How situational was the Ranger's Favored Enemy intended to be?

[harpy]

How situational is favored enemy for the Ranger?

I know... I know... "It depends" is the actual answer, but it's unsatisfying for my broad stroked mind.

How the campaign is shaped by the GM and what the player selects has a wide ranging impact on how often it can be used. Still, the mechanics were designed with the idea that it would be situational on some level. I guess I'm trying to get an idea of the intent of how situational it was meant to be for play. Was the aim for 30% of encounters? 50%?

There is also system mastery at play. A newbie might pick a creature type at level 1 which they won't see for a dozen levels. A veteran player might just select outsider at higher level just to deal with nasty things when they come up, not concerned with frequency, but instead contingency.

Some GMs might help a player out by giving a clear overview of the campaign so that a ranger player can pick some early favored enemies that will likely come up on a frequent basis. Another GM might leave the player in the dark and they have to hope it comes up.

What do people think, in the most general terms, was the intent of favored enemy frequency?

[missmvicious]

IMHO, the favored enemy should be discussed with the DM before it's selected, because setting and encounter rate would mean a lot in both fluff and game mechanics.

Realistically, a favored enemy is directly related to a back story. A Ranger whose family was killed by a Goblin raid may have picked Goblinoid as their favored enemy. But this is also under the presumption that Goblins are common enough in the DMs setting to have amassed a large enough raiding party to do this.

A Ranger who picks Ooze in a world where the DM never uses oozes of any kind, or rarely uses them is a bit off. It's hard to acknowledge an enemy (let alone specialize in vanquishing an enemy) you've never met, so a favored enemy should occur frequently enough to make the fluff side of the Favored Enemy Class Feature make sense.

It's a weird case where meta-gaming is pertinent for IC gaming. The DM knows more about your PCs world than you do, but your PC also knows more about the DMs world than you do. So, in order to build a PC that is functionally in tune with the DMs setting, you have to dig and ask some questions about the setting.

I'm pretty sure that a fair-minded DM would allow you to re-tool your Favored Enemy selection (as long as you don't abuse the privilege) if you picked a Favored Enemy that doesn't even occur in your setting... especially if you're new to D&D or at least new to playing a Ranger. But in the future, I recommend inviting your DM over for a cup of coffee and discussing the setting in regards to your characters back story (and therefore favored enemy) before selecting your Favored Enemy. Besides, it's a good excuse to have a friend over for coffee. :smallsmile:

[Chronos]

Personally, I think that it's good form for a DM to give a ranger's player some input on good favored enemy choices. At the very least, something like "Hm, you're probably not going to meet very many of those; you might want to pick something else". You may or may not want to say something like "Well, the ultimate villain and his minions are going to be demons", though.

To the player, if all else fails, Undead is usually a good choice for the first one, since they're pretty common, and you can meet undead at any level (from skeletons and zombies at 1st, through nightstalkers, liches, and high-level vampires at 20th). By the second choice, you should be able to judge for yourself what's common or significant in the DM's world.

[gbprime]

Well this is why you work with the GM on your backstory. That first favored enemy needs to be one the GM will use. If you say your clan was killed off by goblins, then the DM should either throw goblins at you every so often or suggest you change your enemy to orks, gnolls , or whatever he WILL be using.

But the shorter or more focussed the campaign, the easier this gets. If you know you're going to play the olde Against The Giants series, you pick giants. If you're John McClane in a Die Hard film, you pick Terrorists. ;-)

[FearlessGnome]

Goblins. At higher levels, all the real villains are goblins.

[JaronK]

I always assumed it was supposed to come up a lot, because that's why the Ranger is in the group. A Ranger with a focus on fighting Outsiders simply doesn't hang out with a party that only fights Undead. So I feel like as a DM you should work in that favored enemy a great deal.

JaronK

[Venger]

orks

this is a crossover game I'd definitely want to play in.

DM: you see a band of green skinned humaniods tinkering with a large mechanical device
wizard:does it look magical?
DM:not that you can tell
artificer:mechanical then?"
DM:yes (rolls) you're able to tell it's a weapon of some kind, but you're not sure what
rogue:humanoid, lemme roll local
DM:(rolls) they look orcine to you
ranger:damn, more orcs
DM:they seem to catch a whiff of you on the air and start mobilising, a few of them climbing onto the contraption. they begin jabbering at each other and you hear-
wizard:do any of us speak orcish?
DM:it's in common. anyway, this is what you hear:
ork1:I'm tellin' you, dere's enoof
ork2:and I'm tellin you dere's never enoof daka
ranger:wait... these are orks! step aside, it's time for me to do them a favour. favoured enemy!

that would be fun

[Diefje]

As intended in 3e, I think you were supposed to be able to use it a lot. Without it you just got Track(lol), 2W fighting, and a handful of spells (Animal Companion with a spell, Freedom of Movement, and a few other useful ones but mostly very lackluster), and a few skills.

When it got ported over to 3.5, they bumped up the bonus and gave ranger a lot of stuff across the board. To me it means they thought Favored Enemy was a more powerful then it turned out to be. Since it only is in power "situationally" they must have supposed it was common to be fighting a Favored Enemy.

Fluff wise, I think they are supposed to dedicate their life to hunt down their Favored Enemies, rather than go adventure with some random group. But in that same "should" logic, Wizards just sit in their towers, Clerics in their churches, Fighters in the wars, Monks in their monasteries... In the end there's just Barbarians, some Bards, Paladins, and maybe a Sorceror that should actually want to go out in the world, but definately not all together...

[maysarahs]

A houserule I am fond of using (My group, who are the opposite of optimizers aren't) is giving Rangers their favored enemy bonus on any creature they can make the proper Knowledge check to identify (I think DC is 10+HD? I may be wrong, I haven't used it lately). Thus they get to use it more often, but not on every enemy ever. Of course this makes them slightly more MAD, but I offer them the choice of keying such checks off of Wis instead (melee should get nice things)

[Venger]

A houserule I am fond of using (My group, who are the opposite of optimizers aren't) is giving Rangers their favored enemy bonus on any creature they can make the proper Knowledge check to identify (I think DC is 10+HD? I may be wrong, I haven't used it lately). Thus they get to use it more often, but not on every enemy ever. Of course this makes them slightly more MAD, but I offer them the choice of keying such checks off of Wis instead (melee should get nice things)

check out the "knowledge devotion" feat from complete champion, it lets you do pretty much that exact thing.

[Psyren]

Goblins. At higher levels, all the real villains are goblins.

You misspelled Kobold :smallwink:

[Godskook]

@OP, I always saw it as being that a Ranger should be given enough meta-knowledge to know what kinds of monsters he's going to face with some degree of certainty. Going into RHoD, a player should be warned that:
1.There will be a lot of goblinoids
2.Dragonblood creatures make up a good portion of the power-houses
3.Magical Beasts and Undead are going to come up
4.There might be other types, but no promises.
Although I'll admit that might too much 'bonus' meta-knowledge, so as little as Goblins>Dragons>Magical Beasts/Undead>Other.

Otoh, for Swift Hunters, I always saw FE to be less "you're focused on killing them" and more "you've spent time learning how to bypass their immunities".


check out the "knowledge devotion" feat from complete champion, it lets you do pretty much that exact thing.

Except it stacks.

[Tvtyrant]

I just let my rangers retrain them each time they would get a new one. So at level 5 you can trade your goblinoid for magical beast, and then to evil outsider at level 10.

[Venger]

Except it stacks.

what stacks with what?

[Rubik]

what stacks with what?Ranger's favored enemy stacks with Knowledge Devotion.

[gbprime]

what stacks with what?

Knowledge Devotion stacks with Favored Enemy.

Spend a feat on Education and one on Knowledge Devotion, and your ranger really racks up the bonus damage. Even with archery. (gasp!)

[Rubik]

Don't forget about that tome of knowledge in the MIC for an extra +5 and Collector of Stories!

[Venger]

okay. yes, I know knowledge devotion stacks with favoured enemy. I just meant that since he was homebrewing a feat that seemed to be basically knowledge devotion that I'd point out that such a mechanic already exists (and is awesome) collector of stories is a great choice if his guy's got the skillpoints to spend.

[killem2]

How broken is it to offer a slight errata to rangers in that:

every level, you get to choose:

+1 to one of your current favored enemies, or an additional favored enemy?

To me, it really seems like rangers are bleh at pure ranged combat and I'd like to see them back on the map.

[Godskook]

Don't most people just assume that Swift Hunter is the Ranger errata?

[Fax Celestis]

I give rangers Favored Terrain (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/classFeatureVariants.htm#favoredEnemyVariantFavore dEnvironment) instead, and make Favored Enemy into a feat (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162194). (If you're not using d20 Rebirth prowess rules, you can just assume that the "invested" amount is equal to the character's Base Attack Bonus +3).

[ericgrau]

I dunno how situational it was supposed to be, but I know it's not much better than weapon specialization even when it does work. So it needs to work most of the time merely to break even and it's not a huge class feature. Rangers in general have skills and spells to make up for their lack of combat ability.

As for metagame knowledge, I think rangers should get at least a little. Presumably they grew up in or near the area of the campaign and they would also tend to move to parties facing their favored enemy. So they should at least be allowed the general campaign background before making their character.

[maysarahs]

I am familiar with knowledge devotion, and huh, I have never played a ranger, and wow, I thought the damage scaled with level way better than it does... I think I might just houserule that they get the knowledge devotion bonuses to all of the listed stuff (bluff checks and whatnot) I thought the favored enemy bonus was at least comparable to sneak attack damage of a rogue of the same level...

[Rubik]

I am familiar with knowledge devotion, and huh, I have never played a ranger, and wow, I thought the damage scaled with level way better than it does... I think I might just houserule that they get the knowledge devotion bonuses to all of the listed stuff (bluff checks and whatnot) I thought the favored enemy bonus was at least comparable to sneak attack damage of a rogue of the same level...Yeah, not even close.

[MukkTB]

Most games favored enemy human will get you a long way. Humans show up all over the place.

But normally the DM might give an overview of the area before people commit to their characters final stats.

"The land is overrun with undead. People wear cloves of garlic and don't go out in the night. Corpses are burnt. Undead kill more people than plague or famine. Good Clerics are viewed in high regard. Also there's some magic monsters in the area and some goblin tribes nearby. The goblins mostly stay away because the undead eat them."

Or

"This is a civilized land. Monsters are under control and the savage species have been driven away. You're more likely to run into bandits in the city and brigands in the countryside than any mythical beasts. However the Dwarves to the north are extremely warlike and people fear that another conflict is coming."

Or maybe

The local lord protects the lands from Gnoll and Human raids with his men. His wizard misdirects magical monsters from the land. Without that the peasants wouldn't be able to make a living in this desolate place. The people live in fear that a dragon powerful enough to resist the (low to mid level) wizard's misdirection will come south again and light the countryside on fire.

And the ranger won't always get his bonus. Its pretty random from all the time to none. Stock it with either bad game design or a test of player skill. A campaign with one obvious monster calls for a ranger much more than one with a full bestiary. The DM's description can vary a lot too. Does overrun by undead mean 90% fights against undead or 20%? What happens if some new force comes in as a surprise? You didn't know the Drow were going to invade and be the primary baddies the entire campaign and the DM wasn't going to give away his surprise. Have fun with favored enemy undead. Its not an always on ability so it just depends on how risk averse you are. Personally I don't depend on it to be effective. Use it as a roleplaying tool and be happy when it comes into play.

[Zaq]

Lemme put it this way—when I think about the Ranger as a class, more often than not, I literally forget that Favored Enemy exists. That's how much of a non-feature it is in my eyes. I remember that the Barbarian gets Trap Sense, I remember that the Druid gets Resist Nature's Lure, but I forget that the Ranger gets Favored Enemy. It's only reading through this that I'm remembering that it's supposed to be kind of one of their major defining class features. That's kind of interesting to realize, now that I think about it.

[nedz]

Rangers are pretty good. The get full BAB, reasonably skills and a few spells. They also have some other class features but the're generally not worth worrying about.

[Alefiend]

(If you're not using d20 Rebirth prowess rules, you can just assume that the "invested" amount is equal to the character's Base Attack Bonus +3).

Using what now? What is this d20 Rebirth of which you speak?

[Fax Celestis]

Using what now? What is this d20 Rebirth of which you speak?

Unfinished project, the majority of which can be found here (http://forum.faxcelestis.net/viewforum.php?f=2). Currently working on the wizard (the basics of which you can see here (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=D20r:Wizard))