Tracking has potential, but we need to talk about the skills and how to improve them, and think of additions that will make it a more practical skillset.

There has been talk of giving knights the option to choose between athletics and hunting/tracking. What do you think? Would that be too powerful? There would be knights without surge and flex, and all the other great defensive skills in Athletics. But would that be a balanced trade?

I'll post what suggestions I have so far, let me know what you think. Input is most welcome. Especially if you're Shinza or Icarus. Icarus, if you want to post all your suggestions here go ahead, I think you had some pretty good ones.

Hunting
* Camouflage: Camouflaged trackers should be invisible to those in the room, including those with thirdeye, in natural environments. EMERGE should remove the camouflage. Leaving a natural environment strips camouflage, and there needs to be some message informing the tracker. Camouflaged trackers should be able to see other camouflaged trackers.

* Rustle: Should work on sheep as well as cows.

* Campfire: Should cost 2 wood instead of 3 and last 20 minutes instead of 10. I can't really think of anything else, but right now it's not very good. Apparently it replenished 2.2k willpower over a period of 10 minutes (then it went out).

* Stalk: Balance loss is too long, as whatever race. The point is to secretly start to following someone - that doesn't work.

* Ambush: At a balance-loss of over 6 seconds, it stuns for less than two seconds. How about...
- It trips the target.
- It does about 400 damage.
- It brings you out of camouflage.
- The balance loss is shortened by ~2 seconds.
- The stun length is increased to an amount of 2 flat and independant seconds.

Tracking
*Traps: SET ALARM needs to be added to the AB file. Disarming a trap should trigger an alarm.

* StinkTrap: Right now, pretty useless. Not only is it bugged since both this stench and the skunk stench can be washed away immediately when they should be lasting for a day, there is no way to keep track of who stinks and for how long. How about...
- STINK LIST is added. This should be a list of everyone in the game who currently stinks, and they should be ranked from the worst to best smelling with some sort of ranks (nothing that tells the exact amount of time before the stench is gone).
Will this fix the problem with track?

* Track: Track in it's current state is useless when it's so similar to seek with a stench requirement. It also leads you through guards and totems, making it dangerous. Should it be plane-wide, rather than local area only? Or will STINK LIST be sufficient?

* Legsnare: The amount of wounds the legsnare does is less than negligible, it should bring the leg to medium wounds and have a chance (10%?) to break the leg.

*Deadfall: The stun is barely a second, it should be increased to 2 seconds and cause some head wounds. Wounds would be affected by what headgear the target is wearing. There should be a chance (10%? 5%? Remember traps can hit multiple people so while 5% might not sound like a lot there is a 50% chance of it occuring if the deadfall hits 10 people. This doesn't happen often, but it's possible) of it giving a concussion.

* Hunting Companions:
Hounds and wolves die far too easy, even after their minor upgrade, often they'll die in a few hits.
- They should have a significant increase (2x?) to their health. That still isn't much, with criticals taken into account. However, they aren't supposed to be tanking machines, to me it seems like they were meant more for sneaking around. More on this later.
- It should cost 1 power to get another hunting companion.

* Bond Follow: Hounds and wolves can already be ordered to follow someone, but not from a range. Using BOND FOLLOW will remedy that, so that a tracker can assist in group combat and hunting someone down without being in the same room.

* Pits: When someone falls into a pit, be they shrouded or not, everyone in the room should receive a message that this has happened.

New Skill
* Bond Sneak: Hounds and wolves should be able to sneak, using BOND SNEAK , which will have a slight equilibrium cost, but no one will be able to see the hound leave or enter a room.

There's no perfect invisibility as of now - I assume chockmah would still reveal them?


That would put hounds far above demons/angels health wise. Don't you think it's rather unfair considering their importance? Much more better idea (in my opinion) is making that kind of entourage (fae, demons, hounds) immune to critical hits (and then maybe adjust their health if needed), I'm about to envoy that.

Why random limb instead of just random arm? What do you want to accomplish there, having team of trackers able to give 4 entanglements?

Yes, that would reveal them. Camouflage would hide most actions too though, much like yesod, so something would have to alert you to the presence of the tracker. I forgot to include that in the original post.

Making the hounds immune to critical hits is an idea, but I don't think that would fix it entirely, although I didn't realize 5x hound health would put them above demons and angels. That would be wrong. Maybe twice what they have now would be better. I wouldn't want to stick the requesting powercost on there (although something really does need to be done about that, getting another hound should not be free) and then not making it worth it somehow would be wrong. I thought it might fix both problems (hounds being too easy to obtain, hounds dying too easily) at once.



No, you would still only have to writhe out of clamp once. Stacking clamp would be ridiculous. I just don't know why the hound only clamps arms since hitting the clamped arm causes more wounds to it (not much, but some) than normal, and hitting legs is usually better than hitting arms.

If *any* skillset should get an ability like this, it should be illusions not Hunting. Furthermore, the idea you have suggested is not clear. It sounds more like phasing in a natural environment (which was trans subterfuge in other IRE games), which would be absurd for warriors.



These sound excellent to me.



Stun length is adjusted based upon size. Specifically, the larger one's size, the more resistance he or she has to stun (at least, this is my general understanding). Thus, the stun length could be adjusted in this case to 2 seconds (I don't think that's unreasonable), but given how it works with size, it may be less if someone is ogre-ish.



Sounds good.



Skunk stench should not be lasting a day. At least, there is nothing that indicates this. It has always been wash-able as soon as you get it.

Stink List would be ok but local area only. I don't see how you could tell someone was stinking on Astral while on Prime or even across the continent or a different continent.



Why shouldn't it lead you through guards and totems? They are there for a reason. They provide defense on home turf. And being able to track plane wide would be insane.



This sounds fine to me given that levitation stops you from taking concussion, stun, etc. because you don't actually crash into the ground.



Demons, Angels, and Fae have this same problem except that they cost power. I think one initial step would be to remove critical hits (someone has already suggested this). The health could be increased, but it shouldn't be more than a demon or angel. As for the clamping, I don't see how this matters.



Sounds good.

The thing with stink is that the affliction remains, hidden, for a day after it has been washed off. Thus, a tracker can track to someone either with stink, or who has just removed stink.

You can also instantly re-summon an angel or demon for 5 power. If your hound is deaad, you have to go back to the kernel to get a new one, not to mention I don't think you can get a new one immediately, you'll have to wait. So in effect, if your hound is dead, you're not getting a new one for a long time.

Most of the ideas are great, as for Stink list, Icarus suggested Bond Scent that will allow you to scent everyone in the area, I'm thinking of adding the ability to scent stinky people as well.

I had Alger get 5 in a 30 minute period once.

One of the ideas I sent to an envoy was there to be an ability added called Bloodbond (or something similar) which would increase the health of your bond when it's in the room with you. This would still allow people to counteract seek/unite while still keeping the bond effective during an actual fight. Also, I don't know why it has it but Bond Recall really doesn't need a willpower cost.

Not sure where you got that idea from Terenas. There is no wait period. Getting 5 hounds in 30 minutes for free shouldn't be doable.

I'll remove the clamping onto legs as well as arms since people don't seem to think it would make much of a difference, which means it probably isn't worth coding.


You don't actually crash into the ground anyway, as far as I know. Deadfall causes a small anvil to drop on your head, so I guess levitation would make you avoid the wire that triggers the anvil, but then this trap would be completely useless.





And thanks for clearing that up Soll. The message should be changed though, you don't have to have those periodic stink messages (because they're annoying) but you shouldn't be as clean as you would be by just cleaning off something like gorgog stink.

Regarding BOND STENCH, I like that more that stink list, and if track remains local area only that would actually be more useful. I didn't know that was what Icarus meant actually, because I remember him suggesting it but thinking it wouldn't be that great. However, that still leaves the issue of track being suicidal in many situations.



This sounds reasonable.

To clarify camouflage suggestions: it would work exactly like yesod, in that it hides those little actions, but also hides the tracker while they are in a natural environment with someone (even someone with thirdeye) who looks. They would still show up on the WHO list. It wouldn't be anything like phasing. Phase was like ghost.

Edit:

If that only increases the health of the hound while it's in the room it wouldn't be very good. One of the uses of unite it to get to people and attack them and that doesn't work very well if they can kill your hound before you get there. Although, that reminds me of something I was thinking about before. It would be interesting if each companion got a city/commune specific skill. Not sure what they would be though.

I agree that unite shouldn't have the willpower cost though, it's pointless. Two power and the mana cost is enough.

Deadfall does cause head wounds, but if their head is heavily protected...

Hmm, I'd like to see more of a emphasis on tracking conceptually to futher diversify the skill which is essentially just locating and traps at the moment. I don't think its actually as bad as some make out, but then I haven't seen a full skill list.

I quite like some of the earlier suggestions (not so much the ones that just make existing skills more powerful - that doesn't really do much, and especially not invisibility), but here are some miscellaneous abilities that could give some added flavour to the skillset, rather than combat balance specifically.

Bait - Use the lure of food to attract nearby creatures, or place them above your pit traps in order to ensnare wandering beasts.

(Takes 1 foodish commodity, use it in a room and for 10 seconds any mobiles nearby will wander in if not across area/environment boundaries. Hounds/familiars/stags/turtles/crows/wyrms are also affected. If used to bait a pit trap, the next creature that enters, including the pets above, will fall into the trap for a period of around 20 seconds. If there are more than 3 creatures in one pit it is destroyed and they all escape.)

Tanning - Collect and prepare the skins of your prey in order to clothe yourself.

(The corpse of any natural animal can be tanned using this skill, produces a new item "a leather cloak from the skin of ", which lasts only 3-4 months, but adds to appearance and makes wearer immune to weather - not that that does anything anyway... *cough*)

Lumberjack...ing - Hew through the undergrowth with expertise so as to bolster your wood supplies.

(Halves balance taken when cutting saplings/trees. Can also be used in non-casted forest or wyrden wood environments and will occasionally provide a wood commodity. If used twice in one location in one month there is a chance the area will be changed - 'The dense undergrowth has been hacked away leaving a clear path through the area.', and this will cause all nature or druidic spells to take slightly longer and have a slightly delayed effect.)

Taming - Soothe the savage beast, or at least break them to your will. You will be able to master a weakened creature such that it will attack your enemies if they enter the room.

(Somewhat like seduction, but not via influence. An animal has to be on less than 1/3 health, and this ability can be used for 3 power to cause it to cease being aggressive, and will then attack your enemies if they enter. A sentence is appended to the room description of the creature, talking about being wounded and broken in spirit. Enlargement/empowerment by ecologists both undoes the seduction effect, and will prevent against it being used)

Just some random thoughts.

Original design had some of these things, but was dropped due to the fact that no skill should effect the flow of commodities or trade skills.

ummm, cool!

I'd still really, really like tracking to be switched to being a choice between hunting and athletics.

You choose a pet / traps versus extra health/strength... hone your mastery over outside elements versus your physical self-control.

Edit: I've gone over the RP reasons why I think that tracking being an option against totems is not good, I don't want to hijack this topic into that once again. But it does seem like it would be a somewhat balanced trade- druids already get hunting + totems, so that combination isn't too bad.

Good luck getting people into your traps, mind.

This would be one of the modifications to tracking that this thread would be discussing, of course.

I really cannot picture a ranger without athletics.. I mean.. "Yeah, I'm trained in surviving in the wilderness. I can track, hunt, climb mountains, swim the depths of the ocean.. but oh.. man.. did that jog really take the wind out of me!"

Can you picture that? I can't.

One thing that does annoy me a bit is that a Wiccan is a better tracker than a tracker. They have scent and moonbeam - which is much more effective at doing what a tracker is supposed to be able to do than anything a tracker actually has.


And as for a skill effecting commodities.. doesn't Chop in Axelord and Sapling in Druidry do just that?

It wouldn't take any more wind out of them than random druid over there running around, but as they chose to spend more time working on external pursuits instead of training their body to its peak fitness, they aren't quite as fit as someone who chose to improve their body's performance before all.

How can you say that someone who climbs mountains, who does deep sea swimming, who digs pits, and who does a variety of other physical labor sorts of things.. ISN'T going to be focusing on training their body to its peak fitness?

Btw.. Druids -cannot- do those things with Ecology or Hunting.

Man, I'd be so overpowered that I'd cry. Darkmoon/Stagcurse + Darts + 2 swords + hound.

And Catapult traps will work quite well in luring people into pits, if not, we can always use gust.