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".
I agree that a lot of players and DMs don't really know how to treat exploration and it gets hand waved more than it probably should. I try to incorporate my ranger skills into doing things, but it doesn't come up often enough.
I think Tasha's helped give options that are easy to understand, I do wish you got to choose which option to take rather than getting them at specific milestones, but Deft Explorer is a suite of 'always on' abilities and that is what most players wanted, myself included. Had they tried to revamp Favored Terrain even in the broader way I did you have people who will say it still doesn't work.
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.
Exactly! It is just harder to quantify than the Combat and Social pillars because it is so far reaching, and that makes it harder for people to wrap their heads around (see an earlier poster's most excellent analogy about cue sports and apply it to combat and exploration :P ). I'd say it is harder for the average DM to make exploration fun/relevant, anyone can throw a combat encounter together (yes, there are definite bad/boring combats) with relative ease, but it is harder to create an engaging puzzle/riddle or create a set of clues to the lost temple. Plus, in my experience, sadly not every player cares for these things, sometimes people just want to skip straight to a good old fashioned Orc murdering.
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".
I run travel snd exploration like a dungeon crawl.
Mostly the thing about exploration is that it is much more 1-2 players centric as only a few classes/subclasses focus on it. Social/RP sessions and Combat sessions tend to involve more people...or at least can involve them a lot easier than Exploration. And for those 1-2 players its mostly easy as a lot of the features handwave the difficulty with them.
That's been my experience anyway...we incorporate it but its generally done a lot quicker than social/RP and combat. Social/RP tends to just go a while as human interaction is complicated enough and combat has the crunch.
Overall I enjoy it but it just tends to fall to the side due to taking less time (simpler concepts and abilities that handwave) and the other pillars taking longer.
Mostly the thing about exploration is that it is much more 1-2 players centric as only a few classes/subclasses focus on it. Social/RP sessions and Combat sessions tend to involve more people...or at least can involve them a lot easier than Exploration. And for those 1-2 players its mostly easy as a lot of the features handwave the difficulty with them.
That's been my experience anyway...we incorporate it but its generally done a lot quicker than social/RP and combat. Social/RP tends to just go a while as human interaction is complicated enough and combat has the crunch.
Overall I enjoy it but it just tends to fall to the side due to taking less time (simpler concepts and abilities that handwave) and the other pillars taking longer.
I want to go on record and say this is the first time that you and I are complete agreement, Optimus! Nice!
I think there's this general idea in the community that Exploration = Overland travel. And while the latter is absolutely part of the former, it isn't the whole of it. Exploration is searching for clues about the murderer and gathering information about the dungeon just as much as it is crossing the forest to get to the dragon's lair at the foot of the mountain.
I personally view Exploration as literally everything in between social and combat encounters.
I think there's this general idea in the community that Exploration = Overland travel. And while the latter is absolutely part of the former, it isn't the whole of it. Exploration is searching for clues about the murderer and gathering information about the dungeon just as much as it is crossing the forest to get to the dragon's lair at the foot of the mountain.
I personally view Exploration as literally everything in between social and combat encounters.
Yeah I full on agree here...it just tends to be over quicker for the most part as people see it as the "details" instead of the focus.
Its hard to make it more time consuming without making it boring in my attempts....I like how some DMs do it (Mercer does a great job) but my players don't engage with it as much as they do.
This is a great time to bring up (again and again) that the "expertise" portion of natural explorer does NOT require the ranger to be anywhere near one of their favored terrains. This mechanic works just like any tool, piece of adventuring gear, or most other ability checks and skill checks, where the use of all of them is not necessarily "well defined" and "quantifiable by RAW", but is instead open to the "creative juices" of the player and DM alike.
I'm not clear on what you mean here? I get that the expertise (in Forest) could work when in a city, if you are talking / checking something Forest related. Or do you mean something wider than that?
Natural Explorer
You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level.
"When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in."
This part. This can be as open-ended or unclear and restrictive as a DM and/or player chooses to make it. Just like ball bearings, a 10' pole, knowledge checks, brewer's supplies, a 50' coil of rope, an herbalism kit, or a crowbar, these things are open to use in game, creatively. Arcana, history, investigation, nature, religion, animal handling, insight medicine, perception, and survival are all viable skills that can benefit from the natural explorer ability, some more than others. Nature and survival get a lot of attention because of the nature (pun intended) of the ranger class and now the scout rogue, but I think that this short sighted. Proficiency in a skill instead of expertise amounts to 10%-15% mathematical difference until level 9, and the ranger has many other skills, abilities, and spells that can easily more than overcome that difference. The use of this ability is limited only by the creativity of the player and DM.
"When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in."
This part. This can be as open-ended or unclear and restrictive as a DM and/or player chooses to make it. Just like ball bearings, a 10' pole, knowledge checks, brewer's supplies, a 50' coil of rope, an herbalism kit, or a crowbar, these things are open to use in game, creatively. Arcana, history, investigation, nature, religion, animal handling, insight medicine, perception, and survival are all viable skills that can benefit from the natural explorer ability, some more than others. Nature and survival get a lot of attention because of the nature (pun intended) of the ranger class and now the scout rogue, but I think that this short sighted. Proficiency in a skill instead of expertise amounts to 10%-15% mathematical difference until level 9, and the ranger has many other skills, abilities, and spells that can easily more than overcome that difference. The use of this ability is limited only by the creativity of the player and DM.
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.
I don't know how I missed this before but it is something I would like to discuss because it's a truism I often see parroted by members of the DnD Community as a way to discredit the merits of the Ranger even when the Ranger is actively contributing. It's often a way of saying "they're bad until they're good; but when they're good they're not fun, so really, they're still bad."
But that's not at all how Natural Explorer works. Actually reading the feature, you begin to realize that it doesn't automatically give you any real benefits without chancing a roll of the die (just like everything else in the game.) Rather, what it does is it gives you is additional rewards when you succeed on a relevant check.
Let's take this one at a time:
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel
This one is one of the few that a case could be made actively negates a portion of exploration. Granted, 'difficult terrain' is already not the most engaging portion of exploration anyway, but no big loss. That being said, if we look at the climbing and swimming rules, we see that they count as difficult terrain and that players need to make a successful athletics check to make headway in particularly challenging situations related to them (such as climbing a vertical surface or swimming in rough waters.) In these instances, Natural Explorer simply states that the group athletics check done to make headway won't slow them down. It certainly makes the journey considerably easier, but it doesn't eliminate the challenge altogether. The group still needs to succeed on athletics checks. And with Strength being a common dump stat for a lot of characters....
From the Player's Handbook:
Climbing, Swimming, and Crawling
Each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain) when you’re climbing, swimming, or crawling. You ignore this extra cost if you have a climbing speed and use it to climb or a swimming speed and use it to swim. At the DM’s option, climbing a slippery vertical surface or one with few handholds requires a successful Strength (Athletics) check. Similarly, gaining any distance in rough water might require a successful Strength (Athletics) check.
Anyway, that's the closest we get to actually skipping exploration as opposed to engaging in it.
At any rate, let's move on.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
Not becoming lost isn't about always knowing how to get to your destination. It's about knowing how to get back to your starting point so you can try again. You still need a successful Survival check to know how to get to the other side of the forest or to successfully know how to interpret a map, etc.
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
Remaining 'alert to danger' does not mean you can't be surprised or ambushed (unless you have the Alert feat or an item with a similar effect.) It just makes it harder for you to be surprised/ambushed. Perception and stealth are still important checks that need to be made.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
You still need a successful stealth check in order to move 'stealthily at a normal pace.' Stealth, by the way, isn't amplified by Natural Explorer's Expertise (though you can cast Pass without Trace.) If you fail the stealth check, you don't get this benefit. Again, it's about giving you extra rewards for succeeding; not about skipping the challenge altogether.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
You still need to make a successful survival check to forage. Admittedly, this'll be easier since you get expertise from Natural Explorer, but the roll still has to be made. There is still a chance of failure. It's not just an 'auto-success.' This, again, is just giving you extra rewards for success.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.
Once again, you need a successful survival check to track other creatures. In this case, you have expertise from Natural Explorer and, if tracking your Favored Enemy, then advantage as well. This is admittedly a difficult one to fail, but failure is still a very real possibility. And yet again, all you get is extra rewards for success. If the feature said "You can track creatures without fail," that would be one thing. But this is just giving you additional information if you roll well.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. While I agree with your statement on this one....its still mostly handwaving any real danger with getting lost. You have expertise in the roll for survival and likely the DC will be so minimal for you in your favored terrain that its basically an auto-win. If not...then why even have this part if you can get lost by rolling low?
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. I do not even know what this means....would you normally take a -5 perception hit while doing these things? I thought that relied on travel pace not activity? Checking these individual activities in the DMG does not suggest you would take a penalty but I could be missing something...this literally seems to be referencing nothing.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.- DnD is a party game and any ability that encourages party split is not really something I enjoy or find valuable. I wish this was for ALL of your party and it would be much more useful.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.- This one makes sense for something like inhospitable terrains but if you pick Forrest its hard to believe that the DC will ever be more than 15. Plus there are spells like Goodberry that just make this moot. Rations are cheap and do not take up a lot of space.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.- This one is the most useful overall and I actually enjoy this one.
I think part of the problem is combat and social usually have clear rewards or benefits to compare successful or suboptimal results. Don't Turn exploration into a combat penalty where players are scared to step off the rails for a bit afraid they might poke the bear.
This is where dms need work on showing active benefit to the exploration pillars. The key is to provide clear rewards and/or appropriate conflict-tension-resolution setups. Players should be able to anticipate fun and interesting travel sequences.
some examples :
Time sensitive rewards. Potions or ingredients that go bad over time where a series of difficulties might cause the item to spoil. Should not be mission critical but provide rewards on success.
Hidden loot. Finding tracks of another party who got lost and died because they didn't have a ranger. players get one or two good pieces of equipment The dead party left.
Finding natural cures to future problems That would make next encounters more difficult. Plants that cure poison or neutralize acid or repel Rust monsters.
Downtime rewards. There are a few ways in game to reward downtime/ planning ahead. One of the easiest is Poison harvesting. It its free damage under certain circumstances. but others exist crafting rules + ranger means the ranger can watch while making potions or other consumables.
Cost of travel. travel is expensive but many games hand wave it. Food for players and Mounts. wear and tear on supplies and gear. Imagine two parties traveling. one ends having more food and pelts to sell and trade for potions(ranger). The other is 100 gold in the hole and now none of the party can afford the discount sale on Potions.
Finding a lost cleric in the woods and escorting them to town. New ally for resurrection emergencies or holywater supplier.
Finding a lost animal that Might provide benefits for rangers. small animals for beast sense, animal messenger maybe even ones that would be enhanced familiars. Some AL modules actually have this as rewards. Maybe even a rat or monkey trained in pickpocketing (OR other skill) That could be a weak companion or A phb beastmaster boon.
Traveling at see and noticing a sunken ship or spot for pearl diving as a optional side quest.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. While I agree with your statement on this one....its still mostly handwaving any real danger with getting lost. You have expertise in the roll for survival and likely the DC will be so minimal for you in your favored terrain that its basically an auto-win. If not...then why even have this part if you can get lost by rolling low?
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. I do not even know what this means....would you normally take a -5 perception hit while doing these things? I thought that relied on travel pace not activity? Checking these individual activities in the DMG does not suggest you would take a penalty but I could be missing something...this literally seems to be referencing nothing.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.- DnD is a party game and any ability that encourages party split is not really something I enjoy or find valuable. I wish this was for ALL of your party and it would be much more useful.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.- This one makes sense for something like inhospitable terrains but if you pick Forrest its hard to believe that the DC will ever be more than 15. Plus there are spells like Goodberry that just make this moot. Rations are cheap and do not take up a lot of space.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.- This one is the most useful overall and I actually enjoy this one.
This is what's called "moving the goalposts."
The original argument was 'NE doesn't engage with exploration, it skips it altogether. "You don't even need to roll."' Said argument has now shifted to "You need to roll, but it's a super easy check to succeed."
This may or may not be true, but what it is is a different claim than the previous one.
And whether or not the checks are easy or difficult is dependent on the DM, the table, the campaign, and the particular terrain in question. It may well could be that you can forage on a DC 5 or higher. Or it might require a DC 21. It's very dependent on the situation at hand. But at this point, we are discussing factors that go beyond the features of Natural Explorer. Natural Explorer does not impose a set DC for its features to activate, and as such, this becomes a completely different topic of conversation.
Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. While I agree with your statement on this one....its still mostly handwaving any real danger with getting lost. You have expertise in the roll for survival and likely the DC will be so minimal for you in your favored terrain that its basically an auto-win. If not...then why even have this part if you can get lost by rolling low?
Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. I do not even know what this means....would you normally take a -5 perception hit while doing these things? I thought that relied on travel pace not activity? Checking these individual activities in the DMG does not suggest you would take a penalty but I could be missing something...this literally seems to be referencing nothing.
If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.- DnD is a party game and any ability that encourages party split is not really something I enjoy or find valuable. I wish this was for ALL of your party and it would be much more useful.
When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.- This one makes sense for something like inhospitable terrains but if you pick Forrest its hard to believe that the DC will ever be more than 15. Plus there are spells like Goodberry that just make this moot. Rations are cheap and do not take up a lot of space.
While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.- This one is the most useful overall and I actually enjoy this one.
This is what's called "moving the goalposts."
The original argument was 'NE doesn't engage with exploration, it skips it altogether. "You don't even nee to roll."' Said argument has now shifted to "You need to roll, but it's a super easy check to succeed."
This may or may not be true, but what it is is a different claim than the previous one.
And whether or not the checks are easy or difficult is dependent on the DM, the table, the campaign, and the particular terrain in question. It may well could be that you can forage on a DC 5 or higher. Or it might require a DC 21. It's very dependent on the situation at hand. But at this point, we are discussing factors that go beyond the features of Natural Explorer. Natural Explorer does not impose a set DC for its features to activate, and as such, this becomes a completely different topic of conversation.
I am just talking around the point and not fully refuting yours as this is a discussion about ranger in general and not a specific topic. I did not even quote your post directly simply stating my own thoughts on each individual point.
I think people use the goalpost thing entirely too much as I am not trying to "prove you wrong" or have a staunch logical argument at this point...why would I? This is DnD not philosophy class.
While traveling no one person can do more than one thing at a time. This is the fallacy of the scout rogue. In the activity while traveling section they talk about ranks, who can see what and where, and perception checks, while in the other activities section they talk about characters that turn their attention to other things can't remain alert to dangers. The ranger can specifically do this alone. And all of this plays to the application as is in real life, where many folks are doing things when a group is traveling and it is safer to travel in numbers than alone. The ranger does this the best, getting the entire group where they need to go faster, safer, better fed, and with no unintentional sidetracks.
In regards to food, even the outlander background says "In addition, you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five other people each day, provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth..." I have always taken this to mean that if they survival check(s) to find food and water are made with success the character can do so with a x5 modifier, not that they automatically find food and water for 6 characters.
"When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in."
This part. This can be as open-ended or unclear and restrictive as a DM and/or player chooses to make it. Just like ball bearings, a 10' pole, knowledge checks, brewer's supplies, a 50' coil of rope, an herbalism kit, or a crowbar, these things are open to use in game, creatively. Arcana, history, investigation, nature, religion, animal handling, insight medicine, perception, and survival are all viable skills that can benefit from the natural explorer ability, some more than others. Nature and survival get a lot of attention because of the nature (pun intended) of the ranger class and now the scout rogue, but I think that this short sighted. Proficiency in a skill instead of expertise amounts to 10%-15% mathematical difference until level 9, and the ranger has many other skills, abilities, and spells that can easily more than overcome that difference. The use of this ability is limited only by the creativity of the player and DM.
Do you have some examples that you have used?
Yes! Of course I would be happy to provide several examples. I will do so later today or tomorrow when I have a moment to type some up. Stand by...
I love the Ranger class but started hating the features before Tasha's. The terrain and exploration abilities really shouldn't be gassed up. I understand that it "can" be useful but it's a pain more often than not.
Tasha's made Ranger great again....aside from the lvl 20 ability I'm still not a fan of. (would rather take a single dip in cleric for cantrips and other passives, plus you don't lose anything aside from Foe Slayer!)
I love the Ranger class but started hating the features before Tasha's. The terrain and exploration abilities really shouldn't be gassed up. I understand that it "can" be useful but it's a pain more often than not.
Tasha's made Ranger great again....aside from the lvl 20 ability I'm still not a fan of. (would rather take a single dip in cleric for cantrips and other passives, plus you don't lose anything aside from Foe Slayer!)
I'm not going to defend Favored Foe Slayer as a great capstone or anything, but I will point out that it's 1d8 Favored Foe + 5 Foe Slayer does ultimately add up to around the same damage as a non-magical longbow, rapier, or one-handed longsword. It doesn't get stronger with magic items and it doesn't proc Sharpshooter/GWM, but it is basically a mini-Extra Attack that requires concentration but doesn't need a separate attack roll to hit. Still not the best capstone, but lest we forget the Fighter's capstone is literally just Extra Attack again, so while the Fighter's is better, it's not that much better.
Also, Foe Slayer has the choice to add +5 to the attack roll instead and still add 1d8 to the damage, which does make it slightly more versatile than just a mere Extra Attack.
I agree that a lot of players and DMs don't really know how to treat exploration and it gets hand waved more than it probably should. I try to incorporate my ranger skills into doing things, but it doesn't come up often enough.
I think Tasha's helped give options that are easy to understand, I do wish you got to choose which option to take rather than getting them at specific milestones, but Deft Explorer is a suite of 'always on' abilities and that is what most players wanted, myself included. Had they tried to revamp Favored Terrain even in the broader way I did you have people who will say it still doesn't work.
Exactly! It is just harder to quantify than the Combat and Social pillars because it is so far reaching, and that makes it harder for people to wrap their heads around (see an earlier poster's most excellent analogy about cue sports and apply it to combat and exploration :P ). I'd say it is harder for the average DM to make exploration fun/relevant, anyone can throw a combat encounter together (yes, there are definite bad/boring combats) with relative ease, but it is harder to create an engaging puzzle/riddle or create a set of clues to the lost temple. Plus, in my experience, sadly not every player cares for these things, sometimes people just want to skip straight to a good old fashioned Orc murdering.
I run travel snd exploration like a dungeon crawl.
Mostly the thing about exploration is that it is much more 1-2 players centric as only a few classes/subclasses focus on it. Social/RP sessions and Combat sessions tend to involve more people...or at least can involve them a lot easier than Exploration. And for those 1-2 players its mostly easy as a lot of the features handwave the difficulty with them.
That's been my experience anyway...we incorporate it but its generally done a lot quicker than social/RP and combat. Social/RP tends to just go a while as human interaction is complicated enough and combat has the crunch.
Overall I enjoy it but it just tends to fall to the side due to taking less time (simpler concepts and abilities that handwave) and the other pillars taking longer.
I want to go on record and say this is the first time that you and I are complete agreement, Optimus! Nice!
I think there's this general idea in the community that Exploration = Overland travel. And while the latter is absolutely part of the former, it isn't the whole of it. Exploration is searching for clues about the murderer and gathering information about the dungeon just as much as it is crossing the forest to get to the dragon's lair at the foot of the mountain.
I personally view Exploration as literally everything in between social and combat encounters.
Yeah I full on agree here...it just tends to be over quicker for the most part as people see it as the "details" instead of the focus.
Its hard to make it more time consuming without making it boring in my attempts....I like how some DMs do it (Mercer does a great job) but my players don't engage with it as much as they do.
This is a great time to bring up (again and again) that the "expertise" portion of natural explorer does NOT require the ranger to be anywhere near one of their favored terrains. This mechanic works just like any tool, piece of adventuring gear, or most other ability checks and skill checks, where the use of all of them is not necessarily "well defined" and "quantifiable by RAW", but is instead open to the "creative juices" of the player and DM alike.
I'm not clear on what you mean here? I get that the expertise (in Forest) could work when in a city, if you are talking / checking something Forest related. Or do you mean something wider than that?
Natural Explorer
You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.
While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:
You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level.
"When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in."
This part. This can be as open-ended or unclear and restrictive as a DM and/or player chooses to make it. Just like ball bearings, a 10' pole, knowledge checks, brewer's supplies, a 50' coil of rope, an herbalism kit, or a crowbar, these things are open to use in game, creatively. Arcana, history, investigation, nature, religion, animal handling, insight medicine, perception, and survival are all viable skills that can benefit from the natural explorer ability, some more than others. Nature and survival get a lot of attention because of the nature (pun intended) of the ranger class and now the scout rogue, but I think that this short sighted. Proficiency in a skill instead of expertise amounts to 10%-15% mathematical difference until level 9, and the ranger has many other skills, abilities, and spells that can easily more than overcome that difference. The use of this ability is limited only by the creativity of the player and DM.
Do you have some examples that you have used?
I don't know how I missed this before but it is something I would like to discuss because it's a truism I often see parroted by members of the DnD Community as a way to discredit the merits of the Ranger even when the Ranger is actively contributing. It's often a way of saying "they're bad until they're good; but when they're good they're not fun, so really, they're still bad."
But that's not at all how Natural Explorer works. Actually reading the feature, you begin to realize that it doesn't automatically give you any real benefits without chancing a roll of the die (just like everything else in the game.) Rather, what it does is it gives you is additional rewards when you succeed on a relevant check.
Let's take this one at a time:
This one is one of the few that a case could be made actively negates a portion of exploration. Granted, 'difficult terrain' is already not the most engaging portion of exploration anyway, but no big loss. That being said, if we look at the climbing and swimming rules, we see that they count as difficult terrain and that players need to make a successful athletics check to make headway in particularly challenging situations related to them (such as climbing a vertical surface or swimming in rough waters.) In these instances, Natural Explorer simply states that the group athletics check done to make headway won't slow them down. It certainly makes the journey considerably easier, but it doesn't eliminate the challenge altogether. The group still needs to succeed on athletics checks. And with Strength being a common dump stat for a lot of characters....
From the Player's Handbook:
Anyway, that's the closest we get to actually skipping exploration as opposed to engaging in it.
At any rate, let's move on.
Not becoming lost isn't about always knowing how to get to your destination. It's about knowing how to get back to your starting point so you can try again. You still need a successful Survival check to know how to get to the other side of the forest or to successfully know how to interpret a map, etc.
Remaining 'alert to danger' does not mean you can't be surprised or ambushed (unless you have the Alert feat or an item with a similar effect.) It just makes it harder for you to be surprised/ambushed. Perception and stealth are still important checks that need to be made.
You still need a successful stealth check in order to move 'stealthily at a normal pace.' Stealth, by the way, isn't amplified by Natural Explorer's Expertise (though you can cast Pass without Trace.) If you fail the stealth check, you don't get this benefit. Again, it's about giving you extra rewards for succeeding; not about skipping the challenge altogether.
You still need to make a successful survival check to forage. Admittedly, this'll be easier since you get expertise from Natural Explorer, but the roll still has to be made. There is still a chance of failure. It's not just an 'auto-success.' This, again, is just giving you extra rewards for success.
Once again, you need a successful survival check to track other creatures. In this case, you have expertise from Natural Explorer and, if tracking your Favored Enemy, then advantage as well. This is admittedly a difficult one to fail, but failure is still a very real possibility. And yet again, all you get is extra rewards for success. If the feature said "You can track creatures without fail," that would be one thing. But this is just giving you additional information if you roll well.
I think part of the problem is combat and social usually have clear rewards or benefits to compare successful or suboptimal results. Don't Turn exploration into a combat penalty where players are scared to step off the rails for a bit afraid they might poke the bear.
This is where dms need work on showing active benefit to the exploration pillars. The key is to provide clear rewards and/or appropriate conflict-tension-resolution setups. Players should be able to anticipate fun and interesting travel sequences.
some examples :
This is what's called "moving the goalposts."
The original argument was 'NE doesn't engage with exploration, it skips it altogether. "You don't even need to roll."' Said argument has now shifted to "You need to roll, but it's a super easy check to succeed."
This may or may not be true, but what it is is a different claim than the previous one.
And whether or not the checks are easy or difficult is dependent on the DM, the table, the campaign, and the particular terrain in question. It may well could be that you can forage on a DC 5 or higher. Or it might require a DC 21. It's very dependent on the situation at hand. But at this point, we are discussing factors that go beyond the features of Natural Explorer. Natural Explorer does not impose a set DC for its features to activate, and as such, this becomes a completely different topic of conversation.
I am just talking around the point and not fully refuting yours as this is a discussion about ranger in general and not a specific topic. I did not even quote your post directly simply stating my own thoughts on each individual point.
I think people use the goalpost thing entirely too much as I am not trying to "prove you wrong" or have a staunch logical argument at this point...why would I? This is DnD not philosophy class.
While traveling no one person can do more than one thing at a time. This is the fallacy of the scout rogue. In the activity while traveling section they talk about ranks, who can see what and where, and perception checks, while in the other activities section they talk about characters that turn their attention to other things can't remain alert to dangers. The ranger can specifically do this alone. And all of this plays to the application as is in real life, where many folks are doing things when a group is traveling and it is safer to travel in numbers than alone. The ranger does this the best, getting the entire group where they need to go faster, safer, better fed, and with no unintentional sidetracks.
In regards to food, even the outlander background says "In addition, you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five other people each day, provided that the land offers berries, small game, water, and so forth..." I have always taken this to mean that if they survival check(s) to find food and water are made with success the character can do so with a x5 modifier, not that they automatically find food and water for 6 characters.
Yes! Of course I would be happy to provide several examples. I will do so later today or tomorrow when I have a moment to type some up. Stand by...
I love the Ranger class but started hating the features before Tasha's. The terrain and exploration abilities really shouldn't be gassed up. I understand that it "can" be useful but it's a pain more often than not.
Tasha's made Ranger great again....aside from the lvl 20 ability I'm still not a fan of. (would rather take a single dip in cleric for cantrips and other passives, plus you don't lose anything aside from Foe Slayer!)
I'm not going to defend Favored Foe Slayer as a great capstone or anything, but I will point out that it's 1d8 Favored Foe + 5 Foe Slayer does ultimately add up to around the same damage as a non-magical longbow, rapier, or one-handed longsword. It doesn't get stronger with magic items and it doesn't proc Sharpshooter/GWM, but it is basically a mini-Extra Attack that requires concentration but doesn't need a separate attack roll to hit. Still not the best capstone, but lest we forget the Fighter's capstone is literally just Extra Attack again, so while the Fighter's is better, it's not that much better.
Also, Foe Slayer has the choice to add +5 to the attack roll instead and still add 1d8 to the damage, which does make it slightly more versatile than just a mere Extra Attack.