I'm not against others running, travelling, etc.  My issue is with making travel incidental.  With pulling class features from Ranger and ignoring them.  I'm all for characters deciding they want to run all the way somewhere.  Con checks, and Exhaustion checks work well for this.  But then, possibly getting lost, and possibly running into random encounters should also be part of it.  A Ranger can move quick and stealthy in their chosen terrain.  Does not get lost except by mahic.  Can detect encounters before the whole group runs into combat, and shepherd the group around that encounter or position the group with the best chance to deal with the encounter.  When you make not having a Ranger in the wilderness a non-issue, you weaken Ranger substantially.

I agree that this is terrible idea.



Well, no. Saying that it weakens ranger to not have them be necessary for traversing the wilderness, is like saying it weakens cleric to not have them be necessary for fighting undead... Neither are true.

Clerics are incredible even in a campaign with few undead whatsoever (though they can wipe them out when they encounter them). Wizards are still great even if they don't get to make many Arcana checks (but they are invaluable when it comes up). Druids rock even if they are in a majorly urban setting (yet they are still great in that regard).

In conclusion, needing to have a ranger in the pasty shouldn't be a consideration when designing rules for travel. This is because other classes can be specialized in similar things, and so getting lost in the wilds or avoiding random encounters shouldn't become limited to rangers.

Of course, rangers should be the best at it (except in outlier cases like a keen mind character with special senses or smth), but that doesn't mean it should pose as an exceptional challenge to other skilled characters.

Here's some brief examples for 3rd level characters:

Ranger

 - Wisdom is probably around 16
 - Natural Explorer comes packed with a whole bunch of infallible features, few of which are things other classes are incapable of. The main one is expertise in relevant WIS and INT checks. That's pretty great. The other ranger-unique ones are ignoring difficult terrain (can't think of a way to do this without magic items), moving stealthily at a normal pace (apparently in RAW you can't do this, but I strongly believe that beating a high-DC stealth roll should be enough to do this) and finding double food. Only those first two seem very useful, since I've never heard of an adventuring party starving to death unless a GM railroads really hard to set it up (heck, it's rare enough to miss dinner!).
 - Their spells are pretty good to, except they can't prepare them, so they're more often than not stuck with their choices. They know 3 spells with 3 slots. One of those is probably hunter's mark, which is a great combat spell, but not at all an utility spell. That leaves two spells twice per day (assuming they cast hunter's mark exactly once)

Rogue

 - Wisdom might be their second or third highest stat, so either 16 or 12-14...
 - Expertise either matches or nearly matches the ranger feature, if they choose so. Remember, rogues can learn any skills, though they probably will go with DEX ones to expertise in and maybe honestly probably perception.
 - Their stealth is almost certainly an expertise pick, so they're definitely stealthier than a ranger, if a little slower when traveling for more than one hour with RAW.
 - Scout subclasses get automatic proficiency/expertise in survival & nature, which is great in this situation but a rare choice from what I've seen.

Druid

 - Wisdom is probably 16
 - They are probably proficient, but no double proficiency (which is totally fine, since this edition's balance isn't focused on having +500 to skill rolls anyway)
 - Their spells are way better than ranger in basically every way. They can prepare them, they can prepare more, they have 6 slots of two different levels at 3rd level, and they have cantrips... Some of these spells alone are almost as good if not better than the natural explorer feature.
 - I mean, goodberry automatically feeds 10 people. And you can do that at least six times (I don't know if it has higher level effects). I doubt a ranger could feed 60 people without magic... even if they could normally feed 30...
 - Casting longstrider and becoming a camel or an Axe Beak (flightless cr 1/4 bird) completely cancels out any difficult terrain issues
 - Also wild shape is an incredibly useful feature in combat (especially for moon druids) and outside of it.

In reply to Tidelan Wavyrus (msg # 99):

I think I left out that I agree that these things (getting lost, not being stealthy, etc) should be possible threats, but I don't think they should be balanced as to be difficult for the average character. I mean, getting lost in the forest is totally possible, and probably more likely depending on what choices someone makes, but I'd reckon most INT 10 characters shouldn't have to roll to find their way back after an hour of travel.

In this case, we're like 2-3 days out... which isn't a measure of distance, but I suppose that makes it 48-72 miles away, let's call it 60 miles... Having slept twice since leaving, it's safe to assume we don't all perfectly recall our path (INT builds might, tho)

Still, since we know the direction we would need to head, it seems unlikely that any of us would actually be likely to get turned around. I mean, just walking in a straight line shouldn't require a d20 roll? Interestingly, if it's snowed recently that would maybe add difficulty to tracking one's way back... so maybe just marching straight SSE (southsoutheast) would be an equally good strategy... hm.

A few things you should know:
The entire Rimewood is technically difficult terrain. To make outdoor combat managable, we're just treating it as if it isn't during combat, and having some terrain even more difficult. While on overland travel, players travel twice as fast on maintained roads (i.e. one on which someone plows the snow out of the way regularly, like the road back to Alemakia.)

There was, in fact, a road between Muzzrink's camp and Three Claw Point, but it wasn't the most direct route, nor had it been maintained. If you followed it, without the benefit of Natural Explorer, you probably wouldn't have gotten lost, but it would have taken an extra day or two (depending on how well you can follow a road buried in snow in the forest.)

With these facts combined, having Brohm along shaved at least a day off your travel time. Since encounter rolls are based on how much time passes, having a ranger reduces the chance of random encounters on any given trip, and also makes it much less likely that such encounters surprise you, and more likely you surprise them.

BTW, having the ranger scout ahead doesn't make you travel much slower, since the moment he's out of earshot from the group, he's moving at full speed. He only slows things down a bit if he comes back to tell you he found something (and not as much as getting into a fight you could avoid, especially if someone gets hurt enough to require a long rest.)

Of course, for players who want as many fights as possible, they might not want to travel with a ranger in his favored terrain, but that's a matter of taste that has no bearing on the usefulness of Rangers.

Also, don't forget, you could have arrived at the village a night earlier, but chose to rest first, so you could approach in broad daylight. With Brohm's guidance, you can easily make it back before you need rest again.

BTW, walking in a straight line can really only be done if you have a good landmark to navigate by. Its harder than most people think.

How are the players supposed to know this? Seems like something that all players should be made aware of, before they even join the game.



Huh? That makes no sense in-game, and from an out-of-game perspective, constant difficult terrain doesn't make things less manageable (it adds no complexity), it just hugely nerfs all PCs and monsters alike.

This is obviously a problem, but the solution to just ignore this self-inflicted issue is a pretty bad one.

Again, this was never explained to anybody.



Nobody knows any of these things! Should they be expected to assume this on their own?

Is this something our characters would know?

---

This leaves me wondering how many other things are going on 'behind-the-scenes' (so to speak) that much of the cast is in the dark about. Obviously, I'm not asking GMs to expose their secrets or share all their rolls or whatever, what I am strongly suggesting is that everyone is made definitively aware of basic setting details like this that will drastically alter their gaming experience, before they join the game (meaning it should go in one or more public notice threads)

Also, I should mention that I understand these things aren't nonsensical. It does make sense that an oft-snowing forest would be difficult terrain... but, it's not inherently understood, since it's not part of RAW. Thus, I feel like for grand-spanning things like this (as opposed to case-by-case decisions from the GM[s]), they should be placed in the appropriate public notice threads.

One last thing that I've been thinking about for a while, what's with these arbitrary measurements and overly-complicated homebrew systems?

Why do houses cost such a specific amount, why is a decent lifestyle reliant on spending an absurd portion of one's cash, and why are there so few customizations available to home-owners?

Why does the hexmap not have a scale in miles/km? How do platinum and electrum make things more difficult to calculate, the former is a direct continuation from gold, and the latter is rare to find anyway?

Why is this so needlessly complicated and possibly unrelated?



So, if you die before level 5 (meaning any character that exists right now), you start over with nothing? It's harsh, but at least you stay at your current level.

Then at lvl 5, suddenly you get 525 to 750 gold coins? But if you are a lvl short, you get absolutely no coins? Also, what if this causes you to start with more coins than you had previously? Should it be possible to pick an average from this die, like how it is with determining HP?

Then, at lvl 11 to 16, it becomes 5250 to 7500 gold coins... Okay, so a level 11 character is 10x more wealthy than a level 10 character?

Thing is, this doesn't match up to any other scaling system else used in 5e... Not cantrips, nor proficiency bonus... It's by multiples of five, sure, but so what?

Also, you get an uncommon magic item of your choice. Cool, but why? Just because? What if the previous character had none? Or a rare one? Or ten common ones?

Though, why not just allow a new PC to spend that absurd amount of starting wealth on uncommon magic items? Why just complicate things by giving them one in addition?

Why does rule 7 use a random piece of homebrew from a post on reddit with a mere 15 upvotes? It's mindboggling.

---

It's frustrating that a large portion of this game often feels like a handful of arbitrary, overcomplicated, untested homebrew systems mashed together without any harmony.

I still love this game as a whole, but it seems to be that multiple random homebrews (from a complex taming system to unexplained difficult terrain) are being added for no reason, and they add little except confusion and complexity.

I think the GMs do a pretty good (if sometimes inconsistent) job considering how many players they have to juggle, and at the very least they are always looking out for the cast's best interests (and are open to suggestions and revisions), but I think they don't sufficiently test or consider new things before adding them to the game, and they sometimes forget to write down things that are happening in the background, but remain relevant for players or their characters.

The terrain thing is, as you said, because of the snow (and for the roads, the lack thereof.) We really didn't want to have to nerf almost all monsters and players (except those with long ranged attacks or the ability to ignore rough terrain,) so, as an abstraction (and when it comes down to it, that's what all the rules are: abstractions,) we're simply handwaving it during combat. We didn't feel it necessary to explain it to anybody. We never even thought it might affect anybody's gameplay experience. Combat works as normal, we clearly state on each battlemap what we count as rough terrain.

I did, in fact, mention that there was a road between Muzzrink's camp and Three-claw point, and that the Redfoot clear the trees to build roads as they take territory. The only maintained roads any player characters are aware of are the one back to Amelakia, and the perimeter road between the Watchtowers around Smith's Gambit.

Housing costs what it costs, because we couldn't find any guidelines for how much it should cost. Lifestyle expenses are high because living on the frontier is more expensive than the city.  I'm not sure what you mean about a lack of housing customizations.

I'll leave it up to the Narrator to explain why the hexmap doesn't show mi/km. She made the map. Probably a simple oversight.

The EP and PP thing... I've got nothing to say about that one.

The chart for replacing dead characters is from p. 38 of the DMG, for starting characters at higher levels.

Rule 7 was used in a game we played on RPOL that shut down before we started this game. We never got to use the rule ourselves, but other players in the game seemed to like it, and it looked fun.

I think the issue is, the current edition of D&D doesn't have rules for a lot of things players and DM's would like to do, and expects DM's to pick up the slack. We do our best to consider the possible effects of the rules we use, but ultimately, the only way to test them is to try them. We don't exactly have a playtesting team.

We can't think of everything in advance, and sometimes our blindspots are staggeringly huge, leaving us needing to come up with something wide-ranging on the spot that we are then expected to stick with, whether its the best solution or not (like how to have the whole outdoor map covered in snow without shifting the balance of classes heavily towards ranged combat. We ran the game for at least a few days before it occurred to either of us that the snow should be affecting movement. Sometimes the obvious is the easiest to miss.)

Also, I should probably just go ahead and point out, for my part at least, I rarely consider realism, or historical or scientific accuracy, and even when I do, it's near the bottom of the list of my priorities. This seems to be part of the cause at least a few of your complaints, and if that's the case, I'm sorry.

This is all very fair and well reasoned, thanks for your time in explaining your (and Narrator's) thoughts to me.

Fortunately, none of the issues I've mentioned are nearly close enough to wreck or decrease my gaming experience, just a lot of things I've noticed that make me a bit anxious about what's going on behind the scenes. This has cleared up my worry, and I can certainly live with these changes, even if they weren't what I'd have chosen, while you decide to continue using them.

Thanks again for everything you do for all of us, this is certainly a large game, and from my experience on RPOL (a couple years, IIRC) it's pretty common to make missteps, at least when I've been a GM :)

It's like that old saying: "To err is Human, so it gets +1 to all the stats but can't see in the dark."

No wait..."Hindsight gives you advantage on perception checks."

No, that's not it either.

Lol :)

BTW, I know it's xmas holidays, so I expect and accept that things will probably slow down quite a bit, but nobody has posted in 9 days...

After getting our quest's XP reward, I'm still gonna come up a little short for reaching Level 4, so I'm waiting for any possible woodland encounters.

Once we get back I'm gonna try and start working on a fight club...

So, to be clear, since having Brohm scout ahead won't slow travel time do you want to continue traveling that way? Keep in mind, with a dozen goblins moving at normal speed (and thus not sneaking) you won't have an easy time avoiding fights, but at least with an advance scout, you'll get a chance to fight them on your terms.

... and a lot of things will give us a wider berth.

Santio wil be travelling with Brohm and that contingent.

This is true.

Yeah, I'm good with this. I was mostly brainstorming possibilities, before.

I'm very tired and very busy today, so I don't know if I'll be able to post if it comes up.

Hope everyone's staying well.

Sorry for the delay.  Grad school woes.

Please, as I am still getting used to the game, this Game, and how the systems work:

This will increase my character level.  Do I simply go ahead and make the changes?

Please, how do I go about gaining and using those Downtime Units ... specifically to purchase a new Skill Proficiency?

And where (which thread, please) can Santio buy himself a good bow?
This message was last edited by the player at 01:11, Thu 28 Jan 2021.

In reply to Santio (msg # 113):

You need a long rest before you can level up.

So the instant you have an 8 hour sleep IC, you can make the changes, and notify the DMs of what they were in your initial PM.

For Downtime Units, you get one every Monday (IRL. There are no Mondays in the Rimewood.) You also get them as quest rewards.

BTW, I forgot to add: You each got 4 Downtime Units as a quest reward for this!

To use them, you mention what you are doing with them in the "Downtime- Between Jobs" thread. With a +0 Int modifier, earning a new skill requires 25 downtime units, and 1250 gold, unless you get another player character to teach you, in which case they set the price, and have to spend the same amount of downtime as their least intelligent student (if they are training more than one at a time.)

Awesome, let's do an honor duel!

This is so fun.

Please:

You didn't claim one of the many longbows we looted then?

I must have missed that opportunity.  Thank you, yes I would like to.

Was there ... h-hmm ... anything else worth grabbing from said loot?

So, we sold them for the standard half price.

Just deduct half the price of a long bow from your current gold, and say you kept one.

Thank you.

Just keep in mind, monks aren't proficient in longbows, so you'd only add your DEX mod to attack rolls.