Urban Ranger / Crimson Scourge

[rmccarver]

Building a Changeling Bounty Hunter Character in Eberron, based on Urban Ranger / Crimson Scourge. Game is starting at Lvl 3. Taking Bow instead of Two Weapon. Stats I rolled are 12 Str, 17 Dex, 13 Com, 13 Int, 15 Wis, 14 Cha. Was thinking Lng Sword + Buckler and Dagger Whip + Net. I have no ideas what to do about feats. Its been years since I have played and this is my welcome back experience.:smallsmile: Give me any thoughts and suggestions you may have and they will be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: My thoughts to this point for feats was Weapon Finesse, Exotic Weapon, Improved Trip ... and thats as far as I got. I can take up to 4 feats at level 3 due to DM allowing us to take flaws.

[eggs]

Hi there,

I'm a bit confused by your feat choices.
Weapon Finesse usually only applies to light weapons, which don't include any that you've listed. And you're probably going to want a high strength to use the Crimson Scourge's Intimidate ability effectively.
The Crimson Scourge grants Exotic Weapon Proficiency in one of those weapons, so spending a feat on it seems like a poor choice.
Nets use touch attacks, so you probably won't need to be proficient to be confident about landing it.

Improved Trip's solid, though.


The one thing the Crimson Scourge is really good at is using Intimidate things. You might want to look at focusing on that ability.

As far as my recommendations, this might be a bit much, but feel free to cherry-pick some of it:

Considering the Crimson Scourge's Painful Strike ability, you might want to dip a level of Warblade (from Tome of Battle) at level 5, to access the Disarming Strike maneuver. This would let you attack an opponent as a standard action and disarm them at the same time, as well as Warblade's other benefits (like replacing your Will Save with a Concentration check or your AC with an attack roll 1/round).

If you want Net proficiency and aren't doing much with your combat style, Dragon Magazine #326 has some alternate combat styles, one of which provides Net Proficiency at its first step. Even without digging up the back-issue, it's a less powerful feat than Rapid Shot, so would be an acceptable trade in any game I've ever seen.

A couple Barbarian levels would let you Rage and take the Extra and Intimidating Rage feats (both in Complete Warrior) to Intimidate as a free action with a long duration. With the Wolf Totem (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#wolfTotemClassFeatures ) variant from Unearthed Arcana, you can also pick up Improved Trip without its Intelligence or feat prerequisites. With the Imperious Command feat from Drow of the Underdark and the Never Outnumbered skill trick from Complete Scoundrel, this would mean that starting at level 6, you'd be able able to start every fight by sending a flock of opponents fleeing as a free action (you'd need to swap Wis and Charisma to make it work, though).

Then you might look at the Cityscape Web Enhancement (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) for some other class variants to match the concept. In this case, I'd probably only go with Skilled City Dweller.

So at your level in a typical game, I'd probably make the character look like:
Skilled City Dweller Barbarian 2/Urban Ranger 1 with the Extra Rage, Intimidating Rage, Intimidating Strike, Improved Trip*, Urban Tracking*, and Combat Reflexes feats.
(*bonus feats)
And build toward:
SCD Barbarian 2/URanger 2/Warblade 1/Crimson Scourge X

The general strategy would be to spam demoralizations forcing enemies who aren't mind-immune to cower, use a reach weapon to block enemies' movements, tripping+attacking or disarming with AoOs, and to generally act as a combat control/debuffer character, treating combat damage as a convenient add-on.

In higher optimization environments, some of the fun frills (namely Intimidating Strike and Instantaneous Rage) would have to be sheared off in favor of cookie-cutter damage build elements in order to keep up and better deal with mind-immune opponents, but that's a more niche situation than forum discussion portrays.

[rmccarver]

WOW! Such a useful font of information. You have given me a lot to read up on and research and a real road map to building the character I think I will have fun with. A lot of the group showed doubt in my choice stating that it was a ineffective prestige class, but it sounded like a fun concept. THANKS for your help :-) !

[deuxhero]

13 int
Ranger
no ideas what to do about feats

Ask the DM nicely for Sword of the Arcane Order. sadly it is FR and deity based (so you can't even say "planewalker") so you need DM OK.