Class/magic feature branch

[Moving Pictures]

@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.

I'd agree. Given where I was at, I'd have to scum for days to collect runes/healing to take down Morgy. No fun.

[Moving Pictures]

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.

Two failures. One a test, on some energy hounds. Dropped the decoy, then left, using the no-trace. Energy hounds kept coming. Second was a real honest-to-gosh "I need this to work" evasion on a previously TO-ed Carcorath. I had ESP, and Carcorath - who moves damned fast (again, this was with the no-trace on) may have paused for one turn. May.

I'll give it a whirl down the road, but I'll poke around and try some other class. Maybe a priest. Heck, maybe an elfin mage....

[Voovus]

@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.

I think part of the problem is that archers tend to save top level ammo for the final fight and use weaker stuff otherwise (with the occasional well-timed frost/fire/venom brand), while melee/caster characters use their full strength attacks all the time. I guess I'm just saying that the fight vs Morgoth is probably not the right point of comparison for the ranger class to the others if you want to gauge whether it's going to be fun to play.

[Pete Mack]

@Voovus: rangers *always* use branded ammo in the endgame in current V, so a CL 40 ranger is doing 27*3*(5+2) = 560 damage against nearly all monsters (assuming Bard and +10 branded ordinary arrows.) I did not take into account losing branding as well as an extra shot.

Losing Resistances makes it even worse; in current V it makes up for bad HP to a huge extent--as you pointed out when trying to fight Ancient Dragons. No amount of extra damage can fix this. Without that, you won't be fighting Smaug until after finishing stat gain, unless you carry resistance potions. But that is really no fun.

[Moving Pictures]

Alright, now trying out a mage (elf). Been a while since I played a pure mage ....

Initial gut feeling: I like the new spell arrangements in the first book. A decent blend of detect, and the "electric arc" as a softened lightning bolt is super handy for the early levels. I have only just hit DL4, but used arc to scum xp from some fleas. I normally equip entry-level characters with iron balls to throw at things, but already I am finding that magic is taking over, which, for a mage, is what ought to happen.

[Rydel]

[*]positioning spells as suggested upthread (although I'm trying to get a stealthy, crafty vibe rather than magic teleporting)

I think the "Meld With Rock" spell Moving Pictures suggested would be a good fit fit here - you are slinking away to somewhere the enemy can't follow easily, then can reposition manually and cast it again to return and attack from a different angle.

Perhaps they could also get a spell that temporarily and significantly increases movement speed without increasing their action speed, letting them run to a new position really quickly.

[fizzix]

Disclaimer: I haven't played ranger, having only played priest on the feature branch. But I did take some time to glance through the spells.

I think it's a good idea to push rangers towards the "archer" class (rather than having a separate archer class). I think it might be interesting to give rangers a separate book, one with "spells" that cost 0 MP, that specifically allow for advanced archery moves.

Flaming missile - Arrow/bolt does fire damage (maybe weak fire damage). The missile is automatically mulched

Poison missile - This requires a monster poisoning timed effect to be in. But basically the arrow does much less immediate damage 25% or so, but insteads loads poison on the monster which damages over time. Probably also only applicable to arrows bolts

Multi shot - Fire two arrows at once, each arrow does X% damage, where X is greater than 50 and less than 100, perhaps level dependent. This is like extra shots, but doesn't grant extra turns, and is less efficient since you're getting less damage per arrow mulch chance. Maybe this one should only work for bows.

Heavy shot - Take 2 turns and fire a single sling missile for 250% damage. Very efficient, but only works for slings.

Coat missile - Coat a missile with a detrimental potion (sleep, confusion, poison). This will provide a very high chance of providing the status effect, if the attack hits, even for monsters that resist. It uses up the potion though.

Fashion missiles - Destroy a piece of equipment and make some basic missiles from it. Wooden equipment would make arrows, metal (steel) equipment would make bolts, iron equipment would make iron shots. Maybe even provide a level dependent chance to get a weak enchantment on the gear.


Warriors could also get access to this book, and perhaps there could be a similar one for melee attacks.

[Carnivean]

I think the "Meld With Rock" spell Moving Pictures suggested would be a good fit fit here - you are slinking away to somewhere the enemy can't follow easily, then can reposition manually and cast it again to return and attack from a different angle.

I like the idea but it sounds a bit strong in that form. Add the jeopardy of materialising in the rock for lots of pain and an inability to cure yourself while melded.

[Derakon]

Being able to move through rock is a powerful ability. Variants that have it generally tie it to races with extremely low HP, and apply substantial HP drain when the ability is active / the player is standing in rock. It's not just the ability to step away from combat and reposition; most spells cannot touch something standing in a wall, and standing in a wall greatly constrains the number of tiles that can see you, which effectively means you're only a turn away from an anti-summoning "corridor". You can also do things like make a little cubbyhole that's completely surrounded by walls, in order to rest up while being impervious to any non-wall-walker/eater monster.

This isn't to say you shouldn't do it, but it's pretty much guaranteed to become a core class feature, so it should be balanced accordingly.

[wobbly]

worth noting that in PCB & it's relatives you can be hit for half inside a wall & the AI will splash round corners. It's still ridiculously good. Without you'd be nigh on impossible to kill. It'd also going to be a bit weird giving a semi-spell caster one of the most powerful spells in the game.

I like fizzix's ideas above, I'm just going to point out that needing to carry a book for archery is going to feel a bit weird. If it's explicitly magic (which could fit: flaming arrows etc.) it's one thing, however a bunch of 0sp techniques makes it look more like a ranger needs to pull out a book of archery & thumbing through it before taking the shot.

[Pete Mack]

@wobbly--
Agree. Even if it cuts damage in half, it makes a massively overpowered replacement for resistance. I too played such a character Posband Shadow Dragon, IIRC. It was fun once. But it had zero replayability.

[wobbly]

Perhaps its workable as a shapeshift on the druid? If you can't cast etc. it's just a poormans telelevel except without the reset

[fph]

Poor man's? The main two reasons why people don't use tele-level as their primary escape are (1) it makes you lose the level, with whatever good was in it, and (2) it's rare to find scrolls so it's better to keep them for dangerous situations.

Now, take away those drawbacks...

[wobbly]

Compared to 0 fail with a turn to transform. That's what the mage has. What's the druid got (actually haven't looked at there later books)

[Rydel]

What if, instead of letting you move into the rock, it just completely passed through it - when you cast it, you select a direction, which has to have a wall, there appear on the other side. The wall would probably have to be thin (1, maybe 2 squares), so it would act as a short-range targetted teleport with some extra requirements. This would avoid issues of the character staying in the wall, while still acting as a decent tool for repositioning or escape.