[3.5] Ranger/ Beguiler

[Hironomus]

Is it possible to mix the ranger and beguiler class with any success?

[Eldariel]

Is it possible to mix the ranger and beguiler class with any success?

Sure but finding a PrC to advance the skills is hard. Best I could suggest is Swiftblade and that loses a painful number of casting levels for a spontaneous caster.

[Grendus]

The biggest problem is that you're going to suffer from severe MAD. Beguiler is dex/int. Ranger is str/dex/wis. Add in the obligatory stamina and you need four high stats just to make it playable.

It's doable, don't get me wrong, but those two classes don't synergize. You could try something like Beguiler 6/Ranger 4/Eldritch Knight 10 (replace some of the ranger levels with another gish prc if you prefer, I don't know much about gishes outside of binders). Eldritch Knight isn't exactly my favorite PrC due to the lack of class features, but it's a full BAB class with 9/10 spell progression, so if you do something like Ranger/Beguiler 6/Eldritch Knight 10/Ranger 3 you'll end up being a fairly capable gish until high end. You end up 1.5 BAB behind the pure fighter and 1 spell level behind the caster, which is pretty decent. You will suffer from low hit points, since you have so many levels of binder in there, but you can compensate for that by pumping stam (dwarf maybe, since charisma is a dump stat).

In that situation though, you'd probably be better dumping ranger for fighter to get the bonus feats, as you get almost none of the ranger flavor. I don't think there's a good PrC that advances both class features.

[Salanmander]

My question is what you want to do with it? Do you want to be a jack of all trades type character, or is there some situation or action that both ranger and beguiler will help with? If the former, it's going to be a lot harder to make your character feel effective, as you'll essentially be several levels behind your allies in any given situation. If the latter, we could help a lot more if we know what that is.

If you're going for the flavor of a woodsy sneaky enchanter/illusionist, there may be other better ways to get that flavor. If so, are you willing to think about those, or are you attached to ranger and beguiler?

Basically, what do you want out of those classes?

[Hironomus]

Nothing specific.
Just if I were to mix those two classes, what would be the best way to do it...?
sorry I can't really be more specific

[FMArthur]

Are you interested mostly in the Ranger's Spellcasting? Because the Arcane Hierophant class in Races of the Wild advances an arcane casting class's spellcasting (Beguiler here) and a divine casting class's spellcasting (ideally the Mystic Ranger variant) while also giving you 3/4 BAB, 4+Int skills and d6 hit dice. It also has class features like advancing an Animal Companion, but Mystic Ranger gives that up for it much earlier and better spellcasting. Anyway it's probably the closest you'll get to a Ranger/Beguiler crossbreed, but is geared more towards wizard/druid entry so is a little wonky to get into as other casters.

It is strictly superior to the Mystic Theurge... if you can qualify for it. 2nd level divine spells come late for normal Rangers (but only 4th level for the Mystic variety), and right before the PHB's printing the Druid class ambushed the Ranger in the woods to gain exclusive access to the very Rangerly Trackless Step class feature which you need to get into AH. You can get it as a racial feature from being Bamboo Spirit Folk, but AH technically asks for the Trackless Step class feature, giving a jerk DM just enough room to be a jerk about it.

edit: Oh! Wild Shape! I forgot that AH also fully advances Wild Shape if you have it, which you can get as a Ranger ACF from Unearthed Arcana. Fully compatible with the Mystic Ranger variant. So by going into AH after say, Beguiler 1 / Ranger 5, you can advance both classes' spellcasting, Wild Shape, and still have it on a passable chassis for physical combat. For your next ten levels.

[nedz]

Whilst Mystic Ranger/Beguiler/Mystic Theurge gets you double spellcasting, you'd be better with other classes for that purpose.

What Ranger and Beguiler have in common are skills, and Int would help for that.
Ranger combat options, core wise, are TWF and Archery.
With only a few levels of Ranger, you are not going to have many, if indeed, any spells.
So what you need to make a skillful gish is a skillful arcane PrC, which meshes with Archery or TWF.
There are not many.

Ruather - pretty good, but only 3 levels long
Fochlucan Lyrist - excellent if you can get there

The hard part of FL is getting the 13 ranks in perform, Speak Language (Druidic), Able to cast 1 st lvl Arcane & 1 st lvl Divine spells, Bardic Knowledge class ability, Evasion class ability.

Good luck with this project

[Pechvarry]

If you have Complete Champion, use their feat variant for Ranger instead of spellcasting. Now you can dump WIS and focus on skills and combat.

If there's a Ranger variant to get sneak attack, you could get into Daggerspell mage (which has Survival as a class skill and other oddities, iirc).

[nedz]

Ranger/Beguiler into Unseen Seer should work

Unseen Seer
6+ skill points, full casting
Whilst you can get into Unseen Seer without precision damage its a bit of a waste since the class improves that ability if you have it.

Scout/Beguiler into Unseen Seer

Scout 3/Ranger 1+ (swift hunter)/Beguiler into Unseen Seer

Rogue 1/Beguiler X/Ranger Y/Unseen Seer Z
should be able to get you into several PrCs which require sneak damage.

Ed: Unseen Seer is in Complete Mage