly tied to the popularity of Drizzt. In the early days people were thinking of Aragorn. Once the Drizzt books came out, design followed him. So strongly in fact, that in 4th edition there were a TON of melee attacks that REQUIRED you to dual wield. I honestly like a lot of things about 4e, but it's not great that in their quick build options they only listed archer and dual wielder as recommendations. You'd be forgiven for thinking the ONLY way to play a melee Ranger in 4e was to dual wield.

Disengaging from combat, I have another point of contention with WotC's design. If you've read my very first post, you can probably guess what it is. Spells. DnD Rangers have Spellcasting because Wizards decided with 5e to upscale partial casters from previous editions rather than inventing unique resources like they did for Monks. This means that, of the 12 core classes, only 4 are without spellcasting and only the Monk has a true martial resource to spend on cool abilities (excluding subclasses). Many people love spells, but I am a lover of martial classes and I find the use of spells for everything to be lazy design that encourages excessive and non-sensical multiclassing. How does a Paladin's divine magic use the same resource as a Sorcerer's arcane magic anyways?! But I digress. I don't like Rangers as spellcasters, and 5e has the most magical version of them yet. What makes it even worse is that many of the spell options use your concentration... which the structure of the class encourages you to use on Hunter's Mark all the time.

I don't mind Rangers having some amount of nature magic, but I much prefer when the mechanics of a game have unique ways that different classes do (even the same) things. For example, what if rather than Rangers just having access to the Cure Wounds spell, they could use an ability to do with herbalism? This would be much more in line with the fiction of a Ranger. Aragorn doesn't heal Frodo with a spell, he knows that Kingsfoil is a plant that can slow his symptoms. It perhaps works even better as a replacement for the Lesser Restoration spell later on, since that is only to do with remedying certain conditions. As I discussed in that first post, I find that while ideally people would describe the way their casting is different from other classes with the same spell, that rarely ever happens. However, if the method/resource/etc is mechanically distinct, the difference in classes is more apparent even if players fail to roleplay it.

My final thoughts (and some previously mentioned ones) can be pretty well encompassed by a video from Bob World Builder in August of 2024. Essentially he says that Rangers are, first and foremost, survivalists. They should be the best at foraging, tracking, and navigation in basically any environment. Magic is not a core part of their identity. You should definitely check his video out. I'm not quite as rigid on all his points, but I do agree that Rangers should have all their exploration benefits as early as possible and they should be able to have an animal companion without a subclass entirely dedicated to it.

So what to do? Well, I have spent several months chugging away at making a Revised Ranger. I say Revised because I could not escape the use of some spells. I am one person after all, and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel for everything. Again, I don't mind them having some kind of primal connection that grants them magical abilities. It honestly can just be really taxing to design for engaging gameplay without something like that to justify supernatural abilities. I think the magic shouldn't come from the character themselves though. It should be more akin to gifts bestowed upon them by their connection to nature or else ways that an environment like the Feywild or Shadowfell has left a mark upon them. Rather than Spellcasting, my Ranger has what I call Primal Invocations. These are inspired by the Warlock's Eldritch Invocations, but of course with abilities granted by nature and themed as such.

But enough beating around the bush. I plan on putting a finalized PDF on DMs Guild eventually for people who want to support me. For now, my Ranger Revised can be found here. Please give it a look and consider asking your DM if you can play it at your table. I did a lot of research and cross referencing with other 5e materials, so it should be well balanced. If it isn't... let me know after you play with it! Thanks for reading, and have a great day <3.