Is Natural Explorer terrible design?

[Yora]

Why do people want to play a ranger? I think the main reason would be that you want to play a character who is good at navigating the dangers and challenges of the wilderness.

When you take the ranger class and get Natural Explorer at first level, all the dangers and challenges of the wilderness instantly disappear from the game. Your party will never have to deal with being slowed down, you will never get lost, you will always have enough food, you will not get distracted.
In the PHB, it only applies to one kind of terrain at first level. If you play a desert campaign, you would take desert; in an arctic campaign you take arctic. Otherwise there is probably no reason not to pick forest. At 6th level you get a second terrain, which almost always should be mountains, because now you have covered all the challenging environments covered that you will probably encounter regularly.

The UA ranger improves this ability. With improves meaning that it applies to all terrains from first level. This feels like a fighter ability that lets you remove enemies from the game without rolling, or a cleric spell that makes the whole party immune to damage. What's the point?

Having a ranger in the group seems to be the best choice for groups that don't want to deal with the wilderness. In what situation would you want to play a ranger? The only reason I can think of is that you've always played rangers and would love to keep playing charactes like that. But I am like that, and I still don't want to play this ranger.

[Unoriginal]

It's been noted repeatedly, yes.

The feature works, make no mistake. It just doesn't *feel* right because you avoid the challenge rather than engaging with it. Which would be fine under the "don't roll for things that are guaranteed success" approach of 5e, but it makes people feel it's "don't roll for things that don't matter" instead.

Mike Mearls has been trying to come up with variants for this feature, and I liked what he had come up with last time he showed his work.

[CTurbo]

Yes.

In the phb, it's weak, but in the UA Revised, it's OP. I see it as hard to find the right balance. I'm also not familiar with any other iterations.


Primeval Awareness is a much worse feature IMO.

[Tanarii]

Why do people want to play a ranger? I think the main reason would be that you want to play a character who is good at navigating the dangers and challenges of the wilderness.

When you take the ranger class and get Natural Explorer at first level, all the dangers and challenges of the wilderness instantly disappear from the game. Your party will never have to deal with being slowed down, you will never get lost, you will always have enough food, you will not get distracted.Sounds like good at navigating the dangers and challenges of the wilderness to me.

Otoh, is that un-interesting?
No more so than hand-waving away encumbrance, ammunition tracking, wandering monsters, strict-time keeping, detecting traps/hidden things, or followers & strongholds.
Yes, it's uninteresting in many ways, but it's totally in keeping with the kind of D&D that modern D&D has become. More about heroism and less about niggly little details, and the challenge of overcoming them.

[mephnick]

Also remember that it actually lets the member of your party that's scouting/navigating actually use their Passive Perception. That seems like a pretty big boost.

PSA: If you don't have a Ranger in your party, various members of your group should not be allowed to use their PP while traveling, and should be surprised by encounters regularly.

[Unoriginal]

Sounds like good at navigating the dangers and challenges of the wilderness to me.

Otoh, is that un-interesting?
No more so than hand-waving away encumbrance, ammunition tracking, wandering monsters, strict-time keeping, detecting traps/hidden things, or followers & strongholds.
Yes, it's uninteresting in many ways, but it's totally in keeping with the kind of D&D that modern D&D has become. More about heroism and less about niggly little details, and the challenge of overcoming them.

Basically, yeah.

The issue is that many people feel like being able to bypass a challenge means not engaging the challenge, so the challenge may as well not exist. It's the classic "you went to school for 5 years when this work can be done in 5 mins?" "It can be done in 5 mins because I went to school for 5 years" perception problem.


I bet the people who complains about the Ranger's Natural Explorer never complain when the Wizard gets Teleportation, though.



Also remember that it actually lets the member of your party that's scouting/navigating actually use their Passive Perception. That seems like a pretty big boost.

PSA: If you don't have a Ranger in your party, various members of your group should not be allowed to use their PP while traveling, and should be surprised by encounters regularly.

That's a rule I expect most people who don't like the Ranger to not use, too. Or at least a rule few people pay attention to.

[Yora]

To me it feels like giving rogues the ability to open all locks and detect and disable all traps without a roll.


Sounds like good at navigating the dangers and challenges of the wilderness to me.

Otoh, is that un-interesting?
No more so than hand-waving away encumbrance, ammunition tracking, wandering monsters, strict-time keeping, detecting traps/hidden things, or followers & strongholds.
Yes, it's uninteresting in many ways, but it's totally in keeping with the kind of D&D that modern D&D has become. More about heroism and less about niggly little details, and the challenge of overcoming them.

I happen to add all of these things in.
I think there wouldn't be that much of a problem if they had simply decided to not have difficult terrain, navigation, and food in the first place. But making them part of the game and then having players who want to play a character who engages with them lose the ability to do so is highly questionable at best.

[Tanarii]

Also remember that it actually lets the member of your party that's scouting/navigating actually use their Passive Perception. That seems like a pretty big boost.

PSA: If you don't have a Ranger in your party, various members of your group should not be allowed to use their PP while traveling, and should be surprised by encounters regularly.
Yeah, that's a critical rule that is often overlooked.

For that matter, groups often overlook having a navigator or mapper in the first place.

[Unoriginal]

To me it feels like giving rogues the ability to open all locks and detect and disable all traps without a roll.

As long as the DC is lower than 10 + mod + proficiency, it's what happens with the Rogue at lvl 11.

[Cybren]

To me it feels like giving rogues the ability to open all locks and detect and disable all traps without a roll.



I happen to add all of these things in.
I think there wouldn't be that much of a problem if they had simply decided to not have difficult terrain, navigation, and food in the first place. But making them part of the game and then having players who want to play a character who engages with them lose the ability to do so is highly questionable at best.

well, with expertise it’s very likely a rogue CAN reach a point where they can open all locks/find every trap. But also, I think there’s a difference here in that you will still feel like you’re doing something even if you aren’t rolling for those as the rogue.
Edit: to be honest, I think part of the problem, or the feeling that there’s a problem, is how much the rules seem to want wilderness exploration/overland travel to already be relatively easy and super quick to play. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuanced mechanics that feel interesting in play, because the rules around them in general aren’t all that interesting

[Shuruke]

I'd like to point out that for sale of hand waiving the problem away it doesn't 100% do that

When flraging you get twice as much
So if your in a scarce area where food isn't very abundant like lets say a dessert
Than the survival check to forage for enough food for 2 people the ranger gets 4 in his favored terrain

Rough terrain during travelling I don't see as a big deal
Combat happens they dont ignore rough terrain
And in order to be travelling again theyd be stuck with rough terrain for an hour.

During said hour u can get lost and wander slightly in wrong direction until ranger figures out what's up at the hour point and realizes his map was upside down.

And then for the tracking that is only helpful as before combat tracking because again after combat its disabled for an hour.

Although the ranger can't get lost it doesnt mean he knows how to navigate to places they've never been to. If the ranger only knows the general location he charts the path on the map and reaches the end of his search range unfailingly. However navigation checks are still needed to find the exact place.

This can be made with disadvantage if lets say the person who made the map failed their check to accurately place it.

Even then if the ranger is in their favored terrain they get 1/2 prof bonus if not prof in navigator tools and expertise if they are proficient.


Lets say during the travels your using the Angry GM method od random encounters
Roll a d6 and chops danger of the area based off of how likely it is they have an encounter in that travelling day.
The more numbers it takes up the more dangerous of an area 3 being very dangerous

So you roll and they get an encounter
They have the combat and for an hour ranger favored terrain feature is disabled
I would do a survival check from ranger to make sure they go in right direction
If they fail they are 1 hour of travel in wrong direction using d8 to decide direction.

Depending on area being travelled
Lets use example of my players traveling through swamp
They had 2 encounters
The swamp was rough terrain
After each encounter they had to spend 1 hour of travel in rough terrain and one of those they went in slightly wrong direction
In the end their 8 hour travel day
Had rough terrain and a navigation check for first hour
Had rough terrain after a combat
Had rough terrain and last an hour after another combat.

It was 3 hours of rough terrain and an hour of half progression for practically 7/8 of travelling day was at half pace.


The travelling for one hours is the limitation and it just means that after that hour they realize where they are and correct it but can still lose time

In the end the total swamp travel was 3 days faster because they had a ranger (made it in 4 days rather than 7 and they got 3 days of downtime for scrolls healing potions etc.)

It didn't make it go away it just made the penalties less disastrous, they didnt spend entire days going in wrong direction just a hour here or there.

[Tanarii]

Combat doesn't disable the feature for an hour.

"Traveling" doesn't require an hour. It happens when you travel between combat encounters within a dungeon.

Edit: oops sorry you are correct, that's specific to the feature. I thought you were referring to some kind of general rule for traveling that doesn't exist. But that just means it can't be used on scales of less than an hour, not that it doesn't kick in for the first 59 minutes.

[Shuruke]

Yeah, that's a critical rule that is often overlooked.

For that matter, groups often overlook having a navigator or mapper in the first place.

I feel like a lot of critical rules in 5e are missed.
I know alot of tables where darkvision is just perfect vision in the dark and dim light etc isn't used. Not by choice but just fact that they never noticed it.

Generally I think most campaigns dont have navigators or mappers because at least in my experience DMs don't have exploration as a pillar they are as worried about.
Travelling days are summed up to a group survival check and a fail yields only half speed.

A dm I currently play under really enjoys travel and did a lot of things despite us hiring a npc ranger.

A lot of it was the fact that 3 encounters a day and the 1st hour of travel gives 4 hours of not being under the ranger natural explorer feature.
Each day was treated as a partial adventuring day 3 medium encounters instead of 7.
An obstacle encounter like a large river or a cliff etc.

If the DM lets players know ahead of time
"This is how we are handling travelling you'll need to pick a navigator and someone making the map. For the ranger remember your feature doesn't kick in until 1 hour of travelling. So if you want to forage that'll be an hour you spend away from the group where they don't have your natural explorer. Etc."

I find that most problems at tables can be solved with communication XD

[Shuruke]

Combat doesn't disable the feature for an hour.

"Traveling" doesn't require an hour. It happens when you travel between combat encounters within a dungeon.

Edit: oops sorry you are correct, that's specific to the feature. I thought you were referring to some kind of general rule for traveling that doesn't exist. But that just means it can't be used on scales of less than an hour, not that it doesn't kick in for the first 59 minutes.

your ok ^.^
And if that's how your like to go with it I'm sure that might me how its intended but I feel like the issue that is being had can be solved.by just having it take an hour for the ranger to get back into the hamg of navigating/ get them back on track.

It could even male fpr some fun RP and wpuld show that the ranger has to spend time and effort for these effects


Edit: I just feel like the "Travelling for an hour or more" shouldn't instantly lick in just because they will be travelling longer than an hour. I feel like it kicks in after travelling for an hour or more.

Not sure what RAW or RAI is for it but I'm sure we could use twitter

[Samayu]

Whenever we take advantage of the ranger's talents, I feel like "I'm sure glad we have a ranger." If I say this out loud, I think it helps the ranger's player to feel like their skills are in use, even if they're not rolling dice. Even moreso if the DM takes care to paint the picture of our terrain and how difficult it would be to travel though.

[stoutstien]

Yes.

In the phb, it's weak, but in the UA Revised, it's OP. I see it as hard to find the right balance. I'm also not familiar with any other iterations.


Primeval Awareness is a much worse feature IMO.
I hear you. Nature explorer is bad but I can as DM make sure the player feels good about having it.
Primal awareness is just bad. if a half caster is using a spell slot it better have a impact.
I just made primal awareness Wis mod x day and last a number of minutes equal to ranger lv l.
Also at 2nd lv i gave rangers an ablity to cast hunters mark as part of a weapon strike. Not perfect but it something.