or better yet, the abillity to change freely between natural explorer and deft explorer, so maybe at level 1 i choose favoured terrain (desert) since that fits my character better, and then later since me character is still mostly an desert dweller i pick up tireless from deft explorer, since that feature works perfectly with the flavour as an desert explorer, or canny to give me advantage on survival checks. Or maybe it is vice versa, that an character starts out at 1st level as this person who is determined to explore the entire world, but then at some point ether at level 6 or 14 he begins to settle down somewhere in a local mountain or forest and begins to take care of that local enviorment. Allow an player to get favoured foe, and then to later also pick up favoured enemy, or to start with favoured enemy and get favoured foe later. The variant rules are fun, the old rules are interesting, but executed poorly and an merger or the two might be fantastic
This is exactly what I plan to do with the ranger I’m running through Rime of the Frostmaiden. I took Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy up front, but it would make no sense to add another environment when I hit level 6, when this guy is staying in Icewind Dale for his whole life. I want to try out Roving and Tireless. I figure I’ll take those in order to avoid an OP option, skipping Canny, since I took Skill Expert at 4 and the other ones don’t really build on each other (also, I haven’t been taking language lessons, so it would be weird to pop two languages into my skill set for no good reason). I haven’t decided about Favored Enemy, but I’ve encountered such varied foes, choosing one would make little sense. I plan to take the 1d4 FE at 6th level, since that’s where the tree starts, and it seems greedy to start in the middle of that progression. My DM is down with this. We don’t think it’ll break anything! Has anyone tried something like this?
Ignoring the fact that you are bumping a very old and very dead thread without contributing anything to it, you are also breaking the rules. You can't take both Natural Explorer AND Deft Explorer options. But I guess if your GM don't mind you cheating you can do that. You also can't combine favoured enemy and favoured foe. That would also be cheating.
Obviously a natural explorer have its Pros and Cons, but at least it's a PLUS when it apeears a cross-roads and the party have to choose about which road they should choose to go from the point A to point B. Natural explorers aren't useful on dungeons nore on villages or cityes.... that's the rogues and monks's job. Be sure your party have, at least, a practic use on every terrain they go, even if it's a village, castle or a cave. Because if your party goes i.e. to another Plane, and get the disadvantage on their side ( because the terrain is completely unknown ), I suggest you to beg the DM for a tip or HLP.
or better yet, the abillity to change freely between natural explorer and deft explorer, so maybe at level 1 i choose favoured terrain (desert) since that fits my character better, and then later since me character is still mostly an desert dweller i pick up tireless from deft explorer, since that feature works perfectly with the flavour as an desert explorer, or canny to give me advantage on survival checks. Or maybe it is vice versa, that an character starts out at 1st level as this person who is determined to explore the entire world, but then at some point ether at level 6 or 14 he begins to settle down somewhere in a local mountain or forest and begins to take care of that local enviorment. Allow an player to get favoured foe, and then to later also pick up favoured enemy, or to start with favoured enemy and get favoured foe later. The variant rules are fun, the old rules are interesting, but executed poorly and an merger or the two might be fantastic
This is exactly what I plan to do with the ranger I’m running through Rime of the Frostmaiden. I took Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy up front, but it would make no sense to add another environment when I hit level 6, when this guy is staying in Icewind Dale for his whole life. I want to try out Roving and Tireless. I figure I’ll take those in order to avoid an OP option, skipping Canny, since I took Skill Expert at 4 and the other ones don’t really build on each other (also, I haven’t been taking language lessons, so it would be weird to pop two languages into my skill set for no good reason). I haven’t decided about Favored Enemy, but I’ve encountered such varied foes, choosing one would make little sense. I plan to take the 1d4 FE at 6th level, since that’s where the tree starts, and it seems greedy to start in the middle of that progression. My DM is down with this. We don’t think it’ll break anything! Has anyone tried something like this?
Ignoring the fact that you are bumping a very old and very dead thread without contributing anything to it, you are also breaking the rules. You can't take both Natural Explorer AND Deft Explorer options. But I guess if your GM don't mind you cheating you can do that. You also can't combine favoured enemy and favoured foe. That would also be cheating.
Yes. You can't mix and match those class feature variants with the PHB original. You either board the train or stay at the station.
I love natural explorer and find it fun, effective, and come up more than enough. A lot of people say you will never use it, and that is just not true for, what I'm going to call, the majority of folks. On one hand you can be sad that your level 6 and level 10 class abilities are "lost" because of the Icewind Dale location. But on the other side you could be jumping with joy because you got your level 1, 6, and 10 class abilities ALL AT LEVEL 1! This is your chance to see what it would be like to have this ability work at 100% efficiency!
In one sense dealing with environmental extremes is a con save/check - if you are stupid or ignorant enough to be out in it nprepared! Natural explorer uses wisdom because it is the ranger using his experience and training to AVOID the extremes or to have a means of dealing with the extremes. Examples? 1) dealing with oxygen deprivation at high altitude - learning about the technique called pressure breathing that reduces your effective altitude by 5000-7000 feet. I used this regularly when taking tourists to the top of Maura Kea, even was able to do a quarter mile sprint to give oxygen to an idiot that wouldn’t do the acclimation hikes then did the summit hike and lit up a cigarette at the summit then went down. 2) extreme heat in desert - “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun” if your smart you don’t travel in the desert from 9AM to 5PM you camp out and do your travel from 5-9 am and PM. You are better off traveling in the cold night where the exercise keeps you warm than in the hot sun overheating. If you do have to hike in the day wear appropriate clothes - light, airy but covering and a broad brimmed hat. Geology field camp we were out in the New Mexico deserts for 6 weeks; the profs, experienced grad students and I were regularly in boots, full length blue jeans light shirts and windbreakers or light denim jackets and wide brimmed hats. The students were in shorts, tees and sneakers. They would run out of water by noon and be sipping on our excess all afternoon. By the end they had learned to microclimate their bodies as we had been doing.
Natural Explorer is all about avoiding the hazards of a terrain not bulling thru. Yes you need a DM that understands that and makes room for it, and yes I would like to see you able to get more than 3 or be able to switch them out, but the ability is great if you understand what it is doing.
so there are plenty of adventures where mundane Items(cold weather gear, fruit that resist affects) are handed out to help Deal with said challenges of environments rangers should be actively seeking them out. How do they seek these items out? via skill checks which they do have boons in. so a ranger might make a nature check to know what helps resist the toxic air or know how to make snow shoes to avoid sinking into "snow traps" (natural or created ones.) A mountain ranger would know before entering a cold mountain range that they need to acquire said cold weather gear Which does help with the constitution checks. I ranger would know the timing of how long they could stay out of shelter before exhaustion checks need to be made effectively resetting the process. A ranger has so many responses to natural terrain. the problem is people forget to use their other skills in a way undefined by mechanics because world building mechanics are left out of the player portion of the game.
TOA: Chult has some examples of thinks like Ryath root, sinda berries, wildroots, yacha fruit. all of these items help a ranger resist dangerous effects and diseases of chult. Now extrapolate this to every area. forests, mountains tundra, ocean. each area has its own cures for its regular ailments and the trained ranger knows them best. Not only that but note how the cult fruit will work on diseases and conditions outside of chult.(some have ripeness times while others don't) so a ranger who is an expert in chult is can solve problems outside their terrain.
Because many of the ranger’s abilities lie outside the combat leg a lot of folks forget them or think they are useless. At least until they see a good player making use of all the abilities and asking the DM about things like the fruits/roots & leaves in that terrain that might be useful. It may well be that it’s not till a good ranger player starts asking. About these things that the DM starts to add them to their world building. while it’s not essential, some real world or at least decent fictional experience with the exploration/survival leg is a a big boost for players of rangers and their DMs.
This also requires a good DM to be prepared for Ranger style questions that may not have an answer in the book, but make sense to work with the Ranger on. That can be an added burden, but it also can further immerse the players in the adventure.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Ignoring the fact that you are bumping a very old and very dead thread without contributing anything to it, you are also breaking the rules. You can't take both Natural Explorer AND Deft Explorer options. But I guess if your GM don't mind you cheating you can do that. You also can't combine favoured enemy and favoured foe. That would also be cheating.
Obviously a natural explorer have its Pros and Cons, but at least it's a PLUS when it apeears a cross-roads and the party have to choose about which road they should choose to go from the point A to point B. Natural explorers aren't useful on dungeons nore on villages or cityes.... that's the rogues and monks's job. Be sure your party have, at least, a practic use on every terrain they go, even if it's a village, castle or a cave. Because if your party goes i.e. to another Plane, and get the disadvantage on their side ( because the terrain is completely unknown ), I suggest you to beg the DM for a tip or HLP.
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
Yes. You can't mix and match those class feature variants with the PHB original. You either board the train or stay at the station.
I love natural explorer and find it fun, effective, and come up more than enough. A lot of people say you will never use it, and that is just not true for, what I'm going to call, the majority of folks. On one hand you can be sad that your level 6 and level 10 class abilities are "lost" because of the Icewind Dale location. But on the other side you could be jumping with joy because you got your level 1, 6, and 10 class abilities ALL AT LEVEL 1! This is your chance to see what it would be like to have this ability work at 100% efficiency!
In one sense dealing with environmental extremes is a con save/check - if you are stupid or ignorant enough to be out in it nprepared! Natural explorer uses wisdom because it is the ranger using his experience and training to AVOID the extremes or to have a means of dealing with the extremes. Examples?
1) dealing with oxygen deprivation at high altitude - learning about the technique called pressure breathing that reduces your effective altitude by 5000-7000 feet. I used this regularly when taking tourists to the top of Maura Kea, even was able to do a quarter mile sprint to give oxygen to an idiot that wouldn’t do the acclimation hikes then did the summit hike and lit up a cigarette at the summit then went down.
2) extreme heat in desert - “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun” if your smart you don’t travel in the desert from 9AM to 5PM you camp out and do your travel from 5-9 am and PM. You are better off traveling in the cold night where the exercise keeps you warm than in the hot sun overheating. If you do have to hike in the day wear appropriate clothes - light, airy but covering and a broad brimmed hat. Geology field camp we were out in the New Mexico deserts for 6 weeks; the profs, experienced grad students and I were regularly in boots, full length blue jeans light shirts and windbreakers or light denim jackets and wide brimmed hats. The students were in shorts, tees and sneakers. They would run out of water by noon and be sipping on our excess all afternoon. By the end they had learned to microclimate their bodies as we had been doing.
Natural Explorer is all about avoiding the hazards of a terrain not bulling thru. Yes you need a DM that understands that and makes room for it, and yes I would like to see you able to get more than 3 or be able to switch them out, but the ability is great if you understand what it is doing.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I am so sorry I am late to this thread.
so there are plenty of adventures where mundane Items(cold weather gear, fruit that resist affects) are handed out to help Deal with said challenges of environments rangers should be actively seeking them out. How do they seek these items out? via skill checks which they do have boons in. so a ranger might make a nature check to know what helps resist the toxic air or know how to make snow shoes to avoid sinking into "snow traps" (natural or created ones.) A mountain ranger would know before entering a cold mountain range that they need to acquire said cold weather gear Which does help with the constitution checks. I ranger would know the timing of how long they could stay out of shelter before exhaustion checks need to be made effectively resetting the process. A ranger has so many responses to natural terrain. the problem is people forget to use their other skills in a way undefined by mechanics because world building mechanics are left out of the player portion of the game.
TOA: Chult has some examples of thinks like Ryath root, sinda berries, wildroots, yacha fruit. all of these items help a ranger resist dangerous effects and diseases of chult. Now extrapolate this to every area. forests, mountains tundra, ocean. each area has its own cures for its regular ailments and the trained ranger knows them best. Not only that but note how the cult fruit will work on diseases and conditions outside of chult.(some have ripeness times while others don't) so a ranger who is an expert in chult is can solve problems outside their terrain.
Because many of the ranger’s abilities lie outside the combat leg a lot of folks forget them or think they are useless. At least until they see a good player making use of all the abilities and asking the DM about things like the fruits/roots & leaves in that terrain that might be useful. It may well be that it’s not till a good ranger player starts asking. About these things that the DM starts to add them to their world building. while it’s not essential, some real world or at least decent fictional experience with the exploration/survival leg is a a big boost for players of rangers and their DMs.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
This also requires a good DM to be prepared for Ranger style questions that may not have an answer in the book, but make sense to work with the Ranger on. That can be an added burden, but it also can further immerse the players in the adventure.