Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6174612" data-attributes="member: 1465">This would be very nice.I like the idea of favored enemies be mixable (like totem animals benefits for the totem barbarian subclass, and elements benefits for the elemental monk subclass).Making favored enemy distinct from picking a subclass, and then instead making spellcasting the benefit of one subclass, also sounds a nice possibility.But also it could be the favored terrain to be used as general class benefit instead of subclass.... Favored enemy, favored terrain, spells, animal companions: all these could be Ranger-defining features (thus shared by all subclasses) but could also be subclass-defining features. They could even be both, i.e. if e.g. favored enemy becomes a class feature for all, then there can be a subclass granting a second favored enemy (or if mixable, then it would just grant twice as many favored enemy benefits).Overall, it would be good to have even more flexibility than now, because clearly different people have wildly different expectations about how a Ranger should look like...The only thing that I am convinced can be taken away from the Ranger is the weapon styles. IIRC in AD&D and 3.0 the Ranger had minor freebies related to 2WF (basically some removed penalties rather than boosts), and the whole weapon styles thing only started when a group of players uninterested in 2WF wanted a compensation for not using those minor benefits, hence 3.5 gave the choice between those and some archery feats. IMO this is quite weak conceptually, although I do actually like the attempt at connecting weapon benefits with favored enemies based on how such enemy typically fights (so that multiple-target abilities are more useful against a horde of minions, ranged abilities more useful against flying opponents etc.). But overall Ranger weapon styles are an unnecessary design complication, because you either make them unique (an additional design effort, and then you have to explain why only Ranger get them) or you just make them feats freebies, which right now are completely unnecessary since the Ranger gets feats anyway... so what are you going to do, give the Ranger a choice between a "free" 2WF feat and a "free" archery feat at level X? Then why not just give them a regular any feat, so that someone uninterested in either can take something else entirely? That's much better, because what first looked like a "free" was instead a restriction.</blockquote>

Verification