Forrestfire
2023-08-29, 04:24 PM
https://hexdrake.support/assets/images/banner_top.png
Ranger: The Cooler Paladin
A comprehensive handbook for D&D 3.5's most redheaded stepchild.
For good reason, the ranger is a bit of an outcast in D&D. It’s a deeply weird class split between many concepts flavorwise and mechanically, full of hyperspecific class features that require specific campaigns to be good. It’s okay enough in core games, but at first glance, the ranger might seem to be just a worse version of one’s martial or caster of choice, especially in more optimized tables. It has a solid chassis that makes it okay in core games (full BAB and 6+Int skills is better than a fighter 20, right?), but even then you find yourself torn between a bunch of different niches and not particularly good at any of them.
Needless to say, as a lover of all things mechanically and thematically janky, it’s my favorite class in the game, and one I’ve been somewhat fixated on for decades now. I personally think the ranger is quite strong as a class. I’d even go as far as calling it “the platonic ideal of tier 3,” but because most of the ranger’s good options range from somewhat to excruciatingly obscure, most people kinda sleep on it… and they’re right to do so, honestly! The amount of book diving I’ve done over the years is far more than a person should have to, to make a class good. But hey! That’s what guides are for.
With all that said, I’d like to list some of the base assumptions (and their reasoning) I’m running on for the purposes of this guide, because they may be different from yours, and I’d like us to be on the same page.
All sources are open.
Look, it’s 2023. Third edition D&D came out in the year 2000. Version 3.5 came out in 2003. If you’re still playing 3.5 in 2023 you’re probably the sort of player playing in the sort of group that’s willing to let you go book diving for options. And if you’re not... well, I’m sorry, a lot of this guide is not for you. And that’s okay! You’re valid, even if I don’t agree with your approach. But I am probably going to be unable to help you much.
Anyway, to be more explicit about what this means: I am considering all “official D&D content” sources to be valid. This includes Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine. This includes Diablo II: Diablerie (https://www.diablowiki.net/Diablo_II:_Diablerie). It includes options listed in the sidebars and appendices of official adventure modules. It includes the Dragonlance Campaign Setting and Oriental Adventures, though not their third-party expansions. It does not include Kingdoms of Kalamarand similar books, because they’re third-party-produced licensed material without a “this is 100% official D&D content” sticker like Dragon and Dungeon do. Is that arbitrary and maybe a little petty? Yes, but it’s what I’m going with. Likewise, Pathfinder content is not being considered, for the same reason.
In addition, I'm considering setting splatbook options to be setting-agnostic. Some books, like Oriental Adventures, explicitly made their setting-specific options setting agnostic (with notes in the prestige class and feat sections directing you to outright ignore the clan/race/ancestry requirements if not playing in Rokugan, and even encouraging doing so in Rokugan), while others didn’t think to do that. Similarly, Player’s Guide to Faerûn directs you and your DM to ignore regional requirements for Faerûnian options if you don’t want to use them, and only asks that you come up with some kind of interesting backstory tidbit to justify it. I’m extending this mindset to everything. Some options have specific mechanics that don’t work outside of the setting they take place in (such as Rokugan shadowlands stuff or Forgotten Realms’ spellfire channelers), so they may not be relevant unless your group’s world has something similar, but for everything else, I’m calling it fair game.
Some degree of cheese is allowed.
I’m assuming a permissive, but reasonable DM when it comes to RAW exploits. Theoretical optimization tricks are absolutely not going to be encouraged here, but things like alternative class feature chaining (which have a very strong RAW argument for being valid), early entry into prestige classes, and so on are going to be mentioned. For some stuff, they’ll be cordoned off into their own little section with a guide, and for others I will generally add a note about existing RAW ambiguities or citeable-but-ignored RAI, but like with the stuff above… it’s 2023 and the reason I still play 3.5 is because it has a truly massive library of options, many of which interact in unexpected and interesting ways. When I want to play a more coherent, stable game I will play 4e, Lancer, Pathfinder 2e, 5e, or any number of non-D&D-based tabletop games like Anima Prime or Olaf Hits the Dragon with His Sword. But this guide is for 3.5. I’m a weirdo cheesemonger, and you’re going to find cheese, within limits, in this handbook.
You have some understanding of how 3.5 plays in practice.
While this guide will hopefully be useful even for beginners, there’s a degree of expectation in my ratings that you have a general foundation with regards to the game itself. Things like “casters tend to scale better than noncasters because of having way more options and often better options,” “Weapon Focus is a bad feat on its own because a feat slot for only a +1 isn’t worthwhile,” and “multiclassing and prestige classes are a normal part of the game, not a cheating cheese thing” are assumptions I’ve made without including a formal proof of them in the guide itself, and many of the ratings will assume certain things about how the game is played that may not be obvious if you’re brand-new to the game. If you have questions, feel free to ask them, though the answer may end up being a link to some essay or other that a person wrote before me. The game is 23 years old and so is the community’s understanding of it. There’s a lot of ground to cover!
You don’t have an adversarial relationship with your DM.
Not every option requires DM adjudication, but some do, particularly things like unupdated 3.0 content occasionally. In addition, the ranger has abilities like tracking that can affect the flow of the campaign, and favored enemy, which relies on the DM to make things useful (though optimizing the ranger is generally about mitigating the need for the DM to give you specific enemies to fight as much as possible). It’s not as much ‘whoops, I need to work with the DM now’ as a lot of full caster options, but it’s still there, and still notable. If your DM is the type of person to, once you have a favored enemy build, never have you face those enemies again, you probably shouldn’t be playing a ranger in their game (but also should probably be having a talk with them about expectations at the tabletop).
Rangers don’t have to be racist.
This may seem like an oddly random and specific thing to put into a preface for a game mechanics handbook, but it’s important to me so I’m going to add it anyway. I’ve never liked the “rangers are The Racism Class” jokes. There’s nothing in the class itself that ever even implies that—the class’s gimmick is knowing your enemy and gaining bonuses from that. No one calls the archivist a racism-based class because they can use Dark Knowledge to get bonuses based on creature types. No one says Knowledge Devotion is racist. And yet, people get weird about rangers. Even the humanoid subtype favored enemies aren’t racism-based, but “hey I have a handle on the general skills and practices of a specific culture of people when it pertains to combat,” and there’s a lot of reasons a character might be like that other than racism (and really, racism tends to make a person not understand the culture and practices of others, so like… what even). While there are places in the game where writers for splatbooks took the “you really hate them” meme and wrote it into some option or other, I don’t particularly care for the approach being assumed to be the default.
There will be zero jokes about racist rangers in this guide, and if you come into a thread for this guide commenting with them or assuming that rangers somehow must be racist against their favored enemies, I’m going to sigh and move on and ignore it but will internally be fairly cross about it. That’s all I’m going to say about this topic.
For ratings within the handbook, I'll be using a fairly standard rate-by-color setup, but in order to accommodate colorblind readers I'll also be using a letter scale when rating options, as shown here:
Gold (S): Near-mandatory or jaw-droppingly good.
Green (A): Very good, or at least worth serious consideration
Blue (B): Good, though probably not excellent
Black (C): Middle-of-the-road, but not bad.
Purple (D): Mediocre or incredibly niche.
Red (F): Terrible or otherwise actively not recommended.
And as for book abbreviations, refer to the following list for them. This is longer than the usual handbook's list due to me seeking more obscure sources, and I've also in some cases used the colloquial abbreviations preferred by the 3.5 fandom over Wizards' official ones (really, who uses "SC" to refer to the Sunless Citadel?).
A&EG—Arms and Equipment Guide
BFK—Barrow of the Forgotten King
BoBS—Bastion of Broken Souls
BC—Book of Challenges
BoED—Book of Exalted Deeds
BoVD—Book of Vile Darkness
CoR—Champions of Ruin
CoV—Champions of Valor
CiP—City of Peril
CoS—City of Splendors: Waterdeep
CoStrom—City of Stormreach
CSQ—City of the Spider Queen
City—Cityscape
CAdv—Complete Adventurer
CArc—Complete Arcane
CC—Complete Champion
CDiv—Complete Divine
CMag—Complete Mage
CPsi—Complete Psionic
CSco—Complete Scoundrel
CWar—Complete Warrior
Co—Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
DG—D&D Gazetteer
DH—Deep Horizon
DotF—Defenders of the Faith
DD—Deities and Demigods
D2—Diablo II: Diablerie
Drac—Draconomicon
DrCom—Dragon Compendium
Dr#—Dragon Magazine
DM—Dragon Magic
DCS—Dragonlance Campaign Setting
Dra—Dragonmarked
DoF—Dragons of Faerûn
DotU—Drow of the Underdark
Du#—Dungeon Magazine
DMG2—Dungeon Master's Guide II
DMG—Dungeon Master's Guide v.3.5
Du—Dungeonscape
ECS—Eberron Campaign Setting
EE—Elder Evils
EA—Enemies and Allies
ELH—Epic Level Handbook
EoE—Exemplars of Evil
XPH—Expanded Psionics Handbook
Rav—Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
EDP—Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
ERG—Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk
EU—Expedition to Undermountain
EH—Explorer's Handbook
ELQ—Eyes of the Lich Queen
F&P—Faiths & Pantheons
FoE—Faiths of Eberron
FLFD—Fantastic Locations: Fane of the Drow
FLFR—Fantastic Locations: Fields of Ruin
FLHP—Fantastic Locations: Hellspike Prison
FF—Fiend Folio
FC1—Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
FC2—Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells
FN—Five Nations
FRCS—Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
FY—Fortress of the Yuan-Ti
Frost—Frostburn
Gh—Ghostwalk
GHR—Grand History of the Realms
GC—Grasp of the Emerald Claw
HN—Heart of Nightfang Spire
HBG—Hero Builder's Guidebook
HoB—Heroes of Battle
HoH—Heroes of Horror
LM—Libris Mortis: The Book of the Dead
LG—Living Greyhawk Gazetteer
LGJ#—Living Greyhawk Journal
LF—Lord of the Iron Fortress
LD—Lords of Darkness
LoM—Lords of Madness
LEoF—Lost Empires of Faerûn
MIC—Magic Item Compendium
MoE—Magic of Eberron
MoF—Magic of Faerûn
MoI—Magic of Incarnum
MotP—Manual of the Planes
MotW—Masters of the Wild
MH—Miniatures Handbook
MM2—Monster Manual II
MM3—Monster Manual III
MM4—Monster Manual IV
MM5—Monster Manual V
MM—Monster Manual v.3.5
Mon—Monsters of Faerûn
Mys—Mysteries of the Moonsea
OA—Oriental Adventures
PlH—Planar Handbook
PGtE—Player’s Guide to Eberron
PGtF—Player’s Guide to Faerûn
PHB2—Player’s Handbook II
PHB—Player’s Handbook v.3.5
PoF—Power of Faerûn
RoD—Races of Destiny
RoE—Races of Eberron
RoF—Races of Faerûn
RoS—Races of Stone
RotD—Races of the Dragon
RotW—Races of the Wild
RHoD—Red Hand of Doom
RT—Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Sand—Sandstorm
SS—Savage Species
SoS—Secrets of Sarlona
SoX—Secrets of Xen’drik
SK—Serpent Kingdoms
SSL—Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land
SL—Shadows of the Last War
Sh—Sharn: City of Towers
ShS—Shining South
SM—Silver Marches
S&S—Song and Silence
SG—Sons of Gruumsh
SC—Spell Compendium
Storm—Stormwrack
SBG—Stronghold Builder's Guidebook
S&F—Sword and Fist
Fo—The Forge of Fury
FW—The Forge of War
ShG—The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde
SiS—The Sinister Spire
SD—The Speaker in Dreams
StS—The Standing Stone
Sun—The Sunless Citadel
T&B—Tome and Blood
ToB—Tome of Battle
ToM—Tome of Magic
Una—Unapproachable East
Und—Underdark
UA—Unearthed Arcana
VGD—Voyage of the Golden Dragon
WB—Whispers of the Vampire's Blade
Before moving to the rest, I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks to my co-author Taveena and to my gaming group, who assisted me greatly in the process of making this guide. I also want to thank LibraryOgre for his patience with me PMing him a number of times to workshop what the best way of posting this monster of a document would be, as well as NekoIncardine for setting up hosting for the site.
Anyway, let’s get on with the handbook! :smallbiggrin:
Table of Contents
This guide is big. There are eight chapters and three appendixes, described and linked below. And here is a link to the very start (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/) (which is mostly just this post, but a website version).
Chapter I: The Base Class (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c1-top)
In this chapter I go over the core ranger (middling as it is), as well as the addressing how weird the RAW on favored enemy advancements are. I also recommend various possible houserules for if you don't want to handle favored enemy advancements the janky RAW way.
Chapter II: Alternative Class Features (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c2-top)
This chapter includes a full list of favored enemy options (including those from ACFs), as well as ratings for every alternate and variant ranger feature in the game. There is also a section about ACF Chaining, both going over how it might work and the rules interpretations around it, and going over what ranger can get out of it.
Chapter III: Building Your Ranger (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c3-top)
This chapter is a long one. It includes a look at ability score priorities, ratings for races (includes long-form descriptive ratings for the common races and particularly good ones, as well as a table of every race in the game with ratings for rangers), an expansive feats section going over different options and paths you can take on a ranger, and sections for both multiclassing and prestige classing out of ranger.
Chapter IV: Prelude to Fiddliness (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c4-top)
This chapter has an abridged summary of the following three chapters, which run extremely long due to their wide scopes.
Chapter V: Companions (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c5-top)
This chapter goes over rules and ratings for animal companions, familiars, and special mounts. It also includes sections on customizing your companion creatures with feats and variants, and a complete table of all animal companion options in D&D 3.5.
Chapter VI: Spellcasting (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c6-top)
This chapter includes a list of every ranger spell in the game, descriptive summaries for the actually-notable ranger spells, an in-depth look at Sword of the Arcane Order, and a large list of wizard spell highlights for rangers taking that feat.
Chapter VII: Gearing Your Ranger (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c7-top)
This chapter takes a deep dive approach to equipment, going over weapons, armor, and magic items in sequence. It kinda got away from me, honestly; this chapter is big, representing a solid third of the entire handbook, and should hopefully cover item highlights for basically any ranger build you can think of. It also has a section talking about consumables and trying to assist in addressing common problems people have with them.
Chapter VIII: Optional Subsystems (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c8-top)
This chapter takes a look at several different optional subsystems scattered around the game, including bonded magic items, teamwork benefits, retraining, and affiliation benefits.
Appendix 1: Example Builds (https://hexdrake.support/example_builds/)
Taking a more expansive approach than most handbooks, this appendix opens with seven full "starting package" 1-to-20 builds, including item loadouts and sections for build variations and short guides for playing them. These are meant to be able to be picked up and used for games at any level, simply taking the builds and putting them down onto your sheet. This appendix also has a more standard list of less fleshed-out build ideas afterwards.
Appendix 2: Assorted Tables (https://hexdrake.support/assorted_tables/)
This handbook includes several really big tables, and thus I've collected them and placed them in a single appendix for easier referencing. Includes the full 3.5 races list, the full 3.5 animal companions list, the full ranger spell list, the lists of wizard spell highlights I included in this guide, and the full 3.5 touchstone sites list.
Appendix 3: Critical Maths (https://hexdrake.support/critical_maths/)
In the equipment chapter, this handbook makes some potentially-controversial claims about critical hits, the math behind them, and how they should be approached in building. This appendix includes a deeper look at the reasoning and math behind these statements.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are things that people have asked me a lot as I went through this guide, or I expect to be asked about it and want to get out of the way.
Q: Should I read this handbook if I don’t intend to play a ranger?
A: Honestly, maybe. This is a comprehensive ranger handbook, but the comprehensiveness also led to a lot of writing that’s genuinely useful for martial builds in general. The feats section talks about stuff that could be considered class-agnostic; the spells section would be a good read for people playing wizard-list characters in general. The companion creatures chapter is useful for druids and anyone with familiars, and so on. So yeah, give it a read if you want to, it might broaden your horizons.
Q: What sections of this handbook can I get away with skimming, and what sections should I read comprehensively?
A: You can get away with skimming Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and the appendices. The skimmable sections represent the vast majority of the guide. If you’re intending to play a ranger though I do recommend reading the first two chapters (base class, favored enemy stuff, and the ACFs list) and chapter 4 (summation of companions/magic/gear) all the way through to get an appreciation of what the class does. For the rest, you can and almost certainly should skim rather than read fully.
Q: Why did you make this guide?
A: On February 15, 2016 at 11:05pm, I posted an answer on rpg.stackexchange about making “a ranger close to tier 3,” (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/75735/10963") in which I made several technical inaccuracies about what ranger options could be combined together. However, actually going back and fixing it would necessitate rewriting the entire answer since my core premise (solitary hunting + mystic ranger) was flawed in the first place, and also by that point I had also realized that mystic ranger was far too strong to recommend. As silly as it might sound, this haunts me; saying “it keeps me up at night” would not be an exaggeration. I have since updated the post, but you can find the old version here (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/revisions/75735/5) in all its inglory.
Then, a couple months back, a friend pointed out the existence of the Uthgardt Barbarian regional ranger options and in particular the favored enemy (evil creatures) option listed in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I’d been tempted many times over the years to make a proper handbook for the ranger (since no existing guide matches my thoughts on it or comprehensively approached the class), and this new information proved to be the impetus I needed to actually sit down and do it.
Q: What possessed you to be as comprehensive as you were?
A: An archon of some kind, though they prefer to call it “channeling.” Probably a word archon. A combination of spite, pride, and a complete lack of self-respect. I really like the ranger class, I really like Dragon Magazine content, and I really like digging in books for obscure options. These three things happen to be things that the 3.5 community as a whole tends to be iffy on, so I wanted to write a truly comprehensive guide to show people what I’d found.
Q: Holy crap, how long is this thing?
A: Getting an exact wordcount is tough because of it being split across several Google Docs and spreadsheets (and then converted into a webpage), but my best estimate is that it's roughly 350k words, give or take a few thousand.
Q: Are you okay?
A: I think the length of this guide speaks for itself.
Q: Why are you still putting this much effort into 3.5 in 2023?
A: Because I still play 3.5.
Q: What should I do if my DM makes sure my favored enemies don’t show up often?
A: Talk to your DM and/or not play a ranger. It’s kinda like playing a wizard with a DM who likes targeting spellbooks. This is not a thing you can solve with in-game choices, it’s a play expectations issue.
Q: What should I do if my DM doesn’t allow Dragon Magazine content?
A: Cry.
Q: How long did it take to write this?
A: According to the history of my main draft document, I wrote, researched, and edited on and off for 113 days (a little under four months). Most of my writing took place at odd hours of the day. My chronic illness often wakes me up in the middle of the night and keeps me from going back to sleep, giving me time with nothing else to do but read, write, and wait for the pain to stop.
Q: Why’d you post this as a web page instead of as a Google doc?
A: Over the years I’ve seen a lot of D&D forums die, and I admire the effort the D&D 3.5 and 4e communities have put into keeping the knowledge stored on them alive. Moving threads from one forum to another results in the handbooks and threads remaining findable in search engines, browsable on any hardware, and easily-archivable in Wayback Machine. In contrast, handbooks posted in Google docs are locked to a specific format and hosting, and if the original post for them goes down they basically vanish from the internet unless someone has copied it to their own drive, then gone out of their way to post it (which won’t show up in imprecise searches, and runs into more tricky issues around ownership of the document in my experience than archived threads do).
Plus, Google docs tend to start breaking down at the length needed for a guide like this, and having multiple Google docs linked to each other is something I consider inelegant. I considered making it a PDF, and for months was planning on making it a forum thread on GitP, but in the end after considering the amount of formatting effort and janky post handling I’d need for that (it would be a guide some 40 posts long, spread across multiple forum thread pages, and taking hours and hours to post), I just decided on a website. This is the first nontrivial web page I’ve ever made, so hopefully it does the job!
Q: Why didn’t you make a full list of available wild shape forms for rangers?
A: One, I feel like that ground has already been very well-tread by various druid and master of many forms guides. By using the Master of Many Forms Bible (https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-master-of-many-forms-bible-official-wild-shape-rules-may-2006-harzerkatze.471903) you can get a pretty coherent view of what’s good for wild shape. Two, in the absence of master of many forms (or primeval, which has a super limited form list), wild shape ranger is actually a downgrade on ranger when all options are in play; the Small and Medium forms available, even with Aberration Wild Shape, are just not going to be as good for most builds than your own stats and baseline form due to the heavy taxes on item use and accessing wild shape in the first place. It’s fine? But since this handbook is more about the rest of ranger (which is chronically underloved), I felt like a wild shape chapter wasn’t worth writing when other people have already made multiple excellent wild shape handbooks.
Q: What's the deal with Soveliss? Why is he in so many of the banner images?
A: I just think he's funny. He looks like a mook. All the 3e iconics have a very “low-level adventurer” vibe to them that I absolutely adore, but Soveliss in particular is one of my favorites due to just... looking like, I dunno, an early tutorial boss from a Fire Emblem game or something. 10/10 iconic design.
Ranger: The Cooler Paladin
A comprehensive handbook for D&D 3.5's most redheaded stepchild.
For good reason, the ranger is a bit of an outcast in D&D. It’s a deeply weird class split between many concepts flavorwise and mechanically, full of hyperspecific class features that require specific campaigns to be good. It’s okay enough in core games, but at first glance, the ranger might seem to be just a worse version of one’s martial or caster of choice, especially in more optimized tables. It has a solid chassis that makes it okay in core games (full BAB and 6+Int skills is better than a fighter 20, right?), but even then you find yourself torn between a bunch of different niches and not particularly good at any of them.
Needless to say, as a lover of all things mechanically and thematically janky, it’s my favorite class in the game, and one I’ve been somewhat fixated on for decades now. I personally think the ranger is quite strong as a class. I’d even go as far as calling it “the platonic ideal of tier 3,” but because most of the ranger’s good options range from somewhat to excruciatingly obscure, most people kinda sleep on it… and they’re right to do so, honestly! The amount of book diving I’ve done over the years is far more than a person should have to, to make a class good. But hey! That’s what guides are for.
With all that said, I’d like to list some of the base assumptions (and their reasoning) I’m running on for the purposes of this guide, because they may be different from yours, and I’d like us to be on the same page.
All sources are open.
Look, it’s 2023. Third edition D&D came out in the year 2000. Version 3.5 came out in 2003. If you’re still playing 3.5 in 2023 you’re probably the sort of player playing in the sort of group that’s willing to let you go book diving for options. And if you’re not... well, I’m sorry, a lot of this guide is not for you. And that’s okay! You’re valid, even if I don’t agree with your approach. But I am probably going to be unable to help you much.
Anyway, to be more explicit about what this means: I am considering all “official D&D content” sources to be valid. This includes Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine. This includes Diablo II: Diablerie (https://www.diablowiki.net/Diablo_II:_Diablerie). It includes options listed in the sidebars and appendices of official adventure modules. It includes the Dragonlance Campaign Setting and Oriental Adventures, though not their third-party expansions. It does not include Kingdoms of Kalamarand similar books, because they’re third-party-produced licensed material without a “this is 100% official D&D content” sticker like Dragon and Dungeon do. Is that arbitrary and maybe a little petty? Yes, but it’s what I’m going with. Likewise, Pathfinder content is not being considered, for the same reason.
In addition, I'm considering setting splatbook options to be setting-agnostic. Some books, like Oriental Adventures, explicitly made their setting-specific options setting agnostic (with notes in the prestige class and feat sections directing you to outright ignore the clan/race/ancestry requirements if not playing in Rokugan, and even encouraging doing so in Rokugan), while others didn’t think to do that. Similarly, Player’s Guide to Faerûn directs you and your DM to ignore regional requirements for Faerûnian options if you don’t want to use them, and only asks that you come up with some kind of interesting backstory tidbit to justify it. I’m extending this mindset to everything. Some options have specific mechanics that don’t work outside of the setting they take place in (such as Rokugan shadowlands stuff or Forgotten Realms’ spellfire channelers), so they may not be relevant unless your group’s world has something similar, but for everything else, I’m calling it fair game.
Some degree of cheese is allowed.
I’m assuming a permissive, but reasonable DM when it comes to RAW exploits. Theoretical optimization tricks are absolutely not going to be encouraged here, but things like alternative class feature chaining (which have a very strong RAW argument for being valid), early entry into prestige classes, and so on are going to be mentioned. For some stuff, they’ll be cordoned off into their own little section with a guide, and for others I will generally add a note about existing RAW ambiguities or citeable-but-ignored RAI, but like with the stuff above… it’s 2023 and the reason I still play 3.5 is because it has a truly massive library of options, many of which interact in unexpected and interesting ways. When I want to play a more coherent, stable game I will play 4e, Lancer, Pathfinder 2e, 5e, or any number of non-D&D-based tabletop games like Anima Prime or Olaf Hits the Dragon with His Sword. But this guide is for 3.5. I’m a weirdo cheesemonger, and you’re going to find cheese, within limits, in this handbook.
You have some understanding of how 3.5 plays in practice.
While this guide will hopefully be useful even for beginners, there’s a degree of expectation in my ratings that you have a general foundation with regards to the game itself. Things like “casters tend to scale better than noncasters because of having way more options and often better options,” “Weapon Focus is a bad feat on its own because a feat slot for only a +1 isn’t worthwhile,” and “multiclassing and prestige classes are a normal part of the game, not a cheating cheese thing” are assumptions I’ve made without including a formal proof of them in the guide itself, and many of the ratings will assume certain things about how the game is played that may not be obvious if you’re brand-new to the game. If you have questions, feel free to ask them, though the answer may end up being a link to some essay or other that a person wrote before me. The game is 23 years old and so is the community’s understanding of it. There’s a lot of ground to cover!
You don’t have an adversarial relationship with your DM.
Not every option requires DM adjudication, but some do, particularly things like unupdated 3.0 content occasionally. In addition, the ranger has abilities like tracking that can affect the flow of the campaign, and favored enemy, which relies on the DM to make things useful (though optimizing the ranger is generally about mitigating the need for the DM to give you specific enemies to fight as much as possible). It’s not as much ‘whoops, I need to work with the DM now’ as a lot of full caster options, but it’s still there, and still notable. If your DM is the type of person to, once you have a favored enemy build, never have you face those enemies again, you probably shouldn’t be playing a ranger in their game (but also should probably be having a talk with them about expectations at the tabletop).
Rangers don’t have to be racist.
This may seem like an oddly random and specific thing to put into a preface for a game mechanics handbook, but it’s important to me so I’m going to add it anyway. I’ve never liked the “rangers are The Racism Class” jokes. There’s nothing in the class itself that ever even implies that—the class’s gimmick is knowing your enemy and gaining bonuses from that. No one calls the archivist a racism-based class because they can use Dark Knowledge to get bonuses based on creature types. No one says Knowledge Devotion is racist. And yet, people get weird about rangers. Even the humanoid subtype favored enemies aren’t racism-based, but “hey I have a handle on the general skills and practices of a specific culture of people when it pertains to combat,” and there’s a lot of reasons a character might be like that other than racism (and really, racism tends to make a person not understand the culture and practices of others, so like… what even). While there are places in the game where writers for splatbooks took the “you really hate them” meme and wrote it into some option or other, I don’t particularly care for the approach being assumed to be the default.
There will be zero jokes about racist rangers in this guide, and if you come into a thread for this guide commenting with them or assuming that rangers somehow must be racist against their favored enemies, I’m going to sigh and move on and ignore it but will internally be fairly cross about it. That’s all I’m going to say about this topic.
For ratings within the handbook, I'll be using a fairly standard rate-by-color setup, but in order to accommodate colorblind readers I'll also be using a letter scale when rating options, as shown here:
Gold (S): Near-mandatory or jaw-droppingly good.
Green (A): Very good, or at least worth serious consideration
Blue (B): Good, though probably not excellent
Black (C): Middle-of-the-road, but not bad.
Purple (D): Mediocre or incredibly niche.
Red (F): Terrible or otherwise actively not recommended.
And as for book abbreviations, refer to the following list for them. This is longer than the usual handbook's list due to me seeking more obscure sources, and I've also in some cases used the colloquial abbreviations preferred by the 3.5 fandom over Wizards' official ones (really, who uses "SC" to refer to the Sunless Citadel?).
A&EG—Arms and Equipment Guide
BFK—Barrow of the Forgotten King
BoBS—Bastion of Broken Souls
BC—Book of Challenges
BoED—Book of Exalted Deeds
BoVD—Book of Vile Darkness
CoR—Champions of Ruin
CoV—Champions of Valor
CiP—City of Peril
CoS—City of Splendors: Waterdeep
CoStrom—City of Stormreach
CSQ—City of the Spider Queen
City—Cityscape
CAdv—Complete Adventurer
CArc—Complete Arcane
CC—Complete Champion
CDiv—Complete Divine
CMag—Complete Mage
CPsi—Complete Psionic
CSco—Complete Scoundrel
CWar—Complete Warrior
Co—Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
DG—D&D Gazetteer
DH—Deep Horizon
DotF—Defenders of the Faith
DD—Deities and Demigods
D2—Diablo II: Diablerie
Drac—Draconomicon
DrCom—Dragon Compendium
Dr#—Dragon Magazine
DM—Dragon Magic
DCS—Dragonlance Campaign Setting
Dra—Dragonmarked
DoF—Dragons of Faerûn
DotU—Drow of the Underdark
Du#—Dungeon Magazine
DMG2—Dungeon Master's Guide II
DMG—Dungeon Master's Guide v.3.5
Du—Dungeonscape
ECS—Eberron Campaign Setting
EE—Elder Evils
EA—Enemies and Allies
ELH—Epic Level Handbook
EoE—Exemplars of Evil
XPH—Expanded Psionics Handbook
Rav—Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
EDP—Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
ERG—Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk
EU—Expedition to Undermountain
EH—Explorer's Handbook
ELQ—Eyes of the Lich Queen
F&P—Faiths & Pantheons
FoE—Faiths of Eberron
FLFD—Fantastic Locations: Fane of the Drow
FLFR—Fantastic Locations: Fields of Ruin
FLHP—Fantastic Locations: Hellspike Prison
FF—Fiend Folio
FC1—Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
FC2—Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells
FN—Five Nations
FRCS—Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
FY—Fortress of the Yuan-Ti
Frost—Frostburn
Gh—Ghostwalk
GHR—Grand History of the Realms
GC—Grasp of the Emerald Claw
HN—Heart of Nightfang Spire
HBG—Hero Builder's Guidebook
HoB—Heroes of Battle
HoH—Heroes of Horror
LM—Libris Mortis: The Book of the Dead
LG—Living Greyhawk Gazetteer
LGJ#—Living Greyhawk Journal
LF—Lord of the Iron Fortress
LD—Lords of Darkness
LoM—Lords of Madness
LEoF—Lost Empires of Faerûn
MIC—Magic Item Compendium
MoE—Magic of Eberron
MoF—Magic of Faerûn
MoI—Magic of Incarnum
MotP—Manual of the Planes
MotW—Masters of the Wild
MH—Miniatures Handbook
MM2—Monster Manual II
MM3—Monster Manual III
MM4—Monster Manual IV
MM5—Monster Manual V
MM—Monster Manual v.3.5
Mon—Monsters of Faerûn
Mys—Mysteries of the Moonsea
OA—Oriental Adventures
PlH—Planar Handbook
PGtE—Player’s Guide to Eberron
PGtF—Player’s Guide to Faerûn
PHB2—Player’s Handbook II
PHB—Player’s Handbook v.3.5
PoF—Power of Faerûn
RoD—Races of Destiny
RoE—Races of Eberron
RoF—Races of Faerûn
RoS—Races of Stone
RotD—Races of the Dragon
RotW—Races of the Wild
RHoD—Red Hand of Doom
RT—Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Sand—Sandstorm
SS—Savage Species
SoS—Secrets of Sarlona
SoX—Secrets of Xen’drik
SK—Serpent Kingdoms
SSL—Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land
SL—Shadows of the Last War
Sh—Sharn: City of Towers
ShS—Shining South
SM—Silver Marches
S&S—Song and Silence
SG—Sons of Gruumsh
SC—Spell Compendium
Storm—Stormwrack
SBG—Stronghold Builder's Guidebook
S&F—Sword and Fist
Fo—The Forge of Fury
FW—The Forge of War
ShG—The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde
SiS—The Sinister Spire
SD—The Speaker in Dreams
StS—The Standing Stone
Sun—The Sunless Citadel
T&B—Tome and Blood
ToB—Tome of Battle
ToM—Tome of Magic
Una—Unapproachable East
Und—Underdark
UA—Unearthed Arcana
VGD—Voyage of the Golden Dragon
WB—Whispers of the Vampire's Blade
Before moving to the rest, I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks to my co-author Taveena and to my gaming group, who assisted me greatly in the process of making this guide. I also want to thank LibraryOgre for his patience with me PMing him a number of times to workshop what the best way of posting this monster of a document would be, as well as NekoIncardine for setting up hosting for the site.
Anyway, let’s get on with the handbook! :smallbiggrin:
Table of Contents
This guide is big. There are eight chapters and three appendixes, described and linked below. And here is a link to the very start (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/) (which is mostly just this post, but a website version).
Chapter I: The Base Class (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c1-top)
In this chapter I go over the core ranger (middling as it is), as well as the addressing how weird the RAW on favored enemy advancements are. I also recommend various possible houserules for if you don't want to handle favored enemy advancements the janky RAW way.
Chapter II: Alternative Class Features (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c2-top)
This chapter includes a full list of favored enemy options (including those from ACFs), as well as ratings for every alternate and variant ranger feature in the game. There is also a section about ACF Chaining, both going over how it might work and the rules interpretations around it, and going over what ranger can get out of it.
Chapter III: Building Your Ranger (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c3-top)
This chapter is a long one. It includes a look at ability score priorities, ratings for races (includes long-form descriptive ratings for the common races and particularly good ones, as well as a table of every race in the game with ratings for rangers), an expansive feats section going over different options and paths you can take on a ranger, and sections for both multiclassing and prestige classing out of ranger.
Chapter IV: Prelude to Fiddliness (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c4-top)
This chapter has an abridged summary of the following three chapters, which run extremely long due to their wide scopes.
Chapter V: Companions (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c5-top)
This chapter goes over rules and ratings for animal companions, familiars, and special mounts. It also includes sections on customizing your companion creatures with feats and variants, and a complete table of all animal companion options in D&D 3.5.
Chapter VI: Spellcasting (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c6-top)
This chapter includes a list of every ranger spell in the game, descriptive summaries for the actually-notable ranger spells, an in-depth look at Sword of the Arcane Order, and a large list of wizard spell highlights for rangers taking that feat.
Chapter VII: Gearing Your Ranger (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c7-top)
This chapter takes a deep dive approach to equipment, going over weapons, armor, and magic items in sequence. It kinda got away from me, honestly; this chapter is big, representing a solid third of the entire handbook, and should hopefully cover item highlights for basically any ranger build you can think of. It also has a section talking about consumables and trying to assist in addressing common problems people have with them.
Chapter VIII: Optional Subsystems (https://hexdrake.support/ranger_handbook/#c8-top)
This chapter takes a look at several different optional subsystems scattered around the game, including bonded magic items, teamwork benefits, retraining, and affiliation benefits.
Appendix 1: Example Builds (https://hexdrake.support/example_builds/)
Taking a more expansive approach than most handbooks, this appendix opens with seven full "starting package" 1-to-20 builds, including item loadouts and sections for build variations and short guides for playing them. These are meant to be able to be picked up and used for games at any level, simply taking the builds and putting them down onto your sheet. This appendix also has a more standard list of less fleshed-out build ideas afterwards.
Appendix 2: Assorted Tables (https://hexdrake.support/assorted_tables/)
This handbook includes several really big tables, and thus I've collected them and placed them in a single appendix for easier referencing. Includes the full 3.5 races list, the full 3.5 animal companions list, the full ranger spell list, the lists of wizard spell highlights I included in this guide, and the full 3.5 touchstone sites list.
Appendix 3: Critical Maths (https://hexdrake.support/critical_maths/)
In the equipment chapter, this handbook makes some potentially-controversial claims about critical hits, the math behind them, and how they should be approached in building. This appendix includes a deeper look at the reasoning and math behind these statements.
Frequently Asked Questions
These are things that people have asked me a lot as I went through this guide, or I expect to be asked about it and want to get out of the way.
Q: Should I read this handbook if I don’t intend to play a ranger?
A: Honestly, maybe. This is a comprehensive ranger handbook, but the comprehensiveness also led to a lot of writing that’s genuinely useful for martial builds in general. The feats section talks about stuff that could be considered class-agnostic; the spells section would be a good read for people playing wizard-list characters in general. The companion creatures chapter is useful for druids and anyone with familiars, and so on. So yeah, give it a read if you want to, it might broaden your horizons.
Q: What sections of this handbook can I get away with skimming, and what sections should I read comprehensively?
A: You can get away with skimming Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and the appendices. The skimmable sections represent the vast majority of the guide. If you’re intending to play a ranger though I do recommend reading the first two chapters (base class, favored enemy stuff, and the ACFs list) and chapter 4 (summation of companions/magic/gear) all the way through to get an appreciation of what the class does. For the rest, you can and almost certainly should skim rather than read fully.
Q: Why did you make this guide?
A: On February 15, 2016 at 11:05pm, I posted an answer on rpg.stackexchange about making “a ranger close to tier 3,” (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/75735/10963") in which I made several technical inaccuracies about what ranger options could be combined together. However, actually going back and fixing it would necessitate rewriting the entire answer since my core premise (solitary hunting + mystic ranger) was flawed in the first place, and also by that point I had also realized that mystic ranger was far too strong to recommend. As silly as it might sound, this haunts me; saying “it keeps me up at night” would not be an exaggeration. I have since updated the post, but you can find the old version here (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/revisions/75735/5) in all its inglory.
Then, a couple months back, a friend pointed out the existence of the Uthgardt Barbarian regional ranger options and in particular the favored enemy (evil creatures) option listed in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I’d been tempted many times over the years to make a proper handbook for the ranger (since no existing guide matches my thoughts on it or comprehensively approached the class), and this new information proved to be the impetus I needed to actually sit down and do it.
Q: What possessed you to be as comprehensive as you were?
A: An archon of some kind, though they prefer to call it “channeling.” Probably a word archon. A combination of spite, pride, and a complete lack of self-respect. I really like the ranger class, I really like Dragon Magazine content, and I really like digging in books for obscure options. These three things happen to be things that the 3.5 community as a whole tends to be iffy on, so I wanted to write a truly comprehensive guide to show people what I’d found.
Q: Holy crap, how long is this thing?
A: Getting an exact wordcount is tough because of it being split across several Google Docs and spreadsheets (and then converted into a webpage), but my best estimate is that it's roughly 350k words, give or take a few thousand.
Q: Are you okay?
A: I think the length of this guide speaks for itself.
Q: Why are you still putting this much effort into 3.5 in 2023?
A: Because I still play 3.5.
Q: What should I do if my DM makes sure my favored enemies don’t show up often?
A: Talk to your DM and/or not play a ranger. It’s kinda like playing a wizard with a DM who likes targeting spellbooks. This is not a thing you can solve with in-game choices, it’s a play expectations issue.
Q: What should I do if my DM doesn’t allow Dragon Magazine content?
A: Cry.
Q: How long did it take to write this?
A: According to the history of my main draft document, I wrote, researched, and edited on and off for 113 days (a little under four months). Most of my writing took place at odd hours of the day. My chronic illness often wakes me up in the middle of the night and keeps me from going back to sleep, giving me time with nothing else to do but read, write, and wait for the pain to stop.
Q: Why’d you post this as a web page instead of as a Google doc?
A: Over the years I’ve seen a lot of D&D forums die, and I admire the effort the D&D 3.5 and 4e communities have put into keeping the knowledge stored on them alive. Moving threads from one forum to another results in the handbooks and threads remaining findable in search engines, browsable on any hardware, and easily-archivable in Wayback Machine. In contrast, handbooks posted in Google docs are locked to a specific format and hosting, and if the original post for them goes down they basically vanish from the internet unless someone has copied it to their own drive, then gone out of their way to post it (which won’t show up in imprecise searches, and runs into more tricky issues around ownership of the document in my experience than archived threads do).
Plus, Google docs tend to start breaking down at the length needed for a guide like this, and having multiple Google docs linked to each other is something I consider inelegant. I considered making it a PDF, and for months was planning on making it a forum thread on GitP, but in the end after considering the amount of formatting effort and janky post handling I’d need for that (it would be a guide some 40 posts long, spread across multiple forum thread pages, and taking hours and hours to post), I just decided on a website. This is the first nontrivial web page I’ve ever made, so hopefully it does the job!
Q: Why didn’t you make a full list of available wild shape forms for rangers?
A: One, I feel like that ground has already been very well-tread by various druid and master of many forms guides. By using the Master of Many Forms Bible (https://www.enworld.org/threads/updated-master-of-many-forms-bible-official-wild-shape-rules-may-2006-harzerkatze.471903) you can get a pretty coherent view of what’s good for wild shape. Two, in the absence of master of many forms (or primeval, which has a super limited form list), wild shape ranger is actually a downgrade on ranger when all options are in play; the Small and Medium forms available, even with Aberration Wild Shape, are just not going to be as good for most builds than your own stats and baseline form due to the heavy taxes on item use and accessing wild shape in the first place. It’s fine? But since this handbook is more about the rest of ranger (which is chronically underloved), I felt like a wild shape chapter wasn’t worth writing when other people have already made multiple excellent wild shape handbooks.
Q: What's the deal with Soveliss? Why is he in so many of the banner images?
A: I just think he's funny. He looks like a mook. All the 3e iconics have a very “low-level adventurer” vibe to them that I absolutely adore, but Soveliss in particular is one of my favorites due to just... looking like, I dunno, an early tutorial boss from a Fire Emblem game or something. 10/10 iconic design.