Best idea for the Ranger's "Favored Enemy" mechanic.

[Stormonu]

Third the ranger is a woodland based tracker and hunter not some goblin sniping, orc mauling menace to all that is deemed unworthy.

Actually, I believe the ranger started out as a sort of "commando guerrilla" and morphed into the woodsy mountain man in later editions.

Like most of the other classes, the Ranger is what you want it to be - whether you want to be Grizzly Adams, Aragorn, Faramir, Drizzt, Rambo or whatnot.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Favored enemies don't make a whole lot of sense. The way this game is designed, with the constant increase in a player's power in comparison to the game world, the favored enemy is useless.

The ranger got bonuses against giant class monsters in AD&D. These monsters were always far stronger than the average low level character so they were seldom used early on. As players got stronger they were able to compete with these things more readily and they had an advantage over other characters of the same level.

3e made it a class feature that the ranger could choose from a list of potential threats to gain this advantage over, but they dropped the ball in several ways.

First, the player got significantly higher bonuses against this enemy as they leveled, while at the same time, the campaign moved away from these monsters as viable foes due to their CR.

Second they forced the DM of the player using the ranger to include these foes in the setting or the poor fool felt cheated.

Third the ranger is a woodland based tracker and hunter not some goblin sniping, orc mauling menace to all that is deemed unworthy. These things might inhabit sections of a game world but they certainly aren't the only thing there is and when it's time to gain a new favored enemy they aren't going to disappear to be replaced by the player's newest flavor of hated enemy.

Instead of favored this and favored that, in the character description, this kind of single minded devotion to the complete eradication of a species might be better served as a theme where anyone who feels the need to hunt down and destroy a creature type be given the feats to do so. It shouldn't be the ranger's job unless she wants it to be.

Rangers should be good at wilderness survival, hunting, and tracking. They should be so in tune with nature that they get one or two druid spells a couple of times a day once they reach a significant level, around 10th or so, and never get spells that are designed to replace the character's weapons, enhance them maybe, but not cause damage themselves.

I think you've got most of your factual points wrong here, I'm afraid.

This is why:

1. In 1e and earlier, rangers got bonus against 'giant class' but that wasn't just giants - it included goblins, orcs, ogres etc too. So it was a useful damage bonus against the foes you fought at low level and stayed useful against the higher level giant foes too.

2. In 3e the campaign doesn't necessarily move away from favoured enemies as viable foes as level increases. Take Dragons, Demons or Undead (if DM allowed damage bonus against them - many did) for example - they all have foes available across the entire CR spectrum. You've got to work pretty hard to pick a favoured enemy which really is limited. Nor does it force the DM in any way - unless the DM plans a game with no dragons, or no demons, in which case it is simple for him to tell a player not to pick that foe because it will never exist. The PC doesn't fight them all the time, but occasionally they come up and on those occasions he gets a decent bonus.

3. In your opinion the ranger is just a woodland tracker and hunter, but I must point out that it doesn't match the abilities that the class has *ever* had - it has *always* had a knack for targeting some particular group of foes.

That isn't to say that it is fine for you to have your own vision for what a ranger class should be - more power to you! I'm certainly not intending to try to tell you what you should like... but I did think it was worth shining some extra light on some of the issues you brought up.



Personally I *really* liked the 3.5e rangers favoured enemy - it grew organically with the character, and so as a campaign progressed he could stay with older enemies or focus on newer ones that looked like they were going to be around for a while.

Cheers

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think you've got most of your factual points wrong here, I'm afraid.

This is why:

1. In 1e and earlier, rangers got bonus against 'giant class' but that wasn't just giants - it included goblins, orcs, ogres etc too. So it was a useful damage bonus against the foes you fought at low level and stayed useful against the higher level giant foes too.

2. In 3e the campaign doesn't necessarily move away from favoured enemies as viable foes as level increases. Take Dragons, Demons or Undead (if DM allowed damage bonus against them - many did) for example - they all have foes available across the entire CR spectrum. You've got to work pretty hard to pick a favoured enemy which really is limited. Nor does it force the DM in any way - unless the DM plans a game with no dragons, or no demons, in which case it is simple for him to tell a player not to pick that foe because it will never exist. The PC doesn't fight them all the time, but occasionally they come up and on those occasions he gets a decent bonus.

3. In your opinion the ranger is just a woodland tracker and hunter, but I must point out that it doesn't match the abilities that the class has *ever* had - it has *always* had a knack for targeting some particular group of foes.

That isn't to say that it is fine for you to have your own vision for what a ranger class should be - more power to you! I'm certainly not intending to try to tell you what you should like... but I did think it was worth shining some extra light on some of the issues you brought up.



Personally I *really* liked the 3.5e rangers favoured enemy - it grew organically with the character, and so as a campaign progressed he could stay with older enemies or focus on newer ones that looked like they were going to be around for a while.

Cheers

Agreed on all counts...but I also have to agree that the idea Orzel put forth is pretty damn good.

Personally, I'd like to see a melding of the two, a refinement: FEnemy that grants certain targeted bonuses to fighting particular creatures but also gives a suite of more generalized benefits that derived from that particular training. Ditto FEnvironment.

 

[Gold Roger]

I like it. I really think that having a favored enemy is an important feature of the ranger class and this suggestion really brings that feature from a neat, but forgetable, occassional bonus, to a defining part of the class.

I'd also add the ranger being good at identifying and countering monsters in general, in addition to doing very well against a particular kind.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I think this is definitely the idea of the week. Brilliant stuff.

Replacing +x bonus to attack or damage with a set of well flavoured bonuses/capacities that are more representative of the Ranger's training and ability, while at the same time being more generally useful in all combats/exploration/social (count those pillars) while at the same time freeing the DM from having to suggest that undead [nudge, nudge, wink, wink] is the way to go, while at the same time decoupling the ranger's dependence upon the type of adventure they are presented with...

Summoning [MENTION=82759]WotC_Trevor[/MENTION]; are you listening? I think you have a brilliant idea here.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Raith5]

I want both quarry and favored enemy please! Surely we can have abilties/themes which represent both ie a modest boost for focusing on an enemy or a more significant bonus for a specific type of enemy.

I can also imagine non-rangers having a favoured enemy type of ability.

 

[ren1999]

Could we have "Favored Enemy" and "Racial Weapon Affinity" as a modular option please? I'd like to make it easier to ignore it.

 

[GX.Sigma]

We haven't yet seen what they mean by each class having a variable level of complexity, so I imagine it would fall under that.

It also seems like it would work as a theme.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I... actually like that. It's an awesome idea.

Later in the thread: I like this too! One can imagine a "woodlands" ranger, a "desert" ranger, an "urban" ranger, etc.--and none of them feel useless outside their favored environment.

We have to tell the designers. This one could go all the way.

Like the original; really like the terrain-based one. I came in this topic prepared to say the best way to do favored enemy was to take it out back and shoot it, but changed my mind 180 degrees.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Great idea. Really. Hope this gets picked up, and favored enemy isn't just "advantage vs. your enemy" to some degree. As always, play what you like