Is the Ranger Any Good?

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HI

is the ranger any good.
or ranger 6 warrior 6?
i have a ranger and i have him being a melee guy. are ranger better with the arrows?
or what position do they excell

[ November 10, 2002, 23:42: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

 

for record purpose, i have to state that i love ranger. i started my d&d adventure as a ranger.

frankly, i don't see a ranger can do anything excellent in iwd2. if you want to melee a chatacter, why not use fighter instead? remember that we don't have 'armor of faith' now. and ranger don't have companion like they set in 3rd edition. although they have 'favored enemy' but seriously, this doesn't provide crucial help.

if you want to multiclass a ranger then it would be in best result if multiclass into a rogue. both classes need dex. rouge would wear heavy armor and use shield and ranger automatically gain ambidex and two weapons fighting while wearing light or no armor.

 

Basically, anybody can be good at anything in 3E.
Just make sure you understand what's required for them to be good at it.

For example, anyone with high DEX is good with a bow, especially with a good +6 bow, and a couple of bow-related feats. And if you're going to spend your points on DEX, they might as well use it to attack with short swords too, so you could give them the Weapon Finesse feat (works with short sword and dagger only). Plenty of excellent short swords in the game.

A ranger can wield 2 weapons too (no feats necesssary) if wearing light armor, and is penalized if he has anything in his left hand that is not a light weapon. So 2 shortswords/daggers all fits very nicely with Weapon Finesse and high DEX.

To get high damage (since he'll probably not have high STR), get the Power Attack feat, which lets you transform up to 5 points of Attack into 5 points of Damage. The Cleave feat is also nice after that.

Now for the armor trick:
As soon as you find Bracers of Defence +4, throw away your light armor, because it's limiting your AC bonus from DEX, and you'll probably get a higher AC just wearing those bracers.
Also, if you can afford to give him 13+ INT, you can get him the Expertise feat, which can let you transform up to 5 points from Attack into 5 points of AC.

In short, you can make a pretty good ranger!

[ November 10, 2002, 23:59: Message edited by: Quint ]

 

Besides Wilderness lore is invaluable in Fell Wood (and its more realistic if its the ranger who use it )

 

wilderness lore is not a ranger only skill. druids are more 'wilderness' then a ranger. beside wilderness lore is related with wisdom, which druids don't lack off. in addition, there are many ways to get through fell wood like dropping arrows on the ground to make mark, drawing a map yourself, etc. to me there isn't any solid reason to use a ranger in iwd2, unless for the sake of 'role playing' (which i totally support)

 

Ranger alone?

I had a ranger rogue of equal levels. Kicks bigtime dual wielding, sneak attack, archer, mega murderer!

Rangers are good so long as not a single class.

 

The ranger is a competent character class, but it is not ideally suited for a role in CRPG games. The class' main strength is in its breadth and depth of skill choices, which is not well modeled in any CRPG (though IWD2 does better than most). Its certainly not a gimp class you should avoid like the plague, but there is no special niche they fulfill in IWD2.

As for Wilderness Lore, it is a class skill for Rangers, Druids, and Barbarians. In IWD2, that's all that matters. In p&p, only rangers have the "Track" feat automatically, the other classes have to take it as one of their general feat choices. However, the game designers apparently felt that they would get even more grief about Fell Wood than they already did if only one class had the ability to lead you through the forest. So they made tracking part of any wilderness lore usage.

Saying the druid is "more wilderness" than the ranger is like saying the cleric is more religious than the paladin. Uh, maybe, but not so you'd notice. Rangers also have good Wisdom scores, albeit probably not as good as a druid's, since they also cast divine spells.

Aloha
Vormaerin

 

Well, here is my two cents... Personallly, I love rangers and in p&p thats all I pretty much would play. However, rangers have never really translated well into the crpg environment (exception the later edition gold box games where they ruled especailly when dual classed with mages). Anyway, in my second trip through IWD2 I had a Ranger X/Fighter 4 in my party and she was a pretty well rounded character. I mainly used her with bows as fire support, but she would also step up with her dual longswords or her spear and do some melee. Overall she was ok, but my rogue was a better sneaker. My fighter was a better brawler. Plus, towards the end of the game monsters were tearing her up since she was wearing light armor the whole game.

When I completed the game with that party and used all the other characters to start an HoF game, I switched my ranger out for a pure fighter.