Ranger

A bow specialist and woodsman who scouts, marks and shoots at range, keeps animals, and lives off the wild.

Rangers fight with bows, traps and animals, and live off the wild between fights. A bow reaches up to two rooms along a clear, straight route. Scouting and marking set up a shot; an enemy that charges across that distance forces the ranger to give ground or stand.

A ranger keeps one fighting beast and one small familiar, tames a steed to ride and builds shelter in the field. Wilderness skills help with recovery and defense and keep local wildlife from attacking. That makes the class a guide and tracker as well as a ranged fighter.

Marksmanship holds the bow skills, Beast Mastery the animals, Trapping the traps and herbs, and Wilderness the fieldcraft. A ranger uses all four trees and never has to pick a permanent specialization.

Joining#

Ranger is a remort class (see Remorting). To become one you must currently be a Rogue or a Warrior, have finished a life as each of them (the life you are setting down counts), hold 4 remort points and be invited by the Rangers. A guildmaster's admittance counts as the invitation. Remort at level 100 for a full remort, or from level 50 for a half remort without the remort bonuses; either way you start again as a level 1 Ranger. remort ranger shows what you still need.

The guild is the Yewhold, a lodge with no walls in a stand of old yew north of the Mistwood Crossroads. From the crossroads go north to the Hilltop Clearing, where a blazed trail runs northwest under the trees to the Waymark Yew. compass set ranger walks you to it. inquire at the yew reads the notice board. Guild ranks run Tracker, Hunter, Warden, Beastmaster and Guildmaster.

You leave with two things, and they stay with you for as long as you are a ranger. Neither can be dropped, sold or stolen, and both stay with you through death.

The Bone Whistle tells you how your beast stands when you look whistle, wherever the beast is. blow whistle brings a beast that is away straight to you, or gives one at your side back a fifth of its health, in a fight or out of one. It will not answer again for five minutes, and it can do nothing for a beast that has fallen.

The Trailbook, read with read trailbook, lists the countries whose wild things have come to know you and those still making up their minds, what walks beside you, and your familiar. It keeps itself.

The Yewhold#

Everything behind the Waymark Yew belongs to the guild. compass set trainer takes a ranger to the butts from anywhere.

Rhoswen Harrow, the Warden, gives out the guild's chapters one at a time, from your first day to the gates of Valdris Manor. Stand in front of her and she gives you the next one or tells you the level it opens at. Odo Brack, the Kennelmaster, does the same. Either of them will train you with advance. Until level 20, Master Toren in the Main Hall of the Explorer's Training Grounds in Aurin will also advance a ranger.

Resources#

SP is one resource. Shooting itself is free: once a target is marked and the fight starts, you loose one arrow every two second round without typing anything. SP pays for the skills that sharpen the shot, as shown in the tables below.

The other resource is a pouch of gathered materials: feathers, sinew, resin, wire, iron, herbs, mushrooms, reeds and powder. You find them by gathering in the right terrain and spend them on traps, fletching, campfires, Herbcraft and Breathing Reeds. supplies shows what is in the pouch and where to find anything you have run out of.

You need a bow wielded to shoot at range. Without one the round passes and you wait for the enemy to close.

Rangers wear leather armor. Plate, mail and cloth are barred, and gear with no armor category is open to everyone.

Talent trees#

You earn a talent point every ten guild levels, ten in all, and a tree holds ten at most. Each point in a tree makes every skill in it 2% better: 2% stronger in its hits and heals and ready again 2% sooner, so ten points give 20% of each. Passives are untouched. Each point in Marksmanship also makes your own weapon blows 2% stronger, and your beast strikes harder for your points in Beast Mastery, the tree of the skill that called it. talents shows your trees, talents <tree> what one gives and holds, and talents spend <tree> puts a point in. talents reset takes every point back once a real day and never in a fight; your first reset ignores the wait.

Marksmanship#

The bow skills. Power Shot is the first named attack. Hunter's Mark and Mark of Death raise your damage on a chosen target. The arrow preparations (Barbed, Ignite, Poison, and Choking Gas from Trapping) coat your next several arrows with an effect. Higher up are the aimed shots that interrupt, cripple, split armor and rake a whole room, a hunting spear cut in the woods and thrown into the next room, and Lung Shot, the broadhead behind the shoulder. Four passives raise bow damage and critical chance.

Beast Mastery#

One animal companion that fights beside you, with taming, feeding, healing, naming and reviving at the bottom of the tree and orders and attack commands above. Alongside it come a familiar from level 3, a small wild thing that rides on your person, and a tamed steed to ride from level 59.

Trapping#

Ground you prepare in advance. Snares hold, barbs cripple and bleed, and flame, spikes and frost punish anything that walks in. Detect Traps reads what someone else buried, and an animal worked into a fury waits for the next stranger through the door. The salves, the antitoxin and the affliction extender are here too.

Wilderness#

Fieldcraft and staying alive: dodging, tracking, weather, camping and cooking, a breathing reed for the water, a lean-to and a bivy bag, climbing for a look over three rooms of country or to take a stand in the branches, camouflage, and two ways of breaking out of a melee you did not want. At the top are leading a party through wild country without being attacked, and going out into the deep country for hours at a time. Two shots are filed here too, Enfeebling Shot and Rapid Fire.

Skills#

Passives are equipped with passives, two at a time. Nature's Grace and Familiar Presence are always on and take no slot.

Marksmanship#

Beast Mastery#

Trapping#

Trap skills cost SP when the build starts and materials from the pouch when it is finished. An interrupted build costs the SP and the time and nothing else.

Wilderness#

Outside the trees#

These two passives belong to no talent tree. They are equipped with passives like the rest.

Plain commands#

These are yours from the day you join, cost nothing and do not appear on powers.

Your beast#

A ranger has one bonded companion. Once you have Charm Animal, companion choose <kind> takes a standard wolf, bear, hawk, boar or serpent for nothing. Taming a wild animal with tame is slower, but it is the only way to get a cub, and only a cub raised at your side ever reaches its prime. Feeding builds the bond that grows it. Either way you keep one: companion release ends the bond before you take another.

A beast that falls stays down. Five minutes later, companion call (20 SP) brings it back at a quarter of its health. Revive Animal at 43 brings it back at once, and Odo at the Kennels brings it back for nothing.

Out in the wild#

Nature's Grace#

From level 8, whenever you stand on wild ground (woods, hills, marsh, snow, sand or open country, but not roads and towns), your strength, constitution, agility and intelligence rise by one, and by one more at levels 30, 60 and 90. You mend a quarter faster there, and you are harder to hit.

Familiar Presence#

From level 15 the wild gets used to you. Spend ten minutes, all told, on the wild ground of an area and its animals learn your sound and scent. From then on none of them starts a fight with you or your beasts, though anything you attack still fights back. Survey tells you how far along you are. The country forgets you if you stay away for two weeks. Once an area knows you, Wild Guide at 16 gives your party the same peace for ten minutes, so long as they keep with you.

Familiars#

A familiar does not fight and nothing can hurt it. You keep one at a time and befriend it slowly, standing still in the right country: a mouse anywhere from level 3, a fox in wild brush and woodland from 12, a falcon on open ground under a wide sky from 20, and an owl in the deep woods at night from 35. The mouse squeaks when you walk into a room where somebody else has laid a trap, and loves cheese. The fox brings you luck, and now and then a coin. The falcon scouts the rooms around you, flies off to another area to see who is out on its open ground, learns its work as it goes until it can tell you who is hurt and who is fighting, and brings you hares. Taken to a spirit grove after dark, the owl calls the old forest spirits, who lend you the strength of the bear, the quickness of the hare or the sight of the owl for half an hour.

Steeds#

At 59 you can tame a mount in its own country: a horse on open grass, an elk in the deep woods or snow, a wolf or a bear in the woods and hills. Ride it like any mount. The horse is only a mount; the elk, the wolf and the bear also fight beside you while you are on foot, when your beast is not at your side. You cannot fight from the saddle, but you can open a fight from it: the charge knocks your target off its feet and puts you down beside it, and an elk's ram hits hardest. You cannot charge once you are fighting.

Shelter#

A lean-to at 31 is a camp for the whole party, and a nearby fire helps recovery. A bivy bag at 34 is a bed for one: you lie up unseen, mending fast, and can still talk and use channels until you choose to come out.

Camouflage and the tree stand#

Among trees, camouflage is quicker and cheaper and holds three times as long, and one person searching cannot find you: it takes three people searching the same ground within a minute. climb perch takes you up a tree to stay, out of sight of anything that wanders in below, and every arrow or spear you send down from the branches strikes harder. Both hide you from players as well as creatures. Your first shot from the tree gives the stand away to anyone looking.

Expeditions and game#

At 25 you can go out from wild ground into the deep country for hours, hunting, foraging or cutting timber, safe from everything while you are gone. You can log out and leave yourself out there; up to eight hours away counts, and nothing is found in the first ten minutes. You come home to where you left with meat, hides and pelts, herbs, or logs and resin, depending on what you went for and the country you set out from. Wild game sells well in town: Garrick Hale, the butcher in Thorngate Alley in Aurin, buys pelts, hides, fur, antler, horn and game meat.

Standing in a fight#

You have no shield and no heavy armor, but in a party short of a front line you can hold a fight yourself. Roar draws hostile attention, your defensive skills soften what reaches you, and a guarding beast takes some of the blows.

Roar comes at level 15, two levels after Set Guard. Type roar or guard roar with your beast at your side, and every hostile creature in the room turns on you for six seconds, whoever has been hurting them. It costs 10 SP and has its own 12 second wait.

Dodge at level 2 lasts five minutes, rising to ten at level 100, and takes the weight out of a good share of the blows that reach you, melee and missile alike. Lightning Reflexes at 26 gives you thirty seconds with a real chance to evade a blow completely, and Brambles at 38 hands a share of every melee blow back to whoever landed it.

Your beast guards only when told to. Bare guard sets it to watch you, guard <person> sets it on someone in your group, and guard stop stands it down. A guarding beast steps in front of a blow 30% of the time at level 13, half the time from level 40 and 55% at level 100, once per attacker each round. It will not step in while it is below a fifth of its health, stunned, knocked down, rooted or away hunting. Wolfheart at 60 adds 10 points to that chance, and Comfort, feed and the Bone Whistle keep it on its feet. Predator's Bond at 47 turns a share of what it deals into healing for you, and Troll Unguent at 46 keeps working through the fight.

Have Dodge up first, set your beast to guard you, and only then roar.

Playing a ranger#

Mark Target comes at level 5. It accepts a target name, a partial name or a number from Scout. Once the fight is underway, shots continue on their own while the target stays in range. Scout at 14 shows you the nearby rooms before you commit.

Range follows connected rooms. Adjacent rooms are always in reach; a target two rooms away needs a straight route, because arrows cannot turn corners. A bend or a closed door takes the shot away, so check the path before you spend SP on preparation. A marked creature may come at you.

Bow attacks have their own critical chance: 10% at level 1, rising to 25% at level 100, plus 5% for each room between you and the target. A rare critical is a heart shot that kills outright; it never happens against a boss or a player. From level 22, shots can break a bowstring. restring is much quicker with sinew in the pouch, and a bow kept in good condition breaks less often.

Hunter's Mark and Mark of Death do not stack: applying one removes the other, so choose between them. Arrow coatings and traps add more choices, each with supply costs.

When an enemy reaches your room, the beast, the self-heals and the defensive skills keep you going. Dodge and Lightning Reflexes deal with incoming blows; Throw Dirt, Concussion Shot and Pin Down give control. If you must hold a party's enemies, the section above explains Roar and setting the beast to guard. With another defender in the group, stay back and keep shooting.