Check out the Thug class. Designed as a tougher Thief, and with the option to take alt-skills such as Ranger Track. You might work with that as a base.laDracykei wrote:A player of mine wants to play a hunter character. I really like this idea, since incidentally hunting is especially significant to the theme of the setting I've been hacking together for the campaign. I considered importing the ranger class from AD&D for her, but I have no idea how that would affect balance, and after looking over the class descriptions, she said that she could easily just play a hunter as a thief that doesn't care about picking locks or pockets.
To make things more interesting, I brewed up "hunter" as a variant of the thief class:
The skill Remove Traps is generalized into the skill Traps, which in addition to finding and removing traps, may also be used to create and set any trap of the type that would be used by a hunter or other outdoorsman.
The skill Pick Pockets is replaced with Track Quarry, which allows the hunter determine what creatues have recently been present in the vicinity, and to determine which way they have gone. (This is easiest in the case of natural animals, but may also be used to pursue monsters and men.) The skill Listen is refocused to be used to detect the current presence of creatures, especially in the wilderness, but may still be used to listen as the thief would at a penalty of -20 percentage points.
The skill Open Locks is replaced with Snipe, which can be used to perform a sneak attack with a missile weapon (normally not allowed). Such a snipe, if rolled successfully, receives no long-range penalties. The skill may also be used in lieu of an attack roll to make very difficult shots at non-enemy targets (e.g. performing such stunts as splitting another arrow down the shaft or shooting an apple off the head of another) or to disable a specific body part of monster with a called shot.
How does it look in terms of balance? Does anything stand out?
http://www.basicfantasy.org/showcase.cgi?sid=23
Also, check Quasi-class Hunter (aka Ranger sort of add on). Layer on qualities of the classic ranger onto other classes.
http://www.basicfantasy.org/showcase.cgi?sid=51