So today I learned that, according to the DMG, if the DM is running a chase sequence (i.e., trying to get the party to lose track of an NPC,) the NPC will get disadvantage on their stealth rolls just for a Ranger being with the party. If there is no Ranger in the party, the same effect can be secured by anyone with proficiency in survival. But still, it's interesting that a Ranger just existing (they themselves don't even need Survival) automatically imposes disadvantage on people trying to get away from them.
What.
Explain, please.
always thought it was weird that section assumed there were rangers without proficiency in survival.
Such an strange assumption for them to make
I have played a ranger (once) that was more city based and did not have survival or nature proficiency.
So today I learned that, according to the DMG, if the DM is running a chase sequence (i.e., trying to get the party to lose track of an NPC,) the NPC will get disadvantage on their stealth rolls just for a Ranger being with the party. If there is no Ranger in the party, the same effect can be secured by anyone with proficiency in survival. But still, it's interesting that a Ranger just existing (they themselves don't even need Survival) automatically imposes disadvantage on people trying to get away from them.
It is an awesome perk! Urban ranger, wilderness ranger, whatever! Nice find!
The quarry is making the roll. So the ranger imposes disadvantage on the roll made by the creature the ranger is chasing.
Worth noting is that, either with Hunter's Mark or Favored Enemy, the Ranger can give themselves advantage on the Survival check to track the target while also imposing disadvantage on their stealth checks. But wait, there's more. Both Deft and Natural Explorer can grant the Ranger expertise on their Survival skills for tracking (and Natural Explorer can even track whole groups.)
So for --at most-- the cost of one 1st-level spell slot (Hunter's Mark,) the Ranger is tracking their quarry with both advantage and expertise, as well as imposing disadvantage on the quarry's stealth checks to get away. And this is all just passive benefits.
The quarry is making the roll. So the ranger imposes disadvantage on the roll made by the creature the ranger is chasing.
Worth noting is that, either with Hunter's Mark or Favored Enemy, the Ranger can give themselves advantage on the Survival check to track the target while also imposing disadvantage on their stealth checks. But wait, there's more. Both Deft and Natural Explorer can grant the Ranger expertise on their Survival skills for tracking (and Natural Explorer can even track whole groups.)
So for --at most-- the cost of one 1st-level spell slot (Hunter's Mark,) the Ranger is tracking their quarry with both advantage and expertise, as well as imposing disadvantage on the quarry's stealth checks to get away. And this is all just passive benefits.
So my thoughts on this....
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature. Basically a prolonged enough chase to warrant a roll to actually track them is almost nil. Once you have your prey in sight there are so many other more effective ways of ending a chase this really becomes obsolete pretty darn quick.
Overall its interesting trivia but I would say hardly redeeming of the features.
The quarry is making the roll. So the ranger imposes disadvantage on the roll made by the creature the ranger is chasing.
Worth noting is that, either with Hunter's Mark or Favored Enemy, the Ranger can give themselves advantage on the Survival check to track the target while also imposing disadvantage on their stealth checks. But wait, there's more. Both Deft and Natural Explorer can grant the Ranger expertise on their Survival skills for tracking (and Natural Explorer can even track whole groups.)
So for --at most-- the cost of one 1st-level spell slot (Hunter's Mark,) the Ranger is tracking their quarry with both advantage and expertise, as well as imposing disadvantage on the quarry's stealth checks to get away. And this is all just passive benefits.
So my thoughts on this....
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature. Basically a prolonged enough chase to warrant a roll to actually track them is almost nil. Once you have your prey in sight there are so many other more effective ways of ending a chase this really becomes obsolete pretty darn quick.
Overall its interesting trivia but I would say hardly redeeming of the features.
There's that positive attitude I've been looking for! Just kidding.
Not to nitpick, but you and many others have mentioned this "auto-win" stuff before regarding the PHB ranger abilities. Would not a high level rogue encounter the same situation? With their base 10 and expertise, aren't they also auto-winning? Aren't spellcasting classes, especially wizards, kind of a big deal when it comes to auto-winning an encounter or overcoming a difficultly with their spells? What about the observant feat and passive perception scores well over 20? Isn't that auto-winning? What about a paladin using two 3rd level smites on a turn with a critical hit to slay the big boss monster? That's auto-winning too. I guess I don't see a problem with it for the ranger if it exists everywhere in the entire game for other classes, abilities, feats, and spell.
The quarry is making the roll. So the ranger imposes disadvantage on the roll made by the creature the ranger is chasing.
Worth noting is that, either with Hunter's Mark or Favored Enemy, the Ranger can give themselves advantage on the Survival check to track the target while also imposing disadvantage on their stealth checks. But wait, there's more. Both Deft and Natural Explorer can grant the Ranger expertise on their Survival skills for tracking (and Natural Explorer can even track whole groups.)
So for --at most-- the cost of one 1st-level spell slot (Hunter's Mark,) the Ranger is tracking their quarry with both advantage and expertise, as well as imposing disadvantage on the quarry's stealth checks to get away. And this is all just passive benefits.
So my thoughts on this....
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature. Basically a prolonged enough chase to warrant a roll to actually track them is almost nil. Once you have your prey in sight there are so many other more effective ways of ending a chase this really becomes obsolete pretty darn quick.
Overall its interesting trivia but I would say hardly redeeming of the features.
There's that positive attitude I've been looking for! Just kidding.
Not to nitpick, but you and many others have mentioned this "auto-win" stuff before regarding the PHB ranger abilities. Would not a high level rogue encounter the same situation? With their base 10 and expertise, aren't they also auto-winning? Aren't spellcasting classes, especially wizards, kind of a big deal when it comes to auto-winning an encounter or overcoming a difficultly with their spells? What about the observant feat and passive perception scores well over 20? Isn't that auto-winning? What about a paladin using two 3rd level smites on a turn with a critical hit to slay the big boss monster? That's auto-winning too. I guess I don't see a problem with it for the ranger if it exists everywhere in the entire game for other classes, abilities, feats, and spell.
High level rogue does and honestly I find the same issues there for the most part... And that's at a level that autowinnng on a skill is expected to be honest. 14th level you should not have to worry about rolling 1s on a character that has focused on something so much as to be an expert in it.
Overall it's more about how infrequently the auto win comes up.
Same for observant and Passive Perception.... But in that case the player took a feat and increased wisdom to make it work. They still have their class features to fall back on to do other things where as the rangers class features have you auto win in the most niche things so that when they do come up it's over and forgotten. At least passive perception is used all the time and has an impact on so much.
Paladin is bad example as that's a mathematical oddity to hit two crits in a row and that's hella satisfying to roll all those die.
The use of spells to overcome the issue is dynamic as you are at least getting use of the feature in other ways (fly can do more then chase) where as ranger it's likely to not be used again.
Must be the differences in experiences at the table again. Auto-win, niche, "satisfying", etc. Just very different views on the game based on individual play and preference. I disagree with almost everything you are saying.
Must be the differences in experiences at the table again. Auto-win, niche, "satisfying", etc. Just very different views on the game based on individual play and preference. I disagree with almost everything you are saying.
The ranger successfully tracking someone IMO is just less interesting overall...
With a successful stealth check the rogue goes unnoticed and plot point is revealed or a sneak attack comes.
A wizard using fly on himself and the rest of the party to fly after a fleeing bandit is just awesome as now everyone gets to feel how cool it is to have pure nasty speed.
A paladin crit smiting a BBEG into the ground is extremely satisfying rolling all those die.
A ranger finding the way to go is just....expected? Its not really a huge turning point as the success mostly just lets everything move on and a failure means you do not move on at all...
its just not exciting IMO....unless there is more to exploration (dangers, interesting set pieces, treasures) then the succesful transversal is mostly something I feel the table spending about 10 min or less on and kinda moving on from.
Must be the differences in experiences at the table again. Auto-win, niche, "satisfying", etc. Just very different views on the game based on individual play and preference. I disagree with almost everything you are saying.
The ranger successfully tracking someone IMO is just less interesting overall...
With a successful stealth check the rogue goes unnoticed and plot point is revealed or a sneak attack comes.
A wizard using fly on himself and the rest of the party to fly after a fleeing bandit is just awesome as now everyone gets to feel how cool it is to have pure nasty speed.
A paladin crit smiting a BBEG into the ground is extremely satisfying rolling all those die.
A ranger finding the way to go is just....expected? Its not really a huge turning point as the success mostly just lets everything move on and a failure means you do not move on at all...
its just not exciting IMO....unless there is more to exploration (dangers, interesting set pieces, treasures) then the succesful transversal is mostly something I feel the table spending about 10 min or less on and kinda moving on from.
I understand what your saying.
Potato, potato. (That doesn't really work when typed. LOL!)
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature.
A DM can work around these kinds of issues.
For example, if you want an exciting chase but don't want your flying Wizard or super-fast Monk cheesing it; set it on fast carriages or ships. While Fly can be a great way to bypass obstacles, it's actually not that fast (a longship in ideal sailing conditions can hit 15 knots, which is 25 feet per second, or 150 feet per turn so flying that way isn't feasible without extra work), whereas a carriage moving at speed can hit 120 feet or so per round, so would force dashing just to keep up, or double dashing (burning resources) to close the gap.
You can get around "auto" tracking on Rangers if you really need to by having especially elusive targets disguise themselves with magic, but really all a DM needs to do is set a higher DC, or scale based upon the result, e.g- a 30+ is closing the gap, 25+ is keeping pace, but 20+ is falling behind. Even with all the bonuses a Ranger can still whiff the roll, or not roll quite as well as normal.
DM's have the tools they should need to keep a chase exciting; and really if they have a Ranger in their party they should plan for how to reward them, e.g- if the Ranger isn't around the target just straight up gets away automatically, triggering extra quest stages to find out where they went, but if the Ranger is present the party can potentially bypass this, just like how a character knowing a particular language in a dungeon can mean the different between knowing how to proceed or using trial and error.
The real problem with these kinds of out of combat ranger abilities is that D&D 5e lacks much in the way of structure for out of combat stuff; that's fine to a degree, but for the classes that have specific out of combat features, those out of combat areas really ought to have more formal rules to reflect it (both to take advantage, and avoid leaving groups out that don't have that one character type).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature.
A DM can work around these kinds of issues.
For example, if you want an exciting chase but don't want your flying Wizard or super-fast Monk cheesing it; set it on fast carriages or ships. While Fly can be a great way to bypass obstacles, it's actually not that fast (a longship in ideal sailing conditions can hit 15 knots, which is 25 feet per second, or 150 feet per turn so flying that way isn't feasible without extra work), whereas a carriage moving at speed can hit 120 feet or so per round, so would force dashing just to keep up, or double dashing (burning resources) to close the gap.
You can get around "auto" tracking on Rangers if you really need to by having especially elusive targets disguise themselves with magic, but really all a DM needs to do is set a higher DC, or scale based upon the result, e.g- a 30+ is closing the gap, 25+ is keeping pace, but 20+ is falling behind. Even with all the bonuses a Ranger can still whiff the roll, or not roll quite as well as normal.
DM's have the tools they should need to keep a chase exciting; and really if they have a Ranger in their party they should plan for how to reward them, e.g- if the Ranger isn't around the target just straight up gets away automatically, triggering extra quest stages to find out where they went, but if the Ranger is present the party can potentially bypass this, just like how a character knowing a particular language in a dungeon can mean the different between knowing how to proceed or using trial and error.
The real problem with these kinds of out of combat ranger abilities is that D&D 5e lacks much in the way of structure for out of combat stuff; that's fine to a degree, but for the classes that have specific out of combat features, those out of combat areas really ought to have more formal rules to reflect it (both to take advantage, and avoid leaving groups out that don't have that one character type).
Your last paragraph is the part I generally see...because the system has less support for these kind of things it tends to fall by the wayside. I do agree a DM can mitigate it but I think the reality is a lot do not as it does not naturally flow into the game like social and combat encounters do.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
I think thats why people do not focus on it...while I know that "the journey is the story" a lot of people do not want to do walking simulator in DnD and want to simply move to the next town for story progression.
Personally I have had fun with this approach when the stakes are low key (take this wagon full of cheese to Silverymoon) and along the way you find out the cheese is both haunted and in great demand for demons for its deliciously haunty flavor.
THEN the journey is worth it...otherwise if you have a world altering story on your hands no one feels great about 3 sessions of side quests and describing how you pull yourself through some shrubs.
Your last paragraph is the part I generally see...because the system has less support for these kind of things it tends to fall by the wayside. I do agree a DM can mitigate it but I think the reality is a lot do not as it does not naturally flow into the game like social and combat encounters do.
Thing is, I feel like this is more of a problem with the meta (how the game is actually played by many groups) rather than how the Ranger is designed (when the game is played the way that it's supposed to/intended to be played).
It does still come down to poor design/assumptions, and can make ranger players feel left out a bit when they play in more typical (probably more combat oriented) groups; that's not to say rangers are any kind of slouch when it comes to combat, they're actually really quite good, but a lot of a Ranger's most iconic features really require a player to fish for opportunities to actually use them. You need to be the player that always suggests tracking targets, or pushes the group to setup ambushes so you can make the most of your trap spells and so-on.
Because of these not strictly class related problems Ranger is in this weird space that it's a class a lot of people might want to play, but that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to a first time player unless they've got a clear character idea that just can't be represented any other way (in which case I'd go over the "always be fishing" advice 😉). Monk can be kind of the same, especially when it comes to making full use of your superior speed; Monk players may find themselves needing to fish for cover, distance and mixed enemy groups.
I have a lot of fun in 5e, and there are so many rules for so many aspects of the game now, but combat is still definitely the most structured and best understood part of the game by players and DM's alike, and that can be a bit of a shame for classes that excel out of combat.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
I think thats why people do not focus on it...while I know that "the journey is the story" a lot of people do not want to do walking simulator in DnD and want to simply move to the next town for story progression.
Personally I have had fun with this approach when the stakes are low key (take this wagon full of cheese to Silverymoon) and along the way you find out the cheese is both haunted and in great demand for demons for its deliciously haunty flavor.
THEN the journey is worth it...otherwise if you have a world altering story on your hands no one feels great about 3 sessions of side quests and describing how you pull yourself through some shrubs.
Well if all you want is to get there yesterday without troubles you check with your mages etc or pool your wealth to hire a mage to cast teleport circle/teleport and poof your there. But 3 weeks going thru the high forest with 4 wandering monster checks a day and 2 at night is a lot quicker than 10 weeks on the road with the same sort of thing - and the ranger finally gets to display more than his combat skills.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
I think thats why people do not focus on it...while I know that "the journey is the story" a lot of people do not want to do walking simulator in DnD and want to simply move to the next town for story progression.
Personally I have had fun with this approach when the stakes are low key (take this wagon full of cheese to Silverymoon) and along the way you find out the cheese is both haunted and in great demand for demons for its deliciously haunty flavor.
THEN the journey is worth it...otherwise if you have a world altering story on your hands no one feels great about 3 sessions of side quests and describing how you pull yourself through some shrubs.
Well if all you want is to get there yesterday without troubles you check with your mages etc or pool your wealth to hire a mage to cast teleport circle/teleport and poof your there. But 3 weeks going thru the high forest with 4 wandering monster checks a day and 2 at night is a lot quicker than 10 weeks on the road with the same sort of thing - and the ranger finally gets to display more than his combat skills.
But even then the rolls are over and done with very quickly.... And you basically just bypass the part of the game your good at because you are good at it.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
I think thats why people do not focus on it...while I know that "the journey is the story" a lot of people do not want to do walking simulator in DnD and want to simply move to the next town for story progression.
Personally I have had fun with this approach when the stakes are low key (take this wagon full of cheese to Silverymoon) and along the way you find out the cheese is both haunted and in great demand for demons for its deliciously haunty flavor.
THEN the journey is worth it...otherwise if you have a world altering story on your hands no one feels great about 3 sessions of side quests and describing how you pull yourself through some shrubs.
Well if all you want is to get there yesterday without troubles you check with your mages etc or pool your wealth to hire a mage to cast teleport circle/teleport and poof your there. But 3 weeks going thru the high forest with 4 wandering monster checks a day and 2 at night is a lot quicker than 10 weeks on the road with the same sort of thing - and the ranger finally gets to display more than his combat skills.
But even then the rolls are over and done with very quickly.... And you basically just bypass the part of the game your good at because you are good at it.
This do be the problem with survival in 5e, it is simply a lock and the key to that lock is a ranger with the proper favoured terrain.
If you have it, it is not a challenge, if you don't yer screwed, or at least the challenge becomes longer and arguably more challenging.
The only way i could see survival becomming an novel challenge where the entire party brings something to the table is with a combination of artificers, certain totem barbs, bards, druids and maybe rangers using Deft Explorer + rune knight fighters.
Artificers bring their tool profs/ expertise + flash of genious + some helpful spells and infusions,
totem barbs could bring basic survival or perception proficiency (if nobody else in the party has it), the rituals of their subclass and whatever their 6th level totem does + they are less suseptible to sleep deprivation, hunger and thirst thanks to con save proficiency and at later levels they become the best at strength checks
Bards generally have a lot of skill proficiencies and expertise in some stuff, so chances are they might know something handy for whatever skill challenge they face + bardic inspiration will be handy for the same reasons as flash of genious + they also have some spells that might be handy (the bard spell list is suprisingly druid-like, and skill empowerment is obviously good, and obviously magical secrets)
A druid has wild shape and a lot of useful spells (maybe too good in fact, goodberry + create water makes food gathering and water gathering way less of a hassle), plus good wisdom and proficiency in survival/ animal handling/ perception as needed is good to have
Rune knights with fire rune help like an artificer (but with a lot more of your tools comming from background and race), the frost rune helps with most strength related task and avoiding exhaustion, storm rune helps the party in a similar way to bardic inspiration and flash of genious. Oh yeah not to mention how indomidable and con saves can help a lot
Ranger of course gets lots of useful skills for survival, are encouraged to have high wisdom scores for survival and perception, climbing and swimming well is of course useful and by 10th level you no longer need food, water or sleep as long as short rests are an option, plus the other weird survival stuff you can pull of and the neat shit an animal companion can do
Perhaps exploring would be a fun participatory activity for party using some of these classes where everyone deliberately avoids expertise in survival? I donno
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
It's a foreign concept to me how so many people think about, talk about, play, or approach overland travel, wilderness exploration, outdoor adventuring, or anything else where a ranger might be assumed to excel. I know the core rules have almost zero solid rules or even guidance on the subject other than a few here and there that are literally spread out over 2 or 3 separate books in various places therein, instead of a single chapter like "combat" or "spellcasting". I get it. I do. But all of those types of play to me are no different than playing the game in any other situation. Be it a city, dungeon, castle, underground cave system, open sea, whatever. It is just ran the same way except you have to take away walls and ceilings, and convert a few things, namely feet to miles, seconds to hours, etc.
I actually deal with a lot of this getting from point A to Point B in the method that unless where they are going is close and well traveled. There are a lot of other places to go through.
People forget that things like Mountain Passes, short cuts through ancient cliffs or caves, and all kinds of other stuff can happen during the traveling part that become adventures of their own without actually side tracking from the Main Storyline. Sure at higher level they can bypass these with teleports or fancy modes of travel. But when they are on foot. People forget that half of the adventure can be the places that they have to get through or the things that they discover on the way. Traveling the road is not always meant to be the fastest. Or even the real way to get to places.
So you can do more than just a few random encounter and perception check rolls with a few random fights. You use those for variety... but other things might be an Adventure all on it's own that doesn't change the end goal at all. But does give the characters something to do. And if they are lucky. Something that will help them on their way.
If your planning you own worlds. Consider some area's where It's 3 weeks of boring travel to go one way because it's the long way around and they go through 5 villages and it's relatively safe. But it's a little less than 1 week if they go this other route but it's highly dangerous and It goes right past the camp of the Thunder Dam Orc tribe or along the Stair of the Scholars but almost nobody takes that way because it's rumored to be haunted and people often go missing when they try that route. Just the kind of thing for a group of adventurer's on an important mission trying to do things fast and they find out the Stair of Scholars is really a once venerated crypt where the dead were honored or the corrupted temple of an ancient god once they get there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The quarry is making the roll. So the ranger imposes disadvantage on the roll made by the creature the ranger is chasing.
I have played a ranger (once) that was more city based and did not have survival or nature proficiency.
It is an awesome perk! Urban ranger, wilderness ranger, whatever! Nice find!
Worth noting is that, either with Hunter's Mark or Favored Enemy, the Ranger can give themselves advantage on the Survival check to track the target while also imposing disadvantage on their stealth checks. But wait, there's more. Both Deft and Natural Explorer can grant the Ranger expertise on their Survival skills for tracking (and Natural Explorer can even track whole groups.)
So for --at most-- the cost of one 1st-level spell slot (Hunter's Mark,) the Ranger is tracking their quarry with both advantage and expertise, as well as imposing disadvantage on the quarry's stealth checks to get away. And this is all just passive benefits.
So my thoughts on this....
You are making it so it is so its basically impossible for the ranger not to be able to follow the creature which falls under the "Makes exploration/chases less interesting as its an auto-win" in the book of why ranger is underwhelming. This is one of the major complaints of skill checks in general in 5e but at least the other skill checks come up often enough to be dynamic where as this.....I can count on one hand ( and have enough fingers left to hold a drink) the amount of times a chase has come up for me in 5e. Even then its been completely mitigated by a caster with Fly, Haste, Longstrider, or a rogue/monk who just out runs the creature. Basically a prolonged enough chase to warrant a roll to actually track them is almost nil. Once you have your prey in sight there are so many other more effective ways of ending a chase this really becomes obsolete pretty darn quick.
Overall its interesting trivia but I would say hardly redeeming of the features.
There's that positive attitude I've been looking for! Just kidding.
Not to nitpick, but you and many others have mentioned this "auto-win" stuff before regarding the PHB ranger abilities. Would not a high level rogue encounter the same situation? With their base 10 and expertise, aren't they also auto-winning? Aren't spellcasting classes, especially wizards, kind of a big deal when it comes to auto-winning an encounter or overcoming a difficultly with their spells? What about the observant feat and passive perception scores well over 20? Isn't that auto-winning? What about a paladin using two 3rd level smites on a turn with a critical hit to slay the big boss monster? That's auto-winning too. I guess I don't see a problem with it for the ranger if it exists everywhere in the entire game for other classes, abilities, feats, and spell.
High level rogue does and honestly I find the same issues there for the most part... And that's at a level that autowinnng on a skill is expected to be honest. 14th level you should not have to worry about rolling 1s on a character that has focused on something so much as to be an expert in it.
Overall it's more about how infrequently the auto win comes up.
Same for observant and Passive Perception.... But in that case the player took a feat and increased wisdom to make it work. They still have their class features to fall back on to do other things where as the rangers class features have you auto win in the most niche things so that when they do come up it's over and forgotten. At least passive perception is used all the time and has an impact on so much.
Paladin is bad example as that's a mathematical oddity to hit two crits in a row and that's hella satisfying to roll all those die.
The use of spells to overcome the issue is dynamic as you are at least getting use of the feature in other ways (fly can do more then chase) where as ranger it's likely to not be used again.
Ok.
Must be the differences in experiences at the table again. Auto-win, niche, "satisfying", etc. Just very different views on the game based on individual play and preference. I disagree with almost everything you are saying.
The ranger successfully tracking someone IMO is just less interesting overall...
With a successful stealth check the rogue goes unnoticed and plot point is revealed or a sneak attack comes.
A wizard using fly on himself and the rest of the party to fly after a fleeing bandit is just awesome as now everyone gets to feel how cool it is to have pure nasty speed.
A paladin crit smiting a BBEG into the ground is extremely satisfying rolling all those die.
A ranger finding the way to go is just....expected? Its not really a huge turning point as the success mostly just lets everything move on and a failure means you do not move on at all...
its just not exciting IMO....unless there is more to exploration (dangers, interesting set pieces, treasures) then the succesful transversal is mostly something I feel the table spending about 10 min or less on and kinda moving on from.
I understand what your saying.
Potato, potato. (That doesn't really work when typed. LOL!)
A DM can work around these kinds of issues.
For example, if you want an exciting chase but don't want your flying Wizard or super-fast Monk cheesing it; set it on fast carriages or ships. While Fly can be a great way to bypass obstacles, it's actually not that fast (a longship in ideal sailing conditions can hit 15 knots, which is 25 feet per second, or 150 feet per turn so flying that way isn't feasible without extra work), whereas a carriage moving at speed can hit 120 feet or so per round, so would force dashing just to keep up, or double dashing (burning resources) to close the gap.
You can get around "auto" tracking on Rangers if you really need to by having especially elusive targets disguise themselves with magic, but really all a DM needs to do is set a higher DC, or scale based upon the result, e.g- a 30+ is closing the gap, 25+ is keeping pace, but 20+ is falling behind. Even with all the bonuses a Ranger can still whiff the roll, or not roll quite as well as normal.
DM's have the tools they should need to keep a chase exciting; and really if they have a Ranger in their party they should plan for how to reward them, e.g- if the Ranger isn't around the target just straight up gets away automatically, triggering extra quest stages to find out where they went, but if the Ranger is present the party can potentially bypass this, just like how a character knowing a particular language in a dungeon can mean the different between knowing how to proceed or using trial and error.
The real problem with these kinds of out of combat ranger abilities is that D&D 5e lacks much in the way of structure for out of combat stuff; that's fine to a degree, but for the classes that have specific out of combat features, those out of combat areas really ought to have more formal rules to reflect it (both to take advantage, and avoid leaving groups out that don't have that one character type).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Your last paragraph is the part I generally see...because the system has less support for these kind of things it tends to fall by the wayside. I do agree a DM can mitigate it but I think the reality is a lot do not as it does not naturally flow into the game like social and combat encounters do.
I wonder how much of the problem is actually DM inexperience with wilderness travel, trapping, bow hunting and wilderness survival? Most of the stories I’ve read don’t do it the justice it deserves. The party just walks or rides along the trail/road and you get a wandering monster roll every so often. Even the Hobbit and Ring trilogy pretty much do this. If your into reading you might try Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum which follows the hero on a series of midevial voyages and caravans from Brittany to Spain to Kiev to Byzantium and on to Persia. Other possibly good reads are William Johnstone’s preacher series about a mountain man in the 1830s to 1860s. When there were almost no wagon trails etc. yes they had guns but mostly not repeaters so he makes full use of bows, hand axes and fighting knives when he needs to. If you have never tried to live off the land it’s not nearly as easy as the couple of “foraging rolls” D&D reduces it to. One of the simplest ways to force a party off the roads is a time constraint. example: traveling from Llorkh to Silverymoon in the Forgotten Realms by road it would tale well over a month and possibly as many as 3 months. If you have to be there within 40 days your not going to make it on the roads. But you just might if you have a decent ranger to guide you thru. And just getting there can be a great adventure with lots of hooks along the way to bring the party back into the ranger’ demsene.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I think thats why people do not focus on it...while I know that "the journey is the story" a lot of people do not want to do walking simulator in DnD and want to simply move to the next town for story progression.
Personally I have had fun with this approach when the stakes are low key (take this wagon full of cheese to Silverymoon) and along the way you find out the cheese is both haunted and in great demand for demons for its deliciously haunty flavor.
THEN the journey is worth it...otherwise if you have a world altering story on your hands no one feels great about 3 sessions of side quests and describing how you pull yourself through some shrubs.
Thing is, I feel like this is more of a problem with the meta (how the game is actually played by many groups) rather than how the Ranger is designed (when the game is played the way that it's supposed to/intended to be played).
It does still come down to poor design/assumptions, and can make ranger players feel left out a bit when they play in more typical (probably more combat oriented) groups; that's not to say rangers are any kind of slouch when it comes to combat, they're actually really quite good, but a lot of a Ranger's most iconic features really require a player to fish for opportunities to actually use them. You need to be the player that always suggests tracking targets, or pushes the group to setup ambushes so you can make the most of your trap spells and so-on.
Because of these not strictly class related problems Ranger is in this weird space that it's a class a lot of people might want to play, but that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to a first time player unless they've got a clear character idea that just can't be represented any other way (in which case I'd go over the "always be fishing" advice 😉). Monk can be kind of the same, especially when it comes to making full use of your superior speed; Monk players may find themselves needing to fish for cover, distance and mixed enemy groups.
I have a lot of fun in 5e, and there are so many rules for so many aspects of the game now, but combat is still definitely the most structured and best understood part of the game by players and DM's alike, and that can be a bit of a shame for classes that excel out of combat.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Well if all you want is to get there yesterday without troubles you check with your mages etc or pool your wealth to hire a mage to cast teleport circle/teleport and poof your there. But 3 weeks going thru the high forest with 4 wandering monster checks a day and 2 at night is a lot quicker than 10 weeks on the road with the same sort of thing - and the ranger finally gets to display more than his combat skills.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
But even then the rolls are over and done with very quickly.... And you basically just bypass the part of the game your good at because you are good at it.
This do be the problem with survival in 5e, it is simply a lock and the key to that lock is a ranger with the proper favoured terrain.
If you have it, it is not a challenge, if you don't yer screwed, or at least the challenge becomes longer and arguably more challenging.
The only way i could see survival becomming an novel challenge where the entire party brings something to the table is with a combination of artificers, certain totem barbs, bards, druids and maybe rangers using Deft Explorer + rune knight fighters.
Artificers bring their tool profs/ expertise + flash of genious + some helpful spells and infusions,
totem barbs could bring basic survival or perception proficiency (if nobody else in the party has it), the rituals of their subclass and whatever their 6th level totem does + they are less suseptible to sleep deprivation, hunger and thirst thanks to con save proficiency and at later levels they become the best at strength checks
Bards generally have a lot of skill proficiencies and expertise in some stuff, so chances are they might know something handy for whatever skill challenge they face + bardic inspiration will be handy for the same reasons as flash of genious + they also have some spells that might be handy (the bard spell list is suprisingly druid-like, and skill empowerment is obviously good, and obviously magical secrets)
A druid has wild shape and a lot of useful spells (maybe too good in fact, goodberry + create water makes food gathering and water gathering way less of a hassle), plus good wisdom and proficiency in survival/ animal handling/ perception as needed is good to have
Rune knights with fire rune help like an artificer (but with a lot more of your tools comming from background and race), the frost rune helps with most strength related task and avoiding exhaustion, storm rune helps the party in a similar way to bardic inspiration and flash of genious. Oh yeah not to mention how indomidable and con saves can help a lot
Ranger of course gets lots of useful skills for survival, are encouraged to have high wisdom scores for survival and perception, climbing and swimming well is of course useful and by 10th level you no longer need food, water or sleep as long as short rests are an option, plus the other weird survival stuff you can pull of and the neat shit an animal companion can do
Perhaps exploring would be a fun participatory activity for party using some of these classes where everyone deliberately avoids expertise in survival? I donno
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
It's a foreign concept to me how so many people think about, talk about, play, or approach overland travel, wilderness exploration, outdoor adventuring, or anything else where a ranger might be assumed to excel. I know the core rules have almost zero solid rules or even guidance on the subject other than a few here and there that are literally spread out over 2 or 3 separate books in various places therein, instead of a single chapter like "combat" or "spellcasting". I get it. I do. But all of those types of play to me are no different than playing the game in any other situation. Be it a city, dungeon, castle, underground cave system, open sea, whatever. It is just ran the same way except you have to take away walls and ceilings, and convert a few things, namely feet to miles, seconds to hours, etc.
I actually deal with a lot of this getting from point A to Point B in the method that unless where they are going is close and well traveled. There are a lot of other places to go through.
People forget that things like Mountain Passes, short cuts through ancient cliffs or caves, and all kinds of other stuff can happen during the traveling part that become adventures of their own without actually side tracking from the Main Storyline. Sure at higher level they can bypass these with teleports or fancy modes of travel. But when they are on foot. People forget that half of the adventure can be the places that they have to get through or the things that they discover on the way. Traveling the road is not always meant to be the fastest. Or even the real way to get to places.
So you can do more than just a few random encounter and perception check rolls with a few random fights. You use those for variety... but other things might be an Adventure all on it's own that doesn't change the end goal at all. But does give the characters something to do. And if they are lucky. Something that will help them on their way.
If your planning you own worlds. Consider some area's where It's 3 weeks of boring travel to go one way because it's the long way around and they go through 5 villages and it's relatively safe. But it's a little less than 1 week if they go this other route but it's highly dangerous and It goes right past the camp of the Thunder Dam Orc tribe or along the Stair of the Scholars but almost nobody takes that way because it's rumored to be haunted and people often go missing when they try that route. Just the kind of thing for a group of adventurer's on an important mission trying to do things fast and they find out the Stair of Scholars is really a once venerated crypt where the dead were honored or the corrupted temple of an ancient god once they get there.