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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Meeki" data-source="post: 3586793" data-attributes="member: 17257">I compare it to a fighter because of the idea of bonus feats and the ability to diversify in feats, unlike a barbarian and the fact that a barbarian duel wielding would expend so many feats its silly and a fighter can do it easily, that and the ranger now becomes more like a pure melee/ranged fighter than a nature dwelling tracker with minor magical powers.  I did forget that you cannot power attack with weapon finesse, this would lower the rangers damage since he has to have such a high dex for the duel wielding feats allowing the fighter to easily surpass him.  However, in the campaign I dm currently even the third off hand attack is hitting with regularity.   The character wielding the daggers is a fighter with a few levels of rogue, lvl 14, a ranger would have nearly the same to hit, just missing GWF.  D&D is about buffing and when everyone is buffed to the hilt hitting becomes alot easier. Also a +1 spiked light shield with the bashing property with improved shield bash would do D8+1 piercing damage and grant 2 AC while bashing.  +3 spiked light shield with bashing would also do D8+1 piercing damage a grant 4 AC.  Bashing only allows the shield to act as a +1 weapon when shield bashing.  You could use a +2 flaming handaxe for D6+2 slashing damage +d6 fire damage, avg damage of 8.5 damage, compared to 5.5.  Only a difference of 3 but when you are higher level and able to increase your weapons even further the damage gap will be wide.    All depends if you want more damage with your offhand or more armor.  Plus as the modified ranger you can take two weapon defense as a bonus feat.Truthfully I think the ranger is a weak class and the modified ranger is very powerful.  Even with the wand argument the ranger is still pretty weak.   I guess it depends what books you use to build your characters.  I dont use PHII but might allow some feats from it, doesn't sound like weapon mastery would be one of them though. I use a modified variant of weapon spec that allows you to have weapon spec for each weapon you have a focus in for one feat.  In my campaign most you can get is GWS for +4 damage.Comparing it to the standard ranger is tough since it all depends on the spell selection available to the ranger. I would drop spell casting in a heartbeat for  the listed 4 extra feats if I was using just the Ph spells.   While tree stride and freedom of movement are excellent spells the ranger is only 1/2 caster level and when he could get lvl 4 spells he would be a lvl 7 caster, assuming he has a high enough wisdom modifier to have a bonus spell.  70 mins of freedom of movement is nice and easily dispelled, but I would rather have another feat from the list.  Maybe the current ranger could be tweaked a bit, whenever I see them played they seem to struggle in most situations and shine while tracking or hiding/scouting, but again depends on how you build your ranger.  Its strange that they lack so many knowledges, how is a ranger suppose to find its favored enemy anyways if they dont know anything about their habitats.Anyways, everyone has a valid point and we aren't going to see eye to eye about this.  Only way to find out is to play the variant someday and see how it holds up.</blockquote>

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