D&D (2024) Ranger 2024 is a bigger joke than Ranger 2014:

[Minigiant]

Again, where is your evidence that few want these things?

Because I've experienced it.

Because YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, and other content creators talk about it.

Because "skipping exploration" is a D&D meme

Because other publishers go out their way to create new rules that aren't skipped.

Go ahead. Make a ENworld poll about whether you like tracking food, water, shelter, ammo, clothes...

You know what will be the result.

 

[Corinnguard]

Go ahead. Make a ENworld poll about whether you like tracking food, water, shelter, ammo, clothes...

You know what will be the result.

That would require coming up with a conclusion beforehand, and then fudging the results so they meet and only meet that conclusion. That's not how polls work.

 

[Minigiant]

You should check your PHB and character sheets. Survival is a skill.

I also note you didn't answer the question about Tiny Hut. Tiny Hut does not skip the process of making a camp, it does not skip the process of hiding a camp (it is a giant opaque orb). All it does, and all the supposed problem is, is that it prevents you from being attacked while you sleep, as long as the enemy isn't in the area when you cast it, or can't dispel magic, or doesn't burrow up from beneath.

Honestly, I have always considered trying to refocus the ranger into the "can we find enough food and water to survive" class to be a mistake. That style of gameplay really falls off at higher levels, and not just because of spells. I mean, think about it, you need to travel from Town A to Town B, if you make the forest so harsh, so inhospitable, so deadly that only a party with a 13th level ranger could even hope to traverse such a deadly environment... then the party is just going to join a merchant caravan and travel along the roads. Because the party might not even HAVE a ranger, and you need to get to Town B, so there are going to be solutions. You need to have extreme threats for high level rangers to tackle, and "find food and water in a forest" isn't even something that normal, everyday people truly struggle with doing. Let alone world-class rangers.

Exactly.

The Archmages, Knight Commander, Red Cardinal, and Third Seat of the Black Hand aren't starving in the woods and needing the Ranger Lord to feed them.

They need the Ranger Lord because he knows how to calm the local Faerie Princess, predict the next Psi-clone, pacify a spontaneously revived T-Rex, and terrifies the local wild tribes and predator animals into hiding.

The MM has always had a problem with not having enough animal, plant, and fey threats at mid and high levels nor enough high level obstacles in the darkest forests, highest mountains, vilest swamps, and deepest caverns.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why am I the only one not allowed to make those. Why is that a priviledge of ranger "fans" ?

You're not the only one, but I can't go around calling out everyone. I've got stuff to do today.

 

[g00se99994]

I think they would have reduced in half the amount of complaints about this class if they got rid of concentration on hunters mark.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think they would have reduced in half the amount of complaints about this class if they got rid of concentration on hunters mark.

Nope. Because then there would have been indeed a reason to complain. At least if it came before level 13.

Maybe push down level 13 ability to 9 and concentration free at 13 would be in order.
Maybe capstone concentration free and d10 would also be ok.

 

[Rocker26a]

I think concentration on class features in general is just a bad idea. You wouldn't want it on Wild Shape, you wouldn't want it on Rage, you wouldn't want it on a Paladin's aura, and on down the list. It can even be a bitter pill to swallow for subclass features, like Invoke Duplicity.
It's just that Hunter's Mark started as/still is a concentration spell apart from this class feature, so it has that baggage.

 

[CreamCloud0]

You should check your PHB and character sheets. Survival is a skill.

I also note you didn't answer the question about Tiny Hut. Tiny Hut does not skip the process of making a camp, it does not skip the process of hiding a camp (it is a giant opaque orb). All it does, and all the supposed problem is, is that it prevents you from being attacked while you sleep, as long as the enemy isn't in the area when you cast it, or can't dispel magic, or doesn't burrow up from beneath.

Honestly, I have always considered trying to refocus the ranger into the "can we find enough food and water to survive" class to be a mistake. That style of gameplay really falls off at higher levels, and not just because of spells. I mean, think about it, you need to travel from Town A to Town B, if you make the forest so harsh, so inhospitable, so deadly that only a party with a 13th level ranger could even hope to traverse such a deadly environment... then the party is just going to join a merchant caravan and travel along the roads. Because the party might not even HAVE a ranger, and you need to get to Town B, so there are going to be solutions. You need to have extreme threats for high level rangers to tackle, and "find food and water in a forest" isn't even something that normal, everyday people truly struggle with doing. Let alone world-class rangers.

while the food/water tracking could be discarded with little harm to them i think the real killing blow to exploration ranger is the lack of like, overland hexcrawl navigation, being able to ensure the party is not veering off course and thinking they're in a different hex to where they actually are, finding safe havens to be able to long rest in in the wilds and scavenging herbs to whip up healing potions in the interim, passing nature and survival checks to know how to deal with or avoid environmental hazards to conserve resources.

 

[Minigiant]

I think they would have reduced in half the amount of complaints about this class if they got rid of concentration on hunters mark.

The complaints would have shifted to it being too high level or why Hunters Mark.

 

[ECMO3]

yeah,
I see this as a nice dip of fighter archer.

Ftr11/Rgr1 would be nice of round1 burst, that is 6 possible applications of HM.

Sure, but that is not much of a Ranger. A fighter 12 with Fey Touched would be largely the same and an EK 12 with Fey touched would be substantially better at combat and could do this many times a day.

Also if you took Fey Touched you would have the option of Hex instead of Hunters Mark which is a better spell for most builds.