Ranger proposal: remove FE playable races, boost all other FEs

[Draugir]

In my opinion, FE has always been a pretty flawed design, which I don't feel like I have to elaborate. Admitted, I haven't played the class, but I still feel it's very difficult to justify why you wouldn't take FE human at the very least, and you'd have a huge advantage against over around 70% of the PCs, if you ever were to pvp.

I say instead of expecting players not to take a very powerful feat, a better idea would be to just remove FE playable races. With this, you would be able to instead boost the other feats and add more flavor to the class and perhaps foster some variety from ranger to ranger.

Some ideas that spring to my mind is to take inspiration from the enemies, give FE orc access to rage 2 times a day, give undead some concealment and perhaps DI (they're crit immune so DI is kinda reaching towards it). FE vermin could grant a powerful fireball trap on each reset, perhaps FE Fey could grant some sort of mass confusion. My point is the design should go wild, to make up for the lost FE playable races but also add some more interesting flavor to the class.

[Hierophant]

As a ranger who felt absolutely no need to take any of the FE playable races, FE player races are really not that big of a boost to a player's power. It's a niche at this point and if someone wants to focus on it (i.e bounty hunter, assassin, etc) then I really don't mind and all the power to them. Given the state of rangers, most rangers will end up multiclassing into something else for damage, i.e rogue, bard, swashbuckler, cleric, fighter. It more than makes up for not selecting FE Human.

Last chapter it was pretty obvious who was a FE Human ranger/fighter, this chapter? Building for PvP is where it always should have been- most people have builds more focused on PvE, and if PvP happens, it happens organically and without knowing you have an edge most of the time. You just fight, as people would.

The easier it is for you to clear content, anywho, the easier it will be for you to garner supply and supply = best chances of winning PvP anyways. So it's a done deal.

[Egon the Monkey]

Given the state of rangers, most rangers will end up multiclassing into something else for damage, i.e rogue, bard, swashbuckler, cleric, fighter. It more than makes up for not selecting FE Human.

There we are, that's the problem. The ranger perks don't make up for the low damage like the Fighter or Barb ones make up for low utility or just give them sneak attack etc. Sure, Rangers 'get wands' but what that really means is 'anyone with 1 Ranger gets divine wands if there's a crafter about'. I've said elsewhere that taking Ranger past 6 feels like a bit of a waste.

I feel the existence of FE: Human probably holds back a serious rework of the class 'because what if powerbuild?'. So deleting Player Race FEs (if possible) could be one way to just take that worry off the table. Because as you said, last chapter Fe Human Ftr/Ranger was a whole thing. And the perks haven't been really touched since then.

FE Human is still pretty handy for PvE because of Bandits, Orentids, etc. But looking at my PC's kill list yesterday, the top-tier FEs with great bonuses were all near the top of the league table of Things Killed. (Vermin, Monstrous, Dragon because it's actually an alternative FE: Reptilian, etc). It would probably be really useful for a DM to just pull the kill stats by racial type from a bunch of veteran PCs and average them. And see therefore which FEs could use a boost. Yes Vermin is skewed a lot by Worms for example, but there's also 2 big spider quests and a lot of nasty wilderness arachnids.

[Draugir]

This makes me think the FE choices should grant some powerful things at lvl 8, so you have incentive to remain pure. Especially because you'll have 2 FE at that point.