Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jaden_stormtracker Sep 14, 2015 14:36:13	A Ranger's Primeval Awareness says: Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one ranger spell slot to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether the following types of creatures are present within 1 mile of you (or within up to 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn’t reveal the creatures’ location or number.   So, you give up spell slots, of which you don't have many (or any in the newest version) to detect creatures within 1 or 6 miles from you, but you can't tell how many or where they are located? How is this a benefit? In what capacity would you even use this? Seems like a waste of a "class feature"
#2 jaelis Sep 14, 2015 14:47:41	It is what it is. Given that they are working on the ranger, I guess we'll have other options soon enough.
#3 jaden_stormtracker Sep 14, 2015 15:13:23	The newest version of the Ranger isn't good AT ALL in my opinion. Instead of having a constant traveling companion, you get a either a buff once an encounter, and for 60 seconds every 24 hours, you can have it turn into an animal. This new version REALLY needs work.
#4 daspian Sep 14, 2015 15:27:41	honestly they screwed up with a number of things... you're best bet is communicating with your DM to fix all these things, by removing the restriction on primeval awareness it'd be a nice start.   secondly i'd suggest removing their 20th level feature for a new one... then make it so their favored enemy feature causes you to deal an additional dmg equal to your WIS to them...   as for a 20th level feature, i simply gave them the ability to crit on weapon attacks against their favored enemies with a 18-20.
#5 Mistwell Sep 14, 2015 16:35:27	It's quite useful in a hex crawl game.  The type where you're sent out to find a dragon for instance, and don't know which of many hexes they might be in.     If you enter a village and want to know if it is housing members of a demonic cult you are hunting down, detecting a fiend might answer it immediately, before you even enter town.   Mind flayers controlling the town? Detecting aberrations might let you know that.   Want to know if you're in a good place to camp for the night? Detecting undead within a mile helps answer that question.   It's also highly flavorful of the "Ranger protecting the border from intrusion" theme that originated for the most part with Aaragorn in Lord of the Rings.  You would travel six miles, detect for monsters in a 6 mile radius, if none found travel 6 more miles and do it again, etc., and in this way add a lot of security to the border.   In general, it's often used at the end of the day, to burn one of the Rangers last spell slots out.  It gives a lot of general information for that spell slot. I certainly don't view it as a "screw up".  It's more campaign specific perhaps that I'd prefer, but I think it's useful and flavorful in the right kind of campaign (which is almost any that uses a lot of overland travel).
#6 jaden_stormtracker Sep 14, 2015 18:16:00	But the Ranger should be viable in any game scenario - not just overland traveling. You might as well as just hire an NPC guide.
#7 daspian Sep 14, 2015 19:31:12	yea i mean we could debate which abilities of the rangers are "optimal" or not.. but it's a guranteed fact the class as a whole is quite weak... hence why WOTC even admits it and is addressing it. however some of their attempts can be fixed by simply addressing the issues with the class itself instead of scratching everything and doing it all over, at least thats my opinion.
#8 Chaosmancer Sep 14, 2015 20:08:07	I literally just posted something about this an hour or so ago, let me find the paragraph.   Here:   Looking back over the Hunter Ranger... just realized a language thing. Primeval Awareness gets slammed mostly for the last line "This feature doesn't reveal the creatures' location or number." I just realized that they probably meant "This feature doesn't reveal the creatures' exact location or exact number". So you can't say there are six demons on the Holy Mountain, but you could say there is a small demonic presence to the northeast.       I think with this, which is essentially the same thing daspian said about talking to your DM about it, it gets a lot better.   Instead of being told "Undead yes, dragon no, fey yes" You migh get "A small group of fey midway to the west and a massive force of undead close to the south"   Kind of like 3-ring trackers in video games, shows you a cardinal direction and approximate distance but not pulling out your gps and placing a marker with an accurate population count.
#9 daspian Sep 14, 2015 21:12:40	exactly, what chaosmancer said.. that's how i would detail and explain if a ranger in my party used it.. i'd categorize is saying 'Small, medium or large group of undead to the northeast." but not the exact number or exact location... just a general description of the size and loc.
#10 Slagger_the_Chuul Sep 14, 2015 22:27:54	You can play around with it without further clarification, but then you roam around playing "Hunt the Wumpus".  Your ranger activates the ability and smells a wumpus ("I can feel a fiendish presence", or whatever), then they head half a mile north and check again until they eventually locate it.  The fact that the ability runs for at least a minute makes it easier to tell when you leave the range, but it's fiddly and counterintuitive (since you get a more precise reading by keeping away instead of trying to get close), and the process is complicated further if the creatures in question are moving about.   Thinking on the party side of things (or even just the NPC side of things), you'd hope it's a bit more than just "I smell a wumpus", since you've got a range of things like familiars, conjured creatures, animate dead, and the like that could readily mess up a blind radar ping.  For example, if your party includes Bob the Necromancer with his skeletal luggage-handler and demonic snake familiar, there will be a lot of places where you can sense undead and fiends.
#11 Veleria Sep 14, 2015 23:52:31	This is what they call a "ribbon" feature. It is purely flavor and does not count against what they consider the balance of the class. You will notice at the same level you get your main subclass features which are pretty good.
#12 AaronOfBarbaria Sep 15, 2015 0:25:57	I think that is were the root of many people's issues with the ranger class start. There are more ribbons in the class than are in most others, so it artificially seems like there are a lot of "dead" features because something intended as a ribbon is being interpreted as an actual feature.
#13 Slagger_the_Chuul Sep 15, 2015 7:13:48	I'd have to disagree on that; what other classes (especially ones that have the same approximate structure) get at this level doesn't have the same "ribbon" quality.  For comparison, the monk gets their archetype plus deflect arrows, the paladin gets their archetype plus immunity to disease, the rogue gets a variable ability extra ability built into their archetypes.  These are all generally pretty useful and (quite importantly) they don't burn up resources used by other abilities, while the ranger's primeval awareness eats up spell slots to power it.  It's particularly bad for an investigative ability, where you don't know beforehand if using it will even be helpful, and worse for one that doesn't give you a lot of precise information even when you do succeed.  In fact, the 6-mile version you use in favoured terrain is arguably worse than the standard 1-mile version, because the greater area makes it even less precise. I do like Chaosmancer's suggestion about the RAI; it's the sort of additional information that makes the feature look like something useful.  But much as I like it (and might rule that way myself if DMing), I don't think the RAW supports that interpretation the way it's currently written.   Note: For completeness regarding the classes, the barbarian and fighter are a bit odd in that their archetypes vary, and some include an equivalent feature at 3rd level while others don't.  The dedicated spellcasters tend to mix the arrangement of new features with when they get access to a new level of spells.
#14 AaronOfBarbaria Sep 15, 2015 7:40:42	There is no guarantee, implied or otherwise, that every class has the same number of features and ribbons, nor that those things are gained at the same levels - so what other classes get at this level is irrelevant (in fact, anything but a comparision of the full 20 levels of each class is going to be basically useless because of how this edition is designed).
#15 Slagger_the_Chuul Sep 15, 2015 8:30:34	AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
#16 Gwaithador Sep 15, 2015 19:04:44	Mistwell called it.   It's very useful in hexcrawls (but not limited to hexcrawls).  A ranger in my chronicle used it very successfully in a hexcrawl I'm running in the Suss Forest in the World of Greyhawk. He's also used it in a dungeon successfully.
#17 Cognomen Sep 17, 2015 9:52:57	Heh, my group just wrapped an adventure in which primeval awareness was almost a cheat code. We were looking for a dragon disguised as a humanoid, with only a few clues about which city she might be in. Primeval awareness cut out about two-thirds of the search, since all we needed to do was reach the edge of the city, check for dragons, and move on if she wasn't there.