Linking Favored Enemy to Favored Terrain - A Proposal for the 5th Edition Ranger

[RedGeomancer]

Following is a rules proposal to make the ranger's Favored Enemy feature more useful and (hopefully) more fun. TL;DR Add damage bonus beginning at first level, and have affected creatures determined by favored terrain, rather than an independent selection of a creature type.

Rules in this message, commentary and discussion in subsequent messages.

Natural Explorer

You are particularly familiar with one type of environment and are adept at traveling an surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, hills, mountain, or swamp. Your choice should be consistent with your background and other elements of your personal history and experience.

When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you're proficient in. Intelligence checks to recall information about creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain are treated as related in this way. When you gain this feature, you also learn a language of your choice that is spoken by creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain, or in some country or region of your favored terrain.

When you are traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following advantages: No changes to list from PH 91, list omitted.

You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level. Your choices should reflect the places you have dwelled or traveled in on your adventures. With your DM's approval, you may choose the Underdark, underwater, the Elemental Planes, or the Upper or Lower Planes as a favored terrain, if you have adventured in such regions. (For unusual backgrounds, your DM may allow these choices at 1st level as well.) You may delay your selection of your second favored terrain, but you must make a choice no later than when you attain 10th level. You may delay your selection of your third favored terrain, but you must make a choice no later than when you attain 15th level.

Foe Slayer

Beginning at 1st level, you are an uparalleled hunter of creatures who might threaten the lands that you care for. You add your Wisdom modifier to damage rolls against creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain. You gain this benefit whenever and wherever you encounter such creatures. For example, if your favored terrain is swamp, you would gain the benefit in fighting a black dragon, even if you fought that black dragon in grassland or forest. You would not get that benefit against a green dragon (native to forests), even if you encountered it in a swamp.

Undead and constructs are unnatural creatures which may be encountered anywhere, but are native to nowhere. You never gain this benefit against undead or constructs.

You only gain this benefit against elemental creatures if you have the Elemental Planes as a favored terrain. You only gain this benefit against celestials or fiends if you have the Upper Planes (for celestials) or the Lower Planes (for fiends) as a favored terrain.

This benefit never applies when you are fighting against your own race.

Questions

1. While creatures only have one creature type, many creatures are commonly found in multiple terrains. Does the proposal for terrain-based enemies sweep up too many creatures in each terrain? Is the exclusion of undead a sufficient offset?
2. Is combining the Foe Slayer damage bonuses with larger enemy lists overpowered?
3. Is there too much bookkeeping or ambiguity in determining favored enemy status based on terrain?
4. Is it fun? Do you think players would rather be a "Hill Hunter" than a "Giant Slayer"?

 

[RedGeomancer]

The proposed changes modify the existing Favored Enemy power in two ways. First in its effect, but also how favored enemies are determined. In previous editions of the game, favored enemies (and the effect against them) were determined as follows.

• 1e gave +1/level damage bonus against a fixed list of creatures (basically giants and evil humanoids).
• 2e gave +4 to attack *one* chosen race. No damage bonus and no additional favored enemies as the ranger advanced.
• 3.0 gave a damage bonus of +1 to +5. Choice of five types of creatures over 20 levels, with the highest damage bonus against the type that has been your favored enemy the longest (i.e. chosen at lower levels).
• 3.5 gave a damage bonus of +2 against five types of creatures chosen over 20 levels. Additionally there were four +2s allotted among already selected types, so the total bonus is variable. Outcomes of +2/+4/+4/+4/+4, +2/+2/+2/+2/+10, and others were possible.

Natural Explorer

You are particularly familiar with one type of environment and are adept at traveling an surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, hills, mountain, or swamp. Your choice should be consistent with your background and other elements of your personal history and experience.

Natural Explorer mostly grants the same powers as before. Modifications are primarily to accommodate the fact that the choice of favored terrain now determines the creatures subject to the Foe Slayer damage bonus. The immediate question is, how do you get from the favored terrain to the list of creatures? For the moment I am using the encounter tables at the back of the DMG (ignoring all the NPC encounters like "Cultist" and "Bandit"). Hills were added to the favored terrain list because that terrain has an encounter table.

When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you're proficient in. Intelligence checks to recall information about creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain are treated as related in this way. When you gain this feature, you also learn a language of your choice that is spoken by creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain, or in some country or region of your favored terrain.

The bonus language is now folded into the favored terrain choice. The official Favored Enemy feature grants advantage on tracking checks and Intelligence checks to remember information about a favored enemy. In order to simplify the rules (rather than having two different mechanics), Intelligence checks to remember things about terrain creatures receive the bonus of a favored terrain check (double proficiency bonus) and advantage on the roll is dropped. I have also dropped advantage on tracking favored enemies. In official rules, tracking favored enemies in a favored terrain would have advantage and double proficiency bonus. In the proposed change, you only get a tracking bonus based on terrain.

When you are traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following advantages: No changes to list from PH 91, list omitted.

You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level. Your choices should reflect the places you have dwelled or traveled in on your adventures. With your DM's approval, you may choose the Underdark, underwater, the Elemental Planes, or the Upper or Lower Planes as a favored terrain, if you have adventured in such regions. (For unusual backgrounds, your DM may allow these choices at 1st level as well.) You may delay your selection of your second favored terrain, but you must make a choice no later than when you attain 10th level. You may delay your selection of your third favored terrain, but you must make a choice no later than when you attain 15th level.

I have added additional terrains in order to give rangers access to a wider range of creatures to use their bonus against. Celestials and fields are omitted from the encounter tables. Now the ranger can have the damage bonus against them by choosing Upper or Lower Planes as a favored terrain. I'm not sure if it makes sense to regard all four Elemental Planes as one terrain, but I don't think choosing one Elemental Plane as a favored terrain would be a very attractive choice.

Given the suggestion that the choice of favored terrain be limited to terrains actually explored, the delay is offered so as not to preclude the choice of one of the more challenging options, if the character storyline would not allow it yet, but might do so in the future.

Foe Slayer

Beginning at 1st level, you are an uparalleled hunter of creatures who might threaten the lands that you care for. You add your Wisdom modifier to damage rolls against creatures commonly encountered in your favored terrain.

Foe Slayer as I have rewritten it is essentially what Favored Enemy should have been. Many people regard the ranger as underpowered, and the Foe Slayer power in particular has been referred to as "one of the least impressive 20th-level 'capstone' powers in the game." (See tribality.com "History of the Ranger" series) Moving a Foe Slayer-type power to 1st level seems like the obvious fix, and has been suggested elsewhere, e.g., the Peerless Hunter feature of this version: See MarsupialMancer's Variant Ranger. This ups the ranger's power while recapturing the flavor from previous editions. As with 1e, 3.x, and Peerless Hunter, I've turned it into damage-only. (With 5e bounded accuracy, a large attack bonus is more unbalancing--possibly why the designers thought the RAW Foe Slayer power was appropriate as a 20th level capstone?)

You gain this benefit whenever and wherever you encounter such creatures. For example, if your favored terrain is swamp, you would gain the benefit in fighting a black dragon, even if you fought that black dragon in grassland or forest. You would not get that benefit against a green dragon (native to forests), even if you encountered it in a swamp.

Undead and constructs are unnatural creatures which may be encountered anywhere, but are native to nowhere. You never gain this benefit against undead or constructs.

Undead and constructs are left out of the damage bonus. For me, this is partially about restoring a certain flavor of the ranger character. This resurrects a limitation from 3.0 that was a consequence of undead and constructs not being subject to critical hits (a restriction that was removed in 3.5). But in this case I have tied it to the idea of terrain, and undead and constructs not having a native terrain. Although, possibly someone could argue that if the ranger is a nature defender, nature deserves to be defended from undead and constructs just as much as from orcs and giants! An additional factor is that, because of terrain/creature overlap, I am concerned that the Foe Slayer feature might be too good, so restricting two creature types (particularly undead, an extremely common threat) weakens the power somewhat.

You only gain this benefit against elemental creatures if you have the Elemental Planes as a favored terrain. You only gain this benefit against celestials or fiends if you have the Upper Planes (for celestials) or the Lower Planes (for fiends) as a favored terrain.

This benefit never applies when you are fighting against your own race.

If the DM wants to allow PC races to be subject to this power, humans should be regarded as a grassland and coastal race.

One of the things I like about tying favored enemies to favored terrain is that most of the terrain choices are useful over a wide range of levels. The character never "grows out of" the usefulness of taking forest as a favored terrain, in the same way that they would if they chose humanoid (goblinoid).

There are two issues that I can see. One is that certain "weedy" species, such as orcs and kobolds, show up in many of the DMG terrain encounter lists. So if you use those lists to translate from favored terrain to favored enemy, they will be swept up in many of the terrain choices. On the other hand, these tend to be evil humanoids, the same creatures that were in the fixed list offered by 1e. So, while 3.x and 5e try to limit the effectiveness of choosing the humanoid type as a favored enemy, the proposed rules would reintroduce the idea of the ranger as an enemy of evil humanoids.

Of course, while some creatures might be found far and wide, the DM could decide that each creature has a native terrain, and that favored enemy status is linked to that. This brings me to the second issue, which is whether to use the DMG lists or some other method of determining favored enemies. The 5e Monster Manual unfortunately did away with the Environment stat used in 3.x, so you have to glean the information from the descriptive texts, and sometimes it is just not addressed. So if the DM desired another method, I think it would require considerable work.