Eliminating the Track feat

[ValhallaGH]

Give the ranger a +3 competence bonus when making Survival checks to track creatures outdoors, then let anyone with Survival make track checks, then raise the base DC of track checks to 15 or 20. Tracking should be harder than it already is anyway, especially since you can usually take 10 on it.

I've got a couple of points about this proposal. I'm going to go through them in order, please try not to take offense as none is intended.
1) This will make the Ranger a worse tracker overall as the bonus is less than the increase in tracking DC, putting rangers at a net -2 for tracking compared to their current situation.
2) Applying the bonus only outdoors makes no sense in either themantics or game mechanics. "Uh-oh guys. There's a roof over my head. I can't follow these tracks anymore, sorry."
3) Tracking is almost always a plot device designed to get the PCs from where they are to where they should be. Making it more difficult makes it harder to get PCs where they should be, and that's already a moderate nightmare.
4) The issues with tracking hinted at in your proposal may stem from not following the tracking rules closely. Tracking speed is assumed to be half normal speed; going faster (up to normal speed) imposes a -5 penalty on tracking. If the characters wish to travel faster than their quarry, thus catching it before it reaches its goal, then they'll usually need to travel faster than normal (-20) for an extended period of time (allowing use of extended hustling and forced march rules). Tracking through high-traffic areas, such as city streets, is possible but difficult since the crowd can easily impose a similar penalty to various natural condition (hiding trail, rain, snow or all of the above). Finally, the base difficulty is dependant upon the type of ground being covered. Soft river mud has a base of 5, a typical farm field will have a base of 10, most dirt roads and grasslands will have a base of 15 and stone or similarly hard materials have a base of 20.

The above are why I disagree with your proposal.

 

[Felon]

So, if you allow everyone to follow difficult tracks based on skill points invested, how do you keep the Ranger as the wilderness survival guy?

Sean's idea of adding a penalty to tracking attempts over DC 10 is, IMHO, the cleanest way to accomplish this. If you haven't gone over to read his article I would suggest doing so.

Assigning an arbitrary penalty as nothing more than a contrivance to keep one class at the top rung of an arbitrary ladder strikes me as bad design. As stated, a ranger is currently no better at tracking than any other character who has the Track feat. If the intent of eliminating the feat is to open tracking up to other classes, then logic dictate that the skill shouldn't suddenly become more daunting.

Frankly, from a conceptual standpoint I don't see any reason that other wilderness classes like scout, barbarian, or druid couldn't be every bit as good a tracker as a ranger.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I like the idea of 'Track' giving a +4 bonus to Survival checks made to track, and those checks only. Sounds so good in fact, that it's now a house rule. There are certainly enough feats that do very similar things (+4 to skill check using one skill, but only in one or a couple of particular ways), to make it mesh seamlessly with the game system. Great stuff.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Assigning an arbitrary penalty as nothing more than a contrivance to keep one class at the top rung of an arbitrary ladder strikes me as bad design. As stated, a ranger is currently no better at tracking than any other character who has the Track feat. If the intent of eliminating the feat is to open tracking up to other classes, then logic dictate that the skill shouldn't suddenly become more daunting.

Frankly, from a conceptual standpoint I don't see any reason that other wilderness classes like scout, barbarian, or druid couldn't be every bit as good a tracker as a ranger.

I agree, it is a contrivance to keep the class balance of the Core rules while doing away with the odd-ness of a 'you can't do this because your not a Ranger' rule.
It becomes a 'you can do this, but its much harder than if you were a Ranger' rule.

My contention is that if you remove the Track feat, Ranger loses a part of what they excel at. If this is your goal.. cool for you. Personally I want the Ranger to still be the best tracker in town.
{well, techincally 'out of town', but I think you get my meaning}

And yes, you said "As stated, a ranger is currently no better at tracking than any other character who has the Track feat."
Check.. no better than someone who has spent a limited resource {FEAT} on gaining the same ability.
Lightyears away from ..no better than someone who has spent the same # of skill points on Survival.

 

[Sadrik]

I have had this as a house rule for over a year at least. I gave the ranger skill focus (+3).

The reason I had the issue with the whole thing though way back when was because: Search skill allows you to find tracks, survival allows you to follow them but only if you have the track feat. That is just wacky spreading that out like that. So what I did is roll track into search and add a +5 to all the DC's for tracking and give rangers skill focus search.

Sadrik

 

[Staffan]

I don't find that protection of narrow niches is a particularly worthwhile goal, so I treat Track a bit like Combat Casting. It gives +5 to Survival for the purpose of following tracks. I also increase the DC for tracking by 5, so rangers and others who take the feat have the same competency as before, and others can do it at an effective penalty.

The ranger already has the niche of "skilled warrior," I don't see any need for him to be the only one who can perform the specific task of tracking, especially with other wilderness classes (like the druid or the scout) in the mix.

As an aside, I consider the Trapfinding ability to be even more useless. The only core class that has Disable Device as a class skill is the rogue anyway, and only rogues and rangers have Search. If a 9th level fighter wants to spend all his skill points to be as good as a 3rd level rogue at finding and disabling traps, let him.

In a way, I don't consider tracking and trapfinding to be as much niche protection as task protection. The ranger's niche is "skilled wilderness warrior", and the rogue's niche is "sneaky skillmonkey who sneak attacks." Those are relatively broad niches, whereas tracking and finding traps are narrow tasks. It would be like taking away the druid's, paladin's, ranger's, and bard's access to cure spells, because they step on the cleric's "niche" as healer.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Agreed.. so perhaps the way to get rid of the Track feat {per the OP title } is to follow Sadrik's lead, give Rangers a Skill Focus +3 in Seach and make Tracking an aspect of the Search skill, with a +5 to all DC's.

This leaves the task-protection {thx.. agreed } of the Ranger intact while still allowing the everyday guy a chance at success.

One concern with this is that it is trading Stat-basing from Wis to Int... unless we go a step futher and have tracking with search be Wis based...?

 

[Staffan]

Agreed.. so perhaps the way to get rid of the Track feat {per the OP title } is to follow Sadrik's lead, give Rangers a Skill Focus +3 in Seach and make Tracking an aspect of the Search skill, with a +5 to all DC's.

Why Search? I think tracking comes with the territory when you hunt, and hunting falls under Survival.

Plus, connecting tracking to Search would mean that the masters of tracking would be rangers and, to a lesser degree, rogues. Not Druids, Barbarians, or Clerics with the Travel domain (who all get Survival as a class skill). I kinda feel that in general, barbarians should be better at doing wilderness-related things than rogues.

 

[ValhallaGH]

The issue I have with the Search approach is that if you also delete Trapfinding (which I have) then Rangers are now the best trap finders, which doesn't mesh with the Rogue's archetype.

As I said, Rangers get Skill Focus (Survival) at first level in place of the non-existant Track feat.
Tracking no longer requires a feat.

Rangers are now better in the wilderness than most folk. They are also better trackers than most people of equal training (Barbarians, Druids, Scouts, etc). Anyone can match a Ranger by investing a precious Feat into the attempt but that shows a level of dedication rare outside of certain specific character concepts.
Similar balance to the current setup, with Rangers actually better than other classes.

Now, if you feel that tracking is too easy then go right ahead and start jacking up DCs. Adding a flat amount to the base terrain DC is the place to start, though you can monkey with the various modifiers as well.

Not that tracking is particularly powerful. Monsters as low as CR 4 (Barghest) have pass without trace at will and any druid of 3rd level or higher can't be tracked through a natural environment. I don't see much point in making tracking an even less productive investment of character resources but apparently I "just don't get it" when it comes to D&D.

 

[Sadrik]

So do you guys still keep the part about using search skill to find tracks?

And then use survival to follow them?

I think that keeping all of the various aspects of tracking under one roof is the best possible remedy.

Also, think about it isnt search a little bit more intuative as far as finding and following them?

I agree that hunters (survival skill) would be the ones most likely to want to track. But does that mean that every person who has survival can track? And what about the search skill and its ability to find tracks?

When I asked these questions I decided that search skill would be fine having the abilities of tracking. I mean, "Do I really want to have two skills- outdoor searching and indoor searching?"


What about urban tacking (from unearthed arcana)?

Sadrik