D&D (2024) Ranger playtest discussion

[Bill Zebub]

Exactly

Favored Enemy​

Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy.
You gain one of the following features of your choice.
Banisher
You are a bane to those not of this world. When you score a critical it against an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead, you deal an additional 1d12 damage.
Colossus Slayer
Your tenacity can wear down the most potent foes. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, the creature takes an extra 1d8 damage if it’s below its hit point maximum. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.
Giant Killer
When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provided that you can see the creature.
Horde Breaker
Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and within range of your weapon.
Lone Stalker
Seclusion sharpens you ire. When you hit a creature with a weapon or Unarmed strike, you deal an additional 1d10 damage if there are no allied or hostile creatures within 20 feet of you. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.
Man Catcher
Your weapon attacks and unarmed strikes against giants and humaniods score critical hits on a roll of 18, 19, or 20.

When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice.

You choose one additional favored enemy feature and an associated language, at 6th and 14th level. As you gain levels, your choices should reflect the types of monsters you have encountered on your adventures.

So...without going into whether or not those abilities are well-designed mechanically, in my opinion they demonstrate the problem with the "favored enemy" concept. While each (or most) of them carry some flavor suggesting "favored enemy" none of them really implement it. And I don't mean this as a criticism against your ideas, just of the futility of trying to force fit broadly applicable mechanics into the "favored enemy" concept.

Banisher: six different categories of opponent? So, brownies, liches, devas, beholders, and gelatinous cubes are all favored enemies?
Colossus Slayer: sure, colossi tend to have more HP, and thus are more likely to be below max HP during a fight, but this ability also affects tiny creatures missing one HP. So favored enemy is "injured creatures"?
Giant Killer: if "Giant" refers to size, and not creature type, this one somewhat narrows down the field, but is still quite broad.
Horde Breaker: so, "favored enemy" is any enemy that isn't completely by itself? A drow riding a giant spider, for example, would still qualify.
Lone Stalker: this says nothing about the enemy, just the Ranger's modus operandi
Man Stalker: this is probably the optimal pick, in the absence of other information about the campaign, just because it covers so many creatures you are likely to fight: bandits, evil wizards, orcs, goblins, drow, other PCs (!?!?!), and of course every type of giant.

I have no problem with giving players a choice of fun abilities (although in general my preference is for abilities that result in different decision-making, not just ones that make you better at what you were going to do anyway. For example, I like...and have thought of the idea myself...of getting an opportunity attack against Large+ creatures when they miss you, because it encourages archers to move in close). Again, my issue is just with continuing to try to force fit abilities under the name Favored Enemy. We (and WotC) should just give up on that.

Unless, that is, the favored enemy of all Rangers is simply "monsters" and is implicit in the class design. And then I would design the abilities so that they help the entire party, not just increase the damage of the Ranger him/herself.

 

[Minigiant]

So...without going into whether or not those abilities are well-designed mechanically, in my opinion they demonstrate the problem with the "favored enemy" concept. While each (or most) of them carry some flavor suggesting "favored enemy" none of them really implement it. And I don't mean this as a criticism against your ideas, just of the futility of trying to force fit broadly applicable mechanics into the "favored enemy" concept.

Banisher: six different categories of opponent? So, brownies, liches, devas, beholders, and gelatinous cubes are all favored enemies?
Colossus Slayer: sure, colossi tend to have more HP, and thus are more likely to be below max HP during a fight, but this ability also affects tiny creatures missing one HP. So favored enemy is "injured creatures"?
Giant Killer: if "Giant" refers to size, and not creature type, this one somewhat narrows down the field, but is still quite broad.
Horde Breaker: so, "favored enemy" is any enemy that isn't completely by itself? A drow riding a giant spider, for example, would still qualify.
Lone Stalker: this says nothing about the enemy, just the Ranger's modus operandi
Man Stalker: this is probably the optimal pick, in the absence of other information about the campaign, just because it covers so many creatures you are likely to fight: bandits, evil wizards, orcs, goblins, drow, other PCs (!?!?!), and of course every type of giant.

How different physically and magically is a human and an orc. If you stab them,do they not both bleed. An orc hater can use anti-orc tactics on an elf or human, no? Don't giants and dragons both have weak ankles? Being surrounded by tieflings is not much different that being surrounded by gnolls.

There is a middle between "flavorful but weak" and "Bland and strong."
The Fighter is supposed to be the specialized generalist not the Ranger.

 

[Bill Zebub]

How different physically and magically is a human and an orc. If you stab them,do they not both bleed. An orc hater can use anti-orc tactics on an elf or human, no? Don't giants and dragons both have weak ankles? Being surrounded by tieflings is not much different that being surrounded by gnolls.

There is a middle between "flavorful but weak" and "Bland and strong."
The Fighter is supposed to be the specialized generalist not the Ranger.

Don't all legged creatures have weak ankles?
Do two tieflings (or stirges, or purple worms) really count as a "horde"? (And is "more than one opponent" really a favored enemy or more of a tactical situation?)
Don't nearly all of them bleed?

Again, I'm not taking issue with the mechanics themselves, just with the assertion that the concept is fine but WotC implemented in badly. I think the concept is an awkward fit for the needs of an RPG.

I'd rather just see the best-designed mechanics possible, without constraining them by trying to fit them to the label of "favored enemy".

EDIT: Also, I have no need to "win" this point and persuade others. Just stating how I feel about it as I contemplate what I think a Ranger should be. Not that I have any hope/expectation WotC will agree with me.

 

[Gammadoodler]

When they tested concetration free hunter's mark for Tasha, and they backpaddeled, a lot of people were very angry with wotc...

Seems thay can't please everyone. Suprise.

Are you referring to something in UA or the 'Favored Foe' feature in Tasha's? I ask because Favored Foe in Tashas required concentration and was, in most ways, worse than Hunters Mark from 1-20.

Sure, you can't please everyone, but trying to help a class by giving it a worse version of something they can already do is a particularly bad way to try and please the people who think the class needs help.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Are you referring to something in UA or the 'Favored Foe' feature in Tasha's? I ask because Favored Foe in Tashas required concentration and was, in most ways, worse than Hunters Mark from 1-20.

Sure, you can't please everyone, but trying to help a class by giving it a worse version of something they can already do is a particularly bad way to try and please the people who think the class needs help.

But sometimes a "worse" version of something comes with other benefits (e.g. maybe it's free, or maybe the class gets other goodies on top of it, etc.) or maybe it could come with other benefits. Reactions on the internet are often more emotional than rational.

Instead of "this is terrible wotc sucks the sky is falling" I'd love to see more rational, constructive input. "Here's why this new version is worse. But I see what the advantage of the new version is. Here are some creative solutions..."

Or am I just being delusional that this will ever happen?

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Favored Foe in Tashas required concentration and was, in most ways, worse than Hunters Mark from 1-20.

But most notably, it did free up Ranger slots for something other than spamming Hunter's Mark.

I cannot really put into words how MEH it feels to see them go back to the HM that acts like a class feature, but is not actually a class feature because that'd be too close to what 4e Strikers did, and also scales based on how many attacks you get off which just pushes certain fighting styles only.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Are you referring to something in UA or the 'Favored Foe' feature in Tasha's? I ask because Favored Foe in Tashas required concentration and was, in most ways, worse than Hunters Mark from 1-20.

Sure, you can't please everyone, but trying to help a class by giving it a worse version of something they can already do is a particularly bad way to try and please the people who think the class needs help.

Yes. I refer to an unearthed arcana, that allowed concentration free hunter's mark. And this turned out to become favoured foe of tasha's.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes. I refer to an unearthed arcana, that allowed concentration free hunter's mark. And this turned out to become favoured foe of tasha's.

The hunters mark issue has been a Goldilocks scenario. The UA version people thought was too powerful. The Tasha's version is too weak. The newest one is probably fine, but it has people wanting the original UA version again which the community dubbed too strong before and probably will do so again.

This is why it's good to get feedback, but crowdsourcing design is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Gammadoodler]

But sometimes a "worse" version of something comes with other benefits (e.g. maybe it's free, or maybe the class gets other goodies on top of it, etc.) or maybe it could come with other benefits. Reactions on the internet are often more emotional than rational.

Instead of "this is terrible wotc sucks the sky is falling" I'd love to see more rational, constructive input. "Here's why this new version is worse. But I see what the advantage of the new version is. Here are some creative solutions..."

Or am I just being delusional that this will ever happen?

Apologies. Wasn't looking to fully relitigate the issue with Tasha's Favored Foe.

The pros: no bonus action tax, a new and separate resource pool, some amount of scaling

The cons: Concentration so incompatible with hunters mark (a level 1 spell) but only applies to a single attack and uses a worse or equivalalent damage die as hunters mark for most of the level range..and cannot be switched between targets, so has a hard cap of 6 targets per day at max level. Offers zero exploration benefits.

So, it replaces an exploration feature with a pure damage feature that competes(poorly) with another damage feature, but with an extra resource pool. Maybe the extra resource is worth the sacrificed exploration benefits? And you at least always know you can use it if you have it.. but compared to most of what you do as a ranger it's a third-string kind of feature; you use it when you don't have or don't need your better options.

I doubt that these points have gone undiscussed since Tasha's was released? Or did all that somehow completely fly under the radar amid a wailing and gnashing of teeth?

I also think that, generally speaking, the strengths and criticisms of the oneD&D ranger within this thread have been articulated fairly reasonably thus far. (Basically its stonger but blander).There have been some more impassioned expressions of it than others but not a ton of.."this is terrible wotc sucks the sky is falling".

On the other hand..in addition to..
you all just want power creep..
we can now add..
you all are unappreciative and refuse to participate in rational discussion

..to the "constructive" discourse. Cool.

 

[gorice]

The thing about having a character created to deal with particular types of foes and terrain is that it's a signal to the DM to make those things important in the campaign. Unfortunately, similar abilities are pretty rare in 5e, and the DMG is far more interested in telling people how to invent a cosmology from scratch, rather than sitting them down and saying 'look at your player's character sheets and work from there.' Published adventures are of course not much help, either.

So, while I think abilities like Favoured Foe are cool and flavourful, I don't think they fit the game as it exists, or at least, as many people play it.