Solace MUD Official Forum

Small idea how to improve ranger (if it is necessary, of course) and make "third animal feat" a bit more attracting.
Each of ranger animal could gain a small ability.
Falcons - ability to fly high above _this_ area and report everyone in it, including those who are hidden, invisible, camo/chameleon/blend. Duo and astral should be unseen anyway. Not reporting exact location, just reporting that someone (or person's name) was found in the area. Should not detect peoples being "indoors".
Wolves - due to their high speed, protect ranger from sudden attack with a small chance - something like "Wolf detects aggressive action from *** and attacks him". A very small chance, indeed.
Bear - assist ranger when he ambush victim with one unblockable hit. They are not so strong after all, and two bears should not cause more than 20-40% of rangers damage.
Lion - look at ground and report all peoples walking through this room, and direction they went. Kind of "they smell the following victims passed here". Should not work on water or air locations (btw, stalk should not work there too).

This would give rangers a reason to pick other animals than lion, also it will make third animal more useful. And the powers are allocated at "descrease" (imho), so strongest animals have lesser powers. Probably falcon's power can be even more increased by letting two falcons to fly high with ranger, so let him fly ability, but this is rather powerful and I doubt this is necessary.


Maniacus told about tailored skin. At mine opinion, items created that way should be at least as powerful as most powerful unlim items (commonly found, of course, not quest items) on that place - after all, ranger can get those items too, but it would looks better if he will dress his own armor. This way we will get rangers dressing green armors unless they find something really powerful.


And one question/idea. I have heard that barkskin is reduced now, is it intended to be rather weak skill? Especially for ranger with resist-based familiarity?

Idea of special animal powers backasswards-proportional to their combat strength is quite nice and will be considered in one way or another.

Third-animal feat is questionable already, as it theoretically leads to necromancer-type rangers with a dozen of animals following them. Just remember about manual, clanmounts and minion-summoning items.
If we decide to implement animal spec-powers, we'd better allow rangers to call animals one by one so they can select a pair.

Tailored skins are kinda useless, I agree. But we are planning a major rewrite of crafting system and this skill will fade away. Probably instead of it rangers will get some specific resource gathering abilities inaccessible for other classes.

'Skin' skill that makes sacks is... partially useful, more like a flavor skill. I am thinking of adding burnproof flag to created sack (maybe at some higher level, maybe with some probability, or both), to make it nicer.

Barkskin was reduced greatly, but recently upped a lil bit. The reason for this is that it was not so hard to create a ranger immune or close to being immune for physical damage.

Well, at my opinion rangers should be greatly reworked, now they cannot be good opposition to most classes on Hero range, they aren't warriors, aren't pet-dealers, aren't good support class, just something average and not powerful as can be in the forest.

PS Well, it is only my IMHO, we can start discussion about it, if anybody really think as i am.

[ Nyrl, you have stolen my idea and you know it :-) ]

To be exact, I offered scouting for falcon: ranger send them to find the target, it fly away for few *ticks* , return back and report where target is, if it is in wilderness. Only falcons of N+ ranks should have this ability.


What manual do you mean?

As some of you may know, I played a ranger, and even outside of solamnia, Niano was quite strong. I never had much of a problem at all with ranger's skills. Only thing I see needs to be reworked is snare skill. Snare should not initiate combat, such as it was in days of yore. Should just cause 1.5 lag for whoever is caught in snare. Ranger should have sense enough if they want to attack person caught in snare or not, and given opportunity to ambush. Whole use of that skill IMHO.

Try to fight invoker, necromancer, Zerthan? Ambush Zerthan yeah! You will hit like DEMOLISH, quite funny depending on his health :).

I agree Niano. Snare should be similiar to trap (thief) where it is used to hinder whoever is caught in the snare, then, if you want to attack, you have the choice. Same as hunt. It shouldn't automatically initiate an attack but give you the choice to attack or not.

But as I understand it, ranger cannot be rescued by pets/mount.  Is this correct?

Unfortunately, yes Valeria. It is correct *sigh* Though in past they could yes?