Primeval Awareness 5e
Published on March 10, 2023
Is your ranger tracking enemies in the wilderness? Hopefully they’re within a 1 mile radius and are a certain creature type…
Livia Prima - Wizards of the Coast - Verge Rangers
Table of Contents
What is Primeval Awareness in 5e?
Primeval Awareness
Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and expend one ranger 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 you (or within up to 6 miles if you are in your favored terrain): aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead. This feature doesn’t reveal the creatures’ location or number.
Rangers in Dungeons & Dragons 5e are known for their keen senses. At 3rd level, they gain to a special ability called Primeval Awareness, which allows you to sense the presence of certain types of creatures within a certain distance of you.
How to Use Primeval Awareness 5e
To use Primeval Awareness, rangers must use their action and spend 1 ranger spell slot. Then, for the next minute, the ranger can then sense whether any aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead within range.
The range of the ability depends if you’re in your favored terrain, which is chosen at 1st level.
- If you’re in your favored terrain, the range is 6 miles
- If you’re not in your favored terrain, the range is 1 mile
Is Primeval Awareness Worth It?
Rangers are half casters and only get 15 spell slots, even when levelled all the way up to 20th level. They also only get access to 4 1st-level spell slot, which is probably all you want to spend on Primeval Awareness, but usually rangers will want to reserve these for using hunter’s mark and other spells in combat.
That said, if you compare Primeval Awareness to locate creature, which is a 4th-level spell, the range for Primeval Awareness is much larger for the value (1 mile for 1st-level spell slot vs 1,000 feet for a 4th-level spell slot). With that in mind, locate creature isn’t limited by creature type and can determine the location of the creature you’re tracking.
All in all, Primeval Awareness is extremely situational for a primary class ability. Very rarely will you need to know if certain niche creature types are within a certain range, while still not know their number or location.
Primeval Awareness Revised (AKA Primal Awareness)
Primeval Awareness is a feature that that original Player’s Handbook ranger receives and has received criticism as being situational and difficult to use correctly. In Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the ranger got an update in the form of optional class features. The optional feature that replaces Primeval Awareness is Primal Awareness, which provides rangers with some nature-based spells that you can cast for free once per long rest.
Conclusion
Overall, Primeval Awareness is a lacklustre ability that is difficult to produce value based on the resource investment. It can certainly be useful occasionally—when you need to detect if certain types of creatures are within range—but this ability is easily replaced by Primal Awareness.
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