Knowledge Devotion and Rangers

[Tvtyrant]

The knowledge devotion feat allows you to gain extra attack bonuses from rolling a knowledge check. The Ranger's normal favored enemy does not give you a bonus on knowledge checks, but the environment variant does. The damage done by the knowledge devotion is strictly inferior to that done by a favored enemy at the highest cap point, but you get it earlier and against a wider number of enemies.

Assuming that someone is not going into swift hunter, which is the better option?

[Andreaz]

They don't compare well, because one is only accessible as a class feature, while all can use the other. And the ranger can use both.

If you don't have the spare skill points to put on all KNO checks, you can't use Knowledge Devotion well.

[kulosle]

Knowledge devotion. It works on everyone. Favored enemy is solely circumstantial. You may never run into that creature, unless you chose arcane casters as your enemy. All though if you are going to be using the environment variant then take knowledge devotion anyways. Take the collector of stories skill trick and you shouldn't have a problem getting at least some bonuses with that alone. Then there is optimization of course, but that's a different story. If we bring optimization to the table knowledge devotion wins by an even larger margin. Optimizing favored enemy means you went the swift hunter route, while optimizing knowledge devotion means you are an archivist. I agree with Andreaz they are to different to compare. Archivist will stomp any favored enemy optimization. It's not exactly a fair pairing.

[FMArthur]

Knowledge Devotion is better by far.

Really, it is exactly what Favored Enemy should have been to begin with and represents pretty much the same thing. It affects both attack rolls and damage rolls, so it will outdamage Favored Enemy by virtue of letting you hit more often. Its categories are significantly broader and more versatile; there is one Knowledge for Humanoids, there is one Knowledge for Outsiders, there is one Knowledge for all of Animals, Fey, Giants, Monstrous humanoids, Plants and Vermin, and so on from there.

The 'drawback' is often cited as KD being a greater investment, but really it just has a higher investment 'cap' - if you only wanted to keep up with a focused Favored Enemy you only have to spend one skill point per level on that Knowledge type. If you feel like spending the skill points, you can do this with all creature types, which Favored Enemy simply can't do and still be strong.

Together they can make a really cool, analytical and focused hunter in a character.