Ranger spells

[Derakon]

Paladins are priests that are actually quite competent in melee. Priests themselves can't rely heavily on melee for much of the game (if for no other reason than that their starting STR/DEX scores are lousy). The two classes play quite differently.

[Timo Pietilä]

Paladins are priests that are actually quite competent in melee. Priests themselves can't rely heavily on melee for much of the game (if for no other reason than that their starting STR/DEX scores are lousy). The two classes play quite differently.

Yes, but paladin is just a warrior with priest spells, just like rogue is warrior with mage spells. No distinct ability, like ranger archery or pure spellcaster 0% failure, mage very low HP, priest edged weapon penalty and warrior sixth blow, massive HP and *no* spells.

Paladin and Rogue are just plain boring. There's nothing special in them

[Derakon]

I find being able to play a spellcaster that isn't hopeless in melee to be quite fun and a definite contrast from the no-spells warrior and the crap-melee priest/mage. They don't need to have unique class-specific abilities to be distinct in playstyle.

Though to be fair, the rogue's high base stealth practically is a class-specific ability. They get 2 more base points than any other class (3 more if you ignore the ranger), which makes a definite difference when it comes to exploration.

[PowerDiver]

Because archery is what ranger is good at let it have it. Nerfing the thing that separates it from other classes is not what should be done even if we weaken it. Like Warriors, Mages and Priests, Ranger has an distinct ability that makes it different from all the rest of the classes.

IMO we should make something to Paladins and Rogues, not Rangers. Let it be easy class.

At first, it sounds as if you are disagreeing with me, but then you agree with me.

I guess I must have been unclear, yet again. I'll repeat and try to be clearer.

Leave rangers as they are and don't worry about balance for them. If you want to create a balanced class that has an extra shot with bows, it suffices to give warriors an extra shot with bows.

[Magnate]

At first, it sounds as if you are disagreeing with me, but then you agree with me.

I guess I must have been unclear, yet again. I'll repeat and try to be clearer.

Leave rangers as they are and don't worry about balance for them. If you want to create a balanced class that has an extra shot with bows, it suffices to give warriors an extra shot with bows.

I'm going to try a minor tweak in my fractional blows branch, slightly less radical than the change to extra might (apols for forgetting who came up with that).

Using energy per blow, we no longer have to give the ranger whole extra shots. The current energy-per-shot paradigm is 100/50/33 at cl 1/20/40. That's a bit of an odd shape, so we could try something smoother: 100/75/50 would seem to be the obvious change. So rangers would get 1.33 shots at cl20 and 2 shots at cl40. Obviously those numbers can be tweaked to taste.

[fizzix]

I'm going to try a minor tweak in my fractional blows branch, slightly less radical than the change to extra might (apols for forgetting who came up with that).

Using energy per blow, we no longer have to give the ranger whole extra shots. The current energy-per-shot paradigm is 100/50/33 at cl 1/20/40. That's a bit of an odd shape, so we could try something smoother: 100/75/50 would seem to be the obvious change. So rangers would get 1.33 shots at cl20 and 2 shots at cl40. Obviously those numbers can be tweaked to taste.

I'm the one who tested out extra might rangers. And when I first suggested it way-back-when, I believe I mentioned that a fractional shots approach, like you outline, is far superior, but needed a fractional blow system to be possible.

However, I like 100/66/50/40/33 which is an odd shape but makes a lot of sense in a shots per turn calc. With your scheme, how many shots per turn does a ranger weilding a +1 shots bow get? What about a +1 shots blow with haradrim?

The main reason switching to fractional extra shots is superior has nothing to do with rangers, and has everything to do with keeping extra shots as a non-overpowering item bonus. From a gameplay perspective, as far as rangers are concerned, fractional extra shots <-> extra might are probably about equal.

[Magnate]

I'm the one who tested out extra might rangers. And when I first suggested it way-back-when, I believe I mentioned that a fractional shots approach, like you outline, is far superior, but needed a fractional blow system to be possible.

However, I like 100/66/50/40/33 which is an odd shape but makes a lot of sense in a shots per turn calc. With your scheme, how many shots per turn does a ranger weilding a +1 shots bow get? What about a +1 shots blow with haradrim?

The main reason switching to fractional extra shots is superior has nothing to do with rangers, and has everything to do with keeping extra shots as a non-overpowering item bonus. From a gameplay perspective, as far as rangers are concerned, fractional extra shots <-> extra might are probably about equal.

I think you are right on that last point, and implementing extra might at the time was a good idea.

I think extra shots from items would have to be the same as they are now, otherwise it would break the fracblows paradigm (which has preserved extra blows from items so far). So it doesn't address the balance problem at all, as +1 shot is still +100% damage.

Eventually I plan to make +blows items give less than one whole blow - something like -10% epb or something. So you'd need a pval of +5 to go from 1 blow to 2 blows - but that gets complicated because it'd take an endgame char from 5 blows to 10 blows, which is unbalancing. That's why I didn't do it in a hurry: it needs a lot of thought. But once it's done, using a consistent approach for shots is then desirable, and *that* will solve the overpowered shots problem.

[Timo Pietilä]

I find being able to play a spellcaster that isn't hopeless in melee to be quite fun and a definite contrast from the no-spells warrior and the crap-melee priest/mage. They don't need to have unique class-specific abilities to be distinct in playstyle.

Though to be fair, the rogue's high base stealth practically is a class-specific ability. They get 2 more base points than any other class (3 more if you ignore the ranger), which makes a definite difference when it comes to exploration.

They are boring. Period.

Stealth isn't that important. It is important, but not that important. H-Troll warrior manages just fine and doesn't have huge stealth (IMO all warriors should have higher stealth than spellcasters).

[Derakon]

Well, okay, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. It's wrong, at least where I'm concerned, but you're still entitled to it.

I do think that the skills for the different classes are out of whack, though I'm not convinced warriors should be more stealthy than casters. I made a thread awhile back ranking each of the classes on the different abilities, and there are some weird choices in there. I doubt these values have had a serious look-see since Ben took over.

[ewert]

Well, okay, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. It's wrong, at least where I'm concerned, but you're still entitled to it.

I do think that the skills for the different classes are out of whack, though I'm not convinced warriors should be more stealthy than casters. I made a thread awhile back ranking each of the classes on the different abilities, and there are some weird choices in there. I doubt these values have had a serious look-see since Ben took over.

I might take a look at class balance in my fork at some point... I might even disable ranger for the time being and make warrior also the archer. I mean why two semi-mages? Rogue is enough ... and I might make the rogue much more apt with the status effect spells, maybe even better than the mage ...

[Timo Pietilä]

I do think that the skills for the different classes are out of whack, though I'm not convinced warriors should be more stealthy than casters. I made a thread awhile back ranking each of the classes on the different abilities, and there are some weird choices in there. I doubt these values have had a serious look-see since Ben took over.

There you hit one of the ancient parts of the game. I think skills in general should mean more than they do now. Currently it is all about stats (HP, spellcasting, damage) and speed, with minor effect from stealth, saving throw (which is gained by clvl and WIS) and infravision. Everything else has very tiny part in this game. In fact I don't even know what "perception" does. Or why do we even have searching? Fighting and Shooting as skills should mean more than they do now. More criticals and more hits based on skill more than a weapon.

Stealth at least is a skill more than anything else, and should definitely be affected by clvl, not so much by equipment. Heavy equipment should actually restrict stealth (or not restrict, if high quality) like they do for to_hit now.

[ewert]

There you hit one of the ancient parts of the game. I think skills in general should mean more than they do now. Currently it is all about stats (HP, spellcasting, damage) and speed, with minor effect from stealth, saving throw (which is gained by clvl and WIS) and infravision. Everything else has very tiny part in this game. In fact I don't even know what "perception" does. Or why do we even have searching? Fighting and Shooting as skills should mean more than they do now. More criticals and more hits based on skill more than a weapon.

Stealth at least is a skill more than anything else, and should definitely be affected by clvl, not so much by equipment. Heavy equipment should actually restrict stealth (or not restrict, if high quality) like they do for to_hit now.

Perception is rate of "autosearch" if not searching I think. Yeah pretty useless. =P My ranged searching version btw totally makes searching skill and class choices matter. I'm wearing a ring of searching! Now that you mentioned skills as well, I think I will definitely do class, spelllist and spell, and ability balancing on my fork. Used to be a coder on a couple of MUDs way back when, and I always have had a hankering for balancing more than coding new stuff ...

[Chud]

It might also be fun if some (many? most?) of the artifacts were more tailored to a particular class. An artifact bow in the hands of a mage might be a pretty good bow, still, but a lot of what it could do might be unavailable; put it in the hands of a ranger though and it really comes alive. Some might be tailored to specific races, too; say, armor of Elvenkind can only be fully utilized by elves (and maybe half-elves).

I agree that more differentiation among classes would be good though. Rangers and rogues do not either of them need to be semi-mages; more diversity in the spell set could accomplish that. Rogues could have even better stealth, perhaps, but be seriously nerfed in combat even from where they are now, to create the sense of "you're a great sneaky thief but woe to you if you ever get caught at it." Rangers can have their phenomenal archery, but again, weaken their melee to match; if anything manages to close with them then the ranger is suddenly in big trouble.

Or something along those lines. Maybe.

[ekolis]

How would nerfing ranger melee hurt rangers, if they still have powerful archery, and there is no point-blank penalty for archery?

[Derakon]

It might also be fun if some (many? most?) of the artifacts were more tailored to a particular class. An artifact bow in the hands of a mage might be a pretty good bow, still, but a lot of what it could do might be unavailable; put it in the hands of a ranger though and it really comes alive. Some might be tailored to specific races, too; say, armor of Elvenkind can only be fully utilized by elves (and maybe half-elves).

I always hated finding class-specific equipment in Diablo 2. It's absolutely useless to you unless you either play multiple characters and trade between them, or are on Battle.net and are willing to trade there. For solo play, finding a piece of equipment that's intended for a different class is equivalent to finding something you can't use, a.k.a. junk. Even if you limit the class specificity to only certain ego-items, that means you're modifying the game with the knowledge that you rendered a certain item useless (or at least not notably useful, which is functionally equivalent) to 5/6ths of all characters.

I agree that more differentiation among classes would be good though. Rangers and rogues do not either of them need to be semi-mages; more diversity in the spell set could accomplish that. Rogues could have even better stealth, perhaps, but be seriously nerfed in combat even from where they are now, to create the sense of "you're a great sneaky thief but woe to you if you ever get caught at it." Rangers can have their phenomenal archery, but again, weaken their melee to match; if anything manages to close with them then the ranger is suddenly in big trouble.

Remember that each class needs to be able to kill things. Death is the only feasible source of experience, and after all, the final goal of the game is to kill Morgoth, not to sneak past him. Rogues rely on melee for killing power; nerfing it will seriously reduce their feasibility as a class. Currently I don't think they're remotely unbalanced, so why hit them with a nerf bat?