Ranger optimization

[VenomTongue]

So I have a Wild Elf Urban Ranger (Archery Specialization). I am only level two but I am thinking about the future. I have taken Two-Weapon Fighting as my first level feat.
My ranger is lawful-evil and worships Vecna. He is a member of the city guard and I am trying to make him into a detective. But I don't know what to do for the future. I am thinking of multi-classing into CA ninja after I get my animal companion.
My Wisdom is like 13 so I figure I will put my ability adjustment into that and knock it up to 14. But I have questions.
1. Does a ninja loose their Wisdom to AC if they wear Bracers of Armor?
2. How can I best optimize this character without doing really weird things? Basically I have access to the everything, but I don't want to go too far into supplemental books. I don't want to outshine the other players who have less D&D experience. I want to be helpful to the party. I think for my level 3 feat I will take Track.
3. I am trying to build toward being an assassin-like character. The PrC is neat but the death attack is underwhelming, but the spells are neat.

Also I was thinking about some sort of bird for the animal companion. But I am willing to take whatever advice you might offer.

[Zaq]

I guess it depends on what you're trying to do. Honestly, Ranger isn't a very strong class on its own (none of its tricks are strong enough to be character-defining, and there's no real synergy that makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts), and CA Ninja is honestly pretty lackluster as well. Bracers of Armor don't lose the AC bonus granted by Ninja; your AC is likely to be higher by just wearing armor (at least for an equivalent amount of gold), but of course, Ninjas also lose the ability to go invisible if they wear armor, which kind of defeats the point of being a Ninja. Definitely think long and hard about what you're hoping to gain from being a Ninja, since you're going to have very few uses of invisibility per day, and Sudden Strike is difficult to trigger without going invisible; two levels in Monk for Invisible Fist is a decent stopgap, but when you're only level 2 to start, a 2-level dip is a pretty major investment, so I won't be surprised if that's hard for you to do. Without knowing anything else about your campaign, I would recommend against Ninja; it can be done, but unless you're going for something very specific, there's a good chance that it won't be worth the effort.

A Ranger's animal companion is pretty useless, especially if you multiclass; your best bet is going to be to trade it out for an ACF of some kind (I like Distracting Strike from PHB2) unless it's absolutely critical to your mental image of the character that you have a pet following you around.

Overall, what are you trying to do? What does the rest of the party look like? What kind of role are you hoping to play, and what kind of support does the party need? The character you've described doesn't seem to really do much. If you give us a direction, we can probably figure out how to guide you there, but right now I don't have enough information to make any real suggestions.

[Troacctid]

You're kind of all over the place. You took the Archery combat style, but picked Two-Weapon Fighting as a feat—why not just take the Two-Weapon Fighting combat style? And you traded away Track for Urban Tracking, but now you want Track again—so why trade it away in the first place?

It seems like you don't really know what you want your character to do. What sort of role are you trying to fill, exactly?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

So I have a Wild Elf Urban Ranger (Archery Specialization). I am only level two but I am thinking about the future. I have taken Two-Weapon Fighting as my first level feat.
My ranger is lawful-evil and worships Vecna. He is a member of the city guard and I am trying to make him into a detective. But I don't know what to do for the future. I am thinking of multi-classing into CA ninja after I get my animal companion.
My Wisdom is like 13 so I figure I will put my ability adjustment into that and knock it up to 14. But I have questions.
1. Does a ninja loose their Wisdom to AC if they wear Bracers of Armor?
2. How can I best optimize this character without doing really weird things? Basically I have access to the everything, but I don't want to go too far into supplemental books. I don't want to outshine the other players who have less D&D experience. I want to be helpful to the party. I think for my level 3 feat I will take Track.
3. I am trying to build toward being an assassin-like character. The PrC is neat but the death attack is underwhelming, but the spells are neat.

Also I was thinking about some sort of bird for the animal companion. But I am willing to take whatever advice you might offer.

Hello, and welcome.

First, do you know if your DM will let you reroll your character, keeping the same race and concept?

I - and a lot of other posters here - can definitely offer a lot of advice. What would help a lot is a general concept and an outline of your game. You say you're looking at going into being a detective/assassin; what does that mean to you? What do you want the character's general problem-solving method to be, and what kind of problems do you want to be good at solving? How do you think your game is going to unfold? Will it be a city-based adventure centered on rooting out criminal syndicates and blackmailing the powerful, or will it be about delving into the deepest dungeons and most remote corners of the wild?

The more information you can give us, the better we can assist you.

On the specific subject of what you've got goin' on, I'd advise strongly to forget Ninja. It's crap and there're better ways to do what it does. I'd also advise that you think long and hard about how much you want an animal companion and how you'd utilize it. If you go just enough into Ranger to get an animal companion, then multiclass out, your animal companion will be very, very limited in use without spending feats and multiclassing specifically for AC synergies.

[Troacctid]

Actually, if you take the Urban Companion variant, then the animal companion scales well with non-ranger levels and is extremely useful in a variety of situations, so it is quite good.

[schreier]

I would go swift hunter, bring in scout 3 and swordsage 2

This gives you wis to ac and skirmish that can hit favored enemies. Take arcane hunter at level 1 to get all arcane casters, undead at 5. You can trade in your companion to get favored count to hit and damage. If you want to add more dipping, go barbarian 1, and get pounce. You could drop swordsage and go monk instead, them try and get the sparring dummy from arms and equipment guide (3.0 item) to get a swift 10 foot move, which will trigger your precision damage.

Also, if you go dragon blood, you can get draconic heritage with pyroclastic dragon, letting you add 1d6 to precision damage and changing it to sonic to get around resists

[Barbarian Horde]

Taking urban ranger's companion fixs a lot of problems I have with the animal companion by beefing them up. New issue is has to be chosen from wizards familiars list unless you can convince your DM to make an exception. Otherwise its a solid pick. People who try to optimize usually take scout though because they want that skirmish damage which is just a fist full of 1d6 if played right.

[Cerefel]

Instead of spending a feat on track you could just have your animal companion (ideally riding dog) use its built in tracking abilities and scent to do it for you. That way you don't need to spend a feat on it

[Darrin]

So I have a Wild Elf Urban Ranger (Archery Specialization). I am only level two but I am thinking about the future. I have taken Two-Weapon Fighting as my first level feat.


Why? D&D tends to favor specialization. If you're going to be an archer, then be an archer. If you're going to TWF, then go TWF (and read this OffHandbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279079-3-5-The-TWF-OffHandbook)).



I am thinking of multi-classing into CA ninja after I get my animal companion.


Ninjas and the Ranger's animal companions are regarded around here as being very weak. There is not much the Ninja can do that a Rogue or Swordsage can do even better. Other than the Wis to AC (which can be obtained via other means), what exactly do you want your ninja levels to do?

I consider Ranger animal companions to be walking bloodsmears waiting to happen. They don't advance quickly enough to last in CR-appropriate combat. If they aren't killed outright, then they suck up resources like spells and potions as you try to keep them alive and relevant. There are two decent ACFs (Alternate Class Features) for trading away your animal companion for something more effective: Distracting Attack (PHBII) helps render your opponents as flanked, and Spiritual Guide (Complete Champion) gives you some skill bonuses and a 4th level spell commune with nature 1/day.



My Wisdom is like 13 so I figure I will put my ability adjustment into that and knock it up to 14. But I have questions.
1. Does a ninja loose their Wisdom to AC if they wear Bracers of Armor?


To answer the question, no. Bracers of Armor do not count as armor, so monks can wear them and still get Wis bonus to AC.

However... I wouldn't recommend going into Ninja just to get a +2 Wis bonus to AC. A +1 dwarven buckler axe would do the same thing for about 1170 GP.



2. How can I best optimize this character without doing really weird things?


A basic Swift Hunter build (Scout 4/Ranger 16) works well for archery. Decide if you want to go with Improved Rapid Shot (Complete Warrior) or Greater Manyshot (XPH). The problem here is the archery stuff will suck up all your feats, so you shouldn't be spending feat slots on things like TWF or Track.

If you prefer TWF, then I have several examples (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15034762&postcount=13) in the TWF OffHandbook.



I don't want to outshine the other players who have less D&D experience.


Rangers are good support characters. They can do some frontline fighting, have enough skill points to do some skill monkey stuff, they can be a back-up healer with a wand of cure light wounds, and they have some decent support spells.



I want to be helpful to the party. I think for my level 3 feat I will take Track.


No! Unless your DM tells you explicitly that he will deliberately be putting in a lot of Tracking clues, then there's no reason to take Track. Any vital information that Tracking could give you should be either blatantly obvious or completely useless. More likely, if there's any important information, the DM will make sure somebody in the party finds it (Knowledge checks, Bardic Knowledge, NPC rumors, etc.).

Unless you need Track for a prestige class (Such as Highland Stalker), then I usually recommend trading this for the Trap Expert ACF in Dungeonscape. This allows you to fill in as the party's trapfinder (or back up the party rogue). While I'm not a big fan of traps in general (see Bad Traps Syndrome (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/90/bad-trap-syndrome/) and Part 2 (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/91/bad-trap-syndrome-curing-the-bad-trap-blues/)), it's slightly more useful than anything Tracking will tell you.



3. I am trying to build toward being an assassin-like character. The PrC is neat but the death attack is underwhelming, but the spells are neat.


Sounds like you've got a bit of a Candy Shop Syndrome problem. You're trying to grab too many things at once. There may be ways to add in some of the assassin spells without sacrificing what you're trying to do with your other class levels. However, it might involve some of the "weird things" you want to avoid. For example, a Swift Hunter Build with Dragon Devotee 4/Unseen Seer 4 gets access to most of the assassin spells.



Also I was thinking about some sort of bird for the animal companion. But I am willing to take whatever advice you might offer.

Eagles make for very good spotters (+14), but tend to have the combat survivability of wet tissue paper. If you want something a little stronger than the ranger's animal companion, then the Urban Companion ACF from the Cityscape Web Enhancement (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) should be strongly considered. It has 75% of your HP (instead of 50%), it shares all your skill ranks, and can act on its own without worrying about Handle Animal checks or spending actions to direct it. There's also the Wild Cohort (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) option, which is a bit stronger than a ranger's animal companion because it scales up according to your full character level rather than 1/2 your class level.

[Drelua]

If you can retrain, Wildshape Ranger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#ranger) can be pretty good if you combine it with Warshaper, I think the class is called, from Complete Warrior.

If you really want Wisdom to AC, there's a feat in Complete Adventurer that lets you stack your Ranger and Monk levels for the purpose of unarmed damage called Ascetic Hunter. If you take one level of Monk and then Warshaper, the two could combine fairly well I think, since getting armour that works while wildshaping can be pretty expensive.