Ranger Traps

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Let's talk about how to give Rangers traps. There is a guild that offers in-city traps. Rangers should be shooting stuff, and setting traps for stuff. How can we offer Rangers traps in a manner that is fair to both the PCs and the class?

[Yam]

Pit traps that trap an animal in a small hole. Easily avoided by intelligent humanoids and the smarter animals. Small, unintelligent animals would be caught in them and easy prey for a volley of arrows or rocks.
They could temporarily modify the room like a particular magickal spell does and then you could chase flighty animals into them or lure aggressive animals into them.

Spikes in said pit traps.

Small stonefall traps to capture virtual animals. Snare traps. Et cetera.

Code Select Expand

craft rock stick
You could craft that into a small, stonefall trap.
craft rock stick into a small, stonefall trap
craft trap
You could craft that into a mewling, broken-legged gortok pup.
You could craft that into a dead, red-spotted brown lizard.
You could craft that into a broken-shelled horn beetle.
You could craft that into a writhing sand rat.

Code Select Expand

craft vine stick stone
You could craft that into a looped snare trap.
craft vine stick stone into a looped snare trap
craft trap
You could craft that into a  juvenile jozhal.
You could craft that into a long-tailed desert mouse.
craft trap into a long-tailed desert mouse
craft mouse
You could craft that into a small skin and some stringy meat.

The animals would be objects that could be crafted. Taming could be extended too.

Code Select Expand

craft jozhal
You could craft that into a small, docile jozhal.

That could then be used like the other tamed animal objects.

[brytta.leofa]

Ergh...I love the trap idea, but not the idea of crafting traps into critters.

If we don't have sufficient NPC wildlife to make "actual" trapping work, give traps a random chance per time interval of being filled with a creature (either dead or live an' angry) appropriate for the area.

A trap should be something you create, leave, and recheck periodically. Sitting there and crafting one into a yompar would ruin all kinds of immersion for me.

[Cutthroat]

A simple warning trap that ties a rope along an exit (tripwire) and makes some noise by clattering bones together when tripped. Could do for inside-to-outside exits, or any rooms with a lot of trees.

Another trap that works with a tripwire, but is attached to something large and hanging high, like a log, which swings down when the wire is tripped.

Punji pits would be awesome.

[Sokotra]

Ergh...I love the trap idea, but not the idea of crafting traps into critters.

If we don't have sufficient NPC wildlife to make "actual" trapping work, give traps a random chance per time interval of being filled with a creature (either dead or live an' angry) appropriate for the area.

Yeah, I agree... or have a chance that the trap be filled with the NPC objects that Yam suggested.  Sort of how foraging yields certain edible little critters... these traps might allow you to catch larger ones with various other things you can do with them.

[Yam]

I agree. I just do not know how to code muds and so defaulted to something that would be easy to carry over.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

A simple warning trap that ties a rope along an exit (tripwire) and makes some noise by clattering bones together when tripped. Could do for inside-to-outside exits, or any rooms with a lot of trees.

Another trap that works with a tripwire, but is attached to something large and hanging high, like a log, which swings down when the wire is tripped.

Punji pits would be awesome.

These would be cool, but to be avoided, use scan or dexterity. With scan, the trap would be seen nearly every time and the way could be traversed safely (if seen) by the scanee and his followers. With dexterity, you might see it at the last moment and manage to avoid it, personally.

Pitfalls would also function like this, and could be built in sizes of tiny, small, medium, and large, with corrasponding delays. The sizes would indicate what could and could not fall down the trap. A tiny trap could make a rat fall in it, or a jozhal, but not a halfling. A small trap could trap both the rat and the halfling and small dwarves, but not larger dwarves or humans, and so on and so forth. The exit size would be different, for these traps.

[Tisiphone]

However, pit-traps should have a random SMALL (note, emphasis on SMALL) chance of injuring a person/mount moving through the area, to simulate stepping into a hole and turning an ankle/getting sharpened sticks in the sole of the foot.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

As opposed to trapping them every single time they fail a perception check, or as opposed to ignoring them because the trap is smaller than required to actually trap the beast?

[Dalmeth]

I can simulate all the wonders of traps with half the complication in just one skill.

Let's call it ambush.  A ranger uses it while hidden.  There's an antecedent delay after which you seem to attack like normal, but with with a markedly shorter delay than your average kill command and your target's shield use and parry skills are heavily penalized for a short period of time.

Make the message something like, " Someone springs up and charges toward another someone."  Give it a command emote function that removes that first bit and could go something like this, "Half-running and half-sliding down the shifting, sandy slope of a dune, someone charges toward someone else."

Better.  Much better.  Now we won't have half-assed engineers digging up holes everywhere.

[Is Friday]

Dalmeth's ambush idea could easily be used in conjunction with hide/sneak/shadow.

[Qzzrbl]

These would be cool, but to be avoided, use scan or dexterity. With scan, the trap would be seen nearly every time and the way could be traversed safely (if seen) by the scanee and his followers.

Now here's what I don't like.... Why should this trap be seen nearly every time? What if the ranger was consciously trying to trap another human?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Then craft a trap for a human. I'm asking for ideas here, not posting solutions specifically. A trap for an animal should be the first thing a ranger can make. Trapping humans should branch later. A trap intended for an animal should tend to avoid the path of a human. A trap for a human is more likely to catch a human than an animal.

The scan idea is to give the human a chance to escape the trap, or avoid a trap that isn't intended for his ass.

[Qzzrbl]

Then craft a trap for a human. I'm asking for ideas here, not posting solutions specifically. A trap for an animal should be the first thing a ranger can make. Trapping humans should branch later. A trap intended for an animal should tend to avoid the path of a human. A trap for a human is more likely to catch a human than an animal.

The scan idea is to give the human a chance to escape the trap, or avoid a trap that isn't intended for his ass.

Right-o. I've got a little system as how this could work.... I'll post it up as soon as I put it into words.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Ok, nemesis. 

[Synthesis]

The only thing rangers really need is to have the defense nerf revoked.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

 

[Qzzrbl]

Bah, why not just rig up some flash powder like everyone else? It'll cook the meat too, so you pretty much kill two tregils with one arrow.

[Fnord]

Hmm... thinking out loud:

What is the goal of the trap? It has been discussed that traps would make up for the defense "nerf". So, rangers have sucky defense for a while, but can use a bow something nasty. How about if traps stopped someone from moving for a brief period of time. Maybe enough time to shoot an arrow? Another possibility is a trap that hit for a small amount of damage, but could be poisoned. All traps could be hidden, with a chance to spot them. If spotted they could be disarmed or destroyed... by people with certain skills.

They'd just need to be challenging to make and set, so the world wasn't just littered with traps everywhere.

[Fnord]

Another possibility is let rangers give their mounts orders.

[Synthesis]

Another possibility would be simply to revoke the defense nerf, instead of resorting to a bunch of clunky workarounds for it.

So far, all the suggestions strike me as slightly ridiculous, in that the circumstances under which they would be useful would be so narrow that the addition of the skill would just be tossing a dog a bone to distract him. 

Let's give a class with practically zero defense a skill that takes a lot of preparation to use, takes a long time to get any good at, and has a pretty slim chance of working against anything with half a brain.  Sounds pretty fucking useless, to me.

[X-D]

Actually, the biggest problem I think rangers have is that they have a backwards branching tree.

Meaning, Almost all the skills they branch, really the should start with and and the ones that they start with should be the branched.

If 95% of them were reversed, you all would actually be happy and not so worried about the defense nerf or traps or what have you.

[Synthesis]

Actually, the biggest problem I think rangers have is that they have a backwards branching tree.

Meaning, Almost all the skills they branch, really the should start with and and the ones that they start with should be the branched.

If 95% of them were reversed, you all would actually be happy and not so worried about the defense nerf or traps or what have you.

Ha, yeah.  If they started with parry, I probably wouldn't be bitching about the defense nerf.  Good point.  As for the rest of the skills they branch...not so much.  The ranger skill tree is about the easiest mundane tree to fully branch out, hands down.  Hell, most of them you can apparently branch out without ever even leaving the city to engage in "ranger-like" activities.  I'm not sure how much sense -that- makes, but there you have it.

[Armaddict]

Good lord, man.

[X-D]

That may be true, but not the point.

Without going into the actual tree. There are many things that you can do from the start, but you cannot make the things to do them till you have mastered the first, this is silly and backwards.

Everyone knows rangers have stealth skills, but if you think about the ones you start with and what they branch, well, it makes no sense going that direction either. Going the other direction makes more sense.

Not to mention, you would have to leave the city and do ranger things to make the branches if you switched them around.