One day at work someone had told me of something they found online that I thought was pretty funny. I believe it was a warlock who thinks he's a cleric. Honestly I thought it was hilarious until I thought of my own rip-off idea. A Ranger who thinks he's a Druid. I have been doing some research and found that both classes are pretty different but if they have anything in common it would be the forest. Now look I may be someone who never actually finished a campaign. But still I believe after some work and actually finishing a campaign I can bring that character into light. Now the reason I'm here... Honestly I just wanted some advice and to be told if he sounds like a joke character or not.
You could play this as an entirely “serious” character: perhaps a member of a Druidic circle who has concentrated more on their combat and exploration skills than on their magic. You could increase their magical abilities by taking the Druidic Warrior fighting style (from Tasha’s) and the Magic Initiate (Druid) feat. Some Ranger subclasses also have more of a magical theme (e.g. Swarmkeeper).
Where one opportunity for comedy arises would be the Ranger imagining or claiming to Wild Shape and obviously failing. Role playing the Ranger being convinced that they’ve now turned into a bear or a cat or a bird could be fun.
Before my group expanded to get a few new players in to round out our role deficiencies, my Drakewarden Ranger was going to take Magic Initiate (Druid) just to get a little more healing available for the party (And to pick up Healing Word!) with the in-character justification of her learning a little bit of druidic magic from our party's Circle of the Moon Druid who was, at the time, focusing heavily on Wildshape combat which left spellcasting and healing a little scarce in our core group. You can certainly make a character out of the concept that isn't a joke or meme. Really, it just depends on your group and table mindset.
We ended up finding some extra players, though, and now have a lot more healing available, so I was able to take something a little more focused on my character role, but I still entertain the concept for future rangers if I end up playing one again in another campaign.
I think it could be interesting, you do not need to play it as silly or a joke. Making an in-character comment along the lines of "In years gone by my order of druids gave up their shapeshifting powers to seal away a great evil" can explain why you cannot wildshape, if you otherwise adhere to the druidic lifestyle such as no metal armour/shields then you can play it as a martial version of a druid. You could explain your training as being via a powerful spirit of the woods, but unbeknowst to you, that spirit was actually a Hag or trickster Archfey who thought it would be jolly good fun to send you off into the world with a misguided sense of your profession.
There are plenty of way to flavour Ranger to give it a bit more of a Druid vibe such as the aforementioned Magic Intiiate feat but also Fey Touched and, although personnaly I'm not a fan of the optional abilities in TCoE, there is the Druidic Warrior fighting style that Rangers can take as well as adhering to the Druid aesthetic of weapons and armour.
I agree with most others - a ranger who thinks he's a druid doesn't really work. Now, a ranger who seems like a druid to others would be a perfectly acceptable way to do this.
One thing to bear in mind is that D&D classes would not necessarily be recognised as such within that world. Not all priests are Clerics, not all musicians are Bards. Similarly, not all druids are necessarily Druids. A priestly caste or community of nature devotees might be regarded as druids, but could include a mix of, in D&D terms, commoners, acolytes, scouts, Druids, Rangers, Barbarians, Storm Sorcerers, Archfey Warlocks, Bards… So, a character might regard themself as a druid, but mechanically be a Ranger.
One thing to bear in mind is that D&D classes would not necessarily be recognised as such within that world. Not all priests are Clerics, not all musicians are Bards. Similarly, not all druids are necessarily Druids. A priestly caste or community of nature devotees might be regarded as druids, but could include a mix of, in D&D terms, commoners, acolytes, scouts, Druids, Rangers, Barbarians, Storm Sorcerers, Archfey Warlocks, Bards… So, a character might regard themself as a druid, but mechanically be a Ranger.
This was my first impression as well. D&D classes are a game construct not exactly an in-world concept. "Ranger that thinks they're a druid" is very much a metagame idea, and the joke would be on that meta level rather than actually in-game. This works for warlock and cleric because you know this "joke" is referring to the in-game lore about where/how they get their powers.
I make characters all the time that don't identify as the name of their D&D class. I have a barbarian/rogue that calls itself a shaman. I have a cleric/druid that's an elementalist. It's not a "joke," it's about the way the character sees their place in the world and the way you describe their powers.
Keep in mind that "druid" could be a religion as much as a character class. So you could have a ranger who practices druidic faith but is under no delusions of being a Wild Shape.
Okay I read some pretty awesome comments here but sadly I'm not that cool. His whole lore is that his parents are Rangers and he thought they were druids. His parents wanted to teach him how to survive in the forest and he thought he was being taught how to protect it. He might even be closer to a joke character because he's convinced that primordial is another name for Druidic. for real though I just wanted some people's opinion. I was not expecting to get this many comments
Are you just wanting him to be a joke character (nothing wrong with that) or a more rounded character based on a joke?
If the intention is for him to be only a joke, then the joke needs to be one that remains funny for you. As you were asking for opinions, I have to say that “he’s a Ranger but he thinks he’s a Druid” doesn’t work for me per se. (It’s the equivalent of “he’s a Paladin but thinks he’s a Cleric”.)
However, you said that he thought that he was being brought up to be a Guardian of the Forest whereas his parents were only wanting to teach him to survive. That does create a bit of tension between his youthful idealism and his parents’ more pragmatic ambitions, and that itself can lead to comedy (and equally to tragedy - ah, the human condition…).
Couple of questions that might help flesh out his backstory: how does he know about Druids but doesn’t know that he isn’t one? Sounds like a background where Druids are revered figures of legend. Also, did his parents deliberately mislead him, were themselves deluded or did they just not want to talk about who they really were?
In terms of comedy when roleplaying, for his delusion to have an impact, it needs to make him think that he’s doing something he can’t actually do. Wildshape is the big difference between the capabilities of Druids and Rangers. One way of playing that might be that he’s heard of wildshaping but doesn’t really understand it. So, he thinks that the different wild shapes are mental disciplines or martial arts that he practices, invoking the ideal of the animal, rather than physical changes. Then one day he sees a genuine Druid turn into a deer…
I mean the idea was a joke but I would like him to be able to work. Like if I do have an idea for a joke character then I would only use them in a one shot. But the ranger Druid is a little different for me. the idea is that he saw Druids in books and he thought his parents fit that description. He even thought certain things he had to be taught on his own like instead of learning druidic he learned primordial because he thought Guardians of the forest spoke that language. Sure he might have a joking seen saying something like you aren't speaking real druidic to a real druid. I mean I could even b******* my way and say his parents told him don't ask too many questions and in his head he believed the forest have many secrets and not many people should know about them except for other Druids. I mean sure maybe down the line he would be told that he's not a druid. But at the same time I would like him to have dumb luck about certain forest things. Like he can mostly understand animals through body language. I mean sure I know I should be asking friends about him but I don't have very many of them who talk about D&D. But basically his whole back story is about him thinking he's one thing but in reality he's another thing. And later down the line when he's told what he really is by a god or spirit tree or something. He would have to make a decision to be one or the other. Hope I didn't go too much into detail on that.
Sounds like you’ve got the seed of an idea for a character there. If you don’t need to make the character immediately, give time for the ideas to brew. Have a look at the ranger class and subclass features, background, feats and species features and see what might fit your ideas. They might spark other ideas.
Working out his parents’ backstory might be a fruitful place to enrich his story. Why are they living out in the middle of the forest and not telling their son everything? Have they always lived there or are they hiding from something? Are they outcasts or outlaws or made a dangerous enemy?
You could go a slightly different route, one of my favourite NPC's in my game is a 80 year old bard with dementia who thinks shes a druid. You could tweak your ranger to be a sword or valour bard, take some druidic spells and away you go. Judging by somethign I found online there are 37 spells which overlap bard and druid spells lists so plenty of scope on the spell front.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
But late to the party on this, but scatterbraind hit the nail on the head - it might be a joke at a meta level, but it does not need to be a joke at the character level.
I have seen folks put together this before - their character played a different race or different class than they actually were. It worked fine and, after the initial meta laughs wore off, folks recognised this as just another element of their character.
You already hit the nail on the head about how to do this - the character has never really interfaces with either Druids or Rangers. They know they have some primal nature magic, they know Druids use primal magic, they’ve never heard of anything else which uses primal magic, ergo they assume they must be a Druid. Pretty simple mistake to make, and one that is hardly a joke. You can put complexity there—you have a character who was sheltered from much of the world, but had some minimal and very limited degree of education about its people. You have someone who doesn’t quite know where they fit into society. That’s something you can use as a foundation for even more characterisation—and more interesting non-joke traits than “I don’t know this meta distinction between classes.”
This was my first impression as well. D&D classes are a game construct not exactly an in-world concept. "Ranger that thinks they're a druid" is very much a metagame idea, and the joke would be on that meta level rather than actually in-game. This works for warlock and cleric because you know this "joke" is referring to the in-game lore about where/how they get their powers.
But at the same time, the joke wouldn't just have to be meta if the world used the term Druid to describe shapeshifting humans that used nature magic and stuff, and Ranger as a more skilled in terms of ranged attacks and weapons in general when compared to the two - but less powerful magically and without shapeshifting - could be an easy way to translate the D&D terminology to the world. So yeah, the concepts for this classes instead of the words for them might be used when roleplaying this joke, but not necessarily,
And isn't it really funny to say "I'm a Druid!! HOWOOOOOOOO!!! Wait.. Why isn't my shapeshifting working again?"
:)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
‘Warlock that thinks he’s a cleric” works. “Ranger that thinks she’s a druid” doesn’t. The whole point of the cleric/warlock concept is the good/evil dynamic. The warlock sees what he’s doing as morally right and divine, but the truth is a far different story. As others have said, it’s fine for the ranger to appear as a druid, but to actually think she’s one seems silly.
You could still play this and have a great time, but you might struggle to find a group that takes a character like that seriously. Just my two gp.
‘Warlock that thinks he’s a cleric” works. “Ranger that thinks she’s a druid” doesn’t. The whole point of the cleric/warlock concept is the good/evil dynamic. The warlock sees what he’s doing as morally right and divine, but the truth is a far different story. As others have said, it’s fine for the ranger to appear as a druid, but to actually think she’s one seems silly.
You could still play this and have a great time, but you might struggle to find a group that takes a character like that seriously. Just my two gp.
This post reads a bit like lack of imagination on the poster--not an actual hard and fast mechanics problem.
The reality? There are plenty of druids who never use Wildshape--entire subclasses even. A ranger who never formally studied could, conceivably, think they are using a "wild shape" every time they cast Hunter's Mark--it is a limited duration effect which heightens certain naturalistic elements in the user, akin to some of the wildshape options. Or, perhaps they have never seen a wildshape, and think that "turn into a bear" is figurative (akin to real-world berserkers, who entered a raged state like a bear, but did not actually transform). In that case, the ranger might legitimately think their options like Hunter's Mark or Zephyr strike are "turning into a wolf/eagle" or such in a metaphysical way. A little bit of imagination can go a long way into explaining how this character completely reasonably, and in a non-joke manner, came to this kind of conclusion--after all, both are primal, nature-based classes with a bit of flavour overlap.
Provided you have a group of people who are not fuddy-duddies, it is pretty easy to find folks who can accept characters of this nature. Again, I have seen it done before, and seen it done in a way that was not treated as a joke.
One day at work someone had told me of something they found online that I thought was pretty funny. I believe it was a warlock who thinks he's a cleric. Honestly I thought it was hilarious until I thought of my own rip-off idea. A Ranger who thinks he's a Druid. I have been doing some research and found that both classes are pretty different but if they have anything in common it would be the forest. Now look I may be someone who never actually finished a campaign. But still I believe after some work and actually finishing a campaign I can bring that character into light. Now the reason I'm here... Honestly I just wanted some advice and to be told if he sounds like a joke character or not.
You could play this as an entirely “serious” character: perhaps a member of a Druidic circle who has concentrated more on their combat and exploration skills than on their magic. You could increase their magical abilities by taking the Druidic Warrior fighting style (from Tasha’s) and the Magic Initiate (Druid) feat. Some Ranger subclasses also have more of a magical theme (e.g. Swarmkeeper).
Where one opportunity for comedy arises would be the Ranger imagining or claiming to Wild Shape and obviously failing. Role playing the Ranger being convinced that they’ve now turned into a bear or a cat or a bird could be fun.
Before my group expanded to get a few new players in to round out our role deficiencies, my Drakewarden Ranger was going to take Magic Initiate (Druid) just to get a little more healing available for the party (And to pick up Healing Word!) with the in-character justification of her learning a little bit of druidic magic from our party's Circle of the Moon Druid who was, at the time, focusing heavily on Wildshape combat which left spellcasting and healing a little scarce in our core group.
You can certainly make a character out of the concept that isn't a joke or meme. Really, it just depends on your group and table mindset.
We ended up finding some extra players, though, and now have a lot more healing available, so I was able to take something a little more focused on my character role, but I still entertain the concept for future rangers if I end up playing one again in another campaign.
I think it could be interesting, you do not need to play it as silly or a joke. Making an in-character comment along the lines of "In years gone by my order of druids gave up their shapeshifting powers to seal away a great evil" can explain why you cannot wildshape, if you otherwise adhere to the druidic lifestyle such as no metal armour/shields then you can play it as a martial version of a druid. You could explain your training as being via a powerful spirit of the woods, but unbeknowst to you, that spirit was actually a Hag or trickster Archfey who thought it would be jolly good fun to send you off into the world with a misguided sense of your profession.
There are plenty of way to flavour Ranger to give it a bit more of a Druid vibe such as the aforementioned Magic Intiiate feat but also Fey Touched and, although personnaly I'm not a fan of the optional abilities in TCoE, there is the Druidic Warrior fighting style that Rangers can take as well as adhering to the Druid aesthetic of weapons and armour.
I agree with most others - a ranger who thinks he's a druid doesn't really work. Now, a ranger who seems like a druid to others would be a perfectly acceptable way to do this.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
One thing to bear in mind is that D&D classes would not necessarily be recognised as such within that world. Not all priests are Clerics, not all musicians are Bards. Similarly, not all druids are necessarily Druids. A priestly caste or community of nature devotees might be regarded as druids, but could include a mix of, in D&D terms, commoners, acolytes, scouts, Druids, Rangers, Barbarians, Storm Sorcerers, Archfey Warlocks, Bards… So, a character might regard themself as a druid, but mechanically be a Ranger.
This was my first impression as well. D&D classes are a game construct not exactly an in-world concept. "Ranger that thinks they're a druid" is very much a metagame idea, and the joke would be on that meta level rather than actually in-game. This works for warlock and cleric because you know this "joke" is referring to the in-game lore about where/how they get their powers.
I make characters all the time that don't identify as the name of their D&D class. I have a barbarian/rogue that calls itself a shaman. I have a cleric/druid that's an elementalist. It's not a "joke," it's about the way the character sees their place in the world and the way you describe their powers.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Keep in mind that "druid" could be a religion as much as a character class. So you could have a ranger who practices druidic faith but is under no delusions of being a Wild Shape.
Okay I read some pretty awesome comments here but sadly I'm not that cool. His whole lore is that his parents are Rangers and he thought they were druids. His parents wanted to teach him how to survive in the forest and he thought he was being taught how to protect it. He might even be closer to a joke character because he's convinced that primordial is another name for Druidic. for real though I just wanted some people's opinion. I was not expecting to get this many comments
Are you just wanting him to be a joke character (nothing wrong with that) or a more rounded character based on a joke?
If the intention is for him to be only a joke, then the joke needs to be one that remains funny for you. As you were asking for opinions, I have to say that “he’s a Ranger but he thinks he’s a Druid” doesn’t work for me per se. (It’s the equivalent of “he’s a Paladin but thinks he’s a Cleric”.)
However, you said that he thought that he was being brought up to be a Guardian of the Forest whereas his parents were only wanting to teach him to survive. That does create a bit of tension between his youthful idealism and his parents’ more pragmatic ambitions, and that itself can lead to comedy (and equally to tragedy - ah, the human condition…).
Couple of questions that might help flesh out his backstory: how does he know about Druids but doesn’t know that he isn’t one? Sounds like a background where Druids are revered figures of legend. Also, did his parents deliberately mislead him, were themselves deluded or did they just not want to talk about who they really were?
In terms of comedy when roleplaying, for his delusion to have an impact, it needs to make him think that he’s doing something he can’t actually do. Wildshape is the big difference between the capabilities of Druids and Rangers. One way of playing that might be that he’s heard of wildshaping but doesn’t really understand it. So, he thinks that the different wild shapes are mental disciplines or martial arts that he practices, invoking the ideal of the animal, rather than physical changes. Then one day he sees a genuine Druid turn into a deer…
I mean the idea was a joke but I would like him to be able to work. Like if I do have an idea for a joke character then I would only use them in a one shot. But the ranger Druid is a little different for me. the idea is that he saw Druids in books and he thought his parents fit that description. He even thought certain things he had to be taught on his own like instead of learning druidic he learned primordial because he thought Guardians of the forest spoke that language. Sure he might have a joking seen saying something like you aren't speaking real druidic to a real druid. I mean I could even b******* my way and say his parents told him don't ask too many questions and in his head he believed the forest have many secrets and not many people should know about them except for other Druids. I mean sure maybe down the line he would be told that he's not a druid. But at the same time I would like him to have dumb luck about certain forest things. Like he can mostly understand animals through body language. I mean sure I know I should be asking friends about him but I don't have very many of them who talk about D&D. But basically his whole back story is about him thinking he's one thing but in reality he's another thing. And later down the line when he's told what he really is by a god or spirit tree or something. He would have to make a decision to be one or the other. Hope I didn't go too much into detail on that.
Sounds like you’ve got the seed of an idea for a character there. If you don’t need to make the character immediately, give time for the ideas to brew. Have a look at the ranger class and subclass features, background, feats and species features and see what might fit your ideas. They might spark other ideas.
Working out his parents’ backstory might be a fruitful place to enrich his story. Why are they living out in the middle of the forest and not telling their son everything? Have they always lived there or are they hiding from something? Are they outcasts or outlaws or made a dangerous enemy?
You could go a slightly different route, one of my favourite NPC's in my game is a 80 year old bard with dementia who thinks shes a druid. You could tweak your ranger to be a sword or valour bard, take some druidic spells and away you go. Judging by somethign I found online there are 37 spells which overlap bard and druid spells lists so plenty of scope on the spell front.
But late to the party on this, but scatterbraind hit the nail on the head - it might be a joke at a meta level, but it does not need to be a joke at the character level.
I have seen folks put together this before - their character played a different race or different class than they actually were. It worked fine and, after the initial meta laughs wore off, folks recognised this as just another element of their character.
You already hit the nail on the head about how to do this - the character has never really interfaces with either Druids or Rangers. They know they have some primal nature magic, they know Druids use primal magic, they’ve never heard of anything else which uses primal magic, ergo they assume they must be a Druid. Pretty simple mistake to make, and one that is hardly a joke. You can put complexity there—you have a character who was sheltered from much of the world, but had some minimal and very limited degree of education about its people. You have someone who doesn’t quite know where they fit into society. That’s something you can use as a foundation for even more characterisation—and more interesting non-joke traits than “I don’t know this meta distinction between classes.”
But at the same time, the joke wouldn't just have to be meta if the world used the term Druid to describe shapeshifting humans that used nature magic and stuff, and Ranger as a more skilled in terms of ranged attacks and weapons in general when compared to the two - but less powerful magically and without shapeshifting - could be an easy way to translate the D&D terminology to the world. So yeah, the concepts for this classes instead of the words for them might be used when roleplaying this joke, but not necessarily,
And isn't it really funny to say "I'm a Druid!! HOWOOOOOOOO!!! Wait.. Why isn't my shapeshifting working again?"
:)
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.‘Warlock that thinks he’s a cleric” works. “Ranger that thinks she’s a druid” doesn’t. The whole point of the cleric/warlock concept is the good/evil dynamic. The warlock sees what he’s doing as morally right and divine, but the truth is a far different story. As others have said, it’s fine for the ranger to appear as a druid, but to actually think she’s one seems silly.
You could still play this and have a great time, but you might struggle to find a group that takes a character like that seriously. Just my two gp.
Terra Lubridia archive:
The Bloody Barnacle | The Gut | The Athene Crusader | The Jewel of Atlantis
This post reads a bit like lack of imagination on the poster--not an actual hard and fast mechanics problem.
The reality? There are plenty of druids who never use Wildshape--entire subclasses even. A ranger who never formally studied could, conceivably, think they are using a "wild shape" every time they cast Hunter's Mark--it is a limited duration effect which heightens certain naturalistic elements in the user, akin to some of the wildshape options. Or, perhaps they have never seen a wildshape, and think that "turn into a bear" is figurative (akin to real-world berserkers, who entered a raged state like a bear, but did not actually transform). In that case, the ranger might legitimately think their options like Hunter's Mark or Zephyr strike are "turning into a wolf/eagle" or such in a metaphysical way. A little bit of imagination can go a long way into explaining how this character completely reasonably, and in a non-joke manner, came to this kind of conclusion--after all, both are primal, nature-based classes with a bit of flavour overlap.
Provided you have a group of people who are not fuddy-duddies, it is pretty easy to find folks who can accept characters of this nature. Again, I have seen it done before, and seen it done in a way that was not treated as a joke.