D&D 5E ranger getting caught all of time---What to do?

[Noctem]

That kind of thinking leads to someone sitting and reading quietly in a large room with stone floors being completely oblivious to a platoon of dwarven fighters with plate mail and no stealth proficiency entering the room, because the dwarves are trying to be "sneaky".

I will continue to let common sense and reality influence how I apply the rules

Ok. But if your plate wearing dwarves roll stealth vs passive perception and actually beat it, you're not following the rules by saying they get detected anyway because of plate armor. GL HF.

 

[iserith]

That kind of thinking leads to someone sitting and reading quietly in a large room with stone floors being completely oblivious to a platoon of dwarven fighters with plate mail and no stealth proficiency entering the room, because the dwarves are trying to be "sneaky".

Uh, no, it doesn't. The DM says when something has a certain or uncertain outcome which is when checks (passive or otherwise) apply. If the DM doesn't think the action undertaken has an uncertain outcome, then the DM just says what happens.

 

[spectacle]

Ok. But if your plate wearing dwarves roll stealth vs passive perception and actually beat it, you're not following the rules by saying they get detected anyway because of plate armor. GL HF.

Of course. It's certainly possible that they will succeed to sneak, just extremely unlikely considering they all have disadvantage and no proficiency, and it only takes one of them to fail to alert the book reader. If it was just a single dwarf trying to sneak then the odds would be much better. Still bad, but success would not be out of the question. That's what you'd expect in reality as well in this situation.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...it only takes one of them to fail to alert the book reader.

Are you saying you don't use group checks in general, or that you circumstantially choose to have a group all roll but that not be a group check?

 

[Noctem]

From what he posted it does sound like he doesn't use group checks for that kind of scenario yep. I would recommend that he should since a single person out of a group failing and causing the group to fail is not really what I would call "fun" 9/10 times.

 

[seebs]

That kind of thinking leads to someone sitting and reading quietly in a large room with stone floors being completely oblivious to a platoon of dwarven fighters with plate mail and no stealth proficiency entering the room, because the dwarves are trying to be "sneaky".

I will continue to let common sense and reality influence how I apply the rules

"Reality" should include the people who genuinely don't notice their environments while focused. I can fail to notice multiple people immediately next to me, talking to me, if I'm focused.

 

[KarinsDad]

No, Rogues have a unique class feature that doubles their proficiency bonus on a couple of their skill checks. If the rogues put that bonus in Stealth, then they should have +2 to Stealth over the ranger, assuming everyone is proficient.

Actually, it is "relatively the same". A +2 is white noise. 1 time in 10, the rogues will get a different result than the ranger. 9 times in 10, no change in result. But according to him, not only one, but two rogues have never failed a roll while the ranger often fails a roll.

Something weird going on here.

 

[Farland]

I never even thought this was a question. Passive perception seems to be the chance monsters have without really searching at all: situational awareness, as someone said. As to OP's original problem, no offense but there is something about the tone of it that leads me to believe the DM may have a (very possibly reasonable) explanation, i.e. there could well be another side to this "unfair to the ranger" thing.

 

[Gulogulo101]

I'm his son that asjwolverine was talking about who plays as the ranger. I have a sneak of +6 (+4 Dex with +2 Prof.) and use studded leather which I don't think has disadvantage on stealth. What happened when we last played I messed up and reveled myself by shooting an ogre and a gnoll the third time however I was told there was rustling in the bushes and decided to hide. Ended up getting caught by bandits and held in the middle of the road. The scenario ended better than expected with our soccer intimidating the bandits (they rolled bad and he has a high Charisma). So I did read the earlier posts in what our DM could be doing and I hope that asjwolverine does talk to him about it. On the other had besides trying to scout ahead trying to be an archer as well. Just leveled up to level three having the the sharpshooter feat as well as the archery fighting style. Have hunters mark, cure wounds, and Hail of thorns as my spells. I don't know if theres anything else I can do at the moment. I was also wondering if there was anything special that since I'm a ranger I can do that's not technically in the book that I'll have to ask our DM. I was thinking of since I am a ranger and have proficiency in nature and survival that I could use those to find things to poison my weapons or do something along those lines. Sorry for the long post but short version is feel like I keep getting screwed over and don't know if I'm doing something wrong and/or if there are other special things that I could be do. Thank you for the help

 

[Noctem]

I'm his son that asjwolverine was talking about who plays as the ranger. I have a sneak of +6 (+4 Dex with +2 Prof.) and use studded leather which I don't think has disadvantage on stealth. What happened when we last played I messed up and reveled myself by shooting an ogre and a gnoll the third time however I was told there was rustling in the bushes and decided to hide. Ended up getting caught by bandits and held in the middle of the road. The scenario ended better than expected with our soccer intimidating the bandits (they rolled bad and he has a high Charisma). So I did read the earlier posts in what our DM could be doing and I hope that asjwolverine does talk to him about it. On the other had besides trying to scout ahead trying to be an archer as well. Just leveled up to level three having the the sharpshooter feat as well as the archery fighting style. Have hunters mark, cure wounds, and Hail of thorns as my spells. I don't know if theres anything else I can do at the moment. I was also wondering if there was anything special that since I'm a ranger I can do that's not technically in the book that I'll have to ask our DM. I was thinking of since I am a ranger and have proficiency in nature and survival that I could use those to find things to poison my weapons or do something along those lines. Sorry for the long post but short version is feel like I keep getting screwed over and don't know if I'm doing something wrong and/or if there are other special things that I could be do. Thank you for the help

Thanks for posting, you've answered some of the questions we had

Studded leather does not cause disadvantage on stealth rolls, you're correct about that.

How you got caught is a little vague, but essentially if you hide and are clearly seen by anyone that would consider you a threat (though this point is largely left up to the DM), you would lose hidden and be presumably caught automatically. Though really you should be able to run or something? Maybe you can give us more information on this point so that we can double check that everything is being run correctly.

Your build sounds good. Archery offsets the penalty from Sharpshooter pretty well and if you're hiding, you should be able to get advantage which will largely negate it completely. Opponents shouldn't have very high AC at the levels you're at. I would recommend getting some ability score bonuses next so that you can boost your character overall. Dexterity is especially amazing for you since it boosts everything you care about: Attack bonus, damage bonus, AC, Initiative, relevant skills, etc.. So that should be your next focus. OR you could go for a multiclass. Rogue being the obvious one for example. You could also go Fighter though because they get many interesting benefits. Action Surge for example. Self healing. You could grab the Defense fighting style for +1 AC. Once you get to level 3 fighter you grab Battle Master for the maneuvers and other things. Then I would just keep going in that to get the extra feats / Ability score improvements that only fighters get which will quickly offset not getting them as quickly as a pure Ranger. You get an extra one at 6 and 14th. That's something only the Fighter can do. Damage will be very solid and you get lots of attacks.

And yeah, a Ranger or Rogue using their skills to find poisons is totally par for the course. Rangers use their nature stuff, rogues use their connections. I would expect to be asked if I was your DM.