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Rangerly Speculation |  |
I’ve been speculating about the role of the 4th Edition ranger lately. The following items have been posted on En World, and this is where my speculation springs from:
1. There will be fewer than 11 classes in the Player’s Handbook. “Mearls said 8 was about the ‘middle range’ of the number of classes that might be in the PH when I asked him about it yesterday, specifically mentioning that the Internet was taking 8 classes as confirmed.”
2. There are four party roles in 4th Edition: defender, striker, leader, and controller. The defenders are the fighter and the paladin; the leaders are the cleric and the warlord; the strikers are the rogue, ranger, and warlock; the controller is the wizard. That’s 8 classes.
3. Apparently “elves make for good rangers”. This implies that rangers are in the PHB, since elves are.
4. There are three power sources in the Player’s Handbook: arcane, divine, and martial.
5. “[A] controller can affect not only multiple opponents on the battlefield, but the battlefield itself. Fogs and walls? Controller. Reshaping the terrain? Controller. “Very little is known about the ranger, other than the fact that it is supposedly a striker and has some “scoutish” abilities. Here’s the thing, though. There are four roles, eight classes.
It would make a lot of sense, in order to maximize player choice, for each role to belong to two different classes. Why, then, are there three strikers and one controller? We know more about the rogue and the warlock than we do about the ranger. The rogue has sneak attacks and follow-up attacks, both of which allow the rogue to deal lots of damage to a single opponent, as strikers do. The warlock has curses, which make enemies more vulnerable to his eldritch blast and soul ruin abilities, allowing him to deal lots of damage. We do not know anything about the ranger’s striker abilities. It might have something to do with favored enemy, or some sort of skirmishing damage, if the ranger is indeed a striker.What if the ranger is a controller, though? There is only one confirmed controller (the wizard), and three strikers. Also, every role is filled by members of classes powered by
different sources. The defender has the fighter (martial) and the paladin (divine); the leader has the warlord (martial) and the cleric (divine); the striker has the rogue (martial) and the warlock (arcane); the controller might have the wizard (arcane) and the ranger (presumably martial). It seems redundant to have two martial strikers in the first book, let alone three strikers and one controller.
If you think about it, it isn’t hard to imagine the ranger as a controller. An ability like manyshot could easily be an area of effect attack, and it’s not hard to see other multi-target ranged attacks, or to see the ranger as a highly-mobile skirmisher who is able to strike multiple targets in quick succession. It’s also easy to see the ranger as able to utilize his surroundings more effectively than other classes, both on his own behalf and on behalf of his allies. Allowing allies to ignore the effects of difficult terrain while not doing so for enemies (or even worsening their effects), or allowing allies to gain greater advantage from cover or concealment, seems very controller-ish.
Further, it’s possible that animal companions might be abstracted into abilities that the ranger can use to move opponents around or immobilize them. A ranger’s wolf companion might have hit points and AC, with all other abilities represented by actions that the ranger takes to command it. Tripping opponents, harrying them in specific directions, using a bear to hug an opponent into immobility, using a hawk to momentarily blind an opponent or disarm him. This would not only give the ranger more battlefield-control abilities, but would significantly simplify animal companions (and give them a more concrete effect on the combat).
I may be wrong about all of this, but this is the way I’d like to see it play out. I’d love to see the ranger reimagined as a controller; I think it would help bring further definition to the class, making it a tactical skirmishing combat class with bow-and-arrow skill that others can’t even get near.
December 31st, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I am very interested in the contents of the PHB for 4E, one of my buddies that I game with is a half orc fighter and has heard that half orcs are going away with 4e, at least at launch.
January 1st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
As I understand it, the core races in the 4E PHB are going to be human, elf, half-elf, eladrin, halfling, tiefling, and dragonborn. So no half-orc. However, I remember reading that there will be rules for playing certain races in the Monster Manual as player characters. While half-orc may not be in there, orc certainly will, and I imagine that rules for playing orcs will be present, for those with half-orc characters that they’d like to translate to 4E; it would be pretty easy to roll up an orc and simply call it a half-orc. I believe that the reason they nixed the half-orc was due to the implication’s of a half-orc’s conception; specifically, that most half-orcs are the result of rape (with the notable exception of half-orcs in Eberron). Now, as to playing mechanically distinct half-orcs, I’d imagine that, if they do not appear in a Monster Manual or Player’s Handbook sometime in the future, they will at the very least appear in 4E Eberron, if only because one of the dragonmarked houses is made up of humans and half-orcs, and full-blooded orcs cannot carry the Mark of Finding while their half-breed cousins can.
Of course, fighters will be in the Player’s Handbook, so no worries there.
January 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
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