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If a Revised Ranger chooses to use the Favored Foe variant from the most recent Unearthed Arcana, they replace their original Favored Enemy feature. How does this interact with their existing Greater Favored Enemy feature?

Even when the Ranger doesn't have access to Favored Enemy, do the benefits it provides still apply to the Greater Favored Enemy?

Favored Enemy (original)

Beginning at 1st level, you have significant experience studying, tracking, hunting, and even talking to a certain type of enemy commonly encountered in the wilds. Choose a type of favored enemy: beasts, fey, humanoids, monstrosities, or undead. You gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with weapon attacks against creatures of the chosen type. Additionally, you have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track your favored enemies, as well as on Intelligence checks to recall information about them. When you gain this feature, you also learn one language of your choice, typically one spoken by your favored enemy or creatures associated with it. However, you are free to pick any language you wish to learn.

Favored Foe (variant)

You can call on your bond with nature to mark a creature as your favored enemy for a time: you know the hunter’s mark spell, and Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it. You can use it a certain number of times without expending a spell slot and without requiring concentration a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain allexpended uses when you finish a long rest. When you gain the Spellcasting feature at 2ndlevel, hunter’s mark doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.

Greater Favored Enemy (original)

At 6th level, you are ready to hunt even deadlier game. Choose a type of greater favored enemy: aberrations, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fiends, or giants. You gain all the benefits against this chosen enemy that you normally gain against your favored enemy, including an additional language. Your bonus to damage rolls against all your favored enemies increases to +4. Additionally, you have advantage on saving throws against the spells and abilities used by a greater favored enemy.

(emphasis is mine)

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It doesn't, these options are mutually exclusive

Though it doesn't state it explicitly, it is a fairly reasonable assumption that Greater Favored Enemy has the prerequisite of having the Favored Enemy feature. Since Favored Foe (variant) explicitly replaces Favored Enemy, you would not meet the prerequisites for Greater Favored Enemy and thus gain no benefit from this feature.

However that isn't the real issue here. The designers have said that they will not be moving forward with that version of the revised ranger. Therefore newer UA content will not take it into account. The Favored Foe (variant) option was designed to work with the PHB version of the ranger.

In general content from UA is only designed with officially released content in mind, not other UA content. What you are trying to do is equivalent to combining the class features of the various version of artificer that was released multiple times as UA content. You can't expect this content to work well together as it wasn't designed to.

In summary, the Favored Foe (variant) feature replaces the changes made in the revised ranger and should not be used in conjunction with it.

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I think it’s fair to assume a few things - unless you’re bullying your GM, they agreed to let you use favored foe instead of favored enemy - the ranger has long been considered the weakest class, especially it’s underwhelming early abilities, so nerfing it isn’t necessary

Ultimately it will be up to your GM, as it always is, but in contrast to V2Blast, I don’t feel greater favored enemy actually has favored enemy as a requirement- it’s not op that against 1 type of creature, the ranger might shine a little brighter

If you really feel that the 2 mechanics are too disjointed, consider proposing the following to your gm; at 6th level, the free hunter’s mark spells act as though they are the improved, 3rd level slot cast version, lasting for 8 hours each... this won’t increase damage, but since it doesn’t require concentration would effectively mean you would have access to it all the time, plus increased utility out of combat for tracking down an escaped foe, which is very rangery

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to RPG.SE! Take the tour if you haven't already, and check out the help center for more guidance. I don't know why your answer is addressed to me given that I haven't left any answer to this question or even commented until now; the other answer is by linksassin, not me. Also, the question (and other answer) is about the rules, not about whether house-ruling the features to work this way would be unbalanced; the simple fact is that the Class Feature Variants UA is meant to replace the PHB classes' features, not replace the feature of a different version of the class from another UA. \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast ♦
    Nov 25, 2019 at 2:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ I agree that it would likely not be unbalanced to hombrew a version of the ranger that combines the new favoured enemy rules with the revised ranger. However that is not within the scope of this question. I am curious though how do you think "You gain all the benefits against this chosen enemy that you normally gain against your favored enemy" doesn't imply a prerequisite? If I don't have favoured enemy I don't "normally gain" any "benefits" so this feature would effectively only give them the other bonuses and not the favoured enemy benefits. \$\endgroup\$
    – linksassin ♦
    Nov 25, 2019 at 3:36

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