Rangers, Paladins, Gish - those caught in between

[Marsi]

Keeping it short:

Rangers

1. The plan here remains to expand their list of favored enemies with dynamic choices. A couple other cookies were planned out (e.g. making Blade Thirst work on any weapon), but that alone should make them much more viable as a hunter/skirmisher archetype with reliable damage output.

Are there any plans to give crossbow users analogous paths to the bow ones?

[Rodent]

And to pile in on top of Marsi's query...

The current Ranger paths (both basic, and the two archery ones) have bonuses that stop scaling after level fourteen. Are there plans to change that, so epic rangers get further bonuses from their path?

[FoxyPigeon]

Where mah blade thirst on non slashing weapons?

[The Kriv]

In the grand scheme of Rock-Paper-Scissors, I'd like to offer the perspective of a dyed-in-the-wool Ranger player.

As a deeply invested Ranger (Sniper path) even with Bane of Enemies and the bonuses that go along with it, the damage still doesn't meet up with an equally invested fighter-type melee'er or spellsword. I don't think Rangers ought to be the glass-cannons that AA's are, but maybe the real flavor should lean towards the Favored Enemies.

When you think about your party make up... who do you you REALLY want to bring adventuring with you? Rangers are often picked last. They are a welcome addition, but not your first choice, unless you specifically need someone to follow tracks, and even then, a character with a Ranger-Dip will do just fine.

I am a huge fan of the Rock-Paper-Scissors approach. You have SOME makeups that are unbeatable but have a terrible weakness. Rangers could be this sort of class.

Make Rangers attacks vs. Favoured Enemies bybass all DR... period.
Give "Bane of Enemies" a 5% chance of dispel vs. any Favoured Enemy.
Make every attack vs. Favoured Enemies a free Called-Shot (leg).
Double the standard damage bonus vs Favoured Enemies

I've offered this as part of Sniper path, but maybe this could be something, but perhaps as Beard Master Flex suggested that 'ambush' be part of the Ranger Tactic... maybe there is a way to offer a sort of auto-crit against a favored enemy for the 1st round of attack, provided the Ranger is still (i.e. no movement) for 60-seconds prior to launching the attack? It could be built into a command like "-ambush" which then begins a 60-second timer that is cancelled if the Ranger moves.

Since "tracking" is not Ranger specific, maybe High-level Ranger's ability to track is granted a bonus that if you activate "-track" it won't just tell you what sort of enemies typically are found in the area, but give actual assessment of nearby players at that moment. For example: "An unarmored Dwarf is to the west" -which would make actually tracking players through areas extremely relevant and adds immense amounts of RP!


If UNDEAD are selected as the Ranger's Favored Enemy, then Rangers SHOULD BECOME the Bane of all the Pale Masters in Arelith. Pale Masters are SUPER tough to kill and are quite fearsome. But to an Undead-Killing Ranger? This should be what Pale Masters fear most.


We have generalists who are uber-deadly. We have assassin-rogues who wil stun-lock and kill you. We have weapon-masters who will kill you dead in a few hits unless you have uber-AC or Amazing HP to withstand their massive damage.

Why not have the Ranger be the specialist class, where the more favoured enemies she acquires, the more deadly her abilities against ALL her favoured enemies become until she is the ULTIMATE killer of those enemies.

"Bane of Enemies" on Arelith should really mean more than just an extra 2d6 damage.

(Paladins could be similar in this, only they get massive bonuses vs. all evil.)

[FoxyPigeon]

I like that idea a lot, some boons that actually focus on favored/bane of enemies since those are only specific to rangers. Much better than free +2 ac that some rangers don't even get, or a really cool spell that doesn't work on your weapon because, oops that's not slashing.

[Astral]

I think many problems including a lot of what's going on with all classes with spellbook is that you either want 26+ lvls of them or you want a dip for some skill they give you - Because in any other case they will do more harm than good, as you lose your mundane caster lvl for wands/options in order to have, say, 10 sorc lvls in my build for example. It's a very awkward reality that we've all gotten used to. If it's a class with a spellbook you're sort of forced to decide if you go heavy 26+ lvl or keep it on 3, as anything in between will make you a dispel bait, and nobody likes being dispelled, not even your RP-builds who make no sense mechanically - they shouldn't be a freaking dispel bait either.

[MissEvelyn]

I think many problems including a lot of what's going on with all classes with spellbook is that you either want 26+ lvls of them or you want a dip for some skill they give you - Because in any other case they will do more harm than good, as you lose your mundane caster lvl for wands/options in order to have, say, 10 sorc lvls in my build for example. It's a very awkward reality that we've all gotten used to. If it's a class with a spellbook you're sort of forced to decide if you go heavy 26+ lvl or keep it on 3, as anything in between will make you a dispel bait, and nobody likes being dispelled, not even your RP-builds who make no sense mechanically - they shouldn't be a freaking dispel bait either.

Do you still lose your mundane caster level if you have 10 or less in your spellcasting ability for the spellcaster class?

I really hope everyone realizes how ridiculous mundane caster levels are.

[Baron Saturday]

I think many problems including a lot of what's going on with all classes with spellbook is that you either want 26+ lvls of them or you want a dip for some skill they give you - Because in any other case they will do more harm than good, as you lose your mundane caster lvl for wands/options in order to have, say, 10 sorc lvls in my build for example. It's a very awkward reality that we've all gotten used to. If it's a class with a spellbook you're sort of forced to decide if you go heavy 26+ lvl or keep it on 3, as anything in between will make you a dispel bait, and nobody likes being dispelled, not even your RP-builds who make no sense mechanically - they shouldn't be a freaking dispel bait either.

Do you still lose your mundane caster level if you have 10 or less in your spellcasting ability for the spellcaster class?

I really hope everyone realizes how ridiculous mundane caster levels are.

Yes. Yes we do. Also you only lose the mundane caster level if you actually cast a spell from your spellbook. Can a bard with 8 charisma even cast cantrips?

[gilescorey]

Can a bard with 8 charisma even cast cantrips?

No.

[Peppermint]

I've seen the mundane caster level thing raised a lot, and in spirit, I agree: the discrepancy is pretty silly.

Fixing it isn't as simple as just flipping a switch and making everything key off of character levels, though. Wait, let me take that back. It is that simple theoretically, but believe me when I say you wouldn't want us to. God-tier battle bards and battleclerics would only be the start of our problems.

I'd absolutely be interested in exploring other alternatives, but whatever that alternative may be, it'd require either significant finesse, or a ton of corresponding balance changes.

[Astral]

I've seen the mundane caster level thing raised a lot, and in spirit, I agree: the discrepancy is pretty silly.

Fixing it isn't as simple as just flipping a switch and making everything key off of character levels, though. Wait, let me take that back. It is that simple theoretically, but believe me when I say you wouldn't want us to. God-tier battle bards and battleclerics would only be the start of our problems.

I'd absolutely be interested in exploring other alternatives, but whatever that alternative may be, it'd require either significant finesse, or a ton of corresponding balance changes.

Of course it isn't simple. You'd have to entirely change the way dispells work if you remove caster lvl and regard only character lvl. And yes, God-tier is the perfect term to use for those bards and clerics who would burn the server to the ground. We, as a community, as players and developers as one, have to bring up some kind of a complicated and magical replacement to the whole math behind how dispels work in order to bring Arelith to the next level of evolution in regards to character versatility. I have patience.