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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8010041" data-attributes="member: 18">Mentioning one ability twice doesn't make it two abilities, mate.As I correctly said, literally one ability in the CFV increases damage. All the rest, the vast majority of CFV Ranger abilities, increase utility, mobility, or survivability. You said:That is just completely false. You said "all the flavour but niche noncombat abilities". CFV replaced ONE (1) noncombat ability with "MOAR DAMAGE". One. That's not the same as "all" mate. It's not even close.I don't agree. People coming to Rangers from outside decades of D&D, want someone who tracks, is an archer, maybe has an animal companion (not always), is expert at survival, and so on. What they don't want is someone who is only good at one terrain, and seems to be dedicated to murdering (in a potentially creepy way) a specific set of sentient beings.That's not part of the same package. That's part of a different package.Uh-huh, and in all previous editions Bard as was a half-caster or thereabouts, Paladins couldn't smite and had to be LG in 3 out of 4, and so on. Things change. Even things that have been long-established. Things that always been a bad idea, and FT/FE is exactly that kind of bad idea. It's perfect subclass material.The reason you haven't heard complaints about their inclusion is two-fold. First off, if you're posting on most D&D sites, you're talking to a bunch of grogs like us, and most grogs are rules-conservative, and prefer to retain things rather than change things. Second off, most people who don't like it don't even consider "could it be replaced with a different ability" because they're newer to the game. Over the years, in my experience, I'd say easily 20-30% of new players to D&D have wanted to play a Ranger as their first character, based on the concept (obviously this is anecdotal and YMMV etc.), particularly players who are not "typical" D&D player (i.e. white, male, kinda nerdy is "typical"), but also some "typical" ones. Loads of people love the idea of being sort of survival-capable, good-at-archery, quasi-Robin Hood figure, and if there's an animal companion in it, a bunch of people love that (this is partly why "Anything that can have a familiar" is in the next 30%). That's a LOT of players, in my experience. But when they see stuff like favoured enemy and favoured terrain (but particularly favoured enemies) I've seen the expressions of distaste on their faces. A lot of people don't want to be dedicated to murdering a specific group of creatures. It just doesn't fit the baseline. It finds inside the greater archetype, for sure, it definitely should be a Ranger subclass, but it shouldn't be the baseline. Even people not put off by it, dislike it because they're committing to focusing on certain creature types, even though they have little/no idea if they'll actually feature in the campaign (in like 90% of cases). It's the same with terrain - with the vast majority of campaigns, you have to pick a terrain, without having any idea if it'll actually be relevant.And you can say "Well, it doesn't matter, I'm proposing they get a mechanical benefit that will be perennially useful". Logically, that's true. But this isn't entirely logical. They'll be looking on their character sheet, and seeing their foe-specific and terrain specific bonuses outside of combat, and seeing how they aren't getting much use, and they'll be disappointed.So this should be an OPTION for people who WANT to engage with those shenanigans. Just like with Paladins, you don't have to be an LG Devotion Paladin as the only kind of Paladin anymore.Fewer? I can't argue with that. Obviously being less bad means less complaints. But it's still tying Ranger to this very specific "I love to kill [insert monster] whilst I am in [insert terrain]" deal which should be a subclass thing, not a base class thing.Also, in 2E and 3E, you could get rid of FE and FT via other mechanical options, like PrCs or Kits, and as noted in 4E, I don't think it was even a thing (if it was, it was in one of the Ranger classes, but not all). This is very relevant to this thread, because it's about design space. 5E has not had the design-space to get rid of anything that's in the base class until the CFV stuff. Arguably, as it's a UA (albeit a very popular one), it still doesn't. The only design space for replacing features has been in subclasses - hence those features should have been in subclasses.</blockquote>

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