I sent this as an email a few times over the course of two months to Sebeok then a couple of times to Sebeok, Daevryn, and Zulgh over the course of another two months. Never got a real reply regarding it so I'll just post them here now.

Ingredients suggestions -

* There is an ingredient as a crude stone bola. Currently this is a knock-out trap ingredient, which honestly makes no sense given the echo for setting knock-out traps. It involves setting a bladder full of a fine powder. This fits for the other KO ingredients like the opium, spores, and tar but not a bola. I'm sure all of you know what a bola is. So my suggestion is that this ingredient become a damage trap ingredient and it causes earthbind on anyone who springs it. There is also one called sleeping darts or something similar. Same thing, how do victims inhale a bladder full of fine powder from sleeping darts?

Skill suggestions -

* Weapontrip is currently the most useless skill in a trapper thief's repetoire. It's not as though this is an optional skill that a thief can choose not to practice. It is a requirement if someone wants to go the full trapper path. Perhaps it can be re-evaluated? At first glance and from reading the helpfile it sounds useful but it is actually not. The reasons for this are is that:
a) Bash protection stops it. I.e. control translucence, post-36 wraithform, protective shield, armor of thorns, shield of air, etc.
b) Flight reduces the amount of lag the target suffers from 2 rounds to 1 round while the thief is lagged for 2 rounds if it hits or 3 rounds if it misses. Bash protection counts as a miss. Armor of Thorns counts as a miss and you take damage.
c) Because of (a) and (b) it is more strategically sound to use trip over weapontrip in any situation. Trip isn't stopped by bash protection. It lags the victim and the thief for two rounds on a successful it. It lags the thief for only one round on a miss.
d) It has a low success rate on top of all the other flaws associated with it.

* Would it be possible to reduce the time on setting traps across all levels by one tick? Trappers are entirely dependant on traps. In spontaenous situations where there is not enough time beforehand to prepare multiple traps for opponents trappers are effectively screwed for 2 hours (3 ticks) at hero. This has happened to me numerous times where my character is left in the lurch because I can't set any more traps for 2 hours game time against various opponents. All I'm requesting is that it become a two tick period at hero and a similar reduction in time for all levels below. Maybe this will also assist in making playing a trapper more viable. Since as it is now unless you camp somewhere (Like at the Spire outer or Eastern Road) you know someone is going to pass it's tough really make full potential of a trapper. Given the low success rate of knock-out traps. Or it could be that I just sucked badly over the course of 700 hours.

* Last thing, whoever came up with the idea to make it so that if a trapper failed setting a glowing trap they would have two timers is a genius. That really annoyed me when if I failed to set a glowing trap properly I couldn't set another one for five hours because of the glowing trap timer. Which made no sense. The new way which involves the glowing trap timer being normal and a faerie fire (skill) timer works much better. I hope the same was done for knock-out traps. I.e. there is a knock-out trap timer and a sleep (skill) timer if a trapper accidentally put themself to sleep.

Thank you for you time and consideration in these suggestions ideas. I would really appreciate if there was a response on whether or not this would be doable or if I'm just wasting my time

>
>* There is an ingredient as a crude stone bola. Currently this
>is a knock-out trap ingredient, which honestly makes no sense
>given the echo for setting knock-out traps. It involves
>setting a bladder full of a fine powder. This fits for the
>other KO ingredients like the opium, spores, and tar but not a
>bola. I'm sure all of you know what a bola is. So my
>suggestion is that this ingredient become a damage trap
>ingredient and it causes earthbind on anyone who springs it.
>There is also one called sleeping darts or something similar.
>Same thing, how do victims inhale a bladder full of fine
>powder from sleeping darts?

I changed the bola to do damage instead of sleep, and changed what the "whip" type of damage trap does. It's not earthbind, sorry. I also changed the sleeping darts to reflect the powdered requirement.

>
>Skill suggestions -
>
>* Weapontrip is currently the most useless skill in a trapper
>thief's repetoire. It's not as though this is an optional
>skill that a thief can choose not to practice. It is a
>requirement if someone wants to go the full trapper path.
>Perhaps it can be re-evaluated? At first glance and from
>reading the helpfile it sounds useful but it is actually not.
>The reasons for this are is that:
> a) Bash protection stops it. I.e. control translucence,
>post-36 wraithform, protective shield, armor of thorns, shield
>of air, etc.
> b) Flight reduces the amount of lag the target suffers
>from 2 rounds to 1 round while the thief is lagged for 2
>rounds if it hits or 3 rounds if it misses. Bash protection
>counts as a miss. Armor of Thorns counts as a miss and you
>take damage.
> c) Because of (a) and (b) it is more strategically sound
>to use trip over weapontrip in any situation. Trip isn't
>stopped by bash protection. It lags the victim and the thief
>for two rounds on a successful it. It lags the thief for only
>one round on a miss.
> d) It has a low success rate on top of all the other flaws
>associated with it.
>

It doesn't lag for 3 rounds if you miss, so I don't know where you're getting that. It could be it used to, but it didn't when I looked at the code just now. I gave it a small chance to avoid bash protection and I upped the base chance slightly. There was a bug that I fixed as well which may or may not hurt/help your base chance slightly.



>* Would it be possible to reduce the time on setting traps
>across all levels by one tick? Trappers are entirely dependant
>on traps. In spontaenous situations where there is not enough
>time beforehand to prepare multiple traps for opponents
>trappers are effectively screwed for 2 hours (3 ticks) at
>hero. This has happened to me numerous times where my
>character is left in the lurch because I can't set any more
>traps for 2 hours game time against various opponents. All I'm
>requesting is that it become a two tick period at hero and a
>similar reduction in time for all levels below. Maybe this
>will also assist in making playing a trapper more viable.
>Since as it is now unless you camp somewhere (Like at the
>Spire outer or Eastern Road) you know someone is going to pass
>it's tough really make full potential of a trapper. Given the
>low success rate of knock-out traps. Or it could be that I
>just sucked badly over the course of 700 hours.
>

I lowered the Maximum re-use timer significantly and reduced the minimum re-use timer (at hero) by one.

I fixed a handful of your issues and replied to you in that regard, but that was quite a while back. My CF time has been zero and today was the first time I even touched the code in probably four months.

It is on my list to look at though... maybe today, depending on how sick I feel and how much real work I have to do.

Underneath about a dozen other things I've prioritized higher. While I was involved with the overhaul of the thieves guild, I had almost nothing to do with the code for Trappers and have never had a chance to play one to even evaluate the class.