Help building a character

[Dozen]

Is there a variant ranger that swaps out spell casting for something else?

Two, in fact! Though both of them are considered subpar compared to the ranger spellist(as weird as that may sound). One, the Spelless Ranger from Complete Warrior, gives you the Barbarian's Fast Movement, and three spell-like abilities you can use once per day(because apparently Fast Movement is some kind of superpower above and beyond the ability to defy conventional physics). The other, so called "Champion" of the Wild, offers four bonus feats in place. Sounds good, except the selection is a crime against characterkind. There are some decent options for every combat style, but you'd be hard-pressed to find four feats useful to a single build. Neither worths the effort, really.
Ask your DM to come up with something for you, or see if they allow third party or Pathfinder just this once.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

If you want to make his spellcasting easier, just say "here are some of the most useful spells. Just prep those and don't worry about anything else." If he really can't be bothered to keep track of the very few spell slots he gets... Well, like you said, he's lazy, and that doesn't exactly work well

But yeah, the spell-less ranger variants are a bit crappy. The Complete Warrior one is laughably bad, while the Complete Champion version at least has some maybe useful feats, but in practice they aren't as good as trading away spells, and that goes double for gestalt since Fighter is available to shore up feats.

Just how powerful does this player hope the character to be? Getting decent damage out of an archer tends to be difficult, though it's much easier with Pathfinder or even Dragon Magazine materials. Heck, Dragon Mag 310 has a fighter variant that can get Dex to damage with ranged attacks, and can also get a better version of Rapid shot called Arrow Storm which lets the character trade -5 on all ranged attack rolls for an extra 2 attack rolls on a full attack.

 

[Nezkrul]

Gestalt? Simple? No spells or psionic powers but ranged attacks instead? done:

Ranger 1 - 20 // Scout 1 - 20

take Swift Hunter at 6th level, Greater Many Shot (XPH) at 9th, Improved Skirmish as soon as you can as a Scout bonus feat or at 12th, give up animal companion at Ranger 4 for Solitary Hunter ACF (add favored enemy bonus on attack rolls), take the ACF from Complete Champion for bonus feats and not spells for ranger, Use a composite longbow, and have fun doing crazy amounts of damage with every Greater Manyshot Attack you make (every arrow you fire now must make an attack roll, and each also gets precision damage)

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Regarding Nezkrul's suggestion of Swift Hunter, the feat breaks down a bit in gestalt due to having more levels in both classes. In normal play it would max out at 20 combined levels, but in gestalt it'd effectively be 40 levels at 20th level, and I'm pretty sure your DM's BS meter will go off by then since the character would have the Favored Enemies and Skirmish of 40th level pure classes. One option to work with that is hard cap it at 20, so a 10th level Ranger//Scout would have the Skirmish and Favored Enemies of 20th level scouts and rangers, respectively, and that would be it until epic levels. If you can't go further than your own HD, don't even bother with the feat because it's useless since you have full progression of Ranger and Scout anyway and the feat only gives the stacked progression.

 

[Empirate]

Let me just say that players who want mechanically powerful characters, but are too lazy to learn the goddamn mechanics, better be ultra-important to the group in some way (providing the place to play and the books, being an extremely nice guy everybody likes, buying pizza for everybody etc.). Otherwise, this behaviour is a one-way-ticket to "please leave our group".

I'd put in the least effort humanly possible, and if he complains, shrug and say something along the lines of you at least taking any effort at all, unlike him...

 

[Nezkrul]

Reread the feat, Jack - the feat ALWAYS lets you get favored enemy and skirmish damage against your favored enemies even if they are crit immune

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Perhaps Fighter//Ranger/Scout (Swift Hunter Build?)

Swift Hunter is really good and fairly uncomplicated. The Fighter side would keep the BAB full.

Swift Hunter Handbook.

 

[Turik2100]

Well thanks for your help, but it turns out the lazy player doesn't want to play cause he doesn't want to deal with being the weak one of the group. But on the brighter side I found someone else who wants to play and he has already made his charcter with out anyones help or opinions, Its very refreshing.

 

[Nezkrul]

wow, that lazy person has no idea how much of a powerhouse a scout ranger is then

 

[Rakusia]

i say your better off without the lazy player. congrats on finding a new guy. saddly i have trouble with that. when you live in a small farming community full of rednecks(im a country boy) the selection pool is a bit small.