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Huh, I never noticed that rogues had better favored terrain than rangers.
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More importantly you can take extra rogue talent multiple times to further boost it. Which can get you some monstrously high bonuses. You can get the highest bonus possible by going Ranger3 Rogue 2 Ranger 1 Horizon walker then back to ranger after you finish it. If you do nothing but boost it you can end up with high enough bonuses to justify whatever the heck you feel like doing.
Go Guide Ranger to give everyone a bonus for your favored terrain.
Ranger 1: Power Attack or Pointblank Shot
Human: Precise Shot
Ranger 2: If not Human, Precise Shot Go for just enough ranged feats to make it kinda viable.
Ranger 3: Endurance! 1st Favored Terrain, Pick Mountain. Terrain Dominance works off of what the creatures are native to and Mountains are the most numerous. Or if you are playing in a city or fighting mostly humanoids pick city or plains. Grab Power Attack here if you haven't.
Rogue 1: Trapfinding, neat.
Rogue 2: Here we goooooo! Terrain Mastery twice here. And we get evasion neat. Pick the most common types you think you'll encounter for your campaign. I recommend underground and urban. This puts our best one at +6 then +4, +2
Ranger 4: Guide power is on now.
Horizon Walker 1: We up Mountains here, or if you're looking for a more balanced array, go with the second or lowest. We also grab Extra Rogue Talent again here and pick some random terrain that might be useful. Terrain Bonuses are: +10 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 2: Alot of cool options for mastery. Pick whichever feels good.
Terrain Bonuses are: +12 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 3: Dominance time. This is where the build comes online. I'm picking mountain here. Extra rogue talent again.
TB are: +12 +8 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 4: Another Mastery. Amp up your highest or you can begin to fluff one of your other terrains thats about to be dominated.
TB are: +14 +8 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 5: Another Terrain. Extra Rogue Talent again. TB are: +18 +10 +8 +6 +4 +2.
HWalker 6: Dominance and Mastery. Pick Urban or whatever your second highest is.
HWalker 7: Amping the highest. Extra Rogue Talent again.
TB are: +22 +12 +10 +8 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 8: Mastery whichever one you think has a cool ability at this point. Amp. TB are: +24 +12 +10 +8 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 9: Dominance again. Pick your third highest or wherever the campaign is going. Extra Rogue Talent again.
TB are: +26 +14 +12 +10 +8 +6 +4 +2
HWalker 10: And here we go. +2 to all our terrains now. And if we somehow go somewhere we haven't favored yet, we have it.
TB are: +28 +16 +14 +12 +10 +8 +6 +4
Anything you might like after this. I recommend dropping the rest of your levels in Ranger, though Barbarian is tempting.
You'll grab 2 more Extra Rogue Talents putting your final bonus at.
TERRAIN BONUS AT 19th LEVEL:
+32 +20 +18 +16 +18 +16 +14 +12 +10 +8 +4 +2.
If you are attacking a creature native to mountains you get a +32 to attack rolls and damage.
Which means you've got a guaranteed hit on anything but a 1.
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Oh geez. That's amazing. I hadn't even thought about Extra Rogue Talent. I was just thinking how much more viable a straight rogue had become--of course I should have expected that another class would be able to do it better. Isn't it sad, Rogue-chan?
Oh geez. That's amazing. I hadn't even thought about Extra Rogue Talent. I was just thinking how much more viable a straight rogue had become--of course I should have expected that another class would be able to do it better. Isn't it sad, Rogue-chan?
Rogue-chan: *Clamers back into her hidey hole*
Its a build I was coming up for Rise of the Runelords. Mountains are tremendously prevalent.
Sadly I'll never see how that character will turn out since that DM is rather flaky with games.
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Sure why not. Rogues dont get anything else that makes them stand out meaningfully.
Keep in mind the Horizon Walker gets heavily shafted by fighting enemies that aren't native to his dominances and this build doesn't REALLY show its stuff till level 10. Till then it is quite stealthy and more capable in combat than a rogue.
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Two firsts for me in this thread. One, someone calling rogue OP. Two, someone calling horizon walker OP.
In each of your examples you listed possible places where you might not get your terrain bonuses. Also keep in mind high level play isn't exactly the most balanced piece of work.
This ranger loses alot out on spellcasting as well. Also for 1-8th level you're effectively a somewhat gimped fighter with a nice amount of skills and trapfinding.
Alot of the Horizon Walker is vulnerable to where the DM takes the game. In APs, yes it could be very powerful. In a home campaign? Somewhat unlikely. APs are also not built for highly optimized characters anyway so its a moot point.
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Because the Horizon Walker makes Favored Terrains the sole focus of it's efforts.
In the grand scheme of things, A wizard at the end of the day still kills someone with a failed saving throw and can summon a 18 HD Outsider for free. Or a sorcerer can stunlock you from 8th level onward with Dazing Spell. A barbarian can get such high bonuses to saves as to make them moot and is one of the only classes who gets pounce. He also gets access to a bane effect that applies against all creatures while raging. Then he can throw on a bonus to improve moral bonuses. (everything a barbarian has)
Its been a part of the CRB since print. I highly doubt they'd go editing the ranger's base features.
Why do prestige classes often have requirements that have nothing to do with the class?
Why is everyone more stealthy than the rogue?
The Rogue talent didn't come out till Ultimate Combat, and as most games go, the more books, the more powerful options open up. They thought to grant the Rogue a little advantage in learning a bunch of home turfs for some bonuses to often made checks by rogues. As it has been proven numerous times, anything that buffs anything often helps other classes even more so.
I personally don't see any possible misinterpretation. Unlike for other abilities this one is pretty straightforward whom it could possibly help. I can name 2 classes who greatly benefit from Favored Terrains. Rogues now and Horizon Walkers. Rogues since their HiPS is dependent upon their favored terrains. Rangers don't benefit that much from Favored Terrain because their bonus never becomes very high. A total of +8 to initiative and some skill checks and eventually becomes the method for them to HiPS.
The Horizon Walker Terrain Abuse trick has been known for a long time.
I'm pretty sure you can't take Extra Rogue Talent twice for the same kind of effect (basically, unless it says you can, you can't).
==Aelryinth
In this case you can take it more than once (emphasis is mine).
Terrain Mastery (Ex): A rogue with this talent gains a favored terrain as the ranger ability of the same name, though the favored terrain ability does not increase with her level as the ranger's ability does. A rogue can take this ability multiple times, each time applying it to a new terrain, and granting all other favored terrains a +2 increase to the favored terrain bonus.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Necroing the thread again:
Scavion confused favored terrain with favored enemy. Favored terrain bonuses are to initiative checks and Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth, and Survival skill checks, NOT attack and damage. Unfortunately, going first or seeing everything while in your eldest favored terrain doesn't help you hit enemies.TERRAIN BONUS AT 19th LEVEL:
+32 +20 +18 +16 +18 +16 +14 +12 +10 +8 +4 +2.
If you are attacking a creature native to mountains you get a +32 to attack rolls and damage.
Which means you've got a guaranteed hit on anything but a 1.
Actually the Horizon Walker class ability Terrain Dominance does just that - turns your terrain bonuses into favored enemy bonuses.
Actually the Horizon Walker class ability Terrain Dominance does just that - turns your terrain bonuses into favored enemy bonuses.Necroing the thread again:
Scavion confused favored terrain with favored enemy. Favored terrain bonuses are to initiative checks and Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth, and Survival skill checks, NOT attack and damage. Unfortunately, going first or seeing everything while in your eldest favored terrain doesn't help you hit enemies.TERRAIN BONUS AT 19th LEVEL:
+32 +20 +18 +16 +18 +16 +14 +12 +10 +8 +4 +2.
If you are attacking a creature native to mountains you get a +32 to attack rolls and damage.
Which means you've got a guaranteed hit on anything but a 1.
Bingo.
:P ..... It's definitely been around a while since this was a 6 month thread necro.
Yes, it's been known for quite a long time. And I'm sure I wasn't the first to notice, either.
HW in a game with limited terrain types can be amazing, it's long been the only noncaster Prestige Class actually worth taking levels in, though I think recently there were one or two others added that don't suck. Or at very high levels, a wand of instant enemy (I learned about this more recently; DO NOT give up favored enemy for an archetype!) means you pwn any solo boss. Instant Enemy will make it count as your FE for all purposes....including its native terrain type. Cha-ching!
Instant Enemy will make it count as your FE for all purposes....including its native terrain type. Cha-ching!
Some folks will fight with you on that. The only surefire method I can think of that will shut most of em up is the Aquatic Terrain + Humanoid(Aquatic) Favored Enemy since it's hard to argue that Aquatic Humanoids aren't water native.
Yeah, you have to find a creature type that's only in one terrain type naturally so there can be no argument. That's a good example. I used to joke, "finally, a reason to take FE on Humanoids (gnolls)!" (since that's GOT to be the most narrow, specific, useless FE choice there is) But...iirc they hail from more than one terrain type. Stupid worthless gnolls, can't provide one decent reason to hate them.
I'm not sure if this matters, but I've been emailing the developers of hero lab and they are under the belief that the rogue favored terrain bonus does not increase the rangers favored terrains by the +2. The +2 only applies to the terrains previously selected with rogue talents.
This would surely balance things. Since hero lab is a second party publisher, maybe they have received info that is not written for coding clarification. This is the email I received from them regarding this:
The upgrade only applies to favored terrains gained through the selection of that rogue talent, and not any which you might get by virtue of ranger levels (which have a different advancement scheme).
Hero Lab is not a valid source for rules interpretations.
And that's just not true, they're both favored terrain bonuses.
I hear yah... I am just letting people know what they told me.
Since Hero Lab speaks directly with Paizo, I would think they have a reasoning for coding it the way they do.
RAW vs RAI I suppose. Would be nice to know if this was what Paizo intended.
This is an incredibly powerful way to create a character, and potentially give a GM a struggle. Caution would tell us to at least consider it.
The v2 Errata to the "Ultimate Combat" book has corrected this:
Page 70—In the Terrain Mastery subentry (part of the Rogue Talents entry beginning on the previous page),
remove “, and granting all other favored terrains a +2 increase to the favored terrain bonus”.
The v2 Errata to the "Ultimate Combat" book has
correctednerfed this:Page 70—In the Terrain Mastery subentry (part of the Rogue Talents entry beginning on the previous page),
remove “, and granting all other favored terrains a +2 increase to the favored terrain bonus”.
Fixed this for you. :-)
/cevah