he only sees 2 attacks and a few druid spells and then ignores the rest of ranger abilities and thinks his multiclass is better....
PHB rangers are bad. Tasha's helps fix a lot of their core issues (and introduces at least one major new one), but PHB rangers are bad. A level 1 PHB Ranger has no abilities that can be counted on to actually do anything in the entire campaign beyond proficiencies. That's bad. That's not forgiveable, it's hot garbage. Plus, they're on the very short list of classes whose spellslot progression suffers when multiclassing, giving you yet another reason to avoid them. That's also very bad.
Let's engage in a "fun" challenge. You make an L1 ranger, and then I'll pick a monster of a type you didn't pick for favored enemy and make you face it not in your natural explorer terrain. Let's see how useful you feel.
he only sees 2 attacks and a few druid spells and then ignores the rest of ranger abilities and thinks his multiclass is better....
PHB rangers are bad. Tasha's helps fix a lot of their core issues (and introduces at least one major new one), but PHB rangers are bad. A level 1 PHB Ranger has no abilities that can be counted on to actually do anything in the entire campaign beyond proficiencies. That's bad. That's not forgiveable, it's hot garbage. Plus, they're on the very short list of classes whose spellslot progression suffers when multiclassing, giving you yet another reason to avoid them. That's also very bad.
Let's engage in a "fun" challenge. You make an L1 ranger, and then I'll pick a monster of a type you didn't pick for favored enemy and make you face it not in your natural explorer terrain. Let's see how useful you feel.
Neither favored enemy or natural explorer have anything to do directly with combat. That is a silly metric. I don't ranger is the class for you, bud. You seem very focused on damage crunch.
Neither favored enemy or natural explorer have anything to do directly with combat. That is a silly metric. I don't ranger is the class for you, bud. You seem very focused on damage crunch.
Woa, that's a lot of assuming. You introduced direct combat, I did not. If Favored Enemy actually did anything, I would 100% let you roll Survival to track your foe and get the jump on them. Sadly, as set up, it did not. Because Favored Enemy will virtually never come up in a real campaign.
Same issue with Natural Explorer. I have no idea why you're assuming I'm not a good enough GM to handle mechanics like rough terrain and perception vs stealth and so on. If you were in your favored terrain, of course it would matter. But it won't, since a real campaign can't be counted on to even have your terrain in it, let alone focus on it.
Neither favored enemy or natural explorer have anything to do directly with combat. That is a silly metric. I don't ranger is the class for you, bud. You seem very focused on damage crunch.
Woa, that's a lot of assuming. You introduced direct combat, I did not. If Favored Enemy actually did anything, I would 100% let you roll Survival to track your foe and get the jump on them. Sadly, as set up, it did not. Because Favored Enemy will virtually never come up in a real campaign.
Same issue with Natural Explorer. I have no idea why you're assuming I'm not a good enough GM to handle mechanics like rough terrain and perception vs stealth and so on. If you were in your favored terrain, of course it would matter. But it won't, since a real campaign can't be counted on to even have your terrain in it, let alone focus on it.
Alright. I‘m sorry.
This is still a strange metric to evaluate any class. What is your point?
PHB rangers are bad. Tasha's helps fix a lot of their core issues (and introduces at least one major new one), but PHB rangers are bad. A level 1 PHB Ranger has no abilities that can be counted on to actually do anything in the entire campaign beyond proficiencies. That's bad. That's not forgiveable, it's hot garbage. Plus, they're on the very short list of classes whose spellslot progression suffers when multiclassing, giving you yet another reason to avoid them. That's also very bad.
Let's engage in a "fun" challenge. You make an L1 ranger, and then I'll pick a monster of a type you didn't pick for favored enemy and make you face it not in your natural explorer terrain. Let's see how useful you feel.
by lvl 1 maybe? but by lvl 3 phb hunter rangers are better than fighters and stay as such until lvl 11 when fighter finally gets a 3rd attack to actually do something the ranger is not better at. eg a lvl 5 fighter and lvl 5 druid is a worse martial and an equivalent caster form of a lvl 10 ranger that is lacking a lot of the good martial spells a ranger gets, but with a much worse progression.
Neither favored enemy or natural explorer have anything to do directly with combat. That is a silly metric. I don't ranger is the class for you, bud. You seem very focused on damage crunch.
Woa, that's a lot of assuming. You introduced direct combat, I did not. If Favored Enemy actually did anything, I would 100% let you roll Survival to track your foe and get the jump on them. Sadly, as set up, it did not. Because Favored Enemy will virtually never come up in a real campaign.
Same issue with Natural Explorer. I have no idea why you're assuming I'm not a good enough GM to handle mechanics like rough terrain and perception vs stealth and so on. If you were in your favored terrain, of course it would matter. But it won't, since a real campaign can't be counted on to even have your terrain in it, let alone focus on it.
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
Beasts are in almost every environment. Even Avernus. The intelligence and wisdom boost work with allies just as well as enemies. Having the boosts on medicine or insight for your own team will allow you to detect problems quickly and know how to respond. (Think charm and medicine checks but also Archana). same situation with terrain bonuses. An expert on a local swamp disease will know many different treatments even ones that use materials from other regions.
Tunnel vision is a huge problem when thinking about all the Ranger benefits. Any one who makes broad statements about "never coming up" or "useless" is distilling out important parts of a roleplaying universe or the game.
Your first ranger choices should be smart ones You should know you can create an interaction before choosing them. the 6th, 10th and 14th ones should be responsive to the campaign or personal character choices. Don't say you want a orc wizard with high strength and no intelligence but call the class useless when it doesn't work.
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
How?
Beasts are in almost every environment. Even Avernus. The intelligence and wisdom boost work with allies just as well as enemies. Having the boosts on medicine or insight for your own team will allow you to detect problems quickly and know how to respond. (Think charm and medicine checks but also Archana). same situation with terrain bonuses. An expert on a local swamp disease will know many different treatments even ones that use materials from other regions.
This sounds like cheating. Having Natural Explorer (Swamp) grant Medicine expertise because swamps have a lot of diseases in them is stretching the ability far, far beyond its actual wording. Your check has to actually relate to a swamp for that benefit to crop up.
Tunnel vision is a huge problem when thinking about all the Ranger benefits. Any one who makes broad statements about "never coming up" or "useless" is distilling out important parts of a roleplaying universe or the game.
Do you have an example that isn't "I grew up in a swamp so I know more about treating all diseases ever."?
Your first ranger choices should be smart ones You should know you can create an interaction before choosing them. the 6th, 10th and 14th ones should be responsive to the campaign or personal character choices. Don't say you want a orc wizard with high strength and no intelligence but call the class useless when it doesn't work.
The orc race and the wizard class explain how they work. I don't think I've ever played a campaign where the GM would answer "what terrains will we encounter?" with anything but "that depends on the choices you make" - especially for campaigns that begin with a kidnapped party, like Curse of Strahd, but that's admittedly an outlier. And I would quit a game if the GM willingly answered "what creature types will we encounter?" up front - that's the reddest of red flags.
"The orc race and the wizard class explain how they work. I don't think I've ever played a campaign where the GM would answer "what terrains will we encounter?" with anything but "that depends on the choices you make" - especially for campaigns that begin with a kidnapped party, like Curse of Strahd, but that's admittedly an outlier. And I would quit a game if the GM willingly answered "what creature types will we encounter?" up front - that's the reddest of red flags."
This kind of thing happens all the time before a session starts. Everyone does it to some degree. Rangers simply have a greater/lesser impact from this decision. Here in lies perhaps the most major issue. Building something for combat is simple and easy, in the most simple and predictable way possible. Hit points - damage = win/lose. Great. Straightforward. Quantifiable. Comparable. IMHO, boring. Character backgrounds, stories, history, starting mechanics, everything, should be intertwined with the story. Campaigns that feature open water, underwater, cold weather, the underdark, monster types, location, and societal norms all play into and warp character creation. The character builds that aren't effected by these types of things do one or two things fine, namely combat/healing, because we all "know" that it's pillar is really like 70% for most tables. Rangers aren't back, underpowered, or unplayable. At any level. It is the games people think about playing them in and the ideas they extrapolate from that that makes people dislike them.
A sorcerer can learn fire spells and then face many fire resistant enemies. A rogue can gain expertise thieves' tools and then never come to a locked door. A cleric may never face undead. A paladin in heavy armor may find themselves in a waterborne adventure or facing mostly flying enemies. A fighter or barbarian may find themselves in a social encounter and role play heavy adventure. The same holds true for the ranger. The ranger can learn more and more as they level and unless they choose only one favored terrain that never comes up will it be a unusable choice.
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
How?
How to guarantee interaction. There are a lot of ways.
Favored enemy beasts Take beast master subclass or buy a pet.
Favored enemy two Humanoids: Pick your other party members
Favored enemy Fiends Play with a summoner wizard.
Talk to your dm about starting location. A ranger making a living in the starting area would naturally have a choices that would actually be useful. No campaign hints needed.
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
How?
How to guarantee interaction. There are a lot of ways.
Favored enemy beasts Take beast master subclass or buy a pet.
Favored enemy two Humanoids: Pick your other party members
Favored enemy Fiends Play with a summoner wizard.
Talk to your dm about starting location. A ranger making a living in the starting area would naturally have a choices that would actually be useful. No campaign hints needed.
Many many more
Yes, all good suggestions and all suggestions that demonstrate why the PHB abilities are not great - they require you to have foreknowledge of events and require extra work of you and your DM. Now you can argue that extra work isn't a bad thing, but all the options Tasha replaced them with let you take a Ranger to a table you've never been at and have skills and bonuses that just work.
How often are you likely to go into a game completely blind without knowing a single thing about anything that is happening with zero clue as to even what your allies are going to be playing? That sounds like a fringe scenario at best. How am I supposed to build a character for a campaign if I have literally zero details about said campaign? No, seriously. How often doe that really happen?
I don't know about you, but when I'm joining an established campaign, I always at least ask what the party comp is. I don't know about you, but when I'm joining any campaign, I usually expect the DM to explain at least the general idea they have for the campaign.
This sounds like attempting to apply White Room logic to a practical game, and this mentality is precisely why White Room logic --while fun-- is nigh useless as an actual metric for anything. White Room logic, by definition, ignores all of the things that make the game worth playing. White Room logic isn't DnD. It's just math.
Illusion magic, divination magic, crafting, knowledge skills, travel, and divine intervention are all examples of things that require more “work” with/from the player and/or the DM. This isn’t bad. It’s just requires more thought and effort. If someone is a player that doesn’t like or can’t do any of that then none of those types of things are your cup of tea, certainly not the PHB ranger. What some see as a flaw is actually a wonderfully creative and immersive perk! Are they easily quantifiable, 100% player controlled, straightforward things in the game? Nope. That’s not bad. It can be bad given someone’s play type, table, or situation. But its not bad, underpowered, or poorly designed.
Again, I didn't say extra work was bad, just pointing out that it is there and the new options eliminate that work. You can like that or not, I am simply explaining that the new options are designed to be more streamlined - something a LOT of players wanted. I don't think they are all perfect and honestly I am still using favored enemy over Favored Foe.
To EnvoyofwaterNot often are you going in blind, but that wasn't my point. I wasn't saying "this is better because it works blind" I was saying this is better because it provides always on passive abilities that a LOT of players want. Removing features that are situational in favor of features that work 100% of the time are what people were looking for in updating the Ranger. I think they did a great job of FINALLY updating it, something I and most players had given up hope of happening in 5e. It wasn't perfect, they pulled back on just giving them HM as concentration free.
I imagine when we finally get 6e Rangers are going to have HM as a feature. The first target you hit per turn is marked, all attacks deal an extra 1d4, it scales up as you level and HM is no longer a spell. And no - I don't think that means that EVERY character will dip Ranger. There are players who DO and DO NOT mc. That change is not going to make someone who doesn't start.
like this whole discussion could have just been sidestepped if wizards of the coast let Natural Explorer be a version of itself that does not depend on terrain and if they made sure favored enemy was relegated to a ribbon feature that is not considered towards the strength of the class, there is not much to be gained from the favoured terrain system we have right now
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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
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
How?
How to guarantee interaction. There are a lot of ways.
Favored enemy beasts Take beast master subclass or buy a pet.
Favored enemy two Humanoids: Pick your other party members
Favored enemy Fiends Play with a summoner wizard.
Talk to your dm about starting location. A ranger making a living in the starting area would naturally have a choices that would actually be useful. No campaign hints needed.
Many many more
Yes, all good suggestions and all suggestions that demonstrate why the PHB abilities are not great - they require you to have foreknowledge of events and require extra work of you and your DM. Now you can argue that extra work isn't a bad thing, but all the options Tasha replaced them with let you take a Ranger to a table you've never been at and have skills and bonuses that just work.
None of those are what I would call foreknowledge of the campaign just background information or understanding of progression. As a ranger player I know if i AM interested in Planar travel or beasts even at low levels. to chose an enemy that plans for future levels is Laying the groundwork for Tying character and mechanics together. The only one close to "Metagaming" is talking to your dm But that is only if you ask where the campaign is going. (even if you ask where you are going most players don't actually find it offensive. as seen in other posts)
All of the information is pre-game knowledge that you would know as part of the backstory. when the concept of meta gaming or outside knowledge comes up the opposite is usually forgotten.(opposite being : Knowledge your player should have but doesn't)
Yes. It's not meta gaming. It's building your character as part of the world they exist in. It SHOULD be done.
Meta gaming is using any outside knowledge that your character wouldn't have but you have to make character-based decisions.
So, yes, it's metagaming. However, not all metagaming is bad, some is inevitable. However, if your features require you to metagame, that will make issues in some (if not most) tables.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
he only sees 2 attacks and a few druid spells and then ignores the rest of ranger abilities and thinks his multiclass is better....
PHB rangers are bad. Tasha's helps fix a lot of their core issues (and introduces at least one major new one), but PHB rangers are bad. A level 1 PHB Ranger has no abilities that can be counted on to actually do anything in the entire campaign beyond proficiencies. That's bad. That's not forgiveable, it's hot garbage. Plus, they're on the very short list of classes whose spellslot progression suffers when multiclassing, giving you yet another reason to avoid them. That's also very bad.
Let's engage in a "fun" challenge. You make an L1 ranger, and then I'll pick a monster of a type you didn't pick for favored enemy and make you face it not in your natural explorer terrain. Let's see how useful you feel.
Neither favored enemy or natural explorer have anything to do directly with combat. That is a silly metric. I don't ranger is the class for you, bud. You seem very focused on damage crunch.
Woa, that's a lot of assuming. You introduced direct combat, I did not. If Favored Enemy actually did anything, I would 100% let you roll Survival to track your foe and get the jump on them. Sadly, as set up, it did not. Because Favored Enemy will virtually never come up in a real campaign.
Same issue with Natural Explorer. I have no idea why you're assuming I'm not a good enough GM to handle mechanics like rough terrain and perception vs stealth and so on. If you were in your favored terrain, of course it would matter. But it won't, since a real campaign can't be counted on to even have your terrain in it, let alone focus on it.
Alright. I‘m sorry.
This is still a strange metric to evaluate any class. What is your point?
by lvl 1 maybe? but by lvl 3 phb hunter rangers are better than fighters and stay as such until lvl 11 when fighter finally gets a 3rd attack to actually do something the ranger is not better at.
eg a lvl 5 fighter and lvl 5 druid is a worse martial and an equivalent caster form of a lvl 10 ranger that is lacking a lot of the good martial spells a ranger gets, but with a much worse progression.
You can absolutely guarantee using your Favored enemy or favored terrain. It all comes down to understanding what they do and the choices you make. some choices are flat out better than others. Tracking is a Part of the boosts but not the only thing. There are also boosts to many different skills.
Beasts are in almost every environment. Even Avernus. The intelligence and wisdom boost work with allies just as well as enemies. Having the boosts on medicine or insight for your own team will allow you to detect problems quickly and know how to respond. (Think charm and medicine checks but also Archana). same situation with terrain bonuses. An expert on a local swamp disease will know many different treatments even ones that use materials from other regions.
Tunnel vision is a huge problem when thinking about all the Ranger benefits. Any one who makes broad statements about "never coming up" or "useless" is distilling out important parts of a roleplaying universe or the game.
Your first ranger choices should be smart ones You should know you can create an interaction before choosing them. the 6th, 10th and 14th ones should be responsive to the campaign or personal character choices. Don't say you want a orc wizard with high strength and no intelligence but call the class useless when it doesn't work.
How?
This sounds like cheating. Having Natural Explorer (Swamp) grant Medicine expertise because swamps have a lot of diseases in them is stretching the ability far, far beyond its actual wording. Your check has to actually relate to a swamp for that benefit to crop up.
Do you have an example that isn't "I grew up in a swamp so I know more about treating all diseases ever."?
The orc race and the wizard class explain how they work. I don't think I've ever played a campaign where the GM would answer "what terrains will we encounter?" with anything but "that depends on the choices you make" - especially for campaigns that begin with a kidnapped party, like Curse of Strahd, but that's admittedly an outlier. And I would quit a game if the GM willingly answered "what creature types will we encounter?" up front - that's the reddest of red flags.
This kind of thing happens all the time before a session starts. Everyone does it to some degree. Rangers simply have a greater/lesser impact from this decision. Here in lies perhaps the most major issue. Building something for combat is simple and easy, in the most simple and predictable way possible. Hit points - damage = win/lose. Great. Straightforward. Quantifiable. Comparable. IMHO, boring. Character backgrounds, stories, history, starting mechanics, everything, should be intertwined with the story. Campaigns that feature open water, underwater, cold weather, the underdark, monster types, location, and societal norms all play into and warp character creation. The character builds that aren't effected by these types of things do one or two things fine, namely combat/healing, because we all "know" that it's pillar is really like 70% for most tables. Rangers aren't back, underpowered, or unplayable. At any level. It is the games people think about playing them in and the ideas they extrapolate from that that makes people dislike them.
A sorcerer can learn fire spells and then face many fire resistant enemies. A rogue can gain expertise thieves' tools and then never come to a locked door. A cleric may never face undead. A paladin in heavy armor may find themselves in a waterborne adventure or facing mostly flying enemies. A fighter or barbarian may find themselves in a social encounter and role play heavy adventure. The same holds true for the ranger. The ranger can learn more and more as they level and unless they choose only one favored terrain that never comes up will it be a unusable choice.
How to guarantee interaction. There are a lot of ways.
Yes, all good suggestions and all suggestions that demonstrate why the PHB abilities are not great - they require you to have foreknowledge of events and require extra work of you and your DM. Now you can argue that extra work isn't a bad thing, but all the options Tasha replaced them with let you take a Ranger to a table you've never been at and have skills and bonuses that just work.
How often are you likely to go into a game completely blind without knowing a single thing about anything that is happening with zero clue as to even what your allies are going to be playing? That sounds like a fringe scenario at best. How am I supposed to build a character for a campaign if I have literally zero details about said campaign? No, seriously. How often doe that really happen?
I don't know about you, but when I'm joining an established campaign, I always at least ask what the party comp is. I don't know about you, but when I'm joining any campaign, I usually expect the DM to explain at least the general idea they have for the campaign.
This sounds like attempting to apply White Room logic to a practical game, and this mentality is precisely why White Room logic --while fun-- is nigh useless as an actual metric for anything. White Room logic, by definition, ignores all of the things that make the game worth playing. White Room logic isn't DnD. It's just math.
Illusion magic, divination magic, crafting, knowledge skills, travel, and divine intervention are all examples of things that require more “work” with/from the player and/or the DM. This isn’t bad. It’s just requires more thought and effort. If someone is a player that doesn’t like or can’t do any of that then none of those types of things are your cup of tea, certainly not the PHB ranger. What some see as a flaw is actually a wonderfully creative and immersive perk! Are they easily quantifiable, 100% player controlled, straightforward things in the game? Nope. That’s not bad. It can be bad given someone’s play type, table, or situation. But its not bad, underpowered, or poorly designed.
Again, I didn't say extra work was bad, just pointing out that it is there and the new options eliminate that work. You can like that or not, I am simply explaining that the new options are designed to be more streamlined - something a LOT of players wanted. I don't think they are all perfect and honestly I am still using favored enemy over Favored Foe.
To EnvoyofwaterNot often are you going in blind, but that wasn't my point. I wasn't saying "this is better because it works blind" I was saying this is better because it provides always on passive abilities that a LOT of players want. Removing features that are situational in favor of features that work 100% of the time are what people were looking for in updating the Ranger. I think they did a great job of FINALLY updating it, something I and most players had given up hope of happening in 5e. It wasn't perfect, they pulled back on just giving them HM as concentration free.
I imagine when we finally get 6e Rangers are going to have HM as a feature. The first target you hit per turn is marked, all attacks deal an extra 1d4, it scales up as you level and HM is no longer a spell. And no - I don't think that means that EVERY character will dip Ranger. There are players who DO and DO NOT mc. That change is not going to make someone who doesn't start.
like this whole discussion could have just been sidestepped if wizards of the coast let Natural Explorer be a version of itself that does not depend on terrain and if they made sure favored enemy was relegated to a ribbon feature that is not considered towards the strength of the class, there is not much to be gained from the favoured terrain system we have right now
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
Have any of you ever played a knowledge cleric?
None of those are what I would call foreknowledge of the campaign just background information or understanding of progression. As a ranger player I know if i AM interested in Planar travel or beasts even at low levels. to chose an enemy that plans for future levels is Laying the groundwork for Tying character and mechanics together. The only one close to "Metagaming" is talking to your dm But that is only if you ask where the campaign is going. (even if you ask where you are going most players don't actually find it offensive. as seen in other posts)
All of the information is pre-game knowledge that you would know as part of the backstory. when the concept of meta gaming or outside knowledge comes up the opposite is usually forgotten.(opposite being : Knowledge your player should have but doesn't)
Yes. It's not meta gaming. It's building your character as part of the world they exist in. It SHOULD be done.
Meta gaming is using any outside knowledge that your character wouldn't have but you have to make character-based decisions.
So, yes, it's metagaming. However, not all metagaming is bad, some is inevitable. However, if your features require you to metagame, that will make issues in some (if not most) tables.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms