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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 6666928" data-attributes="member: 6683613">Okay.  It's certainly possible to build a class around a mechanic.  But two questions about this one.  If it's just built around the favored enemy mechanic, (1) why does it have all this other woodcraft capability and flavor; and (2) why is it called the "ranger"?  Seems like something of a bait-and-switch.Could you clarify what you're saying here?  Because elsewhere, including directly below, you seem to acknowledge that all the pre-D&D woodcrafty characters we've been talking to do belong to an archetype.  Are you simply saying that this archetype has not always received the label of "ranger"?It's fair to bring up Boone as being another example of the archetype.  (Or a prototype of the archetype, if you will.)  However, the example of Boone does not erase the example of Bumppo.  You can say that Boone is an example of an archetypal character with a favored enemy, but Bumppo is still an example of an archetypal character without one.  Be he ever so derived from Boone, that particular aspect of Boone's character was removed from him.  And the removal was accomplished without in any significant way altering the archetype.  Which rather proves my point, I think.PS:  You can safely skip the works of James Fenimore Cooper.  Twain has said <a href="http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html" target="_blank">all that needed to be said about them</a>.  I don't mention Bumppo because I'm a fan.  (Though the Daniel Day-Lewis movie is good.)I remind you, my remark was in response to your suggestion that this fluff ought to be hard-coded into the crunch.  In which case I am somewhat less free to ignore it.Grendel didn't kill his men until after Beowulf had come to Heorot to kill the monster (and Beowulf seems to have deliberately let them die).  Beowulf was motivated to seek out and fight Grendel by a lust for fame.  He had no intention of finding Grendel's lair, or going out into the wilderness at all -- his plan was to kill Grendel at Heorot.  He fought and beat Grendel through superior strength rather than special knowledge of the monster's weaknesses.  And when Grendel got away, he did not track him across the moor (not that following a blood trail like that would have required great skill in any case), but rather was led to the lair by a party of Danes who already knew where it was.Ergo we should assume there was?See, I think that would be a terrible idea.  Medusa was a monster that Perseus pretty definitely only fought once.Furthermore, Perseus doesn't display any of the woodcraft of the ranger class.  So, even assuming he should have medusa as a favored enemy, this just raises the question again of why the favored enemy ability should be associated with those other skills.Given the size of the Monster Manual, pretty narrow.I believe all the example literary woodsmen we've been talking about were great warriors.  The two concepts are hardly mutually exclusive.That it doesn't define him.  He is called Halfelven, the Mariner, and the Evening Star, not the Dragon Slayer.  His lineage, his ship, and his Silmaril define him far more than his fight with Ancalagon.It sounds like you're saying you don't think it's important to ask why characters are doing what they're doing.  But I know you're not saying that.  Right?If, as you say, favored enemy means "[t]he Ranger goes out into the wilderness fueled with a burning hatred for the creatures that prey upon those whom the Ranger protects", then that is placing some pretty tight restrictions on my character's attitudes and motivations.To me, at least, there is a wide gap in between "love" and "hate".  Not everyone is "fueled with a burning hatred".Okay, let me lay out my methodology here.The first step is the most subjective:  I'm assembling a group of literary characters whom I intuitively identify as members of the archetype we're labeling "ranger".  If you were of a mind to argue that, for example, Aragorn just absolutely was not a ranger, we'd have an axiomatic difference and could not proceed any further.  But so far you seem to have accepted at least tentatively that these characters have enough in common to form an archetype.  And yes, I am literally picking and choosing characters here.  But I don't think that's particularly damning here, or amounts to picking and choosing traits, because of step two.Step two is considering these characters' immediately defining traits.  I haven't literally done this, but you can imagine me making list for each like "The Top Five Things To Know About Aragorn".  Now, to figure out which of these traits define the archetype, I have to look for the ones that they all share with each other, but which simultaneously distinguish them from others.  To make an example of another class:  Merlin, Gandalf, and Harry Potter have in common the ability to perform magic, and they are distinguished by it; ergo, magic defines the wizard archetype.  Now, turning back to the ranger, Aragorn's palantir ability is not shared (and it should be no surprise that I'm willing to dispute 1E D&D's design decision there).  The fact that all these characters are humanoid is shared, but not distinctive.  And the fact that some (okay, most) of them are male is neither shared nor distinctive.  For shared, distinctive traits, we're looking at things like survival skills, situational awareness, and all the stuff I've already mentioned elsewhere on this thread.  We are not looking at favored enemy.To explain why not, I'll give you one more example that is, I hope, as favorable to your case as I can make it.  Consider <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbett" target="_blank">Jim Corbett.</a>  One of those figures you are astonished to believe was actually real.  And he lines up almost as close as can be with your description of the ranger.  Definitely had a specialty, definitely went out into the woods and killed out of a desire to protect those who could not protect themselves.  If he were a literary character, it's pretty obvious that "tiger hunter" would be right at the top of his list of traits.  I mean, it's in the first sentence of his Wikipedia article.  All this I mention by way of contrast with Aragorn, Bumppo, et al..  This is what definitional specialization looks like; this is what those other characters do not have.  It is not a shared, distinctive trait.  It is not a general trait of the ranger.  It is a particular trait of Corbett, like palantir ability is a particular trait of Aragorn.(And it's also worth noting that there is one point on which even Corbett doesn't line up with your description at all.  He didn't hate big cats.  He loved them.)Because I'm looking for shared traits -- universal traits -- I really don't think I can be accused of picking and choosing them.  Picking and choosing would be if all these other rangers were as specialized as Corbett and I were simply refusing to see it.On the other hand, the archetypal hunter is generally familiar with everything that lives in the wilderness.  Very seldom do you see the grizzled buckskin-clad woodsman kneel down with his knotted muscles, carefully examine a set of tracks with his steely eyes, and then speak in his clipped, laconic growl:  "Sorry, don't know this one, not my specialty."So while I agree that hunter's expertise might be a good starting place for designing a distinctive ranger, I strongly disagree that it should take the form of a specialization.  It should be quite the opposite.  A ranger should have something like Bardic Knowledge, but for monsters.</blockquote>

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