Favored enemies for TOEE (with mod)

Okay, I've always been a big fan of rangers. With CoE's mod, which favored enemies would you recommend for this campaign? I hear bugbears (aka goblinoids) abound in the midde game and humans abound in the early game, but I also hear that taking evil outsidrs are useful. What about elementals? Giants? Undead?

Can someone give some suggestions for which favoured enemies a pure ranger will really want and clarify your reasoning? I'm not even sure how many levels of ranger I'm going to have access to, what with the mod raising the level cap.

 

Seriously, take human as your first favored enemy. This gives you a bonus of +2 bonus on Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks against humans. That bonus will effectively double or at least increase by half again your dialogue skills at first level.

If your ranger is half-elven you will also have a further +1 bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks and a +2 bonus on Diplomacy and Gather Information checks. These bonuses are significant in your first couple levels when you are lowest on skill points. If you take Negotiator for your first level feat you get an additional +2 bonus on all Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks.

Your entire first level will probably be spent in dialogue quests in Hommlet, all humans. Your first real combat except for a couple of spiders will be a group of human bandits. The main encounter for finishing up in Hommlet will be with a villain and his troops who are human. Then you are off to another town and more dialogue quests with humans. A half elf ranger with the negotiator feat and humans as a favored enemy is the most effective face man your party can have in the beggining of the game.

 

That's nice I guess. Human's as first favored enemy. But what about the next two favored enemies? I don't want my ranger to become useless towards the end of the game.

Edit: ...since when did half-elfs gain bonuses to diplomacy and gather information? I just found it in the SRD and I still have trouble believing it.

 

I use humans for the first one, then giants.

 

Like Cujo said, Giants is a good choice for second favored enemy. You might also want to consider bugbears. You would not believe some of the bugbears in this game. I would not bother taking undead unless you plan to play without a good cleric. Having a good cleric makes undead a non-issue.

Also having humans as a favored enemy comes back into prominence in the end game as the main villains are also human, so takingg humans in the beggining is great at first, then you shift focus to the big humanoids as a second favored enemy, but go back to your first favored enemy when finishing the game.

Third favored enemy? Giants if you took humanoids as your second favored enemy, humanoids if you took giants. You could also go with either dragons or with demons. I'll leave that to discuss for people who play rangers more than I do.

 

(1) monsterous humanoids
(2) evil outsiders

 

I'm with Allyx, that's pretty much a listing of the enemies you're going to most-commonly face in the game, and the order. Humans covers humans, obviously. Goblinoids covers Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears. Giants covers Hill Giants, Ogres, Ettins and Trolls.

 

Didn't somebody put a black dragon into a mod?

 

Humans, goblins, giants, maybe evil outsiders. Righty. Thanks guys.

It's kind of odd to think of my ranger as the spokeman of the group. Oh well, whatever works!

Edit: Gah, so many modules, so many options! If I'm just looking for something which patches most of the game's bugs and fixes mot of the gameplay issues, I'd want just the official patch #2 and the latest Co8 release, right?

 

Yeah. Throw on the latest version of v5.01 too and don't forget to clear out those .pyc files (NOT .py).

 

Well... It's a great joke!!! LOL!!! The bad thing is that rangers are not spokesmen... I wish paladins could choose favored enemies!

In fact human opponents are tooo weak at the beginning to waste the feat on them. And at the end, the main villians are too tough to be killed by a bow. For example St.Cuthbert is best killed with wands not with bows or any other weapon. And they are very rare - these villians.

Though I agree about Giants and Goblinoids. Perhaps taking Giants first is better to fight that first one in Emridy Meadows. The third perhaps is arguable - may be evil outsiders?

 

webusver, taking humans as the favored enemy isn't as much about gaining points in combat as it is about gaining bluff and sense motive for the dialogue quests at first level, when you could most use those bonus points.

As far as your assertation that humans are so weak that you'd be wasting your favored enemy choice on them I disagree strongly. Most players start the serious combat at second level, having only fought a couple of spiders, a goblin, or maybe a squad of kobolds before getting to the moathouse.

In the moathouse you will face the bandits/brigands, admittedly not a tough encounter if you just remember to block for the wizard, but the favored enemy bonus helps.

Sure there are some undead, which your ranger should mostly leave to the cleric, and also some humanoids/goblinoids, but the main enemy, and the toughest encounter in module T1 is Lareth and his men. They are human, and having them as a prefered enemy helps.

After that you run into an ambush led by some hostile NPC rivals, all of whom are human. That encounter can be tough for a third level party, and may even cause the loss of one PC if the enemy rolls well. Having humans as favored enemy helps there as well.

The Temple of Elemental evil was modules T1 - T4. For almost all of T1, your enemies are mainly humans. T2 was to have encompassed Nulb, and there you will have more dialogue quests as well, where having humans as a favored enemy can definately help because of the increase to bluff and sense motive skills.

Skip ahead past Lareth's bandits, all human, and a very tough encounter, then the also very tough target of revenge scenario, where all of your opponents are humans, and you will eventualy come upon some high level human magic users and clerics running the temple. Along the way they have plenty of human troops as well as humanoid and monster, so the human as favored enemy bonuses will still apply in combat fairly often.

It's definately not a wasted choice. As for rangers not being spokesmen I also disagree, because my half-elf ranger started life as a bard, and was the party's face man until his untimely demise at the hands of Turuko's ambush party. He was at that point a level one bard for the music and dialogue skills and a level two ranger with two-weapon fighting style and weapon finesse. The cleric now handles most conversations as his diplomacy is finally higher than the bard/ranger's was, and the fighter handles conversations where intimidate or bluff will be the best skill choices, but the bard/ranger was a great spokeman through module T1.

 

I haven't found my archer characters to be weak in the later levels. Give them a holy bow, point blank shot, rapid shot and precise shot and let them go to town. The +2 (or more) from favored enemy is just gravy on top of that.

I certainly wouldn't take Giant as your first favored enemy. The only giants you have potential of fighting before 5th (when it might make sense to take it) are the Ogre in the Moathouse and the Hill Giant in Emridy Meadows. Whereas there's tons of human and goblinoid opponents before 5th level. Remember, you can always put your additional +2 in your most recent choice, so one could concievably start with humans at +2 at 1st level, and then take giants at 5th level and pump it up to +4 immediately. (I'd still go with goblinoids though. The temple is crawling with bugbears with only a handful of giants on any given level.)

One, St. Cuthbert isn't a villain. Second he's not human, so I'm not sure what your point is here.