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Finally laid my eyes on Monte Cook's version of the Ranger
- Thread starter Green Knight
- Start date
SableWyvern
Hero
I'm using Monte's Ranger, but:
-PHB spell progression
-Bonus Feats at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20.
-Dropped Favoured Enemy Critical, but only after I got MotW with all the extra Favoured Enemy feats in there.
-Also, I've expanded the bonus feat list to include feats as appropriate from all the splat books.
-Finally, I have removed the Dex15 requirement for Ambidexterity, for Rangers only.
The player with the Ranger in my primary campaign was a little upset at seeing his HD drop from d10 to d8, but he had no intention of using his TWF abilities, and the improved Ref save has already kept him alive more than once.
In a secondary campaign I'm starting, the Ranger has gone down the traditional archer path (including some Deepwood Sniper), which would have been far less effective with the original Ranger.
As written, the PHB Ranger seems to me to be the ideal sort of class to put into a beginners D&D, together with other classes that send new players down a predetermined path, reducing the number of early choices that need to be made.
But I'm being to meander off-topic.
-PHB spell progression
-Bonus Feats at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20.
-Dropped Favoured Enemy Critical, but only after I got MotW with all the extra Favoured Enemy feats in there.
-Also, I've expanded the bonus feat list to include feats as appropriate from all the splat books.
-Finally, I have removed the Dex15 requirement for Ambidexterity, for Rangers only.
The player with the Ranger in my primary campaign was a little upset at seeing his HD drop from d10 to d8, but he had no intention of using his TWF abilities, and the improved Ref save has already kept him alive more than once.
In a secondary campaign I'm starting, the Ranger has gone down the traditional archer path (including some Deepwood Sniper), which would have been far less effective with the original Ranger.
As written, the PHB Ranger seems to me to be the ideal sort of class to put into a beginners D&D, together with other classes that send new players down a predetermined path, reducing the number of early choices that need to be made.
But I'm being to meander off-topic.
Psion
Adventurer
The following is a community service announcement:
Monte's Ranger is overpowered.
The only problems with the existing ranger are conceptual. It is really rather balanced. Compared to the fighter, the ranger has fewer feats but a few kicker feats, more and better skills, favored enemies, and spells. Overall a fair trade, I think. Monte just scoops on the benefits, though. It's too much.
Monte's Ranger is overpowered.
The only problems with the existing ranger are conceptual. It is really rather balanced. Compared to the fighter, the ranger has fewer feats but a few kicker feats, more and better skills, favored enemies, and spells. Overall a fair trade, I think. Monte just scoops on the benefits, though. It's too much.
SableWyvern
Hero
Psion: Basically, I agree.
But I don't think that hedging a Ranger into a Two-weapon fighting path is ideal.
The original Ranger player I mentioned in my previous post was quite happy to play a Ranger because of a general character concept that suited the class, and forgo the TWF because those abilities were not part of his character concept.
However, free TWF is one of a Ranger's greatest strengths, and it seems less than ideal to force players to lose out because they want to roleplay rather than munchkinise their class abilities.
With the mods I listed, a Ranger at higher levels is slightly tougher than the PHB version, but only slightly so (+6 Ref save, +3 feats, -21hp at 20th), while also being far more customisable.
Edit: oops, forgot the 44 extra skill points for my alt 20th level Ranger. But I probably would have ended up doing that for a PHB ranger as well.
But I don't think that hedging a Ranger into a Two-weapon fighting path is ideal.
The original Ranger player I mentioned in my previous post was quite happy to play a Ranger because of a general character concept that suited the class, and forgo the TWF because those abilities were not part of his character concept.
However, free TWF is one of a Ranger's greatest strengths, and it seems less than ideal to force players to lose out because they want to roleplay rather than munchkinise their class abilities.
With the mods I listed, a Ranger at higher levels is slightly tougher than the PHB version, but only slightly so (+6 Ref save, +3 feats, -21hp at 20th), while also being far more customisable.
Edit: oops, forgot the 44 extra skill points for my alt 20th level Ranger. But I probably would have ended up doing that for a PHB ranger as well.
Last edited:
Malin Genie
First Post
I agree the Monte ranger s overpowered - the problem with the PHB Ranger IMHO is not that it isn't balanced, it's only that it doesn't do what most people think a ranger should do... the problem with that being that different people seem to have different ideas on what a Ranger should be in a way that they don't with Fighter or Rogue, for example. (The other class that suffers from this problem of 'not meeting widely varying expectations of what the class menas' is the Bar, which is perhaps why we've seen so many alt.Bards relative to any other class except Ranger.)
Monte Cook's answer seems to have been to allow it to do everything that various people may have wanted, in order to 'make it attractive' - thereby unbalancing it.
Green Knight - IMHO it's much cooler in the original:
Monte Cook's answer seems to have been to allow it to do everything that various people may have wanted, in order to 'make it attractive' - thereby unbalancing it.
Green Knight - IMHO it's much cooler in the original:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally laid my eyes on Monte Cook's version of the Ranger
Eh? AFAIK the fighter has always had a d10 hit die. This goes right back to the division into the four basic classes: magic-user (d4), thief (d6), cleric (d8) and fighter (d10). In any case, the ranger is a 1E invention, and I'm pretty sure it never existed before AD&D.
Zhure said:
Eh? AFAIK the fighter has always had a d10 hit die. This goes right back to the division into the four basic classes: magic-user (d4), thief (d6), cleric (d8) and fighter (d10). In any case, the ranger is a 1E invention, and I'm pretty sure it never existed before AD&D.
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