MAngband

The topic has come up now and then in the past, of whether or not Rangers should start with a melee weapon.

Those who have tried rangers seem to report that it is a bit iffy to start one. The idea of starting them out with a light melee weap to even things out has been proposed. Whatayall think?

Maybe a simple dagger would work. I could see that being believable. What's a man of the wilderness without his trusty knife? You'd need it for skinning, filleting fish, signs, kindling, close quarters combat, etc.

And... IronPEOPLE??

Rangers can't afford a dagger from shop 3? lol...

The issue, I believe, is that while its nice to get the free bow for the Ironranger, the limitted ammo means it doesn't persist in being useful in the same way a free melee weapon does for other classes.

Rangers seem to have fairly mild starting stats etc, which, combined with the need to purchase a starting weapon instead of, say, armor or more ammo, means they potentially start off with a bit of a deficit.

The goal is to have all players start out in a broadly similar situation cash wise (and perhaps power wise to some degree?).  So, the question is, would giving rangers a small lighter starting weapon push them a bit ahead of where other classes start at, or instead bring them up to par?

The point of the starting gear in Ironman is to give the player the very basics he needs to start diving quickly without having to scum the shops. For this reason it might be fair to give all the classes the cheapest basic weapon.

In my opinion the rangers are already (slightly) overpowered compared to the other classes and compared to their normal starting gear. So giving only the rangers a weapon would be very wrong.

And if we were to give all the classes a weapon it'd have to be a weapon that all classes could use. So we'd basically be at a whip. Which would cost from 30-50 or so, based on race/class. And that's too much.

One could argue that since priests and paladins are often dwarves and since dwarves typically start with a bit more money we could just ignore the priestly classes. But it wouldn't be right to punish someone for wanting to play a Dunadan Paladin either.

If you can't afford spending 14-15$ of your starting gold on a dagger you shouldn't be playing ironman, the randomness of the game is much greater than what you can compensate for with having a few more arrows.

I suggest leaving things the way they are.

In what way do you feel rangers are slightly overpowered at present, Warrior?

i think rangers shouldnt start with a melee weapon neither with a bow. give them 2 csw instead the bow. With the money the player, depending on class and playing style, can choose to go for a bow+arrows or  melee weapon. I also would prefer csws compared to the 2nd mage book, this even is more important for rogues, who cannot spell anything useful until the first dungeon town anyway.

The issue with a bow is that even a sizable number of projectiles won't really last long in the end. Quite quickly, the bow becomes not terribly useful, as the Ranger is quickly reduced to waiting to find projectiles of a type that can be used like anyone else. Rangers, in effect, get only a temporary weapon.

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Hm, actually, Im starting to see what Grisu means: give the ranger neither a bow or a melee weapon, and effectively just give them a dollop of cash so they can decide themselves which direction they want to go.

With 100 starting gold there's no way you can buy a bow... so rangers are already strong with their long bow. A dagger costs a few coins, so I really don't see the problem with rangers.

Rangers are just pretty good overall, good bonuses to most abilities. And starting with a bow is kickass. The whole point with modifying the starting gear for the classes was to be able to dive quickly. The problem with paladins/priests not being able to use the dagger complicated it a bit, if it wasn't for that I think it'd be cool to give all classes a dagger, since those are so cheap. Whip however is too expensive. Though... well. I dunno. Giving all classes a whip wouldn't be very very very unbalancing I guess.

It could be interesting to give everyone 0 gold to start with but just fill up the inventory with an appropriate mix of scrolls/pots so people could just dive instantly and if people wanted to hang around and wait for sales and such they could still do so but at the risk of their charisma/shopkeeper relation screwing things up.

This would force ironman mangband even more into a 5-30 minute experience for most players.

Hm.
That would make it sad to check the character screen and see 100 social class.
So maybe not a good idea.