Undead Stalker: Is it any good?

[Xuldarinar]

As the title. Is the undead stalker class, as presented in the DMG, any good? I never hear of anyone discussing it. then again their is some obscurity to it and some of it is subjective.



As stated in the DMG: make the following adjustments to the ranger

Limit his weapon selection to resemble the rogue's list of weapon proficiencies.
Change his favored enemy ability so that it applies only to undead, and his bonus improves by 2 every five levels.
Give him the rogue's sneak attack ability, but change it so that it's only usable against undead.
Change his spell list so that it consists of spells that deal strictly with undead or that are used for subterfuge and sneaking.
At 3rd level, give him the paladin's smite evil ability, usable only against undead.



Furthermore, an added point of fun and discussion. It only says one thing about it's spell list. Given what it says, what would we be looking at here? What spells do you think would be on it's spell list?

[Phelix-Mu]

This seems terrible. It's like the ranger, but less versatile, and with a side of rogue, but less versatile, and like a paladin, but less versatile.

It's like a smorgasbord of low-tier characters, but less versatile.

The spell list of things that work against undead might be nice, but the problem is that a lot of the real fun off that list would come in at higher level spells. Arguably, spells like the cures would be on there, since they clearly affect undead. Also, you don't even get any spells until 4th, and at that point you get the rather meager per day of the ranger. Not great.

As an NPC, this could be useful. But as a character? I'd be worried that the DM wasn't going to throw undead at the party on any given day.

[ArcturusV]

It's not something I've played with, I'll admit. My thoughts as I ponder it however:

1) Favored enemy is situational enough. Unless your DM is planning something like "The Orc Wars" as the campaign premise, you weren't really going to get a ton of use out of it. The advantage is that you could take multiples so it was more likely that you could find some enemy that you could apply it towards. I don't like limiting it to only undead. As it just regulates the class to something that you'd only play if the DM promised you that you were playing Zombie Apocalypse. No one is taking major class features that only trigger once during an adventure.

2) Eh, the weapon limit doesn't really strike me as anything. Either you likely were going bows with a ranger anyway... at which point it doesn't hurt too badly as you're stuck with composite short bow over composite longbow... not much of a loss, especially considering that encounter ranges are almost never actually at 1,000 feet and the like. Or you were effectively going to have rogue like weapons anyway like the guy who dual wields a dagger and a rapier or something. It's a penalty, sure, but barely a penalty. Almost not worth thinking of.

3) A one a day smite is a terrible feature, but he doesn't lose anything for it. Still runs into the problem that was top of the list. I mean you could say that a Paladin's Smite Evil has that problem too. But Evil is a much broader category... and honestly when you get past the stomping rats/spiders/dogs phase of Adventuring almost everything you face is Evil anyway.

4) Well.. the ranger's spell list is already all about mobility, subterfuge and sneaking. I imagine the spell swap is probably pretty straight forward. SNA becomes Summon Undead. Probably lose a few like Speak with Animals and Magic Fang in return for something like Chill Touch and Command Undead. ... actually despite Command Undead being obviously useful and an "Against undead" spell I probably wouldn't add it because it doesn't fit the theme of a slayer of the undead.

I mean all in all... I'd never use it as a DM. Because it's only really useful if I'm running Zombie Apocalypse or the like. And if I'm running Zombie Apocalypse? Part of the reason I'm doing it is the Horror aspect. Which means having characters who aren't perfectly set up (And knowing) that they're walking into that situation. So I wouldn't tell a player "Oh, use Undead Stalker instead of that Ranger, trust me, wink wink". Even though that's really the one situation where you'd want to use it.

[Quorothorn]

At a glance, the problem seems to me that it should demolish almost any Undead (Smite, SA, and FA bonuses all stacking up definitely is significant), but if you're facing literally anything else you may as well be an Expert. So, borderline OP in a Resident Evil campaign, pretty dang bad almost anywhere else? I can see why it's not much talked about.