Hunter woes

[Vyanie]

I am not sure if I am looking at the class wrong but the harder that I look at hunter the worse it seems. Is this just me or did they actually make a class more mad than even core monks? It has a 3/4 bab so not good in melee, need high str to actually hit anything and do anything in melee, since medium armor only a decent dex and con is required, ohh wait they need 13 int for combat expertise as the only good teamwork feats require it, high wisdom to actually be able to cast spells and finally they need a decent CHA for the pet handling, especially with the newer feats that require 13+ cha that were specifically geared toward hunters. I mean if you were rolling for stats I could understand playing one but on point buy they just.... seem like a really, really bad version of a druid. Can anyone maybe assuage my fears on this class?

[Kurald Galain]

I am not sure if I am looking at the class wrong but the harder that I look at hunter the worse it seems.
You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that you should try to build a single hunter that can do everything you suggest. Rather, there are multiple different ways that you can build a hunter, each of which has their own specialty.

[Vyanie]

I can somewhat understand that, but to do the basic things they need all of that. A fighter can dump Cha at least and keep wis at 10. The unchained rogue can now dump STR as well as other stats. Hunter just seems to be penalized just do do basic stuff because they need to spread to thin. Unless you want to rely on your pet 100% of the time for everything (at that point just make a different class) it seems they should ignore combat expertise or any teamwork feat requirements or something.

[legomaster00156]

As someone who has played a Hunter, my only real complaint is the lack of full BAB. Were the class to have that, they would not rely on STR/DEX quite as much to be competent warriors, but as is, you NEED a high score in one of those stats to even be able to hit anything, in addition to needing a decent WIS score and, of course, CON.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Play a human, and dump INT; you'll still have 6 skill points a level, which is plenty; if you're playing with background skills, you get free ranks into Handle Animal! Either take that dirty fighting feat that counts as Combat Expertise for prerequisites, I forget what it's called, or even better: IGNORE THE TEAMWORK FEATS.

Seriously. Most teamwork feats are garbage. I would hardly consider them critical to a hunter's build goals.

If you're playing an archer, you can take a lower CON and trust to staying on the periphery of fights; let your animal companion take the beatings meant for you. A 12 will likely serve you fine.

13 STR
18 DEX (+2 from human)
12 CON
8 INT
15 WIS
10 CHA

That's a 20 PB right there. You can bump WIS up at 4th or 8th level, and you'll be fine on casting, especially if you stick to buffs and other spells that don't care about save DCs.

Having a high CHA is a luxury that's hardly necessary either. You already get a bonus to Handle Animal checks with your animal companion. Tack on a spell here or there like Charm Animal, and you'll have decent animal-faffery abilities; most animals have poor Will saves anyway.

You can bump STR up for a slightly better pull on a composite longbow down the line, otherwise just focus on DEX. Bing bang boom, perfectly serviceable archery hunter.

[Kurald Galain]

Play a human, and dump INT; you'll still have 6 skill points a level, which is plenty; if you're playing with background skills, you get free ranks into Handle Animal! Either take that dirty fighting feat that counts as Combat Expertise for prerequisites, I forget what it's called, or even better: IGNORE THE TEAMWORK FEATS.
Yes, that's a good example.

My hunter has str 18+2, dex 14, con 12, int 7, wis 12, cha 8. That also works. He'll buy a +wis headband at level 7.

You are good in melee combat, because you've got a free flanking buddy at +4 to hit, plus animal powers to boost your attack, plus buff spells. Don't worry about that. I have no idea where you get the idea that good tw feats require combat exp; there's only a handful of tw feats that have that, and almost all of those suck (and as Cockroach points out, most tw work feats in general suck). You've got sufficient bonuses to handle your own animal, so unless you want to specialize in handling NPC animals (which is, you know, another build) you don't need cha. And if you avoid spells with saving throws, you don't need wis either.

And do not underestimate how much damage your animal buddy can do. Hunters are a very effective class overall.

[Florian]

@Vyanie:

Yes, you're looking at the class wrong. As with most non-core classes, you have multiple routes open, but most decide on which one(s) you take as you can never can go for all of them.

[vasilidor]

for teamwork feats on the hunter, if you decide to use them, get the ones that benefit flanking. and only do this if you decide to melee. otherwise try to kill things from a distance. getting druid spells means getting crowd control spells and some decent buff spells. in the campaign i am currently playing in, i am really wishing that my fellow players (a druid sorcerer mystic theurge and cleric) focused more on crowd control, as now we face a literal army of angry treants (we are tenth level and we can run, and the forest is now on fire, clerics fault).

[Gnaeus]

I am not sure if I am looking at the class wrong but the harder that I look at hunter the worse it seems. Is this just me or did they actually make a class more mad than even core monks? It has a 3/4 bab so not good in melee, need high str to actually hit anything and do anything in melee, since medium armor only a decent dex and con is required, ohh wait they need 13 int for combat expertise as the only good teamwork feats require it, high wisdom to actually be able to cast spells and finally they need a decent CHA for the pet handling, especially with the newer feats that require 13+ cha that were specifically geared toward hunters. I mean if you were rolling for stats I could understand playing one but on point buy they just.... seem like a really, really bad version of a druid. Can anyone maybe assuage my fears on this class?

Basically everything you said is more true about ranger than hunter. Full BAB and a handful of feats are no match for 2 extra levels of casting, self buffs, and one of the best pets in the game.

Also, the best teamwork feats are escape route and pack flanking. Combat expertise is not required for hunter at all.

[Vyanie]

Basically everything you said is more true about ranger than hunter. Full BAB and a handful of feats are no match for 2 extra levels of casting, self buffs, and one of the best pets in the game.

Also, the best teamwork feats are escape route and pack flanking. Combat expertise is not required for hunter at all.

Pack flanking requires both Combat expertise AND int of 13, but i do agree that is about the best TW feat then you have the retarded Beastmaster Style, while this looks really good and seems to be targeted specifically at hunters it for some stupid reason has a requirement of Cha 13 and the additional one requires alertness.... it really seems the pazio devs really really want to make people MAD like crazy. As I have tried a hunter and they are shut down completely by a simple lvl 1 spell of charm animal or any will save spell since the AC have horrible saves, as well as having to spend twice the amount of gold trying to outfit a companion in addition to the character itself order to stay relevant. If hunters could ignore the pre reqs of TW feats then I could honestly say they would show promise. As of now they just don't bring enough or solve enough problems to be worthwhile in my opinion. I do think quite a bit of this is caused by the stupidity of the feat tax that they have for martials and if pazio could get their head out of their but they could have fixed that long ago.

[Kurald Galain]

Your reasoning is basically "I want feat X; hunters cannot easily take that feat; therefore hunters suck" whereas your conclusion should be "hunters should take another feat instead".



Pack flanking requires both Combat expertise AND int of 13
The main point of Pack Flanking is that you can ride your animal while flanking with it. Most hunters don't do that; if you want a mounted character try a paladin.


Beastmaster Style, while this looks really good and seems to be targeted specifically at hunters it for some stupid reason has a requirement of Cha 13 and the additional one requires alertness....
BS is from a notoriously badly written book, that was released three years after the hunter. So clearly the hunter can do without this particular feat.


they are shut down completely by a simple lvl 1 spell of charm animal
Perhaps you should read that spell again. Charm isn't the same as dominate.

[Psyren]

Is this just me or did they actually make a class more mad than even core monks?

Uh... DEFINITELY just you.


It has a 3/4 bab so not good in melee, need high str to actually hit anything and do anything in melee, since medium armor only a decent dex and con is required, ohh wait they need 13 int for combat expertise as the only good teamwork feats require it, high wisdom to actually be able to cast spells and finally they need a decent CHA for the pet handling, especially with the newer feats that require 13+ cha that were specifically geared toward hunters. I mean if you were rolling for stats I could understand playing one but on point buy they just.... seem like a really, really bad version of a druid. Can anyone maybe assuage my fears on this class?

1) You realize most classes are worse than druid, right? If that's your benchmark, nothing below T1 is going to be good.

2) 3/4 BAB doesn't make you bad at being a martial on its own. You need to also look at the bonuses the class gets. For the base melee hunter, the big ones there are its Outflank bonus and its aspects, which stay relevant basically until you can afford a +6 Belt of Physical Perfection - approximately level 14 assuming you ignore your weapons and armor - and even later if you want your weapons and armor to be top-notch too.

3) If you're not impressed with the Teamwork stuff, just drop it with an archetype. My personal favorite for this is Divine Hunter, which trades it for a domain and gives your companion a useful template.