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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Twig" data-source="post: 6973081" data-attributes="member: 31754">Sure the Ranger isn't getting anything he wouldn't get from a Survival skill when there is nothing to find, but if he is looking for something in particular, that is when the ability shines.For example, say a Ranger has Favored Enemy Humanoids and wants to scout a bandit camp. He can spend a minute and know which direction and how many miles away the bandit camp is and how many of bandits are in the camp. The exact number and type. That isn't something you can do with a Survival check and it isn't something that a GM should have to make up on the fly as it is (most likely) part of the adventure.Once he has the camp in sight he can spend a minute again and maybe determine if there are any guards around that he can't see in the camp. Maybe there are some bandits up in trees keeping watch and Primeval Awareness would let him know that there are some humanoids to up and to the sides, or over on the hill across from him, or whatever. Again this is all information that would not be given from a simple Survival check.Another example. Say there is a tribe of goblins on the move and they are threatening to overrun a village. The heroes go out and the Ranger uses Primeval Awareness to locate any advance scouting parties that the adventurers can pick off. Survival won't help at all if the goblins haven't come by yet, but Primeval Awareness will tell him that there is one scouting group a mile northwest, a second a mile to the east, a third 3 miles to the northeast and the main group advancing from four miles to the north. He would know that there are 10 goblins and 5 hobgoblins in each scouting party and that the main group has 124 goblins, 25 hobgoblins 5 bugbears and a dozen humans. Maybe the same 12 humans that disappeared from the outlying farms last week?All of that gives the Ranger the ability to really stand out as an amazing (superhuman even!) tracker. When shared with the rest of the group all the players can then try to decide on a plan of what to do. Sure the Ranger had a moment to shine by getting the information, but after that the whole group is once again engaged in what to do with that information.Edit: What the Ranger doesn't know is that there are three more scouting parties to the rear of the group and that 5 of the goblins in each group are riding dire wolves. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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