Talk:Spirit Hunter (3.5e Prestige Class)

Commentary

The old half-elf cleric/ranger was a favorite of mine from 1st and 2nd Ed. Unfortunately, 3rd Ed and 3.5 seemed to have forgotten this popular multiclass. This is my attempt to recreate this combination.

The final product seems balanced enough. Qualification is easy with cleric 3 with max know (religion) plus ranger 2 plus one more level in either to reach BAB +5. The cleric gains the benefit of martial weapon proficiency, more turn undead uses per day, and ranger spells, but loses one level of spellcasting progression. The ranger gains medium and heavy armor, retains the spell list, but loses potentially one favored enemy and combat style mastery. Also, combat style and heavier armor are NOT compatible, forcing a choice of the use of one or the other at any one time. Using undead as the unifying theme, a low-level spell-like ability and a class feature combo/enhancement were added to round out the class. The class skill list is a combination of cleric and ranger minus diplomacy, since this is a combat-focused class. Basically, this is more a ranger with added cleric abilities, as opposed to a cleric with added hunter skills.

Using pure SRD, at 20th level, the character would probably be a ranger 5/cleric 5/spirit hunter 10 for balance (4 favored enemies, endurance, 2nd level animal companion, 1st-level ranger spells, impr. combat style, 15th-level turning, 16th caster level cleric (14 cleric + 2.5 ranger) with 14th-level spell progression) or ranger 2/cleric 8/spirit hunter 10 to maximize spellcasting (3 favored enemies, impr. combat style, 18th-level turning, 17th caster level cleric with 17th-level spell progression) or ranger 7+/cleric 3/spirit hunter 10- to gain mid-level ranger abilities (woodland stride, swift tracker, and evasion especially), though these might be wasted on undead.

It is probably only slightly overpowered. In that case, raise the level of detect undead and favored turning by one (which will leave the 1st level as a dead level), remove 6th level spell progression and lower favored turning to 6th, or remove detect undead and just have full spell progression. Since this is anti-undead, I want turn undead at 1st level, maybe replace it with something that stacks with cleric turning but does not grant more uses.--Zaq 00:41, 31 October 2007 (MDT)