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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roguerouge" data-source="post: 4253357" data-attributes="member: 13855">The 3.5 TWF ranger, in my opinion, was pretty badly designed. Did Pathfinder do enough to fix the Ranger?Here's the issues with the 3.5 version:Everything he does, someone else can do better: he's a poor spell caster, his animal companion is weak, rogues and bards do as well or better at skills, his combat suffers from lagging in BAB due to the TWF penalty. He's a bard with better marketing.The enemies whom he can hit regularly are the low AC brute monsters. Those brute monsters, of course, can pummel him quickly, taking advantage of his poor AC and mediocre HP. And he's got a scorching case of MAD. He needs dexterity (for AC), constitution (to compensate for d8s), strength (for melee damage), Intelligence (for skills), and Wisdom (so that he can have 2-3 spells at 7th level). The Monk is NOT the poster child for MAD; the TWF ranger is.The favored enemies schtick is incredibly dependent on DM fiat and favor. Choose poorly and you get to wait a long, long time to use that ability: until 5th level. If the game goes in a different direction than the DM intends, if communication's less than perfect, then this ability goes right down the drain.Ah, but what about the wilderness, you say? Tracking works poorly in adventure paths and modules, because the authors have to assume that parties don't necessarily have a tracker in the party, so it provides extra information, but not essential information. And it does so maybe once or twice a story. And if your DM hand waves this stuff or does the requisite "one wandering monster encounter" satirized by Order of the Stick, then this is much ado about nothing. And, again, barbarians and druids do this just as well as the ranger.What about skills? There are at least five skills you want to keep maxed out as a 3.x ranger: survival, spot, listen, hide, move silently. (And, maxing out those five skills lets you do three things, not five.) That leaves 1 point plus the points from INT and race left. We haven't even dealt with the Handle Animal skill. That undermines the "rangers are versatile" argument. And don't even get me started on what the Scout's done to this class.So. Those were the problems. Did terrain mastery and skill telescoping and other hacks do enough to make the TWF viable again?</blockquote>

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