In which we examine the Ranger

 and the druid and survival.  Kinda links in with my last few posts and recent all-too-brief discussions with The Boy.  Part of the initial observation was that MOST classes are identified by the neat thing they can do.  The Ranger, at many tables, is identified by the "boring" thing you no longer HAVE to do.

I take a "different" view of what a Ranger is/does than many tables, because I can read (!)  From D&D Beyond: 

Warriors of the wilderness, rangers specialize in hunting the monsters that threaten the edges of civilization—humanoid raiders, rampaging beasts and monstrosities, terrible giants, and deadly dragons. They learn to track their quarry as a predator does, moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble. Rangers focus their combat training on techniques that are particularly useful against their specific favored foes.

Thanks to their familiarity with the wilds, rangers acquire the ability to cast spells that harness nature’s power, much as a druid does. Their spells, like their combat abilities, emphasize speed, stealth, and the hunt. A ranger’s talents and abilities are honed with deadly focus on the grim task of protecting the borderlands.

For most parties the Ranger is wilderness travel plot armor.  It finds water, forages, hunts and builds shelters, protecting the party as it treks over the mountains, through the woods, along the edge of the veldt and across the desert.  But why?  NONE of those capabilities are granted in the preceding paragraph.  You get one type of creature you can "hunt" well.  And you get certain benefits in one type of biome.  Again, relying on Beyond, it may now travel faster, not get lost or surprised, garner double the food when foraging and detect number and time passed when tracking.  When NOT in their chosen biome these benefits do NOT accrue.  Three days w/o water?  Party is dead.  One day?  Levels of exhaustion set in and further searching rolled at disadvantage.  RAW require one pound of food per day.  Balderdash.  A half orc wearing plate and fighting would need over four TIMES that amount to maintain 100% efficacy. 

So what DO we do?  As is often the case I've gone down the Alexis rabbit hole.  We don't use "feats" but we DO rely on "sage abilities."  Under that system a ranger obtains knowledge in Wilderland (which I match with the players chosen biome.)  Within this biome familiarity the Rangers gains expertise in such things as identifying clean water, locating water, foraging, and all that other Rangery stuff.  Mechanics.  Crunch.  Worldbuilding.  None of this one die roll and feed the party regardless of where you are or what time of year it is.  As per usual I've set the whole thing up on a spreadsheet.  An untrained forager MIGHT find 1/2 a pound of food per day.  And it takes time.  We divide the amount of food found by 10 and there's that much found per hour.  If the chart indicates you find 24# of food (my current party, forest, May, temperate) that's 2.4# per hour.  You decide how much travel time you wanna spend foraging!  Need 10#?  You're looking at 5 hours although I might be generous and allow 4.  

Hunting is another sage ability.  No-skilled hunters MIGHT find something.  But it can take TIME.  Resource management.  

Our current problem?  Our ranger opted to focus on animal training rather than wilderlands.  So he COULD (but hasn't yet,) catch and train a falcon!  Bird can hunt three pounds of meat at a time!  But the Ranger is not yet skilled at these things - by choice.  Could be by 4th level.  Perhaps I should've been more pushy at character creation but the whole Beastmaster thing seemed strong.  

Bottom line .... if you WANT your Rangers to be plot armor (cf Druid Goodberry) you do you.  We tend to be a bit more gritty.
 

 

In which we revisit equipment

 I've been spending WAY too much time watching TTRPG Youtube videos and recently stumbled across a spate of them talking about equipment.  What, how much, where, how - all the good stuff, much of which I've touched on before.  There's a lot of handwaving going on at a lot of tables due to cost, encumbrance, etc.  Not at mine.  You either have it or you don't.  But what DO you have?  Or what MUST you have?

A quick perusal of the starting equipment in 5e and PF2 yields some good but not definitive answers.  is Both are crawling with packs and kits.  Excluding specialty stuff it appears the generic adventure starts with a backpack, bedroll, mess kit, tinderbox, and a waterskin.  Also frequently mentioned is rope, chalk, soap, torches and the dreaded iron rations.  Surprisingly no clothing.  Or footwear!  Inadequate.  

So here's what WE do:  we follow RAW on starting equipment, but after that there's a "required minimum."  Players are responsible for their own equipment list but I tinker with it.  I use a "wear" table.  All items are either new, used, worn or useless.  I check on my "decay table" after a month OR three days in the wilderness OR one day in the dungeon.  Players are notified when an item becomes worn (time to replace.)  Last campaign we had a bard and a druid whose main contributions were just keeping all the equipment in good repair via their Mend spells (house ruled to 1st lvl.)  Run out of torches?  Or tinderbox?  Tough luck Skippy.  

But some things it seems to me MUST be "owned."  Clothing.  Footwear.  Backpack.  Bedroll.  Mess kit.  Waterskin.  So when those become useless (ie, if the players didn't replace when "worn") I'll replace them when they're available.  If they give out in the wild?  Exposure, slowed movement, no rests (long becomes short, short vanishes), dietary distress, dehydration.  A tent might join this list.  Previous party had a couple members skilled at "roughing it" so it wasn't required.  We'll see what happens when they hit inclimate weather.

Side note:  calendar has turned to spring so the party was peeling out of their winter clothes and into something a little lighter for travel.  I was checking prices in the small settlement they were occupying when I saw that WINTER clothes cost over 600 gp!!  Figured there was an error somewhere in the numerous formulas and recipes that go into the calculation so I started tracing it back.  And found the issue.  No sheep!  This community has no shepherds.  So all wool and wool products must be "imported."  I casually mentioned this to the party.  Not directly but I DID mention that the incoming caravans were carrying, among other things, iron (ingots, bars, rods) as there's none mined locally, other metals, and raw wool as well as wool clothing!  They've JUMPED at the chance to clear a mine so they could claim part of the income.  Wonder if they'll try to help out a family in need by setting them up in the sheep biz? 

In which we get circular with the action economy, encounter balance, magic items and the action economy

 The steepest learning curve when I made my foray back into D&D was absorbing all the nuances with the action economy.  And I'm sure I'm still absorbing but the WORST of it has been realized and I'm dealing with it.  Here are the problems I'm cramming into this post - how do magic items impact party level for using CR to achieve encounter balance and what role does the action economy play therein?

As a baseline, I rely on the Sly Flourish encounter benchmark.  This will tell me roughly what CR the "bbg" would be to be deadly, hard, etc.  The PROBLEM was I was taking THAT number and plugging in a relevant creature to be that bbg.  And they were getting thumped in short order, largely because each character could do four things each while the bbg could only do four things.  Period.  Even with a lair action they were slammed.  

So here's my first modifier:  once the formula determines the suggested CR I cut it in half.  THAT'S my bbg.  The OTHER half I divide by the number of party members so that each of them "gets a minion" to oppose. My favorite use of this was a vrock accompanied by a handful of quasits.  Good combat variety and the party had their hands full fighting not just the vrock but the action economy problems presented by a handful of minions.  As deadly as those ancient red dragons are they can be action economied to death quite quickly.  But a young red dragon with four wyrmlings is a MUCH tougher problem.  So suggested CR, divided by 2 to get the bbg, and divided again by party number to get supporting cast.  Hat tip to Ginny Di for her recent vid which kinda got this ball rolling in my head

The OTHER problem that I recently brushed up against is that is SEEMS that everybodys encounter balance guide is based on party/character level per se, but doesn't really incorporate magic items.  Example:  my current party has thee 2nd lvls and a 4th.  That's a total of 10.  A suggested deadly encounter would be a 2.5.  So an ankheg or a basilisk.  But what if your barbarian has a +2 weapon, your rogue's AC is buffed and one of your casters has a staff of X that increases it's DPR.  It's no longer an average of 2.5.  Closer to 3.5 or better.  That ankheg is now quite a bit easier.  The basilisk isn't the bbg it was GOING to be and maybe a banshee or barghest would be more threatening.  Lesson here is that IF the party is perhaps "overmagiced" you'll need to juice that CR suggestion a bit.  IMHO this is where many of the complaints about CR and encounter balance originate.

Edit to add:  OK - HERE'S an interesting solution I'm gonna play around with a bit:  Trekiros recently began popping up in my suggested playlist and here are TOW vids related to this topic - first the intro to a new aid and the second reviews some updates.  Here's a link to the tool.

To recap (TL:DNR): almost ALWAYS use multiple opponents for that deadly encounter and juice the CR to allow for magic items.  And if you use that tool, drop in here and leave a comment!