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I am mostly doing this for the fun of game design. Adusting my ideas in response to insightful criticism is part of the fun. I consider mathematics and design to be an art form worth creating just for the wonder of seeing people's visions of a character class.
I'm in a similar boat. I am motivated by hope that the discussion will improve the product, but I get a sense of personal education in trying to wrestle and uncover the truths that make up this topic.
I had not thought about the active experience angle. I have seen people in this forum complain how reactive the paladin's Retributive Strike reaction is. They were bothered that the paladin's use of one of the class's early class features depended on the opponent's actions.
But Hunt Target does not seem hands-on to me. It does nothing on its own (except for the Monster Hunter modification that allows a Recall Knowledge check). It enhances other actions.
I can imagine many of the complaints at changes to classes result from an amalgam of the specific changes. The Paladin not only lost Smite Evil, but it got stuck with an unfamiliar mechanic.
Hunt Target is "hands-on" because it requires that you designate a Target in every combat. I can't take my hands off the wheel, so to speak. Even if there is one combatant, you still need to technically communicate to the GM that you're using Hunt Target. When there are two or more, now I have to spend some effort to figure out who I should target. It's annoying when you pick a target pre-combat and that Target dies or becomes impractical by the time your Init comes up. Your damage output drops precipitously if you aren't attacking your Target.
Thus, I had Knowledge checks, including the Recall Knowledge checks in the playtest, return about five times as much information as the rules suggested.
Information and decision-making go hand in hand.
I could not agree more. WotC and now Paizo, have totally under-leveraged Knowledge checks. WotC had some splat books where they gave suggestions on what a K. Check might reveal. The information was all narrative and had essentially no mechanical or even tactical value. There was clearly an attitude that players can't know numbers and their characters generally shouldn't know much. I suspect this is a hold-over from AD&D when you couldn't even make K. Checks.
Paizo has made this problem even worse in PF2 by now requiring an action to use Recall K.
There's no doubt that the Hunt Target mechanism would be far more enjoyable for me if I had complete knowledge of the enemies before choosing, or least knew their hit points and defenses. But even if you have Recall Knowledge returning 5x more info, it doesn't help the HT problem because the Ranger isn't getting that knowledge until after choosing the Target.
Of course, that interchangeability means the single-target focus of Hunt Target makes little sense. Why does the ranger have an advantage against the first hobgoblin he fought but not his fellow hobgoblin beside him? Same species, same tribe, same strengths, same tactics--what is different?
In real life, animals that hunt herd animals are able to identify differences between individuals that are used to select optimal targets. We've all seen those Planet Earth type of documentaries where they talk about the apex predators have an ability to identify individuals among a herd that are injured and would make easier targets: the hunter finds the target that conveys the bonus. This is of course the converse of Hunt Target, but it is a reasonable approximation for game-play.
I think that the idea of Hunt Target on an entire group has a lot of merit.
Which is exactly what Favored Enemy was, but the benefits were justified as a result of longterm exposure, so that doesn't logically work for short term study. Of course the game isn't restricted to real world logic or sensibilities, so it's certainly no more immersion breaking than Hunt Target being a hunter's mechanic.