Ranger

“Striding through the vast wildlands outside of civilization, rangers are masterful survivalists, hunters and scouts.”

This week’s piece contains the rules for rangers in DCC. Instead of relying heavily on modern Dungeons & Dragons definitions of the class I tried to go back to the roots, referencing appendix N sources and simplifying the class considerably. Both paladins and rangers are a little tricky for DCC in my opinion, as they traditionally combine martial capability with divine magic, but actually making a distinct class that is more than just a cleric with a deed die requires a little juggling.

Anyhow, enjoy the article, and let me know what you think!

Cheers

AMP

DCC Sheet – Ranger

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DCC Class – Ranger

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Illustration by the always auspicious Joni Kesti.

4 thoughts on “Ranger”

  1. Tobias Wayland

    I think a game like DCC that encourages each monster to be unique makes the Archfoe ability pretty worthless, and giving the Ranger a d8 hit die doesn’t seem to match their abilities as peerless wilderness warriors. There’s a version of this class in Crawl! #6 that makes good use of fighting styles to give rangers a Mighty Deed die, but if you want to stick with Archfoe then I’d suggest making the categories of enemy much broader; all humanoids, all beasts, all aberrations, etc. Otherwise consider switching to fighting styles.

    I submit that the 1e AD&D ranger class is still the best one, so making them useful in every environment is key. I would suggest getting rid of anything situational, and instead giving them bonuses to categories of action; instead of getting +1d to all checks in a forest, maybe they get +1d to all checks that involve tracking or hunting or knowing which way is north. That way they’re useful whether they find themselves in a desert, forest, dungeon, or the bottom of the ocean.

    1. Hey Tobias,

      Yeah, I’m aware that the archfoe mechanic and DCC’s call for unique monsters may be contradictory at times. The enemy categories are intended to be quite broad, and ultimately I came to the conclusion that leaving the interpretation of that to the Judge would be functional enough: the categories you list are perfectly fine by the spirit of what I wrote, as long as they work for the Judge running the game.

      In my opinion rangers are peerless in the wilderness because of their guile and cunning, rather than unstoppable force or physical power, hence the hit die.

      I vaguely recall reading through the ranger in Crawl! and not liking it for some reason or other. I also have a rule of writing up all the non-basic classes used at my table myself. I’m a little leery about giving them a straight up deed die, as that’d just make them a warrior with extra bonuses, and what’s the fun in that?

      I’ll admit that I’m unfamiliar with the 1e AD&D ranger. The terrain bonuses are quite a small addition to this version of the ranger (I consider them a little tweak comparable to the warrior’s Lucky weapon), and the Wildcraft ability is intended to make the ranger quite adept at wilderness skills regardless of terrain.

      Thanks for the feedback, and thank you for reading!

  2. Tobias Wayland

    Fair enough, and thanks for replying! I did really enjoy the Wildcraft ability, and apologize if I appeared overly negative. One of the nice things about DCC is its modularity, and I’m certain I can easily combine the things I like about the ranger classes I’ve seen so far into one class, or include them both as options for different specialties of wilderness warrior. Thanks for your hard work!

    1. No worries, thank you for your feedback! It’s good to hear from people who actually read the articles, and it’s good to go through the logic behind design choices on occasion.

      Modularity and options are some of the best parts of DCC. Also, I’m of the mindset that there’s no balance in DCC, it’s more about collaborating to have fun than calculating the best build. Even the rulebook’s core classes are flagrantly unbalanced when compared to each other. :D

      Again, thanks for enjoying the blog!

      /AMP

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