One Page Classes: The Ranger

And... there we go! This is the first article of the "One Page Classes", a long series of posts about new classes for the old school, Labyrinth Lord (and B/X) experience.

I find class design on B/X - Labyrinth Lord pretty entertaining. You can bring a concept to life with ease, but the actual "design" is a complex matter. It's challenging and fun.
There are two steps you should keep in mind while designing a new class:

- check the class' concept at every sentence. If you go too far from the idea, step back and work on it.

- keep it simple, stupid: the kiss rule is kinda mandatory here. Just bog the word count down as much as you can. I adopt a bunch of tricks and avoid any table, just referring to other classes' tables. Use simple concept and expand just if you believe that the reader might face problems about the features' mechanics.

Those two steps brought me to where I am, starting this series of articles for you, bloodthirsty players and DMs looking to spice up the B/X gaming experience with Labyrinth Lord and similar old school products. 

Important note: most of the classes you'll find here can be found in the Advanced Edition Companion or in classic AD&D 1st edition games. The point here is to stick to the simplicity of the core game and race as classes. I will introduce some race as races in the near future for an AD&D like experience, but everything you will find will be usable just by using the core Labyrinth Lord rules!

So, here is The Labyrinth lord Ranger!

Features

Just a few design notes here:

- I wanted the ranger to be "spell-less". So I added "poultices" and animal companion to give it a "supernatural" link with the natural world.

- my ideal ranger is a good hunter with some quirks. That's the reason why you have the "hunting" bonus, the low ability to use melee weapons (which counters the classic Ranger as a "super-fighter") and the "Wilderness Sense" feature, which adds depth in a simple and effective way.

- Setting traps and moving silently are a must for a good hunter, but since you have other concrete options in terms of gamplay (companion, poultices, gathering) I wanted them to be a bit "lower" than the thief's. That's the reason why I opted for the standard "two levels lower".

You can download the pdf here!
Hope you enjoy it!

I'm planning more One Page Classes this week and thursday we'll have the 3rd session of my Amherth Tradeport campaign, so stay tuned!

Roll initiative!