How do I do hunter-types right?

How do I do hunter-types right?
They seem like a dang staple of the darker monster mash settings, from warhammer to bloodbourne to ancient anime, always lurking wherever vampires and werewolves abound. So naturally, I'd like to play and use them.

However, in almost all their source material, they work as one-man field teams, having effectively the power of an entire traditional party.

How do you resolve this? Weaken the hunter so you have to have a team of four? Run a non-hunt, political based game where the hunter's political swag comes from being the guy who keeps the place monster free, wheras the other players may have other types of political swag?

I just don't know, and they're too cool to leave unused.

Also, for comedy purposes, their edge levels can get to nigh infinite, which is amazing.

Apparently, YOU don't do hunter types right.

Yeah, that's sort of the point of this thread, asking how to do hunter types right.

In its purest form, a hunter is basicly a hobo that murders. Living on the edge of society barely scraping by

so the important questions are

Why does he hunt, both what started it, but also, what keeps him going night after night, almost starving fighting for everything that keeps his personal war going ?

How does he aquire what he needs, and what does he need, in a gritty/realistic game you might want to make this a big part, he could steal guns from gangbangers or dealers, but usually that will net him pistols and semi automatic rifles, he could make his own, or he could use only things you can buy in a store, Axes and chainsaws, beartraps and tent pitons and chains

Does he kill humans ? or is he living by some strict moral code

Start with these, and think about what part of the hunter makes him cool to you

I'd say force them to specialize in a specific form of combat/field

In MANY hunter fictions, he is the field portions of a larger operation taking care of logistics for him.
It's the van helsing classic, and holds true in many of these.

And I can't think of any of them besides like, the witcher that kill straight humans. Mostly not out of any real moral thing, but more because there's no good reason to kill most dudes until they burst into tentacles.

Some also have the lone dude that nobody know, but yeah totally didnt think of larger organisations, i gues there is also the vampire/werewolf that goes after his own

like, if I were to rate on commonality, it'd be like 50% of hunters- in a larger organization,
20% of hunters- half vampire or some shit
15% of hunters- working with some crazy fuck in the woods
10% hunters- just a specialized mercenary
5% hunters- just some crazy fuck on a mission

Watch the first five seasons of Supernatural

Or if you go with solo hunters, they usually have some sort of supernatural upgrade, half demon/fae/werewolf/vampire/etc or the Old Blood in Bloodborne, magic like Constantine, that sort of thing that can level the playing field.

I supernatural, like, good?

>I supernatural, like, good?
Yes, yes it is.

>5% hunters- just some crazy fuck on a mission
So Frank Castle?

The Hunter is the jack of all trades, utility, damage, range, movement and survival enough to handle a single monster on its own.

It should have fuck all in the way of crowd control though because the Hunter is focused on hunting ONE monster at a time, think lots of single target effects or tools designed to debuff a target down to the level of the hunter - heavy or flame shot to knock back or scare beasts, bolases and bear traps to restrict movement, explosives to remove armor or scales, poison to weaken their attacks or stop them from self-buffs or regeneration etc...

Think of it like a sort of "Anti-support" - as a Support class helps their team-mates, the hunter hinders the enemy.

A hunter should also, because it can be a jack-of-all-trades be a second fiddle to any class dedicated anything but that debuff role, but it should be good in a party precisely because it can back up the dedicated whatever is most needed in a given situation, taking some of the burden from them.

A bit like, was it the 4e or 5e monk? whose thing was that they could basically get anywhere on the battle field, do one or two things, then move the fuck out of danger(and if neccesary, carrying members of the party who'd ended up in a bad position) again? Like that, but more focused debuffs rather than tanking, and focused on ranged stuff rather than melee and movement.

frank castle but with vampires and werewolves instead of criminals.

SOME of them also make themselves stronger to fight the monster.
There's a whole bunch of ways for that, from the bloodbourne to the witcher.

It should depend on what sort of monster they hunt. Hidden monsters like vampires? They'll have to be a good investigator, and therefore a good logician, as well as an actor. A bit of a Sherlock Holmes, if you will, because he'll need to go places where he's a stranger and track down this vampire without being caught by it first, so he has to disguise himself well.
A werewolf hunter? He too will have to be an investigator, as the werewolf may turn back into a human as a citizen, but also a better huntsman, in case he has to track the werewolf through the wilds.
If he hunts trolls, then he can go without social or investigative skills, and instead be a pure hunter/trapper/fighter.
In all of these cases, the hunter will also need to know how avoid his prey's strengths, while exploiting their weaknesses.

You know van-helsing, the movie? That.

The hunter does not work alone. They have a team of researchers, smiths, intelligence and funds behind them. The most well-off will be part of a department, the most impoverished will have a friendly blacksmith and maybe an informal squire waiting them home.

The hunter does not go unprepared. They know what they are getting into, and so they get the right equipment for the job. Do you notice how they always have the right trinket, the necessary weaponry, sometimes even hidden traps? That's a hunter who did his homework. With preparation, they are set. Without preparation, they are dead meat.

The hunter goes against a target. They are detectives, assassins and infiltrators. They are not soldiers, and are not geared for war, fair fights or large engagements. A hunter defending himself against a mob is a hunter seeking a way out, or a dead man fighting.

So, how to balance the hunter? A hunter can nigh-prepare for a type of supernatural threat, and that type alone. They need the field-work, they need the observation, knowledge gathering and to choose the appropiate tools for the job. The proper tools are, by the way, highly specific, and not inmediatly avaible. And once in the field, they must avoid large-scale confrontations at all cost.

A hunter having to improvise is a mediocre fighter-thief with lots of useless trinkets, a hunter before the hunt is a detective with decent deterrent skills but nothing extra-ordinary.

Did I say van helsing? Sorry, I should have said Batman.

Personally I just like the idea that hunters are "kinda" normal humans, but they're just filled with so much zealous rage and righteousness that they easily surpass the limits of a normal human.
Basically a case of "man literally too angry to die"

only the first five seasons
after that Crowley and Cass are a little fun but it begins losing steam after season 5
still worth a watch if you enjoyed the earlier stuff and you have time to burn

That is what sometime grinds my gears about homebrew slayers is how they somehow run into a crowd of their preferred pray inn a head on fight and does their best imitation of neo/blade when the preferred situation is using something to make them run in fear and shoot the buggers in the back

What if the solitary hunters we see in fiction is just the 'visible' part? They could have their own posse or crew when they go on hunts, but the only one that go to town and ask questions is the 'cliche' hunter. The rest waits somewhere near, disguised as something else, like a merchant caravan or a wandering theatre troupe or something - this is because usually the things a hunter hunts are hidden with the common folk. In order to not spook them enough to skip town or deal more damage than they already do, most of the hunter crew stay 'hidden' until the target is pinpointed and only then they will act.

The "hunter" in this context refers to a person who both has encyclopedic knowledge of his supernatural target and is fully prepared to exploit every possible weakness they possess.

No matter how skilled a hunter is, if they bring a wooden stake, garlic, and holy water to a fight with a werewolf, they have as much chance as any normal fighter at the same level.

I would say that a hunter is simply a fighter who is especially knowledgeable about their chosen foes, and has enough tracking and investigative skill to find and identify where they are and where they have been.

Rangers fit this bill well too, though a hunter is not so specifically an woodsman.

As a summary?

Pic related, except with vampires or werewolves or whatever else instead of goblins. Specialized tools, dirty tricks and cheap, backhanded tactics combined with an assload of experience and exploiting their prey's natural weaknesses.

A human in a gritty, gothic setting is typically not as strong as the monsters they're fighting. So they use whatever they can to even the odds. Track down your enemy, set up traps and ambushes, use tools specifically designed to kill this one target and have as high a Knowledge (Dungeoneering) or (Monster Lore) skill or whatever else like it that you can manage, and hope that your GM is a good one that will actually humor you and let you do your thing.

A monster hunter that knows what they're hunting and given prep time is a terrifying, terrifying thing. A hunter that ends up caught with their pants down or facing something they've never foughg before? Well, that's what the rest of the party is for. At that point, you should be playing the rogue's role a bit, moving about and nailing enemies with cheap shots but leaving most actual fighting to the other guys.

Goblin Slayer is what happens when you dedicate every thought and action to how you can most efficiently kill your specific foe.
For all the manga's claim that he's "not special", the protag is extremely intelligent and stronger than most. His biggest weakness is how often that he forgets his own body has limits.

The monster hunter OP describes wouldn't be as hilariously limited in the scope of their work, but it does make you wonder if an organization of hunters would be more efficient if each of them focused their work towards the elimination of one distinct monster type. They'd probably be far better at it than trying to do all of them like Geralt does.