its easy to see what fosters a jaded history. Certain youtubers like to use hot takes to gain views. Those hot takes are created by using rules loopholes and bad math or unequal comparisons. there really are only a few of their die hard followers any more but they set precedence. that confuses some dms and players because they heard it was bad. just look at the original post in this thread. he heard it was bad but couldn't find support for the claim.
lots of people have wishlisted features they want the class but then cant actually quantify the flaws.
The easiest way to combat a "bad history" is to stick to the playing the way the class is mechanically intended by the designers who actually test and develop the game and not let feelings or opinions get in the way. we don't Have raI but we do have raw. The first thing people do to ruin the class reputation is throw out or undermine Raw. by studying the raw we can infer RAI.
I get the feeling that people likely become a bit defensive with ranger due to the jaded history.
People aren't getting defensive because you're stating your opinion, they're getting defensive because you're claiming their own experience is mistaken or that they are simply wrong for preferring the features that you don't like.
There's a gulf of difference between simply saying "I prefer Favored Foe to Favored Enemy" and effectively saying "Favored Enemy is terrible and everyone should hate it and is wrong if they don't".
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 opinion and experience with the class has been presented as “obviously right” and “clearly superior”, while at the same time is an apparent minority when it comes to this particular community.
Your opinion and experience with the class has been presented as “obviously right” and “clearly superior”, while at the same time is an apparent minority when it comes to this particular community.
Not sure what to say other than that's just my experience.
I get the feeling that people likely become a bit defensive with ranger due to the jaded history.
People aren't getting defensive because you're stating your opinion, they're getting defensive because you're claiming their own experience is mistaken or that they are simply wrong for preferring the features that you don't like.
There's a gulf of difference between simply saying "I prefer Favored Foe to Favored Enemy" and effectively saying "Favored Enemy is terrible and everyone should hate it and is wrong if they don't".
Never said everyone should hate anything.....
I've even stated times I think the feature would be good.
its easy to see what fosters a jaded history. Certain youtubers like to use hot takes to gain views. Those hot takes are created by using rules loopholes and bad math or unequal comparisons. there really are only a few of their die hard followers any more but they set precedence. that confuses some dms and players because they heard it was bad. just look at the original post in this thread. he heard it was bad but couldn't find support for the claim.
lots of people have wishlisted features they want the class but then cant actually quantify the flaws.
The easiest way to combat a "bad history" is to stick to the playing the way the class is mechanically intended by the designers who actually test and develop the game and not let feelings or opinions get in the way. we don't Have raI but we do have raw. The first thing people do to ruin the class reputation is throw out or undermine Raw. by studying the raw we can infer RAI.
I think their tends to be a whiplash back in the other direction then when people overstate how good they think the feature are and how is the fault of the DM that they can't figure out the way to use them.... When the modules for the game do not even run it that way.
DDAL isn’t great for the entire scope of D&D I think. It serves, and is basically successful, and providing opportunities for folks to play that might not be able to otherwise. It is very lacking, to the point of ignoring, all but a little bit of a rough plot, magic item collection, and lots of combat. Any class ability, feat, skill, language, or tool proficiency that has to do with anything other than damage output or survival is, in my very humble opinion, worthless in a DDAL environment.
I am genuinely curious because you mentioned playing ToA with or as a ranger and having a poor experience.
DDAL isn’t great for the entire scope of D&D I think. It serves, and is basically successful, and providing opportunities for folks to play that might not be able to otherwise. It is very lacking, to the point of ignoring, all but a little bit of a rough plot, magic item collection, and lots of combat. Any class ability, feat, skill, language, or tool proficiency that has to do with anything other than damage output or survival is, in my very humble opinion, worthless in a DDAL environment.
I am genuinely curious because you mentioned playing ToA with or as a ranger and having a poor experience.
The book itself is the same unfortunately. Same with the other survival based adventure I had run Out of the Abyss. It was mostly "Roll a survival check once or twice a day for food and to not get lost" if you got lost then you had an encounter which 75% of the time was combat or 25% an environmental hazard....but not something the ranger was any better at dealing with then the rest of the party.
I had a Gloomstalker ranger in that too and they basically handwaved most of the checks so it was just kinda moot. Overall the experience for them was summed up as "I didn't even do any survival stuff"....which was true and I eventually added some harvesting to but the enemies and creatures you fight in the underdark tend to have poison immunity/resistance so that was not something they reallly needed and the pelt/weapon creation part was not really needed either as I did not have an mechanics for weapons breaking or anything.
Overall this plus my own time as a Hunter ranger where I was in my biome only about 10% of the time....it left me feeling like the class has some support issues from an official stance.
If you are travelling across the sword coast or Faerun in general you can experience so many different biomes in a weeks time that I felt like I rarely got to use my features.
what is your problem with people who choose differently?
No problem whatsoever as long as your fine with a worse ability.
You really don't see how this comes across as hostile towards people for choosing "wrong"? Especially when you then proceed to stubbornly argue for FIVE FULL PAGES about how your opinion, and only your opinion, must be the right one? Especially when your attempts to justify said opinion are mostly self-contradictory and flawed?
This is precisely the problem; you're only now properly stating that this is just your opinion and experience, and still not really accepting that plenty of people have no problem at all playing PHB Rangers, or that your attempts to argue that other classes are better Rangers require extra steps that Rangers do not need to take.
Again, there is a big difference between saying you prefer one feature over another, maybe because you can't personally take full advantage of one of them, versus declaring that the ones you don't like are self-evidently worse then failing to prove it for five pages.
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 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.
what is your problem with people who choose differently?
No problem whatsoever as long as your fine with a worse ability.
You really don't see how this comes across as hostile towards people for choosing "wrong"? Especially when you then proceed to stubbornly argue for FIVE FULL PAGES about how your opinion, and only your opinion, must be the right one? Especially when your attempts to justify said opinion are mostly self-contradictory and flawed?
This is precisely the problem; you're only now properly stating that this is just your opinion and experience, and still not really accepting that plenty of people have no problem at all playing PHB Rangers, or that your attempts to argue that other classes are better Rangers require extra steps that Rangers do not need to take.
Again, there is a big difference between saying you prefer one feature over another, maybe because you can't personally take full advantage of one of them, versus declaring that the ones you don't like are self-evidently worse then failing to prove it for five pages.
To be fair I never said anything about "wrong" just I felt the PHB features were bad ...I still do.
Does that mean others like them more? Sure why not.
I think they are worse and I would tell anyone who asked so... But it's my opinion.
They are worse to me... And there is absolutely nothing wrong with me stating so.
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.
When opinions are expressed as fact, other people either get misinformation or will jump in to correct the conversation.
Optimus, you and I have very different thoughts about exploration and travel in general, let alone how it should be handled in the game, let alone incorporating the ranger. I have been shut down in the recent past several times in these forums regarding my fan-boy opinions on the class and PHB subclasses. I had to learn that no one is going to be convinced of anything from someone shouting in the internet, except for maybe people very new to the game.
I have watched what I think is every video on YouTube regarding the PHB beast master, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when those folks not only put it down as terrible, but get the rules wrong while doing so, and/or obviously don’t play they type of d&d that would make use of that subclass. The same goes for the PHB baseline ranger class.
Folks make class power ranking videos and talk about which classes ate the best, but it always comes back to how much single target damage can a build do in an optimal, white room, perfect scenario, situation.
The game is lacking in the exploration pillar in general. Live play, big production d&d shows, d&d celebrity appearances, and organized play only add to the “exciting” big boss battle/fast and attention grabbing/limited time slot play style. Much of the game that is subtle or understated gets pushed to the wayside in exchange for more new players (which is awesome) and produced d&d content.
When opinions are expressed as fact, other people either get misinformation or will jump in to correct the conversation.
Optimus, you and I have very different thoughts about exploration and travel in general, let alone how it should be handled in the game, let alone incorporating the ranger. I have been shut down in the recent past several times in these forums regarding my fan-boy opinions on the class and PHB subclasses. I had to learn that no one is going to be convinced of anything from someone shouting in the internet, except for maybe people very new to the game.
I have watched what I think is every video on YouTube regarding the PHB beast master, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when those folks not only put it down as terrible, but get the rules wrong while doing so, and/or obviously don’t play they type of d&d that would make use of that subclass. The same goes for the PHB baseline ranger class.
Folks make class power ranking videos and talk about which classes ate the best, but it always comes back to how much single target damage can a build do in an optimal, white room, perfect scenario, situation.
The game is lacking in the exploration pillar in general. Live play, big production d&d shows, d&d celebrity appearances, and organized play only add to the “exciting” big boss battle/fast and attention grabbing/limited time slot play style. Much of the game that is subtle or understated gets pushed to the wayside in exchange for more new players (which is awesome) and produced d&d content.
At no time did I state they were fact...and this a forum for discussing opinions. The simple fact that I state my opinions with conviction and accompanying information is just that and should not be seen as anything else.
I get the sense you want me to apologize for expressing my opinion? While I appreciate your honesty I will not do so as there is nothing wrong with bluntly stating an opinion.
You are correct the game is lacking in content for the exploration pillar...and I feel for ranger players in that regard. I have stated several times I think there needs to be a stand alone exploration guide book. If they did that it would go a LONG way towards changing my opinion on the class features from the PHB.
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.
When opinions are expressed as fact, other people either get misinformation or will jump in to correct the conversation.
Optimus, you and I have very different thoughts about exploration and travel in general, let alone how it should be handled in the game, let alone incorporating the ranger. I have been shut down in the recent past several times in these forums regarding my fan-boy opinions on the class and PHB subclasses. I had to learn that no one is going to be convinced of anything from someone shouting in the internet, except for maybe people very new to the game.
I have watched what I think is every video on YouTube regarding the PHB beast master, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when those folks not only put it down as terrible, but get the rules wrong while doing so, and/or obviously don’t play they type of d&d that would make use of that subclass. The same goes for the PHB baseline ranger class.
Folks make class power ranking videos and talk about which classes ate the best, but it always comes back to how much single target damage can a build do in an optimal, white room, perfect scenario, situation.
The game is lacking in the exploration pillar in general. Live play, big production d&d shows, d&d celebrity appearances, and organized play only add to the “exciting” big boss battle/fast and attention grabbing/limited time slot play style. Much of the game that is subtle or understated gets pushed to the wayside in exchange for more new players (which is awesome) and produced d&d content.
At no time did I state they were fact...and this a forum for discussing opinions. The simple fact that I state my opinions with conviction and accompanying information is just that and should not be seen as anything else.
I get the sense you want me to apologize for expressing my opinion? While I appreciate your honesty I will not do so as there is nothing wrong with bluntly stating an opinion.
You are correct the game is lacking in content for the exploration pillar...and I feel for ranger players in that regard. I have stated several times I think there needs to be a stand alone exploration guide book. If they did that it would go a LONG way towards changing my opinion on the class features from the PHB.
When opinions are expressed as fact, other people either get misinformation or will jump in to correct the conversation.
Optimus, you and I have very different thoughts about exploration and travel in general, let alone how it should be handled in the game, let alone incorporating the ranger. I have been shut down in the recent past several times in these forums regarding my fan-boy opinions on the class and PHB subclasses. I had to learn that no one is going to be convinced of anything from someone shouting in the internet, except for maybe people very new to the game.
I have watched what I think is every video on YouTube regarding the PHB beast master, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when those folks not only put it down as terrible, but get the rules wrong while doing so, and/or obviously don’t play they type of d&d that would make use of that subclass. The same goes for the PHB baseline ranger class.
Folks make class power ranking videos and talk about which classes ate the best, but it always comes back to how much single target damage can a build do in an optimal, white room, perfect scenario, situation.
The game is lacking in the exploration pillar in general. Live play, big production d&d shows, d&d celebrity appearances, and organized play only add to the “exciting” big boss battle/fast and attention grabbing/limited time slot play style. Much of the game that is subtle or understated gets pushed to the wayside in exchange for more new players (which is awesome) and produced d&d content.
At no time did I state they were fact...and this a forum for discussing opinions. The simple fact that I state my opinions with conviction and accompanying information is just that and should not be seen as anything else.
I get the sense you want me to apologize for expressing my opinion? While I appreciate your honesty I will not do so as there is nothing wrong with bluntly stating an opinion.
You are correct the game is lacking in content for the exploration pillar...and I feel for ranger players in that regard. I have stated several times I think there needs to be a stand alone exploration guide book. If they did that it would go a LONG way towards changing my opinion on the class features from the PHB.
That wasn’t my intention.
The for that I will apologize as I have misinterpreted your intentions.
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I'm just stating my opinion as always.
I get the feeling that people likely become a bit defensive with ranger due to the jaded history.
its easy to see what fosters a jaded history. Certain youtubers like to use hot takes to gain views. Those hot takes are created by using rules loopholes and bad math or unequal comparisons. there really are only a few of their die hard followers any more but they set precedence. that confuses some dms and players because they heard it was bad. just look at the original post in this thread. he heard it was bad but couldn't find support for the claim.
lots of people have wishlisted features they want the class but then cant actually quantify the flaws.
The easiest way to combat a "bad history" is to stick to the playing the way the class is mechanically intended by the designers who actually test and develop the game and not let feelings or opinions get in the way. we don't Have raI but we do have raw. The first thing people do to ruin the class reputation is throw out or undermine Raw. by studying the raw we can infer RAI.
People aren't getting defensive because you're stating your opinion, they're getting defensive because you're claiming their own experience is mistaken or that they are simply wrong for preferring the features that you don't like.
There's a gulf of difference between simply saying "I prefer Favored Foe to Favored Enemy" and effectively saying "Favored Enemy is terrible and everyone should hate it and is wrong if they don't".
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 opinion and experience with the class has been presented as “obviously right” and “clearly superior”, while at the same time is an apparent minority when it comes to this particular community.
Not sure what to say other than that's just my experience.
Never said everyone should hate anything.....
I've even stated times I think the feature would be good.
I think their tends to be a whiplash back in the other direction then when people overstate how good they think the feature are and how is the fault of the DM that they can't figure out the way to use them.... When the modules for the game do not even run it that way.
That too comes off poorly.
Optimus, do you play any DDAL?
I DM'd and played but it has been a while.
DDAL isn’t great for the entire scope of D&D I think. It serves, and is basically successful, and providing opportunities for folks to play that might not be able to otherwise. It is very lacking, to the point of ignoring, all but a little bit of a rough plot, magic item collection, and lots of combat. Any class ability, feat, skill, language, or tool proficiency that has to do with anything other than damage output or survival is, in my very humble opinion, worthless in a DDAL environment.
I am genuinely curious because you mentioned playing ToA with or as a ranger and having a poor experience.
The book itself is the same unfortunately. Same with the other survival based adventure I had run Out of the Abyss. It was mostly "Roll a survival check once or twice a day for food and to not get lost" if you got lost then you had an encounter which 75% of the time was combat or 25% an environmental hazard....but not something the ranger was any better at dealing with then the rest of the party.
I had a Gloomstalker ranger in that too and they basically handwaved most of the checks so it was just kinda moot. Overall the experience for them was summed up as "I didn't even do any survival stuff"....which was true and I eventually added some harvesting to but the enemies and creatures you fight in the underdark tend to have poison immunity/resistance so that was not something they reallly needed and the pelt/weapon creation part was not really needed either as I did not have an mechanics for weapons breaking or anything.
Overall this plus my own time as a Hunter ranger where I was in my biome only about 10% of the time....it left me feeling like the class has some support issues from an official stance.
If you are travelling across the sword coast or Faerun in general you can experience so many different biomes in a weeks time that I felt like I rarely got to use my features.
🤔
You really don't see how this comes across as hostile towards people for choosing "wrong"? Especially when you then proceed to stubbornly argue for FIVE FULL PAGES about how your opinion, and only your opinion, must be the right one? Especially when your attempts to justify said opinion are mostly self-contradictory and flawed?
This is precisely the problem; you're only now properly stating that this is just your opinion and experience, and still not really accepting that plenty of people have no problem at all playing PHB Rangers, or that your attempts to argue that other classes are better Rangers require extra steps that Rangers do not need to take.
Again, there is a big difference between saying you prefer one feature over another, maybe because you can't personally take full advantage of one of them, versus declaring that the ones you don't like are self-evidently worse then failing to prove it for five pages.
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 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.
To be fair I never said anything about "wrong" just I felt the PHB features were bad ...I still do.
Does that mean others like them more? Sure why not.
I think they are worse and I would tell anyone who asked so... But it's my opinion.
They are worse to me... And there is absolutely nothing wrong with me stating so.
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.
When opinions are expressed as fact, other people either get misinformation or will jump in to correct the conversation.
Optimus, you and I have very different thoughts about exploration and travel in general, let alone how it should be handled in the game, let alone incorporating the ranger. I have been shut down in the recent past several times in these forums regarding my fan-boy opinions on the class and PHB subclasses. I had to learn that no one is going to be convinced of anything from someone shouting in the internet, except for maybe people very new to the game.
I have watched what I think is every video on YouTube regarding the PHB beast master, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when those folks not only put it down as terrible, but get the rules wrong while doing so, and/or obviously don’t play they type of d&d that would make use of that subclass. The same goes for the PHB baseline ranger class.
Folks make class power ranking videos and talk about which classes ate the best, but it always comes back to how much single target damage can a build do in an optimal, white room, perfect scenario, situation.
The game is lacking in the exploration pillar in general. Live play, big production d&d shows, d&d celebrity appearances, and organized play only add to the “exciting” big boss battle/fast and attention grabbing/limited time slot play style. Much of the game that is subtle or understated gets pushed to the wayside in exchange for more new players (which is awesome) and produced d&d content.
At no time did I state they were fact...and this a forum for discussing opinions. The simple fact that I state my opinions with conviction and accompanying information is just that and should not be seen as anything else.
I get the sense you want me to apologize for expressing my opinion? While I appreciate your honesty I will not do so as there is nothing wrong with bluntly stating an opinion.
You are correct the game is lacking in content for the exploration pillar...and I feel for ranger players in that regard. I have stated several times I think there needs to be a stand alone exploration guide book. If they did that it would go a LONG way towards changing my opinion on the class features from the PHB.
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.
That wasn’t my intention.
The for that I will apologize as I have misinterpreted your intentions.