You haven't done much with the underdark have you. Automatically putting it as a Desolate Area. Deserts are often more desolate than the Underdark is. And Coasts aren't just automatically urban. In fact statistically more coastal area is going to be non-urban environment than urban environment. It's also completely natural. As is decent parts of the Underdark. And anything Arctic, Desert, or Mountain. These categorizations are faulty on multiple levels.
The concept was to change the way you approach the idea of a "favored terrain". Rather than the overly limited choices (that don't even cover ALL of the terrain types you can encounter).
The main point is to have 4 major categories that go from easiest to survive in to hardest: Urban>Natural>Desolate>Inhospitable and to provide some examples, you can argue that some of the examples could go in other categories. This way you can say I choose x at level 1, y at 6, x at 11, and by level 17 there is no place a Ranger can go that they aren't really good at.
If a level 6 Ranger has Natural and Desolate choosen, the DM can decide if where the party is fits either of those.
Easiest to hardest to survive in is a matter of perception and your own skills. It's a problematic list at best. Creating an additional problem for each one your trying to solve with it.
A person with good survival skills but poor social and thieving skills May actually find it easier to survive in nature than in the cities. City scrounging is a particular kind of skill that doesn't necessarily translate over and is looking for different things from anything in nature. Which actually encompasses most Rangers. Your putting a lot of personal biases into the way your breaking things up.
Also things like Deserts and Snow Fields need a completely opposite application of skills. Deserts are about water more than anything for survival but Arctic areas are about being able to hunt things that you can't necessarily see. Lumping them together leads to it's own issues because of things like this.
And the thing is. The Ranger does not suck at these kinds of skills when they are out of their chosen environment. They are just particularly overly good inside of them. There is a vast difference between the two.
People act like they lose all ability to use their survival skill and other things once they leave their favored terrain. A skill that is both a class skill for them (meaning they get proficiency for it) and that survival is a Wisdom Based skill (meaning that they have some automatic synergy with it raising their skill). Something only accomplished by 2 or 3 other classes at best and maybe 1 or 2 subclasses. But that's all they do. Equal it. They don't surpass it. Partly because most of those aren't Wisdom Based so they have to shift stats around and build for it. Even the Scout Rogue. And I can already hear the rebuttal "But Scout Rogue get's Expertise!" Yeah. Expertise is how they equal the Ranger in most circumstances. and then I hear "But I can put points into Wisdom and Spend ASI's and get a +17". That's quite the investment to be making into wisdom. interesting choice just to boost your survival. But here's the thing. The Ranger can easily pick up Expertise itself. And still get additional bonuses for Terrain on top of that with Natural Explorer. Just plain not having to spend extra resources if they take Deft Explorer. But if we're willing to spend resources like feats there is just a lot more that you can add to the picture that was brought with tasha's as well.
In people's efforts to "fix" things they didn't realize what they are trying to fix can already be borderline broken did they? And that it takes massive investment by anybody else to even match what they can just get without getting into that borderline broken territory.
The issue is that the Ranger is so good in their favored terrain its a hand-wave for them to do anything in it....Need food? Just get it. Lost? Nope don't even need to roll. Its not really super engaging.
But outside of their terrain? They are just as good (or worse if they focus DEX over WIS) than others who simply take the Survival skill. A rouge with expertise will be better than a ranger in every terrain besides their own which hardly makes them generally useful...just very very specifically so.
Also any class can take survival and WIS is not something that is generally recommended to dump by any means so its not that uncommon to see a ranger out done on the regular.
Modules call for survival skills for tracking and a scout rogue will be beating the ranger at that all day in anything but their own terrain.
Its not about the ranger being bad at it...its about the ranger not being any better than somebody who picked survival as an after thought and all of a sudden is running side by side with a ranger for what is supposed to be a pillar of their class identity.
Granted its a LOT better for Rangers now that Tasha's fixed a lot of major issues with the class. They can just get expertise in survival instead of a ribbon and be good overall at what they are supposed to be good at.
Wasting a feat/ASI on getting expertise just so you can have Natural Explorer is like trading your brand new car for a 1987 Moped.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Rangers are great. Wizards gave the ranger so many...OPTIONAL VARIANTS...to shut down the whining power gamers.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
Spellcasting Extra attack
Everything else got the cut....so yeah overhaul.
Nothing was cut, and everything else was given a lateral shift. None of the alternate features are actually stronger than before.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
Those are just some of the other abilities that didn't get cut while your lying about how everything else got cut. And even the things your saying got cut didn't even get cut. They are still competely takable while all their replacements are purely optional.
So I'm going to have to call BS here on everything on a couple of different levels while your sitting on that pole demanding that it was all overhauled. Because 4 abilities does not make All of them except Extra Attack and Spell Casting. Particularly when I can name more than that which you ignored on top of those two.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
Those are just some of the other abilities that didn't get cut while your lying about how everything else got cut. And even the things your saying got cut didn't even get cut. They are still competely takable while all their replacements are purely optional.
So I'm going to have to call BS here on everything on a couple of different levels while your sitting on that pole demanding that it was all overhauled. Because 4 abilities does not make All of them except Extra Attack and Spell Casting. Particularly when I can name more than that which you ignored on top of those two.
I will say I meant 1-10... Where 90% of play occurs.
sounds to me the problem is when a dm and player can't co-operate and work together. Not the ranger class. Don't blame the wrong thing.
I can play with strict/new/minimalist dms but if I do I'm gonna make class choices that keep things clear and well defined. That Doesn't mean I don't like those class choices or that they are bad. It means that dm can't work with them. (which may or may not be intentional on the dms part).
When I want to play a ranger I always start with " I want to play a (PHB) ranger what do you think?" depending on their response I may choose a different option.
That was the whole point. There was no blaming the class, but if that's the way you see it I'm sorry.
There are some classes which will suffer more from DM interpretation/intervention than others. I think Ranger is one of the highest on that list, that doesn't make it bad, but in some situations it will certainly mar the experience of people playing it, or alongside it.
It is really good for you that you can do those things, but not everyone is as experienced as you. You have to consider playing D&D as if you were new to the game, new to the DM, new to the table to understand why people have the misconception of the Ranger being bad.
Consider being introduced to the base fighter, we'll call her 8 Ball Pool, the objective is simple, pot all your balls then the 8 and you're good, then the Ranger, we'll call her Snooker, whose rules I really don't understand, I'm sure it is easy once you learn it, but it takes a little more to understand the game and play it (if someone who actually plays Snooker comes along and tells me that it is actually super simple then I kindly ask you find me a better analogy). Both games are enjoyable, neither is bad, but it is certainly easier to pick up and play eight ball despite the similarities, at least to the majority of people. Some people, however, might just tell you that Snooker is bad because they don't know how to play her, or they had a bad experience.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
Those are just some of the other abilities that didn't get cut while your lying about how everything else got cut. And even the things your saying got cut didn't even get cut. They are still competely takable while all their replacements are purely optional.
So I'm going to have to call BS here on everything on a couple of different levels while your sitting on that pole demanding that it was all overhauled. Because 4 abilities does not make All of them except Extra Attack and Spell Casting. Particularly when I can name more than that which you ignored on top of those two.
I will say I meant 1-10... Where 90% of play occurs.
So just the most important parts.
And even there, there are only four received alternate features. Two others got straight buffs, and one was completely unchanged. So even with the benefit of the doubt, with two of the alternates receiving improvements, that's only six out of nine. So two-thirds.
And nothing was actually cut. So what we have here is you deliberately misrepresenting the facts. And you want us to take you seriously?
You don't have to do anything but literally no other class had 2/3 of it's 1-10 features changed... It does not take much to see that they saw a huge flaw in the current state and fixed it.
You don't have to do anything but literally no other class had 2/3 of it's 1-10 features changed... It does not take much to see that they saw a huge flaw in the current state and fixed it.
They changed it because people like you were complaining. Not because it was broken. But, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
As hard as it may to believe, it's entirely possible that many of the class's detractors, including yourself, don't view and use the ranger's features as designed. Whether that means not communicating with the DM, not following common sense during character creation, or old-fashioned cognitive dissonance is immaterial.
Those features don't directly contribute to combat so they're viewed as weak. Hell, we're seven years into the lifecycle of this edition and people are still saying to expect 6-8 medium to hard combats per day. As if there aren't two other types of encounters to be had. They only see the game as a narrow thing, and not full of possibility.
You don't have to do anything but literally no other class had 2/3 of it's 1-10 features changed... It does not take much to see that they saw a huge flaw in the current state and fixed it.
They changed it because people like you were complaining. Not because it was broken. But, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
As hard as it may to believe, it's entirely possible that many of the class's detractors, including yourself, don't view and use the ranger's features as designed. Whether that means not communicating with the DM, not following common sense during character creation, or old-fashioned cognitive dissonance is immaterial.
Those features don't directly contribute to combat so they're viewed as weak. Hell, we're seven years into the lifecycle of this edition and people are still saying to expect 6-8 medium to hard combats per day. As if there aren't two other types of encounters to be had. They only see the game as a narrow thing, and not full of possibility.
I only use 6 because it's an easy measuring stick and is suggested by the book as reasoning for using it even though it's not necessarily always realistic. And because it's easy to understand for those that base everything through combats. And I freely admit to this. i also use 6 because it tends to actually break many things that are often seen as the most powerful because of white room optimization over primarily one combat encounter over a very few number of turns.
I do actually accept and enjoy social and environmental encounters as well. Both often provide interesting experiences that many are just not prepared for. Occasionally even myself depending on the kind of character i've made simply because they often require a much broader set of skills than what I can really assign points to for some of them. They can often be more interesting and fun than combat challenges actually are. Sometimes even more challenging as well. But I do accept they are a harder thing for new DM's to understand and get used to using than combat is.
What gets me is that we are 7 years into this edition with the power level much lower but there are still a lot of players demand that you max your stats and find the maximum power magical items that you can for any particular tier as an absolute necessity. Despite the fact that that hasn't been true since 3.x/PF.
You haven't done much with the underdark have you. Automatically putting it as a Desolate Area. Deserts are often more desolate than the Underdark is. And Coasts aren't just automatically urban. In fact statistically more coastal area is going to be non-urban environment than urban environment. It's also completely natural. As is decent parts of the Underdark. And anything Arctic, Desert, or Mountain. These categorizations are faulty on multiple levels.
The concept was to change the way you approach the idea of a "favored terrain". Rather than the overly limited choices (that don't even cover ALL of the terrain types you can encounter).
The main point is to have 4 major categories that go from easiest to survive in to hardest: Urban>Natural>Desolate>Inhospitable and to provide some examples, you can argue that some of the examples could go in other categories. This way you can say I choose x at level 1, y at 6, x at 11, and by level 17 there is no place a Ranger can go that they aren't really good at.
If a level 6 Ranger has Natural and Desolate choosen, the DM can decide if where the party is fits either of those.
Easiest to hardest to survive in is a matter of perception and your own skills. It's a problematic list at best. Creating an additional problem for each one your trying to solve with it.
A person with good survival skills but poor social and thieving skills May actually find it easier to survive in nature than in the cities. City scrounging is a particular kind of skill that doesn't necessarily translate over and is looking for different things from anything in nature. Which actually encompasses most Rangers. Your putting a lot of personal biases into the way your breaking things up.
Easiest to hardest isn't a matter of perception or skill. I am simply looking at it in the most basic terms. If you took four average people, not a fantasy hero, and you put one in each area, the person in the city will last the longest, then the person in a natural setting like a forest, etc...
"Your putting a lot of personal biases into the way your breaking things up." Again, not really. I hardly think it is bias to say that someone can survive longer in a city than a desert.
Is a desert and the arctic the same, no, but you are waaay over analyzing this. Its a game, I created a way to group environments in a way that I feel makes sense from a gameplay logic and in a way that creates a number of possible options that fit the mold so that at level 17 you have all of them. If you want to create your own version of Favored Terrain that has 47 different possible terrains because surviving in each has its own list of crap go for it.
This is just an alternative for someone who wants to use Favored Terrain over Deft Explorer and feel like the choice is more impactful.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (not that anyone in this thread feels the need for an invite ;) ) but I think the biggest issue is that for the most part I would say the majority of players don't find exploration fun. People like combat, it is very well defined, you know what you can and can't do, you can get a good idea of what abilities do from reading them without always needing first-hand experience. People like social interactions, you can really role play a character here, playing on their quirks, conversation is a great way to get people involved even if their character isn't the face of the party, anyone can start a conversation, some truly memorable moments can start because of a conversation gone wrong. I don't think many players like exploration, it is arguably the least defined pillar, and probably the most ignored. I'd say it is the hardest to make exciting for a DM, and probably the hardest for players to find fulfilling. There is less exciting imagery with doing something like saying "I find a tree with a hollow and build a lean-to to provide an opportunity to light a fire in order to ride out the snowstorm" than there is with "I leap forward into the dragon's breath, shield first with a battle cry on my lips before sweeping my morningstar at its gaping maw".
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (not that anyone in this thread feels the need for an invite ;) ) but I think the biggest issue is that for the most part I would say the majority of players don't find exploration fun. People like combat, it is very well defined, you know what you can and can't do, you can get a good idea of what abilities do from reading them without always needing first-hand experience. People like social interactions, you can really role play a character here, playing on their quirks, conversation is a great way to get people involved even if their character isn't the face of the party, anyone can start a conversation, some truly memorable moments can start because of a conversation gone wrong. I don't think many players like exploration, it is arguably the least defined pillar, and probably the most ignored. I'd say it is the hardest to make exciting for a DM, and probably the hardest for players to find fulfilling. There is less exciting imagery with doing something like saying "I find a tree with a hollow and build a lean-to to provide an opportunity to light a fire in order to ride out the snowstorm" than there is with "I leap forward into the dragon's breath, shield first with a battle cry on my lips before sweeping my morningstar at its gaping maw".
But there is a lot of fun... and even reason at times to be the one that searches around and finds the long forgotten entrance to an old temple full of forgotten lore. Which would all be covered under the exploration pillar. But people don't really think about that as being exploration because they aren't even really thinking... What is exploration? And Exploration of lesser and grander scale can be found eveywhere without just being making a lean-to that helps you avoid the blizzard. It could be thta secret entrance into the castle. the invisible stair case leading to the floating tower. The hidden cache of items behind that throne... That's all part of exploration and those are all the kind of things that players actually love to do... without ever realizing just what they are doing.
The issue is that the Ranger is so good in their favored terrain its a hand-wave for them to do anything in it....Need food? Just get it. Lost? Nope don't even need to roll. Its not really super engaging.
But outside of their terrain? They are just as good (or worse if they focus DEX over WIS) than others who simply take the Survival skill. A rouge with expertise will be better than a ranger in every terrain besides their own which hardly makes them generally useful...just very very specifically so.
Also any class can take survival and WIS is not something that is generally recommended to dump by any means so its not that uncommon to see a ranger out done on the regular.
Modules call for survival skills for tracking and a scout rogue will be beating the ranger at that all day in anything but their own terrain.
Its not about the ranger being bad at it...its about the ranger not being any better than somebody who picked survival as an after thought and all of a sudden is running side by side with a ranger for what is supposed to be a pillar of their class identity.
Granted its a LOT better for Rangers now that Tasha's fixed a lot of major issues with the class. They can just get expertise in survival instead of a ribbon and be good overall at what they are supposed to be good at.
Wasting a feat/ASI on getting expertise just so you can have Natural Explorer is like trading your brand new car for a 1987 Moped.
PHB ranger is like that episode of South Park where Stan and Butters go to George RR Martins house and he keeps promising them pizza is coming but it never comes....
Ranger keeps promising you will get to do these things and have fun with exploration but then everyone realizes that its not going to happen. So instead you focus on combat and spell utility and get Gloomstalker.
That's a failure of you and the DM. Not the ranger.
If the majority of DMs have to struggle to make a class feature relevant its a bad class feature and not a fault of them...its the fault of the system and the design.
Funny how no other class got a full overhaul in features.....
Funny how Ranger didn't either. But some are really rushing to climb up and sit atop that pole and make everybody believe it.
Literally the only base class features that didn't get the cut were:
Spellcasting
Extra attack
Everything else got the cut....so yeah overhaul.
Rangers are great. Wizards gave the ranger so many...OPTIONAL VARIANTS...to shut down the whining power gamers.
Nothing was cut, and everything else was given a lateral shift. None of the alternate features are actually stronger than before.
Land's Stride, Fighting STyles, Vanish, Feral Senses, Foe Slayer.
Those are just some of the other abilities that didn't get cut while your lying about how everything else got cut. And even the things your saying got cut didn't even get cut. They are still competely takable while all their replacements are purely optional.
So I'm going to have to call BS here on everything on a couple of different levels while your sitting on that pole demanding that it was all overhauled. Because 4 abilities does not make All of them except Extra Attack and Spell Casting. Particularly when I can name more than that which you ignored on top of those two.
I will say I meant 1-10... Where 90% of play occurs.
So just the most important parts.
And even there, there are only four received alternate features. Two others got straight buffs, and one was completely unchanged. So even with the benefit of the doubt, with two of the alternates receiving improvements, that's only six out of nine. So two-thirds.
And nothing was actually cut. So what we have here is you deliberately misrepresenting the facts. And you want us to take you seriously?
You don't have to do anything but literally no other class had 2/3 of it's 1-10 features changed... It does not take much to see that they saw a huge flaw in the current state and fixed it.
They changed it because people like you were complaining. Not because it was broken. But, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
As hard as it may to believe, it's entirely possible that many of the class's detractors, including yourself, don't view and use the ranger's features as designed. Whether that means not communicating with the DM, not following common sense during character creation, or old-fashioned cognitive dissonance is immaterial.
Those features don't directly contribute to combat so they're viewed as weak. Hell, we're seven years into the lifecycle of this edition and people are still saying to expect 6-8 medium to hard combats per day. As if there aren't two other types of encounters to be had. They only see the game as a narrow thing, and not full of possibility.
I'm just glad they fixed it!
The only "fix" was allowing them to use a druidic focus. That should have been there from the very beginning.
And all that other good stuff that's actually useful.
I only use 6 because it's an easy measuring stick and is suggested by the book as reasoning for using it even though it's not necessarily always realistic. And because it's easy to understand for those that base everything through combats. And I freely admit to this. i also use 6 because it tends to actually break many things that are often seen as the most powerful because of white room optimization over primarily one combat encounter over a very few number of turns.
I do actually accept and enjoy social and environmental encounters as well. Both often provide interesting experiences that many are just not prepared for. Occasionally even myself depending on the kind of character i've made simply because they often require a much broader set of skills than what I can really assign points to for some of them. They can often be more interesting and fun than combat challenges actually are. Sometimes even more challenging as well. But I do accept they are a harder thing for new DM's to understand and get used to using than combat is.
What gets me is that we are 7 years into this edition with the power level much lower but there are still a lot of players demand that you max your stats and find the maximum power magical items that you can for any particular tier as an absolute necessity. Despite the fact that that hasn't been true since 3.x/PF.
Easiest to hardest isn't a matter of perception or skill. I am simply looking at it in the most basic terms. If you took four average people, not a fantasy hero, and you put one in each area, the person in the city will last the longest, then the person in a natural setting like a forest, etc...
"Your putting a lot of personal biases into the way your breaking things up." Again, not really. I hardly think it is bias to say that someone can survive longer in a city than a desert.
Is a desert and the arctic the same, no, but you are waaay over analyzing this. Its a game, I created a way to group environments in a way that I feel makes sense from a gameplay logic and in a way that creates a number of possible options that fit the mold so that at level 17 you have all of them. If you want to create your own version of Favored Terrain that has 47 different possible terrains because surviving in each has its own list of crap go for it.
This is just an alternative for someone who wants to use Favored Terrain over Deft Explorer and feel like the choice is more impactful.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (not that anyone in this thread feels the need for an invite ;) ) but I think the biggest issue is that for the most part I would say the majority of players don't find exploration fun. People like combat, it is very well defined, you know what you can and can't do, you can get a good idea of what abilities do from reading them without always needing first-hand experience. People like social interactions, you can really role play a character here, playing on their quirks, conversation is a great way to get people involved even if their character isn't the face of the party, anyone can start a conversation, some truly memorable moments can start because of a conversation gone wrong. I don't think many players like exploration, it is arguably the least defined pillar, and probably the most ignored. I'd say it is the hardest to make exciting for a DM, and probably the hardest for players to find fulfilling. There is less exciting imagery with doing something like saying "I find a tree with a hollow and build a lean-to to provide an opportunity to light a fire in order to ride out the snowstorm" than there is with "I leap forward into the dragon's breath, shield first with a battle cry on my lips before sweeping my morningstar at its gaping maw".
But there is a lot of fun... and even reason at times to be the one that searches around and finds the long forgotten entrance to an old temple full of forgotten lore. Which would all be covered under the exploration pillar. But people don't really think about that as being exploration because they aren't even really thinking... What is exploration? And Exploration of lesser and grander scale can be found eveywhere without just being making a lean-to that helps you avoid the blizzard. It could be thta secret entrance into the castle. the invisible stair case leading to the floating tower. The hidden cache of items behind that throne... That's all part of exploration and those are all the kind of things that players actually love to do... without ever realizing just what they are doing.