Alright, let's do another one. This is Class Acts my weird little collection of thoughts on the base D&D classes and my experience with them. I'm then using that to re-examine in Heroes by Hearthlight, my Forged in the Dark game based on that style of fantasy roleplay.
So I recently finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 as a ranger. I wound up making the same style character I had when I first started early access which was to make someone with the most skills possible- that way I could do damage and manage rogue shit and not have to deal with the annoying ass vampire. I remember when 5e first dropped people hated the ranger to the point it needed to get reworked and its always been a bit of an odd class.
And I think it's oddity stems from being originally based off one figure.
A cliche I see at almost every D&D table in the early days is that someone is going to try and roll up Batman. This is folly because you are trying to make a character who is good at everything: a strange blend of rogue, monk, and paladin. It's never gonna do what they want as they stretch themselves too thin and annoy their table with their antics.... And I feel like Ranger was a class made attempting to do the same thing to let people play Strider.
Rangers can: fight as well as a fighter, have sworn enemies like a paladin, get along in the wild like a druid as well as have their animal companion, cast spells, and be almost as skillful as a rogue. It is a class that shouldn't work but much like Batman... people are gonna want to play Aragorn. And the way the game has modernized to make this all balanced is by making these options. You don't get all of these at once or even get to be great at them all- but instead they are options you can pursue.
Having these broad options of specialty let Rangers fill a lot of niches in the party. You can easily sub one in as your fighter or rogue. If you have a combat Ranger who is up against their favored enemy, the rest of the party can pretty much sit back and break out the popcorn. But it also means that I don't have too many memories specifically as a "ranger", its instead of builds within it. How I found ways to excel hard at one or two things, but unfortunately as we all must learn... you can't be Batman.
Okay, before I abandon this particular tangent I do want to shout out the Bound playbook in Spire as giving me the best Batman experience I've ever had in an RPG.
Switching over to HBH mode. Rangers are akin to Bards in that they are a composition of a bunch of classes and can do a bunch of things great and most things good. They also have an archetype that people are going to be trying to fill. They are scouts, woodsman, noble outlaws, and explorers.
I think this is the first time I'm gonna tough on starting action points. Every playbook gets +2 to one action and +1 to another. There are 12 actions and 12 playbooks so it worked out really nice where there's a +2/+1 for each action and everything was able to be spread out. However, like I said Ranger is supposed to be able to do a lot. Perception, Volley, Survival, and Stealth were all options. Ranger wound up taking +2 stealth because the Rogue had to be the best at Thievery, and Rangers should be ghosts. They also got a +1 to Volley which starts them off already as a good sniper without having spent any points yet.
I had a hard time with the Ranger's power. It sat unwritten as I tried to figure out what would go here, if I wanted to figure out Favored Enemy/Quarry in there but so many powers were combat focused and then a mechanic I really love clicked. SCOUT lets you spend a charge to find something useful or add something to the scene- multiple uses can be spent at once to increase tier. This mechanic was born from the weirdest place. In the board game, Kingdom Death Monster, you can get an upgrade on a character that lets them add some extra terrain to the map as you set up for combat. I always thought that was such a fun way to do perception/scouting by giving the player narrative control to add cover or something useful. This ability is one of the broadest in the game but also can be one of the most narratively exciting. Spend a tick to have a chandelier to swing from. Don't have something that can harm the monster? Find the bones of a dead adventurer and their magic blade. It is about getting you what you need and solving a problem. More than that it is inviting a player behind the screen edit the scene in a way that always really fun.
One of my evil playbooks for an upcoming expansion has a similarly meta power that lets them use a tool usually reserved for the GM
The "alt-fire" ability for scout is SEIZE ADVANTAGE and its the first move I'm unsure of. It allows you to spend Scout charges and move a point of Doom to Advantage. Narratively, I love this- its the Ranger changing the playing field to suit their needs. Since it matters here I'm gonna quickly explain Doom/Advantage.
Doom and Advantage are two pools that share tokens between them. Whenever a player rolls they can spend a point of advantage to add 1d to the roll. That point of advantage moves to doom. The GM can spend doom tokens to cause consequences to the players without them failing rolls. Its current to be spent making moves. A landslide hits, a bolt flies in a window to kill an npc, etc. And the players are aware of the Doom pool and know you can make these moves so it's not coming out of nowhere. But also after you spend Doom it all goes back to the players giving them advantage token to spend again in whatever crisis you've thrown at them.
Seize Advantage is the only move in the game that affects the GM's doom pool. At the right time it's incredibly useful because you could steal a point before its spent in order to foil a move the GM is about to make while also giving yourself a resource. But it doesn't do anything in the moment. I think how I want to fix this is as follows:
Seize Advantage: You can spend Scout to spend a point of Doom as though it were Advantage, moving the token over to Advantage after its spent. How did you change the circumstances
This does the same thing but allows the player to immediately benefit from it. I like it.
Step into the Storm flows into this beautifully. Whenever you spend advantage on a desperate roll it becomes risky instead. This move makes advantage so much more powerful as its now lowering position while giving an extra die to roll. If you push yourself on this roll too, then you can upgrade your effect. This creates an image of a ranger as someone fully in control of their surroundings and able to control them mechanically. Perfect.
Hawkeye is our push ability and lets you either perform an impossible feat of trick shooting or see clearly in the deepest darkness. I think both of these work great in that it lets you cut through obstacles and be impressive on top of whatever you are doing. They also both fit the thematic core we want from the Ranger.
Never Alone is a FitD holdover and I think I need to revisit it. The move gives you an animal companion as an expert hireling. You also gain one of 3 special abilities (spirit-form, mind-link, arrow-swift) that started out from Blades in the Dark. And from its name to those abilities I think these needs a reskin. This is a ranger move that should be here but I think it needs tweaking to make it sing.
Ghost of the Forest and Like the Back of my Hand are both moves that grant a circumstantial +1d. Between the advantage use and this, the Ranger can wind up with a good handful of dice- something to keep in mind later on. I could see myself swapping one of these with another class to add some variation. Ghost gives you that +1d when you spring an attack or ambush, it also has the "shoot-first" ability of "when there's a question of who acts first, its you". Always a fan of shoot-first because players have such a blast utilizing it. This also mechanically incentivizes the Ranger to set up traps and ambushes- something they wouldn't normally do.
Back of my Hand gives you a +1d to engagement rolls to locations you've been to previously. I like this because engagement is a lever few playbooks tug on. There could be a question of usefulness and how often are you adventuring in the same locations- but it also gives the Ranger a downtime project to potentially scout and beyond any intel or traps they set up, they also gain this +1d. I could potentially see switching this with Druid who I know also has a few moves with the same bonus and a link to the land is also quite druidic.
Woodland Stride makes you unable to be tracked and aware if someone is following you. If you lead a group action the party also gains this. A narrative allowance that does exactly what it needs to. The funny thing is that if a player takes this move they are pretty much signaling they want you to send tails and ambushes at them so they can look cool. Helping out the party is also part of the Ranger's guide shtick while potentially costing them stress.
Finally, we've got Quarry our ranger's focus/favored enemy move. It grants +1d to rolls against weakened or vulnerable targets. When a ranger rolls to gather information on a weakness- the worst they can get is a 4/5. Once again we have a +1d, which I'm not loving at this point. Weakened or vulnerable is also vague in a way I both like and dislike. Oddly enough, its the second part of this I adore. Finding out ways to bypass protection/immunity is a good thing and also this gives the Ranger something to spend their limited downtime doing. I think I might flip this- keeping the research part and then adding on: when you first attack a foe's weakness or vulnerability, gain increased effect. +effect is a huge boon in FitD games so I try to be sparing with it but I like it here as a one shot/opening gambit. It also means you've discovered a way to hurt them so even if you do miss with this shot, you still have the knowledge or tools to win this fight.
Alright. I'm pretty happy with today's work. 2 moves fixed and another marked to be retrofitted. Feel free to jump in the comments with any comments, advice, or which class you'd like to see next.
My weird comic recommendations for Rangers are:
Something is Killing the Children is about a modern-day monster hunter killing monsters that only children can see. It's moody and violent and similar to John Wick it start to pull back the curtain revealing an organization and its lore that is so fucking delicious. It's also led to the spin-off House of Slaughter where each volume follows a different hunter doing their thing.
Delicious in Dungeon is a manga I'd have had to recommend somewhere. It's a huge inspiration on not just me but fanatasy creators in general. I'm putting it with the Ranger because the conceit of the story is broke adventurers are needing to start hunting and cooking the monsters they fight in order to survive. So it becomes very interested in the monsters themselves but also the dungeon as an ecosystem. As of the time of writing there is only one chapter left of this story and I am quite happy setting it next to Full Metal Alchemist as one of the all time classics of the medium.
