I think it should be noted that the core rules and adventure modules should be treated like federal and state governments respectively. The former always applies and takes precedence unless the latter surpasses the former.
That's kind of the issue isn't it though?
WotC hardly if ever uses these rules and even if you do it does end up being more or less boils down to a few rolls per day.
The ask for the DM (and a lot of the time the player) is to create hours worth of content that serves only to make one class features feel worthwhile?
Like I've said combat and social situations evolve more naturally and every class has the ability to participate.
Rangers pillar is by every definition "extra" and is almost exclusively for their benefit. Sure other classes can participate but to a much lower extent then the others.
Not everyone has time to shoehorn these into the game or even wants to when you realize as I have how overtly shallow the experience is even with effort to include it...
It's just not fun to me and I shouldn't have to apologize for stating my experience bluntly.
In your defense, the “guidance” for travel in the jungles of Chult is considerably lacking from an exploration perspective. I believe the internet was to streamline the travel rules for this book. When I was a player in this adventure we had zero exploration pillar characters in the party. It was all DDAL. So everyone was playing paladins, warlocks, rogues, wizards, and clerics. We spent a dozen, at least, sessions trying to get through the jungle to our destinations, and in retrospect I’d argue the DM was going easy on us. Even someone with proficiency in survival would have helped. And a ranger with a favored terrain of forest would have literally saved days of real game play.
The fact that you had an underwhelming experience with that part of that book because you had someone that could bypass all of the troubles the jungle offers through any kind of exploration/travel abilities, although not sexy at all, demonstrates it’s effectiveness.
the goal with the book I think was to provide a simple path for those who don't want to focus on travel or exploration. and allow a group that understands travel encounters and pacing to fill in the gaps by reading between the lines. this seems to be a common Philosophy with most of their books. just look at the new raven loft book. some people will see very little content and others will be inspired.
I think thats the rub for me....
Combat and social set pieces are all there with lots of possible combat/social encounters. You get lore and backstory and history to have understanding so that you can have dialogue and you get new creatures with interesting abilities for combat.
For exploration you get.....a survival DC check once per day.
Ravenloft is a great example of this as the bestiary there is one of the best I have seen yet in a book. The lore behind each of the domains is enough I get a feel for the personality of the Dread Lord who owns it. You get new character options that can create tension and distrust in the party.
For survival I get: "Valachan provides the opportunity to exaggerate everything the players and characters know about the threats of nature. The Survival skill proves invaluable in navigating the rain forest, determining what kind of creature mauled a corpse, and understanding how different venoms afflict a jungle survivor."
A survival check.
So I am not exaggerating when I say most exploration comes down to a survival check....its just baked in that way.
Even in the "Encounters" section the more exploration focused encounters rely on....you guessed it.....a survival check.
If WotC would just invest at least SOME time in the exploration aspect I would find the PHB ranger to be a better bet...instead we get the easier approach of Deft Explorer as it just fits better into the system they have created.
All that lore that your praising. That's the Exploration pillar. That's things for both DM's and Players to latch onto to explore. That and the Beastiary entries don't touch heavily on the social pillar as you claim. Even gaining Allies through social skills while slowly appearing more often in certain things like Modules is mostly a creation of DM's and not the materials. Beastiary Entries do tend to help to do a lot towards Exploration building because they are full of the kinds of environments they live in, sometimes how they affect or work with that environment, and occasionally even some indication where those environments can be placed.
And I want to touch on another thing. Often many combat encounters do not really advance the plot. They fill space. Both on the map and in the time of the game sessions. But many of them are not all that high on the meter of Plot movement. Most of them tend to actually be just a mechanical way to wear down characters to increase tension by either slowing the parties movement or draining their resources. While this is story telling in it's own element it is not necessarily plot at all. The Plot Driving Combat encounters tend to just be a small part of the overall number of combats that Parties tend to have.
combat is not the Most Defined Portion of the Game because it is the meat and the Core of the Game. The game does involve Fighting but the Reality is this is where the most abuse and confusion that needs stability exists. This is why it is the most defined portion of the book. And it does not take up 80% of the book. It doesn't even take up 50% of the book. I've seen people claim a couple times in these messages saying numbers like this but they are just not true. At best you can say that Combat is 30% of the Book, And A decent part of that is either something that applies in general but also applies to combat or Is sprinkled throughout sections that have a heavy level of mixed focus (such as spell descriptions, And Everything to do with Classes and Subclasses) which quite possibly need their own large amount of definition of just what is and is not possible within it's provided framework for the sake of stability of the game.
Not Even 80% of a proper sheet is even Devoted to Combat. Again numbers like this is an over Exaggeration. The reality is that somewhere between 25 and 50% of the sheet is combat depending on which version of a sheet your using. There are very simplified 1 page Sheets that does lean towards that 50% but the 2 or even 4 page sheets(not sure this one exists for 5e) The number becomes dramatically less. With the Combat stuff only being found on parts of a couple pages. Most often having somewhere between a quarter and the third of the front page (all of the rest being taken up by general or non-combat stuff that may or may not be useful in combat) and usually something on a second page but that is often intermixed with or along other general stuff of a simular nature, such as your inventory being split up between Armor and Weapons, and the Rest of your gear. or a place to detail out key points about class features and Feats which tend to be mixed between combat and non-combat stuff. Separated out only if you the player choose to list them in such a way.
Again. I'm going to restate it. Everything to do with the Exploration Pillar is being mis-stated, mis-represented and flat out ignored despite being right in front of people and people such as Optimus are even pointing to them as proof of other things while willfully ignoring their importance to the Exploration pillar.
Combat is for sure at least 75% of the sheet....I am not sure where you are getting 50% but I just flatly disagree. Rules for combat make up about 75% of the character in general so it makes sense.
Go Look at a Proper sheet again. Attributes Are General. Not combat specific. Skills are mostly non-combat and actually take up a large portion of a single page character sheet. usually opposite of the Attributes and Saving Throws, both of which are general and used as much outside of combat as they are inside of combat. Perhaps even more so. HP are technically a general thing as well because there are lots of ways to take damage that are non-combat but I'l give you that one. This leaves you with your Weapons and Armor stuff and potentially certain attacks.
Even go through a Sheet here on DDB. If you Consider it's default Position of being on the Actions Tab. Which tends to be dominated first and foremost by attacks. That is still less than 50% of the single page sheet that we are presented with. When you actually start considering other Tabs in place of Actions. Which on a multi-page sheet would be included. You actually start finding thta most of the things listed on those other tabs is not combat specific material.
So your number of at least 75% is massively overblown.
Its not....as Frank and others have stated class features (for the most part) are tied to combat, along with AC, HP, Saving throws, Attacks, items, and spells all add to the combat realm.
The game only has the listed biomes in the game, and they are the most common categories of biomes. Also, biomes doesn't appear in the rules, just so everyone knows.
Forest is the terrain used n the ToA book. Trees. If all of the biomes you mentioned mention in the book had mechanical weight like that it would use game terms. It doesn't.
frank I disagree the monster manual and dmg have specific biomes/terrains assigned to creatures this is a mechanical fact in the rules.
a jungle has a mix of both forest and swamp entities. so its both.
Exactly....and coast and mountains and swamps.....they are all there and different choices for NE.
which blows your one choice of terrain math out of the water as wrong. now all 3 work in chult. thanks for seeing the light and undermining your own argument.
There are also wasteland, rivers, lakes so 5 total
Jungle = Forrest
Swamp = Swamp
Coast = Rivers/Lakes
Wasteland = Desert
Mountain = Mountain
So you would still be behind quite a bit the expertise rogue as they would have all 5 at level 1 and you would have 1.
Except the Rogues not doing that at all. Because they have none of those terrains and your ignoring very valuable key details. Should the Ranger Wish to. They can get general expertise too. There are a few ways to do that in the game now really.
But a General Rogue is also wasting one of their valuable Expertise options on Survival and Losing out on other things that might be more valuable and useful to the party to do something that the Ranger Does already. And on a Skill that they don't naturally get Proficiency in. Bringing up Rogues is a bad example. It's only one subclass that even naturally gets Proficiency and the ability to put Expertise in Survival without outside factors besides class. This is a strawman example that really needs burned down to the ground. It doesn't actually equate like people pretend it does. The Rogue Also does not get as good of Ranged Weapons, Potentially the same level of armor, or a host of other things naturally from their class selection. Not even as a Scout. This comparison between the two and trying to depend it's all based around a single skill and somehow that single skill makes that Rogue superior kind of needs to stop.
Also something tangential to that. Expertise does not necessarily give you the same benefits that Natural Explorer would. one fine example is the matter of foraging for food and water. They are not going to get the same amount out of Foraging by what's printed in the DMG. 5th edition doesn't work on a system where the higher you roll over the DC that's an additional mouth you feed. You get a 1d6+Wisdom in pounds of food and a second 1d6+Wisdom in gallons of water. That's it. So that is all the Rogue is going to get. however. The Ranger from level 1 will always get double that amount in their favored terrains and they will get that amount in any other Terrain for being successful. This means that the Rogue's player is now going to have to invest in wisdom. He can't just rely on the Expertise to make up for a low stat to have an adequate score because that +4 doesn't equal more food. So the Rogue's now going to have a +5 or a +6, which makes the DC20 difficulty of food being scarce easier to reach at low level, but he's only going to pull out an average of 5lbs of food and 5 gallons of water. This is enough for an average party of 4 or one animal and that's it. If you all have horses your going to need to supplement more. If you have a larger party then to feed them reliable, your going to need more. Many people like to shoot back "Just use spell slots". Ok You can use spell slots but they come not only with the issue that you've just spent resources in the form of those spell slots, some as high as third level, but they may have other issues. Like Create food and Water makes plenty of food but unless you have a real large party. Most of it is either going to go to waste or has to be carried with you to make use of and/or have a lot of it go to waste each time you cast the spell. And it has the issue that it doesn't supply the same amounts of food and water. Actually creating more food than it does water.
On the matter of getting lost. People like to throw this one away. Just like a lot of the exploration Pillar gets thrown away. But even the Scout still has to make the roll. And people go well it's not exploration if you can just succeed on the roll. But they ignore the fact that any failed roll can be as much as a quarter of a day of travel lost. Luckily for the Scout this is a roll where Expertise helps. but the Ranger does have that natural tendency to put points into Wisdom even in outside of it's favored Terrains so unless the Scout is investing in Wisdom the Ranger is going to be just as good without doing anything special or being a special subclass at least until the mid-level tier of the game. They gloss over this stuff and actually devalue this on the Ranger by inadvertently giving it to everybody in their rush to smash heads and then complain about how it's dumb and useless on the ranger.
People discount things like Difficult terrain when traveling and how not having to deal with it is no big deal. But the truth is that traveling through most types of terrain unless your following a road may actually be and often quite likely is difficult terrain. This means automatically double the time it takes every time you leave the beaten path. Even though most adventurer's jobs is to leave the beaten path. This gets glossed over a lot but actually can be an issue to keep in mind. Specially when people are having to search for a location.
And Another Big one. The Ranger can make Perception rolls, or have their Passive Perception be useful even when they are doing all that foraging or tracking while they travel. The Rogue, not even the Scout, can actually do that. It's either Forage/Track or pay attention. People often over power Passive Perception. But it's only really usable when your not all that actively paying attention to anything. But if your attention is fully buried in something then your not getting that skill. This frustrates some new DM's because they mistakenly think of it as basically always happening and it's not. There are lots of times and lots of things that can make it not work. Many players don't help this because plenty older players propagate and take advantage of this misrepresentation of the skill, and many newer players don't realize it's any different and just reap the benefits.
If you really want to talk about how much of the books is actually given over to particular Pillars. Let's look at the DMG. It's so obvious it didn't even dawn on me to say it before now. But the DMG in particular has whole chapters just dedicated to the Pillar of Exploration. Parts of Chapter 1 and Basically all over Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are basically dedicated to different Versions of the Exploration tree from the small scale terrains to the big swaths of area that might be used in a campaign. Chapter 5 in particular has all kinds of details to be used in those spaces between adventure points to help DM's. And I can hear it now. "That's just world building stuff..." And my response is.. "Welcome to the Exploration Pillar." But there is all kinds of stuff in there that the ranger can help avoid, help deal with, Or to overcome.
If your DM isn't using half of the DMG. You might want to start asking why... And what you might be actually missing.
Survival checks make up 90% of the suggested exploration rules in the books...So its very applicable.
You would need to adopt the optional DMG rules to make it applicable....which I don't see a ton of DMs do because they are a bit janky and not well organized.
A lot of what I'm talking about. Isn't actually in the optional rules. I went back and looked. They are almost all in the general stuff for how to build encounters and how to use environments and complications that can be found within them. They are rules for DM's to follow to build the exploration pillar which is much of the world without getting into some of the optional stuff.
I think it should be noted that the core rules and adventure modules should be treated like federal and state governments respectively. The former always applies and takes precedence unless the latter surpasses the former.
That's kind of the issue isn't it though?
WotC hardly if ever uses these rules and even if you do it does end up being more or less boils down to a few rolls per day.
The ask for the DM (and a lot of the time the player) is to create hours worth of content that serves only to make one class features feel worthwhile?
Like I've said combat and social situations evolve more naturally and every class has the ability to participate.
Rangers pillar is by every definition "extra" and is almost exclusively for their benefit. Sure other classes can participate but to a much lower extent then the others.
Not everyone has time to shoehorn these into the game or even wants to when you realize as I have how overtly shallow the experience is even with effort to include it...
It's just not fun to me and I shouldn't have to apologize for stating my experience bluntly.
In your defense, the “guidance” for travel in the jungles of Chult is considerably lacking from an exploration perspective. I believe the internet was to streamline the travel rules for this book. When I was a player in this adventure we had zero exploration pillar characters in the party. It was all DDAL. So everyone was playing paladins, warlocks, rogues, wizards, and clerics. We spent a dozen, at least, sessions trying to get through the jungle to our destinations, and in retrospect I’d argue the DM was going easy on us. Even someone with proficiency in survival would have helped. And a ranger with a favored terrain of forest would have literally saved days of real game play.
The fact that you had an underwhelming experience with that part of that book because you had someone that could bypass all of the troubles the jungle offers through any kind of exploration/travel abilities, although not sexy at all, demonstrates it’s effectiveness.
the goal with the book I think was to provide a simple path for those who don't want to focus on travel or exploration. and allow a group that understands travel encounters and pacing to fill in the gaps by reading between the lines. this seems to be a common Philosophy with most of their books. just look at the new raven loft book. some people will see very little content and others will be inspired.
I think thats the rub for me....
Combat and social set pieces are all there with lots of possible combat/social encounters. You get lore and backstory and history to have understanding so that you can have dialogue and you get new creatures with interesting abilities for combat.
For exploration you get.....a survival DC check once per day.
Ravenloft is a great example of this as the bestiary there is one of the best I have seen yet in a book. The lore behind each of the domains is enough I get a feel for the personality of the Dread Lord who owns it. You get new character options that can create tension and distrust in the party.
For survival I get: "Valachan provides the opportunity to exaggerate everything the players and characters know about the threats of nature. The Survival skill proves invaluable in navigating the rain forest, determining what kind of creature mauled a corpse, and understanding how different venoms afflict a jungle survivor."
A survival check.
So I am not exaggerating when I say most exploration comes down to a survival check....its just baked in that way.
Even in the "Encounters" section the more exploration focused encounters rely on....you guessed it.....a survival check.
If WotC would just invest at least SOME time in the exploration aspect I would find the PHB ranger to be a better bet...instead we get the easier approach of Deft Explorer as it just fits better into the system they have created.
All that lore that your praising. That's the Exploration pillar. That's things for both DM's and Players to latch onto to explore. That and the Beastiary entries don't touch heavily on the social pillar as you claim. Even gaining Allies through social skills while slowly appearing more often in certain things like Modules is mostly a creation of DM's and not the materials. Beastiary Entries do tend to help to do a lot towards Exploration building because they are full of the kinds of environments they live in, sometimes how they affect or work with that environment, and occasionally even some indication where those environments can be placed.
And I want to touch on another thing. Often many combat encounters do not really advance the plot. They fill space. Both on the map and in the time of the game sessions. But many of them are not all that high on the meter of Plot movement. Most of them tend to actually be just a mechanical way to wear down characters to increase tension by either slowing the parties movement or draining their resources. While this is story telling in it's own element it is not necessarily plot at all. The Plot Driving Combat encounters tend to just be a small part of the overall number of combats that Parties tend to have.
combat is not the Most Defined Portion of the Game because it is the meat and the Core of the Game. The game does involve Fighting but the Reality is this is where the most abuse and confusion that needs stability exists. This is why it is the most defined portion of the book. And it does not take up 80% of the book. It doesn't even take up 50% of the book. I've seen people claim a couple times in these messages saying numbers like this but they are just not true. At best you can say that Combat is 30% of the Book, And A decent part of that is either something that applies in general but also applies to combat or Is sprinkled throughout sections that have a heavy level of mixed focus (such as spell descriptions, And Everything to do with Classes and Subclasses) which quite possibly need their own large amount of definition of just what is and is not possible within it's provided framework for the sake of stability of the game.
Not Even 80% of a proper sheet is even Devoted to Combat. Again numbers like this is an over Exaggeration. The reality is that somewhere between 25 and 50% of the sheet is combat depending on which version of a sheet your using. There are very simplified 1 page Sheets that does lean towards that 50% but the 2 or even 4 page sheets(not sure this one exists for 5e) The number becomes dramatically less. With the Combat stuff only being found on parts of a couple pages. Most often having somewhere between a quarter and the third of the front page (all of the rest being taken up by general or non-combat stuff that may or may not be useful in combat) and usually something on a second page but that is often intermixed with or along other general stuff of a simular nature, such as your inventory being split up between Armor and Weapons, and the Rest of your gear. or a place to detail out key points about class features and Feats which tend to be mixed between combat and non-combat stuff. Separated out only if you the player choose to list them in such a way.
Again. I'm going to restate it. Everything to do with the Exploration Pillar is being mis-stated, mis-represented and flat out ignored despite being right in front of people and people such as Optimus are even pointing to them as proof of other things while willfully ignoring their importance to the Exploration pillar.
Combat is for sure at least 75% of the sheet....I am not sure where you are getting 50% but I just flatly disagree. Rules for combat make up about 75% of the character in general so it makes sense.
Go Look at a Proper sheet again. Attributes Are General. Not combat specific. Skills are mostly non-combat and actually take up a large portion of a single page character sheet. usually opposite of the Attributes and Saving Throws, both of which are general and used as much outside of combat as they are inside of combat. Perhaps even more so. HP are technically a general thing as well because there are lots of ways to take damage that are non-combat but I'l give you that one. This leaves you with your Weapons and Armor stuff and potentially certain attacks.
Even go through a Sheet here on DDB. If you Consider it's default Position of being on the Actions Tab. Which tends to be dominated first and foremost by attacks. That is still less than 50% of the single page sheet that we are presented with. When you actually start considering other Tabs in place of Actions. Which on a multi-page sheet would be included. You actually start finding thta most of the things listed on those other tabs is not combat specific material.
So your number of at least 75% is massively overblown.
Its not....as Frank and others have stated class features (for the most part) are tied to combat, along with AC, HP, Saving throws, Attacks, items, and spells all add to the combat realm.
75% is being generous in fact.
Tied to does not make them combat. General use means that they have involvement in at least 2 but potentially all 3 pillars of the game.
Your falsely equating these multipurpose parts of the sheet only to combat and this is false and paints a wrong picture. Being Tied to combat is not the same thing as being all about combat.
Also there are many items and spells that are not part of the combat realm at all.
HP, Saving Throws, Items, Spells, languages, and Skills can all be used without ever getting into a single ounce of combat. If somebody uses the optional (and highly suggested to be used) rule of non-combat encounter experience. It's actually concievable for characters to actually gain levels without ever getting into combat. But you can use all of these other things on the front side of the sheet very easily.
So 75% isn't being generous. Your being horribly biased and using that to make up a statistic that isn't actually true. your choosing to use them in a narrow view that fits the perspective that your wanting to push by declaring such false information.
The game only has the listed biomes in the game, and they are the most common categories of biomes. Also, biomes doesn't appear in the rules, just so everyone knows.
Forest is the terrain used n the ToA book. Trees. If all of the biomes you mentioned mention in the book had mechanical weight like that it would use game terms. It doesn't.
frank I disagree the monster manual and dmg have specific biomes/terrains assigned to creatures this is a mechanical fact in the rules.
a jungle has a mix of both forest and swamp entities. so its both.
Exactly....and coast and mountains and swamps.....they are all there and different choices for NE.
which blows your one choice of terrain math out of the water as wrong. now all 3 work in chult. thanks for seeing the light and undermining your own argument.
There are also wasteland, rivers, lakes so 5 total
Jungle = Forrest
Swamp = Swamp
Coast = Rivers/Lakes
Wasteland = Desert
Mountain = Mountain
So you would still be behind quite a bit the expertise rogue as they would have all 5 at level 1 and you would have 1.
Except the Rogues not doing that at all. Because they have none of those terrains and your ignoring very valuable key details. Should the Ranger Wish to. They can get general expertise too. There are a few ways to do that in the game now really.
But a General Rogue is also wasting one of their valuable Expertise options on Survival and Losing out on other things that might be more valuable and useful to the party to do something that the Ranger Does already. And on a Skill that they don't naturally get Proficiency in. Bringing up Rogues is a bad example. It's only one subclass that even naturally gets Proficiency and the ability to put Expertise in Survival without outside factors besides class. This is a strawman example that really needs burned down to the ground. It doesn't actually equate like people pretend it does. The Rogue Also does not get as good of Ranged Weapons, Potentially the same level of armor, or a host of other things naturally from their class selection. Not even as a Scout. This comparison between the two and trying to depend it's all based around a single skill and somehow that single skill makes that Rogue superior kind of needs to stop.
Also something tangential to that. Expertise does not necessarily give you the same benefits that Natural Explorer would. one fine example is the matter of foraging for food and water. They are not going to get the same amount out of Foraging by what's printed in the DMG. 5th edition doesn't work on a system where the higher you roll over the DC that's an additional mouth you feed. You get a 1d6+Wisdom in pounds of food and a second 1d6+Wisdom in gallons of water. That's it. So that is all the Rogue is going to get. however. The Ranger from level 1 will always get double that amount in their favored terrains and they will get that amount in any other Terrain for being successful. This means that the Rogue's player is now going to have to invest in wisdom. He can't just rely on the Expertise to make up for a low stat to have an adequate score because that +4 doesn't equal more food. So the Rogue's now going to have a +5 or a +6, which makes the DC20 difficulty of food being scarce easier to reach at low level, but he's only going to pull out an average of 5lbs of food and 5 gallons of water. This is enough for an average party of 4 or one animal and that's it. If you all have horses your going to need to supplement more. If you have a larger party then to feed them reliable, your going to need more. Many people like to shoot back "Just use spell slots". Ok You can use spell slots but they come not only with the issue that you've just spent resources in the form of those spell slots, some as high as third level, but they may have other issues. Like Create food and Water makes plenty of food but unless you have a real large party. Most of it is either going to go to waste or has to be carried with you to make use of and/or have a lot of it go to waste each time you cast the spell. And it has the issue that it doesn't supply the same amounts of food and water. Actually creating more food than it does water.
On the matter of getting lost. People like to throw this one away. Just like a lot of the exploration Pillar gets thrown away. But even the Scout still has to make the roll. And people go well it's not exploration if you can just succeed on the roll. But they ignore the fact that any failed roll can be as much as a quarter of a day of travel lost. Luckily for the Scout this is a roll where Expertise helps. but the Ranger does have that natural tendency to put points into Wisdom even in outside of it's favored Terrains so unless the Scout is investing in Wisdom the Ranger is going to be just as good without doing anything special or being a special subclass at least until the mid-level tier of the game. They gloss over this stuff and actually devalue this on the Ranger by inadvertently giving it to everybody in their rush to smash heads and then complain about how it's dumb and useless on the ranger.
People discount things like Difficult terrain when traveling and how not having to deal with it is no big deal. But the truth is that traveling through most types of terrain unless your following a road may actually be and often quite likely is difficult terrain. This means automatically double the time it takes every time you leave the beaten path. Even though most adventurer's jobs is to leave the beaten path. This gets glossed over a lot but actually can be an issue to keep in mind. Specially when people are having to search for a location.
And Another Big one. The Ranger can make Perception rolls, or have their Passive Perception be useful even when they are doing all that foraging or tracking while they travel. The Rogue, not even the Scout, can actually do that. It's either Forage/Track or pay attention. People often over power Passive Perception. But it's only really usable when your not all that actively paying attention to anything. But if your attention is fully buried in something then your not getting that skill. This frustrates some new DM's because they mistakenly think of it as basically always happening and it's not. There are lots of times and lots of things that can make it not work. Many players don't help this because plenty older players propagate and take advantage of this misrepresentation of the skill, and many newer players don't realize it's any different and just reap the benefits.
If you really want to talk about how much of the books is actually given over to particular Pillars. Let's look at the DMG. It's so obvious it didn't even dawn on me to say it before now. But the DMG in particular has whole chapters just dedicated to the Pillar of Exploration. Parts of Chapter 1 and Basically all over Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are basically dedicated to different Versions of the Exploration tree from the small scale terrains to the big swaths of area that might be used in a campaign. Chapter 5 in particular has all kinds of details to be used in those spaces between adventure points to help DM's. And I can hear it now. "That's just world building stuff..." And my response is.. "Welcome to the Exploration Pillar." But there is all kinds of stuff in there that the ranger can help avoid, help deal with, Or to overcome.
If your DM isn't using half of the DMG. You might want to start asking why... And what you might be actually missing.
Survival checks make up 90% of the suggested exploration rules in the books...So its very applicable.
You would need to adopt the optional DMG rules to make it applicable....which I don't see a ton of DMs do because they are a bit janky and not well organized.
A lot of what I'm talking about. Isn't actually in the optional rules. I went back and looked. They are almost all in the general stuff for how to build encounters and how to use environments and complications that can be found within them. They are rules for DM's to follow to build the exploration pillar which is much of the world without getting into some of the optional stuff.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
The game only has the listed biomes in the game, and they are the most common categories of biomes. Also, biomes doesn't appear in the rules, just so everyone knows.
Forest is the terrain used n the ToA book. Trees. If all of the biomes you mentioned mention in the book had mechanical weight like that it would use game terms. It doesn't.
frank I disagree the monster manual and dmg have specific biomes/terrains assigned to creatures this is a mechanical fact in the rules.
a jungle has a mix of both forest and swamp entities. so its both.
Exactly....and coast and mountains and swamps.....they are all there and different choices for NE.
which blows your one choice of terrain math out of the water as wrong. now all 3 work in chult. thanks for seeing the light and undermining your own argument.
There are also wasteland, rivers, lakes so 5 total
Jungle = Forrest
Swamp = Swamp
Coast = Rivers/Lakes
Wasteland = Desert
Mountain = Mountain
So you would still be behind quite a bit the expertise rogue as they would have all 5 at level 1 and you would have 1.
Except the Rogues not doing that at all. Because they have none of those terrains and your ignoring very valuable key details. Should the Ranger Wish to. They can get general expertise too. There are a few ways to do that in the game now really.
But a General Rogue is also wasting one of their valuable Expertise options on Survival and Losing out on other things that might be more valuable and useful to the party to do something that the Ranger Does already. And on a Skill that they don't naturally get Proficiency in. Bringing up Rogues is a bad example. It's only one subclass that even naturally gets Proficiency and the ability to put Expertise in Survival without outside factors besides class. This is a strawman example that really needs burned down to the ground. It doesn't actually equate like people pretend it does. The Rogue Also does not get as good of Ranged Weapons, Potentially the same level of armor, or a host of other things naturally from their class selection. Not even as a Scout. This comparison between the two and trying to depend it's all based around a single skill and somehow that single skill makes that Rogue superior kind of needs to stop.
Also something tangential to that. Expertise does not necessarily give you the same benefits that Natural Explorer would. one fine example is the matter of foraging for food and water. They are not going to get the same amount out of Foraging by what's printed in the DMG. 5th edition doesn't work on a system where the higher you roll over the DC that's an additional mouth you feed. You get a 1d6+Wisdom in pounds of food and a second 1d6+Wisdom in gallons of water. That's it. So that is all the Rogue is going to get. however. The Ranger from level 1 will always get double that amount in their favored terrains and they will get that amount in any other Terrain for being successful. This means that the Rogue's player is now going to have to invest in wisdom. He can't just rely on the Expertise to make up for a low stat to have an adequate score because that +4 doesn't equal more food. So the Rogue's now going to have a +5 or a +6, which makes the DC20 difficulty of food being scarce easier to reach at low level, but he's only going to pull out an average of 5lbs of food and 5 gallons of water. This is enough for an average party of 4 or one animal and that's it. If you all have horses your going to need to supplement more. If you have a larger party then to feed them reliable, your going to need more. Many people like to shoot back "Just use spell slots". Ok You can use spell slots but they come not only with the issue that you've just spent resources in the form of those spell slots, some as high as third level, but they may have other issues. Like Create food and Water makes plenty of food but unless you have a real large party. Most of it is either going to go to waste or has to be carried with you to make use of and/or have a lot of it go to waste each time you cast the spell. And it has the issue that it doesn't supply the same amounts of food and water. Actually creating more food than it does water.
On the matter of getting lost. People like to throw this one away. Just like a lot of the exploration Pillar gets thrown away. But even the Scout still has to make the roll. And people go well it's not exploration if you can just succeed on the roll. But they ignore the fact that any failed roll can be as much as a quarter of a day of travel lost. Luckily for the Scout this is a roll where Expertise helps. but the Ranger does have that natural tendency to put points into Wisdom even in outside of it's favored Terrains so unless the Scout is investing in Wisdom the Ranger is going to be just as good without doing anything special or being a special subclass at least until the mid-level tier of the game. They gloss over this stuff and actually devalue this on the Ranger by inadvertently giving it to everybody in their rush to smash heads and then complain about how it's dumb and useless on the ranger.
People discount things like Difficult terrain when traveling and how not having to deal with it is no big deal. But the truth is that traveling through most types of terrain unless your following a road may actually be and often quite likely is difficult terrain. This means automatically double the time it takes every time you leave the beaten path. Even though most adventurer's jobs is to leave the beaten path. This gets glossed over a lot but actually can be an issue to keep in mind. Specially when people are having to search for a location.
And Another Big one. The Ranger can make Perception rolls, or have their Passive Perception be useful even when they are doing all that foraging or tracking while they travel. The Rogue, not even the Scout, can actually do that. It's either Forage/Track or pay attention. People often over power Passive Perception. But it's only really usable when your not all that actively paying attention to anything. But if your attention is fully buried in something then your not getting that skill. This frustrates some new DM's because they mistakenly think of it as basically always happening and it's not. There are lots of times and lots of things that can make it not work. Many players don't help this because plenty older players propagate and take advantage of this misrepresentation of the skill, and many newer players don't realize it's any different and just reap the benefits.
If you really want to talk about how much of the books is actually given over to particular Pillars. Let's look at the DMG. It's so obvious it didn't even dawn on me to say it before now. But the DMG in particular has whole chapters just dedicated to the Pillar of Exploration. Parts of Chapter 1 and Basically all over Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are basically dedicated to different Versions of the Exploration tree from the small scale terrains to the big swaths of area that might be used in a campaign. Chapter 5 in particular has all kinds of details to be used in those spaces between adventure points to help DM's. And I can hear it now. "That's just world building stuff..." And my response is.. "Welcome to the Exploration Pillar." But there is all kinds of stuff in there that the ranger can help avoid, help deal with, Or to overcome.
If your DM isn't using half of the DMG. You might want to start asking why... And what you might be actually missing.
Survival checks make up 90% of the suggested exploration rules in the books...So its very applicable.
You would need to adopt the optional DMG rules to make it applicable....which I don't see a ton of DMs do because they are a bit janky and not well organized.
A lot of what I'm talking about. Isn't actually in the optional rules. I went back and looked. They are almost all in the general stuff for how to build encounters and how to use environments and complications that can be found within them. They are rules for DM's to follow to build the exploration pillar which is much of the world without getting into some of the optional stuff.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
In many instances... Unless that single survival check is made by a ranger or other Wisdom based character with proficiency in survival. It can often take multiple foraging checks to meet a foraging goal. Specially if you have animals with you.
People actually mis-state foraging checks quite regularly. Now if they module states otherwise of course, that's a specific detail of the module itself and not the core rules.
The game only has the listed biomes in the game, and they are the most common categories of biomes. Also, biomes doesn't appear in the rules, just so everyone knows.
Forest is the terrain used n the ToA book. Trees. If all of the biomes you mentioned mention in the book had mechanical weight like that it would use game terms. It doesn't.
frank I disagree the monster manual and dmg have specific biomes/terrains assigned to creatures this is a mechanical fact in the rules.
a jungle has a mix of both forest and swamp entities. so its both.
Exactly....and coast and mountains and swamps.....they are all there and different choices for NE.
which blows your one choice of terrain math out of the water as wrong. now all 3 work in chult. thanks for seeing the light and undermining your own argument.
There are also wasteland, rivers, lakes so 5 total
Jungle = Forrest
Swamp = Swamp
Coast = Rivers/Lakes
Wasteland = Desert
Mountain = Mountain
So you would still be behind quite a bit the expertise rogue as they would have all 5 at level 1 and you would have 1.
Except the Rogues not doing that at all. Because they have none of those terrains and your ignoring very valuable key details. Should the Ranger Wish to. They can get general expertise too. There are a few ways to do that in the game now really.
But a General Rogue is also wasting one of their valuable Expertise options on Survival and Losing out on other things that might be more valuable and useful to the party to do something that the Ranger Does already. And on a Skill that they don't naturally get Proficiency in. Bringing up Rogues is a bad example. It's only one subclass that even naturally gets Proficiency and the ability to put Expertise in Survival without outside factors besides class. This is a strawman example that really needs burned down to the ground. It doesn't actually equate like people pretend it does. The Rogue Also does not get as good of Ranged Weapons, Potentially the same level of armor, or a host of other things naturally from their class selection. Not even as a Scout. This comparison between the two and trying to depend it's all based around a single skill and somehow that single skill makes that Rogue superior kind of needs to stop.
Also something tangential to that. Expertise does not necessarily give you the same benefits that Natural Explorer would. one fine example is the matter of foraging for food and water. They are not going to get the same amount out of Foraging by what's printed in the DMG. 5th edition doesn't work on a system where the higher you roll over the DC that's an additional mouth you feed. You get a 1d6+Wisdom in pounds of food and a second 1d6+Wisdom in gallons of water. That's it. So that is all the Rogue is going to get. however. The Ranger from level 1 will always get double that amount in their favored terrains and they will get that amount in any other Terrain for being successful. This means that the Rogue's player is now going to have to invest in wisdom. He can't just rely on the Expertise to make up for a low stat to have an adequate score because that +4 doesn't equal more food. So the Rogue's now going to have a +5 or a +6, which makes the DC20 difficulty of food being scarce easier to reach at low level, but he's only going to pull out an average of 5lbs of food and 5 gallons of water. This is enough for an average party of 4 or one animal and that's it. If you all have horses your going to need to supplement more. If you have a larger party then to feed them reliable, your going to need more. Many people like to shoot back "Just use spell slots". Ok You can use spell slots but they come not only with the issue that you've just spent resources in the form of those spell slots, some as high as third level, but they may have other issues. Like Create food and Water makes plenty of food but unless you have a real large party. Most of it is either going to go to waste or has to be carried with you to make use of and/or have a lot of it go to waste each time you cast the spell. And it has the issue that it doesn't supply the same amounts of food and water. Actually creating more food than it does water.
On the matter of getting lost. People like to throw this one away. Just like a lot of the exploration Pillar gets thrown away. But even the Scout still has to make the roll. And people go well it's not exploration if you can just succeed on the roll. But they ignore the fact that any failed roll can be as much as a quarter of a day of travel lost. Luckily for the Scout this is a roll where Expertise helps. but the Ranger does have that natural tendency to put points into Wisdom even in outside of it's favored Terrains so unless the Scout is investing in Wisdom the Ranger is going to be just as good without doing anything special or being a special subclass at least until the mid-level tier of the game. They gloss over this stuff and actually devalue this on the Ranger by inadvertently giving it to everybody in their rush to smash heads and then complain about how it's dumb and useless on the ranger.
People discount things like Difficult terrain when traveling and how not having to deal with it is no big deal. But the truth is that traveling through most types of terrain unless your following a road may actually be and often quite likely is difficult terrain. This means automatically double the time it takes every time you leave the beaten path. Even though most adventurer's jobs is to leave the beaten path. This gets glossed over a lot but actually can be an issue to keep in mind. Specially when people are having to search for a location.
And Another Big one. The Ranger can make Perception rolls, or have their Passive Perception be useful even when they are doing all that foraging or tracking while they travel. The Rogue, not even the Scout, can actually do that. It's either Forage/Track or pay attention. People often over power Passive Perception. But it's only really usable when your not all that actively paying attention to anything. But if your attention is fully buried in something then your not getting that skill. This frustrates some new DM's because they mistakenly think of it as basically always happening and it's not. There are lots of times and lots of things that can make it not work. Many players don't help this because plenty older players propagate and take advantage of this misrepresentation of the skill, and many newer players don't realize it's any different and just reap the benefits.
If you really want to talk about how much of the books is actually given over to particular Pillars. Let's look at the DMG. It's so obvious it didn't even dawn on me to say it before now. But the DMG in particular has whole chapters just dedicated to the Pillar of Exploration. Parts of Chapter 1 and Basically all over Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are basically dedicated to different Versions of the Exploration tree from the small scale terrains to the big swaths of area that might be used in a campaign. Chapter 5 in particular has all kinds of details to be used in those spaces between adventure points to help DM's. And I can hear it now. "That's just world building stuff..." And my response is.. "Welcome to the Exploration Pillar." But there is all kinds of stuff in there that the ranger can help avoid, help deal with, Or to overcome.
If your DM isn't using half of the DMG. You might want to start asking why... And what you might be actually missing.
Survival checks make up 90% of the suggested exploration rules in the books...So its very applicable.
You would need to adopt the optional DMG rules to make it applicable....which I don't see a ton of DMs do because they are a bit janky and not well organized.
A lot of what I'm talking about. Isn't actually in the optional rules. I went back and looked. They are almost all in the general stuff for how to build encounters and how to use environments and complications that can be found within them. They are rules for DM's to follow to build the exploration pillar which is much of the world without getting into some of the optional stuff.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
In many instances... Unless that single survival check is made by a ranger or other Wisdom based character with proficiency in survival. It can often take multiple foraging checks to meet a foraging goal. Specially if you have animals with you.
People actually mis-state foraging checks quite regularly. Now if they module states otherwise of course, that's a specific detail of the module itself and not the core rules.
So say 2-3 checks for an entire day...thats not a huge time commitment table wise unless you want to fluff it for time.
Outlander background would forgo it completely in most of Chult too.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
I am saying it does come down to survival rolls and although that ranger gets expertise in that roll a rogue with expertise will have the same odds to do as much as the ranger. A caster with ADV on the roll from enhance ability will have a very good shot as well. Someone with the right background makes it moot.
The major issue then is the exploration pillar in this case is not very robust compared to the others and most of it is either handwaved or a very small amount of time is devoted to it.
I am not sure what you are saying about statistics as I am simply saying what is in the source book for ToA?
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
Not only that but Outlander Stacks with what the Ranger does. So the Ranger can potentially feed the party and a pack animals/mounts between the two. i don't remember how much allowance Tomb of annihilation for things like mounts or pack animals. It's been quite a while for me.
Also. Navigation rolls are not "do it at the start and then it's not doing anything anymore". It's a roll that represents the time that you spend doing it so your attention is occupied on making sure the group is going the right way. So Passive Perception does not help the navigator unless they have the ability to be perceptive while being active. So saying PP is passive and automatic after the initial roll is another misrepresentation of the workings of abilities (one that many people mistakenly make).
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
Not only that but Outlander Stacks with what the Ranger does. So the Ranger can potentially feed the party and a pack animals/mounts between the two. i don't remember how much allowance Tomb of annihilation for things like mounts or pack animals. It's been quite a while for me.
Also. Navigation rolls are not "do it at the start and then it's not doing anything anymore". It's a roll that represents the time that you spend doing it so your attention is occupied on making sure the group is going the right way. So Passive Perception does not help the navigator unless they have the ability to be perceptive while being active. So saying PP is passive and automatic after the initial roll is another misrepresentation of the workings of abilities (one that many people mistakenly make).
If you get a pack animal native to Chult it finds its own food and water so no rolls needed there but a good thought.
PP is part of the travel pace rules as it comes to if you get a penalty or not so you could get ambushed if you are moving too fast. I would guess you would not have the navigator also be the spotter but I guess that situation could come up if only one person is good at both.
Otherwise the party can split up the duties but it doesn't add a lot of table time overall I have found. I leads to the things that take table time (combat/social encounters).
Its pretty simple overall with this approach and mostly is hands off.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
I am saying it does come down to survival rolls and although that ranger gets expertise in that roll a rogue with expertise will have the same odds to do as much as the ranger. A caster with ADV on the roll from enhance ability will have a very good shot as well. Someone with the right background makes it moot.
The major issue then is the exploration pillar in this case is not very robust compared to the others and most of it is either handwaved or a very small amount of time is devoted to it.
I am not sure what you are saying about statistics as I am simply saying what is in the source book for ToA?
Yes, it does come down to Wisdom (Survival) rolls. And while a rogue might also have the same bonus to their roll, they lack the other perks of Natural Explorer. If we're adding spellcasting to the mix, the same spellcaster could instead cast enhance ability on the navigator with Expertise; explicit (Scout) or functional (Natural Explorer). Of course, there might be other ways of acquiring advantage that don't require the expenditure of a spell slot.
"If the party has an accurate map of the region or can see the sun or stars, the navigator has advantage on the check." (DMG 111)
No, the exploration pillar is not robust. Neither is the social pillar. The only pillar that even approaches being robust is combat, largely out of necessity, and even then it's still open to a lot of interpretation. "Rulings, not rules."
And I brought up statistics because you continuously pull percentages out of thin air. Give us a break.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
I am saying it does come down to survival rolls and although that ranger gets expertise in that roll a rogue with expertise will have the same odds to do as much as the ranger. A caster with ADV on the roll from enhance ability will have a very good shot as well. Someone with the right background makes it moot.
The major issue then is the exploration pillar in this case is not very robust compared to the others and most of it is either handwaved or a very small amount of time is devoted to it.
I am not sure what you are saying about statistics as I am simply saying what is in the source book for ToA?
Yes, it does come down to Wisdom (Survival) rolls. And while a rogue might also have the same bonus to their roll, they lack the other perks of Natural Explorer. If we're adding spellcasting to the mix, the same spellcaster could instead cast enhance ability on the navigator with Expertise; explicit (Scout) or functional (Natural Explorer). Of course, there might be other ways of acquiring advantage that don't require the expenditure of a spell slot.
"If the party has an accurate map of the region or can see the sun or stars, the navigator has advantage on the check." (DMG 111)
No, the exploration pillar is not robust. Neither is the social pillar. The only pillar that even approaches being robust is combat, largely out of necessity, and even then it's still open to a lot of interpretation. "Rulings, not rules."
And I brought up statistics because you continuously pull percentages out of thin air. Give us a break.
Fully agree with the social pillar being light as well. I think that is almost a good thing based on the complex nature of human interaction but I do think there could be more there as well.
I liked what PF2e did with the social aspects and I hope future editions work that in somehow.
What my point with the enhance ability is that a ranger is not needed or if they are there they cause less rolls and less time spend in the exploration pillar. I am glad we are on the same page with the fact that the pillar is sort of bare bones as thats mostly my issue overall. That part of the game is just lacking and I hope we get more content at some point. If not in this edition then in the next.
For the statistics....still don't know what you are talking about. I ballpark stuff sure but its just that...a ballpark guess. TBH it seems to be more a sticking point than it needs to be.
Also with Tasha's the ranger can also just cast Enhance Ability on themselves now! So another win for Tashas!
The things I'm going to come back to here are, 1. skill check DCs in general are rarely ever above 20 while most are closer to the 10-15 range, so we reach a mathematical point where someone with a modifier of +7 on a roll is basically equivalent to one with a +100 to the same roll. 2. expertise is nice and reliable talent is great, rogues are good at skills, that's what they do. If you choose to build a rogue to focus on an area of the game that should be rewarded mechanically. A non scout rogue focusing on survival skills is going to sacrifice quite a bit of their class to do so, and that will only yield them the ability to do those couple of survival skills very well. A scout gets the two extra skills, but again of you, as a player, want to devote your ENTIRE subclass to being a boy scout, and possibly your background as well, then I applaud that and would reward that as a DM. That isn't a slight to the ranger. IF that scout player was in the party then the ranger can focus on doing the several other things it does very well while still taking part in the survival game. 3. A ranger can be, and is much of the time, and even more frequently as levels progress up, great at the wilderness game. We can make all of the claims and scenarios we want about how one hyper focused build or combination or another can do "what a ranger does" (false, by the way), we are still talking about building against type. The fact that all rangers can do nothing and be, worst case scenario on their worst day, 65%+ as good at the survival game as several hyper focused and intentionally built classes in combinations is, as far as I'm concerned, a strength.
Optimus, in one breath you say that the survival and travel game boils down to a few die rolls and is over in a second AND a hyper focused build of a scout and cleric can do what all rangers can do. That does not carry the same weight that you seem to think it does with most of us.
And that is ONLY TWO SKILLS! That is what we are talking about. Not even the rest of what the ranger's two abilities do and cover. Nor the rest of the ranger baseline kit. Not healing magic. Not moving and protecting the entire party. Not being a strong martial combatant. Not having the spell arsenal. And that is just the baseline ranger stuff. All of that, all of this conversation, is just talking about to skill checks, that are easy most of the time, that the ranger meets or exceeds much of the time, and is by several folk's own admission not a large pert of the game and is over and done with too soon.
This thread is about if the ranger is underpowered. I vote that if you need a specific class, with a specific subclass, a specific background, all with a specific hyper focused build, and with occasional help form a full spellcaster second party member, to some of the time recreate some of what the ranger does by default, then the ranger is not underpowered.
Fully agree with the social pillar being light as well. I think that is almost a good thing based on the complex nature of human interaction but I do think there could be more there as well.
I liked what PF2e did with the social aspects and I hope future editions work that in somehow.
What my point with the enhance ability is that a ranger is not needed or if they are there they cause less rolls and less time spend in the exploration pillar. I am glad we are on the same page with the fact that the pillar is sort of bare bones as thats mostly my issue overall. That part of the game is just lacking and I hope we get more content at some point. If not in this edition then in the next.
For the statistics....still don't know what you are talking about. I ballpark stuff sure but its just that...a ballpark guess. TBH it seems to be more a sticking point than it needs to be.
Also with Tasha's the ranger can also just cast Enhance Ability on themselves now! So another win for Tashas!
That's...look, when you give a "ballpark" figure, you're making an estimate. That estimate has to actually be rooted in something. If I look up the Redfin estimate on my house, it gives me an approximate sale price based on a number of factors such as what I paid for it at the time of purchase, expected appreciation over the years, and the recent sale prices in the neighborhood. So if you give us a number it needs to be based on something. And you haven't given a basis for any of them.
And without a basis, you're just making stuff up. That makes you look bad, and it means your position is demonstrably weak. The more you double-down or try to deflect from that weakness, the more you look like a fool. And nobody should want that; especially you. Sleazy politicians get called out on this all the time. We don't want to be like that.
I get that you're frustrated by what you see as a lack of content in that pillar. But in most games it's also not that important. We like to hand waive travel because that's usually just the stuff between adventures. In Westeros, it takes a month to travel from King's Landing to Winterfell and vice versa. But we don't follow people traveling over that entire month. We get little episodes here and there at stops along the way. When Gandalf took Pippin to Minas Tirith, it was, "a three days' ride, as the Nazgul flies." But we didn't stop to see them camp or worry about where they were going or if they'd get lost.
The important thing isn't what happens that day, unless there's a random encounter. The point of the exploration rules is to ratchet up tension. In most cases, it isn't a problem. But in harsher environments, like Chult and Icewind Dale, it can be. Not being able to find enough food or water (the Dehydration rules in Chult are brutal) can lead to a death spiral. It's there to facilitate atmosphere. And this is, admittedly, not well communicated by the authors.
But when you understand the purpose behind the rules, you know when to use them and when not to.
Fully agree with the social pillar being light as well. I think that is almost a good thing based on the complex nature of human interaction but I do think there could be more there as well.
I liked what PF2e did with the social aspects and I hope future editions work that in somehow.
What my point with the enhance ability is that a ranger is not needed or if they are there they cause less rolls and less time spend in the exploration pillar. I am glad we are on the same page with the fact that the pillar is sort of bare bones as thats mostly my issue overall. That part of the game is just lacking and I hope we get more content at some point. If not in this edition then in the next.
For the statistics....still don't know what you are talking about. I ballpark stuff sure but its just that...a ballpark guess. TBH it seems to be more a sticking point than it needs to be.
Also with Tasha's the ranger can also just cast Enhance Ability on themselves now! So another win for Tashas!
That's...look, when you give a "ballpark" figure, you're making an estimate. That estimate has to actually be rooted in something. If I look up the Redfin estimate on my house, it gives me an approximate sale price based on a number of factors such as what I paid for it at the time of purchase, expected appreciation over the years, and the recent sale prices in the neighborhood. So if you give us a number it needs to be based on something. And you haven't given a basis for any of them.
And without a basis, you're just making stuff up. That makes you look bad, and it means your position is demonstrably weak. The more you double-down or try to deflect from that weakness, the more you look like a fool. And nobody should want that; especially you. Sleazy politicians get called out on this all the time. We don't want to be like that.
I get that you're frustrated by what you see as a lack of content in that pillar. But in most games it's also not that important. We like to hand waive travel because that's usually just the stuff between adventures. In Westeros, it takes a month to travel from King's Landing to Winterfell and vice versa. But we don't follow people traveling over that entire month. We get little episodes here and there at stops along the way. When Gandalf took Pippin to Minas Tirith, it was, "a three days' ride, as the Nazgul flies." But we didn't stop to see them camp or worry about where they were going or if they'd get lost.
The important thing isn't what happens that day, unless there's a random encounter. The point of the exploration rules is to ratchet up tension. In most cases, it isn't a problem. But in harsher environments, like Chult and Icewind Dale, it can be. Not being able to find enough food or water (the Dehydration rules in Chult are brutal) can lead to a death spiral. It's there to facilitate atmosphere. And this is, admittedly, not well communicated by the authors.
But when you understand the purpose behind the rules, you know when to use them and when not to.
My ballparks are as well informed as I can be with the information I have available. Feel free to make your own of you feel they are not accurate but I disagree that any opinion here is "weak" as that's a juvenile way of looking at it. I'm in no way being "sleazy" as I'm just expressing my opinion and have stated such many times.
We all have different experiences and to say yours is "stronger" is a fallacy as no such thing exists.
As for the exploration pillar.... It's hard to call it a pillar of the game if it's not a significant portion of the game for most and all I would like is additional content to bring it up a bit.
Combat and social encounters seem robust enough, albeit for different reasons, but the exploration pillar is lacking IMO.
This is why certain aspects of ranger suffer as the content is not there to make it shine for more than a brief moment.
The things I'm going to come back to here are, 1. skill check DCs in general are rarely ever above 20 while most are closer to the 10-15 range, so we reach a mathematical point where someone with a modifier of +7 on a roll is basically equivalent to one with a +100 to the same roll. 2. expertise is nice and reliable talent is great, rogues are good at skills, that's what they do. If you choose to build a rogue to focus on an area of the game that should be rewarded mechanically. A non scout rogue focusing on survival skills is going to sacrifice quite a bit of their class to do so, and that will only yield them the ability to do those couple of survival skills very well. A scout gets the two extra skills, but again of you, as a player, want to devote your ENTIRE subclass to being a boy scout, and possibly your background as well, then I applaud that and would reward that as a DM. That isn't a slight to the ranger. IF that scout player was in the party then the ranger can focus on doing the several other things it does very well while still taking part in the survival game. 3. A ranger can be, and is much of the time, and even more frequently as levels progress up, great at the wilderness game. We can make all of the claims and scenarios we want about how one hyper focused build or combination or another can do "what a ranger does" (false, by the way), we are still talking about building against type. The fact that all rangers can do nothing and be, worst case scenario on their worst day, 65%+ as good at the survival game as several hyper focused and intentionally built classes in combinations is, as far as I'm concerned, a strength.
Optimus, in one breath you say that the survival and travel game boils down to a few die rolls and is over in a second AND a hyper focused build of a scout and cleric can do what all rangers can do. That does not carry the same weight that you seem to think it does with most of us.
And that is ONLY TWO SKILLS! That is what we are talking about. Not even the rest of what the ranger's two abilities do and cover. Nor the rest of the ranger baseline kit. Not healing magic. Not moving and protecting the entire party. Not being a strong martial combatant. Not having the spell arsenal. And that is just the baseline ranger stuff. All of that, all of this conversation, is just talking about to skill checks, that are easy most of the time, that the ranger meets or exceeds much of the time, and is by several folk's own admission not a large pert of the game and is over and done with too soon.
This thread is about if the ranger is underpowered. I vote that if you need a specific class, with a specific subclass, a specific background, all with a specific hyper focused build, and with occasional help form a full spellcaster second party member, to some of the time recreate some of what the ranger does by default, then the ranger is not underpowered.
I will not reiterate the points on this but I feel that if anyone can get a decent survival and that check is that is required I feel it makes the aspects they included in NE to not even be utilized and therefore underwhelming.
Underwhelming translates to some (not myself but others) into "underpowered".
You have your opinions on it and I respect that but I see/feel that the value is lessened by this approach and therefore the feature does feel underwhelming.
I will not reiterate the points on this but I feel that if anyone can get a decent survival and that check is that is required I feel it makes the aspects they included in NE to not even be utilized and therefore underwhelming.
Underwhelming translates to some (not myself but others) into "underpowered".
You have your opinions on it and I respect that but I see/feel that the value is lessened by this approach and therefore the feature does feel underwhelming.
I think it slipped by. I'm saying much more. The survival thing is a check anyone can make anyway. Just like all checks. NE and FE by themselves have great uses and perks, and a survival check is one small piece of one of them. They both offer much more than that alone, things a simple check can't do, and together with the other class and subclass abilities and spells, they form a dangerous combination. I'm saying few builds are going to even take survival and boost wisdom at the same time. Fewer still are going to invest in the way that scout rogue demands. The point is, by default, rangers are better at the whole travel and survival thing than almost all other classes, save for highly specialized builds.
I guess another example would be, what single class would be most effective at leading a medium group of commoners through any kind of terrain/landscape? I say ranger.
I will not reiterate the points on this but I feel that if anyone can get a decent survival and that check is that is required I feel it makes the aspects they included in NE to not even be utilized and therefore underwhelming.
Underwhelming translates to some (not myself but others) into "underpowered".
You have your opinions on it and I respect that but I see/feel that the value is lessened by this approach and therefore the feature does feel underwhelming.
I think it slipped by. I'm saying much more. The survival thing is a check anyone can make anyway. Just like all checks. NE and FE by themselves have great uses and perks, and a survival check is one small piece of one of them. They both offer much more than that alone, things a simple check can't do, and together with the other class and subclass abilities and spells, they form a dangerous combination. I'm saying few builds are going to even take survival and boost wisdom at the same time. Fewer still are going to invest in the way that scout rogue demands. The point is, by default, rangers are better at the whole travel and survival thing than almost all other classes, save for highly specialized builds.
I guess another example would be, what single class would be most effective at leading a medium group of commoners through any kind of terrain/landscape? I say ranger.
Maybe... Or a fighter that took skill expert and outlander background. They would be better in a forest then a ranger who took mountain in NE... If it's just a survival check to figure it out.
If they had more fleshed out challenges then yeah it's going to be ranger.
I will not reiterate the points on this but I feel that if anyone can get a decent survival and that check is that is required I feel it makes the aspects they included in NE to not even be utilized and therefore underwhelming.
Underwhelming translates to some (not myself but others) into "underpowered".
You have your opinions on it and I respect that but I see/feel that the value is lessened by this approach and therefore the feature does feel underwhelming.
I think it slipped by. I'm saying much more. The survival thing is a check anyone can make anyway. Just like all checks. NE and FE by themselves have great uses and perks, and a survival check is one small piece of one of them. They both offer much more than that alone, things a simple check can't do, and together with the other class and subclass abilities and spells, they form a dangerous combination. I'm saying few builds are going to even take survival and boost wisdom at the same time. Fewer still are going to invest in the way that scout rogue demands. The point is, by default, rangers are better at the whole travel and survival thing than almost all other classes, save for highly specialized builds.
I guess another example would be, what single class would be most effective at leading a medium group of commoners through any kind of terrain/landscape? I say ranger.
Maybe... Or a fighter that took skill expert and outlander background. They would be better in a forest then a ranger who took mountain in NE... If it's just a survival check to figure it out.
If they had more fleshed out challenges then yeah it's going to be ranger.
1. Again a build investing in doing something (background, at least one feat, pumping wisdom) that a ranger does naturally (pun intended). 2. Only by your severely devalued and underestimated example of what it would take to do something like that (which I don't think is actually what you think, just what you are saying to play the devil's advocate in these discussions). 3. No. A ranger not in their favored terrain would have a 10% less chance of making a survival role that this mythical fighter would make, but the rest is not even close. Just the spells alone...
My ballparks are as well informed as I can be with the information I have available. Feel free to make your own of you feel they are not accurate but I disagree that any opinion here is "weak" as that's a juvenile way of looking at it. I'm in no way being "sleazy" as I'm just expressing my opinion and have stated such many times.
We all have different experiences and to say yours is "stronger" is a fallacy as no such thing exists.
As for the exploration pillar.... It's hard to call it a pillar of the game if it's not a significant portion of the game for most and all I would like is additional content to bring it up a bit.
Combat and social encounters seem robust enough, albeit for different reasons, but the exploration pillar is lacking IMO.
This is why certain aspects of ranger suffer as the content is not there to make it shine for more than a brief moment.
Your ballparks might be well-informed, but we don't have the same information you do. Or, at least, we don't know if we do or not because you have a habit of leaving your statements unqualified. This, in turn, has led a number of your opinionated statements to be presented as if they were facts. We all know how facts and opinions can look and feel similar, but they are not the same. You need to qualify your statements. And if anything is based in something more concrete than your own, personal experiences, then please share with the rest of the class.
As for the exploration pillar, it's present everywhere. The pillars are not unto themselves disparate elements of the game. They interweave together to create a complete experience. If you're trekking across the wilderness, that's exploration. If you're dungeon-delving, say in The Sunless Citadel, that's exploration. If you're visiting Candlekeep to gather information from the library, that's exploration. If you're walking door-to-door, asking local residents about missing people, that's exploration. If an adult red dragon is using a Legendary Action in the middle of combat to perceive a hidden rogue, that's exploration. If a spellcaster is using their Reaction to attempt an Intelligence (Arcana) check to identify the spell being cast by an enemy spellcaster, that's exploration.
Compartmentalization, which if I'm reading this correctly is what you do, is a terrible way to look at the game.
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Its not....as Frank and others have stated class features (for the most part) are tied to combat, along with AC, HP, Saving throws, Attacks, items, and spells all add to the combat realm.
75% is being generous in fact.
A lot of what I'm talking about. Isn't actually in the optional rules. I went back and looked. They are almost all in the general stuff for how to build encounters and how to use environments and complications that can be found within them. They are rules for DM's to follow to build the exploration pillar which is much of the world without getting into some of the optional stuff.
Tied to does not make them combat. General use means that they have involvement in at least 2 but potentially all 3 pillars of the game.
Your falsely equating these multipurpose parts of the sheet only to combat and this is false and paints a wrong picture. Being Tied to combat is not the same thing as being all about combat.
Also there are many items and spells that are not part of the combat realm at all.
HP, Saving Throws, Items, Spells, languages, and Skills can all be used without ever getting into a single ounce of combat. If somebody uses the optional (and highly suggested to be used) rule of non-combat encounter experience. It's actually concievable for characters to actually gain levels without ever getting into combat. But you can use all of these other things on the front side of the sheet very easily.
So 75% isn't being generous. Your being horribly biased and using that to make up a statistic that isn't actually true. your choosing to use them in a narrow view that fits the perspective that your wanting to push by declaring such false information.
I could literally post the navigation guide from ToA in which a single survival roll a day decides if you are lost and anyone can make it. In the case of the ranger you just forgo the roll if they are in their terrain...which while advantageous is not engaging IMO.
That plus a survival check to forage for food/water....again a single check.
Overall it does boil down to survival checks about 90% of the modules/adventures I have read through with very little/no mention of the DMG rules beyond travel pace but thats about it.
Once the pace is set its mostly done at that point and your PP is passive so no active checks there.
In many instances... Unless that single survival check is made by a ranger or other Wisdom based character with proficiency in survival. It can often take multiple foraging checks to meet a foraging goal. Specially if you have animals with you.
People actually mis-state foraging checks quite regularly. Now if they module states otherwise of course, that's a specific detail of the module itself and not the core rules.
So say 2-3 checks for an entire day...thats not a huge time commitment table wise unless you want to fluff it for time.
Outlander background would forgo it completely in most of Chult too.
Are you referring to the rules for Becoming Lost; found on pages 111 and 112 of the DMG? Because the only real differences between those and the ones from page 38 of Tomb of Annihilation is the addition of Coasts and Lakes for terrain (DC 10) and rolling 1d6 to figure out which hex they wind up in. And both of those are campaign-specific.
So, yeah, that makes for three Wisdom (Survival) rolls to determine whether or not the party is lost, whether they find enough food for the day, and whether they find enough water for the day. And a ranger, in one of their favored terrains, can really help by trivializing the first roll and doubling the amount of food found for the second. By the same token, the Outlander background can also help. A party can do well either either one.
Tomb of Annihilation embraces a specific style of play. It's a meat grinder where survival is paramount because death is permeant. There are real stakes. It's one of the few campaigns where wilderness exploration actually matters. And you can't even bother to cite the rules properly.
Between your dismissive attitude and fabrication of statistics, why should anyone listen to you?
I am saying it does come down to survival rolls and although that ranger gets expertise in that roll a rogue with expertise will have the same odds to do as much as the ranger. A caster with ADV on the roll from enhance ability will have a very good shot as well. Someone with the right background makes it moot.
The major issue then is the exploration pillar in this case is not very robust compared to the others and most of it is either handwaved or a very small amount of time is devoted to it.
I am not sure what you are saying about statistics as I am simply saying what is in the source book for ToA?
Not only that but Outlander Stacks with what the Ranger does. So the Ranger can potentially feed the party and a pack animals/mounts between the two. i don't remember how much allowance Tomb of annihilation for things like mounts or pack animals. It's been quite a while for me.
Also. Navigation rolls are not "do it at the start and then it's not doing anything anymore". It's a roll that represents the time that you spend doing it so your attention is occupied on making sure the group is going the right way. So Passive Perception does not help the navigator unless they have the ability to be perceptive while being active. So saying PP is passive and automatic after the initial roll is another misrepresentation of the workings of abilities (one that many people mistakenly make).
If you get a pack animal native to Chult it finds its own food and water so no rolls needed there but a good thought.
PP is part of the travel pace rules as it comes to if you get a penalty or not so you could get ambushed if you are moving too fast. I would guess you would not have the navigator also be the spotter but I guess that situation could come up if only one person is good at both.
Otherwise the party can split up the duties but it doesn't add a lot of table time overall I have found. I leads to the things that take table time (combat/social encounters).
Its pretty simple overall with this approach and mostly is hands off.
Yes, it does come down to Wisdom (Survival) rolls. And while a rogue might also have the same bonus to their roll, they lack the other perks of Natural Explorer. If we're adding spellcasting to the mix, the same spellcaster could instead cast enhance ability on the navigator with Expertise; explicit (Scout) or functional (Natural Explorer). Of course, there might be other ways of acquiring advantage that don't require the expenditure of a spell slot.
"If the party has an accurate map of the region or can see the sun or stars, the navigator has advantage on the check." (DMG 111)
No, the exploration pillar is not robust. Neither is the social pillar. The only pillar that even approaches being robust is combat, largely out of necessity, and even then it's still open to a lot of interpretation. "Rulings, not rules."
And I brought up statistics because you continuously pull percentages out of thin air. Give us a break.
Fully agree with the social pillar being light as well. I think that is almost a good thing based on the complex nature of human interaction but I do think there could be more there as well.
I liked what PF2e did with the social aspects and I hope future editions work that in somehow.
What my point with the enhance ability is that a ranger is not needed or if they are there they cause less rolls and less time spend in the exploration pillar. I am glad we are on the same page with the fact that the pillar is sort of bare bones as thats mostly my issue overall. That part of the game is just lacking and I hope we get more content at some point. If not in this edition then in the next.
For the statistics....still don't know what you are talking about. I ballpark stuff sure but its just that...a ballpark guess. TBH it seems to be more a sticking point than it needs to be.
Also with Tasha's the ranger can also just cast Enhance Ability on themselves now! So another win for Tashas!
The things I'm going to come back to here are, 1. skill check DCs in general are rarely ever above 20 while most are closer to the 10-15 range, so we reach a mathematical point where someone with a modifier of +7 on a roll is basically equivalent to one with a +100 to the same roll. 2. expertise is nice and reliable talent is great, rogues are good at skills, that's what they do. If you choose to build a rogue to focus on an area of the game that should be rewarded mechanically. A non scout rogue focusing on survival skills is going to sacrifice quite a bit of their class to do so, and that will only yield them the ability to do those couple of survival skills very well. A scout gets the two extra skills, but again of you, as a player, want to devote your ENTIRE subclass to being a boy scout, and possibly your background as well, then I applaud that and would reward that as a DM. That isn't a slight to the ranger. IF that scout player was in the party then the ranger can focus on doing the several other things it does very well while still taking part in the survival game. 3. A ranger can be, and is much of the time, and even more frequently as levels progress up, great at the wilderness game. We can make all of the claims and scenarios we want about how one hyper focused build or combination or another can do "what a ranger does" (false, by the way), we are still talking about building against type. The fact that all rangers can do nothing and be, worst case scenario on their worst day, 65%+ as good at the survival game as several hyper focused and intentionally built classes in combinations is, as far as I'm concerned, a strength.
Optimus, in one breath you say that the survival and travel game boils down to a few die rolls and is over in a second AND a hyper focused build of a scout and cleric can do what all rangers can do. That does not carry the same weight that you seem to think it does with most of us.
And that is ONLY TWO SKILLS! That is what we are talking about. Not even the rest of what the ranger's two abilities do and cover. Nor the rest of the ranger baseline kit. Not healing magic. Not moving and protecting the entire party. Not being a strong martial combatant. Not having the spell arsenal. And that is just the baseline ranger stuff. All of that, all of this conversation, is just talking about to skill checks, that are easy most of the time, that the ranger meets or exceeds much of the time, and is by several folk's own admission not a large pert of the game and is over and done with too soon.
This thread is about if the ranger is underpowered. I vote that if you need a specific class, with a specific subclass, a specific background, all with a specific hyper focused build, and with occasional help form a full spellcaster second party member, to some of the time recreate some of what the ranger does by default, then the ranger is not underpowered.
That's...look, when you give a "ballpark" figure, you're making an estimate. That estimate has to actually be rooted in something. If I look up the Redfin estimate on my house, it gives me an approximate sale price based on a number of factors such as what I paid for it at the time of purchase, expected appreciation over the years, and the recent sale prices in the neighborhood. So if you give us a number it needs to be based on something. And you haven't given a basis for any of them.
And without a basis, you're just making stuff up. That makes you look bad, and it means your position is demonstrably weak. The more you double-down or try to deflect from that weakness, the more you look like a fool. And nobody should want that; especially you. Sleazy politicians get called out on this all the time. We don't want to be like that.
I get that you're frustrated by what you see as a lack of content in that pillar. But in most games it's also not that important. We like to hand waive travel because that's usually just the stuff between adventures. In Westeros, it takes a month to travel from King's Landing to Winterfell and vice versa. But we don't follow people traveling over that entire month. We get little episodes here and there at stops along the way. When Gandalf took Pippin to Minas Tirith, it was, "a three days' ride, as the Nazgul flies." But we didn't stop to see them camp or worry about where they were going or if they'd get lost.
The important thing isn't what happens that day, unless there's a random encounter. The point of the exploration rules is to ratchet up tension. In most cases, it isn't a problem. But in harsher environments, like Chult and Icewind Dale, it can be. Not being able to find enough food or water (the Dehydration rules in Chult are brutal) can lead to a death spiral. It's there to facilitate atmosphere. And this is, admittedly, not well communicated by the authors.
But when you understand the purpose behind the rules, you know when to use them and when not to.
My ballparks are as well informed as I can be with the information I have available. Feel free to make your own of you feel they are not accurate but I disagree that any opinion here is "weak" as that's a juvenile way of looking at it. I'm in no way being "sleazy" as I'm just expressing my opinion and have stated such many times.
We all have different experiences and to say yours is "stronger" is a fallacy as no such thing exists.
As for the exploration pillar.... It's hard to call it a pillar of the game if it's not a significant portion of the game for most and all I would like is additional content to bring it up a bit.
Combat and social encounters seem robust enough, albeit for different reasons, but the exploration pillar is lacking IMO.
This is why certain aspects of ranger suffer as the content is not there to make it shine for more than a brief moment.
I will not reiterate the points on this but I feel that if anyone can get a decent survival and that check is that is required I feel it makes the aspects they included in NE to not even be utilized and therefore underwhelming.
Underwhelming translates to some (not myself but others) into "underpowered".
You have your opinions on it and I respect that but I see/feel that the value is lessened by this approach and therefore the feature does feel underwhelming.
I think it slipped by. I'm saying much more. The survival thing is a check anyone can make anyway. Just like all checks. NE and FE by themselves have great uses and perks, and a survival check is one small piece of one of them. They both offer much more than that alone, things a simple check can't do, and together with the other class and subclass abilities and spells, they form a dangerous combination. I'm saying few builds are going to even take survival and boost wisdom at the same time. Fewer still are going to invest in the way that scout rogue demands. The point is, by default, rangers are better at the whole travel and survival thing than almost all other classes, save for highly specialized builds.
I guess another example would be, what single class would be most effective at leading a medium group of commoners through any kind of terrain/landscape? I say ranger.
Maybe... Or a fighter that took skill expert and outlander background. They would be better in a forest then a ranger who took mountain in NE... If it's just a survival check to figure it out.
If they had more fleshed out challenges then yeah it's going to be ranger.
1. Again a build investing in doing something (background, at least one feat, pumping wisdom) that a ranger does naturally (pun intended). 2. Only by your severely devalued and underestimated example of what it would take to do something like that (which I don't think is actually what you think, just what you are saying to play the devil's advocate in these discussions). 3. No. A ranger not in their favored terrain would have a 10% less chance of making a survival role that this mythical fighter would make, but the rest is not even close. Just the spells alone...
Your ballparks might be well-informed, but we don't have the same information you do. Or, at least, we don't know if we do or not because you have a habit of leaving your statements unqualified. This, in turn, has led a number of your opinionated statements to be presented as if they were facts. We all know how facts and opinions can look and feel similar, but they are not the same. You need to qualify your statements. And if anything is based in something more concrete than your own, personal experiences, then please share with the rest of the class.
As for the exploration pillar, it's present everywhere. The pillars are not unto themselves disparate elements of the game. They interweave together to create a complete experience. If you're trekking across the wilderness, that's exploration. If you're dungeon-delving, say in The Sunless Citadel, that's exploration. If you're visiting Candlekeep to gather information from the library, that's exploration. If you're walking door-to-door, asking local residents about missing people, that's exploration. If an adult red dragon is using a Legendary Action in the middle of combat to perceive a hidden rogue, that's exploration. If a spellcaster is using their Reaction to attempt an Intelligence (Arcana) check to identify the spell being cast by an enemy spellcaster, that's exploration.
Compartmentalization, which if I'm reading this correctly is what you do, is a terrible way to look at the game.