My Life As A Gamer: When The Trees Speak Elvish It's Time To Die

(h/t to Ryan Howard on Twitter, whose Twitter thread last week sparked this post.)

The Ranger of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition (AD&D1e) is a sub-class of Fighter.

As such, he is a Fighting Man at his heart. What separates him from the Fighter is his extensive training in woodcraft and skirmishing, such that certain features of the Fighter are depreciated or delayed to make room for them.

This is abstracted in the form of the Attribute requirements to qualify as a Ranger (PHB p.24) as well as the starting age for a fresh 1st level Ranger (DMG p.12).

What people forget is that a Ranger is more than some Fighter/Thief hybrid, and that includes those who made the later editions of the game.

The Ranger's extra Hit Die at 1st level, his tracking skills, damage bonuses against a variety of common enemies, and--later--his access to Druid and Magic-User spells are what snares the attention of the casual reader, but that is not the core ability of the Ranger.

The core ability is his adjustment to Surprise checks. (PHB p.24)

The reason that Rangers travel light, prefer quick-moving weapons, have their stealth capacities--later augmented magically--and so on is to build off what this Surprise adjustment allows the Ranger to do: Ambush.

Surprise is a devasting advantage in combat. For each Segment of Surprise that the ambushers have they get to do a full round's worth of attacks (DMG p. 61). Rangers are able AS A CORE ABILITY to maximize this advantage.

The ability to move quietly, move fast, and stay undetected is all about maximizing the odds of Surprise in the Ranger's favor. Once he springs the ambush, he can quickly cut down key targets in the enemy unit--leaders, spell-casters, monster-wranglers, the wagon with all the gunpowder in it, whatever--before the targets can do anything about it. If his party cooperates with him, that advantage can be shared across his entire side- and if you doubt that this is possible look at the image immediately above. That happened, for real, to AN ENTIRE ROMAN LEGION. (And yes, Rome learned that lesson, to the Germans' regret.)

Now add in spell-casting. Druid spells to shape the terrain (entangle), Magic-User spells to maximize stealth (spider climb, invisibility), Tracking ensures that he can follow you across the wilderness and move faster than you to set it all up time and again. You'd have to find a Bard to get a man equal to what a Ranger can do at high levels.

What price does he pay? He loses the ability to hire solders to follow him until he's almost Name Level. Yes, as a sub-class of Fighter he can command troops as a Fighter can--he can act as a Serjeant, Lieutenant, or Captain (DMG p. 30-31)--but he cannot acquire such hirelings on his own; someone else must second them to him.

His Alignment restriction also binds him significantly in whom he will associate with, and what tasks he takes on, and his restricting on wealth accumulation is as much about his ability to perform his core function as anything else. The limitation on the number of Rangers in an area also speaks volumes; they are meant to be lawgivers on the frontier, even when the formal law is corrupt and used to prey upon the people, as they are known to keep good order on the frontier against the very people claiming to champion it (but don't, because they are evil). Both the Texas lawman and the legendary English outlaw are Rangers.

It is easy to dismiss the Ranger as "Aragorn: The Class", and you would not go wrong by playing your Ranger using Aragorn as a guide, but there is so much more to what makes the Ranger as a class and a character work- especially if you're playing a Human that opts to Dual-Class into or out of Ranger, or you're playing a Ranger multi-classed demi-human..

This is a Heroic Fighting Man in its own right, and when allowed the opportunity to shine he shows his worth as swiftly as he conducts his ambushes.

(N.B.: Simo Hayha may not count as a Ranger icon, but he should.)