Why are they always the weakest class? Why do designers hate them so much?>Have you tried not playing DND?It's not just DND.
>>96463223>It's not just DND.It pretty much is. Any game that has just a regular hunter as a class usually does absolutely fine, they are useful.I guess, the more grounded the game is, the more useful the hunter-archetype becomes. Otherwise, you have DMs not caring much about tracking through wilderlands and magic just circumventing it anyway.
Rangers, who, as the name suggest, specialize in ranged combat get easily outmatched by wizards who specialize in deranged combat.
>>96463232They're dookie in Pathfinder too.
>>96463244>store-brand DnDHYTNPDND
>>96463250>HYTNPDND poster hypocritically claims every other game is still DNDYou love to see it
>>96463232The Dark Eye has no Ranger, but Hunter is strictly worse than Elf, because Elf can do all the outdoors stuff plus magic.
>>96463328Well yes, it's an elf.
>>96463223>4E Ranger>weakest class
>>96463298Pathfinder is LITERALLY still D&D though
>>96463386It's literally not
>>96463223>Artificer, am I a joke to you?Yes, and it means that ranger isn't weakest.
>>964634041e is literally D&D 3.5e, there are no systemic differences between the two and it can only exist thanks to 3.5e's usage license.2e is a bit more of a divergence, but is still much closer to D&D than almost any other game that isn't an outright clone.
>>96463328Ranger is an occupation, elf is a species. You can just be an elf ranger.
>>96463460The Dark Eye does the oldschool race-as-class thing for Elves and Dwarves, with wider selection of classes for Humans.
>>96463488Ah, you were talking about an older version of TDE then.
>>96463223Ranger, paladin, and bard were just homages to fantasy heroes. The RPS combined arms strategy that slots infantry/ artillery/ infiltrators sees everything else as support characters.
>>96463223Fuck it. I'll bite.What makes them weakest?
>>96463492Yeah. How does the new one handle it? Do elves keep access to magic regardless of their class or is Elf Warrior their non-magical option.
>>96463524being weaker than the rest
Rangers are always going to be weak because the concept of the class is "the guy who is good at surviving outside'" but most players don't actually care about this and ignore what scant survival mechanics out there; not to mention that as you progress, natural dangers become less and less of a thing to worry about even if you're bothering to track them
>>96463578You didn't answer my question. List all of the weaknesses inside of their respectable editions.
>>96463595>natural dangers become less and less of a thing to worry about even if you're bothering to track themOnly if you have a fogbrain DM who cannot fathom a survival event.
>>96463595Except Druids don't have that problem.
>>96463886No, no matter what you're doing, every class is going to get more and more tools to handle conventional natural events (or even the bulk to shrug them off) as you progress, unless you're venturing into the Elemental Planes or some other places with wholly unconventional natural dangers. And if you are, Rangers aren't equipped to handle them either, so you're not better off as one.
>>96463924Yes, because Druids aren't "the guy who's good at surviving outside," they're "the nature wizard".
>>96463595>Rangers are always going to be weakThe 4E Ranger is the single best class of its type and is top 3 among the entire system.
>>96463886Most survival events boil down to sort of gear check. Food, water, cold weather clothes, ways to stay out of rain, tools to ford a river, climbing gear. Class build around substituting box of mundane items is doomed to fail.
>>96463953Because 4E isn't a TTRPG, it's a skirmish wargame.
>>96463223Class?
>>96463995Most adventurers would fall under "lumpenproletariat"
Have you tried designing rangers in a way that befits your game?
>>96463956What about navigating the terrain? Mapping? Knowledge of local geography? Survival and movement across difficult terrain?
>>96464568All very useful skills, but it all comes back to the problem of many groups just not giving a shit about those mechanics. A lot of the time they're here just to roleplay and fight, exploration is kind of a lost art form.
>>96464011Nah they're nouveau riche, surviving your first adventure gets you more money than a typical peasant will see in his lifetime.
>>96463534It's point buy with recquirements (from TDE4 onwards, anway).In the current version, TDE5, which I am the most familiar with, it works like this: every elf must take the "magic user" advantage (which is in turn a recquirement for every magical ability) and the "elven magic tradition" abilty (basically, all spells in the game are ordered by traditions. To learn elven spells in chargen, you need the elven magic tradition.) So starting as an elf is pretty expensive compared to dwarves or humans (or whatever other races they added in newer books) as it comes with a bunch of expensive point sinks. So if you start as an elf, the system nudges you towards making a magic user, otherwise those point sinks would kind of go to waste.For classes, they're a suggestion more than anything. Every character picks an "occupation" at chargen, which already distributes some of their points (picking a warrior will automatically allocate some points into straight swords, picking a baker will allocate some points into food preparation, etc.) but as it's point buy, you can distribute the remainder of your points in whatever way you like. There's a list of hundreds of occupations, but all of them are just pre-packaged point distribution spreads. Essentially they are lables, but they do not determine how you spend the rest of your points.Basically, if you're gonna play an elf, you will always know some magic. What else your char can do dependss entirely on how you spend your remaining points. Class has no bearing on that.
>>96464568I'm going to have to agree with >>96464608, but I'll expand on my own experiences as a GM. Of the dozen+ systems I've run that include a 'Ranger' type and wilderness survival/exploration, I find most systems are going to boil down to, "Beat the DC/Skill test number or all your friends suffer." Most games rarely have interesting or even useful rules for survival and I've yet to find any game that lends as much page space to survival against nature as it does about how to grapple someone. The only times people even engage with survival/exploration is when it provides a bonus, yet many situations only act to hinder, slow, and drain some resource from the party. However, I'm open to new things and would love to see a game that does it differently. I'd take any recommendations just to see what could be.
>>96464568>Mapping? Knowledge of local geography?gear check for having a good map>Survival and movement across difficult terrain?rope, ladders, pitons, planks of wood to bridge unstable ground and so on
>>96463223CosmereRPG has the Hunter path, and it's got both pretty good archer and beastmaster specializations for the favored enemy/tracking stuff, but also eats a bit of Rogue's lunch by incorporating assassin and sneak attack abilities into their favored enemy equivalent.
>>96463223>Why are they always the weakest class?Have you tried playing D&D? 4E D&D, rangers are probably the best DPS class.
>>96463886Players do not care about survival mechanics they just want to be a ranger so that they can automatically succeed at those things because they think that makes them could. That or they want a pet like in World of Warcraft.
>>96464848Cosmere's gay and nobody is going to play that shit unless they're a particularly annoying dork.
>>96464726That's the worst way to do races in a point buy system I've ever seen.
>>96464568All of that falls under Talents, which anyone can invest in.
>>96463973That doesn't follow. There's no reason a skirmish wargame would naturally have better rangers .
>>96464907As a particularly annoying dork, I will continue to enjoy it. It is still worth mentioning though because there is a generic version in the works that will be using the same framework.
>>96463223In GURPS, the traditional “ranger” (guy with bow and survival skills) can suck as it takes a while to reload a bow. This is not as much of a problem as it seems, however. It can be cut down to firing every other turn with a single skill, there are cinematic options like Heroic Archer that let you do a legolas style bow machinegun, and the main problem usually comes down to the GM not giving ranger characters engagements at ranges where a bow is more useful.As for the survival/animal handling aspects of a ranger style character in GURPS, these are represented fairly well. GURPS Low Tech’s companions have detailed foraging and survival rules, and a talented hunter/tracker can be a major boon to a party trying to survive in the wilderness.Outside of strict bow usage, taking a short or broadsword on a ranger character also works very well, as low encumbrance dodge builds do very good work in GURPS. A character who is great at all of these things might struggle pointwise, though.
Ugh!
>>96464568Have you considered that with money people can buy maps
>>96464964I’ll also add that at least in my group, something resembling the ranger archetype is one of the most common fixtures in anything but urban campaigns. Be it medieval hunters, late 19th century bushmen, modern survivalists, or a high tech explorer/settler in sci fi settings, we usually have one turn up.
>>96464911How else would you do it? You pick the race, you get the stuff that the race automatically has. Just means the race is more expensive than races that don't come with baggage.
>>96464988Do you think hazards like sinkholes and landslides show up on maps?
>>96464988Most wilderness isn't exactly mapped out. Maps are for civilisation, to show you where the streets to the next town are. Wilderness won't have a map store.
>>96465037By not having any specific rules for races at all, of course. It doesn't matter whether a power comes from your race, training, technology, or any other source. All that matters is what it does.
>>96464726Speaking as a fellow pointbuy autist from a different system, I like putting Magery 0 in elven templates. It represents a natural connection to magic and the capacity to be good at it, but unless magery is levelled further you can’t really cast spells.>>96465053This leads to the problem of races not really having distinct features compared to eachother, and everything just blends together. Racial template are a good way to give a player a discounted list of advantages and disadvantages that lets you include thematic/useful stuff that fits the race, but most people won’t take unprompted.
>>96463223Rangers are strong as hell for overland hexcrawl games where tracking, survival, hunting, etc matter a lot. They suck a billion dicks when played in battle focused games.
>>96463223I've been a Ranger-head since the 90s. The biggest problem with Rangers is that so much of their inherent usefulness is often taken away to make the RPG system easier to manage or that magic simply does it better. Most of these benefits often have nothing to do with combat either, which makes them even easier to ignore. Examples:>HerbalismGames often don't create medical conditions that can be cured solely by the Ranger. Think of Frodo being stabbed by a Morgul blade. Most RPGs will let you magic away the condition with a potion, spell, or trip to a temple. When they don't, the Ranger is often not the sole person responsible for fixing that situation, rather a quest given by some other NPC.>TrackingAgain, another system the Ranger offers that can often be bested by a Locate Create spell or other divination magic>Foraging & HuntingMost DMs do not require players to manage food stores, and even when they do...it's often just abstracted into a random buff for the party rather than life or death. Ranger's should be critical to the party surviving long term in the wilderness.
>>96464608>>96464730>>96464812>>96464893>>96464988>>96465110>DM gives everything for free and completely nullifies a whole classDamn those sound like some shit games
>>96465091What do you mean? Of course they have distinct features. They can only not have distinct features if you don't design them to. Nothing blends together.
>>96465091If there are options in your game that no one picks, that means the options are shit. Design better ones.
>>96465053>By not having any specific rules for races at all, of course.Then why have races at all?>It doesn't matter whether a power comes from your race, training, technology, or any other source.My man this is TDE, not GURPs. If there is one defining trademark of TDE, it is autistic lore.
>>96465135You mean in exchange for money, which isn't free? Retard?
>>96465110From my own experiences I can say this just comes down to high magic settings killing most non fighting non magical party roles. A character built to do first aid and medieval surgery is always gonna be worse than a healing spell. A hunter/tracked will always be made obsolete by a guy who can just make food using magic. A stealthy guy who opens locks will be outshined by a mage with invisibility and an open spell. For people who aren’t stuck playing DnD, this becomes a setting problem, rather than a rules one. My group rarely plays games with easily accessible, versatile magic because of how it invalidates these other roles. My preferred way to handle it in settings which should have magic is to make the magical solution usually more consistent (a hunter depends on there being game, a mage who can turn dirt into soup does not), but more difficult to pull off and expensive to learn. A ranged character in GURPS using a system like this could have 5-10 useful rangery skills for the price it takes to get 3-4 powerful spells as a mage, so even if theres overlap the ranger will have more things they can consistently achieve.
>>96465155In-game money is essentially free.
>>96465149Like I just said, you don't need to design explicit races. A good system allows the player to play whatever sort of creature she imagines, without unnecessary sub systems.
>>96465155>"yeah, I think it's good idea to play that class">hey DM, can I just buy everything that my class can do?>"sure buddy"Pay2lose lmfao
>>96465164Not at all.
>>96465172lol dumb fuck
>>96465165Well, the system The Dark Eye is specifically made for the lore of The Dark Eye. Why would it allow to make any races that do not exist within said lore?
I'm obviously not referring to setting specific systems. Why are you pretending to be stupid?
>>96465176>hey can I buy a map?>uh sure it's a nickle>cool I'll sell you some of that ham from my ration bag for that map>deal
96465195lol dumb fuck
>>96465192Then why are you responding to me describing how The Dark Eye 5 works?
>>96465202I'm not, retard. I'm responding to the general discussion about race design. Jesus.
>>96465195low iq fella cannot comprehend that by his logic everything can be bought with gold>hey, wanna go on an adventure?>"lmao, I'll give you 100 gp to hire someone else"
lol dumb fuck
>>96465217>maps are 100gpwhat kind of economy is this?
>>96465222Are you illiterate?
>>96463244They absolutely are fucking not!
>>96465215You are responding to the section of said discussion that is about TDE5, my man.
>>96465172>play class whose whole concept it that it does [things that gear can also do]>wtf why am i outclassed by gear
>>96465227Why are you comparing the price for a piece of paper to the price for an entire person?
>>96465231Wrong.
>>96463240I chuckled
Do PathFags really deny that it's D&D? It was a fucking reactionary creation utilizing the 3e OGL because buildtards were doing what EA is afraid people will do if a Sims 5 comes out: Throw a shitfit because now their 1000s of dollars worth of DLC is useless in a new system.Pathfinder exists at all as D&D4e backlash LOLAnyways, OP, you're mistaking nuD&D with all D&D again. Rangers were good back when the system was made for wilderness adventures and exploration was king.
>>96465110Something people forget about tracking is that the DM wants to make it as easy as possible for you to find what he wants you to find. If he created a dungeon or encounter for you, he wants you to find it, and rather than risk you not finding it he will probably just have an NPC tell you exactly where it is so you can get there without issue. You could argue that maybe time constraints come into play and traveling through the wilderness for longer because you don't have a ranger has consequences, but at that point you're just perpetually punishing the party for not having a ranger and I don't think anyone will enjoy it.
>>96463240>Rangers, who, as the name suggest, specialize in ranged combat get easily outmatched by wizards who specialize in deranged combat.>specialize in ranged combat1a: the keeper of a British royal park or forestb: forest ranger2: one that ranges3a: one of a body of organized armed men who range over a region especially to enforce the lawb: a soldier specially trained in close-range fighting and in raiding tacticsRanging, like Cruising in ships, was originally an activity more than a class. Note "close-range fighting and in raiding tactics".
