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Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder: Fixing the TWF Ranger
- Thread starter roguerouge
- Start date
Ruslanchik
First Post
Nifft said:
What I really mean is: Brainfart.
Jeff Wilder
First Post
Dropping spellcasting, which sucks for the ranger anyway, in favor of special abilities at 4th, 9th, and 14th levels, would help with the MAD. (Which, from experience, really is pretty bad for rangers.)
Not familiar with the Pathfinder ranger, but for the 3.5 ranger, what I'd really like is to up the spellcasting. Full caster level, and more spells per day (maybe a +2 to the number of spells per day at each current level). With the SpC (not sure if Pathfinder supports this book), the ranger got good.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Wicht said:
FWIW I've always thought that favoured enemy could be improved by making it more granular. Start at +2 and then get +1 favoured enemy bonus per level, which can be added wherever wanted.
The big benefit of this is that every level you are able to adjust the way your favoured enemy bonuses are being built up to reflect the changing shape of a campaign - you never have to wait five levels to pick a new bonus.
The other thing that ought to be done is to put all humanoids into the same category. I mean c'mon. If you know the vitals of a human, how different are they going to be for an elf, goblin or orc? Compared to the difference in vitals of all the different aberrations?
Here's my musings on the Favored Enemy mechanics...
It's supposed to be the classes "thing". It's what makes a Ranger unique, because otherwise he's just a Fighter/Rogue/Druid.
So why is it (in 3.5) something that he gets to see improve a grand total of 5 times over 20 levels?
It's like they loaded him up so much with Fighter/Rogue/Druid crap that he had no room left for any decent mechanic that was "Ranger unique".
So with that in mind, here's my ideas for breaking and rebuilding the Ranger:
1. Make Favored Enemy/Terrain the core concept of the class. Fighters have feats, Rogue have skills, Clerics/Wizards have spells, Barbarians have Rage.
Make it so that you improve your Favored X AT LEAST every second level, if not every level in some way.
2. To prevent making this bonus go insane, detach the bonus from the enemies chosen. The "when" of getting pluses are based on certain levels (gp cost prohibitiveness, feat chain costs, etc), so make the bonus start at +1, and go up based on Ranger level FOR EVERY ENEMY CHOSEN.
3. No one likes an ability that's the same for everyone, so give this feature added variety. Yeah, you can pick more favored enemies or terrains, but also you should be able to pick things like adding extra bonus for individual enemies you "really" know/hate. Or gain combat bonuses against your favored enemies, or more movement/perception abilities for your terrains, etc.
To this end, possibly allow picking "Ranger Favored Feats" during the career that add things like:
- Increase threat range against your Favored Enemy
- Reroll Perception checks when in favored Terrain
- Grant your bonus to your allies (temporarily, or at a lower bonus, etc)
- Spend time/skill check to grant Favored bonus against a singular ability (similar to Quarry), etc. This allows a Ranger to ALWAYS gain his bonus, against at least a single opponent per combat.
So after all this, what do you do with all the other crap the Ranger is getting? Cut stuff out!
- Remove the "Fighting Styles". Yeah, yeah.. he's combat oriented. However, with the "quarry" like ability, he doesn't need specific combat styles to make him "good".
And with 10 character feats in Pathfinder, he can afford to move his specific combat stuff into his character side, as opposed to learned from Ranger abilities.
And if he's particularly more Fighting oriented, then maybe he should pick up a few levels of Fighter then to focus on that. Barbarians do it.
- Remove spells per day. First of all, a Ranger praying for spells, or using wands and holy symbols just seems way too much "dogmatic" for this concept.
Instead, take the most "Ranger-ific" type spells and turn them into spell-like abilities scattered throughout the class. OR, even better, allow the Ranger to choose them among other non-spell type abilities.
This allows a person to build a Ranger that's basically a "Guerilla Fighter/Survivalist/Creature or Terrain specialist" type character.
Besides, if you really, really, really wanted to make a person with druid spells... well.. take some Druid levels? Pretty much the same as any other class wanting a bit of cleric/druid capability.
This would make a Ranger mean something when you take class levels in it. Right now, if you gave Favored Enemy as a feat, you could practically rebuild a Ranger with a smattering of other classes. The ranger was built literally as an afterthought... it's using abilities straight out of other classes. It's basically a pre-made multiclass build.
Which would be nice if you really, really, really enforce the XP penalties, but I don't know many people who were that stickler to them. And even then, it's still only "nice", it's not really that unique.
It's supposed to be the classes "thing". It's what makes a Ranger unique, because otherwise he's just a Fighter/Rogue/Druid.
So why is it (in 3.5) something that he gets to see improve a grand total of 5 times over 20 levels?
It's like they loaded him up so much with Fighter/Rogue/Druid crap that he had no room left for any decent mechanic that was "Ranger unique".
So with that in mind, here's my ideas for breaking and rebuilding the Ranger:
1. Make Favored Enemy/Terrain the core concept of the class. Fighters have feats, Rogue have skills, Clerics/Wizards have spells, Barbarians have Rage.
Make it so that you improve your Favored X AT LEAST every second level, if not every level in some way.
2. To prevent making this bonus go insane, detach the bonus from the enemies chosen. The "when" of getting pluses are based on certain levels (gp cost prohibitiveness, feat chain costs, etc), so make the bonus start at +1, and go up based on Ranger level FOR EVERY ENEMY CHOSEN.
3. No one likes an ability that's the same for everyone, so give this feature added variety. Yeah, you can pick more favored enemies or terrains, but also you should be able to pick things like adding extra bonus for individual enemies you "really" know/hate. Or gain combat bonuses against your favored enemies, or more movement/perception abilities for your terrains, etc.
To this end, possibly allow picking "Ranger Favored Feats" during the career that add things like:
- Increase threat range against your Favored Enemy
- Reroll Perception checks when in favored Terrain
- Grant your bonus to your allies (temporarily, or at a lower bonus, etc)
- Spend time/skill check to grant Favored bonus against a singular ability (similar to Quarry), etc. This allows a Ranger to ALWAYS gain his bonus, against at least a single opponent per combat.
So after all this, what do you do with all the other crap the Ranger is getting? Cut stuff out!
- Remove the "Fighting Styles". Yeah, yeah.. he's combat oriented. However, with the "quarry" like ability, he doesn't need specific combat styles to make him "good".
And with 10 character feats in Pathfinder, he can afford to move his specific combat stuff into his character side, as opposed to learned from Ranger abilities.
And if he's particularly more Fighting oriented, then maybe he should pick up a few levels of Fighter then to focus on that. Barbarians do it.
- Remove spells per day. First of all, a Ranger praying for spells, or using wands and holy symbols just seems way too much "dogmatic" for this concept.
Instead, take the most "Ranger-ific" type spells and turn them into spell-like abilities scattered throughout the class. OR, even better, allow the Ranger to choose them among other non-spell type abilities.
This allows a person to build a Ranger that's basically a "Guerilla Fighter/Survivalist/Creature or Terrain specialist" type character.
Besides, if you really, really, really wanted to make a person with druid spells... well.. take some Druid levels? Pretty much the same as any other class wanting a bit of cleric/druid capability.
This would make a Ranger mean something when you take class levels in it. Right now, if you gave Favored Enemy as a feat, you could practically rebuild a Ranger with a smattering of other classes. The ranger was built literally as an afterthought... it's using abilities straight out of other classes. It's basically a pre-made multiclass build.
Which would be nice if you really, really, really enforce the XP penalties, but I don't know many people who were that stickler to them. And even then, it's still only "nice", it's not really that unique.
RangerWickett
Legend
I really wish they turned the ranger into "someone who is good at exploring" instead of "someone who thinks Drizzt and Legolas are awesome."
Ditch the fighting style stuff. Let them take feats to determine their fighting style, just like every other non-fighter. In its place, steal what 4e did -- kill the scout and take his stuff. Give mobility benefits, ability to ignore terrain penalties and to hide well, and some combat advantage for skirmish-style attacks. If you're a lightly-armored traveler type of guy, you need to be able to hit and run.
For spellcasting and animal companions, I'd be tempted to take them out entirely, and say that if you want an animal companion or magic, multiclass to druid. But Pathfinder's loaded up the druid with tons of extra stuff, so . . . I dunno.
Part of the problem with animal companions is that they draw away magic item GP from the main PC. I think realistically, you should design animal companions so that you don't need to buy them gear ever. But I'm getting stuck too much in the 4e mindset. I don't think I'll ever use Pathfinder rules, unless I'm writing for them.
Ditch the fighting style stuff. Let them take feats to determine their fighting style, just like every other non-fighter. In its place, steal what 4e did -- kill the scout and take his stuff. Give mobility benefits, ability to ignore terrain penalties and to hide well, and some combat advantage for skirmish-style attacks. If you're a lightly-armored traveler type of guy, you need to be able to hit and run.
For spellcasting and animal companions, I'd be tempted to take them out entirely, and say that if you want an animal companion or magic, multiclass to druid. But Pathfinder's loaded up the druid with tons of extra stuff, so . . . I dunno.
Part of the problem with animal companions is that they draw away magic item GP from the main PC. I think realistically, you should design animal companions so that you don't need to buy them gear ever. But I'm getting stuck too much in the 4e mindset. I don't think I'll ever use Pathfinder rules, unless I'm writing for them.
I already did back in Alpha 2, complete with some of the feats I had designed for the concept a while back too.
I guess I could repost it again for Alpha 3...
The only problem I can see with my proposal is that it's definitely NOT backward compatible, and would basically mean an entirely new class.
I think Pathfinder might need to keep the current Ranger's abilities mostly as is, since NPC builds and such are likely fairly dependent on them.
I guess I could repost it again for Alpha 3...
The only problem I can see with my proposal is that it's definitely NOT backward compatible, and would basically mean an entirely new class.
I think Pathfinder might need to keep the current Ranger's abilities mostly as is, since NPC builds and such are likely fairly dependent on them.
Last edited:
Achan hiArusa
Explorer
My biggest problem with the Ranger is that it was always the best NPC class, you could easily make a bugbear ranger's favored enemies be the composition of the party and with Paizo's favored terrain it becomes worse because then that same ranger's favored terrain is exactly the terrain the player's are going through. I do like the 4e ranger's base abilities and I had thought about using the defensive ranger from the old Master's of the Wild with the 4e ranger's Hunter's Quarry ability going up a little slower than a rogue's sneak attack or something like that to increase his usuability.
