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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 6665381" data-attributes="member: 5435">This is exactly why the story behind Favored Enemy falls flat in the context of the campaign. Sure, at 1st level you can pretend it is part of the character's backstory (gnolls killed my mommy), but for the professional adventurer it is too restrictive. FE implies the ranger stays in one place, fighting one population. 1E got around this by applying it to a whole range of common monsters, from orcs to giants, so the ranger would get there bonus some of the time almost anywhere. 2E and 5E copped out by making the FE a ribbon.Hence my suggestion earlier that we think of the Ranger not as a Hater but as a Hunter.  Unlike the fighter, barbarian, and paladin, the Ranger doesn't approach a combat hoping that their personal skill at arms will carry them through. The Ranger will take her time, looking for every possible advantage of the terrain and weak point in the foe. Furthermore, if the player spends time scouting and studying the enemy, the game should reward that behavior for the Ranger, because it is very much in line with the archetype.And it's easy enough to do: give a FE bonus and make it apply to any foe that the Ranger takes time to study or fight. My earlier post suggested a cumulative +1 to attack, damage, and skill rolls per significant interaction (typically observation from hiding or a battle), so the Ranger gets better and better the more they fight a particular foe. By the time the party meets the Gnoll Warlord, the Ranger should be at their maximum. But the Gnolls of the Broken Fang might have very different fighting styles from the Gnolls of the Muddy Paw, so the FE bonus should reset in the next adventure when the Ranger meets a new tribe of gnolls. Then the question becomes where to cap the FE bonus, how many FEs the Ranger can sustain simultaneously, and whether the Ranger can give some of the bonus to allies... but these are just details to be resolved through a bit of math and playtesting.</blockquote>

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