rangers favored enemy?

[BastionLightbringer]

Does anyone else feal that the Ranger should not be allowed to pick human as favored enemy (unless evil)? I believe you are allowed in 3.5, unless i'm reading it wrong. My campaign is primarily inhabited by human npcs and will unbalance it.

 

[mikebr99]

It's based on good training now... not hatred. But it's your call.

Mike

 

[The Souljourner]

If it'll unbalance your game, you should do something. But be warned, if 90% of the enemies are humans, rangers in your game are going to be pretty upset that they never get to use their favored enemy abilities.

Making favored enemy:human require evil alignment doesn't really fix the problem, it just stops most PCs from running into it. If taking favored enemy:human unbalances your game, just disallow it. If you make it evil only, that means only the evil people get the unbalancing power, and that's really not fair to the PCs.

-The Souljourner

 

[Felix]

Welcome to the Boards!

Think of it this way, remember Tommy Lee Jones' character Marshall Sam Gerard from The Fugitive? How he could organize a manhunt so well, anticipate what people were going to do? That's his Ranger Favored Enemy bonus at work there. He doesn't hate the people he's chasing (doesn't mean he likes them either), but he does know their tendencies very well.

If there are a lot of human NPCs, well, then I advise those evil NPCs to be subtle in their work and not rouse the ire of the famously vicious Ranger. I.E., don't just send NPCs charging at him directly; have them be subtle. Have them hire a squad of halfling assassins or something he will be less effective against.

This will only unbalance the world if your world is static. If your world is dynamic and changes to suit the situation, then there won't be a problem. When the human evil NPCs see that no human can match the ranger in battle, they won't send humans to get rid of him.

 

[mikebr99]

And class abilities are meant to come up alot... and an extra +10 damage (I know there's more then just damage) by 20th isn't that big a deal, even if it does come into play every day. YMMV



Mike

 

[Laurel]

As other said...

Does anyone else feal that the Ranger should not be allowed to pick human as favored enemy (unless evil)? I believe you are allowed in 3.5, unless i'm reading it wrong. My campaign is primarily inhabited by human npcs and will unbalance it.

It is based on training and/or knowledge aquired of a certain group's tactics and weaknesses. And the ranger in your campaign I assume is fighting, tracking, at odds with humans the most, so it makes sense to me that he would know them the best.

 

[Darklone]

I do have a lot of humans as opponents in my games... but it's not that bad. Quite the opposite, the ranger multiclass seems weak if the oponent is suddenly a half-elf

 

[the Jester]

You could make them further define it- favored enemy (human- cult of Badgod); or (human- rogues); or (human- from Kingdom of Badpeople); etc.

 

[DarkMaster]

Well the UA Urban Ranger has an interesting variation of the favored enemy. Where instead of targeting a race it targets member of certain groups or organizations.

 

[shilsen]

I had already house-ruled away the "can't pick your own race unless evil" restriction before 3.5 came out, so that's a firm "No" from me.