That seems like it would be pretty neat. Looking at the spell lists, it would be extremely hard to be a pure ranger anywhere early, due to a lack of attack spells that aren't setups for other things, low mana and high mana costs, and the low spell aim, and the spell aim would continue to be a problem even far later in life.

Giving up weapon use for minor elemental would be a pretty neat tradeoff. I'd love to see more pure casters rangers in the world, and it would be neat if every prof had a "sacrifice something to gain something" decision possibility a la KS.

Love the idea!

<and the low spell aim, and the spell aim would continue to be a problem even far later in life.>

Rangers can train in 2x SA just like any pure.


<Which bolt spells would a 'druid' cast?>

611, though I would think that a ranger designed around this spell would be as much of a mutant as my THW cleric....

Starchitin, the OG

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

also, fire spirit? or whatever the minor spiritual spell I've never used because I have no spell aim is.

I definitely love the moonbeam + sunburst combo vs creatures with my main ranger. It can be quite fun.

- EK

>You now regard Eorgina with a warm demeanor.

I wouldn't mind seeing a KS-like "give up this to get that" feat for all profs TBH, but like this one quite the best (though perhaps because I can't conceptually think of any others and am a Ranger stan)

<Also, the array of spells is rough IMHO.>

Even with the recent ranger review, a pure spellcasting ranger is pretty much for advanced players... and a pure bolting ranger is def a mutant build. Even if they had a way to bring their bolt AS up to the level of a wizard or empath, I don't think it'd make much of a dent in that assessment.

I don't really have an interest in tackling a pure spellcasting ranger, but if I did I wouldn't try to train them to just one type of attack spell. I'd want them to be equally proficient in bolt, CS, and maneuver spells... and I'd likely want them to be at least decent at hiding to take advantage of 608's AS/CS boost. I don't know how that would stack up against my cleric that's trained to take advantage of all three attack types, but it looks like the most logical way to go about it.


Starchitin, the OG

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

Some time back I asked if 608 could be used to allow the AS boost with wands. I wanted to do a pure bolting ranger build and thought some extra AS from waving wands from using 608 at a younger level would help offset some of that low bolt AS and lack of decent native bolt spells.

Spend 8 mana to hide and then come out wand waving! Rangers aren't known for having tons of mana and using 608 for every waved wand would still be a bit mana intensive until later in trainings.

Sadly, I never heard anything....just crickets.

When I was coming up as a Bard it was "sword & board + spells" (like Lullabye/1005 to lay them on the ground), so it was certainly not "use multiple spells go kill any given creature."

But it looks like mana costs the same for both Bards & Rangers; Bards get a bit of a break on MIU & Scrolls, and two different in-Realm Lores cost less each (but 160% in the aggregate).
(And this may be changing in the re-write, not sure how that settled out.)

The Bards' review looks like it's putting a 3rd level damage spell in, so that would allow for "pure caster" to start a whole lot sooner on that side.

.

Along the lines of the "sacrifice to go pure-caster" under discussion: I would still like to see the Bard/Ranger/Paladin who choose to go that route, able to gain access to Arcane Blast/1700 somehow.
- SK item after a quest reward (truffles == katana, for example).
- Visit the alchemist with backroom access (== Weapon Fire re-write of some years ago, reading the book).
- Drink an Alchemy potion (new recipe opportunity!).
- Silver cost.
- Other.

And again, maybe it comes with a "you cannot train in weapon skills" rider. <shrug> Not set on it, but I could see the implementation.

"I think GoS could be pretty viable at high levels for resolving some of this and would need to be part of the balance." -- Weyr1

(Sssoooo... that would be "Fort Weyr"? The first one?)

.

My spellcasting Bard didn't join a society until late 80s/early 90s, when I saw that Sunfist had both "+mana recovery" in and of itself, and also "turn useless stamina into useful mana" capability.
At this point--given # of stamina and amount of stamina recovery--the ability boils down to "being in the Society is a +50 Mana Recovery Enhancive" (I'm getting back 46-50 stamina on each experience pulse, which lets me fire it twice per mana pulse).
Which is actually "+55", because of the standalone "+5 Mana Recovery" ability that lasts for like 10 minutes or so.

And it happens at my convenience, not "when the game gets around to firing a pulse."