Champion of the Wild OP?

[Snig]

I saw this Ranger ACF and thought it looked very powerful. Losing out on spellcasting but gaining free feats at 4th, 8th, 11th, and 14th level seems like a no brainer?

For an Archer I could have Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Precise Shot all by lvl 3 then another free archery feat at lvl 4. Combined with a free feat at lvl 1 granted from taking a flaw, this seems like an insane amount of feats?

Am I wrong? Is this overpowered? I lose out on spellcasting but i'm not sure ranger spell casting is a big loss? I never really even considered the power of Ranger spell casting so perhaps I am overlooking it?

[Namfuak]

When in doubt, spellcasting trumps everything that isn't a variant spellcasting system (and trumps most of those as well). Any feat that you can take will presumably increase your chance to hit or damage by some static amount (2/3 you mentioned do), which can be replicated when needed by spells. This also assumes you have no need for spells that don't increase damage/to-hit, such as entangle, longstrider, or endure elements (and that's just glancing at SRD 1st level spells, there are a ton more in other books that are also useful).

The one time I would consider taking this ACF is if I was planning on being a Swift Hunter and knew that I would rarely have time to rest and prepare more spells (or otherwise didn't want to have to worry about it).

[Eldariel]

Basically, if you take ~4-6 Ranger levels, the feat is probably better than the 1st level spells. If you plan to go Ranger all the way, your spells are gonna be way better (note that Champ. of the Wild also gives up access to Ranger wands including the ubiquitous Wand of Cure Light Wounds).

[NeoPhoenix0]

You are missing out on very powerful spells, gonna open my SC now.

-Arrow Mind: 1st level spell, immediate action cast, gives you your normal reach as threat range with arrow weapons (ie. bows), can take AoOs, Don't Provoke AoOs, lasts 1 min/level. Just plain awesomeness right there.

-Camouflage: 1st level spell, 10 min/level, +10 hide, 2nd level version allows you to hide your entire party. makes sniping a viable tactic through a hole fight at low levels, snipe hide at -20 but you have a +10 so its like a -10.

-Guided Shot: not great but still very useful, 1st level, lasts only 1 round, ignore less than total cover, ignore range penalties to hit, ignore less than total concealment.

think i'll just skip to a few awesome ones

-Arrow Storm: 3rd level, make a ranged attack against each foe within one range increment.

-Find the Gap: 3rd level, 1 round/level, first melee or ranged attack each round is a touch attack.

That's all i got for now but that should be more than enough to prove even ranger spells are better than a few extra feats.

[Barsoom]

I saw this Ranger ACF and thought it looked very powerful. Losing out on spellcasting but gaining free feats at 4th, 8th, 11th, and 14th level seems like a no brainer?

For an Archer I could have Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Precise Shot all by lvl 3 then another free archery feat at lvl 4. Combined with a free feat at lvl 1 granted from taking a flaw, this seems like an insane amount of feats?

Am I wrong? Is this overpowered? I lose out on spellcasting but i'm not sure ranger spell casting is a big loss? I never really even considered the power of Ranger spell casting so perhaps I am overlooking it?

Take a look at some of the spells available to rangers: Hunter's Mercy, Arrowmind, Lay of the Land ... and that's just level 1 spells. Gets better from then on. A bunch of combat feats aren't going to trump this.

The only reason to take this ACF, is if you got mighty unlucky die rolls, and were forced to dump wisdom. With reasonable wisdom, 4 levels of ranger spellcasting will trump over 4 combat feats [and 1 level of ranger spellcasting will trump 1 combat feat, and so on]


Basically, if you take ~4-6 Ranger levels, the feat is probably better than the 1st level spells.No. Not even then. Even if the 1st level Ranger spell list would only have Arrowmind on it and nothing else, it'd still be better than a feat [the ability to cast Arrowmind is strictly better than the Epic level feat Combat Archery]

[Snig]

what would I want my wisdom score to look like to make spellcasting worth it?

Right now (lvl 1) if I remember it's 11?

[Humble Master]

Yah, spells generally trump feats. Unless there is some strange chain of feats that lets you do something amazing like shoot 50 arrows per round your probably better off with spells.
Also here are some ok spells from Complete Divine:
Natures Favor: 2nd level. +1 luck bonus to attack and damage per 2 levels for an animal. Great for buffing your animal companion.
Implacable Pursuer: 4th level. Know were target is as long as they are moving.

The ones from Spell Compendium are infinitely better. Man Complete Divine keeps letting me down. :smallfrown:

[Barsoom]

what would I want my wisdom score to look like to make spellcasting worth it?

Right now (lvl 1) if I remember it's 11?

You would need Wis 12 by level 4, and Wis 18 eventually to make good use of the Ranger's spellcasting.

[Eldariel]

No. Not even then. Even if the 1st level Ranger spell list would only have Arrowmind on it and nothing else, it'd still be better than a feat [the ability to cast Arrowmind is strictly better than the Epic level feat Combat Archery]

...yeah, except your argument is fallacious. Combat Archery is first of all a ****ty feat, not epic material and thus a terrible comparison. That's akin to saying "1/day Mage Hand is more powerful than a feat 'cause it's more useful than Toughness". Only Epic Archery-feat that's really worth anything is Distant Shot and even that's only due to some weird readings it enables, and not that useful directly for combat but for example for orbital bombardment.


Second of all, you don't have many slots with those levels. You're looking at ~1 casting of Arrowmind daily. The situation where Arrowmind is useful is also a situation you don't really need or want to be in very often and frankly, it'll only amount to rarely avoiding one attack or getting one attack of opportunity. It's useful but nothing to write home about.

And you can get Close-Combat Shot out of Exotic Weapon Master or OotBI for the whole day if you really want to (tip: not worth it). Feats actually worth taking add significantly to your overall all-day attack routine; Improved Skirmish, Swift Hunter, Ranged Weapon Mastery, Knowledge Devotion, etc. (or increase the ways in which you can use archery such as Improved Precise Shot or Pierce Magical Concealment). Those feats are quite a bit more powerful than either a single casting of Arrowmind or Combat Archery. Reaching the end of feat trees earlier is also a worthwhile endeavor.

Once you begin racking up the multiplicative scaling of casting with extra slots + higher level slots amounting to a massive number of extra slots, it begins to be more interesting. Ranger Wands are also a consideration and indeed far more important than the single slot but usually you can gain Wand access through other means if desired (UMD, Cloistered Cleric or Archivist dip or whatever), and frankly, Ranger Wands aren't really that necessary for many Archer archetypes (though Hunter's Mercy is nice but it really needs to be a Swift Action to truly shine and cheating the Quicken is already a tad more difficult; and it really only shines in a crit-focused build anyways).

[Darrin]

As many have already pointed out, ranger spells are the better deal. Even if they weren't... Have you actually looked at the bonus feat list? They all stink.

The only time I recommend this ACF is if you're only taking 4 levels of Ranger and want to pick up Manyshot early.

[Piggy Knowles]

Ranger spells that are actually cast as spells kind of suck. You get so few of them, and they come sooooo slowly.

On the other hand, archer rangers can get a lot out of wand chambers on their bow, because there really are a lot of fun spells. A wand of arrowsplit, for instance, is going to be pretty nice. Cloistered cleric with the magic domain can't use that, either. And UMD is surprisingly annoying to get on a ranger, requires investment into Charisma, and doesn't become reliable until fairly late.

If wands of ranger spells weren't available, though, I might consider the ACF, especially if I wasn't planning on sticking around ranger for the long term.

[Barsoom]

...yeah, except your argument is fallacious. Wasn't an argument. Was an illustration to make a point, spiced with some hyperbole. Sorry I didn't clarify it better.

[Elric VIII]

what would I want my wisdom score to look like to make spellcasting worth it?

Right now (lvl 1) if I remember it's 11?


You would need Wis 12 by level 4, and Wis 18 eventually to make good use of the Ranger's spellcasting.

Actually, assuming you're not a Mystic Ranger, you only need 14 Wis to be able to cast 4th level spells. you need a score of 10+spell level to be able to cast that spell. By the time you hit 2nd and 3rd level spells you should be able to afford a +2 item (4000 gp) and a +3 (custom, 9000 gp) or +4 (16000gp) when it becomes necessary. Realistically, you won't even need to spend bonus points on it.

[Yora]

For low levels (1st - 8th), loosing spellcasting doesn't hurt at all. At high levels (13th - 20th), spells are better.

[limejuicepowder]

As long as you have access to SpC and some wands, I would never ever trade away ranger casting, as it's one of their stronger features. I also find it the most fun.

All on the first level list:
-make climb, move silently, and balance checks at normal speed with no penalty
-aspect of the wolf, granting some very useful things like scent and 50 ft speed
-+10 to climb and the ability to brachiate
-+10 hide
-lay of the land....seriously, this spell rocks
-omen of peril, another great divination spell
-double damage on charge attacks
-+10 on balance, climb, jump, and tumble checks. Yeah from one spell
-+10 intimidate checks
-scent
-low-light vision

I would not give away access to all that for a couple of feats, never mind that this is ONLY the first level list. Higher level ranger spells are even better.

[Snig]

Well I just thought that since a mounted archer build is pretty feat intensive that this ACF was just the answer I was looking for.

I can't deciede if I want to use the rangers animal companion as my mount or if I should pick up the Wild Cohort feat.

Wild Cohort is going to be the better choice and allow me to freely pick classes without having to worry about taking classes that advance my animal companion.

However if I do use the ranger animal companion and take a level dip in Beastmaster, pick up the Natural bond feat, and perhaps 3 levels in Wild Plains Outrider then I can have an animal companion equal to a 20th level druid.

Please help me deciede which is the better option? Do I even want to go into the higher levels with ranger (14+).

[Darrin]

This may be Power Attacking a dead warpony, but let's take a closer look at the feats you can get:

Blind-Fight. One of the better options, but is useless for archery, and only marginally useful for TWF.

Combat Expertise. I hate this feat. First, there's a 13 Int requirement, which a lot of rangers dump. Second, this feat promotes long, boring fights where you eventually get ganked by some nameless creature that gets a lucky crit.

Eyes in the Back of Your Head.. Another nearly useless feat for archers, as they can hang back or move around and thus avoid being flanked. For TWF, you sometimes get hit slightly less often, but you can get the same benefit by taking a 5' step.

Improved Disarm. Yes, because naked monsters always carry melee weapons.

Improved Favored Enemy. This actually makes favored enemy damage almost respectable, but as soon as you take this for Favored Enemy: Smurfs, your DM decides he's been over-using smurfs and they never appear in the campaign again.

Improved Feint. Oh, look, a feat that's useless for both archery and TWF! And you gave up spells, so no hunter's mercy, either!

Improved Trip. One of melee's few decent debuffs, and somewhat useful for TWF rangers. However, it still requires the nearly useless Combat Expertise and thus Int 13. Much easier to pick this up via Wolf Totem Barbarian (and grab Pounce/Whirling Frenzy while you're at it.)

For the Archery combat style, we have:

Far Shot. Meh. You can get this via two relatively cheap items: Helm of the Hunter (9000 GP, MIC) or Horizon Goggles (8000 GP, Complete Mage). Since almost all encounters start within the first range increment of a longbow, it's hard to see if this would be all that useful. Might come in handy for the somewhat rare thrown-weapon ranger.

Manyshot.. A bit of a poke-in-the-eye, considering you get this for free at Ranger 6, and if you take it early you've wasted a bonus feat. Somewhat useful if you're only going 4-5 levels into Ranger, but if that's the case, why exactly did you need Ranger levels?

Point Blank Shot. This is the most important prereq feat for pretty much all the archery feats, so if you haven't gotten it by this point, you're probably doing something wrong. Now if only there were a way to increase the range beyond 30'...

Precise Shot. Very useful, at least as far as quelling the white-hot murderous rage at your fellow players from running into melee before you can get any shots off. You can get the same effect as this feat by paying for the Precise weapon property (+1 enhancement, MIC), but that's probably out of your price range at the lower levels where you need it most. That being said... once you can shrug off or ignore a -4 cover penalty, you don't really need this.

Ranged Disarm. Get rid of all the non-existent melee weapons that your naked monster enemies aren't carrying, only now you can do it at range!

Ranged Pin.. While grappling at range might occasionally be useful, to get this to work your naked monster target must 1) be wearing clothes and 2) be standing in front of a tree, wall, or door. Good luck getting that to work.

Ranged Sunder. I like this one, nice for those cinematic "money shots" where you shoot the gun/potion/maguffin out of the BBEG's hand, but the 1/2 damage renders this nearly useless, as archery already sucks pretty hard on damage to begin with. Might be good against potions/glass vials/spell components, but that will require a readied action, and I'm not sure sunder can be mixed with Manyshot, so you're giving up the option to get multiple attacks/full attack/etc. There's also the original problem with Sunder: if the item is important/expensive, then it's counter-productive to destroy your own loot.

Sharp-Shooting. Trumped by a wand of guided shot, which eliminates the *entire* cover bonus instead of just part of it.

Shot on the Run. Requires Dodge and Mobility, two of the most reviled "feat taxes". Also, since there's usually no reason to get out of melee range while you're already out of melee range, the whole point of this feat is largely invalidated by the simple act of move + ranged attack.

For the Two-Weapon combat style:

Greater Two-Weapon Defense. There are much better ways to get an AC bonus than wasting a feat. Not to mention: animated shield, which, unlike a feat, can support additional enhancements.

Greater Two-Weapon Fighting. I love TWF. Wrote the OffHandbook, in fact. But you get this for free at Ranger 11. With the -10 attack penalty, though, this one's somewhat skippable.

Improved Two-Weapon Defense. See above.

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting.. Again, big fan of this one, but you get it for free at Ranger 6, and it's also available via item: Gloves of the Balanced Hand (8000 GP, MIC).

Two-Weapon Defense. There are worse things you could waste a feat on, but not that many this close to the bottom of the barrel.

Weapon Finesse. You already have high Dex, which is great, but TWF doesn't need more help hitting, that's why you roll that huge fistful of d20's every round. TWF needs damage help, not attack help. Also, you can skip this feat by spending some GP on a pair of feycraft weapons (DMGII).

[Eldariel]

Precise Shot is a prerequisite for using Splitting Bows so I wouldn't consider it optional (and you can use your other feats to take other stuff and take Precise Shot on 4 or use retraining or whatever to reorder your feats when you get there, thus freeing up one feat for other stuff). Otherwise, I mostly agree with your assessments.

Precise Weapon, unless you can gain it from an auxillary weapon, is quite terrible since it delays the key enhancements (+1 Splitting into Force into Seeking) and increases their price beyond the point where you can afford them.