Dedicated Hunter[General] (Was Dedicated Tracker [General])

[Bront]

Dedicated Hunter[General]
As a devoted warrior and tracker of your god, you have learned use the skills of nature along with your divine gifts.

Requirements: Lay on Hands, Favored Enemy, Smite, Knowledge Religion 5, Survival 8

Benifit: You may multi-class freely between Ranger and Paladin.

Your Ranger Levels stack with your Paladin Levels for increasing the effects of Lay on Hands.

Your add one half your Paladin Levels (rounded up) to your Ranger Levels for qualifying for Favored Enemies. In addition, You can add your Ranger level to your Paladin level when smiting a Favored Enemy for the effect (but not the number of smites).

Also, you may choose to make your Special Mount your Animal Companion as well. If you do so, use the following table instead of the Special Mount or Animal Companion table. Your Special Mount is summoned once, and then stays will you till it dies. Should the mount die, die, it immediately disappears, leaving behind any equipment it was carrying. you may not summon another mount for thirty days or until you gains a paladin or ranger level level, whichever comes first, even if the mount is somehow returned from the dead. During this thirty-day period, you take a -1 penalty on attack and weapon damage rolls. After those thirty days, you can immediately summon a new mount.

The effective level is your Paladin level plus your effective Druid level granted to you by the Ranger class (One-half your Ranger level). You gain the mount as soon as this effective level is 5.

Effective							
Level		HD	NA	Str	Dex	Int	Special
5th		2	4	1	1	6	Empathic link, improved evasion, share spells, share saving throws, Link
6th-7th		4	4	2	2	6	Devotion
8th		4	6	2	2	7	Improved Speed
9th-10th	6	6	3	3	7	Multiattack
11th		6	8	3	3	8	Command creatures of it's kind
12th-14th	8	8	4	4	8	
15th-17th	10	10	5	5	9	Spell Resistance
18th-20th	12	12	6	6	9

All powers are identical to those stated in the Animal Companion or Special Mount rules.

The choice to combine your Special Mount and Animal Companion is a one time choice made when you select this feat.

If you loose your Paladin abilities, this feat ceases to function untill those abilities are restored. In the case of the mount, the mount leaves.

Normal: You may not return to the Paladin class once you take a level in another class, and class levels are counted normaly.

[sblock=Old Proposal]Dedicated Tracker [General]
As a devoted warrior and tracker of your god, you have learned use the skills of nature along with your divine gifts.

Requirements: Lay on Hands, Combat Style, Knowledge Religion and Nature (one at 8, other at 5)

Benifit: You may multi-class freely between Ranger and Paladin. Also, your Ranger Levels stack with your Paladin Levels for increasing the effects of Lay on Hands.

Also, you may choose to make your Special Mount your Animal Companion as well. If you do so, use the following table instead of the Special Mount or Animal Companion table. Your Special Mount is summoned once, and then stays will you till it dies. Should the mount die, die, it immediately disappears, leaving behind any equipment it was carrying. you may not summon another mount for thirty days or until you gains a paladin or ranger level level, whichever comes first, even if the mount is somehow returned from the dead. During this thirty-day period, you take a -1 penalty on attack and weapon damage rolls. After those thirty days, you can immediately summon a new mount.

The effective level is your Paladin level plus your effective Druid level granted to you by the Ranger class (One-half your Ranger level). You gain the mount as soon as this effective level is 5.

Effective							
Level		HD	NA	Str	Dex	Int	Tricks	Special
5th		2	4	1	1	6	2	Empathic link, improved evasion, share spells, share saving throws, Link
6th-7th		4	4	2	2	6	3	Devotion
8th		4	6	2	2	7	3	Improved Speed
9th-10th	6	6	3	3	7	4	Multiattack
11th		6	8	3	3	8	4	Command creatures of it's kind
12th-14th	8	8	4	4	8	5	
15th-17th	10	10	5	5	9	6	Spell Resistance
18th-20th	12	12	6	6	9	7

All powers are identical to those stated in the Animal Companion or Special Mount rules.

The choice to combine your Special Mount and Animal Companion is a one time choice made when you select this feat.

If you loose your Paladin abilities, this feat ceases to function untill those abilities are restored. In the case of the mount, the mount leaves.

Normal: You may not return to the Paladin class once you take a level in another class.[/sblock]

 

[Bront]

Bump

FYI - the Chart is simply a compilation of the best of the Summon Mount and Animal Companion tables put togeather. And while yes, it lets you get Summon Mount and Animal Companion before either class alone would, but it should be at a higher level than you would have gotten it given the two classes. Basicly, I see it as a tradeoff of giving up on potentialy 2 weaker companions (Horse and other Animal) for one stronger one. And given the other Paladin features that you'll take a hit for with multi-classing, it didn't seem too out of line.

 

[Velmont]

Requirements: Lay on Hands, Combat Style, Knowledge Religion and Nature (one at 8, other at 5)

Why Combat Style?

Why not using as prerequisit Special Mount and Animal Companion? After all, the feat mix those two, it would make sense to have them as requirement. No?

 

[Bront]

Because that requires you to be 9th level, 5th paladin and 4th Ranger, which makes the feat somewhat unwieldly and potentialy near useless (XP penalties to get there for a non-human/half-elf make it expensive).

Combat style was to require 2 ranger levels without simply saying 2 ranger levels. Same with Lay Hands and Paladin, though since it boosts Lay Hands, it works with that at least. I guess I could add that your paladin levels count for Combat Style, but that seems to be too good.

The idea is to make the combo that is not normaly very mechanicly sound a bit more so. You still loose most of the higher level paladin/ranger abilities, turn undead is a bit more stagnent, favored enemy doesn't improve, smite doesn't get much better, and their skills aren't the most compatable, but the 2 powers that realy took a nose dive were animal companion and special mount, so I figured to allow them to be combined, and eventualy gotten to earlier than they might with a multi-class character normaly (though later than a single class one of either class).

 

[Velmont]

I like the idea.

Something bugging me with these requirment... something more for the flavor I think, as Combat style have no relation with the gained power.

The mount, seems pretyty fine.

Lay on hand raising with ranger level. Fine. I might have devellop something with more flavor (Greater lay on hand healing, but may be apply only the mount?)

But yeap, it's a good one.

 

[Bront]

It's a feat, don't want to give too much for it.

And yes, flavor wise, the Combat Style bugs me a little bit, but there wasn't a ranger ability that was a good fit at 2nd level (1st level Favored Enemy was ok, but 1st level. Endurance or Tracking work, but are feats, and let you get around taking ranger, though since you only benifit from ranger levels, it's kind of pointless)

 

[Velmont]

There is favored enemy too, but end with the same problem, the feat have no relation to it either...

 

[Knight Otu]

Problems:
- Its prerequisites can only be obtained at 5th level, so it can't be taken until 6th level. A bit of an odd choice.
- The name doesn't fit too well with the granted abilities. Perhaps Paladin of Nature would work better.
- The (Extra) Tricks column is rather pointless. One, the mount's intelligence increases naturally, which in theory increases the available tricks. Two, since the mount is intelligent, I'd say it understands you well enough to do what you want without having to train it to.

I'd change Combat Style to Favored Enemy, and give a smallish benefit against that Favored Enemy. I'd also be tempted to change the requirements a bit so they can be fulfilled at either 3rd or 6th level.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I'd change Combat Style to Favored Enemy, and give a smallish benefit against that Favored Enemy. I'd also be tempted to change the requirements a bit so they can be fulfilled at either 3rd or 6th level.

What if you required a paldin-ish favored enemy, say "favored enemy undead, evil outsiders or an [always evil] humanoid"? and say that when using smite evil against a favored enemy your favored enemy bonus is doubled, or something like that?

 

[Bront]

What if you required a paldin-ish favored enemy, say "favored enemy undead, evil outsiders or an [always evil] humanoid"? and say that when using smite evil against a favored enemy your favored enemy bonus is doubled, or something like that?

I like the second part, and then perhaps renaming the feat "Dedicated Hunter". I worry about the allignment part of favored enemy, which sort of doesn't make sense, but having Smite either double, or better yet count your ranger levels against your favored enemy works.

There are lots of feats that are available at levels that characters don't get them. How many BAB +5 feats are out there (Yes I know not nessessarily in the SRD, but still). I picked 5 and 8 because they tend to be common and significant numbers. 5 is a significant skill number in general, 8 shows up a few places as well beyond PrCs (It's double your 1st level training, so a significant improvement). Also, requiring one at 5 and one at 8 promotes you having at least 2 levels in each class (or you have to buy one as a cross class skill at some point most likely).

However, I guess if I drop both to 5 and require favored enemy you could get this as 3rd. What I want to avoid though, is allowing this feat to allow a player to take 1 level in ranger (or Paladin), and get a ton of extra powers by staying single classed the rest of the way, so requiring at least 2 in each may be needed just in general.