Shattered Kingdoms

Training the weapon skills gives the basic training. There has been some discussion lately on two topics 1) the limiting of gear like pole-maces. and 2) how to improve scouts/bow attack skills.

Level of skill: Expert, maybe mentor for non-warrior classes
[Skills help] ranged melee

Automatic

The use of longer ranged melee weapons requires more training than
those weapons of short melee. You need to have at least one basic
weapon skill mastered before you can train ranged melee. The
training in this skill is only applicable to those skills which have
been mastered.

Available to scouts only. I don't know much about them, so I can't do more than guess at the level.
[Skills help] Call target

Automatic

What sets the scout apart from other adventurers is his talents with
ranged weapons. It is said what sets apart the average bowman from
the accomplished marksman is one's ability to mentally call the target
to the arrow mentally. This has a definate impact of the accuracy,
increasing the likelihood the ammunition will hit the target. Bow or
crossbow skill needs to be mastered before this can be learned. It
is only possible to call targets with weapons which have been mastered.

(side note, not in help file -> could also be be applicable to seigecraft)

I could see the scout getting a line similar to:
You call <whatever it is> to you in your mind's eye.

I also liked silmar's annoint skill on the scout thread. That's just something that logicly makes sense for a scout to do. If there are harmful herbs out there already, they could be made to work.

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Current skills may have to be adapted. I don't know mechanics.
But the result would be that more weapons could be available again,
just not as effective at lower levels. And that scouts would get
something which doesn't have to be all-powerful, but the edge in the
direction other players seemed to be thinking appropriate.

You know Cyra, when someone has an idea, you should actually debate why that idea is not good, instead of being a total [REDACTED] about it, I personally think that his idea is good, but his lack of knowledge on scouts may attribute to some mistakes...all in all this should be discussed more

Seriously lockdown, what the hell is ranged melee?

What are these longer "ranged melee" weapons even?

Why do both bow an and crossbow need to be mastered to even use this skill? No skill in the game functions like that.

I mean what does this do? You're able to throw your flamberge and it boomerangs back to you while you sit in row 3? I don't even understand the mechanics behind this skill.

Call target? wtf, I can call the target all I want by typing in shoot finney or shoot jerinx. I've now discussed an argument with the mud that tells it that I want to shoot either Finney or Jerin. In effect I have called my target. But you want to add a "finesse" like skill to the bow?

First, why do scouts need to increase their accuracy with the bow or crossbow?

Scouts use bow to poach cute little forest animals and then eat them by butchering them. Or to poach sorcerers and eat them by butchering them. Or necromancers, whatever.

Ranged combat is fine as is. You can shoot a target from several rooms away, you have a mud trigger in skirmish that allows you to spot targets as they move around, and then move around and kill them so that they don't stay in the same room as you.

The fact is, ranged combat kills the people it needs to kill. If you want to be better with a bow then play a mercenary and specialize in a specific bow. Why? Because that's what a mercenary is about, fighting with weapons and standing in the front lines, and they need to know some weapons. Mercenaries are fighters, scouts are not.

Being that I played a scout I know just how powerful they are. You get 90 billion spell effects from herbalism, you get the ability to make your own suit of elite armor for free. You have virtually unlimited PE, the ability to make your own arrows--for free. And a skill which makes it impossible for 99% of the pbase to even detect you.

Oh let's not forget the fact that the scout also gets to have a beefy pet which cannot be canceled or dispelled.

Scouts are so powerful that they can solo the murex.

With the code change that made shields a bit weaker scouts got the buff they needed.

You don't need to add a skill to the most spoiled class in all of SK, especially when you add that your knowledge of the class is limited.

My suggestion is to make brick available to all classes like swim and languages and writings. It will be purely aesthetic, but will provide hours of endless fun.

Psh.
Here's a better one: "garrote".

The scout can reverse his handle on the bow, and choke someone with it's drawstring! Go, Hitman, go!

On second thought, scouts should get poach as a skill. Scouts can poach animals, sorcerers, necromancers, and God, to exchange them at the bank for goods like with warparty stuff.

I stole this idea from Final Fantasy Tactics. It was a great idea in that game and it is a great idea here.

I don't remember this in Tactics. Probably because I rarely, if ever, used tamers. However, there IS a "capture" tech in FF12 that essentially does something like that.

There's no such thing as a tamer in Tactics. You never played the game you liar ;p. The thief class got the poach skill which was passive and you had to equip . If the character with poach equipped landed the killing blow, they would have a 80% chance to receive a poach from said beast. Generally only worked on the monster class of the game. You never could tell how many poaches of what you had, but you went to a trade shop where you traded the poaches for items, and what items were for sale depended solely on what poaches you had. Something similar would really be cool in Shattered Kingdoms but I would like it to be changed a lot.

It worked in FF:Tactics like this.
Goblin poaches [REDACTED] items.
Godly dragon and rare monster poaches rare items.


I would also like if this got adapted, (probably wont) that you don't get uber damage dealing weapons and [REDACTED], but crazy [REDACTED]. Which is how it was in Tactics, they were definatly not the best items in the game, but they were up there, and fun and interesting.

I DID play the game. But I could have sworn I remembered a class that ran around with a whip. Me, I preferred Samurai. But I'll concede I wasn't TOO thrilled with tactics - I preferred the more mainstream stuff.

I own that game but I haven't played it in years. Used to love it.