Josh's Quick Ranger Hack

[Josh_Kablack]

Cuz I don't like any of the other versions yinz jagovs have posted anna cuz da core verzin don't work witch da Tome Feats annat.

Start here
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/ranger.htm

Change HD to d10s - just because

Change Favored enemy so that it applies to "damage rolls" not just "weapon damage rolls". You totally should be able to add damage to a Necklace of Fireballs just as well as from a longbow.

Change Combat Style, Improved Combat Style and Combat Style Mastery to

At 2nd, 6th and 11th level a ranger may select one of the following tome feats as a bonus feat:

Blind Fighting, Combat School, Command, Danger Sense, Hunter, Insightful Strike, Point-Blank Shot, Sniper,Two Weapon Fighting and Zen Archery.

This folds the abilities into the existing Tome Feats.

Change Endurance to

A ranger gains the tome feat Great Fortitude as a bonus feat at 3rd level.

This folds the ability into the existing Tome Feat

Change animal companion so that

This ability functions like the druid ability of the same name, except that the ranger’s effective druid level is three less than his ranger level.

This means it won't become meaningless as levels increase

[Username17]

Why have it function at a lower level at all? The Druid still gets more animal boosting spells, if anything the Ranger's pet should have more base hit dice.

You might want to do something about how Rangers get less and less as they go up in level even so.

-Username17

[koz]

May I suggest an alternative?

[Juton]

For animal companion just let the Ranger use their level as the Druid level, no -3. Do something more extreme with Favoured Enemy, because it still sucks. If you let it apply to larger groups, say all Humanoids instead of just Humanoid:Orc it might be actually relevant outside a specialty campaign like Ravenloft or that Drow one. If you are going to house rule a class don't be afraid to break it, if your changes are a probably you can always fix them for a week later.

[ubernoob]

Handing out two useful feats over three levels makes this pretty dippable. Might want to change that and just replace endurance with an explicit ability.

[Josh_Kablack]

My fear is not breaking the class, but in wasting my own time, so I am not going to do a major rewrite nor look through the twenty zillion online ranger variants.

The thinking on still reducing animal companion level is that upon attaining 4th level, a ranger player can use stats out of the book and does not have to modify them at all when the animal is first acquired. This way they have two levels to get used to having the animal before they need to apply bonus HD and stat adjustments to it. I suppose I could work this so that at 4th level, the ranger had to take one of the 4th level druid companion choices.

And yes, given the game Favored enemy categories should get collapsed so Outsiders is one category and and humanoids applies merely to Humans (and those appearing as humans) or to Non-Humans

[JonSetanta]

Will you change the spell selection any? Add Druid spells?

While my own writings aren't widely accepted (Actually, just here. Elsewhere I do get other opinions) I don't ever find it a waste of time. It's always a learning experience.

[Josh_Kablack]

While my own writings aren't widely accepted (Actually, just here. Elsewhere I do get other opinions) I don't ever find it a waste of time. It's always a learning experience.

Fair point and well said.

I wouldn't post stuff here and have these frustrating arguments if I didn't honestly think that the process made my design work and games better.

So lemme rephrase as "any further revisions will be of lower priority than other work I still need to do for this game until such time as one of my actual players chooses to play a ranger."

[ubernoob]

My fear is not breaking the class, but in wasting my own time, so I am not going to do a major rewrite nor look through the twenty zillion online ranger variants.

In light of that, seems fine,

[PhaedrusXY]

May I suggest an alternative?

No kidding. I just found that one myself the other day, and can't wait to play it.