Ranger playtest discussion

[Gammadoodler]

Sure. But Hunters Mark isn't heightened senses. It's a Mark you can sense out of the range of your normal senses.

What do you base this on?

If you exclude the word "mystically" from the spell description, there is zero hint of this. The effect is,

"..you have advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it (the creature you have marked)"

..which is exactly the kind of effect one might expect from being focused on the target..

It makes no reference to any kind of magical mark that you can detect... It's fine if that's how you like to think of it.. But there's nothing inherently magical in limited-use advantaged perception/survival checks.

Edit: Also, advantage to perception/survival checks is like the textbook definition of "heightened senses" within the context of D&D 5e.

 

[Staffan]

Only thing I said: not every DM is designing their adventures around the player's abilities, some DM's use premade adventures. So having abilities that are only useful in very narrow enviroments can be problematic for them.

If you're doing a pre-made adventure/campaign, you should probably discuss things with your players before/while making PCs.

The Pathfinder adventure paths traditionally come with an online Player's Guide. Lately, they've been fairly bland, but the early ones usually had good advice for making PCs work within the AP. For example, the Serpent's Skull player's guide had these recommendations for rangers:

Or for bards:

So, not giving away the whole plot or anything, but "These are options that will be useful."

I think it would be super-fun if high level spells took multiple/many rounds to cast, and the martials had to protect them until complete.

That sounds like a fun tactical exercise, but I can imagine how fun it would not be to have the other players take 1-5 minutes each per turn, plus the DM having like ten monsters of three different kinds all taking their turns, and then when my initiative comes up I say "I keep casting Meteor Swarm, round 2 of 5."

 

[Minigiant]

What do you base this on?

If you exclude the word "mystically" from the spell description, there is zero hint of this. The effect is,

"..you have advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it (the creature you have marked)"

..which is exactly the kind of effect one might expect from being focused on the target..

It makes no reference to any kind of magical mark that you can detect... It's fine if that's how you like to think of it.. But there's nothing inherently magical in limited-use advantaged perception/survival checks.

Edit: Also, advantage to perception/survival checks is like the textbook definition of "heightened senses" within the context of D&D 5e.

The part where the mark works when the target is out of your sight and hearing range on a duration.

It's one thing to say your ranger has heightened senses. It's another to say your quarry is 5 miles away but you still sense them. That's blatantly supernatural.

If Hunters Mark was just damage then fine. You can only damage stuff in your sight or hearing range

I have no problem with a ranger sensing a foe miles away or gaining the nose of a wolf and tracking them by scent. But if it's on an arbitrary duration, it's magical. At least supernatural. Make it always on and it becomes a trained martial ability.

As currently written Hunter's Mark is a magical mark.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If you're doing a pre-made adventure/campaign, you should probably discuss things with your players before/while making PCs.

Never spoke against that and this is good advice. However, adventures happen to take you from one enviroment to the other. So you have to hope it is exactly at the point where you get your next favoured terrain as 2014 ranger.

My response as DM would be: after some downtime, you get accustomed to the land and just swap it out or add one extra favoured terrain... I mean, it is a ribbon feature. Why not just allow the ranger to learn more of them...

 

[Bill Zebub]

Also, isn't "Favored Enemy" sort of oxymoronic? Shouldn't it be "Unfavored Enemy"? "Arch-Enemy"?

 

[Minigiant]

Also, isn't "Favored Enemy" sort of oxymoronic? Shouldn't it be "Unfavored Enemy"? "Arch-Enemy"?

No,it's your favored enemy to kill.

Bard are horny. Barbarians are stupid. Wizards are wimps. Rogues are edgy. Rangers are racist.

 

[Bill Zebub]

No,it's your favored enemy to kill.

Brd are horny. Barbarians are stupid. Wizards are wimps. Rogues are edgy. Rangers are racist.

"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I just hate plants."

 

[Gammadoodler]

The part where the mark works when the target is out of your sight and hearing range on a duration.

It's one thing to say your ranger has heightened senses. It's another to say your quarry is 5 miles away but you still sense them. That's blatantly supernatural.

If Hunters Mark was just damage then fine. You can only damage stuff in your sight or hearing range

I have no problem with a ranger sensing a foe miles away or gaining the nose of a wolf and tracking them by scent. But if it's on an arbitrary duration, it's magical. At least supernatural. Make it always on and it becomes a trained martial ability.

As currently written Hunter's Mark is a magical mark.

You think you need magic to be good at following the tracks of and finding a creature you've focused your attention on?

 

[Bill Zebub]

You think you need magic to be good at following the tracks of and finding a creature you've focused your attention on?

I think consciousness is magic. So....yes?

 

[Gammadoodler]

I think consciousness is magic. So....yes?

Would make anti-magic fields a looooot more threatening.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Would make anti-magic fields a looooot more threatening.

"Mmmm....I suddenly got a craving for pineapple pizza..."
"You must be in an anti-magic field! Move!"

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that would be pretty awesome. I find risk/reward tradeoffs like that to be a lot of fun.

Me too. I wish we were more representative of WotC's fans.

 

[Minigiant]

You think you need magic to be good at following the tracks of and finding a creature you've focused your attention on?

if its on a changeable duration, yes.

 

[Gammadoodler]

if its on a changeable duration, yes.

Like it's impossible to just... focus longer?

Clearly we disagree here.

To me Hunters Mark is "because I said so" magic rather than anything obviously supernatural. It's targeted barbarian rage without the damage resistance.

The amount of work to convert it from spell to mundane class feature would be astonishingly small.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I was thinking of a Hunters Mark that’s mechanically sort of like Reckless Attacks: you go into a kind of focused state, focus intently on one enemy, giving bonuses (whatever they might be), but at the cost of not paying attention to other enemies, who perhaps have advantage on attacks against you. Awesome against a single enemy, very dangerous against groups.

Either that or a giant, red magical arrow bobbing over the target’s head, showing everybody where he is, even from the other side of Warsong Gulch. ($&#% Hunters, ok?)

 

[Gammadoodler]

I was thinking of a Hunters Mark that’s mechanically sort of like Reckless Attacks: you go into a kind of focused state, focus intently on one enemy, giving bonuses (whatever they might be), but at the cost of not paying attention to other enemies, who perhaps have advantage on attacks against you. Awesome against a single enemy, very dangerous against groups.

Either that or a giant, red magical arrow bobbing over the target’s head, showing everybody where he is, even from the other side of Warsong Gulch. ($&#% Hunters, ok?)

I think the tradeoff makes sense thematically, but the bonus would need to be huge for that big of a penalty or the Ranger would need significantly more robust defensive options.

Barbarians get rage damage resistance and bonus damage with an option to reckless attack. Always on Reckless Attack without damage resistance would be suicidal (less so if monsters can't crit). Maybe add an easier ability to hide way earlier?

Maybe it could be slightly less hyper-focused and more just alert, keep exploration bonuses, reduce or eliminate damage bonus to attacks but offer some expanded reaction options (e.g ranged opportunity attack, reaction seek action, etc.) ?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think the tradeoff makes sense thematically, but the bonus would need to be huge for that big of a penalty or the Ranger would need significantly more robust defensive options.

Barbarians get rage damage resistance and bonus damage with an option to reckless attack. Always on Reckless Attack without damage resistance would be suicidal (less so if monsters can't crit). Maybe add an easier ability to hide way earlier?

Maybe it could be slightly less hyper-focused and more just alert, keep exploration bonuses, reduce or eliminate damage bonus to attacks but offer some expanded reaction options (e.g ranged opportunity attack, reaction seek action, etc.) ?

Well, you wouldn't have to always use it. Like I said, against a single boss there's no downside. But even against a group, if you're shooting from range maybe there's still no downside. (It partially depends on whether the DM plays the monsters so that they know they'll have advantage against you.). Or maybe you pop it after the minions are dead. Against two enemies, maybe an ally has one of them preoccupied, so you focus on the other one. There's a whole range of possibilities, and I think part of the fun is figuring out when and how to use it.

What I like about designs like this is that it's not a no-brainer (does the double negative make it a "brainer"?).

But really I popped into the thread to say that I wish I, in real life, could cast speak with animals. Just once. I would really love to have a 10 minute conversation with my 6 month old pup, to explain some ground rules.

 

[Horwath]

here is my take on the Ranger:

OneDnD - Ranger a la carte; be the Ranger that you want to be...

Right now people want for Ranger to be everything and anything: A woodsman, a marksman, a tracker, a beastman, a dualwielding storm of swords, an expert, some kind of wilderness rogue, a naturalist healer, some level of druid-like spellcaster. Ranger can be all of those, but maybe not the same...

www.enworld.org

 

[Olrox17]

here is my take on the Ranger:

OneDnD - Ranger a la carte; be the Ranger that you want to be...

Right now people want for Ranger to be everything and anything: A woodsman, a marksman, a tracker, a beastman, a dualwielding storm of swords, an expert, some kind of wilderness rogue, a naturalist healer, some level of druid-like spellcaster. Ranger can be all of those, but maybe not the same...

www.enworld.org

That’s an interesting thought experiment, almost a “build your own class”. Makes me think even more that giving something similar to warlock invocations to the ranger would works well. Instead of spellcasting, of course, which could be reserved to subclasses.

 

[Horwath]

That’s an interesting thought experiment, almost a “build your own class”. Makes me think even more that giving something similar to warlock invocations to the ranger would works well. Instead of spellcasting, of course, which could be reserved to subclasses.

It is build your own class, but choice of abilities are mostly "rangery" in theme.