Ranger Varient: How many bonus favored enemies = combat styles

[Prometheus]

I want to substitute more favored enemies for the combat styles of a ranger, however I'm not sure whether this is fair on a one-to-one basis. There are not feats that are as exclusive as a the creature type requirement of favored enemy, so they are not easy to compare. Therefore I am relying on the wisedom of the board. What do you guys think?

[Prometheus]

Has anyone seen any substitutes for either favored enemies or combat style that I can use as a means of comparison?

[Matthew]

I would say 1 for 1 was fair. To be honest, I would happily make them Bonus Ranger Feats, as they are a particularly lame feature.

[Were-Sandwich]

I agree. Favoured enemy is pretty sucky.

[Draz74]

Depends on the campaign. In campaigns where you are dedicated to fighting a certain few kinds of enemies, Favored Enemy is great. (e.g. Red Hand of Doom ... Goblinoid and Dragon favored enemies will get great milage. Even OOTS isn't too bad -- mostly human, goblinoid, and undead enemies.)

Other campaigns, where you don't know what to expect or face a wide variety of monsters, render this ability near-useless. Unless you're a Ranger/Scout with Swift Hunter, in which case you can just pick opponents that are normally immune to Skirmish as your favored enemies and it is very helpful.

[Falrin]

I'd changed Fav. enemy to +1d6 sneak attack every time you get it. Fits more with the ambushing hunter. Also synergies nicely with TWF or Ranged.

[Nero24200]

It speicficily states in the DM guide to NEVER sacrifices a characters class features for plot. So if the DM knows that the ranger won't encounter his favoured enemies, he should alter the enemys involved.

[Hazkali]

It speicficily states in the DM guide to NEVER sacrifices a characters class features for plot. So if the DM knows that the ranger won't encounter his favoured enemies, he should alter the enemys involved.

But that can be tricky, as I have experienced myself. I suggested to my Ranger player to take Orcs, with the fair certainty that Orcs would be my backup villains and they'd get fair play. However what ended up happening was that a lot of the campaign took place in a country that was under the shadow of an Undead plague, rendering the Favoured Enemy useless. Now, had I put Orcs in, it would have been tacky and contrived. What would be better would be to allow a character whose Favoured Enemy is not getting much of a workout to metagamingly change for a better one, i.e. without a retraining quest.

[Jerthanis]

But that can be tricky, as I have experienced myself. I suggested to my Ranger player to take Orcs, with the fair certainty that Orcs would be my backup villains and they'd get fair play. However what ended up happening was that a lot of the campaign took place in a country that was under the shadow of an Undead plague, rendering the Favoured Enemy useless. Now, had I put Orcs in, it would have been tacky and contrived. What would be better would be to allow a character whose Favoured Enemy is not getting much of a workout to metagamingly change for a better one, i.e. without a retraining quest.

Um, this kind of seems like your fault. You advertised orc as a good choice, but then made the campaign about hunting undead? That's kind of dishonest, and at the very least you should allow him to change it spontaneously to undead, especially if he got it primarily on your recommendation. However, Orcs are fully capable of becoming involved in a necromancy plot. Whatever BBEG might be commanding the zombie apocalypse would be better off convincing the orcs to kill everything so he doesn't have to sacrifice his own zombies to the war (and can animate both sides of the conflict after it's done). Or if it's a plague, orcs can be affected as well as humans, and they can blame the humans for its cause. A cure could be sought by both an adventuring party of Orcs and the PCs, and each wants to claim it to help their civilization first.

Really, except for the most outrageous combinations of favored enemies, a DM should be entirely capable and ready to get that monster type to come up with some degree of regularity. The ones where this is impossible, the DM should have warned the ranger ahead of time. Constructs or Dragons in a low fantasy setting would be great things to suggest not to get.

As far as whether extras are worth a feat or less than a feat... Well, they DO get better linearly as new favored enemies are taken. You can add +2 to any single favored enemy every time you get a new one, so a level 6 character who dumped all his bonuses into his first choice of favored enemy could get a +8 damage per attack on one type of enemy if he so chose to specialize (using the proposed houserule of course). +10 if he takes a really good feat out of Complete Warrior. This capacity to overspecialize to obtain just unbeleivable levels of free damage can be a bit odd. If you're ready for the ranger to have a wickedly pronounced difference in combat ability against its favored enemies versus not, you're golden.

[Matthew]

Which Feat do you have in mind? Improved Favoured Enemy?

[Prometheus]

Well the variant is for a Ranger for which neither combat style is applicable (mentioned in another thread, a human stuck polymorphed as a rabbit and is only able to use both hands as one Tiny hand). Before this transformation, he was a bounty hunter that went after various types of supernatural evils, Undead, lycans, demons, magical beasts etc. so more favored enemies would make sense. A character with Track and other ranger abilities would also make more sense that a pure Fighter in a lot of cases.

These are foes that are guaranteed to get some play, but are also guaranteed to be completely ignored for whole swaths (Humanoids and Constructs are the two major races, neither of which will be on the favored enemy lists).

So I'm hearing 1 for 1 trade?

[Matthew]

Yup, one for one is fine; take out Combat Style, gain three more Favoured Enemy progressions.

[Damionte]

or vise versa, take out the favored enemy and pick up both combat styles. seems like a fair trade to me.

[Matthew]

Hmmn. Almost. Thing is, Favoured Enemy turns up five times. I reckon it's not quite an even trade that way round.