Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
I am agreeing with you, yes. LotR may be where fantasy originates, but D&D is far futher from it than many people think.
Anyway, while I realize they're trying to stay close to old-school D&D themes, I think that there are cases where it's detrimental to the game. Ranger abilities being all over the place is one of those cases.
I'm fairly certain the LotR is based heavily off of nordic mythos, fantasy has been around for a long long time.

When D&D originally came out, it was heavily based off of LotR mythos. Actually, it was heavily based off of Chainmail, which was based off of LotR. As time went on, D&D has seperated itself from it's roots, and started to become it's own thing with it's own lore, but understanding it's roots is essential to understanding the setting.

The Ranger class is kind of interesting. When it was first made, a Ranger was just as much a job as a class. A Ranger has a purpose. They were good aligned protectors of the natural world, and hunters of evil, and their abilities reflected their almost supernatural connection to the land. In future editions they tried to downplay that aspect and make them more of a finesse based fighter, though they always kept some of their nature theme, until 4e where is was mostly gone.

With the design philosophy of 5e, making the ranger a finesse fighter makes no sense, as you could just make your fighter dexterity oriented, which means a ranger will have to go back to more of their old role.