Weather...

[Djarjak]

I think the real crux of this debate is the perception that the longevity of the storms (although not necessarily their frequency) is a hinderance to RP in certain areas.

Unfortunately, the only advice I can give until someone decides to revamp the weather is to play somewhere where the weather isn't quite so impacting to your character.

Creating an NPC guide would not be impossible, but might not be feasible for a few reasons. The least of which being wandering monsters. It's still something to consider, but I think everyone would rather see an enterprising player create a PC designed for this purpose to make his 'sid.

[Angela Christine]

The problem with a PC working as a guide is trust.   Everybody will guess that he is a ranger, and from that extrapolate on what other skills the PC has.  

-You have the strong chance that a new guide will have clients that intend to get the guide into a lawless area and then try to kill him.  A single newbie warrior can put a world of hurt on a newbie ranger, as can a small group of any guild.  By the time the ranger is experienced enough that this isn't as much of a threat, he probably has developed other ways of making a living.

-Slightly less likely, but certainly possible, is a warrior or other non-ranger claiming to be a guide with the intention of getting clients out of lawful areas and then killing/robbing them.  The non-ranger will have the problem that his marks might guess he is up to something when he can't walk in a straight line for three rooms in a row.   :wink:

-Then there is the possible of a real ranger guiding people out into the middle of no where, and then extorting extra money by threatening to leave them there if they don't get more.  I read a story where some unethical guides working the pyramids would do this, if the gullible tourist doesn't pay extra they would douse the light and run off.  

All of those are things that could legitimately happen ICly, but I think with PCs they might happen more often than they would among the general population.

[Djarjak]

You should be saying all the same things about an NPC.

Don't think we aren't devious enough to consider something like that, or sadistic enough to do it.

[Lazloth]

Rangers spend their LIVES in the wilderness -- they would make the most effecient scouts or hunters, because they know how the sand shifts - they would what the slight changes in the weather mean.  They spend their time trying to survive, generally.

A warrior, on the other hand, is someone who is conditioned to the art of combat rather the art of survival.  They have probably spent much more of their time thumping someone else's ass than looking for animal scat.

There is a distinction on Armageddon between guild choice and role:  there is nothing which prevents a pickpocket from acting as a House guard, a warrior living as a cook, a ranger entertaining masses with song.  Certain collections of skills will make for a more viable toolkit, but "outdoors navigation" is one of the situations where the model breaks.

The reason that rangers get a greater variety of 'skills' and abilities is because of a lifestyle difference.

A given ranger can live an entire life without once stepping beyond the cityscape, and in another part of Zalanthas, a merchant can reside exclusively within a 3'-square mile patch of silt.  I don't see your argument that restricting this ability as guild-only makes any consistent sense.  Why should someone who (for lack of a more meaningful example) has spent all of her/his life within the confines of, say, the Allanaki bazaar suddenly be able to duck and skirt whipping winds and sand outdoors that s/he never witnessed before?  By that token, where virtually all of a new player's abilities begin at seriously poor levels, why should this affinity be innate?

I enjoy the weather code - I think it's brutal and allows for a real interaction with the world (though certainly could benefit from some attention, like anything else).  What I dislike is how that interaction translates.  [Yes, I would endorse a skill and subguilds with some affinity.]

[Anonymous]

I used to get frustrated about this a lot, but it was always when I wanted to make a hunter, traveller, guide, or raider with badass fighting ability. Both guilds need to make sacrifices and these sacrifices reflect the time each character has spent working on either combat or desert travel in their life up to the time you start to play your PC. I don't think any change is needed. Warriors can still work in the desert and Rangers can still fight in the city. The weather makes it hard, but that's because weather like that DOES make things hard. I believe that anyone who hasn't spent a large portion of their life dealing with desert weather should be totally incapacitated by a storm.

[flaran]

There is a good reason why rangers have this and warriors don't.  If you want to play a character that plans on being out in the wilderness wandering through the storms-- in fact, doing anything that is necessary for your survival that is related to the wilderness, maybe you should have the Ranger class. (Exceptions to this I could think of were miners, salt foragers, and lumberjacks.)