Instant Enemy reads:
"With this spell you designate the target as your favored enemy for the remainder of its duration. Select one of your favored enemy types. For the duration of the spell, you treat the target as if it were that type of favored enemy for all purposes."
The idea is to get the bonus when you normally wouldn't.
Otherwise it would be called "Better Enemy", or "Broken Spell".
I'm here to talk about a problem that might not be one for many : The ranger's favored enemy. Each time this skill improves, the ranger gains one favored ennemy +2 att/dmg and he can improves another existent favored enemy bonuses +2 att/dmg.That's very poor compared to the previous version but that's not the subject
...what? How?
Since the spell doesn't seem too difficult to understand, I'm more interested in how the Pathfinder FE is actually worse..
The link to Instant Enemy, for your convenience.
I can understand the complaint, but I think Instant Enemy is already an extremely powerful spell. At 11th level, a Pearl of Power and a 16 wisdom will let the ranger cast Instant Enemy 3 times per day. Casting is a swift action, and the duration is in minutes/level. That's a whole lot of +6/+6 attacking.
I believe that he's upset because he wants to use Instant Enemy on creatures that are already his Favored Enemies, using a min/max approach.
Basically, if he chooses Humans as his first favored enemy, and continues maxing points in it, choosing dragons and undead for the next two, he couldn't use Instant Enemy to get the full +6 against dragons and undead, because they're already favored enemies, but only +2.
Now, the option he proposes, as I see it, is to keep all of the bonuses vs. different enemies equal in order to not specialize (for better or worse).
I can see where it might get confusing, because obviously, the ranger really likes beating on the dragons and undead, more than, say, aberrations, but if he uses the spell, he can never quite whack dragons and undead as hard as aberrations.
Personally, this is kind of an interesting limitation, even though it might not make sense. It's a great utility spell, but I'm not super-fond of the concept. It's limited to one single creature, though (not one creature type), so it's not like you could say "I'm changing to fight Orcs." Rather, it's "I'm fighting that Orc like he's a Human."
Really, it's a bit of sleight of hand to try to max out one and then use it on everything. No, it's not super-powerful, comparatively (rangers have precious few spell slots, and it might be better, statistics wise, to spread out the FE bonuses a bit more evenly (+4,+4,+4 d of +6, +2, +2). That way, the spell becomes handy when you don't meet those creatures, for BBEG and the like, and when you do, then you have the same bonuses.
By the way, the 3.5 rangers functioned identically, but received no bonuses to hit and to knowledge checks. In 3.0, maybe, I think they had the +1, I think I remember it was just that all of the other ones went up by one, but they weren't equal. 3.0 rangers kind of sucked.
|
I understand what Kela is talking about. Why would anyone choose to do anything else with a Ranger's FE than to max one of them out leaving all their other FE's at a low +2 and then repeatedly cast Instant Enemy, say through the use of a wand?
For the record, Pathfinder's current version of the Ranger's favored enemy is the best we've seen from previous versions.
I agree with you Kela. It'd probably be better for the FE class ability mechanic to function as +2 for new favored enemies and for all other current favored enemies to increase at a rate of +1 for every 3 ranger levels or something along those lines.
I also like your idea of meditation but would expand on that to allow the ranger to have an ability that would allow them to "study" traces left by their target for an hour (for example) and gain a benefit against that target in their next encounter.
I agree with you Kela. It'd probably be better for the FE class ability mechanic to function as +2 for new favored enemies and for all other current favored enemies to increase at a rate of +1 for every 3 ranger levels or something along those lines.
A game I do NOT play in (for other reasons) uses a FE bonus of your total number of FE + 1. The 'dm' does allow taking of additional FE through feats.
I'm more interested in how the Pathfinder FE is actually worse...Last version of FE for the ranger was +2 each improvement to all favored enemies and a new enemy with +2. Leaving you at level 20 like +10 to the first, +8 to the second, +6 to the third and so on... The actual version is what I call "poor" in comparison.
I'm not talking of game mechanics and balance, just saying that the actual version is weaker. And not making a judgement wether it's better or worse.
Ok I have no idea what he is talking about but yeah Instant Enemy is stupid. There is no reason to limit it to creatures that aren't your favored enemy.
I'm more interested in how the Pathfinder FE is actually worse...Last version of FE for the ranger was +2 each improvement to all favored enemies and a new enemy with +2. Leaving you at level 20 like +10 to the first, +8 to the second, +6 to the third and so on... The actual version is what I call "poor" in comparison.
I'm not talking of game mechanics and balance, just saying that the actual version is weaker. And not making a judgment whether it's better or worse.
With the Pathfinder version you can get +2 vs goblins or animals at 1st level, and +8 vs dragons or demons at 15th level, both being useful and level-appropriate bonuses.
The old version gave more total bonus points, but was prone to being games in was that didn't feel right with the theme of the game. If you picked goblins at 1st level, and dragons at 15th, you'd have +8 vs goblins (which you could easily kill with no bonuses at all) and +2 vs dragons (which is a pretty small bonus at 15th level). So players would 'play smart' by taking dragon at 1st level.
You'd see a lot of low level rangers who were experts in hunting dragons but who had never seen one!
.
I can understand the complaint, but I think Instant Enemy is already an extremely powerful spell. At 11th level, a Pearl of Power and a 16 wisdom will let the ranger cast Instant Enemy 3 times per day. Casting is a swift action, and the duration is in minutes/level. That's a whole lot of +6/+6 attacking.In our campaign (and I guess in other ones too) it may happen to deal more than six fights in a same day, even 6 per day instant enemy wouldn't be that much.
I sure guess you're kidding or you party goes to sleep after each fight to get the spells back ?
3-4 fights per day is fairly typical. 1-2 and your spellcasters tend to dominate, 5+ and the fights probably aren't very challenging.
.
I agree with you Kela. It'd probably be better for the FE class ability mechanic to function as +2 for new favored enemies and for all other current favored enemies to increase at a rate of +1 for every 3 ranger levels or something along those lines.
At 1st level, a ranger selects a creature type from the ranger favored enemies table. He gains a +2 bonus on Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival checks against creatures of his selected type. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon attack and damage rolls against them. A ranger may make Knowledge skill checks untrained when attempting to identify these creatures.
At 5th level, the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, the ranger may raise one of his two favored enemy bonuses by +2.
At 10th level, the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, the ranger may raise one of his three favored enemy bonuses by +2, and another by +4, to a maximum of +6.
At 15th level, the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, the ranger may raise one of his three favored enemy bonuses by +2, another by +4, and another by +6, to a maximum of +8.
At 20th level, the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, the ranger may raise one of his three favored enemy bonuses by +2, another by +4, another by +6, and another by +8, to a maximum of +10.
Contributor
|
If you want your favoured enemy to be "everything" then don't play a ranger, play a fighter. Rangers get stuff that fighters don't, and so having a single spell remove that limitation completely is silly.
I think that the real issue is that spells like instant enemy would be cheesy ways to get around class feature limitations if they weren't themselves limited in some way. If instant enemy is "fixed" as suggested, then the ranger class becomes unbalanced - essentially a full fighter that also gets spells and animal companions.
If you're fighting big single monsters, the spell is very effective; if you're fighting mobs of kobolds, it's more limited. The point is that the GM and campaign's style is as important to the "balance" of the spell as the rules are. I guess that's why the game has a GM - they can adjust the spell, adjust the campaign, and make it work so people have fun.