How to Build a Better Scout?

Kid Charlemagne said:

You could use the Complete Warrior's variant Ranger. Basically you lose spells, gain fast movement at 6th level, gain an ability to add +4 to Con, Dex, or Wis 1/day for 1 min/lvl at 11th level, gain the abiltiy to remove disease or neutralize posion 1/day at 13th level, and Freedom of movement at 16th level.

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Well hello! I didn't know that the Complete Warrior had anything like that -- thanks for the tip. Is this variant just called a "variant ranger," or do they give it its own funky name?

Are those class abilities Exceptional or Supernatural abilities?

In any case, this sounds closer to what we're after than the 3.5 ranger. Still not crazy about favored enemy or the combat style abilities, but maybe there's no perfect answer.

dreaded_beast said:

Did your player originally pick the fighter class because of all the extra feats or just for the BAB?

If that is the case, I would probably go 3 levels of rogue and then all the rest fighter. This build is assuming you do not take any PrCs.

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I think if the player were to go with a rogue/fighter multiclass combo, your suggestion of a Rog3/Ftr9 (with Rogue being the first class) is probably the best way to go.

The biggest drawback would be that Survival is cross class for all levels.

Haldarin said:

I think the ranger is closest to what you are looking for. The variant from Complete Warrior will eliminate the spellcasting abilities from the ranger. You could replace Cure Disease/Neutralize Poison ability with a Stealth bonus usable once a day.

[SNIP]

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Another vote for the Complete Warrior ranger variant. I have to check that out.

And an interesting insight into the nature of 3.5 favored enemy.

Variant Rangers

All this talk of the variant ranger from the Complete Warrior reminded me that a virtual cottage industry sprang up a couple years back to develop an alt.ranger that didn't suck.

I checked out the Ranger Project site (http://webs.lanset.com/johno/rpgs/dnd/rangerproject/rangers/ranger_list.html) which has plenty of variants, but all of these seem to be spell-casting. Does anyone know of any good mundane alt.rangers out there?

FoxWander said:

You might like the Woodsman from the Wheel of Time book. They've got a very special ops feel to them. Here's the gist of them- full BAB, d10 HP, good Fort save, 6 skill pts/level (with all the class skills you're looking for), simple & martial weapons, light & medium armor and shields. Special abilities include: choose an environment- add half your DEX bonus to attacks rolls vs humanoids in this environment (gain more environments at level 8 and 16), Tracking, Imp. Initiative in light/no armor at 2nd level, +2 to Hide and Move Silently in the woods at 3rd level (increses to +4 at 12th level), bonus feats from combat-centric list at levels 4, 9, 14 & 19, and Weapon Specialization at 6th level.

Basically a Fighter with some pre-chosen feats, more skills and skill points balanced by no heavy armor and less bonus feats. Though if you add it up, the pre-chosen feats, class abilities and bonus feats equal 11- the same number of bonus feats a Fighter gains. So it might be a little unbalanced compared to the Fighter but that will depend on your game. If you gave the class a d8 hit points instead of d10 that could make it better. Then again, one person's "unbalanced" is another's "perfect fit".

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This sounds even closer to my goal than the Complete Warrior's variant ranger. Does anyone have any experience with WoT woodsman? Is it balanced?

Lord Pendragon said:

[SNIP]

I'd go with either a modified Fighter (change feat progression to 1 every three levels instead of two, bump skill points up to 6 and use Ranger skill selection), or a modified Ranger (drop spellcasting, add 3 bonus feats evenly spaced through level progression).

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These are both pretty appealing suggestions, especially the modified fighter. At first blush this seems like it would be reasonably balanced -- the 12th level character would lose two bonus feats in exchange for 60 skill points and a wider skill selection.

And it's got two huge advantages to me: mechanically it's only slightly tinkering with an existing core class, so it's got far fewer unknowns than introducing a completely new or heavily modified core class into the campaign.

And this mod is pretty close to the existing character build, making a retool relatively easy and seemless. Just drop a couple of feats, add some more skill points, and we're ready to roll.

What do you folks think? Is this fighter mod too good?

I think probably the easiest solution is to swap out class skills for class skills. What wilderness rogue needs Gather Information, Diplomacy, or Knowledge (local) when Survival, Heal, and Knowledge (nature) are more appropriate.

I think this is the easiest and surest way to alter classes without making them too weak or too powerful.

Another option, look at the Warcraft Campaign Sourcebook. There's a Scout class in there.

Yes, the proposed fighter mod is far too good. If you were to translate those feats into skill bonusses, they wouldn't add up to more than 8 skill points. That, however, is admittedly, not an ideal way of balancing things but I still think 60 skill points and a better selection for a mere two bonus feats is a bargain. (High level fighters often have more feats than they know what to do with anyway).

I think that the ranger class is a more promising one to modify. Although I think favored enemy should be in line with the characters focus (Haldarin's comments are definitely to the point), it would probably be reasonable to replace each increase of it with a fighter bonus feat. With Fast Movement substituting for 1st level casting and possibly Uncanny Dodge substituting for 2nd level casting, and Imp Uncanny Dodge for fourth level casting, I think you'd have a reasonably balanced nonmagical ranger. (For reference, Ranger 10/Ftr 4/Bbn 6 would have equivalents to all of those abilities and more, so I think it's reasonably balanced against core classes).

BTW, Felix, Knowledge (Local) definitely should be on the wilderness rogue's class skill list. It covers idenitifying local humanoids and hunting areas, geography, etc as well as the city stuff. A scout should know that the odd-shaped hill was once a great watchtower and that there are safe hiding spots in the ruins of an ancient city's sewers. He should probably know that the locals of town X aren't to be trusted but that the innkeeper in Bree is a good and honest man who's just horribly absent-minded.

Garnfellow said:

These are both pretty appealing suggestions, especially the modified fighter. At first blush this seems like it would be reasonably balanced -- the 12th level character would lose two bonus feats in exchange for 60 skill points and a wider skill selection.

And it's got two huge advantages to me: mechanically it's only slightly tinkering with an existing core class, so it's got far fewer unknowns than introducing a completely new or heavily modified core class into the campaign.

And this mod is pretty close to the existing character build, making a retool relatively easy and seemless. Just drop a couple of feats, add some more skill points, and we're ready to roll.

What do you folks think? Is this fighter mod too good?

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If you're still not happy, have a look at the infiltrator class in the Kalamars Players Guide. It's more a rogue class though, less fighter heavy... but it's a real scout class.