Druids and Rangers

[James Maliszewski]

Does anyone use these classes in their OD&D games and, if so, do you modify them at all from their appearances in The Strategic Review and Eldritch Wizardy? What changes do you make?

I personally very much like the idea of these two classes, but what I'm curious about is people's experiences with the specific implementation of them in OD&D.

Thanks.

[WSmith]

In AD&D, I am all about the ranger (my favorite fighting class) and the druid (my favorite spell casting class). I am not so sure when it comes to OD&D. I haven't used them yet in our campaign, (shoot our game hasn't started yet but we are sticking with fighting man, magic-user, cleric, paladin, and monk.) In a dungeon centric game, I guess we really didn't think they would fit in, or we really didn't talk much about it yet.

[Zulgyan]

I never liked the Druid as a PC class.

I have always found very hard to justify his desire to leave the forest and head to town in search of adventure, join a bunch of mercenary-types and head to a dungeon far away in order to retrieve treasure and magic.

He does not fit in the D&D party IMO, unless the campaign has some sort of overall story that would make the druid interested in adventure.

The druid is a TRUE NEUTRAL in the most absolute sense, his place is in the forest (or desert, or mountain, etc). I don't see how he can become interested in adventuring in the D&D fashion.

I prefer to keep him as an NPC class, or as a monster (as per Greyhawk), or as a PC class in a "story-based" campaign that somehow involves the defense of nature and balance.

The morals and ethics of a druid don't fit the ordinary D&D party IMO, and it's weird how he follow a bunch of crazy folks into the depth of a ruined dungeon. He should have no interest in that IMO.

[doc]

I've never been a big fan of the druid either, although the ranger is one of my favorite classes. I've always found the ranger to be an iconic figure: the lone silent huntsman traveling the vast wilderlands between kingdoms to keep the monstrous humanoids from ever gaining enough strength to launch attacks on the unsuspecting humans and their allies.

I had a character in first edition that started out as an assassin for the Scarlet Brotherhood and switched sides to become a ranger, keeping that class for an astounding 17 levels! His favored enemy? The Scarlet Brotherhood, of course

Doc

[Falconer]

I have renamed the OD&D Cleric to Ranger for my Middle-earth campaign. I use the level titles from TSR but otherwise it’s a pretty straight Cleric. Seems to be working flawlessly.

I intend to use the Druid class as a basis for a new Beorning class as well. It will need to be rewritten for an entirely different flavour, but it should translate pretty nicely with a few tweaks. A Beorning would have no trouble fitting into a group if it were raiding goblins in the Misty Mountains, for example. Regards.

[foster1941]

I put druids into the same category as illusionists and witches -- the exist in the game-world but only as NPCs (and they may or may not function exactly as described in the rules). Rangers I think would have worked better as a "prestige class" (like paladins) rather than an entirely separate class.

[Deleted]

zulgyan said:

I never liked the Druid as a PC class.

I have always found very hard to justify his desire to leave the forest and head to town in search of adventure, join a bunch of mercenary-types and head to a dungeon far away in order to retrieve treasure and magic.

I'm totally with you on this. Although I like Druids, I just don't understand their motivations for dungeon crawling. IMO, they just wouldn't want to be away from their sacred area(s) for that long a time.

As for Rangers, I like them as well, but not enough to justify them as a character class (a Fighting-Man tweaked slightly would work just fine). Just my op.

[ffilz]

Mechanically, I like druids, though some of their spells aren't very useful in a dungeon (but then when I played AD&D, we didn't exclusively dungeon). But the archetype the class represents just plain doesn't fit dungeoning.

Now I can see one reason to have them in my upcomming OD&D mega-dungeon campaign: The mega-dungeon and it's inhabitants are chaotic. Chaos is inimical to nature/neutrality (though human civilization which is the path of law is also at least somewhat inimical to nature/neutrality). So I can see neutral forces (and all the demi-human races in my campaign will be fundamentally alligned with nature/neutrality) might have an interest in joining lawful groups and traipsing into dungeons. However, it's possible they might not be so interested in the treasure, or maybe they are, they just use it so very differently than humans would, crafting objects of beauty from gold and gems.

Yet, there is still the problem of the druid and ranger mechanics not meshing well with dungeons... (though at least rangers in OD&D just get magic user and cleric spells, not magic user and druid spells).

Frank

[foster1941]

The ranger works fine in the dungeon -- their "giant class" opponents are typically found in dungeons, the class write-up includes rules for tracking in dungeons (more detailed than the rules for tracking in the wilderness), at high levels they get cleric and magic-user spells, both of which are mostly useful in dungeons, etc. The only problems are 1) people's mental image of the ranger as a "wilderness guy," and 2) some of the possible followers for high level rangers (taking a pegasus or 2 unicorns into a dungeon seems questionable, but no moreso really than a paladin's special warhorse or a cleric's 10-60 heavy cavalry and 10-60 mounted crossbowmen ).

[James Maliszewski]

Just as an aside, I feel I should add that my own gaming preferences, even with OD&D, are decidedly not dungeon-centric. I have dungeons, lots of them in fact, but they're not the focus of my campaigns usually, since I like wilderness encounters and developing the local area to add some layers of intrigue.

Consequently, druids and rangers both fit in very nicely with what I like to do. I was hoping someone else out there might play OD&D without a mega-dungeon focus and could offer some advice on this score.

[Zulgyan]

I too have lots of wilderness. But my PCs are generally mercenary types in search of gold and might!

Even when they play "good" types, their goals are rarely of the interest of a druid.