Ranger - likes and dislikes?

[Plane Sailing]

I disliked the 3e ranger intensely, much preferred the 3.5e version, but also had my own ranger which I used in 3e days.

What I like about the 3.5e ranger

6 skill points
good skill list
full BAB
favoured enemy

I'm OK with

d8 HD
Animal Companion (but only if treated as level-3 rather than level/2 - otherwise it is worthless)


I dislike
spells (especially since they seem poorly themed and stuff. They could at least have given him shillelagh since he's likely to be using a quarterstaff!)

In the original 3e conceptino I think since the paladin was a divine casting fighter they missed the opportunity to include an arcane casting fighter which was a role that the ranger used to fulfil.

Favoured enemy was useless in 3.0 but is worthwhile in 3.5. It does seem silly that you have to subdivide humanoid though... an abberation hunter knows the vital spots on everything from a beholder to a roper, while an orc hunter can't work out that the elf and the human have basically exactly the same vital spots! Forget game balance, it just doesn't make sense!

One of the best changes in 3.5e for favoured enemy was the opportunity to let it grow organically during the game. You might start off with enemy A, by level 5 you are fighting lots of enemy B though, so you take them as your new and improved favoured enemy. By level 10 if you are now all about dragons (or undead or whatever) you can take them as the new favoured enemy at +4 and so on. Works nicely.

Back in 3e my conception of the ranger was the tough, fast, lone wilderness warrior, while Barbarian was a cultural type, thus my 3.0 ranger looked like this:

d12 HD
Fast movement as per Bbn
Uncanny dodge as per Bbn
Favoured enemy +1 per odd level (add it wherever you want on new or existing enemies)
6 skill points.

No spells, No 2WF, No rage.

He worked quite well as a character class. Ranged a lot

 

[hong]

There used to be a site with 40 different alt.rangers, but alas, it seems to have disappeared.

 

[Felon]

Favoured enemy was useless in 3.0 but is worthwhile in 3.5. It does seem silly that you have to subdivide humanoid though... an abberation hunter knows the vital spots on everything from a beholder to a roper, while an orc hunter can't work out that the elf and the human have basically exactly the same vital spots! Forget game balance, it just doesn't make sense!

Yes, it really hurts to think about it too much. Again, this is why I would have preferred favored enemy to provide a selection of "anti-monster" abilities. For instance, an offensive anti-DR ability or anti-crit-immunity ability, or a defensive anti-level-drain or anti-gaze attack ability.

 

[Plane Sailing]

anti-gaze attack ability.

You just reminded me of my 1e saving throw tables - I used to have a greatly expanded saving throw table - more conditions and a separate row for every class too. One of my entries was for 'gaze attacks' and the base save for Thieves was 11 (because they naturally avoided eye contact) and for Samurai was 20 (because they couldn't avoid staring foes down!)

I like the Fort/Ref/Will save model, but I sometimes miss the granularity of my old design

 

[solkan_uk]

My biggest problem with rangers is more of a gripe with D&D, out of 11 classes, there are only 3 with no magic - this just seems excessive. If you want to create a simple no-magic guy your stuck with Fighter, Rogue or Barbarian or dipping into classes before they get magic.
Could the designers not think of interesting non-magical things to give characters?

 

[JVisgaitis]

Welll, I can agree on the fighting style and the animal companion. While they are good things to get, it just takes too long to acquire them. I really liked the Woodsman from WoT. I though that class was well done. And while you are able to use two weapon fighting without the pre-reqs, how many Rangers aren't going to take a high Dex? Maybe I'm off base with that, but most Rangers I've seen always have their highest score in Dex, so that makes that ability useless.

 

[dagger]

the answer to that would be to expand the Commando (PrC in the wizards' site, of which I can't find the link now) to create a base class...

This one?

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20050407b&page=6


Here is my ranger, thinking about adding a non-spellcasting variant.


CLASS FEATURES Rangers follow the PHB except as noted:
Bonus Feats: Instead of a Combat Style, a ranger gets a bonus feat at 2nd, 6th, and 11th level.
Favored Enemy: Rangers automatically know the primary language of their favored enemies
Animal Companion: Same as in the Player’s Handbook except as follows:

• Ranger animal companions automatically receive max hit points
• Animal companions have the same favored enemy bonuses as the ranger

Ranger Variants: The following variants you can take at 1st level:

• Ranger Variant: Planar Ranger
• Ranger Variant: Urban Ranger
• Ranger Variant: A ranger might forgo training in weapon combat in exchange for the ability to take animal form and move swiftly through the woodlands.

Alternative:

• Instead of an Animal Companion, a ranger my use the class option on page 55 of the Players Handbook II.

 

[The_Gneech]

The real trick with the class seems to be to stop thinking "I wanna play Aragorn" for a minute, and start figuring out what the actual party role of such class is supposed to be. It's easy for people to say stuff like "ASFAIC the ranger does not exist in 3e", because all they have to do is criticize the content that they consider inappropriate. But when you strip that stuff away, something has to replace it. What should a ranger be able to do that's special and unique?

One primary shtick for a ranger is to be a skilled, mobile, light fighter and scout; rogues are too fragile (and lack the BAB) to be frontline fighters (generally), even though they can be devastating with a well-placed sneak attack.

The other primary shtick for the ranger is the whole wilderness thing: track, survival, animal companion, trackless step, etc. They're not the "priests of nature" that druids are, but they are definitely "of the wild" in a way that fighters and rogues generally are not.

So what it boils down to is the ranger is a kind of fighter/rogue/druid, but instead of needing to go all over the map with multiclassing, they're rolled into a single core class.

-The Gneech

 

[The_Gneech]

Bonus Feats: Instead of a Combat Style, a ranger gets a bonus feat at 2nd, 6th, and 11th level.

Just any feat? Choose from fighter bonus feats?

One thing that makes the combat style different from just gaining TWF or Rapid Shot as a feat, is that the ranger doesn't need to meet the prerequisites for the higher-end versions. (Granted, they're likely to ... Dex 17 is the main hurdle and a ranged specialist will probably have that.)

-The Gneech

 

[Hussar]

In other words, Rangers are Nature Bards?

No wonder people dislike them.