[System Altering] Classes, borrowing from Frank Trollman (and others)

[Elennsar]

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=63997#63997

Boolean: Yes! Yes, multiclassing as a concept is deeply stupid, and has always been stupid, and will always be stupid. The entire fucking point of having classes is to say that somebody who is a Monk is not a Druid and vice versa.

That doesn't rule out any particular *concept*. Because we aren't tied down to the D&D classes. So we can totally have "Dawnwarden" be a class, for members of a holy order who run around stabbing fools with gilded swords, firing lazer beams and Summoning demons. Or whatever. The Spells and sword character lives on. But he should probably run around in gilded armor covered in arcane symbols. And even if he's under cover, the minute some guy whips out a sword and starts lasering, you should know that's a Dawnwarden. And if he starts animating vines or tunring into a snake, you can and should call bullshit, because Dawnwardens don't do that , Fangthanes do.

Bigode: And can you say somebody can't be both?

Boolean: Yes. We can and indeed must, for many reason, not least of which is that laser-snakes are retarded.

But even if, for some reason, you really felt that it was necessary to be able to turn into a laser-shooting snake, that would be another frigging class from another setting, because the Twelve Dominions of Acamar don't have any frigging lasersnakes.

RandomCasuality2: If you think that, then really, I don't know what to say.

I don't really want a game where wizards can't fight with swords and you can't have a fighter schtick and a rogue schtick at the same time.

FrankTrollman: Swinging a sword is NOT A PROTECTED ROLE! It's not even interesting. "Using Magic" is far too fucking broad to count as a protectable role as well. The Kach? Tenshin Amaguriken is a protected technique. The Dragon Slave could be a protected technique.

D&D doesn't have anything in it that is special or protected. It should, but it doesn't. It should have protected roles so fucking hard that people will tell you with a straight face that it does. A lot of people will tell you that fireballs and healing magic are sacred protected cows even though literally anyone can pick up a necklace of fireballs or a potion of healing and move on with their lives.

The Book of Nine Swords could have been a step in the right direction. Diamond Soul fighting style techniques are special enough that those could be protected into the roles of specialized adventurers. Unfortunately they pussied out and opened the floodgates for every single adventurer to have those too.

People should be more than just an adventurer who has set their sword/spell slider to some number. They should actually be something. But to be something you have to put your foot down and make some clear distinctions that make you not be everything else.


For those who do not agree with Frank, this project on tweaking the game to make classes work like that is not for you.

For those who do think that...where shall we go from here?

I am posting this in a seperate thread from the multiclassing thread, as the issue here is treating multiclassing (though not the ability to have more ability in some basic area like hitting people with swords) as a bad thing.

What classes should be: "Just as a Vampire character can learn Potence or she can learn Dominate, and a Werewolf character can learn razor claw gifts or twinkle magic gifts - a Totemist should be able to make monster soulmelds that give him a caster routine or ones that give him a fighting style.

To use the Rand Al Thor example that keeps getting thrown around: the male Aes Sedai have sword techniques and they shoot fire at things with the source (in the shape of swords). At the beginning of the books, our hero mostly falls on sword swinging maneuvers, and later in the series he mostly calls on balefire, but in any case he never stops being of that same character type.

Classes should be broad enough to give people that kind of flexibility. Like Vampire vs. Werewolf or Totemist vs. Binder more than Ranger vs. Paladin. Also, there should obviously be universal abilities that anyone can take (if you're in a setting where magic light is easily achieved, everyone should have the option of learning it). But people frankly shouldn't be jumping from one of the classes to another. Vampire/Werewolves were bad for the game, and they ended up having to officially announce that the book they were thrown out in had never actually happened over at Whitewolf.  - Frank"


A universal system where you can be anything does not benefit from classes, because fighter/wizard isn't really what "warrior mage" means.

A specific system should have classes, with that kind of distinction.

[fil kearney]

So, is the complaint that multiclassing is dumb from a flavor perspective, and thus we should have a master menu to custom build everything? 
It might make things easier if it can be done.
They started this in UA, but only half assed it.


Here is my extended response....
[spoiler]This may be a dumb question:
why can't I play a 1/2fey-marrulurk binder/cleric/crusader/koss/rkv?

cleric + binding tenebrus as my Koss focus, reflavor the bindings as various "fey spirits", blessing the character with "faerie charms" (spells) and "word of the seelie court" (turn undead) -- RKV crusader as a fanatic combatant for the seelie court?

This gives me a slew of very cool abilities, geared well towards outright tanking, and killing undead, all flavored under defending the seelie court against corruption.   Done via multiclassing.  seemingly unrelated "class powers" working in unison to define what a character's role, personality, and flavorful activites are.  I didn't need a menu option to achieve this.
(but I treat multiclassing as a menu anyway)

It would seem that the building of a character's technical bits need to simply be matched by the character's fluff bits... the more CO in action, the more creativity needed to make everything fall in place via reflavoring.
Fighter 20 is a armoured sword guy.  Not as much fluff detail needed to make sense of him than the marrulurk example above.
[/spoiler]
I initially thought this was merely complaining about how badly people flavor their multiclass characters so as to not make sense, but if you're really proposing a UA style "master list" menu, I'm cool with looking at it.
Four Color to Fantasy by EN Publishing did a good job of it when there was core only books... hasn't been updated since splat madness, but the core is still good.  It's only a dollar PDF.  I use it as a DM constatnly to tweak my monsters.  Give it a look.

[Elennsar]

A master menu of general abilities anyone who is sufficiently talented (meets the requirements can take) and for the classes a only-a-paladin (or fighter, or whatever) can take.

So, to use the warrior guy idea.

Any warrior can learn how to survive in the wilderness. Any warrior can fight on horseback. Any warrior can learn to hit people with swords really well.

To a somewhat lesser extent, any character of any sort can do that.

But only a Paladin can turn undead.

If you want to play "a guy who can turn undead", you're playing a paladin. Does that rule out some concepts? Yes!

If you want to play your personal tailored creation, classes are not for you. Unless you get really fantastically freakin' lucky and get exactly what you want in a given class, you'll multiclass. And if you're multiclassing, you're basically "mixing abilities to get the result I want"...and why have classes? Their whole existance is based on (originally) the idea that yes, you are a "fighter" but not a "bard" or a "druid" or a "monk" or a "guy who can actually do decently" (okay, that last is for other reasons).

Quote Frank: The basic minimums that a character needs to be a viable adventurer are actually extremely minimal. People need to be able to shiv a goblin guard, and people need to be able to carry treasure, attack a goblin archer on the other side of a rive, manipulate door handles, walk through hallways, and hide behind a tree while an enormous monster stomps past. None of these are particularly negotiable and they have no business being class limited. So these core conceits do not belong on "class lists." They go to the "everyman skills" and we move on.

Furthermore, there are a fair number of things that no one has any particular claim to. The ability to use a bow, light the darkness, or sharpen a knife is potentially useful for an adventurer, but it's hardly role defining. These and many other abilities should be available off a single "universal ability list." Characters can and must get a number of abilities off this list.

And finally, we have the "class lists." These are ability lists that you get to choose one of.




I'll keep an eye peeled for this Four Color to Fantasy thing. Keep in mind that as a matter of personal taste I dislike superheroics, so I'd like to keep things toned down a few notches, but that doesn't mean the concepts are invalid, just the raw power.

[fil kearney]

Personally, I dislike enforcing specific powers into specific "flavors" such as paladin to turn undead... my spoiler example is a good example of this. 

If a true master list of EVERYTHING can be created, with sensible prereqs for each power, I would be VERY interested in playtesting that on my infinite array of monsters...

Honestly, I think it would be reasonable to set an "open source" menu without flavor attached, and have individual DM's set the flavor for what can be used by what... same as a DM who line vetos specific PRC's, Feats, and spells from his game due to "this is eberron.. no FR"... very viable.

But to make a rule variant universally appealing, I personally would encourage a fluff-neutral set of prereqs...
For example:
Divine Orisons could require wis 10, 2 ranks of religion skill... access to 0 level spells.
Divine SpellcastingI could require wis 11 and 4 ranks of religion skill.. access to 1st level spells.
Divine SpellcastingII could require wis 12 and 6 ranks of religion skill... access to 2nd level spells.
Divine Grace could require wis 13 and cha 13, and divine spellcastingI
Turn Undead could require Divine SpellcastingI, divine grace, and 7 ranks of religion skill.

We'd likely have to assign a "point value" for each ability, and how many "points" you get per level.  4CTF goes this route, and does a pretty good job about it. 
instead of points, there is the UA "generalist" idea... where everyone would take the "warrior" option, and say, sacrefice BaB any level they pick up spell casting... so
Arcane spellcastingI: int 11, arcane knowledge skill 4 ranks, sacrefice BAB and top armour or weapon proficiency: access to 1st level spells
etc. 

something like that would work probably pretty well... the more spell focused you get, the less armour and weapons you use.  Maybe.

increase skills: use the warrior table again; gain 2 skill points per level, and add 2 skills to your class skill list: sacrefice armour or weapon proficiency OR sacrefice 1 BAB.

This makes rogues ramp up, and they lose weapon and armour skills, or they lose BAB.  So 8 skill points per level will be reached by level 3 at the soonest... sacreficing heavy and medium armour, and martial weapons (or a variant thereof)

It aint perfect, but I'm just playing around.  Folks will still have lots of HP and a save of their choice, so survivability is there... but their attack and defenses will be taken as they specialize in other things...
point buy would probably be easier.

Especially if we convert ALL PRC abilities... that would be brutal as feat conversions... but point buy with prereqs is not bad.

[Elennsar]

Well, you have two choices:

1) Classless, in which every power is "anyone who qualifies can take it". Naturally, powers based on the Laser Snakes don't exist in worlds without such things, but that's okay.

2) Classes, in which being a Fighter or whatever provides powers that not just anyone can take, in addition to a universal list.

If you want different people as X for "only X can take this", so that you can have the Seelie Champion, then that'd work, but presumably you don't want anyone being able to do Seelie Champion stuff if being a Seelie Champion means something beyond the "and he has white hair, too".

I'm really not sure having total "you can buy any power you can afford" #1 would be a good fix for D&D. It'd be trying to turn D&D into GURPS.

Only...with d20s. And d8s. And so on.

Not to say you couldn't get a good system, I'm just not sure if anything in "D&D" or even the d20 system remains intact.

[SiggyDevil]

You can have D&D and d20 as classless. It's been done and still being done by many.

The only thing lost is restricted and exclusionary roles, upon which if a gamer becomes dependent that's pretty far from the original intent of the game IMO.
For instance in D&D core as-is if a player makes it to Fighter L5 they are a Warrior and can't be a good Expert or Caster at all.
With classless you simply have "Level 5" and whichever parallel ability tracks acquired along the way, combined to fulfill a role(s) as seen fit, archetype be damned. A Classless L5 could be much like a Fighter, but it doesn't mean they don't have a smattering of other capabilities usually good enough to perform as a role itself if need be; the side-role abilities just won't be as diverse or adaptable as the main abilities.

[Elennsar]

Well, ideally, you can do "side" abilities AND main abilities together. There should be no need to make any sacrifices for Fred the Fighter to be able to be proficient outside of combat.

And similarly, Ed the Expert is not a role. Ed the guy-better-outside-combat-than-in-it, fine. But Ed as the only guy with skills worth a damn is just pissing on Fred.

Problem with D&D as classless IMO is that you run into "and what makes this D&D still?" Not that there's anything wrong with a major rewrite, but you can't really call a car a car after it becomes a boat.

Now, if you have some kind of car that can do car things and boat things because you're that damn awesome, that'd probably be best. I'm just not at all sure how possible that is.

[fil kearney]

ick. GURPs.  Never liked the feel of it. 

4e is definitely more in the direction we're talking here, but 4e didn't do it right either. 
There is probably a sensible way of making 3e doable with "class specific" and "general" abilities to grab... I think dipping into the stack of PrC's is a good(if not totally daunting) idea to increase "class" diversity.  RKV turn - swift actions is a neat incentive to play a pally, for example.   

If we can figger a way to price things "fairly", then we got us a game.  I'd bounce it around with you here.
first step? what classes to keep?
(IMO 1st edition had a good list of "core" classes... fighter, pally, ranger, wizard, priest, druid, psion, rogue, bard... nine classes to spin class abilities to, and leave the rest open for customization?
honestly, barbarian and scout stuff folds in nicely with ranger.  very different flavors to be found.

[Elennsar]

What classes? Well, hm.

I'd make wizard, pison, priest, and druid into the same thing; and then break things up again based on what specifically you wanted to be.

For instance, if you want to be a Priest of Order, that's a class with its own set of stuff.

Meanwhile, "bard" and "rogue" are not really classes. Abilities available, yes. But any fool should be able to be sneaky, for instance. And "inspiring allies" is not a "bard" shtick.

I'm really not sure.

There's several threads that talk about things, and while I can point to "I agree here", I'm too unsure of exactly what to say.

As stated elsewhere, a generic system and classes don't mix.

So what are we trying to create? We need classes for what exists in the setting, because "guy who hits someone with a sword" is not a role.

"Knight" is.

So...even if just as an outline to work from, we need that.

[fil kearney]

I would think we would keep traditional titles for classes... it will lose more DnD flavor the less you reference what *is*... we're already discussing a huge deviation akin to 4e... mechanics can be forgiven as "attempting to better fill the flavor" of traditional classes, if not the roles.

I like druids vs clerics, and there's plenty of mechanics that separate the two.
Same with Rangers and pallys.

What may be "too generic":
fighter
rogue

mostly because what they can do can be done by MANY.  yeah.  killing them is a sad loss of name association, but not bad.

wizard
cleric

keeping because of the power associated... there is TONS of diversity for these two as is.

sorceror
druid
bard

I can see these as potentially significant variants to the two above.

So....

My suggestion for base classes to keep:
bard
cleric
druid
pally
psion
ranger
sorceror
warblade
wizard

things like beguiler, TN and Warmage can key off of sorceror, while specialist stuff off wizard... lots of "different" in flavor there, me thinks.
bard is good because there are quite a few bardic stuff, and blending in with roguely things make sense, while freeing up a lot of the "general" stuff rogues can do for all.
Same with fighter... "hitting stuff" is generic... but barbarian and scout can fold into ranger easily, and can share some with druid.
pally and cleric can blur lines: pally can steal off of crusader.
warblade is the new "fighter" but with a lot of juicy stuff like from knight, ToB, swashbuckler, errr..? (fell flat on that one. )

Base 9 is broad enough to cover a lot of good class ideas, but leaving a LOT of base and PrC's to give TONS of options for all specifically, and fill the void between for "general" stuff.



Ball's back in your court.

[Elennsar]

Okay, let me look this over.

Warblade: Can't we just call this a Warrior? Please? I don't know ToB well enough to judge it in particular (either manuevers or Warblades vs. Crusaders, say)
Wizard/sorcerer/psion: As stated, we need there to be real differences to keep seperate classes. Saying "I use charisma instead of Intelligence!" is not a real difference that justifies a whole seperate class.
Cleric/Druid: Some priest guys are like D&D's cleric, some are like D&D's druid. Some are something else. Solved.
Bard: I really want to make those "anyone who wants to take these can take these" unless there's something about being a Bard that Stands Out And Marks You as a Bard.
Paladin: Keep, ja
Ranger: Ja.


Here's the thing. "Guy who hits people with swords" is not a role. "Holy Knight Who Purges Evil With Holy Fire" is a role.

So as stated, we need to know what concepts exist and then deciding what classes to (re)build.

If someone wants to add one, we can add one.

My list:

Warrior: Boromir, Lancelot, Inigo, etc.
Woodsman: Conan d20 like.
Barbarian: Some aspects of said class in Conan d20, some of nomad.
Paladin: We can define this easily enough.
Noble (rename): Conan d20ish.
Mage: We need to decide how magic gets split up. Being a "healer priest" is a role. Being a guy who can break game balance and campaigns over his knee is not.
Others: No idea at the moment.

So there will be a class for what roles exist. I think we can come up with ten or a dozen total and see how they look, and then add more as we need more. And "we" means those working on this. Whether or not there might be some campaign out there that direly needs a Rune Mage is irrelevant if we don't. They can make one if we do this right.

Something to read rogue wise, by the way: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=4978

[bkdubs123]

I think the point being made in some of these arguments is that if you can make up your own classes, then multiclassing is dumb. All that talk of having the Dawnwarden is IMO almost strictly referencing the player and/or DM creating a custom class to do exactly what he wants. In a class based system, this is actually encouraged. It is exactly why there were so many, many supplement books for 3.5, and exactly why they sold so well. I can remember my joy when Complete Warrior came out including the Swashbuckler class. Some people said, "Oh, that's just a dex-based Fighter." No! It does things that a Fighter simply cannot do, and only by virtue of it being an entirely different class. Further, as someone, I believe Elennsar, mentioned, Fighter/Wizard is not what is meant by Warrior Mage. However, Duskblade... kind of is, at least much more so than Fighter/Wizard. More to the point however, the Duskblade class is a DUSKBLADE, not a Fighter/Wizard. Not a Bard, not a Cleric, not a Psychic Warrior, and not a Swordsage. What's my point? That's five different spellcasting warrior type classes, all which exist within the same rules set, all which do completely different things, by virtue of being entirely seperate classes.

I agree that "class protection" is valuable within a class based system. Of course, if it is not considered important than the argument, "why have classes at all?" is exceptionally valid. Therefore, a Fighter (though, such a concept is certainly not the class of an adventuring hero, and I am merely using it for example) should be capable of doing things no other class can do. A Wizard should be able to do things no other class can do. This does NOT mean that no other class should be able to swing a sword with gusto (Power Attack), or that no other class should be able to cast arcane spells. It does mean, that with the generic things that a class is expected to use most often (melee combat, bow combat, fire magic) the class SHOULD be doing unique, flavorful, and dammit, awesome things.

"Class protection" is not however "role protection," at least not as I believe, and certainly not how roles and classes are presented to us by WotC or MMOs for that matter. As Frank Trollman aptly puts it, in DnD, all classes, and therefore all PCs, have the "role" of adventurer. This means that there is absolutely no role protection, and perhaps there shouldn't be. In 4th Edition, all of the PCs are intended to be adventurers, but this is a secondary role at best. In 4th Edition, there is intense role protection in the form of Controllers, Defenders, Leaders, and Strikers. You MUST be one of the four to exist within the rules set. This can be very restricting, and at times boring, others bothersome. Class protection I see as a good and necessary thing for a class based game. Role protection, as it applies to a class based game seems unnecessarily restrictive, in my opinion.

[Elennsar]

Here's what I'd say, and some of this may agree and some of this may not:

As stated, any fool can use Power Attack.

Any fool can use "all out attack" (borrowing the term from GURPS).

A Berserker, on the other hand...a Berserker is going to fuck with you. And if you cut off his arm, he'll pick it up and beat you to death with it because that's what Berserkers do.

Role protection as in Striker/defender/controler/etc. isn't terribly appealing.

What needs to happen is that being a Berserker means something, but being a Striker or a Defender or Whatever is your own choice solely based on your own preferences.

If you go for "guy with a protector-martyr complex", you're taking the Defender role, but you can do that as a Paladin, a Warrior (Fighter...I prefer the former name), a Swashbuckler, etc.

So being a Swashbuckler should NOT be "being a fighter who uses Dex". And if you can dip into Swashbuckler to do better as oh, a Swordsage, you're winding up with an overly optimized character. Intentionally or not.

Dat is not good.

So...
a) if you can make up your own classes, and if those classes mean something, single class only.
b) "single class" does not mean "only one ability". As stated in my sig, if you want to shoot people and give blow jobs, that ought to be perfectly possible. If you want to be able to seduce the Dala Lamai, you had better be a Courtesan, however.

[bkdubs123]

Right, so perhaps one way to solve the problem is to come up, first with classes that are actually protected from each other, which isn't actually hard considering 3.5 actually does this with a lot of the "better," more balanced classes. But the second part of that is perhaps to provide more clear, more canon, and much, much more helpful class creation rules and guidelines?

[Elennsar]

Yes and yes.

If we say that "Paladins don't do X, if you want to do X, you have to be something else"...writing up a something else when necessary has to be pretty simple.

One thing I would like to note is that in addition to rehandling classes in this sense, I would also like to tone down the power level of the game some,

More Indiana Jones, less Spiderman. And Superman is out.

If you want to be more than is humanly concievable, let's put that at epic, because that gives a full progression from "not incompetent on Earth" to "best humanity can hope to be", instead of squeezing that within a few levels like the system does now.

So, its going to take a fair amount of work.

I think it can be done. I don't think it'll be quick and I doubt it'll be easy, but we can do it.

The question is, can we come up with a commonly accepted level on what's "too much" even if balanced? That will take some tact and paitence.

But first, let's figure out what roles we're working on, then on how potent they're going to be.

[bkdubs123]

First, I'd just like to point out again that what we are talking about here doesn't appear to be roles, but rather classes. Even with the amount of class protection we are discussing everyone remains an adventurer. If you aren't an adventurer you aren't playing DnD. So, if we are on the same page, and I believe we are, can we stop referring to roles? We want to get to the bottom of what classes we want, or at least you do. Perhaps I do too, that remains to be seen. I think I can start by elaborating on classes I DON'T want.

Bard - Leave me. You are a poor Rogue and a poor Wizard and you have ranks in Perform. No one wants to play you except that you get lots of skills and spells. Your flavor is dumb, and your music abilities are broken (either not good enough, really, really not good enough, or insurmountably powerful). We can come up with a better Jack of all Trades class, and a better Tricky, Skillful Spellcaster class. Oh wait, we don't need to (Factotum and Beguiler).

Druid - Ha. Hahaha. You are a woodsman priest, nothing more. Wild Shape is at worst a ridiculous game-shattering ability which causes everyone to facepalm at it's use in game, and at best, and properly houseruled and nerfed into submission, a DOMAIN ABILITY. You are utterly unnecessary.

Fighter - No. Just no. You fight. With a weapon. BADLY. And that's all you do. You don't contribute to the game at all, in any other mechanical way. Feats as class features are utterly and incomprehensibly ridiculous, and feat chains only make this WORSE. Any adventurer worth his salt had better be able to pick and a sword and fight worth a damn, IN ADDITION to being able to do many other things. You are an NPC class.

Ranger - This one I go back and forth on. On the one hand, living out in the wild, and having the ability to survive on your own certainly qualify as suitable talents for an adventurer, however the class concept, and execution far too often make playing a Ranger outside of these wilds difficult, annoying, or even ludicrous. For the Ranger to remain a class it needs to be more cooperative with the group, and it needs to feel more like it actually has a reason to adventure, instead of something that just has a forest pad that it lives in and protects from intruders.

And of course, this is only Core. So, in Core I've left Barbarian, Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard. Not actually too bad. You have two physically capable melee fighting adventurers (Barbarian, Rogue), two divine spellcaster adventurers (Cleric, Paladin), and two arcane spellcaster adventurers (Sorcerer, Wizard). While the Paladin of course fights with weapons, he empowers his fighting with divine spells, leaving the Barbarian and Rogue to master actual weapon techniques. The Sorcerer must be different from the Wizard in this however, MUCH more different than it is in the 3.5 core PHB. The Sorcerer could emerge as the arcane analog to the Paladin, but again must be different enough from the Paladin that they don't play the same, and they don't do the same stuff just with different colors.

[Elennsar]

Righto.

Classes I don't want:

Bard.
Druid.
Fighter (as written)
Rogue (as written...if you want that kind of combat role, we need to write it, but "only guy who can actually get the skills he wants" needs to die a painful death along side THAC0.)
Barbarian (needs to merge with Ranger, details if desired)
Cleric (needs to be more specific)
Wizard (ditto)

[bkdubs123]

And between the two of us that leaves Sorcerer, Paladin, and maaaybe Ranger. 

[Elennsar]

Sorcerer is really a form of how-you-can-cast-magic-to-begin-with (taught or born with the "gift"). There's a million kinds of mage, "guy with innate talent" is just describing source, not anything beyond that.

Ranger...

Here's the thing. What makes a Ranger/Woodsman/Hunter/Whatever specific and distinct from "Outdoorsman", which covers all the guys familiar with the wild, from Conan to Aragorn to probably even Robin Hood?

No point creating classes that are really not distinct as different classes.

[bkdubs123]

Precisely. Although, I do believe that a character having an innate talent to cast spells, makes the way you cast them, and the type of magic you wield fundamentally different from a character that learned specific arcane formulae in order to cast pre-created spells. But, that's merely my opinion/preference.

And again, the reason I see the Ranger as probably not the perfect PC adventurer class is because he is so dedicated to living in the wild. I have no qualms making NPC classes just as powerful as the adventurers when it comes to their areas of expertise. An adventurer specialized in melee combat that fights an NPC melee combatant might find himself evenly matched. Of course, put that NPC in a dungeon crawl adventure and he's going to die, whereas the PC adventurer has abilities to survive - by virtue of being an adventurer. For the Ranger to be viable as a PC adventurer class, it needs to be, well less focused I suppose. It needs to have more generic adventuring ability.