Now that Paladins, who already had a more functional and modern spell list, got their spell review I am hoping we can look into doing the same for Rangers and Bards. The two classes who have seen the least Dev in the last decade. Quite frankly, I feel the 600s and 1000s are both stuck in Gemstone III in a lot of ways. That said I would propose the following necessary updates to the ranger spell circle:

601 Natural Colors / 611 Mass Colors - These two spells should be combined. Make the mass spell a function of either spell ranks or blessing lore.

603 Foraging / 604 Skinning - Personally I would like to see these two combined into a single spell "Nature Lore."

606 Phoen's Strength - No change, though I wouldn't be opposed to a blessing lore tie to increase carrying capacity

609 Sun Burst - Change targetted 609 to a damaging attack. Maybe require a Summoning Lore threshold for this.

620 Resist Nature - This spell is an empty slot on the ranger spell list, as far as I am concerned. I can't give it away in Platinum, I've tried. My own armor has too much padding to ever use it on and many other rangers use chain, which it cannot be used on. I would like to keep the service aspect as it is but add a self-cast component, similar to what sorcerer's can do for themselves with 735.

Self casting 620 would give 10% resistance to Fire, Nature, Cold and Steam for 1200 sec + 60 per spell rank, stackable. Blessing lore would increase this by 1% per step at Seed 5, maxing at 20% total at 95 ranks. This resistance would stack with any resistance on the armor but not with ranger resistances on the armor. (i.e. A ranger with 0 Blessing Lore who put fire resist on their armor would have 10% resistance to cold, steam and nature and 20% from their armor against fire. If their armor had 10% cold resistances built in, they would have 20% cold and Fire resistance and 10% steam and nature resistance.)

625 Nature's Touch - Removed. Rangers can now cast indoors at level 20 and/or rank 20 in ranger spells. Alternately just let us cast inside and remove this archaic restriction entirely.

650 Assume Aspect - With the change to 625 noted below I would only ask that we be allowed to use ASSUME while in roundtime and that ASSUME (ANIMAL) would cast Assume Aspect with that animal aspect if we did not already have it running. Quite frankly I just want the option to emergency ASSUME PORCUPINE if I get RT locked.

NEW 603 Nature's Assault - Single target CS attack that uses the environment similar to Nature's Fury. Modified by Summoning Lore. This, combined with 609 doing damage, would make a "druid" build more viable.

NEW 611 Imaera's Ward/Nature's Ward - When a ranger who is bound, stunned or feared is attacked the ward activates and attempts to remove the affliction prior to the attack processing. Once the Ward activates once the magic dissipates and must be recast.

NEW 625 Untamed Spirit - The wild nature of the Ranger's magic resist attempts to confine them. Using this spell a ranger may STRUGGLE to throw off the effects of bind, calm, stun, fear or silence. Making use of nature magic in this way is taxing and a ranger will need to rest for an hour before attempting this again. If a ranger wishes to use Untamed Spirit again within the cooldown period they may do so at a cost of 25 stamina per attempt made since the ranger properly rested. (i.e. Brinret uses Untamed Spirit, 20 minutes later he uses it again at a cost of 25 stamina and the 1 hour cooldown restarts, 50 mintues later he uses it again at a cost of 50 stamina and the 1 hour cooldown restarts, he goes 60 minutes from there without using it and then needs it again, costs just the base mana cost)


These proposed changes would do the following:
- Make a "druid" build alternative viable at earlier levels
- Remove the redundancy of 601 and 611
- Make 620 useful to rangers
- Provide rangers with an "emergency" option they are currently severely lacking

Thoughts on those changes from both players and staff? Please note that I purposely left 630 Animal Companion out of this thread as I believe the spell needs a major overhaul and deserves it's own thread.


Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Be nice to Wyrom or I will cut you!

I like Lore requirements, and other-skill requirements as well. (Like the single-target ability of Disruption/1030; great example.) The effectively let the GMs put multiple different effects into a single spell slot. (Curse is another good example, and those different stages come without a skill requirement so far as I know.)

The base spell should be usable as-is. (Targeting/Barrier are good examples there: you use it as-is, and it works just fine with no additional training whatsoever.) But if you do go ahead and train more, you get more out of it.