Adventures: Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. In addition, they often carry grudges against certain types of creatures and look for opportunities to find and destroy them. Additionally, rangers may adventure for all the reasons that fighters do.

Characteristics: The ranger is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and capable in combat. His skills allow him to survive in the wilderness, to find his prey, and to avoid detection. He also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. This knowledge makes him more capable of finding and defeating those foes. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does.

An experienced ranger often has one or more animal companions to aid him, thanks to his animal friendship spell.

Alignment: Rangers can be of any alignment. Most are good, and they are protectors of the wild areas. In this role, a ranger seeks out and destroys or drives off evil creatures that threaten the wilderness. Good rangers also protect those who travel through the wilderness, serving sometimes as guides and sometimes as unseen guardians. Rangers are also mostly chaotic, preferring to follow the ebb and flow of nature or of their own hearts instead of rigid rules. Evil rangers, though rare, are much to be feared. They revel in nature's thoughtless cruelty and seek to emulate her most fearsome predators. They gain divine spells just as good rangers do, for nature herself is indifferent to good and evil.

Religion: Though rangers gain their divine spells from the power of nature, like anyone else they may worship a chosen deity. Ehlonna, goddess of the woodlands, and Obad-Hai, god of nature, are the most common deities among them, though some rangers prefer more martial deities.

Background: Some rangers gained their training as part of special military teams, but most learned their skills from solitary masters who accepted them as students and assistants. The rangers of a particular master may count themselves as cohorts, or they may be rivals for the status of "best student" and thus the rightful heir to their master's fame.

Races: Elves are commonly rangers. They are at home in the woods, and they have the grace to move stealthily. Half-elves who feel their elven parents' connection to the woods are also commonly rangers. Humans are often rangers as well, being adaptable enough to learn their way around the woods even if it doesn't come naturally. Half-orcs may find the life of a ranger more comfortable than life among cruel and taunting humans (or orcs). Gnome rangers are more common than gnome fighters, but still they tend to remain in their own lands rather than adventure among "the big people." Dwarf rangers are rare, but they can be quite effective. Instead of living in the surface wilderness, they are at home in the endless caverns beneath the earth. Here they hunt down and destroy the enemies of dwarvenkind with the relentless precision for which dwarves are known. Dwarf rangers are often known as "cavers." Halfling rangers are legendary-as in, you might hear stories about them but you'll probably never meet one.

Among the savage humanoids, only gnolls are commonly rangers, using their skills to slyly stalk their prey.

Classes: Rangers get along well with druids and to some extent with barbarians. They are known to bicker with paladins, mostly because they often share goals but differ in style, tactics, approach, philosophy, and esthetics. Since rangers don't much look to other people for support or friendship, they find it easy to tolerate people who are quite different from themselves, such as bookish wizards and preachy clerics. They just don't care enough to get upset about others' differences.

GAME RULE INFORMATION

Rangers have the following game statistics.

Abilities: Dexterity is important for a ranger because rangers tend to wear light armor and because several ranger skills are based on Dexterity. Strength is important for them because rangers frequently get involved in combat. Several ranger skills are based on Wisdom, and a Wisdom score of 14 or higher is required to get access to the most powerful ranger spells. A Wisdom score of 11 or higher is required to cast any ranger spells at all.

Alignment: Any.

Hit Die: d10.

Class Skills

The ranger's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Animal Empathy (Cha, exclusive skill), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Hide (Dex), Intuit Direction (Wis), Jump (Str), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str), Use Rope (Dex), and Wilderness Lore (Wis).

Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) x4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier.

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the ranger.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A ranger is proficient with all simple and martial weapons, light armor, medium armor, and shields. Note that armor check penalties for armor heavier than leather apply to the skills Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Pick Pocket, and Tumble. Also, Swim checks suffer a -1 penalty for every 5 pounds of armor and equipment carried. When wearing light armor or no armor, a ranger can fight with two weapons as if he had the feats Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting. He loses this special bonus when fighting in medium or heavy armor, or when using a double-headed weapon (such as a double sword).

Spells: Beginning at 4th level, a ranger gains the ability to cast a small number of divine spells. To cast a spell, the ranger must have a Wisdom score of at least 10 + the spell's level, so a ranger with a Wisdom of 10 or lower cannot cast these spells. Saving throws against a ranger's spells have a Difficulty Class of 10 + spell level + Wisdom modifier.

Upon reaching 4th level a ranger can cast 1st level spells. At 8th level a ranger can begin casting 2nd level spells, then 3rd level spells at level 11, and 4th level spells upon reaching level 14. A ranger has access to any spell on the list and can freely choose which to prepare, just as a cleric can.

Through 3rd level, a ranger has no caster level. Starting at 4th level, a ranger's caster level is one-half her class level.

Mana: Mana is the "life force" of magic. Each spell takes a specific amount to complete its invocation. For a Ranger, Mana is determined by his Wisdom modifier multiplied by his level of experience: (experience level x ability modifier = Mana). For example, Rhodona is a 5th level Ranger with a Wisdom of 16. Her ability modifier for Wisdom would be +3, so her total Mana would be 5 times 3 for a total of 15.

Track: A ranger gains Track as a bonus feat.

Favored Enemy: At 1st level, a ranger may select a type of creature (dragons, giants, goblinoids, undead, etc.) as a favored enemy. (A ranger can only select his own race as a favored enemy if he is evil.) Due to his extensive study of his foes and training in the proper techniques for combating them, the ranger gains a +1 bonus to Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Wilderness Lore checks when using these skills against this type of creature. Likewise, he gets the same bonus to weapon damage rolls against creatures of this type. A ranger also gets the damage bonus with ranged weapons, but only against targets within 30 feet (the ranger cannot strike with deadly accuracy beyond that range). The bonus doesn't apply to damage against creatures that are immune to critical hits.

At 5th level and at every five levels thereafter (10th, 15th, and 20th level), the ranger may select a new favored enemy, and the bonus associated with every previously selected favored enemy goes up by +1. For example, a 15th-level ranger will have four favored enemies, with bonuses of +4, +3, +2, and +1.

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting: A ranger with a base attack bonus of at least +9 can choose to gain the Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feat even if he does not have the other prerequisites for the feat. The ranger must be wearing light armor or no armor in order to use this benefit.

	Attack	Fort	Ref	Will
Level	Bonus	Save	Save	Save	Special
1	+1	+2	+0	+0	Track, 1st favored enemy
2	+2	+3	+0	+0
3	+3	+3	+1	+1
4	+4	+4	+1	+1	can cast 1st level Ranger spells
5	+5	+4	+1	+1	2nd favored enemy
6	+6/+1	+5	+2	+2
7	+7/+2	+5	+2	+2
8	+8/+3	+6	+2	+2	can cast 2nd level Ranger spells
9	+9/+4	+6	+3	+3
10	+10/+5	+7	+3	+3	3rd favored enemy
11	+11/+6/+1	+7	+3	+3	can cast 3rd level Ranger spells
12	+12/+7/+2	+8	+4	+4
13	+13/+8/+3	+8	+4	+4
14	+14/+9/+4	+9	+4	+4	can cast 4th level Ranger spells
15	+15/+10/+5	+9	+5	+5	4th favored enemy
16	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+5	+5
17	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+5
18	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+6
19	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+6
20	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+6	5th favored enemy