Shattered Kingdoms

Snare needs an overhaul - I've been playing with this for a while, here are some things I see wrong with it, and how I think it could be corrected.

1) Negligible PE costs.
2) Once snares are laid, snares are nondetectable - save in the case someone else tries to set a snare in the same area.
3) If scout gets snared accidentally, he can still lay MORE snares while doing so.
4)Same limitations as camo effect snares (e.g, for some reason, you can't set snares on the beach)
5) WTF are snares anyway? Why do scouts have an unlimited supply of the materials one needs to make a snare? Where do snares come from? Wtf comprises a snare?

Fixes:
1) Raise PE costs of snare to proportional amounts, i.e., bring it in line to match fletch

2) Are snares buried? Are they sitting on the ground? Are they magical? No one really knows, but they need to be detectable some kind of way. Detect buried, detect magic, or hell, awareness and pathfinding could pick up snares.

3) Disable the ability to set snares while snared. This just doesn't make sense.

4) I'm supposing that beaches aren't flagged the same way as normal wilderness, which makes camo and snare not work in these environments. It might take a while, but I think these areas should be flagged accordingly.

5) This problem is a bit more complex. Either make a snare crafting system like the way fletch works, in which multiple types of snares can be chosen (beartrap, hanging rope, bamboo spike trap?) based on environment, or materials - or make snares some sort of weapon/tool type only scouts can use effectively. I'm not sure how the latter one would work, but based on what little I know, it might be more feasible.
Somehow, the number of snares a scout can set SHOULD be made finite. As it is now, if a scout wanted to take the time - they could set 8 snares in every room in the wilderness.

I like all these ideas.

The thing about beaches is minor, so I wouldn't expect much in that regard.

The last part is the hardest. It'd be nice to see some more varied use out of snares, definitely. The first three points should definitely be addressed first, though.

Snares are just simple traps laid on the ground which is a rope that extends from a tree branch down to the ground and is usually covered by a pile of leaves.

When a hapless victim triggers a snare it snatches his [REDACTED] up off of the ground and hangs him upside down.

I do think bear traps would be awesome though.

So, why can scouts make more snares while hanging upside down? And where are they getting all this rope from? Know what I mean?

Never stopped them from crushing coal into diamonds with their bare hands while making arrows. Why can't they just make rope out of thin air too?

its the secret rule of scouts. 'thou shall make diamonds out of thin air, yet thou shall only use them for arrowtips! thou shall not sell them for profit or ye shall face fluffy doom'

:/


That's a good question, too. I never stopped to think about it.

I wouldn't get hung up on the 'where the materials come from argument'.

If you think about it similar arguments could be made about a lot of other skills in the game. Like how there is a infinite supply of dirt to kick no matter how polished the temple floor is...Or how a character can use the 'disguise' skill to change his eye-color hair-color or any other much more dramtic feature without any dye or magical energy.

All the others changes I think are really good, although maybe not bear traps. Its bad enough lowbies get caught in snares and are immobilized for a period of time, I'd hate to think what a GM beartrap would do to a lowbie.

Generally speaking, you can only dirt kick outdoors. If you see someone dirt kicking in a temple, the room is probably not flagged correctly and should be typo logged for a builder to fix.

I think if we ever got a tradeskill system going, part of that effort would be to make skills use up more in the way of material components. Right now we just assume that you find this stuff, since a lot of these items aren't anywhere physically in the game.

Being able to make snares while snared is probably just an oversight. I can agree in theory that snare could use revamping all around.

Haha, I always imagined SK to be like an old-school chinese kung fu movie. No matter where you go, there's ALWAYS dust and dirt to kick. This includes restaurants, bars, temples, and houses.