Ranger

Ranger

 HitDie: d8  Mana: d8  Skills: 8 Saves: FRw Defense: 1/3
 +toHit: Archery 100%, Brawl 75%, Melee 100%, Thrown 100%
 
  The hunter, the archer, the woodsman, the explorer, the tracker, the forester -- all these have the seeds of a Ranger in them, but a Ranger exceed them all. The superlative masters of the woodlands, the Ranger combines stealth, nature skill and martial prowess into a deadly, effective package. Heroic Rangers often act as the hand of the law outside of the cities, protecting innocent villages from the depridations of vile humanoids, while others stalk and hunt men in one form or another, or simply remove themselves from society utterly to commune with nature.
  The Ranger is a formidable fighter. Rangers have a variety of wilderness-oriented skills, including the valued stealth skills, and diverse special abilities to aid their role: tracking, bonuses against studied enemies, weapon skill, traceless passage, bonus combat feats oriented toward archery and two weapon-fighting and a dabbling of nature-oriented magics at the higher levels.

CLASS SKILLS
   The class skills of the ranger are Animal Empathy, Climb, Craft, Find Weakness, Healing, Hide, Intuition, Jump, Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Oceans), Knowledge (Theyra), Listen, Move Silently, Ride, Search, Spot, Swimming and Wilderness Lore.

CLASS FEATURES
   All the following are class features of the ranger.
   * Proficiencies -- Rangers are proficient with all simple weapons, long blades, short blades, axes, archery, thrown weapons, staves and spears, and with light armour and shields.
   * Animal Companions -- Rangers can tame animals using their Animal Empathy class skill, and if successful add those companions to their adventuring party. A ranger character receives a free 'buffer' of (approximately) two hit dice per ranger level for animal companions; these hit dice worth of animals do not count toward the total hit dice of the party for purposes of party loyalty checks or gaining new party members.
   In addition, up to once per day, the ranger may activate this ability to summon an animal of their choice from a list of options that improves with the ability's level as a permanent companion. They cannot have more than one such summoned animal companion at the same time.
   Levels of this ability from the druid and ranger classes stack.
   * Tracking -- The ranger's tracking ability is a combination of mundane tracking skill, keenly honed intuition and a mystical kind of insight. Once a ranger of 2nd level or higher somehow notices a creature (via normal sight, scent, darkvision, or whatnot), she begins tracking it. Thereafter it will always appear on the map even if it is not in the ranger's direct field of vision. The monster's location will be known as long as it is within 100 feet (10 squares) of the ranger and no more than 10 turns have passed. These limits increase by 20 feet (2 squares) and 2 turns with each additional ranger level. Since this is a partially mystical ability, it will even allow the ranger to keep track of a creature that has teleported or shifted into another plane and it will allow the ranger to track creatures with her eyes closed. Since the creature must be noticed initially before tracking can take place, a well-honed Spot skill is important. Tracked enemies can be targeted with spells or arrows (etc.) even if they are out of the range of normal sight.
   * Lore of Arms -- Like warriors, rangers are extremely well versed in the ins and outs of weapons. Every even level as a ranger counts as a warrior level would for advancing this ability (which is described under the warrior class), and ranger and warrior levels in Lore of Arms stack.
   * Favoured Enemies -- The ranger is at heart a hunter, and she makes a practice of knowing her enemies. By studying different types of creatures estensively, the ranger gains bonuses in combat against those she specializes in stalking. These bonus begin at +1 to hit and damage and increase by +1 for every 4 full ranger levels.
   A ranger begins with one favoured enemy, and gains another at every fifth ranger level.
   * Woodland Stride -- Starting at 3rd level, a ranger's movement rate is never modified negatively by the terrain she is standing on (as with brambles, hedges, rubble or webbing).
   * Combat Style -- Starting at 1st level, rangers must choose one of the three ranger combat styles: archery, skirmish or two-weapon. Based on their choice, they receive pre-set bonus feats at 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th and 15th level. If they already have a feat inherently, they receive the next one in the progression; if the progression is complete and the ranger gains a bonus feat, they will gain one of the following instad: Woodsman, Endurance, Alertness, Toughness. Rangers do not need to meet the prerequisites for feats gained from their combat style, but the feats only function if the ranger is wearing light or no armour.
   Archery -- This combat style gives the ranger the Rapid Shot feat at 1st, the Point-Blank Shot feat at 3rd, Defensive Shot at 7th, Zen Archery at 11th and Aimed Shot at 15th.
   Two-Weapon -- This combat style gives the ranger the Two-Weapon Style feat at 1st, the Ambidexterity feat at 3rd, Defensive Synergy at 7th, Two-Weapon Tempest at 11th and Twin Weapon Style at 15th.
   Skirmish -- This combat style gives the ranger the Sneaky feat at 1st, the Backstab feat at 3rd, the Expert Tactician feat at 7th, the Mobility feat at 11th and the Deft Opportunist feat at 15th.
   * Spellcasting -- Rangers dabble with magic, being able to cast a few nature-oriented spells from a subset of the druid spell list. They gain one spellcasting chart level at 4th level, and an additional spell level for every even ranger class level thereafter.
   * Fasting -- Being well accustomed to the harsh ways of the wilderness, rangers are able to survive for extended periods on much less food than other creatures; they get hungry at 1/3rd the rate of other characters. Multi-classed rangers receive this advantage in proportion to the amount of their total levels that are ranger levels.
   * Size Advantage -- Much like Small warriors, Small rangers train to fight larger creatures by exploiting their vulnerabilities, and thus gain reduced threat ranges just as warriors do. For rangers, this training is delayed by two levels, so they receive a -1 threat range at 3rd level, -2 at 5th and so forth.
   Warrior and ranger levels in this ability stack.
   Small races also receive the Defensive Roll ability (from the rogue's higher-level special ability list) upon attaining four combined levels of warrior, ranger, paladin, monk or barbarian.
   * Starting Benefits -- Rangers start with a mighty long bow +2 (or a short bow for small races, or a quick-loading arbalest +1 for dwarves and gnomes), a miscellaneous magic item designed for stealth or mobility, a racially-determined melee weapon and peasant garb. Any starting ranger missile gains a +1 bonus.

THE RANGER
   Level  Def  Fort Refl Will Special Abilities
     1    +0    +2   +0   +0  Bonus Feat, Fast.,
                              1st Fav. Enemy
     2    +0    +3   +0   +0  Tracking, LoreArms
     3    +1    +3   +1   +1  Woodland Stride,
                              Bonus Feat
     4    +1    +4   +1   +1  +1 caster level
     5    +1    +4   +1   +1  2nd Favoured Enemy
     6    +2    +5   +2   +2  +2 caster level
     7    +2    +5   +2   +2  Bonus Feat
     8    +2    +6   +2   +2  +3 caster level
     9    +3    +6   +3   +3                    
     10   +3    +7   +3   +3  3rd Favoured Enemy,
                              +4 caster level
     11   +3    +7   +3   +3  Bonus Feat        
     12   +4    +8   +4   +4  +5 caster level