<Companions were discussed including some of the current difficulties with them, their current usefulness, and future improvements that would like to be seen.

Companions should be a long-term goal. I think it's pretty clear that it's not planned for us to ever have meaningful pets. More utility would be nice, but it's so far from the top of the list in what the ranger guild needs.

<The ranger bonus was spoken about including the difficulties being in RP events, the current penalties compared to other guilds, and the issues maintaining a full bonus in-game.

One of the biggest downsides to being a ranger is the bonus system. The argument has been made that it needs to go negative to warrant how much it bonuses and I disagree. Clearly the upper end of the bonus is fine, and there's no mechanical problems, so why should that change because you want your character to be more social? I think there are much better ways to accomplish our bonus without hurting the guild. My suggestion would be to turn it into a constantly, slowly draining pool that does not care about where you're standing at any one moment, that you need to commune with nature(note: wilderness area) occasionally to refill. But that's just my version.

<Discussed time trails took to run compared to just putting in .travel to get to and from places.

Trail times should either be cut in half right off the bat, or the travel time reduction should scale MUCH harder with scouting ranks. This is particularly true when leading a group down a trail.

<Talked about what would be liked with regards to changes to current ranger spells; “un-nerfing” swarm and making awaken forest (more in line with combat pets from other guilds) more viable by not dropping when moving from room to room were both mentioned.

These would both be good improvements, particularly the swarm change, and it seems like something that could be done fairly easily.

<Beseeches were talked about including the difficulties completing the quests (full bonus requirements) the usefulness of the beseeches and any ideas to make them better.

I never recalled the beseeches being particularly difficult to obtain, but it's been a while. The only two that have proven useful are beseech water to solidify and beseech Elanthia to transfer, however. A lot of work could go into beseeches to improve them, but I think it would require a major redefining of what beseeches are. Currently, they're questionably useful secondary abilities akin to cantrips. I don't have any suggestions to make here, but I could really go either way on them.

<Discussed ideas for new spells (pushed for an AOE cyclic ™ spell)

The whole reason I bothered making this post. No. No no emphatically no. The Ranger spellbook is pretty damn close to fine. It packs enough punch where we need it, and it focuses on a lot of things we want it to focus on. We do not need any more useless abilities tied to our tertiary skill set. What Rangers need is actual useful abilities, that come from actual useful skills. Signature attacks. Ranged-oriented abilities. Something that helps define our role in the game and gives us something unique, or at least desirable. We don't need more things we can waste a lot of time to be considered acceptable at, we need something we can be the best at. Spells are not the way to accomplish this.

>Magic terts need to have unique and useful abilities not tied to a tertiary skillset.

Truer words etc etc

It seems magic dev is a lot easier or more common than other systems, but I sure hope we can find a GM willing to work on abilities not tied to mana. I don’t want to play the poor me fiddle to hard because we do have some neat tricks, but Rangers don’t seem to have anything that someone else can’t do better (see quote). I want other guys to cry for ranger nerfs again!

~Hunter Hanryu
>Everything Rangers have is just a lame version of something cool.~Morkim

I'm genuinely not trying to be antagonistic to the guild, because Rangers clearly need some love and improvements, but I do think sometimes about the argument to add abilities not related to the Magic skillset. I'm not saying I have answers to these questions but they are questions I think about:

If numerous powerful abilities are granted outside the Magic skillset, is that fair to the model where the tert skillset is supposed to be painful? Would it not be the best guild ever if allowed to be Survival prime, Armor/Weapon secondary, and ignore the Magic deficit by filling up with abilities outside that skillset?

Then again, at Magic tert, does that not mean that TM is basically never useful at level? Is this unfair, or more like what, say, Moon Mages have to deal with in having TM primary but weapons and armor tert?

Should there be some balance of abilities that come from magic and some that do not? If a Magic Prime gets, say, 50 magical spells/abilities, should a Ranger also get the same number, total, some from magic and some not? Or does the Magic Prime nature mean that their main benefit is more abilities than anyone else?

Rangers are natively just plain the best at many Survival skills, thanks to their bonus, without having to spend any time or mana (although the managing of bonus is annoying). Further, their skillset placement sets them up as potential combat powerhouses, letting them advance in combat faster than almost every other guild (save Barbarians).

Ultimately I think that Rangers do need more (and better) abilities outside of magic, I would just think carefully about how many and how powerful they should be compared to magic. All I'm really trying to say is that I think all aspects of a guild need to be taken into consideration when balancing abilities.


- Navesi

The First Land Herald -- Zoluren's newspaper. https://elanthipedia.play.net/The_First_Land_Herald

Ahhh... the subject of what Rangers should get. My first love was the Ranger guild, so I have some thoughts, with the caveat that I have no skin in the game as I'm not playing a Ranger right now. I posted something similar to this when Naohhi was working on Rangers.

My understanding is that the original intent of Magic Terts was that they would get abilities that would even up their lesser skill with magic. This is an easier task with Paladins, as smiting seems thematic for them, and it's easy to come up with other abilities that go along those lines - the whole "soul of a samurai is his sword" thing. So, TM Parry, Holy Weapons, and you can kind of imagine other things as well.

For Rangers it's harder, because the concept has been so nebulously defined. I think DR has been most successful when it's taken existing fantasy concepts and had a very specific and unique take on them. Necromancers, Moon Mages, and Empaths are very much in this mold, and Warrior Mages and Clerics have a good bit that makes them unique as well. So... what should be unique about Rangers, considering that their confound is "attunement to the forces of nature"?

My suggestion would be that since the other Life Magic users can shape the body to heal that Rangers should be about Shapeshifting - themselves and the wilds around them. We don't have Druids in DR, so it's ok for Rangers to eat their conceptual lunch. Non-animal spells would move away from spectral beasts attacking you and more towards serious manipulation of the self and nature. How about I grow spikes and shoot them at you for a TM spell? Make nature come alive and tear you apart? Turn my skin to bark to enhance my tankiness? That sort of thing.

I would basically remove Animal Abilities spells into an ability suite that contains buffs. Years ago I suggested that there could be three different Aspects that one can choose from - Predator (wolf, leopard), Juggernaut (bear, rhino, bull), and Scout (birds, bats, possibly some land-based one). Rangers can also choose a Form for each Aspect - essentially what animal they take on features of in each form. This may also be something that could be Altered at festivals or handed out as Auction prizes. Only one Aspect would be active at a time.

Each form would have its own self-contained suite of buffs, as well as various "special abilities" that went along with it that aren't just buffs, like knockbacks, auto-stand, armor ignoring, etc. Each might also have various non-combat applications as well.

I wrote more about this concept and spell changes here, years ago - http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Rangers/Ranger%20Ideas%20-%20Suggestions%20For%20Improvement/thread/1752411?page=2 I'd do some things differently now, but I still think this would be a good, unique way to take Rangers. That thread might be a good place to mine for my and others' ideas.

- Saragos

I think the primary problem with developing cool stuff is that core magic has become so comprehensive that banging out, say, an aoe cyclic spell is a sliver of effort compared to, say, some new ranger-specific stelth mechanic or a new beseech. Is there even a gm on staff actively familiar with the beseech code etc.?

But on a conceptual level yes, I think Rangers need more ranger stuff and less mage stuff.

> I think the primary problem with developing cool stuff is that core magic has become so comprehensive that banging out, say, an aoe cyclic spell is a sliver of effort compared to, say, some new ranger-specific stelth mechanic or a new beseech. Is there even a gm on staff actively familiar with the beseech code etc.?

I think this is probably the core of the issue. Though about beseeches, if Ranger were my main guild I'd be arguing strongly to just ditch the entire concept and start over with something new. I feel the same way about glyphs, FWIW.

- Saragos

> beseech suggestions

I guess it depends on what you want out the of the guild? Obviously beseeches could be enhanced to do neat things, such as always on abilities. The real question I have is... is that what you want to be one of the "awesome" things about your guild?

To me, I would want the more mechanically heavy concepts to be rolled into something a bit more flashy and cool. There's definitely room for something like "Ranger cantrips", since that conceptual space belongs entirely to them, and which most of the beseeches fall into the category of anyway, IMO.

But the implementation just turns me off.

For example,

> > beseech the wind to echo <player>

> You beseech the wind to echo your words:

> I beseech the winds to come to me!
> To carry my words, my voice to free!
> Across the land my missive to bring!
> Echoed utterings the air to sing!

> Roundtime: 5 sec.

I like the effect of being able to whisper a quick message to someone, but I can think of a few ways it could look which would be cooler and more inspiring to be able to do it. You could do it with calling birds to send messages too, but you could go overtly supernatural (and maybe a little creepy) by having something subtle come from the Ranger and then messaging happening at the destination based on the terrain the target is in. You close your eyes for just a moment in concentration and stretch your senses out through the land. Then, the building you're in settles in a way that sounds like words. The tree branches rub and creak in a way that sounds like speech for a moment. That gryphon you were fighting just paused for a moment and spoke with a voice before going back to its regular business of trying to kill you...

You get the idea. I just kind of feel like spouting poetry to get magical effects feels clunky and far more Bard-like than Ranger-like.

- Saragos

What I'd like to see from the Ranger guild:

1) Wilderness bonus rewrite. It's fine to trend towards neutral but the current system just feels more punitive than fun IMO. I'd like to see something more like Cleric devotion, where neutral or low wilderness bonus isn't really a penalty but high wilderness bonus provides benefits, and it becomes more like a pool to power abilities, like communes use devotion. I'd also like to see substantially slower/more gradual drift down. I'd personally happily trade some of the efficacy of maxed wilderness bonus buffing survival skills if it was less of a chore to hang out and roleplay in the city for extended periods of time.

2) A couple spells that benefit from, or consume, wilderness bonus in the way some Trader spells use starlight aura, for example a meta-spell that gives Cheetah Swiftness passive stun resistance based on wilderness bonus, or a metaspell that adds Discipline buff to SOTT at the cost of some wilderness bonus.

3) New beseeches that cost wilderness bonus, with a design of coming up with things to see regular use.

BESEECH THE BEAST TO PROVIDE: bonus to roll for skinning results, with additional chance to acquire perfect parts/skins, and a small chance to acquire an additional pelt/skin/whatever.
BESEECH THE HERBS TO HEAL: enhances efficacy of herbs and catalysts for the purpose of alchemy or potion-making
BESEECH THE EARTH TO ENDURE: targets attempting to escape melee/pole range must make skill vs reflex check or suffer roundtime

4) Trails rewrite.

The core system is fine, I think we just need to get realistic about the timeframe here. These were designed in a time when travel scripts were not ubiquitous, and having 250 swimming to bypass the ferry was not easily assumed.

I'm not saying they have to be so fast that we have to piss off the Moon Mages, but they should at least be uncomfortable. Rangers should be zooming around likes Moonies do. "My buddy's in Theren, lemme just run a couple trails since I have 1200 scouting, be there in 2 minutes."