Here's another thing: Rangers make good "muscle" backup for rogues for scouting parties- but for a spellcaster devoted to sneaking, the Ranger is the Rogue's next best friend when they have to venture out (almost) alone.
Absolutely. It works fine in 3e, and even a bit better with PF. Why? The classes are more customizable because of the selectable class features and the archetypes.So question 1 is this: Is there ever a way to make having two of the same class in a party workable?
Rangers are pretty awesome, because they cover several niches. They can use those wands of CLW, cover a lot of useful skills, and fight quite effectively. I've never heard anyone accuse the ranger of being too weak in any version of 3e, and the PF ranger is a huge upgrade from where it started in 3.0. You won't be quite as good a fighter as the fighter, but with full base attack, some bonus feats, and better saves, you won't exactly embarass yourself. And Hunter's Bond and your spells give you some useful combat abilities a fighter doesn't have. And again, redundancy on stealth and athletic skills and redundant healing ability are good things. And being the one nature-oriented guy can come in handy if you encounter druids/fey/etc. Definitely not a bad choice.Question 2 is a little different. The remaining two class choices play out something like this to me: Rangers are a worse version of Fighters who really wish they were Druids, but can't do either very well, and Bards are worse versions of Sorcerers who wish they were as good at buffing the party as Clerics. Either one still duplicates functionality, in a mechanical sense, and on top of that are so weak in other areas that they are effectively useless in the presence of the other "core" classes. If I'm wrong, please, let me know.
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Question 2 becomes: Is there anything I can do with either of those two classes that will fit with the other four characters, but still fit into a necessary and unique place in the party?
In my experience, the two best "martial" combat styles (this means that they use no magic) are Two-handed fighting and Archery.
The GM let me know that "the focus here is RP, but there will be not insignificant combat and mechanical dealings as well."
being either the only min-maxer or the only non-min-maxer probably isn't good.