The dedication archetype has to be better or else no one would really bother using it.
That's simply not true. People who were not Rangers (or druids) would use it.
Now if the argument is that the archetype has to be better in some way, or else you'd never see a Ranger using it, *that's* true. I'm not sure how compelling of an argument that is, though.
You don't need a dedicated class to be a "Woodsman," though. Really, just getting good proficiency with the Survival skill is enough. Maybe Nature too.
One iconic vision of the ranger is the rugged loner who lives away from cities and who only got roped into the adventure because it was their fate. This class should focus on tracking, likely favor a switch hitter's fighting style, and is the best fit for having a larger focus on an animal companion.
This is a bit at odds with also trying to support specific weapons styles, TWF and bow, having specific hated foes, and being the team's mixed style DPS class. Trying to put every different hat a ranger has proven to spread the class very thin in terms of being top tier at any given part of that class identity.
Just try to build, or convert from PF1, a character that actually wants to use all aspects of the ranger as Pazio has presented it in PF2. Does it work or is it a mess of minor bonuses with a pet that really can't contribute?
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Paizo has been moving away from "niche protection" since the Advanced Class Guide, if not earlier. It is an incredibly artificial and restricting idea.
These restrictions prove incredibly annoying in 5e, where it is so difficult to move outside of your little box.
The way PF2 is designed, it ditches a lot of the restrictive nature typical of level based games while maintaining to diverse and interesting options that come with it.
Boo niche Protection. Hooray beer Flexibility!
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You could say kind of the same thing about the Fighter... most of the weapon-style archetypes just wholesale poach Fighter feats. I guess that the fighter is so broadly defined and also so strong doesn't make it feel the same though.
TBH the only one I don't really like comparatively is snarecrafter, just but mostly because I think the expert and level 4 requirements on snare specialist feel a little harsh.
Frankly you could distribute every Fighter feat between different archetypes and that still wouldn't diminish the Fighter's power; with everything else stripped away, Fighter is still the pure numbers class that every other martial needs a special gimmick to keep up with.
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Archetypes doing what main classes do but better in a very specific domain is a feature to me. That allows for character concepts that don't fit neatly into pre-defined boxes. I love seeing character variation at the table.
As to the Ranger in particular, it's a hell of a strong class already. The class is one of the most effective damage dealers while also having maximum perception. On top of that, it has a lot of diverse feat support to really craft the concept of the ranger than you want to play. I think the PF2 feat system does a massive service to this type of class that has a lot of concepts associated with it that some people will want for their character and others won't.
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The dedication archetype has to be better or else no one would really bother using it.That's simply not true. People who were not Rangers (or druids) would use it.
Now if the argument is that the archetype has to be better in some way, or else you'd never see a Ranger using it, *that's* true. I'm not sure how compelling of an argument that is, though.
The problem is, that if you have a ranger in the party and the ranger is better than you at the niche that you had to take a dedication for then your investment it relatively worthless.
And also probably a bad idea to have two characters in a party focus so much on a thing.
A ranger has a lot more versatility in scouting related or animal companion related options than the Scout or Cavalier dedication. Yes, on something things those dedications are better. They need to be. Else you should just play the ranger.
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Oh, and thanks for pointing out beastmaster. That actually solves most of my specific issues. Don't really *want* two animal companions, but eh, it will work.
You don't need the feat(s) that give you more than one, last I checked. Haven't read how effective it is in a while, though.
Is the edge worth it? Maybe yes. But probably not. Precision, maybe. Flury? I don't think a -2 on your second attack is much at all. Outwit? Probably not, but at least it helps when supporting. When on-tier I think I'm still better off with free higher-level feats, but it's debatable. When off-tier it isn't close.
Flurry's entire design is at odds with having a beast in the first place (because it incentivizes using as many actions to attack as possible), but you're really undervaluing Precision and Outwit, I think. Ranger as a whole has stuff it does better than any other class (or at least most of them), as you were told earlier.
I feel like the Ranger probably should have been split into two distinct classes that each has more focus than the current class does.
The Hunter who's focused on combat and marking targets and the Woodsman which is focused on being the rugged outdoorsman. Then you could properly protect their niches while still allowing people to play the various things that Ranger has come to mean in D&D-style fantasy games.
Woodsman just sounds like an archetype to me, in truth. If they deemed PF1 Ranger to give too much random stuff to fit into the chassis of PF2 Ranger, I'd rather they keep most or all of that stuff as feats in one class to give you the option to go for it anyway rather than further gate the PF1 concept in levels and capabilities.
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Oh, and thanks for pointing out beastmaster. That actually solves most of my specific issues. Don't really *want* two animal companions, but eh, it will work.You don't need the feat(s) that give you more than one, last I checked. Haven't read how effective it is in a while, though.
The dedication feat gives you a second animal companion if you already have one.
The dedication feat gives you a second animal companion if you already have one.Oh, and thanks for pointing out beastmaster. That actually solves most of my specific issues. Don't really *want* two animal companions, but eh, it will work.You don't need the feat(s) that give you more than one, last I checked. Haven't read how effective it is in a while, though.
Oh! I completely forgot about that. And kind of assumed they were ignoring the Ranger's beast feats, honestly. Fair enough then, and at least you still only control one at a time.
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My suggestion would be to worry less about names of things when it comes to getting your character together. Whether something is entitled "Ranger" or "Cavalier" or "Archetype" or "Class", just go with the idea of the character and use the rules to make that idea come to life. If that means you take Rogue with a Cavalier archetype, or a Wizard with Beastmaster archetype, or whatever, then that is fine as long as it supports your idea.It's not the name that is bothering me. It's that I feel a wizard shouldn't be out-done in casting by a fighter with a "spellcaster"archetype. A ranger shouldn't be outdone on the things associated with being a ranger. The problem is, as others have noted, for a ranger, that's a wide range of things. Still, I think a ranger needs some niche protection and I'm feeling like there isn't anything a generic ranger can do that any other PC couldn't do better with the right archetype. Casters don't have this problem. Fighters and Champions don't have this problem. Rogues mostly don't have this problem (maybe?). But rangers do.
Niche protection is important in game design so each player can feel they have something special to contribute. It's not clear what the ranger has, if anything. In my mind, that's a design flaw.
Rangers are the masters of switch hitting and ambushes-- adaptability, if you will. No martial class can take advantage of preparation and scouting as effectively as they can.
1) Hunter's Edge applies to any weapon. Most classes have limits placed on this, or simply lack offensive enhancement (Champions).
2) Quickdraw in class.
3) Snares in class.
4) Hunt Prey's range boost can be huge. They can use a shortbow without penalty further than a fighter can use a longbow, or strike from further than anyone else with the longbow or crossbow.
5) The bonuses to Track can help you locate enemies rather than stumble onto them.
6) Things that help you identify monsters and their weaknesses.
7) Stealth enhancers.
Many classes can do some of this with archetypes, but it is really hard to do all of it. A ranger who scouts an enemy can start combat from 200 feet away, a range that exceeds most spells, forcing an enemy to spend several rounds closing the distance and possibly triggering a snare along the way. All that amounts to "free" damage. And when that enemy reaches the ranger they find the ranger can just whip out a blade hit even harder.
There are some asterisks on that, of course. You need to have a campaign that supports these kind of open ended encounters rather than just dropping you in small rooms with no chance to scout or prepare. It can also be resource intensive-- no class wants double class feats as much as the ranger, and keeping multiple weapons fully enhanced gets expensive at higher levels. But all this really lends itself to my own fantasy of what a ranger is-- a guerilla fighter and a guide. That is a specific fantasy, and I think it is OK if it doesn't work in every adventure.
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Rogues are better at ambushes having sneak attack, surprise round, better at sneaking, and better at group attacks.
Rangers are better at multiple attacks, and protecting an area.
Rogues are good at ambushes in a very narrow sense. They are good at an opening salvo within close ish range. They don't have nearly the range a ranger does and usually their damage drops because they need to spend actions to keep the enemy flatfooted. Do they even do better damage than a ranger in that circumstance? They definitely have a more limited range of weapons. The ranger is also more durable, which matters because even with an ambush it is hard to actually kill things in the first round.
Also, they don't have inherent access to Snares. For all the issues with Snares they can do incredible damage.
Surprise attack also isn't that important for ranged weapons from ambush, because you likely already started combat unobserved. It can get you sneak attack on your second and third attacks if that is your jam but at that point you're within shortbow range of an enemy and pretty exposed.
The problem is, that if you have a ranger in the party and the ranger is better than you at the niche that you had to take a dedication for then your investment it relatively worthless.
And also probably a bad idea to have two characters in a party focus so much on a thing.
A ranger has a lot more versatility in scouting related or animal companion related options than the Scout or Cavalier dedication. Yes, on something things those dedications are better. They need to be. Else you should just play the ranger.
That's also not true, though. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the Ranger is better at the Animal Companion than the Beastmaster. That has no bearing on whether or not some other member of the party woudl be improved by taking a Beastmaster dedication. They could very easily be a caster who wanted something to do with their third action, and figured "Oh, hey - I could use it to command a minion". The Ranger getting a better minion doesn't invalidate that choice at all.
Now, it's true that there are some things that you want one of in the party, and if it's a thing you want one of in the party, then you only want one of it, but that's true whether you're getting it from Class or Archetype or Ancestry or whatever.
...and the reason you'd want to play a non-Ranger while having a Ranger-adjacent dedication is that... some people want to be things that are not Rangers. Some people like being full-casters. (I don't understand them, but I respect their life choices.) Some people want to have the fighter mojo or the Barbarian mojo or the Monk mojo, and then also want to have an animal companion on the side, and those are the people that the archetype is most clearly for. Like many archetypes, they let you splash in things that don't come to your class naturally
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I mean, why even play an animal companion druid when you can just play a Beastmaster dedication Cleric?
Primal spell list, good armor, some of the best focus spells in the game... is the animal companion really the thing that Druid needs to justify itself?
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Paizo has been moving away from "niche protection" since the Advanced Class Guide, if not earlier. It is an incredibly artificial and restricting idea.
These restrictions prove incredibly annoying in 5e, where it is so difficult to move outside of your little box.
The way PF2 is designed, it ditches a lot of the restrictive nature typical of level based games while maintaining to diverse and interesting options that come with it.
Boo niche Protection. Hooray
beerFlexibility!
At least to me, it feels like they've moved away from niche protection without facing the issues of many other games without niche protection, where it's very easy to step on other people's toes. While it's entirely possible for my rogue to end up with an animal companion at the same effectiveness as an expert's, or the cleric can track and hunt as well as the ranger, and so on, but it's almost always a conscious decision. You need to take the archetype, or spend several class feats. There were a lot of times while running PF1 that I had to recommend that one player (typically a prepared caster) avoid picking up certain abilities, because they'd just accidentally obliterate a niche that another party member was trying to specialise in.
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The problem is, that if you have a ranger in the party and the ranger is better than you at the niche that you had to take a dedication for then your investment it relatively worthless.
And also probably a bad idea to have two characters in a party focus so much on a thing.
A ranger has a lot more versatility in scouting related or animal companion related options than the Scout or Cavalier dedication. Yes, on something things those dedications are better. They need to be. Else you should just play the ranger.
That's also not true, though. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the Ranger is better at the Animal Companion than the Beastmaster. That has no bearing on whether or not some other member of the party woudl be improved by taking a Beastmaster dedication. They could very easily be a caster who wanted something to do with their third action, and figured "Oh, hey - I could use it to command a minion". The Ranger getting a better minion doesn't invalidate that choice at all.
Now, it's true that there are some things that you want one of in the party, and if it's a thing you want one of in the party, then you only want one of it, but that's true whether you're getting it from Class or Archetype or Ancestry or whatever.
...and the reason you'd want to play a non-Ranger while having a Ranger-adjacent dedication is that... some people want to be things that are not Rangers. Some people like being full-casters. (I don't understand them, but I respect their life choices.) Some people want to have the fighter mojo or the Barbarian mojo or the Monk mojo, and then also want to have an animal companion on the side, and those are the people that the archetype is most clearly for. Like many archetypes, they let you splash in things that don't come to your class naturally
For the animal companion specifically, I can agree that what other players can do is likely to be less of a factor.
But for a scout, if the ranger in the party is a better scout despite me taking the archetype and having to through having a dedication only to be lesser than...that's really disappointing. To the point where I shouldn't bother if there's a ranger in the party.
To be honest though, neither scouting or animal companions are actually the Ranger's niche. And that's what were saying to the original question.
But then to follow it up, we're saying even if it was the ranger's niche these archetypes are more narrowly focused (and you can still take it as a ranger if you really want) so they should be rewarded for taking that dedication. Their very narrow niche archetype should be better than your broader class options.
Intrinsically I don't think things like Beastmaster are a big deal, it's not a core feature of either the druid or ranger, but rather optional feats, so you're not 'stealing' some core part of their identity or anything, you're just taking an idea and making it available to everyone.
Though I will say these archetypes sometimes feel awkward though, for a class that can get those abilities internally there's a push away from taking the archetype, but then the archetypes often have unique abilities or access later on that makes them worth considering too.
It's unpleasant, imo, that the best way for a Ranger to build an animal companion is to start with their own feat, then move into Beastmaster and ignore the rest of their own native class options. It just feels unnecessary to me and creates a design paradigm where you make bad choices now because they'll pay off later that doesn't really line up with what I've always thought some of PF2's core principles were.
Intrinsically I don't think things like Beastmaster are a big deal, it's not a core feature of either the druid or ranger, but rather optional feats, so you're not 'stealing' some core part of their identity or anything, you're just taking an idea and making it available to everyone.
Though I will say these archetypes sometimes feel awkward though, for a class that can get those abilities internally there's a push away from taking the archetype, but then the archetypes often have unique abilities or access later on that makes them worth considering too.
It's unpleasant, imo, that the best way for a Ranger to build an animal companion is to start with their own feat, then move into Beastmaster and ignore the rest of their own native class options. It just feels unnecessary to me and creates a design paradigm where you make bad choices now because they'll pay off later that doesn't really line up with what I've always thought some of PF2's core principles were.
My preference, as stated before, would be having the edge on the AC, but beyond that I would also choose ranger pet in the sense of not being locked into beast master until lvl 8. I might want a different archetype for my character at lvl 2/4