Thoughts for a Ranger handbook?

[Tonymitsu]

The fact that rangers are underused surprises people?
Look at what a normal Ranger gets for your investment:

Hit die:  d8                             Okay.
Full BAB:                                Good.
Skills:  6 + Int                        Also good, except a Scout gets 8, and a Ranger can't be the skill monkey role without Trapfinding
Saves:  Good Fort and Ref       Kind of good, I guess.  So long as you aren't fighting anything competent.
Only light armor and shields:   ....Sure.

Class Features:

Favored enemy:
Bonuses to Bluff, Listen, Sense, Motive, Spot, Survival, and damage rolls.  Well since Bluff and Sense Motive aren't on your class skill list, that makes this ability roughly the equivalent of the Alertness and Weapon Specialization feats that only work against that creature type.  Yay.
Improves as you level, provided you don't multiclass out, up to a +6 at level 20.  More yay.

Track:
Or you could just have the wizard cast some divination.

Wild Empathy:
Does anyone even use this?  Hooray, you can diplomance some animals.  Now you just need a spell to talk to them.  And another one to provide them with something worthwhile to say.  And a third one to get Diplomacy as a class skill.

Combat style:
Rangers have no source of bonus damage other than Favored enemy.  The two weapon fighting focus is irrelevant.  Even if you pick it you have to stay with ranger unless you qualify for the feat chain anyway.  There is almost no reason not to pick archery.

Endurance:
....Yeah.

Animal companion:
Strictly worse than a druid.  If this is the main reason you want to play the class you are better off in every way playing a druid instead.

Spells:
Once you go outside of core, rangers do have some really nice spells exclusive to them.  Plus some other nice spells at lower levels than anyone else.  In this case, spell-focused variant rangers become acceptable.  Anything else?  You are still better off playing a druid.

Woodland stride:
You get this at level 7.  Druids get it at level 2!  Yet another thing in the long list that druids do better than you.

Swift Tracker:
"Trail signs?  How quaint..."
/cast Locate Person

Evasion:
This is never a good reason to pick a class.  People who care about this ability just buy for 25,000 gp

Camouflage:
Hey something relevant to the class.  And it only took us 13 levels to get it.  Count the number of serious encounters you've had that occurred in natural terrain and not, say, a dungeon of worked stone, a castle, a tavern, or a city.

Hide in Plain Sight:
You get this at level 17.  Even without the natural terrain restriction, waiting that long for it it would still totally suck.  Unless you prepare all your second level spell slots as Hunter's Eye I guess.




Is it any wonder nobody bothers with ranger, other than to qualify for something that's actually good?

[Sorator]

Okay, so it's not a great class to take 20 levels in if you're working in core only. But, as snakeman said, they do have a lot of ACF's and variants that can give them some better options, as well as the good non-core spells. I think that's enough to warrant a handbook, if only to describe what you can do with it.

Even if a lot of the builds involved have less than 10 levels in Ranger, remember that a lot of builds involve heavy use of dipping and PrCs anyway. With the BAB, skill points, bonus feats (especially the variant classes' bonus feats), and spells, this is still a good base that can go in a lot of different directions. I think it'd be a good way to show folks new to these boards how you can still make a good character from a low-tier class, too.

[PhaedrusXY]

Even though I know it is true... it still hurts me to see all the ranger hate... Ranger was my favorite class, before I knew WTF was going on with optimization in D&D... I played one for years through 2nd edition, all the way into 3.5 (I mean the same character), until it became painfully obvious how gimped he was compared to any full caster... If I hadn't moved away from that area, I might still be playing that gimp. 

By the time 3.0 rolled into 3.5, I'd actually gotten him to the point where he could cast Polymorph Self (he was 14th level with an 18 Wis). That spell was so strong by itself that he was actually pretty badassed just because of it. Sure, the wizard could have just slapped a PaO on him, but it was more fun to do it himself, and the fact that you could actually change forms every round throughout the duration (like Shapechange) was quite a strong reason to use it over PaO.

So I was violently anti-3.5 at first, just because I felt it had nerfed my favorite character of all time.

But yeah... longwinded way of saying that the archetype of the wilderness warrior is quite appealing to some of us, despite the fact that the core class itself is kind of gimpy now. So if someone wanted to put together a good handbook, I'd love to see it, and try to contribute.

[Cephid Arcanis]

Count the number of serious encounters you've had that occurred in natural terrain and not, say, a dungeon of worked stone, a castle, a tavern, or a city.

Sounds like you play some pretty lame d&d then...
Where I'm playing the entire world is an epic scaled wilderness with deep glacial valleys, trees spanning mountain ranges and ancient forces of nature stalking for prey.

Oh well, I suppose I could just hang out in taverns and fight the city guard all day...

[PhaedrusXY]

Count the number of serious encounters you've had that occurred in natural terrain and not, say, a dungeon of worked stone, a castle, a tavern, or a city.

Sounds like you play some pretty lame d&d then...
Where I'm playing the entire world is an epic scaled wilderness with deep glacial valleys, trees spanning mountain ranges and ancient forces of nature stalking for prey.

Oh well, I suppose I could just hang out in taverns and fight the city guard all day...

It varies drastically by DM (and campaign)... I've played in games like you describe where probably 80-90% of the combats were outdoors, and in other games where we were underground much of the time...

[Unbeliever]

...
But yeah... longwinded way of saying that the archetype of the wilderness warrior is quite appealing to some of us, despite the fact that the core class itself is kind of gimpy now. So if someone wanted to put together a good handbook, I'd love to see it, and try to contribute.

As was probably indicated by my earlier comment, I'm a fan of archetype-oriented handbooks to begin w/.  I'm indifferent to what the class section of my character sheets says, all I care about is what the character can do. 

[PhaedrusXY]

This should go in there.

Nemesis + Wise to Your Ways + This + Favored Enemy (Evil) would be powerful. There's quite a few other useful options, too.

[Sorator]

This should go in there.

Nemesis + Wise to Your Ways + This + Favored Enemy (Evil) would be powerful. There's quite a few other useful options, too.

The "This" in that quote refers to this, btw.

[awaken DM golem]

I think PhaeXY's pre-CO experience is ... typical.
I had about the same experience.
I feel the same way about old Psi and Planescape stuff.
Loved the game despite the warts and all.


But if someone tries to play the game according to the rules,
and inevitably the rules are necessary; the rules get too thin at some point.
Or the rules are out and out wrong.

People also like "cheat" codes 
CO fills in both of these two areas, rather nicely I do say.


**

Oh ... rangers ... the Trapfinder Ranger 1 racial sub is kinda nice.

[Shiki]

Needs some Power Rangers mention(s). In the handbook, I mean.

ps: That Wise to Your Ways feat is pretty neat. W/ Arcane Hunter, it has a funny to it, though FE (evil) is broader.