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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 6662709" data-attributes="member: 6683613">I see the ranger as the guy who is uniquely aware of his environment and capable of exploiting it.  He's the one who spots the best place to take cover, fords the river across hidden shallows, and leads his enemies into a deadly morass.  Abilities like Natural Explorer and Land's Stride are good starts, but the trouble with their traditional implementation has always been that they place the character's expertise at the mercy of the DM's encounter design.  What if the ranger mechanics took a more proactive approach?Rough sketch:Lay of the LandStarting at Nth level, your keen eye for terrain allows you to notice features that may be advantageous to you and your allies.  In effect, this allows you to add to the DM's description of environments.  At the start of an encounter, you can add one feature from the Lay of the Land list, as appropriate to the terrain type.  If you have the opportunity to select and prepare the field of the encounter (for example, choosing where to lay an ambush), you can instead select up to three features.Starting at Nth level, you can select larger and more significant features from the Improved Lay of the Land list.Lay of the Land ListForest:  fallen tree, bramble bush, hornet's nest, etc.Mountain:  grotto, loose snow, etc.Dungeon:  etc.etc.I'm not entirely sold on this ability philosophically.  It's much more narrativist and dissociated than D&D normally goes for, as the player knows he can reshape the battlefield but the character doesn't.  However, it does ensure that rangers can be rangers, and bring something to the party that cannot be replicated or even beaten by a rogue who takes Perception and Survival.Other ideas to reinforce the theme:- climb and swim speeds.- just more speed generally - why is the barbarian faster?- double bonus from cover.- ignoring cover a la Sharpshooter.- enemies in difficult terrain have disadvantage on melee attacks.- enemies who take damage from the environment grant advantage.</blockquote>

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