Not sure why Lightning Arrow uses concentration. Seems like just arbitrary. Not like a fireball or any other direct damage burst spell needs concentration.
Because it's more powerful than Conjure Barrage, which doesn't. Don't compare against Fireball; Rangers are not Wizards.
Hunter's Mark only uses a bonus action to move. So one spell slot for an hour worth of bonus damage on each and every hit plus real time telemetry on the target you mark vs an ability that gives reduced damage on only one hit per turn and has to be re-triggered for each new target. Sure it is an 'extra resource' but it is one of limited use that is only really more useful than what you already have if you are facing many combats in a day spread out over multiple hours. Even the original Favored Enemy ability gives arguably more than that.
Hunter's Mark only lasts an hour if you don't interrupt it, which is entirely the point; if you want to build a Ranger where interruptions are an issue, then Favoured Foe is an extremely useful ability to take. Rangers are half-casters, you get 15 spell slots at most. Three slots is the minimum you can end up burning when you have to switch concentration, and that's ignoring any spells you might want to use outside of (or in preparation for) combat.
People have been spoiled by the UA version, which was always obviously going to be toned down; Favoured Foe fulfils a perfectly legitimate role, and being able to actually stack it with Lightning Arrow etc. actually makes it surprisingly good at what it's for.
If spell slot conservation and maintaining Hunter's Mark aren't issues for your Ranger, then Favoured Foe was never for you. It really is silly to see people hating on a feature that gives them something for free that they can use to build more types of Ranger more easily.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Concentration on Lightning Arrow ends when you resolve it, at which point you have a hit that can then be used to also trigger Favoured Foe on top of that damage; remember, Favoured Foe does not require a bonus action, it's just something you can use when the condition is met (you hit something). Likewise when you hit with Zephyr Strike you can end it and stack Favoured Foe immediately, and so-on. It's a very versatile bonus if you're not building for constant damage over time (whereas if you are, just don't take it and stop complaining).
And yes, rangers have limited spell slots, but I do not see how the new ability really materially helps with that.
You don't see how an ability that doesn't require a spell slot helps with limited spell slots on builds that are vulnerable to burning through them, seriously?
And no, it is not a 'free ability' since it is replacing the old favored enemy ability, which at least gives extra languages. However it also gives benefits to tracking and to understanding your enemy and at least has some RP benefit if absolutely nothing else.
As with all the class variant features you can pick them or not; it costs you nothing to not take it, and if you actually can use it for a build you freely can.
Favoured Foe also isn't the only new option; Deft Explorer replaces a chunk of Favoured Enemy and can be taken in addition to Favoured Foe, so you don't have to lose out on languages (and also gain another skill, and exhaustion clearing).
One of the big complaints about Ranger has always been how situational many abilities are, Favoured Enemy being one of them; in some groups it's not a problem (I've gotten tonnes of mileage out of it in the past) but in others it will be, Favoured Foe meanwhile can be used whenever the fancy takes you, and if your campaign gets that far it triggers Foe Slayer a lot more easily.
And I have not mentioned the UA version at all. The UA version essentially gave one extra known spell (since it gave hunter's mark knowledge for free) and gave one extra cast of it per day.
The 2019 UA gave a number of free castings equal to your Wisdom modifier, allowed switching targets without the original target being reduced to 0 HP first, and caused Hunter's Mark to no longer count as a concentration spell. It was always going to be nerfed hard, as the feature Favoured Foe replaces isn't generally that powerful (though it's hard to compare out of combat utility to direct combat abilities). I'd hoped it'd just be WIS free uses of Hunter's Mark, but even that is arguably much stronger than Favoured Enemy (not enough incentive to consider keeping Favoured Enemy).
Favoured Foe may not do as much damage as Hunter's Mark can, but that depends a lot on how you actually play a Ranger; for a Beast Master who typically makes one weapon attack per turn Favoured Foe will actually do more damage once it scales. For a Ranger that does the usual two attacks Hunter's Mark is better but we're only talking a few extra points of damage; where it makes the most noticeable difference is for a two weapon fighting Ranger or a Ranger that gets reaction or bonus attacks from some other source. Even so, that Hunter's Mark still costs you a spell slot, whereas Favoured Foe does not, which matters.
Anyway, I really don't want to keep going on about this, as there's already a thread in the Ranger sub-forum about it; if you don't see the benefit, fine, Favoured Foe is clearly not for you, but for those that it is for, it's a perfectly good ability, just not anywhere near as strong as it was in UA.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't WANT more mechanics, this is starting to feel like Pathfinder where there are just way too many options.
Funny thing about options .... they're optional. WotC is not going to send the Game Police to your house and force you to use anything at all, not even the PHB defaults.
I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't WANT more mechanics, this is starting to feel like Pathfinder where there are just way too many options.
Compared to previous editions, 5E’s sourcebook release rate is glacial. I’m happy there’s no absolute glut of crunch in this edition, but it can stand to be ramped up a bit. Particularly since everything is still pretty steamlined. Character creation, the mechanical part at least, takes less than half an hour for most of my players once they’ve decided on a concept. We’re nowhere near Pathfinder yet in this regard.
I just want to know why things get dropped for UA or why things get buffed.
Why was spell versatility dropped? 1 spell per long rest on classes that have no method of knowing more spells than what's allowed by level. There's no magical item that lets you know more, you can't kill a enemy sorcerer and drink is blood to get more spells known etc etc. It was addressed as a problem that being stuck with what you know until you hit a level up and than only being able to swap ONE spell, but the entire thing was dropped, because?
Why can every class swap a cantrip only every 4 levels but for some reason wizards can do it on a long rest? Like that's not even close in terms of utility.. it can take MONTHS to hit 4 levels and you can only do it what 2 maybe 3 times in a average campaign, vs a long rest which your going to see hundreds and hundreds of? It's not the most amazing power in the wizards far to big list of amazing powers but again what was the design decision behind such a massively lop sided addition to spell casters?
Why was the ranger feature again made concentration? why no excluding it to work with other abilities or something?
There's just so much "WTF WHY WOTC??" and just no reasoning ever given. Published material could seem a lot less MEH if we had some reasoning behind things that got dropped or nerfed
There's just so much "WTF WHY WOTC??" and just no reasoning ever given. Published material could seem a lot less MEH if we had some reasoning behind things that got dropped or nerfed
From other games with very public beta testing, this often becomes a disaster. Knowing doesn’t mean agreeing with it, and with disagreement often comes questioning of the reasons given. “WotC said things suck if they do X but if I do X things don’t suck and if I don’t do X things do suck. Obviously they didn’t test this properly or they’d know better”.
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You can only trigger 'Foe' again if you still have another use of it available. You can normally sustain it up to a minute... if you do not cast any lightning arrows in between. I do not see that as stacking particularly well. You could do similar with Mark but Mark is so much more effective that there is less incentive to, plus spell slot limitations, of course.
You could similarly drop Zephyr Strike to Mark or re-Mark with Hunter's if you wanted. Same issues.
To activate Hunter's Mark requires a bonus action; while you can prepare it on the same turn that something else ends, you can't use it until later (usually your next turn). Favoured Foe is triggered by hitting something; meaning you can not only bring it up after a Lightning Arrow, but deal your bonus damage while doing so.
Deft explorer is independent of Favored Foe, can be chosen independently and note I was not complaining about it. However something of such questionable value as Favored Foe is, is just that, questionable. Saying 'If you do not like it, do not take it' does not make it suddenly decent.
You complained that taking Favoured Foe loses you the benefits of Favoured Enemy, but you can replace many of those using Deft Explorer. And also take Favoured Foe, so it's absolutely relevant, unless of your course your goal is to attack the thing you don't like only.
Why would a beastmaster of level 5+ only make one attack per turn? Extra attack is core, not subclass and is part of the base attack, not any bonus action.
Because it costs one of their attacks to attack with their beast companion (though I believe the new creatures can also be ordered to do a single attack as a bonus action as well, you still need to use one of your own attacks if you want to double or multi-attack with them).
Ultimately you're complaining about an optional feature that you do not need to take, and that is clearly of no use to you (if you even play Rangers at all or ever will); but it's absolutely useful for different styles of Ranger. Dismissing it as "poop" is as wrong as it is incredibly childish.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Because people like new things. If people didn't need anything new, we wouldn't need to be on 5e. People would still be happy on AD&D. If people didn't want anything new Tasha's wouldn't have sold, neither would have Xanathar's.
And yes, a few people do still play AD&D or other earlier editions, but most move on when a new edition appears.
Very few companies survive by releasing one product and just selling that over and over for years with nothing new or improved (unless it's an essential, like an apple or bog roll)
I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't WANT more mechanics, this is starting to feel like Pathfinder where there are just way too many options.
Nope. you're not alone, I feel absolutely no need for expansions, classes, spells or whatever. More great campaigns, more settings (especially resurrecting beloved legacy ones), yes, but it's not the same thing at all.
I actually decided that I was not a big fan of Tasha's, but decided WOTC was trying to do what I wanted in the long term.
Make a setting book with a setting and a few iconic character building options. Add some particular rules for the setting. Ideally, this setting would have a few adventures or a campaign arc in it.
Every few years put out a collection of character-building options and general rules from various settings.
5th edition hardcover adventures have been excellent if a bit derivative. And Ghosts of Saltmarsh is probably the closest to what I want ideally, you have a setting, a few character options, some new rules that really emphasize the setting, and a series of adventures within the setting.
It's still not proof, they could have survived just as well, IMHO with producing settings and adventures / campaigns.
It’s not absolute proof, but even Paizo felt a need to create a new edition for Pathfinder - and they pretty much set the gold standard for releasing adventures/campaigns.
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It's still not proof, they could have survived just as well, IMHO with producing settings and adventures / campaigns.
It’s not absolute proof, but even Paizo felt a need to create a new edition for Pathfinder - and they pretty much set the gold standard for releasing adventures/campaigns.
Of course they did, after what, 10 years ? And after so much cluttering of their previous system that it had become totally unmanageable...
Clutter doesn’t need a new system and new books. Clutter just needs someone to go through things with a broom.
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It's still not proof, they could have survived just as well, IMHO with producing settings and adventures / campaigns.
It’s not absolute proof, but even Paizo felt a need to create a new edition for Pathfinder - and they pretty much set the gold standard for releasing adventures/campaigns.
Of course they did, after what, 10 years ? And after so much cluttering of their previous system that it had become totally unmanageable...
It's still not proof, they could have survived just as well, IMHO with producing settings and adventures / campaigns.
I agree, how much of the D&D line profit is even in the books? Adventures and campaigns are very good at spawning licensing for miniatures and screens and cards.
Honestly, look at Call of Cthulhu, a first edition character is perfectly compatible with the seventh edition. While in the same period D&D has been 5 largely different games whose original publisher no longer exists as a corporate entity.
I think new character content would be less needed if they were less specific in their classes. Maybe you wouldn't need god knows how many warlock patrons if there was just a loose 'patron idea' and you could claim it to be whatever you wanted for your character concept.
But that's not the case. If you pick the fiend, most DM's will not let you claim it's a genie or celestial. It says it's a fiend in the book and that is that. And that's why more patrons end up being needed. Same with tons of other concepts and one of my issues with 5e. Many of its classes and concepts are so specific it essentially forces the need for more content to play the character idea you want thematically, not just mechanically.
Maybe people wouldn't be contently asking for a new swordmage class of there was something in paladins class description which made it clear that maybe an oath isn't needed for some RP concepts, or maybe you can use fire or necrotic damage instead of radiant for yours smites.
Yes there are always DMs willing to bend the rules and go fast and loose with the reflavoring, but a huge amount of the time that isn't the case, especially in adventure league.
Reflavoring would take you a lot further than it does now if the classes were designed from day 1 to be a rough mechanical 'base' and leave the thematics and RP to the player.
It's one of my gripes with 5e. Either there should be a lot of classes which are really specific in their thematics, or there should be few classes which are just generalist and can allow any theme to be glued on without having to haggle with the DM.
5e has gone for few classes, which are also very specific thematically.
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Because it's more powerful than Conjure Barrage, which doesn't. Don't compare against Fireball; Rangers are not Wizards.
Hunter's Mark only lasts an hour if you don't interrupt it, which is entirely the point; if you want to build a Ranger where interruptions are an issue, then Favoured Foe is an extremely useful ability to take. Rangers are half-casters, you get 15 spell slots at most. Three slots is the minimum you can end up burning when you have to switch concentration, and that's ignoring any spells you might want to use outside of (or in preparation for) combat.
People have been spoiled by the UA version, which was always obviously going to be toned down; Favoured Foe fulfils a perfectly legitimate role, and being able to actually stack it with Lightning Arrow etc. actually makes it surprisingly good at what it's for.
If spell slot conservation and maintaining Hunter's Mark aren't issues for your Ranger, then Favoured Foe was never for you. It really is silly to see people hating on a feature that gives them something for free that they can use to build more types of Ranger more easily.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Concentration on Lightning Arrow ends when you resolve it, at which point you have a hit that can then be used to also trigger Favoured Foe on top of that damage; remember, Favoured Foe does not require a bonus action, it's just something you can use when the condition is met (you hit something). Likewise when you hit with Zephyr Strike you can end it and stack Favoured Foe immediately, and so-on. It's a very versatile bonus if you're not building for constant damage over time (whereas if you are, just don't take it and stop complaining).
You don't see how an ability that doesn't require a spell slot helps with limited spell slots on builds that are vulnerable to burning through them, seriously?
As with all the class variant features you can pick them or not; it costs you nothing to not take it, and if you actually can use it for a build you freely can.
Favoured Foe also isn't the only new option; Deft Explorer replaces a chunk of Favoured Enemy and can be taken in addition to Favoured Foe, so you don't have to lose out on languages (and also gain another skill, and exhaustion clearing).
One of the big complaints about Ranger has always been how situational many abilities are, Favoured Enemy being one of them; in some groups it's not a problem (I've gotten tonnes of mileage out of it in the past) but in others it will be, Favoured Foe meanwhile can be used whenever the fancy takes you, and if your campaign gets that far it triggers Foe Slayer a lot more easily.
The 2019 UA gave a number of free castings equal to your Wisdom modifier, allowed switching targets without the original target being reduced to 0 HP first, and caused Hunter's Mark to no longer count as a concentration spell. It was always going to be nerfed hard, as the feature Favoured Foe replaces isn't generally that powerful (though it's hard to compare out of combat utility to direct combat abilities). I'd hoped it'd just be WIS free uses of Hunter's Mark, but even that is arguably much stronger than Favoured Enemy (not enough incentive to consider keeping Favoured Enemy).
Favoured Foe may not do as much damage as Hunter's Mark can, but that depends a lot on how you actually play a Ranger; for a Beast Master who typically makes one weapon attack per turn Favoured Foe will actually do more damage once it scales. For a Ranger that does the usual two attacks Hunter's Mark is better but we're only talking a few extra points of damage; where it makes the most noticeable difference is for a two weapon fighting Ranger or a Ranger that gets reaction or bonus attacks from some other source. Even so, that Hunter's Mark still costs you a spell slot, whereas Favoured Foe does not, which matters.
Anyway, I really don't want to keep going on about this, as there's already a thread in the Ranger sub-forum about it; if you don't see the benefit, fine, Favoured Foe is clearly not for you, but for those that it is for, it's a perfectly good ability, just not anywhere near as strong as it was in UA.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't WANT more mechanics, this is starting to feel like Pathfinder where there are just way too many options.
Funny thing about options .... they're optional. WotC is not going to send the Game Police to your house and force you to use anything at all, not even the PHB defaults.
Compared to previous editions, 5E’s sourcebook release rate is glacial. I’m happy there’s no absolute glut of crunch in this edition, but it can stand to be ramped up a bit. Particularly since everything is still pretty steamlined. Character creation, the mechanical part at least, takes less than half an hour for most of my players once they’ve decided on a concept. We’re nowhere near Pathfinder yet in this regard.
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I just want to know why things get dropped for UA or why things get buffed.
Why was spell versatility dropped? 1 spell per long rest on classes that have no method of knowing more spells than what's allowed by level. There's no magical item that lets you know more, you can't kill a enemy sorcerer and drink is blood to get more spells known etc etc. It was addressed as a problem that being stuck with what you know until you hit a level up and than only being able to swap ONE spell, but the entire thing was dropped, because?
Why can every class swap a cantrip only every 4 levels but for some reason wizards can do it on a long rest? Like that's not even close in terms of utility.. it can take MONTHS to hit 4 levels and you can only do it what 2 maybe 3 times in a average campaign, vs a long rest which your going to see hundreds and hundreds of? It's not the most amazing power in the wizards far to big list of amazing powers but again what was the design decision behind such a massively lop sided addition to spell casters?
Why was the ranger feature again made concentration? why no excluding it to work with other abilities or something?
There's just so much "WTF WHY WOTC??" and just no reasoning ever given. Published material could seem a lot less MEH if we had some reasoning behind things that got dropped or nerfed
From other games with very public beta testing, this often becomes a disaster. Knowing doesn’t mean agreeing with it, and with disagreement often comes questioning of the reasons given. “WotC said things suck if they do X but if I do X things don’t suck and if I don’t do X things do suck. Obviously they didn’t test this properly or they’d know better”.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
To activate Hunter's Mark requires a bonus action; while you can prepare it on the same turn that something else ends, you can't use it until later (usually your next turn). Favoured Foe is triggered by hitting something; meaning you can not only bring it up after a Lightning Arrow, but deal your bonus damage while doing so.
You complained that taking Favoured Foe loses you the benefits of Favoured Enemy, but you can replace many of those using Deft Explorer. And also take Favoured Foe, so it's absolutely relevant, unless of your course your goal is to attack the thing you don't like only.
Because it costs one of their attacks to attack with their beast companion (though I believe the new creatures can also be ordered to do a single attack as a bonus action as well, you still need to use one of your own attacks if you want to double or multi-attack with them).
Ultimately you're complaining about an optional feature that you do not need to take, and that is clearly of no use to you (if you even play Rangers at all or ever will); but it's absolutely useful for different styles of Ranger. Dismissing it as "poop" is as wrong as it is incredibly childish.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Remember; it's not 'Sorcerers of the Coast'.
Also surely more options doesn't force you to use them? Just stick with the player handbook and don't move beyond it.
If 5e had never released more options, it would have died long ago.
Thank you!
Because people like new things. If people didn't need anything new, we wouldn't need to be on 5e. People would still be happy on AD&D. If people didn't want anything new Tasha's wouldn't have sold, neither would have Xanathar's.
And yes, a few people do still play AD&D or other earlier editions, but most move on when a new edition appears.
Very few companies survive by releasing one product and just selling that over and over for years with nothing new or improved (unless it's an essential, like an apple or bog roll)
I actually decided that I was not a big fan of Tasha's, but decided WOTC was trying to do what I wanted in the long term.
Make a setting book with a setting and a few iconic character building options. Add some particular rules for the setting. Ideally, this setting would have a few adventures or a campaign arc in it.
Every few years put out a collection of character-building options and general rules from various settings.
5th edition hardcover adventures have been excellent if a bit derivative. And Ghosts of Saltmarsh is probably the closest to what I want ideally, you have a setting, a few character options, some new rules that really emphasize the setting, and a series of adventures within the setting.
It’s not absolute proof, but even Paizo felt a need to create a new edition for Pathfinder - and they pretty much set the gold standard for releasing adventures/campaigns.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The thing is if you disagree with new content apart from adventure books, you can still run a PHB only campaign. Nothing stops that happening.
Clutter doesn’t need a new system and new books. Clutter just needs someone to go through things with a broom.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I agree, how much of the D&D line profit is even in the books? Adventures and campaigns are very good at spawning licensing for miniatures and screens and cards.
Honestly, look at Call of Cthulhu, a first edition character is perfectly compatible with the seventh edition. While in the same period D&D has been 5 largely different games whose original publisher no longer exists as a corporate entity.
I think new character content would be less needed if they were less specific in their classes. Maybe you wouldn't need god knows how many warlock patrons if there was just a loose 'patron idea' and you could claim it to be whatever you wanted for your character concept.
But that's not the case. If you pick the fiend, most DM's will not let you claim it's a genie or celestial. It says it's a fiend in the book and that is that. And that's why more patrons end up being needed. Same with tons of other concepts and one of my issues with 5e. Many of its classes and concepts are so specific it essentially forces the need for more content to play the character idea you want thematically, not just mechanically.
Maybe people wouldn't be contently asking for a new swordmage class of there was something in paladins class description which made it clear that maybe an oath isn't needed for some RP concepts, or maybe you can use fire or necrotic damage instead of radiant for yours smites.
Yes there are always DMs willing to bend the rules and go fast and loose with the reflavoring, but a huge amount of the time that isn't the case, especially in adventure league.
Reflavoring only takes you so far.
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Reflavoring would take you a lot further than it does now if the classes were designed from day 1 to be a rough mechanical 'base' and leave the thematics and RP to the player.
It's one of my gripes with 5e. Either there should be a lot of classes which are really specific in their thematics, or there should be few classes which are just generalist and can allow any theme to be glued on without having to haggle with the DM.
5e has gone for few classes, which are also very specific thematically.