Your favored enemies, and why?

[Liolel]

I only played my elf ranger up to level 4 but his first choice was gobliniods. For in his backround story his uncle had been killed by hobgoblins.

edit: 200th post Yay

 

[NiTessine]

Khamut, my gnoll ranger in Nightfall's Scarred Lands game, has favoured enemies of Aberration, Humanoid (Dwarf) and Monstrous Humanoid. Aberration and Monstrous Humanoid are there because most Titanspawn are one of the two, and Termana is crawling with them. Humanoid (Dwarf) because the charduni, lawful evil dwarves who practice slavery, happen to have an empire on the side of the continent that Khamut tends to haunt. Next one will probably be Undead. Nightfall seems fond of them.

 

[Driddle]

My latest ranger chose green monsters as his first favored enemy, then purple second, and black monsters third. ... He would have chosen white monsters as his next favored enemy, except an evil cleric cursed him with color blindness and nearsightedness, and then he made the mistake of charging at the wrong dragon -- it looked much smaller and greenish at a distance, ya know.

I think orange monsters are the least useful favored enemy group.

 

[Altalazar]

These days, everyone seems to choose "human" because then they can maximize the usefulness of it.

That would seem rather min/maxish, were it not for the fact that I've seen way too many times the "favored" choice of a PC Ranger be completely irrelevant because the campaign ends up NEVER involving ANY of the creatures selected - which makes the whole thing rather pointless.

Perhaps the way to fix this is to discuss with the DM the nature of the campaign and so create the Ranger with that in mind - and thus you can select one that is appopriate to the character concept AND will be relevant to the campaign.

Alternately, perhaps you could Rule-0 and keep the slot "empty" until the campaign has developed and, through role-playing, the Ranger picks up a favored enemy that is the type that is the main BBEG minion of the campaign.

I mean, unless the favored enemy comes up fairly often, it really is meaningless - and not just from a game mechanics point of view - it also makes an element of the CHARACTER irrelevant - I mean, imagine the game is a novel, and you have a character who ABSOLUTELY HATES goblins - but in the novel, he never encounters any - heck, you may not even find out about his feelings about goblins at all, unless he just announced it out of the blue. It would be like the trait of that character just didn't exist because there would be no manifestation of it.

Things like favored enemy need to be incorporated into the campaign - or else I think an interesting facet of the Character of a Ranger is lost.

 

[CCamfield]

I chose humans for my ranger's first favored enemy because part of his training was from an old Robin-Hood like figure who fought the men of the evil Governor (until his 'rebels' got stomped and he had to hide deep in the forest to survive).

In play, we ran into a lot of undead around levels 3-4 and I decided my character was really shocked and disliked the undead because, well, they're an unnatural aberration to nature. (In the generic sense--dead things should not return to life!) So I rp'd my character reading books by past hunters of the undead, and took undead as my f.e. at level 5.

 

[dreaded_beast]

Okay, I'm going to rant now.

What the hell is the logic behind Favored Enemy? Apparently, you've studied your enemy very well, so you're really good at dealing with him. Let's examine the bonuses you get. Bonuses to Spot and Listen, to damage rolls, to Sense Motive, to tracking, and a few others.

So . . . I've studied Goblins. I know where a Goblin's body can be hurt most easily; I know what they sound like as they walk, and I can recognize their facial features and gestures well enough so as not to get caught off guard by them. If I run into an Orc, I don't get this benefit, because Orcs and Goblins are very different.

Next, for my next favored enemy, I've studied Humans. I know how to injure a human by going for the weak spots like the third vertebra, and I'm familiar with the common aspects in human sociology to let me tell when a human is telling a lie, whether that human is a tall, hulking Nordic man or a skinny teenaged Japanese girl, each from vastly different cultures. But if I try to tell if an Elf is bluffing, or if I want to hurt an Elf, I'm out of luck. His gestures and anatomy are just too different from humans. Heaven forbid I want to hurt a dark Elf.

For my third favored enemy, I choose Aberrations. In an adventure, I come across a room filled with an Aboleth, a Mind Flayer, a Beholder, and a Carrion Crawler. I am not worried. Because of my superior knowledge of anatomy, I can discern the shared weak spots of these three monsters, despite their completely different body plans and minds. Of course, I can't possibly know how to hurt a Frost Wurm. After all, it's a magical beast. It's far too unrelated.

No, I'm sorry. The explanation in the PHB is stupid and lame. The only possible explanation my group can accept for these ridiculous bonuses to completely arbitrary groups is that rangers hate these monsters. They do not derive benefits to combat and hunting because of close study, but rather because they are racists.

Durned racist rangers, hating on everybody.

I'm going to make a ranger PC with Favored Enemy (Playas).

I can see your points and agree with the logic you have presented.

However, in my opinion, I believe the overall goal of the designers is to make the game fun (and hopefully balanced and playable at the same time). I don't think the overall "fun-factor" takes precedence over whether or not the ability make sense or not.

Based on your above example, in the case of aberrations, if a player had to pick a specific type of aberration, I believe that the would make the Favored Enemy ability that much weaker. For instance, the ranger had to be specific and pick Aboleth. Then Mind Flayer. Then Beholder. While making much more sense regarding having "studied" the creature in question, it would probably severly limit the usefulness of this ability (unless the creatures were common in the campaign you play ) Just my opinion.

That being said, to go back to the original topic, to quote my newbie player:

"My Favored Enemy is going to be Monks!"

 

[Nighthawk]

In the current playing group, I am playing a human single-classed ranger. I have two favored enemies at this point: humans (primary) and aberrations (secondary). The humans are not all humans, but humans of a specific empire (that the pc group actively opposes, albeit on a very small scale). The aberrations were chosen because my character has had unpleasant experiences with humans using magic to modify creatures for their own bizarre ends. So, not all aberrations, either, just those created by humans experimenting on creatures with magic. Both require acquired knowledge to work successfully, which means it can be problematic to implement correctly.

Both favored enemies of my character reflect a campaign background situation and use game mechanics to try and make them have some sort of impact in the game sessions. So far, it has required serious interaction between the gm and myself. It's pretty cool, though.

This is my first playing experience with the 3.5 ranger, and it's been an enjoyable one up to this time. I hope it continues.