There is really only one build that rangers do and that's "crit ranger". Dungeon Runners wants players to make "poison rangers" but for a number of reasons, players don't. I would like to suggest Dungeon Runners help create a new ranger build that focuses on vampiric gear and thus creating a new ranger build: Vampiric Ranger

In another thread, I made a suggestion to increase the value of vampiric gear. Here's a link to that thread:

http://boards.dungeonrunners.com/sho...d=1#post141487

However, what I was advocating in that thread would only benefit PvE rangers. Mages cannot benefit from vampiric gear since they don't do weapon damage to monsters. Fighters wouldn't benefit from what I suggested since they immediately engage monsters in hand-to-hand combat. Given this...

What I would like to suggest is that Dungeon Runners add some new ranger skills/buffs that would make this vampiric build a meaningful option for ranger players.

The first skill/buff that I would suggest is a passive buff called "Bigger Cup" and does what I was advocating in the other thread. This passive buff enables rangers to add onto their maximum health and mana bars by way health and mana stolen by way of vampiric gear. The bonus health and mana disappearing after three seconds if no new health and mana is added by way of vampiric damage. This buff possibly broken into two buffs. One for health and one for mana. I would have it be a level-restricted passive buff so that it isn't until the player is adventuring in the dungeons off of Townston that they can get this for their ranger. Possibly even make the first rank of this buff be a quest, "Taking the Dark Path" (which only rangers can do), and have the quest-giver be a vampire in Townston's graveyard.

I would also suggest two more passive buffs that rangers can get a bit later in the game (say 10th level). "Brains Over Body" and "Body Over Brains" These could be passive buffs that convert a percentage of health stolen into mana ("Brains Over Body") or mana stolen into health ("Body Over Brains"). With each new rank of one, the percentage conversion would be increased.

As for skills, a great one for this vampiric build would be: "You Suck Big Time!" This could be a spell that last 15 or 30 seconds that increases how much health and mana one gets from health and mana steal weapons. The percentage increases with each additional rank of this spell.

Edited by Magic_Mallard (10/04/08 03:38 PM)

Only one problem with the only rangers can do. What is to stop someone from respecing to a ranger to get the skill and use it with a fighter or mage? Now I will admit that you've already pointed out reasons it wouldn't be as effective. But there isn't anything stopping anyone from doing so.

Besides, saying that only a ranger can have the skill is going against the concept of the game that I've come to understand. That concept being that anyone can be anything.

Having a ranger only skill doesn't take away from the concept that anyone can be anything. I play primarily as a ranger, therefore I can think of a couple warrior skills I cannot use because ranger's use ranged weapons and not melee weapons. Having a ranger only skill simply means that you have to use a ranged weapon to use it; seems fair to me. It simply means that you have to factor in a ranged weapon if you wish to use the skill.

Require a ranged or melee weapon, to me, is a weapon based restriction, and that is perfectly acceptable. Because even a ranger can choose to pick up a melee weapon, or a warrior a ranged weapon. Granted, they may not be as good with the weapon, but they can still do it. What I read in the original post, according to my interpretation, was implying a class based restriction. Now on that note, I could very well have misread the intent, and would reanalize the suggestion should a correction be made.

If the skill requires a ranged weapon that is fine, but why should it not work with a melee weapon too.

The other part of my point still stands. Granted I already pointed out a way around it, but as for the concept in general, I disagree with requiring a "class" to acquire a skill.

There should be absolutely no such thing as "class restrictions", given that classes do not truly exist in Dungeon Runners. Weapons restrictions, fine.

By class restriction, I mean that the spell/buff can only be gotten from the ranger trainer. This doesn't exclude mages and warriors from getting it. After all, rangers can get Chill Bill from the mage trainer. As for the ranger-only "Bigger Cup" quest, I suppose it doesn't have to be restricted to just rangers but it would only make sense for rangers so I'd have the wording of it be as if the person taking it is a ranger. In fact, if Dungeon Runners can have the NPC be "slightly" aware that the class of the character taking the quest might not be a ranger, the NPC could make humorous remarks about how the non-ranger quest-seeker has some of the oddest looking ranger gear that NPC has ever seen a ranger wear.

As for a mage or a warrior getting the spells/buffs, no mage would want to get any of this since their spells don't do weapon damage thus cannot benefit from a vampiric weapon. As for warriors, I think "Bigger Cup" would be a waste for them since its benefit comes from being able to do damage prior to being hit. Warriors engage in hand-to-hand combat so they get damage at the same time they give it thus "Bigger Cup" would be pointless for them. However, I could see warriors getting "You Suck Big Time!" and "Body Over Brains" if they're using vampiric gear. I see nothing wrong with warriors taking either of those but would only have the ranger trainer offer them to characters.

And the above should be able to be done with any vampiric gear. Not just ranged weapons. If it is only from ranged weapons, then all the other health and mana steals on other gear might not work. It also make it more complicated than it needs to be. In fact, I could even seen a new build come out of this for warriors ("Vampiric Warrior") where warriors pass on "Bigger Cup" but get the other vampiric spells/buffs and seek out vampiric gear.

Now since Dungeon Runners is a tongue-in-cheek kind of a game, I would also suggest that the ranger trainer also offer "Henchman" spell. The "Henchman" spell would conjure up a humpback assistant named "Igor" who would pretty much do the same as Chill Bill, but I'd give Igor a spiked club to swing. Then a later level spell could be "Brides" where a vampiress is conjured up that flies at monster and possibly with a percentage chance of causing them to run in fear when hit for the first time by her. The "Brides" spell being upgradeable so eventually you can have three brides (like Count Dracula had) fighting for you and then other spells buffing them up. Perhaps one bride buff being a percentage chance of stunning a monster and each rank of that spell increases the stun chance.

Ok. That makes a bit more sense to me. I wouldn't know how to detect non-ranger "classes" except if you looked at the default passives. So, I wouldn't even worry about wording the quest as if the character is a ranger. To give a mage some benefit, it may be possible for the developers to make it such that health and mana steal work with spells, maybe at a reduced capacity. As for your pet ideas, which I think you got off of Van Helsing, they don't seem like a bad idea right now, but pets need to be carefully designed. You don't want the pet to be overpowered for general use, nor do you want it too weak.

That's naturally their call, but it seems as if they have purposely not done this. One of the reasons I can see them not doing that is because some offensive spells attack more than one monster at a time. Some up to five. Giving mages even a small cut of the health/mana steal could add up quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the reason why the developers haven't given rangers multi-shot, which is common with most rangers in other video games.

Nah, I remember them from tons of cheesy "B" vampire movies of my youth. Google "vampire brides" and you'll see this. As for Igor, that's name of Dr. Frankstein's assistant (or at least in some those other cheesy "B" monster movies), but the original Count Dracula story had a banker/accountant that got him to London ... who was insane by that time. Since Dungeon Runners has a sense of humor and isn't too anal about details, using the name Igor will get across the cheesy idea for which that I think the developers are aiming.

Oh, I agree. I would make the brides possibly just be monster magnets that only do fear and stun attacks. If possible, once they fear/stun one monster, they go onto the next one and try against them. Used this way, the brides are actually just giving the ranger more time to take down the monsters and not taking any down themselves.

Of course, it is their decision. I can also see it adding up quite quickly with the Area of Effect spells. As for multi-shot, they could mark it to not trigger health and mana steal effects, but I've never really used multi-shot when it is available. I think Fable is the only place I've used it. Every other game I play that has it, also keeps track of arrows. Multi-shot tends to go through the arrows too fast for me.


Well a different source isn't a bad thing. I assumed Van Helsing because it had both Igor and three brides for Dracula.

An interesting concept for the brides. I wouldn't want to be melee with them though. It gets to be a pain fighting enemies that are running away from you. For ranged weapons, it isn't so bad having enemies run away. However, if they aren't doing any damage I'm not sure how many people would even consider using them.

That could be viewed as a plus for making rangers more unique.

With my ranger, if the brides could simply slow the monsters down, that gives me more time to mow them down.

A third thing the brides could do is make the monsters go momentarily insane and temporarily attack their own kind. Fear/stun/insanity would be quite the combo package for such brides. And the insanity would enable the brides to do damage without doing direct damage and in a unique way that I don't believe anything else in the game does. I'd just have it be random which the brides do to monsters as well as a percentage chance they don't do anything other than be a monster magnet. As your character gets more ranks in "Brides", the percentage chance of nothing happening decreases.

Alternatively, since you earlier said up to three brides, you could have each bride having one action. First has fear, second has stun, third has insanity. Or some other order. The chance of nothing happenning also makes sense to me. The bride rebelling over your control and just sitting there. Higher skill level = more control and less rebelling.

That's a good suggestion. If the developers were to have each of the brides have a different type of attack, I'd suggest the developers color each a little different from each other. Maybe have one have red hair (insane), another white (fear), and a third black (stun). If the developers did this, I'm sure players will eventually give the gals names individual names. *laugh*

As for which bride players get first, I think the least preferred bride should be given first, second desirable second, and most desired last. If I was given the decision, I'd have fear first, stun second, and insanity third. Insanity is a no-brainer for it being third. Why I'd have fear first is that fighters hate fear since that means they have to run after a monster and it does moderately annoy rangers if the feared monster runs around a corner.

And an important design for such brides is they moving onto another monster all the time to attempt their attack. If they just focus on one, their combat value would be greatly depreciated. They should hit a monster once and then strike a different monster. If a monster is feared, stunned, or made insane, the brides then not attack them. Now this could mean none are attack as all monsters are suffering fear, stun, or insanity, but that's great. If this happens (very likely a low percentage chance), I'd have the brides evilly laugh until the effects wears off one of the monsters and then the brides go on the attack again.

I was more meaning a failure rate. In other words, they don't cause their effect every time they hit. There's a percentage chance they fail.

Maybe add in the possibility of, not only the brides taking no action, but also a chance of each angry bride to turn on her "master".

It's happened before......

PS heh heh not talking about you wifey, nice wifey, sweet wifey.

You definately would want some way to distinguish which bride is which. Here's another option to think about. It would be more overhead to keep track of, but changing the default bride names to custom names could be offered for either gold or king's coins or even nothing at all. The names would have to be saved somewhere though, possibly on the character's xml data.

I'm glad you agree on the order of the attacks. I just put them up in the order I thought they should appear.

That would be fun to see.

That works too.

I like this idea too. After all, everyone wants more power. Maybe this could be what happens if all the monsters are under the effects of any one power.

You speak of Brides. What of Female players then?

Have another set of models for female players, and call them grooms. Yes I know that there is more coding involved here.

It is just a concept. All the versions of Dracula that I can think of off the top of my head portray Dracula as a him, and Dracula had brides.

I find it a bit more trouble than it's worth. Just do other Pet/Summon concepts, instead of this complicated and graphically-intensive (lots of new models) one. Don't say "use existing human models", because that would be very confusing and chaotic in Teams especially...

Acutally they would only have to make two models (one male and one female) and change the hair color to make the other four. For PvP I would say limit it to only one being summoned, and since to my knowledge (I don't play PvP in general) fear and insanity wouldn't have any effect in PvP, the one summoned who be the stunning one.

*LMAO* Very funny!

First, this game isn't PC to start with. Thank goodness!

Second, you're assuming that the female characters are heterosexual. Who says they're not bisexual or homosexual? I'm sure players can make up their own rationalization ... if they even bother. The female characters could view them as helping sisters.

Edited by Magic_Mallard (10/16/08 11:00 PM)

That which does not kill us, makes us dinner?

MMmmm, PIE!!!