Finally! The new bonding code and the Ranger/verynvelyrae rewrite was released. It came during the week so I was at work, trying to get what I could and teach a class of elementary level adult students who noticed I was a bit preoccupied. 'Prof, what is the meaning of...' SSSSSSSSSH! I'm reading here...
The FIRST thing I noticed was my nice fieldcraft skills were gone. Which was a bit disheartening. They're passive, but they're oh so nice. They're almost like a tactical advantage in most situations. Now my sky fieldcraft has gone up, as suits a pegasus but the fieldcraft skills were for me the embodiment of all that was left of the old Rangers in easy little passive skills. C'est la vie. Ranger skinning has also gone and as far as I'm aware there's no real bonus to the basic ranger. Now don't take this as fact and I'd welcome some new rangers or Twi setting me straight on this. But it seems the current incarnation there are only benefits from your familiar.
Only from your familiar I say. Now I can't actually compare the new rangers with the old. As it seems to me that would be unfair, I need to compare the new rangers with the rangers post the original rewrite which led to familiars in the first place. Since last year Twi has been tweaking and fiddling with how the bond works and what we get from it. The addition of tame and dominion seems to have spiralled off into this new rewrite and I think this is the culmination of what he was trying to do since then. The first thing is the bond now scales your benefits, something previously only seen in the attribute bonus but now applies to ALL your powers and skill bonuses. Now I know some of the older rangers will be a little miffed by this, but this is how it should work. Slowly unlocking your powers and abilities as the bond increases gives great motivation to work on that bond. There are hints that you're getting more from the bond too. I've already seen some of this in the new spy power. We can now see through our familiar's eyes. The other abilities I automagically have from having an older familiar would have been slowly unlocked over time with the new system. Which would have led to some pleasant surprises. Wow! I can now inspire! Wow I can now tame other pegasi etc. Which is very cool.
On to the War Band. Since my return I've been working on recruiting a new War Band. It's where my heart is really. There's been some triumphs and disasters. I was messing with that fool deck again and got another Templar, but... he fell shortly after in Ryleh when I ran into Yog by accident. Damned Elder was already summoned when we moosied on in. The rest of the band was wiped out last night except for Ruby of course, my squire who I'd already gotten a stone for and Auremius one of the yeomen. He had to die this morning though to a Dark Young. Shortly after I went and got another stone for Trije, headed to Kentaur Isle, found myself three pegasi and recruited three more yeomen. Leek, Animus and Rylamon. Here's a hint for recruiting yeomen, choose those whose names are easy to use. "kunontitil, mount pegasus gets cumbersome, I know I know about nicknames but they feel odd on yeomen for some reason.
Now I did donate again (first time since LAST christmas) and I've used that to improve the Band. Ruby is taking advantage of the new Bond code, and there's a couple of followers on the way... What's that Mordred, someone's looking for me?
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Verynvelyrae only get spec bonuses based on their familiar, that's right. Many familiars now grant fieldcraft bonuses (or do once you get the bond strength up) appropriate to the bond.
ReplyDeleteOld Ranger base spec bonuses (from the guild itself, not from bonds) were put in when Rangers had shitty animal summons and no familiars to speak of. Then familiars came along, with a shitload of default spec bonuses, and I never bothered updating the base specialties.
I felt like the bonus specialties had gotten a bit out of control, and also couldn't see the justification for it. Familiars give you more bonus specialties than anything else in the game, plus everything else familiars do.
However, I'll give you a nice clue as to something familiars do now, that might make up for it. Some familiars have the ability to modify the formula that determines your combat ratings. For example, if you bond to an orthros, it makes your fieldcraft skills count for more in your combat ratings. How much more they count depends on how high your bond is. At max strength, you will be getting over +4 per point of fieldcraft skill! Dog familiars make your tactics, among other things, count for much more. Small bird familiars will give you crazy dodge bonuses based on your sky fieldcraft and some other things. And so on.
So the general combat bonus from getting a bonus spec in fieldcraft skills is gone, and has been replaced by something more specific and, in many cases, far better. And moreover, this mechanic coheres quite well with the notion that your familiar is subtly working its way into your soul and changing everything about you. In this case, changing your fighting style, as it were.
As for skinning, I actually really like skinning, it's just that the code for it was old and broken, and it was really hard to support it in a way that didn't lead to it being unbalanced. It's also modeled really poorly. At some point someone will make better crafting mechanics. While usually I'm inclined to leave the crappy code in place until better code replaces it, in this case the skinning code had been a sore spot on an otherwise completely rewritten guild for multiple years, and I just got tired of it.
True actually, Rangers did get a LOT of bonus specs, and I forgot to mention in the main post about the awesome applicability and versatility of this new bonding process. Familiars for wizards, followers for leaders, friendship/loyalty bonds, hell even Knights being able to bond their warhorse something I mentioned in an earlier post. Definitely a huge accomplishment.
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