UA Prestige Ranger II

[dcollins]

Here's another problem my player looking at the UA Prestige Ranger has pointed out. Among its prerequisites is the need to have one of these feats:
- Rapid Shot, or
- Two-Weapon Fighting.
(Same as initial "combat style" ability for core 3.5 ranger.)

However, Rapid Shot itself has a prerequisite (Point Blank Shot), while Two-Weapon Fighting does not. This presents a marked imbalance in how soon one can take the class, depending on whether they're pursuing the archery or TWF options. (For the core ranger, it's not a problem since they explicitly get to skip any otherwise necessary prerequisites.)

Any thoughts or observances of fixes, FAQs, or errata to this?

 

[Thanee]

Isn't that class meant to be for core rangers to multiclass into?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pax]

No, thanee. That class is meant to REPLACE teh Core Ranger class. Some folks (myself included) have long held that Paladin, Ranger, and even Bard might have been best modelled as Prestige classes, rather than Core classes. The Prestige Ranger (and Prestige Bard and Prestige Paladin) are examples of doing exactly that.

DCollins: I'd probably just add Two-WeaponDefense to the list of prerequisites for the Prestige Ranger; it's certaily thematic.

Whenever the original version was written up, it was probably initially based on the 3.0 rules (which would have added the Ambidexterity tot he 2WF route to prestige ranger). So, when it was editted for inclusion in UA, the difference between the two possible routes into the class were probably just plain missed by whoever "updated" it.

 

[Thanee]

Hmm... ok, but is that really a difference?

By level 3 any archer-type will have Rapid Shot anyways.

EDIT: Ah, there are two more feats to take as well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[dcollins]

Whenever the original version was written up, it was probably initially based on the 3.0 rules (which would have added the Ambidexterity tot he 2WF route to prestige ranger). So, when it was editted for inclusion in UA, the difference between the two possible routes into the class were probably just plain missed by whoever "updated" it.

That did occur to me, and it would be convenient since we're actually running a core 3.0 campaign. However, wouldn't that put the starting point noticably higher than the other "Prestigious Classes", when you take into account a total of 5 feats plus the druid-style spellcasting requirement? (Can't check details, don't have UA here myself for comparison. Note that Ambidexterity was not a prerequisite for TWF in 3.0, it would have to be explicitly listed if it were to have - hypothetically - been a prerequisite.)

 

[~Joseph~]

May be they expected that you would be a fighter/druid or fighter/cleric before taking a level of PrC Ranger, with 1 level of Driud, you already have all the prereques exept BAB and 2 feats (only one if Human). So even with the need of Point Blank Shot to meet the prereq for Rapid Shot, you'll have everything by Druid1/Fighter2, exept BAB. And like he said above, I would expect just about any archer type to take point blank at Level1

 

[Pax]

That did occur to me, and it would be convenient since we're actually running a core 3.0 campaign. However, wouldn't that put the starting point noticably higher than the other "Prestigious Classes", when you take into account a total of 5 feats plus the druid-style spellcasting requirement? (Can't check details, don't have UA here myself for comparison. Note that Ambidexterity was not a prerequisite for TWF in 3.0, it would have to be explicitly listed if it were to have - hypothetically - been a prerequisite.)

Harder prerequisites? Not really, IMO; I think they assumed a Fighter/Druid would be the entry. The level progression in UA seems to show that it was intended to be taken as your 6th character level, after all.

Let's see, by 3.0 rules, I think it would come out to ... BAB +4; either [Endurance, Track, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot] or [Endurance, Track, Ambidexterity, Two Weapon Fighting]; be able to cast Calm Animal as a divine spell; 2 ranks of knowledge (nature) and 4 ranks of Survival.

That's easy, and there're multiple ways to get there! Fighter(4)/Druid(1) can do it, of course ... but so can Fighter(4)/Cleric(1), if you select the Animal domain (at least, Calm Animal is listed as being the first-level spell o that domain in the 3.5 PHB).

So at 20th level, you'd have (say) Fighter(4)/Druid(1)/Prestige Ranger(15); you'd cast spells as an 8th-level Druid, be able to specialise, and hae all hte crunchy-goodness of the Ranger core class as well. Not bad, eh?

Your feats, just before taking your first level of Prestige Ranger, would be:

Endurance (Character 1)
Point-blank shot *OR* Ambidexterity (Fighter 1)
Rapid shot *OR* Two-weapon fighting (Fighter 2)
Track (Character 3)
*** anything you like! *** (Fighter 4)

As a human, you could take Weapon Focus for your racial feat, and then Specialise in that weapon for your Fighter(4) feat.

Overall, Prestige Ranger is very easy to qualify for, IMO.

 

[dcollins]

One bump on this: I'd be interested in hearing any additional observations on this one.

 

[dcollins]

In case anyone's interested, I wanted to report what determination was made on this issue in the campaign I co-DM. We decided to take out the Endurance feat prerequisite and replace it with the other component of whichever path was chosen. Hence the prerequisite feats become a choice of the following:

(1) Track, Ambidexterity, and Two-Weapon Fighting, or
(2) Track, Point-Blank Shot, amd Rapid Shot.

Here's how we came to this determination. All the Prestigious Classes are basically aimed at some particular multiclass combination for its prerequisites. For Bard its Rog/Sor, for Paladin Clr/Ftr, for Ranger Drd/Ftr. I note that all the given prerequisites can be satisfied by any combination of those classes adding up to 5. For example: for Bard anything from Rog1/Sor4 to Rog4/Sor1 works -- for Paladin anything from Clr1/Ftr4 to Clr4/Ftr1 -- and so should Ranger, from Drd1/Ftr4 to Drd4/Ftr1, for any race. The only way to make that last option happen for Ranger is to have a limit of 3 prerequisite feats, and so we took out Endurance and added in the other component indicated for each path in the class.

Now, for you playing 3.5 I don't know what you'll do, because of course Ambidexterity no longer exists in those rules.

 

[Pax]

... keep Endurance in, but only for the TWF route. Probably, anyway. ^_^