What to Expect From My Ranger Player?


Advice


So, in one of the campaigns I'm GMing I have a new Ranger. He's a Dwarf dual-wielding a Dwarven Waraxe and a Handaxe (house rule that Weapon Focus affects weapons groups from Weapon Training). He went the Divine Tracker archetype, giving up the Hunter's Bond ability.

I've already told him Demons will be a extremely common foe and the main antagonists, especially at higher level.

If I understand Favored Enemy correctly, this means at level 20 he could wind up with something like...

+10 AB/damage vs Evil Outsiders

+2 AB/damage vs Favored Enemy from level 5 (humans right now, there is a mostly evil demon cult that I mentioned)

+2 AB/damage vs Favored Enemy from level 10

+2 AB/damage vs Favored Enemy from level 15

+2 AB/damage vs Favored Enemy from level 20

Assuming he dumped everything into one enemy. Which seems like the smart thing to do, since Instant Enemy lets him designate a target and make it considered an Evil Outsider for +10 AB/damage.

Also, he'll have Lead Blades or Gravity Bow presumably. His Blessings are Strength and Protection.

Does this seem like a reasonable summary? Am I missing out on anything significant? Not worried about 1-2 AB or AC here and there or whatever right now, just worried about broad stuff.


So keep in mind, Instant Enemy has a target line "Target one creature that is not your favored enemy." so it only works if they are specifically not one of his favored enemies already. Otherwise the numbers look correct.

Are you only concerned with combat numbers? They'll also get a bonus to initiative from Favored Terrain. Outside of that, there's a few spells that can wildly derail campaigns but don't help much in combat. Up to +30 to perception, track the previously untrackable, things like that. Are you sure they're staying single-classed? Horizon Walker could get them Terrain Dominance (which lets you use FT bonuses as FE bonuses) which presumably still works with Instant Enemy. Last I saw on FT was a build that got up to +42 but I believe it has since been nerfed by errata.


While the spells are nice... he needs time to cast time.

one of the paradoxes of buffs- the time spent casting buffs actually lowers your damage a lot of the time. Because you spent a turn casting instead of attacking. Some spells overcome this problem (haste is an example- it is a party buff, so it makes up for it from allies' attacks).... but yeah. There is a reason why warpriests (who can cast self buffs as a swift action) are considered to be really good.

lead blades or gravity bow are minutes/level, so they might last a few fights in a tight dungeon.

But instant enemy is the spell that really rams against this problem. It is fairly simple to overcome it- just use multiple enemies. The spell targets one creature and treats it as if it had the favored enemy thing. That means that having 2 enemies means he has to cast twice to get this against both of them.

It is the classic problem of tough battles- you want multiple 'ok' enemies, rather than a single Big Bad that gets instantly focus fired and slaughtered.

Thus, you can limit the ranger's effectiveness... without the ranger ever really noticing. Yes- he will ginsu any enemy that he gets instant enemy on. But he will spend so much time casting the spell that he actually doesn't mess things up too much. The player gets to feel powerful, but he actually plays right into your hand (as you have the other enemies target the party and mess them up). That is how a proper GM plays.

The blessings have similar problems- unless he has quickened blessing, he can't do it fast enough to actually cause a problem. As a note- limit how much they can effectively scout. Giving them time to prebuff insures they will tear your monsters apart.

Another note for builds- the reason why people spread out their favored enemy is to avoid the buff problem. Instant enemy is nice when you meet the oddball monster (like constructs), but you really want to have a nice spread of the common stuff- things like undead, evil outsiders, humanoid (human), giants, magical beasts. Having a +4 against all of those means you are as good as a barbarian in most fights without any buffs. Of course, some campaigns are ultra focused, like wrath of the righteous or some of the undead stuff... those are places where you want to go all in.


Just be aware for planning purposes that rangers get endurance for free. The main ways this is relevant is that he will sleep in medium armor without penalty which can mess up ambushes and it is a prereq for things like the die hard feat tree if he feels like going that route.


Think of him as a paladin with "smite everything". He can kill pretty much all such mobs in one fullround attack, aside from special bosses (and some of them got one-shot by our pally, who also went twoweapon).
As Iemeres points out, never present the group with a single enemy. Groups are way better and give everyone a shot.

On the other hand, Instant Enemy is a 3rd level spell. The ranger gets them at level 10 soonest and has a whopping 3 of them at level 20. So he doesn't get close to how often a paladin can smite at that level.

If he gets Terrain Dominance via Horizon Walker, he can diversify his FE bonus, but it does not stack with FE, it just overlaps. Nonetheless, he accumulates more bonuses and raises his value in combat (at level 10 he gets +2 against everything). This is like the fighter class: the bonuses seem not to be much, but they add up in the end.


Vatras wrote:
On the other hand, Instant Enemy is a 3rd level spell. The ranger gets them at level 10 soonest and has a whopping 3 of them at level 20. So he doesn't get close to how often a paladin can smite at that level.

I would assume it was wand based myself. If I remember right, that is about 300 gp per pop-.... kind of bad at level 10, but the sting gets lesser with every level.

But even using a wand has its limits. Because he...what? Uses the wand, drops it to use his weapons? (2 handed, TWF, archery- pretty much all use two hands some way) What happens with the second enemy he wants to fight?

This is why I say focusing favored enemy in one enemy type is not that great in most battles/campaigns. Instant enemy is more of a band aid when you face the oddball enemies, rather than a primary resource. It is better to just get a +4 in as many of the common enemy types as possible.


Pretty good at level 10 if you're only popping it for "boss" fights. Which is why, as stated above, you don't have boss fights, you have boss-plus-the-boss's-seven-elite-minions fights. Or boss-and-the-other-three-bosses fights.


Bob Bob Bob wrote:
So keep in mind, Instant Enemy has a target line "Target one creature that is not your favored enemy." so it only works if they are specifically not one of his favored enemies already. Otherwise the numbers look correct.

Hmm. So that actually seems to encourage taking one "main" FE and then having the rest be stuff you probably never fight in order to have max power from Instant Enemy?

Bob Bob Bob wrote:
Are you only concerned with combat numbers?

For now, yes, it's a mainly heroic fantasy campaign, not worried about him messing up a complicated intrigue plot or something.

Bob Bob Bob wrote:
Are you sure they're staying single-classed?

Nope, haven't asked. They're level 6 at the moment.

lemeres wrote:
Giving them time to prebuff insures they will tear your monsters apart.

Yeah, I'm seriously worried about this in another campaign which has an paladin archer. If he had to buff in combat I wouldn't be worried. But being able to pre-buff (at level 8) with 1 AB and 8 damage (followed by another 5 AB and 8 damage from Smite Evil) has been problematic a few times.

lemeres wrote:
Of course, some campaigns are ultra focused, like wrath of the righteous or some of the undead stuff... those are places where you want to go all in.

He's aware Demons will be the primary antagonists later on. So far he has +4 vs demons and +2 vs humans (there's a mostly human demon cult).

Vatras wrote:
As Iemeres points out, never present the group with a single enemy. Groups are way better and give everyone a shot.

I rarely do. And when I do it's against something like a cave bear and isn't meant to be a severe test of the party's skills.

Vatras wrote:
On the other hand, Instant Enemy is a 3rd level spell. The ranger gets them at level 10 soonest and has a whopping 3 of them at level 20. So he doesn't get close to how often a paladin can smite at that level.

3rd level Pearls of Power are only 9k each.


Balkoth wrote:
lemeres wrote:
Of course, some campaigns are ultra focused, like wrath of the righteous or some of the undead stuff... those are places where you want to go all in.
He's aware Demons will be the primary antagonists later on. So far he has +4 vs demons and +2 vs humans (there's a mostly human demon cult).

....oh....ooooooh. So this IS a Wrath of the Righteous situation, where there will be just the one kind of enemy?

Ok, yeah, that puts things into perspective. Yeah, taht is a bad situation to face a ranger in. My only advise is to have demons with various controller aspects (ie- those that make undead, those that use charm monster to get various beasts, etc.)

Demons are highly chaotic. Devils might frown on mixing up the ranks with stuff like that... but demons love having the power to personally control a force to wreck havoc, and their armies are usually not disciplined enough to care whether some whack job is running around with war elephants down the middle of the group.


At least he's not a Guide Ranger with Inspired Moment. Swift-action to designate 'Favored Enemy' from Guide, then two turns of huge combat buff and free move-and-full-attack.


lemeres wrote:
....oh....ooooooh. So this IS a Wrath of the Righteous situation, where there will be just the one kind of enemy?

I've never played Wrath of the Righteous, but taking a guess I'd say no. They will make up an increasing percentage of enemies as time goes on and the final boss is a demon, but there's a reasonable chunk of variety through level 12 at least (haven't played out specifics past that).

lemeres wrote:
Ok, yeah, that puts things into perspective. Yeah, taht is a bad situation to face a ranger in.

They've only had four encounters that had demons so far. In fact, I've been worried that the ranger seems to be struggling compared to what a Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, or Slayer would be doing...

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