Ranger combat styles and kits? suggestions and stuff

[Sun Wukong]

How about a ranger combat style/kit that automatically gives you Improved Favored Enemy for each of your favored enemies and nothing else? As far as I know, the Improved Favored Enemy feats only apply to a specific favored enemy. Thus a level 30 ranger with Bane of Enemies would do 15-25 points of damage against each of his favored enemies.

I have no idea what to call it though, slayer, exterminator, Bane of Enemies?

I guess Bane of Enemies should work, and I am not against this style getting Bane of Enemies at level 21, but I think getting 7 Improved Favored Enemies should be more than enough. I mean, at ranger level two you would have +6 damage against your first favored enemy? At ranger level 5, you would be doing +7 damage against your two chosen favored enemies, and so forth.

It would break the combat style format of feats given at level 2, 6, 11 and 21, by giving feats at level 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, ||21||, 25, and 30. I think this could work as both sword and board ranger kit as well as a two-handed ranger kit.

Thoughts, comments? I don't mind if someone shoots this down to be honest. Or perhaps suggests something else.

[Babuguuscooties]

Sounds cool to me. Call it a Hunter

I mean, call it a Predator

[Sun Wukong]

It could work very nicely with the Hunter Kit actually.

[Sun Wukong]

I think the proper Bane of Enemies feat should require the epic feat to be spent on it.

I can imagine this ranger combat style being very strong early on, as the Improved Favored Enemy bonus damage alone would be pretty much enough to oneshot the undead in the Eastern Farmland Graveyard. The favored enemy damage would just overcome the DR and your strength modifier and weapon damage dice would do the rest.

It is a strong start, but I think that it will balance out as you reach higher levels and mob hitpoints start to number in the several hundreds.

Now, you wouldn't be tied down to just two-handed or sword and board type of fighting, you could go for two-weapon fighting or ranged feats, but those again require ability score investment in dexterity.

For example the requirement of 25 dexterity for Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting pretty much means that the benefit you get from the Improved Favored Enemy feats is negated by a simple strength based ranger that went for the Two-Weapon Fighting combat style. Not to mention that he will be doing more damage against enemies that are not his favored enemies. I suppose you could try to get the best of two worlds and settle down for something like strength based Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, but again the required 19 dexterity does come at the expense of your strength ability score.

As for ranger that goes for high dexterity and the 'bane of enemies' combat style, there is some real synergy right there, but you will have to get Point Blank Shot before you can have Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Improved Rapid Shot and Oneshot. That is already 4 pre-epic feats, and most races only get 7 feats pre-epic. What would your remaining three feats on? A dexterity based Ranged combat style ranger could easily get two One Shot feats, and actually get the Combat Focus Feats without much of a problem and get +4 AB and Damage against all opponents, or perhaps 4 points of regenation with 20% concealment.

Additionally, you cannot really make a decent wisdom based ranger with the 'bane of enemies' combat style, simply because you have to invest in dexterity to qualify for those ranged feats. Again, you are stuck raising two ability scores, you are stuck spending feats on rudimentary combat feats and leaves you with less feats to invest on other things, such as the previously mentioned Combat Focus Feats.

Thus, I do not see this 'bane of enemies' combat style stepping on the pre-existing combat styles. What I do see is it working very well with the Hunter Kit, because this kit grants some ranged feats by default and you could make use of it with some kind of a strength based axe throwing build - but again you do lose your spellcasting and that makes you more item dependant.

As for the kit on its own, as I said before, you would be pretty much free to go with a sword and board or a two-handed ranger character. You would have to spend your feats on things like Power Attack, which many rangers already do while picking a combat style that doesn't really do much for them. (Ranged or Two-weapon fighting.) Thus I believe that people would be interested in going for this 'bane of enemies' combat style.

As for mechanics, the most powerful build that I can come up with is something along these lines: http://nwn2db.com/build/?276996

If you are willing to give up on Steadfast Determination you could go for a +2 Strength Race such as Wood Elf and start with following ability scores: STR 20, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 6, WIS 14, CHA 8. This would increase our end strength modifier to 12 instead of 10, and hence grant us +3 damage per hit. If we factor in the Improved Favored Enemy feats, the minimum, avarage, and maximum damage numbers would be as follows:

MIN: 67
AVG: 79~
MAX: 91

This is a character that literally hits like a truck, but you have to endure the Frenzy bleeding damage, you do not have Expose Weakness, and you would have to fear rolling one against save or die spells. Not to mention that you have to reach level 30 to get most out of the build. In the purest sense of the word, this build is a glass cannon that might find some success at hunting 'mages' - or other favored enemies. Something that many players on this server's history have tried to do.

So any thoughts, any comments? I kind of feel like I am arguing for and against my own suggestions here.

Is this too OP, is this too underpowered?

Personally I think it would make more sense to just skip the Favored Power Attack feats and go for Great Strength feats, with Steadfast etc.