I posted my sheet a little back. I have spot and listen covered, but not sneak.
If you want to go Ranger (not sure what "SWV" means), Venn, there's a class substitution level that lets you trade your Track for trapfinding, something our group currently lacks.
I had planned on that.
Basically,
Sublime Way Variant Ranger removes the weapon style feats and spellcasting in favor of the maneuver progression of the Warblade (from Tome of Battle). Its base martial disciplines are Shadow Hand (stealth, cold, sort of necromancy oriented maneuvers), Tiger Claw (wild, nature/barbarian style oriented maneuvers), and a homebrew discipline,
Falling Star, which is archery-oriented. However, it has the option to replace one of those disciplines with another one from a set list (pretty much giving access to any of the schools except Setting Sun and Diamond Mind). This would give me access to Devoted Spirit, which works similar to some of the Leader-role classes from 4E, in that rather than just outright healing their team members, they still make attacks and operate directly in combat, and secondary effects allow your allies to get some much-needed healing and bonuses, and there are some for debuffing enemies.
However, they only get a very limited amount of maneuvers to know at any given time. This is balanced by being able to recover expended maneuvers (like prepared spells that have been cast already) by spending a swift action. Unlike the Warblade, who needs to spend his standard action that round by attacking or by doing nothing, the SWV Ranger needs to spend its move action that round either moving at least 10', or by spending it to hide.
Mixing it with the Dark Template gives me just as sneaky a character as the swordsage I spoke of earlier, and using the Trap Expert variant, I can gain the trapfinding feature as you mentioned. I'd probably end up mixing Shadow Hand and Devoted Spirit maneuvers to make a sneaky character that can aid its teammates. Alternatively, I could go with a different blend of maneuvers, if there's no need for healing afterall.
AJ, did you have an idea of what you're going with for your character? Obviously you want to be a Leader, since you're building up an Egalitarian Kingdom. I was just wondering how you were going to achieve it.
