Class Review: Ranger

[Dragor]

Class Review: Ranger

NWN Definition: “A ranger can use a variety of weapons and is quite capable in combat. His skills allow him to survive in the wilderness, to find his prey, and to avoid detection. He also has special knowledge about certain types of creatures, which makes it easier for him to find and defeat such foes. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw upon natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does.”

FRwiki Definition: “Rangers are warriors and hunters who excel at exploring the fringes of civilization. Hunters, scouts, trappers, and assassins rangers can be found wherever civilization borders the wilderness. Many rangers use only natural armor and benefit from a closeness to the wild. Nearly all rangers worship a god, and almost always this god is tied in some way to the natural world.”

http://www.sundren.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ranger
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Ranger

MY VIEW

Rangers are a very flexible class that I feel is largely forgotten about. They can be scouts, guardians, assassins, or just general explorers sometimes all at once. They are still a religious class however and the RP should reflect that.
I do not really have any gripes about RPing rangers outside of my normal religious character gripe, as long as you research the faith the character follows I do not even care if it is a chaotic good drow…ok maybe I do a little as I tend to prefer seeing originality…

I’ve decided to risk creating a firestorm by doing a short review like this on all the base and PrC classes available on Sundren and ask for the communities input on anything related to that class such as RP tactics, personal views, lore tidbits, and character build strategies.
Keep it clean, thanks

[Snowmane]

My favorite class to role-play. Mechanically, too weak IMO.

[Thief Of Navarre]

My favorite class to role-play. Mechanically, too weak IMO.

Im in the same mind. love playing them (Pel was my first sundren character). But without multiclassing they are too weak and when multiclassed they lose the strengths they have (ability advancement & spellcasting).
Feats like Ascetic Hunter from complete adventurer or Swift Hunter from complete scoundrel (substituting scout levels for rogue perhaps) could easily remedy some of the shortfalls.

I'd like the scout class while Im here. pwease? Fits into sundren quite nicely.

[Doubtful]

A great little class that can fit many niches, from military scout or guerrilla fighter through to city dwelling private detective.

NWN2s insistence that you take a nature deity hampers the class somewhat, in PnP you don't even need to worship a god (Even the Kar-Lanan who are a sworn enemy of all gods can take the class)

A focused ranger can be one scary character, capable of ripping up pretty much any other character, provided they're the ones that choose the place and time to fight.

[Cornuto]

My favorite class to role-play. Mechanically, too weak IMO.

I wish feats like favored power attack weren't specific to a type of favored enemy. I'd rather it work for ALL of your favored enemies and not require you to burn a feat choice for each type.

[Doubtful]

I wish feats like favored power attack weren't specific to a type of favored enemy. I'd rather it work for ALL of your favored enemies and not require you to burn a feat choice for each type.

It is kind of weird that Bane of Enemies covers all your favoured enemies (quite a lot at level 21), but Favoured Power Attack just does the one..

[Cornuto]

It is kind of weird that Bane of Enemies covers all your favoured enemies (quite a lot at level 21), but Favoured Power Attack just does the one..

It would do a lot for my dream of running up to a favored enemy at a far-strider boosted sprint while fully stealthed and power attacking them in the face for 100+ damage.

[Mournas]

My biggest Issue with Rangers is D8 hit die, and a fighter cleric looks at a ranger and laughs in his face singing the "Everything you can do I can do better." Song. However with that being said, the one things Rangers have that can't be bested by any other class is level 21 Ranger for Bane of Enemies and Perfected TWF. Rangers were more awesome in 2nd edition than 3rd.

[Thief Of Navarre]

Fighter with able learner and a level of rogue does everything better than a ranger. Its a shame really, I've always liked them!

[Doubtful]

Pffft! Crazy talk.

A fighter/Rogue is a better generalist, the ranger is much, much better specialist.

A ranger that makes it to level 21 becomes a stupendous killing machine. Played to their strengths they're equally devastating at medium levels. They are a bit poor at low levels though, that's true

[Aniril_Telin]

I really don't have much to add to this, but considering the prevalence of Archers as Rangers, and I cannot think offhandedly of a better class to do that with. It is however unfortunate that this seems to ultimately be the standard outcome. I would say beat Noril at an archery contest, but he's a ranger/aa so thats not really sporting.

[Thief Of Navarre]

I really don't have much to add to this, but considering the prevalence of Archers as Rangers, and I cannot think offhandedly of a better class to do that with. It is however unfortunate that this seems to ultimately be the standard outcome. I would say beat Noril at an archery contest, but he's a ranger/aa so thats not really sporting.

A fighter/bard/aa would be better than a ranger/aa (or wizard if you want to keep charisma as a dumb stat). He already gets weapon feats that work on any enemy rather than just circumstancial ones. In my opinion rangers still need a little help to become as mechanically sound as a fighter ~ maybe if favoured enemies were +2 points per five levels like in canon 3.5e or if woodland stride was a limited freedom of movement (like in nwn1) instead of a base movement increase? Either of those would significantly increase the class' popularity and viability

[Snowmane]

Do we honestly have a class where everyone concedes it is underpowered? Maybe this would be a class that Saulus and crew could reevaluate and maybe give a little boost?

[Zoberraz]

I remember that the original, non-feyblooded Maia had both two-weapon and archery styles at her disposal - one via class features and the other via feats. I suppose it might've looked impressive to have that at her disposal... but two-weapon fighting ended up being obviously mechanically weak for her. Generally, when Maia ended up being in melee what she needed was staying power and not extra attacks that were very likely to miss. That's especially the case on a low-magic setting since high-level TWF performance strongly depends on good weapon enchantments (and elemental damage).

Arguably, you can do a lot better with a two-handed weapon; I tried that out with a wood elf ranger on Frontier Reborn - that one has arguably equivalent damage for the feat investment (or lack of) and is potentially much more effective against enemies with DR. Or, you can go sword-and-board like Maia does for extra AC - which does end up being useful especially if you're fighting more than one opponent.

Ranger spells are kinda weak. As a level 20 pure ranger, you end up with less casting ability than a level 8 druid - which is kinda sad if you compare the potency of a Fighter12/Druid8 to a Ranger20. The caster level is halved which makes said spell not that great of a contribution even in a group (even if it's only on account of a limited duration) and the spell list has limited attractive picks (for one, I so wish Forestfold was available for Level 3 Ranger spells... though one of the big blessings for the ranger in Sundren is access to Longstrider).

Favored Enemies is a mixed deal for me. I think NWN2 applies it decently enough, but there are hiccups. Improved Favored Enemies could've used some love, yes. Also, race classifications are in some cases iffy - you could have Favored Enemies with Humans and Orcs both... but Half-Orc will fall through the cracks despite the 'Orc-blooded' racial feature. Same goes for half-elves if you have FE Elf and Human. For those races, you have to specifically pick them - it's kind of ridiculous.

Another common drawback for rangers whom rely on two-weapon fighting or archery is the basis of their damage on a numerous amount of low-damage attacks. For some of this setting's high level content like what the Veritas were and the Bloodmaim orcs... that works out. But whenever DR crops up in content like Argyle Keep or with vampires (especially player-manned vampires) it ends up potentially being bad news for the ranger - making him close to ineffective.

This isn't a bash against said content: I'm just outlining the problem that makes it difficult for the ranger character to contribute. A fight between Maia and Ruby, despite Maia having Silver Arrows and Holy Water for preparation, will still end up with Maia largely ineffective because Ruby had in addition DR against something else (/adamantine? /good?) that made it impossible regardless of the arrow's material to land a good hit and that despite having +5 FE Undead. Whatever damage did go through was just removed by Ruby's vampire regeneration. It could be the very same with a vampire priest using Stone Body (Clive?) - near invincibility to anyone that doesn't do massive amounts of positive energy damage.

That translates into futility and near-helplessness, despite said character being prepared for said fight and specialized as much as the class would allow to fight undead. Unfortunately, there are very few instances in the persistent world where the FE bonus pays off in other ways than 'trying to compensate, and usually failing, for damage reduction'.

Then again, the point isn't whining and more just pointing out that it's much harder to contribute, to look competent, to look useful/your-class-level when you run up against that kind of wall and find out most of your expended prowess ends up being an effort in futility. You can still run or avoid confrontation - but you're still missing out/not being useful.

It's kind of the same deal with monsters in Argyle Keep. Maia has FE Outsider, but make her run up against the Forge demon boss... and she's only going to do damage if she uses her adamantium sword of cold damage. (2+1d6 cold her hit) since none of her arrows, despite hitting good damage numbers on their standards (14, 16, 18...) will ever get through.

Okay, arguably that part is just me. Maia is feyblooded, has /cold iron DR, and thus I'm roleplaying her as having an aversion to cold iron in the way of being close sickens her and touching it is like having cold needles stab into her skin, with a poison-like numbness spreading through her. I suppose if she had access to cold iron weapons/ammunition, she could kill these monsters just as 'easily' as anyone else.

Of course, with the right ammunition and in the right circumstances, you can turn the table. Wizards are often very confident in their power, but the moment you whip out adamantium arrows... you're pretty much nearly as deadly as they might be in a single round by pointing you and casting Finger of Death.

I'm not too impressed in the ranger stealth capabilities. It seems that half the adventurers around and their mother can rather easily spot a stealthed ranger character - even if she's at max rank with decent dexterity. Perhaps not coincidentally, anyone who's affiliated with 'other factions with reasons to be sneaky' have much better item support to reliably stay hidden and quiet (especially quiet - the best Wardens get are +5 move silently on their best footwear).

Also, you can have a Ranger20 with maxed spot/listen/search along and elven auto-search toggle always on... and you're still not very likely to spot traps anywhere in the Mossdale and adjoining locales due to the insane DCs involved.

tl;dr: Rangers get some very fun class features, but mechanically both D&D 3E trends unfavorable to 'finessy' characters and some of Sundren's dungeon/encounter/faction tools design ends up rather unfavorable to them despite attempts at specialization on the ranger's part - Damage Reduction is a frequent culprit. It hurts attempts to look competent/be useful to a group.

It does make my day whenever a DM goes along to accomodate using my class' detection capabilities like Spot, Listen, Search and especially Survival for tracking - especially when it opens up quest opportunities/helps Maia act as a guide to a larger group that she empowers into a better ability to 'get the job done'. Tracking has some people headscratching, trying to relate... but just like a high-level wizard can divest the cosmic secrets of the universe from a Level 9 Wizard Spell Scroll, a ranger like Maia can look at the ground and with her +27 skill, 'read' it to determine uncanny things in ways not dissimilar to the high-level archmage and his spellscroll.

[roguethree]

I don't believe what I'm reading.

Archer ranger with the appropriately chosen favored enemies (not hard to do with a PW) is awesome, especially if level 21 is a possibility. HiPS, improved favored enemy, Bane of Enemies, One Shot: things die.