The Ranger is a pretty classic fantasy fantasy, who wouldn’t want to be Aragorn? But despite there being a clear, famous character to pin the archetype on, this D&D class has always felt a little amorphous to me, a little out of place in the most popular tabletop RPG.
The updated ruleset in 2024 made the D&D Ranger a lot stronger mechanically, in particular giving it new class features that make it less anemic in combat. While this makes for Rangers that are much more fun to play, I wouldn’t say it’s fixed the core problem that drags the concept down.
There are two main issues with Rangers in Dungeons and Dragons, and one is caused by the other. Firstly, Wizards of the Coast never seems to quite clear on exactly what the Ranger should be good at. In most editions, they’re a bit sneaky, a bit fighty, a bit healy, and a bit magicy.
This makes them a jack of all trades, master of none. Which, in a game where you probably only need one person to pick the lock, translate the arcane scroll, or revive the wounded villager, can leave Ranger players feeling like a spare part.
The Ranger is an assortment of different class features all mixed up into one, quite wonky whole. It’s got a bit of Druid, a bit of Fighter, a bit of Rogue. This is why the 5e Ranger subclasses are so all over the place. There’s no central premise to build off from when devising a subclass for the Ranger, no simple concept that can be expanded on with a bunch of differently flavored offshoots. Instead, it’s a bunch of disparate ideas masquerading as one class.
And there’s a good reason for that. When you think about what the Ranger should be best at, it’s not combat, stealth, or magic; it’s exploration and survival. A player picks a Ranger because they want to be able to track the villain from miles away, figure out exactly what happened at a spot hours later from the way the grass is disturbed, and find the secret paths that can deliver their party safely through the deep, dark woods.
The trouble is, D&D is not a game that deals well with exploration or survival. There’s a section on travel in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s guide, but it’s pretty brief, mostly covering how to structure encounters on the road. The only part that digs into mechanics is about calculating distances and speed. And survival is even worse. The only rules for foraging are that you make a Wisdom (Survival) check once per journey stage (which is an arbitrary length of time), and the DM’s guide outright suggests ignoring ration tracking.
In a more realistic campaign, it says, characters “should approach a long wilderness journey as a challenge in logistics”, but it offers no guidance on how to do that. It’s a long way from the travel rules provided in other RPGs, like The One Ring 2e, where successful navigation requires a designated scout, lookout, and guide.
Ultimately, the Ranger doesn’t really work in D&D because the game is not built for Ranger-y things. The systems are underbaked and therefore seldom used, leaving Rangers without problems they can solve for the group.
WotC has come up with different solutions to this issue over the years. In 5e, the Ranger had survival skills, but they trivialized exploration; rather than making it something the Ranger could engage in and be good at, they made it something the whole party could skip and not think about.
D&D 2024 has removed the survival aspect entirely. The class has abilities which restyle Ranger flavor to be useful in the parts of D&D that actually matter. For instance, Deft Explorer grants an additional skill and languages, Roving increases your speed, and Feral Senses grants blindsight. These features sound Ranger-y, but they don’t feel it.
Ultimately, the 2024 fix is preferable, because at least the final result is a class that can compete on a level pegging with everyone else. But unless Dungeons and Dragons changes its whole attitude to exploration or adds some optional rules, the Ranger will always feel slightly wrong. It’s there not because D&D requires an Aragorn, but because its players want one.
What do you think about the Ranger’s place in D&D? Am I on the money or did I miss the (Hunter’s) mark? You can let us know over at the Wargamer Discord.