D&D 5E It's official, WOTC hates Rangers (Tasha's version of Favored Foe is GARBAGE)

[Paul Farquhar]

Exploration is not 'niche', it's one of the three core pillars of the game.

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

But, if 'niche' is the prevailing attitude among the design team it kinda sums up why Rangers - probably the most exploration-based class - keep getting so little to work with.

I suspect the WotC design team (along with 90% of the population of the planet) share my opinion about the wilderness, yes.

That's why wizards invented teleportation.

 

[billd91]

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

If that's your attitude, it would be no surprise if you don't really warm up to the ranger or any other wilderness-oriented class or background. You devalue the places where a ranger could shine, so you devalue the ranger.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think that the ranger could focus on something else than the exploration pillars. Some thematic and design niche are left unfulfilled and I believe they could be presented as ''the ranger's things''.

Some ideas:

• Called shots
• The ''optional actions'' from the DMG: Climb on a Huge+ creature, Overrun, Tumble and Mark
• The Hunter's combat thingies could have been part of the base class
• Herbalism (curatives or toxins)
• Lure and Traps

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If that's your attitude, it would be no surprise if you don't really warm up to the ranger or any other wilderness-oriented class or background. You devalue the places where a ranger could shine, so you devalue the ranger.

Yeah, create a game called Forests & Flowers, and all the rangers can go there, and leave the Dungeons & Dragons to the rest of us.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, create a game called Forests & Flowers, and all the rangers can go there, and leave the Dungeons & Dragons to the rest of us.

Yeah, no staying right here. Sorry, not sorry, if that pees in your cornflakes.

 

[Gradine]

Pretty sure bounded accuracy applies to skill checks too

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

I suspect the WotC design team (along with 90% of the population of the planet) share my opinion about the wilderness, yes.

That's why wizards invented teleportation.

Considering most campaigns start at low level and also considering most campaigns don't actually make it to high level, walking around in the wilderness is a vastly more likely scenario then teleportation. Unless playing in a game where reliable teleportation is easily available to low level characters, and in that case the game is clearly far outside the general norm.

Exploring wilderness is not niche. And it's as interesting as the GM chooses to make it. I don't think your arguments really have a leg to stand on.

Your particular game may never feature wilderness exploration. In which case I could see an argument for the Ranger (or other "Wilderness" classes) not being very applicable for the campaign. And that's okay.

 

[Minigiant]

missing word is prep. The game expects the DM to at least have a map of the environment and have it be reasonable. They also expect the DM to have their lore in order, whether homebrew or official. If a DM doesn't know what's in his areas or why they're there, of course the players will struggle when they ask.

Is it not the same when a DM decides they'll just "wing" a combat encounter without a statblock?

Based on what I've seen and heard over the years.

Many DMs wing exploration
High level PCs have a lot of control where they go making mapping out constrained encounters harder
Combat has lots of rules and examples for DMs to pull out and use (CR statblocks)

Essentially 5e relies too heavily on the DM being a veteran or extremely creative to make the exploration pillar to work. So any class that leans on Exploration takes a hit at many tables.

Cool. And this is why Rangers have been given more spells

Except they really haven't.
Ranger has being getting very few new spells and many are reject druid and mage spells. Especially in the Exploration dept.

Some of the combat spells are nice though.

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud

I feel sorry that your DM can't come up with interesting wilderness encounters.

But I don't blame them since D&D offers little guides that doesn't lean to basic survivalism.

 

[CleverNickName]

I never really understood the notion that unless a character gets a mechanical bonus on something, they are immediately rubbish at it. (Or if another character is better at something, your character shouldn't even bother trying.) I wouldn't enjoy playing D&D at that table.

I think that character backgrounds have just as much to do with filling the Exploration pillar as character classes do. Two skill proficiencies, two tool proficiencies, and a minor (usually situational) benefit can make a big difference in a character's role.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that the ranger could focus on something else than the exploration pillars. Some thematic and design niche are left unfulfilled and I believe they could be presented as ''the ranger's things''.

Some ideas:

• Called shots
• The ''optional actions'' from the DMG: Climb on a Huge+ creature, Overrun, Tumble and Mark
• The Hunter's combat thingies could have been part of the base class
• Herbalism (curatives or toxins)
• Lure and Traps

If you give Called Shots to one class, sure as the gods made little green apples it'd be a matter of mere days before all classes had access to it somehow. Not that this is necessarily bad, mind you; I'm just saying there's no way in hell this would remain Ranger-only for long.

There's loads of open design space in herbs and herbalism (we have a homebrew system for such, and if we can do it WotC can do it much bigger and probably much better), and that's something that can be made almost exclusive to Rangers. I say 'almost' exclusive as a case can be made for Druids and-or Nature Clerics having some abilities here, but not as good as the Ranger.