Hey Veeky Forums I'm starting my first RPG game session on Sunday. We're playing DnD 5e

non-varient. I wanted to go pretty basic with my first character, and his backstory is pretty bland

well since your ability scores have 4 odd numbers in them you have literally nothing to lose by making a variant human instead, but suit yourself. There's probably some DMs that don't use it anyway

Looks perfect.

Awesome backstory with a lot of room for development

Shouldn't your background give you some more skills?

Also is the 2nd Ranger save STR? I thought it would be WIS or something.

I don't think he needs to swap the wis and int. They have been pretty good in my experience to allow for builds that don't use the spellcasting stat.

Also the -1 isn't that bad if he's casting spells on targets that are for some reason vulnerable to the spell.

Don't sweat a "bland" backstory. It gives a lot of room for development as the story progresses and leaves plenty of room for the DM and party to come up with cool connections and situations for your character to take action in.

wat. If he's using some sort of no-spellcasting version he should probably say so and a bad wisdom is fine, but a -1 in your casting stat compromises a huge amount of potential success with your spells. A fair amount of them don't directly use wisdom (hunter's mark and some of the more utility minded ones come to mind), but when many do and the only real uses for higher int are knowledge checks and potential multiclassing he's better off putting the 15 into his second most important stat as a ranger.

You're basically giving up succeeding with the majority of arrow magic stuff, and all the snaring stuff in doing that. I think that's a pretty big hit to the character

I don't understand, you start by saying "wat" as though you don't understand and the idea doesn't make sense, but then you show that you do understand it.

Don't worry about optimizing your stats like everyone is saying, if the system is half decent than every stat should be relevant enough. Do what fits the character concept.

>like everyone is saying
>not everyone said that

d-don't ignore us...

Almost everyone is talking about how he should optimize con or wis, which really says something if a system is so poorly designed that a character not heavily investing in those stats would be at a major disadvantage.

I've never actually played this system or any system. I never did plan on casting spells though.

is a little min-maxy but ends with "go wild and have fun" so yeah he's just giving his opinion and dgaf

Didn't even get to forceful about it just suggested something.

Is the only one who got KINDA dickish about it but that's a huge KINDA

Said it was perfect.

So yeah looking at it people do suggest to optimize. I guess I just kind of felt that you were getting a little hostile, my bad...

Oh wait are you trying to start a flame thread? Because I kind of feel you are trying to jump to conclusions about the system and are completely discounting the possibility of a game where it's all "this is the type of setting/scenarios you'll be playing"

Yeah then your build is 100% perfect. You might want to double check your background again though I feel like you should have more skills.

WELL, you are playing a ranger, arguably the weakest class in 5e

there was a whole thread dedicated to how bad the ranger was compared to the rest of the classes

you are arguably better suited to pick Druid or barbarian if anything, ranger is just plain weak in 5e

Fuck off

Ok, well, aside from stats, I was hoping how I should RP this character and how to approach combat.

Specifically, what are some common things to follow as a TN character? I was thinking of only helping the party based on mutual survival, and helping NPCs only if it ultimately furthers my character's goal of revenge, directly or by helping the party/my own chances of survival.

Actually all the stats are pretty relevant (Int and Cha are possible exceptions), but it is a class based system and classes have defined abilities and they are usually based around one or two stats so the player doesn't have to spread themselves too thin.

Did you come from /v/?

He's not wrong, rangers got the shaft. Their survival and long range movement powers are still pretty useful though.

Ask yourself "what does my character feel that they need to accomplish their goal?"

In this respect money is always good so he'd probably ask for that or some kind of other payment.

That being said, experience with fighting a strong monster is always good and if the rest of the party wants to do a thing he would probably stick with them (though might gripe if things get rough or "waste his time")

The guy wants to play a Ranger, why shit on his fun?

Well I would ask someone who doesn't want to cast spells why they would pick a ranger. You're basically worse at other things because where other classes might improve in different ways you get better magic. If the actual favored terrain stuff is important to him I'd say stick with it, but he might be better off as a fighter or barbarian with the outlander background or something if he just hasn't considered other options

>favored terrain stuff
It is. I figured I might be pretty useful to the party as a former surveyor, because I'd have some good navigation skills I guess.

Fair enough. I think favored terrain is kind of a funny thing in that for some games it's fucking amazing and others it might fall pretty flat, but if you know the kind of natural environment your game will largely take place in that's probably a good sign. Travel is sort of a thing a lot of DM's seem to handle differently

Then why not start off with those questions instead of "Ranger is shit play these other things"?

desu its a pretty solid character

thank you

Because I'm not the poster you're bitching about, but there was sort of a point worth making within his bullshit

Yeah, so he should say the point instead of trying to show how edgy he is by shitting on other people's fun.

Despite some random guy's bitching I think it's perfectly valid to point out there are some problems with the ranger class (I mean they even had a UA for fixing it) and I think the OP probably didn't post here only to hear people tell him how great he is without bringing up any possible issues his character might have. At least letting him know that some people find the ranger class lacking and wisdom is important for spellcasting kind of seems like a minimum for an honest response. Neither is damning to a character, but getting all self righteous about how nice someone could have been on Veeky Forums is kind of a joke

True Neutral is the most free alignment. You can do whatever you want as long as it's not an extreme.

For your ranger, he might have likes and dislikes, but no strong bias against work in general. Living each day trying to earn his living doing whatever pays well, as long as it doesn't conflict directly with what he sees as moral(killing innocents, etc). He might have a bigger objective, but isn't so eager to throw himself on any small chance of accomplishing it like some extremists, so he knows when to turn down a suicide mission. Dying trying isn't so appealing to him as it doesn't actually solve the problem.

His tastes are up to you, and he can like things fanatically like anyone else, he's just not inclined to like something based purely on ideals.

Also, being TN doesn't prohibit you from using any extreme's tactics, but you don't see them as first choices. You might have a poisoned arrow or two for when push comes to shove, and chemicals that induce uncounsciousness aren't uncommon. Even having a god you worship and relating to a church or group of followers along the way isn't out of character. But those things aren't your whole life, they're some facets you have, and as such you don't use them to define yourself.

That's how I see a TN Ranger. It's purely my opinion, you can use parts you like and build something completely different, it'll certainly work well.

> all self righteous about how nice someone could have been on Veeky Forums is kind of a joke
>on Veeky Forums
>saying Veeky Forums is just like the rest of Veeky Forums

O-oh god...Veeky Forums has changed...

And here I thought encouraging more people to play tabletops and being a chill place to be would make it better...

A-are you from /v/ too?

thank you so much desu

bump