D&D 5E Primeval Awareness?

[ShadowsKat]

Sooo I had a question about the Ranger's Primeval Awareness ability. More of a clarification I guess, so let me know what you think. (Specifics of the ability below.)

"Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one 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 your (of within 6 miles if you are in your favoured terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn't reveal the creatures' location or number." -- PHB, 92

I've used this ability a total of two times now. The first time I used it, I picked a specific creature type to sense and it was all good. The second time I wanted to use it to sense something, my DM said I sensed them all and it nearly knocked my Ranger on his ass (he sensed every type listed....it was the middle of a city).

Which is the correct way to use it?
The way I read it, I thought I'd be able to choose what type I'm looking for since I'm specifically wanting to concentrate on that type. Though if there's more than one type around, I can see needing to make some sort of check to see if I can keep my concentration on what I'm looking for, and on a failure, getting hit with sensing whatever types are in the area. Kinda like listening to music and trying to focus only on guitar or drums, but possibly getting distracted by the rest of the music.
But am I reading it wrong and it really is you sense whatever types on that list are within the 1-6 mile radius? Which just make me feel that it's kinda useless/unhelpful in alot of situations.

 

[evilbob]

I interpret it to mean: you use this ability and then for the next X minutes, you know whether or not each of the different types of creatures are within 1 mile of you. If there's a dragon around the corner and a hundred zombies 9/10ths of a mile down the road, your sense tells you: there are dragon and undead within 1 mile.

The ability is so awful that there's no need to restrict it further. Make it work as well as it can because it's almost always useless. The only time it's ever been useful to our group was determining whether or not a dragon was home. (To be fair, in that case it was very useful.)

And yes, using it in a very crowded place could also be useless, since you could pick up each type. Although I suppose that's still better than not knowing that there are dragons AND aberrations AND celestials AND all those other types within a mile of you.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, the ability is generally rather weak and so doesn't need any nerfing.

But there's one special case, and that might be what got your DM to stonewall you.

If the adventure asks you to find a shapeshanged dragon, say, or an rakshasa hiding behind the illusion of a respectable townsman, this ability could be used to shortcircuit any need for having an actual investigation.

In that case I find it much easier to simply say "your ability defeats the entire adventure - do you want to use it and risk having to go home early tonight or not?"

Zapp, can get rather tired of the way D&D divination spells were designed by somebody that hates mysteries and investigations...

 

[iserith]

It's a pretty niche ability and it's been discussed in a lot of threads. In my experience, every ranger I've ever seen in play has put it to good use a few times. I think it would work best in a monster-hunter hexcrawl game where you can ping the map to find lairs or the like.

 

[jodyjohnson]

It reads that you get specific information. If you want their location and number you should probably ask the party's tracker for that information.

Now who could that be?

 

[ShadowsKat]

I wasn't looking for ways to nerf it. As it stands now (with sensing everything if it's there) it's pretty close to nerfed already.

Zapp - It wasn't a case of something like finding something posing as something different. I was hoping to sense if there were particular types of nasties below the city where our Paladin sensed something big evil. Kinda a 'see what we were walking into' kinda thing.

I guess in hindsight since the ability doesn't give me a direction anyway, and we were in the middle of the city, that I wasn't going to get any useful information. But finding out that there's all of this stuff within a mile of here is honestly more unsettling to everyone than anything else. Lol.

 

[jodyjohnson]

That's why Rangers prefer the wild. Cities are wretched hives of scum and villainy that blow their minds.

 

[jaelis]

Yes, the ability is generally rather weak and so doesn't need any nerfing.

But there's one special case, and that might be what got your DM to stonewall you.

If the adventure asks you to find a shapeshanged dragon, say, or an rakshasa hiding behind the illusion of a respectable townsman, this ability could be used to shortcircuit any need for having an actual investigation.

In that case I find it much easier to simply say "your ability defeats the entire adventure - do you want to use it and risk having to go home early tonight or not?"

Zapp, can get rather tired of the way D&D divination spells were designed by somebody that hates mysteries and investigations...

Is it that much of a spoiler to know the shapeshifter is within a mile of you?