Could scouting have the ability to allow the ranger to basically take a trail to a nature sanctuary from anywhere? Perhaps only one or two sanctuaries per province, maybe each having a natural spirit, that will bestow a certain boon if conversed with. Might be close to stepping on moonmage toes, but if we keep it limited, it is somewhat close to a trail, but not needing to find start/stop points.

Could scouting be tied into unlocking some rangerish bow or trap skills? Maybe something like placing a snare at pole/melee range that ties opponent into roundtime and gives a penalty free retreat? Special arrows that utilize animal toxins, etc. (might be close to whatever poison crafting ends up with?)

Would also be a member of the group who wouldn't mind a new name for scouting altogether.

It seems good, survivally. I like it...

I mean as its going to be a survival skill, I'm expecting it to help my character to SURVIVE, not win, add quality of life stuff. So it seems pretty cool.

Personally I have used appraise to get a feel for whether a 'boss' was starting to weaken from the tons of tiny pricks we'd be throwing at it to kill it.... ahhh people using LEs.

Anyways. I think its a decent direction, hopefully it'll be some cool information, and maybe could be made so that it could be added open.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

How about...

SCOUT AREA or a similar verb returns non-ordinal/cardinal room exits in the style of hunt. This would be of use in mazes to find the exit, for example. I'm suggesting this as I run around the Velaka desert trying to find the exit back to town on my Bard. ;)

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Scouting is quite unlikely to become Animal Lore, but you can expect that companions will tie into Scouting.

What I'm looking for here are things that
1. Meet the definition of scouting or scout.
2. Enable a Ranger to train Scouting since this seems to be a major issue in reference to trails, which are a whole other tangle.
3. Provides some kind of use, because if it doesn't do anything besides train a thing, why am I coding it?


>> Scout area to find exit
When I read this, I thought back to looking over DIRECTION's code and I admit I shuddered IRL. It's unlikely I'll try this, but I'll try to think of something for it. Maze areas have their own unique code, each different from the other, usually, so there's not an EASY way to hook into it for this.


>> Why additional info on appraise?
It was just an idea, and I have no idea what kind of info would be easy to add here that would also be interesting enough to be of any kind of use.


>> analyze danger lumberjacking
It's not only used for lumberjacking. In truth, only those that harvest materials for crafting would see a benefit from this particular idea, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Look at the benefits MM's have been picking up with spells. Not every MM will care or want them, but some might.


>>Is it possible to have a Manipulate ability for rangers
I'm not sure Rangers have that kind of grasp, but I can ask some lore and guild ppl.


>>So many bug reports will follow.
Maybe. There are a lot of old areas that got built before we had a lot of the options and stuff we do today. It's often low priority to fix them.


>>Could scouting have the ability to allow the ranger to basically take a trail to a nature sanctuary from anywhere?
You just gave me an entirely different idea that ties into Ranger sanctuaries.


>>Could scouting be tied into unlocking some rangerish bow or trap skills?
Mechanisms for Tinkering/Engineering are being worked on. It's something I can put on my list to look into with Kodius. Don't get too excited though, my list is massive.

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NaOH+HI

Or Scout Hunt:

Increases the spawn rate in your room. You've scouted out a game trail favored by the creatures in the hunting ground.

Or Scout Avoid:

Your knowledge of the creature/land has allowed you to choose a location unpopular with the creatures there. Decreases the likelihood of spawn in your room. You're overhunting or pushing up into a new hunting ground and can't handle capped engagement or need/want to stay at missile for easier ranged hangback/archery.

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Vote:
http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

I like the concept of the scouting out preferable areas of the ground to make you the master of the area, kinda reminds me of, location, location, location. Sounds survivally.

I also like the two ideas about spawn increase/decrease.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

So using scouting to get out of mazes, what if there could be something that was tagged as an NPC but wasn't an NPC:

hunt
You take note of all the tracks in the area, so that you can hunt anything nearby down.

To the south, southeast:
1) a gold and rust spotted lizard

To the north, east, down:
2) a red-headed Halfling lad

So that red-headed Halfling lad stands outside of Arthe Dale. What if some type of trail marker could be placed at the entrance of someplace that was 'maze-like'.

Or perhaps just something that might be cool to use for more natural/wild places as a 'trail' that allows for a Ranger to make a quick in and out type thing, because they are Rangers and Rangers are cool like that?



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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

>* ANALYZE for Tactics also teaching Scouting. Maybe room for something else in this.

For some kind of first-strike bonus? Maybe a one-time huge Stealth bonus for any hidden attack. Similar to a backstab, but could only be used once on a critter / on a timer.

>* SCOUT AREA (would be new) - enables you to see the biome, terrain, and ground type as well as items you're likely to find with foraging. Trains Scouting and Outdoorsmanship.

Super cool/useful ability. I hate having to rely on outside resources to figure out where I can forage stuff.

>* Discern more information on appraisal of creatures.

What would be better is if APPRAISE critters had different options, rather than the text dump it's become.

APPRAISE <critter> STEALTH would replace SCOUT AWARENESS (and train Appraisal and Scouting -- Thieves could use this too, replacing MARK) and you could break up the other bits into something like APPRAISE STATS/SKILL/THREAT, etc. (I realize this is probably outside the scope of Rangers, but if it weren't a huge mess to code, it would be helpful for more than just us)!

GENT

Er, yeah, I phrased that poorly. If APPRAISE was updated as suggested, I would hope that both MARK and SCOUT AWARE in their current states would be updated to actually teach at-level (Appraisal and Scouting/Backstab). They are legit, useful tools, but should probably just be brought under a more central, logical system that already exists.

GENT

It doesn't even need to be invisible to other guilds, really.

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Ok I'm going to propose some out-of-the-box ideas here - while I recognize that the goal is to find some low hanging fruit, I believe that continuing to add more, low-value functionality to the Scouting skill is not viable in the long term if Scouting remains the Ranger Guild-only skill.

1) The Most Drastic
Get rid of Scouting all together. With the more generic 'Outdoorsmanship' skill now in the Survival skillset, many of the functions that are currently driven by/teach Scouting could easily have a case to be rolled into Outdoorsmanship. Scouting is just too narrow to have cool, interesting uses beyond trails and tracking.
Replace Scouting with a Ranger Guild-only Survival skill called 'Animism' or something along those lines. This skill would represent a more concrete idea of a Ranger's connection with the natural world.
If you look at the model for guild-only skills in most other cases, the formula is pretty similar: by doing things that are 'thematic' to the Guild, you fill a 'pool' that powers non-magical Guild abilities and learn it by filling and discharging your pool.

Summoning for WMs --> ALIGN and cast spells or SUMMON ADMITTANCE to charge, use it to power Elemental Weapons, Familiars, Pathways, etc
Astro for MMs --> Study sky/moons/constellations to charge, use it to power predictions
Theurgy for Clerics --> Rituals to charge, power Communes
Bardic Lore for Bards --> Playing/performing to charge, powers Screams, Whistles, etc
Expertise for Barbarians --> Maneuvers to charge, power Analyzes

You get the idea. This doesn't hold for all Guild-only skills - you might make an argument that Empathy is similar in some way, but Scouting and Backstab don't seem to fit the mold, and I don't think Trading or Thanatology do either (but I don't have any experience with those, so can't say for certain).

The obvious parallel here for Ranger abilities is Beseeches. Infrequent, non-magical, thematic abilities powered by some kind of 'pool.' Looking back at some historical posts about the nature of Beseeches, the concept of 'Animism' may be somewhat aligned - or at least not too far of a stretch.

From Zeyurn back in 2008 (http://forums.play.net/messages.asp?forum=20&category=31&topic=7&message=5702/messages.asp):
>"The first and foremost thing to understand about beseeches is that they are not magical. As Armifer stated, the Ranger has a form of supernatural tie or perhaps hyperawareness to the natural state of the world around him or her.

>Through a very methodical and highly researched ritual, the Ranger can attempt to reach out to what we might consider personifications or 'spirits' of the various natural forces."

I think this new Animism skill would have a lot more possibilities than Scouting as a Guild-only skill - it could be an actual, quantifiable basis for many of our abilities, even beyond Beseeches.
Ranks in the skill could:
- allow for tiered Companion choices that scale with actual ranks
- allow for scaled numbers of personal trailmarkers
- some interplay with spells like Awaken Forest (the opposite of metaspells and Elemental Weapons - more skill allows you to summon different flavors of spawn?)
- a factor in Bonus regeneration/decay (more skill means you decay slower and regen faster)
- etc

The "Nature Pool" that is powered by the Animism skill could be used for even more things:
- Beseeches
- how long your companion sticks around/some kind of effect on their interactions
- tied into personal trailmarker creation
- enhanced ways to check the bonus setting of a room
- etc

For filling the Pool, maybe:
- Composting stuff
- casting some other spells that made thematic sense (maybe just one book? Nature Manipulation or Animal Abilities?)
- some kind of 'ritual' related to killing or skinning a natural creature
- etc

2) The Middle Ground
Introduce Animism skill as outlined above, but instead of doing away with Scouting, open it up to everyone. Add the kinds of things talked about earlier in this thread (getting out of mazes, better foraging info, etc) in addition to HUNT. Trails would remain Ranger-only application of the skill, but tracking would open up to everyone. Best of both worlds.

3) The Status Quo
Add some more functions to Scouting as mentioned in this thread and others.

Summary
Scouting is basically 'Natural Perception' and so primarily powers things like 'what would someone notice if they were more in touch with Nature than others' - an inherently passive (vs active) set of abilities. More foraging info, better appraise, better hunt - it's acting as a modifier to an ability that is powered by another skill (Outdoorsmanship, Appraisal, Perception, respectively). Until Scouting can be defined as something more active (or replaced with something that is), we will always have this conundrum of the skill not really having much value on its own.

- Vision et al

> "Animism" in some way as a measurement of both the skillset driving the Ranger's relationship with the supernatural natural world (hah) makes sense. Or maybe "Shamanism" but that could sound a little too Druid/magical and the Guild's always been great at walking that fine line.

Yeah I had thought of Shamanism as well and looked for another word for exactly that reason. 'Natural Attunement?' Whatever it's called, I think it just needs to be more broad, where Scouting today is very narrowly defined.

>I think though this could just be a rebranding of Scouting, keeping the core system intact, but adding additional ways to train it, plus the supernatural pool, that previously would be seen as outside of the realm of Scouting.

This could be an option, although I'm not sure the current ways of gaining skill would still apply - for instance, do we think running a trail would somehow enhance our 'supernatural natural relationship?' I could see it either way. Today, this helps us recover bonus faster, which means there is some relationship to our connection with Nature, and so could train such a skill, if it were to exist. I could also see HUNT (for Rangers) and trail running be tied to 'Outdoorsmanship,' which is a generic enough term to encompass such mundane abilities (and frankly, give that skill some additional use beyond just 'Foraging with another name').

Ultimately, I think this approach would serve a few purposes:

1) Tie (some) Ranger abilities to each other in a logical, thematic way that has been pioneered by other Guilds and 'modernize' systems like Beseech/ALIGN that just don't make much sense in today's DR.
2) Turn our Guild-only skill from passive and narrowly-scoped to more active and broadly-encompassing, paving the way for future development (or at least not blocking it).

- Vision et al

>>>>This could be an option, although I'm not sure the current ways of gaining skill would still apply - for instance, do we think running a trail would somehow enhance our 'supernatural natural relationship?'

>>I think it could work. If you imagine Nature as a person, the Ranger is the one who knows her best. Making inroads into little-known areas or following seldom-used trails could be seen as building that connection.

Real world studies continue to demonstrate how much better cognition and mental abilities are with even limited exposure to nature and the great outdoors. Taking the road less traveled is a perfect way for Rangers to maintain their relationship with Nature.

One idea is to continue the scaling of the trail system. Rangers at lower levels are able to access hard to reach areas, skip over chokepoints, compared to non-Rangers. But at a certain point this advantage goes away. I wonder if there are major areas where you could introduce even harder, more advanced trails that would be of benefit for higher circles.