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

[Minigiant]

The UA favored foe did something the Tasha's version doesn't: the Tasha's version has no utility. Hunter's Mark can be used on a target who you want to track, so it supports the danger's core schtick of being a Hunter.

Hunter's Mark should have always been a class ability. The Ranger could have been built on the Rogue chassis to allow for a bit more bonus damage too.

Nah.
Rangers are expected to be able to "tank" in a pinch or build into being a upfront warrior if desired.

D&D Rogues don't upfront fight anything that is a threat.

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Frankly WOTC had over 15 years of action RPGs to steal a mechanic for Ranger combat and stack some noncombat exploration aspects on what they copied.

How the Paladin has Divine Smite and a couple Smite spells in the PHB but the Ranger only has one Mark spell and is getting a Mark class feature 5 years later with almost no unique exploration spells is baffling.

At a certain point the "We empower your DM to invent things" mentality becomes a display of lack of imagination or a flood of apathy.

How many spells is Tasha's giving Ranger? How many are unique? I'd be shocked to see more than 10 and 2 respectively.

 

[Don Durito]

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?

Procedural rules are part of making wilderness exploration work and Natural Explorer either obviates them completely or does nothing to help at all.

As for non-combat encounters - most of the rules under Natural Explorer seem to be designed specifically to deal with procedural issues. Once you get to real kind of encoutner it's quite limited and not very clear. If you come to a overturned cart in the middle of a road through a forest do you get double proficieny on the roll to investigate? (Not very clear - it's just an overturned cart - the fact that it's in a forest doesn't necessarily make it related to the forest - and there's good chance the Wizard will still beat you at Int rolls anyway). You would definitely get double proficiency to follow any tracks from the wagon if you are in your favoured terrain, but if you had expertise in Survival you could do the same even if the Wagon was in the mountains, or in a swamp, or on a grassland, or rolling hills or tundra or...

And since you won't run into any procedural problems going through your favourite terrain you will spend less time there.

This has so often been the problem with a Ranger, it's a class that can have a great solution to all sorts of problems, if only you made the right guess when you levelled up.
Did you choose a Favoured Enemy that will come up lots? Did you choose the Favoured Terrain that is going to be most central to the campaign? When you chose spells that will be useless most of the time but just might be awesome for a situation now and then did you choose the right ones with your limited picks? Or are you sitting there thinking "Damn it. Water Breathing would have been so handy here - too bad I thought Protection from Energy would be more useful."

So again. What the Ranger needs is Expertise in Perception and Survival and (Druid) Ritual Casting. The guessing game needs to go!

 

[squibbles]

Well, the Tasha's preview is out, and the Ranger got utterly shafted, namely in its Favored Foe feature.

The exact text (from this source):

Favored Foe​

1st-level ranger feature, which replaces the Favored Enemy feature and works with the Foe Slayer feature​

​

When you hit a creature with an attack roll, you can call on your mystical bond with nature to mark the target as your favored enemy for 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell)​

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The first time on each of your turns that you hit the favored enemy and deal damage to it, including when you mark it, you can increase that damage by 1d4.​

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You can use this feature to mark a favored enemy a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.​

​

This feature's extra damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class: to 1d6 at 6th level and to 1d8 at 14th level.​

So 1d4 damage. On only one hit per round. Requires your concentration even though it's not a spell. And you can only use it proficiency bonus times per day.

This is literally a dollar-store version of Hunter's Mark.

I'm not sure if anybody brought this up already--I only read pages 1, 2, 11, and 12--but my first impression is that the new favored foe is much better integrated with the ranger's other mechanics than hunter's mark is.

"When you hit a creature with an attack roll" is way better for rangers than "as a bonus action".

Rangers want a bonus action for two-weapon fighting, planar warrior, slayer's prey, vanish, and nine different spells. Though all nine ranger bonus action spells require concentration, favored foe would still work better with three of them than hunter's mark does--hail of thorns, zephyr strike, and lightning arrow.

The reduction in kludge definitely justifies some downsides--though I'm not confident that the downsides they went with are the right ones.

...and in any case, favored foe beats the bejesus out of favored enemy's situational tracking and intelligence checks ribbon.

 

[Shardstone]

Then you run into issues of having FF and HM up at the same time, which is thematically redundant and more meta-gamey than anything else.

Also, I think from a damage standpoint, rangers are fine. Several subclasses (Hunter, monster slayer, gloom stalker, etc) all have abilities that add damage to attacks anyway that don't use up spell slots, which paladins don't get. FF is allowing the ranger to essentially get HM without needing to blow spell slots, which adds a ton of flexibility. I think that's getting lost. i think people are focusing on the DPR bit and/or viewing this in a white room arena style where it doesn't factor in usability for out of combat scenarios, or when you have several encounters a day. If FF saves me from blowing spells I'd normally use for HM, then that allows me to help heal my allies, or increase my movement (jump, longstrider), or be able to still use spells (including those concentration spells you seem to be worked up about) when otherwise I'd have been out of spells due to previous encounters.

Note that damage never came up with what I was saying

Favored Foe originally let the Ranger cast Hunter's Mark without concentration. That should be what was used. Balance can be done the same way: make it so Hunter Mark's damage ONLY procs once per turn when cast in this unique way. Could also say its damage die changes to what the actual Favored Foe's scaling is. And in 5E, since you can't be under the influence of the same spell twice, you can't stack it!

That being said, my argument has nothing to do about damage, its only about how you can't use the vast majority of the Ranger's spells because of both hunter's mark and Favored Foe, and I find that poor design overall.

 

[Sacrosanct]

That being said, my argument has nothing to do about damage, its only about how you can't use the vast majority of the Ranger's spells because of both hunter's mark and Favored Foe, and I find that poor design overall.

You can use all of the rangers spells. Just not all of them at the same time as FF and HM. That hasn't changed (with HM anyway). And that is a matter of personal opinion I guess, and not necessarily poor design. If you're choosing to concentrate on a skill/power/spell to increase your damage, then I'm perfectly OK with not being able to concentrate on other spells at the same time. But this idea that you're losing out just isn't accurate. Not only can you now use FF that didn't exist before, but because FF exists, you're not as reliant on casting your spell slots on HM to increase your damage, freeing them up for other use for other scenarios.

Edit I get people loved the UA version, but think about that for a second. Why did people love it so much? Because it was super good. so it stands to reason that it could have been too good. I strongly suspect that if that UA never showed up, and we got this change now as it appears in Tasha's, people would be happy instead of saying how much is sucks. It appears to suck only because you (general you) saw the super uber version earlier.

 

[Shardstone]

Favored Foe uses Concentration, so you still aren't getting use out of your spell slots. Because of that, it is the same as having been forced to cast Hunter's Mark. I think you may have gotten confused in my argument, so let me rephrase:

• The bulk of the Ranger's spell list in combat requires Concentration.
• Because Hunter's Mark AND Favored Foe use Concentration, you can't enjoy the usagae of your main class feature as freely as virtually any other class.
• Because the Ranger cannot use Favored Foe AND its spell list, its is markedly different from every other class, and the reasons for this do not, in my opinion, justify it. +1d6 damage (scaling) once per turn a few times per Long Rest is NOT more powerful a Paladin's Smite or an Artificer's Infusions, so why is it they can enjoy their spell lists but the Ranger cannot?

If you do not think the Ranger would be balanced AND more enjoyable if Favored Foe or Hunter's Mark didn't require Concentration, then ok, that's our discussion! But I personally think the Ranger would be a more enjoyable and satisfying class if its core class feature did not eat up Concentration. Is it better than the current Favored Enemy? Yes! But just because its better now doesn't it can't be even MORE better, you know?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Favored Foe uses Concentration, so you still aren't getting use out of your spell slots.

Yes, you are. Because you don't have FF up all the time, every minute, every adventuring day. You still have all of your spells that you can cast whenever you want. You just can't have them at the same time, which hasn't changed from HM anyway. FF gives you a way to get a damage bonus and save your spell slots for later. I guarantee you that in a typical adventuring day, you're still getting use out of your spell slots because you won't have FF up for every battle, for the whole battle. I don't know why you keep refusing to acknowledge this.

 

[Shardstone]

Yes, you are. Because you don't have FF up all the time, every minute, every adventuring day. You still have all of your spells that you can cast whenever you want. You just can't have them at the same time, which hasn't changed from HM anyway. FF gives you a way to get a damage bonus and save your spell slots for later. I guarantee you that in a typical adventuring day, you're still getting use out of your spell slots because you won't have FF up for every battle, for the whole battle. I don't know why you keep refusing to acknowledge this.

I acknowledged it. I don't think that play pattern is very fun or satisfying compared to what it could be if FF was a modified HM without concentration and different damage scaling. That's the core of what I'm getting at. Not being able to use your spells alongside your main class feature, which is what every other class BUT the Druid does (and which Druid subclasses and a later class feature specifically get around!), isn't very satisfying to me. And because it is broken to have this, and because it makes the Ranger more satisfying to play, I think it should have been what the official Favored Foe was in Tasha's.

What I don't know is why you keep trying to tell me that because it isn't terrible (its not!) it doesn't need to be better. That's a weird stance to take. Unless you think my propose criticisms are somehow unbalancing, I'm not quite sure what we're debating anymore!

 

[Sacrosanct]

I acknowledged it. I don't think that play pattern is very fun or satisfying compared to what it could be if FF was a modified HM without concentration and different damage scaling. That's the core of what I'm getting at. Not being able to use your spells alongside your main class feature, which is what every other class BUT the Druid does (and which Druid subclasses and a later class feature specifically get around!), isn't very satisfying to me. And because it is broken to have this, and because it makes the Ranger more satisfying to play, I think it should have been what the official Favored Foe was in Tasha's.

Which classes get to use a persistent class ability to increase damage every round AND also cast other concentration spells at the same time? I know! The ranger....(colossus slayer, gloom stalker, monsters slayer, etc) Not every other class. do you have some examples? (extra d8 cleric damage doesn't count because that's specifically meant to address lack of extra attack feature).

What I don't know is why you keep trying to tell me that because it isn't terrible (its not!) it doesn't need to be better. That's a weird stance to take.

If it seems weird to you, it's probably because I never said that. That's a strawman. I never said it's not terrible and thus shouldn't be improved. I said it's already good enough. And I said if you (general you) never saw UA, then you'd think this is a great improvement.

 

[Shardstone]

Which classes get to use a persistent class ability to increase damage every round AND also cast other concentration spells at the same time? I know! The ranger....(colossus slayer, gloom stalker, monsters slayer, etc) Not every other class. do you have some examples? (extra d8 cleric damage doesn't count because that's specifically meant to address lack of extra attack feature).


If it seems weird to you, it's probably because I never said that. That's a strawman. I never said it's not terrible and thus shouldn't be improved. I said it's already good enough. And I said if you (general you) never saw UA, then you'd think this is a great improvement.

Paladin can stack Smites with Smite Spells on its turn.

Rogue's power is always on.

Cleric Divine Divinitiy's never interfere with Concentration, even on minute long events.

Paladin auras too!

Monk ki features can be used even if you have a Concentration spell up.

Barbarian is an exception, since you can't cast ANY spells as a raging Barbarian, so you get one point there

Hexblades can maintain their curse without concentration! Wild! And Shadow Sorcerers their summons at 6th level! And Druids like the Wildfire, Star, or Fungus, who use their Wild Shapes to transform into "super Druid" states.

Quite a few can use their class abilities while concentrating. They may use another resource, sometimes even spell slots, but I've already said if Favored Foe used a spell slot and didn't have concentration I'd be more satisfied!

By the way, it wasn't a strawman if you said it was good enough, haha. I may have used stronger language, but what I typed and what you typed is philosophically the same thing! You think its good enough, and I think that being good enough shouldn't be where we stop!