Baldur's Gate 3: Ranger Class Overview

foreign [Music] what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you a class overview for the ranger in Baldur's Gate 3 ahead of the game's official launch where we'll be talking about the class fantasy of a ranger on top of some of its mini class mechanics available in Baldur's Gate 3 and while we've done several of these so far some of them are pretty good guides for 5th edition DND as a whole but in the case of the ranger in particular larion has made some significant changes to their class mechanics in order for them to feel up to par in Baldur's Gate 3 because if you're unaware Rangers in 5th edition D and D well I wouldn't outright say they're bad or anything they have a lot of class mechanics that are very situational for instance in the tabletop version of the game they have an ability called favored enemy that allows them to get advantage on tracking certain enemies and while that can be useful in certain situations if you're not playing a module where you need to track something that that doesn't do you any good and that's just one of many examples so as we go through this and talk about Rangers do understand that significant changes have been made to them in Baldur's Gate 3 and that's what we're going to be talking about specifically that said I like to kick these videos off talking a bit about the class fantasy of said class and Rangers are an interesting case because in a somewhat similar sense to paladins in the early editions of the game Rangers were required to be of a good alignment unlike paladins they had a little bit of wiggle room there they could be lawful good or chaotic good but they had to be good this was a requirement that was dropped all the way back in I believe it was Third Edition has nothing about a ranger really necessitates them to be good but the reason that alignment restriction ever existed in the first place is that as a class fantasy Rangers are meant to be Defenders of civilization but on the fringes of society they are wardens of forests they they are Protectors of isolated Villages that kind of thing they are very much so a sort of Predator working their way through the Untamed Wilds of the world working and living in places other people would find incredibly difficult to do so this has seen them pick up a variety of combat methods that allow them to both commune with nature but also be very self-reliant they are a fiercely independent type of person and while they have been known to work with Gatherings of Druids among others when a need arises generally these are people that are loners and left to their own devices as such they are skilled Hunters they are used to living off the land and in case you were wondering it is not a coincidence that they might remind you of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings because some of their original versions of the Ranger were very much so based on Lord of the Rings and specifically the character Aragorn by the time advanced Dungeons and Dragons rolled around the SEC second edition that is they started incorporating other Inspirations such as Robin Hood for instance but however you want to look at it Rangers are incredibly skilled outdoorsmen who have learned to commune with nature to cast a limited selection of spells which is one of many tools at their Arsenal that makes them deadly Hunters so with that in mind let's talk a little bit about some general information for Rangers such as their proficiencies and primary ability scores now ability score wise Rangers typically rely off of dexterity and wisdom it is possible to make a strength-based ranger though typically that's not very common especially if you're actually putting levels into Ranger primarily because they used ranged weapons such as bows a lot which use dexterity and then they often use finesse weapons which attack roles use dexterity so while strength is possible it is unusual and then they need wisdom for their casting stat as Rangers are in fact half cast and their magic comes from a very similar place as Druids so they use wisdom as well proficiency wise right out of the gate they are proficient with light and medium armor as well as simple and martial weapons next I want to talk a little bit about their spell casting ability as I mentioned they are half casters and they use wisdom as their casting stat but more specifically a lot of their spells revolve around either buffing or augmenting their ranged or potentially melee attacks with things such as Hunter's Mark which causes extra damage when you hit an enemy and if that enemy dies you can recast Hunter's Mark and it just gives you a little bit of extra damage they also have a spell called ensnaring strike which can ensnare enemies you hit with attacks potentially so a decent amount of a Ranger's spell list goes into augmenting their attacks in some way however they also have other spells centered around restoration or potentially things like speaking with animals or communing with nature in some way so it's important to understand that while a ranger is in fact a half Caster a lot of their spells are important to in essence getting the most out of using them as a character because if you're not applying something like Hunter's Mark when you're in combat you're going to have a bad time and the nice thing about Hunter's Mark is that if you kill an enemy with it you can freely recast it without using up spell slots so if you're not doing that you're actively hurting your experience and you're gonna kill your damage a little bit basically meaning that they have a lot of spells that they need to utilize to get the most out of the character now from there we're going to talk a little bit about the class mechanics and this is initially where there were a lot of changes made so in Baldur's Gate 3 we will be picking a favored enemy however in the tabletop version all favorite enemy does is give you a bonus so to speak on wisdom survival checks to track enemies as well as give you languages your favorite enemy might speak and in a game like balder's Gate 3 that's just not gonna be useful so they changed that pretty much entirely a complete rework we have these five options you can see on screen here each of them will give you a proficiency and a skill now while also providing some other sort of benefit for instance Bounty Hunter will cause enemies you hit within snaring strike to have disadvantage on their saving throws or you could pick something like Ranger Knight which will actually give you proficiency and history but also give you heavy armor proficiency right out of the gate and this just right off the bat gives a pretty big Boon to Rangers that can be useful in a variety of situations and they continue this trend with natural Explorer which has also seen significant reworks natural Explorer in the tabletop version allows you to pick a favored terrain which would give you a variety of bonuses to mostly just traveling in the ttrpg which again isn't super useful in a game like Baldur's Gate 3 so they reworked this as well to either provide provide resistances to certain elements or granting us sleight of hand proficiency with another option giving us the ability to use find familiar at will though if you're going Beast Master I don't imagine that would be super useful for you nonetheless though some nice benefits to what would otherwise be something useless in a game like this while we're talking about large changes though something else they seem to have done is gotten rid of primeval awareness altogether at third level in the ttrpg Rangers would be able to use primeval awareness to spend a turn and arrange your spell slot to since if certain types of enemies were present in the surrounding area which would gain bonuses if you were in your favorite terrain again this just isn't something useful in Baldur's Gate 3 and it looks like they cut this one all together I couldn't find it anywhere and given their already significant changes to favorite enemy and natural Explorer that's not a huge surprise to me but moving on from there at second level Rangers get to pick up a fighting style though it has to either be archery defense dueling or two weapon fighting meaning that a lot of their fighting styles again lean into more Dex based combat primarily but either way you'll get to pick one of those fighting styles which will confer a small bonus to you in regards to those things so naturally pick the one you want to specialize in and then at fifth level like most other Marshall classes they will get an extra attack at level 5 allowing them to attack twice instead of once in a single turn now past that there are a few more abilities that a ranger would get up to the level cap of Baldur's Gate 3 which will be level 12 for the full game I'm going to go over them but do understand because of the significant changes the ranger has already seen these might not be implemented in exactly this way I think it's actually pretty likely in some cases but at eighth level we can pick up land's stride this basically means we can move through difficult terrain without it actually being difficult terrain which includes moving through non-magical plants that would otherwise hurt you or something and not being heard by them this also gives us advantage on saving throws against plants that are magically created such as entangling Vines from the entangle spell and then at 10th level they pick up hide in plain sight which allows them to spend an action to effectively blend into their surroundings which gives them a large bonus to stealth checks I would assume these two will likely make it into the game with some sort of variation but up to the level cap of 12 that's all the mechanics you need to worry about which brings us to the Rangers subclasses there will ultimately be three of these Hunter Beastmaster as well as gloomstalker two of these are in the game right now in Early Access Hunter and Beastmaster and then gloomstalker will be added at launch now when it comes to Ranger sub classes 5th edition d d likes to add a little bit of flair to essentially every type of of subclass to give them a little bit of lore significance in the case of the Ranger their archetypes are based off of ideals that they follow so a hunter is typically seen as having accepted their role as Protectors of the fringes of civilization whereas The Beastmaster embodies the friendship between man and animal and takes on an animal companion to represent that but to start with the hunter this is a subclass that focuses on your Martial prowess right away you'll be able to pick one of several abilities that will give you an advantage in combat typically allowing you to make some sort of extra attack or deal more damage with this really being exemplified by the hunters level 11 ability multi-attack which allows you to make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 foot of a point you can see or Whirlwind attack which allows you to make a melee attack against any enemy within five feet of you with you getting as many attacks as there are enemies so that one is much more of about dealing as much damage to as many enemies as possible but then we have Beastmaster this one's pretty self-explanatory you get an animal companion to join you in combat as you level up with this subclass the animal companion is capable of doing more and more for you including doing things like getting extra attacks itself you can pick from one of a few different Animal Companions each with their own like main ability that they can do and it's a relatively simple system here in Early Access so this might see some expansion but as it stands it's a nice touch that leaves us with our last one though which is gloomstalker gloomstalker while not in the Early Access period is a sort of stealth and Ambush focused Ranger they get a few extra spells such as disguise self or potentially fear and then right away when you take that subclass you get bonuses to your initiative based off your wisdom modifier on the first turn of combat you have faster movement speed and then if you attack on that first turn you can actually make an additional weapon attack that specific turn as well and if that attack hits you deal more damage again kind of symbolizing that Ambush mechanic they also get a unique ability that makes them immune to any creature trying to see them with dark vision that is to say if they are in darkness and the only way a creature could normally see them is with dark vision then that creature just can't see them and then later on they get to basically re-roll an attack if they miss so once on every one of their turns they'll get the opportunity to make another attack if they miss with an attack giving them more chances to deal more damage so as you can see gloomstalker is more about a sort of stealthy approach to combat and dealing even more damage especially right at the start of combat to symbolize and Ambush so when it comes to actually playing a ranger as you've probably picked up on they're good at a few things in particular for starters they make very very good archers which should come as no surprise really but between the spells that will add damage to their ranged attacks on top of the archery fighting style they can get some really good damage as an Archer it's also possible to turn them into a DEX based fighter very very easily if that's what you want to do which means that Rangers can play a very solid role in your DPS lineup especially ranged Marshall DPS or just being an Archer there's only a couple of classes that really excel at that with the ranger being one of them and then you add in their ability to do something like get an animal companion which can help you turn the action economy in your favor by simply giving you more turns and their utility focused spell casting which might help you out when it comes to Healing here and there can potentially be very useful as well now generally speaking especially in the table top version of DnD the problem with Rangers is that they tend to just be a very situational class to play and that may or may not wind up being the case in Baldur's Gate 3 as we simply don't have access to the full game yet but once we do we'll know for sure exactly how that winds up playing out but it's a class that comes with a pretty rigid play style and how big of an impact some of lyrion's changes to the class here wind up having will ultimately remain to be seen But the good news is if you want to play an Archer that has an animal companion with them Baldur's Gate 3 has done a good job of getting a ranger up to speed in that regard with that in mind let's talk about a couple of multi-classing options as we move to wrap this video up so there are two classes that are really common to multi-class a Ranger with because they both use the same casting stat which is Druid and cleric a druid multi-class will allow you to potentially focus on shape-shifting into an animal while having an animal companion if you go Beastmaster it's also a convenient way to get more spells and then there is clarex specifically nature cleric with their channeled Divinity ability allowing you to charm animals and plants and then if you take cleric all the way to level six you'll even get an ability that within 30 feet makes you resistant to Elemental damage potentially at the cost of a reaction and combined with its very nature-based extra spell list will thematically fit in with a ranger very well though a third option is actually to multi-class Ranger with Rogue Sneak Attack by being a rogue is quite good simply because you can get sneak attacks when you attack with advantage and then that combined with the cunning action will give you extra bonus actions which as a class that uses spells with a lot of bonus actions like Hunter's Mark for instance this can be very useful and then if you grab expertise you can even make yourself incredibly good at a few specific skill checks which can work incredibly well if you're trying to do stealth with say a gloomstalker ranger so you have some options there with multi-cloud class and potentially it might actually make the Base Class itself of a ranger even more compelling of an option when you mix it with some specific classes for certain things but to wrap this video up and not go on too long when it comes to the ranger what a lot of it really comes down to is how well some of these changes larion have made ultimately wind up being and with any luck they're great and the ranger actually manages to keep up with the rest of the classes in terms of power because while a ranger might lack some of the many options other classes have what they do provide is a really thematic way to play the game that can potentially offer you things such as an animal companion or just some really solid damage in certain instances so again with any luck the changes that they have made will be genuinely impactful on the rest of the game outside of Early Access but that's something we'll have to wait and see on but either way it's a class with a strong identity and class fantasy and that's something I'm a big fan of that though is going to do it for this particular video I hope you enjoyed it if you did like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 166,876

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, Connections, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, baldurs gate 1 & 2 before 3, bg3 multiplayer, bg3 gameplay, bg3 panel from hell, bg3 panel from hell recap, bg3 final panel from hell, bg3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 panel from hell, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 ranger, bg3 ranger overview, bg3 ranger guide, bg3 ranger cl

Id: HyNd1LrRHRU

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023