Favored Enemy (Your Race) question

[Dreaddisease]

I have a friend who asked why having your race as a favored enemy would cause you to be evil? He asked this because police detectives favored enemies (Enemy in the sense of getting bonuses to track and take out) is human, and they are not considered evil. In a human-dominated society would it be okay to have humans as a favored enemy if you are human and not be evil?

I countered him with the situation where humans did not dominate the geography and that killing your own race would be considered evil, especially if they were considered your enemy.

What do you think?

 

[Drawmack]

Well it made sense to me.

Someone who blindly hates everyone from their own race is a genocidal maniac.

OTOH: I did house rule this a bit to say that you could name a specific person from any of the PC races as a favored enemy and you could change this if they were not your enemy anymore for any reason. I did this when I created the bounty hunter who is an urban ranger.

For Example: Bob the Bounty Hunter is seeking a bounty on a human wizard who robbed the crown jewels. This wizard is his favored enemy. Eventualy he catches the wizard who is put to death. He can now name a new favored enemy to fill the spot left vacant by the death.

 

[shilsen]

I've house-ruled this and allow characters to have their own race as favoured enemy without being evil, if it is appropriate to the character. A favoured enemy is not necessarily a hated one (although it can very well be so), but may simply be the type of target one is used to. A woodsman who is skilled in hunting animals does not need to hate them, nor does (for example) a LN elven bounty-hunter, most of whose targets are elves.

 

[Agback]

Someone who blindly hates everyone from their own race is a genocidal maniac.

Someone who blindly hates everyone from any race is a genocidal maniac.

Indeed, anyone who blindly hates is evil.

The issue is that the 'favoured enemy' bonuses usefully model abilities and specialities that are unconnected with hatred, blind, racist, or otherwise.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Khorod]

That's odd, my reading of Favored Enemy in 3rd has been that the old passionate hatred and rage are much played down.

"Do to his extensive study of his foes and training in the proper techniques for combating them..."

So whatever the ranger's reason to select a Favored Enemy, the flavor strikes me as training to figtht particular sorts of enemies, as a hunter of deer masters tracking and precisely and painlessly killing a deer.

Looks like they're trying to play it both ways with the same-race-evil comment. My solution:

1) Race breaks down to culture.
2) You can't choose your own culture because you have to be eccentric- maybe even evil, by its standards, to not share some of the same subte vulnerabilities of combat style and psychology.
3) So you have to be evil, chaotic, or suitably warped by your own cultural standards to choose your own people.

I think the entry in the PHB is referring to evil that is the result of utter self-hatred.

 

[Angcuru]

I don't think that taking your own race as favored enemy should be evil, since specializing in tracking, hunting down, etc. can be used for GOOD purposes, such as trying to find the little girl who got lost in the woods and protecting her from the evil bad guy who kidnapped her out of opportunity. Having Favored enemy is not having a raging hate against a race, but knowing their behavior, anatomy, psychology, etc. so that it gives you an edge.

Favored Enemy, ahh, the goodness. When used right, it can make a ranger as dangerous, if not more so than a fighter of equal level, at the higher levels, of course. Even more so if you use Monte Cook's version.

I also think that a favored enemy selected at char-gen should have the option of being swapped out if the char NEVER EVER EVER runs into those creatures.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I've always wondered about that rule in relation to PCs of evil races. Why shouldn't a CG Orc Ranger be able to hunt his brethren particularly well? Hell, he should know them better than any Human Ranger would...

 

[haiiro]

I've never really seen the point of the alignment limitation on picking one's own race as a favored enemy, and I wouldn't have any problem with allowing a good/neutral PC to do just that. (Along the same lines, I don't think the assassin PrC should be limited to evil characters -- but that's a slightly different issue.)

Alignment is a useful tool, but it shouldn't hobble character concepts unnecessarily, IMO.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, I, personally, have studied how to hunt and kill my fellow humans efficiently. I can kill people with much greater efficiency than I could kill, say, a bear, because I've carefully studied human physiology, what makes humans tick, and how to break one in a permanent manner. So a case can be made that people like me have taken Humans as a favored enemy.

Of course, I'm also evil, so that makes me a bad case for this.

But still, I don't see why learning about how your own people is an evil act. The same things which make one good at hunting and killing something can also make you halfway decent at putting them back together. In fact, if anything, a ranger is more likely to learn about his own species than that of another species. After all, knowing yourself is even more important than knowing the enemy.

 

[Dreaddisease]

Agreed. And wouldn't the easiest creature to study be your own race making that a perfect favored "enemy". I don't see why saying its a favored enemy. Maybe it should be favorite 'prey'.