Any mod that makes ranger tracking not useless?

[Morgoth]

I think that tracking giving a passive bonus while outdoors would be a fitting perk. Wouldn't it?

[pete_smith1229]

I think it should give a racial bonus based on the enemies in the area.

Could be explained by the ranger being better prepared to face enemies identifed through tracking.

But I dont know if there are mods which changed the tracking ability.

[Trouveur80]

Artisan's Kitpack ranger overhaul modifies tracking. 

[subtledoctor]

23 hours ago, Trouveur80 said:

Artisan's Kitpack ranger overhaul modifies tracking. 

Does it? From what I see on the webpage all it does is give the tracking ability to rangers early. Pretty much the same as two or three other mods.

I'm not sure what would make it good, or whether it's worth the effort? My approach is, let it be what it is, and focus on giving rangers other goodies.

I suppose it could make sense to make it, like, an ability to cast Clairvoyance at will? Like, rangers can get the lay of the land? That would actually be a cool little convenience reward for having a ranger in your party... hmm...

Edited September 25, 2023 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

The thing about implementing a bonus active while outdoors is that it may be difficult to gatekeep and ensure that it can't be used while just outside an entrance to some underground area where enemies lurk, and persist for the battle ahead. Area type is something detectable by scripting and by spell header field, not by any particular stat on a creature.

What kind of buffs do you think rangers should get outdoors through tracking?

• Backstab immunity?
• Bonus to attack speed factor?
• Bonus to hide in shadows/move silently?

Those are all justifiable by AD&D standards, it makes sense that a ranger's better at hiding in a forest than an urbanite thief. All a bit weak for a situational HLA though.

I think every warrior passes on War Cry though, and most on Magic Resistance since it's a set percentage although in vanilla game it can be stacked with a potion of Magic Protection for 100%.

There's one other mod that replaces tracking and various other HLAs, Improved Anvil, it's most probably not what you're looking for though.

[guyudennis]

What the unreleased KR did in this regard was pretty cool in my opinion: instead of giving text descriptions of a particular map, it functioned as non-magical detect invisibility at the cost of movement rate.

[subtledoctor]

That’s an interesting idea; have Tracking give rangers op193 invisibility detection. This would remove the 4-point attack penalty against improved invisible opponents, which I like - the idea would be, rangers are better at noticing footprints/movement/sounds to better target invisible mobs. This is cool!

But, it would not let them see fully invisible opponents unless it was paired with a blast of op136, but that would let others see the invisible target as well unless paired with my invisibility overhaul. That’s not great. 

(Of course my own ranger improvement mod is instructed to install after my invisibility overhaul, so I could make it a conditional thing. Hm, I just started a game, maybe I’ll apply something like this and see how it plays. I’m thinking, you use the Tracking ability and you suffer one round of immobility and then get ~5 rounds of invisibility detection? (Should it just be no movement but still allow attacks?, or should it be more extreme, like using op165 to fully paralyze the ranger for a few seconds?)

[Trouveur80]

On 9/25/2023 at 3:49 AM, subtledoctor said:

Does it? From what I see on the webpage all it does is give the tracking ability to rangers early. Pretty much the same as two or three other mods.

I'm not sure what would make it good, or whether it's worth the effort? My approach is, let it be what it is, and focus on giving rangers other goodies.

I suppose it could make sense to make it, like, an ability to cast Clairvoyance at will? Like, rangers can get the lay of the land? That would actually be a cool little convenience reward for having a ranger in your party... hmm...

Yes, it's a recent change :

"I'm testing something different. I think my version of ranger Tracking has potential, but it's a bit annoying to use so I changed it to modal instead. So the ranger can persistently keep track of enemies in the visible fog of war, which lets them scout forward with stealth, back away and show exactly where enemies are. Even though you can see the enemies in fog, you're still limited to your own visual range when it comes to attacking."

Quote from Artisan's Discord 

[subtledoctor]

So, I was going to mess with this ability in my current game, to test possible improvements, and I noticed that SPCL922 already casts a subspell that applies op116 invisibility detection! Thanks the Revised HLAs in the Refinements mod. 

So if you install Refinements + Might & Guile (or Refinements + one of the other mods that gives Tracking earlier) then you already have something more useful than the vanilla ability. A Christmas miracle! 

Edited December 27, 2023 by subtledoctor

[CamDawg]

@Lava was kind enough to write IWD-style area descriptions for all of the BG areas, so IWDification will be making it an at-will, level 1 ability as of the next version. I've also added a component to Tweaks that will use Tracking automatically in any area with non-default tracking information available.

[testlum]

That sounds fantastic!