ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I made a ranger class that currently is bunch of talents. I feel like names and descriptions aren't very creative or incomplete. I was wonder what other people would like to see in regards to names/ descriptions , talent effects and even what a unlock should be. Keep in mind that this class currently has a lot of trees, so if you suggest a new one please make suggestions on what to remove.

the class is available here: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=25195 along with a brief description of what each of the new talents are.

Here are the trees the class currently has:

My idea for the class feel was a highly mobile character that either specialized in melee or ranged. Stat wise Dex and will would be primary along with either cun or str depending on what progression was used. str is for those who want a pure melee / bow archer. cun is for those who want to use stealth, traps, sling or daggers. those are my ideas. I am open to suggestion for just about anything related to this class.

EDIT it seem people are'nt looking at the devlink so here is what is done

Stalking -class
Garrote - melee attack that silences + bleeding damage. Must be used from stealth -NEED BALANCING
Hit and run - Hit with a melee attack and then jump back - NEED BALANCING
reappear- switch places with another target and confuse-NEED BALANCING
Nature's compliance - while stealth ed probability travel can be used -NEED BALANCING

Hunting -class
Multi arrow -Fire multiple arrows - NEED BALANCING
Reducing Shot - Acid damage with % blind and reduce eq - NEED BALANCING
Split arrow - fires a cone at range - NEED BALANCING
Snake Shot - chain lightning effect with small added poison damage -NOT DONE

Fury - class
Balance of weapons - percent based of of dex to restore eq - NEED BALANCING
Fang strike - Use two weapons to hit for poison damage - NEED BALANCING
Lunge - rush and hit for slime damage - NEED BALANCING
Fury of the storm - calls targets close to you and then unleashes lighting with a chance to daze and hits adjacent foes - NEED BALANCING

Wrath - generic
Vine Growth - AOE DOT with chance to pin - NEED BALANCING
Winter's chill - infuse weapons with ice damage - NEEDS BALANCING
Tree growth - Summons trees - NEEDS BALANCING
Nature's energy - restore stamina -NEED BALANCING (might make this heal also)

My biggest problem here is that you're trying to hard to copy the DnD Ranger and you've made him very good at both Dual Wielding and Archery as a result. I would say to pull yourself away from that thinking and try to come up with something more unique based on the basic concept. A ranger is a wilderness hunter very good with nature, so what kinds of weapons/skills would that suggest to you?

catwhowalksbyhimself wrote:My biggest problem here is that you're trying to hard to copy the DnD Ranger and you've made him very good at both Dual Wielding and Archery as a result. I would say to pull yourself away from that thinking and try to come up with something more unique based on the basic concept. A ranger is a wilderness hunter very good with nature, so what kinds of weapons/skills would that suggest to you?

What do you suggest?

Well basically a rogue specialized on bows instead of daggers, maybe spears. Plus perhaps the training of the hunter: traps and survival. Creating traps I mean, that would be fun. But unlike rogue, less skilled in direct combat. Survival should help in indirect ways. Some healing skills perhaps, or magic-like, surely perception perks (but the rogue has already them). Probably speed, because hunters walks a lot. Perhaps the ability to train or temporarily tame (charm)some animals and/or monsters. Ergo to summon them. It would be very similar to the healing category of the archmage (regeneration, healing, anti-poison and summon are all things that a ranger could do, but not using mana of course).

A sort of mix of rogue, archer and in minor part healer/mage.

Also funny skills could be decoy (the ability to put fake yourself to attract monsters) or some crafting skill with dead monsters.

So: a rogue that shoots with the bow, but not so well as the archer, and is not so good in close combat like the rogue, who can make traps, summon animals, taming, using decoys and perhaps even craft something. I would play it

Crafting could work this way: you activate the ability and the next monster you kill generates a token. Tokens are different from each other depending on the level of the monster and the type of monster. They give a bonus that you can apply to the armor and/or perhaps another piece like headgear or cape, but not too many pieces for the same reasons of the alchemist. It's not too complex, quite similar to the power of the alchemist.

Another power could be "tree passage", a sort of gem portal/probability thingy that works only with trees & mountains. Uhm perhaps that's a bad idea, since trees aren't so common, mountains too.

I don't have a problem with him being decent with two weapons, but not as good at either. The skillsets originally suggested make him really, really good at both Dual Wielding and Bows.

My suggestion, make him a bow/sword user. He get's a bow tree and some weapons tree, and skillset that gives him some abilities at both while making it beneficial to switch between both as needed. Not sure exactly, but a combined skillset that works with both weapons would be good.

Or you could go a completely different route and make him a bow using Rogue/wilder type hybrid as suggested above. That's probably the easiest way to go at this point, since all you'd need to do is drop the dual wield trees.

PhoenixToME
So it looks like you want
1 healing
2 speed increase
3 charming/summoning animals
4 crafting

other than crafting those idea are doable by me. To cover what you want I would add a tree like this

Serenity :
Charm animal: whenever a animal attacks you there is a X% chance that it will become neutral and Y% it will become friendly
Natures gift: Heal + regen
Invigorate: speed increase and clear negative effects
Nature's aid:summon some forest critter

There are some concerns with this
1)there are a lot of talent trees, so which one would be replaced?
2)Charm animal seems specialized given the fact that animal only really appear early game

However if people want that tree to be part of the class I have no real objection to adding it

currently this is a rogue wilder combination. From what I am hearing some people don't like the fact that the ranger can be either a dual weapon combatant or a range combatant . My view on this is that the player should focus on either Range OR melee. The temporal warden does the same thing

Two of the class-specific trees have melee attacks in them. With both of the dual weapons trees as well, this makes the ranger VERY melee heavy. The choice here isn't between melee and archery; it's between archery and nature-craft. I don't think this is what was intended.

To fix this, get rid of the Dual Techniques tree, and probably get rid of the Dual Weapons tree as well. The Fury and Stalking trees will still make the player seriously consider melee weapons, but it won't be such an obvious choice.

Goblinz wrote:There are some concerns with this
1)there are a lot of talent trees, so which one would be replaced?
2)Charm animal seems specialized given the fact that animal only really appear early game

I'm still not an expert of this game (I've yet to finish it, I don't know every class) so I leave this argument to others (it seems dual wielding plus the other skills forces the player to chose the melee path because it's stronger, I wonder if you are forced to toggle dual weapons instead of the fury thingy).

You should be able to charm also some monsters, not just animals. Perhaps it should be harder, but still possible. I've reached max lvl 26 so I don't know how frequent are animals or "credibly charmable monsters" (they should be dull enough, instinctual wild creatures).

This could work in a more complex way, instead of a temporary charm in that level could be a golem-like thingy. I mean you create a golem charming an animal/monster, it's permanent till he dies. If you charm a low level animal/monsters he adjust automatically to your level. It should be fun enough, since you can change monster and take strange allies (like ants, bees ^^).

Perhaps a tree skill is needed to buff properly the companion.

For the other two things don't know if you can make them, perhaps when you get more experience or someone other adds them.

A decoy skill would be useful as active defensive ability, perhaps with a check for the cunning of the monster. Shouldn't be too hard, it's just an immobile fake companion. (With another skill you could make him explosive, that would be useful) And traps could be fun. But the game itself still lacks interesting traps (like pits, arrows and the giant rolling stone). Although managed differently they should be just like proximity spells (don't know if some class have something like this).

Anyway rogue/warrior or rogue/wilder it's just a matter of taste. Perhaps the rogue/wilder is a bit more credible as a hunter. But ranger is a lousy definition, it could be as well a rogue/warrior. They could be two different classes as well, since they both could be fun. In fact rogue/warrior is more of a ranger, rogue/wilder a hunter.

[EDIT]

Another skill that I would like on the hunter is lure. Like the decoy but without the actual thing, it's just a way to lure somewhere (in traps perhaps) monsters. I would love it

[EDIT]

I saw a post that mention a trap launcher that's already implemented in b21. I think it's an item. So it should be easy to convert the item power to a normal talent.

PhoenixToME wrote: You should be able to charm also some monsters, not just animals. Perhaps it should be harder, but still possible. I've reached max lvl 26 so I don't know how frequent are animals or "credibly charmable monsters" (they should be dull enough, instinctual wild creatures).

This could work in a more complex way, instead of a temporary charm in that level could be a golem-like thingy. I mean you create a golem charming an animal/monster, it's permanent till he dies. If you charm a low level animal/monsters he adjust automatically to your level. It should be fun enough, since you can change monster and take strange allies (like ants, bees ^^).

Perhaps a tree skill is needed to buff properly the companion.

You do bring a point that charming animals would be cool. However I feel that there would need to be 3-4 trees devoted to this idea. Frankly I don't have room for 3-4 new trees. What I could see happening is making another class that has those trees and some basic combat ones and call that the Beastmaster.

Also the Trap mastery tree already has a lure/decoy talent, so that is already included

PhoenixToME wrote:Anyway rogue/warrior or rogue/wilder it's just a matter of taste. Perhaps the rogue/wilder is a bit more credible as a hunter. But ranger is a lousy definition, it could be as well a rogue/warrior. They could be two different classes as well, since they both could be fun. In fact rogue/warrior is more of a ranger, rogue/wilder a hunter.

I may be misinterpreting this but from the looks of this you are suggesting I rename the class to hunter or make the ranger class more of a rogue/warrior.

I don't know if you played rogues yet (I don't think so) but you might want to try. both the stealth and trap mastery trees are from rogues and are included in the ranger. Also For me the only real difference between a rogue and a warrior is armor and stealth/traps/dual weapons so a rogue/warrior does'nt make much sense to me.

Goblinz wrote: You do bring a point that charming animals would be cool. However I feel that there would need to be 3-4 trees devoted to this idea. Frankly I don't have room for 3-4 new trees. What I could see happening is making another class that has those trees and some basic combat ones and call that the Beastmaster.

Woa, hang on there. We don't need 3-4 trees for this at all. For a full Beastmaster class, sure, but just for a Ranger with some optional, very basic, monster charming? One tree is you need. That tree can then become the basis of the Beastmaster, should that ever be done.

It could probably work with just 1 tree for the beast-powers, depends on how many things one wants to put in.
I think a permanent charm(golem-like), a spell to render temporarily neutral nearby animal/vermin/dull monsters, something to buff the tamed beast and a teleport for the beast. It's meant for support, not for developing only that.

I didn't played the thief yet (I played very shortly a shadow blade but it hasn't the trapping tree, so I thought it didn't exists), I see that's quite similar to the hunter that I'm talking about, except dual wielding and the lack of beasts/archery/crafting powers. Happy about the trapping tree, maybe I'll try the thief next time.

Rogue/warrior was a lousy definition because I haven't played the thief yet. Anyway both variants could be good, even a mixup.

PhoenixToME wrote: I saw a post that mention a trap launcher that's already implemented in b21. I think it's an item. So it should be easy to convert the item power to a normal talent.

Actually, Trap Launcher is not an item. It's a talent that is part of the Trap tree.

Okay So this is what I am thinking of adding

Beast (needs better name)
Charm creature - makes a creature join your party with a max of 1. you charm a creature and there is no room it will become neutral. Talent will have a LONG cool down. Additional talent levels will allow more variety in what you can charm OR as this levels up it will teach new talents to the pet
Invigorate - heals and speeds up you and your pet
Cleanse - Regen and clear negative effects (target able)
Call pet - summons pet to you and increases its fighting capabilities for a while

This will replace dual weapon training.

What do you think of this

Simple, clean, in theme; I like it.

Goblinz wrote:Charm creature - makes a creature join your party with a max of 1. you charm a creature and there is no room it will become neutral. Talent will have a LONG cool down. Additional talent levels will allow more variety in what you can charm OR as this levels up it will teach new talents to the pet

Perhaps would be better adding an area effect to the "neutralizer" effect. I'm not sure if it would be useful just with one animal/vermin/whatever. And I'm not sure if that would be useful with a long cooldown, well... not that long anyway. Maybe two different skills is better.

Also Regen would work even on other creatures besides you and the pet? I'm thinking about escort missions.

To me sounds better wild empathy than charm creature anyway, more wild less magical.

Beast isn't that bad, it's a bit strange though. Could be also Wild connection, wild binding, wild spirit.

If this class proves weak, an improved extra survival tree could be useful. As for the skill in it, something about various resistance and movement speed could do it.