A Breath of Fresh Air

It’s an interesting design space, to create something new-yet-familiar, to tread where others have gone without retracing their steps (and missteps), to discover a different path forward and avoid stumbling along the way.

I knew going into the assignment it was a tall order: create a spell-less Ranger class for Level Up, Advanced Fifth Edition (A5e), add depth and meaningful choices without increasing complexity, and integrate Level Up’s exploration pillar, all while maintaining backwards compatibility with D&D’s original fifth edition (O5e).

Thankfully I wasn’t alone. As the entire Level Up team was churning out content for the game, the ingenuity I found in the work produced by my fellow designers, as well as feedback I received from them, inspired and informed my own designs.

The A5e Ranger is a return to its class roots as the quintessential wilderness expert. Not an outdoorsy fighter. Not a combat druid. Not a huntsman rogue. A wilderness expert. THE wilderness expert. A hardcore survivalist. A master hunter. An incomparable tracker.

Aragorn. Sacajawea. Bass Reeves. The Mandolorian. Characters of myth and legend but not of mysticism or magic. These individuals share a single-minded focus on honing their craft and developing their survival instincts into unmatched expertise.

Removing spellcasting as a core feature meant figuring out how to replace spells with power and utility, both in and out of combat. It meant creating a new power source from which the class could draw, one that scaled as the Ranger gained experience. It meant taking risks, calculated not reckless, and ensuring those risks were mitigated by the gains made in the process.

All in all, the class feels like a true ranger to me, and while I make no claims the A5e Ranger is perfect, I’m proud of what I accomplished and pleased with the response it’s gotten so far. As an added bonus, I get to take everything I learned along the way and apply it to upcoming work in my next big A5e project…(hint, it’s one of these!)