" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Paradox_Traveler nowhere it says in the DMG that can pass a save against an effect made by itself, if that's the case, be a bard and cast fireball over yourself: did you pass the save automatically? do you get damage?
And being 20ft away is the RAI (they want people to just use rangers at range and nlt melee) and thats why they messed up the feature: the hitted creature is the point of origin for the creatures being afraind from you, you arent the origin of the effect, is 10ft around the creature hitted by you, which is exactly is medded up if yo go melle, is like trying to force the ranger into going range instead of melee, railroading the decisions.
"Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn." nowhere says that you dont count, you are a creature, and if you are standing within 10ft of the target you hitted, you are a subject of your own feature. This is like a spellcaster using fireball centering it to a creture within 5ft of it: unless you have another specific feature, you are subject of such fireball, same for Mass Fear
@Plaguescarred i know is not an emanation, im just saying they literally created "a clause" of an "specific rule". When a specific rule exists establishing something, and something else have a similar description but dont have the specific of the other, it meas it doesnt apply to the second thing. Is like the objects around burning with fire spells: some fire spells specify that spread fire, others dont. That means that the spells that DOESNT specify it in the spells description DONT spread fire. In this case: Emanations is a new rule and SPECIFY that doest apply the user. In mass fear doesnt specify anywere that the feature doent affect the user, it doesnt mean distintions at all, probably because it was writted in a way of thinking that you would be attacking at long range, inetead of going melee
"No, because it chooses not to target itself with its fear effect. If it chose to target itself, it would have to save." where it say you can do that? it doesnt say "any creature you choose", it just say "The target and each creature within 10 feet of it"
"The reason monsters don't generally hit themselves with area effects isn't because they can't, it's because they choose not to." What? really, what? where do you get that this rule existed? mosnter dont hit themselves in AoE because the DM chooses WHERE TO PUT such AoE or they have immunity to such effect, like a demon casting fireball while being immune to fire damage, or because the festure stablish that they choose targets. Wizards CAN get damage for a fireball if you cast it at 15ft away without anythin in between (2014 rules also ignored corners so even with something in between it would reach you) and this is actually the cause of a lot of memes and jokes around more spellcasters and even for the Evocation wizard, now the evoker, since they actually gain a feature that let them "ignore" certain creatures that can see to not get any damage from their spells, but the feature says "When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 plus the spell's level. " Meaning the evoker wizard CANT choose himself to ignore the damage of its own spells, meaning yes, it can hit himself with a fireball, he can say he dont wanna, but it will hit hmself regardless of if he choosed or not. This has been addressed before in a sage advice wizard cant choose himself for the sculpt spells feature This also is now part of the Careful spell from the metamagics of the sorcerer, where also state "other creatures" and not "any creature" "When you cast a spell that forces other creatures to make a saving throw, you can protect some of those creatures from the spell's full force" If you think is a rule, say the page where is it to read it, cause i cant find it anywhere, there is a new rule about voluntarily choosing to LOSE a save, but nowhere is stablis that you can ignore yourself from your own effects
So your basically saying a caster can’t save when the DC is literally the casters own spell casting mod + 8, and the caster has to virtually save for it’s own effect. If a caster wants to set off a fireball point blank in their own face, i’d let them have advantage on the save considering they probably already have a solid idea of how much damage a fireball at min range can do. [ and who says the caster doesn’t have fire immunity at some point? ]
You can rule however you want, but it is neither RAW, nor RAI that spellcasters are better at dodging spell they know/cast. (Whether the caster at one point in there life had fire immunity is the most irrelevant thing possible.)
If the intent was to prevent close combat with the effect, they certainly failed. Can’t frighten yourself if the effect is capable of putting the caster in the same space that literally forces the caster to use the same DC needed for others to make a save, the caster would always make the save.
Can you please clarify what this means? What effect puts you in a space that forces the caster to use a dc to make a save?
Paradox solved by just removing the one factor that makes it a paradox, the caster automatically saves and is not effected. Stupid but Simple, yet effective and cuts the cost of needless debate over what is the affect of the caster being frightened by their own effect.
That would remove the supposed paradox, but that is a houserule and not RAW.
Now if you absolutely must push the ridiculous implication , then the poor caster can’t do squat till the effect ends, and now you have a worthless character just standing there frightened for nothing. Wow look a punching bag, hope that player likes a dead character, cause that what you’ll have with that decision.
Please explain how being frightened would prevent the ranger from doing anything.
This is probably the worst-written class ability I've seen in D&D since the Truenamer.
Well, it's not like the wording is hard to understand, and there's nothing per se wrong with an attack producing a burst that you don't want to be in, it's just that being afraid of yourself seems rather dumb.
And it reads like there was no proof reading before it went to print.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Frightened prevents moving closer to the source of your fear. As you're already at 0' away, there is no direction you can move that is closer than you already are, and thus no effect on movement. All it does is give you disadvantage on attacks until the effect ends.
Paradox_Traveler nowhere it says in the DMG that can pass a save against an effect made by itself, if that's the case, be a bard and cast fireball over yourself: did you pass the save automatically? do you get damage?
And being 20ft away is the RAI (they want people to just use rangers at range and nlt melee) and thats why they messed up the feature: the hitted creature is the point of origin for the creatures being afraind from you, you arent the origin of the effect, is 10ft around the creature hitted by you, which is exactly is medded up if yo go melle, is like trying to force the ranger into going range instead of melee, railroading the decisions.
"Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn." nowhere says that you dont count, you are a creature, and if you are standing within 10ft of the target you hitted, you are a subject of your own feature. This is like a spellcaster using fireball centering it to a creture within 5ft of it: unless you have another specific feature, you are subject of such fireball, same for Mass Fear
@Plaguescarred i know is not an emanation, im just saying they literally created "a clause" of an "specific rule". When a specific rule exists establishing something, and something else have a similar description but dont have the specific of the other, it meas it doesnt apply to the second thing. Is like the objects around burning with fire spells: some fire spells specify that spread fire, others dont. That means that the spells that DOESNT specify it in the spells description DONT spread fire. In this case: Emanations is a new rule and SPECIFY that doest apply the user. In mass fear doesnt specify anywere that the feature doent affect the user, it doesnt mean distintions at all, probably because it was writted in a way of thinking that you would be attacking at long range, inetead of going melee
"No, because it chooses not to target itself with its fear effect. If it chose to target itself, it would have to save." where it say you can do that? it doesnt say "any creature you choose", it just say "The target and each creature within 10 feet of it"
"The reason monsters don't generally hit themselves with area effects isn't because they can't, it's because they choose not to." What? really, what? where do you get that this rule existed? mosnter dont hit themselves in AoE because the DM chooses WHERE TO PUT such AoE or they have immunity to such effect, like a demon casting fireball while being immune to fire damage, or because the festure stablish that they choose targets. Wizards CAN get damage for a fireball if you cast it at 15ft away without anythin in between (2014 rules also ignored corners so even with something in between it would reach you) and this is actually the cause of a lot of memes and jokes around more spellcasters and even for the Evocation wizard, now the evoker, since they actually gain a feature that let them "ignore" certain creatures that can see to not get any damage from their spells, but the feature says "When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 plus the spell's level. " Meaning the evoker wizard CANT choose himself to ignore the damage of its own spells, meaning yes, it can hit himself with a fireball, he can say he dont wanna, but it will hit hmself regardless of if he choosed or not. This has been addressed before in a sage advice wizard cant choose himself for the sculpt spells feature This also is now part of the Careful spell from the metamagics of the sorcerer, where also state "other creatures" and not "any creature" "When you cast a spell that forces other creatures to make a saving throw, you can protect some of those creatures from the spell's full force" If you think is a rule, say the page where is it to read it, cause i cant find it anywhere, there is a new rule about voluntarily choosing to LOSE a save, but nowhere is stablis that you can ignore yourself from your own effects
So your basically saying a caster can’t save when the DC is literally the casters own spell casting mod + 8, and the caster has to virtually save for it’s own effect. If a caster wants to set off a fireball point blank in their own face, i’d let them have advantage on the save considering they probably already have a solid idea of how much damage a fireball at min range can do. [ and who says the caster doesn’t have fire immunity at some point? ]
You can rule however you want, but it is neither RAW, nor RAI that spellcasters are better at dodging spell they know/cast. (Whether the caster at one point in there life had fire immunity is the most irrelevant thing possible.)
If the intent was to prevent close combat with the effect, they certainly failed. Can’t frighten yourself if the effect is capable of putting the caster in the same space that literally forces the caster to use the same DC needed for others to make a save, the caster would always make the save.
Can you please clarify what this means? What effect puts you in a space that forces the caster to use a dc to make a save?
Paradox solved by just removing the one factor that makes it a paradox, the caster automatically saves and is not effected. Stupid but Simple, yet effective and cuts the cost of needless debate over what is the affect of the caster being frightened by their own effect.
That would remove the supposed paradox, but that is a houserule and not RAW.
Now if you absolutely must push the ridiculous implication , then the poor caster can’t do squat till the effect ends, and now you have a worthless character just standing there frightened for nothing. Wow look a punching bag, hope that player likes a dead character, cause that what you’ll have with that decision.
Please explain how being frightened would prevent the ranger from doing anything.
And what if the gloom stalker is blind, how the heck are you supposed to rule that particular situation? How does line of sight work then?
I’ve seen some poorly written rules, but this was written by someone who has absolutely zero understanding of how the game works.
[ Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must … ( within 10 feet of YOU, not IT.)]
Already knew this was coming. It’s ether be the point of the effect, or have a natural immunity to the effect, otherwise you put yourself in a never-ending cycle of uncertainty that is useless to some.
Ether stick with it as is and watch it’s usefulness diminish, or fix it.
If one little word can break a feature this much , just change the one little word, or make the caster of the feature immune to the effect. Paradox solved, or we can go the long way around again? Nuff said, it’s broken, and a hot fix for now is the best way to solve the problem.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Paradox_Traveler nowhere it says in the DMG that can pass a save against an effect made by itself, if that's the case, be a bard and cast fireball over yourself: did you pass the save automatically? do you get damage?
And being 20ft away is the RAI (they want people to just use rangers at range and nlt melee) and thats why they messed up the feature: the hitted creature is the point of origin for the creatures being afraind from you, you arent the origin of the effect, is 10ft around the creature hitted by you, which is exactly is medded up if yo go melle, is like trying to force the ranger into going range instead of melee, railroading the decisions.
"Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn." nowhere says that you dont count, you are a creature, and if you are standing within 10ft of the target you hitted, you are a subject of your own feature. This is like a spellcaster using fireball centering it to a creture within 5ft of it: unless you have another specific feature, you are subject of such fireball, same for Mass Fear
@Plaguescarred i know is not an emanation, im just saying they literally created "a clause" of an "specific rule". When a specific rule exists establishing something, and something else have a similar description but dont have the specific of the other, it meas it doesnt apply to the second thing. Is like the objects around burning with fire spells: some fire spells specify that spread fire, others dont. That means that the spells that DOESNT specify it in the spells description DONT spread fire. In this case: Emanations is a new rule and SPECIFY that doest apply the user. In mass fear doesnt specify anywere that the feature doent affect the user, it doesnt mean distintions at all, probably because it was writted in a way of thinking that you would be attacking at long range, inetead of going melee
"No, because it chooses not to target itself with its fear effect. If it chose to target itself, it would have to save." where it say you can do that? it doesnt say "any creature you choose", it just say "The target and each creature within 10 feet of it"
"The reason monsters don't generally hit themselves with area effects isn't because they can't, it's because they choose not to." What? really, what? where do you get that this rule existed? mosnter dont hit themselves in AoE because the DM chooses WHERE TO PUT such AoE or they have immunity to such effect, like a demon casting fireball while being immune to fire damage, or because the festure stablish that they choose targets. Wizards CAN get damage for a fireball if you cast it at 15ft away without anythin in between (2014 rules also ignored corners so even with something in between it would reach you) and this is actually the cause of a lot of memes and jokes around more spellcasters and even for the Evocation wizard, now the evoker, since they actually gain a feature that let them "ignore" certain creatures that can see to not get any damage from their spells, but the feature says "When you cast an Evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 plus the spell's level. " Meaning the evoker wizard CANT choose himself to ignore the damage of its own spells, meaning yes, it can hit himself with a fireball, he can say he dont wanna, but it will hit hmself regardless of if he choosed or not. This has been addressed before in a sage advice wizard cant choose himself for the sculpt spells feature This also is now part of the Careful spell from the metamagics of the sorcerer, where also state "other creatures" and not "any creature" "When you cast a spell that forces other creatures to make a saving throw, you can protect some of those creatures from the spell's full force" If you think is a rule, say the page where is it to read it, cause i cant find it anywhere, there is a new rule about voluntarily choosing to LOSE a save, but nowhere is stablis that you can ignore yourself from your own effects
So your basically saying a caster can’t save when the DC is literally the casters own spell casting mod + 8, and the caster has to virtually save for it’s own effect. If a caster wants to set off a fireball point blank in their own face, i’d let them have advantage on the save considering they probably already have a solid idea of how much damage a fireball at min range can do. [ and who says the caster doesn’t have fire immunity at some point? ]
You can rule however you want, but it is neither RAW, nor RAI that spellcasters are better at dodging spell they know/cast. (Whether the caster at one point in there life had fire immunity is the most irrelevant thing possible.)
If the intent was to prevent close combat with the effect, they certainly failed. Can’t frighten yourself if the effect is capable of putting the caster in the same space that literally forces the caster to use the same DC needed for others to make a save, the caster would always make the save.
Can you please clarify what this means? What effect puts you in a space that forces the caster to use a dc to make a save?
Paradox solved by just removing the one factor that makes it a paradox, the caster automatically saves and is not effected. Stupid but Simple, yet effective and cuts the cost of needless debate over what is the affect of the caster being frightened by their own effect.
That would remove the supposed paradox, but that is a houserule and not RAW.
Now if you absolutely must push the ridiculous implication , then the poor caster can’t do squat till the effect ends, and now you have a worthless character just standing there frightened for nothing. Wow look a punching bag, hope that player likes a dead character, cause that what you’ll have with that decision.
Please explain how being frightened would prevent the ranger from doing anything.
And what if the gloom stalker is blind, how the heck are you supposed to rule that particular situation? How does line of sight work then?
I’ve seen some poorly written rules, but this was written by someone who has absolutely zero understanding of how the game works.
[ Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must … ( within 10 feet of YOU, not IT.)]
Already knew this was coming. It’s ether be the point of the effect, or have a natural immunity to the effect, otherwise you put yourself in a never-ending cycle of uncertainty that is useless to some.
Ether stick with it as is and watch it’s usefulness diminish, or fix it.
If one little word can break a feature this much , just change the one little word, or make the caster of the feature immune to the effect. Paradox solved, or we can go the long way around again? Nuff said, it’s broken, and a hot fix for now is the best way to solve the problem.
You may not have noticed, but this thread is in rules and game mechanics, not homebrew and houserules.
there is no rule that say that because you are the one doing the effect you are inmmune to it, if someone told you that, that is a houserule or a homebrew, but in RAW, that doesnt exists. That is why most spells and effects that make the user inmmune say it like "choose any creature" or "any enemy in the AoE" or the like, specifying when and how you choose targets, and since that is a specific rule, any other feature/spell that doesnt include that means it just doesnt apply, like casting a fireball next to you, unless you have a special feature that makes you immune to it, you had to roll the save against your own DC, and if you fail, you take fulll damage. The mass Fear dont apply to creatures within 10ft from you, but rather from 10ft around the creature you hitted AND the target (specified in the feature), take a look at the FULL feature, you are using the mass fear while hitting a creature and activating Dreadful strikes on a hit, then you as a ranger decide to activate the mass fear effect on top of that, the hit doesnt need to be melee, bt the wording makes it so if you go melee and hit a creature, that creature is the point of origin of the effect, affecting you since you are within the 10ft radius of that creature
Dreadful Strike.When you attack a creature and hit it with a weapon, you can deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage. You can use this benefit only once per turn, you can use it a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
It requires a weapon attack, nowhere specifies melee or ranged, so you can use any of those
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strike becomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Sudden Strike. You can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and that is within the weapon's range. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn.
Is not about homerulng the feature, is to clarify how would work in RAW. Some people like to understand how that works in the rules as written (RAW) so if you wanna change it, you have to understand WHAT you are changing first, because some houserules are made based on "what people understand" and later on realize that that decisions affect other classes/players, like the old "use items as a bonus action" which sounds cool... until a player wants to play a rogue thief, and then you realize that the whole point of playing that subclass is the feature that allow you to use items as a bonus action. If you take away that from the sbclass, well, why use it in first place, right?
You need to understand the RAW to make houserules, and explain it to the players, if you dont, you are jsut teaching them the game "wrong" and they will pass that wrong knowledge to other person and so on, until you can see any yt video where people think that paladins used to need deities in older editions to have power (is jut a myth, they never needed deities) or people who think that nat20 in ability checks are an auto success (only to attacks and death saves)
also yes, if the gloomstalker is blind, he has no line of sight to himself so frightened is applied but dont have any effect since require to see the source of the fear, but be aware, this means the effects dont apply, but the condition remains, if a creature has the frightened condition and is blinded, it will not apply any of the 2 effects of such condition, but the cndition remains until is removed by its own conditions on how it gets it on the first place, like mass fear, is until the start of your next turn (the turn of the ranger ends the condition on all afected creatures). But if we see other sources of the condition, like the spell Fear, which is superpowerful since dont allow rerolls on subsequent turns, the condition remains until YOU CANT SEE the source of the fear
"FEAR Each creature in a 30-foot Cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and have the Frightened condition for the duration. A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."
which means it can be blinded and then repeat the roll at the end of its turn, if pass, the effect ends. or just hide behind a pillar, that works too, i guess, if you cant see him, means he is not in line of sight
Which is another problem with the gloomstalker: you can become invisible to creatures with darkvision by just walking into the darkness, which means you can use mass fear, make enemy creatures be afraid of you, walk to the darkness to be invisible so they cant attack you... but then they cant see you and ergo they arent afraid of you and can make attacks normally to your allies or move towards your position since they cant see you
It's not broken, it's just dumb. Mostly, what it means is that you shouldn't use it with a melee weapon ever.
Ya. It's dumb that it frightens the character if they attack in melee range. That would definitely be the RAW reading of Mass Fear and any argument against it wouldn't be coherent or in good faith. I don't think the intention was for the ranger to be affected by Mass Fear though because it is dumb for them to hit a creature so dreadfully that they scare themselves. So, a RAI interpretation would likely exclude the ranger from Mass Fear.
It's not broken, it's just dumb. Mostly, what it means is that you shouldn't use it with a melee weapon ever.
Ya. It's dumb that it frightens the character if they attack in melee range. That would definitely be the RAW reading of Mass Fear and any argument against it wouldn't be coherent or in good faith. I don't think the intention was for the ranger to be affected by Mass Fear though because it is dumb for them to hit a creature so dreadfully that they scare themselves. So, a RAI interpretation would likely exclude the ranger from Mass Fear.
This seems like a thing that's going to be universally house-ruled, and probably errataed.
Exactly, the ability reads as if it's intended to be a Batman Strikes From The Shadows And Inspires Terror In His Foes! style effect. Having it also affect the character using the ability is something that would only make sense if the game was a much more comedic RPG, like Toon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
there is no rule that say that because you are the one doing the effect you are inmmune to it, if someone told you that, that is a houserule or a homebrew, but in RAW, that doesnt exists. That is why most spells and effects that make the user inmmune say it like "choose any creature" or "any enemy in the AoE" or the like, specifying when and how you choose targets, and since that is a specific rule, any other feature/spell that doesnt include that means it just doesnt apply, like casting a fireball next to you, unless you have a special feature that makes you immune to it, you had to roll the save against your own DC, and if you fail, you take fulll damage. The mass Fear dont apply to creatures within 10ft from you, but rather from 10ft around the creature you hitted AND the target (specified in the feature), take a look at the FULL feature, you are using the mass fear while hitting a creature and activating Dreadful strikes on a hit, then you as a ranger decide to activate the mass fear effect on top of that, the hit doesnt need to be melee, bt the wording makes it so if you go melee and hit a creature, that creature is the point of origin of the effect, affecting you since you are within the 10ft radius of that creature
Dreadful Strike.When you attack a creature and hit it with a weapon, you can deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage. You can use this benefit only once per turn, you can use it a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
It requires a weapon attack, nowhere specifies melee or ranged, so you can use any of those
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strike becomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Sudden Strike. You can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and that is within the weapon's range. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn.
Is not about homerulng the feature, is to clarify how would work in RAW. Some people like to understand how that works in the rules as written (RAW) so if you wanna change it, you have to understand WHAT you are changing first, because some houserules are made based on "what people understand" and later on realize that that decisions affect other classes/players, like the old "use items as a bonus action" which sounds cool... until a player wants to play a rogue thief, and then you realize that the whole point of playing that subclass is the feature that allow you to use items as a bonus action. If you take away that from the sbclass, well, why use it in first place, right?
You need to understand the RAW to make houserules, and explain it to the players, if you dont, you are jsut teaching them the game "wrong" and they will pass that wrong knowledge to other person and so on, until you can see any yt video where people think that paladins used to need deities in older editions to have power (is jut a myth, they never needed deities) or people who think that nat20 in ability checks are an auto success (only to attacks and death saves)
also yes, if the gloomstalker is blind, he has no line of sight to himself so frightened is applied but dont have any effect since require to see the source of the fear, but be aware, this means the effects dont apply, but the condition remains, if a creature has the frightened condition and is blinded, it will not apply any of the 2 effects of such condition, but the cndition remains until is removed by its own conditions on how it gets it on the first place, like mass fear, is until the start of your next turn (the turn of the ranger ends the condition on all afected creatures). But if we see other sources of the condition, like the spell Fear, which is superpowerful since dont allow rerolls on subsequent turns, the condition remains until YOU CANT SEE the source of the fear
"FEAR Each creature in a 30-foot Cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and have the Frightened condition for the duration. A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."
which means it can be blinded and then repeat the roll at the end of its turn, if pass, the effect ends. or just hide behind a pillar, that works too, i guess, if you cant see him, means he is not in line of sight
Which is another problem with the gloomstalker: you can become invisible to creatures with darkvision by just walking into the darkness, which means you can use mass fear, make enemy creatures be afraid of you, walk to the darkness to be invisible so they cant attack you... but then they cant see you and ergo they arent afraid of you and can make attacks normally to your allies or move towards your position since they cant see you
Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself.
If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage.
If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group.
If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do.
If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range? Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.)
If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word.
The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage.
As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work.
At this point a solution is nothing more than home brewing a melee range use, or have the player realize the effect half sucks and is barely used.
I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken.
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" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
there is no rule that say that because you are the one doing the effect you are inmmune to it, if someone told you that, that is a houserule or a homebrew, but in RAW, that doesnt exists. That is why most spells and effects that make the user inmmune say it like "choose any creature" or "any enemy in the AoE" or the like, specifying when and how you choose targets, and since that is a specific rule, any other feature/spell that doesnt include that means it just doesnt apply, like casting a fireball next to you, unless you have a special feature that makes you immune to it, you had to roll the save against your own DC, and if you fail, you take fulll damage. The mass Fear dont apply to creatures within 10ft from you, but rather from 10ft around the creature you hitted AND the target (specified in the feature), take a look at the FULL feature, you are using the mass fear while hitting a creature and activating Dreadful strikes on a hit, then you as a ranger decide to activate the mass fear effect on top of that, the hit doesnt need to be melee, bt the wording makes it so if you go melee and hit a creature, that creature is the point of origin of the effect, affecting you since you are within the 10ft radius of that creature
Dreadful Strike.When you attack a creature and hit it with a weapon, you can deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage. You can use this benefit only once per turn, you can use it a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
It requires a weapon attack, nowhere specifies melee or ranged, so you can use any of those
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strike becomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Sudden Strike. You can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and that is within the weapon's range. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn.
Is not about homerulng the feature, is to clarify how would work in RAW. Some people like to understand how that works in the rules as written (RAW) so if you wanna change it, you have to understand WHAT you are changing first, because some houserules are made based on "what people understand" and later on realize that that decisions affect other classes/players, like the old "use items as a bonus action" which sounds cool... until a player wants to play a rogue thief, and then you realize that the whole point of playing that subclass is the feature that allow you to use items as a bonus action. If you take away that from the sbclass, well, why use it in first place, right?
You need to understand the RAW to make houserules, and explain it to the players, if you dont, you are jsut teaching them the game "wrong" and they will pass that wrong knowledge to other person and so on, until you can see any yt video where people think that paladins used to need deities in older editions to have power (is jut a myth, they never needed deities) or people who think that nat20 in ability checks are an auto success (only to attacks and death saves)
also yes, if the gloomstalker is blind, he has no line of sight to himself so frightened is applied but dont have any effect since require to see the source of the fear, but be aware, this means the effects dont apply, but the condition remains, if a creature has the frightened condition and is blinded, it will not apply any of the 2 effects of such condition, but the cndition remains until is removed by its own conditions on how it gets it on the first place, like mass fear, is until the start of your next turn (the turn of the ranger ends the condition on all afected creatures). But if we see other sources of the condition, like the spell Fear, which is superpowerful since dont allow rerolls on subsequent turns, the condition remains until YOU CANT SEE the source of the fear
"FEAR Each creature in a 30-foot Cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and have the Frightened condition for the duration. A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."
which means it can be blinded and then repeat the roll at the end of its turn, if pass, the effect ends. or just hide behind a pillar, that works too, i guess, if you cant see him, means he is not in line of sight
Which is another problem with the gloomstalker: you can become invisible to creatures with darkvision by just walking into the darkness, which means you can use mass fear, make enemy creatures be afraid of you, walk to the darkness to be invisible so they cant attack you... but then they cant see you and ergo they arent afraid of you and can make attacks normally to your allies or move towards your position since they cant see you
Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself.
If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage.
If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group.
If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do.
If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range? Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.)
If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word.
The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage.
As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work.
At this point a solution is nothing more than home brewing a melee range use, or have the player realize the effect half sucks and is barely used.
I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken.
That's just not how it works. The fact that the aoe is centered on another creature does not mean they are causing the effect. You seem to be misunderstanding many things here. Here are the rules, bookmark them.
It's not broken, it's just dumb. Mostly, what it means is that you shouldn't use it with a melee weapon ever.
Ya. It's dumb that it frightens the character if they attack in melee range. That would definitely be the RAW reading of Mass Fear and any argument against it wouldn't be coherent or in good faith. I don't think the intention was for the ranger to be affected by Mass Fear though because it is dumb for them to hit a creature so dreadfully that they scare themselves. So, a RAI interpretation would likely exclude the ranger from Mass Fear.
This seems like a thing that's going to be universally house-ruled, and probably errataed.
Exactly, the ability reads as if it's intended to be a Batman Strikes From The Shadows And Inspires Terror In His Foes! style effect. Having it also affect the character using the ability is something that would only make sense if the game was a much more comedic RPG, like Toon.
Is like the guy who came from shadows, hitted a guy and then he explodes and he and the enemies stand there in terror and the ranger says "i though you were stronger!!! im sorry!!!!!" and then he needs like 6 years of therapy from that moment... and since then, he never went melee ever again... as WotC intended
there is no rule that say that because you are the one doing the effect you are inmmune to it, if someone told you that, that is a houserule or a homebrew, but in RAW, that doesnt exists. That is why most spells and effects that make the user inmmune say it like "choose any creature" or "any enemy in the AoE" or the like, specifying when and how you choose targets, and since that is a specific rule, any other feature/spell that doesnt include that means it just doesnt apply, like casting a fireball next to you, unless you have a special feature that makes you immune to it, you had to roll the save against your own DC, and if you fail, you take fulll damage. The mass Fear dont apply to creatures within 10ft from you, but rather from 10ft around the creature you hitted AND the target (specified in the feature), take a look at the FULL feature, you are using the mass fear while hitting a creature and activating Dreadful strikes on a hit, then you as a ranger decide to activate the mass fear effect on top of that, the hit doesnt need to be melee, bt the wording makes it so if you go melee and hit a creature, that creature is the point of origin of the effect, affecting you since you are within the 10ft radius of that creature
Dreadful Strike.When you attack a creature and hit it with a weapon, you can deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage. You can use this benefit only once per turn, you can use it a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
It requires a weapon attack, nowhere specifies melee or ranged, so you can use any of those
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strike becomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Sudden Strike. You can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and that is within the weapon's range. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn.
Is not about homerulng the feature, is to clarify how would work in RAW. Some people like to understand how that works in the rules as written (RAW) so if you wanna change it, you have to understand WHAT you are changing first, because some houserules are made based on "what people understand" and later on realize that that decisions affect other classes/players, like the old "use items as a bonus action" which sounds cool... until a player wants to play a rogue thief, and then you realize that the whole point of playing that subclass is the feature that allow you to use items as a bonus action. If you take away that from the sbclass, well, why use it in first place, right?
You need to understand the RAW to make houserules, and explain it to the players, if you dont, you are jsut teaching them the game "wrong" and they will pass that wrong knowledge to other person and so on, until you can see any yt video where people think that paladins used to need deities in older editions to have power (is jut a myth, they never needed deities) or people who think that nat20 in ability checks are an auto success (only to attacks and death saves)
also yes, if the gloomstalker is blind, he has no line of sight to himself so frightened is applied but dont have any effect since require to see the source of the fear, but be aware, this means the effects dont apply, but the condition remains, if a creature has the frightened condition and is blinded, it will not apply any of the 2 effects of such condition, but the cndition remains until is removed by its own conditions on how it gets it on the first place, like mass fear, is until the start of your next turn (the turn of the ranger ends the condition on all afected creatures). But if we see other sources of the condition, like the spell Fear, which is superpowerful since dont allow rerolls on subsequent turns, the condition remains until YOU CANT SEE the source of the fear
"FEAR Each creature in a 30-foot Cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and have the Frightened condition for the duration. A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."
which means it can be blinded and then repeat the roll at the end of its turn, if pass, the effect ends. or just hide behind a pillar, that works too, i guess, if you cant see him, means he is not in line of sight
Which is another problem with the gloomstalker: you can become invisible to creatures with darkvision by just walking into the darkness, which means you can use mass fear, make enemy creatures be afraid of you, walk to the darkness to be invisible so they cant attack you... but then they cant see you and ergo they arent afraid of you and can make attacks normally to your allies or move towards your position since they cant see you
Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself. If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage. If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group. If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do. If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range? Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.) If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word. The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage. As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work. At this point a solution is nothing more than home brewing a melee range use, or have the player realize the effect half sucks and is barely used. I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken.
Quoting Luke Skywalker "Amazing... everything you just said... is wrong"
"Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself." no, the origin point is the creature hitted, but YOU are the source of the fear, as stablished in the mass fear description, since it includes the "target creture" of the initial attack, and well, if you wanna rule it as if the hitted creature is the source of the fear, then we get to the same problem: the hitted creature is the source of the fear, but according with Mass Fea, that creature is also affected by the feature, meaning IT CAN become afraid of himself, going again on the same topic as if the ranger was the source of fear (which it is)
"If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage." if your allies are within 10ft of the creature, they DO have to make the save against YOUR DC and become afraid of you, and run from YOU, who originated the fear. the frightened condition originate from you, devastating a creature, dealing so bizarre damage that creatures who see that are terrified of you doing that gore-type or brutal attack, thats why is activating while doing a Dreadful strike (Dreadful: causing or involving great suffering, fear, or unhappiness; extremely bad or serious.)
" If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group." well, of course is more useful at range, but that doesnt mean it must be at range, which is why that feature is railroading the ranger into going ranged, in a class that can excel at melee too, specially that subclass that can ambush and disapear in the shadows. The game should not railroad you into going one way or another. Even monks are good at ranged and people think they shouldnt do that, but they can, same with the Swords bard, even when it says is a "swords" bard, you can play it with a crossbow, since the features only say "weapon attack" and not "melee weapon attack". The only class they focused on going melee are the Paladin (smite attacks need to be at melee) and some of the barbarian too, which again, limit how you play, they dont let a paladin do ranged stuff or smite from afar, but if they wanted the Mass fear to only work on ranged attacks, they can by just adding the "when you hit a creature with a ranged attack" and there, only work that way, but no, so it works in melee and there is no wording saying it doesnt affect you, the ranger.
" If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do." you think is easy for all casters to pass that save? remember casters get items that can boost their DC but not all can boost the saves. in my table the Wizard have a DC 25, but its wisdom saving throw is +9, meaning it will require a 16 in the dice, so it depends of the spellcaster, dont generalize.also, why roll above an 8? where you get that number? the stats aren equal to all haracters, neither are the DC's, you can have bonuses to the DC and not to the save and viceversa, so it depends of the character, and where you get that advantage? casting yu the spell dont grants you advantage on the save on any way, there is no rule that say that, you are just making up that out of nowhere. There are features, fats and other stuff that let youg et advantage, but is not "all spellcasters get advantage against their own spells", that there doesnt exists in RAW, and we are talking RAW here, not houserules or homebrew, if you though that's raw, someone teach you the game wrong
"and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell" well, it is, is called Fear, is a spell of lv3, illusion, same level everyone prefer Fireball, but Fear is actually worse for some kind of enemies, since you cannot reroll the save unless you lose line of sight with the source of fear. As a Dm i used this spell with the lich in the final battle where the party enclose themselves with the lich in a circular room of 70ft radius... turns out, the super mega rogue that can have 100ft of speed at lv20 can do nothing if is afraid of the lich who can teleport 60ft as a legendary action, outrn any party member who can help the rogue and by getting closer, the rogue will use a dash action and run away from the lich and get basically neutralized since is a melee build in a circle room with nowhere to hide from the lich, she can become invisible, but that cant hel her there since the lich can be seen at all times from all angles. So just like you, most people dont get the power of the Fear spell
" If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range?" is not, but WotC kinda hate the ranger and they wanna railroad the class into using a bow, they kinda forgot that the OG ranger was Aragorn and not Legolas (fighter with dex)
"Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.)" again, the effect affects all creatures 10ft away from the target, the hitted creature, but they become afraid OF YOU, the ranger, who hitted the creature and blast it with such a "dreadful strike" that they fecome frightened of YOU, the RANGER. Nowhere it says they become frightened of the creature, because you can actually "kill" the target, which then is no longer a "creature" but a corpse (an object in dnd terminology), and that's the thing, you hit it, they saw your hit, and become terrified of YOU for what you just did, no matters if is ranged or melee, you can use a longbow, use the sharpshooter feat to shoot at 600ft, hit a target, mostly kill it and they will look from where that shoot came and look that you shoot from out the castle through a window and through the gates and become terrified of your aim at that distance "how can he do that? we are not safe here!!!"
"If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word." no, you are frightened of the creature who attacked that creature...wait for it... thats you, the ranger
"The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage." you can homebrew everything, we are talking of the understanding of the RAW here, if you just came to say "thats not how i rule it in my table, we houseruled that blah blah blah" then forget all of it, you are just spitting out of the bucket, that is not the question, you can houserule that the ranger deal 100d12s by looking at the enemies, but that's not RAW and is not the point of this thread (but yes, it should say "any enemy" or "any creature you choose", that is usually that most features/spells say in these kind of features, like old tarrasque who choosed targets, or just an AoE in which says "any creature other than you must make the save", there is your houserule, go home)
"As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work." ok, thats not true neither, a feature not always "is supposed to do X", sometimes is just it can do this, otherwise do whatever you want with it" and as i said earlier in this thread, a spellcaster can cast FEAR on an AoE affecting all creatures in the area and be inside such AoE under special conditions (a trickery cleric with the invocle duplicity multiclasing into a class with such spell or the scribe wizard with manifest mind) meaning you can be affected, and realisticly, some people can become afraid of themselves on certain situations, which is like having a panic attack, so it is actually also relistic on a fantasy game that you used a magical feature that induce fear and you become affected by it, as i said, is like the wizard casting fireball at point blank range and hitting himself, you can think that's not is supposed to work, but it is, is a big ball of fire, it would fill the space and burn anyone on it (except you, rogue, you came up without any harm, damn evasion...)
"I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken." well... uhm.. thats... thats how actually works, the source of fear IS THE CHARACTER, the RANGER, not the creature that the ranger hitted, which is the point of this thread... at this point i think you misunderstood the thread and the rules... that's exactly the problem: the ranger IS the source of the fear, and can become scared of himself since the aoe of fear that the RANGER creates is 10ft around a creature hitted by the ranger, if you go melee, that means that AoE includes you as a creature since nowhere in the feature says you are excluded, as other features that provoke fear usually say, so... thats the thing, and since you are always in line of sight OF YOURSELF (unless you become blinded), yo are always afraid of yourself until the start of your next turn as the feature says if you fail the saving throw against your own DC (a lv11 ranger with 18wis has a DC of 8 + 4 wis +4 prof= 16, but dont have prof in wis saves, so they have a +4 in the dice only, they need a 12 in the dice at least)
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and not getting the outcome you expected.” - Albert Einstein.
The feature literally says:
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strikebecomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn. ( italic underlines are the key here.)
That clearly means the effect is coming from the the target of the attack not the caster or the character that made the attack. If you have to save against your own spell DC especially in melee range, then the feature is broken and garbage as it is written. If your 600 feet away whats the point of attempting to frighten creatures that might not even notice you? Insanity and stupidity are both at play here, and a simple fix of changing “it” to “you” is the fix that makes the whole thing work the way it should.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
The phrase "Line of Sight" includes the word "Line". In mathematics, in order to create a line, there must be at least two points in space. It is not possible to draw a straight line from one point to itself. Therefore, you do not, and you cannot have Line of Sight to yourself or to your own location.
Locations are not points, they are areas. You can undoubtedly draw a line between one point in your area and another point in your area.
I disagree. The Line-of-Sight rule has been quoted, and it doesn't allow for drawing such a line. To see something within your own space, you must use other rules and concepts. The rule and the concept of Line of Sight does not apply within your own location. If a feature specifically uses the phrase "line of sight", then you apply the rule for Line-of-Sight as written.
The frightened condition says “while the source of its fear is within line of sight.” Does that mean you have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks even if the source is invisible but you have a clear line to its space?
No. If you can’t see something, it’s not within your line of sight. Speaking of “line of sight,” the game uses the English meaning of the term, which has no special meaning in the rules.
As already mentioned, this Sage Advice is simply wrong.
Line-of-Sight has nothing to do with whether or not you can see something, and whether or not you can see something has nothing to do with Line-of-Sight. They are two different concepts and each of them have their own rules associated with them. Darkness, for example, causes many creatures to be unable to see certain things. But not because their Line-of-Sight to those things are blocked. In fact, it is common that you actually do have Line-of-Sight to such things, but you just cannot see them for other reasons.
as was said before: you can target a sarm that is in your own space without problem
This is like saying that you can never see yourself in-game, which by all means, have been also confirmed by the "can you see yourself? if yes, apply" can confirm it here
Yes, you can target a swarm in your own space, and you can see yourself.
Again, whether or not you can see something is a different concept and is covered by different rules than the concept of Line-of-Sight. You do not have Line-of-Sight to yourself and you do not have Line-of-Sight to the swarm because of how the RAW for Line-of-Sight is written. But you can still see those things. You are not Blinded, those things are not Heavily Obscured, and so on.
Even if you have trouble getting behind the abstraction that everything in your own space is considered to be your location, in this thread we are discussing a situation where YOU are the source of YOUR fear. In this case, those two things are indisputably at exactly the same location. You are always at your own location no matter how you slice it. You cannot draw a straight line from yourself to yourself.
This is one of those cases where the rules are explicitly simplifying the model of how we might expect to be using the phrase in real life. To follow the RAW, you have to let go of your own preconceived notion of what you feel like the phrase "line of sight" actually means in real life. The rules of the game are an abstraction and in many cases the model of the reality is greatly simplified so that we can have playable mechanics. In D&D 5e, you do not have Line-of-Sight to yourself, and having Line-of-Sight is simply not required to be able to see things that are within your own location. The other rules for sight will cover those edge cases just fine.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and not getting the outcome you expected.” - Albert Einstein.
The feature literally says:
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strikebecomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects. Mass Fear.The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn. ( italic underlines are the key here.)
That clearly means the effect is coming from the the target of the attack not the caster or the character that made the attack. If you have to save against your own spell DC, then the feature is broken and garbage as it is written. Insanity and stupidity are both at play here, and a simple fix of changing “it” to “you” is the fix that makes the whole thing work the way it should.
Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
What if you have a spell that says. "Each creature in a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on that point makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they are frightened for the duration."
[Redacted]The feature clearly states the creature you attack is the origin point in which the mass fear extends from.
Origin point and source are not the same. Your statement is equivalent to stating "when the wizard casts fireball and hits me, I wasn't damaged by the wizard, I was damaged by the point in space where he centered the fireball".
So, to address whether Ranger is being hideously shortchanged by the effect- no they aren’t. Both of the secondary options are designed to be situational, and I’m not sure where this idea that subclass is specced for up close work comes from. The only thing that slightly leans towards that is the extra 10ft of movement on the first turn, which is also good for a ranged build that wants to reach cover or kite back away from the front line. Also keep in mind that the subclass already gets a point blank fear option with the Fear spell two levels earlier, so it makes more sense for the feature to be built for hitting targets more than 30 ft out.
adding to that The_Ace_of_Rogues, they put a "fear" feature in a subclass based on "not being seen", whitout any clause that if you go invisible ior igf they cant see you it keep the condition on, and you can go invisible after making them fear your with any of your features, like walking into the shadows for darkvision creatures, their fear become useless to you and your party since they cant see you anymore
And what if the gloom stalker is blind, how the heck are you supposed to rule that particular situation? How does line of sight work then?
I’ve seen some poorly written rules, but this was written by someone who has absolutely zero understanding of how the game works.
[ Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must … ( within 10 feet of YOU, not IT.)]
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
You can rule however you want, but it is neither RAW, nor RAI that spellcasters are better at dodging spell they know/cast. (Whether the caster at one point in there life had fire immunity is the most irrelevant thing possible.)
Can you please clarify what this means? What effect puts you in a space that forces the caster to use a dc to make a save?
That would remove the supposed paradox, but that is a houserule and not RAW.
Please explain how being frightened would prevent the ranger from doing anything.
And it reads like there was no proof reading before it went to print.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Frightened prevents moving closer to the source of your fear. As you're already at 0' away, there is no direction you can move that is closer than you already are, and thus no effect on movement. All it does is give you disadvantage on attacks until the effect ends.
Already knew this was coming. It’s ether be the point of the effect, or have a natural immunity to the effect, otherwise you put yourself in a never-ending cycle of uncertainty that is useless to some.
Ether stick with it as is and watch it’s usefulness diminish, or fix it.
If one little word can break a feature this much , just change the one little word, or make the caster of the feature immune to the effect. Paradox solved, or we can go the long way around again?
Nuff said, it’s broken, and a hot fix for now is the best way to solve the problem.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
You may not have noticed, but this thread is in rules and game mechanics, not homebrew and houserules.
there is no rule that say that because you are the one doing the effect you are inmmune to it, if someone told you that, that is a houserule or a homebrew, but in RAW, that doesnt exists. That is why most spells and effects that make the user inmmune say it like "choose any creature" or "any enemy in the AoE" or the like, specifying when and how you choose targets, and since that is a specific rule, any other feature/spell that doesnt include that means it just doesnt apply, like casting a fireball next to you, unless you have a special feature that makes you immune to it, you had to roll the save against your own DC, and if you fail, you take fulll damage.
The mass Fear dont apply to creatures within 10ft from you, but rather from 10ft around the creature you hitted AND the target (specified in the feature), take a look at the FULL feature, you are using the mass fear while hitting a creature and activating Dreadful strikes on a hit, then you as a ranger decide to activate the mass fear effect on top of that, the hit doesnt need to be melee, bt the wording makes it so if you go melee and hit a creature, that creature is the point of origin of the effect, affecting you since you are within the 10ft radius of that creature
Dreadful Strike. When you attack a creature and hit it with a weapon, you can deal an extra 2d6 Psychic damage. You can use this benefit only once per turn, you can use it a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.
It requires a weapon attack, nowhere specifies melee or ranged, so you can use any of those
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry
The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strike becomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects.
Sudden Strike. You can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature that is within 5 feet of the original target and that is within the weapon's range.
Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn.
Is not about homerulng the feature, is to clarify how would work in RAW. Some people like to understand how that works in the rules as written (RAW) so if you wanna change it, you have to understand WHAT you are changing first, because some houserules are made based on "what people understand" and later on realize that that decisions affect other classes/players, like the old "use items as a bonus action" which sounds cool... until a player wants to play a rogue thief, and then you realize that the whole point of playing that subclass is the feature that allow you to use items as a bonus action. If you take away that from the sbclass, well, why use it in first place, right?
You need to understand the RAW to make houserules, and explain it to the players, if you dont, you are jsut teaching them the game "wrong" and they will pass that wrong knowledge to other person and so on, until you can see any yt video where people think that paladins used to need deities in older editions to have power (is jut a myth, they never needed deities) or people who think that nat20 in ability checks are an auto success (only to attacks and death saves)
also yes, if the gloomstalker is blind, he has no line of sight to himself so frightened is applied but dont have any effect since require to see the source of the fear, but be aware, this means the effects dont apply, but the condition remains, if a creature has the frightened condition and is blinded, it will not apply any of the 2 effects of such condition, but the cndition remains until is removed by its own conditions on how it gets it on the first place, like mass fear, is until the start of your next turn (the turn of the ranger ends the condition on all afected creatures). But if we see other sources of the condition, like the spell Fear, which is superpowerful since dont allow rerolls on subsequent turns, the condition remains until YOU CANT SEE the source of the fear
"FEAR
Each creature in a 30-foot Cone must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and have the Frightened condition for the duration.
A Frightened creature takes the Dash action and moves away from you by the safest route on each of its turns unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a space where it doesn't have line of sight to you, the creature makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the spell ends on that creature."
which means it can be blinded and then repeat the roll at the end of its turn, if pass, the effect ends.
or just hide behind a pillar, that works too, i guess, if you cant see him, means he is not in line of sight
Which is another problem with the gloomstalker: you can become invisible to creatures with darkvision by just walking into the darkness, which means you can use mass fear, make enemy creatures be afraid of you, walk to the darkness to be invisible so they cant attack you... but then they cant see you and ergo they arent afraid of you and can make attacks normally to your allies or move towards your position since they cant see you
It's not broken, it's just dumb. Mostly, what it means is that you shouldn't use it with a melee weapon ever.
Ya. It's dumb that it frightens the character if they attack in melee range. That would definitely be the RAW reading of Mass Fear and any argument against it wouldn't be coherent or in good faith. I don't think the intention was for the ranger to be affected by Mass Fear though because it is dumb for them to hit a creature so dreadfully that they scare themselves. So, a RAI interpretation would likely exclude the ranger from Mass Fear.
To go back to the first response on this thread.
Exactly, the ability reads as if it's intended to be a Batman Strikes From The Shadows And Inspires Terror In His Foes! style effect. Having it also affect the character using the ability is something that would only make sense if the game was a much more comedic RPG, like Toon.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself.
If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage.
If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group.
If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do.
If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range?
Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.)
If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word.
The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage.
As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work.
At this point a solution is nothing more than home brewing a melee range use, or have the player realize the effect half sucks and is barely used.
I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
That's just not how it works. The fact that the aoe is centered on another creature does not mean they are causing the effect. You seem to be misunderstanding many things here. Here are the rules, bookmark them.
Is like the guy who came from shadows, hitted a guy and then he explodes and he and the enemies stand there in terror and the ranger says "i though you were stronger!!! im sorry!!!!!" and then he needs like 6 years of therapy from that moment... and since then, he never went melee ever again... as WotC intended
Quoting Luke Skywalker "Amazing... everything you just said... is wrong"
"Understanding the fear effect is not emanating from you but the creature you hit is knowing what the rules are telling you. If you hit a creature in melee range and fail the save, your now running away from that creature, not yourself." no, the origin point is the creature hitted, but YOU are the source of the fear, as stablished in the mass fear description, since it includes the "target creture" of the initial attack, and well, if you wanna rule it as if the hitted creature is the source of the fear, then we get to the same problem: the hitted creature is the source of the fear, but according with Mass Fea, that creature is also affected by the feature, meaning IT CAN become afraid of himself, going again on the same topic as if the ranger was the source of fear (which it is)
"If your allies are in the range of the effect and fail, they run from the creature, congrats you just gave the creature an avenue to escape or worse yet save and have an advantage." if your allies are within 10ft of the creature, they DO have to make the save against YOUR DC and become afraid of you, and run from YOU, who originated the fear. the frightened condition originate from you, devastating a creature, dealing so bizarre damage that creatures who see that are terrified of you doing that gore-type or brutal attack, thats why is activating while doing a Dreadful strike (Dreadful: causing or involving great suffering, fear, or unhappiness; extremely bad or serious.)
" If it’s more useful at range, it’s near pointless as the creatures allies should be focused on your party rather than the others in their group." well, of course is more useful at range, but that doesnt mean it must be at range, which is why that feature is railroading the ranger into going ranged, in a class that can excel at melee too, specially that subclass that can ambush and disapear in the shadows. The game should not railroad you into going one way or another. Even monks are good at ranged and people think they shouldnt do that, but they can, same with the Swords bard, even when it says is a "swords" bard, you can play it with a crossbow, since the features only say "weapon attack" and not "melee weapon attack". The only class they focused on going melee are the Paladin (smite attacks need to be at melee) and some of the barbarian too, which again, limit how you play, they dont let a paladin do ranged stuff or smite from afar, but if they wanted the Mass fear to only work on ranged attacks, they can by just adding the "when you hit a creature with a ranged attack" and there, only work that way, but no, so it works in melee and there is no wording saying it doesnt affect you, the ranger.
" If your blind, line of sight is pointless, and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell to make for the caster, ( just gotta roll above an 8[ 2/5ths fail rate or 40%, at melee range just on a d20 test.], and advantage just drops the fail rate to a near always success.), then the problem becomes the feature is broken in whatever the ability is supposed to do." you think is easy for all casters to pass that save? remember casters get items that can boost their DC but not all can boost the saves. in my table the Wizard have a DC 25, but its wisdom saving throw is +9, meaning it will require a 16 in the dice, so it depends of the spellcaster, dont generalize.also, why roll above an 8? where you get that number? the stats aren equal to all haracters, neither are the DC's, you can have bonuses to the DC and not to the save and viceversa, so it depends of the character, and where you get that advantage? casting yu the spell dont grants you advantage on the save on any way, there is no rule that say that, you are just making up that out of nowhere. There are features, fats and other stuff that let youg et advantage, but is not "all spellcasters get advantage against their own spells", that there doesnt exists in RAW, and we are talking RAW here, not houserules or homebrew, if you though that's raw, someone teach you the game wrong
"and if being frightened is as easy as just failing a DC that should be easy as hell" well, it is, is called Fear, is a spell of lv3, illusion, same level everyone prefer Fireball, but Fear is actually worse for some kind of enemies, since you cannot reroll the save unless you lose line of sight with the source of fear. As a Dm i used this spell with the lich in the final battle where the party enclose themselves with the lich in a circular room of 70ft radius... turns out, the super mega rogue that can have 100ft of speed at lv20 can do nothing if is afraid of the lich who can teleport 60ft as a legendary action, outrn any party member who can help the rogue and by getting closer, the rogue will use a dash action and run away from the lich and get basically neutralized since is a melee build in a circle room with nowhere to hide from the lich, she can become invisible, but that cant hel her there since the lich can be seen at all times from all angles. So just like you, most people dont get the power of the Fear spell
" If melee combat becomes a crapshoot, whats the point of the feature if the combat use requires it be most effective at range?" is not, but WotC kinda hate the ranger and they wanna railroad the class into using a bow, they kinda forgot that the OG ranger was Aragorn and not Legolas (fighter with dex)
"Change that one word and effect of just smacking the life out of a creature should scare the hell out of other creatures in the 10 feet area around you, not the creature ( what if that creature is a BBEG you and your party are attacking? Oops, you just gave that enemy an opportunity to turn the tide of battle and possibly TPK the group, nice going Doom and Gloom, well played.)" again, the effect affects all creatures 10ft away from the target, the hitted creature, but they become afraid OF YOU, the ranger, who hitted the creature and blast it with such a "dreadful strike" that they fecome frightened of YOU, the RANGER. Nowhere it says they become frightened of the creature, because you can actually "kill" the target, which then is no longer a "creature" but a corpse (an object in dnd terminology), and that's the thing, you hit it, they saw your hit, and become terrified of YOU for what you just did, no matters if is ranged or melee, you can use a longbow, use the sharpshooter feat to shoot at 600ft, hit a target, mostly kill it and they will look from where that shoot came and look that you shoot from out the castle through a window and through the gates and become terrified of your aim at that distance "how can he do that? we are not safe here!!!"
"If you fail the save, and was in melee range, now you frightened of the creature you just attacked, AoO anyone? Stupid and broken due to just one tiny word." no, you are frightened of the creature who attacked that creature...wait for it... thats you, the ranger
"The only solution to how it’s currently written is to just change the word or homebrew a fix. Otherwise the effect is garbage by way of selective use case to prevent character disadvantage." you can homebrew everything, we are talking of the understanding of the RAW here, if you just came to say "thats not how i rule it in my table, we houseruled that blah blah blah" then forget all of it, you are just spitting out of the bucket, that is not the question, you can houserule that the ranger deal 100d12s by looking at the enemies, but that's not RAW and is not the point of this thread (but yes, it should say "any enemy" or "any creature you choose", that is usually that most features/spells say in these kind of features, like old tarrasque who choosed targets, or just an AoE in which says "any creature other than you must make the save", there is your houserule, go home)
"As a DM and player, being frightened of effect that should never affect the player is a clear indication of piss poor thought put into understanding what the feature is supposed to do and how it should work." ok, thats not true neither, a feature not always "is supposed to do X", sometimes is just it can do this, otherwise do whatever you want with it" and as i said earlier in this thread, a spellcaster can cast FEAR on an AoE affecting all creatures in the area and be inside such AoE under special conditions (a trickery cleric with the invocle duplicity multiclasing into a class with such spell or the scribe wizard with manifest mind) meaning you can be affected, and realisticly, some people can become afraid of themselves on certain situations, which is like having a panic attack, so it is actually also relistic on a fantasy game that you used a magical feature that induce fear and you become affected by it, as i said, is like the wizard casting fireball at point blank range and hitting himself, you can think that's not is supposed to work, but it is, is a big ball of fire, it would fill the space and burn anyone on it (except you, rogue, you came up without any harm, damn evasion...)
"I’d rather have the player and DM understand the mass fear is from the character, not some random creature the character hit, and can cause the character run off because the character has a feature thats broken." well... uhm.. thats... thats how actually works, the source of fear IS THE CHARACTER, the RANGER, not the creature that the ranger hitted, which is the point of this thread... at this point i think you misunderstood the thread and the rules... that's exactly the problem:
the ranger IS the source of the fear, and can become scared of himself since the aoe of fear that the RANGER creates is 10ft around a creature hitted by the ranger, if you go melee, that means that AoE includes you as a creature since nowhere in the feature says you are excluded, as other features that provoke fear usually say, so... thats the thing, and since you are always in line of sight OF YOURSELF (unless you become blinded), yo are always afraid of yourself until the start of your next turn as the feature says if you fail the saving throw against your own DC (a lv11 ranger with 18wis has a DC of 8 + 4 wis +4 prof= 16, but dont have prof in wis saves, so they have a +4 in the dice only, they need a 12 in the dice at least)
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and not getting the outcome you expected.” - Albert Einstein.
The feature literally says:
Level 11: Stalker's Flurry
The Psychic damage of your Dreadful Strikebecomes 2d8. In addition, when you use the Dreadful Strike effect of your Dread Ambusher feature, you can cause one of the following additional effects.
Mass Fear. The target and each creature within 10 feet of it must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature has the Frightened condition until the start of your next turn. ( italic underlines are the key here.)
That clearly means the effect is coming from the the target of the attack not the caster or the character that made the attack.
If you have to save against your own spell DC especially in melee range, then the feature is broken and garbage as it is written. If your 600 feet away whats the point of attempting to frighten creatures that might not even notice you?
Insanity and stupidity are both at play here, and a simple fix of changing “it” to “you” is the fix that makes the whole thing work the way it should.
Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
I disagree. The Line-of-Sight rule has been quoted, and it doesn't allow for drawing such a line. To see something within your own space, you must use other rules and concepts. The rule and the concept of Line of Sight does not apply within your own location. If a feature specifically uses the phrase "line of sight", then you apply the rule for Line-of-Sight as written.
As already mentioned, this Sage Advice is simply wrong.
Line-of-Sight has nothing to do with whether or not you can see something, and whether or not you can see something has nothing to do with Line-of-Sight. They are two different concepts and each of them have their own rules associated with them. Darkness, for example, causes many creatures to be unable to see certain things. But not because their Line-of-Sight to those things are blocked. In fact, it is common that you actually do have Line-of-Sight to such things, but you just cannot see them for other reasons.
Yes, you can target a swarm in your own space, and you can see yourself.
Again, whether or not you can see something is a different concept and is covered by different rules than the concept of Line-of-Sight. You do not have Line-of-Sight to yourself and you do not have Line-of-Sight to the swarm because of how the RAW for Line-of-Sight is written. But you can still see those things. You are not Blinded, those things are not Heavily Obscured, and so on.
Even if you have trouble getting behind the abstraction that everything in your own space is considered to be your location, in this thread we are discussing a situation where YOU are the source of YOUR fear. In this case, those two things are indisputably at exactly the same location. You are always at your own location no matter how you slice it. You cannot draw a straight line from yourself to yourself.
This is one of those cases where the rules are explicitly simplifying the model of how we might expect to be using the phrase in real life. To follow the RAW, you have to let go of your own preconceived notion of what you feel like the phrase "line of sight" actually means in real life. The rules of the game are an abstraction and in many cases the model of the reality is greatly simplified so that we can have playable mechanics. In D&D 5e, you do not have Line-of-Sight to yourself, and having Line-of-Sight is simply not required to be able to see things that are within your own location. The other rules for sight will cover those edge cases just fine.
What if you have a spell that says. "Each creature in a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on that point makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, they are frightened for the duration."
Would the creatures be afraid of the point?
Origin point and source are not the same. Your statement is equivalent to stating "when the wizard casts fireball and hits me, I wasn't damaged by the wizard, I was damaged by the point in space where he centered the fireball".
So, to address whether Ranger is being hideously shortchanged by the effect- no they aren’t. Both of the secondary options are designed to be situational, and I’m not sure where this idea that subclass is specced for up close work comes from. The only thing that slightly leans towards that is the extra 10ft of movement on the first turn, which is also good for a ranged build that wants to reach cover or kite back away from the front line. Also keep in mind that the subclass already gets a point blank fear option with the Fear spell two levels earlier, so it makes more sense for the feature to be built for hitting targets more than 30 ft out.
adding to that The_Ace_of_Rogues, they put a "fear" feature in a subclass based on "not being seen", whitout any clause that if you go invisible ior igf they cant see you it keep the condition on, and you can go invisible after making them fear your with any of your features, like walking into the shadows for darkvision creatures, their fear become useless to you and your party since they cant see you anymore