Changes to the Ranger

[Galethorn]

EDIT: Changed my mind about this modification; see my third post in the thread for my current idea.

Ok, so, I had a vague idea for a third ranger path. The title is a working one, obviously. Basically, it gives the ranger that takes the path the same HP characteristics as a fighter, for those rangers who want to fight in melee with a single weapon.

Tough Bastard
Life in the wild has turned you tough as nails.
* Instead of 12 + con hitpoints at 1st level, and 5/level thereafter, you begin with 15 + con, and gain 6/level
* You may make 9 + con mod healing surges per day.

Anyone have thoughts regarding how this could ruin the balance of the game, or, more importantly, any ways to meet my original goal better (e.g. a non-two-weapon path for melee rangers)?

I know that a lot of the powers are two-weapon (or archery) specific, but I think that's alright, because a character taking this path might well want to use a bow sometimes.

Edit: also, I think it would be within reason, for my game, to change some of the powers (for example, Sweeping Whirlwind) to allow for a two-handed melee weapon, if not two melee weapons, if that influences the viability of my general goal.

 

[Revinor]

Why to not just play fighter? Instead of going over and changing every ranger power, just take a look at fighter and decide what is really missing from your 'tough ranger'. Maybe one or two powers here and there extra for fighter will be enough?

 

[Galethorn]

Fighters lack the skills and 'skirmish' related powers that rangers get.

 

[Galethorn]

Having slept on it, it seems like a better modification would be to just alter the TWF path to be a more general melee path, and forego the change in hitpoints.

To do that, I think what I might do is basically let a ranger make two attacks with a single weapon for all the powers where you roll to-hit twice. It's possible that this would be a little unbalancing with, say, a greataxe, when compared to the ranger with two longswords.

To solve that little stumbling-block, I think I might just exclude two-handed weapons other than Heavy Blades, because they're "Too heavy to use effectively for Ranger powers."

This means that a single-weapon ranger isn't going to do any better than two attacks at 1d10 damage, which is the same as a ranger with two bastard swords. Now, yes, the single-weapon ranger only has to buy one weapon, but that's nicely counterbalanced by the fact that they only get the bonuses of one weapon; you get to burn twice as many item-powers if you've got two magic swords instead of one.