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

[Bacon Bits]

How does it not? It is basically a Hunter's Mark lite. It is very awkward overlapping design.

The same way that burning hands doesn't invalidate fireball (or vice-versa).

 

[Asisreo]

The same way that burning hands doesn't invalidate fireball (or vice-versa).

Fireball is essentially supposed to invalidate burning hands. Many spells build themselves up from a lesser version to a more higher-level version.

Burning hands->fireball because they're both AoE pure damage spells that force dex saves. Then fireball->delayed blast fireball.

This doesn't mean total invalidation, but unless you're on a serious resource crunch, there's no reason to cast burning hands over fireball.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Even without considering its effectiveness I think the new Favored Foe is pretty poor design. There are just too many moving parts. We have:

• A trigger
• a limitation on how often it can be used per day
• a limitation on how often it can be used per turn
• concentration, on something that isn't a spell

All this for a tiny bit of extra damage per turn...

I'm wondering if WotC's designers are starting to feel the limitiatons of the 5e design space. If it continues like this 6e might not be as far away as we think.

 

[billd91]

Natural Explorer just says you don't have any problems and everything goes smoothly. Therefore there is little opportunity to be awesome.

It's a terrible abiltiy because it takes away the opportunity of the Ranger to shine.

It comes with all the fun pre-optimised out of it.

"Ok Ranger. Your time to shine. Roll three navigation checks to see if you can find your way throuh the perilous forest"
"It's my favoured terrain. I can't get lost"
"Oh, okay then. But it's difficult going to find a path. Make roll to see if you can find an easy path - otherwise it will be a slow journey".
"Difficult terrain doesn't slow us".
"Oh, ok then. But since you are so busy finding the path, someone else will have to forage for food. Who else has Survival?"
"Actually I can do that at the same time".
"Oh, ok. I guess you arrive at the dungeon then. A big stone ruined tower looms..."

At this point, I'm kind of wondering a few things:
1) Why does the DM not know what his ranger player is capable of doing?
2) Why does he think that interesting things only happen if dice rolls can be thrown/failed?
3) Why is he being a dick and not coming up with really interesting things on the journey that actually involve choices rather than fishing for dice roll failures?

 

[ScuroNotte]

I think they need to focus less on damage (never had this issue) and more on features/abilities that an outdoorsperson should have. Swimming and climbing - every terrain have obstacles that require a Ranger to have both of these abilities. Expertise in survival and nature - they thought that was critical to include for the Rogue scout when WoTC not only gave them these 2 skills, but then expertise on top of that. WoTC's Ranger is only permissible eventually in 3 terrains? So a Rogue is better at tracking and surviving in ANY terrain compared to a Ranger.
Probable second best option is for Rogue Scout to get extra attack and spells instead of sneak attack and you have the "Ranger class."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I happened to see the rest of the ranger features.
And if you look at it as a whole:
Defet explorer giving languages and later swim and climb speed, primal awareness giving free cast rangery spells (I would have liked them as ritual even more).
And the ability to become invisible for a turn makes the ranger quite formidable.
Also the fey wanderer features are not bad at all, increasing damage a bit and having an ally without concentration that even scales to 2 attacks per round is not too shabby at all.

I think people here are once again overreacting. No the improved ranger was not good. It was way imbalanced. Also the free concentrationless hunter's mark was so too. Fireball for a druid is also unneeded.
When we read about sorcerers being able to swap spells at long rest we had a lot of whining about wizards beeing invalidated... Now its out and wotc hates sorcerers.
I am glad that designers are not having pure power creep in mind when adding options.

 

[Laurefindel]

At this point, I'm kind of wondering a few things:
1) Why does the DM not know what his ranger player is capable of doing?
2) Why does he think that interesting things only happen if dice rolls can be thrown/failed?
3) Why is he being a dick and not coming up with really interesting things on the journey that actually involve choices rather than fishing for dice roll failures?

I'll leave @Don Durito defend their post, but it resonates with my perception of the ranger too.

1) The DM knows. This serves as an exposition of the perceived issue. It could have been done in many ways that didn't involved a DM or players. Still, it successfully explains @Don Durito 's issue with Natural Explorer.

2) Things don't only happen if dice are rolled. But ability checks are an integrated and expected way in D&D for resolving a challenge. Natural Explorer means the ranger is either no better than anyone else (if not in favoured terrain) or handwaves the challenge altogether (if in favoured terrain). There are a few other similar abilities in the game (swim speed and climb speed come to mind) but there aren't many, and NE evacuates the tension of many exploration challenges. Not necessarily in a good way.

3) DM is not being a dick. DM is being unimaginative. There is no dickery involved here. The bard doesn't have abilities allowing them to "win" social encounters without a check. The fighter doesn't have abilities allowing them to win a combat without a check. Most game I've seen mix player choices with ability checks/saves/attack rolls, if only to allow a character to succeed in something the player isn't necessarily good at. Saying "you're so good you don't need to roll" doesn't always serves the story. In my experience, it's usually the other way around.

If anything, DM could be seen as a dick for having the ranger lose its bearing or slowed by terrain despite its abilities.

 

[FrozenNorth]

At this point, I'm kind of wondering a few things:
1) Why does the DM not know what his ranger player is capable of doing?
2) Why does he think that interesting things only happen if dice rolls can be thrown/failed?
3) Why is he being a dick and not coming up with really interesting things on the journey that actually involve choices rather than fishing for dice roll failures?

IMHO, the answer to questions 2 and 3 is that the DMG doesn’t do a good job of giving DMs the tools to design interesting non-combat encounters.

 

[Asisreo]

I think they need to focus less on damage (never had this issue) and more on features/abilities that an outdoorsperson should have. Swimming and climbing - every terrain have obstacles that require a Ranger to have both of these abilities. Expertise in survival and nature - they thought that was critical to include for the Rogue scout when WoTC not only gave them these 2 skills, but then expertise on top of that. WoTC's Ranger is only permissible eventually in 3 terrains? So a Rogue is better at tracking and surviving in ANY terrain compared to a Ranger.
Probable second best option is for Rogue Scout to get extra attack and spells instead of sneak attack and you have the "Ranger class."

The problem is that its always about damage.

Think about it. Why do people want to have concentrationless HM? The answer can be distilled down to damage.

If you break concentration on your HM for Lightning Arrow, you'll have to either continue the fight without HM or recast it. Either way, you're losing damage on the spell slot you used for HM. But if you take the actual opportunity costs, you're far more likely to benefit from Lightning Arrow at an instant than just keeping HM up.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Even without considering its effectiveness I think the new Favored Foe is pretty poor design. There are just too many moving parts. We have:

• A trigger
• a limitation on how often it can be used per day
• a limitation on how often it can be used per turn
• concentration, on something that isn't a spell

All this for a tiny bit of extra damage per turn...

I'm wondering if WotC's designers are starting to feel the limitiatons of the 5e design space. If it continues like this 6e might not be as far away as we think.

It might be more helpful to think of it as a backdoor cantrip. I mean, a two-weapon fighting ranger can get 2d6 extra damage from Hunter's Mark a round while maintaining concentration. A potential extra 3d6 when you get Extra Attack.

But when you run out of spell slots (and don't have HM going any longer), this is the other option you have to beef damage up a little. But it's not meant to be as powerful as HM.

The design makes sense to me.

• Trigger - Works pretty much like a paladin's divine smite, and doesn't require a bonus action, which is great for TWF, or commanding your beast, or any other feature that might compete for that bonus action.
• Limitation on uses per day - They didn't want to just give a permanent +1dX to the ranger. Even so, a minute per usage pretty much equals 1 entire combat per Prof. Bonus.
• Limit on per turn usage - given the bonus damage increases later, it would effectively replace Hunter's Mark by 6th level if the damage applied to every attack.
• Concentration - without it, it would stack with HM, making it too powerful for an ability that is just effectively replacing a ribbon

And yeah, it is a "tiny bit" of extra damage, but it's replacing a pretty weak ability in the first place, and not meant to be a huge powerup.

Also, I don't think this has anything to do with the 5e design space (which implies creation of new things within the limits set by the original design); it's more about tinkering with a class that's been not completely satisfactory since the start of the edition.