Rangers in various guises

Okay, now for the finale

I’ve paired down the kind of character class that I think I could be comfortable role playing in Eberron over a long series of games.  I’m going to build this character as a Ranger, but with an axe to grind against mages.  From his public education in Q’barra he has learned a thing or two about arcane knowledge (costs one feat), and fearing Q’barra would be drawn into the conflict, took training as an Arcane Hunter (Complete Mage, pg. 32).  In the time after the war, he has undertaken use his skills, and particular knowledge, to explore the Mournland with an eye to recovering it. 

What does he feel about the world?

The world is devastated, and he’s chosen to focus on the worst parts.  While he keeps his mind open to the ideas of Arcane magic, he is painfully aware of the dangers of magic out of control.  His attitude to mages starts from cautious and drops to hostile when mages demonstrate a lack of control of their abilities.  He sees himself as a servant of all humanity, but humans do stupid things and mages among the worst of them.  Sometimes saving a life means cutting a limb.  This is the grim reality of a world after a hundred years of war.

Choosing Q’barra as a homeland is significant in its own right.  Q’barra’s common races represent civilization, and its outward spread.   As a ranger, this character would take to the bush and fight the wild things on their terms.  He can be furious with them, but he respects the wild for what it is.  The Mournlands denizens would be very different, existing in a ruined land, wild beasts horribly mutated, probably painfully, by arcane magic out of control, he would work to put down the beasts as a kind of mercy, all the while hating mages more and more.  The warforged might seem to him deluded, and he will fight them but more as a matter of business, or part of the struggle between good and evil.  This isn’t personal.

I decided before that he was going to be human.  I am just now review options for other common race rangers.

For Human, take the base class from the Player’s Handbook

For Half-elf, racial substitution levels exist for Urban Rangers, who swap many deep commitments to nature for arcane street magic, and urban tracking.  While skill mastery looks interesting at first glance, really I expect to use it with Hide, which is exactly what the typical ranger has with Camoflage.

Elf Ranger just doesn’t go in the right direction.  They get nice bonuses against undead and the like, but none of them are going to be useful in the Mournland or Q’barra.

Shifters can also be rangers, and the 9^th level enhanced shifting power is cool, but not much else recommends itself.

I’ve had a long interest in going further with illusions, and the Gnome Ranger could easily fill that desire (Races of Stone, pg. 149-150), but it will take away the chosen enemy that is arcanist.  It has to be a Gnome racial enemy, which does include humanoid (reptilian), and fits well enough in Q’barra.   Taking this Racial substitution level just means adjusting the character’s background to being disinterested in the wider world, and focused more on the violence in Q’barra.  It is almost perfect, except why is he in Sharn where the game begins?  Gnome can work with a little bit of creative storytelling, and his proclivity with illusions could kill whole adventuring parties in the Mournland just by getting them lost (assuming the spells work right). 

Any other race could be a ranger, but they would all function pretty much like the human ranger, so unless they have specific racial bonuses, there is not much point in continuing.  The Mournlands are a dangerous place, so the choice is between skill points (for humans), illusions (for Gnomes), and urban advantages (for Half-elves). 

There’s a lot of cities to comb through to find the mage responsible for the Day of Mourning.  A half-elf ranger with Arcane Hunter would be singularly capable of pursuing the truth.  The adventure would be in surviving the hunt.