Class/magic feature branch

[Pete Mack]

@Nick--
I suspect having more than one dungeon book would actually help (or making the one book ridiculously common.) With old magic users, there are a number of books that were genuinely helpful. (Resistances, Escapes, Transformations, and for mage, Destruction and Power.) Any one of these gave a big boost, as does town book 4. With so few books, the possibilities are greatly reduced. Certainly 9 books is too many. But I don't think 4 is, especially if one book becomes optional later in the game.

[Derakon]

The Z-series of variants generally uses 4 books per realm, two town, two dungeon. Pure caster classes either get two realms (for 8 books, which might or might not have significant overlap depending on realms) or really double down on being good at their single realm.

[Moving Pictures]

Rangers currently get two books, the second is called Forest Craft. Should be findable from DL40, so you've been unlucky.

Thanks for your comments, they will help - of the new classes, I think rangers need the most work.

a) DL 65, no findie.
b) I would, at this moment, tend to agree. Sadly, I have no ideas. I'm thinking two books is one too few, but not knowing what's in book two ... (shrug)

Right now, rangers are underpowered: can't use magic to blast biggies, and can't shoot bows quickly enough to do the same.

[fizzix]

Just shooting off the cuff. Perhaps rangers would really benefit from access to a spell that allows a controlled teleport over a short range (10 squares or so). Perhaps you could only teleport to visible squares. This would allow access to a shoot and scoot fighting technique, but would also provide an escape option.

I haven't actually played rangers in the new feature branch, so it's not clear to me what they actually need though.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I haven't actually played rangers in the new feature branch, so it's not clear to me what they actually need though.

In my opinion, shooting has been nerfed so much that there's no longer any incentive to playing a ranger.

[Pete Mack]

One further suggestion: put at least one highlevel powerful spell ( poison brand arrows, perhaps) in a town book.

[Derakon]

In my opinion, shooting has been nerfed so much that there's no longer any incentive to playing a ranger.

I still feel like the ranger archery bonus should be extra might instead of extra shots. Shooting faster is good but IMO the traditional demonstration of archery excellence is shooting accurately, which should be reflected by better damage per shot.

Of course there's no reason why rangers couldn't get both. If they got +1 might at levels 20 and 40 and +1 shot distributed across the entire game, they'd be doing a bit over triple damage with an x3 bow with unenchanted arrows, as compared to any other class (from x3 to 2 * x5). Using an x4 bow with Slay Evil arrows (works out to x5 for non-rangers) they'd be a bit under triple (2 * x7). I think that puts them at roughly the same endgame power level as current Vanilla rangers, but without the absurd power jumps, and we can tune exactly how many extra shots we get to fine-tune balance, if necessary.

[Pete Mack]

Current V rangers gets 3*(5+1) multiplier with Holy Might ammo and Bard or a +2 Lothlorien. Estimate roughly 50 damage per shot with seeker anmo. That adds up to 900 damage per turn. That is unreasonable. Your suggestion gives a 2*(5+3) multiplier, for 800 dam/turn with optimal ammo. That's pretty unreasonable, too. The trouble with the current model is the power comes too late to help. The NPP model of one extra shot at cl 26 works much better, where further power comes from equipment and MB8. It'd give a 2*(5+1) multiplier of 600 dam/turn with optimal equipment and ammo, which seems pretty reasonable. (And a bit more with branded ammo, of course.)

[Voovus]

That adds up to 900 damage per turn. That is unreasonable.

What's the probability to hit the target with a shot? My minions (usually non-rangers) miss a lot of the time. Spells or wands, in contrast, hit almost always; their fail rate is typically <10%, after all.

[Derakon]

What's the probability to hit the target with a shot? My minions (usually non-rangers) miss a lot of the time. Spells or wands, in contrast, hit almost always; their fail rate is typically <10%, after all.

Warriors are generally happy to be doing 500/round before accounting for miss chance, and generally have 80-85% accuracy. They also get hit a lot more than rangers do. So unless you're missing >50% of the time you're still doing better than warriors are. Until you run out of ammo anyway.

[jevansau]

With Rangers, it is not just the lowering of extra shots that makes them weaker - the removal of enchanting and branding ammunition means that useful ammo is scarce. Try the calculations with low grade ammo .
Removal of glyph also makes combat at a distance harder to maintain, but is probably fair.

[Moving Pictures]

With Rangers, it is not just the lowering of extra shots that makes them weaker - the removal of enchanting and branding ammunition means that useful ammo is scarce. Try the calculations with low grade ammo .
Removal of glyph also makes combat at a distance harder to maintain, but is probably fair.

I found the second book about six minutes after posting my last whine. Underwhelming and almost useless. Decoy doesn't work well, and the leave no tracks spell doesn't work with hounds, which is the one group of critters it should work with. It's sort of nice to heal 30 points per turn for a bit, but at this point (Dl70), 30 points per turn means I'm still using a lot of consumables. So this poor little dwarf is basically a fighter with poor melee and poor archery, 300+ spell points and nothing useful to cast with it. here are precisely zero offensive spells in the book, save for the limited critters that are susceptible to rock to mud. The spells aren't defensive (ie: resistance, shield, prot evil, resist fire/cold) and although "detect life" is nice, it scales poorly.

However, I won't just bitch. I will suggest adding a spell like "meld with rock," that allows passage through rock, with duration equal to half char level, and a crapton of damage if the spell ends and the character is still within the rock. It's a novel escape from summoners, but still susceptible to dreads, xarens, etherial hounds/etherial dragons, ghosts, master vampires.

Though that is better placed in the druid realm, I suppose. Maybe call it "etherial form", allow the above, and give rNether for the duration.

I gave up playing at CL42/DL70. If I wanted to play a weak fighter, I would have. Ranger gets a massive thumbs down.

[Pete Mack]

@voovus--
Vs Morgoth, it's around 80% for a fully buffed ranger; vs. Sauron, it's about 5% less. Even with the higher fail rate, the damage is much higher than magic devices. If the ranger is stuck with ordinary seeker ammo +15, his nominal damage is still at 3*5*45 = 645 with three shots, or 2x5*45 = 450 with 2 shots. With an 80% hit rate, That's 540 and 360 damage, respectively.

With 1.8 shots, as is current in the class/magic branch for a cl 50 ranger, damage is another 10% less at cl 50, which is to say: really pathetic without ideal equipment and ammo.

[Pete Mack]

@Moving Pictures:
Ouch. No resistance, no branding, and less than 2 shots means you're not much better than a bookless mage in regular V.

@Nick--you really need to work backwards from what an endgame character needs to do.

[Nick]

Decoy doesn't work well

What is wrong with it? It should be making monsters attack it instead of the player until it's destroyed, the idea being you can shoot the monster with impunity while it's going for the strawman. Probably not useful in crowds.

the leave no tracks spell doesn't work with hounds, which is the one group of critters it should work with.

This one is really unfinished. It only works on scent, and mostly monsters are following sound. It is partly a first step in having different ways of dealing with different monster tracking methods, but there is more work needed (not least on the monster list).

I agree the ranger spells are underwhelming. Possibilities I'm considering for improving them include

• a spell to power up archery - something like double the bow multiplier for the next 5 shots
• positioning spells as suggested upthread (although I'm trying to get a stealthy, crafty vibe rather than magic teleporting)
• monster traps

There are also pacing and spell/book availability issues with all the classes.