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Offline horus

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Ranger skill tree
« on: March 16, 2009, 11:13:23 am »
This class skill tree has been completed by Tocharaeh, with slight modifications by me. Please be aware this is draft 1 and is a work in progress. We will release a draft 2 and further class skill trees after feedback.

General Overview
This is a draft and the numbers will need major tinkering.
The first main branch requires only one prac to gain one rank. The second branch requires 3 pracs for each rank. The third branch requires 5 pracs, etc.
There are a maximum of 20 ranks per skill. Each rank will increase that particular skill's effect.
Once rank 20 is reached, a player can quest for mastery of that skill, thereby attaining rank 21 for that skill and gaining a special bonus on that rank.
(R) Means Ranger favored skill/spell


Melee    --> bash
                --> kick
            --> slashing profiency    --> sword specialisation    --> Bladedance
      --> blunt profiency   --> (R)staff spec             --> Flurry attack
      --> piercing profiency   --> (R)dagger spec       --> lunge attack
                                           --> Expose Armor
      --> advanced melee   --> longarm
                       --> Dual wield
                       --> Berserk

                --> (R)Bows             --> Arrow Craft
                                              --> Strafe
                     --> Sniper
Nature      --> ranger craft
                    (make ranger staff/bow)
      --> nature creation     --> Entangle
      --> call of the wild   --> Greater CoW                 --> Beast Form
      --> Pass Without Trace  --> Camoflague                  --> Forest Walk

      
def man    --> evasion      --> dodge
      --> parry      --> disarm

mounted   --> Riding           --> Advanced Riding
                                        --> Horseback Archery

DESCRIPTION
Melee
With familiarity through use and training, a ranger has a greater chance of striking their opponents with this skill. With every two ranks, their innate

hitroll increases by 1. Mastery of this skill gains an additional hitroll of +5. NOTE: This replaces the current thac0 system.

Bash
A successful bash will send the victim sprawling, making him unable to fight back until he stands up. If it fails, the ranger will be the one sprawled to the ground. Increasing ranks will improve the chance of a successful bash, and with every five ranks, the ranger is able to bash a larger victim. Mastery of bash will give the ranger a chance to remain upright if the bash fails.

Kick
Improving ranks with kick will improve the chances of a successful kick. Also, for every five ranks, the damage multiplier increases.

Slashing/Piercing/Blunt Profiencies
When using a class of weapons (for eg, slashing - longsword, shortsword), the ranger's training helps improve their innate hitroll by 1 for every rank. This bonus is in addition to the melee bonus the ranger may have.

Weapon Specialisation (Sword, staff, etc)
The ultimate in weapon mastery, the ranger is so attuned to his weapon that he is able to deal extra damage over and above what his weapon would normally do.

Damage bonus will increase by +3 for every rank gained! In addition, at rank 10, the ranger gain a bonus +1 damage multiplier, and at rank 20, another +1

damage multiplier. Weapon specialisation is very specific to the type of weapon used, and the bonus is in addition to weapon proficiencies and melee bonuses.

A ranger must gain mastery in each weapon specialisation before they are able to train in weapon special attacks.

Weapon Special Attacks (bladedance, flurry, Lung attack, expose)
Only masters in their weapon classes can even attempt these special attacks. Because of their difficulty in delivering these attacks, bonuses from Weapon Specialisation and Proficiencies do not stack up.

Bows
Increasing ranks will increase the innate hitroll of rangers by 1 for every rank when using a bow.

Strafe:
Allows ranger to hit multiple targets in the same room. Will spend arrows very quickly. Loss of accuracy is incurred through rapid fire.

Sniper:
Allows ranger to hit targets up to 3 rooms away. Loss in accuracy is incurred for every room the arrow passes. Mastery level of this skill causes no penalty but instead gains accuracy bonus.


Pass Without Trace/Camo/Hole in
For every rank increase, increased the chance of being able to walk and remain hidden in FOREST/WILDERNESS/TUNDRA/MOUNTAIN?FIELD/DESERT/Nature zones. Camoflague is a surprise attack akin to backstab, and requires perfect stillness. Forest walk is the combined group of the two skills above. With each increase in rank, the success of the skill climbs. If successful, while in ature rooms, ranger can move slinetly (req sense life to spot him/her), and can backstab with increased efficiancy.

Nature Creation:
Create Spring= make water. Forage = Create food. herbal = A skill allowing for the ability to find roots in nature zones (yellow root = heal, green root = vitilize, red root = cure poison (strenth is random), purple root = poison (strength is random). Create rose = make a pretty rose. Create tree = Creates a tree to craft ranger staffs and bows/arrow from. Separate tree types make better/worse bows/staffs/arrows than others.

Defensive Manoeuvres
This skill allows your body to instinctively turn defensively to deflect the full impact of an attack. Each rank increases the rangers natural armor class.

Entangle: Advanced nature ability allowing a ranger to trap his/her opponent.

Call of the Wild (CoW)
With every 5 ranks invested into this skill, ranger has a better chance of calling an animal mob (be it normal animal or exotic) of equal level/tier (max t2) as s/he. Failure will cause animal to attack, and possibly call for help of its own.

Advanced (CoW) Call: advanced form of above, allow for the ability to call T4 animals to assist you.

Beast Form: The master of CoW allows you to truly become an animal yourself. basic choices of an animal to switch to are wolf, bear, mountain can, lion, panther, jaguar, dire wolf, snake, and gorilla.

Ranger Craft:
Ranger craft allows the ranger to create his own weapons. With every +2 ranks invested in R.C., the ability to create better more powerful weapons of his own increases by 1. Ranger staff is a statless staff (same for bows), which can be later enhanced by other classes (mage/gypsy). upon mastery of ranger craft, max dam dice is 11D10, with perfect balance. Rangers gain a bonus when using his own crafted weapons. Bonus to be determined later.

Arrow craft:
Allows rangers to create their own arrows to be placed in a quiver (new eq slot/item). The following arrows can be crafted as skill increases: Fire Arrow

(Like burning hands, but on single target, Ice Arrow (possible freeze effect), (sectional, default is torso) Armor Piercing, (Poison 3) Poison Arrow, Blasting Arrow (acts like fireball).


Bladedance
gain 2 extra attacks in a given turn for set duration. Lower casting time for nature spells.

Flurry Attack
Send a barrage of attacks of lower dmg to lower the defense of the opponent, and confuse them.

Expose Armor
Sectional attack tat will target an area specific (expose arm), and lower targets armor with 10. Duration to be decided later.

Offline Molly

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Re: Ranger skill tree
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2009, 04:39:34 am »
I am definitely not a fighting expert, but I still have some comments, mostly of IC nature, since to me Ranger is an Old West based class.
On a quick glance the class looks a bit overpowered compared to Warrior, but since I am no math expect, I'll leave the balancing to you guys.

1. Weapon skills
I actually don't think Rangers should use swords, that seems totally OOC to me. Consequently they shouldn't have bladedance either.

Rangers should specialise in other weapons; daggers, blunt weapons, ranged weapons and whips.

Ranged weapons should include both bows and firearms, but possibly not crossbows, which is very medieval to me.
The use of both bows and firearms should require marksmanship

The special weapon for rangers should however be whips.
A whip in the hands of a skilled user could do a number of things, apart from damaging the opponent, like snaring and tripping.

Nature skills
I like the idea of nature skills, but care must be taken to separate Rangers from Hunters.
Consequently I'd like to see both Hunter and Ranger skilltrees, before deciding who gets what.

In my mind Hunters should be more 'primitive', working with 'Earth magic', and calling on Deities for assistance.
Consequently, while calling on beasts to assist is OK for Rangers, I think that Beast Form should be exclusive for Hunters.

Both Rangers and Hunters should have skills like track and trap.
Probably both should have disentangle too.

I like the Camouflage idea, I suppose it's a combination of sneak and hide?
(We had an old idea of subskills for for thieves, called Mask and Shadowcloak. Mask would block the name of the player in the long and short desc, putting 'a masked figure' instead. Shadowcloak would also substitute the name on the WHO list. It was never implemented, and possibly the risk of abuse is too big, but perhaps Camouflage could do something similar.)

Craft skills
I am ambivalent towards the craft skills. While I like the general idea, they interfere a bit with other ideas that we have for the Craft subskill system.
For instance, there already are a number of extra wear_locs, that are meant to be used solely for crafted items, so as not to interfere with the existing in game equipment.
Shoulder is one of those, and could potentially be used for quiver.
The craft subskill system was meant to mainly be scripted.
But then again, after 4 years we still haven't got around to implementing them, although I started working on them myself lately.
So maybe we shouldn't let that stop us, if some of them can be coded now.

On a side note: Why would the Ranger need the ability to create 'a pretty rose'? To stun the pretty mob ladies, making them easier to kill?
Message: 'Lulu-Ann swoons in your arms as you present her the pretty rose.'


« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 06:29:16 am by Molly »

Offline Tocharaeh

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Re: Ranger skill tree
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2009, 02:27:22 am »
Just to clear soemthing up since I'm am an American-

Rangers are not old west vased. Rangers were medieval inspired, and are a cross between warrior and cleric. Their abilities to use swords is very much IC, BUT rangers FAVOR blunt weapons.

HUNTERS however ARE Old West because that was the big thing for us americans was all of the hunter trappers that populated the old west (I grew up on the Oregon trail...and know a lot about it).

Just thought I should clear taht up since if we're going to base things on IC stuff, they should be "historically" accurate.

As for being more overpowered than warriors? Ranger is the only class to be posted first. As you can see you're the only person wiling to post anything... So anyway, we are waiting before posting the rest of the classes.

:)
-Tocharaeh D'Araesth
The Dirty Ol'' Drow that time left behind in fear of obliteration!

Offline Kvetch

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Re: Ranger skill tree
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2009, 08:37:50 am »
A Ranger in 4D is not the type of ranger that was inspired by medievalness and D&D.  A Ranger in 4D is one of the Old West classes (remember, there are 2 for every dimension - ranger in 4D is from old west, NOT medieval) and would probably be considered the class of someone that worked on a Range - there are plenty of them in the old west.  As I've posted before, just because 4D uses the name of something you know from somewhere else, doesn't mean it is FROM somewhere else.  This is a GAME and this GAME can use different definitions for things.

*gah. I hate having to remove my own posts for flaming... *mutters* but I was bad*

As others pointed out on the mud... there are also things called "Texas Rangers" which would probably be more historically inline with the 4D Ranger.

Kvetch

Offline Tocharaeh

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Re: Ranger skill tree
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2009, 01:26:18 am »
Texas Rangers would be warriors.

Rangers are rangers, you cannot just change something because it suits your taste. Texas Rangers didn't even exist until VERY late into the game, and they were cops with licenses to kill....STILL are in fact. Do not confuse rangers with cops.

If you want to have proper IC consistancy with Old West it NEEDS to be the Hunter because the old west is all based on the popular sites along the gold rush/oregon trail. They were miners, hunters, and trappers. Texas Rangers were LAW INFORCEMENT.

here I even included somrething from wikipedia to suport my arguement:

The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction based in Austin, the capital of Texas, in the United States. Over the years, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted as riot police and as detectives, protected the Governor of Texas, tracked down fugitives, and functioned as a paramilitary force at the service of both the Republic (1836–45) and the state of Texas.

here are some otehr listings for RANGERS (law enforcement types)
Police forces

    * Arizona Rangers, a former law enforcement agency in Arizona
    * California State Rangers, the state's first state wide law enforcement agency formed in 1854
    * Newfoundland Rangers, a defunct police force of the pre-confederation dominion of Newfoundland
    * Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction based in Austin, the capital of Texas

here is something else:
Ranger or Rangers may refer to:

    * Ranger (usage), the original word meaning gamekeeper and subsequently soldier


NOOBODY else were called rangers aside from park rangers...which would be more akin to the REAL ranger class.

Something you guys are constantly forgetting is that our system is based on dnd. Rangers are rangers, and always have been. Just because foreigners are trying to loosely base a class off of true american history does not make it right.
-Tocharaeh D'Araesth
The Dirty Ol'' Drow that time left behind in fear of obliteration!

Offline Molly

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Re: Ranger skill tree
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2009, 05:54:49 am »
We can discuss semantics and 'historically correct' until we get blue in the face, but that isn't really productive. Correct history is nice, but this is after all just a game, so it doesn't bother me too much if we are not historically or politically correct all the time.

What does matter a bit - at least to me - is the 4D history and what lies behind the original 8 classes.
I don't really care what similarly named classes are like in other Muds. The only thing important to me is how we do it in 4D. And if there is anything I know it's 4D history.

We may be based on Dnd, but the four classes that are not stock Diku were created for 4D, based on 4D ideas, and what you think a Ranger should be isn't necessarily what the 4D founders thought.

So Kvetch is right in that Ranger was an Oldwest inspired class, and Hunter was a prehistoric based.
Both are Nature related Classes, but Hunter was more focused on interacting with nature and animals without disturbing the balance, while Ranger was focused on exploiting nature and dealing with other humans with the same or conflicting interest.

Here is some more 4D History for you:

We started out with the 4 Diku Classes, Warrior, Thief, Priest and Mage, and the other 4 Classes were combinations of those, with some unique skills/spells added to each class.

So Hunter was Warrior+Priest, Ranger was Warrior+Thief, Gypsy was Thief+Mage and Esper was Mage+Priest.

Hunter was Prehistoric inspired, Gypsy was Medieval inspired, Ranger was Oldwest inspired, and Esper Future inspired. The original four classes are obviously universal.

Later Mordecai stated that there really only were three basic types of Classes: Fighters, Rogues and Spellcasters, which lead to our current system.

That is 4D History. Whether we need to be true to it or not is another matter, but this is what lay behind the decisions taken when the Mud was created 12 years or so back in time.

Just thought you should know.

I also thought I should bring it up, since it could affect how the Hunter Class is designed.
Rangers and Hunters are both nature based Classes, but that doesn't mean that all their 'nature skills' should be the same, although they'd obviously share some of them. The principle I've suggested is one way of deciding which class should get which skills, based on 4D history. I'm not saying it's the only way, it's just how I look at the two Classes myself.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2009, 06:41:13 am by Molly »