Since ranger is one of the most recommended classes while playing Improved Anvil (for playing the expanded ranger stronghold), I added the new Vagrant kit to the game in order to give players more options at character creation stage. Please send your feedbacks, suggestions and comments about the new ranger kit here.

1- Is the kit balanced, overpowered, underpowered? (mostly compared to other ranger kits of the original game)

2- Are the swanmays helpful, too powerful, too weak, well balanced?

3- Does the kit gain the ability to summon swanmays too early, too late, too frequently, not frequently enough, or just fine?

4- How interesting is the kit compared to other ranger kits? Is it attaractive enough to give you motive to play with it at least in some of your game-throughs (when you decide to play a ranger anyway)?

Here is the newest description of the kit (you can always find the newst description in theinitial post of this thread or in the related file attached to the mod's readme file):

Planning on playing a vagrant on my next run-through. Alas, that will be sometime in the summer, and after my uni exams.

First impression-wise, i'd say it looks like an interesting kit. I like the way it adds a unique ability rather than just tweaking a few stats.

The only thing I don't like is the name, vagrant has derogatory connotations, and the amnish guards call you a vagrant as an insult when you sleep on the streets. But, meh, that's personal preference.

I tried the vagrant kit a bit.I personly prefer F/M or F/M/T and don't
really like playing pure rangers.R/C if taking rangers.

The immunity to poison,+1 constitution and saving throws are not the
most helpful ones.You can get the with magic items or little buffs
in neccesary.

Haven't tested the summon that much.It's gated so it's a nice feature.
I don't like the kit.Playing IA I'll try to take really useful protagonist
like a F/M or R/C for my second run.I like my protagonist very useful.
As a ranger NPC it can be nice.

To me at least it's not interesting or seems powerful enough for a game-through.
If I wasn't playing IA I would probably try it for a game-through.

Considering the feedback I have received so far about the kit, it seems that not many players have found it attractive and powerful enough to play the entire game with it. I have decided to revise the kit for the next release of the mod (not v5 yet; I'm talking of v4.3).

I'm thinking of the new description of the mod to be as follows:



Any comments before I implement it? Is it now better, worse, still underpowered, overpowered or what?

I'm also thinking of adding a "Vagrant-Specific" quest to the game, though I have not decided about the details yet. Of course, the quest I have in mind will not be "Vagrant-specific" with no justification and just to encourage players to play the kit. The story I have in mind is such that it only make sense if the protagonist is a vagrant ranger. It's about helping a small community of Swanmays. I may even grant a new ability "Summon Greater Swanmay" to the kit once the player completes the new quest successfully. What do you think?

Against my better judgement, I'm playing a vagrant protagonist atm. Not a comment on the kit itself, rather a matter of the amount of work I should be doing .

To get down to the brass tacks, the kit is a lot weaker than say.....a f/m or a r/c, which is why I imagine a lot of people haven't chosen it for their first game (only losers like me who have played 1.5 games already).

But it is comparable to the other ranger kits, and a damn sight better than archer or beast master. No, I would keep the power level as it is, rather than try to compete with the multi-classes, and settle for creating an intentive spin on the usual bg 2 gameplay.

Firstly, I think introducing elemental resistance is unnecessary, unless you're willing to add more disadvantages to using the kit. My advice would be to concentrate on expanding the summoning ability, perhaps give it a bit more tactical weight without being cheesy.

From my experience, the ability came in a bit too late to be truly useful. By the time my vagrant was lvl 13, I already had mordenkainen's sword, so summoning a swanmay instead of a sword is kinda pointless. And i'll update you when I get there, but I could see swanmays getting shredded almost instantly by the enemies in tob. Plus I kinda feel like the summon needs some identity, a special ability that's unique.

So this is my idea: one tactical area I feel is neglected in bg and could lead to rewarding gameplay are those icedust potions. You only get 3 in the whole game, yet they're a really good idea (they'd be a real life-saver if you couldn't just walk out of a dragon's breath and not get hit). But yeah, one of the most annoying parts of the game for me is realising a triple abi-dalzim's horrid wilting is coming and not having any protection spells left, or you can't cast them fast enough. So I say the swanmays should have an ability which allows you to sacrifice them to make your party immune to a certain type of damage for 2 rounds or so, like the icedust potions, except you could use it for magic, fire, acid etc. Imo this is an underused device.

I also very much like the idea of having a more powerful summon for tob, and the vagrant-specific quest. Dynamic content is always a good thing.

If there's anything else, feel free to ask away, I think I have a pretty good impression of the kit.

Thank you very much for the feedback, leonidas!





I mainly want the kit to be comapred with the Stalker (which is the most powerful ranger kit of the original game, IMO).


Well, the main reason I thought of adding this new ability was to introduce a better justification for why the kit can't wear metal armors. For stalkers the justification is that they are backstabbers and stealth is a primary ability for them. For vagrants, I felt a lack of this kind of justification (except that they are probably more attuned with nature than other rangers). This was why I thought to add the resistance to elemental damage ability. Metal armors are conductive materials which will probably contradict with resistance to electricty, fire and even cold. Hence, I added these resistances to give a better justification why the kit won't use metal armors.Do you think that the elemental resistance (10% per 4 levels) will make the kit overpowered?



Well, swanmays are more powerful than Modenkainen's swords in many respects (and weaker in some other respects, of course). First of all, Swanmays are not ordinary summoned creatures. "Death Spell" will not kill them (and of course enemies will not cast death spells on them; they also know that Swanmays are not ordinary summoned beings). Also, Swanmays are 13th level warriors; so, it didn't make sense to me to give the ability to summon them to lower level vegrants. I'm not sure,but perhaps it won't be a good idea to allow a low level vagrant to summon a swanmay which has higher level than the summoner.



They already have a unique ability. A special attack called "Wing Swing". I'm just thinking of improving this special attack and making it a bit more powerful for the next release of the mod. I hope that with the revision I have in mind for this special attack, Swanmays will turn to really helpful creatures even in IA's difficult battles.

No, definitely not overpowered. It's just a high ratio of advantages to disadvantages compared to any other kit. Also, I personally prefer to see dynamic abilities, rather than passive ones (although elemental resistance would be convenient; god knows how many times i've cast protection from fire)




Ah, yes, summoning a higher level character would be bizarre. I think the answer lies in what you've already suggested: having different types of swanmays based on the completion of a quest or going up a level. As for them being comparable to mordenkainen's swords, well, they're not. A sword can keep an enemy occupied for a long time, being impervious to damage and mental attacks and all. Comparitively a swanmay is down for the count as soon as the first emotion spell hits. But, it would be a bad idea to compete with morky's sword in this area, because they are the ultimate summon for taking a beating. That brings me on to the next bit....



Well, if it can be made useful, so be it. It's just atm, wing swing doesn't separate swanmays from the multitude of summoned stuff I can throw at an enemy.

Oh and I do like the kit btw, definitely better than the other ranger fare.

I haven' played one yet, but it seems to be a cross between a barbarian and a ranger. How about some sort of animal rage ability and greater animal rage at higher levels (sort of like barbarian rage), countered by an extra disadvantage that the vagrant could not use any metal two-handed weapons (so no 2 handed swords or hallberds) ?

The new decription of the kit is this. It's now in its testing phase. We should test and see how the new and powerful swanmays work in practice.

Think I'll play a vagrant when 4.3 comes out, the changes to the kit look pretty interesting. I wanted to just check a couple of things:

Is the resistance to elemental damage effective against all of: fire, cold, electricity and acid?

The Vagrant has the spell casting and animal friendship abilities of the standard ranger, as well as stealth and 2* in two-weapon fighting, correct?

All except acid. As you can see in the 7th level spell "Protection From The Elements", acid damage is not considered as elemental damage.


Yes.

BTW, I am thinking of adding a slight disadvantage to the kit. Perhaps requiring 12 charisma (this is so far the most justified disadvantage I have found; (just like druids) vagrants need to have a minimum charisma to be so close friends with those woodland and lakeside beings). It's a disadvantage because the player won't be able to reduce his charisma too much to add to his other stats. What's everyone's opinion?

OK thanks Sikret. I hadn't realised acid wasn't counted as an 'element'.

I think requiring a certain minimum charisma is an excellent idea. It's loyal to the character of the kit and I always disliked the way you can reduce charisma to 3 in order to boost 'more important' stats - I don't like this side of powergaming because it's basically exploiting the fact that the game does not deal with low charisma scores properly at all.

You do realize that minimum stats are not a disadvantage; correct? The game engine forces a roll of the minimum stat in that category automatically, so it actually works out as an advantage.

Mhm... that's not set in stone. Minimum stats can be interpreted as a disadvantage. Let's take the paladin class as an example. You get lots of minimum stats, correct. On the other hand you are forced to have awesome charisma and wisdom. On the other hand you need good dexteritiy and constitution. A decent strength would be nice as well. So intelligence normally becomes the dump stat. The problem with this is that you can't do it the normal powergamer way, when creating the character: lowering charisma and maybe wisdom/intelligence. IMHO it's even worse with combat oriented bards
By forcing the player to have at least 12 charisma one might argue that he will end up with higher stats. On the other hand you lose 9 points (12 -> 3) you could have spent in the other attributes. As a ranger has other minimum stats as well (wisdom and the usual fighter stuff) this can really be a disadvantage.

No, the minimum stat requirement can be a disadvantage and can be an advantage depending on several factors. For example, if you create a fighter kit and then give him a minimum requirement of 16 on constitution, then it will work out as an "advantage", firstly because constitution is a prime and very useful stat for fighters and secondly because 16 is a high number. However, there are many cases in which a minimum stat requirement can work as a "disadvantage". For example, in this parituclar case, a minimum charisma requirement of 12 for a ranger is surely a disadvantage. It's true that the engine automatically creates a number bigger than 11 for the character, but on the other hand, the player can't reduce the charisma stat below 12 just to add to his other stats and 12 is not actually a big number to add any pariotuclar bonus to the character. (Heck, I had actually explained this in my previous post, but more clarifications were probably helpful, anyway.)

Arkain's explanations were great as well.

Hmm, I was under the impression that the engine just bumped up whatever was rolled for a particular stat to the minimum stat, not that it automatically distributed the stats to account for the minimum requirements and then placed the left overs in the unrestricted ability scores.

For example, if the engine handles it such that

Roll 1: Strength = 15
Roll 2: Dexterity = 12
Roll 3: Constitution = 6
Roll 4: Intelligence = 9
Roll 5: Wisdom = 18
Roll 6: Charisma = 8

Then apply minimum allowed scores by FOOKIT of wisdom = 18, Intelligence = 18, Charisma = 18

Roll 1: Strength = 15
Roll 2: Dexterity = 12
Roll 3: Constitution = 6
Roll 4: Intelligence = 18
Roll 5: Wisdom = 18
Roll 6: Charisma = 18

Or are you saying that it would redistriubute the other points, forcing lower scores to account such as below:

Roll 1: Strength = 5
Roll 2: Dexterity = 3
Roll 3: Constitution = 6
Roll 4: Intelligence = 18
Roll 5: Wisdom = 18
Roll 6: Charisma = 18

I was under the impression that the engine handled it like the first example I mentioned where it just modifies the score to the minimum values and doesn't affect the other rolls.

You're right. If you need a 17 charisma (paladin) and roll a 14, you get some extra points to have 17. Well, at least I think so.

Ok, that's why I suggested that minimum stats might be considered an advantage, though I can see the point that it would somewhat reduce the freedom to min-max, although it will still give you a larger total number of points.

One possibility you may want to consider for a CON for the kit, is a penalty to move silently/hide in shadows. Ideally I'd suggest that this only apply in urban/dungeon settings, but that is most likely beyond the practical limitations of the engine.

I think I'm going to play a Vagrant for the PC of my 4 character party. Perhaps I'll open up a thread to chronicle my progress (and, surely, ask for help quite a few times!)

In addition to the minimum charisma requirement, I'm also thinking of adding immunity to some beneficial spells to the kit as new disadvantages. Immunity to "Resist Fire/Cold", "Protection from fire", "Protection from cold", "Protection from Lightning", "Protection from Electricity", "Protection from the Elements", "Protection from Energy" spells (the immunity doesn't cover immunity to potions or items which grant elemental resistances of course, but just spells). The justification would be that the kit's innate resistance to the elements takes precedence and overrides those spells' effects. It's just a rough idea for now. I have not implemented it yet. Any comments?

My worry there would be that it would effectively change the true nature of the advantage (that is, the end net benefit in comparison with a normal ranger) from "gets extra protection from elemental damage" to "saves you some gold and/or casting slots". The former seems much cooler than the latter. I certainly don't think that having very high resistances to elemental damage would be overpowered. I haven't even played IA yet, but from what I've surmised from reading this forum it seems like not a whole ton of enemies focus primarily on elemental-based attacks (and having a few that do is perfectly ok and welcome if you ask me, it would only be overpowered if it was a huge advantage against a large chunk of improved enemies).

Protection from Energy is one of my favorite spells, and I would prefer that he not be immune to that. Immunity to any of the listed spells may make his inherent immunity a mixed advantage/disadvantage. (I think more of a disadvantage.) You could make the resistances not stack if you wanted (highest resistance is in effect). But even that would mean the elemental resistance is not an advantage, because it's not enough. I would end up using a spell to protect him anyway. Similarly, the main (but not only) reason that I haven't used the riskbreaker kit is that he seems fragile at lower levels considering his immunity to spirit armor.

I'm considering on coverting Valygar to a vagrant using SK. Will this be allowed?

It's doable, but it's better if your have your protagonist as a vagrant, because you will see some minor changes in the game with a vagrant protagonist which you won't see even if one of your NPCs is a vagrant. There is also a new item upgrade which will be offered by Cromwell (and Cespenar) only if your main PC is a vagrant.

Mhm... depends. The new Vagrant's advantages include his ever growing resistances to elemental damage. While these get really high later on, it would be a huge disadvantage if he were immune to most protection spells.
One can protect the vagrant though - as the character could use equipment and potions. It would still be nice if he wasn't immune to likely all protection spells. Maybe you consider rbe...'s idea of only the highest value working. Or you make the kit immune to low level protection spells? Something like Protection from Energy (which I like very much as well, btw ) as a high level spell would work simply because it's such a powerful spell.
What I'm wondering about: the justification is okay. But why would his innate resistance to elements overwrite the spells? I've always imagined that not all are working in the same manner. Protection from Magic Energy for example creates an aura around you (such as Protection from Evil... which's effect it is ) protecting you. So why would his innate resistances override this (note: this is an example. I know that this spell isn't included in you list)?

Ok, I dropped the idea of immunity to those beneficial spells.

What if I let the vagrant to reach grandmastery in axes and clubs, but confine him to one proficiency stars in some other weapons? If yes, which weapons do you suggest for him not to have more than one stars in?

As a character who spends most of his time at lakesides and woodlands, he seems to be more in harmony with his axe (with which he makes boats and cut woods) and the club he makes out of the woods rather than (say) a bastard sword or a halberd, eh?

I have not implemented this either, I'm looking for opinions and feedback.

I suggest 5* in simple tramp's weapon: clubs, daggers, staffs. And only 1* in flails, hammers, halberds and all big swords (two handed, bastard, long, exotic ones).
He still can use axes, spears, short swords, bows and slings with usual rangers proficiency.

I favor leaving >2 star proficiency to fighters (and kits) exclusively.

I think there is a medium way between 2* and 5*. I wouldn't like 5* at a ranger kit, but a 3* is welcome. 3* with clubs, axes, staffs. 1* with all big swords, hammers, halberds. Others are 2*.

IIRC archers can reach grandmastery in bows, so the precedent is already there in the original game.

Leonidas, you're correct that the precendent is there, but the difference in my opinion is that the Archer is a class built around mastery with the bow.

I don't see the same level of connection on the part of the vagrant with any particular weapon. I think mastery with a few choice weapons that this class is likely to use on a regular basis is cool. But I don't see him/her putting forth the level of focus on weaponry to achieve grand mastery.

This is all somewhat subjective reasoning, but in the case of the archer grandmastery seems logical and appropriate. I don't feel the same in regards to the vagrant. Just another opinion to throw into the mix....

I agree with Marceror, for what that's worth.

Vagrant kit's newest description is this:

Just a small typo:
5- Gians
should be Gains.

Concerning the summons: Will you at level 28 be able to summon 3 Swanmays, 2 Greater Swanmays and 1 Swanmay Queen per day, or will the lesser ones be lost or converted to Queen? Can you have one of each summoned at the same time? Do they have any kind of special abilities or spells, or are they "point and attack" summons?

I read this thread yesterday, but I'm not sure what you decided to do about the elemental resistance. Will it stack with spells/potions/items?

Does "2- Cannot specialize in ranged weapons" mean vagrants can get only 1 * in ranged weapons, or none at all, but still be able to use them? Not that ranged weapons are what I'd plan on using anyway, as it seems weak and unreliable in IA. That being said, I don't see why Vagrants should not be good at using ranged weapons, but if you want to it should be pretty easy to come up with a good explanation. Maybe not being able to use heavy or large weapons would be more fitting, as that'd be much work to carry around when you're a vagrant, and that could lead to them not having as much training as with lighter and smaller weapons?

Disadvantages vs advantages seems balanced and fitting for the kit. This looks interesting, and I will play a Vagrant in 4.3.

Thanks! Just fixed it.

Yes.



No.

Swanmays are lycanthropes, half human half swan. They are winged and have special attacks with their wings. Normal swanmays have "Wing Swing"; greater ones have "Greater Wing Swing" and the Queen has "Royal Wing Swing". You don't need to do anything during the battle, they will use their special attacks accordingly.



Yes.

Yes.



What I thought as a possible explanation is that ranged weapons are mostly used by those who are defending a fortress from inside. Vagrants have little experience with defedning castles and such places because they are mostly in travel.

Yes, testers have also reported that the kit is balanced.


Glad to hear that you have found it interesting. Also, the new quest added to the expanded ranger stronghold (= The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) is a vagrant specific-quest. Only vagrant rangers can see and play that quest.

The disadvantages look a lot like those of an archer, and you have a similar amount of disadvantages compared to the other vanilla kits. There are more bonuses than normally but I think overall it should work out fine since it's balanced especially for IA play.


I was planning to play a stalker from a BG1 game that I finished 2 weeks ago, but it has a movement bug when I imported it to BG2. I can edit it out but BG2 starts weirdly without the starting cutscene so I'm wary of playing with the character now. Hence, I'm going to reinstall BG2 and make a new character. Since there is already a stalker in the game whose overpowered items I will never be able to top I might as well try something else and Vagrant looks really good.


Just something halfrelated to the Vagrant.
I was wondering one thing. I recall that protagonist divine casters do not get the +bonusspells that were based on wisdom. For instance if you have 15 wisdom, you were supposed to get the +1 level 1 priest spell (I cannot recall the correct bonus here from the table). Also, when you gain +1 wisdom from an ioun stone (or you start with 15-18 wisdom) you should have the +bonusspells as listed. The bug was that the NPCs have them but the protagonist never did receive them for some reason. I was wondering if you had fixed this in your current BG2 or whether it is already fixed since it would relate to the casting power of the Vagrant class.

Iroumen, only clerics and druids get bonus spells based on Wisdom. Rangers and paladins don't get bonus spells in BG2 as far as I know (no matter how good their Wis is). My cleric and druid protagonists have always had bonus spells generated correctly (like it says in the manual); I've never noticed such a bug.

Paladins and Rangers are Clerics and Druids in theory. I thought it should have worked that way. Well, I guess I might be wrong

Nope, the rules are pretty explicit about that:

Okay, I stand corrected. I guess I always misunderstood then.

But on another note, I have been able to use all priest scrolls with my ranger in BG2.

The only advantage of the kit which I'm not fully comfortable/satisfied with is the +2 bonus vs. all saving throws. A constitution of 19 should have automatically granted +1 bonus to save vs. paralyze/Death; but unfortunately, the game's engine doesn't handle it. So, it seems that all we need to add is a +1 bonus vs. paralyze/Death *if* the bonus is supposed to be a consequence of high constitution and good stamina. But if we want the bonus to saves to be an independent advantage, it's a different question. Any comments?

I guess it makes more sense RP-wise to restrict it to saves vs paralyse/death since these are most closely associated with the hardiness of the character (eg the immunities & high CON). I haven't played it through yet with a Vagrant though so I don't have a particularly strong view.

Incidentally, I'd like to play a Vagrant through from BG Tutu (as I do with all my BG characters); if I install IA on top of a Tutu installation to create a level 1 Vagrant, will it cause other problems? If so, would it be possible to have a standalone Vagrant mod for Tutu only? Thanks.

If you play Elf Vagrant then you're restricted to a final constitution of 18, which only matters in hitpoints compared to a constitution of 17 (which elves are normally restricted to). So I think that if you're not certain on how the +saves is handled by the engine (or by player choice), then a hard +2 bonus would be better.

Final description of the kit for IA v4.3:

"Swanmays are very rare and special kind of lycanthrope rangers living at lakesides in woodlands and in remote temperate wetlands".

This sentence needs to be adjusted or re-phrased:

'Swanmays are a very rare and special kind of...' [inclusion of article 'a' as 'kind' is singular]

Alternatively: 'Swanmays are very rare: a special kind of...'

Also 'rangers' could perhaps be singular here ('ranger'), which works better to my ears.

( is lycanthropic a word? :)

Actually, since 'lycanthrope' literally means 'wolf-man' / 'werewolf', maybe 'shapechanger' would be more fitting; alternatively, the general term for 'beast-man' is 'therianthrope', by the way.

"Lycanthrope rangers" is actually the description used in the 2nd edition Monster Manual to make reference to swanmays.

When this kit appeared in IA v4 for the first time, I received many comments from players telling me that the kit was too weak and needed some boost and improvements.

I improved the kit in v5; many players were satisfied, but then I started to receive comments from some other players telling me that the kit is overpowered. The number of these players were of course smaller than the number of players who had asked me to improve the v4 version of the kit. Nonetheless, I thought that this kit should be tested more accurately and thoroughly. So, I asked a few of my testers to play with this kit and evaluate it.

The result was clear: The kit is powerful but by no means overpowered for IA.

This was reassuring. One of my testers clearly wrote that the vagrant kit is actually even weaker than the other IA specific kits (Riskbreaker and Protector) and that all IA kits are certainly weaker than the wild mage which is a kit of the unmodded game.

Add to this the fact that vagrant ranger has plenty of additional content and additional powerful enemies to face and defeat. One big quest is added for them in v6 which has very difficult battles. The point is that if vagrants are powerful, this is adequately compensated with the powerful enemies they have to face.

A satistical survey I made about players who complain about the vagrant kit and call it "overpowered" had interesting results. Most of players who complain about IA kits (and particularly about the vagrant kit) are those who didn't like the ranger class even before playing IA; it's not the new kits that they have problem with, it's the ranger class that they dislike (this is a very interesting and illuminating point).

Ironically, the reason they didn't like the ranger class was that in their opinion rangers were too weak compared to other warriors such as fighters and paladins. After the appearance of the vagrant kit and improving it in v5, the natural reaction one would expect of these players was that they say "Hurrah! At last we have a better ranger to play with". But as ironic as it may sound, some of these players didn't welcome a powerful ranger kit, because they were addicted to the belief that a ranger is weak (or at least weaker than other warriors).

All in all, the criticisms and comments I had received about the allegged overpoweredness of the vagrant kit, practically wasted some of our time in testing the kit over and over again; and now I'm glad to say that I'm satisfied with the results of these tests and do not believe that the vagrant kit is overpowered in IA's atmosphere and for the tough enemies he has to confront.

I can understand the psychological impact of some old beliefs about the weakness of rangers compared to other warriors, but those old days have gone. If you play IA, you know that the ranger class is no longer a weaker version of other warrior classes. Not only the vagrant kit, but also the Protector kit (in v6) are both added to the game to put an end to those old-fashioned beliefs about the weakness of rangers (as men of woods who didn't know how to fight effectively) as opposed to the awesomeness of the kensai or berserker kits. Don't get me wrong though; the Kensai and the berserker still have their advantages over rangers (they have bonuses and abilities the rangers lack), but that unfair equation is now balanced by new abilities rangers have and those other warriors lack. Justice is preserved.