Admittedly, a pen-and-paper sheet can be whatever the figgety Newton you want it to be, and any DM can say "yeah no lol" to the dread one-level ranger dip if they like. But us digital-tool folks are stuck with what the books say, and I'd caution against expecting class features to get moved around.
I think this just highlights the need for better homebrew tools, and the ability to create fully custom classes. I would be more than happy to set up "my" version of the ranger I outlined above as a custom class for myself and my players to use on here, if I only had the means to do it.
And yeah, as DM you can change things around however you want in your campaign, but this UA does not account for switching class features around, only for providing alternatives and a couple additions to certain features for those who feel that certain existing features are lackluster.
Ok, well, I did give feedback on how to do it without moving features around. Favored Foe replaces Primeval Awareness and Deft Explorer replaces Favored Enemy, leaving Natural Explorer as-is. You lose the Primeval Awareness from the UA, but honestly it's not necessary for most of the subclasses and it was overtuned anyway. We do need a bit of an update to the Beastmaster and Hunter subclasses to bring them in line with the other Ranger Archetypes, but that is outside the scope of this UA it seems.
Remove the choice aspect, and make it Level 1 : Canny, Level 6: Roving, Level 10: Tireless.
That gets rid of the problem of Tireless being OP at low levels and the thematic issue of gaining Expertise at a later level meaning you didn't take a skill you might've wanted sooner.
Favored Foe needs to be tuned a bit for multi classing. Which is sad because for a single class character it's perfect. But then, is it worse than a Hexblade dip? A 2 level fighter dip?
Again, I think the same basic thing can be done with Favored Foe, seeing as Favored Enemy (which it replaces) also receives improvements (if they can be called that, lol) at higher levels. Just nerf it for first level, then add the rest as the class progresses.
The Favored Foe feature is quite welcome in my books, however I would have it grow stronger overtime so that you can cast Hunter's Mark ignoring the concentration aspect starting at level 6 akin to choosing a second Favored enemy. At least that would be my solve for the multiclassing issue.
This sounds like a pretty good way to make it less of a one level dip powerhouse ability. I mean I look at this and think hell yeah best one level dip for a monk EVER!!!Fear the flurry, fear it.
But getting a couple free uses early on is a decent balance, dropping the concentration as they advance in their levels seems like an almost anime level of, I use this so often I don't have to think about it anymore. Which makes sense to me (might still give another 1 or 2 uses as sixth level). Then for the later one another couple of uses so you almost always have it running in a given fight. I hope they go with some version of this.
Otherwise I could see them dropping concentration requirement at first level, then adding free uses of it at the higher levels instead. This would still make it quite potent as a level one dip, and make it less impactful to spell slots as they grow in levels.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Okay, a lot of criticism going on. I'm just going to say, I really love the improvements! one of the big things preventing me from using the Ranger was how limited all of the benefits were. If you weren't in one of your favored terrains, that feature is useless. If you aren't fighting or tracking your favored enemies, that feature is useless. If you want to use one of your concentration based spells, but also want to keep up damage with hunter's mark you can't so it's useless.
Is it a really good pick for a 1 or 2 level dip. yes. Absolutely. So are fighter, warlock, and Paladin. Do we need to nerf those? It's okay for it to be good. So some people will munchkin a dip into ranger. Okay. that's their table. if you're the DM, you get to pick which of these features you use, and if a character can multiclass.
Is it a really good pick for a 1 or 2 level dip. yes. Absolutely. So are fighter, warlock, and Paladin. Do we need to nerf those? It's okay for it to be good. So some people will munchkin a dip into ranger. Okay. that's their table. if you're the DM, you get to pick which of these features you use, and if a character can multiclass.
It sounded like they had plans to roll out a whole new tool to help with this UA and ones in the future that may be similar in scope, so that later iterations can come out quickly and smoothly.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
"Also, just b/c someone can train to be an Olympic level swimmer usually doesn't also make them the best at scaling Mt. Everest. Unless you can give me a good thematic reason for why both Swimming and Climbing should get boosted to full movement speed, the Roving as currently written just sounds like overcompensation for years of neglect to the class."
The quote didn't work, but in response, the "thematic" reason is that Natural Explorer is universally considered stupid because you get 1-3 out of 9 (counting Urban) terrains and if you pick one your group doesn't spend much time in, it is 100% useless. No other class has a feature, ribbon or not, that makes you pick something that you may NEVER use. So they give you both, it hardly breaks anything.
1) Giving the Ranger big boosts to both climb and swim speed at the same time doesn't fit any particular theme that already exists in fiction or real life. Like I said before, this should be about rebalancing Ranger in the context of other classes and races, not tilting it too far into the power direction. See Overcompensation.
People should be given incentives to take Ranger past level 11. If everything is frontloaded right from Tier 1, then most people will still play Ranger only to level 5, then dash off to multi-class with Rogue/Fighter/Monk/Druid. Balancing out a class like the Ranger should partially be about giving us, the players, more reasons to want to play that class to Tier 3 or Tier 4.
1) Giving the Ranger big boosts to both climb and swim speed at the same time doesn't fit any particular theme that already exists in fiction or real life. Like I said before, this should be about rebalancing Ranger in the context of other classes and races, not tilting it too far into the power direction. See Overcompensation.
People should be given incentives to take Ranger past level 11. If everything is frontloaded right from Tier 1, then most people will still play Ranger only to level 5, then dash off to multi-class with Rogue/Fighter/Monk/Druid. Balancing out a class like the Ranger should partially be about giving us, the players, more reasons to want to play that class to Tier 3 or Tier 4.
1) It may not fit a theme, but it is satisfying the big problem with the phb, making someone make a choice that could be worthless. Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain are weird features in the phb version because you either have to metagame, or end up making a choice that you may NEVER use and ends up being useless. Yeah, you could make a ranger take only swimming or climbing and the other later and all you have done is recreate the problem of favored terrain. I pick swimming speed, oh look, we are spending months in the mountains and my choice was useless, yay!
Screw that, give them both. Now you aren't locked into a choice that you never use, and honestly, arguing that it makes a Ranger dip too appealing is a bogus argument. I know plenty of people who never multi-class and this would not change that attitude. You have two types of players, those who do MC and those who don't. This isn't going to make those who don't change anything, and those who do, it also doesn't change anything. To take a level of Ranger you need STR/DEX and WIS 13. If a player has that and wants to dip Ranger, go for it. It is no different than dipping Cleric to get Guidance, Spare the Dying, Faerie Fire, Guiding Bolt, etc, so 1 level gets you something good, great. and even if they have a 13 WIS, they get 1 Hunter's Mark per long rest, woopie!
It is complaints like this that have kept Wizards from doing ANYTHING to fix the Ranger, the PHB Ranger is hands down broken and everyone knows it, you don't feel like a ranger at all. Hunter is ok at best and Beast Master is useless. They did a Revised Ranger that went overboard in areas and not far enough in others, I think the Variant Features basically fixes everything except adding expanded spell list to the base classes which could be an easy errata. I and many others have written up list to give them,
Is concentration free Hunter's Mark great, sure is, is it going to destroy the game, hell no. Clerics get 1 attack, so 1d6 extra damage is nothing to a Cleric who can throw up Spirit Guardians. The class that would benefit the most is the monk, and if a monk wants to delay all the cool stuff they get to be able to do 1d6 extra per hit, go for it. Good luck finding a lot of Fighters who have given Wis more than 12.
People always freak out over how if you combine x feature with y you get super powers so X shouldn't exist. Well guess what, if we applied that rule then we need to get rid of Action Surge, Invocations, Smite, and a dozen other things because a smart player will always find ways to combine features. So what? Most didps are going to be 2-3 level, so this one is a little more appealing with 1, ok, great more people will give the ranger more than 10 seconds of consideration.
Yeah, I agree that it is really hard to be motivated to take a Ranger past 11, you know what else is really hard? Playing any character past 11, something like 90% of games are played with characters leveled between 5-10. Most published content takes you to about 14 max, and that takes about a year or more to hit. Realistically, unless you start with a high level, or do a one shot, you probably are not playing above 11 anyway so your argument becomes theoretical, or in other terms - meaningless.
I know this turned into a rant, but I am passionate about this and it annoys me that I like the concept of a Ranger, but in order to make one that doesn't suck I need to play a ranger/rogue or a ranger/fighter or a ranger/bard or ranger/artificer, any of which will be a better ranger than a pure ranger. Even after you implement theses features, I will still MC my ranger in all probability because I love MC and that isn't a knock on the Ranger with variant, it is a reflection that outside of spell casters, essentially every other class is front loaded because as stated, no one actually plays higher levels.
I don't know why you're trying to argue with me a bunch of points I never made.
If you read my earlier posts, I do actually like most of the variant features rolled out. And anybody who has seen my record of posts knows that I am quick to point out weaknesses of the base Ranger class.
Maybe you should take some deep breaths and come back to this later.
I don't know why you're trying to argue with me a bunch of points I never made.
If you read my earlier posts, I do actually like most of the variant features rolled out. And anybody who has seen my record of posts knows that I am quick to point out weaknesses of the base Ranger class.
Maybe you should take some deep breaths and come back to this later.
I know you didn't, it started with a response to just the part about the climbing/swimming and it got away from me. Most of it was not directed at you specifically, more so just a general response to a lot of the negative feedback.
I am hoping that many of the features (not just ranger) in the Variant show up in what will be a big player book that is clearly in development. They have soo many unpublished UA subclasses and features that they must be prepping one.
Looking at this again, I support MonkeyDave's suggestion on spacing out the Deft Explorer enhancements and I would support Mezzurah's suggestion about concentration-free Hunter's Mark, though I would probably want that put in at level 11 or so: give folks a real incentive to take Ranger to Tier 3 of play rather than just take 5 or 6 levels and multi-class immediately to Rogue/Fighter/Monk.
I don't know why you're trying to argue with me a bunch of points I never made.
If you read my earlier posts, I do actually like most of the variant features rolled out. And anybody who has seen my record of posts knows that I am quick to point out weaknesses of the base Ranger class.
Maybe you should take some deep breaths and come back to this later.
I mean.... the point you did make is that, to you, it didn't make sense for someone living largely alone, out in the wilds with only themselves to depend on, would not become rather skilled at both climbing and swimming at the same time.... And then something about balancing against other classes that I don't really understand how it's connected to your objection.
Climbing and swimming are both niche abilities that are either critical or irrelevant. Is it really that devastating to class balance to be granted both by the same feature?
My point is to consider things so that they A) are interesting to players, B) make sense thematically, C) balance out the Ranger's abilities with those of its next nearest comparable class, the Paladin (because the Paladin is also a Fighter-lite half-caster) without taking away the impact of player choices in regards to their class or race.
It makes no sense that a few levels in Ranger turns a dwarf into super Olympiad who can both swim as fast as a Triton and climb as fast as a Tabaxi all at a pretty low level. Now, if that same Dwarf got the swim benefit at level 3 and the second benefit at level 6, I would have no problem with that because that difference in levels represents time and effort put in to improve her/himself during that time period.
Deft explorer and Favored foe make the ranger class ten times better to play and make the ranger feel like they can travel anywhere just as the other classes have their domains. is there a way to use these features on dnd beyond?
Not yet. They're working on the code to allow optional features, but realistically it could be another couple of months before it's even close to ready.
Re: favored terrain .... it's like favored enemy... it makes sense in a story, but in D&D the game, it is extremely swingy. Either you can be flavorful, and take something interesting that may never come up, or you can take the thing you think will come up the most, in which case, you're not really doing it for flavor, you're doing it to min-max.
I think it's much more flavorful and useful in-game to have the ranger be the jack-of-all-terrains... the rogue doesn't have to pick his favored city or dungeons, he's just good at all city/dungeon-type stuff. Same with the ranger.
If you wanted a flavor-adder, give the ranger an option to take a favored terrain and make it like the PHB version..... but don't actually count it as anything other than fluff or a very minor ability.
I strongly disagree with your interpretation. A forest ranger is not going to be naturally good at navigating the arctic tundra, and a coastal ranger would be out of his element in the desert. It makes sense for rogues that they would be able to recognize advantageous places to put traps, like natural chokepoints, and know the kinds of things to look for (raised stones, subtle seams, bolt-sized holes, tripwires, etc.) regardless of the dungeon locale. I would imagine that if the DM determined it was a trap the Rogue would be wholely unfamiliar with, they'd adjust the DC appropriately.
Also, yes, it can be hit-or-miss depending on the terrain you end up adventuring in, but the same can be said for other features that are just as situational. How often does Thieves' Cant or Druidic come up in most games? Ask Warlocks and Wizards about how often they get to take short rests and get all their stuff back in the middle of dungeons. Heck, the features from backgrounds end up getting ignored most of the time too. The feature doesn't need to be universally applicable to be useful, and in my experience it's a lot more fun to be able to contribute to the group and say "So, if we're traveling through the forest then I can lead us and we won't lose time. I can also forage for food so we don't need to use up rations" vs just stating once at the beginning of the game "Ok, so we don't need rations because I can always forage for us, and we will never get lost while traveling" and that just being the case for the rest of the game.
Also, if you look at my proposed design, it essentially adds Natural Explorer back in on top of all of the UA class variant stuff, so it's a bonus feature anyway and you're not going to lose anything.
With that logic why should a wizard who has trained their entire life in Illusion magic just learn any necromancy spell on the wizard list when they level up? they have never learned anything about necromancy magic ever but not they can raise dead whenever they want.
A lot of little things don't really make any sense for certain characters but that's why a player who truly wants to flavor their character in a certain way, has to limit the things that they can do or they features they take to strategically make them bad at certain things for flavor. This does not make Natural Explorer a good feature, it is objectively the worst feature in the entire PHB. You can go for an entire campaign without it ever coming into use.
As for Druidic and Thieves Cant, yes they are more specifically for flavor and are significantly more impactful when you are playing with other PCs who also have these features, but they are also not supposed to be the cornerstone features of these classes like Natural Explorer is for the ranger. And of you AREN'T taking short rests whenever you can especially as a Warlock then you shouldn't be playing that class.
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I think this just highlights the need for better homebrew tools, and the ability to create fully custom classes. I would be more than happy to set up "my" version of the ranger I outlined above as a custom class for myself and my players to use on here, if I only had the means to do it.
Ok, well, I did give feedback on how to do it without moving features around. Favored Foe replaces Primeval Awareness and Deft Explorer replaces Favored Enemy, leaving Natural Explorer as-is. You lose the Primeval Awareness from the UA, but honestly it's not necessary for most of the subclasses and it was overtuned anyway. We do need a bit of an update to the Beastmaster and Hunter subclasses to bring them in line with the other Ranger Archetypes, but that is outside the scope of this UA it seems.
My one suggestion is for Deft Explorer:
Remove the choice aspect, and make it Level 1 : Canny, Level 6: Roving, Level 10: Tireless.
That gets rid of the problem of Tireless being OP at low levels and the thematic issue of gaining Expertise at a later level meaning you didn't take a skill you might've wanted sooner.
Favored Foe needs to be tuned a bit for multi classing. Which is sad because for a single class character it's perfect. But then, is it worse than a Hexblade dip? A 2 level fighter dip?
Again, I think the same basic thing can be done with Favored Foe, seeing as Favored Enemy (which it replaces) also receives improvements (if they can be called that, lol) at higher levels. Just nerf it for first level, then add the rest as the class progresses.
This sounds like a pretty good way to make it less of a one level dip powerhouse ability. I mean I look at this and think hell yeah best one level dip for a monk EVER!!!Fear the flurry, fear it.
But getting a couple free uses early on is a decent balance, dropping the concentration as they advance in their levels seems like an almost anime level of, I use this so often I don't have to think about it anymore. Which makes sense to me (might still give another 1 or 2 uses as sixth level). Then for the later one another couple of uses so you almost always have it running in a given fight. I hope they go with some version of this.
Otherwise I could see them dropping concentration requirement at first level, then adding free uses of it at the higher levels instead. This would still make it quite potent as a level one dip, and make it less impactful to spell slots as they grow in levels.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Okay, a lot of criticism going on. I'm just going to say, I really love the improvements! one of the big things preventing me from using the Ranger was how limited all of the benefits were. If you weren't in one of your favored terrains, that feature is useless. If you aren't fighting or tracking your favored enemies, that feature is useless. If you want to use one of your concentration based spells, but also want to keep up damage with hunter's mark you can't so it's useless.
Is it a really good pick for a 1 or 2 level dip. yes. Absolutely. So are fighter, warlock, and Paladin. Do we need to nerf those? It's okay for it to be good. So some people will munchkin a dip into ranger. Okay. that's their table. if you're the DM, you get to pick which of these features you use, and if a character can multiclass.
A fine perspective indeed.
These were never answered to D&D Beyond correct? I thought they said it would take a month or so at some point and its been over 2 now. Just Checking.
They did not give any timeline, just said it would take time.
It sounded like they had plans to roll out a whole new tool to help with this UA and ones in the future that may be similar in scope, so that later iterations can come out quickly and smoothly.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
"Also, just b/c someone can train to be an Olympic level swimmer usually doesn't also make them the best at scaling Mt. Everest. Unless you can give me a good thematic reason for why both Swimming and Climbing should get boosted to full movement speed, the Roving as currently written just sounds like overcompensation for years of neglect to the class."
The quote didn't work, but in response, the "thematic" reason is that Natural Explorer is universally considered stupid because you get 1-3 out of 9 (counting Urban) terrains and if you pick one your group doesn't spend much time in, it is 100% useless. No other class has a feature, ribbon or not, that makes you pick something that you may NEVER use. So they give you both, it hardly breaks anything.
1) Giving the Ranger big boosts to both climb and swim speed at the same time doesn't fit any particular theme that already exists in fiction or real life. Like I said before, this should be about rebalancing Ranger in the context of other classes and races, not tilting it too far into the power direction. See Overcompensation.
People should be given incentives to take Ranger past level 11. If everything is frontloaded right from Tier 1, then most people will still play Ranger only to level 5, then dash off to multi-class with Rogue/Fighter/Monk/Druid. Balancing out a class like the Ranger should partially be about giving us, the players, more reasons to want to play that class to Tier 3 or Tier 4.
1) It may not fit a theme, but it is satisfying the big problem with the phb, making someone make a choice that could be worthless. Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain are weird features in the phb version because you either have to metagame, or end up making a choice that you may NEVER use and ends up being useless. Yeah, you could make a ranger take only swimming or climbing and the other later and all you have done is recreate the problem of favored terrain. I pick swimming speed, oh look, we are spending months in the mountains and my choice was useless, yay!
Screw that, give them both. Now you aren't locked into a choice that you never use, and honestly, arguing that it makes a Ranger dip too appealing is a bogus argument. I know plenty of people who never multi-class and this would not change that attitude. You have two types of players, those who do MC and those who don't. This isn't going to make those who don't change anything, and those who do, it also doesn't change anything. To take a level of Ranger you need STR/DEX and WIS 13. If a player has that and wants to dip Ranger, go for it. It is no different than dipping Cleric to get Guidance, Spare the Dying, Faerie Fire, Guiding Bolt, etc, so 1 level gets you something good, great. and even if they have a 13 WIS, they get 1 Hunter's Mark per long rest, woopie!
It is complaints like this that have kept Wizards from doing ANYTHING to fix the Ranger, the PHB Ranger is hands down broken and everyone knows it, you don't feel like a ranger at all. Hunter is ok at best and Beast Master is useless. They did a Revised Ranger that went overboard in areas and not far enough in others, I think the Variant Features basically fixes everything except adding expanded spell list to the base classes which could be an easy errata. I and many others have written up list to give them,
Is concentration free Hunter's Mark great, sure is, is it going to destroy the game, hell no. Clerics get 1 attack, so 1d6 extra damage is nothing to a Cleric who can throw up Spirit Guardians. The class that would benefit the most is the monk, and if a monk wants to delay all the cool stuff they get to be able to do 1d6 extra per hit, go for it. Good luck finding a lot of Fighters who have given Wis more than 12.
People always freak out over how if you combine x feature with y you get super powers so X shouldn't exist. Well guess what, if we applied that rule then we need to get rid of Action Surge, Invocations, Smite, and a dozen other things because a smart player will always find ways to combine features. So what? Most didps are going to be 2-3 level, so this one is a little more appealing with 1, ok, great more people will give the ranger more than 10 seconds of consideration.
Yeah, I agree that it is really hard to be motivated to take a Ranger past 11, you know what else is really hard? Playing any character past 11, something like 90% of games are played with characters leveled between 5-10. Most published content takes you to about 14 max, and that takes about a year or more to hit. Realistically, unless you start with a high level, or do a one shot, you probably are not playing above 11 anyway so your argument becomes theoretical, or in other terms - meaningless.
I know this turned into a rant, but I am passionate about this and it annoys me that I like the concept of a Ranger, but in order to make one that doesn't suck I need to play a ranger/rogue or a ranger/fighter or a ranger/bard or ranger/artificer, any of which will be a better ranger than a pure ranger. Even after you implement theses features, I will still MC my ranger in all probability because I love MC and that isn't a knock on the Ranger with variant, it is a reflection that outside of spell casters, essentially every other class is front loaded because as stated, no one actually plays higher levels.
I don't know why you're trying to argue with me a bunch of points I never made.
If you read my earlier posts, I do actually like most of the variant features rolled out. And anybody who has seen my record of posts knows that I am quick to point out weaknesses of the base Ranger class.
Maybe you should take some deep breaths and come back to this later.
I know you didn't, it started with a response to just the part about the climbing/swimming and it got away from me. Most of it was not directed at you specifically, more so just a general response to a lot of the negative feedback.
I am hoping that many of the features (not just ranger) in the Variant show up in what will be a big player book that is clearly in development. They have soo many unpublished UA subclasses and features that they must be prepping one.
Looking at this again, I support MonkeyDave's suggestion on spacing out the Deft Explorer enhancements and I would support Mezzurah's suggestion about concentration-free Hunter's Mark, though I would probably want that put in at level 11 or so: give folks a real incentive to take Ranger to Tier 3 of play rather than just take 5 or 6 levels and multi-class immediately to Rogue/Fighter/Monk.
I mean.... the point you did make is that, to you, it didn't make sense for someone living largely alone, out in the wilds with only themselves to depend on, would not become rather skilled at both climbing and swimming at the same time.... And then something about balancing against other classes that I don't really understand how it's connected to your objection.
Climbing and swimming are both niche abilities that are either critical or irrelevant. Is it really that devastating to class balance to be granted both by the same feature?
My point is to consider things so that they A) are interesting to players, B) make sense thematically, C) balance out the Ranger's abilities with those of its next nearest comparable class, the Paladin (because the Paladin is also a Fighter-lite half-caster) without taking away the impact of player choices in regards to their class or race.
It makes no sense that a few levels in Ranger turns a dwarf into super Olympiad who can both swim as fast as a Triton and climb as fast as a Tabaxi all at a pretty low level. Now, if that same Dwarf got the swim benefit at level 3 and the second benefit at level 6, I would have no problem with that because that difference in levels represents time and effort put in to improve her/himself during that time period.
Deft explorer and Favored foe make the ranger class ten times better to play and make the ranger feel like they can travel anywhere just as the other classes have their domains. is there a way to use these features on dnd beyond?
Not yet. They're working on the code to allow optional features, but realistically it could be another couple of months before it's even close to ready.
With that logic why should a wizard who has trained their entire life in Illusion magic just learn any necromancy spell on the wizard list when they level up? they have never learned anything about necromancy magic ever but not they can raise dead whenever they want.
A lot of little things don't really make any sense for certain characters but that's why a player who truly wants to flavor their character in a certain way, has to limit the things that they can do or they features they take to strategically make them bad at certain things for flavor. This does not make Natural Explorer a good feature, it is objectively the worst feature in the entire PHB. You can go for an entire campaign without it ever coming into use.
As for Druidic and Thieves Cant, yes they are more specifically for flavor and are significantly more impactful when you are playing with other PCs who also have these features, but they are also not supposed to be the cornerstone features of these classes like Natural Explorer is for the ranger. And of you AREN'T taking short rests whenever you can especially as a Warlock then you shouldn't be playing that class.