Finally laid my eyes on Monte Cook's version of the Ranger

[Wormwood]

It's enough of an improvement to be useful. It may 'encroach' on the fighter's territory, but not so much that you'll see fighters disappear from your campaign.

We've been using it since it was released with no problems, if that means anything.

 

[Zhure]

Re: Re: Re: Finally laid my eyes on Monte Cook's version of the Ranger

Actually, 1E fighters (and paladins) had a d10 hit die, maxing out at 9d10.

Dude! You just mis-corrected Gary Gygax about original D&D. LOL.

He was referring to the pre-AD&D fighter, with the d8 hit points.

Greg

 

[SableWyvern]

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.

 

[Psion]

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.

 

[SableWyvern]

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.

 

[Malin Genie]

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:

To the grene chapel thou chose, I charge the, to fotte
Such a dunt as thou has dalt - disserved thou habbes -
To be yederly yolden on Nw Yeres morn.
The knyght of the grene chapel men knowen me mony;
Forthi me to fynde, if thou fraystes, fayles thou never.
Therefor com, other recraunt be calde thou behoveus.

 

[qstor]

I like Monte's ranger. I think the TWF is a blatant copy of a certain drow. I like that Monte's drops the TWF. The ranger in Dragonstar d20 drops this too. All of this is IMHO.

Mike

 

[Psion]

Psion: Basically, I agree.

But I don't think that hedging a Ranger into a Two-weapon fighting path is ideal.

Oh, I agree... which is why I said the problems with the ranger are conceptual, not balance.

I allow a ranger to swap those feats out with other, more conceptually-happy feats.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally laid my eyes on Monte Cook's version of the Ranger

Dude! You just mis-corrected Gary Gygax about original D&D. LOL.

He was referring to the pre-AD&D fighter, with the d8 hit points.

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.

 

[uv23]

My $0.02. Remove the spell casting, change d8 back to d10, and Monte's ranger is just right.