EDIT: Just as a note this has been changed to the newest version.

Marksmanship is a specialization of Hunting that may be taken by Druids or Warriors (However I believe it may be unbalanced in the hands of a Druid so maybe it should just be for Warriors? If there was another specialization for Hunting it could be made that Marksmanship is for Commune warriors and then City Warriors get something else). I incorporated a lot of abilities in Hunting to be helpful to Marksmanship such as the need to find wild animals in order to improve your arrows. Also, campfires play a role in setting your arrows on fire. Anyways, here it is!



Anyways, what do you think? Also, I think it would be better if bows were more damaging and accurate while you are in the room with the target so you don't get into all that Distance Skill vs. Melee Skills everyone else has.

Poisons on an arrow have a 100% chance of coming off the arrow onto your target. However, they can still be shrugged. The balancing factor for this would be that arrows aren't as accurate the farther away your target is. The reason I didn't have them be parried or stancing to have an effect is simply because it's not needed as these arrows really aren't that powerful and it has enough drawbacks with accuracy. Also, basic arrows can be made in WOODCRAFTING in the ARTS skill. Also, harvesting things from animals will give a random amount of items to be able to used on the arrows so you won't have to kill a fish for -every- arrow. Also, if you couldn't tell these tips all stack. So the only different are those arrows with poisons, arrows with cobwebs, and then resin-covered/flaming arrows.

Also, your dexterity score will apply to how accurate all your shots are. Also it wil effect lhow damaging they are if it has its damage source as physical but if the attack is magical then its damage will be modified by intelligence.

EDIT: Remember this post has been -highly- editted so the next few posts applied to how it used to be and may not make as much as sense.

No
poisons should have a chance to come completely off the arrow for every room they go through before hitting the target including when they are fired. Forces people to get closer rather than sitting four rooms away firing various poison arrows at their target. Also I believe warriors are the only ones who really get to use the full range of poisons, everyone else is restricted to specific afflictions.

puncture should be room only, and 1/2 to 1/4 health.

arc shot should fail if the target is parrying head, and everything should strike a body part so that shielding can come into effect

don't stack tips, you've given the ability to do double bleeding with armour piercing. One tip type seems better, i.e armour piercing OR extra bleeding OR better poison chance.

don't like attunement, people without the pathways skill can't even see where they are and suddenly they could be attacked by someone on the other side of the basin?

also writhing when pinned should just remove a random ammount of the arrows rather than having a separate command.

There's no reason to have the poison have a chance of coming off because that would make them crappy compared to SwiftFetish. Also, anyone can envenom weapons with anything as far as I know.

Puncture and Pinshot are in the room only. Puncture doesn't need to have a health restriction since it already has the restriction of the enemy having an arrow in each hand and foot which is hard to achieve.

Arcshot can be stopped by the person going inside/burrowing. Also, maybe have it so they can move a certain number of rooms away from where they are standing to dodge it. I don't understand what you mean by the second part.

I never said they would do double bleeding or anything. The idea is that arrows start off pretty weak and you slowly build them up to become useful. I don't know where you got the idea bleeding is suddenly doubly better or anything. The exact amounts can be easily balanced.

There are hardly any pathways anyways and the enemy would be able to see that the arrow is coming from a pathway. They could add an ability in Discernment that allows people to see pathways so they don't stand by them.

The reason for the PLUCK ARROW command was to make it easier to remove arrows from the body. This would make it harder for the Archer to stack them in order to use Puncture to kill the enemy. The idea I had with it was to use Pitched arrows in conjunction with Pinshot in order to achieve the instant kill.

In Quivers, you said that NOCKing an arrow instantly removed it from your quiver and prepared to fire. There is no way to "prepare to fire" wether or not an arrow is in your quiver.

Oh... um... that's how I wanted it I guess. >_>

I'll change that and I forgot to mention that the first three skills you get automatically when you specialize.

Well swiftfetish costs what... 50 power for the fetish every so many months with half the poisons of warriors also this effectively gives druids Crotamine and the disloyalty(yes we have it with runes but not fetishes)
And have you ever tried to hit someone with Hadrudin via a cudgel?


Still too easy. Gore is 1/4 health and 2 power, There are others which require 1/2 mana and bound or something. With druidry effects pinning would seem far to easy against anyone without a system.


The best defense against arrows if your out in the open is simply to hold a shield above your head, if it uses the parrying weights then you'll only get a 100% chance if you focus only on your head it seems unfair to require someone to fight indoors or burrow so that you can avoid something you should be able to. Also remember sylphs and druid cudgels are supposed to protect people from incomming projectiles.


Then what is the point of having two bleeding tips? Also the only thing similar is fetish grafts which only increase the poisons you can inflict. with the tips you do damage, peirce armor, do increased bleeding AND double doses of poison. peirce someone with four arrows with Crotamine that's eight chances with the death poison, with Chraybdon thats eight random afflictions.


Pathways aren't that hard to get, there was one in serenwilde that people didn't know about that lead to some random place. Also it would be environment if anything.



Pluck arrow would use equilibrium. being bound would most likely prevent you plucking so it's just easier to writhe off the arrow just like when you get a sword through your foot.

I would just like to say, I would assume that shooting them in the line of Sight, would have a chance to miss, per room, and Arcshot should be pretty inaccurate, I would also think that stances would have to play a large part in dodging. Pierce also should have a 50/50 chance of stopping after it hits a target, and alot of those skills need powercosts. Retreat, Truesight, Archshot, Pierce and Puncture at least. Truesight would have to have a large mana drain or endurance drain.

Stances would probably allow you to dodge any arrow that would hit that body part, parrying would allow you have the same chance to block an arrow as a weapon.

The poisons coming off is counterbalanced by the chance for arrows to miss the farther away your target is.



No it's not, i don't know what you don't understand about this. With Gore all you do is GORE if they are below 1/4 health they die. If not, it does other things. This way you have to pin each hand and foot which would be pretty easy for them to escape from. Also, anyone without a system at all would have no chance against a skilled warrior or any other classes. Do you even know what you're talking about?

QUOTE(Saran @ Jul 9 2006, 05:06 AM) 305901

The best defense against arrows if your out in the open is simply to hold a shield above your head, if it uses the parrying weights then you'll only get a 100% chance if you focus only on your head it seems unfair to require someone to fight indoors or burrow so that you can avoid something you should be able to. Also remember sylphs and druid cudgels are supposed to protect people from incomming projectiles.

Yes, if the arrows were actually hitting your head. I never said anywhere they -were- I don't know you pull these random ideas from. Also, as I said before you can burrow, go inside, or maybe even move a few rooms out of the way. I guess you haven't played other games where meteor arrows are almost able to do the same thing and can only be dodged by going inside or burrowing, and guess what it's -not- a problem there.

As to the part about Sylphs...
Sylph Winged sylphs bring your enemies from the sky.
Syntax: FAESUMMON SYLPH
Power: 1 (any)
Faes of the winds and air, a sylph will attempt to pull flying enemies out of
the sky and to the ground.

Obviously you should have noticed that Sylphs don't do that? Pay attention to changes to skills if you're going to act like you know what they do. If I am discussing a skill I thought of with people I hoped that they would be informed on how skills work, apparently that is too much to ask?

Although cudgels do give resistance to projectiles you have to remember they also allow people to not get knocked out of the trees. If this is still the same then they would just add a certain amount of dodge chance against arrows.
Finally, TWIRL CUDGEL will create a shield that will offer some protection against projectile attacks, aswell as make it harder to knock you out of the trees.

QUOTE(Saran @ Jul 9 2006, 05:06 AM) 305901

Then what is the point of having two bleeding tips? Also the only thing similar is fetish grafts which only increase the poisons you can inflict. with the tips you do damage, peirce armor, do increased bleeding AND double doses of poison. peirce someone with four arrows with Crotamine that's eight chances with the death poison, with Chraybdon thats eight random afflictions.

Honestly, I'm not sure you know how to read as I have never mentioned "two bleeding tips." The double doses of poison and extra bleeding -only- come into effect with Pinshot. If you shoot a barbed arrow at someone without Pinshot you won't have to worry about that at all. You really need to learn how to read effectively. Yes, but do you know how long it takes to Pinshot someone in four different places? As pinshot leads into an instakill it will have a fairly long balance recovery time.

QUOTE(Saran @ Jul 9 2006, 05:06 AM) 305901

Pathways aren't that hard to get, there was one in serenwilde that people didn't know about that lead to some random place. Also it would be environment if anything.

Wow, and guess what? You'll probably only get to shoot one arrow through before they shield anyways. It's not a powerful ability it's mainly there to tie in mystic pathways and give it an extra novelty ability that may come in handy if you have a group of archers.

QUOTE(Saran @ Jul 9 2006, 05:06 AM) 305901

Pluck arrow would use equilibrium. being bound would most likely prevent you plucking so it's just easier to writhe off the arrow just like when you get a sword through your foot.

You can only writhe from an arrow if you can't pluck it because both of your hands have been pinned. Maybe you misunderstood but I mean that their hand is pinned, what I mean is the arrow has pierced through their fingers into the palm and into the wrist (usually because they are wielding something).

QUOTE(tenqual @ Jul 9 2006, 09:23 AM) 305918

I would just like to say, I would assume that shooting them in the line of Sight, would have a chance to miss, per room, and Arcshot should be pretty inaccurate, I would also think that stances would have to play a large part in dodging. Pierce also should have a 50/50 chance of stopping after it hits a target, and alot of those skills need powercosts. Retreat, Truesight, Archshot, Pierce and Puncture at least. Truesight would have to have a large mana drain or endurance drain.

Aye, the farther away they are the harder it is too hit them. Arcshot doesn't need to be that inaccurate since it is easily dodged. You can immediately reshield after it breaks yours, go inside, or leave a certain radius of rooms. This make it even worse than meteor arrows in other games. Stances would only protect to dodge against Pinshot since that would already be accurate since it's in the same room. I would agree with Pierce but I don't think it would atcually be very useful since your enemies are all usually in one room instead of a line of rooms. Aye, I agree with the Power costs but as I said at the beginning I'm not very good at determining how much skills should cost power.

You've given double the poisons of the ecology skillset and a 100 percent chance to inflict with them.
Make the poisoning tip a delivery system that gives you the chance but just dipping an arrow in the poison has the chance to wear off. You can still get two hits out of that tip but if you try to fire far away there is a risk.
Yes all you do it gore, IF they are below half health you impale them. And please tell me how are you balancing it out for someone who is sapped, vined, broken armed?


Meteor arrows sound like magic, these are physical arrows. If not the head they are going to strike a body part. It's an area attack available to a single person without a ten power cost and not completely disabled at certain times of the month. Why should it have the ability to hit everything that a coven can. (minimum of five peope with 10 power for every attacker)


I haven't been a wiccan in rl months, and from memory there was a fae that did this. I believe it was sylph, insulting my knowledge of skills will get you nowhere, I acknowledge that my knowledge isn't the best and skills do change.


Yes, whats your point. They help resist projectiles, arrows are projectiles, my point is valid, yours is confusing.


so four balance recoveries, with a fast race, Demesne spam, sap, vines, woah I want this skillset I already have level three balance. I can have Malach attacking, I'll have a totem healing me, sapping would be easy. Get a curse going, load the arrows with a good selection of poisons. Suddenly seems less hard.

Still you writhe off a sword through your foot, you don't just pull it out. It's just simpler


Ok, have you ever seen the moondancer files on covens? They have it set up so they can time all their hits together, if the leader adds a tiny ammount of code they can time it so that they all fire once a circle or pentagram is destroyed. A certain radius works so you convince the gods to code something that works out how many rooms away you can hit without problems about the logical location of rooms (such as being unable to fire to the center of moonlake from the waterfall.


Do you understand that the arrow will have to land somewhere on their body, just like a sword does, but not light a burst of moonlight? If you are holding a shield over it or focusing of avoiding damage to that body part how does it make sense. The actual bodypart could be random outside the room and targeted in the room.

Anyway now for some light reading http://lusternia.ire-community.com/index.p...8882&hl=Archery

just wondering what draw backs are there to choosing this skill?
Ecology has a lot of skills that just aren't that useful, one of the higher ones is apparently a worse version of a lower one. But Transmigration makes up for it.
Dreamweaving is weak if you can't find a place for your body, powerful against some and if the target is over level 80... good luck
Runes... meh
Archery... you don't transmigrate... you get more poisons... you don't get a creature whose death will cause yours... more range...

As your respect for my opinions is so low I'll play dumb

duuh whut is bad bout dis skil set? Y wud ne1 choose d other skils ova dis 1 cept transmigrate? evry skil has sum negativs.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, the drawback is that arrows are not 100% accuracy which
makes it a bigger drawback then just not afflicting with a poison. Also don't forget you can still shrug the
poisons from arrows.



Don't forget that it will do some damage even if they aren't below half health. It's balanced out because
you have to shoot four arrows into them without them curing any and -then- shooting the final arrow to
kill them. This would take the same amount of time as damaging them enough with your cudgel to get them
below 1/4 healt hand then using Gore. it's just two different ways of going about it.



This is because you can't use it for a ranged Waning, ranged Moonburst (which can do decent damage sometimes but this is a problem with magic defence that needs to be sorted out), and also Dark moon at
range. These are much better than damage and one poison. Not too mention a coven of people can hit them
at -least- five times a round compare to this where it's one arrow per round. Not too mention the coven will
-instantly- hit them after the warning message for Rage. However, the enemy will be able to see the arrow
flying up into the air, then aiming toward their location, and -then- it will finally hit them. That's the difference, also the main reason I don't want to include all of the body parts is because it will make archery
a crappy skill. Parrying and stancing should work against warriors because they have the chance of
afflicting you with two poisons and then wounds. The poisons have instant cures and the wounds could have
delayed cures. Allowing parrying and stancing to block against arrows which can only do damage and a
poison, OR web, OR pitched arrows. I just think that it isn't needed since poisoned arrows aren't much of
a threat.



I'm sorry I snapped but it annoys me when people talk about skills when they don't even understand how
other ones work.



I was conceding the point that cudgels will add extra protection against arrows? As to the shield parrying
and such I answered above why I don't think it's needed.



You could use dreamweaving under the same conditions to mess up your opponent and then go for the
kill.




You have to writhe off the sword because the enemy's hand is on the other end that's why you can't just
pull it out, unless you want to grab and pull on the blade . Obviously the -reason- for plucking is so
it becomes a lot harder to laod them up with arrows. Plucking would be much faster than writhing, also if
you had to writhe you could easily screw them up by hitting them with web arrows in between each Pinshot.
i'm having writhing not cure it becuase that would make it -overpowering-.



The reason why it doesn't need to be dodged or parried or whatever is because it is ONE ARROW. This is not
dangerous, added unto that you can just reshield after each arrow shatters it which is even better in this
game since we have unlimited shields. Having shielding, going indoors, and parrying will just make it a
worthless skill.



Yes, but the reason I didn't feel like applying that is because the arrows don't do wounding afflictions and
already have a strong chance to miss. Besides, using that logic I should be able to block your thorns with
my shield since they -have- to be hitting a certain body part. I could also parry your fetishes since they
have to sting or bite or do whatever do a bodypart. I'm just not applying it because it doesn't need to be
applied.



I'm not sure why you showed me that link because that just shows why archery shouldn't be able to do those
types of afflictions from a distance. This game is based around person vs. person in the same room. That's
why this skills strong attacks only work in the same room.


Well, let's see. Obviously you have to spend time searching multiple animals to keep all your arrows in tip
top fighting condition. You accuracy with arrows isn't that great so it's hard to hit people outside of the room.
This makes it worse than Runes and Fetish because they will always hit, not too mention Runes can do more
afflictions. Also, Archery cannot instantly afflict you with two things at once as Fetishes and Runes can. You can only time it to hit around the same time period which you could do with Fetishes and a smudge. You can't embed anything into your demesne to make it stronger like Dreamweaving and Runes can. It doesn't
have any real utility skills whereas Dreamweaving has things like Control and Ecology has Charms.

That good enough?

EDIT: Added some power costs. Also, later I'm going to post this revised skillset since I had some new ideas to change it around.

I'm saying that accuracy should be scaled
in percent something like 100 90-75 75-50 50-25 25-0 to give a declining chance to hit rather than a fifty fifty per room. This way your generally garunteed a hit in adjacent rooms with a margin for error, but four rooms away gets tricky.
Shrugging happens with fetishes, and is a low chance with a skillset without any skills.


Someone with a basic sipper will be able to get around five hits with a cudgel. The difference is that sipping is something you can do on a different balance. Writhing and plucking take/would take actual balance as such stacking ontop of other priorities.


But it's easily combined with such skills
Imagine a script written to time an arrow breaking circle/pent with launching an entire covens burst/kiss
Body


Skills do change and I don't have the will to maintain multiple characters to keep updated with current skills


Ok, getting someone asleep or their aura punctured (requires you to physically go there and them not eat reishi) can be quite hard and we require one or the other to cast any motes so that's all our afflictions. Also some skills can only be cast in physical/dreamform


I always thought of the sword going through the foot and into the ground, also remember you writhe with transfix.


Remember not everyone has great equilibrium, if you have great balance wouldn't it be possible for you to launch a few arrows before the pent/circle can be remade. Also remember we have protection scrolls, distance combat has been toned down before.
I would only concede this if it only hits a circle/pent if one exists. But parrying with a random body part doesn't give any garuntees. Parry all reducing your percents to 14 each.


Fetishes just hit you, they are alive and smaller than a fist or something so that would be nigh impossible to protect. Also shields do offer protection to the body don't they? The splinters from a cugdel explode, some random guy once told me not to play with a stick because it could shatter and a splinter hit my eye (yeah randomness)



Runes do one less, which is replaced by charybdon. there are only a few tips, they have to be made often so power cost would be unfair, the animals would have to produce enough for groups of arrows at a time. These things would be complained about if not implemented.
Fetishes also only do Shyness, Clumsiness, Relapse, Charybdon, Withered Arms, Sensitivity, Dizziness, Chills, Weakness, Sleep, Blindness, Deafness.
I would give sarans wings for disloyalty against an unprepared wiccan.
archery has range over them, if you go with the scaled chances above, anything further than a room is a bonus.
You can't embed anything with Ecology, also embed is restricted to six and cycles through them not hitting with all of them.

Remember you still have hunting with this. That is a utility skillset.

That's what I was thinking, the farther away they are the easier it is for an arrow to miss. I just don't think
it needs the added chance of poisons coming off.



Yes but fetishes always hit, also keep in mind combat is balanced around Omnitrans.



Yes, but it will all revolve around how plucking arrows work. It could just require you to have balance and equilibrium in order to instantly pull it out. Or it would just have a very short balance recovery, that's where
the combat balance would come into play.



Yes, but the person would be able to instantly put up their shield again with better timing than the coven. Also, you could just as easily use moonbeam and constantly break their shield. Besides, keep in mind combat is -not- balanced around teams.



If you have them sapped and vined and all that you described you -would- be physically there. Also, it becomes easier to afflict them as you time your attacks with an embedded blackout. You could time a puncture with the blackout and then load on the motes. Besides if they are sapped and vined they aren't going to prioritize eating reishi.



Yes it does go through the foot into the ground, but my point still stands that you have to writhe from it -because- you can't grab onto it. I'm not sure ransfix has anything to do with this at all and I don't see where you are going with this. I'm saying we need pluck to make Pinshot harder to stack and thus harder to pull off.



Yes but that's the whole point of arcshot, allowing you to continue peppering your opponent with arrows. I don't see why you mentioned protection scrolls at all that has nothing to do with Arcshot...
Also I bring you back to the point that arrows aren't that powerful on their own anyways.



If an enemy saw an arrow flying into the air I would expect they would instantly shield just in case it is heading for them.



Yes but arrows can also be rather small and they "just hit you." Don't forget you can't parry pixie arrows and they "just hit you." I'm just saying in this case combat balance trumps realism. Shields would mitigate damage from arrows, there's just no reason why they should be able to parry them. Arrows aren't that dangerous at all.



Yes, animals produce enough for a few arrows.

Ecology can hit within line of sight as well with Swiftfetish... the only range bonus would be arcshot which is delayed and stopped by other things.

Drawbacks
Prep time - Archery, Runes, Dreamweaving, Ecology
Accuracy - Archery
Poison shrugging - Archery, Ecology
No Defenses - Archery, Runes


Yes but those who have Ecology would have that as well making Archery no better in that regard.

I'm heading to work but you forgot the ammount of skills that are there that people don't use because they aren't always useful.

The runes whose use is needed rarely. (Never had it but I remember a few hexes that were odd)
The dreamweaving skills that require a physical presence (I was refering to distance combat) and the ones which require dreamform.
I always thought swift fetish was adjacent room only for some reason, probably because I never saw it working when someone was in my line of sight but more than a room away. (hrm who can I bug to test it) If thats true.

I'm probably going to add more later

Also, the main use for Runes is for Totems and Statues since its use in combat is extremely underpowered compared to other skills. Everyone knows and agrees that it needs -major- upgrades to be on par with other skills especially when compared to Psionics with Telekinesis or Telepathy.

I'd assume if you were using dreamweaving in a duel or something you would use physical form...

SwiftFetish Your bone fetish can find its target within line of sight.
^Well according to that it should be working for line of sight but it could be buggy or something?

Well, there's always going to be abilities in skills that aren't necessarily useful which is why it's up to the Envoys to hopefully upgrade them so you can use them for combat.

Well I updated the skill and changed it's name to Marksmanship while shuffling around a few abilities and adding new ones. The only thing I'm really concerned about is Pinshot but I'm sure it can be balanced by the amount of balance time it takes to be used.