Eraden's page

Ummm, Alfa/Polaris, this is the first time I've ever had any discourse with N N 959. You must be thinking of someone else entirely. I've only ever begun posting on these forums since a few days ago. I've been incredibly busy with work for the last couple of years but now that I have finally retired after 33 years of service, I can get back to the game I love so much (started playing D&D back when there was only tiny little booklets and a smile on everyone's face).

Yes, yes, I agree. That is why I offered a mea culpa. I really should have been more specific and clarified what I was talking about. I do apologize. Thanks for pointing that out by the way. Doing that has helped to remove some of the misunderstanding on my part. You were also quite polite about this and that is also appreciated. Nice to see folks in these forums who are willing to have friendly discourses.

Wow, it's fascinating to see how people completely misinterpret a post. I NEVER said that rangers should be EQUAL to fighters in terms of combat capability. What I DID say was that even if a ranger devotes ALL of his feats towards catching up to a fighter, he is still behind and on top of that also has additional restrictions such as lack of heavy armor use, etc. What I had proposed was that rangers should be allowed to have one free class utility feat from the list I presented so as to make these disadvantages less pronounced AND give them more of a unique flavor. I don't want rangers to be fighters. Let fighters be fighters. Rangers should be more versatile but at the cost of combat prowess. I would argue that right now, that the cost in combat prowess in order to have versatility is a bit too extreme.

It's actually human nature to want to be the "star" (being appreciated for some accomplishment) at least once in one's life/career. Most people are like that. It's really only the people who DON'T want to be the "star" and those who want to be the "star" ALL the time, that are the odd ones. I would agree that PF1 was amazingly unbalanced in its treatment of character classes. I think though, that PF2 may have fixed some imbalances and introduced others. Time will tell on that part. The play testing period probably helped to identify some of the problems. A massed accumulation of experiences of players over the next few years will definitely reveal any faults in the new system. My own concerns are with the ranger class. It seems a tad bit bland to me now that options have become so limited. However, my concerns about rangers are nothing compared to with my growing worry about wizards. They did need to be toned down. Have they been toned down TOO much?

I understand the need to trim down all of the features and abilities that rangers had in PF1, but I honestly think they went a bit too far in PF2. Rangers appear to have become effectively second class fighters that can nearly approach what fighters achieve IF they (rangers) devote nearly ALL of their feats towards "catching up". For this, they give up a number of features like use of heavy armor, high accuracy and such. It just doesn't feel right.

What I would like to propose is that you take features such as Tracking, Animal Companion, Traps, Spell Casting and Favored Terrain and have rangers select ONE bonus first level feat from ONE of these categories, at first level. This would go together with whatever combat style feat they would choose at first level. From there on, the class would function as per PF2 rules. If you want to boost that additional ability, it will come at the cost of improving your core combat functions. This way rangers would get some introductory level competency in another function for having given up functions that fighters get.