[3.5] Need help building Ranger/Hellreaver

[SirVire]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm in a bit of a quandry. Im going to a new dnd game with a new DM and players (though i know them well outside of such) and i wish to play my Diablo 3 Daemonhunter (aka a Ranger/Hellreaver). However, im rather rusty on the dnd 3.5 rules due to long absence from playing and thus need some help building this guy.

Im joining at level 9, and my stats are below
Str: 15
Dex: 16
Con: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 13
Cha: 14

Race: Half-elf

1st feat: Nymph's Kiss (?) or Power attack

Planned Fighting style (in order of priority): Archer (Longbow or better) or Hybrid (Longsword+throwing daggers/hand crossbow/whatever)

Planned Animal Companion: White Raven or Eagle

thats all i have for now

(Note: im going to be the second ranger in the group, and are enemies are varied enough that some focus hunting demons and devils won't limit me too badly.)

[herrhauptmann]

I've played Hellreaver before, but didn't really get much benefit from it. The abilities it offers never seemed to help as much as I wanted (except Mettle). Particularly the Holy Fury, I never seemed to have enough points available to do what was needed. With your low Cha, you'd probably have the same problem. So I'd recommend level 4 as a break point. Maybe level 6 for the ability to stop teleportation effects.
Paladin 2 or 3 would help you get more out of your Charisma. There's a chaotic good version too in d20srd.org.

Is dragon magazine allowed?
1) Faerie Mysteries initiate. Multiple bonuses available, best is probably Int bonus to HP.

2) Alternate ranger combat styles are available. Strong arm for Power Attack at 2, and Imp Sunder at 6. (Great cleave at 11). Given that you have to take Power Attack for Hellreaver, this seems better than Archery.
Also, you get to stack power attack multipliers for a noticeable amount of damage. A lot better than 1d8+X for a longbow.
You can even do a longsword for your ranger, two hand fight when you want, and swap to the crossbow when you need to. No TWF penalties either.
A number of the Hellreaver abilities seem to be melee only anyway, so I'd suggest against archery.

3) Players Guide to Faerun: Harper Paragon (pg181). You get Favored Enemy: Evil. That's all evil creatures, not just Evil: Lawful, or Evil: Chaotic.

4) To get to Harper Paragon, you need two Exalted Feats (BoED). I recommend a third. Nemesis. It offers a negligible damage increase. What you want it for is the ability to detect your favored enemies through all materials within 60 feet.
Paragon also boosts your ranger casting while hellreaver does not. It gives you an exalted companion. So celestial eagle or raven. (Is 'white raven' a specific animal? Or just a raven that's white?)

5)Ranger casting sort of sucks, so you might want to look at complete champion. Trade away your spells for bonus feats. If you go that route, why not Karsite race from Tome of Magic (binder section)? Lose all casting anyway.
Or go Mystic Ranger for the better wizard spell list.

6) There's also Stalker of Kharesh (boed) which gives FE: Evil, and boosts ranger casting only. I can't tell you much about that though, sorry.

7) Next is Favored Power Attack. More power attack multipliers on your favored enemies.

8) Finally, Favored Enemy: Arcanist. Complete mage. Anything that uses arcane spells or invocations. No luck on Spell likes or supernatural abilities though. You have to take it at ranger 1 though.

Depending on what level you start at, I'd suggest something like:
paladin3/ranger 3/harperparagon 2/hellreaver 4.
Devoted tracker will let you freely multiclass between paladin and ranger. (Pal3/rgr3 should give you the needed skill prereqs.

[SirVire]

Note: If you (or anyone else) have a better suggestion for a prestige class to make a D3 Demonhunter, I'm open to suggestions (Ranger is pretty much set though)

1. Don't Know if Dragon magazine is allowed or not, but i would love to know the article Faerie Mysteries appears in.

2. What book/magazine are these alternative Combat styles of which you speak are in? And i would love to switch between Longsword and hand crossbow for combat

3. Ill have to check this out

4. Nemesis is a given, and yes, its a raven that's "white" not a specific creature.

5. Sword of the Arcane order was one feat for enhanced spell casting and options was one thing I was looking into, but ill check out Mystic ranger as well. Is Mystic Ranger in Tome of Magic?

6. Im going to look that one up right now

7. Favored Power attack would work great for what im going for

8. Not bad. I do need to an alternate Favored enemy outside Demons/Devils (going with evil outsiders) that will have longer lasting value.

Im starting at level 9, but im trying to stick with Half-elf and not-so-much multi-classing so i don't overload my brain with "Crap to keep track of."

[Fax Celestis]

Can a ranger get into Knight of the Raven?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

On a Hellreaver, you want to pick up a single level of Binder from Tome of Magic to bind Naberius, which gives you fast healing for ability damage. That way when you use the Hellreaver's Heroic Sacrifice ability, you'll heal the Con damage within two round. It basically removes the per-encounter limit on your Hellreaver abilities as soon as you get the 5th level.

If you use Ranger, go with the Strong-Arm combat style from Dragon issue 326, it gives Power Attack, Improved Sunder, and Great Cleave at the 2nd, 6th, and 11th level.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Can a ranger get into Knight of the Raven?

Yes. With a high enough Wis they only need 4 levels of ranger to get in.

[herrhauptmann]

Karsite:
Has 2 LA by the way. I've heard you might be able to use an adaptation from Races of Destiny (halfbreeds count as human enough to use human items/feats), to make a halfelf karsite...
Seems questionable, but worth looking into.

I'd say use the handcrossbow for things delivering poisons (or afflictions and ravages) to enemies, rather than dealing large amounts of damage. Archery has that problem in D&D in general, and handcrossbow has it worse. Isn't it also an exotic?

Faerie Mysteries: Dragon Mag 319

Mystic Ranger is an ACF, same for the noncasting ranger and paladin. Dragon Mag 336. You lose martial weapons and some class features are delayed.