Meet The Scout
An Essentials take of the melee ranger, the scout is a martial/primal hybrid that can either emphasize swords or axes, gaining a bonus to accuracy or damage respectively. Like rangers, scouts can use their Dexterity modifier for attack and damage with their melee basic attacks, and make a free attack once per round when they hit with one thanks to dual weapon attack. Unlike rangers, they can't use one-handed weapons in both hands, having to instead rely on weapons with the Off Hand property.They have at-will stances, referred to as aspects, that function as stance and seem to provide multiple benefits. For example, aspect of the cunning fox causes you to take half damage and let's you shift 2 squares whenever you hit or miss with attacks. Another, aspect of the charging ram, greatly enhances your charge attacks; you ignore opportunity attacks while moving, can prone targets that you hit, and you gain a damage bonus. There's a bunch of other aspects listed, but not hard mechanics.
The other previewed class feature is power strike, which does what it always does. As with the sentinel and hunter, wilderness knacks doesn't get any elaboration.
Reiterating the not-very-funny joke I said on Twitter: before, it was almost true and somewhat amusing to say that all a Ranger ever did was whack people twice, but now it's very much true. I'm rather not fond of Essentials martial classes.
ReplyDeleteThere was a sample Wilderness Knack on the hunter preview - its name was Ambush Expertise, and it provided a small stealth bonus to your allies when you tried to hide. I assume all knacks have minor, skill-related effects.
ReplyDelete@Wyatt: I also find the essentials to be limiting. I think it's fine for people who want it to VERY slightly play like an older edition, or for beginners. The highly repetitive basic melee attacks doesn't hold a lot of appeal to me.
ReplyDelete@Perico: Good find. I'll take a look. :-)