Blog-It Llama!

By Nick - October 21, 2009

The Ranger is one of my favorite classes. In 3rd Edition is was far too easy to crank their damage up to 11 by picking a few select feats and making sure to have a nice attack bonus. What made them really wonderful was part of what made the Paladin wonderful. They were a class that could physically attack their target but had more options because of their access to spells. A lot of people love these guys because of some classic characters in literature that were Rangers, guys like Aragorn or Drizzt.

Click on the image for a link to the 3rd Edition Ranger

3rd Edition’s Version: The spells, an animal companion, and the combat style options are all cool and help distinguish the Ranger, but my favorite feature is Favored Enemy. It’s needlessly complicated because of the staggered scaling that you get with each Favored Enemy type you choose. The way that Favored Enemy scales is that the first enemy type you choose is the highest bonus and your most recent choice being the lowest. People liked the Ranger because of some of the crazy ranged attack exploits that are out there.

Click on the image to download The Pathfinder RPG Beta test for free

Pathfinder’s Version: Paizo decided to give them class features every level. Plenty of class features are just repeats, but some have been revised a bit. The Combat Style feature now just offers you a choice between a set of relevant feats. Favored Enemy is a little different, allowing you to allocate the increased bonuses against an enemy type you’ve already chosen instead of it just going up automatically. There are a couple of features here that are brand spanking new that I’ve seen in Unearthed Arcana and in some versions of the Ranger on the D&D forums. Favored Terrain is one new feature that is really appropriate thematically. Hunter’s Bond also offers up an alternative if you don’t feel like managing an animal companion. Quarry, which is something that 4th Edition has as well, if an ability that marks a target for the Ranger and makes that target a little easier for them to kill. At 20th level, they gain Master Hunter, which includes a few little bonuses and the ability to instantly kill a Favored Enemy. This is definitely my favorite version of the Ranger.

World of Warcraft – The Roleplaying Game: There are two classes here that resemble the Ranger but neither epitomizes it conceptually. The Hunter doesn’t focus at all on melee combat, but gains a lot of ranged special attacks called “Stings” and gains an Animal Companion. What makes them really stand out are the “Aspect” abilities they get. These Aspects last indefinitely and can be switched as a free action on their turn. The only catch is that they may only have one function at a time, so they must choose wisely. The Scout is a curiously weak adventuring class, gaining many passive tracking abilities that resemble that classic Hunter but lack their combat prowess. Their most interesting ability is Wild Healing, a skill-based healing ability that can be used indefinitely but is incredibly time consuming.

Iron Heroes’s Hunter: Here they have the Archer and the Hunter. Iron Heroes has a “Token” system where you’re character gets access to a lot of special attacks, but they must earn tokens that are spent to use on these abilities. The conditions needed to earn a token vary with each class. The Archer gains tokens by spending an action to aim at the target, and the Hunter is kind of a “Token Battery” starting combat with a large number of tokens and capable of giving tokens away to fellow party members. The Archer really does just focus on ranged abilities while the Hunter is a bit more like a tactician, granting a lot of bonuses to allies. Neither of these really resemble the traditional Ranger, with the exception of the archery from one class and the terrain advantage from the other.

4th Edition’s Version: I miss Favored Enemy. It wasn’t that convoluted until you gained it, like, five times. It was part of the flavor for the Ranger, part of what made a player feel like a trained hunter. With Martial Power, the Ranger can once again pick up a beast companion by sacrificing their combat style class feature. It’s totally worth it considering there’s plenty of feats that can make up for it. Their staple damage dealing ability Is Hunter’s Quarry, which marks a target for a damage bonus and makes the eligible for a lot of special effects from powers and feats. This version of the Hunter stands out from it’s 3rd Edition counterpart because of the lack of spellcasting. Conceptually, the newly released Seeker has filled the mantle of the nature spell-casting archer.

If you missed the exact premise for this series of articles, you can find the original article here.

Here are also the previous entries in this series…

The Fighter Across the Tabletop

The Paladin Across the Tabletop

The Barbarian Across the Tabletop

The Bard Across the Tabletop

The Druid Across the Tabletop

Categories: Dungeons and Dragons
Tags: 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, Archer, D&D, DnD, Dungeons and Dragons, Hunter, Iron Heroes, Pathfinder, Ranger, Roleplaying Game, RPG, Scout, Seeker, Tabletop Gaming, World of Warcraft