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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6432944" data-attributes="member: 1165">IMO, rangers aren't even a class. Of course, this is opinion. IMO, a class is a mechanical frame that forms part but not all of a character, primarily focusing on its combat role. A class should also be fairly narrow, to avoid giving a PC abilities they don't want or need (eg those that have nothing to do with the character concept).The ranger is a skillset.The ranger is not even a personality. I didn't like how in some older editions rangers had to be good-aligned and "close to nature". An arrogant big game hunter who travels to exotic lands, slaughters the wildlife, takes their heads home and leaves the rest of the body to rot on the plains is not "close to nature" and probably isn't good-aligned either... but they have the skillset needed to track their prey. Why are the spirits of nature giving this guy magic? That makes no sense. Just because they're a hunter doesn't mean their personality and alignment need to match Aragorn's.The ranger also runs into a problem of being too-heavily based on specific characters. One of them is Aragorn. Rangers weren't particularly common in the Middle-earth setting, but Aragorn was not the only ranger of the North. Indeed, Aragorn was special by ranger standards, being trained as a captain and having "healing hands" and other gifts. He did kill a fair amount of orcs/goblins (I suspect this is where favored enemy came from) but frankly so did Gimli (dwarven bonus against such foes) and Legolas (also called a ranger, but never in LotR). Indeed, the latter two probably killed far more goblins than their commander.Aragorn once dual-wielded flaming brands (more of a psychological technique to freak out his pursuers), so apparently "all" rangers need to dual-wield. Aragorn's Dunedain heritage enabled him to use some magic, such as the Palantiri, so apparently this means "all" rangers need to be able to cast spells. And since Aragorn was good-aligned, this meant "all" rangers had to be good-aligned.Aragorn is something like a ranger/warlord or ranger/warblade specializing in White Raven or ranger/paladin, which would help distinguish him from other rangers mechanically, in addition to elements of personality and background that his player would roleplay (had LotR had been a game and not a book series). For the same reason, if an encounter involved a group of knights challenging the PCs, I would do something to distinguish the lead knight beyond "giving her more levels", as the ability to kick more butt does not somehow make you a better leader of men. The captain would probably multiclass with something. (For 3e purposes, I'm thinking warblade. Or aristocrat if I only care about her skills, not her fighting ability.)I'm recalling a trio of bounty hunters I read about in an adventure. One bounty hunter used nets and bolas (to ensnare the target), another used bows with mildly poisoned arrows (I think they slowed the target) and the third was a big tough guy who would try to encircle the target, so if the target tried to flee, they'd run into the big buy... who could hit their legs to slow them. The three were "martial" characters with no magic at all, but the three fought in very different ways. In theory you could have built a class around this, but only by either not giving it any combat abilities (forcing the player to spend feats) or giving very narrow combat styles (like the 3.x ranger). Certainly all three bounty hunters have the same (non-combat) skillset and can all call themselves bounty hunters, even if one is some oddball class (or maybe rogue using a sap, if a netted creature loses its Dex bonus you could dish out lots of nonlethal sneak attack damage), one a fighter specializing in archery and one a melee fighter or warblade with the Urban Tracking feat.See comments about Aragorn. The type of spells they receive is edition-dependent, of course (and in early 4e, no spells) but even druid spells are only mildly flavor-appropriate.See the comment about the "arrogant" big game hunter. A responsible ranger who could cast that spell makes sense, actually... because he's taken levels of druid, not because he's a ranger <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />This one actually made a little more sense to me, with my main beef about them being how weak favored enemy is (since you don't control it, the DM does), and in 2e, how you didn't get to choose which creatures you might hate. It made more sense to me to pick creatures that live in my favored haunts, and frankly if I build a goblin ranger I expect his favored enemy to be elves or something similar! The last 3.x ranger I played actually took favored enemy (animal) because, well, he was a hunter, so it made sense! (The second one he took was much more useful to the campaign, but yes he did kill a rampaging beastie or two.)For the fighter example, that almost sounds like a prestige class. "Hate-Filled Warrior". Maybe something that a barbarian could take too. It's too bad WotC was allergic to good feats in 3.x, because "Hunter of Werebeasts" is a fantastic-sounding feat. Spend something (a feat) and get something that actually supports your character concept. Alas, said feat would be fairly weak, because it's still too DM-dependent.</blockquote>

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