Ranger fighting styles?

[evilgiraffe42]

Since this server does like to try and bring things more in line with 3.5 (with a dash of pathfinder here or there I noticed) what about giving rangers more options for fighting styles?  It never really made sense to me that all the woodsmen, huntresses and survivalists in faerun were swinging a pair of scimitars Drizzt style   So what about instead of only giving dual wielding we had the option to also go an archery, or two handed/sword and shield route?  Instead of TWF at 1 and ITWF at 9 what about being able to pick Point blank shot and Rapid shot, or Power attack and Improved power attack?  I'm not thinking of going crazy with the options but it'd be nice to have some diversity without having to completely ignore two free feats and just equipping a sword and shield because that's what the character would most likely use RP wise.

[morwen]

Ranger/Wiz/Arcane Archer is a really deadly combo - this covers part of your question. That said, I would think your concrete suggestion isn't unattractive.

[Vincent07]

Not sure there's a good way to do this without excessive LETOs. I've yet to find a way through the 2da settings to allow for choosing 1 feat or another on level-up (and it wouldn't work at 1st level on chargen anyway), and then give a second based upon the first later.

As much as there are a number of things I wish NWN could do, it's an old system and has some rather concrete limits.

[The Red Mage]

You have the freedom to pick up those things anyway, and in fact, you are encouraged to get both PBS and power attack, in my opinion. I do see what you mean by who TWF encourages people to take it for the same build over and over, but you don't have to only use it. And you're kind of asking to be put into a different pidgeonhole. You have feats to do anything or everything. Ranger is really flexible. You could go sword/shortsword, longbow, sword/shield, greatsword all at the same time and still get things like you free TWF feat, PBS, Power Attack, Cleave, Expertise, Blind Fight, Improved Crit, Filler(Rp feat, toughness, imp expertise). Just switch out your weapons by what you need. You could even forgo your wisdom for more combat stats since rangers get really bad spells here. Just go for 12 and get your level scaled barkscale at higher levels, you'll be good.

Rapid shot/ weapon focus/ great cleave and all that is pretty bad feats in comparison to how few pure rangers(judging by your other post) can get. I've seen lots of dual bastard sword/ katana/ raiper builds, but I'm not sure if I've seen any dual scimitar builds that weren't just so for the Scimitar of the Void abuse.

[shotgunbunny]

NWN2 lets you choose a ranger style around level 2 or 3, I think. Then you get Archery or TWFish feats accordingly. That's the sort of thing we're talking about, right?
Wouldn't it be possible to give 1 bonus feat, and limit the options to Style A or Style B feat? Then you could check for X ranger levels and Style A/B, and give free feats accordingly?

[Masque]

In fairness I don't think it would be overpowered to give Rangers the Archery line and the two weapon fighting line this combined with Tumble and HiPS the class already gets on CD would make the ranger fairly respectable.

That being said there is no canon source I could draw onto justify it. It simply gives them a boost as a lot of the Rangers utility simply does not translate very well from PnP to NWN which is primarily a combat simulation engine.