Favored Enemy Ranger Houserule

[Kai Lord]

The only problem I have with favored enemies is that it is completely dependent on the DM. If your favored enemy is Shapcechangers and you never encounter within the context of the game then the favored enemy ability is absolutely useless.

So choose Dragons, Demons, Devils, Humans, and Undead as your Favored Enemies. If your DM never throws any of those at you, congratulations, your campaign just got a whole lot easier.

Remember that the Supernatural Blow feat from Masters of the Wild lets you apply your Favored Enemy damage bonus toward Undead.

 

[Relic]

So choose Dragons, Demons, Devils, Humans, and Undead as your Favored Enemies. If your DM never throws any of those at you, congratulations, your campaign just got a whole lot easier.

That still does not address that the Favored Enemy is still reliant on the DM. As long as Favored Enemy is going to be based on encounter chances (the DM's realm of control) then Favored Enemy has the potential to be weaker, if not useless, because of it. A class feature should be viable without DM control and/or manipulation. Since the Ranger's Favored Enemy is such a fundamental aspect of the class, there should be a system to where Favored Enemy is not based on encounters that may or may not happen but is based on something the Ranger can draw upon and use on a consistent basis.

 

[FireLance]

That still does not address that the Favored Enemy is still reliant on the DM. As long as Favored Enemy is going to be based on encounter chances (the DM's realm of control) then Favored Enemy has the potential to be weaker, if not useless, because of it. A class feature should be viable without DM control and/or manipulation. Since the Ranger's Favored Enemy is such a fundamental aspect of the class, there should be a system to where Favored Enemy is not based on encounters that may or may not happen but is based on something the Ranger can draw upon and use on a consistent basis.

To a lesser extent, it is true of any class ability since the DM sets the challenges. If your rogue never has to make a Reflex save, his Evasion class ability is useless. If the only creatures he ever encounters are Constructs, Elementals and Undead, so is his Sneak Attack ability.

Anyway, what do you think of my proposed fix (elaborated above)? Basically, the ranger can choose which enemies his favoured enemy bonus applies to on a daily basis.

 

[Relic]

Anyway, what do you think of my proposed fix (elaborated above)? Basically, the ranger can choose which enemies his favoured enemy bonus applies to on a daily basis.

It is certainly more favorable than the PHB favored enemy. It solves the issue of having +5 vs goblins and +1 vs dragons at the high end of the level scale. I would allow my players to do this... switch their bonuses so that they apply to their favored enemy that they are dealing with at the moment.

 

[Stalker0]

I like the idea of switching your favored enemy on a per day basis.

If you think that's too powerful, you could say the bonus kicks in after fighting one of those kinds of creatures that day.

For instance, if your out fighting dragons, you say I'm going to put my bonus for dragons. You find a dragon, and beat him. Now the bonus kicks in. However, if you just stick with your usual creature and don't switch, you wouldn't have that problem.


I also really like moving the bonus to things like AC and such, makes it more flexible and takes care of the whole picking undead and oozes and such.

 

[Plane Sailing]

We have adjusted the favored enemy for rangers to make them more versatile in combatting different creatures. Let me know what you think of this favord enemy houserule.

Why make a damage bonus only applicable to creatures which can be struck by critical hits? It seems like a pointless limitation in the PHB and a pointless limitation to continue with any changes you make.

If a fighter can add +2 from weapon specialisation when fighting undead, why can't a ranger from his special knowledge and training? A bard could give him +1 damage against undead just by inspiring confidence. Can't the ranger have the confidence of training?

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I wouldn't allow the greater flexibility that you propose in my games because so many of the PC's seem to need to add up all their bonuses at the point of rolling the die already... this would give them more to get confused with!

The one change I made to favoured enemy is to provide 1 point every odd level which can be added to any existing enemies or to start a new enemy. This means that the favoured enemies can grow "organically" as the campaign progresses. Perhaps you started with +1 Orcs, but never faced them again, so at 3rd and 5th you took Abberations (giving +2 Abberations) and then there was a long stretch fighting drow so at 7th, 9th and 11th it ended up as +3 Drow. At this point it was revealed that devils were behind the entire campaign evils, so he concentrates the rest of his campaign life on preparing to fight devils, at 13th, 15th, 17th and 19th... so at 19th level his favoured enemies might look +1 Orcs, +2 abberations, +3 drow, +4 devils. At 20th level, I allow the ranger to add +1 to *every* favoured enemy he has - giving a benefit to someone who sticks to the class for all 20 levels, much like the 20th level benefit barbarians and monks get.

Cheers