Tracking - pg. 48-49

[Jonathan Olson]

We obviously don't know what's in store for rangers yet, but I find the current incarnation of Tracking to be unacceptable. One of the benefits of the ranger class is the free Track feat. As it is stated in the newest doc, the ranger gets virtually no bonus in this category: "A ranger gains a bonus on Survival checks when using this skill to find or follow the tracks of a favored enemy." That seems like it's stealing some of the ranger's thunder in my mind.

Please tell me that this is either an innocent oversight that will be corrected, or that there is something in store for the Alpha 3 Ranger.

Is nobody bothered by this?

[DracoDruid]

I'm still not convinced of track as part of the survival skill.
But I fear I have to live with it.

My "ranger-fix" would be giving them "Fast Track" at first level instead and add the line that only them could find and follow tracks above DC20 (like trapfinding rogues).

[Mosaic]

But it goes nicely with Search if Search were just pulled out of Perception :)

[Mistwalker]

Why not wait a few weeks for Alpha 3 to come out?

Jason has been doing a great job so far, so why not give him the benefit of the doubt until then?

I rather doubt that he will steal any class' thunder.

[Gramps]

I'm hoping there will be some kind of fix in Alpha 3, but until then, what do we do for players who want to continue playing their rangers while everyone else has updated to Alpha 2 for testing? I don't want to be draconian and simply say, "No bards, druids, monks or rangers until Alpha 3!"

I can make certain assumptions about the direction of the ranger class for Alpha 3, and can make the necessary changes ahead of time (i.e. class skills, Hit Dice, et al). But the Track thing bugs me. A Dev Note would have been nice.

Other than that, I agree with the above poster... Jason has done a bang-up job thus far. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out, and that's why this forum is running. And that's also exactly why I mention the omission of the Track feat before Alpha 3 comes out.

[Ron Dawson]

Mosaic wrote:

But it goes nicely with Search if Search were just pulled out of Perception :)

You're right there. Track would fit in nicely with search (assuming search were pulled out of perception).

However, I kind of like having skills that are useful on their own without requiring a feat to perform so I don't have a problem with tracking just being one task associated with the survival skill.

As for rangers, perhaps they have some kind of automatic bonus on all survival checks (including tracking) which would generally make them better trackers than other people.

I know that as a player, I would often take tracking feats as a non-ranger if it fit the character concept, so I haven't seen tracking as a ranger only thing for some time.