3.5ed ranger with crappy ability stats..what to do with it?

[dehro]

and I mean fairly crappy stats.. not bad enough to allow for rerolls, but not much better either.
I'm currently at a low level, so no hurries..but I wonder what would be the best way to progress, so as not to fall too much behind the rest of the party.

some stats: halfelven true neutral character
str 13
dex 14
con 12
int 11
wis 12
cha 9

I've chosen to go 2handed instead of going for archery.
I'm fairly well armed, and have the following feats so far: weapon finesse, weapon focus longsword, track, endurance, 2weapon fighting, wild empathy.

I'm thinking of going on untill the 11th level to get all the nifty pro's from being a ranger and then multiclassing or taking on a prestige class (or is that the same thing?)
is this good thinking or should I go for something else?
and even so..once I'm 11th level (like in a couple of years, most likely :smallbiggrin:)..what class should I take on then?
I'm of course trying to find ways to buff my character and/or make him the ultimate blade wealding machine...but I do not know what prestige classes are out there, wether I should take one on or not and so on...
any suggestions?

[Illiterate Scribe]

I'd get out of ranger, and see if you can multiclass out to warblade as soon as you can. It's much less attribute dependent, and you'll have more fun doing the twin roles - your ranger's scout-y stuff, and your ToBer's fight-y stuff. The whole thing's available (well, nearly) on the WotC site, too.

[Human Paragon 3]

Wild Shape ranger variant from the unearted aracana will help mitigate your pitiful stats. It can be found on d20srd.org if you go to the variant rules section.

[Telonius]

That's ... yikes. :smallyuk: That's the equivalent of a 23 point buy. Hoo.

Okay, so are you stuck with that particular race, and the arrangement of the stats? As in, can you move the 14 someplace else, or take a race that gives ability adjustments?

My instincts are telling me that this will never make it as a melee class. You're going to be struggling just to get the prerequisites for some of the feats. I normally wouldn't recommend this, but have you considered multiclassing sooner, to Druid? Druid is also wilderness-themed, grants better animal companion abilities, and allows you to cast spells. They're Wisdom-based, though; so see if you can get that 14 moved over to Wisdom. (They're also one of the three most powerful classes in the game).

[Vortling]

What books are available to you? What characters are the rest of your group playing? Are you highly attached to being a ranger?

[DrizztFan24]

Belkar.

He looks like he'd be a bunch of fun to play. Although you would be very ineffective.

[Kurald Galain]

Can you re-order the stats, and pick a race other than half elf, such as anything that gives you a bonus to dexterity?

With your dexterity about equal to your strength, weapon finesse isn't worth it. Weapon focus is pretty much never worth it, so I'd suggest replacing that.

I second the Wild Shape variant. I also suggest prestige classing, although I can't think of anything off-hand.

Just for a weird suggestion, multi-class to Warlock; that class is about as non-attribute-dependent as they get, and even with a one-level dip you could potentially net a decent invocation.

[dehro]

naa...I've gotten at level 4 and start playing around with race, stats or class is not doable...then again I really dig ranger-based characters..

so it's more like "from this point onwards"

as for the rest of the party...one archer-ranger (as in ranger with incredible stats and bonuses at ranged attacks...way better ability rolls than mine)
one very tough warmage/sorcerer..a cleric, a second sorcerer...and me... (there were more close range fighters, but I'm the only one left)
all human or elvish

manuals...uhm...I suppose I've got a few from..well..various sources :smallbiggrin:..and I suppose I can find the ones that I don't have

[Draz74]

naa...I've gotten at level 4 and start playing around with race, stats or class is not doable...then again I really dig ranger-based characters..

so it's more like "from this point onwards"

Hmmm. Then ... you may just be in trouble.


Your stats are low.
Half-Elf is a weak race.
Two-Weapon Fighting is a hard style to use powerfully, especially with low stats.
It sounds like you're playing a campaign that's mostly Core Only.
Ranger is a decent class with splatbooks, but a mediocre, slightly-on-the-weak-side class in Core Only.
Weapon Finesse is a very poor feat when your Dex bonus is only 1 better than your Strength bonus, especially if you are going to be using a non-finessable weapon for half of your attacks.
Weapon Focus is a very poor feat.


With all of that stacked against you, I don't know how much we can actually do to redeem your character (in terms of his mechanical power).

I guess I would agree with the guy that said, "start multiclassing to Druid ASAP." Druids are so powerful that becoming one might actually save your character. Of course, you have to be OK with the idea of being a shapeshifter who turns into a bear or dire weasel or dire bat or dire wolf to fight.

Other than that ... I guess you could multiclass as a Scout, take the Travel Devotion and Swift Hunter feats, so that 1 encounter/day you could unleash a devastating blast of Skirmish damage. Or you could skip the Travel Devotion part if you can get the Lion's Charge spell and some Pearls of Power.

Or if you have Tome of Battle access, you could multiclass as a Warblade like someone else said.

Or take a couple of Fighter levels, then become a Dervish. It would help ... a little.

[SoD]

My recomendation: multiclass to cleric.

Because right now, you don't have a prayer.

[Shishnarfne]

Another point if you're TWF: Weapon Focus usually is better if both of your weapons are the same (usually both light weapons, allowing finesse...), because as originally written, your Weapon Finesse only applied to your off-hand blade... So you've spent your two feats on getting an effective +1 to hit with each hand... There are better ways to work this in the future (or ask your DM to retrain a feat, e.g. Weapon Focus to shortswords, which uses the same feats to get +2 to both hands). However, this still leaves Weapon Finesse as a suspicious choice given that evening out your Str will leave the modifiers the same.



You might consider splashing in a few Rogue levels for even more skill points and a bit of Sneak Attack... this would put you squarely in the skillmonkey (with a focus towards the wilds) bin, where the reduced stats probably wouldn't have nearly as big on an effect...

You might want to look at the Horizon Walker for flavor reasons...

Also, you might have fun multi-classing into Barbarian, with the ability to deal more damage while raging... It should allow you to keep some key Ranger skills with the benefits of increased HD and other abilities (if Complete Champion is permitted, the Spirit Lion Totem Variant granting pounce is probably hard to pass up, or at least I wouldn't be able to bypass it).

I think that Dervish, in the Complete Warrior (IIRC), though it requires feats that you don't have, is probably one of the better melee TWF PrC's out there...

Also one note about the difference between multiclassing and prestige classing: Multiclassing incurs the XP penalty (which won't be a problem for a halfelf unless you want 3 classes), but Prestige Classing requires certain prerequisites... They are not the same, and usually you can multiclass at any time, but you have to wait longer to Prestige.

Edit: if you are the primary melee combatant I suggest asking your DM about retraining some of your feats... and try to enter Dervish as quickly as possible. That should be the best way to boost your melee abilities. Again, if you don't have a party rogue, you may want to consider multiclassing there for skills, and asking someone to stand on the other side of trouble...

...and I just got ninja'd... a lot.

[ShaggyMarco]

Is your DM fudging the rules and allowing Weapon Finesse for Longswords? Better yet, is he fudging the rules and incurring no penalties for using medium wepaons in your off-hand? If so, then you are less screwed than everyone thinks. For your sake, I hope the answer is yes.

Really, you have a handful of options:

1. Multiclass Rogue FAST. Redefine yourself as a skill-focused character that can dish out damage whenever you can get the jump on people and/or flank them. Sneak Dice are pretty much the only thing that makes 2-weapon fighting forth it. As a half-elf multiclass penalties won't kick in, since your highest leveled class is your favored class. You might consider taking a balanced collection of Fighter and Rogue levels in order to get sneak attack dice and feats that will allow you to get into the Dervish PRC. This will give you lots of 2-weapon fighting skills that will be augmented by your Rogue Sneak Dice. Ranger 4/Fighter 4/Rogue 3 might be able to get you what you need for Dervish...I am not sure off of the top of my head and don't have my books handy. At the very least that combo would get you 2d6 on attacks, evasion, and weapon specialization in with whatever weapon you are using (hopefully cheating with dueal finessed longswords).

2. Sign a DNR form with the Cleric. Be stupid heroic and rush into everyfight, swords a blazing. Have better luck with the next character.

[Everyman]

I'm sorry to say this, but there is little chance of you ever becoming "the ultimate blade wielding machine" with your stats. It isn't your fault. Your physical stats are just too low to support that kind of build. However, if you DO want to go melee, I would suggest this...

Druid or Ranger (Wild Shape variant) 5 / Master of Many Forms X / Warshaper X

First see if you can move your Wisdom score. If not, you are still not completely out of luck with this build (you'll just need to spend ability points on Wisdom). You'll be able to Wild shape into any combat form you want, so your physical stats won't matter as much. Also, you'll only get a few spells, so your mental stats won't matter as much either. Really, you're just going to want to boost your Constitution and Wisdom as much as possible.

This is just a suggestion, of course. If you want to stay in the "blade machine" set of warriors, I'd seriously ask your DM if you can reroll.

[Draz74]

Or you could just decide that your animal companion is going to be the effective member of the duo, not you; and optimize this animal companion. Take the Natural Bond feat (http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/feats.pl?Natural_Bond,CAd) from Complete Adventurer, and pick a Fleshraker Dinosaur as your companion. Give it lots of magic items, such as AC boosts and save boosts. Then look for a PrC that improves your animal companion at a better-than-normal rate (is there a PrC called Beastmaster?). Or just take Druid after Level 6 to make your animal companion improve faster, if you can't find an appropriate PrC.

[Keld Denar]

Couple of good suggestions here. The Swift Hunter one being one of the best. Take 3-4 levels of Scout, the Swift Hunter feat at level 6, and you should be well on the road to recovery as much as you can with what you have.

An alternative that was mentioned is Wildshape Ranger, from Unearthed Arcana. If you can switch to nab this, you'll be in a good boat. Take 2 levels of Master of Many Forms at 6 and 7, then 1-4 of Warshaper, then some more MoMF and possibly a level of Natures Warrior for the Serpent Coils ability. While wildshaped, you'r pysical stats will change to those of the form you take. There was a really good guide to wildshaping over on the CharOp forums, I'll nab the link in a couple minutes. Popular forms include various bears, apes, trolls, and dinosaurs. Take Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple at some point, wildshape into something big and huggy like an War Troll, Owlbear or Brown Bear, and rip your oponents to shreds with your bear arms (pun fully intended).

[sonofzeal]

Oh gods... looks like Glimmer's bastard halfbrother.

Story - our DM decided to take some time out of our lvl18 campaign, made a prefab charsheet for a lvl1 character of each PHB class, and handed them out randomly. Mine happened to be a Half-Elven Ranger with 12 Str, 11 Dex, and 10 Wis. Joy. Highest stat was a 14 for Cha. I spent hours staring at that character sheet, trying to make something of it, until it hit me - Handle Animal. Took Skill Focus: Handle Animal, plus max ranks, plus a masterwork tool, then took my second level in Bard. I then proceeded to ace my rolls, and could have had Polar Bears following my lvl2 character around. Had to settle for leopards, but I still pwned.

Yeah, 3rd most broken character I've ever played. =P

[Telonius]

Oh, one other question worth asking ... do those stats include the +1 to any ability score you get at level 4?

[UserClone]

Well, I'd have to say the wild shape variant Ranger5 is the way to go; I'd follow it up with some Warshaper levels 6-10, then maybe Horizon Walker or Scout or something, IDK. Just off the top of my head. Also 2WF is a trap, anyway. I hate to say it, but they made it suck in 3E/3.5e.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Take one level of Samurai from Complete Warrior. :smallconfused: Then come back here for instructions on Hari-Kari. :smalltongue:

[Person_Man]

One of the best classes for PCs with poor ability scores is the Wildshape Ranger variant (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/unearthedCoreClass.html#simple-ranger) from Unearthed Arcana, helpfully located in the official SRD. Wildshape improves your physical stats. At higher levels, you can take Draconic Wildshape (Draconomicon), Frozen Wildshape (Frostburn), or Aberation Wild Shape (Lords of Madness), so that you're not locked in to medium animal forms.

Regardless of what type of Ranger you decide to be, your biggest class features are your spells, animal companion, and Favored Enemy - not bonus feats. These features can be drastically improved with the right feats or PrC dips. But there is no PrC that progresses more then one of these features, leaving the other two severely nerfed after a few levels. So I suggest that you leave Ranger very early (Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Barbarian 1/PrC X/PrC Y) or just stick with it all/most of the way up to ECL 20 (with Sword of the Arcane Order, Favored Enemy Evil, Totem Companion, etc).

Comrade Gorby: Please note, this post merged over from duplicate version of this thread, so may not flow with other responses as expected.

[kme]

I would also suggest you to take rogue levels and then get the craven feat from champions of ruin. Maybe take one level of rogue, then get ranger to 6(for imp. TWF, 2nd favored enemy and level1 spell slot) and from then continuing with rogue or assassin if your DM lets you qualify as neutral. And convince your DM to switch weapon focus to short sword, since you are crappy already.

[Starbuck_II]

and I mean fairly crappy stats.. not bad enough to allow for rerolls, but not much better either.
I'm currently at a low level, so no hurries..but I wonder what would be the best way to progress, so as not to fall too much behind the rest of the party.

some stats: halfelven true neutral character
str 13
dex 14
con 12
int 11
wis 12
cha 9

I've chosen to go 2handed instead of going for archery.
I'm fairly well armed, and have the following feats so far: weapon finesse, weapon focus longsword, track, endurance, 2weapon fighting, wild empathy.

I'm thinking of going on untill the 11th level to get all the nifty pro's from being a ranger and then multiclassing or taking on a prestige class (or is that the same thing?)
is this good thinking or should I go for something else?
and even so..once I'm 11th level (like in a couple of years, most likely :smallbiggrin:)..what class should I take on then?
I'm of course trying to find ways to buff my character and/or make him the ultimate blade wealding machine...but I do not know what prestige classes are out there, wether I should take one on or not and so on...
any suggestions?

Ask if you can retrain the feats out.

Now, I'd suggest 2 handed/TWFing at same time.

You ask am I mad? Well, yes, but that isn't the point.
The point is Greatsword + armor spikes is what you need. Not some lazy piece of blade called long.

That way, when you have to move (and rarely does one stand still and trade blows), you have greatsword damage to make up for not being able to TWf.

Weapon Finesse isa crappy feat. All the other feats cry names at it if Dex is close to strength.

Exchange that with Power Attack. With the Greatsword: you deal extra +2 damage per -1 penalty to hit you accept (up to BAB). Just Charging alone gives +2 hit (sacrifice it for +4 damage +0 when charging and trust me enemy will feel that).

Weapon Focus isn't a bad feat (not a good one either). If keeping it, give iot to Greatsword. He appreciates it.

[Xyk]

Why did you choose half-elf? They are useless...

I'm gonna agree with going wild shape. It doesn't matter how strong you are, a bear is the same strength for everybody.

[Deepblue706]

Well, if you can obtain wild shape, that'll do ya good. If that's not quite an option, you should consider multiclassing to Barbarian. You'll still get skill points, you still get good BAB, plus you'll have Rage which lets you dish out more damage, take more hits, and shrug off a few more spells. As suggested above, also look into Horizon Walker at higher levels - it's a neat class. Ranger/Barbarian/Horizon Walker works pretty well.

If you have access to Complete Warrior, you could get Bear Warrior, which is a class that lets you transform into one of those terrifying creatures. It's pretty sweet. Master of Many Forms is preferable, tho. From there, Warshaper is kinda neat - more buffs when in wildshape form, etc.

[Person_Man]

Why did you choose half-elf? They are useless...

Actually, they're only useless 99% of the time. They're the only race that qualifies for the Sociable Personality feat from Races of Destiny, which allows them to re-roll any Diplomacy or Gather Information check. Very useful for low-mid level Diplomancers, until you get access to Skill Mastery. And in my group, we house rule that half-elves get any 1 Skill of their choice as a class Skill for free. But yes, Half Elf is a very poor choice from a purely crunch perspective.

Here's another option: Go the archery route, and ask your DM to be generous, and/or take Ancestral Relic and Mercantile Background. If you have a +1 Flaming Bow, and fire +1 Frost arrows, and have an 8th level friend cast Greater Magic Weapon on your bow, you now fire +2 Flaming Frost attacks. It's easy for pretty much any build to have respectable archery damage output. And it can even be done with nothing but core rules, as long as you have the gp to support it.

[Avor]

With stats like that, it's all dependent on what the stats are your party members.

If your stats are on about the same as everybody else's, no problem. But if you are in a group where everybody else has 18,17.15.16,11,13, or the like, just kill yourself and start over.

Tie a rope between two tall buildings and see how blance checks your character can make.

It's not being a poor sport, a low stat game is nothing new, and is can be fun. But if you are the one gimp out of a party of heros, things suck.

[dehro]

dunno about heroes, but for sure I'm the underdog in the party

anyhow...thanks for the great ideas and suggestions... I don't see that many advantages in the horizon walker thing, but I'm not an expert...but I'l put all of the suggestions through to the DM and see what he has to say about them.

[JaxGaret]

Actually, they're only useless 99% of the time.

Indeed. Half-Elves make some of the best faces.

Also, in an all-Elf campaign, the Half-Elf suddenly becomes an attractive choice for many builds, the Full Plate wearing melee type being one example. Wood Elves do compare pretty well to Half-Elves there, but you can make a case for the Half-Elf.

[Keld Denar]

Indeed. Half-Elves make some of the best faces.

Also, in an all-Elf campaign, the Half-Elf suddenly becomes an attractive choice for many builds, the Full Plate wearing melee type being one example. Wood Elves do compare pretty well to Half-Elves there, but you can make a case for the Half-Elf.

How does that proverb go?

"In the land of the full-elves, the 1/2 elfed man is king"???!!!???

[Sstoopidtallkid]

"In the land of the full-elves, the 1/2 elfed man is the dumb meatshield whose job it is to get hurt"???!!!???At least, that's what my Gray Elf says.

[UserClone]

Yeah, definitely you want the wildshape Ranger, and at LEAST 2 (read: at least 4) levels of Warshaper, if you can get away with it. (Read: +4 Str AND Con; 5 extra feet of reach; Fast Healing, etc.)