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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kaffis" data-source="post: 811934" data-attributes="member: 10305">Well, the way I see it, Rangers were a fun class in 2e (if anything, they suffered from a lack of .. direction? focus?) that may or may not have been ideally suited to various archetypes and character concepts inspired by such characters as Aragorn, Robin Hood, various early American folk heroes, et al. Namely, a wilderness warrior who used savvy and stealth to master the wilds rather than brute force and steel plating.Now 3rd Ed. rolls around with it's mantra of "character diversity and customization". I love 3e, I love what it's done to character development, etc. As a reminder/basis for comparison:Fighters get feats out the wazoo, get to pick their progression, through which they can define a variety of diverse character concepts, ranging from mounted combat to cleaving fiends to swashbuckling masters. They can be strong, dextrous, or just plain hale and hearty, all with good character development potential. Barbarians, on the other hand, are limited to standard feat development, but get a good rage mechanic, some good uncanny dodge bonuses, and some outdoorsyish skills. Monks get unarmed attack benefits with more attacks per round, as well as a gamut of bonus specialty attack feats to emulate your favorite features of martial arts.Mages got some differentiation: sorcerors for spontaneous spell slinging, wizards for studious, carefully prepared masters of the most powerful arcane. And bards with their little jack-of-all-trades shoe in the door, of course.Thieves got to be rogues -- guild pickpocket, dungeon delver/tomb robber, party scout, fast-talking scoundrel, take your pick. They've got the class skills and the skill points to use a fair number of em, but again -- you choose your specialties, and in the process can define a diverse set of characters. Ditto bards on the diplomatic side, again with their jack-of-all-trades.Priests get some definition with spell list face-lifts, clerics get the onus of party-rod-of-cure-light lifted from their shoulders with spontaneous healing. Druids get a bunch of fun toys like wild shape and a hearty spell list. Paladins remain beefy warriors and moderate pseudo-clerics.Now that we've summed up everything else, look at a ranger. They keep the TWF stuff (which I agree, is pretty much an incentive to stay in light armor, artificially 'forcing' you into the sneaky archetype above) and get a good assortment of class skills to make a stealthy, wilderness-savvy character. Only they get jack for skill points, so you end up choosing one or the other. You can beef up your wilderness lore, animal empathy, intuit direction, spot, and listen to become a master of the wild, or you can do move silently, listen, spot, and wilderness lore and become a stealthy wilderness scout. In any case, tracking has always been hurting in my opinion, as whatever I'm tracking can invariably outrun me if I'm tracking it. Same with foraging. I can understand harsh movement rate penalties for non-rangers and maybe young rangers, but isn't the point of being a ranger to become a master at those kinds of things?Add to this a relatively meager favored enemy system, by which the favored enemy that you can use early on (your first) ends up with monstrous bonuses, but the ones you might take later (most likely stronger enemy categories) end up with +2s or +1s at 20th. Remind me to cheer for those underwhelming top favored enemies while I use my +5 bonus vs. kobolds. Add to that a still pathetic spell list (or rather, complete lack of spells/day progression), and you just run out of things to look forward to in a straight-classed ranger beyond, oh, 6th? Maybe 10th if you're really into that TWF, but heck, you may as well spend a couple levels on fighter and get bonus feats rather than suffer through 10 levels of ranger.In any case, I've always viewed the mild front-loading (I don't consider a bonus feat and two virtual feats too excessive, but then I don't play human characters with just one level of ranger either -- I generally force myself to invest high enough to get a couple spells.. so from my perspective moving the TWF stuff up a few levels or adding them at 2nd and 3rd or something would probably be appropriate) and complete lack of anything in the 8-20 range to be evidence that the 3rd ed. ranger is really an invitation to make your ranger character by taking a couple levels of ranger and then adding rogue/fighter/barbarian as you see appropriate to fill out your character. Want a wilderness archer? Rng1/FtrX, take archery bonus feats. Want a TWFing tracking scout? Rng4/RogX.. the 4 levels of ranger get you a few good spells for the character concept, and time to dump skill points into wilderness lore and intuit direction. Then beef up your mildly neglected move silently, hide, search, spot, and listen skills with the copious rogue points. How about a beastmaster warrior? RngX/DruX or Rng1-3/DruX/FtrX. Pick up animal empathy points with the ranger skills, along with BAB. Collect befriended and summoned animals with the druid levels.Is this the optimum solution? No, I think that people should be able to take their ranger characters down the paths that embody the various ranger archetypes with a straight ranger class. If trying to embrace all the archetypes that fall best under 'ranger' in the current class list makes rangers too powerful, then start offering things as either/or progressions, or divide the class into two (there's room to do it if you want.. you could easily create a 'paladin mirror' and a straight non-casting woodsman class in the same system and still have two healthy classes, imo.). Things as basic as what's been mentioned above shouldn't require multiclassing to obtain a good picture. The tables for rangers past 10 shouldn't be wasted space in the PHB, heh. And to finish it off, I don't think anybody could contend that any other class has near the stagnation at high levels as the ranger does. And that's what gets people upset and annoyed.Good lord, I just wrote a book!</blockquote>

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