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

[Lanefan]

Yeah, create a game called Forests & Flowers, and all the rangers can go there, and leave the Dungeons & Dragons to the rest of us.

Until, of course, a situation arises where the wilderness IS the adventure: there's numerous published modules out there where the 'adventure' is the journey itself rather than what happens at the end point.

 

[Mistwell]

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

I suspect the WotC design team (along with 90% of the population of the planet) share my opinion about the wilderness, yes.

That's why wizards invented teleportation.

This might be the nerdiest comment of the month. "The outdoors is just boring open mud!"

 

[Bacon Bits]

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

I suspect the WotC design team (along with 90% of the population of the planet) share my opinion about the wilderness, yes.

That's why wizards invented teleportation.

From an adventure or encounter design perspective, there is no difference whatsoever between a dungeon and an open wilderness. The only difference in any practical aspect to gameplay is that the outdoors is typically naturally lit, typically offers less restrictions on movement, and generally doesn't conform to a square grid as well as a hex grid.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There's loads of open design space in herbs and herbalism (we have a homebrew system for such, and if we can do it WotC can do it much bigger and probably much better), and that's something that can be made almost exclusive to Rangers. I say 'almost' exclusive as a case can be made for Druids and-or Nature Clerics having some abilities here, but not as good as the Ranger.

Troll gift. Wolfsbane.
The ability to make a "poison" specific to a creature, that ignores poison resistance and turns immunity to resistance. More than just damage, too. Wolfsbane shuts down shapeshifting, Trolls gift shuts down regen, wyrmbane slows the target and makes flight require a strength save every round, etc.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Exploring the wilderness is niche. It's also boring. Exploring dungeons and cities is much more interesting, because they have stuff in them, not just boring open space and mud.

There is absolutely "stuff" in the wilderness. This is...perhaps the most inaccurate thing I've seen someone say in a long time, on these forums.

 

[Lanefan]

From an adventure or encounter design perspective, there is no difference whatsoever between a dungeon and an open wilderness. The only difference in any practical aspect to gameplay is that the outdoors is typically naturally lit, typically offers less restrictions on movement, and generally doesn't conform to a square grid as well as a hex grid.

Disagree about the hexgrid: if one is trying to orient things to the cardinal directions (N, S, E, W) then IME grid works way better.

 

[Don Durito]

This might be the nerdiest comment of the month. "The outdoors is just boring open mud!"

I need to go and write the series of blog posts I've been musing on about how to run a dungeon crawl in the wilderness without a dungeon.

And other ways to make the wilderness travel and exploration (two different things!) interesting.

 

[Lanefan]

Troll gift. Wolfsbane.
The ability to make a "poison" specific to a creature, that ignores poison resistance and turns immunity to resistance. More than just damage, too. Wolfsbane shuts down shapeshifting, Trolls gift shuts down regen, wyrmbane slows the target and makes flight require a strength save every round, etc.

The trick with things like that is getting them in to the target creature. (also, for thems as care, poison use is specifically called out as Evil in 1e by RAW, I'm not sure how long this proviso lasted through later editions)

But these are good ideas, to be sure.

Most of our herbs are either curative or defensive; while some provide temporary personal buffs (the canonical pop-culture example of course being Popeye's spinach). There's a few that can be used offensively e.g. Calodar's Flower, a bulb that when thrown against a surface pops and releases a 10'-radius sleep gas, but those are unusual. We've got maybe 50 different herbs and there's always room for more.

Rangers are by far the best at finding and identifying these, and in cases where they must be applied (e.g. nearly all the curatives) they're the best at that too.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The trick with things like that is getting them in to the target creature.

The ranger ain't exactly bad at hitting things with weapons.

 

[Minigiant]

I never really understood the notion that unless a character gets a mechanical bonus on something, they are immediately rubbish at it. (Or if another character is better at something, your character shouldn't even bother trying.) I wouldn't enjoy playing D&D at that table.

I think that character backgrounds have just as much to do with filling the Exploration pillar as character classes do. Two skill proficiencies, two tool proficiencies, and a minor (usually situational) benefit can make a big difference in a character's role.

It's lessthat the ranger needs mechanical bonuses.
It's more that, as you can see with a few response, a lot of DMs don't know how to make wilderness encounters interesting and half of the ranger is based on that.

It's like if a lot of DMs didn't know how to do social encounters and you were playing a bard. People would be calling for more social encounter advice... or more sonic and song spells for bards.