D&D (2024) Why no new packs since late September?

[Maxperson]

So back to gut feeling.

Sure. There's no such thing as learning. All experience is "gut feeling."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sure. There's no such thing as learning. All experience is "gut feeling."

I have 30 years of experience and I see it totally different than you.

So who is right?

You, because of 10 extra years or I, because I have grown up with newer D&D.

So experience is nice and such, but you should back it up with some data. And when evaluating data, you should evaluate them equally.

You can say: for our group, it is a buff, because X and Y are more valuable than Z. But this is no objective truth. It is your subjective truth, which results from your experience. Other's can have different experience.

See, I see where you are coming from and I agree, that the newer ranger is more versatile (not more powerful). I do however think it lines up with the tasha alternate features very well. I think it might be a debuff in some regards (the 3rd level feature from tasha is all around great...).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sure. There's no such thing as learning. All experience is "gut feeling."

Oh, and yes. It is.

It is unconscious competence. The highest level of proficiency.

If you took the time to overcome unconscious incompetence with the inbetween states of conscious incompetence and competence.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh, and yes. It is.

All experience = gut feeling = no such thing as anything other than gut feeling. Congrats. You've made all knowledge useless!

So why is your gut feeling better than mine?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

All experience = gut feeling = no such thing as anything other than gut feeling. Congrats. You've made all knowledge useless!

So why is your gut feeling better than mine?

Didn't say so. But I also did not claim that my experience reflects universal truth.

No. I did not claim that knowledge = gut feeling. I do claim however, that what you call experience is only a gut feeling if you don't back it up with evidence. With your experience, you can make an educated guess about the power level regarding your group.

You are easily dismissing half of the facts, because by your experience they don't matter.

Also, don't confuse knowledge about things you can objectively know (3 +3=6) with "knowledge" about history, where depending on your point of view, it might look different.

But since you claim +6 = +20, i am not so sure about the extend of your confusion.

 

[Minigiant]

My experience is that mostly DMs who are ranger and druid fans who call for Animal Handling, Survival and Nature checks and make them meaningful.

The strength of ranger Expertise is taking the more commonly rolled skills: Stealth, Athletics, Acrobatics and the social skills.

It is possible that the early feedback before actual play is "this is awesome" then when people actually ran them the feedback drastically went down to "You know this isn't as good as it looks"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My experience is that mostly DMs who are ranger and druid fans who call for Animal Handling, Survival and Nature checks and make them meaningful.

The strength of ranger Expertise is taking the more commonly rolled skills: Stealth, Athletics, Acrobatics and the social skills.

It is possible that the early feedback before actual play is "this is awesome" then when people actually ran them the feedback drastically went down to "You know this isn't as good as it looks"

Yes, probably expertise in nature and survival is quite rare. Although athletics might not be that important for a ranger, because they don't need it for grapple anymore and later they also don't need ot for swimming and climbing.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, probably expertise in nature and survival is quite rare. Although athletics might not be that important for a ranger, because they don't need it for grapple anymore and later they also don't need ot for swimming and climbing.

Yeah but DMs are a lot more likely to call for Athletics checks as jumping is one in both 5e and 5.5e.

Natural Explorer was rare. However since it was a list, it kept players and DMs aware of what Nature and Survival checks could do. IE "When you arent in you favored terrain, you have to roll for these".

I have no proof of this but the overall nerfing and adjustment of skills in the playtest may have caused a slow slideof dissatisfaction in surveys as people actual tested them and realize the most skills don't do anything concrete and are extremely dependent of the DM, their calls, and their DCs.

 

[Maxperson]

Didn't say so. But I also did not claim that my experience reflects universal truth.

No. I did not claim that knowledge = gut feeling. I do claim however, that what you call experience is only a gut feeling if you don't back it up with evidence. With your experience, you can make an educated guess about the power level regarding your group.

You are easily dismissing half of the facts, because by your experience they don't matter.

I didn't dismiss anything as not mattering. 5 of the 6 abilities granted by Favored Terrain are highly situational and the last might still be highly situational if the campaign doesn't spend most of its time in two terrain types. Highly situation means that they aren't all that useful.

Compare that to nature skill which encompasses every single terrain type. So unless the campaign is almost exclusively or exclusively taking place in cities and dungeons, nature skill will be very useful.

Nature skill wins out because in the vast majority of campaigns it is going to be much more useful than being good at two terrains with some highly situational bells and whistles.

But since you claim +6 = +20, i am not so sure about the extend of your confusion.

My claim is that +6(Favored Terrain) < +20(expertise in Nature skill).

 

[Maxperson]

My experience is that mostly DMs who are ranger and druid fans who call for Animal Handling, Survival and Nature checks and make them meaningful.

The strength of ranger Expertise is taking the more commonly rolled skills: Stealth, Athletics, Acrobatics and the social skills.

It is possible that the early feedback before actual play is "this is awesome" then when people actually ran them the feedback drastically went down to "You know this isn't as good as it looks"

I don't think they're finding out that it's not as good as it looked. More likely they are finding out that simple expertise by itself is kind of bland and doesn't really have a ranger feel to it, especially if every expert class has it.

Edit: What they should have done was instead of giving them two expertise skills of choice, it should have been a choice of two from nature, survival, animal handling, athletics, perception and stealth. Then two more later on. At least you are giving a list of nature type skills which does give it a bit of a ranger feel.