does anybody else play rangers
jesterdesu
Member Posts: 373
I know they're outperformed by most other classes (dual and multi especially) but I still play a ranger nearly all the time... Does anybody else play ranger (kits inc) regularly for the love of the class?
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My cousin, on the other hand, LOVES Rangers. I can't say which he likes more, Stalker or Archer, but he loves both so much.
I haven't made a ranger since, though.
I play Archers, but mostly Generic Archers, the special kit from the Tactics mod that's actually a fighter kit with Archer abilities, just because it can dual-class to mage or thief.
Personally, I think that they get a bad rap because of all the min-max powergamers out there. When playing with crazy difficulty increasing mods, some people want full parties of fighter/kensai/mage/thief/cleric dual combos. Plus, people who are ignorant of how to properly take advantage of Valygar often are the same people who bad-mouth stalkers.
Archers are one of the most powerful classes in the game. Some people say that they aren't "useful" late game because so many enemies are immune to less than +3 ammunition, but all you need is to stock up on ammo or use a couple of specific bows/crossbows (no spoilers) and then they rain deathly ranged pain on all your enemies, with the exception of a handful of boss fights. Besides, who wants to play the whole game with only the last little bit game-time in mind?? My restartitus is so bad I rarely even make it to ToB.
Lots of people say that fighter/thieves are better than stalkers, but I strongly disagree. They are just different. Stalkers are more like fighters that can backstab. Fighter/thieves are more like thieves that can fight. Using a stalker as a backstabber is a perfect way to free up the slot for your thief to use those early thieving points somewhere else...like the absolutely necessary open locks and find traps. Let's face it, you can generally survive without hide in shadows and move silently, but how annoying is it to have to come back because your thief couldn't open a lock, or your party got blasted by a trap because your thief wasn't skilled enough to detect it? Then, once find traps and open lock are maxed out, forget about backstabbing (such as a in the case of using a swashbuckler) and dual the thief to a Mage and have extra arcane firepower, without the need for waiting a couple of levels just to get the next backstab multiplier. You can also just dual Imoen as early as she maxes out find traps, open locks, and detect illusions.
Multi-class Ranger/Clerics may be the best divine only casters in the game because they can cast Druid and cleric spells (don't forget to edit your .ini or .lua file, though!) and they tank like a freaking beast.
I have read lots of complaints about vanilla rangers being worse than the kits, but than those same people bring Minsc along and use him as their tank. Sure, vanilla Rangers may have some disadvantages when directly compared to fighters which aren't compensated for, such as backstabbing or called shots. But they are still just as viable as a tank as a fighter or paladin. You may find it challenging and get special equipment or use unusual strategies to flat out replace your tank with a fighter/thief, but you could easily replace your tank with a vanilla ranger or even a stalker. Plus, vanilla Rangers are the most versatile ranger kit to dual class to cleric, and you get all the Druid and cleric spells.
Beastmaster, I agree, is not so good. But there are a lot of mods out there that balance beastmasters to be more on par with their kitted counterparts.
Aside from all that, Rangers are just freaking awesome. They have the best role-playing value of any class, imho, and are such a crazy cool concept. No game since baldurs gate has truly captured the original AD&D flavor of the ranger. Every game seems to want to make them the ranged attackers or bowmen of the game, and that's just not accurate.
RANGERS ROCK!!!!
I also have another ranger, a female half-elf (human/ wild elf) named Dia. She doesn't like people and is a loner. The only people she genuinly gets along with are Kivan and Valygar.
But yeah, rangers where my first favourite class and even though today my favourite is sorcerer, rangers still hold a very dear place in my heart. I started liking the class so much both because as a teenager I was obsessed with Aragorn and because my parent was an actual ranger.
On top of that I have added backstab x2 from level five, so it gets more use out of its stealth.
All in all this makes for a thematically unique ranger, that really excells in tracking down strong opponents in the wilderness.
Now that's a cool ranger I think!
The other rangers have a nice RP element but I would never include them among the best of the best.
Isn't that a pretty good balance overall? One very powerful kit and the rest pretty interesting even if the beastmaster is kind of weak.
The Stalker debate is getting a tad old imho. I personally don't really like them and would much rather have a F/T or my personal favorite the FMT.
That being said, the Archer kit has that uniqueness. They have a clear focus and clear role, with extra abilities and extra bonuses to really get the point across. That essentially makes them THE Ranger for me, with all the other kits being pale shadows. And as was already mentioned, I too am an avid fan of what Archers bring to a party powergaming-wise, and I nearly always include one (or even two).
As an aside: long ago I toyed around with an idea of how to make classes more interesting overall with the given tools. One idea I came up with was to make dual-wielding a thing limited to very specific setups: Swashbuckler for Rogues, for example, or Berserker for Fighter. Ranger however would always have access to the feature, giving them a more unique characteristic; in my idea they were also the only ones able to go to *** in two-weapon fighting while everyone else was stuck at **. While those thoughts never resulted in anything tangible, it serves to illustrate the lack of distinguishing characteristics between Rangers and Fighters.
I love the concept of stalkers as sneaky, backstabbing scouts. Problem is everything they can do, a fighter/thief does better - same proficiencies, more stealth, basically the same thac0. Only differences are that f/t gets more backstab, has an option of heavy armour for tough fights, and after maxing stealth it can diversify into other skills. In exchange for all that, stalkers get charm animal, some minor druid spells and a few mage ones. Haste is good, but can probably be cast by someone else. Armour of faith is pretty much all you have left.
Stalker/clerics are pretty cool though, besides giving all divine spells they also fill a unique role - there are no fighter/thief/clerics.
Pure rangers are alright, but I don't really see the point. They can stealth, but without backstab it's a bit lacking, and if you're going to wear light armour you might as well be a stalker. They have some spells, but nothing great. Other than that, they're fighters that can't get grand mastery, and have more limited races/classes. Ranger/cleric is good of course, but using the high level druid spells feels cheap, and without them you might as well be a fighter/cleric and get shorty saves.
As for beastmaster... Well you're a stalker with less stealth, less weapon choices, no backstab, and instead of some sort of useful mage spells when you need them, you instead get stuck with 3 specific druid spells that even druids don't use.
I think damage output is a parameter that doesn't win you fights, but speeds up the battles.
My last BGee playthrough was with a cleric/ranger
However, I dont understand why Rangers have to be good. The Paladin I understand, hes a knight with a strict code imposed by the church of his (good) god. If he doesnt follow it both church and god rejects him and he understandably loses his supernatural powers. But the Ranger? hes a woodsman, a hunter, a tracker. What the hell does any of that have to do with being good? why can a druid be neutral but a ranger cant?
I assume the ranger class was at least in part inspired by Aragorn.
As for damage, I have always been a firm believer in "strike first, don't ask questions later". LoB has put a damper on that to some degree, but it also reinforces the value of damage due to the high HP pools.
In the end, if you want to compare performance there has to be SOME sort of efficiency metric. Just going by "did I lose the fight" is insufficient because you can slog it out over an excruciating amount of time with many setups; clearly a worse performance despite not actually losing the fight. Archers deliver a lot in that respect, plain and simple and no strings attached.
Rangers weren't originally thought up as woodsmand/hunters/trackers, although that is what recent gaming has made them become because they generally have those skills.
In the same way that a Paladin is a righteous force against crime and chaos, Rangers were conceived to be a righteous force against tyranny, or to protect and guide settlers and the innocent from the dangers of living on the fringes of civilization. The only things that they had in common with Druids in AD&D was that Rangers tended to live on the edges of civilization and Druids shunned civilization utterly...which isn't really anything in common, except the "not in civilization" part. In fact, if you role-played Druids and Rangers properly, they are the most likely to come into conflict with each other out of any of the classes, even more so than the classic "Thieves vs Paladins" routine that every P&P tabletop game has acted out since the history of P&P.
The Druid's dogma was to protect the wilderness; the Ranger's dogma was to protect civilization in the wilderness. Obviously, these two interests could very easily come in conflict with each other. As the freeman shapes the wilderness into civilization, the Druid gets pissed, and the Ranger then defends. You get the picture.
D&D 3rd edition tried to conceptually turn Rangers into either more of a environmentalist warrior who got along with or even worked with Druids OR more of the hunter/tracker/woodsman that you described. In doing so, they got rid of their alignment restriction (which is pointless, because most DMs want their players to be good anyway in order to more easily provide them with motivation to "save the world") and thus the whole background and reason for the Ranger's original concept was forgotten.
They were a class inspired into one mass concept by a conglomerate of people from history and legend like Robin Hood, Aragorn, Jack the giant killer, and the huntress of Diana, etc., the list goes on. If there was a tyrant that was razing people's villages and enslaving them for war, a Ranger would be the one to "rise up from the ashes" of a destroyed village to lead a rebellion against the king for freedom from oppression. If there was a part of the forest that was haunted by criminals and evil-doers, a Ranger would be the one to sacrifice his life to harry them and drive them out where no one else would.
Consider also that because of the stat requirements in AD&D, Rangers (and Paladins and Bards) were among the most rare and unique of people. They were generally singled out for greater deeds than the common man because they were more capable and, because of their alignments, driven to achieve and fight evil where the common man's courage and heart failed. Anyone can swing a club (fighter str requirement 9), and just about anyone can cast magic missile (mage int requirement 9), and almost anyone can pickpocket (thief dex requirement 9). But it takes special, unique people to be the ones to sacrifice home and comfort for the benefit of strangers: that's what Rangers are.
I scoff at simple woodsmen and trackers. A fighter, thief, cleric, wizard, or even a commoner can live in the woods and follow bear tracks. It takes a Ranger to shine light in the darkened wilderness hideouts of evil criminals in order to bring them to justice. It takes a Ranger to seek and organize a sustainable refuge in the high mountains for an entire village of common men fleeing their homes from the tyrannical oppression of a harsh governmental regime. It takes a Ranger to fight to his dying breath the evil surrounding him for the sake and protection of people that he may never meet.
Rangers are heroes.
Stealth without backstab is still helpful for scouting and getting into position/ picking off enemies from range.
By now I know where most/ all the traps in the game are (if only they could randomize that). Even before I'd generally move my ranger and thief together. This also highlights my main issue with bg rangers tho... Lack of detect and set traps. (could that ever be easily modded?)
And I know their spell casting comes late and is never much to write home about (why it's weaker than a paladins tho I do not understand). However I still like having some slow poison, cure disease, armour of faith, resist fire/ cold to hand, without having to resort to potions.
In summary, if they'd implemented find & set traps and a tracking mechanic of sorts, the vanilla ranger would be perfect for me... As is he is not too far off.
Edit: And level 4 spells.
Give me a hunter, poacher, forester, or an good ol' lumberjack any day of the week.
My personal fave is a Crossbow Archer, Half-Elven. Insane damage in BG2 with Firetooth.
I get the lore behind it. Woodsmen and all that. Okay.
But I just find them to boil down to Fighters with some minor perks (and some major disadvantages) in terms of how they play. That's sad.
I'm actually glad I made the topic as its at least shown that a few others out there appreciate the ranger for his flavour.
I like what they did in nwn2 where they get detect trap as a class skill and where tracking in brought in... Makes them excellent scouts.