Ranged Combat: Issues and Ability Suggestions

[Squeak]

With the recent thread about Tumble and Flip, I figured I'd post this considering there's a certain dearth of abilities for Mundane Ranged (i.e. non-magical ranged options) character playstyles. Ranged combat can be used in conjunction with most melee specs pretty well, but for a ranged specific character, there's very few things that really grants them any type of survivability, foremost being stealth. They can take two offensive abilities (quick aim and true shot) and the only defensive being Dodge Proficiency.

Don't get me wrong, stealth is an exceedingly powerful tool to use with ranged combat and imparts up to -4 negative rerolls on a target on top of positive rerolls for the player. It's huge. Risk mitigates the long-term effectiveness on this pretty heavily, with 5 shots putting one in the vicinity of 100 risk, but if you play it right in a group and take your time it's something that can be largely controlled. Once they're drawn from stealth, it's pretty much all over from there with no primary defensive ability and a lack of offensive abilities to help control the ebb and flow of combat in general.

So, I'd like to suggest a few things to help with that:
Bards in Cogg had an ability, Slippery Coward, that increased the chance of avoiding an attack (I'm assuming while in avoid engagement), gave some dodge rerolls or a flat bonus to dodge, and made it easier to break engagement and flee. I'm not sure how much of this would really apply in Clok, but perhaps such an ability could increase the chance to avoid an attack and activate Tactical Dodge, if present. The combat classes I can think of that *might* go with ranged as an offense all have something in TacDodge that would be beneficial to controlling combat.

There was also Coward's contingency which applied stealth to dodge at 100% when "recently found", but I'd like to see some options to get ranged characters out of stealth, not encourage them to maintain stealth at all costs (despite the fact that this is how I play, largely by necessity.)

Maybe something that reduces the chance of a mob targeting the ranged character when grouped?

At this point, I really don't know what would be the best way to go about balancing things to make non-stealth ranged combat viable without also making stealth combat god-tier awesome (more so than it already is). Perhaps with the inclusion of Druidry will allay some of this, whenever it's re-introduced, but I still see Snowpiners having some difficulty as well.

But you can also look here https://clok.contrarium.net/bbs/viewtop ... arm#p40400 for some other firearm/ranged abilities for insight, too.

[Zeldryn]

https://cogg.contrarium.net/bbs/viewtop ... over#p7917
a thing for people to chew on:

[Squeak]

Rainbow man and I got together to put some thought together and we came up with this as a defensive ability for Rangers(Snowpiners/Udemi), Primalists and Dunwyr (the most likely to take Ranged Combat Proficiency, I think):

Hunter's Intuition / Danger Sense / Heightened Awareness
IC: Due to many years of traveling through lands full of angry beasts, unpredictable weather that can turn sour at the drop of a pin, and generally hostile environments, one has developed such keen senses as to rival that of an animal. With such heightened awareness, one can respond almost preternaturally fast to stimuli that most never notice and react accordingly.
OOC: This is a primary defensive ability that allows one of several responses to an incoming attack:
Slip into Hiding: Depending on the environment, and if the character has the associated stealth abilities for such an environment (woodland or urban or both), they can mitigate some damage from an attack and break engagement to slip into hiding.
Take Cover: If in an area that is not indoors, one can duck into cover, allowing them to respond in several different ways (see the above post for more information about Cover). Any damage taken is mitigated and travel time is incurred, but the player slips into a covered position.
Tactical Escape: Immediately activates a corresponding tactical dodge result, if available.
Reflexive Channeling [primalist/udemi]: Immediately channel and respond to the threat with roots and/or their light thing (if either return). Damage is normal, but counter-attack go through with a surprised reroll.
Trap Deployment[Snowpiner]: Slips from the attack with mitigated damage but activates a trap in front of the attacker, increasing the odds of them activating it.

A character must be at ENC 1 (they must respond quickly to threats) with armor no higher than 1. Long cooldown - 45 seconds? Maybe have each additional option reduce the cooldown some?

The idea behind this is that a player responds to a threat with a manuever to get them out of engagement as is something I'd feel a ranged character would want to do. It is a heavy ability requirement to get every single option for the defense. While you'll almost always have a least one response, the rest are circumstantial due to the environment.

I dunno if it's even doable, but damn it sounds like a fun ability to take as a defensive measure that falls inline with the more woodsy classes and doesn't, necessarily, encourage full stealth builds.