Ranger Archive

I realize the fate other proposals (some of which are really good) have had in this and other forums, but I'm going to throw this out there anyway just for grins. It's been something in the back of my mind for a while, and only recently matured to the point where I could put it down in a semi-concrete form.

1) To enhance the trapping and possibly cammo skills or rangers, both in terms of the functionality as well as the fun in using those abilities.

2) To provide additional justifications for the ranger skillset as a whole and promote exploration and discovery, which are two ranger trademarks.

The basic idea is animal behavior is often governed largely by smell. If they smell a prey the salivate, if they smell a predator they get scared, if they smell a potential mate they exhibit certain behaviors, and if they smell a rival they may get defensive. Such smells can of course be artifitially manipulated to produce desired effects by someone skilled and knowledgeable to manipulate them. That's where rangers come in.

Traps:

Ranger traps would be changed such that they require some of the same stuff they do now, to give the trap "mass" (i.e. bone, hide, meat, etc) but also contain one of more slots for "musk". My idea is that to the extent there are different trap schematics, those schematics only represent the "dispersal mechanism". In other words:

a) dart: something that delivers the trap to one animal only

b) grenade: something that is thrown and affects a radius around the trap

c) bomb: something that is placed with a timer, and goes off at the location where it was place.

The actual affect that the traps have though, would be completely independent of the delivery mechanism, and could be customized by the ranger (see below).

There would be a new generic object added to the database, namely "animal musk". This musk could be collected from dead animals by rangers. There would be a new radial selection which would be "collect musk".

The properties, and strength,of musk would be dependent on the animal that it was extracted from. For example, musk of a rancor might cause a fearful reaction in effective animals (i.e. "root"). Perhaps musk from something like a angler would have some toxic properties (i.e. poison). Perhaps musk from something like a paralope would cause the animal(s) effected by the trap to become aggressive (i.e. "taunt") and so forth.

There are obviously very complex implementations of this possible (for example making traps designed to have certain effects on very specific animals or being able to mix or stack different musks within the same trap) and much more simplistic implementations (very generic state affects that affect all animals equally).

If such a system were to be implemented, I think it would be best for the ranger skill progression to simply be focused on the +trapping skill mod. So in other words, a novice ranger could extract musk, make a perfectly good trap, and use it very effectively against lower CL animals, but only a master ranger could actually expect to land such a trap with regularity against the mightiest of beasts.

Obviously musk could also be implemented such that it interfaces with the concealment portion of ranger as well, although I honestly haven't given much thought to how that might work, or the pros and cons of it.

I think the musk system would be a fun addition to ranger which would provide a ranger with both additional fun and useful abilities on the pve battle field as well as giving him/her some motivation to run off to far away places and explore solo or with some select friends. In some ways this idea goes against some of the recent notions brought up in the CU (the move away from being reliant on equipment and instead being reliant only on things you earn from grinding skill boxes) but for me at least I suspect it would add to the enjoyment of playing ranger.

Vola Goce - Bounty Hunter/Commando/Hunter
"Doc" Holliday - Smuggler/Combat Medic