My view of a ranger is a hunter skilled with many weapons. The ranger is secure in the wilds because of a great understanding of nature's struggles, the trees struggle against each other for light and water, the animal's conflict for food and territory, and the air's relentless assaults against the mountains trying to grind them down.

A ranger will use any means to overcome an obstacle whether that obstacle is an opponent, swift river, treacherous mountain cliffs, or potent booze.

Rangers are tough, elite fighters, who are often alone in the wilderness. The solitary ranger explores the vast, untouched areas few others dare to tread. Because of this tendency to go where few others will, rangers have learned to depend on themselves to heal their wounds, build their shelters, if they even need shelter, and find food where others would find only death. Rangers are masters of any skill that will give them an edge in any contest. A ranger's magical power is an extension of this indomitable will to survive. Our magic is not the forcing of nature into submission but rather manifestation of a bond developed through years of living within nature's eternal struggle. Nature might be forced to answer a mage's call as a servant but for the ranger, nature answers our call as a friend as this gives us far greater power.

Living so closely tied to the untamed lands, as rangers do, has allowed rangers to develop a bond with the various wild animals that we may encounter. Some rangers use this bond to more easily hunt their prey, while others have turned to the creatures as companions. These companions are often the only living things a ranger may be close to for who else can see the world as a ranger sees it if they haven't heard the call of the wild wind in the trees?

Calissa's player

I know it's rather flowery and silly at points but I was in an odd mood. hopefully you can sift through it and see a ranger as I see a ranger.

>Calissa's post

I enjoyed reading that. It's always great to hear how people view rangers (but only if they are rangers, I hate all the rest of you) and compare their views to my own.

I'd really love to see storylines or threads where we see dark Rangers forcibly looting nature to increase the power of their life mana, or developing spells of a malevolent nature to bind/force nature into an unnatural sort of subservience. Would be even better if these were storylines to introduce powerful new spells, beseeches, or such.

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You are Malkien, a dashing Barbarian. Huzzah!
You are Apis, a legendary Cleric in your own head.
You are Ragesong. What sort of Kaldar is a Bard, anyways, doofus?
You are also Pellazan (WM), Essatariol (Ranger) and running out of sig space.

I'm in a posting mood this morning, I guess since I haven't slept in about 25 hours. Yay for off days.

I think Calissa's vision is spot on with how I feel personally as a Ranger. Nature is magical in itself, and some people have found that and formed a bond with it - Rangers. Outside of that, what I envision for myself as a Ranger, as someone who on the overall is good. To compare us to another guild, I think of myself as good as a Paladin would be, without the need for face time so to speak. I do what I can to help out, if I see something or someone that I deem needing helped out, and when I'm done, I'm gone. I don't go out of my way trying to make things right, but I will not run away if I see it. With our skill sets and abilities, depending on how you train, Rangers have the ability to be the most dominant guild. We have the perfect build for gaining ranks and TDP's, and you can train your terts to be just as strong as your primaries and secondaries. With that said, and I'm not really a Star Wars fan, but I kinda envision Rangers like Jedis. On the whole, I personally think we should have a loose code of conduct that makes us good PC's. Can't be structured, or we'd be Pallies. In addition to being primarily 'good', we have absolute freedom over what we want to do, if there's a mean streak in there, then take advantage of it. I do think that there is a reputation to uphold for being a Ranger, and there are some Rangers who I'd like to see get kicked out of the guild and get shipped off to the other Prime Survival guild based on the way they roleplay. There is a difference in being a snert and occasionally having a mean streak.

No....

It's my philosophy that snerts don't deserve to be Rangers. Being that the Thief build is similar to the Ranger build, I just meant that they could switch guilds without a penalty. I know they are weapon and lore secondary and we're armor and weapon secondary. Definitely not all snerts are thieves. I've got several thief friends that don't RP as snerts. And actually most of the problem people I know are warmies. However, back to what I was trying to say, my vision of a Ranger is that being a Ranger is a privilege. A simple code of conduct "should" be followed.

>>One of the things I like about rangers is how diverse they are. I also am not very good at following rules or codes. Codes are for paladins.

A wonderful thing about DragonRealms is that you can play any Guild very far from the stereotypical version of it. Many people think my character is a Warrior Mage, etcetera.


- Xelten

I think the problem is one of semantics. To me a snert is someone who goes out of their way to annoy me personally and not just my character. Then there are those who role-play confrontational or adversarial characters. Meaning they tend to be gruff, hostile, or unpleasant. Those types shouldn't be ostracized just because they play those types of characters unless their actions warrant that response from our characters. These characters can add a little bit of spice to an otherwise bland experience.

These kind of characters need to be played by folks with some decent amount of skill or you just come across as a jerk. I can only manage gruff characters for short periods of time because it just takes me too much concentration to stay focused on being gruff but not obnoxious and I don't have the skill to pull it off for too long. It's hard for me to be mean=)

Calissa's player

And again, I completely understand and respect everyone's right to RP as they see fit. I just wanted to throw in my 1 and a half cents in on my personal philosophy on what it means to be a Ranger.