What are your thoughts on favored enemy and similar abilities.

[frogglesmash]

What are your thoughts on favored enemy's requirement to pick a specific variety of humanoid/outsider instead of the type as a whole. Is this a case of WotC not understanding their own game, or are the categories so superior to their alternatives that the subdivision is warranted?

[Nifft]

Humanoids being split up is probably more of a monster-vs-PCs issue. Making a monster that has a +4 hate bonus vs. Dwarves is more memorable & thematic (& balanced) than someone who "specializes" in killing all the PCs.

But also that split makes it less appealing to take FE:Humanoids, which might be a way to discourage PvP characters.


Outsiders being split up might be a balance thing. Outsiders are tough, varied, and are often used as high-level campaign antagonists. You can get decent value from FE:Outsiders(evil) at low levels, and great value at higher levels.

[Eldariel]

It's also a quantity thing; there are lots more Humanoid (not in types but I'd expect Humanoids mostly populate most game worlds) and Outsider types than most generic monster types. And of course, someone who hunts LE Outsiders probably isn't interested in optimizing their angel hunting skills. Same with Humanoids; there is like to be a heavier representation of different humanoids of certain types than e.g. different Aberrations (Undead are the big exception here). And Elf Hunter just feels different from a Halfling Hunter.

[The Viscount]

I'm sort of on the fence about Outsiders, there are a fair number of them but after you select (evil), I don't know that there's another subtype worthy of picking as a favored enemy. There is also the problem of a number of outsiders without any of the subtypes present.

Humanoid is such a common type, especially at low levels that if it were a single group it would be a very easy choice. That being said, the splintering is an over-correction such that you would need to be in a specific campaign for most of those choices to be worthwhile. Humanoid as a favored enemy also has the much more worrying problem that there have been a great number of humanoid races introduced after the phb. By RAW you could not have say, shifters as your favored enemy. Honestly, even if you did include all the new races as options, many would not easily fall into any pre-existing subtype, so you would be forced to create new ones with small numbers that will almost never be worth choosing.

[ksbsnowowl]

There is also the problem of a number of outsiders without any of the subtypes present.
Examples? I can't think of any off the top of my head. But I'm also sleep-deprived.

[Fizban]

With humanoids, if you're fighting them, you're probably fighting a lot of the same type for a whole adventure, if not the whole campaign. Generally whenever I've seen humanoids as an enemy in a campaign arc, it's been major enough that favored enemy would be brutal. Unless your DM makes very cosmopolitan bands of bad guys it's not a weakness, and protecting the party from the same is also good.

For outsiders, yeah there's not much reason to take any other than [evil] if you're good, or making bad guys with [good] to make a point- since PCs are rarely [good] outsiders. Most people prefer campaigns of good and evil or grey, so law/chaos is niche while being a good guy who kills fiends is pretty safe. Still, if you know your DM likes devils and inevitables but hates slaad and demons, then being anti-[law] could work out. Or the other way around, if you see [law] as amenable to diplomacy but fear obyrith and slaad spawn, [chaos] could still be worth it.

Outsider [element] though, that's pretty useless. Elementals suck because all the powerful "elementals" are outsiders, but there's still few enough of any serious outsider [element] that you'd need a DM guarantee, unless I'm missing something. A "tribal" campaign against one of the genie as a mid-game option (fewer HD than smart giants), that would be a fine setup. The evil-inclined genie all have slave-built empires, it's ready to go.

[Kurald Galain]

What are your thoughts on favored enemy's requirement to pick a specific variety of humanoid/outsider instead of the type as a whole. Is this a case of WotC not understanding their own game, or are the categories so superior to their alternatives that the subdivision is warranted?

I understand where they're going from (there's lots more kinds of humanoids and outsiders than the other groups) but they should have solved this in exactly the opposite way. The issue is not that the group of outsiders is too large, but that the group of most other creature types is too small.

[Necroticplague]

What are your thoughts on favored enemy's requirement to pick a specific variety of humanoid/outsider instead of the type as a whole. Is this a case of WotC not understanding their own game, or are the categories so superior to their alternatives that the subdivision is warranted?

I think this is a case of their playtesting taking place in a game type with vastly different assumptions than the game as a whole. Their playtesting, which was typically very low-level, low-op, and low-effort, probably featured mostly goblins, orcs, and kobolds as antagonists. Thus, FE: Humanoid probably looked overpowered (covering most of what was fought), so they split it up.

Though frankly, I'm not sure it's justified. Considering the relatively minor impact of FE (+2/5 levels bonus to a handful of skills and damage), I'm not sure there would even be anything wrong with letting it always apply.

[Fizban]

Well like you say, many of their antagonists were probably classed humanoids. And classed humanoids have way fewer hit points than monsters. +2 or +4 damage per hit doesn't sound like much against proper monster, but against a classed humanoid it's pretty huge. So it really shouldn't apply all the time.

Of course if you want it to apply all the time, the Favored Organization loophole will do the job.

[Zaq]

Honestly, I think FE is garbage game design from start to finish. It's a super-conditional bonus, but its triggering condition is basically entirely out of the character's control—and yet it's marketed as a major class feature. A selling point, even. In what universe is it good game design for a character to have zero control over whether an all-or-nothing class feature can even be attempted? Sure, not every single one of your abilities can reasonably be expected to be firing at full strength in every round of every encounter, but it shouldn't feel like a gift from the gods when you randomly get to use something that's allegedly one of your main tricks.

I mean, sure, you can take generically common enemies (undead being the obvious choice), but even so, is that really exciting? I don't feel like it is.

And then we get into the metagame element. A crappy GM who's scared of a conditional +2 will never feature your FE, which is annoying, but even a good GM who wants to occasionally let the Ranger feel like they're using their toys is now stuck with an additional hoop to jump through when designing encounters. GMing this game is quite hard enough already without that concern. Yes, GMing should involve a consideration of the PCs' abilities anyway (see earlier comment about expectations for your abilities), but FE is way, way narrower than "hmm, there's a Beguiler in the party, so I shouldn't make every single enemy in the encounter immune to mind-affecting stuff" or whatever.

In mid-op or higher games, it's tempting to say that it wouldn't be especially OP to just allow bog-standard FE to apply all the time, regardless of target. (I'm sure there's some ridiculous FE combo out there that would be stupid if it applied 24/7, but the baseline isn't that bad.) I mean, it's honestly just a +2, and a +2 that scales every five levels really doesn't seem that gamebreaking to me. Maybe, MAYBE make the skill part scale a bit slower, but again, +2 per five levels. That really isn't very crazy. At all. And it's not like non-WS Rangers get too many worthwhile combat tricks anyway. A no-questions-asked bonus to all weapon damage makes their Combat Style actually slightly interesting, given that both styles sorta-kinda encourage swinging over and over. But I don't think it's powerful enough to need to lock it behind a GM gate and act like it's a big deal.

[The Viscount]

Examples? I can't think of any off the top of my head. But I'm also sleep-deprived.
There's a smattering of monsters. Based on searches on monsterfinder there are 36 of them, but their sources aren't complete, and some entries are inaccurate so it's not exact.
From the srd there's the ravid, shadow mastiff, xill, and abyssal greater basilisk (which seems like an improper use of fiendish but as written it's outsider).
From MMII there's chaond, ether scarab, glimmerskin, and zenythri. The two planetouched should have been changed to native, but weren't.
From Fiend Folio there's aoa droplet and sphere, bacchae, keeper, nerra (kalareem, sillit, and varoot), planetouched, rilmani (aurumach, cuprilarch, and ferrumach), and steel predator. I don't think (native) existed when fiend folio was made and it didn't receive a proper update, so the planetouched should be affected.
From MMIII there's the astral stalker, lumi, and rejkar (who has the cold subtype which is not an acceptable one).
From MMIV there's the concordant killer (subtypes from parentage cancel, I guess) and windblades (windrazor and windscythe)
For MMV they perhaps picked up on it, and all the outsiders are valid targets.
From Planar Handbook there are the xac-yij, xap-yaup, xong-yong, and xor-yost energons. Their player races include the Bariaur, Neraph, Shadowswyft, and Wildren, which are only native when on their own planes. Thus for most encounters they will not be valid targets.
BoVD has the Vaath.
Fascinatingly, a number of these monsters are improperly listed as possessing subtypes they dont have in the section where monsters are listed by type and subtype, possibly indicating they at one point were planned to possess them and be valid targets, or perhaps just incompetence. Probably some that I missed, would love to see if anybody else finds any.

This is also a concern with templated monsters. There are a number of templates that change type to outsider, like pseudonatural, vivacious, and entropic. If the base creature doesn't have an elemental or alignment subtype then they cannot be affected by any of the outsider favored enemies. Certain ones like half-fiend specify to make the target (native) but others missed this.

Well like you say, many of their antagonists were probably classed humanoids. And classed humanoids have way fewer hit points than monsters. +2 or +4 damage per hit doesn't sound like much against proper monster, but against a classed humanoid it's pretty huge. So it really shouldn't apply all the time.

Of course if you want it to apply all the time, the Favored Organization loophole will do the job.

Yes some monsters have more health than some humanoids with class levels, but that shouldn't be your reason to deprive ranger of one of their class features. If encounters can't survive the combat you can always tweak the hp so they aren't instantly defeated, but don't take it out on the poor ranger. That +2 or +4 to damage multiplied by 7 for a twfing ranger with the full line is 14 or 28 points of damage. At level 20 that is less that a +4 to an NPC's constitution score. If that's making the difference for your encounters, a template or magic item solves this "problem."