Favored Terrain & Favored Enemy

[dagger]

I am still against the way Pathfinder handles rangers favored enemy....its the same as 3/3.5.




1. First of all, it is a pain to keep track of (to us).
2. Second, they have added Favored Terrain, which adds to the annoying factor.
3. Third, they might rarely kick in if ever.....

Now if you like the system that is great, but we don't.

I am thinking about morphing them both into maybe one ability, like the way rangers are handled in 1st edition with a flat damage bonus to certain monster types (Giant Kin).

Thoughts?

 

[Kaisoku]

A looooong time ago (possibly during 3.0e days), and back when I was posting on Monte Cook's boards, I created a variant Ranger that could pick up "Ranger Talents" (to use Pathfinder's current Rogue to give a perfect example of what I did).

In it, I had the old Favored Enemy options, but then also had some different options.. like the following:

- The ability to pick creatures from the bestiary (instead of a creature type) to have bonuses against. They were added to a list, capped by your ranks in Knowledge (nature).
The ability to swap them out with time and a skill check, and feats for expanding your max known were available.
This was typically more relevant since you could wait and choose creatures (with a skill check) as you encountered them.

- The ability to gain a bonus against a specific target. To get this bonus, you needed to observe the target in combat (similar to the assassin), or out of combat (took longer), or even the option of Survival checks (reading tracks) or Gather Information checks (word of mouth, typically for humanoids but also "local legends") to gain the bonus before even meeting the creature face to face.
This was more of a Hunter type of ability, so was automatically relevant all the time, as long as you invested time/checks into it. This also had additional options with the ability to have multiple targets, quicker learning about the target, etc.
Basically Quarry, but as a more "main ability" type thing.

- Similar ability with favored terrains, where you spend time and skill checks to adjust your "survival training" for the current environment, and adjust your ghillie suit to gain proper camouflage, etc.
Get extra stuff in line with more movement, reroll perception checks or never surprised, etc.
"Hunter's Bond" effect of allowing you to give your allies a little fast movement and ignore terrain penalties screams "ranger" to me too.

Since most of these abilities were more uniform, I went with more "gain extra crit range or multiplier" or "cause status effect" or "ignore penalties or gain retries" stuff, instead of just pure attack and damage, or skill bonus. That way you didn't always have +10 to attack and damage or skill against a particular creature/terrain or set of creatures in combat, but you could get a +5 bonus to those, and deal crippling effects, or gain fast movement and "act on surprise rounds" in terrains, etc.

This sound like the kind of stuff you are talking about?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

The thing that most pisses me off about the new favored terrains is that PF actually NERFED several high level Ranger class features like Camouflage to ONLY function in favored terrains.

 

[dagger]

This sound like the kind of stuff you are talking about?

Thanks for the ideas.

Yea we are looking at various ways to change it, and we might just end up not messing with it.

 

[dagger]

The thing that most pisses me off about the new favored terrains is that PF actually NERFED several high level Ranger class features like Camouflage to ONLY function in favored terrains.

Yea that something else I had not considered.

 

[Voadam]

When I was running Pathfinder Beta I adopted some 4e stuff including the concept that rangers are high damage low AC vulnerable striker/skirmishers. I made the favored enemy bonus a flat bonus and did not restrict it by type of target.

I also gave the ranger in the party the choice of a flat skill bonus to one of the normal skill categories for favored enemy or a knowledge skill for a type of creature knowledge. That way it could be, "I'm the thief hunter" with sense motive or survival for tracking as the skill bonus, or "I'm the demon hunter" with knowledge planar as the bonus.

I felt these changes worked out very well in defining the ranger niche.

 

[Mon]

We reduced the RAW favoured enemy bonuses by half (+1 at 1st, 5th, 10th, etc) and shifted the other half across to a "prey" ability which works the same way but the creature type can be changed once per day (representing a new hunting focus).

This way the ranger can spread his bonus around a bit if he has some inkling of what he might be up against or, since prey and favoured enemy stack, focus on his "real nemesis" and receive the full bonus that a RAW ranger gets.

 

[gamerprinter]

As a DM when a player is rolling up their Ranger and gets to Favored Enemy, the player asks what they should pick - and I offer them suggestions based on the kinds of enemies found in the region of the world that the game is taking place. I suggest specific humanoids that are prevalent, will be enemies they run into and so. If undead are common, I suggest that. If giants same thing. While the party could run into anything and not every combat will contain a ranger's favored enemy, I do try and insert a ranger's FE fairly often. If you're DM is just never putting those kinds of FE choices as opponents, then he's being a dick.

Since I'm the DM in my games, my rangers never have a problem with their favored enemies not showing up.

Regarding favored terrain, I like the fact that the Jungle ranger can't camoflage himself in dessert terrain, it makes sense - something I didn't think 3.5 make sense in the use of that ability.

GP

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

As a DM when a player is rolling up their Ranger and gets to Favored Enemy, the player asks what they should pick - and I offer them suggestions based on the kinds of enemies found in the region of the world that the game is taking place. I suggest specific humanoids that are prevalent, will be enemies they run into and so. If undead are common, I suggest that. If giants same thing. While the party could run into anything and not every combat will contain a ranger's favored enemy, I do try and insert a ranger's FE fairly often. If you're DM is just never putting those kinds of FE choices as opponents, then he's being a dick.

Since I'm the DM in my games, my rangers never have a problem with their favored enemies not showing up.

Regarding favored terrain, I like the fact that the Jungle ranger can't camoflage himself in dessert terrain, it makes sense - something I didn't think 3.5 make sense in the use of that ability.

GP

This - all of it.

 

[Kaisoku]

Well, to me.. it felt like the Ranger was using a ghillie suit. In which case, he'd just have to spend a little time adjusting it for his new environment and blammo, useable in any natural terrain really.

The only problem I see with asking the DM in advance is twofold:

In a sandbox game, where the DM is making the encounters, the player will know if the DM is adding enough creatures for his favored enemy bonus or not. When it gets to different levels of bonus... the DM will feel like he's specifically tailoring his encounters for this one character.
Do I put a creature that he gets his full bonus for? Or a lower bonus? If I do put it, it might make things too easy, and if I don't, he'll begrudge me for leaving one out.
Yeah, in a game where everyone is mature, it's not so bad (and a DM can try to focus on putting what makes sense, instead of pandering). When you are playing with people who are new to your group, the DM gets saddled with some decision making, and the player has far too much transparency on the DM's encounter building process.
Some people dislike the idea that in a homebrew, a DM has to worry about a class demanding his attention like this.

In the second scenario, with published adventures, the DM has to read far enough ahead to know if this permanent choice will be worth it for the character, and potentially reveal some elements of the adventure path that perhaps should have been more of a surprise.
People can decide to not act on meta-game knowledge, but it still ruins the feel, even if only a little.

I can very much see the desire for a more uniform, or changeable system that lets the ranger still get his focus, but not get screwed out of bad choices or ruined by metagame knowledge.

I'm partial to the "spend time and skill checks to change your choices" alternative approach.