Talk:Ranger, RoW Variant (3.5e Class)

Ranger in Tome

This is something that's come up a lot--no Ranger class in Tome. It's actually hard to say what a Ranger is without the answer containing "A Fighter out in the woods". I mean, take a couple of the archery feats, Handle Animal, and Survival, and some Hide/Move Silently and that's a ranger, isn't it? If we go by source material (Lord of the Rings, off the top of my head), rangers stake out a turf and defend it against incursion and threats against the people in it (R.A. Salvatore also had Drizzt doing this at first--as well as the Rangers from his Demon Wars series, but people--even him--generally only know about rangers because Aragorn was cool and the idea of them taking out threats the normal people never knew about is pretty compelling). But abilities centered being the protector of the tri-county area don't always--or even usually--lend themselves to a D&D campaign, where the players are essentially vagabonds traveling constantly. And that's even before you get into planar travel.

So you're undertaking a heck of a job to try to come up with something that works and has enough differences from the Fighter to stand on its own. I wish you luck and patience. --Genowhirl (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2012 (MDT)

Thanks for the support. I already realized this is going to be infuriating since the ranger never stood on its own very well from the beginning but I know enough people that like them that I actually need to develop one. I just hope it doesn't take much longer than my estimated timeline of three weeks. Tivanir (talk) 07:24, 8 May 2012 (MDT)

I'd work the "Wily terrain-setter" thing myself, possibly with some poison or something. The Tome Assassin has a couple of powers you could port in directly:

Poisonmaster (Ex): At 11th level, the Assassin learns alchemic secrets for creating short-term poisons. By expending an entire healer’s kit worth of materials and an hour of time, he can synthesize one dose of any poison in the DMG. This poison degrades to uselessness in one week.

Trapmaking (Ex): At 5th level, the Assassin learns to build simple mechanical traps in out of common materials. As long as has access to ropes, flexible material like green wood, and weapon-grade materials like sharpened wooden sticks or steel weapons, he can build an improvised trap in 10 minutes. He can build any non-magical trap on the “CR 1” trap list that doesn’t involve a pit. These traps have a Search DC equal to 20 + the Assassin’s level, have a BAB equal to his own, and are always single-use traps. He may add poison to these traps, if he has access to it, but it will dry out in an hour.

Slap in an animal companion/spirit guide/whatever, some supernatural-based Animal Empathy/Talk to animals type things (with the highest level being, say, the multispecies stampede from Ace Ventura 2), and then throw in the allowance of both combat AND skill feats and you'd have something pretty ranger-y. --Genowhirl (talk) 11:58, 8 May 2012 (MDT)

Those are pretty cool and gives me an idea. I will probably put those on with the spin that they have to use or make natural poisons (like scorpion venom etc.) and gives me a few more things I can do with later levels when I reshuffle abilities. Tivanir (talk) 12:45, 8 May 2012 (MDT)

Alright I have changed and added a ton of stuff. Hell I think I may have overpowered it quite a bit and I may need to tone it back a bit. Tivanir (talk) 16:35, 8 May 2012 (MDT)

Sometime in the next day or two I'll give it a look over and see if anything glaring pops out at me. --Genowhirl (talk) 20:19, 8 May 2012 (MDT)