The Ranger's Guild

[Mask]

Greetings!

I was wondering if someone could explain to me the reasoning behind the current set up of the Ranger's Guild, where a token is required before someone can begin the ranger quest? The helpfile for the 'Guiding Council of Rangers' states:

OOCly, the Council is responsible for teaching young warriors who want to
become rangers the basics of good ranger RP, and on how to avoid abusing
skills and using them OOCly.

Might this be better handled by some helpfiles and possibly some changes to the skills involved to avoid them being 'abused', and removing the need for a 'token' before someone can become a ranger? That is, could code be made to do what the Council does, at least as far as guilding new rangers is concerned?

Could someone explain what purpose the Ranger's Council serves and whether it would be a good use of time to take a fresh look at this, update some helpfiles, optionally some code, and then remove the 'token requiring' part of the ranger guilding quest? What sort of lessons do the council give and what value do they have?

On the same theme, the quest has a bunch of alignment restrictions, but there are no neutral or evil ranger guilds - there's no such restriction in 3.5E canon rules, which we are trying to move to. Is it time for neutral and evil rangers guilds to be added to the game?

Thanks!

[Selveem]

I think it was to curtail evil-aligned Rangers. Especially because there was such a concern about 'intelligent' creatures being skinned.

The other major concern that I remember was shapechange, but I don't think Rangers get Shapechange anymore? Either way, no token is required for Druids and Druids still get shapechange. I haven't experienced any problems with shapechange-abusing Druids, so I doubt it'd be a problem either way.

[Brar]

Honest personnal opinion, the council is a pain and plainly sucks. (Edit: Of course, I mean the system, not the members )

Explanation: We speaks of rangers, the ultimate free guys. I fail to see a common point between Drizzt, Dove and Jeryth, except their skills that is. And they are 3 badass goodly rangers.
The purpose the council was created for is long overdue and had no real sense back then for me and still have none today.

It is the only class (because technically speaking, our guilds are the classes of dnd) that "needs" so much monitoring, why is that?
I think very few even remember the correct complete answer that leads to the creation of the council.

So I'm all up to have ranger of all alignment, after all it is a set of skills that define a basis for your devellopment, nothing else in my eyes. If you decide to skin humans, it is your alignment that should change (and thus probably your spells won't be available for alignment restriction), not your skills.

Don't know if I'm clear but you're all getting used to it.
Brar

[Lathlain]

I'll admit I've never fully understood the reason behind the ranger council's strangle-hold over one's ability to be a ranger.

I believe their existence as an organisation is entirely fair enough, but the process should be that the character should train themself in the ways of the wild, not exclusively with the council's blessing.

Selveem's right - the matter of skinning intelligent creatures has always been cited to me as the main argument against evil rangers in the past too, but I suppose it depends on whether we as a player base are as offended by the notion as we apparently were at the time of the council's inception.

[Brar]

Selveem's right - the matter of skinning intelligent creatures has always been cited to me as the main argument against evil rangers in the past too, but I suppose it depends on whether we as a player base are as offended by the notion as we apparently were at the time of the council's inception.

For the sake of the argument, I will explain some things of the past.

Rangers is the utmost favorite class of the game owner, we are praised, cherished, overpowerful and still being worked on to be even more powerful. (I speak of the very very ancient system before feats, armor restriction, memorization, ect).
Trades are included to the games, guess who's the class who got an exclusive one called leatherworking...
2 days after it being implemented, game owner wakes up, log on and find a good hundred armor piece mades of human skin on the WD Merchants.
At the end of the day, ranger class is locked up and creation of the council is on the way.

It is a short summary but the main idea is there.

Brar

[Nysan]

Very good Brar, refreshing to see someone else remember the old ways.

To the topic at hand... the system is outdated and in dire need of correction. However, like many outdated systems it is difficult to fix.

Consider the current quests and mobs a new ranger interacts with. Ill fitting for certain alignments, don't you think? Before we leap at the chance to dismantle the council, I strongly recommend we have recruiting systems in place that would assist all rangers, not just good aligned ones. Removing the council will bring those 'evil ranger' desires out of the woodwork for a few players, I would think. Opening druids to Malarites certainly sparked a few new characters way back when, for example.

On the topic of ranger trades... also outdated. Trades have me edgy lately, so I'll keep this short. Its natural for evils, and certain neutrals, to skin and craft attire out of skins. We even code such items in-game... orc camp anyone? Goodies skinning elves and dwarves should gain in-game and OOC reactions. Personally, I lay this in the same catagory as someone mining in a sewer... IC and OOC consequences for obvious poor decision.

There is no logical reason to maintain the council system. We need to patch up a few things before we toss the crutch though.

[Selveem]

I'm pretty sure that's what Mask's getting at (and please, Mask, correct me if I am misinterpreting the intent of your post!):

What are the concerns with removing said council?

If it's that a token is required to even begin lessons, that's easily remedied with a mprog patch that gives the token immediately as soon as someone 'joins' the guild of their alignment.

If it's that the lessons are catered specifically to those of good alignment, that's also remedied with volunteers to build new Ranger guilds elsewhere. I'd be more than willing to help with this, too, since the area I have worked on is too large to be a first-time area.

I continue to use the term 'guild,' but I realize Rangers are more 'soloists' in personality; I mean it more as a code formality and the teachings associated with characters who intend to become a Ranger.

I guess what it comes down to in my opinion is whether to allow skinning of sentient creatures. I've seen a lot of changes proposed and implemented due to the "PG-13" status of this game. We've talked about some very adult ideas, but ultimately I think it's important not to focus on "PG-13" as that in many ways curtails creativity. The very idea of "humanoid leathers" defies this rating (and many other in-game aspects that are too numerous to mention), but I don't believe this is the thread for the whole PG-13 debate.

I don't believe there's any real reason that cannot be 'adjusted' via hard code to prevent the few 'abuses' I could foresee.

[Nysan]

PG-13 makes me laugh when I consider several items my goblin wears from the orc camp. Scalp pouches and ear necklaces pretty much dismiss any skinning concerns.

[Lathander]

Mask,

This should give you a start on the history behind it. If the thread doesn't address what you are specifically looking for, please send me a PM and I'll try to answer.

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2423&hilit=Foregathering

[Melusine]

I honestly believe it would be fascinating to have neutral and evil rangers out there. It would create new possibile roleplays, new groups to confront one another, and ultimately more fun.

Of course there are going to be concerns with the idea... There would have to be at least one more guild 'area' for the evil rangers to go and learn, as their teachings are likely to be slightly different from the current good rangers' area. The neutral rangers could learn from one or the other, depending on their own natural leaning in neutrality, although it would be nice if they too had another area. I expect there would be willing builders going into this project, if it becomes a possibility. I believe, with some of the shining examples of evil that we have out there, that this also would be well roleplayed.

Of tokens... The roleplay would be amazing if there were always rangers about of enough frequency to train all the new rangers. It can be a deterrent to those maybe wishing to create a ranger character. Being able to help train a new ranger is a roleplay I have been on both sides of, and it was very fun both times. The difficulty is having enough rangers there to see it done. The trouble is that our interest in our alt of this race, or that class tends to go back and forth, and there is always a new popular race or class of the month. It is easy to shift. I can see many cases for not using tokens, and to use them... But ultimately as much as I love the roleplay of the training, I don't know if I would call it a necessary thing. New rangers could certainly elect to be mentored by an older ranger, as wizards have been known to do. It could be adjusted for the Ranger Trainer to not require tokens at all, but to go off of his other criteria. As long as the expectations of any new ranger are laid out in the quest, then it is upon the player.

[Glim]

Helloooooo, just logged on for a while and saw this gem. Thought I might give my views from a while back as I used to be in favor of evil rangers because it would open up more choices for character creation (and bolster my faith of choice at the time, Malar).

The biggest problem and main responsibility of the ranger council was enforcing alignment roleplay. A good ranger was expected to stick to certain alignment guidelines (almost but not as stringent as paladins). And the problem was that if there was an evil ranger's guild, what is to stop a good ranger who disagrees with the goodly guild from just changing over to evil. It would undermine the whole authority of a goodly rangers guild.

Skinning was only a small part of the bigger problem of enforcing alignment rp and one that could be enforced by code-based skill limitations (i.e. if you are good and a ranger, you cannot skin something with a "humanoid" tag or some such, even if you want to).

From my point of view, the reason the evil rangers were never allowed was because a good solution to this larger problem was never found.