The 5E Ranger is either worse or not significantly better than other classes at these things, and the animal companions are rubbish. Some of the new subclasses and spells made the Ranger much better, but many still consider it an underwhelming class.
The ranger class was first introduced in The Strategic Review #2 as a sub-class of fighting men, similar to the paladin class introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk, but receiving both magical and clerical spells at higher levels. The inspiration for it was Aragorn-as-Strider from the early portion of the Lord of the Rings. As revised for formal inclusion in AD&D, the ranger class was described as "a sub-class of fighter who are adept at woodcraft, tracking, scouting, and infiltration and spying" and gained both magical and druidic spells at higher levels. It wasn't until AD&D 2nd edition that rangers had any connection to the rogue/thief group/class, and even here the ranger class was still part of the warrior group alongside fighters and paladins, depending primarily on skill-at-arms.
I agree, except for Vanguard. That ranger was great, all their classes were amazing. *long sigh*
As usual, you don't know what you're talking about (especially my opinions on munchkinism), and your reading comprehension is atrocious. Where did I share my opinion or complain about the Ranger's mechanical power? It is a fact that the Ranger is bad/not particularly good at the things I quoted, and it's also fact that many players find the 5E Ranger underwhelming. It's why WotC made two UA revisions for the class, with the last Revised Ranger being widely accepted as a replacement for the PHB version. Also, if you knew anything about 5E, you wouldn't use the Bard as an example there.
The biggest issue to me is, Mearls and WotC are primarily marketing D&D tabletop products to people who pay 100 dollars for art commissions such as this:
Looking at various Facebook, forum and reddit D&D 5E communities over the last 3-4 years, D&D 5E the tabletop game seems to be primarily used as a medium for the queers, socially challenged and the furries to live out their fantasies. It no longer has anything to do with what IE games were about in spirit and tone, nor with the tone that even most current 5E modules try to set. If WotC pushes Larian towards designing a "diverse" fantasy toolkit for weebs and furries, things may turn out a lot worse than the popamole game many of you fear.
Story in games is the worst.
dice meaning RNG when speaking about CRPG is pretty common nomenclature unless you have Aspergers and can't help but be distracted while you hyper focus on trying to imagine literal dice being tossed in a mass market CRPG
its fine, but I actually feel modern games and gamers focus too much on it and not enough on thew actual game part. I also notice that it seems like the more focused a game is on story often the less I like it, possibly because that is where their effort is and I am playing a game instead of reading a book. If somebody can do both parts good, then I am all for it... but its not as important as many people make it out to be imo, and I think its often over emphasized.
have you bothered to look at codex's top ranked RPGs?
Which rpgs would you put at the top?
lol furniture only play through..bar stool +1/+4 against drunks
That list is an absolute disaster.
and I disagree with many of the choices, or perhaps its more like planscape is the exception that proves the rule.
They wanted to make Aragorn a class is basically the problem.
