Or have abilities to enhance that outside of their spells as well.
Then take away their spellcasting, if you don't want them to use it to do ranger-y things. Make them a rogue x fighter hybrid with some always-on abilities for tracking that will get used 1/campaign.
Why? Why can't they have both. Some versatility wont break the class.
Because there are limited "feature slots" available, limited actions in combat, and limited encounters per day. So if resource management is to mean anything (and it is supposed to be a thing) then there is a limit on the amount of "stuff" a class gets. So adding loads of exploration stuff means other stuff gets taken away - it's why lots of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Optional features replaced existing features rather than were just adding new features.
This is a good point but I think the current Ranger highlights how that can be poorly implemented.
2 of the feature slots are given over to Deft Terrain and it's Improvement, basically useless in comparison to the Expertise that comes with it. Then there are two feature slots for Conjure Barrage and Volley; two slots wasted on knowing two very similar spells without even giving a free casting like other classes do. Then Favoured Foe, which is good at low levels but frustrating in this iteration after Tier 1 (for reasons already covered in depth elsewhere), and Foe Slayer, which relies on you casting Hunter's Mark.
It's not that people want to add more, they just want those core features to be implemented better.
That's 6 core feature slots (4 if you think both Conjure spells are worth keeping). That's more than enough Core class feature slots for the relatively simple changes people have suggested here. 2 (or 3) for terrain/exploration, 2 (or 3) for favoured foe.
Because there are limited "feature slots" available, limited actions in combat, and limited encounters per day. So if resource management is to mean anything (and it is supposed to be a thing) then there is a limit on the amount of "stuff" a class gets. So adding loads of exploration stuff means other stuff gets taken away - it's why lots of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Optional features replaced existing features rather than were just adding new features.
I'd agree with that if Ranger was so top tier class on the verge of being broken. But, they just aren't. They are solid but getting a few perks broadening things out would not require the loss of something else. They will still be worse than full casters.
Why are the Ranger abilities so attached to Wisdom? Is the same for the other classes in 1D&D? Cast Hunter's Mark for free a number of times equal to Wis modifier. But for Tireless, temporary hit points based on Wis, a number of times also based on Wis... I though the proficiency bonus was the way to use for the revised specially for the number of times per Long Rest.
Why are the Ranger abilities so attached to Wisdom? Is the same for the other classes in 1D&D? Cast Hunter's Mark for free a number of times equal to Wis modifier. But for Tireless, temporary hit points based on Wis, a number of times also based on Wis... I though the proficiency bonus was the way to use for the revised specially for the number of times per Long Rest.
One of the problems using proficiency is multi-class options.(total levels vs required growth) Ranger has always had issues being a dip appeal strictly for min-maxing . To a certain extent its not bad but when it undermines base class potential it becomes a problem
Why are the Ranger abilities so attached to Wisdom? Is the same for the other classes in 1D&D? Cast Hunter's Mark for free a number of times equal to Wis modifier. But for Tireless, temporary hit points based on Wis, a number of times also based on Wis... I though the proficiency bonus was the way to use for the revised specially for the number of times per Long Rest.
One of the problems using proficiency is multi-class options.(total levels vs required growth) Ranger has always had issues being a dip appeal strictly for min-maxing . To a certain extent its not bad but when it undermines base class potential it becomes a problem
That's because what should be used is proficiency bonus of the level of the class, not the character level. With the new Warlock attaching some skills progression to the class level instead character levels was the solution. So you want to dip, OK, but you are limited to 2 no matter how much your Wis is increased. Is even more fair as you can dip then maximize your Wis if your other class is also Wis type, like Druid, Monk or Cleric.
So this may be controversial, but rangers too me are supposed to be masters of the terrain, not masters of SPECIFIC terrains. It is what made the old one and it is still dumb now. From the previous one you are losing a skill expertise to gain advantage on nature checks "about those terrains" so if it is a creature or anything else no advantage. And survival checks to TRACK in THAT terrain, no foraging or anything else just tracking. Later you give a total of 2 skill expertise for no real additional benefit because 2 additional terrains when you can change the terrains on a long rest is meaningless.
They essentially are masters of all terrains now. They have two terrains, and can replace one every long rest. I can't think of many situations where you're going to encounter more than two biomes on one long rest (maybe once you get to high levels and are teleporting around a lot), - so the Ranger essentially always has advantage on Nature and Survival checks. Which begs the question of why we should bother with the terrain book-keeping rather than just saying "Rangers have advantage on all Nature and Survival checks."
And, as you point out, the two extra terrains at higher levels are extra useless - you're never going to encounter 5 different terrains on one long rest.
Because when you give rangers actual expertise in Nature and Survival you end up with a bunch of people crying they want the freedom to choose their expertises. The moment you give Ranger to many expertises you end up with a bunch of people crying they are stepping on the rogues toes.
Because when you give rangers actual expertise in Nature and Survival you end up with a bunch of people crying they want the freedom to choose their expertises. The moment you give Ranger to many expertises you end up with a bunch of people crying they are stepping on the rogues toes.
Even though they are very much not, especially now with the cunning strikes thing and reliable talent at level 7. Before it was an issue because they nerfed the rogue so far into the ground it was disgusting, but that was the issue with the rogue not the Ranger. Are we going to say that Bards step on rogues toes because they get expertise too? It is just dumb.
let me be a City ranger with Expertise in Investigation and Insight playing a kind of City Guard investigator. Or I can do the wild ranger with Nature and Survival. The Scout Ranger with Stealth and Perception. Expertise worked just fine as long as it was limited to ranger skills.
Yah, Expertise on Ranger is more flexible and more consistent than these Favored Terrain bonuses. If anything, Ranger should get their expertise and a couple of low-impact features like "You always know which direction is North", "You obtain double the amount of food from Survival checks as normally provided," or "Your party is not slowed down by Difficult Terrain when traveling". These are mostly ribbon features that just make the ranger good at navigation and food management. I don't think they're worth an entire Expertise point, and I don't really see them breaking the game if they're always active instead of only being active most of a campaign.
What is really the difference between always having these features and being able to choose ecosystems ahead of time anyway? At best the DM can mess with the ranger by having them fall through a portal and end up in a different biome to take away their class features. Seems more like a dick move than an engaging gameplay limit.
That's simply a Wis (Survival) check, no need to have it paragraphed explicitly for 100% times to work even without training. The Ranger needs the ability just like any other character, if when creating the character it doesn't care anything about Survival, then it has what it got.
Because when you give rangers actual expertise in Nature and Survival you end up with a bunch of people crying they want the freedom to choose their expertises. The moment you give Ranger to many expertises you end up with a bunch of people crying they are stepping on the rogues toes.
Even though they are very much not, especially now with the cunning strikes thing and reliable talent at level 7. Before it was an issue because they nerfed the rogue so far into the ground it was disgusting, but that was the issue with the rogue not the Ranger. Are we going to say that Bards step on rogues toes because they get expertise too? It is just dumb.
let me be a City ranger with Expertise in Investigation and Insight playing a kind of City Guard investigator. Or I can do the wild ranger with Nature and Survival. The Scout Ranger with Stealth and Perception. Expertise worked just fine as long as it was limited to ranger skills.
Doesn’t matter if they are actually stepping on the rogues toes. People are going to cry about it if you give them too many expertises. It’s just what will happen. Honestly I wouldn’t care if you gave them 2 expertise at 1st lvl, but I think they have enough expertise.
That's simply a Wis (Survival) check, no need to have it paragraphed explicitly for 100% times to work even without training. The Ranger needs the ability just like any other character, if when creating the character it doesn't care anything about Survival, then it has what it got.
The point is so that even if the ranger is rolling nat 1s left and right there are a few Survival related things they can rely on no matter what. Ranger is, at its core, a wilderness survivalist. It needs to be baseline decent at survival even if the player chooses to put their expertise elsewhere. Giving them a couple of ribbon features is all they really need to have a certain baseline competence at surviving in the outdoors so the game can focus on giving them other, more interesting, features.
That's simply a Wis (Survival) check, no need to have it paragraphed explicitly for 100% times to work even without training. The Ranger needs the ability just like any other character, if when creating the character it doesn't care anything about Survival, then it has what it got.
The point is so that even if the ranger is rolling nat 1s left and right there are a few Survival related things they can rely on no matter what. Ranger is, at its core, a wilderness survivalist. It needs to be baseline decent at survival even if the player chooses to put their expertise elsewhere. Giving them a couple of ribbon features is all they really need to have a certain baseline competence at surviving in the outdoors so the game can focus on giving them other, more interesting, features.
But why? Why would a ranger with a -2 modifier to Survival be any good as a wilderness survivalist?
"I can't tell a horse foot print from a bear foot print, nor track a raging bull elephant through a forest, nor find edible berries while standing next to a wild blackberry bush, but I just happen to know that that way is North and can cross this swamp without issue."
That's simply a Wis (Survival) check, no need to have it paragraphed explicitly for 100% times to work even without training. The Ranger needs the ability just like any other character, if when creating the character it doesn't care anything about Survival, then it has what it got.
The point is so that even if the ranger is rolling nat 1s left and right there are a few Survival related things they can rely on no matter what. Ranger is, at its core, a wilderness survivalist. It needs to be baseline decent at survival even if the player chooses to put their expertise elsewhere. Giving them a couple of ribbon features is all they really need to have a certain baseline competence at surviving in the outdoors so the game can focus on giving them other, more interesting, features.
But why? Why would a ranger with a -2 modifier to Survival be any good as a wilderness survivalist?
"I can't tell a horse foot print from a bear foot print, nor track a raging bull elephant through a forest, nor find edible berries while standing next to a wild blackberry bush, but I just happen to know that that way is North and can cross this swamp without issue."
This feels like asking, “why does your fighter have to be proficient in martial weapons.” Just because you want to play a farmer who only trained himself in hand axes doesn’t mean the class needs to change its core identity to match your concept of it. Just like an Eldritch knight with -2 INT can still cast shield, magic missile as good as any other caster.
At the end of the day these classes are archetypes and if you don’t give it some fluff people will cry it’s bland. A better question is, why would a urban Ranger know Druid spells and not any survival skills?
This feels like asking, “why does your fighter have to be proficient in martial weapons.” Just because you want to play a farmer who only trained himself in hand axes doesn’t mean the class needs to change its core identity to match your concept of it. Just like an Eldritch knight with -2 INT can still cast shield, magic missile as good as any other caster.
At the end of the day these classes are archetypes and if you don’t give it some fluff people will cry it’s bland. A better question is, why would a urban Ranger know Druid spells and not any survival skills?
Because beasts (rats, cats, dogs, skunks, birds, bees, spiders), plants (weeds, flowers, trees), dirt (gardens, dirt roads, muddy puddles, wattle-houses), water (sewers, ponds, fountains, wells), fire (stoves, ovens, forges, torches, candles, lanterns) and air, all still exist in urban environments. An urban ranger might have a loyal hound, a mutant giant sewer rat, a pidgeon/crow, or a horse, pig or cow as their Beast companion, they might call upon thistles, rose bushes, or ivy to ensnare their enemies, they might have fireflies be their Faerie Fire, or flavour their spike growth as magical caltrops.
But an urban ranger could still have a high survival modifier. -2 Survival rangers would be more your brutish bounty hunters, or highly-intelligent detective, or charming resourceful pit-fighter.
So, one of the things unique to my efforts (and part of why the VTT's are useless for me) is that there is no "generic" class that can really operate. Granted, I am coming from a different paradigm relating to the framework of "class", but still relying on it.
One of the points raised is that different people have different views on what a Ranger should be, and where the archetype is drawn from, and how it should flow intot he settings. My baseline was always an Aragorn style, wilderness warrior, primarily a bow fighter, an ambush style survivalist.
For the new setting, I have to find a way to do the Ranger type class that works for the setting as a whole. Something that gives them a distinct difference and a very specific advantage, and that recognizes they are somewhat magical and that magic is *useful* in survival and the wilds, which are supposed to be really dangerous for most people, who will stick to the safety of their settlements.
What I ended up doing was enabling them to create weapons from nothing -- well, not quite nothing, but on the fly from materials they can find. Rangers are never weaponless -- they can take a stick and make it work as a sword for them -- including slashing or piercing, because they have additional powers to enable that. They can fabricate armor from the furs, hides, leaves, and woods of the spaces they live that works as well as other armor.
This central feature for them becomes one of the traits that defines them within the setting as it is played, and makes them something that fits the "fantasy" o that kind of character, because they are still the ones who understand the trackless wastes and how to get water and food from the wilds, how to track and spot lairs, and how to deal witht he creatures of the wilds, from the goblin camps to the burrow of a landshark (you know, a bulette).
But rangers are pretty useless in a setting where the wilds are more tamed, less dangerous. A ranger in a city is pretty much wasted unless you come up with a sub-class of "urban ranger". They also would be pretty useless in an exploration focused setting, where they might be the basic model for a Quatermain style explorer -- they would need a different set of skills and features.
All of which is to say that Rangers are an environmentally based class -- they are the people who are most at home in the environment they are found in, and this is one of the challenges for the class as a whole in fitting into different campaign types if you try to do an approach of one class meets all needs.
A published setting would work well -- and it is important to note that WotC is looking to make these rangers fit those published settings -- they don't care (and have no real need to care) about them working in settings outside of that -- so how does a Ranger fit into Faerun or Greyhawk or other published settings, and those are all settings where the wild is still very much a wild place, where travel (if it is used at all) is mostly glossed over.
Well, for those settings, the ranger in the one D&D format is very much a ranger that works. They even describe why early on:
Far from the bustle of cities, amid the trees of trackless forests and across wide plains, Rangers keep their unending watch. Wanderers of the wilderness, Rangers specialize in facing monsters that threaten the world. Rangers learn to track their quarry as a predator does, moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble. Thanks to their connection with nature, Rangers can also cast spells that harness the primal powers of the wilderness. A Ranger’s talents and magic are honed with deadly focus on the task of protecting the world from the ravages of monsters and tyrants.
In many ways, then, a Ranger in those places is something akin to a Witcher in terms not of abilities but in what they are doing in the world -- they are out there and they are fighting the monsters that the local nobility doesn't give two farts about taking care of. THey are the game role that arises in response to random encounters in the wilderness, and so unless you are going to have those, they aren't all that useful. In a dungeon they are going to have some decent skills, but those skills are mostly going to be limited by the environment. A dungeon is not trackless, is not a waste, is not a forest. Drop a Ranger into the Faewild and ok, maybe we have a new thing here, something interesting until they hit the city itself.
The underlying archetype is tied to the environment and kind of adventure.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
So, one of the things unique to my efforts (and part of why the VTT's are useless for me) is that there is no "generic" class that can really operate. Granted, I am coming from a different paradigm relating to the framework of "class", but still relying on it.
One of the points raised is that different people have different views on what a Ranger should be, and where the archetype is drawn from, and how it should flow into the settings. My baseline was always an Aragorn style, wilderness warrior, primarily a bow fighter, an ambush style survivalist.
For the new setting, I have to find a way to do the Ranger type class that works for the setting as a whole. Something that gives them a distinct difference and a very specific advantage, and that recognizes they are somewhat magical and that magic is *useful* in survival and the wilds, which are supposed to be really dangerous for most people, who will stick to the safety of their settlements.
All of which is to say that Rangers are an environmentally based class -- they are the people who are most at home in the environment they are found in, and this is one of the challenges for the class as a whole in fitting into different campaign types if you try to do an approach of one class meets all needs.
A published setting would work well -- and it is important to note that WotC is looking to make these rangers fit those published settings -- they don't care (and have no real need to care) about them working in settings outside of that -- so how does a Ranger fit into Faerun or Greyhawk or other published settings, and those are all settings where the wild is still very much a wild place, where travel (if it is used at all) is mostly glossed over.
Well, for those settings, the ranger in the one D&D format is very much a ranger that works.
THis is everything that I said, but you've said better.
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I mean that's a deliberately irrelevant argument. You could say the same of any other buff ability or spell.
It's a decent suggestion for a way to make the ranger more of a support than a solo fighter or dip level.
Why? Why can't they have both. Some versatility wont break the class.
Because there are limited "feature slots" available, limited actions in combat, and limited encounters per day. So if resource management is to mean anything (and it is supposed to be a thing) then there is a limit on the amount of "stuff" a class gets. So adding loads of exploration stuff means other stuff gets taken away - it's why lots of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Optional features replaced existing features rather than were just adding new features.
This is a good point but I think the current Ranger highlights how that can be poorly implemented.
2 of the feature slots are given over to Deft Terrain and it's Improvement, basically useless in comparison to the Expertise that comes with it. Then there are two feature slots for Conjure Barrage and Volley; two slots wasted on knowing two very similar spells without even giving a free casting like other classes do. Then Favoured Foe, which is good at low levels but frustrating in this iteration after Tier 1 (for reasons already covered in depth elsewhere), and Foe Slayer, which relies on you casting Hunter's Mark.
It's not that people want to add more, they just want those core features to be implemented better.
That's 6 core feature slots (4 if you think both Conjure spells are worth keeping). That's more than enough Core class feature slots for the relatively simple changes people have suggested here. 2 (or 3) for terrain/exploration, 2 (or 3) for favoured foe.
I'd agree with that if Ranger was so top tier class on the verge of being broken. But, they just aren't. They are solid but getting a few perks broadening things out would not require the loss of something else. They will still be worse than full casters.
Why are the Ranger abilities so attached to Wisdom? Is the same for the other classes in 1D&D? Cast Hunter's Mark for free a number of times equal to Wis modifier. But for Tireless, temporary hit points based on Wis, a number of times also based on Wis... I though the proficiency bonus was the way to use for the revised specially for the number of times per Long Rest.
One of the problems using proficiency is multi-class options.(total levels vs required growth) Ranger has always had issues being a dip appeal strictly for min-maxing . To a certain extent its not bad but when it undermines base class potential it becomes a problem
That's because what should be used is proficiency bonus of the level of the class, not the character level. With the new Warlock attaching some skills progression to the class level instead character levels was the solution. So you want to dip, OK, but you are limited to 2 no matter how much your Wis is increased. Is even more fair as you can dip then maximize your Wis if your other class is also Wis type, like Druid, Monk or Cleric.
They essentially are masters of all terrains now. They have two terrains, and can replace one every long rest. I can't think of many situations where you're going to encounter more than two biomes on one long rest (maybe once you get to high levels and are teleporting around a lot), - so the Ranger essentially always has advantage on Nature and Survival checks. Which begs the question of why we should bother with the terrain book-keeping rather than just saying "Rangers have advantage on all Nature and Survival checks."
And, as you point out, the two extra terrains at higher levels are extra useless - you're never going to encounter 5 different terrains on one long rest.
Because when you give rangers actual expertise in Nature and Survival you end up with a bunch of people crying they want the freedom to choose their expertises. The moment you give Ranger to many expertises you end up with a bunch of people crying they are stepping on the rogues toes.
Even though they are very much not, especially now with the cunning strikes thing and reliable talent at level 7. Before it was an issue because they nerfed the rogue so far into the ground it was disgusting, but that was the issue with the rogue not the Ranger. Are we going to say that Bards step on rogues toes because they get expertise too? It is just dumb.
let me be a City ranger with Expertise in Investigation and Insight playing a kind of City Guard investigator. Or I can do the wild ranger with Nature and Survival. The Scout Ranger with Stealth and Perception. Expertise worked just fine as long as it was limited to ranger skills.
Yah, Expertise on Ranger is more flexible and more consistent than these Favored Terrain bonuses. If anything, Ranger should get their expertise and a couple of low-impact features like "You always know which direction is North", "You obtain double the amount of food from Survival checks as normally provided," or "Your party is not slowed down by Difficult Terrain when traveling". These are mostly ribbon features that just make the ranger good at navigation and food management. I don't think they're worth an entire Expertise point, and I don't really see them breaking the game if they're always active instead of only being active most of a campaign.
What is really the difference between always having these features and being able to choose ecosystems ahead of time anyway? At best the DM can mess with the ranger by having them fall through a portal and end up in a different biome to take away their class features. Seems more like a dick move than an engaging gameplay limit.
That's simply a Wis (Survival) check, no need to have it paragraphed explicitly for 100% times to work even without training. The Ranger needs the ability just like any other character, if when creating the character it doesn't care anything about Survival, then it has what it got.
Doesn’t matter if they are actually stepping on the rogues toes. People are going to cry about it if you give them too many expertises. It’s just what will happen. Honestly I wouldn’t care if you gave them 2 expertise at 1st lvl, but I think they have enough expertise.
The point is so that even if the ranger is rolling nat 1s left and right there are a few Survival related things they can rely on no matter what. Ranger is, at its core, a wilderness survivalist. It needs to be baseline decent at survival even if the player chooses to put their expertise elsewhere. Giving them a couple of ribbon features is all they really need to have a certain baseline competence at surviving in the outdoors so the game can focus on giving them other, more interesting, features.
But why? Why would a ranger with a -2 modifier to Survival be any good as a wilderness survivalist?
"I can't tell a horse foot print from a bear foot print, nor track a raging bull elephant through a forest, nor find edible berries while standing next to a wild blackberry bush, but I just happen to know that that way is North and can cross this swamp without issue."
This feels like asking, “why does your fighter have to be proficient in martial weapons.” Just because you want to play a farmer who only trained himself in hand axes doesn’t mean the class needs to change its core identity to match your concept of it.
Just like an Eldritch knight with -2 INT can still cast shield, magic missile as good as any other caster.
At the end of the day these classes are archetypes and if you don’t give it some fluff people will cry it’s bland. A better question is, why would a urban Ranger know Druid spells and not any survival skills?
Because beasts (rats, cats, dogs, skunks, birds, bees, spiders), plants (weeds, flowers, trees), dirt (gardens, dirt roads, muddy puddles, wattle-houses), water (sewers, ponds, fountains, wells), fire (stoves, ovens, forges, torches, candles, lanterns) and air, all still exist in urban environments. An urban ranger might have a loyal hound, a mutant giant sewer rat, a pidgeon/crow, or a horse, pig or cow as their Beast companion, they might call upon thistles, rose bushes, or ivy to ensnare their enemies, they might have fireflies be their Faerie Fire, or flavour their spike growth as magical caltrops.
But an urban ranger could still have a high survival modifier. -2 Survival rangers would be more your brutish bounty hunters, or highly-intelligent detective, or charming resourceful pit-fighter.
So, one of the things unique to my efforts (and part of why the VTT's are useless for me) is that there is no "generic" class that can really operate. Granted, I am coming from a different paradigm relating to the framework of "class", but still relying on it.
One of the points raised is that different people have different views on what a Ranger should be, and where the archetype is drawn from, and how it should flow intot he settings. My baseline was always an Aragorn style, wilderness warrior, primarily a bow fighter, an ambush style survivalist.
For the new setting, I have to find a way to do the Ranger type class that works for the setting as a whole. Something that gives them a distinct difference and a very specific advantage, and that recognizes they are somewhat magical and that magic is *useful* in survival and the wilds, which are supposed to be really dangerous for most people, who will stick to the safety of their settlements.
What I ended up doing was enabling them to create weapons from nothing -- well, not quite nothing, but on the fly from materials they can find. Rangers are never weaponless -- they can take a stick and make it work as a sword for them -- including slashing or piercing, because they have additional powers to enable that. They can fabricate armor from the furs, hides, leaves, and woods of the spaces they live that works as well as other armor.
This central feature for them becomes one of the traits that defines them within the setting as it is played, and makes them something that fits the "fantasy" o that kind of character, because they are still the ones who understand the trackless wastes and how to get water and food from the wilds, how to track and spot lairs, and how to deal witht he creatures of the wilds, from the goblin camps to the burrow of a landshark (you know, a bulette).
But rangers are pretty useless in a setting where the wilds are more tamed, less dangerous. A ranger in a city is pretty much wasted unless you come up with a sub-class of "urban ranger". They also would be pretty useless in an exploration focused setting, where they might be the basic model for a Quatermain style explorer -- they would need a different set of skills and features.
All of which is to say that Rangers are an environmentally based class -- they are the people who are most at home in the environment they are found in, and this is one of the challenges for the class as a whole in fitting into different campaign types if you try to do an approach of one class meets all needs.
A published setting would work well -- and it is important to note that WotC is looking to make these rangers fit those published settings -- they don't care (and have no real need to care) about them working in settings outside of that -- so how does a Ranger fit into Faerun or Greyhawk or other published settings, and those are all settings where the wild is still very much a wild place, where travel (if it is used at all) is mostly glossed over.
Well, for those settings, the ranger in the one D&D format is very much a ranger that works. They even describe why early on:
Far from the bustle of cities, amid the trees of
trackless forests and across wide plains, Rangers
keep their unending watch.
Wanderers of the wilderness, Rangers
specialize in facing monsters that threaten the
world. Rangers learn to track their quarry as a
predator does, moving stealthily through the
wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble.
Thanks to their connection with nature,
Rangers can also cast spells that harness the
primal powers of the wilderness. A Ranger’s
talents and magic are honed with deadly focus
on the task of protecting the world from the
ravages of monsters and tyrants.
In many ways, then, a Ranger in those places is something akin to a Witcher in terms not of abilities but in what they are doing in the world -- they are out there and they are fighting the monsters that the local nobility doesn't give two farts about taking care of. THey are the game role that arises in response to random encounters in the wilderness, and so unless you are going to have those, they aren't all that useful. In a dungeon they are going to have some decent skills, but those skills are mostly going to be limited by the environment. A dungeon is not trackless, is not a waste, is not a forest. Drop a Ranger into the Faewild and ok, maybe we have a new thing here, something interesting until they hit the city itself.
The underlying archetype is tied to the environment and kind of adventure.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
THis is everything that I said, but you've said better.