Are rangers the only character class able to track in an AD&D campaign?
Clearly other intelligent humanoids...especially humans...will have some means of tracking prey. Hunting has long been a means of providing meat for the table, and the ability to find and recognize tracks is nearly as pertinent to the practice as the ability to bring down the target. People have been hunting since the stone age and it is too far-fetched (from my perspective) to restrict the skill to individuals of exceptional ability and supernatural power (i.e. rangers).
Of course, this doesn't mean folks of non-exceptional ability are as good at tracking as rangers. The class as presented in the PHB provides a 90% base chance to track in the outdoors (Unearthed Arcana adjusts this to level based, though I'm inclined to ignore most of the UA). The Expert rule book (Cook/Marsh) provides a straight 1 in 6 chance per day of successfully hunting with a far higher likelihood of the turning up a hostile predator than a tasty antelope. Foraging for nuts and berries (also a 1 in 6 chance in B/X) is a safer bet.
Still, my takeaway is that it's possible for anyone (i.e. non-rangers) to find tracks (at least obvious ones), though their ability to make any sense of sign...or successfully follow it...may be far more limited than the sturdy ranger. And while there may be professional hunters or pathfinders...something equivalent to an expert hireling...these are probably little more than an NPC with the appropriate "secondary skill" (from page 12 of the DMG): something like forester, hunter/fisher, or trapper/furrier. Any PC has about a 15% of acquiring one of these skills, should the DM decide to include these in the campaign (we always did, back in my old AD&D days).
However, it's entirely possible that a player might desire more than a random secondary skill and less than the "full ranger" experience. While the clear winner of the man-hunter category is the assassin class (duh), I know there's been a long-held interest in the bring-em-back-alive archetype, usually embodied in the bounty hunter archetype.
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| A typical bounty hunter. |
For an "advanced" D&D campaign, I think it's a bit more interesting to add such a character type to the list of permissible classes than to tweak or alter an existing class (e.g. by lifting the alignment restrictions on rangers and/or assassins). The reason I find it more interesting is that adds specificity, an additional layer to the setting. What does it say about the world that such a character type exists? If execution of wanted criminals was the only result needed, why would anyone require more than an assassin? A specialist in tracking and trapping targets can sometimes be useful, especially if one requires more information out of the subject than can be gained through a speak with dead spell. And it almost goes without saying that there are times an employer will want to engage the services of a professional kidnapper for the capture of an individual no goody-two-shoes ranger would ever touch.
Personally, I like the idea a lot. They'd use D8s for hit dice and be open to the same races (with similar level restrictions) as the assassin class, probably with a non-lawful alignment restriction. I like the idea of a multi-class or dual class bounty hunter, and can easily see the class paired with a cleric or magic-user to give them a kind of "witch hunter" vibe (without actually needing to create a new witch hunter class). Yeah, the more I think about it (and I have been thinking about bounty hunters a lot the last two-three days) the more I think I'm going to write it up...possibly for free, but perhaps as a download for my Patreon supporters. It's about time I showed them a little tangible gratitude.
More later.
