One of my players wants to play a ranger in Curse of the Crimson Throne with his favored enemy bonus to human and his favored terrain as urban.
If you haven't played CotCT before, 90% of the enemies are humans and 99% of the campaign is in urban terrain.
Is the ability for a ranger to be constantly under the effects of favored enemy bonus and favored terrain bonus too strong for this campaign?
Probably still won't be OP. In fact, without those choices, he would be pretty gimped.
Let it be.
One of my players wants to play a ranger in Curse of the Crimson Throne with his favored enemy bonus to human and his favored terrain as urban.
If you haven't played CotCT before, 90% of the enemies are humans and 99% of the campaign is in urban terrain.
Is the ability for a ranger to be constantly under the effects of favored enemy bonus and favored terrain bonus too strong for this campaign?
While it might well be possible for your ranger to deal some fairly decent damage (especially as an archer) and he'll possibly outshine a vanilla rogue and fighter in there fields, my vote is that you should allow it. In a skulls and shackles game, you use archetypes and classes well suited to the sea. How is this different?
I guess what I'm saying is that if you are willing to allow your players to optimize for the game (i.e. they are the ones the tasks involved fall to because they are the best suited to it) then it's legit to allow the ranger to make these choices (as well as accept it when said ranger asks to play the urban ranger archetype).
However, if your misgiving is that you are worried that your group is going to bulldoze straight through, then I would then suggest that you take it up with your group as a whole, or get a hold of their character sheets before the first session, and see what kind of changes you need to make to the adventure.
It is your game, though having class features that match the game isn't overpowered. I would expect a ranger in the Giantslayer AP to have giants as a favored enemy.
Overpowering would be if a PC had mythic ranks in a non-mythic campaign, or used unbalanced third party material that the NPCs or other PCs would not have access to (such as epic augmented summoning, or some such shenanigans).
Besides, you will likely have to modify the AP anyway since it was made for D&D 3.5. Not to mention how many base classes and archetypes have been added since the AP was first released. It's not like you couldn't swap out an antagonist rogue NPC for a slayer class.
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Well, I've just run my players through CotCT (actually, we're in the middle of Chapter 6) and, well:
Firstly, Urban Terrain doesn't apply for chapters 4 and 5 (I guess 5 is debatable...I'd say it doesn't apply). So, a full third of the game. Secondly, Favored Terrain is not a huge deal as bonuses go.
Favored Enemy is more important, but as for enemies being human...I think half the enemies in Chapters 1, 3, and 4 are human, if that. Ditto Chapter 6. Chapter 5 has not a single human foe in it. Chapter 2 is admittedly heavy on human foes, but that's one chapter.
I'd allow this in a heartbeat.
This is sort of inherent to the issue when a player has some idea about what the campaign is about. I mean, if players know in advance they're going against a pale gentleman with a pronounced widow's peak named Vlad expect to see a lot of Paladins and Clerics, if the players expect to be in a nautical campaign, expect to see merfolk and hydrokineticists. There's really nothing you can do about it, and you want to give players some idea about what the campaign is about since you don't want someone to end up completely useless by accident.
The real problem with "OP" characters is twofold:
1) They hog the spotlight so that the other players feel superfluous
2) They render combat uneventful.
I sincerely doubt an OP ranger is going to damage either in a meaningful way, so I would allow it. I mean, it's the nature of the "favored [foo]" class features that you are going to try to guess the thing that you're most likely to encounter.
On my thoughs you should be able to balance encounters if necessary, that's all.
Characters aren't OP, (they can be unbalanced if you have to deal with a powerplayer, in that case the party will notice that encounters are unbalanced because of this player) remember you're the GM and nothing could be unbalanced if you don't want so.
As others said, i would allow this.
This is sort of inherent to the issue when a player has some idea about what the campaign is about. I mean, if players know in advance they're going against a pale gentleman with a pronounced widow's peak named Vlad expect to see a lot of Paladins and Clerics, if the players expect to be in a nautical campaign, expect to see merfolk and hydrokineticists. There's really nothing you can do about it, and you want to give players some idea about what the campaign is about since you don't want someone to end up completely useless by accident.
The real problem with "OP" characters is twofold:
1) They hog the spotlight so that the other players feel superfluous
2) They render combat uneventful.I sincerely doubt an OP ranger is going to damage either in a meaningful way, so I would allow it. I mean, it's the nature of the "favored [foo]" class features that you are going to try to guess the thing that you're most likely to encounter.
APs specifically have players guides so they know what they will be going up against. It is actually intended for them to have some sort of idea what is coming so they can plan characters accordingly. Nothing like making a ranger with favored enemy (insert the thing you will never see in the AP) and being bummed about never using half your class abilities.
Quite honestly, if the ranger making a decent choice for their class abilities is a legitimate concern and OP, you may want to reconsider running a game. A certain amount of system mastery is pretty much required to GM and if having class abilities online and useful is a problem, you may want to wait until you are a little more comfortable with the game before running.
I wouldn't worry about it at all GM. I really can't imagine it being a problem. Run a few combats to get the feel of how everybody's characters stack up before making any decisions.
APs specifically have players guides so they know what they will be going up against. It is actually intended for them to have some sort of idea what is coming so they can plan characters accordingly. Nothing like making a ranger with favored enemy (insert the thing you will never see in the AP) and being bummed about never using half your class abilities.
This makes a complete sort of logical sense. If the campaign is going to be a nautical campaign taking place on an archipelago, you can assume all the PCs have at least been on a ship before. If the kingdom is plagued by the depredations of giants, people who think "I know how to fight those" are going to show up. If the ranger's favored terrain is "tundra" and his favored enemy is "orc" what is that person doing in the majority human city with a decidedly non-arctic climate begin with?
To say that a player shouldn't play a ranger with this favored enemy and terrain because they're good choices is basically to say that favored terrain/enemy shouldn't be features of the class because sometimes they're going to be consistently useful. Which, I guess, is a valid position but you'd have to rework the ranger a lot to fix the issue.
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The mere thought that a Ranger could be OP is sorta surreal.
If you haven't played CotCT before, 90% of the enemies are humans and 99% of the campaign is in urban terrain.
Not true, at least in the parts I've played of it (about halfway through the second volume). There are many nonhuman enemies and significant non-urban terrain.
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Not true, at least in the parts I've played of it (about halfway through the second volume). There are many nonhuman enemies and significant non-urban terrain.
If you haven't played CotCT before, 90% of the enemies are humans and 99% of the campaign is in urban terrain.
Yeah...having just GMed my way through most of it, those numbers are deeply wrong. As I mention above.
There are definitely a lot of humans in the first two books and some later on, so FE: Human is good. Then again, it tends to be a good idea for most adventure paths. Later on, things get more varied.
I'd say let it go. Rangers are a cool class, but just because one of the warriors is good at what s/he does doesn't break the game. What other characters are in the party?
If the character does steamroll through everything, just change some of the humans in the encounter with other races. However, I doubt this would be a big issue.
I am running book 1 of CoCT right now and I've been far more annoyed by sleep and the like. Have fun having 80% of your humanoid enemies being rendered helpless with a single spell. I am seriously considering increasing Korvosa's (half-)elven and dwarven population just to make it a bit harder to breeze through such encounters.