To the person that started this thread, if you don’t understand why people don’t like the ranger then you are in the minority but the correct group.
There is no correct group. There is a group in the majority and a group in the minority. Many people that have played the ranger from the Player's Handbook have enjoyed it but more have found it frustrating. No one is wrong for their opinion.
To the person that started this thread, if you don’t understand why people don’t like the ranger then you are in the minority but the correct group.
There is no correct group. There is a group in the majority and a group in the minority. Many people that have played the ranger from the Player's Handbook have enjoyed it but more have found it frustrating. No one is wrong for their opinion.
It's not even clear who is and isn't the majority. That said, the class's detractors do seem to be the more vocal people. But that could just be psychology. Many years ago, when I was 16 and got my first job, working at a grocery store, I was told that for every good experience a person will tell 2 other people. For every bad experience, they'll tell 5.
People like to complain and tear down. It can be cathartic, even fun, to vent our frustrations. But it also doesn't accomplish anything. Anyone can offer negative criticism. It's not hard or requires a particularly well-developed skill set. Constructive criticism, on the other hand, does.
Did you know that no two classes in the player handbook utilize their Spellcasting features in the same way? There's always some adjustment, no matter how slight. I find it an interesting quirk of the design process, and I'd love to know more about the rationale behind it.
First I wanted to write something, because the Ranger class is very close to me (i always love to play a Beastmaster style character)
then I read the whole thread and basicly Korbin_Orion is right with everything he/she wrote.
I playes a Ranger in 5e and I GM 2 Rangers at the moment (1 in Tomb of Annihilation and 1 in Curse of Stradh) and no other class needs as much
attention from me to shine like the Ranger(s).
So long story short... read Korbin_Orions post - it says everything!
Rangers do extremely well in both modules. Just how much attention do they get from you?
Yes. I’m hard pressed to understand why a ranger wouldn’t literally be in their element in either module. But especially ToA. That is basically one terrain.
I’m sure folks mean what they say. I’ve had the complete opposite experience with the class both as a player and DM.
Thanks for taking peoples' experiences at face value and not questioning them. Anything can be argued when you're essentially saying you don't trust someone's experience.
Personally, I don't think the amount of attention a ranger needs is about being out of its element. I think it's about a ranger's class abilities being so niche or ineffectual that to make them useful takes a concerted effort from the DM regardless of campaign.
I don't think the two sides of this discussion are mutually exclusive.
I agree with Korbin_Orion's post almost entirely, and I believe it is an excellent read for anyone that wants to get a solid analysis of the Ranger's weaknesses. It is absolutely a class with a bunch of ineffectual class abilities (the most in any one class IMO) and Korbin outlines the reasons quite well. It is also important to note that their post is made without Tasha's added to the equation. It is a breakdown of the Ranger from PHB.
BUT
I also LOVE the ranger, and have found it to be an extremely useful addition to the party in both my hands, and those of my teammates. The class has performed admirably along many different player skill levels. Its diverse toolkit brings great tactical versatility and leads to a strong "GLUE" character. Someone that always fills in the gaps of the team.
But how could the PHB ranger have so many sucky class abilities and still pull off all this versatility? Spells and skills.
And that's MY problem with the ranger. Its class abilities are more niche versions of what you can accomplish with the use of skill proficiencies and spells. Good use of insight, perception, nature and survival, combined with Pass without Trace is all you ever need to be scout guy. I can't stand that the class' own abilities are overshadowed by more universal game mechanics that are in the same toolkit.
Tasha's really did some nice things for the Ranger. Its optional class features are much better than the mess of garbage that is the PHB ranger class abilities. This is the only place I wish they weren't listed as "optional" rules, because the ranger really, really wants them. But that is a small, petty complaint.
You can have fun and be effective without it, but Tasha's is a huge boon to rangers. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore the ranger in the future.
I guess I just haven’t seen the ineffectiveness of the class for myself and the situations people give as examples don’t really seem bad to me. The scout rogue comparison, the paladin comparison, the fighter comparison, the druid comparison, all of these are classes or subclasses are devoted to doing something to compete with the ranger, a class that does all of them at the same time.
If all you're looking for is a "scout guy", then you can do just fine with something other than a ranger. The ranger can absolutely do the job, and they're using Natural Explorer then they become so much more. If they're proficient, then they gain expertise in Intelligence (Nature) and Wisdom (Survival) checks; to name a few. They find twice as much food while foraging. Difficult terrain, like dense forests, heavy snowdrifts, and steep mountainsides, doesn't slow the party down. And you're not getting lost unless magic is messing with you. Natural Explorer can elevate a scouting ranger to a master of their environment, and it doesn't require any spells. It even synergizes with Favored Enemy, which I think is a decent enough feature on its own.
I love Hide in Plain Sight, but I get why people don't. It requires planning ahead and setting up an ambush. If you're tracking enemies and/or know where they're going, and you're in a favored terrain, you can skip ahead of them and lie in wait. It doesn't require cover to hide behind, freeing up terrain for someone else. It stacks with pass without trace, so you can still buff everyone else in the party. Heck, you could even do it before going to bed while camping out. If you've watched Predator (1987), then you know what it looks like. It's evocative, and, for me, that's a big part of the appeal. That said, Vanish does come too late.
I do have issues with the class. I wish they got a decent selection of spells with all their chosen archetypes. I wish they were prepared spellcasters. (Both of these are things I've house-ruled.) But I do think the chassis is more than solid.
I've never seen the ineffectiveness of the class either. What I have seen is their class abilities never get used session after session because you don't even have to be that creative with your skill use to be the explorer guy you need to be. Pass without Trace pulls so much weight too.
To me it isn't a matter of is this class weak or not. It's a matter of the class having redundant abilities, where the class specific abilities get outshined by more general spells and skills. It's a feel bad situation is all. The fact that the PHB ranger still manages to pull its weight is a testament to the power of versatility more than anything else.
Redundancy isn't a bad thing. Cross-training in the workplace can even be a good thing. It means there are multiple people who can get it done. It means the load can be shared among different party members. Spell slots are still a finite resource, so any feature or trait that lets me save spell slots is welcome.
Redundancy isn't a bad thing. Cross-training in the workplace can even be a good thing. It means there are multiple people who can get it done. It means the load can be shared among different party members. Spell slots are still a finite resource, so any feature or trait that lets me save spell slots is welcome.
That wasn't my point. If you bothered to read and analyze what I said you would know that.
And that's MY problem with the ranger. Its class abilities are more niche versions of what you can accomplish with the use of skill proficiencies and spells. Good use of insight, perception, nature and survival, combined with Pass without Trace is all you ever need to be scout guy. I can't stand that the class' own abilities are overshadowed by more universal game mechanics that are in the same toolkit.
Only 4 posts away. I'm saying I don't like that the ranger's kit is redundant with itself.
What I have seen is their class abilities never get used session after session because you don't even have to be that creative with your skill use to be the explorer guy you need to be
The post you just responded to. Note: Redundancy in a kit is not automatically bad. BUT, I'm saying, from experience, the class abilities are unnecessary for the ranger to function as its primary out of combat role. That skills and spells do the job on their own and make the class abilities feel irrelevant.
If all you're looking for is a "scout guy", then you can do just fine with something other than a ranger.
My god, you would make the most atrocious waiter. When a customer complains about the quality of their meal, you don't tell them to buy something else.
When people complain about the quality of the ranger they don't want to hear "play something else". They have a vested interest in the Ranger for one reason or another. No one is asking for things the ranger does not already promise in its class description. People complain about the ranger because it advertises something, and the class abilities do not deliver in a satisfying way. It manages to get by on skills, spells and some decent subclass features, but the main meat of the class (and Beastmaster pre Tashas's) leaves a lot to be desired. I don't know if you realize it but you are being incredibly dismissive to the topic at hand.
Several of us (the user names are starting to become familiar) have been in marvelous discussions already in other threads regarding rangers and combat damage, so I’ll let those stay there. What’s left? Exploration? Skills? The druid doesn’t get but two skills and has no (none that I can think of) way to get something like advantage or expertise in those two. Rogues get lots of skills (one more than the ranger) but their real praise is in the expertise with those skills. So still four skills, but really good at them. The scout gets additional skills, correct? Nature and survival? And those gets expertise as well, correct? Only one small part of the natural explorer ability is giving an expertise like ability. The rest of that ability, favored enemy, primeval awareness, and spells all aid the ranger in exploration, eg. survival and nature. My main thing is the rogue player is devoting their subclass choice to being kind of a ranger, but mathematically is not a huge difference, and thematically and effectively it’s not even close.
At level three, let’s say the focus is nature and survival, the ranger is proficient and the rogue has expertise. The rogue has a (on a d20) 10% better chance of being “better” at making a survival or nature skill check roll than the ranger. Unless the ranger is doing something related to their favored terrain, like making survival or nature checks. At level three the ranger has an entire creature subtype to make survival rolls at advantage (mathematically a +5) and a favored terrain that provides this same expertises. (I’ll add that tracking or survival in one terrain is often “related” to other terrains. But that’s my interpretation.) So that 10% lead is matched or overcome by the ranger some of the time. Situationally. At level ten, the rogue has a 20% (on a d20) greater chance of success on a nature or survival ability check than the ranger. But now the ranger has three favored terrains and two favored enemies (and a third at level 14). Again, situational, but the ranger is matching or exceeding the rogues lead in these two skill checks much more of the time, and that’s if you are playing a campaign that has more than three favored terrains, which to my knowledge is very rare in the published modules, many of them are only one or two main terrains. On top of that, the ranger can create food, provide stealth to the entire party, speak with animals, speaks multiple other languages, can heal people, can conjure animals for scouting, travel by sea land or air, and ignores difficult terrain. All of that if they aren’t in their favored terrain. If they are in their favored terrain they match the scout rogue and do all of the other stuff that ability provides, which is far and away way beyond what expertise in survival and nature provides.
They are almost as good, as the subclass with the best modifier, all of the time. Become as good, as that same subclass, more and more of the time as the game goes on. And is far and away superior, to that subclass, more and more often as the game goes on. If the ranger had the same abilities of natural explorer “on” all the time, it would completely wreck the game. Same thing with primeval awareness. Knowledge even the direction of the creatures from that ability would wreck the game.
I'm annoyed at having to repeat points I just made. And I'm annoyed at you dismissing people that have a problem with the ranger's design. I'm not picking a fight. There isn't one to be had.
They are almost as good, as the subclass with the best modifier, all of the time. Become as good, as that same subclass, more and more of the time as the game goes on. And is far and away superior, to that subclass, more and more often as the game goes on. If the ranger had the same abilities of natural explorer “on” all the time, it would completely wreck the game. Same thing with primeval awareness. Knowledge even the direction of the creatures from that ability would wreck the game.
I agree with you here. I think that the Ranger's PHB "explorer" abilities are in a really weird spot when it comes to balance. It's hard to make them good, but not so good that they act like uber spells. I'm not sure if anyone else was asking for them to be "on" all the time, but I certainly wasn't. That's why I like the new optional rules from Tasha's so much. They seem to do a good job of threading the needle in terms of balance while being less situational.
If you don't think the PHB abilities are that situational, then that's another story entirely, and as valid an opinion as my own take or anyone else's.
I'm annoyed at having to repeat points I just made. And I'm annoyed at you dismissing people that have a problem with the ranger's design. I'm not picking a fight. There isn't one to be had.
And don't worry, I would never work for you.
Except you didn't have to repeat yourself. Nor did you every single other time you thought you did. You chose to, each and every time. You think the ranger has redundant tools in its own toolkit. I find it absolutely amazing that, after six years, people still can't see what's in plain text. Each and every tool the ranger has at its disposal can stack on top of each other.
I'm not dismissing people having a problem with the ranger's design. That requires a flippancy I simply do not possess. And I have my own issues with the class, as well. It also seems I have a different style of DMing and play in mind than those most vocal. So, instead of complaining, I offer thoughtful counterpoints. That said, people are still going to complain because people like to complain. If something doesn't go their way, they're going to make darn sure someone else knows it.
Although I don't advocate specifically for the Ranger's explorer abilities to be always on, I also don't see that that would make the Ranger so overpowered as some people seem to think. With all of the overpowered features of other classes or feats/spells combined with specific classes, "always on" exploration buffs certainly isn't game-breaking if so many other things are just fine.
Or just SOME of the benefits of FE and NE are always active, but then you get the remainder of the bonuses in that terrain or in relation to that foe.
I primarily advocate for something else, almost anything else, to go alongside FE and NE as is rather than change them. Unique combat buffs or utility, other types of exploration bonuses not covered by FE/NE, resistances to or being able to recover faster/easier from certain conditions such as poison and exhaustion. Like I said earlier, Foe Slayer is so bad of an ability that it could move to level 1 with no changes and be fine. Hell, you could nerf Foe Slayer as a level 1 ability to be half of your WIS mod, minimum 1, but then buff it back to full WIS mod later.
It also always bothered me that since 4e the beast companion was made exclusive to a paragon path/archetype. A weaker beast companion made available to all base Rangers with original PHB BM mechanics would go a long way to alleviate the problems here. Then the BM would be reserved for those that want to really emphasize the bond with the beast and get better fighting mechanics and more utility/bonuses than the base Ranger.
Honestly the ranger's exploration abilities (Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer) should have been always on in all environments and for all creatures. It wouldn't have been overpowering in the least. You don't see bards only being a good "face" if they're talking to a certain race in a specific environment. They're always good at the social pillar. That's a big part of their fantasy. If that's not overpowered, why would always being good at the exploration pillar be overpowered? Answer: Favored Foe and Natural Explorer abilities were poorly designed.
The solution to having Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer be a choice was literally the player asks the DM what to pick in session 0. Alternatively, you have to be lucky enough to have chosen correctly. If you have to ask the DM what to pick in order to ensure a feature is useful you might as well just remove the choice. And that's basically what they did in Tasha's with Favored Foe and Deft Explorer. One of the many good things they did in Tasha's. I'm glad these features are optional though because there are some people that were fans of the old features as they were.
Except you didn't have to repeat yourself. Nor did you every single other time you thought you did. You chose to, each and every time. You think the ranger has redundant tools in its own toolkit. I find it absolutely amazing that, after six years, people still can't see what's in plain text. Each and every tool the ranger has at its disposal can stack on top of each other.
I'm not dismissing people having a problem with the ranger's design. That requires a flippancy I simply do not possess. And I have my own issues with the class, as well. It also seems I have a different style of DMing and play in mind than those most vocal. So, instead of complaining, I offer thoughtful counterpoints. That said, people are still going to complain because people like to complain. If something doesn't go their way, they're going to make darn sure someone else knows it.
The irony of this is not lost on me.
Sure, some of the ranger hate is bandwagon meme land. But it didn't come from nowhere. People have been playing with the ranger for those six years and have been coming to their own conclusions about the class. A lot of those conclusions end with disappointment about the class's main abilities. I myself posted in this thread that from experience playing and being alongside a ranger that exploration based class abilities basically never came up (for reasons I stated previously) and that had been disappointing to me. You just boiled 6 years of peoples' experience and opinions down to not knowing how to analyze what they read.
That is extremely dismissive.
To me, the fact that they did the work to publish this many optional class features (that replace existing ones) for the ranger speaks to the fact that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the ranger and that something needed to be addressed. If you are someone that is having a blast with those PHB abilities, honestly, I'm jealous. I wanted to like them so bad.
Korbin_Orion: I can only imagine taking the pet off the class's main chasse was an attempt to break away from 3.5 design. Maybe because they wanted to avoid the archetype system from Pathfinder they didn't want to force the ranger into always being pet guy. Who knows. I like to think about why these things happen though.
Also, I just found the horizontal line function. What a game changer.
Although I agree they wanted to break from 3.5 and Pathfinder design, that particular reasoning seems off cause the 3.5/Pathfinder Druid got animal companions at level 1, Ranger at level 4 (so it was inherently weaker than the Druid's) but then (to the best of my knowledge) in 4th edition the Druid didn't get any animal companion. At least not in PHB2 when it was introduced.
I also find it fun to contemplate the reason for some design decisions. Such as the various incarnations of Favored Enemy are clearly an attempt at expanding upon the very first version of the Ranger I think having bonuses exclusively vs. giants. It has clearly stuck and I think Favored Foe is a step in the right direction to focus on the bounty hunter/slayer aspect of the Ranger rather than the "I hate this specific type of creature and that's it" aspect of old.
EDIT: I forgot the 4e Beast Master wasn't even in the PHB. I think it was introduced in Complete Martial or something.
EDIT 2: Going through 4e PHB and it just baffles me they abandoned so many good ideas. It took them 6 years to make a weaker version of Hunter's Quarry for the Ranger.
There is no correct group. There is a group in the majority and a group in the minority. Many people that have played the ranger from the Player's Handbook have enjoyed it but more have found it frustrating. No one is wrong for their opinion.
It's not even clear who is and isn't the majority. That said, the class's detractors do seem to be the more vocal people. But that could just be psychology. Many years ago, when I was 16 and got my first job, working at a grocery store, I was told that for every good experience a person will tell 2 other people. For every bad experience, they'll tell 5.
People like to complain and tear down. It can be cathartic, even fun, to vent our frustrations. But it also doesn't accomplish anything. Anyone can offer negative criticism. It's not hard or requires a particularly well-developed skill set. Constructive criticism, on the other hand, does.
Did you know that no two classes in the player handbook utilize their Spellcasting features in the same way? There's always some adjustment, no matter how slight. I find it an interesting quirk of the design process, and I'd love to know more about the rationale behind it.
If you were to have a party of only one class, then the ranger class would be the best choice, IMHO.
Maybe cleric, second.
First I wanted to write something, because the Ranger class is very close to me (i always love to play a Beastmaster style character)
then I read the whole thread and basicly Korbin_Orion is right with everything he/she wrote.
I playes a Ranger in 5e and I GM 2 Rangers at the moment (1 in Tomb of Annihilation and 1 in Curse of Stradh) and no other class needs as much
attention from me to shine like the Ranger(s).
So long story short... read Korbin_Orions post - it says everything!
Rangers do extremely well in both modules. Just how much attention do they get from you?
I’m sure folks mean what they say. I’ve had the complete opposite experience with the class both as a player and DM.
Yes. I’m hard pressed to understand why a ranger wouldn’t literally be in their element in either module. But especially ToA. That is basically one terrain.
Thanks for taking peoples' experiences at face value and not questioning them. Anything can be argued when you're essentially saying you don't trust someone's experience.
Personally, I don't think the amount of attention a ranger needs is about being out of its element. I think it's about a ranger's class abilities being so niche or ineffectual that to make them useful takes a concerted effort from the DM regardless of campaign.
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I don't think the two sides of this discussion are mutually exclusive.
I agree with Korbin_Orion's post almost entirely, and I believe it is an excellent read for anyone that wants to get a solid analysis of the Ranger's weaknesses. It is absolutely a class with a bunch of ineffectual class abilities (the most in any one class IMO) and Korbin outlines the reasons quite well. It is also important to note that their post is made without Tasha's added to the equation. It is a breakdown of the Ranger from PHB.
BUT
I also LOVE the ranger, and have found it to be an extremely useful addition to the party in both my hands, and those of my teammates. The class has performed admirably along many different player skill levels. Its diverse toolkit brings great tactical versatility and leads to a strong "GLUE" character. Someone that always fills in the gaps of the team.
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But how could the PHB ranger have so many sucky class abilities and still pull off all this versatility? Spells and skills.
And that's MY problem with the ranger. Its class abilities are more niche versions of what you can accomplish with the use of skill proficiencies and spells. Good use of insight, perception, nature and survival, combined with Pass without Trace is all you ever need to be scout guy. I can't stand that the class' own abilities are overshadowed by more universal game mechanics that are in the same toolkit.
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Tasha's really did some nice things for the Ranger. Its optional class features are much better than the mess of garbage that is the PHB ranger class abilities. This is the only place I wish they weren't listed as "optional" rules, because the ranger really, really wants them. But that is a small, petty complaint.
You can have fun and be effective without it, but Tasha's is a huge boon to rangers. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore the ranger in the future.
Well, sure!
I guess I just haven’t seen the ineffectiveness of the class for myself and the situations people give as examples don’t really seem bad to me. The scout rogue comparison, the paladin comparison, the fighter comparison, the druid comparison, all of these are classes or subclasses are devoted to doing something to compete with the ranger, a class that does all of them at the same time.
If all you're looking for is a "scout guy", then you can do just fine with something other than a ranger. The ranger can absolutely do the job, and they're using Natural Explorer then they become so much more. If they're proficient, then they gain expertise in Intelligence (Nature) and Wisdom (Survival) checks; to name a few. They find twice as much food while foraging. Difficult terrain, like dense forests, heavy snowdrifts, and steep mountainsides, doesn't slow the party down. And you're not getting lost unless magic is messing with you. Natural Explorer can elevate a scouting ranger to a master of their environment, and it doesn't require any spells. It even synergizes with Favored Enemy, which I think is a decent enough feature on its own.
I love Hide in Plain Sight, but I get why people don't. It requires planning ahead and setting up an ambush. If you're tracking enemies and/or know where they're going, and you're in a favored terrain, you can skip ahead of them and lie in wait. It doesn't require cover to hide behind, freeing up terrain for someone else. It stacks with pass without trace, so you can still buff everyone else in the party. Heck, you could even do it before going to bed while camping out. If you've watched Predator (1987), then you know what it looks like. It's evocative, and, for me, that's a big part of the appeal. That said, Vanish does come too late.
I do have issues with the class. I wish they got a decent selection of spells with all their chosen archetypes. I wish they were prepared spellcasters. (Both of these are things I've house-ruled.) But I do think the chassis is more than solid.
I've never seen the ineffectiveness of the class either. What I have seen is their class abilities never get used session after session because you don't even have to be that creative with your skill use to be the explorer guy you need to be. Pass without Trace pulls so much weight too.
To me it isn't a matter of is this class weak or not. It's a matter of the class having redundant abilities, where the class specific abilities get outshined by more general spells and skills. It's a feel bad situation is all. The fact that the PHB ranger still manages to pull its weight is a testament to the power of versatility more than anything else.
Redundancy isn't a bad thing. Cross-training in the workplace can even be a good thing. It means there are multiple people who can get it done. It means the load can be shared among different party members. Spell slots are still a finite resource, so any feature or trait that lets me save spell slots is welcome.
That wasn't my point. If you bothered to read and analyze what I said you would know that.
Only 4 posts away. I'm saying I don't like that the ranger's kit is redundant with itself.
The post you just responded to. Note: Redundancy in a kit is not automatically bad. BUT, I'm saying, from experience, the class abilities are unnecessary for the ranger to function as its primary out of combat role. That skills and spells do the job on their own and make the class abilities feel irrelevant.
My god, you would make the most atrocious waiter. When a customer complains about the quality of their meal, you don't tell them to buy something else.
When people complain about the quality of the ranger they don't want to hear "play something else". They have a vested interest in the Ranger for one reason or another. No one is asking for things the ranger does not already promise in its class description. People complain about the ranger because it advertises something, and the class abilities do not deliver in a satisfying way. It manages to get by on skills, spells and some decent subclass features, but the main meat of the class (and Beastmaster pre Tashas's) leaves a lot to be desired. I don't know if you realize it but you are being incredibly dismissive to the topic at hand.
Several of us (the user names are starting to become familiar) have been in marvelous discussions already in other threads regarding rangers and combat damage, so I’ll let those stay there. What’s left? Exploration? Skills? The druid doesn’t get but two skills and has no (none that I can think of) way to get something like advantage or expertise in those two. Rogues get lots of skills (one more than the ranger) but their real praise is in the expertise with those skills. So still four skills, but really good at them. The scout gets additional skills, correct? Nature and survival? And those gets expertise as well, correct? Only one small part of the natural explorer ability is giving an expertise like ability. The rest of that ability, favored enemy, primeval awareness, and spells all aid the ranger in exploration, eg. survival and nature. My main thing is the rogue player is devoting their subclass choice to being kind of a ranger, but mathematically is not a huge difference, and thematically and effectively it’s not even close.
At level three, let’s say the focus is nature and survival, the ranger is proficient and the rogue has expertise. The rogue has a (on a d20) 10% better chance of being “better” at making a survival or nature skill check roll than the ranger. Unless the ranger is doing something related to their favored terrain, like making survival or nature checks. At level three the ranger has an entire creature subtype to make survival rolls at advantage (mathematically a +5) and a favored terrain that provides this same expertises. (I’ll add that tracking or survival in one terrain is often “related” to other terrains. But that’s my interpretation.) So that 10% lead is matched or overcome by the ranger some of the time. Situationally. At level ten, the rogue has a 20% (on a d20) greater chance of success on a nature or survival ability check than the ranger. But now the ranger has three favored terrains and two favored enemies (and a third at level 14). Again, situational, but the ranger is matching or exceeding the rogues lead in these two skill checks much more of the time, and that’s if you are playing a campaign that has more than three favored terrains, which to my knowledge is very rare in the published modules, many of them are only one or two main terrains. On top of that, the ranger can create food, provide stealth to the entire party, speak with animals, speaks multiple other languages, can heal people, can conjure animals for scouting, travel by sea land or air, and ignores difficult terrain. All of that if they aren’t in their favored terrain. If they are in their favored terrain they match the scout rogue and do all of the other stuff that ability provides, which is far and away way beyond what expertise in survival and nature provides.
They are almost as good, as the subclass with the best modifier, all of the time. Become as good, as that same subclass, more and more of the time as the game goes on. And is far and away superior, to that subclass, more and more often as the game goes on. If the ranger had the same abilities of natural explorer “on” all the time, it would completely wreck the game. Same thing with primeval awareness. Knowledge even the direction of the creatures from that ability would wreck the game.
I'm annoyed at having to repeat points I just made. And I'm annoyed at you dismissing people that have a problem with the ranger's design. I'm not picking a fight. There isn't one to be had.
And don't worry, I would never work for you.
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I agree with you here. I think that the Ranger's PHB "explorer" abilities are in a really weird spot when it comes to balance. It's hard to make them good, but not so good that they act like uber spells. I'm not sure if anyone else was asking for them to be "on" all the time, but I certainly wasn't. That's why I like the new optional rules from Tasha's so much. They seem to do a good job of threading the needle in terms of balance while being less situational.
If you don't think the PHB abilities are that situational, then that's another story entirely, and as valid an opinion as my own take or anyone else's.
Except you didn't have to repeat yourself. Nor did you every single other time you thought you did. You chose to, each and every time. You think the ranger has redundant tools in its own toolkit. I find it absolutely amazing that, after six years, people still can't see what's in plain text. Each and every tool the ranger has at its disposal can stack on top of each other.
I'm not dismissing people having a problem with the ranger's design. That requires a flippancy I simply do not possess. And I have my own issues with the class, as well. It also seems I have a different style of DMing and play in mind than those most vocal. So, instead of complaining, I offer thoughtful counterpoints. That said, people are still going to complain because people like to complain. If something doesn't go their way, they're going to make darn sure someone else knows it.
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Although I don't advocate specifically for the Ranger's explorer abilities to be always on, I also don't see that that would make the Ranger so overpowered as some people seem to think. With all of the overpowered features of other classes or feats/spells combined with specific classes, "always on" exploration buffs certainly isn't game-breaking if so many other things are just fine.
Or just SOME of the benefits of FE and NE are always active, but then you get the remainder of the bonuses in that terrain or in relation to that foe.
I primarily advocate for something else, almost anything else, to go alongside FE and NE as is rather than change them. Unique combat buffs or utility, other types of exploration bonuses not covered by FE/NE, resistances to or being able to recover faster/easier from certain conditions such as poison and exhaustion. Like I said earlier, Foe Slayer is so bad of an ability that it could move to level 1 with no changes and be fine. Hell, you could nerf Foe Slayer as a level 1 ability to be half of your WIS mod, minimum 1, but then buff it back to full WIS mod later.
It also always bothered me that since 4e the beast companion was made exclusive to a paragon path/archetype. A weaker beast companion made available to all base Rangers with original PHB BM mechanics would go a long way to alleviate the problems here. Then the BM would be reserved for those that want to really emphasize the bond with the beast and get better fighting mechanics and more utility/bonuses than the base Ranger.
Honestly the ranger's exploration abilities (Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer) should have been always on in all environments and for all creatures. It wouldn't have been overpowering in the least. You don't see bards only being a good "face" if they're talking to a certain race in a specific environment. They're always good at the social pillar. That's a big part of their fantasy. If that's not overpowered, why would always being good at the exploration pillar be overpowered? Answer: Favored Foe and Natural Explorer abilities were poorly designed.
The solution to having Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer be a choice was literally the player asks the DM what to pick in session 0. Alternatively, you have to be lucky enough to have chosen correctly. If you have to ask the DM what to pick in order to ensure a feature is useful you might as well just remove the choice. And that's basically what they did in Tasha's with Favored Foe and Deft Explorer. One of the many good things they did in Tasha's. I'm glad these features are optional though because there are some people that were fans of the old features as they were.
The irony of this is not lost on me.
Sure, some of the ranger hate is bandwagon meme land. But it didn't come from nowhere. People have been playing with the ranger for those six years and have been coming to their own conclusions about the class. A lot of those conclusions end with disappointment about the class's main abilities. I myself posted in this thread that from experience playing and being alongside a ranger that exploration based class abilities basically never came up (for reasons I stated previously) and that had been disappointing to me. You just boiled 6 years of peoples' experience and opinions down to not knowing how to analyze what they read.
That is extremely dismissive.
To me, the fact that they did the work to publish this many optional class features (that replace existing ones) for the ranger speaks to the fact that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the ranger and that something needed to be addressed. If you are someone that is having a blast with those PHB abilities, honestly, I'm jealous. I wanted to like them so bad.
Korbin_Orion: I can only imagine taking the pet off the class's main chasse was an attempt to break away from 3.5 design. Maybe because they wanted to avoid the archetype system from Pathfinder they didn't want to force the ranger into always being pet guy. Who knows. I like to think about why these things happen though.
Also, I just found the horizontal line function. What a game changer.
Although I agree they wanted to break from 3.5 and Pathfinder design, that particular reasoning seems off cause the 3.5/Pathfinder Druid got animal companions at level 1, Ranger at level 4 (so it was inherently weaker than the Druid's) but then (to the best of my knowledge) in 4th edition the Druid didn't get any animal companion. At least not in PHB2 when it was introduced.
I also find it fun to contemplate the reason for some design decisions. Such as the various incarnations of Favored Enemy are clearly an attempt at expanding upon the very first version of the Ranger I think having bonuses exclusively vs. giants. It has clearly stuck and I think Favored Foe is a step in the right direction to focus on the bounty hunter/slayer aspect of the Ranger rather than the "I hate this specific type of creature and that's it" aspect of old.
EDIT: I forgot the 4e Beast Master wasn't even in the PHB. I think it was introduced in Complete Martial or something.
EDIT 2: Going through 4e PHB and it just baffles me they abandoned so many good ideas. It took them 6 years to make a weaker version of Hunter's Quarry for the Ranger.