Rangers and Favored Enemy

[Lynceus]

Something that has always bothered me about this ability is that it implies that you have great familiarity with/hatred for/special training regarding a particular species. Many monsters, however, have disguise abilities that make it difficult to determine what they are.

It's true that Favored Enemy grants you the ability to identify a foe, but I don't believe a Knowledge check will (or should) allow you to realize that Mayor McCommoner is actually a Doppleganger or similar creature.

Many GM's will give the Ranger his bonus damage in secret, perhaps assuming that on some, subconscious level the Ranger realizes he's not fighting whatever he thinks he is, I suppose. Which doesn't make too much sense- you'd think you'd realize that you're dealing more damage to someone!

The opposite can come into play as well- a Ranger with Favored Enemy-Kobold who attacks a shapechanged demon, should pretty quickly realize his anti-kobold tactics aren't working, no?

Obviously, a GM should not deprive someone of a class feature or bonus, but at the same time, it's hard to justify the existence of a bonus that's functionality has no bearing on character knowledge.

Ranger 1: "Aha, the mercenary is a Half-Orc, I get bonus damage! Except that I do not? What trickery is this?!"

Ranger 2: "Darn, I only get bonus damage against Goblins. Wait, I seem to be dealing more damage to him? Sweet!"

*(Actually a disguised Hobgoblin)

No real question, other than me wondering how other people feel about this- it bugs me, but maybe everyone else is okay with it.

[Orfamay Quest]

Lynceus wrote:

It's true that Favored Enemy grants you the ability to identify a foe, but I don't believe a Knowledge check will (or should) allow you to realize that Mayor McCommoner is actually a Doppleganger or similar creature.

Actually, I usually rule that Favored Enemy is a very good way of knowing that Mayor McCommoner is actually a doppleganger precisely because you are deeply familiar with how dopplegangers behave, and he's acting like one.

[thenobledrake]

Um... Favored Enemy totally gives a bonus to determine that something is disguised as relates to either your enemy attempting to look like something else, and something else trying to look like your favored enemy:

That's the whole point of the Perception & Sense Motive bonuses... though I can see the confusion since the rules don't clearly spell that out.

[Zhayne]

thenobledrake wrote:

Um... Favored Enemy totally gives a bonus to determine that something is disguised as relates to either your enemy attempting to look like something else, and something else trying to look like your favored enemy:

That's the whole point of the Perception & Sense Motive bonuses... though I can see the confusion since the rules don't clearly spell that out.

Yes, but with the RAW as-is, even if you don't make a check, or fail the check, you still get the FE bonus when you attack.

[Addem Up]

Maybe you instinctively attack in a way that wouldn't hurt most creatures that much, but would be especially devastating to those that you've trained against? Or that all your training gives you an imposing presence that weakens the enemy and thereby buffs your attacks?

[Zhayne]

Maybe ... I'm sure there are lots of ways to fluff it.

[Roberta Yang]

If you're really good at hunting demons and you've specially trained to track demons and spot demons and see through demons' tricks and kill demons, then you're going to be better than most people at figuring out that someone is a demon in disguise.

[Marthkus]

Well in an actual game, if you didn't know it was a demon and you had FA demon you would forget to tell your GM your bonus and he would forget to add it.

That's all I got, this rules question is making my head hurt.

[Zhayne]

Roberta Yang wrote:

If you're really good at hunting demons and you've specially trained to track demons and spot demons and see through demons' tricks and kill demons, then you're going to be better than most people at figuring out that someone is a demon in disguise.

Well, yes, that's obvious.

But why does that still work if you haven't the slightest inkling that the person you're hunting, tracking, spotting, etc. is a demon?

[Roberta Yang]

Zhayne wrote:

Well, yes, that's obvious.

But why does that still work if you haven't the slightest inkling that the person you're hunting, tracking, spotting, etc. is a demon?

Because it's not something you need to consciously activate. It's not like your character needs to consciously think "Okay, I see a demon over there, I'm going to turn on my demon knowledge to learn more about it" - your character is very experienced with demons and intuitively knows how they work, and will be able to recognize their patterns even without knowing in advance that the subject is a demon.

[Pan]

There is a meta element to favored enemy that you just have to leave abstract. If I was using something in disguise I would add the damage behind the screen. I track that as GM. I wouldn't let them know until they discover that the enemy is actually in disguise. keep in mind the ranger gets a bonus against their favored enemy. In the case of a doppelganger its a monstrous humanoid and most monstrous humanoids don't often have disguise abilities. If the campaign revolved around enemies that disguise themselves often I would figure out a way for the ranger to sniff them out if they took such foes as favored enemy.

[Backfromthedeadguy]

I wouldn't give the bonus until they knew what they were fighting. If the ranger had no idea that what he was fighting was a doppelganger then he wouldn't be fighting as if it were. I would still apply the bonus to stuff like sense motive (secretly) because his knowledge of his FE would help clue him in. Once he verbally suspects the target of being a doppelganger, then he'll get his bonus. Until that point there is no logical reason for it.

[Kazaan]

Well, the Ranger gets a bonus to Perception vs his favored enemy so I'd say that, when trying to penetrate a disguise, applies as well as Sense Motive since both are based in Wisdom (and, arguably, Survival to track as well as you'd probably be able to spot traces of something you're familiar with in tracks and traces). But if you don't know you're fighting your favored enemy, you don't get any of the other bonuses. Sure, you may be "familiar" with the tricks of Demons, but that isn't in fallible; you can still flub a knowledge check vs a Demon even with the bonus so you can still fail an opposed perception check to identify a disguised demon all the same. After all, you can always choose not to employ these bonuses even if you are fighting a favored enemy if, say, you want to do less damage (for whatever reason). Just because you "know" the most vulnerable parts of a person doesn't mean you are compelled to exploit them. By converse, it means that if you don't know to exploit them, you can't just do it "automatically".

One caveat, though, if the actual creature and the creature it's disguised as are your favored enemies, you get a perk. If, say, you have both Monstrous Humanoid and Humanoid(Human) as your favored enemies, and you are up against a Doppelganger (MH) disguised as a Human, and you try to use your Favored Bonus vs Humans, and it's thrown off for some reason, the GM should let you know something along the lines of "That didn't work as well as you know it should have" which immediately tips you off as to something's very wrong and you get an immediate perception check to defeat the disguise again, maybe with an additional bonus under the same logic as being told about an illusion's true nature gives a bonus to disbelieving it.

[Zhayne]

Pan wrote:

There is a meta element to favored enemy that you just have to leave abstract.

Yeah, that's the long and short of it. It still bugs me on a whole lot of levels, though.