I've been in ranger tinkering mode again for the last few days. Instead of doing the standard way of beefing up favored enemy, what if you simply added the ranger's wisdom bonus to all the favored enemy skills and to damage?
With this idea, here's what I see as the its strengths and weaknesses to the ranger.
Strengths:
1)Could be a much bigger bonus at lower levels.
2)The ranger has less to worry about in the order he picks favored enemies. He can pick them solely on what he's likely to fight, not on what he needs bonuses for later.
3)There's no cap on the power of Favored Enemy. It can become as strong as your wisdom allows.
4)That new favored enemy every 5 levels is no longer just a measly +1. It could be a big increase.
Weaknesses:
1)It makes wisdom a strong key stat for the ranger. While now rangers only need a 14 wisdom for his highest level spells, this ranger would need to keep upgrading his wisdom along with his other stats if he wants to keep scaling favored enemy.
2)In middle levels, this favored bonus could lag behind the current system for some favored enemy if the ranger's wisdom isn't that high.
3) Leveling doesn't give any new advantages against old favored enemies, so for them there's no feel of growing more powerful.
4) Having a negative wisdom would make the favored enemy useless.
Balance Issues:
1)In campaigns where only a few races are prevalent, the ranger's favored enemy ability could give him big advantages in skills and damage- and might make the class more frontloaded.
Counter: However, the "coolness" factor of favored enemy has the chance to increase by a great margin, and in normal campaigns may make it more desirable to go up more levels in ranger, to get a nice big bonus to an array of creatures.
2) A ranger with access to both str and wis boosting items and spells could potentially do a large amount more damage than fighters and barbs against his favored enemy, and for some skills surpasses the rogue.
Counter: The ranger is a specilized fighter/hunter whose main class aspect is favored enemy. Therefore, against these creatures he should be a good deal stronger than the fighter and rogue.
3) Rangers with low or negative wisdoms become very weak compared to the original version.
Counter: This ranger is more like the Paladin-where 2 of his main abilities come from Cha. A paladin with low or neg charisma is just not that strong, and so the ranger should be expected to have a decent to high wisdom.
So what does everyone think about THIS idea. Please don't post your ranger versions and ideas, we can save those for their own posts.
With this idea, here's what I see as the its strengths and weaknesses to the ranger.
Strengths:
1)Could be a much bigger bonus at lower levels.
2)The ranger has less to worry about in the order he picks favored enemies. He can pick them solely on what he's likely to fight, not on what he needs bonuses for later.
3)There's no cap on the power of Favored Enemy. It can become as strong as your wisdom allows.
4)That new favored enemy every 5 levels is no longer just a measly +1. It could be a big increase.
Weaknesses:
1)It makes wisdom a strong key stat for the ranger. While now rangers only need a 14 wisdom for his highest level spells, this ranger would need to keep upgrading his wisdom along with his other stats if he wants to keep scaling favored enemy.
2)In middle levels, this favored bonus could lag behind the current system for some favored enemy if the ranger's wisdom isn't that high.
3) Leveling doesn't give any new advantages against old favored enemies, so for them there's no feel of growing more powerful.
4) Having a negative wisdom would make the favored enemy useless.
Balance Issues:
1)In campaigns where only a few races are prevalent, the ranger's favored enemy ability could give him big advantages in skills and damage- and might make the class more frontloaded.
Counter: However, the "coolness" factor of favored enemy has the chance to increase by a great margin, and in normal campaigns may make it more desirable to go up more levels in ranger, to get a nice big bonus to an array of creatures.
2) A ranger with access to both str and wis boosting items and spells could potentially do a large amount more damage than fighters and barbs against his favored enemy, and for some skills surpasses the rogue.
Counter: The ranger is a specilized fighter/hunter whose main class aspect is favored enemy. Therefore, against these creatures he should be a good deal stronger than the fighter and rogue.
3) Rangers with low or negative wisdoms become very weak compared to the original version.
Counter: This ranger is more like the Paladin-where 2 of his main abilities come from Cha. A paladin with low or neg charisma is just not that strong, and so the ranger should be expected to have a decent to high wisdom.
So what does everyone think about THIS idea. Please don't post your ranger versions and ideas, we can save those for their own posts.
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