"But", the Magic Word

While we are going to have a joint character creation session, my players are already pondering character ideas, both in mechanical and background terms.  This is exciting, because it shows they are interested in the game, and means we'll have plenty of material to work with when we get together to start hammering stuff out.

One of the players is considering a bow ranger, but isn't too excited by the basic archery build from PH1.  His idea was to play an elf beastmaster ranger, focusing on ranged attacks.  While the beastmaster build assumes a STR-focused, melee character, mixing it up with his beast, by focusing on ranged DEX pwers for himself and beast powers that just involve the pet attacking, an archer beastmaster should be plenty doable.

Where things got interesting was when he asked if he could have a hummingbird as his beast, trading out some or most of its damage for extra speed, and essentially use it as a quarry spotter.  I thought about this, and the fact that the raptor beast template is already relatively low damage, at 1d6+1 to start, and very maneuverable with a fly speed of 7 (hover), and decided that I really didn't like messing with that.  So I said, "No, but..." and made the counteridea of using the raptor stats as-is, and the hummingbird is some kind of three foot long dire fey hummingbird, with a dirk- (if not rapier-) like beak.  It would still be a great spotter for him, still present a potential threat itself, and dude, killer hummingbird.  He liked the idea (his wife evidently laughed with glee), so it looks like he may go with that.

I looked at the beast powers some more, and started to consider letting him take some that are of the "you and your pet both make attacks" variety, and change the character's attack portion from melee STR-based to ranged DEX-based.  I figure that this will still be pretty balanced, as, one: there are plenty of ranger multi-modal powers already.  Two: he's giving up the easy flank oppertunities with his pet of the melee beastmaster.  The Distant Advantage feat does help to overcome that, but at the cost of a feat and the added complication of needing a third character to set up flanks for him to exploit.  Three: having a dire fey killer hummingbird pecking away bloody gobbets out of some hapless monster while the ranger pumps arrows into it passes my Rule of Cool handily.   Or, as a friend so succiently put it, "That's not just D&D.  That's D&D in capital letters, that are fifty feet tall, on fire, and resting atop a crushed halfling."