Track Facing

[The Rambling Midget]

This is kind of a kludge, but I think that it might be able to address my biggest pet peeve about following people via tracks.

The Problem
As tracks are now, the best way for a Ranger to go about tracking a person or party is to run to every transition in an area to check for corresponding tracks. From a RP standpoint, it's hard to believably "follow a trail" when you're always skirting the edge of the map, and from a mechanical standpoint, this encourages a lot of running, or cross-classing with Monk to increase movement speed, because it's about three shades of impossible to follow someone at a walking pace when you're covering several times the ground.

The Suggestion
When a character leaves an area, update the entry tracks to provide a clue as to where they lead. It could be as definitive as "North" or as vague as "veer left".

This will hopefully allow Rangers to RP tracking more realistically and reduce the need for cross-classing and magical speed enhancement.

[IndifferentPerson]

If possible at all, add the extra functionality to -track, where if in a certain radius of tracks(the more ranger levels, the bigger the radius is), you get the info.

[The Kriv]

I would like to see a different approach to what the OP has listed.

I would like to see something like this:

#1 not make -TRACK a spammable command. -it as a cooldown. once per hour, per area... where 'exiting' the area does not refresh this timer.

#2 activating -TRACK gives you all the tracks of the area with "FRESH TRACKS" indicating the owner of those tracks are in the area, "OLDER TRACKS" being creatures who have left the area and also the DIRECTION (N,NE,E,SE,S,SW,W,NW,N), and "FAINT TRACKS" meaning you detect something, but the tracks are too far gone (or trampled) to make anything out of them.

#3 as in the details given to any Ranger in above #2, are directly correlated to how many Ranger Levels a character has: <5 you ONLY see "FAINT TRACKS"... meaning you can tell something went that way, whether it walked on 2 legs or 4... but whether it was a human, a drow, a gnome... hard to say, exactly... -At Levels 5-9 You get "FRESH" tracks and "FAINT" tracks, and you get SOME "Group" information (Aka HUMANOID, ANIMAL, etc..) on the "Fresh" tracks, so you are able to actually tell what passed and the direction it went- At levels 10-20 you get Fresh, Faint, and "OLD" tracks now. And details of the tracks you find are given on more detailed information, like Racial clues, (very much like the results you get now: Elf, Human, Hinn, Drow), but "Faint Tracks" you get ... at lvl 20+ no longer get "FAINT" tracks, as they are all the same as "OLD" to you. The added bonus of 20+ levels of Ranger are that you can detect the DIRECTION of "FRESH" tracks, as they relate to YOU... -so that if you are in a large area, you don't just know that whatever you are tracking has entered and has not exited yet, but you can KNOW that the owner of those tracks are NW of your present location.

-so you have "FRESH" Tracks are still in the area. OLD tracks are "EXIT" tracks with details AND direction, and "FAINT" tracks are exit tracks with ONLY direction information... you could ALSO pair this together with the "SEARCH" and "LORE" skills to give synergy bonuses on details returned.

So this creates a market for high-level ranger tracking services! you really do have characters who can follow trails and literally track someone down to the region they're in.