Remove Tracks

[The Kriv]

Leaving tracks at transitions is really an awesome awesome thing.

Had a couple of ideas, thought I would toss them out to see what folk thought and maybe workshop it into something actually submitable to the Suggestion forum when it opens up again.

The mechanic for removing tracks is kinda clunky though. You have to bash them out of existence. And when you do it, usually folk look at you funny like you're attacking the ground.

It might be kinda cool to removed the tracks with a simple command like -Hide_tracks or something?

And then to another level...

If you have a ranger in your party, the Ranger could toggle 'on' an ability to HIDE the tracks of that party. Maybe like one additional pair of tracks for Ranger-levels/3...

Which would be really cool for raiding parties who have a ranger PC with them to travel quickly and leave no tracks behind them... meaning that if there are EXISTING tracks... NO ADDITIONAL tracks would be added to them by the party traveling with the Ranger!


Example of this in action:

4 dwarves, an elf, and 2 humans pass through a transition, all leaving tracks behind.

Sometime later, a small drow raiding party of 3 drow and a gnoll. -The gnoll is a Ranger/Barb mix with enough Ranger levels to cover 2 of the 3 sets of tracks left by his companions.

A Hawkin ranger scout comes upon the same transition and sees there are tracks, so examines them.

Instead of seeing tracks of 4 dwarves, an elf, 2 humans and 3 drow (Gnoll doesn't leave tracks cuz Ranger)
what the Hawkin ranger finds are the tracks of: 4 dwarves, an elf, 2 humans and 1 drow.



More ranger levels would translate into hiding more party companions. Multiple Rangers in a single party could combine efforts to hide more tracks...

maybe for this to work, the ranger has to move through the transition last.


-brainstorming- maybe even HIGHER level rangers could recognize that the tracks had been altered!

I dunno, just brain storming.

thoughts??

[WanderingPoet]

Nice idea!

How about... Rangers hide their own tracks like current. Rangers can read tracks as they can now, however for every 2 levels of ranger less than the druid/ranger they're following that druid/ranger's party can hide 1 set of tracks.

So for example,

- Level 30 druid is in a party with 4 other people. Level 30 ranger follows them and sees all 5 people. Level 26 ranger follows them and sees 3 people. Level 20 ranger or ranger with fewer levels sees 0 people.

- Level 26 ranger is in a party with 4 other people. Level 26 ranger follows them and sees 5 people. Level 18 ranger follows them and sees 1 person.

It would be great if tracks -always- existed, rather than cleaning up every 6 minutes and were more out of the way of transitions/portals to remove using tracks to tell that 'someone' passed if you can't read them; as well as having some of them disappear faster than others. It'd also make them impossible to clean up if you're not a high enough level ranger/druid, giving more incentive to go high levels in ranger.

[Ebonstar]

I happen to like tracks how they are, save the subrace bug i have mentioned before

if people want to cover their tracks they can rp brushing them out while they kick up dust

[The Kriv]

I happen to like tracks how they are, save the subrace bug i have mentioned before

if people want to cover their tracks they can rp brushing them out while they kick up dust

The RP if covering their tracks = destroying the tracks, which:
1) calls attention to itself because it makes noise.
2) breaks stealth, revealing you and your position.
3) it is not uncommon for the sound of the destruction of the tracks to catch people's curious attention and walk over to see what is causing the combat sounds.

-the idea of the suggestion is to make the 'cover tracks' a more invisible thing so that the existing tracks can be used to intentionally mislead others.


If you are in an area, and tracks suddenly appear... you might not be able to break that character's stealth, but you SEE the tracks they leave behind. Even if you can't READ them, you can still SEE them.

This would make it so Rangers could be able to use their skill to prevent a number of party members (level dependent) from leaving tracks in the first place, provided they travel together... so that YOU don't SEE the tracks appear.

Honestly, the benefit would be to assassins and Underdarkers traveling on the surface, who would desire the services of a ranger-pc... and vice-versa. It is making a class feature more useful to more than just the character who has the skill.

just a crazy idea I thought would be cool. - I won't feel bad if you don't think it's cool too.

Thanks for reading it and tossing your 2-coppers in anyway!

[Might-N-Magic]

Bashing tracks sounds to me more like a bug than anything. I'm sorry, but how does <insert violent action here> hide anything? Seems like an oversight as hiding tracks would be some thing a skilled individual would do.

I'm fine with rangers being the defacto masters of all things track, but I'm a bit annoyed they're the only ones who can. I'm a hunter in real life and can attest, you don't need to be some super-weirdo to track, it's not insanely hard, esoteric knowledge. I'd be happy if people who had Lore + Search could make use of them.

Also, can we make it so they stop spawning directly on top of portals? That's inconvenient and irritating.

[Hazard]

It's silly to me that only rangers can track. I can track and I'm boring.