Change how tracks are left.

[WinkinBlinkin]

But if rangers had powerful senses of smell...

The ranger lowers himself to the ground, and inhales, taking in the scent of the creature he is tracking. One of them smells of pie crust and gravy, weak, watered ale. He sees the small footprints: halfling then. The other trail... the prints are definitely human, but there is no scent attached to them whatsoever. A complete absence, a hole where a life should be. Not the pungent, leafy effluence of a vegetarian, nor the heavy odours of a meat eater. No sweat, no fading musk. This creature was human once, but had ceased being so long before these tracks were made.

[WinkinBlinkin]

Mind you, if they could do that, they should be able to recognise all different races without tracks too...

[The Kriv]

The difficulty of modifying the system without breaking it is in that NWN made the decision to lump every kind of specific D&D knowledge skill into a single 'general knowledge' category and give it the name, "Lore"

As anyone who's played the Ranger class in D&D (or had a PC take the TRACK feat) knows that the "Track Feat" that is mentioned above -DOES NOT- grant anyone automatic success in reading and interpreting tracks.

What it allows is for you to make a SKILL CHECK to get useful information on the tracks, and the SKILL CHECK used is "Wilderness Lore" in 3.0 and "Survival" in 3.5.

"Survival" is the skill that allows you to keep yourself (and others) safe and fed in the wilds.


I know this thread began because folk didn't like their 5% Dragon char magically shifted into human form be outed by a ranger-dip build that doesn't even RP as full-on Rangers. Which, you know, heck.. I'm all in agreement with.


The interpretation of the "Track" feat into NWN is hard. Arelith has done a pretty darn good job of it, relatively speaking. And modifying it further without breaking it all together is a challenge.

As BMFlex mentioned above, having a loaner step out of the shadows to point out that those are not ordinary elf-track, but DROW tracks... that's all about being a Ranger. Giving that away to any character who may happen to have taken certain skills that for different reasons that suddenly acquire "TRACK" information as a byproduct just because the two share some sort of synergy, that would be a crime.


For reference, here is a link to the 3.5 SRD info for the "SURVIVAL" skill.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Survival_Skill

please take note:

"Epic Check
You can ignore the effects of terrain on movement and withstand even the harshest weather. If you are capable of tracking, you can identify the races of creatures being tracked."

And honestly... DISCIPLINE and how it works as a SINGLE skill to defend against a host of COMBAT FEAT ABILITIES?? That is WAAAAY more broken than Track.


I think comparatively, Track is in a pretty good place. Could it use a revision? Definitely. Is it a high priority revision? No.

[CosmicOrderV]

That's why it seems straight forward enough to link any ranger-exclusive insights to their Favored Enemies.

[Beard Master Flex]

@CosmicOrderV

That does sound like a neat idea - but I'd just worry that it would limit the ~kinds~ of Ranger's we'd see.

Back in the day no one played FULL ranger. My first Ranger was a Rogue, my other companions were an AA and a Monk with Ranger dips.

Now neither character could hold a candle to the Ranger after the improvements these days, but it made for a more diverse skill set and uniqueness when the Rangers that popped up out of the bushes all functioned very differently as part of a team.

Linking it purely to Ranger progression would essentially give you Ranger's that are either dual wielding double bladed weapons, or Archers with a rogue/bard dip.

That aside I do like that idea thematically. But it just feels like tracks aren't in a enough bad place that warrant a change to me.

Other then the new Ranger I made when the changes first came out I've never played one with more then 3-10 levels in it, which would effectively limit how rangery they could be and I've never really liked gating a theme behind class levels.

[magistrasa]

I don't know that anyone is playing a ranger /exclusively/ for the tracking ability, so I doubt any changes like the ones COV mentions would exactly limit build diversity

Tracking is something purely used in RP. With that being the case, I'm in favor of any changes that makes it more accessible to other classes (like tying it to search/-investigate), and changes that create a unique flavor for the skill depending on your build (diviners see attunement, rangers see favored enemy, druids should probably get some special sauce too!).

[Serendipitous214]

As someone who knows how and does track critters IRL, I figured I'd throw my two cents in

You can definitely and fairly easily "with some practice" tell the difference between subraces, relative age, and gender of what you're tracking, it's not all about the footprints though the clues you get from those are also important, they tell you the relative age and particular species, also direction of travel, pace, and how long ago they travelled through the area, as well as an educated guess as to gender, broken twigs, trash and waste left behind and hair/fur/clothing caught in obstacles can tell you hair/fur color and confirm what is left to question from reading footprints

From experience I can tell you that it's very easy for a semi skilled tracker to tell the difference between subspecies of deer, bear, elk and other game. If anything, if we wanted tracking to be more realistic in Arelith, we'd have to add details rather than seek to take them away "disregarding magically transformed creatures entirely because I have no real world experience with telling when a dragon or a rakshasa are pretending to be something else"

(Edit)
I'm an IRL ranger dip, my main class is procrastination, but I do get ranger ambidexterity

[Tarkus the dog]

I know a few situations of roleplay being completely cut in short because of that one person who has the imagination of a dead turtle. I had a few instances of rangers trying to be slick on me by calling my character a 'dead-one' or whatever. Okay, that's great,
I don't mind that personally, but literally what Roleplay did you made out of the information you were given other than do a little
'haha, i know what you are' on me. There was a drow character who was on verge of going full Eilistraeean or however you type that. The character was a bard so no point in trying to break the disguise. Anyway, they mingled with the elves a couple of times and it was put to a full stop when one of the elves discovered that one of the elves is in fact a drow. The roleplay ended there when the rest of the elves decided to embrace the dead turtle mentality and nothing ever came out of it in the end.

That's what the tracks system does most of the time, in my experience at the very least. It's also notorious for just straight up revealing 5% characters who's entire shtick is not being revealed so easily in the first place. If that's your preferred method over actually going with the players's roleplay and getting that knowledge the long way, then I wasted my time trying to get my point across and I think you're a lazy donut.

[Serendipitous214]

I'm confused, is the point to make ranger tracking more realistic or less weighted out of favor of otherwise unidentifiable races?

As I understand it there's not currently a means to positively identify special races aside from the tracks left behind which can be easily solved by taking druid or ranger levels to get the trackless step feat, if we're talking about taking a counter to undead/dragons/planetouched characters being unknown, shouldn't we add another in its place to keep THOSE from being unbalanced?

[CosmicOrderV]

The point is that you can accomplish both at the same time.