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

[Sword of Spirit]

A Monster Slayer will be wanting to use Slayers eye on round 1 (which chews up his bonus action). Now on round 1 he can use Favored Foe AND use his Slayers eye (dropping FF for HM if he wants after Round 1). Ditto with Beastmasters, who likely want to command the Beast to do something on round 1 other than simply Dodge.

That makes sense. Could be useful for those subclasses. I kind of wish they'd include more sidebars explaining intention like they do in some of the UAs. Maybe they will in Tashas. My immediate thought isn't "how can I use this with sub-classes from XGtE?" but "how does this work with the PHB?" It is coming out in the same book that lets Beast Masters use their bonus action instead of their action to command select companions, so maybe that's the intentional tie in.

 

[Flamestrike]

You are traveling in the mountains, come across a man with a seeping, gangrenous wound. Do you have expertise on the Medicine check? Only if somehow that wound relates to "mountains"

Of course you do. You've been collecting healing herbs on the journey, or know of a nearby herb or natural remedy that would heal the man.

Like how Aragorn knew how to heal Frodo:

Athelas

 

[Asisreo]

A party with a Ranger (Outlander) in Chult:

DM: You move at 10 miles per day because of the difficult terrain of the jung..
Ranger: Nope. We move at normal speed as per the DMG; 24 miles per day.
DM OK then, this is a hexcrawl and you need to make Survival checks or you get los...
Ranger: Nope. I never get lost. I also have a good idea of whats around me (ruins, settlements, terrain features etc) in the local area at all times.
DM: OK, food and water are hard to...
Ranger: Nope. I can feed myself and up to 10 people with no checks required.
DM: OK, screw it, where do you want to go?

This doesn't prove that you removed the fun. If anything, it just sounds like you disappointed a DM bent on starving your characters.

Imagine if the Ranger wasn't in the party.

DM:You move at 10 Miles per Hour because the difficult terrain of the Jungle
party: oh.
DM: Oh, and if you ever want to get somewhere, roll a D20. If its low, you just don't do that.
Party: ummm...
DM: Also, food and water is hard to get, so you'll need to constantly make more rolls or suffer exhaustion! This is fun, right guys? ...guys?



In play, this looks like

party: hey, let's go to the Valley of Embers
DM: roll!
party: 5
DM: you're lost. Now what?
party: find our bearings
DM: rolls Oh look, you took 5 hours. Also, you'll need to eat. Roll!
party: 9
DM:you don't find any food or drink. Roll a DC 15 con check
party: nat20!
DM: good, you don't get to be exhausted. This is a fun sequence of events, right guys?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

This doesn't prove that you removed the fun. If anything, it just sounds like you disappointed a DM bent on starving your characters.

Imagine if the Ranger wasn't in the party.

DM:You move at 10 Miles per Hour because the difficult terrain of the Jungle
party: oh.
DM: Oh, and if you ever want to get somewhere, roll a D20. If its low, you just don't do that.
Party: ummm...
DM: Also, food and water is hard to get, so you'll need to constantly make more rolls or suffer exhaustion! This is fun, right guys? ...guys?



In play, this looks like

party: hey, let's go to the Valley of Embers
DM: roll!
party: 5
DM: you're lost. Now what?
party: find our bearings
DM: rolls Oh look, you took 5 hours. Also, you'll need to eat. Roll!
party: 9
DM:you don't find any food or drink. Roll a DC 15 con check
party: nat20!
DM: good, you don't get to be exhausted. This is a fun sequence of events, right guys?

Dice are there to tell stories, they are not there to replace stories.
If you’re starving, maybe you will find strange luminescent fruits in the wild. Eating them will save your life but it may give you strange hallucinations.
If you’re lost, you may find the ruins of an ancient city, which one can only access - or escape - when the moon is full.

 

[billd91]

Dice are there to tell stories, they are not there to replace stories.
If you’re starving, maybe you will find strange luminescent fruits in the wild. Eating them will save your life but it may give you strange hallucinations.
If you’re lost, you may find the ruins of an ancient city, which one can only access - or escape - when the moon is full.

Judging from the dialogue posted by Flamestrike, you'd think that the dice rolls were the only way to tell a story or have anything interesting happen when traveling.

 

[Helldritch]

Well... That is not how I run the ranger's wilderness abilities. This is an example from the Friday Night D&D a few months ago.

Travel time estimated: 5 days through a forest toward a mountain (10 days without a ranger) The DM (me) says it from the go to the players. A teenage girl (and a DM at that) asks why. We take time to explain.

Roll random encounters for 5 days (for a party of level 5, six players strong) in total before the actual session.
Take notes of the random encounters in our case it was 4.
Two groups of orcs (10 strong and 15 strong)
One displacer beast.
One Wyvern.

Day one through three nothing happens. We're a bit too close to civilization to have them.
Day four.
DM to Sneaky Ranger: You spot a group of 10 orcs. They are clearly looking for something.
Player: I avoid them. I don't want any fights. We'll give them a wide berth.

DM to Sneaky Ranger: A few hours later, you have the impression that something is amiss. But you don't see anything. (Failed perception roll) (Note: I use pre rolled skill checks before each sessions. About 20. And I check them in order and not what each roll was for. This is available to all players after session's end.)
Player: We stop and we search as to not be surprised. (all players roll, no luck) But now, the least sneaky characters can attract the attention of the displacer beast. Which does not attack. It decides to follow the group instead in the hopes of catching a straggler.

DM: It is the evening, you set camp to eat. To dark to walk anyways.
In camp, Rangers ability to avoid encounters are almost nullified. Ranger or no ranger, night encounters are there. Like it or not.
DM: During the watch of X you hear ruffles from the south. Maybe your fire attracted someone. (Perception roll of 20. I know that there are no crittical success in D&D but whenever a 20 happens, I like to give a lot of meaning).
Player: I wake up the others.
DM: You have a rain of arrows comming down from the south end of the small clearing you're in. 8 humanoids are running down towards you throwing spears. The fight is on. The displacer beasts is still there waiting for the spoils. The players win with no loss and no serious hurt.

In the morning, one orc body is missing. The ranger discover a set of tracks which suggest a six legged creature with claws not unlike those of a mountain lion. It clearly dragged the body of the orc away during the night. The players now know that a displacer beast is lurking around. They are wary. But...

DM: The body of the orcs must have attracted attention. (an other good perception roll, but passive perception would have worked anyways). A giant flying lizard with a sickening grey/green color with the tail of scorpion is flying directly towards you, barely grazing the tree tops. That such a beast be so silent is incredible but the wiff of a tree top caused by its passing warned you.

In this, the ranger's abilities were useful (less encounters because less days traveled.)
They enabled the ranger to avoid an encounter entirely.
They defused an other (the displacer beast). But not wanting that encounter to be wasted, I used it instead to show that the world is alive. They have an impact, but the world still work as normal. The displacer beast could've attacked. But I decided to follow instead. The players learned about the displacer beast and though they knew they could've beaten it, they were happy that a predator chose the easy way to get a snak. It also made them less cocky as the Displacer has been able to sneak a body without them noticing it.

Again, it is not because the ranger can avoid a lot of the dangers of traveling that the dangers are not present. With prepartion, it is easy to incorporate the avoided pitfalls and dangers into the narrative of the ranger's abilities. It makes the ranger shine and its usefulness is way more important than the players expects. Handwaving the dangers because a ranger is there and can avoid them is not the way to go. It is very sad that the PHB did not explained this a lot more. It would have make the exploration much more interesting and put the ranger in a more favourable light. By explaining and narrating the effectiveness of the ranger, it makes the class a lot more attractive. When you do not know what something does for you, you don't appreciate it. In the first encounter, the ranger could have decided to make an ambush or attack immediately. The power to avoid the fight was on its hands. And this is what is important. All of a sudden, a bland and boring ability became useful and interesting.

For the wyvern encounter. The orcs' bodies made for a nice bait for the wyvern and added even more believability to the world. The ranger asked me if he had hidden the body, would the wyvern encounter happened anyways. And right in front of everybody, I lied a no (I wanted it to happen. But if he had hidden the bodies, the wyvern would have attacked on the mountain slopes). But it made the ranger's player happy that it would not have happened if he had thought of it.

A bit of preparation can go a long way to both make the ranger's skill useful and impactful. Yet, it also helps the DM to create a believable narrative to the trek. I have nothing against improvisation. I do a lot myself. But improvisation on the go can be detrimental on the narrative if the DM does not take notes on his improvisations.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Whoa. The memes mocking specific members of the forum are a real BLAST FROM THE PAST holy hell is this 2000 again? I wish!

I found a couple of memes I made to mock you guys back from around then on an old HDD a while back. No I am not going to upload it for you.

Seems like most of the changes they've made in Tasha's, to UA stuff, have landed squarely on the wrong side of "dumb", whether it's removing Fireball from fire druids (I mean for god's sake...) or putting concentration on this already-mediocre ability.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not really a comment on the new rules, but am I the only one who has always found the name "Ranger" (even when it appears in LotR) hard to separate from the image of a modern park ranger?

 

[Xeviat]

Now put them in a one on one fight. Ranger wins due to no SA for the Rogue, more HP for the Ranger, and likely also a better AC.

D&D isn't a 1 on 1 game.

Dex 16 and Studded Leather is AC 15.
Chai shirt costs about the same and is 13+2, or AC 15, if the Ranger cares about Stealth for a comparable character. If the Ranger doesn't care about Stealth, they can have that +1 AC with scalemail, but that's a trade off (it's interesting to note that medium and light armor both cap at AC 17 with Dex 20).

The Ranger maybe has more HP, but possibly not since the Ranger cares more about their Wisdom, but let's give the Ranger more HP. The rogue has more proficient skills, which could be seen as a trade off.

The (phb) Ranger can get expertise in a bunch of skills, but only if they're proficient in them. This is why people wanted Natural Explorer to be changed. A ranger with no extra trained skills from race (which I'd never play personally, see above), may be looking at Nature, Perception, Stealth, and Survival, so they have expertise on 3 skills in their area and advantage when tracking their favored foe. Outside of that, since they didn't just make that switchable, they've got nothing.

I know I'm looking at 1st level. I know 1st levels aren't really balanced elsewhere (cleric vs druid, fighter vs Paladin), but I think it only grows from there.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Dude, there is food (and water) everywhere in the jungle. They're teeming with life. We're not talking about the Arctic or Desert here.

And no, you dont have to roll. You're never (ever) lost aside from magical means, difficult terrain (jungle, swamps, snow) never slows down your travel, and you always can find food and water for yourself and10 people (assuming Outlander background as well) provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth.

I know of no jungle in the world that does not offer boundless small game, water, and edible plants.

Hold a sec, foraging can require a roll. Sure, a natural explorer gets double amount, and Outlander gives food for free if available... but I interpret that only being for the easy DC10 foraging check.

Scarce and almost non-existent require checks - even from an outlander ranger (albeit probably with advantage).

I ran a mountain trek once and upped the tension with players suddenly limited in food and thus a limited range of safe travel. Yes, the mountain ranger could stop and forage, chewing up time, but they needed her to navigate.

Now back to your jungle, yeah okay, probably easy DC. Except around those Black Dragon hexes.