04 December

Essential Builds – Hank The Ranger

Written by Ryan Costello

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Hey, look! A Dungeons & Dragons build!

Welcome to Essential Builds, the blog that turns popular culture icons into Essence20 characters, even if they’re characters from another RPG.

I’m Ryan Costello, one of the designers of the Essence20 system and an author on the G.I. JOE, Transformers, and My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebooks. As of this writing, I’ve written over 300 000 words for Essence20, contributing to over a dozen products and counting.

In recent years, Dungeons & Dragons reclaimed its status as a household name, riding a wave of unmatched popularity thanks to TTRPG streamers and newfound general interest in RPGs. In the 1980s, however, a lot of people’s first exposure to the brand wasn’t through the game. It was by boarding the Dungeons & Dragons roller coaster only for a portal to open up and teleport them to a realm of fantasy and magic.

Some players can’t help but go off the rails.

Who Is Hank The Ranger?

Hank The Ranger from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

The Dungeons & Dragons animated series put the handsome blonde guy in charge, as was legally required at the time (see also: G.I.JOE, He-Man, M.A.S.K., Scooby-Doo, The Avengers, and the Know Direction Network).

Hank is your prototypical lawful good leader. He doesn’t make the best strategic choices, but he certainly makes a lot of them. Undeniably, he devotes his energy to the team’s mission: returning home. However, unlike his more cynical associate, Eric the Cavalier, Hank believes that solving the riddles offered up by the mysterious and impish Dungeon Master will get them what they want.

But there’s more to Hank than just being in charge. Each hero in the series received a magic item during chargen. Hank had the team’s only ranged weapon, and I’d argue its coolest magic item: the energy bow. He pulled back on an invisible string and let fly bolts of yellow energy. They could hurt enemies, but they also had utility functions, pushing back approaching threats, blinding them, and even tying them up. In a lot of ways, Hank was a better caster than the team’s wizard, Presto.

Building Essence20 Hank

Hank springs into action with fellow combatant Bobby.

Without his bow, this isn’t a build. We want to recreate as much of what we see him do with it as we can, which can be difficult when the source material never establishes its limits and the writers took liberties with its abilities for the sake of cool scenes. How dare they?

Hank may be described in the series as a ranger, but he only has a fraction of the skillset normally associated with that class. He doesn’t do much tracking, and is no better with animals than the rest of the group. He’s not even the one with an animal companion!

That actually works to our advantage. It lets us focus on his leadership skills when choosing his Role. As long as he’s competent with his energy bow, we’ve got the majority of the rangery things we see him do covered. Fortunately, the latest My Little Pony sourcebook will help us with that.

Speaking of My Little Pony…

Role

Hank takes point.

Spirit of Loyalty (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

There are two versions of a Hank build that I think are equally viable: A Pink Ranger, focused on ranged combat, or a Spirit of Loyalty, focused on leadership.

The Pink Ranger isn’t just a good choice because it’s the best archery Role in the game. Its use of Power Points to enhance archery skills and create basically magical arrows makes it more Hank coded than other famous archers, like Robin Hood or Green Arrow. In a live action version of the Dungeons & Dragons animated series (one centered on the cartoon cast, not just the Honor Among Thieves cameo), I can see Hank performing the full range of acrobatics and trick shots this Role allows. However, based purely on how the animated series presents Hank, Pink Ranger overdelivers on archery without delivering enough leadership.

Similarly, I didn’t look at the G.I. JOE Ranger Role or the new Silent Weapons Expert Focus of the Commando, because both would make Hank good at what he would theoretically be good at while also making him good in ways we never see him excel.

Spirit of Loyalty isn’t a leader Role in the same way as Red Ranger, Officer, and Field Commander, but it works very well for Hank. The D&D cartoon cast has no formal combat training. The only reason they can hold their own is because of the magic weapons they were gifted. Otherwise, they get by on determination and friendship. Not quite to the level that friendship is an actual source of magic that we see in MLP, but along the same thematic lines. This is why we’re changing the Faction.

We aren’t changing Settings, though, since Equestria is as close as an Essence20 setting gets to The Realm. That means, according to the Gen Con Worlds Collide: The Pony Puzzle Event – Character Preparations blog post, we lose Friendship Circle at 1st level, but we still get Loyalty Is Magic and Talent For Loyalty. It also means Hank gets to be the Princess of Loyalty at 20th level. I’m not jealous, you’re jealous!

The Talent For Perks were part of a larger Talent subsystem meant to give the players a level of narrative control and to ease up on the complexity of MLP mechanics. Most of the Talent system was removed in development, with the Role Perks being the only element of it that made it to print (which explains the “Unlike most Talents” line). Basically, if you act in line with your talent, you get to act more quickly. So, any time Hank performs an action motivated by his loyalty for his allies, he can perform it as a different type of action.

This is especially useful for a combat-capable leader, because it means he can step in to help while still getting to attack.

Also at 1st level, we get Reactionary, which improves our Initiative and is one of the more combat focused Role Perks in MLP. Hank is usually the first to attack when a threat arrives on the scene, so that works.

At 2nd level we get Stand By Me, which increases the Defenses of adjacent allies. This may seem suboptimal for a ranged combatant, since we don’t want to be as close to the enemies as our allies, but it pairs well with Talent For Loyalty. Hank can be in the back, firing arrows, but if an ally needs help, he can Move up to them as a Free action to protect them, leaving us our Standard and Move actions for more combat oriented actions before, after, or during that movement.

Most of the rest of the Role Perks revolve around helping our BFFs, gaining Friendship (Story) Points, and giving ourselves bonuses.

Sub Rules

Faction: Mercenary (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Intercontinental Adventures: Factions in Action Vol. 2 )

The Mercenary Faction is only about 6 months old and this is the second time it’s shown up here. Like the other Intercontinental Adventures Generic Factions, we get to customize this one to our needs.The Mercenary Faction goes one step further by letting us decide whether it’s an independent contractor (which we saw with our Deadpool build), or, as in this case, a group working together.

Most of the Mercenary Perks aren’t going to be particularly useful to our build, except for our code of ethics. We get to define it and then gain Story Points for following it. That means we can give Hank a heroic hard limit, like not using his weapons against non-monsters, and that gives us a reward whenever we take the high road to deal with an issue we could fight our way through.

Origin

“I’ve heard this ride is life changing!”

Civilian (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

Like Hank’s Role, I considered another option for the build’s Origin: Bipedal Earth Pony.

Earth Pony and Civilian have a lot in common. Honestly, Earth Pony is the same as or better than the Civilian in every way except Essence Score Increases. On top of getting a General Perk (the main motivation for considering these two Roles), Adaptable would have been a useful Perk for Hank to have. Once per scene, he could act as if Specialized in a Skill of a chosen Essence Score.

Despite Earth Pony being a straight up more powerful option than Civilian, I went with the latter for an unusual reason in this case: Flavour.

Essential Builds isn’t meant to create purely powerful builds, but to show the flexibility of the Essence20 system and use it to recreate familiar characters. And while Civilian is generic as a selling point, what flavour it has perfectly lines up with the fish thrust out of water plot of the Dungeons & Dragons animated series. Hank was just some kid at an amusement park with his friends. There’s never been a better representation of the Civilian Origin.

Influences

This was the “first 10 minutes of Bumblebee” for D&D cartoon fans.

1st: Archer (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game: Knights of Canterlot)

2nd: Networker (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Ferocious Fighters: Factions in Action Vol. 1)

3rd: Time Displaced (Power Rangers Roleplaying Game: A Jump Through Time)

Three easy Influence picks.

Archer was easiest of all. In fact, the idea for this build came to me while reading the new Influences in Knights of Canterlot.

I’ll admit, I raised an eyebrow when I found out Knights Of Canterlot included the traditional fantasy RPG classes as Influences. Making them Roles seemed like the obvious choice. Not only are our Roles the Essence20 analog to D&D and Pathfinder classes, but My Little Pony could use options for campaigns that don’t focus on the destined heroes of Equestria.

That said, fantasy classes as Essence20 Influences works extremely well. They lead with easily understood themes, and often only require only one specific bonus to deliver on the concept. I do think an Essence20 fantasy setting with these classes as Roles would still be a tonne of fun (as I’ll get to in the conclusion), but classes as Influences surprised me.

Specifically looking at the Archer Influence, we can give ourselves an Edge on a Targeting Skill Test once per scene. Perfect for when Hank needs a clutch hit.

Moving on, Networker lets us start with a Contact. This is how we get Dungeon Master at the table. The mysterious magician would pop up at the beginning of every episode, and was known to lend the group a hand from time to time. However, his motives and even messages weren’t always clear. That’s why we’re taking this as an Influence with a Hang-Up, which reduces the number of Allegiance Points and Contact Perks to 2 each.

Dungeon Master may give Hank his bow in the lore, but Time Displaced gives it to our build. The bow comes from one of the General Perks we can choose from the Influence, Personal Heirloom. We would need to clear it with the GM that we can take the bow as the heirloom. Technically, it grants a Standard, non-Power weapon, and the Projectile Launcher (the generic weapon meant to represent weapons like the bow) is Limited. However, because the Projectile Launcher lost its Alternate Effects in development, it’s not particularly impressive for its availability. We’d also need to clear that “getting handed the weapon by the first person we met after traveling dimensions” can sub in for the traditional definition of an heirloom. Hopefully our GM understands. Dungeon Master would be cool with it.

This may seem like a lot of stretching for an Essential Build choice, but that’s because we want the Time Displaced Hang-Up. Whenever Hank is faced with a situation where being from another time and dimension leaves him at a disadvantage, he suffers ↓2. Getting a bow as a personal item is just bonus (a bow-nus, if you will).

Equipment

An archer arches.

Normally not an element of character creation I dedicate a section to, but given the importance of the energy bow to a Hank build, I thought I’d illustrate my plans.

Time Displaced only gets us a regular bow, not the magic weapon Hank adventures with. To represent its magic powers, we’re going to invest in MLP’s Spellcasting Skill, and Specialize in beams.

Any combination of Barreling Beam, Energy Beam, Explosive Beam, and Lancing Beam give a magic attack for every scenario, while Mind Beam from the CRB, Sparkle Blast and Super Sticky Celebration String from Knights of Canterlot, and Smoke Beam from Dark Skies over Equestria give a variety of choices for hampering enemies.

You might wonder if a character can even cast while holding a bow. Fortunately, the Spellcasting rules work like they do in the My Little Pony setting, which doesn’t require free hands since, y’know, no one has hands.

You might also wonder why bother with the bow. It’s not just so we can fire traditional arrows while we wait for our Spellcasting to recharge. Like I said, the Archer Influence inspired this build. That Influence gives us a bonus to Targeting, which we wouldn’t need if this was a purely spellcasting build. Now, it can happen that an option that inspired a build gets cut from the final version. However, in this case, the Archer Influence was just the first indication that Hank needs Targeting. We should be excited whenever we come across an option that works well with a bow and arrow. Unfortunately, because it’s unlikely that the mechanics work with Spellcasting, it would mean having to pass on thematically on-point options for our build.

Essence Scores and Skills

Hank lends Diana a hand.

Speed 6

MLP Roles let us choose the rate at which our Essence Scores increase, so we’re going with Speed as our Diamond (fastest) progression. Targeting gets the lion’s share, with 3 Ranks. This may seem low, but we have a lot of options that improve our Skills and provide Story Points.

Next we’ll take a Rank in Initiative. The last two Ranks increase our Speed and Evasion, but they’re going into our Essence-neutral Skill, Spellcasting. As Hank levels up, we’ll probably split Speed increases between Targeting and Spellcasting. I would have liked at least a Rank in Infiltration, since the party tries to sneak around in most episodes, but since they usually fail, I’m OK sacrificing this for the sake of a tighter focus on a smaller selection of Skills.

Social 5

Like with Speed, I did a combination of three Skill Points into a Social Skill (in this case, Persuasion) and two into in Spellcasting (one Rank and a Specialization in Beams). By doing this in the Essence Score tied to the build’s purpose, it gives us a Defense appropriate to what we’re supposed to be good at, even if we only have a smaller selection of Skills in that Essence Score.

Also like Speed, I considered 1 Rank in a Social Skill (in this case, Animal Handling, since I know Hank rides a horse at least once), but ran out of Skill Points. I might consider saving the Beams Spec for a higher level and settling on only d6 Spellcasting (and therefore only mastering three spells, probably Barreling Beam, Energy Beam, and Smoke Beam).

Strength 3

Even though Hank usually flees if he can’t fight with his bow, I thought he could use a melee Skill. I only gave him 1 Rank in Might, in case of emergencies. The other two Skill Points went into Athletics, which is where I see most Strength boosts going. There’s a lot of physicality to adventuring in The Realm.

Smarts 2

Typical 80s leader, all big speeches and bad ideas. As usual, how much I invest in Alertness depends on the rest of the group. If the Smarter characters have Alertness covered, I would go with two Ranks in Survival (Hank may not be a great Ranger, but I can see the rest of the party expecting Hank to Survive from time to time).

Conclusion

Not real. Fake. You can’t buy this. Stop getting excited. I said stop it!

My impossible dream is that Renegade Game Studios gets the license to turn the Dungeons & Dragons animated series into an Essence20 setting. I say impossible because even though Renegade somehow convince Hasbro to give them a bunch of RPG rights instead of handing them over to the world’s largest RPG publisher that they happen to own, it’s different with D&D. Can you imagine how confusing it would be for the average consumer to a game store, see the D&D logo and D&D characters on the cover of a new sourcebook, only to find out it’s Essence20 on the inside? Add to that the fact that WotC is embracing the D&D cartoon characters lately more than they have in decades, it’s not just unlikely that this ever happened.

That said, this build is a great peak at what Essence20 D&D could look like. My Little Pony remains the best Essence20 source to draw from if you want to expand beyond your setting or to customize your own setting. And Hank The Ranger is the latest Essential Build that I’m itching to see at the table.