A friend of mine is interested in playing Pathfinder, but there's a problem with what she wants to play. Basically, what she wants is the Hunter class from World of Warcraft. Now, were this my own game, I'd just crack the OGL World of Warcraft RPG and let her play that version, but it's for Pathfinder Society, so it's got to be legit.
What she wants:
-Ranged combat specialist using a bow as main focus for damage
-Tanking pet
-No spellcasting, or all casting delivered through bow -- she wants a DPS build, not a healer
What I can build for her:
1) Druid mixed with fighter or ranger. Start as an elf for the Longbow proficiencies. Problem is, she doesn't want to be THE HEALER. She had a bad experience with D&D 3.5 where her druid was told 'take healing spells' and she didn't want to, and it ended badly with hurt feelings.
2) Ranger. But she wants the pet from Day 1. Or at least as early as possible. Is there a ranger archetype that gets the pet early? Also, she wants the animal companion to be the tank, not the skirmisher -- and the level hit that ranger companions get doesn't seem conducive to making them the wall she wants her pet to be.
I don't know of anything else that would fit her preferences, and neither seem to work for what she wants. Is there a way to make this work, or do I just have to disappoint her?
Start your game at level 4, and hand her a ranger.
I mean it seems a bit quippish but... is it really going to change your game if your people start at lvl 4?
Seems the simplest answer.
Looking deeper at the rules, there's the possibility of the non-caster druid -- a druid with an 8 WIS doesn't have the WIS for spellcasting, or a druid wearing metal armor loses spellcasting and shapeshifting. I'm concerned, though, that if the player sits at some tables, they'll refuse to have her at the table since her character is missing some fairly major class abilities.
Ranger, potentially with some no-spells-archetype
The Skirmisher replaces spells with "Ranger Tricks", and the Trapmaker archetype replaces spells with ranger traps.
Start your game at level 4, and hand her a ranger.
I mean it seems a bit quippish but... is it really going to change your game if your people start at lvl 4?
Seems the simplest answer.
Pathfinder Society does not start at level 4. It starts at level 1.
Let me requote my original post:
Now, were this my own game, I'd just crack the OGL World of Warcraft RPG and let her play that version [of the hunter class], but it's for Pathfinder Society, so it's got to be legit.
Just tell her that the Ranger will eventually cover everything she wants out of her character, she will just have to wait a couple of levels for some of them (not unlike in WoW).
And I actually wouldn't recommend either Skirmisher or Trapmaker. Quite a few Ranger spells function in a way similar to WoW "special attacks", and generally having spells is much better than... not having spells (duh!).
Depends on the animal she wants.
If she wants a bird of prey, the Falconer archetype says hello and "scree!"
If she wants something else, Beastmaster is there for every animal imaginable (unsure if she gets an animal at first or 4th.)
And then trapmaker or skirmisher archetype (I think I'd go with skirmisher.)
Will you allow some variant rules from Unearthed Arcana? She could go for the straight up non-spellcasting Ranger. IIRC, they get their animal companion as the same level as Druid, not Druid-3. Let her go with the archer specialty and a bear and she'll be golden.
I think this is the write up for that variant class:
Variant Ranger
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Elven Druid. Bow proficiency and her animal up front. Notning in the rules about "prohibited weapons".
"A druid who wears prohibited armor or uses a prohibited shield is unable to cast druid spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class abilities while doing so and for 24 hours thereafter."
"Weapon Familiarity: Elves are proficient with longbows (including composite longbows), longswords, rapiers, and shortbows (including composite shortbows), and treat any weapon with the word “elven” in its name as a martial weapon."
Tell her it's like the old style hunter, where they didn't get pets till lvl 10. Except her's is level 4.
We all want the cool stuff, sadly some of it needs to be waited for.
Will you allow some variant rules from Unearthed Arcana?
Elven Druid. Bow proficiency and her animal up front. Notning in the rules about "prohibited weapons".
Again, let me requote my original post:
Now, were this my own game, I'd just crack the OGL World of Warcraft RPG and let her play that version [of the hunter class], but it's for Pathfinder Society, so it's got to be legit.
...
What I can build for her:
1) Druid mixed with fighter or ranger. Start as an elf for the Longbow proficiencies. Problem is, she doesn't want to be THE HEALER. She had a bad experience with D&D 3.5 where her druid was told 'take healing spells' and she didn't want to, and it ended badly with hurt feelings.
Unearthed Arcana isn't allowed for Pathfinder Society, last I knew.
I already cited the elf druid, but the problem is that she'd give up spellcasting if she wore proscribed armor, and for the other players at the table, that removes a fairly major capability for her character. With Pathfinder Society gameplay, the other players at the table can refuse to play with a problem character, even if the character is viable according to Pathfinder Society rules and the GM is amenable. Look at it this way: You're at a convention. You're facing an adventure that you've heard is quite deadly unless every member of the group is operating at full capacity. Your only healer is a druid that can't cast spells or use wands. Do you continue on the adventure, knowing that it's lethal and you have no healing? Or do you sit this one out and go play another game?
What she wants is a ranger, and I think the trapmaster ranger is more her speed. However, this does bring up another point that I'll have to bring up in another post.
Trapper ranger. It basically is a wow hunter. It can even eventually shoot it's traps from afar.
And is there a rule against buying a pet in PFS? She can start the game with a guard dog, a bird, whatever. It just won't become cool until 4, but that's not so far off...
Actually, there is. Guard animals aren't allowed, otherwise every player would be bringing menageries on their PFS missions.
Another option she could pursue is a Beast Rider Luring Cavalier. No casting, on-demand blastiness. Probably going to want to run Human to get the ranged feats quickly, or Halfling to start with a wolf companion instead of a horse or camel.
The Skirmisher replaces spells with "Ranger Tricks", and the Trapmaker archetype replaces spells with ranger traps.
yea!! but the triks are so low... i mean, you only pick a short ammount of those.
Create your own archetype wich give her the abilities she want to play:
ranger/elf/
replace:
favored enemy for the companion
and natures ally ability for maybe an ability wich let her hunter add her wis mod to ranged damage aside the str.
or check the iron heroes archer class
Guys, please stop suggesting 3rd party/homebrew. It's PFS.
And, I would second the Beast Rider Luring Cavalier. It gives you everything she wants.
This probably goes without saying; however, in terms of the character she wants, she might be better of with a game not using the PFS and instead a game that focuses on roleplaying
That's too bad, and a rather dumb rule. Mundane animals are not cheap, and quickly lose any value in combat. So you can't buy a mount either?Actually, there is. Guard animals aren't allowed, otherwise every player would be bringing menageries on their PFS missions.
You can buy mounts, but unless they're class features of some sort, they're not meat shields or combat allies. They're vehicles. Plain and simple.
On the plus side, I've not yet run into any PFS Mission that caused the loss of your mounts, so again, they're vehicles (and really have no impact upon the world anyway -- missions take the same amount of time if you're on foot as if you're mounted).
If you think the rule is dumb, you're more than welcome to go over to the Pathfinder Society boards and argue it. I'm not going to complain -- I'm happy to play PFS, as I'm getting burned out on running games at all (I run 4E Living Forgotten Realms every other weekend).
The closest thing to a wow hunter in pfs would be (as many others have already pointed out) a ranger. If you take the boon companion feat at lv 5 the animal will work at your full ranger lv instead of lv -3. If she must have the animal from the start, you could take 1 lv druid then the rest in ranger. Just because a character has spells and is able to cast clw doesn't mean they are a healer, in fact just having a clw wand is plenty of healing in most situations. It is her character and she shouldn't be forced into healing if she doesn't want to.
If you want a druid archer, instead of going half elf/elf for weapon proficiency you could just take the heirloom weapon trait, which can give you proficiency with 1 simple or martial weapon of your choice.
DM bacon has it right. If you want something that's not allowed to start in a very strict rule set, you have 2 choices.
1) Play something less restrictive that allows you to bend now and then. or
2) Know that there's rules that might prevent_X_ and if so, you're choosing to play with in those rules. That's a choice you've made.
The short version is, at level 1, there's not a way to mimic a wow hunter using Pathfinder Society strict, by the book rules. So.. either drop the strict rules, or play something slightly different. :)
A little out of left field, and doesn't meet the "no spell-casting" restriction, but what about a Wild Caller Summoner? She can focus on spells that will buff her Eidolon (which takes on a more 'natural' form) which will allow it to serve much better as a tank than a Ranger or Druid's Animal Companion would.
As a Half-Elf, she can pick up Longbow proficiency with Ancestral Weapon.
Not a perfect fit, I admit.
Make her a trap-ranger. That's definitely the closest. If she complains that she can't get a pet until level 4, remind her that WoW hunters don't get their pets until level 10.
Well. We get them at level one 'now' but we didn't USED to get them till 10. *Grins*
I had the same idea above though. Works well. :)
Just curious, where in the rules does it say that mounts don't engage in combat? And if you can have a horse that won't fight, where does it say you can't have a dog that won't fight? Does her pet have to be fighting from level 1? It's not like those 3 levels take that long to get through...
I'm not sure where it says that; all I know is that when I tried to bring my money-bought warhorse into battle, I was told it was against the rules by a more experienced player. I was informed that only cavaliers and paladins can deliberately bring their mounts into combat. (I suppose druids and rangers and summoners would also qualify.)
So, why buy a warhorse? Because if the party is caught in an ambush, they're easier to control, I was told.
So a roughrider fighter or some other archetype who gets bonuses to his mount but not the mount ability can't use their class abilities?
I am not familiar with PFS so I don't know which archetypes are legal but those are the ones I remember from the top of my head to get class abilities that give bonuses to their mounts or mounted bonus feats:
Mounted fury barbarian (gets a mount at 5th level but gains a class ability for his mount earlier)
Roughrider fighter
Dragoon fighter
Sohei Monk
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Just curious, where in the rules does it say that mounts don't engage in combat? And if you can have a horse that won't fight, where does it say you can't have a dog that won't fight? Does her pet have to be fighting from level 1? It's not like those 3 levels take that long to get through...I'm not sure where it says that; all I know is that when I tried to bring my money-bought warhorse into battle, I was told it was against the rules by a more experienced player. I was informed that only cavaliers and paladins can deliberately bring their mounts into combat. (I suppose druids and rangers and summoners would also qualify.)
So, why buy a warhorse? Because if the party is caught in an ambush, they're easier to control, I was told.
How many animals can I have at any given time?
During the course of a scenario, you may have one combat animal and as many noncombat animals as you like. Noncombat animals (ponies, horses, pet dogs, and so on) cannot participate in combat at all. If you have so many noncombat animals that their presence is slowing a session down, the GM has the right to ask you to select one noncombat animal and leave the rest behind. A summoner's eidolon is considered an animal companion for the purposes of counting combat and noncombat animals. If you have more than one class-granted animal companion (or eidolon), you must choose which will be considered the combat animal at the start of the scenario. In general, a mount, a familiar or mundane pet, and your class-granted animal(s) are acceptable, but more than that can be disruptive.
In my opinion this seems to imply that non-combat trained animals such as regular horses, regular dogs, donkeys and such would not participate in combat. A combat trained warhorse or a riding dog should be able to attack (and die) in combat, provided you are making the proper Handle Animal and Ride checks when appropriate. You could not have a plain pet riding dog and a tiger animal companion and expect them both to be able to fight though; you'd have to choose which one you take into battle with you.
That said, I could see someone interpreting this differently, so it probably falls under the purview of table variation.
The problem with mounted combat characters is that so few PFS missions take place in an arena where those mounts can be used. There's a few, but most of the ones I've been in took place in dungeons/ruins or urban zones. Kinda hard to take your horse inside.
The problem with mounted combat characters is that so few PFS missions take place in an arena where those mounts can be used. There's a few, but most of the ones I've been in took place in dungeons/ruins or urban zones. Kinda hard to take your horse inside.
This definitely goes along with the mantra of "why play a non-halfling cavalier?"
The problem with mounted combat characters is that so few PFS missions take place in an arena where those mounts can be used. There's a few, but most of the ones I've been in took place in dungeons/ruins or urban zones. Kinda hard to take your horse inside.This definitely goes along with the mantra of "why play a non-halfling cavalier?"
Because gnomes has cantrips? :3
This definitely goes along with the mantra of "why play a non-halfling cavalier?"
-2 STR and Small weapons on a melee class.
This definitely goes along with the mantra of "why play a non-halfling cavalier?"-2 STR and Small weapons on a melee class.
Spirited charge in any dungeon.
Skirmisher Ranger. Or just Prepare spells like Gravity Bow.
Boon Companion Feat if it is allowed.
I also think Cavalier would be the way to go here. Luring Cavalier is definitely necessary since WoW hunters can't function in melee, but Beast Rider might not be-- horses and camels make pretty awesome tanks.
Also, even with Beast Rider, she's stuck with Horses and Camels until 7th level unless she plays a Small character.
Ranger with Boon Companion nets you (IIRC) a full level companion and the Ranger's Advantages. If you spend all your Spell slots on Gravity Bow and things like Instant Enemy you are golden.
Pick a Wolf, get some good Barding and there you go. Heck, a well built Horse can be even better than a Wolf. Especially since it still allows a Ranger to become the Fantasy equivalent of an Abrams or Panzer tank.
Ranger with Boon Companion nets you (IIRC) a full level companion and the Ranger's Advantages. If you spend all your Spell slots on Gravity Bow and things like Instant Enemy you are golden.
It does, but you still don't get the companion till 4th level.
Buy a Guard Dog or Wartrained Horse for lower levels. IIRC it is PFS Legal.
Or use the Falconer(?) Archetype. It is surprisingly wonderful.
your friend can play a ranger (probably trap ranger) and then just ask the PFS judge if she can have the pet as a part of fluff that does not become combat viable untill level 4. say its a wolf pup and it takes some time to grow to young wolf status where its usable as a pet and continues to grow as the ranger levels.
if the player simply wants to have all of the cool pets and abilities they have while playing wow then they are just going to have to bend a little or play a NON-PFS game.