Kit Revisions (Rangers)

[kreso]

...........it's a slightly more armored ranged kensai with KR's Called Shots - need I say more?).

[kreso]

My toughts on rangers

Stalker

Well, the in-game description is wrong...they can backstab from level 1 and I wouldn't change that. There's no reason to give them backstab at 5th.

I would limit their multiplier to 4. It's enough, 5 is basically thief territory. I would, however, grant them x3 multiplier at level 8, not 9, so they can enjoy these benefits in BG1.

x4 at level 16.

level 19 - permanent non-detection

Some new spells/abilities:

As already suggested, True Strike, Invisibility, imp.Invisibility, I'm fine with them getting Haste as well. All as innate abilities, no druid spellcasting for them.

Weapons - as per thief seems ok.

Shields - at least bucklers (if thieves can, why not rangers?!), I'd opt even for small shields as well. I see very little point in dual-wielding Stalkers, since you can't backstab with your off-hand and after your invisibilty is gone you'll want some protection. In addition, it would help within BG1. Further enhancements could be done via HLA's.

I'm in favour of keeping this kit much like vanilla. I liked it.

 

Archer

Suggestioned tweaks (Called Shots, no spellcasting) seem fine. Will probably be a bit OP in BG1, but it's true for anything with *** and above in ranged weaponry and 18+ Dex score. In addition, he can use stealth to negate Called Shot THAC0 penalty completely. Ummm...he really might be OP in BG1.

Am not sure, overall.

 

Beastmaster

I am not sure why he could use druidic weapons, tbh. Scimitar? I can understand daggers/spears/bows/axes/staff/club/sling - and imo, that should be it. It's a man from wood spending his life with animals, and I don't see how you can use something such as this in wood, nor any use for it in such enviroment. It is a ceremonial druid weapon, but BM isn't a druid.

I would give him nature armor, yes (Wyvern scale, Ankheg, Dragon).

As for abilities...this kit needs serious improvements.

Basically, I'd focus him onbuffs and weak, but numerous summons (or Animal Companion, but I don't know the exact idea or how this is supposed to be implemented).

 

True Ranger

I'm for keeping it simple. Medium armor to distinguish himself a bit from kits, customized book (as Paladins), a bit more melee oriented.

[Lawlight]

True Ranger

If not dualclassed to druid this class was really underpowered in vanilla. He needs some serious love imo.

EDIT: "Underpowerd" may be a bit harsh, but the class was at least unappealing in comparison to both it's own kits and warriors in general...

 

Archer

Besides Call Shots there is not much to add here. It'd be cool if he could craft his own arrows though.

But basically, balancing is the main problem here.

 

Stalker

Just hate this kit. It's overlapping with Fighter/Thief is beyond good and evil. But you succeeded with Barbarians & Berserkers - I believe in you!

 

Beastmaster

I am not sure why he could use druidic weapons, tbh. Scimitar? I can understand daggers/spears/bows/axes/staff/club/sling - and imo, that should be it. It's a man from wood spending his life with animals, and I don't see how you can use something such as this in wood, nor any use for it in such enviroment. It is a ceremonial druid weapon, but BM isn't a druid.

I would give him nature armor, yes (Wyvern scale, Ankheg, Dragon).

As for abilities...this kit needs serious improvements.

Basically, I'd focus him onbuffs and weak, but numerous summons (or Animal Companion, but I don't know the exact idea or how this is supposed to be implemented).

 

I agree on the weapon and armor part. Imo Beastmasters should be limited to weapons he could easily craft himself like axes, clubs, spears, daggers, darts, bows, quarterstaffs and slings.

He should be restricted to nature armor, yes. Other drawbacks could be a charisma penalty (not a real disadvantage within BG, but they really are natural outsiders...) and a shock state when his companion dies.

 

I'd focus on the Animal Comanion part instead, like Pathfinder's (3rd party) Beastmaster. AD&D allowed him to summon a horde of animals, yes, but it took him a week to gather his horde and it happend only once per year for great purposes.

Anyway, I think summoning spells don't fit the class in general.

Battle Roar and Greater Battle Roar could be appealing abilities. I don't know if Bond of Blood is implementable in a fashionable way.

As a HA it might even be conceivable that he gets a second permanent companion. Other things I could imagine are things like animal instincts or even immunity to blindness (because he can look through the eyes of his companion).

The big question is how to handle the death of a companion and the "getting a new one" part.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Lawlight

[kreso]

Stalker

Just hate this kit.

Are you saying you don't like Valygar?!

Not even for his epic banters?!!!

Valygar: "What is your opinion on magic?"

CHARNAME :"Magic is evil."

Valygar: "Yeah. Enough talk for one day. Let's get going."

Epic....

[Lawlight]

Are you saying you don't like Valygar?!

Not even for his epic banters?!!!

Valygar: "What is your opinion on magic?"

CHARNAME :"Magic is evil."

Valygar: "Yeah. Enough talk for one day. Let's get going."

Epic....

Yeah... Awesome...

 

Stalker

Just hate this kit. It's overlapping with the Stalker is beyond good and evil. But you succeeded with Barbarians & Berserkers - I believe in you.

Uhm. I meant to say: overlapping with Fighter/Thief.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Lawlight

[lynx]

Maybe bring back the feralan instead? Divine remix already has one too.

[Lawlight]

Yet another class with a rage like ability (Feral Rage). No offense meant, but no thanks. I think it's against KR's philosophy anyways...

And I can't think of any good way to explain how charname could've become a feralan...

 

As for Divine Remix' Feralan (no offense meant again):

- Can only be proficient with [...] katanas [...]

Stopped reading here...

Edited June 28, 2013 by Lawlight

[kreso]

Yet another class with a rage like ability (Feral Rage). No offense meant, but no thanks. I think it's against KR's philosophy anyways...

And I can't think of any good way to explain how charname could've become a feralan...

Dumped in woods, Gorion found him, yet he remained true to his wild-natured spirit.

As for Divine Remix' Feralan (no offense meant again):

- Can only be proficient with [...] katanas [...]

Stopped reading here...

They somehow grew on trees!

Jokes aside, I'm all for keeping KR to vanilla kits.

[Lawlight]

Dumped in woods, Gorion found him, yet he remained true to his wild-natured spirit.

+10 for creativity

 

But you have to admit that Valygar would be an appropriate candidat for a feralan kit, at least in term of his sincere, amiable and sunny personality...

 

Stalker

Jokes aside, imo the Stalker should outshine every other class/kit in term of stealth. He is the best candidate for a 'hide in combat' feature. Something like:

- SHADOW STEP: The Stalker can instantly "teleport" to any place within 15? yards of his sight and immediately becomes invisible

- and/or a passive ability with a small (on hit) chance to become invisible

 

As already suggested, True Strike, Invisibility, imp.Invisibility, I'm fine with them getting Haste as well. All as innate abilities, no druid spellcasting for them.

Agree on the 'no druid spellcasting' part. I'd love to see these generic arcane spells replaced with a "unique" set of abilities instead.

 

permanent non-detection

Like that.

 

Other:

Maybe even two points in one-handed weapon fighting style at first level.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Lawlight

[Grammarsalad]

Charm Animal/Animal Empathy

 

Perhaps you've thought of this but why not let this have a chance--with a bonus to save, say--to affect monstrous animal-like creatures like Ankhegs and Carrion Crawlers.

[kreso]

Stalker

Jokes aside, imo the Stalker should outshine every other class/kit in term of stealth. He is the best candidate for a 'hide in combat' feature. Something like:

- SHADOW STEP: The Stalker can instantly "teleport" to any place within 15? yards of his sight and immediately becomes invisible

- and/or a passive ability with a small (on hit) chance to become invisible

Shadow step - I fear abuse with this, and does seem monk-like. On the other hand, he should have at least 1 decent and powerful feature besides backstab, otherwise an Asassin with 3 Rings of Invisibility and 200+ Potions of invisibility will completely outshine him in BG2

Invisibility per hit - this is a weapon feature imo.

Altough, I completely agree with your stealth remark. In PnP, this class is considered a loner (heavily penalized in terms of party members), and enemies are very prone of killing him if he gets cought - he's quite hated. Given that these things don't matter in BG, perhaps add some kind of a bonus (like movement speed aka scouting, +x THAC0 and damage etc.) if he's x feet away from nearest party member?

 

Other:

Maybe even two points in one-handed weapon fighting style at first level.

This would be a nice change, however, given that Ranger bonuses are hardocoded I fear giving them 4 free pips is too much.

[Demivrgvs]

I won't use quotes to avoid huge wall of texts but thanks for sharing your ideas guys.

 

True Ranger

Overall, I'd say this class doesn't need heavy refinements, but a lot of small ones. Within BG1 I think this class already is extremely good even without new entries, whereas it surely needs something at levels 9+ to keep up with other classes.

 

Level 1: it gets Stealth, Two-weapon fighting style (++), Racial Enemy and Charm Animal.

 

They get too much imo, but my only real complain here is that damn hardcoded 2 weapon style for free, because Charm Animal (or Wild Empathy) is situational at best, Racial Enemy is kinda meh the way it works here, and Stealth at level 1 is still not developed enough. I thought about limiting the class to medium armors as per 3E, but I don't care so much because if you want to use Stealth you are forced to dump heavy armors anyway, even with IR. Compared to a True Fighter they are clearly superior at level 1, but at least KR's Fighter has got Offensive and Defensive Stances to slightly reduce the gap, and having moved the +1/2 apr to Mastery allows Fighters to at least regain the advantage in terms of combat skills at level 3.

I'd love to completely get rid of the current Racial Enemy system (it's really bad imo) and implement a more widely usable one (e.g. a classic ranger should get bonuses vs goblins, kobolds, gnolls, and ogres - not just one of them) or something similar to D&D Next. Anyway, afaik I can do nothing about it.

 

Level 2: this is where I planned to put Tracking skill.

 

Levels 3, 6, 9: for a while I thought to put here Herbalism (create Antidote and Potion of Healing), but then I realized that for a ranger with spellcasting abilities this is a really redundant feat. A very small progression to a supposedly re-worked favored enemy system would fit these levels too, but I fear my hands are tied.

 

Levels 4, 8, 12, 16: Divine Spellcasting. I'd dare to call it Nature's Bond, Primal Spellcasting or something like that to differentiate it from paladin/cleric spells, but this is marginal. The good news is that we can have a unique spellbook, removing spells which are supposed to be druid-only and maybe even adding a bunch of ranger-only ones (e.g. Longstrider, Snare, etc.). At levels 6, 10, 14, 18 you get +1 spell slot to currently known spell levels.

 

Level 5: Woodland Stride fits here imo. A first simple solution for it could be something like immunity to entangle, but in the future I can refine it when SR will add things like Spike Growth.

 

Levels 10+: from here the class progression starts to feel really empty. For this level in particular I don't know what to do, perhaps an upgrade to tracking skill, like Swift Tracker.

 

Level 11, 14, 17: I wanted to suggest adding Quarry ability at level 11. The problem is that I accidentally implemented it ages ago in the form of the 2nd level spell Know Opponent, and thus if we want it to matter I either have to remove that spell or at least remove it from ranger's spellbook.

 

Level 15: we could put here 1/day Evasion HLA considering 3E Ranger gets Improved Evasion at level 16.

 

 

Archer

The least changed ranger kit. Even if I'm slowing down hit/dmg progression and removing spellcasting this class is a powerhouse imo.

 

Levels 1, 4, 8, 12, 16: gives up armor, melee specialization (++) and spells, in favor of +1hit/dmg with bows ever 4 levels and KR's Called Shots limited to ranged attacks.

 

Levels 3, 6, 9: mastery, high mastery and grandmastery with bows. Nuff said.

 

Levels 11, 14, 17: considering Pathfinder's Archer already is almost identical to our kit, I'd add Evasive Archer (increased AC vs. missiles).

 

 

Beast Master

This is the only kit which I haven't touched at all till now. The idea was to give him a powerful Animal Companion - initially I'd stick with a panther because it shares the stealth ability - and to remove standard spellcasting in favor of innate summoning abilities.

 

In terms of weapons and armors they'll share druid ones (aka even heavy armors as long as they are of natural sources). Not sure what to do about scimitars, but you guys have a point about them making little sense.

 

Just to answer about the Feralan: I'm not interested in adding one more Rage based class, and if we wanted to, Animal Rage feat could easily fit this kit (actually, something similar is indeed almost mandatory for both the master and his companion when one or the other dies).

 

 

Stalker

I thought this would have been uber easy, but it's not, at least if we want him to look unique and not just a lesser Fighter/Thief, or a Bounty Hunter with worse backstab and better thac0/damage. The key to make this class unique are spell-like stealth/hunting oriented abilities imo, as they are the only thing it does not share with the above mentioned classes.

We have two routes:

1) Herbalism + stealth oriented innate abilities

2) keep divine spellcasting

Despite my dislike of it, pretty much all the new abilities I wanted to implement as innates can be implemented as PnP spells (e.g. Camouflage, Hunter's Eye, Non-Detection), thus both solutions should be viable.

[leania]

Stalker

I thought this would have been uber easy, but it's not, at least if we want him to look unique and not just a lesser Fighter/Thief, or a Bounty Hunter with worse backstab and better thac0/damage. The key to make this class unique are spell-like stealth/hunting oriented abilities imo, as they are the only thing it does not share with the above mentioned classes.

We have two routes:

1) Herbalism + stealth oriented innate abilities

2) keep divine spellcasting

Despite my dislike of it, pretty much all the new abilities I wanted to implement as innates can be implemented as PnP spells (e.g. Camouflage, Hunter's Eye, Non-Detection), thus both solutions should be viable.

 

I personally don't like the Stalker's backstabbing ability because I think this ability makes this kit redundant. Despite of their special spell casting abilities in vanilla, I've barely felt that this kit is good as much as F/T.

 

The Stalker would be specialized kit for tracking and hiding, but not killing someone imo. Invisibility-like ability would give Stalker more chance to hide so that it would be differentiated feature comparing to Thieves because they can only hide in shadows from out of visions of enemies. Instead of backstabbing ability, I'd rather say some additional damage or effect is enough for Stalker when he attacks from the invisible status.

[Kalindor]

The Stalker as currently proposed has increased movement rate, a bonus to stealth, the ability to cast some arcane spells, and backstab. He is definitely differentiated enough from a Ranger IMO. If you are worried about him overlapping with Fighter/Thief, then you could capitalize on the part of his description that reads "Stalkers serve as spies, informants, and scouts." You could translate this into a larger sight radius, if that is doable. Improved Tracking and Non-Detection are also options.

 

*Edit: Evasion is also an option, but you have that on the True Ranger right now.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Kalindor

[kreso]

Stalker is a very powerful kit in vanilla game. In vanilla BG1 (Tutu or BGT), I'd dare to say that apart from Asassin, Cavalier, and Berserker/Barbarian, he's your best bet for a no-reload game.

Backstab x2 from level 1, exellent THAC0 progression, Stealth, 1d10 HP + constitution bonus - what's not to like? Due to high HP he can fight hand to hand as well.

Stealth feature is by itself very powerful.

At higher levels, backstab x4 + Critical Strike HLA usually means dead enemy.

He's not as good as f/t multiclass, but that's a game issue, no single class is as good as multi/duals apart from Bards and Sorcerers, and to a much lesser extent Paladins.