So you want to play a Ranger? Here is some stuff your character would know, which may matter for how you play them! # Settlements & Paths “Settled Land” or “Settlement” is the Ranger jargon for the places people live connected by Paths. Rangers basically train to function well in the Wilderness, the not-settled land, and are the experts on doing so.  Rangers know that Wilderness and Settled are not binary positions, but there is a gradient. The balance of Settled vs Wilderness is primarily impacted by the intentional actions of people. A game trail through the Wilderness is not, and will never become on its own, a Path. A game trail which people take the time to clear brush on, establish trail markers along, and smooth the difficult places along will become more Settled over time as these are repeated and maintained. It will also steadily revert back into Wilderness unless these actions are continuously maintained. The same gradual change happens at the edge of actual Settlements. A settlement may be in a forest, and the parts that people really live in, or use heavily become more Settled, and those that people rarely visit or use are more Wild.  In a sense, Paths are no different than Settlements, they are just narrow and long. Once the Wild dominates a place though, it becomes more fluid and less predictable. While many places in the Wilderness are very dangerous, the Wilderness itself is not malignant, it is just more chaotic, less understandable, and that makes it more dangerous for people. # In the Wilderness When the balance flips from Settled to Wilderness, and vice versa, rangers can intuitively feel it happen. In their favored terrain, a ranger automatically knows, in other terrain they can make a DC 10 Nature check as a bonus action to tell whether they are, on balance, in a place of Settlement or Wilderness. On a critical success (or plain success on a bonus action check in favored terrain) they can get a more nuanced feel for the degree of that balance. When traveling in the wilderness you can make the places you go become more fixed, at least temporarily, by taking actions to Settle them: leaving trail markers such as blazes on trees, or cairns of rocks; clearing underbrush and building camp furniture or shelters when staying in one place, and so on. You can make a Survival check against a variable DC, depending on how Wild the place is, to temporarily settle a place. On a success it will remain mostly stable for 1d4 days (DM rolls secretly), on a critical success that is doubled. Rangers refer to this as “leaving a trail.” Even if a trail falls back into Wilderness (after the 1d4 days) you can make a Survival check (again, variable depending on degree of Wilderness and the age of the trail) to follow it. Notably, the trail can be followed in this way even if the Wilderness has changed around it! #class/ranger #wilderness