Is the urban ranger crap?

[tedcahill2]

Seems like they give up quite a bit and don't get much back. Am I missing something?

[Goaty14]

Seems like they give up quite a bit and don't get much back. Am I missing something?

He's only really missing anything meaningful if he's not in his favorite city all of the time, that is, most adventurers. I think it's more for political intrigue campaigns than not. But yea, he doesn't quite get too many meaningful benefits for it. NOTE: He could still get a fleshraker though :smallsmile:

[Zaq]

I mean, the regular Ranger is mostly crap before you ACF it to hell and back (or staple a functional damage mechanic on with Swift Hunter), and as you said, the Urban Ranger loses things, so . . . yes?

[tedcahill2]

Is there any reason I would take UA version of urban ranger vs picking and choose from CS alt class features to make my own urban ranger?

[Troacctid]

Is there any reason I would take UA version of urban ranger vs picking and choose from CS alt class features to make my own urban ranger?
You get some interesting spells like Invisibility and True Seeing.

[Mordaedil]

You could probably change it just enough to where the urban ranger is useful in both dungeons and cities and it'll be useful most of the time. Rangers in the wilderness are everywhere anyway and in a city-based campaign like Thieves World or a campaign placed entirely in Waterdeep, it's still useful enough as a class.

[Troacctid]

One of the funny things about Urban Ranger is that it makes you worse with animals, even though there's a ton of wildlife in urban settings and an urban adventurer would probably find it pretty darn useful to be able to befriend the city's rats and pigeons.

[Telonius]

There are a couple of Prestige Classes that you can enter with an Urban Ranger base (Urban Soul and Vigilante) but otherwise not much. If you know you're going to be in a city for the whole campaign or one-shot, it's probably better than a Ranger.

[BowStreetRunner]

The weakened Animal Companion and Wild Empathy class features are annoying, but since the UA Urban Ranger still gets both they do at least have the choice of exchanging them for the Urban Companion and Voice of the City ACFs from CS instead of keeping the nerfed UA versions. However, the removal of Woodland Stride and Camouflage isn't really balanced by anything. At the very least, give the Crowd-Walker and Hidden Stalker ACFs from CS to the Urban Ranger.

The biggest problem with simply trying to build your own from CS ACFs appears to be the skill list not changing. Urban Tracking without Gather Information is going to be a pain.

[Zaq]

The biggest problem with simply trying to build your own from CS ACFs appears to be the skill list not changing. Urban Tracking without Gather Information is going to be a pain.

Skilled City-Dweller (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) swaps Handle Animal for Gather Info.

To be fair, it’s easy to forget that SCD has uses other than “Ride becomes Tumble.” And as I said/implied above, Rangers themselves are weak enough that just making some naturey parts less naturey isn’t likely to help much and may hurt. But at least the ACFs aren’t so badly thought out that the skills become completely impossible.

[BowStreetRunner]

Skilled City-Dweller (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) swaps Handle Animal for Gather Info.
I missed that one, thanks!

Is there any reason I would take UA version of urban ranger vs picking and choose from CS alt class features to make my own urban ranger?
So I think the answer here then becomes: No, there isn't any reason to take the UA version over picking and choosing from CityScape ACFs. In fact, by using the CityScape version you can not only create a strictly better Urban Ranger but you also have more flexibility with using ACFs from other sourcebooks to customize even further.

[tedcahill2]

I missed that one, thanks!

So I think the answer here then becomes: No, there isn't any reason to take the UA version over picking and choosing from CityScape ACFs. In fact, by using the CityScape version you can not only create a strictly better Urban Ranger but you also have more flexibility with using ACFs from other sourcebooks to customize even further.

So the only possible issue is that the UA version does some tweaking of the ranger spell list which the CS version doesn't have an ACF for.