Hello, please forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere. I gave a cursory search but couldn't find anything. I have a rules question and I was hoping that the gaming community might lend me a hand in working it out.
I am making a ranger with the guide archetype. One of the abilities that is changed with the guide is the loss of a favored enemy. Instead, guides gain the ability Ranger's Focus which allows them to select one specific enemy a number of times per day and gain bonuses against that specific foe.
Here is the problem: The Slayer's Knack feat states that the prerequisite requires the Favored Enemy class feature. At first glance, this seems pretty cut and dry - a guide cannot take the feat as that ability was replaced. However, the guide does not lose the ability of Master Hunter, which, when you get high enough level, allows you a special death attack against your favored enemies.
Now, if Favored Enemy is replaced and you cannot select feats which rely on them, shouldn't the Master Hunter ability also be replaced? Or should abilities like Master Hunter and feats like Slayer's Knack allow you to apply the bonuses they give to the target of the Ranger's Focus ability?
Right now, the RAW is against such a pairing, but I think this is one of those situations that wasn't initially foreseen. This happens often as new materials with class abilities and feats in them get introduced into the game - you just can't track down and evaluate every possible ability and feat combination and how they effect each other - and we've all seen many problems like this before.
In my opinion, as both player and GM, I don't see why allowing the use of favored enemy feats like Slayer's Knack shouldn't be allowed. It doesn't upset the play balance any, but since I'm trying to make the ranger character to which this ruling applies, I'd like some feedback.
What do you guys think?
The rules for ranger's focus states:
Ranger's Focus (Ex): At 1st level, once per day, the guide can focus on a single enemy within line of sight as a swift action. That creature remains the ranger's focus until it is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points or surrenders, or until the ranger designates a new focus, whichever occurs first. The ranger gains a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls against the target of his focus. At 5th level, and every five levels thereafter, this bonus increases by +2.
The rules for favored enemy state:
Favored Enemy (Ex): 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 and every five levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th level), the ranger may select an additional favored enemy. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus against any one favored enemy (including the one just selected, if so desired) increases by +2.
If the ranger chooses humanoids or outsiders as a favored enemy, he must also choose an associated subtype, as indicated on the table below. (Note that there are other types of humanoid to choose from—those called out specifically on the table below are merely the most common.) If a specific creature falls into more than one category of favored enemy, the ranger's bonuses do not stack; he simply uses whichever bonus is higher.
The abilities are similar, but not exactly the same. By RAW your initial assessment is correct - it would not be allowed. I also looked at many of the ranger archetypes to find out about the ones that replace or modify favored enemy and found that there are very few that replace favored enemy, but many that modify it.
I think you are also correct in stating that this was an oversight. The guide still has an unmodified master hunter ability that states:
Master Hunter (Ex): A ranger of 20th level becomes a master hunter. He can always move at full speed while using Survival to follow tracks without penalty. He can, as a standard action, make a single attack against a favored enemy at his full attack bonus. If the attack hits, the target takes damage normally and must make a Fortitude save or die. The DC of this save is equal to 10 + 1/2 the ranger's level + the ranger's Wisdom modifier. A ranger can choose instead to deal an amount of nonlethal damage equal to the creature's current hit points. A successful save negates this damage. A ranger can use this ability once per day against each favored enemy type he possesses, but not against the same creature more than once in a 24-hour period.
This ability is not modified or replaced by the guide archetype, which also seems to me to suggest that it should apply to the guide's ranger's focus ability, and THAT would also suggest, by RAI, that you could also apply feats (such as Slayer's Knack) to it.
I suppose it all comes down to the needs of your game group and what you want to allow, but it seems reasonable to allow this.