Shattered Kingdoms

I had some ideas on how to tweak scouts.

Remove staff, whip, sword.

Add bow training (just a generic name for the skill, come up with something fancy later) as a novice skill.
point blank shot at j-man
mystical arrow at master.
tweak rapid shot.

What bow training does is allows the scout to receive a bonus to the distance he can and shoot bows by one room. At master level the scout can see two extra rooms away and shoot. He can also see two wilderness rooms away provided he is not in a forest; he will still only be able to ambush one wilderness room away though. So essentially the scout will start out seeing 5 rooms instead of the current max of 4 and later he can see 6 rooms.

In addition to this it allows a combat perk for the scout position wise. As long as the scout is using a bow and not a melee weapon he can position himself on the third rank with nothing on the second rank between him and his pet or player on the front row. However, to do this the pc/npc in front of him has to be at least two sizes larger than the scout to keep the scout from being flanked.

so a possible group for some scouts would look like

1:1 gorilla 1:2------- 1:3 human merc
2: 1 ------- 2:2------- 2:3 --------
3:1 human scout 3:2 ------- 3:3 sprite scout

point blank shot - This allows the scout to do extra damage to targets closer to them with arrows. Mechanically arrows would do double damage to targets in the same room as the scout. Rooms directly adjacent would do 1.5x damage. After that its normal damage. This does not stack with ambush and it can not be used in adjacent wilderness rooms. In the same wilderness room you would only do 1.5x damage.

Rapid shot tweak - The scout has become so proficient with the bow that he can shoot far faster than normal. Essentially, in addition to what rapid shot already does, the scout will be able to shoot extra arrows in between rounds of combat that can not be dodged or shield blocked, though armor effects them normally. They can not be dodged or shield blocked due to the fact that they are coming so fast at the target, they do not have time to react. Cabal skills which allow for arrows to be blocked or their damage asorbed do still apply however.

When learned at expert the scout has a chance of shooting one arrow in between combat rounds. At master he has the chance of two. Essentially it works like specialization speed, only between rounds. It would max out at two except for sprites, who could shoot 3 arrows in between rounds at gm. This however costs mana. The scout can toggle rapid on and rapid off. Rapid off will still let them perform the normal rapid shot skill already in place, rapid on will automatically spend the mana needed to shoot arrows in between rounds. I'm thinking a normal scout with clever wisdom would spend about 2% mana an arrow. I also think it should be a dex based skill. Meaning that if your dex is under 19 you will not get any extra attacks between rounds and your dex has to be at least 23 to get 2 attacks. Sprites get 3 attacks between rounds when their dex is 25 due to the natural speed of the race.


Mystical arrow - master level scouts become able to instill each arrow with arcana energy. The scout can choose to spend mana to give each arrow they fire a magical energy attack type. The list would be something like flaming bite, shocking bite, freezing bite, light, negative energy, sonic, shocking bite, and deadly wrath. It takes mental energy to instill these arrows with power. The scout chooses the damage type upon activating the skill and may change the attack type at any time or cease imbuing arrows with energy.

I'm thinking it would take a regular scout with clever wisdom something like 7-8% per arrow fired and it works in conjunction with rapid shot as well, meaning the arrows fired between rounds would have these properties too.

Double bow damage in the same room, plus extra undodgable shots, plus using enemy weaknesses? Being impervious to reach weapons while behind a giant pet?

This is a little more than a tweak.

I am greatly in favor of a boost, big or small, for scouts. What you are suggesting is as if a major overhaul of the whole range combat system. Range combat already bypasses sanctuary and shield. It is also very difficult to get away from a skilled hunter who uses skirmish well.

If nothing else, perhaps a re-work of the herbs and herbal system would be appreciated. It has come up many times in the past.

admittedly mystical arrow is a bit overpowered. I'd personally just like to see the range added as well as the rapid shot change. The rest were just interesting ideas to toy with.

Scouts are fine. If Dulrik decides they need a boost, he could simply give them staves back instead of spending time coding and debugging new skills, which may or may not be overpowered.

I consider the usage of any attack from adjacent rooms in a game with no graphics a bad idea. It is a rather unfair fight for the defender in every case since the attacker can just skirmish and automatically hit his target, while the defender might die before he even realise he was attacked. This happened to me more than enough times when I had a really bad connection.

Maybe all these could be more viable if skirmish was changed to warn the target a few seconds before the attack takes place and offensive spells to also give warning upon concentration.
I am not saying there are no measures against it but if you ever happen to suffer 1.5 seconds lag, you will probably die. That does not demonstrate skill from the offender, the only way to make this fair and even is the addition of a 'time-stamp' program, which I am sure it would make the code too heavy to even play.

You will probably die most of the time if you suffer a 1.5 second lag...

In my oppinion, range combat is a very good idea, it's a threat looming in the background, for necromancers and sorcerors and such. It isn't -that- often used, but noone forget to take it into account, at least not when they've been struck by it once.

I think too, that scouts should need some form of boost in the ranged combat section. Simply because mercenaries can exceed their skill with specialize. The range boost is an interesting idea, which I am behind. I'm not that into the damage of arrows nowadays, but the rapid shot tweak seems okay too.

I'm with Konge and Cannibal. I also think scouts could use a boost, though not as far-reaching as initially suggested.

I like the idea of strengthening ranged combat slightly. It makes sense that the bow skill would be prominent with a scout, and currently it isn't all that much.

Not much a favor of giving them staves back though. I can't really unite the notion of a nature expert with someone able to use intricate magical tools.

Scouts don't need anything. They're already spoiled as it is.

Scouts should get a skill called anoint (or give it a better name).
Anoint lets you use any herb/potion with a negative effect to put on a arrow similar a hellion or shaman with their spelling only more spells work so long as you can get it in a potion or a herb. Example Cause wounds arrows, Blindness arrows, poison arrows, arrows of sleep are just a few sure the chances of people failing the saves in not great but its a little extra that a scout could use.
Low lag time so you are able to coat a reasonable number of arrows in a shortish time say 10-20 in one tick. Timer on life of anoint bonus something similar to spelled up weapons already maybe a little longer.

There are two reasons for this skill makes scouts a little more powerful and also gives a reason for all the useless herbs out there even a chance more harmful herbs could be made to suit this skill.

The skill could be changed a little so it is useable with all weapons and or perhaps even let the scout feed herbs to their pet (be them blind or deaf) quicker than ordering for healing/curing their tames after combat.