Quote Originally Posted by Nicos View Post
I disagree. Quickrunner shirt just became another must have item in a game filled with must have stuffs. Quickrunner shirt were just a patch, I dislike patchest in the form of magic items. What the game needed was a fix.
I'd agree with that. Which is why I said a "step" actually. It doesn't give them the freedom that they had in 3.0 but it was a step in that direction. One could just make full attacking a standard action I suppose if they wanted to take away any reliance on using magic at all, and that would have much the same result as 3.0 was designed around (you'll notice that you get your first iterative attack at +6 BAB, which is also the level core sorcerers have access to haste).

That's something I think doesn't get enough attention these days. The fact that, in a sense, the game was designed around the idea that a party working cooperatively and feeding into each other would be ideal. Perhaps that's because people don't want to feel like they have to adhere to the traditional party paradigm. I can sympathize with that, though I'm a little fuzzier on whether or not I'm ready to throw it out, since I think playing with unusual party comps can be part of the fun (and far from impossible).

Might be worth it's own musing session or two.

Quote Originally Posted by Lemmy
You know why. But, fine... I'll humor you.
Well I mean, I've got a pretty twisted sense of balance it seems compared to most, and there's always a good chance that someone knows something that I don't, and I respect your insight.

FE is a passive bonus that is considerably stronger than similar abilities (Studied Target, Weapon Training, Judgement, etc). It's balanced by being somewhat situational (usually). Instant Enemy effectively turns it into "use whenever you want" ability, which puts it head and shoulder above most other "attack bonus" abilities (it's not as good as Smite Evil, but you get far more uses per day).
Well, let's talk about how I see it, and we can compare notes?
1. It seems like at low levels when Rangers don't really need it, it's a situational +2 that pops up sometimes and it's neat. Not as useful as an always available effect such as the Studied Target, and also fairly difficult to exploit with multiclassing. I also think Weapon Training is a garbage ability, but that's just a side note.

2. Eventually you come to a point where your ranger might need a big gun, and that's about the time favored enemy becomes available. It's a limited resource (magic) which prevents you from spamming it without making some sort of investment into it (in the form of magic items, such as investing in scrolls, wands, pearls of power, or x/day items), but not so demanding as to force you to expend feats or something on it. Similarly, adding a resource pool or some other method of paying for using the ability to make it x/day would be awkward.

This puts it sort of half-way between smite and similar abilities, while also preventing you from having your cake and eating it too (it comes at a cost, mostly in the form of items).

3. It doesn't strike me as anything out of the realm of fine for a martial, but then I also have no problems with oath of vengeance Paladins, who can convert Lay on Hands uses into smite uses (which in turn makes Extra Lay on Hands automatically Extra Smite, and also effectively grants them a potential extra smite for every +2 Charisma modifier they attain, and so forth). Similarly in my own campaigns, Paladin smites are 1/2 effective against Neutral-aligned creatures (and the majority of enemies are neutral) and full strength against their opposing foes (like evil clerics and antipaladins), and that feels pretty similar.

These are reasons that it doesn't feel overpowered to me. Not even a little bit. But I understand that "overpowered" is something that varies from person to person, which is part of the reason I wanted to ask.

EDIT: Also I had never interpreted the spell as being able to not target a creature you had as a favored enemy, but a creature that wasn't THE favored enemy, because of the favored enemy as defined by the spell is a selected creature type (as defined in the spell's text).
Select one of your favored enemy types. For the duration of the spell, you treat the target as if it were that type of favored enemy for all purposes.
Ergo, I've always read this as if your choice of favored enemy is for example "Undead", you can still choose to target and choose a creature that is not undead even if you do also have a favored enemy bonus against the creature type, because the creature type that the spell references is the chosen type.

Put another way, the targeting of the spell is a creature that is not your favored enemy (notice it doesn't say "not one of your favored enemies") but expresses favored enemy as a singular instance. In the text, you define what your favored enemy is by selecting the type.

I can see the case for the other being made, though that seems to lead to absurd situations (like you pointed out), so unless there's a really good reason to run it that way rather than the aforementioned way, I think I'm going to stick with the aforementioned way, since it seems poorly defined (and in such cases I usually go with whichever makes more sense).