This might be a strange question, but does favored enemy work if you don't know something is your favored enemy?
Example: You have human as a favored enemy. You see something in a cloak sneaking around in the dark. You want to try to get a better look at it, so you use perception to try to see it better. It could be a human or it could be a drow for all you know. Would the favored enemy bonus apply to the check before you actually knew that it's human or only after?
RAW makes me assume that if you have a favored enemy, you get the bonus. Period. However, in terms of the game, I've had players use favored enemy to cheese information they wouldn't otherwise have. "I attack the shadowy cloaked person. Are they human? I get my bonus if they're human." Just like that a little of the mystery of what's skulking around is solved with no real effort.
But if you don't KNOW they're human, how can the bonus apply?
I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone. I'm not arguing for either side, I'm just trying to understand if the bonus can help you gleam information you wouldn't otherwise have (in or our of character).
Thoughts?
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I agree with this:
You are not required to properly identify a creature to get your favored enemy bonus against it. It simply functions.
Even if a creature is polymorphed into something else (polymorph doesn't change your type/subtype) the ranger still gets his favored enemy bonus against an enemy, even if he can't see through the magic or make a perception check to see through a mundane disguise.
How and why does it work?
Hey! How exactly is a rainbow made? How exactly does a sun set? How exactly does a posi-trac rear-end on a Plymouth work? It just does.
However, it shouldn't give the player any metagame information, nor need it---the GM is not obliged to tell the player all the bonuses (or penalties) they are currently receiving. Just apply in your head and tell them whether their roll succeeded.
I agree with this:
You are not required to properly identify a creature to get your favored enemy bonus against it. It simply functions.
Even if a creature is polymorphed into something else (polymorph doesn't change your type/subtype) the ranger still gets his favored enemy bonus against an enemy, even if he can't see through the magic or make a perception check to see through a mundane disguise.
How and why does it work?
Hey! How exactly is a rainbow made? How exactly does a sun set? How exactly does a posi-trac rear-end on a Plymouth work? It just does.
However, it shouldn't give the player any metagame information, nor need it---the GM is not obliged to tell the player all the bonuses (or penalties) they are currently receiving. Just apply in your head and tell them whether their roll succeeded.
That's a good bit of advice, Fuzzy. I may run it like that from now on in terms of the bonuses in my head when the situation demands it. That's all I really wanted to do was not allow favored enemy to be used to metagame.
Remember that the ranger’s favored enemy bonus is to more than just to hit and damage. They also get it bluff, knowledges, perception, sense motive and survival. Many of these skills deal with spotting and identifying the favored enemy. If the ranger has to be aware of the fact his target is one of his favored enemies to get the bonus they would not get it to identify or spot the target. This leads to the situation where the high level ranger specializing in fighting undead is no better at identifying the vampire in the room than the fighter. Saying the ranger cannot use his favored enemy bonus to identify if the creature is the favored enemy just does not make sense.
The best way to handle situations where the ranger may not be aware the creature is his favored enemy is for the GM to adjust the results without telling the player. So if the ranger has favored enemy human and the target is human and he misses the roll by the bonus give the player the information anyways.
One last thing to remember is that a ranger can make knowledge skills vs his favored enemy even if he is untrained in the skill. A ranger interacting with a favored enemy should get an appropriate knowledge skill to recognize the fact that what he is dealing with is his favored enemy. So in the situation above if the ranger does spot the cloaked “creature” he gets knowledge local (with the bonus) to recognize the cloaked figure is in fact human.