The Horizon Walker is actually my favorite of the core 3.5E PrCs. It's nicely balanced, has some interesting abilities, and stays safely nonmagical, for those of you tired of the high-level PrCs where everyone gets spell-like abilities to imitate casters. Go to the House Rules forum and look up threads on magicless Ranger variants. The HW is exactly that; it's like a Ranger in most ways, but trades spells for some always-on abilities.
Anyway, I've got a Half-Ogre (not the SS version, it's an ECL 0 one from the House Rules forum) Ranger/Barbarian/Rogue/Horizon Walker. It's not about being Tarzan; he's a wanderer. The HW abilities are a GREAT complement to his combat abilities. Unlike most brute-force types, he doesn't rely on spellcasters to buff him up constantly.
It's mainly a flavor alternative to the Ranger, balanced in almost every way:
> The +2 skill bonuses the HW gets for environments at most levels balances the 2 fewer skill points you get, EXCEPT that if you always intended to keep that one skill maxxed, it's an improvement.
> The combat bonuses compensate for the 8 lost Favored Enemy points. More importantly, by not tying to specific creature types, there's less of a headache for the DM (if you make the bad guys the Ranger's types, he dominates, otherwise it's a useless ability).
> The miscellaneous bonuses balance the lost spells. Frankly, I'd much rather have Darkvision, Tremorsense, immunity to fatigue, the alignment immunity, and the dimdoor ability instead of the Ranger's spell list, but YMMV.
> And, finally, it reduces multiclassing XP headaches. Since you only need at most three Ranger levels to qualify, you can be a Ranger 3/Barbarian 2/Rogue 2/HW X without worrying about which class is favored. Someone who intended to take the rest of their levels as a Ranger, on the other hand, would probably end up with a penalty.
