Hi friends,
I've been running a home campaign for about 6 months - party is now up to level 8 using the fast progression track - good times... currently trying to escape from the Harrow Deck in the Harrowing. My girlfriend is playing a Ranger 7 Druid 1 elf archer character and she's fallen into a rut of casting Gravity Bow in round one, then just using her manyshot feat to fire 3 arrows into everything. I get the feeling she's losing interest in the game as she's a one trick pony. Its great having her at the table and I dont want her to lose interest in the game.. but also dont want to drastically reduce combat situations because the other guys enjoy that part immensely. Besides mixing up encounters with a good range of combat/social/puzzle obstacles - what are some easy ways I could make combat more fun for her. She's not as into crunch as I am, and doubt she'd read through all the spells and feats available.. i just want to give her a few good, easy, fun options to use in combat - did i mention i gave her a really powerful bow: +1 flaming composite Longbow (+2 str) which might be compounding the problem as she's dealing the most consistent damage in the party by far. She's also got a wolf animal companion (but its weak as a Class Level 5 animal companion - cos of Ranger levels - so most time is now spent keeping him out of harms way rather than adding to her options)
* What are a few neat tricks she could use in combat, ie spell combinations, feats etc? besides gravity bow and full attack?
* I was thinking of giving her a bag of randomly rolled arrows of slaying so at least she'd have something to try work out(what type of monster she's facing with a knowledge check or twp) before launching volleys of arrows.
* Is there something I could do by controlling monsters differently so she's forced into melee or different tactics? Dont want to make it feel like i'm picking on her character though by having every monster rapple her for instance.
* should I just level her wolf companion to level 7 (with some cool story to back it up) so it grows up to (7th-Level Advancement: Size Large; AC +2 natural armor; Attack bite (1d8 plus trip); Ability Scores Str +8, Dex –2, Con +4.) so it keeps up with the rest of the party and she has that to play with as well?
I'm happy to make her a little overpowered, as long as she has fun and has options in combat.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
First thing first, what does your campaign look like as a whole? Do your players spend most of their time in combat? I would think that a lot of what makes rangers interesting happens outside of combat and it's not all mechanical in nature - that wolf companion of hers can also be a great narrative hook. What about the druidic grove that she calls home? What about a general love for nature? This can be done as large as a campaign arc or as small as her helping set up an animal shelter in a town hit by disaster. Honestly, I think going small is better because it's that kind of flavor that PCs will remember for years.
In combat don't give her special treatment either way. You are representing external reality and external reality doesn't generally give it's girlfriend even more unbalancing magical items than it already has. If she wants a more awesome pet she can take Boon Companion at level nine. If she wants a more diverse combat role then she can take the appropriate feats. If she's just bored with the archer mechanic in general and would be happier with another character, then write the archer out of the story and have her put together a new character. But don't give her special treatment by letting her opt out of rules or by giving her free stuff that the other characters aren't getting.
Why the level of druid?
If she pursue that route soon enough she will be wildshaping, that is a lot of fun (especially to a girl, everybody like wildshaping, but girls for some reason really love it).
You could also let her retrain her completely (maybe in a couple of level) and let her switch from ranger to druid with a cool story behind: this will not make the other players jealous as a simple boyfriend-gift will. Make sure to come up with an idea for retraining stats.
Also, the bow is nothing spectacular, just what you would expect from a 8th level character.
The Level of Druid gives you plenty of options.
Wands and Staves are spell trigger items, so as long as it is on her class list (either Druid or Ranger she can use the item)
Remember that if you have a friendly wand maker then spells can be stacked on it giving some serious flexibility.
She'll need a friendly spell caster to re-charge her Staffs, but there is plenty of room to keep several in her efficient quiver. A flame strike for area damage, and Transmute rock to mud to keep her victims at a distance might be just the thing. Remember that the minimum caster level for a staff is 8th, so she'll get pleny of dice when using them.
This is true, however, Staffs are always cast at your caster level. So if a first level wizard picks up a staff with fireball, he casts a 1d6 fireball from the staff.
Anyway, as for making the archer more fun, there are items you can give her to help her out if you really want to.
There is a large number of specialty arrows she could be using in addition to just plain old magic arrows. Some of my favorites are:
Armor Piercing Arrows
Bleed Arrows
Broad Arrows
Raining Arrows
Smoke Arrows
Splintercloud Arrows
Tracer Arrows
For a list of different arrows, click here.
Consider giving her a quiver that is enchanted based off the Abundant Ammunition spell. Say it's a 20 arrow quiver with 5 different types of arrow (for 5 sets of 5 arrows). Maybe Splintercloud, Smoke, Bleed, Armor Piercing, and Tracer arrows. These could allow her some different options. Oh, group of goblins? Shoot Splintercloud Arrows after casting gravity bow, taking the damage from 1d3 to 1d4. Creature has high DR? Use Bleed Arrows. Good AC? Use Armor Piercing. Having trouble hitting that sneaky monk? Use Tracers for follow up shots, aiding you and the party.
Grr, won't let me edit :(
If people get upset with GM favoritism, make sure to custom build each person a unique item so they all feel special. If you've got a dagger wielder in the group, use this item:
Ice Shard Bracers
Aura Faint Conjuration (creation); CL 3rd or 6th
Slot wrists; Price 6,000 gp (for lesser) 12,000 gp (for greater); Weight 3 lbs.
DescriptionThese clear, blue bracers appears as slabs of ice forged into armor and come in two versions, lesser and greater. With but a thought, the lesser ice shard bracers create masterwork quality daggers in each hand. The daggers do normal damage if used, plus one point of cold damage. If thrown, the bracers automatically create new daggers allowing those with multiple attacks to throw a multiple daggers each round. The daggers created by the lesser ice shard bracers melt one round after leaving your hands.
The greater ice shard bracers function in all ways as the lesser variant, except the daggers created are +1 frost daggers.
Construction
Requirements Crafter Wondrous Item, Craft Arms and Armor, icicle dagger; Cost 3,000 gp (for lesser) or 6,000 gp (for greater)
For your GF use something like this item, though custom tailored to her preference.
Quiver of Endless Arrows
Aura Faint Conjuration (summoning); CL 2nd
Slot --; Price 8,000 gp; Weight 2 lb.
DescriptionThis relatively small quiver holds only 20 arrows, but contains a limitless supply. One round after an arrow has been drawn from the quiver, the arrows used, vanish and new ones reappear inside the quiver. The arrows are standard and non-magical made of either iron or steel, although more powerful versions do exist.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, abundant ammunition; Cost 4,000 gp
Got a sneaky type? Consider an item that allows him to use the spell vanish a limited number of times per day. Perhaps for 10 rounds per day but the uses need not be consecutive.
Got a tank? Consider an Amulet of Feral Beasts. I haven't stated it out quiet yet, but it allows 3 charges, each charge casting Bear's Endurance, Bull's Strength, or Cat's Grace on the wearer.
The thing to keep in mind is you want to make each item useful enough that they'll use it, but not so powerful they'll never use anything else. The Ice Shard Bracers would be very useful for a dagger thrower, but not so useful he never picks up his own custom built dagger. The Amulet of Feral Beasts could be great for any melee class, but not so useful they'll never consider picking up Amulets of Natural Armor, or an Amulet of Mighty Fist for the monk types. The Quiver would be probably never be replaced, unless you opted to allow them to upgrade the arrows the Quiver reproduces. The Ring of Vanish could be powerful, but it's not as if the Rogue won't consider upgrading to a true Ring of Invisibility at a later date.
A fair amount of restriction as well. A level of druid pretty much means saying goodbye to options such as mithril chain mail or any armor other than hide or leather.The Level of Druid gives you plenty of options.
There is still the Ironwood spell at later levels, but, I agree, the level of Druid isn't a very wise choice from an optimizing perspective. It's very possible that she chose druid from a character concept, or role playing reason. One thing that often irks be on these forums is when someone comes in and blasts a character build because it's not optimized to the maximum potential.
Maybe she started off a Druid, and switched to Ranger because she had to take a more heavy handed and combative role to defend nature. Who knows? Certainly not a class combination I would build, but it also sounds like she's not very experienced, so mistakes are forgivable.
This is a common problem with high-powered archers in many RPGs. Doing major, consisten damage from range with little risk of combat is a great tactical model, but it can become boring.
Instead of making your awesome ranged blaster more awesome, you might consider some tactics which actually challenge her ability to rain destruction on the enemy.
I am no fan of minions, but this could be a way to provide more tactical options for her. Skirmishing minions who charge or stealth into melee would make her react to danger but would not be a serious threat to her survival. Opposing ranged combatants set apart from the melee group by terrain could let her use her amazing bow to take down a different sort of threat that nobody else can tackle.
Interrupt her gravity bow casting. Silence her at the start of combat.
Protection from arrows could force her into melee.
Give her wolf something important to do in combat. Chase down a fleeing minion. Flank an opponent.
Give her a chance to use entangle or othr druid spells.
Outside of combat do a "skill challenge encounter" where her ranger tracking skills win the day. Have her encounter a wild animal that must be tamed, not killed.
Lots of possibilities
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There is a line of products I really like by Super Genius Games. It is their 'Genius Guide to X Archetypes'. They are different then paizo archetypes in that they are designed to be added to any class (or almost any class) not one specific one. Each has a suite of abilities that can be traded out for one of the archtypes.
In their Archer Archetype package, they have one called the Alechemical Archer. This class allows you to make and use 'achemical ammunition' for ranged weapons. Think Green Arrow. You can create bolas arrows (that can trip or disarm) or Grappling Arrows (that can allow movement or to grapple a foe), injector arrows (to deliver poisons, potions, and antitoxins), or caltrop arrows (to spread caltrops over a location at long range).
Since you dont think she is getting the most out of her spell list, one of the packages of abilities you can trade out for the ranger is her spells and 2 skill points per level. In exchange you get to make and use the alchemical ammunition mentioned above. If she can trip, disarm, grapple, poison, or even do a little bit of battlefield control, she would be far from a one trick pony and hopefully enjoy combat a little more. And basically all it would cost her is the use of gravity bow.
Missle shield also works as feat from the advanced players guide to get arrows. Also maybe burrowing monster that burrow up close to her.
This is true, however, Staffs are always cast at your caster level. So if a first level wizard picks up a staff with fireball, he casts a 1d6 fireball from the staff.The Level of Druid gives you plenty of options.
Wands and Staves are spell trigger items, so as long as it is on her class list (either Druid or Ranger she can use the item)
Remember that if you have a friendly wand maker then spells can be stacked on it giving some serious flexibility.
She'll need a friendly spell caster to re-charge her Staffs, but there is plenty of room to keep several in her efficient quiver. A flame strike for area damage, and Transmute rock to mud to keep her victims at a distance might be just the thing. Remember that the minimum caster level for a staff is 8th, so she'll get pleny of dice when using them.
My rulebook reads that "the wielder can use his caster level when activating a staff **IF** it's higher than the caster level of staff"....which reads to me that a 1st level caster using a CL8 staff would cast at CL8, but a 9th level caster using a CL8 staff would have the option to cast at CL9.....
I may have given the wrong impression with my earlier post. I certainly did not mean by my comment that "The level of Druid gives plenty of options" to suggest that I thought that this was a good idea. It is definately sub-optimal in many ways. However, the original question was how to make best use of a current character, a Ranger 8/Druid 1, where the player is getting bored of just shooting arrows all day. So, making the best of bad job, why not let her throw down some powerful spells? That's always fun.
Oops, seems I'm getting my 3.5 in my Pathfinder again, darn it. Mine says the same thing, I forget all the little things that got changed in the upgrade from time to time.
Protection from arrows could force her into melee.
The spell states, "The subject gains damage reduction 10/magic against ranged weapons" which is typically negated by about 5th level or so. Protection from Arrows is a good idea, in theory, except it typically fails to effect any and/or all ranged attacks. The go-to spell to avoid archery characters, for me, is Wind Wall. Fickle Winds is also a good spell, but I'm not fond of the Ultimate series and my group typically bans everything from the Ultimate books.
___________________
Another thing you might do is create a Combat Reflexes Ranger With Two-Weapon Fighting, a high Stealth, and the Step-Up feat. Send him around to get in her face, forcing her to draw her melee weapon, or get AoO to hell.
Then, make up 'cuddles' afterwards!
Wow, go back and edit a post, submit it, and nothing shows up. Try to edit again, and it doesn't let me. That's the second time that's happened today :(
@peterroco
I didn't mean to mini-rant at you, I had just got done skimming the "anyone play Shadowdancer" thread and it just really pushed all the wrong buttons. I don't really like it, nor do I allow, people to level dip for certain abilities, to min-max their builds. I always tell them they need to really look at their character concept, background, personality, what have you, and apply some realism.
In real life, you do not have a Priest, level dipping as a soldier, and as a computer engineer, so he can gain certain abilities. The closest thing that comes to level dipping, is mixed martial artists, and multiple sport athletes. However, they are both staying within a similar frame of life style. A Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian, makes sense, a Druid/Wizard/Paladin, does not. And no, the fact they are all casters does not make them the same. A Druid is a tender of the natural order and living things, a wizard wields Ordered-Chaos to meet his desires, and a Paladin is a champion of his deity.
Forgot a suggestion. An archer in my party decided to blow something like 30,000 GP on a purely RP item. He has a Ring of Tiny size so he can mount and fly his Pseudodragon friend. It vastly reduces his combat abilities, but he said the mental picture of him flying on his Pseudodragon against a giant is too hilarious to pass up.
Of course, then the asshat steals an idea from my wizard in another group that has enchanted a item fro his hawk familiar so he can shoot lightning bolts 3 times per day. The Hawk is named Toothless. Now he wants to ride his Pseudodragon named Toothless that shoots lightning bolts into battle against a larger dragon. I told him he can NOTt rename his character Hiccup!
Thanks for all the advice guys - some great ideas. I think the party wizard would be happy make her a couple of interesting wands, the recently defeated Denizen of Leng's hoard could reveal a bag of randomly rolled magical arrows with different properties, I'll employ a much greater use of cover and magical cover like wall spells and wind spells, some more use of minions charging up close - and a nemesis male ranger npc who Steps Up in her face and demands Mortal Kombat would be awesome. I'll also encourage her to take Boon Companion as her next feat so her Wolf becomes worthwhile again, and she could even ride him! She'll love that. Story wise - they're heading into a woodlands village recently ravaged by unnatural storms - for certain the poor, local animals are going to need a hero to build them a shelter. Cool idea Mr Boggard. Of course the Enemy will lay an ambush using a poor little puppy as bait - and the Campaign continues!
Re the druid level, she took that hoping to go for the PrC Nature's Warden... but now she's having major doubts as many parts of the campaign have been in dungeons, on strange demi-planes, and now they're heading towards the Linnorm Kingdoms - so the favoured terrain focus (forests) seems like a bad choice. It was originally her character concept of the one-with-nature-fighter-druid-protector-of-the-wild...
thanks again for all the help folks
Oops, seems I'm getting my 3.5 in my Pathfinder again, darn it. Mine says the same thing, I forget all the little things that got changed in the upgrade from time to time.
Except that didn't get changed, it worked the same in 3.5. :p
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/staffs.htm
"Staffs use the wielder’s ability score and relevant feats to set the DC for saves against their spells. Unlike with other sorts of magic items, the wielder can use his caster level when activating the power of a staff if it’s higher than the caster level of the staff."
|
I'll employ a much greater use of cover and magical cover like wall spells and wind spells
Note that since she very likely took Improved Precise Shot as her 6-th level Ranger combat style feat (it is that awesome), cover and concealment do not matter anymore (except for total of course). Do not know about the spells though.
I'll also encourage her to take Boon Companion as her next feat so her Wolf becomes worthwhile again, and she could even ride him! She'll love that.
Mounted Archers are awesome beasts for delivering damage. If that is the way you want her to go, the Lookout teamwork feat for both her and her wolf will be very useful.
Note however that being mounted will make most of your other foils less effective as she can now outrun most any humanoid opponent AND full-attack them at the same time.
BTW, for even better mounted goodness, she could dismiss her Wolf and get a Roc companion (with the Hover feat). Flying Mounted Archer FTW !!!
Time to stack on wands of Reduce Animal and Reduce Person to get in the cramped dungeons though.