Alternate rangers

[Plane Sailing]

The ranger in my campaign world is a replacement for the barbarian class, and can be seen here http://www.starguild.freeserve.co.uk/frp/kyri_classes.htm at the bottom.

At the present I play in a campaign where I have a simple variant ranger - he uses the Paladins spell list instead of the Ranger list, and is a "magistrate" - sort of an official bounty hunter focussed on Law rather than Good.

For a very interesting take on alternative ranger the Wheel of Time "Woodsman" class is a nice example, a flavourful wilderness warrior. Just ignore the "defence bonus" which is a WoT-ism and you are good to go.

Cheers

 

[Psion]

Besides Malhavoc and Necromancer ranger variants, what are some others that you use or like?

The best I have seen is the one in AEG's Mercenaries. Too many others I have seen are overpowering.

IMC, I alter the favored enemy ability slightly and use the aforementioned rokugan variant, and allow the ranger to select alternate virtual feats, and remove the stupid "no double weapon" restriction if you select ambi/TWF anyways.

 

[jester47]

Re: Re: Alternate rangers

Is there anything in particular you're looking for? Do you want, for instance, a ranger more like Aragorn, or more like Robin Hood, or more like the 1st-edition Ranger, or simply more powerful?

Well, I thought there would be more, and I was going to run a poll. But now I am pretty sure that the three that are getting the most use are the Malhavoc, Necromancer and AEG ranger variants. I am not looking for a specific one to use, but rather the most popular ones. I plan on making Epic progressions for the three or five most popular. I looked at the AEG ranger and was pretty impressed. Eventually I might make a full compromise ranger class that uses what I think is the best from everything. Right now the most popular seem to be

AEG merc Ranger
Necromancers Gary Ranger
Monte Malhavoc Ranger
WOT Woodsman (still have to take a look at this one though)

I think I might have a list of requirements: like it has to have ranger in the name, favored enemies, virtual feats, favored terrain and spell casting. But we will see.

Keep posting.

Aaron.

 

[Tsyr]

I'd like to suggest that spellcasting should not be a requirement for being called a ranger, but...

Anyhow, I use the Outdoorsman from Path of the Sword. Great class.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Favoured terrain can suffer from the same problem as favoured enemy - too dependent upon the DM giving you the right terrain to work in. I used it for a while a few years ago, but my players and I agreed that while thematically it made lots of sense, in practise it didn't.

Having said that, Something like the WoT ability or even a variant of the Neverwinter Nights thing (+4 hide and move silently in your favoured terrain) might still work well.

Cheers

 

[jester47]

I have some ideas to fix these problems, and they will be out once I am done with all my ranger stuff.

Aaron.

 

[Voadam]

There is also the d20 wheel of time woodsman, but you have to deal with the defense ability/stat in converting.

 

[Voadam]

Also there is the dragon star rangers who I think get point blank shot and the range increasing feat instead of two weapons but are otherwise the same.