Is there a published option to swap a Rangers Wild Empathy?

[Wraith-Hunter]

I'm playing a ranger that is more of a scout type than animal lover type. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a rnager varient that swaps out Wild Empathy for something else, I can do it as long as it is published somewhere. Books, Dragon Mags ect. If you know of anything let me know the swap and the source. Thanks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One option is to ditch the Ranger concept and just go with the Scout base class from Complete Adventurer.

If that is not an option, AFAIK, its between you & your DM as to what you can swap out. As a guideline, you might check out the Urban Ranger from Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Pielorinho]

I'm playing a ranger that is more of a scout type than animal lover type. I'm wondering if anyone knows of a rnager varient that swaps out Wild Empathy for something else, I can do it as long as it is published somewhere. Books, Dragon Mags ect. If you know of anything let me know the swap and the source. Thanks.

I dunno--but I do know that in 17 levels of playing a druid with wild empathy, the ability's not come into use once. That may be campaign-specific, but I suspect in most campaigns it's not going to come into play very often. Whatever you swap it out for should be similarly limited in its use.

Consider instead of being an animal-lover being an animal-dominator: you shift animal's attitudes by intimidating them into thinking you're the leader of the pack/herd/flock/whatever. That gives a steely-eyed cast to the ability that may be more in keeping with your character concept.

(I know that's not what you're asking for--sorry! I hope something there might be useful anyway).

Daniel

 

[schporto]

In PHB2 there's a variant to ditch animal companion for distracting shot. That doesn't trigger till 4th level. I wonder if you could ditch animal companion and wild empathy and get distracting shot at 1st or 2nd level.
-cpd

 

[The Lost Muse]

If you can find the Wheel of Time d20 book, there is a magicless ranger variant which is pretty good and might be what your lookiong for (assuming that you have access to it, if you don't e-mail me at timmundo (at) hotmail (dot) com and I can type it out for ya)

 

[Cabral]

I would suggest ditching wild empathy for +2 skill points per level or extra class skills. Anything else is too good of a trade. Actually, +2 skill points per level is too good of a trade.

 

[Marshall]

I dunno--but I do know that in 17 levels of playing a druid with wild empathy, the ability's not come into use once. That may be campaign-specific, but I suspect in most campaigns it's not going to come into play very often. Whatever you swap it out for should be similarly limited in its use.

I'd be shocked if its ever come up. Wild Empathy is, literally, useless. It uses the Diplomacy DC charts and rules, but the bonus is LVL+CHA. Its nearly impossible to make a successful roll.

Nice idea, but the mechanics are even more borked than the Clerics Find Traps spell.

 

[Pielorinho]

I'd be shocked if its ever come up. Wild Empathy is, literally, useless. It uses the Diplomacy DC charts and rules, but the bonus is LVL+CHA. Its nearly impossible to make a successful roll.

Especially since it's one of four (being generous) druidic charisma-related doohickeys, none of which see much use at all:
1) Diplomacy. How many druids take this skill above, say, spellcraft, spot, heal, knowledge (Nature), listen, concentration, etc.?
2) Handle Animal: sort of useful, but since you get such a big bonus when handling your animal companion, it's more of a flavor skill than anything else--I don't think I've made any rolls with this, either.
3) Disguise, using Mask of a Thousand Faces. This isn't a druid class skill, so nobody's going to take extra ranks in it, but still, it's occasionally useful.
4) Wild empathy.

So, charisma tends to be something of a dump stat for druids, probably their least useful stat (excepting possibly strength, since no right-thinking druid melees in their regular form after fourth level).

Rangers are even worse: unless they multiclass, this and handle animal are the only charisa-based skills. Sure they get bonuses on bluff against their favored enemy, but without ranks in bluff, that's not a huge deal normally.

So I'd rank wild empathy as one of the most useless class features in the game.

Maybe you could swap it out for the ability to detect ingested poisons by taste (before you've consumed enough to be affected), with a level+wisdom roll equal to the poison's DC? That'd also be almost completely useless (how often is poison put in your character's food or drink?), but it'd be kinda cool, and I could see it sort of fitting in a ranger's schtick.

Daniel

 

[Terath Ninir]

You know, instead of wild empathy, wouldn't it be cool if the game had the ability as, say, a skill? That way you could put more ranks in it so it would be useful, or you could just not put ranks in it if you're not going to use it. And if you don't want non-druids and rangers to use it, you could just make it a restricted skill. And, maybe, you could even give it a better name like, say, animal empathy?

Boy, it sure would be nice if we could do that instead...