The short answer is yes.
Pay attention to the wording used in the feats. Understanding the meaning of attack, standard action, and full-round attack is vital. They feats are usually worded very specifically.
Yep. All of it stacks unless a specific action is called out.
You can Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Clustered Shot, Deadly Aim all at once if you wish, since only one of those, Rapid Shot actually specifies an action (full-attack action).
What you CAN'T do is say, stack Rapid Shot and Focused Shot, since Rapid Shot requires a full-attack action and Focused Shot is a specific Standard action.
Ok, another DM- Ranger question. The campaign setting is Game of Thrones so pretty much a human only campaign. Enter the ranger with favored enemy human. Should I limit this as it is a huge boon, and 90% of all the enemies fought? How do I balance it without screwing over the character?
Doesn't really need to be limited. I've run the math on it and a Ranger vs his primary Favored Enemy only has a leg-up of like +2 to hit and damage on a Fighter using his main weapon group or a raging Barbarian, and that's after he hits the +6 bonus.
Really in a campaign with all humans you may have bigger problems with X (Hold, Dominate, etc.) Person spells working on about 80% more targets than usual.
Magic is almost non existent, and is reserved for epic style encounters. Alchemy and spontaneous casters are allowed, but the casting is usually limited to buffs/ debuffs while battlefield control casting is very rare.
You could make him swap favored enemy for one of the variants from an archetype? Specifically check out Freebooter's Bane from the Freebooter archetype, I like that one a lot.
Except in an actual game scenario a Ranger is likely using his Favored Enemy 80-90% of the time anyway. If 80% of the enemies are Monstrous Humanoids or Undead (a few campaigns I can think of), do you nerf the Ranger that picks those Favored Enemies too?
RACIST!!!!
No seriously, thanks for everything. I'll just up the undead/ magical and regular beasts encounters. If it gets too crazy then I will break it down by geographical regions.
Sounds racist.What? How?
And Rynjin, yes, in a scenario you may have FE undead and 90% of the baddies are undead. But a scenario is like 3% of a character's career though 12 levels, and unless you're playing in a campaign like this one, your opportunities to use a particular FE bonus shouldn't come up in every scenario.
But if you're in a campaign with 90% undead over your entire career, yes, as a GM, I'd break down undead into categories like skeletal, incorporeal, etc., to again get all undead into 4 or 5 categories so a ranger with FE undead won't be OP compared with the other classes in this campaign. Though again this is at GM's discretion. If the players all want to take undead bashing types (paladin, cleric, ranger with FE undead) then things should balance themselves out, and the GM can go ahead and raise the CR by 2 or 3 points to compensate for having characters which are all specialized at destroying undead.
But it's not unbalanced. Like I said before, by level 10 and above it's like a +1-2 to-hit and +1-2 to damage over an equivalent Fighter or Barbarian. A little more in Archery, a bit less with 2H.
He asked.
I gave my answer.
My apologies, I'll never disagree with you again oh lord of all.
Yep, I agree.
I think geography is the best way of handling this. I used to like the idea of an alternate Favored Enemy that dealt with perhaps spellcasters -- but spellcasting ability is too frequent a trait (especially in Pathfinder), and class-based FE is too metagamey.
On the other hand, geographic origins ensures that humans are split up decently and that they mostly fit into one category at a time. If you did it class-based, then you have creatures fitting into multiple categories, overlapping -- or, your total range of possible Favored Enemies increases every time a new base class is released. Heaven help you if you started this campaign with Pathfinder Core -- 11 classes -- and then the GM started using Advanced Player's Guide, then Ultimate Magic, and then Ultimate Combat!
I also previously considered the idea of a alignment-free conversion where paladins and clerics were less friendly with each other, and instead of Smite Alignment, they had Smite Heresy. Knowing what I know now about game balance, I suppose I'd have to set the churches against each other in specific, political ways (Iomedae against Rovagug, but not Sarenrae) rather than just saying worshipers of Iomedae can smite everybody that doesn't worship Iomedae.
At one point I thought about writing up a document about the elemental plane of fire with a chapter about running an entire campaign there, and it was an interesting exercise considering the challenges of such a game where almost every monster is going to be fire-based and most of the creatures will be elementals. Any PC that knows generally what the campaign concept is will go for fire resistance / immunity, and bonuses against elementals, devils, and other outsiders. Yet this means that the most challenging fights of the game would be the ones against non-fire based creatures that aren't outsiders. It's a big problem when your hardest fights aren't representative of the campaign's theme!
Still, if I dedicate myself to that problem then I've got some ideas developing to handle it.
Anyway, I figure if I ever start writing gaming modules I'm going to try to remember to use more non-humans. I use humans way too much as it is, and the APs I've run really seemed to over-represent them as well. Human is too good of a choice.
I would just let it be as it is. There still are animals, undead, magical beasts and perhaps dragons beside humanoid (human). So taking FE humanoid (human) is not an automatic, works 100% of the time bonus.
That's ethnicity. That would be splitting up favored enemy by, oh, Chelish or Mwangi people. And yes, that would resonate poorly with some players, while others wouldn't be bothered at all. Games like Axis & Allies seem to keep selling, so there must be people who like to play WW2 germans.
That has its own weaknesses. What if you have a Kellid/Tian/Varisian/Ulfen character? Is there a cutoff for how many races you count as? Do you gain any benefit to offset the disadvantages of choosing to be the child of a Tian and Vudrani?
Geography may be gaining a bonus against people born in the River Kingdoms, or from Varisia, or from Cheliax. Maybe they have chelish blood, or maybe they're of mwangi blood, but that's where they're from.
Or you can run it like an allegiance -- wherever you consider yourself a citizen of, changeable during your lifetime. In fact, there are some games where a person would love to get a favored enemy against all the knights, military, and peasants sworn under a rival king.
The idea does have weaknesses. You have to know the nationality of your NPCs, which isn't necessarily known (if an AP) or you have to write it down if you're running a homebrew. Some may still be over-represented (if you play a game in Varisia, then likely a lot of your enemies will be Varisians! Same problem as before!).
Anyway, your complaint stands equally against favored enemy right now, only that it's happily disguised by the fact that people don't think of 'bonuses against dwarves' or 'bonuses against orcs' as being racist. Yet in standard D&D, you can have a ranger who is really good at killing people of a particular species, whether they're good or evil, whether he personally knows them or has never seen the individual before.
Shrug. Pick your problems.
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Still feels wrong to me.
Maybe it's totally awesome for some, and nerfs the ability to their liking.
I guess if some guy told me they were the best at killing Japanese, and no could kill Japanese like them, I might give them a funny look.
Especially if they told me they were not very good at killing any other ethnicity of people.
Games where you regularly scout out locations, disable their security, break in, murder the inhabitants and loot their dwelling sound bad when you start translating them to real-world context.
"I'm particularly good at killing humans" sounds weird coming from a real-world ranger whether he gets more specific or not.
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If you want to keep it all humans, maybe put it down to +1 instead of +2 each time it is chosen.
The problem I see is not with the attack/damage, but with the skill bonuses. Having +6 to Perception, Sense Motive, Bluff, Knowledge (local) and Survival (tracking) in 90% of your encounters sounds huge to me.
It is roughly equivalent to 4 Skill Focus feats.
Who will want to play Rogue/ninja anymore ?
For even more cheese in such a setting, allow your player to be a spell-less ranger (3pp from Open Design/Kobold Press) and to take the Dual Style archetype.
And WEEP !!!
If you want to keep it all humans, maybe put it down to +1 instead of +2 each time it is chosen.
The problem I see is not with the attack/damage, but with the skill bonuses. Having +6 to Perception, Sense Motive, Bluff, Knowledge (local) and Survival (tracking) in 90% of your encounters sounds huge to me.
It is roughly equivalent to 4 Skill Focus feats.
Who will want to play Rogue/ninja anymore ?
For even more cheese in such a setting, allow your player to be a spell-less ranger (3pp from Open Design/Kobold Press) and to take the Dual Style archetype.
And WEEP !!!
That is the ability that is being broken more than anything.
Besides... A game of thrones setting is very racist. Or houseist, if you will.