The description of the ranger's Primeval Awareness feature says:
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.
I feel like Primeval Awareness is so underpowered as to be almost pointless. (But maybe I have not fully understood its implications…)
Feeling as I do, I have been talking with the ranger in the party to come up with a new version of the spell to make it a bit more useful and interesting. So far we have this:
Beginning at 3rd level, you can use your action and one ranger spell
slot, or 10 minutes (as a ritual) per level of spell, to focus your
awareness on the region around you. For 10 minutes per level of the
spell that you cast, you can sense the following types of creature
within 1 mile per level of the spell that you cast (or up to 6 miles
in your favoured terrain): Aberrations, Celestials, Dragons,
Elementals, Fey, Fiends, Undead, Your Favoured Enemy. You can either
focus on the allowed number of types for the spell level and know
which are within range or focus on all to know whether the same number
of randomly selected types are within range. In your favoured terrain,
or focussed solely on your favoured enemy, you can also sense the
direction within 180°; if both are true, you can sense the direction
within 90°.
I think that this will make the spell feel more useful to the player, allow them to roleplay ritualistically burning twigs in the woods to mystically track creatures down, and not break the game for everyone else.
However, I am reluctant to make changes, as an inexperienced DM, without first checking whether they are likely to be problematic in some way that I might not have foreseen. Therefore, my concern is this:
Is my reworded version of the Primeval Awareness feature likely to be an improvement, compared to the original? Will it cause any kind of problems (either for me or the players), or maybe not work in a way to make the feature any more useful for the ranger?
Best Answer
Consider swapping to Primal Awareness instead
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduces several optional class features for the ranger; one of these is Primal Awareness (p. 57), which replaces Primeval Awareness entirely with a thematically similar but mechanically distinct feature.
Primal Awareness essentially provides a list of spells that you gain at specific levels, starting at 3rd level (i.e. when you would first get Primeval Awareness), along with the ability to cast each of those spells once a day for free. The provided spells are all related to gathering information from the surrounding environment or wildlife.
(I'm giving a general description rather than quoting the feature directly because TCE is not a freely available source. However, you can find an earlier playtest version of the same feature in Unearthed Arcana: Class Feature Variants.)
Of course, while Primal Awareness is thematically similar, it is a distinct feature, not just a modification of Primeval Awareness, so it might not be exactly what you're looking for. On the other hand, it is an official character creation option, so you have some assurance that it has been play-tested for balance and such.