So, I'm running Serpent Skull and converting it to E6 as I go. My players made characters today and I ended up with two Rangers. They're both totally new to D&D in general (having only played world of darkness games), so I'm helping them out pretty heavily with their characters.
I am trying to give them advice on what favored enemies might be good choices, but I'm not totally sure. I've only read Book 1 and 2 so far, so I don't know what's coming up later, yet, and since it's going to be E6, they'll only ever get 2 favored enemies, so it's not like they can adjust and take more appropriate ones later.
Based on the first two books, I suggested Human, Undead, and Animal, but I wanted to make sure there wasn't some obviously better choice.
I'm particularly worried about Human--the first two books are full of them, but I'm concerned that 3-6 cut down on that tremendously based on what I know of their content.
Any suggestions?
Serpentfolk(they should take this one after the end of Book 1, it's super useful). Human i suppose. Undead. Evil Outsider. Animal/magical beast(most animals won't need FE bonuses).
I would suggest having them take a look at the Player's Guide for serpent's skull. It will give them recommendations such as good favored enemies to take I believe.
I believe in the long run Favored Enemy(Monstrous Humanoids) will be the most useful, but won't come up too much at the start. Undead, Humanoid(human), and Outsider(native) are all good choices as well.
Our Ranger is rocking Monstrous Humanoid as his main and Undead as his secondary.
He's been coasting pretty well.
Side note: Jungle and Urban terrains are your friend as well. Though Dungeon likely comes in handy just as much.
I think Urban beats Dungeon - unless you classify everything underground as a dungeon.
Our range took Humans for his first, then reptilian humanoids.
Serpentfolk are monstrous humanoids, not reptilian. You definitely want monstrous. Not sure if the Gorilla King's winged monkeys are...
Other then then, Evil outsiders and undead are both good on the side. At level 1, I'd take undead...you run across undead in every book. At level 5, monstrous humanoids if you can justify it. After that, Evil Outsiders, especially for the end game.
==Aelryinth
Oops - that's what I get for applying real world designations instead of looking up critters in the bestiary.
I just looked up the Dherii scouts - they're also monstrous humaniods.
Thanks
I have a monstrous humanoid bane weapon and cant say I have had much use out of it yet. I believe mod 4 has more MH in it
The player's guide had suggested monstrous humanoid as the top choice and that's what I recommended to my player running a ranger. He has been very patient, but I feel a bit embarrassed that we are pretty far into the second adventure and there has been one (1) monstrous humanoid for his character to encounter (Yarzoth); plus a harpy I threw in largely because of this issue. Speaking at least for the first five levels, undead would have been vastly more helpful. There have also been a lot of animals, but I understand FE:animals isn't highly regarded for later levels.
Once you get to Tazion, and then through pretty much the rest of the AP, it's a monstrous humanoid fest. Charau-ka, Snakefolk, boggards, etc. They may have to wait till then, but after that, they'll be going to town.
Thread necro, but I was looking into this issue as I am looking at potentially running this for my son who would like to play a Ranger.
My suggestion after looking into it:
1st - Animal +2
5th - Animal +4, Humanoid (human) +2
10th - Aberration +4, Animal +4, Humanoid (human) +2
15th - Outsider (evil) +4, Aberration +4, Animal +4, Humoid (human) +2
My criteria was to look for any encounters that had a creature with a CR higher than CL+1 for the expected CL at any given point in the adventure.
This got a little hard in some of the large sandbox areas, but I did my best to estimate...
Random encounters with animals really pushed that animals was a good choice for the first two books.
I was a little disappointed that Monstrous Humanoid never really hit the list high enough to make it, but they often had more numbers but not the big CR single creature fights.
I would also say that it was a lot more spread out than I expected for what a 'good' choice was. It would be hard to go wrong (with Animal lvls 1-9 or so being the clear choice).