Why is dual wielding a Ranger thing?

Why is dual wielding a Ranger thing?

Other urls found in this thread:

portal.tolkienianos.pt/files/The_LotR_I.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Aragorn

Drizzt

Norris

/thread

I misread that as
>Why is dual wielding a Ranger a thing?
And it got me thinking: Can a ranger 1+ size categories smaller be considered a ranged weapon?

Because it's cool.

Drizzt.

Incorrect. He had a sword and a bow. A two-handed sword in the movies but I can't remember if it was different in the books or not.

Now im going to force my friends to play halflings so I can use them as weapons

The idea that ranger dual-wielding is based on Aragorn comes from the first book where he used two weapons to fend off the nazguls. I think it was a torch and a sword.

Why not?

Can we have a serious discussion of why Ranger is shit in every edition except 4e? Oh and AD&D.
Ignore martial/caster disparity in 3.5 and 5e.
Ranger is objectively shit compared to fighter in 3.5. I don't know why it is considered a tier 4 class.
All a ranger can do is track (hireling ranger can do this) and gather food / keep the party comfortable in the wilderness. Neither matter much in most games.
Ranger gets spells, sure. This may be their only saving grace.
Ranger gets an animal companion, greatly inferior to the druid's. Oh but you can spend a feat to make it druid-tier. While the druid is getting natural spell and learning call lightning.
The main issue with ranger is the fucking idea that favored enemy works as a main class feature. This was brought back in 5e for whatever dumb fuck reason. Favored enemy is a nice feature, but as a primary damage option? Fuck no. Unless the DM cooperates and sucks your dick. If a martial's job is damage, a ranger fails utterly. If an expert's job is to be an expert, ranger fails at doing anything not easily replicated by a spell, except tracking.
Ranger is only good in campaigns where the DM focuses alot on traveling, roleplaying things like hunting and camping, and where a lot of tracking is involved.
Oh but that's just so the wizard can save a spell slot from create food and water.
Fuck ranger. And I'm saying that having played one ranger character for seven years and another ranger character for four years with two different long-time groups. Ironically the only time I was good as a ranger was in 4e, and I hated everything else in it.

It isn't though

...You mean Legolas?

It was. We never get a close description of Anduril, but Boromir's unnamed sword is described as having a lesser lineage but identical design to it. And he's using a shield with the thing, so clearly Anduril is a one handed weapon.

Didn't have a bow in the books.
No, actually in that scene he had JUST a torch, and he already had the broken Narsil with him as his only weapon.
He's described as carrying no other weapons except Narsil's remains, which remain unforged until after Rivendell, at which point Anduril is all he's carrying.

Probably because knives/daggers are something any ranger/woodsman type always has and they're easier to dual wield than other weapons. Or something.

For the most part Tolken's world seems to hover around the 10th and 11th centuries in terms of technology outside some of the crazier impressive architectural stuff that the elves or Numenoreans accomplished; weapons and armor seem to stabilize around "chain mail is the best armor" and "swords are vaguely Viking-age weapons in shape".

Two torches

portal.tolkienianos.pt/files/The_LotR_I.pdf (page 129)

>Even as he swooned he caught, as through a swirling mist, a glimpse of Strider leaping out of the darkness with a flaming brand of wood in either hand.

There's no indication in the books that Legolas uses two knives when he's not fighting with his bow.

It was Drizzt.
Seriously, just LOOK a prior editions of D&D; dual wielding was in no way more common or more emphasized until AFTER WotC's and TSR's favorite dark elf showed up, and then in 3e suddenly Rangers were dual-wielders.

It's questions like this that remind me of how young this board is; I'm not even thirty yet, but I can STILL remember when Rangers were not dual-wielders by assumed default.

No.
>There's no indication in the books that Legolas uses two knives when he's not fighting with his bow.
In fact, it specifically says all he's carrying with him other then that is a "long, white knife". It's actually why he fared worse then Gimili in the Dead Orc Game at Helm's Deep, he ran out of arrows and was forced to rely on his knife.

>It's questions like this that remind me of how young this board is
I think a lot of it is people just not believing such a widely criticized character could be so influential on fantasy gaming stuff.

Why not?
The VAST majority of modern D&D players hopped onboard after or during 3e D&D, at which point dual-wielding Rangers became a thing due to the relative success of Drizzt novels back in the 90's. From there that vast majority went on to do other things including design video games with D&D inspiration in mind when designing their generic fantasy stuff. Hell, you could even argue that Rangers didn't even have animal companions before that dark elf, because they sure as shit didn't in 2e.

The fact that people need to ask this question of this board so often heavily suggests that it's already been more then enough time for people to forget the pop cultural origins of the thing, despite it's comparative recent happening.

>Hell, you could even argue that Rangers didn't even have animal companions before that dark elf, because they sure as shit didn't in 2e.

That predates Drizzt, the Complete Ranger's Handbook has a big section on animal companions, they're treated as followers instead of an innate part of the class like in later editions but the basic principle is the same. I don't see anything about dual wielding though.

Interesting. He's not a big focus of the books is he?

>Archery rangers got shit on in favor of melee idiots

Archery rangers are better than melee rangers in 3.5, I'm pretty sure. Invest in one weapon instead of two, tack on a shitton of energy, and you can do alright. Certainly better than a dual-wielder. For 50,375 gp you can have a +1 shock frost flaming corrosive longbow. Oh, and composite for another 1,000 maxed up to whatever your Strength. Pathfinder has Deadly Aim, too, which basically lets you power attack with a bow.

Pretty sure archery rangers hold up well in 5e, too. Dex to damage so you only need to max Dex out, then take Sharpshooter feat ASAP and have fun dealing 1d8+13 with your bow. As opposed to 2d6+6 total with two shortswords.

1e was just to allow people to play Aragorn or Gwydion from the Prydain pentilogy. The light armor led to the stereotypical cry of "Ranger down!", to which we all would grin. It was a simpler time, with simpler players. 2e let you be Legolas with bows. 3 grandfathered him in without much, just a fighter with special feats.

Rangers are good when you can't get good armor because of the setting. Set the favored enemy to the most common local enemy, hide from outrun and evade everything else. Use your skill to get a top horse, good for hit-and-run tactics. Not good for much else.

Legolas? Not particularly, no.

Archers are better in almost every edition simply because rangers are never particularly tough in melee

It actually isn't, since fighters and rogues are better dualwielders. The ranger's thing seems to be picking a random defining trait, then being subpar at it.

>dual wielding is a Ranger thing in western RPGs like D&D
>meanwhile, RPGs like Final Fantasy usually make the Ninja do it, going so far as to restrict dual wielding ONLY to Ninja in some games

Just sort of funny how everyone seems to have their standard for why a certain class would dual wield.

>I'm not even thirty yet, but I can STILL remember when Rangers were not dual-wielders by assumed default.
No you can't, rangers have had bonuses to dual-wielding since at least 1989.

I don't think anyone much disagrees. The only class that has been consistently more useless is the bard.

>they sure as shit didn't in 2e
>what is the 10th-level class feature
Guenhwyvar isn't an animal companion anyway, he's a magic item.

>bard
>useless
nigga you been watching too many normie youtube series instead of actually playing games, bards have been consistently above average.

Pretty sure that's just a final fantasy thing, and not many final fantasy games even have a ranger class

I think rangers were only tier 4 with certain alternate class features back in 3.5. Vanilla they would probably only be a little above CW Samurai. I think the revised ranger in 5e is fine though (really only the beastmaster one was that bad. The other was just kind of boring)

You're not even remotely cognizant of how wrong you are. Bards are one of the finest classes in 5e.

I don't think there's been an edition where bards were bad. They took a little work to be good in 3.5, but that's true for like every class that isn't one of the big three casters

Dog, bards in 4e are the BOMB, some of the best healers in the game.

In 2e they were basically the ultimate multiclass, but they required so many high stats and specific level counts done in a specific order that it would take months if not a year to achieve the rank of Bard, which amounted to being a Fighter 5-7/Thief 5-8/then Bard X (also Druid X), so by virtue of the sheer amount of investment in other classes and stat requirements, they were a good class.

That's 1e, in 2e they just required some good stat rolls.

They were really only shit in 3.xe

>They took a little work to be good in 3.5
Not really, they're (half) casters by that virtue they have pretty nice options out of the box

Because Rangers are kinda Mary Sues. They're for the same kind of person who wants to be the lone wandering badass gunslinger in post-apaoclypse settings or "Jedi who also uses guns".

Did the first Drizzt book come out before 3.0? Because I always felt like he had that one level in ranger because it was op as shit in 3.0 to do so. You got dual wielding and a bunch of other good stuff for one level. His stats in the forgotten realms book were like... Lv1 ranger lv1 barbarian lv16 fighter or something. So the question is, which came first the free feats for ranger or the crystal shard?

Holy shit I just checked drizzt predates 3.0 by a decade. Chicken came before egg, I guess.

Guess it was him after all then. I suppose the next question would be, did drow dual wield before that? Or did Salvatore just like dual wielding? He made it seem like dual wielding big weapons was a drow thing, but Artemis used a dagger and sword too so it was probably just his own preference.

But I think drizzt's two swords + ranger background aren't linked. That is, those weapons had little to do with being a ranger.

Core spells were pretty limited until they have access to 4th level ones. There were some pretty bullshit things out there though, namely dragonfire inspiration

At early levels yes but a decent bard bluffing an entire party often equals way more than a equal level fighter or cleric would be in multiple edition

Two weapon fighting = More Attacks per round is the biggest problem of Ranger.

It's not how sword fighting works and it's almost never balanced.

Having a slight benefit to attack and defence like in 4e was the only time it worked, but I guess odd design habits die hard.

It's usually been terrible, actually. 4e was the one edition where it was good, and even then only for the classes that explicitly used it. Ranger is the undisputed king of DPS in 4th Edition thanks to the sheer amount of ''accurate'' attacks they can land and stack static damage modifiers to. Without even diving that deep, a Ranger with an Action Point can, very easily, attack a target six times, getting an extra swing if swings 1 or 3 crit.

Bro with 2e scans... Can you do me a solid and post a pic of the page with the fish-o-mancer Ranger kit? You know the one! It's got Council of Fishes or something and it's a power where you can call.on the local quorum of fish to totally give you sweet advice.

I prefer my rangers 2handing swords or wielding 1h or 2h axes, and a bow. Never was a fan of dual wielding rangers

Even the revised ranger sucks ass. They can't be a secondary fighter or an expert well.

the underdark subclass seems okay if only to take alongside fighter. raw it just makes attack actions taken on the first turn generate one extra attack, so that means you could action surge nova on the first turn for eight attacks if you have enough fighter levels.

I dunno about 1e AD&D, but I know that 2e is almost exactly as old as Drizzt's first appearance and that already had two-weapon fighting as a core defining feature.

In which system? beacuse in 3.PF archery is tons better

2e Bard kick serious ass, fastest xp table, limited wizard spells, okay fighting abilities, limited thief skills, the ability to vaguely identify magic items, and a buff with great utility at early levels.

Except it is not.
Limited wizard spells to a dice roll what he gets, can wear chain mail but cannot cast in it and his Thief skills become unbearably shit in it - also, just does not get enough thief skill upgrades to be useful. He can use long swords okay, but gets the Thief THACO progression which is the second shittiest. Overall, his problem is the same as the Thief's: need godly stats to perform what he does apart from singing, which nets a free meal for the party at best. All in all, it is a bit far from "kicking serious ass" in 2e.

>Pretty sure archery rangers hold up well in 5e, too.

The major problem there is that DEX-fighters make even better archers. Even when using dedicated archery spells rangers can barely keep up with what the fighter can do without limits.

Because Legolas.

Who actually fucking sucks at sword v sword, so his technique was to parry someone then stab them in the neck to avoid prolonged combat.

It should be an elf thing.

Yes but only the ranger got extra attacks in 4e for TWF. Which was quite a big deal as the game didn't give you extra attacks like another edditions. You got a plus one to defence and damage, it was basically a trade off for not using the shield or two handed weapon.

Retard.

It's Outlandish.

It's speficially mentioned in their first battle in the sewer that it's super weird that Drizzt fights with two swords. He has more reach than Artemis and a regular person would get their two swords tangled while fighting but Drizzt is so special awesome that he can fight with them.
Also when he is choosing his weapons in Drow camp his master questioned his decision to go with two scimitars, which implies Drizzt has a snowflake fighting style even in Drow culture.

I want to pat the 'suzu on the head.

>cheat to get early kills
>fall behind when the REAL fighting starts

Elfs!

5e archery is fantastic.

>Also when he is choosing his weapons in Drow camp his master questioned his decision to go with two scimitars, which implies Drizzt has a snowflake fighting style even in Drow culture.
IIRC there are plenty of drow who use two swords in those books, although I don't remember any besides Drizzt using two scimitars specifically.

Of course, it HAS been a while since I read any of those, so I might be wrong.

the typical drow fighter in the drizzt books used two longswords

Not to mention that their dedicated spells can be poached by bards in order to do the same thing at earlier levels and more often

D&d

Why is wanting to fuck Misuzu an everyone thing?

He's very much a side character, yeah

That's pretty interesting, what page number does he mention it on?
Ah, wait, I don't think he mentioned that at all.

Because class based systems suck, "fighters" are continuously cucked, and even beyond that ranger should not be a class

Ranger is just a warrior that doesn't arbitrarily have zero skills. Have a system that lets warriors train in nature/survival and not be retarded when it comes to bows (how is a WARRIOR bad at using a bow?) and you have a "ranger" option.

Fighters are pretty solid in 5e, though

It's a bummer that 5e's Ranger isn't as sharp as its Fighter, but it's at least nice that the designers acknowledge that and are willing to patch it.

Personally I feel like you could successfully have Ranger just be a Fighter archetype, sort of reminiscent of how it was in pre-3e editions. Make it a 1/3 caster like EK and similar to EK the way to balance it more towards magic would just be multiclassing or the right feat selections, which is already an intended bit of design for Fighters with their extra ASIs.

Of course then it'd be quite difficult to have a meaningful animal companion, though that's stepping a little outside of the "Fighter Subclass" design space unless you also introduce Followers in general (which would be pretty rad, I think).

Fighting with sneak isn't very different. A simple circumstantial damage bonus at best. No attacking saves or managing slots or collecting bat shit.

You forgot Praying-man.

No. Just have one with 'fireball' as a weapon and have it be similar to a bow

Just flavor. Mechanically does all the same things as mumbly batshit guy.
So play 4e? I did and it was nice, but it's dead now.

No. Not fight and sneak.
Just sneak.
Pray man use divine magic. Therefore pray man is divine magic man. Therefore pray man is just magic man.

>legolas was bad at swordfighting because all he knew how to do was quickly and efficiently dispatch his foes with a skillful counter

Pray man uses different spells, can roll religion (to beg the DM), needs Wis to help be the BS detector, and can use armor, though.

>can roll religion
sound good
>needs Wis to help be the BS detector
I like
>different spells
yes, magic spells
therefore is magic-user. What is problem?

Pray man is the between of the fighting man and the magic man, plus extra use. To be where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

different types of magic could do entirely different things in entirely different ways

could be 1 class, could be 10 classes, equally valid