[Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

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Void
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[Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Wed Apr 01, 2020 12:44 pm

What title says.

I'm looking for set of recommended skills for melee gnoll ranger. The race is not human and has int penalty, so I can't just get everything like a human would.
Last edited by Void on Wed Apr 01, 2020 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Opustus
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Opustus » Wed Apr 01, 2020 12:58 pm

Assuming your intelligence is 12 or 14 and you're going Ranger27/Specialist3, it means you will bag either 7 (int12) or 8 skills (int14).

Discipline, UMD15, and Tumble30 are the essentials pretty much. Heal is also really handy, and it especially makes your levelling a lot easier. So that's roughly 4.5 skills used. After that you get to choose: Lore for scrolls, Spellcraft for saves vs. spells, Hide and MS for stealth (you don't have to max, you can just take enough so you can stealth from people who haven't invested in spot/listen), Search for more loot, Listen or Spot for detection.

It really boils down to preference. Spellcraft is probably the most versatile, it helps you in both PvP and PvM, but will have to wait till you take the Specialist skill dump. Listen and Spot require some gearing for effectiveness, which can be cumbersome. A little bit of stealth can help in both PvP and PvM, but it'll be situational. Lore for scrolls is very PvP-centric.
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:03 pm

Opustus wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 12:58 pm
Assuming your intelligence is 12 or 14 and you're going Ranger27/Specialist3, it means you will bag either 7 (int12) or 8 skills (int14).
I'll be likely going Ranger 30, not a fan of multiclassing. Then again I'll likely never reach level 30.
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In the end it is similar to what I ende dup coming up with.

Heal + Discipline are required.
Then there's Hide/MS.
Search and Listen OR Spot (Listen lets you detect invisible critters, while spot breaks disguises).

Then there's room for 1 or 2 skills (depending on whether the gnoll has 12 or 14 int), which I suppose could be cross-classed tumble and something else.

I suppose the gnoll will end up with 0 lore (cue wasting gold identifying items, then again it makes sense...)
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Dr. B
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Dr. B » Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:38 pm

Some lore is very useful for leveling, especially at low levels (Mage armor and shield scrolls).

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Opustus
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Opustus » Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:39 pm

Yep, cross-class Tumble15. Have you already made the character, what's your starting intelligence?

As Int10 you will have 198 skills at level30. Every 2 int counts as +33 skill points, it's basic arithmetics.
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:43 pm

Opustus wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:39 pm
Yep, cross-class Tumble15. Have you already made the character, what's your starting intelligence?
In the process of making one.

I'm seriously contemplating making an int 16 gnoll (through the gifts) for the hell of it at the moment. This could make an interesting character, and would also get me lore skill access.
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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Jagel » Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:53 pm

Points for interesting :mrgreen:

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Re: Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Wed Apr 01, 2020 3:02 pm

Alright, thanks for the responses. Marking as solved.
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Re: [Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by msterswrdsmn » Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:29 am

Void wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:03 pm
Search and Listen OR Spot (Listen lets you detect invisible critters, while spot breaks disguises).
Unless somethings has changed recently on arelith, listen does NOT let you spot invisible creatures from a distance. And even if you do find a hidden enemy with listen, they still have 50% concealment.

Search helps you get additional loot every now and then, but its primary ability is to find traps....which you're not going to be doing much with, as you lack the class/skillspoints needed to invest in anything trap related.

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Re: [Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Thu Apr 02, 2020 8:30 am

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:29 am
Unless somethings has changed recently on arelith, listen does NOT let you spot invisible creatures from a distance. And even if you do find a hidden enemy with listen, they still have 50% concealment.
It doesn't let you spot them, it lets you hear them.

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Listen

DC quickly grows with distance though. You can also hear enemies through the walls.

Works while blind as well, although due to the way dcs work blind archer is not exactly possible.
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Rigela
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Re: [Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Rigela » Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:26 am

You're misunderstanding what it's saying.

What it means is if a stealthed person is also invisible you can only hear them where it normally let's you when an invisible person invades your bubble.
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Re: [Solved]Suggested skills for melee gnoll ranger

Post by Void » Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:36 pm

Rigela wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:26 am
You're misunderstanding what it's saying.

What it means is if a stealthed person is also invisible you can only hear them where it normally let's you when an invisible person invades your bubble.
And? You can't beat invisibility with spot skills, as far as I know.
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https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Invisibility
Invisible creatures cannot be seen by non-magical vision. They cannot be detected with the spot skill, but can be detected with listen. If heard, they are rendered translucently on the game screen and can be attacked. Invisibility inherently grants 50% concealment, and anyone attacked by an invisible creature is considered flat-footed. Furthermore, invisible creatures receive a +2 attack bonus unless negated by the target's blind fighting. Attacking, or performing any hostile act, causes invisibility to be lost, though. This includes hostilities performed by a lingering spell (cast by the subject before becoming invisible), but does not include summoning a creature nor hostile actions taken by a summoned creature.

The types of magical vision that can see invisible creatures are see invisibility and true seeing. These types of magical vision also negate the +2 attack bonus granted by invisibility, but (probably a bug) they negate the bonus when the invisible attacker has them, rather than when the target of the attack has them. See invisibility and true seeing also negate the concealment inherent to invisibility (but not other types of concealment; in particular, improved invisibility has a separate 50% concealment effect that is not negated).

Attacking a creature that cannot be seen gives a -4 penalty to attack rolls. In particular, this usually applies when attacking an invisible creature.

Since some creatures can detect or even see invisible creatures, it can be helpful to use stealth mode even when invisible.
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