have any of these abilities have seen use in your game?

[messy]

have any of these abilities have seen use in your game?
stonecunning
low-light vision
aura
woodland stride
trackless step
slow fall
timeless body
swift tracker

 

[delericho]

Just the low-light vision and the aura. I don't recall any of the others ever coming up. To be honest, neither of the two that have come up have come up very often.

 

[Dog Moon]

I think very rarely Stonecunning and Slow Fall. The others... I want to say Woodland Stride came up like once. But otherwise, if they were removed from the game, I don't think our group would miss them at all.

 

[gamerprinter]

There seems to be a lot of stealth activities in our games, and there's almost always a ranger in play, so woodland stride, trackless step and swift tracker rears up now and again.

There is frequent attempts to dispell or otherwise recognize what kind of magic is being cast or has been cast, so use of magical auras comes up fairly frequently. We don't do much underdark/cavern/dungeon delving and haven't played many Underdark races so stonecunning has never come up.

Only a few (including myself) have run monks in our games, though Slow Fall has come up a time or two. Since we run Pathfinder mostly these days, there are a couple monk specific feats that require Slow Fall as a prerequisite - spiderwalk and cloudwalk. One is a limited use/range spider climb, while the other is a limited use/range airwalk - the distance being distance of your slow fall - which are excellent ninja like abilities, and you can be sure that our monks like those abilities.

 

[Crothian]

All of them say use in our games. As a DM I think it is important to make the abilities of the PCs come up in the game.

 

[was]

The ranger abilities come up often in our group

 

[Tovec]

ALL, though I didn't select the swift tracker simply because we tend to ignore the RAW DCs for skill checks in the first place - or at least stretch the rules. Like we allow anyone to move at full speed while stealth/move silently/hide. Or forget the modifiers in a lot of cases (bluff checks?) so, something that removes a -5 that we don't often apply in the first place doesn't come up too often. So, in MY games it doesn't really apply - thus unchecked. That said, in games where they do use the DCs as written - then it is a good ability and does come up often (I like rangers).

I've played races with low-light vision simply because they have it. Not often, but it has happened. I often play elves so it is a frequent thing to come up.

Stoncunning has come up, but it isn't one I like so I tend to avoid it when possible. But in most games I've been in or run there is a standard practice of having the dwarf walk around the exterior wall "looking for doors" aka getting his free check when passing in 10 feet. I dislike the rule but it does still come up. So "it has seen use" in my game, unfortunately.

Timeless body comes up in practically every game where we are playing at near-epic. Frequently when playing monks before that level. Abilities like that one are part of the reason why I enjoy monks - even though they are objectively kind of terrible, they're my favourite class.

Slow Fall is another one of those abilities - and why I get so upset when these types of abilities are removed to make the monk "more fighter" instead of "more utility/rogue." But I have once fallen from the stratosphere and managed to stick the landing by aiming for a tree and slow falling my way down it. Honestly I just wish the slow fall ability reduced the fall damage by Xd6, and eventually turned it into "any height" and ignored the wall requirement.

By "Auras" I assume you mean like the cleric and paladin auras? This is one I never really understood until fairly recently (like 2011 ). Now it absolutely is how it is run in my games or games I'm in to explain how 'detect evil' works. Heck last Saturday I explained that as a 15th level evil character I would only have a moderate aura of evil and that was only because we were 15th level. Whereas an 11th level cleric would have a overwhelming one. Helped the party paladin NOT smite me upon first meeting me - got him to rewrite his code Just on the explanation of the aura.

All of the druid (or ranger) abilities have come up [again see swift tracker] often enough. Trackless step made an antagonist we were chasing once much more annoying - a simple class ability turned a regular encounter into a mini-boss. Woodland stride is also helpful, if niche, in all kinds of maps - especially those that have an 'official' map from some product or other. When actual hazards show up, it is amazing to be the one guy without that problem. The niche part comes in that these kinds of terrain problems don't usually show when the DM is just winging it in a homebrew game (most of the games I play). But it is still a great ability.