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]

Originally Posted by Nick

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]

Originally Posted by fizzix

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]

Originally Posted by Ingwe Ingweron

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]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

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]

Originally Posted by Voovus

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.