Advice on starting a ranger ...

Sooo ...

I haven't played a ranger since my 2nd Edition &D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) days ... can y'all give me some pointers, some things to think about as I plan my next lady out? I know that y'all are much more mechanics savvy than myself, so I defer to y'all's greater hive wisdom ...

Tanks in advance!

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Recently I asked Jay Braysin about the best Favored Enemies for Anenea, and he gave me the list of those creature types that are immune to Critical and Sneak Attacks, which the Favored Enemy bonus, along with taking the feat Bane of Enemies during an Epic level of Ranger (21-23, depending on where you can make it work), is a very effective compensation. His list was : Undead, Orcs, Dragons, Aberrations, Constructs, Outsiders. The order is mine, based upon those creatures that I encountered first and most often.

And as to generally, you should decide how you want to play your Ranger. Will she emphasize Bow or Melee? You should take advantage of the Dual Wield, of course, in your melee avenue. Will she be wilderness-saavy, but city-dumb? My Ramana is the veritable Swiss Army knife of characters, a wilderness ranger and sneaky tomb/building raider both, in that her hidden half Rogue side givers her a nice Sneak Attack and dodginess, and makes her capable of handling every lock and trap, along with an emphasis in not only trap-disarming but recovery and even crafting. The crafting may not be so essential, as there's quite a few traps around to recover, but crafting is very useful to have the types of traps you want rather than just scavenging. Max Hide and Move Silently, of course, with HIPS, makes her able to sneak past a lot of really bad creatures or crowds that she may not want to take on just to get to some treasure, or be able to plan and strategize how to isolate and trap those enemies. Lots of manoeuvring to peel off a few from afar with her bow, so she doesn't get surrounded too badly. Often with traps laid out in an escape route in case too many rush her.

So, attack style, again. A purely Dex character, or combo with Strength, or fairly pure Strength? I always play my main as a fairly pure DEX with just a touch of STR. She is a petite elf that tries to rely on her bow so that enemies get killed before getting near. But if they get near, she'll HIPS and then can sneak melee. Lots of the feats that give dodge bonuses and protection from attacks of opportunity. Lots of Tumble. Her biggest weakness is a big heavy hitter with true seeing (no adult dragon hunting done solo). Otherwise, she's the perfect hit-and-run sneak, and can whittle down crowds by transiting into the Shadow Plane (HIPS) and then back again. At planned of 21 to 25 Ranger, she has really decent attack bonus, although not as huge as a fighter.

I think Jay plays a Ranger with Dual Katanas, so I'm assuming he's done a STR build. You could ask him about it if a STR build is your preference.

I'm still testing out the feats that work best here, and by no means do I know a lot about maximizing builds. But my Ranger/Rogue/SD Ramana is my favorite character, and I think I do pretty well with her, although I'm still learning. I've thought to post her build sometime for constructive criticism, since I could rebuild her after she's made. But here's a list of feats (and I could send you my excel spreadsheet of her entire build if you like, I use Character Build Creator v2836).

Luck of Heroes
Dodge
Mobility
Point Blank Shot
Rapid Shot
Weapon Finesse
Fleet of Foot (optional, as one does have the speedy Jumping Boots - I chose this for a slightly faster walk when I don't want to run, and the ability to run more decently from enemies while nearly always wearing the fearproof Dragon Boots, so personal pref and RP of the athletic light-on-her-feet personality of my toon)
Epic Prowess
Weapon Focus Longbow
Blind Fight (still not sure if this is essential here, or just relieves some annoyance; one can always use See Invis I suppose)
Spring Attack
Called Shot
Weapon Proficiency Exotic
Defensive Roll (Rogue)
Improved Evasion (Rogue)
Epic Dodge
Bane of Enemies (Ranger)

Other options:
Improved Critical (Longbow for my Bow Focus)
Fast Healing
Toughness
Armor Skin

As to choosing weapon feats, I started out thinking that I'd find some Daze Dusters and augment them, take Weapon Focus Short Swords, but the weapons setup here in Aenea took me down a different path. So, I'll probably have her collect the best weapon for each Favored Enemy, and some of those require Weapon Prof Exotic. This works well with her RP of being fascinated with all different types of weapons (although I do tend to not unrealistically have my little girl wield really heavy ones often) and not a dedicated lifelong-learning expert with any one yet (she's a very very young elf from a sheltered aristocratic upbringing), although as an Elf she found an affinity to the Bow. But when not fighting a Favored Enemy, she'll fall back to Rapier/Shield, Rapier/Short Sword, or Bow as her mainstays, taking advantage of her Weapon Finesse bonus and Dex build.

There's my two cents, but I'll be interested in what others might say, as I am always looking to maximize my little Ranger's build.

If you go duel-wield, you'll want to go heavy on the dexterity. The ranger's two weapon fighting feats only function when in "light" armor (and rangers can wear light and medium right off the bat).

Your animal companion.... rangers have a very limited spell selection, and thus limited ability to buff their companion compared to druids or wizards/sorcs. A level of rogue for UMD would help with being able to use scrolls. Assassin or bard would work too for the UMD.

In general though, think of rangers as the poor man's fighter. Not as many bonus feats, no heavy armor, but still a lot more feats than the other non-fighter classes, +1 BAB progression.

With the bonus feats, you can only select the favored enemy feats pre-epic, but post epic, (that is, epic CHARACTER, not necessarily epic *ranger*, you can pick any feat off the ranger bonus feat list... not just favored enemies.

Nice! Ramana and Manny, thank you both so much! A lot to digest, no doubt, but good things to consider! And of course, while I'm thinking about it, I still welcome other thoughts from folks more familiar with the mechanical side of it than I am ...

It's true that for a pure power build you're better off with Fighter, but I find Ranger just so much more interesting. Along with the maximized Rogue skills (Disable-Recover Trap, OpenLock, UMD, etc) and HIPS that I put into my Ramana, it makes the clever resourceful survivalist with every skill you need for that, plus a lot of RP flavor, especially with the animal companion. You could say that Ranger is Druid-lite, and can have the same sort of attitude but less spells and more combat capabilities (although you don't have to make their personality "naturey" like I feel is nearly obligatory with a Druid, you can just make them a survivalist under any situation, even an Urban Ranger, and perfect for that Lara Croft Tomb Raider). I've always liked the self-reliant wilderness survivalist jill-of-all-trades super-stealth, and so have played only a few builds before I settled on this as my favorite (Ranger/Wizard, pure Druid, Ranger/Rogue/SD, and lately considering a Wizard/Rogue/fullSD Shadow Child here.) Thus I can't really comment on how to maximize a fighter build that might actually better compete.

And about the DEX build versus STR build, I don't really see how one can NOT make a fairly pure DEX build and take advantage of Weapon Finesse and interleaved Rogue skills. But I have heard of really STR-hopped Ranger builds to make the melee powerful, using Dual-Wield 1d10 katanas/bastard swords. The last time I built Ramana, I started off with this idea and a moderate STR, but ended up going Finesse in the end. I RPed that the little elf girl threw her shoulder out with the ambitious bastard sword, lol.

My Dwarven Rgr/ Ftr/ Rog is STR based, and I skip the A/ TWF completely, I believe.

The stacking of EWS and FE bonuses on both longbow and melee weapon make this Clan McJagger rep my top archer, I believe. While other Players may have better AB, outside of the Big Bosses, this Ranger controls the field of battle quite well.

And I seem to recall that had made the Skill Pt investment into Animal Empathy a worthy one here in Aenea for both Rangers and Druids, I believe. Having Hostile critters go into Neutral behaviour prevents a lot of small battles, and the inclusion of higher end Magical Beasts makes for some nice temp allies to aquire. Happiness is watching a Beholder get popped by Manticora spikes!

Oh, yeah, Bison stamping Ankegs = fun. Get others to do your dirty work, my little roguish ranger loves that. Only wonders if she'll piss off Andra, lol.

I'd been wondering about that Aenea AE feature for auto-calming hostile creatures. My character doesn't go around with a lot of base AE, as she's not a real "naturey type". But I could enhance it and see who's not hostile anymore. What do you consider a useful level of AE?

Cannot recall all the info, and I am not a fanatic about min/ max info, but based on this, I would recommend aiming at making a DC 40 safely:

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Animal_empathy

Unless one has another selection for the Skill Pts, Dominating opposing Caster summons spells is a sweet perk for the Ranger & Druids using AE. I believe I took close to max for both Aerik and Azar, but cannot access their files currently as I have not updated yet.

Yeah, I've had a few ideas with Jay Braysin. He has changed classes a few times... He started as a Ranger partly for the back story (he is from the wildlands area of Aenea, it seemed fitting) and partly because my main OC PC was a Ranger... for his two other classes he has been a Rogue/SD and a Rogue/WM and a Ftr/WM and a dabble at Bard/Ftr (and many other combinations in my toolset)...

My biggest problem is I personally am a "feat wh*re".. I love to have loads of feats... so the Rgr/Ftr/Rog build works best for me... but I think he was "stronger" as a Rgr/Rog/WM....

As for Str vs. Dex he is actually quite equal in both by design, I was going to have him as an archer type but found it harder in Aenea then the OC (( Jay is stuck with a "useless" Point Blank Shot feat as a reminder of that early beginning ))... the idea was for sniping then close in to melee with a heavy hitting 2-handed weapon... ... ...

Now from experience I'd say a high Dex Rgr/WM/Brd build with finesse and duel-wield Rapiers wearing Light armour, singing quaking chorus and slinging out scroll based spells would be quite a dangerous PC....

Also for a Rgr, other then the previously mentioned Favoured Enemies and Bane of Enemies (which I highly recommend), I would seriously consider either Bard or Rog for the UMD so you can cast the 6th lv Druid spell "Awaken"... this spell buffs your animal companion a considerable amount ... (you can also get a custom item to cast this spell).... ... if you plan on using your Animal Companion a lot this spell will be essential towards the later levels....

... And if you go Rog, your AniComp can be used to flank your enemy too (even in Solo!) so you always have someone to help you Sneak Attack....

And you may want to look here about those companions and follow the links... the companion you chose should compliment your PC, not hinder them.. the Badgers good in the later levels for his regen and DR, the Panther is good for the SA and the Spiders good for his poison.... ...

You might also like to browse through this here as it has some information on effective rangers (well I thought so when I read it.. although I'll point out the writer does appear to be biased on several points) ... ..

So, I don't suppose in Aenea the Animal Companions have the ability to actually use their Hide/MS Skills? Or is there someway to actually have my Panther be as sneaky as I think it should be, as in undetectable until attacking? The only thing I can think of is cast Invisibility on it.

The companion should hit stealth mode when you do.. via the toggle on the radial (or quickslot) .... I think that it's also part of the conversation and "setup" that you can do (as well as distance from you to walk etc etc, talk with your Animal and go through the lists of "stuff").... ...

Admittedly the AniComp Ai isn't all that intelligent , but I think it at least attempts to copy what your doing, to make it seem like it is making decent, informed and logical choices... ... ..

I didn't realize that the Companion was imitating my Stealth Mode. I now surmise that the problem is that the Panther is too low a level with my multiclassed build, to yet have an effective Hide/MS. For most of my NWN history, I played my Ranger/Rogue/SD on a PW with a level cap of 20, so my cat never got over L10. That's where I am now here at Aenea, and so my cat only has 13 Hide and MS. I'll have to Camo spell it until higher levels, I guess.

By the way, will the Companion continue to level up after Ranger 21? I saw somewhere that there might be a cap on how high a level the Companion goes up to. If Ramana goes to Ranger 25, will the Companion go to L25 too?

RustyDios wrote:
... Now from experience I'd say a high Dex Rgr/WM/Brd build with finesse and duel-wield Rapiers wearing Light armour, singing quaking chorus and slinging out scroll based spells would be quite a dangerous PC....

So as to avoid confusing Eric, let's clarify that while Rapier is indeed a Finessable weapon, for Medium Races such as Human and Elf it is not eligible for the purpose of using in the Off-Hand to obtain the benefit of the Ranger Amb/Dual-Wield feats. For the Human and Elf racial size Medium category, the Rapier, being a Medium Weapon, is not a Light Weapon for them (a Light Weapon being a weapon which is one size category smaller than the racial size category). To gain the benefit of the Dual-Wielding feats to decrease the off-hand penalty, one must use a Light Weapon in the Off-Hand, which for Humans and Elves are the Small and Tiny Weapons.

Short Sword is my favorite off-hand weapon for my Elf, and Kukris and Daggers are also useful. I've noticed recently that there are a few re-engineered Short-Sword-template swords available at the Adventurer's guild, in the oriental styles of Ninjato and Wakizashi. The Wakizashi has a nicely-balanced appearance as an Off-Hand weapon to compliment a Finesseable Rapier or a non-finessable Katana in the main hand. From its description, "This type of short bladed sword is often paired with the dangerous katana," one can see that the designer was aiming at that traditional japanese pairing of long katana and shorter matching sword. Kudos.