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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6114306" data-attributes="member: 1165">Maybe it's because I'm a big fan of 4e now, where the skills are incredibly broad (Nature, for instance, is everything from surviving in the wild to knowing how to commune with spirits), but I would expect a ranger to simply "not use" the skills that way.It's also been my experience that while rangers have a good number of skill points, no one ever takes Knowledge (geography). It could be useful, but that just seems to fall under Survival.Alternatively, build it like Wild Empathy, which is basically a more limited Diplomacy. Just make a check at level +3 + Int modifier to answer questions of the following type, working like a Knowledge skill check unless stated otherwise...I think that's pretty neat. It's hard to track a ranger literally hustling in the dark... and his buddies. Yeah, awesome.I like the idea of a ranger getting the first shot too, but going first is more important for a rogue or a wizard than a ranger. Unless the ranger does a lot of damage and can literally kill someone on the first shot, the enemies will, on their initiative, outfight them. (Of course, the ranger can swiftly move away, but the rest of the party won't be too happy about that.)Again, 4e-speak, but I think a class needs a combat role to go with the flavor. Most alt-rangers do the flavor just fine ... this class's design knows exactly what it wants to be out-of-combat ... but in part because the ranger has no real defined combat flavor (archery doesn't really count, and is pretty vanilla anyway) the combat features get left behind.A shorter way of saying this: the ranger needs offense to go with the initiative bonus and the skills.Personally I like spear-wielding rangers, although that's because the spear is a hunting weapon. (A shield... isn't.)I sometimes see the ranger as not being a class. In D&DN, while there is a ranger class, you could generate a ranger without extra abilities tacked on with a fighter, taking the Military background (gives most relevant skills) and one or two appropriate combat packages. (Humans get an extra one, I think, haven't read the last playtest package yet.)Even in 4e, I see the ranger as being an archer (with a bit of enforced flavor tacked on) rather than a ranger. With the simple house rule that you don't need to take Nature as a class skill, a 4e ranger could literally be a battlefield archer, with no wilderness skills to speak of.It would probably be much more of a stretch than you're looking for, but if the ranger were in fact a short collection of feats, built on a fighter, you could be a spear-wielding shield-using fighter, putting your non-fighter feats toward being a scout and your combat feats toward (literally) specializing in the spear. Unfortunately, there's no good way of gaining the relevant skills at maxed out values in 3rd Edition.</blockquote>

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