Tracks Update

[ltlukoziuz]

Sun, Moon, Wood, Wild, Sea, Avariel and Drow forms of Elf now report as Elf.

Disguising race follows grouping rules, disguising as Drow leaves tracks of Elf, Drow disguising as Sun Elf leaves tracks of Elf.

While I may be a bit miffed about tracks becoming even more useless than they were before (the amount of times I had tracks only generate on one side, or outright fail to cover both entry and exit ON THE SAME MAP is way too damn many), I can at least understand it (though not like it). But what's even the point of second statement? Can't you only disguise subrace, meaning you will always report Elf anyway, no matter the disguise?

[Sincra]

Regarding disguising as a subrace and it now generalizing:
For your tracks, Sun Elf using -disguise_r Drow, they will appear as only Elf now.

Prior to this it said the exact race except for two Elven and two of the Dwarven types.
There is no meaningful way to determine which flavor of elf you are sniffing the feet of.

Disguises will still display your chosen race when examined. (Provided it isn't broken)

This was apart of a bugfix as the systems involved often took an uncaring and full disclosure route, instead of a subtle one.

I do want to revisit tracks again soon(TM) and see if more functionality can be added to allow a wider range of bonuses, making it possible to get more information again. This hinges on behind the scenes discussion to the granularity and gratuity of changes.

Edit: Clarity and Formatting.

[ltlukoziuz]

Hmmm, my memory might be off, but I'm pretty certain that outside of bugs (ghostwise hin and "wild/forest" subraces), the only races you could differentiate were Surface vs Underdark (elves vs drow, dwarf vs duergar, gnome vs svirf). At least I never remember on my ranger seeing any other subraces. But as I said in main post, I'm fine with fixing it fully - tracks shouldn't be fully full race disclosure.

And to be fair - I think lore-wise it would make sense to differentiate the two, for future update. I really doubt that two kinds of people would have the same gait/stride when one walks primarily on earth (surface) and other walks primarily on hard rock (underdark).

[Eyeliner]

Maybe seeing more instances of tracks from the same PC could give you a little more info on them each time you find another set? Just a two cent thought but the system could reward trackers for being on someone's tail.

[Itikar]

And to be fair - I think lore-wise it would make sense to differentiate the two, for future update. I really doubt that two kinds of people would have the same gait/stride when one walks primarily on earth (surface) and other walks primarily on hard rock (underdark).

The Underdark, and also the surface, are too vast settings for statements like this to be reliable. Plenty of Underdark areas are soft, slimey and overall far from being "hard rock". Just flip through the Underdark sourcebook for any edition and you will see how the number of environments there is rather varied.

In general I welcome the change, as it removes a lot of interactions that very often felt forced and artificial, and corroborated by flimsy excuses and explanations in order to justify a mechanic that gave way too much information than realistically possible.

I hope that this can be extended to a degree also to the -investigate function on fixture remains. Even though there there may be elements, such as height, that make more sense for identifying a race, I don't think that full race disclosure makes sense in at least a number of those either.

Also, it must be noted that while this affects elves, dwarves and respective subraces above and below, a wide number of other Underdark races, and hins since they have no Underdark cousins, remain very easy to be identified as a group. Those who followed tracks can hardly be said to be without jobs or to have suddenly got a "useless" ability. This is simply not true.

[Stop. Ninja Time]

Prior to this it said the exact race except for two Elven and two of the Dwarven types.
There is no meaningful way to determine which flavor of elf you are sniffing the feet of.

In general I welcome the change, as it removes a lot of interactions that very often felt forced and artificial, and corroborated by flimsy excuses and explanations in order to justify a mechanic that gave way too much information than realistically possible.

I would argue that in a world where someone can go for a jog with four altars strapped to their back, where you can scry someone with just their name, and teleport across the isle on a whim that it's not a stretch of the imagination that some with advanced training (especially favoured enemies or divination focus) can tell the difference between different types of the same species.

A skilled tracker in the real world can tell the difference between different types of deers: https://worlddeer.org/deer-tracks/ - so an epically skilled tracker that devotes their life to understanding and killing elves (favoured enemy) should be able to tell the difference between various elf tracks. Or someone with good eyes (spot/search) or just a lot of world knowledge (lore).

Besides, it's not like tracking is just the two foot prints that someone leaves at the edge of a clearing. It's the scents they leave, the damage to the environment (broken branches, etc), the way animals have reacted to the passage, their gait (Male drow are 15% smaller than surface elves, and have a smaller gait; which is a way real world people tell the difference between male and female deer).

Oddly, it's far more sensible to know the species of creature passing through than it is to know their gender, as there is far more variation there.

[Nekonecro]

A skilled tracker in the real world can tell the difference between different types of deers

How many of those deer wear some form of shoes?

[Echohawk]

You need the appropriate lore to differentiate between the subraces in a lot of instances, not breaking the disguise would've always made it elf yes. Still remains the case.

Tracks won't need disguise since you're not going to be able to tell who's got dark skin by the shape of their foot. Etc etc.
It makes plenty fine sense on it's own. I can see trackers being pissy about this not being able to homing missile in on underdark races and vise versa, but unless scent rp (underdark spores as example, weirdos) is implemented it makes sense as is.

[ReverentBlade]

Drow are noticeably smaller than real elves. The tracks of a raiding Drow war band would be distinct to a ranger, with the dim possibility of it also being a tribe of particularly runty elves. This is a bad change.

[Nitro]

Drow are noticeably smaller than real elves. The tracks of a raiding Drow war band would be distinct to a ranger, with the dim possibility of it also being a tribe of particularly runty elves. This is a bad change.

And since they're making an active effort to disguise themselves they probably put on bigger boots to throw off trackers.
This is a good change.

[ReverentBlade]

Yes, I'm sure the big bad Drow make it routine habit to sacrifice their renown dexterity to don comically oversized shoes to fool those silly surfacers.

No one does that.

[Skibbles]

I'd like to hear why the change was made. I didn't even think this was a contentious topic.

Tracks were super neat but now it doesn't seem to give much more information than not being able to track at all, or apparently in some cases being able to track gives you even worse information than having no ability at all.

If characters don't want to be tracked it makes more sense to just bash the tracks instead of outfitting a party in clown shoes.

Aragon is a normal human but a divinely inspired dragon slaying spell casting epic Ranger just can't puzzle it out anymore? Big kneecap to the Ranger mystique here. Not a fan.

[Stop. Ninja Time]

The sarcastic replies aside, remember that tracks are not just footprints. Tracks are defined as "detectable evidence (such as the wake of a ship, a line of footprints, or a wheel rut) that something has passed". The fact that they're implemented as a few footprints at rather random edges of the wilds doesn't mean that 'whoops, I was careful but it was muddy at this /one/ location' or that the snow was suddenly a little better at holding tracks at that one junction for reason(tm).

Unless you're going to actively disguise yourself, you're probably not putting on big boots to pretend to be a surfacer. If your character has no ranks in disguising then just like you're going to fail if someone looks at you, you can't expect to fool someone who's literal job it is to hunt your people.

I'm not suggesting they get it for free, or anything. 3 levels of ranger being able to read tracks is rather silly. But a 21-26 ranger (especially with favoured enemy which already skips lore checks for race detection), or someone that heavily invested in spot/lore or someone who it's their racial enemy, shouldn't be incapable of detecting very real differences in what they're tracking. It's not just a bootprint. Sent RP is already implemented, most of our characters have functional noses.

It has nothing to do with skin colour, any more than the difference in deer tracks has to do with their fur colour. It has to do with physical differences and environmental differences that can be detected pretty easily by someone who's job it is to master that. If people can do this in the real world, it obviously can be done in a world full of magic.

If you want to disguise your race, be it tracks or visually, it should require bluff/perform. There's a reason that only a few classes/races are able to hide their tracks at all, because they've trained to do it . There should be counter play on both sides.

[Eyeliner]

Yah.. It would make sense if epic rangers could fully ID tracks from their favored enemies.

[Itikar]

I am sorry but I disagree categorically. The point about walking around with altars on the back is completely unrelated to tracks and thus irrelevant, for starters. The justification remains really flimsy, as individual variation between drow and drow, and elf and elf, or duergar and duergar, would ultimately impair whatever conclusion one can draw from it. The fact that one can already tell the difference between the tracks of an elf, a human or a dwarf already represents rather well a good training and abilities that one can have, without going into the territory of the silly.

If one wants to justify the ability to "magically", because there is no better way to define it, tell apart drow from the other subraces of elves, or dwarves from duergar, or deep gnomes from other gnomes, then I would say that gameplay is a much better argument than these creaky justifications in support of the previous status quo. If anything gameplay makes for sound and much more reasonable cases.

But to those cases I say good riddance, because in my humble opinion this much less transparency in tracks is preferable and provides more sensible roleplay opportunities. Not to mention the fact that a mechanic that could not fail was able to indirectly pierce through disguises, with very little one could do, until not very long ago when 75 bluff allowed to hide the subrace. And even then, seeing the parent race with no subrace was already an easy way to tell the character in question had something to hide very likely.

Besides, gameplay wise, there are still many races, such as kobolds, ogres, troglodytes, gnolls, orogs, and to a degree halflings in general, who cannot truly disguise their tracks as those of something else. Hence there remains plenty of use and work for trackers, with a bit of imbalance in favor of surface ones too, if one has to call things for what they are.

Personally I can only applaud and commend wholeheartedly a change that was long overdue and needed.

[AstralUniverse]

It's like the change to disguise checks cooldown.

For long time infiltration RP had way too many risks and it sort of cut out a lot of RP avenues - people would just not bother with certain risks. Changes like this, and the disguise check cooldown represent an attempt to make infiltration RP less risky.

The result? Literally half of the server is wearing disguises (but also because of new-lock partially) for a whole plethora of reasons, to a point meta-gaming happens *less* and disguises are more normalized in the culture, for all sorts of characters and IC reasons. Infiltration is easier than ever. It's not effortless still, but it's harder to reach the stage where the consequences for your actions destroy your character entirely, even if the infiltration fails.

I was protesting quite exclusively against the disguise change when it happened not long ago, and I would have done the same here but I feel like I was wrong and this sort of changes are needed to solve some fundamental issues in server culture.

[Stop. Ninja Time]

Ultimately infiltration RP should be dangerous, and given my character Ren spent a lot of her time infiltrating various organizations, I am keenly aware of the difficulties. What's the point of doing something hard if you get a free pass? If you want to infiltrate with low risk than learn to scry.

I am sorry but I disagree categorically. The point about walking around with altars on the back is completely unrelated to tracks and thus irrelevant, for starters.

Sorry if you did not understand the relation. To attempt to clarify the correlation: The world is magic, we suspend our disbelief on many entirely impossible actions. It is rather baffling that the justification of it being 'silly' or 'impossible' when it is clearly not, is used but the others are overlooked when convenient.

The justification remains really flimsy, as individual variation between drow and drow, and elf and elf, or duergar and duergar, would ultimately impair whatever conclusion one can draw from it. The fact that one can already tell the difference between the tracks of an elf, a human or a dwarf already represents rather well a good training and abilities that one can have, without going into the territory of the silly.

If one wants to justify the ability to "magically", because there is no better way to define it, tell apart drow from the other subraces of elves, or dwarves from duergar, or deep gnomes from other gnomes

Of course, if you ignore the entire part of the argument that people in the real world can do what you claim is impossible to do then all that is left is 'yay magic'; but that ignores the important part of the argument. If it can be accomplished without magic, then why would a ranger whose entire purpose in the world is to keep bad things out of their territory, who has magic gifted to them by nature (including -track to determine an entire area's general population), be unable to do something a mundane human can do?

Also I think you missed the fact that drow are actually significantly smaller than surface elves (source, the wiki). I'm not sure of the difference between duergar, off hand. Going by the wiki they do seem to be the same dimensions, so you definitely have more argument there for why they should be identical.

then I would say that gameplay is a much better argument than these creaky justifications in support of the previous status quo. If anything gameplay makes for sound and much more reasonable cases.

There is no 'creaky justification', other than your personal disagreements with it. Also none of what I said says "It should not be changed", if you read what I said you'll see I specifically note that there should be counter play in the way of skill checks. Disguise to hide your tracks, but other skills to counter those disguises.

But to those cases I say good riddance, because in my humble opinion this much less transparency in tracks is preferable and provides more sensible roleplay opportunities. Not to mention the fact that a mechanic that could not fail was able to indirectly pierce through disguises, with very little one could do, until not very long ago when 75 bluff allowed to hide the subrace. And even then, seeing the parent race with no subrace was already an easy way to tell the character in question had something to hide very likely.

There is not 'very little one can do', as there are several classes that prevent you from leaving tracks (3 level dip gets you it from ranger/druid). You can also RP with others and bring along someone that can clear tracks. If you have exactly zero training in travelling through the open world without leaving behind any useful tracks at all, why should you get that for free while others need a class for it?

Again, I suggested that there be skill checks on both side; no one should get a free pass. For rangers to be good at tracking they should have to invest as well; maybe a high level, or a skill check, or a combination of that with favoured (not studied) enemies.

Besides, gameplay wise, there are still many races, such as kobolds, ogres, troglodytes, gnolls, orogs, and to a degree halflings in general, who cannot truly disguise their tracks as those of something else. Hence there remains plenty of use and work for trackers, with a bit of imbalance in favor of surface ones too, if one has to call things for what they are.

Nothing I said indicated there wasn't plenty of use for trackers. Perhaps you were responding to someone else, but you only quoted me, so I have to assume it's a response to me.

I fail to see what your actual counter argument is other than to tell me you disagree with my argument. Did you have a point you were trying to make that I missed?

--------
The TLDR is: My argument is that if real people can determine from tracks the difference between many closely species, and we play in a world of magic, and we have classes devoted to hunting people, then losing the ability to differentiate races without the otherside having to invest in it isn't really fair. I agree that rangers should have to also invest in more than "I took a dip for free feat/tracking", and even more than "I leveled to 21 for Bane of Enemies", perhaps a base lore skill or contested skill or a higher amount (27?) ranger. But there was a /lot/ of counter play before, so it'd be better to add more: dip into ranger, druid, or take assassin levels, take bluff/perform to mask it, maybe add more a feat or gift to hide your tracks - or, bring a friend and actually cautiously clean up your tracks.

[Itikar]

Sorry if you did not understand the relation. To attempt to clarify the correlation: The world is magic, we suspend our disbelief on many entirely impossible actions. It is rather baffling that the justification of it being 'silly' or 'impossible' when it is clearly not, is used but the others are overlooked when convenient.

That correlation is so vast, and generic, that it can hardly be connected to that. More importantly it does not follow, as the reason for it is lacking, that given that completely unrelated point then tracking should be that way. It's called a non sequitur.

Of course, if you ignore the entire part of the argument that people in the real world can do what you claim is impossible

No, you can't discriminate skin color from shoe footprints in real life. Or baldness for that matter. As for drow being smaller, firstly, females are not so much smaller, and secondly, there remains the issue of telling them apart from an elf who is growing up, who will be, obviously, smaller. Not to mention that individual variation can still come into play, and it can include also very different outliers. It certainly could not justify seeing written "drow" instead of "elf". It could justify at best seeing the height of a certain individual. If elves are like humans in this regard, then their foot size is correlated to their height, but foot size is a poor predictor of ultimate height on individual basis. Long story short, no, it's not a very serious argument for races that are still so close in size, and whose heights can overlap even for males.

I tried to point you toward more sensible arguments based on gameplay, instead of these fragile arguments, yet you persist. They are not particularly convincing neither from the point of view of lore nor of realism, so much that you yourself used suspension of belief in your support! And suspension of belief is actually a pretty a self-defeating argument, in that you already recognize yourself that one must suspend some judgement and critical assessment in order to accept your version.

I get that you are upset that your character lost an edge, but as others have pointed out, this is a change for the better, and sincerely, I don't see much point in subraces being easily identifiable from footprints as a good and healthy mechanic for the server. Even more so with a pathetic 3 level dip. I can see merit in a more nuanced system, but I think that critical information should come with heavy sacrifices on part of the tracker. I think that expanding tracking with accessory information, such as body phenotype, for example, rather than subrace, would be a good way to make it more interesting, and less disruptive. And perhaps also make the mechanic actually more useful in tracking individuals, rather than just in identifying Underdarkers on the surface, and vice versa.

[Watchful Glare]

On a practical level, this takes a golf club to the knee of the elven patrols in the surface sniffing for drow. Now they will patrol through their usual routes and without knowing in advance if they'll find a drow or not and/or they'll be suspecting of elven tracks.

This amuses me. It's good for drow looking to RP in the surface, bad for those that would hunt them. That is the only time I have ever seen tracks being used at all on a regular basis. I am uncertain it was a good use, however, as meeting a roving PvP band is never a good experience no matter which side you're on (Except when you meet group vs group, then it can be fun). The only other time was when actively hunting another character within a handful of areas. If those tracks would have been unified under a single parent race, I doubt it would have been as relevant.

On the flip side, I don't like this because tracks were unrealiable before, this just makes it so it matters less. Perhaps draw out the information given across more levels, so that people have to be really deep into classes that read tracks in order to get the most information out of them, such as specific race, armor and gender. Tracks being more useful would make classes whose RP steeps deeply into being able to... Well, track others, actually be more fulfilling to play, and also viable as a more mundane alternative to scrying so long as you know what you're looking for.

[AstralUniverse]

Ultimately infiltration RP should be dangerous, and given my character Ren spent a lot of her time infiltrating various organizations, I am keenly aware of the difficulties. What's the point of doing something hard if you get a free pass?

I dont think you get a free pass? You are just less likely to ruin your characters entire life for good. You will still fail infiltrations just as before, but your real identity wont be exposed as easily as before. That's my take. I dont think it's terrible, given the fact so many of us have been complaining about how hard it is to pull off anything evil on the surface it might actually be just what we need.

If you want to infiltrate with low risk than learn to scry.

lmao.