Rangers and favored enemies and feats

[The Souljourner]

Yeah, the only thing that makes a ranger different from a fighter/rogue is track and favored enemy. Track is ok... but quite rarely useful. And at mid to high levels, it's completely trumped by divination spells.

That leaves favored enemy. Unfortunately, it increases so slowly and is so specific, it's hard to justify taking the class solely for that purpose.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the spells. Not that it's a huge bonus, but it is a little one. Still, for most people, the spells are not a huge factor.

If favored enemies were every 3 levels and worked against uncriticalable monsters, I could see it. I mean, rogues get sneak attack every other level... and it's 1d6 damage each time, not just 1, plus it works against everything (minus non-criticalables)... yeah, you need to flank the guy, but damn, how hard is that? *sigh*

-Nate, aka The Souljourner

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

The Souljourner---
Umm... umm... read it again it says you can detect your favored enemy - singular, implying the one you took for this class. I agree, having detect favored enemies as an ability would be cool... but alas, it was not to be.

Sunshine, my friend:

OA, pg. 45, at the end of Detect Enemy---
If the shadow scout has more than one favored enemy, he can detect any of them, and on the second round he can determine what kind of creature is in the area.

.
.

I don't know if I could get away with that, even if I were cheesy enough to try... and I don't think I am. besides, how do you put armor spikes on a chain shirt?

1)

PHB pg. 105---
You can also make a regular attack (or off-hand attack) with the spikes, and they count as a light weapon in this case.

2) You put armor spikes on a mithral breastplate.
3) Yes, it is cheesy. Which is why I haven't played it. Yet. (I have an itch to play a Bugbear Ranger who uses this tactic. I have a character concept and personality in mind and everthing.)

 

[Chun-tzu]

Monte Cook created two Ranger feats with his alt.ranger: Favored Enemy Strike and Favored Enemy Critical Strike. You do extra damage against ALL favored enemies, not one specific type. I like them a lot better than the ones in Masters of the Wild.

 

[Skullfyre]

1.) Extra favored enemy - this feat from MotW doesn't increment all the rest of your favored enemies, the way getting one through levels does. How crappy is that? You have to have at least +5 BAB which means a straight ranger has to wait until 10th level for that +1 to become a +2. Whoopteedoo. I was a lot more excited about it when I thought it incremented the rest.

-The Souljourner

+5 BAB at level 5 which means you have one FE at +2 and one at +1. And then at level 6 you take the extra favoured enemy and yes you have 3 FE's. One is at +2 and the others are at +1.By level 20(if you every make it there ) you would have one at +5, 2 @+4 ,1@ +3 ,1@+2 and 1 @ +1. Granted it may not be cool but even having one extra favoured enemy at a higher bonus is a boon.

 

[The Souljourner]

ConcreteBuddha - ha! That'll teach me not to read the entire passage.

The problem I have with wielding a two handed weapon and using the armor spikes is that it makes for a really stupid image in my head.

During a grapple, sure, I'm all for letting armor spikes do their thing. But as an offhand weapon? Just doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway.... that's not why we're here.

Skullfyre - actually there is a neat little trick you can do to maximize the effect of at least your first extra favored enemy. Take a level of some other class (I prefer barbarian).. then at 6th level you take a level of ranger, take extra favored enemy as your level based feat, then increment it immediately with the favored enemy you get from level 5 ranger. It's interesting, one level brings you from +1 to +2/+2/+1 in favored enemy land.

I've actually decided to create my own ranger prestige class, much like I thought the shadow scout's abilities were. I'll post a link to the thread in House Rules when I get it up. Main idea - favored enemy at 1/4/7/10 and some ranger/commano style abilities. Yes it'll be just plain better than ranger, but shee-it, it's hard to do worse.

-The Souljourner

 

[The Souljourner]

Here's a link to a prestige class I developed. I think it needs some balancing, but I'm excited about the basic idea:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33394

Of course, my DM thinks it's way too powerful and will probably neuter it into uselessness... but hey, at least I can get the opinions of people outside my D&D group.

-Nate, aka The Souljourner