A Rant about Ranger's Species Enemy

[LibraryOgre]

I hate this ability so goddamn much. So, so, so much.

Mechanically, it doesn't scale. It's either really useful (at level 1, I will always hit orcs!) or utterly useless (at level 9, I will... always hit orcs. Who I always hit anyway). You have to be super-careful to pick something useful, and usefulness is 100% a DM choice ("Yes, I know your species enemy is trolls, but I've decided to set the game in the Fire Swamps, where trolls don't go"... which is a real **** move on the DM's part). There are so many things they could have given them, and they decided "Let's choose something that is very situational, and THEN saddle it with an additional, unnecessary, limitation."

Plus, it makes pretty much every ranger so virulently racist that they're just murder machines against a particular species. Like, it's straight up in the text... rangers HATE. "This enmity can be concealed only with great difficulty, so the ranger suffers a -4 penalty on all encounter reactions with creatures of the hated type." It makes every ranger into Hettar (https://davideddings.fandom.com/wiki/Hettar), who was kind of a cool character when you were a kid, and when you read him as an adult, you're like "Holy ****, this man is unhinged."

For reference, do you know what gives you a 4 point penalty to reaction rolls? A 4 Charisma. A FOUR.

[Curbludgeon]

1E's "Giant-class" was a very slightly less distasteful approach, if for nothing else by using a rather broad brush. 3E ACFs such as Arcane Hunter and Rival Organization were a definite step up, by simple dint of divorcing enmity from species. The ACF model could have stood some more examples to benefit that class in particular; of the core classes rangers arguably had the largest grab bag of middling abilities to be swapped in and out.

[Shpadoinkle]

Pathfinder, for whatever reason, decided to keep the Favored Enemy nonsense. As I was explaining to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, the main problem with the Favored Enemy ability is that it's completely up to the DM whether you EVER get to use it or not.

Furthermore, as Mark Hall said in the first post, if you pick something weak, eventually it becomes useless because you'll hit those weak enemies all the time anyway. But if you pick something you might need it for, say dragons or beholders or something, you're going to be waiting a while until you can use it (assuming you start play at level 1.)

Pathfinder does have some workarounds. For one, there's the Instant Enemy spell, which lets you treat one target as if it's part of your favored enemy group. The biggest problem with this is that's it's a level 3 ranger spell, meaning you can't cast it before level 13. By which time the bonuses it gives are PROBABLY going to only be okay, but at least it's a Swift action so you don't have to give up any attacks to do it.

There's also a couple better options among archetypes. The Freebooter archetype, for instance, gives up Favored Enemy and instead grants an ability called Freebooter's Bane, which lets the entire party get bonuses on attack and damage rolls against a single target, which is nice for eliminating a single, high-priority enemy. Also there doesn't seem to be a limit on how many times per day you can use it, but it does eat a Move action every time.

[DigoDragon]

Something I always wanted to try was to change the Ranger's favored enemy ability to be an ability where you pick a specific target and all attacks to that target is where you gain your bonuses to. Sorta like that ability of the Arcane Archer PrC. And on levels where you would normally gain another favored enemy, instead your bonuses just increase, allowing you to keep up at higher levels.

[Lord Torath]

You won't find me arguing. You either pick an enemy that's useful at first level and useless by 4th level, or one that you hope will be useful at higher levels. At least the 1E 'giant kin' version was applicable at all levels, since 'giant kin' included low-HD humanoids as well as full giants. I rather like giving the Ranger a new choice every 4 levels or so.

The reaction penalty is, indeed, very hefty (also: I understood that reference!). No disagreement here.

[Shpadoinkle]

Something I always wanted to try was to change the Ranger's favored enemy ability to be an ability where you pick a specific target and all attacks to that target is where you gain your bonuses to.

Pathfinder 1e's Slayer class does pretty much exactly that with its Studied Target ability. You spend a Move action studying an individual, and you get bonuses on attack and damage rolls, as well as social skill rolls against that individual (Bluff, Diplomacy, etc.) I honestly think that way is a way better method of handling that kind of thing than how Favored Enemy works.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm still tempted to switch Rangers to the bard spell table. With just Animal and Plant (and Travelers, as seems to be a common, post ToM, addition), they don't have a ton of spells, but they have useful ones, none-the-less.

[elros]

Your explanation is why I could only make rangers work as a flavorful alternative to a fighter, and not as its own PC class. It was hard to be a DM with a ranger PC because it forced the DM to figure out how to incorporate favored enemies without making them too prevalent or too rare.
But that was the same reason why rangers made great one-shot NPC allies to a party! A NPC ranger could be lower level than the PC but could still contribute in certain situations and against certain enemies. It also allowed the DM to explain why the PCs were the main characters (they were higher level), and it also made sense for PCs to ally with someone who knew the environment and help them navigate unfamiliar terrain.