I have seen this come up a few times now. A change to the ranger.

[Throne12]

One thing that's been bugging me is the ranger's Natural Explore ability. What I'm talking about is
.Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
.Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.

Now my problem with them is most games they are crappy ribbon abilities. But when you are playing a survival game they just make the game unplayable because they are two good.

So I was thinking of changing them to this
You are so Adept at Traversing terrains you make it easier for your other party members allowing your group to go further everyday. Your group moves 15 miles in a day instead of 10.

The next you gain Expertise in survival.

With these changes the ranger is still rolling survival to make sure y'all are getting to where y'all need to be. But has a low chance of getting all lost. (Because it a game about rolling dice.) For the Difficult terrain it lets the DM bring back in Environmental challenges. But it still gives the ranger something instead of just taking it away.


So what ddo y'all think?

[CircleOfTheRock]

One thing that's been bugging me is the ranger's Natural Explore ability. What I'm talking about is
.Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
.Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.

Now my problem with them is most games they are crappy ribbon abilities. But when you are playing a survival game they just make the game unplayable because they are two good.

So I was thinking of changing them to this
You are so Adept at Traversing terrains you make it easier for your other party members allowing your group to go further everyday. Your group moves 15 miles in a day instead of 10.

The next you gain Expertise in survival.

With these changes the ranger is still rolling survival to make sure y'all are getting to where y'all need to be. But has a low chance of getting all lost. (Because it a game about rolling dice.) For the Difficult terrain it lets the DM bring back in Environmental challenges. But it still gives the ranger something instead of just taking it away.


So what ddo y'all think?
Well, I think the idea of Natural Explorer is that the party spends about (note the about, and note it well :smallbiggrin:) a third of their time in urban places, a third of their time in dungeons of sorts, and a third of their time in the wilderness - and Natural Explorer means that during this third of the time, the ranger absolutely rocks... But not for the rest.

Also, we’re talking about the Revised Ranger, right? Because the PHB’s Ranger only gets one terrain they benefit in.

[Easy_Lee]

To your point OP, the revised ranger has a few abilities that can be inconvenient for the DM. The group can't be lost - what does that mean? If it means that the DM has to tell you where you are and which direction to go to your next destination, that's a bit game-breaking. I don't mean game-breaking in that it's stronger than what other classes do, but game-breaking in that it unravels one tool a DM might want to use.

By the exact same token, the Revised Ranger's Primeval Awareness allows him to determine the exact number, direction, and location of his favored enemies within five miles. Not only is that inconvenient for the improvising DM who may not even know the answer, it can also ruin ambushes with minimal input from the players.

I don't like these features because they don't require the players to be clever. Players should be rewarded for being clever. When the characters have abilities that force the DM to give them more information about the world without any investment or creativity on the part of the players, that's no fun for the DM.

[Throne12]

Well, I think the idea of Natural Explorer is that the party spends about (note the about, and note it well :smallbiggrin:) a third of their time in urban places, a third of their time in dungeons of sorts, and a third of their time in the wilderness - and Natural Explorer means that during this third of the time, the ranger absolutely rocks... But not for the rest.

Also, we’re talking about the Revised Ranger, right? Because the PHB’s Ranger only gets one terrain they benefit in.


I all ready said that. I quote in most games they are crappy ribbon abilities. But in survival, hex crawls, sand box. Style games they take away from the play of those games. We wanted are DM to run Tome of annihilation. The hole Trekking through the jungle was pointless because we had a ranger.

[Serafina]

"Can't get lost" is probably best handled like this:
If you know where your destination is, and you know a route to it, you can follow that route without making mistakes.
So if you don't know a clear destination, it doesn't help. If you know you want to go to a place, but don't know how to get there, it doesn't help.
But if you know both of those things, you won't accidentally take a wrong turn. You won't wander a few degrees too far east and thus miss your destination entirely.
Magical means still work - so you can still get lost in mystical fog, an ever-shifting magical forest can throw you off course, and if the true tower your are seeking is invisible while there is an illusory copy due west, you'll likely be fooled by that.

Or in other words, the feature shouldn't magically divine information about your destination, or the route there - it just ensures you can make perfect use of that information.


As for "difficult terrain doesn't slow you down" - that is only a crappy ribbon ability if the GM doesn't make use of difficult terrain.
Sure, a clear open road with no obstacles or heavy traffic isn't difficult terrain. How many of those are there?
A dirt road or path can easily be muddy, or ripped up, or have loats of debris strewn across it. Even heavy traffic on a normal road can easily count as difficult terrain for travel purposes.
And of course, travel through forest, marshes, desert, and so on should count as difficult terrain too.

Obviously, this only matters if there's some time pressure, but that should be the case often enough.


And while the feature mentions "wildnerness", you can easily apply this to urban terrain too if your game takes place there often.
Not getting lost is great in a city. Being able to move faster through busy city strees is great too.

[HidesHisEyes]

One thing that's been bugging me is the ranger's Natural Explore ability. What I'm talking about is
.Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
.Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.

Now my problem with them is most games they are crappy ribbon abilities. But when you are playing a survival game they just make the game unplayable because they are two good.

So I was thinking of changing them to this
You are so Adept at Traversing terrains you make it easier for your other party members allowing your group to go further everyday. Your group moves 15 miles in a day instead of 10.

The next you gain Expertise in survival.

With these changes the ranger is still rolling survival to make sure y'all are getting to where y'all need to be. But has a low chance of getting all lost. (Because it a game about rolling dice.) For the Difficult terrain it lets the DM bring back in Environmental challenges. But it still gives the ranger something instead of just taking it away.


So what ddo y'all think?

Yep, absolutely. It’s a ridiculous feature because if a player decides to play a ranger, that sends the message that they WANT navigation, travel, Wilderness survival to be an aspect of the game. But the feature is so good it removes that aspect from the game entirely, and the DM is forced to handwave it (if they weren’t doing so already). It’s so good that it makes itself redundant. The Outlander background feature is similar.

But I think the solution is going to depend on how you handle Wilderness travel in the first place. The real problem is that the rules don’t give you a structure for Wilderness travel the way they do for combat, so all of the rules, mechanics and class features related to it are meaningless until you come up with a structure of your own. It’s as if the combat rules told you about attack rolls and armour class but not about turns, rounds and types of action.

Once you have a Wilderness travel system that you think will work for your game you can figure out how Natural Explorer and Outlander break or bend (not obliterate) the rules of that system.

[Mortis_Elrod]

i kinda agree with everyone here, and specifically like Serafina's suggestion.

I like that the ranger can't get lost though, makes sense to me. But lost implies destination in mind with a specific route as well.

Expertise with survival really should have come in the rangers package to begin with. Maybe even expertise in a tool as well.

If the Ranger was alone I'd let him not get lost, but i'd say in a group its a bit more distracting and harder to keep track of where you are (if i had to justify why i'm making the ranger roll at all).

[Throne12]

So should favour terrain changed back to you are really good aka can't get lost in your fav terrain. Then a added bonus to help with other terrains. So that a ranger is king in his fav terrain. But still slightly better then others in diffrenet bio's.

[Mortis_Elrod]

So should favour terrain changed back to you are really good aka can't get lost in your fav terrain. Then a added bonus to help with other terrains. So that a ranger is king in his fav terrain. But still slightly better then others in diffrenet bio's.

honestly i hate favored terrain. Ranger's should be good everywhere. But if it had to stay then yeah i would do it like that.

OR if favored terrain HAS to be a thing make it something i can change on a short or long rest. Make my favored terrain a terrain i've spent a long rest in. Then the ranger can actually be good everywhere.

[Specter]

If you're worried about this puny terrain stuff, wait until you see high-level Wizards and Bards!

Seriously, don't worry about it. If the player wants to be a ranger, they want to be the best at this kind of stuff. If your player are getting too comfortable in the wild, increase the number of monsters around them. Make them show up during the party's rest to interrupt it. Give them an easy but long way and a short, dangerous one. Make food scarce or tainted, so they need to ration out what they already have and not linger.

Basically, the players should never feel comfortable in the wild. The ranger is just there to give them a small comfort boost.

[Armored Walrus]

I'm running a PbP game based on survival and gritty resource management. I changed the revised ranger to the following:

The first two bullets of the Ranger's Natural Explorer feature changes in the follow ways:
* When guiding your group through difficult terrain, make a Wisdom (Survival) check against the navigation DC of the terrain type. On a success, you are able to find a path through the land that doesn't slow your group's travel.
* You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks made to navigate for your group.
The other bullet points remain unchanged.

But I'm also using a bunch of homebrewed wilderness travel rules cribbed from thealexandrian.net since the UA about travel wasn't out when I pitched that game. I just had one character multiclass into Ranger, so in about six months (at a PbP pace) I should be able to check back here and tell you how it worked ;)

Edit: I also changed the Outlander feature:
The second sentence changes to - In addition, you have advantage when making a Wisdom (Survival) check to forage for food or water, and you find twice as much food and water as you normally would.

Because I thought that automatic 5 rations a day would make it far too easy to just stay out in the wilderness at all times and never need to go back to town.

[Throne12]

I'm running a PbP game based on survival and gritty resource management. I changed the revised ranger to the following:

The first two bullets of the Ranger's Natural Explorer feature changes in the follow ways:
* When guiding your group through difficult terrain, make a Wisdom (Survival) check against the navigation DC of the terrain type. On a success, you are able to find a path through the land that doesn't slow your group's travel.
* You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks made to navigate for your group.
The other bullet points remain unchanged.

But I'm also using a bunch of homebrewed wilderness travel rules cribbed from thealexandrian.net since the UA about travel wasn't out when I pitched that game. I just had one character multiclass into Ranger, so in about six months (at a PbP pace) I should be able to check back here and tell you how it worked ;)

Edit: I also changed the Outlander feature:
The second sentence changes to - In addition, you have advantage when making a Wisdom (Survival) check to forage for food or water, and you find twice as much food and water as you normally would.

Because I thought that automatic 5 rations a day would make it far too easy to just stay out in the wilderness at all times and never need to go back to town.

Can you throw a pdf of the rules your using I just started a survival game.

[ImproperJustice]

In all fairness:

A Ranger should be spoiling ambushes. It’s their job.

It’s like a Gm getting upset that because a player chose to be a Rogue, the party keeps bypassing traps and locked doors.....

[Easy_Lee]

In all fairness:

A Ranger should be spoiling ambushes. It’s their job.

It’s like a Gm getting upset that because a player chose to be a Rogue, the party keeps bypassing traps and locked doors.....

Like I said, there's a little more to it than that with the revised ranger. A Scout rogue would roll survival to find a trail and would use expertise in Stealth to investigate a room ahead of time. The revised ranger cannot be lost (unclear what this means) and can automatically detect all of his Favored enemies, including number and location, in a five mile radius.

The former requires some rolling and can potentially fail or lead to complications. The latter just happens and can be inconvenient for the GM who may not even know the information he needs to provide (such as exactly how many giants are within five miles of the players).

[Armored Walrus]

Can you throw a pdf of the rules your using I just started a survival game.

Those are it. Or are you talking about the wilderness travel rules? Those are here (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl).

[HidesHisEyes]

Can you throw a pdf of the rules your using I just started a survival game.

The Alexandrian is a great site, but I’ve found a point map much better than a hex map, for the kind of game I run at least. I’d recommend checking out this too and seeing which one sounds more suited to your game:
http://hillcantons.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/crawling-without-hexes-pointcrawl.html?m=1

Hex maps give you complete geographical accuracy if that’s what you’re after. The point map focuses just on the important locations and the routes between them. This suits my purposes because in the game I run the PCs have never decided to start walking in a random direction and see what they find. They always have a destination in mind. Navigation checks are necessary to reach a destination the first time (similar to Serafina’s suggestion).


In all fairness:

A Ranger should be spoiling ambushes. It’s their job.

It’s like a Gm getting upset that because a player chose to be a Rogue, the party keeps bypassing traps and locked doors.....

No, it’s like if the rogue automatically bypassed all the locks and traps without needing to make any checks or describe their actions. It’s like if the fighter had a feature called “great at fighting” that makes them automatically win every fight. That would be absurd because the rules for combat (and even locks and traps) are developed to a usable level. The rules for wilderness travel are an afterthought.

[Specter]

No, it’s like if the rogue automatically bypassed all the locks and traps without needing to make any checks or describe their actions. It’s like if the fighter had a feature called “great at fighting” that makes them automatically win every fight. That would be absurd because the rules for combat (and even locks and traps) are developed to a usable level. The rules for wilderness travel are an afterthought.

You talk as if the two benefits made wilderness travel and survival totally moot. They don't.

- Difficult terrain doesn't slow your group's travel
The party gets to save time, but they don't get to save HP or food or resources while going through these places. If your party has horses, it's easy enough to create terrain where they don't fit, and so the players have to choose between being slower or risking wounding the horses. If there are monsters and hazards in the wild, this benefit won't help the ranger and the party once combat starts. If checks need to be made for exhaustion and such, you can make those checks HARDER if they're going faster (try to sprint through the Saharan Desert and you won't live long, for instance).

- Your group can't become lost except by magical means
The fact that you always know where you should go doesn't mean you can do it fast, or that you can avoid the challenges over there. If I'm hiring a guide to take me into the woods, that's the LEAST I want him to know; the rest we can figure out later. And if you need your players to get lost by narrative reasons, there's always magic to do that.

So yeah, these abilities don't "win" exploration encounters immediately, unless you're a lazy DM (and most DMs I know do get lazy on the wild).

[HidesHisEyes]

Fair enough. As I said I think the real underlying problem is that the wilderness travel rules don’t provide any kind of structure, so it’s hard to tell what features like this are going to mean in practice. As it happens I have designed a structure for travel in my games after reading lots of blogs and so on and trying it various ways, and I couldn’t find a structure that did what I wanted it to do without Natural Explorer rendering it rather pointless. That’s been my experience, hence why I agree with the OP here.

[KorvinStarmast]

Well, I think the idea of Natural Explorer is that the party spends about (note the about, and note it well :smallbiggrin:) a third of their time in urban places, a third of their time in dungeons of sorts, and a third of their time in the wilderness - and Natural Explorer means that during this third of the time, the ranger absolutely rocks... But not for the rest. And only in favored terrain.

honestly i hate favored terrain. Ranger's should be good everywhere. But that would be a bit unbalanaced, see also Circle of the Land Druids. The design theme is similar.

Seriously, don't worry about it. Indeed. Why not have a place for the Ranger to shine?


Basically, the players should never feel comfortable in the wild. The ranger is just there to give them a small comfort boost. More than a comfort boost.

OP: suggest you broaden the field of view on your camera. Your complaint is far too narrow, and FWIW in a campaign which has a lot of outdoors exploring the ranger should be rocking. In a dungeon crawl, the ranger won't rock as much.

[Mortis_Elrod]

But that would be a bit unbalanaced, see also Circle of the Land Druids.

Ranger being able to use features that doesn't tie it down to a specific environment is unbalanced? How? Also what does land druid have to do with this?


Ranger should be the go to survival class that can adapt to any environment. Having features that only work in a specific type of terrain is ridiculous to me, since it restricts the ranger to one type of terrain to act like a ranger.
My suggestion for favored terrain makes sense with this in mind and works in any campaign setting.


Also why would the ranger being good everywhere be unbalanced when every other class is good everywhere?

[Throne12]

And only in favored terrain.
But that would be a bit unbalanaced, see also Circle of the Land Druids. The design theme is similar.
Indeed. Why not have a place for the Ranger to shine?

More than a comfort boost.

OP: suggest you broaden the field of view on your camera. Your complaint is far too narrow, and FWIW in a campaign which has a lot of outdoors exploring the ranger should be rocking. In a dungeon crawl, the ranger won't rock as much.

The Ranger isn't rocking cause he ain't rolling. It called rock n roll. You need to be rolling dice to be rocking the game. The abilities are telling the DM hey buddy don't ask the ranger to that survival check because he can't get lose. Hey DM it me your friend again. So I know you had a terrain skill challage deal with them moving through 7ft of snow and a blizzard. But my ranger buddy can't be slowed down by Difficult terrain sooo what now. Oh that was a cool blizzard tho.

Also ranger's are just as good in urban areas then in wilderness. And ranger's are on the same playing field then everyone else in a dungeon.