Walder Van Hide

[John]

Walder Van Hide
Explorer & Hunter Renown

I was thinking it would be cool to have a specifically ranged character in Don't Starve.
I've gone for a female jumanji style hunter, as I think there's a lot that can be done with that.
(Another role for someone of this nature might be an circus animal tamer)
In that context I've tried to communicate how she might be more of a glass-cannon than other characters.

Pros

• Slow to Hunger & Fast Healer
• Likes being around dangerous animals
• Has lovely helmet to protect from sun and rain
• Has cursed weapon

Cons

• Small Stomach & Health
• Claustrophobic, feels trapped by buildings and caves
• Itchy Feet, hates dilly-dallying around a place

Voice

• Djembe (African Drum)
• Mbira (African "Piano")

Weapon

• Non-Craftable, Non-Degradable
• Firing costs Nightmare-Fuel
  • Else firing costs Sanity
• Fires Gold-Slug & Stone-Shot (paper+grass+stone)
  • Stone Shot scatters in random radius that increases with distance
  • Gold Slugs will scatter similarly but more tightly

Additional Thoughts

• Gun
  • Could instead shoot spears as in SW
  • Stone-Shot, perhaps too OP in addition to gold-slugs
  • Cost of nightmare-fuel or sanity could be any value
• Change of Character & Weapon
  • Waverly the Witch could use a wand based on similar mechanics with a weaker base damage.
  • A character could also be based around a boomerang, i.e. an australian skeleton/castaway/native
• Balance
  • The cost of nightmare fuel, then sanity, and then gold seems fair, but I'm not sure how well that scales. 
  • Restricting usage to a character that needs to be put in harm's way further balances weapon.
  • Loading a round of ammo would be clunky like SW spear-gun
  • Would be a glass cannon in terms of health & stomach capacity, perhaps in a mental capacity as well.
  • Could be xenophobic, hates humanoid beasts.

Cheers for reading this, had an old concept I decided to refurbish on a whim.
If anyone has any ideas about how to make a working (primarily) ranged character that doesn't over-power the other characters (like Wig) I'm a fan of speculating so let me know your thoughts.

[Ecu]

I've said this elsewhere on the forum, but ranged combat needs to be kept in check heavily.  In addition, no other item in the game uses items outside itself to activate (that I can recall), so I don't feel it would be a good idea to implement a completely different item design for a single character.  All in all, your idea of having a ton of ranged options for this character is poor, in terms of balance.

I could see implementing the gun in a similar fashion to my suggestion of blowgun overhauling, where you load the ammo into the gun (utilizing durability) and then fire.  By having an animation delay and only allowing a single shot to be loaded at once, you could keep it cumbersome enough to be more balanced.  Even then, it couldn't be allowed to do very much damage (probably 30 at most, likely less).

Ranged combat allows one to ignore a lot of damage in DST.  If a character has a high damage ranged combat, it would really unbalance the game as nearly all creatures are melee combat encounters.

[John]

I kind of see it utilizing the same clunky SW speargun mechanics. I think that's what you're suggesting with the blowpipe?? But my justification for having a stronger weapon is the added expenses of nightmare fuel then sanity, and tieing it to an otherwise weaker character.

I did leave a lot of elaborate suggestions for ammo on the table though, let me cull those down... (give me a mo to do that))

All characters have some access to ranged weapons with some gathering, I would agree with your suggestion that the blowpipe be adjusted, and I'd further suggest maybe even having the SW speargun itself implemented (with balances to damage and durability(maybe a new art design)).

Some ideas that float around in my head, might be making the weapon "over-heat", be useless against small targets, or a new mechanic with the aiming; like an ignition delay so you have to predict the path of a target

[Ecu]

16 hours ago, John said:

I kind of see it utilizing the same clunky SW speargun mechanics. I think that's what you're suggesting with the blowpipe?? But my justification for having a stronger weapon is the added expenses of nightmare fuel then sanity, and tieing it to an otherwise weaker character.

I did leave a lot of elaborate suggestions for ammo on the table though, let me cull those down... (give me a mo to do that))

All characters have some access to ranged weapons with some gathering, I would agree with your suggestion that the blowpipe be adjusted, and I'd further suggest maybe even having the SW speargun itself implemented (with balances to damage and durability(maybe a new art design)).

Some ideas that float around in my head, might be making the weapon "over-heat", be useless against small targets, or a new mechanic with the aiming; like an ignition delay so you have to predict the path of a target

I'm sorry, but I personally cannot agree with stronger ranged weapons for the most part.  Regarding adding ammo AND nightmare fuel cost, that honestly would require things working outside the current game mechanics.  Nothing currently utilizes secondary items like that and I think it would just muddle things.  A better solution would be to have nightmare fuel as part of the ammo cost, if you required it per shot.

As for the mechanics, yeah I am suggesting something akin to SW's speargun (which this ammo being non-recoverable, of course).  If you wanted it to have strong damage, it would need to be single shot, with a full reload animation delay to load another shot into the gun.  At least then, it would make it very impractical to use to outright kill things, unless you have a friend helping.  You would also need high costs on the ammo if you wanted higher damage.

All in all, I suggest being highly wary of strong ranged combat in DST.  It stands to really unbalance the game due nearly all existing creations (including bosses) being melee.

[CaptainChaotica]

Wait, this isn't the MODS forum?  My mistake.  No wonder people are against this.  You actually mean this character--well-drawn and time-period-appropriately-dressed as she is--to the actual game itself? Uh-uh.

Make it into a mod and people might try it out.  (shrug)

...Notorious

[John]

Nah CC, I don't really have the time these days to dive into modding, I just had a image to hand to illustrate a suggestion for a ranged character and some (new) mechanics within the base-game to balance that.

Ecu, I think we're agreed on the darts, and some sort of time-delay between shots.

[minespatch]

You should put this in the art and lore section. This looks like a interesting concept. The art's a nice bonus too. You should do a thread on your work alone.

[Arlesienne]

6 hours ago, minespatch said:

You should put this in the art and lore section. This looks like a interesting concept. The art's a nice bonus too. You should do a thread on your work alone.

Exactly. Is the art yours? Because it's rather charming. Also, bonus points for African instruments.

[John]

Thanks guys, maybe I'll rejig things next week