Sad for the folks that want to play rangers in your world - you’ve eliminated their entire shtick.

how did he take away their druidic halfcasting?

Exploration, travel, survival not the casting

That's not their entire schtick.  Those are ribbons that go along with being a half caster.

But its the only part that makes them a ranger,

By getting rid of all travel you basically get rid of the need of any outdoor class or skills.

D&D is just going to go back to three or four classes and people just get to mix them as they want.
Everything will just be a long list of abilities and skills they can pick and choose from.

Quote from StyksMyx >>

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from kayakingpoodle >>

Sleeping in armor XGtE page #77 

 

So, when sleeping in medium or heavy armor, you regain fewer spent hit dice (but still fully heal all lost hit points) and do not recover any exhaustion levels, if your character happens to be exhausted (which they would not be simply from a normal day of adventuring and travel).

That is still massively more comfortable than the real life equivalent.  

 
See I always disagreed with this rule. As someone who has slept in Chainmail, Scale Armor and even Plate Armor. It isn't that uncomfortable, I didn't lose any sleep and I got a good night's rest. Was ready to go the next day without any issues. With 1 or 2 exceptions anyone I know that has, were the same.

I haven't had a group that's paid attention to that rule since the 90s.  Nobody wants to adjust their AC for not wearing armor, so we simply don't bother.  That rule is legacy from the gygax days, not a balance thing.

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

But its the only part that makes them a ranger,

 

By getting rid of all travel you basically get rid of the need of any outdoor class or skills.

 

D&D is just going to go back to three or four classes and people just get to mix them as they want.
Everything will just be a long list of abilities and skills they can pick and choose from.

 You don't need an outdoor class, especially when the ranger's presence is to handwave it all anyways.  Someone just takes survival and nature, it all works out.

What makes them a ranger is primal half-casting.  A fighter can take survival and nature if necessary.  A fighter needs to be a ranger to get the primal spells.

It's less that this handwaving deletes the Ranger, and more that it deletes whoever wants to fill that role in a party. Whether they choose to do that by playing a Ranger, a Scout, a Wizard with some weird skill proficiencies, or whatever.

But it's not exactly the DM's fault.

PCs can get Fly at level 5. Given the carrying weight limits , it's all but certain that at least one PC will be strong enough to carry the others one by one. At that point they can cross any chasm or river, they can scale or descend any cliff, they can fly over toxic water or lava. Create Food and Water comes at the same level, and completely nullifies any gameplay that might involve supplying food and water for the party. "But wait," I hear you say. "They cost spell slots!" Indeed they do. But let's think. If a destination is one day away, do you need to Create Food? No. So you'll get it back when you rest for the night.

5e is not a game that supports the type of gameplay it implies with the base Ranger class (and the Outlander background, and the Scout subclass, and.... Just the Survival skill...). At least not for long. Level 5 is a quarter of the way up the level ladder. For 3/4 of the levels, exploration outdoors is basically pointless by design.

Is it any wonder, then, that people don't track supplies? It's literally wasted time if you can just conjure supplies with magic.

The ranger with Goodberry, can conjure those supplies at level 2.  Druid can do it at level 1, so survival isn't a big deal.  So, let's take a look at what "makes the ranger a ranger"

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. Who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. Again, who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. Non benefit.  DMs give us perception checks.  Only a bad DM doesn't allow you to roll to avoid an ambush.  Bad DMs aren't going to let you out of his ambush because you have a ranger.  If he wants to ambush you, he does.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.  ohhhhh a benefit to splitting the party!!!!  Never comes into play.  Our recon missions take as long as they take, and they happen outside combat, so distance, movement speed is irrelevant.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would. Or you can just cast goodberry.  Non benefit.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area Except when the DM doesn't want you to know these things.  Then they get ignored.  Again, non benefit

All these things that supposedly make the ranger unique are all non-factors.  As someone who's played a ranger since the 80s...these features suck.  They are useless, and actively DETRACT from rollplaying, because this stuff turns into a handwave.  Oh, I want to do an exploration campaign?  Too bad, I can never be lost!  Difficult terrain doesn't slow us?  Dude, it doesn't anyways.  I can forage better?  Nice!  except nobody wants to do that and it gets handwaved, or someone just summons food starting at level 1 or 2.  These features are utter garbage and add nothing to a party/campaign.

Quote from crzyhawk >>

The ranger with Goodberry, can conjure those supplies at level 2.  Druid can do it at level 1, so survival isn't a big deal.  So, let's take a look at what "makes the ranger a ranger"

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. Who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. Again, who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. Non benefit.  DMs give us perception checks.  Only a bad DM doesn't allow you to roll to avoid an ambush.  Bad DMs aren't going to let you out of his ambush because you have a ranger.  If he wants to ambush you, he does.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.  ohhhhh a benefit to splitting the party!!!!  Never comes into play.  Our recon missions take as long as they take, and they happen outside combat, so distance, movement speed is irrelevant.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would. Or you can just cast goodberry.  Non benefit.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area Except when the DM doesn't want you to know these things.  Then they get ignored.  Again, non benefit

All these things that supposedly make the ranger unique are all non-factors.  As someone who's played a ranger since the 80s...these features suck.  They are useless, and actively DETRACT from rollplaying, because this stuff turns into a handwave.  Oh, I want to do an exploration campaign?  Too bad, I can never be lost!  Difficult terrain doesn't slow us?  Dude, it doesn't anyways.  I can forage better?  Nice!  except nobody wants to do that and it gets handwaved, or someone just summons food starting at level 1 or 2.  These features are utter garbage and add nothing to a party/campaign.

Huh.

Every one of those features is exceptionally useful in my games.

and, as a woman, it probably has to do with the whole "sandbox", so you get there when you want to get there, if you don't get lost on the way. 

In the same vein as:  "Only a bad DM doesn't allow you to roll to avoid an ambush.  Bad DMs aren't going to let you out of his ambush because you have a ranger.  If he wants to ambush you, he does." I suppose that I should say only a bad DM would ignore the dangers of the wilderness  and argue that "they are boring"...

... But that would be petty and equally untrue as the quoted section.

So instead I will say that I feel really bad for all these folks who haven't really gotten a chance to find out just how fun wilderness survival is, and how much it contributes to a campaign.

but then, folks don't want to do encumbrance or count ammunition, either -- which comes from the same place of thinking as tossing money into the free parking space in Monopoly.

My kids taught me a valuable phrase when it comes to video games -- "go hard or go home". Same rule applies here: playing on easy mode is just that -- easy.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Quote from crzyhawk >>

The ranger with Goodberry, can conjure those supplies at level 2.  Druid can do it at level 1, so survival isn't a big deal.  So, let's take a look at what "makes the ranger a ranger"

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. Who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means. Again, who cares?  We're going to arrive when the DM wants us to arrive.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger. Non benefit.  DMs give us perception checks.  Only a bad DM doesn't allow you to roll to avoid an ambush.  Bad DMs aren't going to let you out of his ambush because you have a ranger.  If he wants to ambush you, he does.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.  ohhhhh a benefit to splitting the party!!!!  Never comes into play.  Our recon missions take as long as they take, and they happen outside combat, so distance, movement speed is irrelevant.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would. Or you can just cast goodberry.  Non benefit.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area Except when the DM doesn't want you to know these things.  Then they get ignored.  Again, non benefit

All these things that supposedly make the ranger unique are all non-factors.  As someone who's played a ranger since the 80s...these features suck.  They are useless, and actively DETRACT from rollplaying, because this stuff turns into a handwave.  Oh, I want to do an exploration campaign?  Too bad, I can never be lost!  Difficult terrain doesn't slow us?  Dude, it doesn't anyways.  I can forage better?  Nice!  except nobody wants to do that and it gets handwaved, or someone just summons food starting at level 1 or 2.  These features are utter garbage and add nothing to a party/campaign.

 

Huh.

Every one of those features is exceptionally useful in my games.

and, as a woman, it probably has to do with the whole "sandbox", so you get there when you want to get there, if you don't get lost on the way. 

In the same vein as:  "Only a bad DM doesn't allow you to roll to avoid an ambush.  Bad DMs aren't going to let you out of his ambush because you have a ranger.  If he wants to ambush you, he does." I suppose that I should say only a bad DM would ignore the dangers of the wilderness  and argue that "they are boring"...

... But that would be petty and equally untrue as the quoted section.

So instead I will say that I feel really bad for all these folks who haven't really gotten a chance to find out just how fun wilderness survival is, and how much it contributes to a campaign.

but then, folks don't want to do encumbrance or count ammunition, either -- which comes from the same place of thinking as tossing money into the free parking space in Monopoly.

My kids taught me a valuable phrase when it comes to video games -- "go hard or go home". Same rule applies here: playing on easy mode is just that -- easy.

Yes well surely you are willing to admit that your game is on the unusual side, not really representative of the game as intended by the creators nor representative of the average of the rules as written. 

Scrabbling about for basic necessities is fun and interesting for most only at the earliest levels, when it makes sense for poor, inexperienced characters to do so. Adventuring is high risk, high reward though and it doesn’t take long for the PC’s to become rich AF with very few places to spend their wealth in game. Food is 4gp/lb. It makes no sense for some of the richest, baddest MF’ers around to concern themselves with breakfast day in and day out unless you are specifically playing in some sort of low magic, grimdark, gritty survival setting.

“Oregon Trail” is for sure a legit game style. More power to you but most people don’t want to worry about dying of dysentery or starving to death because they got lost in the forest. Furthermore, it’s not the style of game that the standard rules lend themselves to. YMMV as always. 

Well, given my campaign in the new world starts next month, lol, I was referring to existing rules in the books, not my table stuff.

I do run straight games, lol.

The biggest issue I see is that folks think of travel as boring, and, as you noted, find the mundane stuff sorta bleh. I suck out coin each week for mundane stuff (housing, food, taxes, blah blah), but I do use encumbrance and I do count ammunition even at high levels because they create tactical situations.

I will note that I have never done dysentery as a problem, though — I always sorta figure there is better general health care and sanitary habits, as well as fewer unseen critters in the water when you have magic.

My games require folks to plan and think about how to do stuff, I guess. That does make me an outlier these days, I suppose — far more than my additions to existing rules do.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Well, given my campaign in the new world starts next month, lol, I was referring to existing rules in the books, not my table stuff.

I do run straight games, lol.

The biggest issue I see is that folks think of travel as boring, and, as you noted, find the mundane stuff sorta bleh. I suck out coin each week for mundane stuff (housing, food, taxes, blah blah), but I do use encumbrance and I do count ammunition even at high levels because they create tactical situations.

I will note that I have never done dysentery as a problem, though — I always sorta figure there is better general health care and sanitary habits, as well as fewer unseen critters in the water when you have magic.

My games require folks to plan and think about how to do stuff, I guess. That does make me an outlier these days, I suppose — far more than my additions to existing rules do.

 

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Well, given my campaign in the new world starts next month, lol, I was referring to existing rules in the books, not my table stuff.

I do run straight games, lol.

The biggest issue I see is that folks think of travel as boring, and, as you noted, find the mundane stuff sorta bleh. I suck out coin each week for mundane stuff (housing, food, taxes, blah blah), but I do use encumbrance and I do count ammunition even at high levels because they create tactical situations.

I will note that I have never done dysentery as a problem, though — I always sorta figure there is better general health care and sanitary habits, as well as fewer unseen critters in the water when you have magic.

My games require folks to plan and think about how to do stuff, I guess. That does make me an outlier these days, I suppose — far more than my additions to existing rules do.

 

Insinuating that others' games do not require thought and planning because they're not spending in game time foraging for food is a rather unfortunate and combative stance to take on the matter. My mistake for engaging I suppose. Good day.

I didn’t insinuate such.

not even a little.

I made a clear statement about my game and strictly my game.

Thank you Dorsay, I’m in agreement with you - wilderness/cross country travel/ Exploration games done right can and should be fun - Mother Nature is or should be a CR (PC level +2) bbeg all on her own.

The argument against a lot of the Ranger features is based on the assumption that the DM is running a campaign on hard rails and all the encounters are already fixed; having a clock that the party can miss in part because of things like terrain or becoming lost is a valid narrative choice. I actually really like the idea that when the party is racing the BBEG to the Lost Temple of Whatchadooin somewhere in the Perilous Jungles of No Return with only some ancient and vague map to guide them the DM calls for a Survival roll to navigate by the map, and if the party fails then instead of a few traps and small encounters as they navigate the temple before the BBEG shows up behind them at the end for the big fight, the BBEG got there first and has their forces ready for the heroes, resulting in some tougher encounters. At DC 15 or 20 it's within the realm of possibility that they could beat the BBEG to the location without a Ranger, but I doubt anyone at the table will complain if a feature means they auto-succeed in the scenario. And yes, obviously this is a somewhat tailor-made circumstance, but that's how it goes for ribbon features; it's up to the DM and player to be clever and creative and make them relevant.

While those kind of games can be fun, I can't remember a game where the party has wanted to engage with that style.  I've actually gone so far as to suggest trying out the journey rules from AiME which I thought were well done, and there's been no interest either from the DM or the rest of the party.

For my group it’s not about thought and planning or class features or skills. It’s about time. We get to play twice a month, sometimes only once a month and we’ve been on hiatus since the end of October, and get to play 3-4 hours those sessions. Spending too much time on what goes on during travel means less time actually getting to further the plot  

We did do a little traveling play in a dessert situation but it was minimal. 

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues>>

I actually really like the idea that when the party is racing the BBEG to the Lost Temple of Whatchadooin somewhere in the Perilous Jungles of No Return with only some ancient and vague map to guide them the DM calls for a Survival roll to navigate by the map, and if the party fails then instead of a few traps and small encounters as they navigate the temple before the BBEG shows up behind them at the end for the big fight, the BBEG got there first and has their forces ready for the heroes, resulting in some tougher encounters. At DC 15 or 20 it's within the realm of possibility that they could beat the BBEG to the location without a Ranger, but I doubt anyone at the table will complain if a feature means they auto-succeed in the scenario. And yes, obviously this is a somewhat tailor-made circumstance,

What you're describing is essentially Tomb of Annihilation. And the problem is, as the problem has been every time someone plays that adventure, everyone knows the side events (what happens when you fail a Survival check) don't matter on their own. They only matter to the extent that they affect the actually important event at the end. In your example, you might as well just deal some damage to each character when they fail a Survival check, and skip the narration and interaction. Edit: Or, as you said, skip the narration and interaction and simply have the party arrive late.

Here's a thought. How long is the average journey in 5e? How many days should a party expect to be outside civilization in a row? How could you possibly know?

Quote from crzyhawk >>

While those kind of games can be fun, I can't remember a game where the party has wanted to engage with that style.  I've actually gone so far as to suggest trying out the journey rules from AiME which I thought were well done, and there's been no interest either from the DM or the rest of the party.

 
Straight up, take a look at the new top line article on the DDB front page -- i saw another comment, went to read it, and laughed because that's pretty much why we can have so much fun. 

But don't get me wrong -- I am not actually suggesting anyone else go for that style or that anyone force their players to do a campaign like that. Nor am I saying they are better or worse (indeed, as WildBill pointed out, we are an outlier that has been playing together 40 plus years - we are bored by styles of play that others still adore just like we did 30 years ago).

You don't need to add in new stuff -- yeah, the 5e base may not be fantastic and super crunchy and hypersimulatationsit or whatever, but they aren't bad. THey are just kinda simple.

I do a random roll every 4 hours (and here I personally use a whole bunch of custom tables, some feely snagged from herein, for non-combat, silly, whatever) during the day and one at night (and they hate the at night ones because sometimes the dice, they are rollin happy, and that can mean a day of bad stuff, low resources, and then .-=bang=-., long rest interrupted). I describe the countryside (sometimes using images), there are role playing set ups (some encounters are with other traveling people or adventurers),, and then, of course, there are odd little side things that may or may not pop up (table for unusual features) that can be a little side adventure.

I track time constantly, though -- because time matters even when they aren't roaming around the wilderness. I have lots of different villains and all of them are doing things and those things happen to the world around the players. I work in mentions of those things, and then there are all the damned hooks and the like.

So if you do want to try it, don't sell it as "we gonna do a wilderness adventure", lol. You sell it the same way you would a regular adventure -- this is what we gotta do. ANd WIlderness adventures can be odd if the world is set up for them -- there are all manner of strange ruins and bizarre things in my worlds; they often have odd things in them, and sometimes those things can be a mcguffin for a much later adventure.

But I also run a sandbox -- my players are explorers, who prefer that kind of a challenge, and so my games meet those needs of theirs -- and the other DMS in our group provide the "cool power fantasy" stuff.