Companions... I want a damn Panther like Marion...

~Purnay
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his."

Companions. Birds!


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Oleveir says, "One must be careful around the angry ODS women."

Your vote counts like 20 times....

>>Sorry, Marion has a mountain lion.

Technically, a panther is a type of mountain lion, no? I do not remember off-hand what kind of mountain lion Marion's is, since its short description is "mountain lion".

>>because I actually see signs that is what will happen.

>>Such as?

>>- GM Sithix

The way I see this is that in this new system Rangers will gravitate toward only doing what is their Primary and Secondary skill sets so they can get the TDPs they will need when they circle. As it stands now 4 primary survival skills, 3 armor secondary skills, and 3 weapon secondary skills will gain TDPs toward circles (of course this might change but for right now lets assume this is how it will be when its changed). After all we need the TDPs for the stats needed for beseeches, companions, horse catching, hunting grounds, survival skills, etc. Now from what we hear already we find that Animal lore and Foraging are being folded into one skill Outdoorsmanship or some such. Now I'm going to assume the reason for this is to provide more ways to train a skill and of course to allow for more magic and lore skills to be introduced. This will make the former companion training (animal Lore) to now train outdoorsmanship, along with foraging, and who knows maybe others tossed in at a later date. Between Foraging and training a companion now, 99% of the people will gravitate to just foraging to raise the outdoorsmanship skill because its easier and simpler to do. But they will only work it hard if its among their 4 primary survival skills needed for TDPs. Those 4 skills will be worked harder than all the rest, with the rest getting enough to handle new ranger requirements and not much else.

So what I see is a gradual pushing of the animal companions to the side, where the skills to advance will be the easiest of the methods of training. For example most folks rather than bring out the companion will simply forage till locked then get back to hunting so they can circle and still get the TDPs they need. Thus on all the combined skills the easiest method to train them will be the one chosen. Since training animal lore was always basically broken we can assume foraging will be the method of choice. You can do it anywhere you can train a companion and much easier. Don't get me wrong here, I assume you will eventually change how things train but I doubt it will happen within a year or two of this major change, which will be all the time necessary to relegate companions to the byways for many rangers (gee, sorta like... now). Its all about the ability to train a skill nothing else.

This is another reason I figured we better do companions first over trails, because well, the scouting skill is broken for training as well. You cant train well on trails if you are very young because you cant see them yet and when you do you dont have many to run. But HUNT works pretty good if you are young. Not as good if you are older as it requires critters usually tougher than yourself to make hunt work well at much higher circles, not to mention if you are alone in the hunting ground the gen rate of the critters probably sucks making HUNT rather useless in those cases. And Running trails at high circles just does not train well, unless you dont mind spending a couple hours just running a set of trails (hopefully without you getting keyboard imprints on your face while doing so).

Anyway this is why I see companions basically becoming irrelevant. They really don't do anything other than help you learn animal lore and it will simply be easier to forage for the outdoorsmanship skill. Unless companions provide something other than a method to train animal lore (now outdoorsmanship), they will become/remain completely irrelevant with the changes, which is why I voted for companions.... hoping my wolf smokey gets a bone tossed his direction.

Ranger Pfanston and his Soggy Puppy

>Type of big cat, yes. Mountain lion? No. Mountain lion is the same as a cougar, or a puma.

Mountain lions, cougars, and pumas are also refereed to as 'panthers' in some regions, as are leopards and jaguars.

There is no distinct 'panther' species, I don't think the original 'panther' was even a real animal.

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"Magic has rules and so does posting on these forums." -Annwyl

Pfanston,

I agree with parts of your post in that Companions need to be more than a way to train Animal Lore.

On the other hand, if you're looking at Companions as only (note the keyword) a way to train a skill, you're probably missing out a little. I know some people will, and it won't be as narrow as the current incarnation don't worry, but even so, some probably still will. I promise to make it rewarding and fun... if scripting foraging is 10% more efficient for you to train a skill and you want to do that instead... I won't stop you. You meaning, any Ranger; not pointing you out here.

Also, begin to think of Outdoorsmanship as Outdoorsmanship, not Foraging+AnimalLore. It will be difficult to do so, especially in the short-term, but the new skill doesn't just allow for us to have more meaningful skills that we can develop with by taking two very narrow things and putting them together, but it also begs the question: what -else- is Outdoorsmanship?


- GM Sithix

If you'd stop finding bugs I could code Companions 2.0.

fletching. first aid. hell pretty much anything involved in being a boy scout


~Purnay
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his."

companions