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

[ECMO3]

And what I and the other person were discussing is what happened in Lord of the Rings.

I was the one you initially replied to stating Aragorn did not use magic and that it was just an uncanny skill as a healer.

What Aragorn did in LOTR is magic as played in D&D. Not just magic, what I would call high magic. As such for the purposes of this discussion and this thread Aragorn the archetype Ranger displayed abilities which are magic as defined and exercised in D&D.

If you now agree with that, then you and I have no argument.

Yes, he wrote Aragorn saying he was doing those things. He also wrote that all he actually did was shout at her.

So your position is Aragorn was lying when he said he could heal her body since that is what he said he could do?

 

[Emberashh]

What Aragorn did in LOTR was magic as defined by D&D. Not just magic, what I would call high magic. As such for the purposes of this discussion and this thread Aragorn the archetype Ranger displayed abilities which are magic as defined and exercised in D&D.

I've already highlighted twice that how DND defines magic is stupid and constantly complained about. You're not making some revelatory point here.

So your position is Aragorn was lying when he said he could heal her body since that is what he said he could do?

Did I say that? Was I being vague in what I thought was a straightforward and unambiguous statement?

Rhetorical questions, obviously, don't start making assumptions if you don't get what someone is saying.

And given how you're talking to me, I'll end it here.

 

[Mecheon]

Fighter Subclass: Shadow Blade​

See, that brings up the issue. That's a shadow themed fighter with some similar things, not a conversion of the Way of Shadow that allows everything the monk has. Heck, the weapon strike is specifically Wepaon Attacks so you can't even do decent unarmed stuff, which immediately makes this a failure at trying to be any sort of monk

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The quote comes from Arthur C. Clarke. He was an assistant editor of Physics Abstracts, and president of the British Interplanetary Society. His book, The Exploration of Space, was used to help convince Kennedy that humans could go to the Moon. As one of the most influential science and science fiction writers of his time, in 2000, he was made a Knight Bachelor by the British Crown for his services to literature.

Maybe watch who you call an, "ignorant hole person."

More importantly, the quote necessarily entails a much more interesting statement:

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

I'm still scratching my head that I can post some amazing worldbuilding and get a couple of pages at best, but say something about core dnd classes and we're up to 17 pages.

Telling people (even if only by implication) that something they care about doesn't deserve to exist is much more likely to stir up controversy, and thus attention, than unobjectionable fare.

What is the purpose of the ranger and what examples do we have from fiction?

The archetype of the ranger is a survivalist and a hunter: someone who walks the fuzzy boundary between civic (or at least organized) culture and the chaotic wilderness, and someone who is adept in bringing death to a target, be it against sapient or savage prey.

Superhero examples are actually quite nice here. Green Arrow and Hawkeye are great urban Rangers. Robin Hood is extremely flexible, so you can flavor him as a Ranger, but he might also be other things (e.g. the later interpretations that make him specifically Robin of Locksley, a displaced member of the nobility, might warrant Paladin instead.) Boba Fett is a sci-fi Ranger (as many bounty hunters are). Atreus, aka Loki, from the new God of War games fits fairly well with this idea, especially once he starts developing his Jotnar magic. Ronon Dex, from Stargate: Atlantis; potentially Van Helsing, if expanded from exclusively vampire-hunting and into general nasty-monster hunting; "Crocodile" Dundee; Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games; H. Rider Haggard's Alan Quatermain (of King Solomon's Mines fame); potentially the image, and part of the actuality, of Teddy Roosevelt and other "big-game hunter" naturalists; etc.

As far as implementing this, all I can say is, the goddamn coolest thing I've ever seen a Ranger do happened specifically in 4e. Our party Ranger got into an almost mesmerizing dance of death with an elite foe, each of them dodging and weaving around one another as they strove to strike the final blow. Watching the two of them repeatedly have a "au contraire" moments back and forth as they did their turns was almost more fun than doing the entire rest of the fight that I and the other players were taking care of.

 

[Clint_L]

Aragorn's magic is rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the true king having a "royal touch" that could heal, so it is one more sign of his legitimacy as true heir to the throne of Gondor. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature. It's not really anything like D&D-style magic; it's part of Aragorn's birthright.

 

[Vaalingrade]

*if you're an ignorant hole person.

He said, hurling his thoughts across the planet on invisible beams from his box filled with lightning.

 

[ezo]

See, that brings up the issue. That's a shadow themed fighter with some similar things, not a conversion of the Way of Shadow that allows everything the monk has. Heck, the weapon strike is specifically Wepaon Attacks so you can't even do decent unarmed stuff, which immediately makes this a failure at trying to be any sort of monk

Yep, this was exactly the point I made above. You can make a shadow-themed fighter with similar (or even identical) "shadow" abilities, but it would be lacking most if not all monk abilities.

You'd have to heavily tweak the fighter class as well to add all the "monk features" you could, and then shoe-horn the rest into the shadow subclass.

Since monks have the most class features IIRC, this makes it even more of an near-impossible task.

The best I've seen is 1E nostalgia but, the moment you turned your back on 1E it added druids, yet alone acrobats, barbarians, assassins, paladins, cavaliers, and that's before I even look at Dragon magazine

Inventing new classes and mucking around with them is fun and the game's supported it since day 1

Don't forget Illusionists!

And now it is inventing new subclasses, but new classes still pop up now and again.

Frankly, I agree with @Vaalingrade that there is no reason to remove the Ranger or any other class. If it doesn't get used, as in @CleverNickName's case, but the desire is there, it probably just needs reworking to fit.

 

[Minigiant]

Really the only class that doesn't need to exist in the core is the Monk.

Once you cut out the Orientalism, the Monk is 2 fighting styles: Martial Arts and Ki Discipline.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Really the only class that doesn't need to exist in the core is the Monk.

Once you cut out the Orientalism, the Monk is 2 fighting styles: Martial Arts and Ki Discipline.

Having seen a Monk in action that has no Orientalism in its flavor (it's an old lady beating the naughty word out of people with her "I've survived a 40-year adventuring career" energy), I strongly disagree.

 

[Minigiant]

Having seen a Monk in action that has no Orientalism in its flavor (it's an old lady beating the naughty word out of people with her "I've survived a 40-year adventuring career" energy), I strongly disagree.

Oh I wouldn't do it.

Just saying that once you remove the Orientalism, the monk is a collection of class features that could be justified to be available to all martials as an option.