Now I know that there have been a lot of ideas thrown about concerning rangers and that more or less they all get shot down by wise old nepenthes "well they really are tough at hero" comment but you know tough does not mean fun.

My idea for rangers is to allow them at a very high rank conduct a spirit quest. This would be automatic and at a certain rank kind of like specs and legacies. How it would work is the ranger would make his way to a secluded wilderness area and put in the command spirit quest. Now what happens next would be cool if a string of echos would go off like.

You assume a meditative position in the middle of the clearing and do blah blah blah.

as night approaches you suddenly feel yourself loosing consciousness. A lighted tunnel appears before you and at the end of it you see a ferocious bear.

in this case the spirit guide of the ranger would be a bear. It would be cool if there were several different animal spirit guardians and if they differed by terrain. so if you go up in the mountains for your spirit quest you won't neccesarily get the same spirit if you go into the desert. Now this would be a once in a life time thing and the spirit will be permanent.

I see this as giving rangers a cross between a spec and a legacy. I could see some interesting skills being put in for the ranger and maybe even some other effects like if you get the bear your bearcharge works as well in cities as in the wild. or maybe a fox spirit would let you camo on roads. A serpent spirit might give you 2 hits on serpent strike, a falcon might give you a semi useful global locate person. on and on.

This not only would give rangers some more vialble options outside of the wilds at high levels but could bring in another avenue of rp. Those who role play execptionally well could behaps get more skills related to their animal guide.


Now for druids I have to say I love them already and they are deadly as hell but it would be neat if they could pick a homeland where their supps would be stronger and perhaps get some more supps based on it, choices would be, water, swamp, mountain, forest, plains. Perhaps up their CoW and give them more utilitish sups like the whirling simon and swarm of leeches. I think it would be cool if a swamp druid could create a swampy mud pit instead of briars or something like that. this would also give you more branches of roleplay for druids without adding significantly to their power.

>Now I know that there have been a lot of ideas thrown about
>concerning rangers and that more or less they all get shot
>down by wise old nepenthes "well they really are tough at
>hero" comment but you know tough does not mean fun.

If you're going to quote me, at least get it right.

I've said a bazillion times that I think rangers are tough as hell at all levels, including hero range. I still stand by that.

I also always add in the same breath that I think that they're a relatively uninteresting/boring class with no specialization and fewer tactical options, compared to several other classes on CF.

If you think I'm shooting down ideas by saying that, you either aren't reading my posts closely enough or you're seeing what you want to see regardless of what's actually there.

Well, touching on his post...are there any changes in line in the near future being worked on for rangers?

Its like watching forum paparazzi. Doing anything they can to get dribbles of whats coming. ;)

I love my surprises, and as much as I want to find out too - I'd rather it be a big one on the day rather than dribble info. Like a big tasty burger instead of a few bits of bread, a salad and some beef. Just sit back, relax and trust that they're on it. I certainly do.

Yhorian.

I didn't mean to say your a ranger basher, there was a bit of sarcasm in there that doesn't come through as much in text. I agree rangers are strong at most ranks in fact I would go so far as to say I have not seen any ranger truly take advatage of their strengths yet.

I think they need diversification I think this could add diversification without creating a momentus power shift.

I could expand and elaborate on this for hours. I really like the direction.

I could see the spirit guides easily like legacies. They are the warriors of the woods ;)

I would be hesitant to give them city abilities though. They rock in the woods and suck in the city. I wouldnt want them nerfed in the woods so, personally, I wouldn't want to change that aspect.

But a legacy-type thing and/or some more skills would really rock. Not having anything from 40 to hero doesnt really add much of a drive to try and rank past 40.