Variant Ranger?

[Mothman]

Is anyone aware of any variant ranger class, or alternate class abilities, that sacrifice a ranger’s spell casting ability for … anything else? Particularly martial or combat related abilities?

[mwbeeler]

Complete Warrior, p. 13 - Loses spells, gains fast movement, touch based buff, spell like abilities for poison / disease, freedom of movement over several levels (pretty spread out though).

[Cato Novus]

If you head over to Crystal Keep, you can find a PDF with all major classes listed, including the variants for them.

[Dale McCoy Jr]

PHBII - I forget what the variant is (don't have the book with me) but the PHBII has a variant for all the PHB classes in there (and a few from the complete books).

Koboldnomicon - Base class called Vermin Kin. Its basicly a vermin themed ranger. Easy to make it a variant ranger if desired.

[Valegrim]

yep ;there are lots of variants available; Crystal Keep is a great resource; I like the Ranger that gets wildshape :) wish there was a monk with wildshape...

[tdewitt274]

Monte Cook's Ranger

[Steven Purcell]

Complete Champion has a variant ranger with bonus feats at 4th, 8th, 11th and 14th in place of spellcasting and a fair sized list to choose bonus feats from.

[Valegrim]

I like the mystic ranger; give up some stuff for more spellcasting power.

[Fizzban]

Iron Kingdoms has one you trade spell casting for favored terrain that stacks with favored enemy.

Fizz

[Mothman]

Thanks guys, exactly the sort of things I was looking for. Thanks particularly for the headsup about Crystal Keep, I wasn’t aware that resource existed.

[Lathiira]

I'd definitely recommend the Complete Champion ranger. I'm playing one at this point and it's nice to get a few extra feats to let you round out your combat style in exchange for the loss of spellcasting powers.

[Mothman]

I don’t have the Complete Champion (and that variant doesn’t seem to be on Crystal Keep), but my first instinct to approach this character was to give bonus feats in exchange for spellcasting ability (using a variant of the fighter list). I was thinking at levels 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, but wasn’t sure how balanced that would be.

Looks like the Complete Champion version gives four bonus feats as opposed to me proposed 5, but stacks them closer to low and mid levels. Interesting … I’ll think about it.

[ericthecleric]

You could have a look at the thread I started yesterday "Regarding Class Variants" and see if that's any use to you.

[Mothman]

ericthecleric wrote:

You could have a look at the thread I started yesterday "Regarding Class Variants" and see if that's any use to you.

Just checked it out - thanks Eric, there's some food for thought there.