Jump to content

Sharpshooter Thief Kit


Andyr

Recommended Posts

My problem with Marksman was always that it implies a male kit user. A female thief choosing this kit will sound funny...

In the English language, the word 'man' can mean "a human regardless of sex or age; a person", as well as "an adult male human". Okay so we can get mixed up in all this politically correct nonsense, but remember this isn't modern day earth, it's a fantasy world where such things don't exist.

 

BTW that same female thief had better play a race other than human too... :) She'd better not be a dwarf though, as that word is also politically incorrect. :)

Link to comment
My problem with Marksman was always that it implies a male kit user. A female thief choosing this kit will sound funny...

In the English language, the word 'man' can mean "a human regardless of sex or age; a person", as well as "an adult male human". Okay so we can get mixed up in all this politically correct nonsense, but remember this isn't modern day earth, it's a fantasy world where such things don't exist.

 

BTW that same female thief had better play a race other than human too... :) She'd better not be a dwarf though, as that word is also politically incorrect. ;)

well, if anything Faerun is much more politically correct than modern society, with women having equal rights witrh men. It is only logical that marsman and markswomen would exist akin to the modren world fireman and firewoman in the words that have a legible two roots. BTW, when Jinnai first suggested the kit it was called Markswoman. :)

Link to comment

Equal rights and political correctness are very far from being the same thing though :). I certainly support the former, but not the latter - especially when it involves using words such as "marksperson" which don't actually exist in the English language :). "Markswoman" does exist but would obviously be unsuitable for men to use. "Marksman" is gramatically correct for both men and women, and so is the most appropriate word other than some synonym (and I'm using most of those for other kits ;)).

 

BTW there are already a few kits and classes that use the masculine form, e.g. bounty hunter and undead hunter (rather than huntress), beast master (not mistress), the speciality priests (instead of priestess), druid (not druidess), sorcerer (rather than sorcereress), etc. Not to mention that all of the kit and class descriptions use either the neutral or masculine forms, i.e. none of them refer to "her", "she", etc (of course I'm not saying this is a good thing, but to do otherwise would really jar with the existing content).

Link to comment

This is the really annoying thing about the english versions of the game not having access to a dialogf.tlk. Unfortunately this option is not available to us until someone finds the part in bgmain.exe which tells the game to look for one. Until then we will have arguments like these, which tend to become circular and often show up a trans-Atlantic divide in the use of english.

 

I have to mostly agree with NiGHTMARE on the use of masculine words as relates to BG2, for four reasons. First, this is the way it is currently done and, as he stated, we should try to fit in. Second, this is the way the pnp kits are written.

A Note About Pronouns

 

The male pronoun (he, him, his) is used exclusively throughout the second edition of the AD&D game rules. We hope this won't be construed by anyone to be an attempt to exclude females from the game or imply their exclusion. Centuries of use have neutered the male pronoun. In written material it is clear, concise, and familiar. Nothing else is.

I largely agree with this. There are always exceptions, but when someone speaks on a blahman there existence of a blahwoman is not excluded (this is not necessarily the case the other way round). Third, trying to write in a gender neutral way really does sound shite when it is read. Forth, I am a man so am probably biased.

 

There is a hacky solution which involves having both a masculine english and a feminine english translation of the mod. Again, it doesn't really fit well.

 

Anyway, this kit is called Sharpshooter which is nice and gender neutral, which makes me wonder why this little debate is happening in this thread.

Link to comment

I played a lot of The Darkest Day and really lowed the sniper kit there... it was a little janky, tho, as many seem to complain about this kit here as well.

 

Anyway, the way I see a thief archer is someone who comes from the shadows, accuratelly fires a deadly arrow or two, and then disappears/retreats quickly. I think a "sniper" thief should be somewhat like a ranged assassin. Poison, in my opinion, is The Way to go, as it's a lot of a "one shot" thing.

 

To use this theme:

- Ability to poison his/her arrows, pretty much like assassin kit. I'm not sure if it's possible to coat a bow with poison, but creating poisonous arrows would do as well. Just make sure you can create 5 or so arrows with a single click... it was a pain having keep creating arrows for three minutes in TDD. Also, higher levels could

- Ability to cast Shadow door or such, to ensure the thief can escape after the shot

Link to comment

Don't take that shadow door too literally - call it "embrace the shadows" or "thief's withdrawal", whatever to make the thief able to switch scenes without a horde of ogres in his back.

 

Also, an interesting idea (I'm not sure if this can be done, I'm not scripter) would be that the character would get an Enormous bonus to his attack (hit) if the shot was made while in shadows... it would be great to at least somehow bring up that "shot from the dark" theme. Of course, if that kind of "ranged backstab" can't be done, you could always implement some sort of called shot ability... but it doesn't quite fit in with the theme.

 

In my opinion all those "-1 to strength of target" shots are rather useless. Poison arrow or an arrow of feeblemind would do much better. Just make sure you get better arrows as levels go up, or the whole kit will be useless on later levels (as kind of happened in TDD).

Link to comment

OK, I just noticed that you actually can poison bows with Assassin's poison weapon ability... geesh, amazing I had never tried it.

So, wouldn't it make a perfect ability for a sharpshooter thief? Instead of having to spend your life creating arrays (and then stack them, and then move the stack to your quiver...) you could just add the effect to your weapon... make it poison, for example. Higher level abilities could include confusing or stunning "poison".

 

Anyway, I really hope this kit makes it to v2, as this is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for since TDD went down.

Link to comment

Oh, and may I ask what's the use of having two slots in "two-handed weapon style" ? As far as I know, bows get no benefit from it. Or were you thinking that since they've worked with bows for such a long time, using any other 2-handed weapom would become easier?

Maybe getting a couple of slots instead for daggers (think of throwing daggers) would work better.

 

Another idea for that Shadow door ability would be "Quick retreat" ability, which would give the thief haste for 5 or so seconds... just enough to run away from the fireballs.

Or even better, you could make a "Sharpshooting" ability (once again, I'm not sure if this is possible to code) that would give critical hits for a couple of seconds AND the thief would be hasted and/or made invisible after a couple of seconds for safe retreat... sounds good, eh?

 

It would be still nice to have this kit in a mod of its own... just in case someone doesn't want to install some other stuff.

Link to comment

As some of you probably know from IRC, I decided to "bloody do it myself" and started learning the secrets of modding IE games. After three days I had some sort of sharpshooter kit done, but it just wasn't powerful/useful enough, so I decided to tell my experiences here and maybe put some oil into this kit's gears.

If I have time an energy to learn things, I could make an NPC out of all this, but at the moment it doesn't look like it, and it would be just nice to get a decent sharpshooter kit out. Cheers!

 

 

Background:

+ A thief kit, no multi/dual classing

+ Specialized in "hit and run" style ranged combat, concentrating on sneaking near the enemy while their defences are down and firing accuratelly one (or perhaps two) deadly arrows. High specializing with the bow leaves him quite handicapped with the traditional thief skills

+ Must be (half) elf, human or halfling

 

Pros:

+ Gets darn good with shortbow. Maybe even as high as grandmastery?

+ Gets +1 ranged damage and thac0 every now and then

+ Every ranged attack made while invisible has multiplied damage (2x, 3x, 4x, 5x - depending on level)

+ Can use 'Shot from the shadows' innate ability while invisible. This ability lasts three seconds and grows better with levels, eventually adding lots of thac0 and coating the weapon in poison

+ Gets +1 dex

 

Cons:

- Gets only 15 thieving skills on level up

- No backstab multiplier

- Can not be of any good alignment (heck, he's a cruel murderer!)

- gets -1 str and dex

 

 

The main problem I stumbled into was that "ranged backstab". Originally I had 'Shot from the shadows' count as such ability, but when I tested it, I simpy didn't use it that much... the ability would need to trigger "automatically", very much like normal backstabbing. Hope someone could figure out a way to do this.

 

The other thing I noticed to be a Must to have was that poison bow ability. Now, everyone is yelling "Create poison arrows!" ...but in my opinion it causes the same thing as that backstab thing: As you need to "switch" the arrow type for one shot (and then back to your normal arrows), it usually seems to be too much work and the player doesn't bother using it.

Also, having to create the arrows as an innate ability is a pain in the ass as well. I see innate poison weapon ability (like the one Assassin kit has) to be the only option here... and to boost up the idea of the kit here, it should be combined with 'Shot from the shadows' ability, making it possible to take fast and effective surprise attacks. The effects of that 'Shot from the shadows' ability are still a little bit open, but at least thac0 boost and poison should be included... maybe change to stun and invisibility after 5 seconds (!) on high levels?

 

Comments, taunts, anything? Let's get this kit rolling again!

Link to comment

I am against stat modifiers for kits, and I don't think the aligment restriction is necessary - why can't someone who sneaks and shoots be Good aligned? :D Assassins can... Similarly I'd dump the multiclassing and race restrictions.

 

Similarly, I'd like the kit to be able to use any ranged Thief weapon - slings, darts, crossbows as well as bows. I don't think that suggesting the only ranged weapon thieves can get really good with is the shortbow. :D

 

So, at a tentative glance, I'd suggest something similar to this:

 

Pros:

- Up to 3 stars in ranged weapons.

- Gets +1 ranged damage and thac0 every now and then - perhaps.

- Can use 'Shot from the shadows' innate ability. This turns them invisible and gives them thac0 and damage bonuses to their next shot.

 

Cons:

- Gets only 15 thieving skills on level up

- No backstab multiplier

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...