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kpenguin
2010-01-21, 12:14 AM
My friend wants to play a warforged ranger with an archery focus. With an eye on simple mechanics (he's fairly new to the game) in mind, any suggestions? Would it be worth it to spend a feat on a mithril body? Ranger spells, good or bad?

Starting at level 5, by the way.

Ability scores rolled are 17, 16, 11, 11, 14, 14

Runestar
2010-01-21, 12:28 AM
Spells are nice, but in light of its wis penalty, you may want to swap them out for bonus feats (using the complete champion variant).

Mithral body is good, I say go for it.

Bayar
2010-01-21, 12:59 AM
The problem is that he will lose his ranger feats for being built with a medium armor.

kpenguin
2010-01-21, 01:03 AM
The problem is that he will lose his ranger feats for being built with a medium armor.

Mithral body counts as light armor, Bayar.

Runestar
2010-01-21, 01:05 AM
Mithral body is light armour.

You could go for a scout/ranger multiclass and take the swift hunter feat (complete scoundrel), but may experience xp penalty issues since neither is a warforged's favoured class (unless you waive that).

Bayar
2010-01-21, 01:19 AM
Well that will teach me to reply to someone 2 minutes after I woken up.

AslanCross
2010-01-21, 02:27 AM
Ranger Spells from Spell Compendium are really good.

Hunter's Mercy--your next ranged attack is an automatic critical hit.
Arrow Storm and Guided Shot are pretty cool too.

I'm also in favor of Mithral body. I rarely leave warforged with the default composite plating.

Ruinix
2010-01-21, 12:04 PM
don't give up with spells, i did and now im so regret :(

go for ranger caster/companion like it must.

make him pick a large size companion and use HA for convert in a warbeast template. if eberron is alowed then add magebread too :) and there he have a very handly mount for combat.

explain to him the penalties for be warforged and advice him with another race, elf or human :), from Races of the Wild Catfolk is a la+1 but totally worth +4 dex and ranger favored class :)

Optimystik
2010-01-21, 12:38 PM
You could also be a Warforged Scout (MM3). Small, but retain the Warforged advantages, and get a Dex bonus.

Ranger is also specifically mentioned as a good choice for them (along with rogue.)

Sprainogre
2010-01-21, 01:14 PM
I agree, Mithral body is almost essential for this character. He might have to make the sacrifice and put a higher stat into Wisdom, or at the very least put some stat gains in as time goes by. Ranger spells can be really useful.

Amphetryon
2010-01-21, 01:57 PM
My friend wants to play a warforged ranger with an archery focus. With an eye on simple mechanics (he's fairly new to the game) in mind, any suggestions? Would it be worth it to spend a feat on a mithril body? Ranger spells, good or bad?

Starting at level 5, by the way.

Ability scores rolled are 17, 16, 11, 11, 14, 14

Ranger spells good! Not casting spells bad!

I'd shove that 17 in DEX and a 16 in WIS in order to 'minimize' the penalty - but I'm weird like that. INT and CHA can pretty much be ignored on most Ranger builds without specific complicated concepts, so the 11s can park in those stats. This way your buddy has a +2 bonus before equipment on STR, DEX, CON, and WIS.

Mithral body, as 900 ninjas have already mentioned, is basically required. Take a look at some of the archery-based prestige classes and build with at least one in mind. I'm not counting Order of the Bow Initiate as a PrC, since it is actually a gigantic, Akbar-sized trap in PrC form in its 3.5 incarnation.

Person_Man
2010-01-21, 02:07 PM
I had a new player using a strait Ranger recently, and it was horrible.

In particular, she had a very difficult time with the archery feat tree. The jumble of penalties, bonuses, and different types of actions for Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot, range, cover, concealment, etc, were just too much for her. In addition, she had a hard time managing her Animal Companion, due to the Handle Animal rules. The animal companion doesn't just mentally follow your commands. You're supposed to teach it tricks, like come, attack, defend, etc.

After about three game sessions, we decided that it would be best if we abolished the archery feats and Handle Animal rules and replaced them with homebrew abilities. Since she was a 11th level Ranger, we basically replaced her bonus feats with the ability to make a full attack as a Standard Action, and to ignore all to-hit penalties and miss chances (including magic) as long as she was within 100 ft of her target. We also gave her a magic amulet and collar that let her control her Animal Companion and Speak With Animals using Wild Empathy. We then reallocated her feats to homebrew versions of Ranged Disarm, Ranged Pin, and Ranged Daze, and gave her the Scent ability.

She was much happier with her new build. You might want to consider something similar.

Ruinix
2010-01-21, 03:40 PM
personman, abaout HA, the tricks are teached among time, so if the char start lets say at lev diferent than 1, then the animal companion SHOULD alredy know some tricks.

if the ranger want to teach new tricks then look the table and make the roll and spend the time.

after that command a companion is just that, be able to speak in combat, if prefer, say to ur player make a list of what tricks has his/her companion and that its.

isn't so hard.

the archery feats ... ajjj they are awfull especialy point blank, WHO WANT TO BE IN ALMOST CLOSE RANGE WITH A RANGE WEAPON ?! is friking retard seriusly but yeah is a prereq for every else.

anyway, the player should have a notepad with his/her bonus to attack per situation lets say ..

at 30' or less
at + 35'
to a same size foe
to a 1/2 size bigger/smaller
whatever

isn't that hard and for the rest it should work for the DM especially with a new player.

________________


avoid at all cost Order of the bow initiate. is stupid really, u never ever gona be 10' over the foe. really, u can with a flying mount bla bla bla and but there are a lot more options than OotbI.

Person_Man
2010-01-21, 04:34 PM
personman, abaout HA, the tricks are teached among time, so if the char start lets say at lev diferent than 1, then the animal companion SHOULD alredy know some tricks.

You can't just tell an Animal Companion to grapple, trip, flank, avoid a trap, take a 5 ft step, or lure enemies away from you on the fly. You can only do it if you've specifically taught them a custom Trick to do it, or you spend a Move Action (for Rangers and Druids) and make a Handle Animal roll to Push them. You can't just teach them a custom trick for every contingency beforehand, as tricks are limited by Intelligence and your effective Druid level. It's annoying for a new player to be told "No you can't do that. You have to spend a Move Action, and make a Handle Animal roll" every time they want to do something that isn't covered by their known Tricks.

It's not difficult. It's just annoying, especially for a new player.


anyway, the player should have a notepad with his/her bonus to attack per situation lets say ..

Lets say you're an 11th level Ranger with 10 Dexterity and a non-magical bow (for the sake of easy math). Here are your options:

Take a Full Round Action to make a 3 attacks. The first roll is at +11, the second is at +6, and the third roll is at +1.
Take a Full Round action to make 4 attacks. The first roll is at +9, the second roll is at +9, the third roll is at +4, and the fourth attack is at -1.
Take a Standard Action to make one attack at +11.
Take a Standard Action to make 3 attacks. Each roll is at +5, and must be at a single target within 30 feet (forcing you to stay in close range, and potentially wasting arrows.


Now you also have to map that into a chart to account for Point Blank Shot, range, firing from higher ground, terrain, and any other miscellaneous modifiers that might apply. If someone casts a buff spell on you (like Haste, or Cat's Grace) you have to change all of the numbers.

Again, it's not difficult. It's just annoying for a new player, especially one who is bad at math.

Runestar
2010-01-21, 07:41 PM
Also, PHB2 has a option to let your ranger swap out his animal companion for the ability to treat foes you hit as being flanked by you, if you don't want the hassle of managing it.

kpenguin
2010-01-21, 11:53 PM
Are there any ranger variants that switch out the free Endurance feat? That won't be very useful to a warforged.

Glimbur
2010-01-22, 12:00 AM
Are there any ranger variants that switch out the free Endurance feat? That won't be very useful to a warforged.

Steadfast Determination from PHB II iirc is rather nice. Diehard... is less useful due to being warforged. There are probably other feats that require Endurance that are actually useful, and I know there are PrC's that require it. So it's not helpful in isolation, but in combination.

Person_Man
2010-01-22, 10:38 AM
Are there any ranger variants that switch out the free Endurance feat? That won't be very useful to a warforged.

You could just ask the DM if you could trade it for a Warforged feat. You might want to try the Pathfinder Ranger (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/basic-classes/ranger), which has a bit more powerful.

Ruinix
2010-01-22, 11:42 AM
You can't just tell an Animal Companion to grapple, trip, flank, avoid a trap, take a 5 ft step, or lure enemies away from you on the fly. You can only do it if you've specifically taught them a custom Trick to do it, or you spend a Move Action (for Rangers and Druids) and make a Handle Animal roll to Push them. You can't just teach them a custom trick for every contingency beforehand, as tricks are limited by Intelligence and your effective Druid level. It's annoying for a new player to be told "No you can't do that. You have to spend a Move Action, and make a Handle Animal roll" every time they want to do something that isn't covered by their known Tricks.

It's not difficult. It's just annoying, especially for a new player.



Lets say you're an 11th level Ranger with 10 Dexterity and a non-magical bow (for the sake of easy math). Here are your options:

Take a Full Round Action to make a 3 attacks. The first roll is at +11, the second is at +6, and the third roll is at +1.
Take a Full Round action to make 4 attacks. The first roll is at +9, the second roll is at +9, the third roll is at +4, and the fourth attack is at -1.
Take a Standard Action to make one attack at +11.
Take a Standard Action to make 3 attacks. Each roll is at +5, and must be at a single target within 30 feet (forcing you to stay in close range, and potentially wasting arrows.


Now you also have to map that into a chart to account for Point Blank Shot, range, firing from higher ground, terrain, and any other miscellaneous modifiers that might apply. If someone casts a buff spell on you (like Haste, or Cat's Grace) you have to change all of the numbers.

Again, it's not difficult. It's just annoying for a new player, especially one who is bad at math.

1- true about companion, but that its called "learn to play" and is a phase we all have to by pass. so the annoy for the new player isn't something u can or can not save for him.

as a master is a must make it easy as posible but staying IN rules or elaborate house rules but over all that, teach to the player to think throught the character rol, think thrgouht the char perspective.

2- the note pad should be able to add mods on pencil. i still use it. so I add any mod like when i take a pot of heroism, bard chant, commander buffs, clerics buffs, positional modifiers, whatever.

is not that much, like u posted, is only 5-6 numbers. and again, u can save the annoy to the new player, heck, he should learn this as fast as he/she/it can for the sanity of the master.

Cieyrin
2010-01-22, 03:53 PM
Are there any ranger variants that switch out the free Endurance feat? That won't be very useful to a warforged.

If you're not adverse to homebrew and they just want to play an archer, not necessarily a ranger, you might want to have a look at the Sagittarius (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117933)