Originally Posted by
Foxhound438
Sure, but it's not like a cleric not bringing protection from energy is going to have their level 3 spell slots sprinting 10' a round at something that can crawl away prone at 15'. Not having the right niche spell doesn't prevent you from leveraging your spells at all, but an encounter that starts with 30 or 40' between you and enemies makes your ranger's entire flagship build defining feature that holds all of the build value for several of your levels do nothing for 3 or 4 rounds if you happened to think the boat adventure would have fights in the water when the enemy instead just jumps on to your boat.
For longstrider: See OP. Spending spell slots to do that all the time is not going to be good, and waiting until combat starts means you have to be an entire turn behind when fighting starts just to have your extremely slow octopus still need to spend actions to catch up with something merely walking away.