Ranger - Favoured Enemy Categories

[Baldgeek]

BUMP

I agree with the merging of Beast and Animal when it comes to FE ...
Before even realizing the mechanics I chose Animal as Trishs' initial FE due to a RP driven idea: As a younger hin traveling the Dales' with her merchant parents she was the sole hunter of the group and hunted various animals not only for food but had to stave off some in defense. Now to me this would make sense (logically) to include wolves and bear for example ... however this is not the case currently .. in fact ... I think rats are under the animal category which would be more a vermin I would gather ... regardless like OS had originally stated some streamlining would be a nice consideration for easier playability and evasion of confusion (perhaps something that could be stated on the Wiki as yet another custom change to Ranger class ... )

Anyway thought I'd add my two coppers in (not that Trish could afford even that atm )
Thank you,
~BG

[Loreweaver]

Since we use a custom Favoured Enemy system these things are not technically difficult to implement. However, the entire thing is intrinsically imbalanced and that means it's very challenging to make sensible changes to the system.

For example, if we merge elf and half-elf, both of which are mainly useful versus PCs in our setting, we've doubled the feat's value but did nothing for, say, a halfling hunter. Do we then merge halflings and gnomes for the sake of balance rather than for racial association? Also, a half-elf is just as much human as it is elven so why wouldn't we pool them with humans instead? Probably because humans are already a very present race in the setting, but still. You could at least argue that half-elves should fall into both the human and the elf categories. Even if we don't do that and elf and half elf are merged however, doesn't the category still fall way behind other choices like goblins or undead?
Then it gets more complicated still when creatures fall into multiple racial types. Werewolves might be shapeshifters but there's also something to be said for classifying them as magical beasts. An undead ogre could be both undead and giant, but a double racial identity is not recognized by NWN's race system.

All such things put together, I think we're looking at a system which can't be fixed without an extreme overhaul of some sort and barring that, any reshuffling is probably a futile effort. I trust that most rangers would pick up at least one major racial group for mechanical viability and at least one quirky group for characterization so that everything sort of evens out, but of course you can shoot yourself in the foot or claim a major combat advantage with the categories as they are.

That said, I would have trouble identifying the difference between Animal and Beast too, particularly since there's also a Magical Beast category. I think that could be a valid reason to eliminate one or the other entirely.

[Silver Snow]

I think generally there are some blanket terms that address creatures, like Undead generally are the defining descriptor given that they immediately inherit a lot of racial features from that and sometimes lose some from their previous race.
I think this should be looked at somewhat through the balance lens a bit more, if only to do what we can to combine some of the more niche and desirable categories into ones that can generally overlap all of them. At present, there's plenty of goblinoids on the server, plenty of undead, some orcs. These should probably stay as they are, and I foresee them being often enough taken by rangers. I'll take a stab at some more encompassing categories here:
EDIT: Just to be preemptive, I think for balance's sake there can be some decisions made with a little bit more mechanical mind to it. Yes, something like half-elf is as much human and elf for instance, but if we tried to compile those, their "unique" features as far as humans are concerned (the dominant race in the setting and specific game area) are going to be leaning elven for similarities.

Beasts: Can include Animals, Beasts, and Vermin.
Construct: Can include Constructs and Oozes (as we have seen cases of them, like constructs, being magically created through similar processes)
Aberration: Seems to have some strong overlap with Monstrous Humanoid and Giants. Surely there's a way to somehow put these together under a reasonable umbrella.
Reptilian: Can include Dragon and Reptilian
Magical Beasts: Can include magical beasts, shapechangers.

The hard ones become the various races. Having a particular knack at killing gnomes or half-elves never made much sense to me. Elves, for perhaps a drow hunter, maybe. Humans given their prevalence in the setting, also perhaps. But the rest are very niche. It'd be nice to somehow put them together but maybe they should remain separate to let those with very specific aims go for them.
I don't quite know what to do with Plants and Fey, also fairly small a subset, and I've hardly seen any here.

At present a full level ranger can take 3 of 27 of these favored enemies, which of course over the course of a game and setting set up for level 20s, becomes more tolerable for rangers as they go on. I think if we can squeeze the categories down to maybe 18 separate ones, or as low as 15, that still means a whole lot of specialization but lets some of the needlessly niche ones find a little more solid ground.