What are the limits of variant ranger's Primeval Awareness?

[Pijetlo]

Greetings everyone,

So I am rather new to DnD 5e and recently I started running my 2nd campaign and this is the 1st time one of my PCs plays a variant ranger. After playing a few sessions, I have started having issues to understand the limits of the ranger's Primeval Awareness ability, especially the part where it says:


Additionally, you can attune your senses to determine if any of your favored enemies lurk nearby. By spending 1 uninterrupted minute in concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell), you can sense whether any of your favored enemies are present within 5 miles of you. This feature reveals which of your favored enemies are present, their numbers, and the creatures’ general direction and distance (in miles) from you. If there are multiple groups of your favored enemies within range, you learn this information for each group.

So I have questions regarding both the gameplay and world building aspects, so I will split this into two parts.

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Part I - gameplay:

How does the ranger do this? What is the explanation behind this ability?
Is it some form of super attuned senses that allows a ranger to detect the smell, tracks and marks of his favored enemy even when not directly searching for them which guarantees they cannot escape him unless they use some sort of magic or is this some magical link more in line with how druids work with nature and the ranger is somehow linked with the earth?

Either way, can anything block this ability?
Like, if there is a mountain between the ranger and his favored enemy does this ability go through the mountain? Or maybe over it, so the range decreases a bit?
Does this work in an urban setting as well? Or when riding on a ship in the middle of the ocean or flying on a giant hot-air balloon?

In my particular case, the ranger's favored enemies are drows. Since the setting puts the players in the middle of the elves vs drows war, this ability can seem quite powerful, or borderline overpowered and I understand that in a different setting, for example if they move to another continent that does not contain drows, this ability becomes totally useless.

To make my question as precise as possible - is my PC able to detect invisible drows sneaking up upon him? If he enters a city that is full of drows and stands in the city square, concentrates for a minute can he detect every single drow living in every single house inside the radius of this ability? Can any drow hide in any way from him if withing the radius? If a drow uses disguise self/polymorph, can he/she still be detected by this ability?

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Part II - world building:

Since I really love consistency when in comes to world building, I would like to think how effective and world changing this ability really is?
If nothing (not even magic) can block this ability, then having 1 ranger every 5 miles or so basically makes all the borders of a kingdom almost 100% safe.
Having 2-3 rangers patrolling the city walls at night would make it impossible for anyone to sneak inside, and all of this without including material components for spells or even having a cool down of say at least a short rest or number of uses per day.
Can anyone like dig a tunnel under the city in full secrecy without the ranger knowing if the ranger hates for example humanoids?
The way it is described in the rulebook it basically becomes a 5 mile tremor sense against a certain group of creatures.

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If anyone can give me any official or at least unofficial ruling for this, I would be very grateful :)

Also, please share your experiences and homebrewing if you encountered similar situations.

Regards,
Pijetlo

[Lunali]

As for how it works, magic is almost certainly involved in some way given the range on it.

Given the range, I don't think there's anything that can really block it save magic that prevents detection.

As for drow sneaking up on you, you might know that there are drow within 1 mile to the southeast, which will put you on your guard, but won't prevent an ambush.

[stoutstien]

The closest thing we have to compare with it is the grave domain's eyes of the grave.
seeing how it doesn't say it's blocked by any kind of cover I don't see why it wouldn't bypass it

A half Caster blowing a spell slot is a pretty big investment.

[Pijetlo]

I have searched the interwebs a bit more and I found that some people treat it as though it is divination magic.

So I guess if a drow is under the effects of Nondetection, he/she could not be seen by using primeval awareness.
But if an invisible drow was waiting in an ambush, the PC would be aware that there is a single enemy within one mile to the north but not know his exact location and would be thus prone to being ambushed?

Also, one more question:

If there was say a permanent portal to some other plane, could this ability detect a drow on the other side of the portal?
My guess is probably not, since it is not the same terrain.

[Tanarii]

Where did you get that text from? Primeval awareness in the PHB doesnt reveal number, direction or location.

Edit: nm, guess I should have read the thread title /facepalm

[Pijetlo]

It's from the Unearthed Arcana pdf.

Sadly, I cannot post the link (since I have less than 10 posts) but it should probably be the 1st thing that pops out when you google it.

I feel that the Variant Ranger is quite more in line with other classes than the original from the PHB.