| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lazy answer: just get rid of Ranger, leaving Slayer and Hunter, or only allow choices/archetypes without Favored Enemy.
You might want to consider the other types of favored enemies and try to make them as similarly broad. Ideally, you'd like the choices available to the ranger to be relatively equal over the campaign setting so that no single one is the obviously dominating choice. Maybe that means grouping Animals and Vermin, All outsiders, and so on. Just putting that in front of any potential ranger player may be enough to get them thinking that Humanoids isn't necessarily a dominant choice for the whole campaign.
|
If there's only one type of humanoids, you still have Aberration, Animal, Construct, Dragon, Humanoid (Human), Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Ooze, Outsider (Air), Outsider (Chaotic), Outsider (Earth), Outsider (Evil), Outsider (Fire), Outsider (Good), Outsider (Lawful), Outsider (Native), Outsider (Water), Plant, Undead, and Vermin as favored enemy choices! =p
(Note that having only one type of humanoid deletes goblins, orcs, bugbears, and hobgoblins from the setting; they're Humanoid (Goblinoid).)
Just leave it as is. I think some of the humanoid sub-types are pretty terrible. How many orcs and goblins will be facing after early levels, except in special campaigns? How many of those sub-types are just a trap? Too many. A ranger doesn't get a lot FE types, so there will still be plenty of non-favored enemies for the character to face without the bonus.
I'd do the same thing I'd do with Weapon Training, Rage, Favored Target, Challenge, etc.
Nothing.
Your concerns are ungrounded.
unless you are in a campaign where Humanoids are going to be a foe across many levels (the only two I can think of are MAYBE gnolls in the desert AP, and Goblins in the Jade Regent AP) (I"m ignoring Giants, which are good for both Runelords and Giant slayer), the other humanoid races other then human are almost NEVER worth putting an FE into, anyways.
In PFS, for example, the ideal FE configuration is always FE: Human, Undead, Evil outsiders, pretty much in that order. You don't see other humanoid races enough to spend the FE on anything else.
Yes, this makes FE: Human quite strong, but you're an adventurer. You're not going to be fighting humans all the time unless it's a city-based, social game. The monsters don't care. So it will be situationally good, but if your foes aren't human, it's no better then a game with dozens of humanoid races.
My advice is not to worry about it UNLESS the vast majority of your combats are with Humans. Seriously, half the time he'll be excellent, and the rest of the time he'll just be meh.
And if that's the case, just remove humanoids from the list of options.
Let's say you had a setting where there was only one race of humanoids. Humans-only is one example. What happens to Rangers' Favored Enemy then? Are multiple subtypes for a common enemy type especially necessary to keep it balanced?
I don't see the problem. So what if there's only one race of humanoids?
You have two possible outcomes.
1. You only have one enemy to face... You keep improving your favored enemy bonus through the roof.
2. There are other things in the world to beat on... Choose which ones you want it to apply. And which bonuses you keep improving.
The utility of the Ranger class isn't impacted here.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Might I suggest, if after all these posts you still think something should be done (which, personally, I do given that having this problem implies that you'll be having a lot of humanoid enemies in this campaign, and the ranger wasn't meant for his favoured enemy bonus to apply to 95% of a campaign's enemies - the entire reason it has to choose subtypes for the more widely used types), consider making rangers pick a character class in place of a humanoid subtype, so a ranger may take "Humanoid (druid)" or "Humanoid (rogue)" as their favoured enemy. Personally, I'm almost inclined to say that the hybrid classes from ACG could count as either of its constituent classes, just as an Outsider (Evil, Lawful) would count as Outsider (Evil) and Outsider (Lawful). I say "almost" because while, as a general rule, the hybrid classes tend to be better than either of the classes they combine, this isn't universally true, and I don't think the difference is quite enough to warrant it. That said, you may feel differently.
I feel like Lawrence DuBois. Expanding what constitutes as a favored enemy is a great way supplement. Undead are a pretty strong candidate as well since few games I've been in can keep from bringing them in. Maybe offering undead (incorporeal) as an added option is a possibility to differentiate from bodily undead?
Another option is to halve the bonus and apply it against a broader swathe of enemies. This makes it less useful against any one foe, but more useful against marginal foes.
For instance, Outsiders (alignment) - all one subtype. Creatures (Elemental subtype) - all one FE. So, fire elementals, fire dragons, and fire giants, all together.
Constructs and Aberrations, lumped under Unnatural.
Plants and Animals lumped under Natural.
Magical Beasts and Fey lumped under Supernatural Foes.
Monstrous Humanoids and Giants lumped under Ancients.
etc etc.
The underlying question seems to be: How often is a ranger's favored enemy supposed to apply from a game-balance point of view?
Is this PFS and did you choose FE humanoid(human)? Then the answer is a lot.
I think the real question here is, will it be a problem if the ranger has his favored enemy bonus active on virtually every opponent they face?
The answer is no. In fact, there is a spell that allows them to do exactly that, and while it's good, perhaps even great, it's certainly not game breaking.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The underlying question seems to be: How often is a ranger's favored enemy supposed to apply from a game-balance point of view?Is this PFS and did you choose FE humanoid(human)? Then the answer is a lot.
I think the real question here is, will it be a problem if the ranger has his favored enemy bonus active on virtually every opponent they face?
The answer is no. In fact, there is a spell that allows them to do exactly that, and while it's good, perhaps even great, it's certainly not game breaking.
But it does make the choice meaningless. There is no opportunity cost or trade-off, you either made the "right" choice (where your bonus affects everything) or you made the "wrong" one (where it affects nothing). From a non-power-gaming/optimization-concerned perspective, a ranger's favoured enemy bonus was not intended to affect everything or else there'd be no choice to be made when getting the class feature. That there is a choice required implies that some limitations are intended to exist, and that it should not affect the vast majority of enemies. If a given campaign concept does not easily allow for that to be the case using the rules-as-written, then house rules are needed to correct for this. I know that if I were playing a ranger, I would much rather have to choose FE (cleric) than FE (human) in a campaign that features only humans if for no other reason than that it makes my choice actually matter. (Incidentally, while I like aspects of PFS in theory, I am not a fan of its execution, so referencing it won't sway me.)
|
|
I feel like Lawrence DuBois. Expanding what constitutes as a favored enemy is a great way supplement. Undead are a pretty strong candidate as well since few games I've been in can keep from bringing them in. Maybe offering undead (incorporeal) as an added option is a possibility to differentiate from bodily undead?
In such a situation, I'd probably divide the categories up more or less like so (though not necessarily with these names):
Incorporeal revenants - ghosts, spectres, etc. Undead with the Incorporeal subtype that are the spirits (or something similar) of a once living entity.
Corporeal revenants - zombies, vampires, etc. Undead without the Incorporeal subtype that are the bodies of a once living entity.
Intelligent undead - vampires, liches, etc. Undead with an Intelligence score.
Mindless undead - zombies, skeletons, etc. Undead without an Intelligence score.
Composite undead - bonestorms, necrocrafts, etc. Undead that are the combined remains/souls of numerous entities.
Template undead - vampires, liches, etc. Undead that apply a template to another creature rather than being a wholly unique one in their own right. In this case, I would not count skeletons, zombies, or similar templates since they pretty much only rely on the original creature's size and a few other physical features.
Transformative undead - bodak, allip, etc. Undead that turn others into what they are through a completely transformation (that is, a brand new stat block, not merely a template).
Note that this was basically just off the top of my head, and that if I were to actually run such a campaign, I'd probably be rather more fastidious and in-depth about it, not to mention that it would depend largely on how many of what types of undead players are likely to encounter.
I think the best answer if you're truly worried about it is to replace the FE system for Ranger with the Studied Target system for Slayers, just as a direct replacement.
There is an archetype that even comes close to doing this, but it trades out spell casting and a few other things (Ilusiran Ranger). Personally I like the ranger spell casting, even if it isn't amazing.
There is also the Freebooter archetype, which is decidedly a pirate/sailor themed archetype. It gives something which was basically the forerunner of the Studied Target mechanism, but the downside of the archetype is that it requires you choose a bond with your party instead of having an animal companion.
I think if you just go straight substitution of studied target for favored enemy the trade off I think is a fair one. Studied Target applies half the numerical bonus, but can be applied to every enemy you encounter and requires an action type to activate. I think this could be an easy way for you to handle it that wouldn't be a problem for most players.
Lots of good advice already in this thread.
Another option is to swap favoured enemy for ranger's focus (from the guide archetype in the APG).