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Sep 30, 2012 -- 7:24AM, Valien wrote:

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Many of us who play RPG envision the game as trying to give the feel of an adventure movie, the classical example being LotR. I mean, if I were an archer, and I saw my Wizard buddy going all "Spiked Tentacles of Forced Penetration" on my enemies, and my DM woudn't even allow me to shoot two arrows at once or pin a cloak against a tree... I would leave the game faster thank you can say "fantastical realism".

*sigh*

Firstly, Just because there isn't an explicit ability that says you can do that doesn't mean you can't do that. Any GM can let you try it if he so chooses, but if such things are a part and parcel of the ranger class, it's less easy to rule that particular move out of the game. There's a big difference between "You want to try and pin his cloak to the tree? Okay, I'm going to let you try. Make an attack at -2." and "All rangers have the ability to pin someone's cloak to a tree." That kind of thing is something a character might try once in a hundred fights, not something they can easily do in every fight, to the point where it almost becomes expected of them.

Secondly, at no point in Lord of the Rings does anyone's cloak get pinned to a tree by an arrow. One character shoots more than one arrow at once at two points in the whole film, and in both cases it was at the same target and at a very close range. This character is a high level specialist archer. Ergo, this feat is something not every archer in the world can just do whenever he feels like it. That's why I don't want them as special moves (I could forgive the Manyshot feat because that carried hefty penalties).

Thirdly, again, pinning something to something depends on too many outside conditions to be true. If you're in a dungeon with a stone floor, can you still do it? What about if the tree is made of a particularly hard wood? What if it's not a tree, but a bush? Or one with a very thin bark? Maybe you want to try it on a wall instead? Is that wall made of brick? The point is, you can't really do it in the majority of cases, so it seems silly giving a ranger an ability that they can't use 9 times out of 10. And if they can pin anything to anything...well now it's just getting too silly.

Finally, why do we always have to end up in the usual "all or nothing" argument? According to you, it must either be an 100% realistic medieval simulator where the PCs are all big burly men with beards and nothing fantastical happens whatsoever, or an anime style world where the characters are superheroes (with enormous spaulders) and anything and everything is possible. There is no in-between.

Sep 30, 2012 -- 5:56AM, Orzel wrote:

3 things

1. If every ranger build is the same then you are being taxed, A fet tax is when a customization option is sacrificed to make a concept.


1. Class: Fighter
2. Background: Hunter
3. 1st Specialty: Dual weilder or Archer
4. 2nd Specialty: Tracker


2. If someone wants to be a fighter, they are only locked into the choice of Fighter. If someone wanted to be a ranger, they are locked into multiple choices. Where a fighter can be a military archer (soldier/archer), a magic noble (magicuser/noble), or religous thief (acolyte/thief), a ranger which requires a specific BG and Spec cannot be any of the three. 
3. Backgrounds and Specialties are optional modules. If the group is playing without either, you can't play any class thet requires either.

Got your point. You could never be a Ranger magicuser noble or the like. Very well then. I'm convinced.

But this comes down to: is the ranger a "defender" or a "rogue"? Should he get heavy armour, or sneak attack? Should he get the rogue's skills, or the fighter's expertise? I'd be loathe to make him a "fighter+1", but unless there's a mechanic for specialities removing core aspects of a class, the only other way is to make him a rogue, at which point he loses access to many weapons and things that would make the ranger useful as a skirmisher.

Also, I really don't want to use those names! 

What I meant is that you can be each. Choose your own persona of a ranger. and about the names: I don't like them either. They were just names that poped to my head in a few seconds thoughts to find a way to express the differences between one ranger specialty and the other.  forget it.

I still think it's good option, although I understand now why there should be a Ranger class all by it's own.

Sep 30, 2012 -- 3:13PM, Salla wrote:

Because some of us don't want to go back to 'spellcasters get to do everything because they can create a spell to do it, while everybody else gets to play 'DM may I'.'

And some of us don't want to go back to "every class is expected to do fantastical things that would be more in place in an anime".

Leave the fantastical things to the fantastical classes, and let fighters, rogues and rangers be ordinary people who are very good at doing ordinary things.

Oct 1, 2012 -- 10:01AM, Salla wrote:

Oct 1, 2012 -- 9:31AM, Ranger-of-Cormyr wrote:

Sep 30, 2012 -- 3:13PM, Salla wrote:

Because some of us don't want to go back to 'spellcasters get to do everything because they can create a spell to do it, while everybody else gets to play 'DM may I'.'

And some of us don't want to go back to "every class is expected to do fantastical things that would be more in place in an anime".

Leave the fantastical things to the fantastical classes, and let fighters, rogues and rangers be ordinary people who are very good at doing ordinary things.

That's already covered.  You don't have to select powers that don't fit your character concept.  You don't like 'pin foot to ground' power, don't select it.  Boy, that was hard, and something nobody's ever thought of before.

Not always that simple. We don't even know that it's going to feature a choice of "powers" like 4th edition. It might be something the ranger automatically gets, in which case, to remove it would be to either remove a part of the class, or to mess with the game mechanics. Even if I did have a choice, if all of the "powers" are similarly ridiculous, then I have no choice but to choose one of them. Then there's the GM's point of view...do I tell players that they can't choose certain skills because I don't like them, therefore I want to limit their available prowess? Have you ever told a group that a wizard can't choose certain spells?

Actually, as a side note, I've just this minute had an idea: I wonder what 4th edition with only a few "at-will powers" (but with every other class features) would be like...I must look into this.

Some of us actually like the idea that martial characters aren't second-stringers, thank you very much.

Well, some of us like the idea that martial characters aren't born superheroes, thank you very much.

But you know what, we are never ever going to agree on this because we both want different things. I want believability and gritty semi-realism, while you want superheroism and high-fantasy. We come from different eras of D&D, and both seem to hate each other's respective favourites. What's more, we've been through this countless times now. So with all due respect, shall we just agree to disagree?