I love the flavor of the trapper archetype, but have to agree with, what appears to be, the majority of people on the boards that its underpowered. Any suggestions on how to impove it?
An idea I had was to impove the animal compaion. At levels 6,10, and 12 your effective Druid level rises by 1, so that at 12 level your compaion is as strong as a druid's of equal level. At 8,14,16,18 and 20 your animal compaion gains a +1 enhancement bonus to it's attack to a maximum of +5 at 20th.
I think this makes up some of the power that you lose by not having any spells.
Promos wrote: I love the flavor of the trapper archetype, but have to agree with, what appears to be, the majority of people on the boards that its underpowered. Any suggestions on how to impove it?
An idea I had was to impove the animal compaion. At levels 6,10, and 12 your effective Druid level rises by 1, so that at 12 level your compaion is as strong as a druid's of equal level. At 8,14,16,18 and 20 your animal compaion gains a +1 enhancement bonus to it's attack to a maximum of +5 at 20th.
I think this makes up some of the power that you lose by not having any spells.
But then you are not focusing on the trapper aspect. As a trapper ranger, I want my traps to be effective, not my animal companion.
Unfortunately I think the traps would have to do a lot more damage as a start. But it is hard to balance with losing spells that basically only go to level 4. So traps would have to be equal to 1 - 4 level spells and by the time you get those as a ranger, the effect is barely worth it.
I almost think you would have to start over again, and maybe make it a rogue archtype based off of sneak attack.
One thing I would like to see, maybe to help with the "under powered" aspect is, MORE traps. A small selection, no matter the power presented, always makes something seem, well, under powered.
Maybe some that are elemental flavored, or being able to alter effects of the traps with Feats and or other ways would help as well. JM2C.
Promos wrote: I love the flavor of the trapper archetype, but have to agree with, what appears to be, the majority of people on the boards that its underpowered. Any suggestions on how to impove it?
I strongly disagree. Some posters here are focusing only on the traps. They're neglecting to take into account that you're also getting what was once the sole province of the rogue... effective trapfinding and disabling. They can essentially replace the rogue in her aspects as scout and trapfinder. (Rogues still have other good uses). When you look at the whole package it's not a bad deal.
LazarX wrote:
I strongly disagree. Some posters here are focusing only on the traps. They're neglecting to take into account that you're also getting what was once the sole province of the rogue... effective trapfinding and disabling. They can essentially replace the rogue in her aspects as scout and trapfinder. (Rogues still have other good uses). When you look at the whole package it's not a bad deal. there are other archetypes that do the same thing (take the rogues trap finding stuff) but don't leave you with the sucky ranger traps.
To be fair, when you compare the traps with the skirmisher archetype hunter's tricks they really aren't that bad. Part of the traps problem is that they take a full round action to make and deploy. Unless you have time to set up multiple traps, their use is limited/circumstantial, compared to hunters tricks which can be used with little planning.
I agree with tark that more trap selection would help, and feats and/or trap modifying abilities would be nice.
Honestly, I'd just add the traps as just another class ability to the Ranger, allowing the character to swap out a trap for a spell slot on an as needed basis.
As far as I'm concerned, there basically a variation form of "spell" and should simply be treated as such, thus, just see them as adding to the Ranger's spell list.
Sure, some aren't magical, but for simplicity sake just treat them all as spells.
If you want to have the distinction between mundane and magical traps, then just allow the Ranger at level 1 to implement all the mundane traps.
Ultimately, the traps are highly situational and don't in any way push the Ranger any closer to the power scale of full spellcasters.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules
|
