Odd bit of ACF chaining on Ranger

[Jowgen]

Start with the ever popular Mystic variant of the ranger; which grants better spell progression by delaying Favored Enemy and Combat Style progression and loosing Animal Companion.

1: Track & Wild Empathy, 2: Favored Enemy, 3: Combat Styles, 4: Endurance, 5: Nothing

First things first, we swap out Track for Urban Tracking, for reasons to be seen later.

Onto this we now stack onto this two of the "Other Variants" ACFs from Unearth Arcana, which "simply swap one or more of that class's features for one or more class features of another class. A class feature gained works just as it did for its original class, including the level at which it is gained and any other effects, except as noted below."

First:

Gain: Wild shape (as druid; Small or Medium animals only), fast movement (as barbarian).
Lose: Combat style, improved combat style, combat style mastery.

Now our progression is:

1: Urban Tracking, Wild Empathy & Fast Movement, 2: Favored Enemy, 3: Nothing , 4: Endurance, 5: Wildshape as Druid

Second:

Lose: Armor and shield proficiency, wild shape (all versions).

Gain: Bonus to Armor Class when unarmored (as monk, including Wisdom bonus to AC), fast movement (as monk), favored enemy (as ranger), swift tracker (as ranger), Track feat (as ranger).


So if I am reading this right, we now have:

1: Urban Tracking, Track, Wild Empathy, Fast Movement (Barbarian), Wis to AC, Favored Enemy, 2: Favored Enemy, 3: Fast Movement (Monk), 4: Endurance, 5: Nothing

First off, that is quite neat, but what I am wondering about is about the interaction between our two instances of Favored Enemy.


Should they be treated as seperate, i.e. one progresses as regular Ranger and the other as Mystic Ranger, or do we simply advance the progression by an extra step, or some other solution entirely?

[Saintheart]

I'd call them separate Favored Enemy tracks, they don't stack with one another. Wording of favored enemy is:

At 1st level, a ranger may select a type of creature from among those given on Table: Ranger Favored Enemies. The ranger gains a +2 bonus on Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks when using these skills against creatures of this type. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon damage rolls against such creatures.

At 5th level and every five levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th level), the ranger may select an additional favored enemy from those given on the table. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus against any one favored enemy (including the one just selected, if so desired) increases by 2.


Each time you get a favored enemy, it's a new favored enemy and a foundation for the progression as the levels go on.

That said, a conservative DM might turn around and say that the variant rangers by RAW are only available to rangers, not Mystic Rangers. A mystic ranger might progress as a ranger does, but that doesn't mean he's treated as a ranger for the further purposes of taking other variants.

This is especially so given Mystic Ranger's warning that you can't take levels in both M.Ranger and Ranger, and that this rule is specifically so a Ranger doesn't pick up 1st level ranger abilities twice. Which admittedly is RAI, but it's certainly going to provoke a ranged attack of opportunity using a thrown weapon DMG from the DM.

[Elves]

Come to think of it, wildshape ranger + huntsman + moon warded ranger 2nd sub level would be a cool basis for a maximum Cha to X build. Saves you having to take a monk level in addition, which could make the difference between 16 BAB or not. Might have to write that up.