BG3 Rogue vs Ranger - Which Baldur's Gate 3 Class Should You Play?

in this Baldur's Gate 3 video we're going to be taking a look at the Ranger and Rogue classes and doing a direct comparison to them and this is the first video in a series of videos before a launch where we go through different classes usually two or three classes and compare them helping narrow down for players what class they want to play it's important to note that these are not proper class guides and they don't go into as much detailed as those guides will be and those guides will use full and proper footage from the full version of the game as we want them to be as accurate as possible but these guides are aimed at narrowing down for you what you want to play a lot of players are coming from a lot of other RPGs that are not familiar with 5th edition d t or maybe they're familiar but it's been a while and they're just having a hard time deciding and I feel like they generally have an idea of the style they want to play like they've narrowed it down to two or three classes give or take and the idea in these videos is to help them narrow down to one so in this video we're going to cover Rogan Ranger and that's because they have similarities right these two classes have a lot of similarities but they also have a lot of differences and that's what we're going to focus on this video so let's get into what those are so the first thing you're going to notice when you compare these two classes side by side is that Rangers have more HP which means that they're going to be harder to kill in combat they're going to be a bit tankier they don't have a ton more HP but they do have a little bit more making them a better candidate for a melee style of play if that's what you want to do and this is also true because they have medium armor proficiency meaning they can get more protection from armor from wearing a heavier armor than light armor which robes only have light armor proficiency and Rangers can also get heavy armor proficiency during character creation by choosing the ranger Knight favorite enemy so they can play anywhere from light armor to Heavy Armor right out of the gate Rogues on the other hand only have light armor proficiency which I mentioned which is very very good for Dex builds and that means that they're primarily going to use finesse and ranged weapons whereas Ranger has more of an option to play a strength based character because they can wear medium and heavy armor where dexterity plays less of a role and another point to make here is that Rangers have both simple and martial weapon proficiencies allowing them to use just about any weapon in the game with proficiency whereas Rogues only have simple weapon proficiency and a handful of Martial weapon proficiencies so they have to be more selective about the weapons that they use whereas Rangers have a lot more freedom and the next thing you're going to is skill proficiencies Rangers have three skill proficiencies that are a little bit different than Rogues and Rogues have four but Rogues also gain expertise in two of those four skills making them even more effective so if you're talking a bit about you know what your character is going to do outside of combat and how they're gonna perform Rogues are going to outperform Rangers in terms of the things they can do effectively outside of combat so if you're trying to play a playthrough where you like avoid combat or maybe you just really want to nail all your skill checks outside of Combat Rogue is a better choice than Ranger in that sense and the last thing you're going to notice during character creation is that Rogues have something called sneak attack which is a way for them to deal bonus damage against a Target that they have advantage against and typically the way they have advantage against targets is by being out of sight this is probably the most common way you're going to gain it's not the only way but this means that Rogues can deal with substantial damage but they're going to try and do it in a very non-confrontational way whereas Rangers are kind of more straight up combat type characters Rogues might you know try and get around a corner and then peek a little bit and snipe you for sneak damage whereas a ranger might just stand there and attack you so if you just just go from character creation alone you can see already that Rangers have a lot more options in terms of what they can do from equipment standpoint and Rogues have a lot less options but they have a lot more Effectiveness outside of combat so moving along we'll jump into Ranger a bit more in the things they get when they level up at level two Rangers are going to gain spell casting and this is going to allow them to cast a few spells not very many of them and very specific spells and their spell casting is going to be handled via the wisdom ability or the wisdom attribute so Rangers are going to have a bit of a focus on wisdom whereas Rogues don't have this so you know when you're talking about making a ranger whether it's a strength or dexterity based Ranger wisdom is probably going to be factored in there somewhere and Rangers at level 2 are going to gain a fighting style and this allows them to kind of narrow down the style of combat that they want to focus in whether that's dual wielding or single weapon or whether they have archery so if you want to be an Archer a dual wielder or you want to like play a sword and board or just a single weapon you're gonna select the fighting style here that's further going to determine how your range replace in combat and then at level 5 Rangers are gonna gain an extra attack and this is going to make it so they can attack twice every round which is a huge Improvement in their damage that's like almost doubling their damage effectively and this is something that Rogues don't get Rogues will never gain an extra attack so if you're talking about how one performs in Combat versus the other Ranger has a bit of an edge here even though Rogue has sneak attack and they might hit very very hard against a single Target Rangers can hit a single Target twice or hit two different targets maybe kill two different enemies in the same combat so they have a little bit more flexibility and there isn't some weird requirement like having to have advantage to gain that extra damage that Rogues need to do so rogue's got to be a little bit more crafty about how they get their damage whereas Rangers it's just a bit simpler to do so moving on a bit to the archetypes that Ranger has or the subclasses the first one is the hunter archetype and essentially what the hunter is is it's just a straight up Improvement to combat capabilities of the Ranger it's going to Grant you both offensive and defensive situational bonuses that help you in combat and if you're a Ranger that really likes to focus on combat in general and like that's the fun of the game for you and that's really what you wanted to play a ranger for this is probably going to be the subclass that you choose you might still choose gloomstalker instead but this is definitely one of the two that you'll select and then we come to Beastmaster and Beastmaster lets you summon an animal companion that has its own actions and bonus actions that has its own armor class and HP and these things improve over time and this animal you know can be used outside of combat or inside of combat so there's some interesting interactions you might have in the game with your animal companion outside of combat but it gives you an extra body on the battlefield as well that can tank that can absorb damage that can do attacks so this is really really good to have if you are you know you need an extra body on the battlefield it's definitely not a bad one to select and then lastly we come to gloomstalker which is the new subclass that's not currently in Early Access that will be in the full version of the game and what's great about this class is their class feature called dread ambusher which grants them an extra attack during their first turn of combat just during their first turn of a combat as long as they use the attack action and on top of that if they hit with this attack it deals increased damage so this is huge because at level five you have your attack and your extra attack in combat that's what you get but if you are a gloomstalker you're going to get to attack and for extra damage if you hit then do your first attack and then do your second attack so on your first turn of combat as a gloomstalker at level 5 onward you'll actually have three attacks which is incredible additionally they'll gain a class future called umbral site which makes it so that they have dark vision allowing them to see in Dark Places and hit enemies more effectively in combat in dark areas like the underdark or the shadow lands which is very very important for this game and also it makes it so that enemies that have dark vision can't see them when they're in darkness so this is really really good for avoiding enemies that have dark vision particularly again enemies that are in these darker areas of the game and can allow you to get into a position where you can attack and not be attacked so now taking a look at Rogue at level 2 rogue's game cutting action Dash and cutting action disengage which allows them to use these actions as bonus actions and instead so they can still attack and do these things in the given turn that means their movement speed is huge because they can Dash an attack in the same turn or they can disengage from an enemy move and then attack if an enemy is right on top of them and that's really really useful and then at level 5 they're gonna gain uncanny Dodge which is a class feature that makes it so when an enemy strikes them in combat if they use their reaction they can half the damage that they take and this can absolutely save their life in a lot of cases or drastically reduce the damage that they take and then at level 7 they're gonna gain evasion which makes it so that when they have to make a dexterity saving throw against like a hostile spell or something like that if they save successfully they would only take half the damage in this case they would take zero damage so they can prevent themselves from taking any damage from a lot of AOE focused spells with this class feature so those things being said let's take a look at the archetypes of the Rogue and then we'll kind of get into a summary of these two classes at the end so the first one is the thief so thieves gain fast hands which gives them additional bonus action and Second Story work which makes it so they gain resistance to Falling damage so if they fall they're gonna take less damage from maybe jumping from very high distance they'll take less damage but what's really important here is that additional bonus action and that additional bonus action allows them to do things like if they're dual wielding attack with their offhand and additional time because if you didn't know when you're dual wielding in this game your main hand uses your action and your offhand uses your bonus action to attack so if you attack with two weapons you would effectively not be able to do anything else but Rogues can attack with dual wield and then attack with their offhand why this is important is because if you took three levels of Rogue for instance and you took another class like let's say Ranger you took five levels of Ranger and you got that extra attack at level five then you could do a wheeled attack Main and offhand and then do World attack Main and offhand again in the same turn and there's other applications of this for instance monks have unarmed attack when they strike with a monk weapon they get that as a bonus action so you could possibly do this twice in combat or you know you could use like healing word on a cleric as a bonus action to heal multiple times in combat since healing word is a bonus action so there are a lot of ways that the thief can be multi-class with other classes to take advantage of their bonus actions as well and then level nine thieves are going to get the ability to on their stealth checks like if they're in combat or outside of combat when someone's trying to detect them they're going to gain Advantage if they have moved half or less of their movement points this means they're going to be extremely hard to detect allowing them to get sneak attacks more easily and you know sneak by enemies like outside of combat and that sort of thing so then we come to Arcane trickster and Arcane trickster is sort of a hybrid class this allows you to use some wizard spells with your Rogue and you're going to gain a small amount of spells you can cast allowing you to sort of hybrid between a wizard and a rogue and you know maybe you want some spell casting abilities on your Rogue magic Missile is a fantastic spell on this archetype because it just doesn't require intelligence at all to be very very good and it never misses so it's phenomenal additionally Arcane tricksters are going to be able to use magehand or a version of it that's invisible that can move objects out of containers or from people's pockets or put stuff into containers in people's pockets and can also pick locks and disarm traps this is going to allow you to do these things from a distance which is quite incredible especially if you're talking about the things you can do outside of combat and then at level 9 when they cast spells against a Target that they're hidden from that Target's actually going to have disadvantage against saving against their spells so that means that their spells are more likely to do a full damage or connect depending on the spell that they're doing so enemies are going to have a much harder time you know preventing damage from this character while they're hidden so you're going to try and you know sneak and hide and cast spells if you're an Arcane trickster for best results once you have that and lastly is the Assassin subclass which is the new subclass that wasn't in Early Access that uh is now in the full version of the game and what this class does is it allows you to use the assassinate feature and assassinate makes it so that you have advantage on attack rolls against enemies that have not taken a turn yet in combat so this is going to be turn one of combat which is why it's important that you have high initiative on an assassin so that you can go before enemies do so you can make sure you can connect but it also makes it so that they deal critical damage against surprised enemies and surprise enemies are basically enemies that are not prepared for combat so this is only going to happen usually when you're outside of combat triggering a combat so like if you walked up to an enemy and they can't see you they don't even know you're there and you blast them from behind with a crossbow that's going to surprise them right they didn't even know you were there and you hit them in the face that's going to be a guarantee Critical Strike and that allows you to a lot of times wipe out enemies before combat even begins so I think it's pretty clear to see from looking at these directly that Rangers are more combat focused than Rogues they have a lot more things they can do in combat they're set up better for combat Rogues have to be a little bit more Wily with the way they take care of things they can still deal extremely good damage but they have a little bit of things they must do in order to pull that off and they're probably not nearly as good in directly confrontational scenarios but something else that I want to mention that I didn't mention a lot about earlier is stealth it would seem at first glance that Rogues have a much better application for stealth they have a lot more things that can make them go stealthy but something that you might not be taking into account is that at level 5 Rangers get a spell called pass Without a Trace and this gives them plus 10 on their stealth checks and everyone around them to their stealth checks you can make your whole party stealthy while you go through an area which is incredible and that adds a ton of stealth check potential to a ranger that can catch up or pass a rogue and a lot of times so Rangers actually have a lot more stealth to them than would first seem but you you won't really reach that potential of stealth on them until about level five and talking a little bit more about abilities for these two classes as this is not something I talk a ton about at the beginning but both of these classes have a tendency to focus on dexterity uh if that wasn't obvious it should be by now that's because Rose gives finesse weapons for their sneak attacks or ranged weapons that's a requirement for their sneak attack damage which means that they're going to be using dexterity most of the time or they can't take advantage of their sneak attack Rangers if they're using ranged weapons are going to use dexterity but if they're using melee they can either use finesse and state dexterity or they can go strength because they don't necessarily need dexterity if they're playing melee because they have access to like heavy armors and stuff like that or medium armor that will protect them and they don't need their dexterity bonus to give them extra armor and beyond that Rangers will probably take advantage of wisdom for their spells in order to make them harder to resist and they'll probably take some Constitution particularly if they mainly so that they don't die as easily and Rogues on the other hand will probably focus on either intelligence if they're playing an Arcane trickster in order to make their spells harder to resist or they might take something like Charisma because they have a lot of skill proficiencies some of those can be dialogue proficiencies like deception or intimidation or persuasion and you might want to make like a really crafty robe that can talk people into doing stuff so if you're going to do that you'll probably Focus some points on Charisma as well and that opens you up to multi-classing with other Charisma type classes as well and the last thing I want to mention before I wrap up this video is that these two classes synergize really well together they actually are multi-class quite often together for instance assassin and bloomstalker are often multi-class or where you could take a few you know levels of Rogue and take thief in order to get that extra bonus action on your Ranger to give you an extra dual wield attack if you're planning on playing a dual build Ranger or or if you're playing a rogue and you might want to pick up some armor proficiencies from the ranger you can do that or maybe you're playing a ranged Ranger and you want some sneak attack from a rogue so there's a lot of synergies here and you can definitely multi-class these classes together very easily so that wraps up our video comparing the Rogue and Ranger I hope you found this helpful I feel like the information when compared directly together gives you a better picture of why you might choose one of these two classes rather than having to watch one video and then a separate video and then remember what was said in that video particularly if those videos are spaced out several days apart so I hope that was useful to you guys you will obviously have specific class guides ready at launch and we are planning on doing more of these videos so please leave feedback on them what did you like about the video what did you find useful what would you like to hear in the next video I think it's probably going to be warlock wizard sorcerer what's the differences between those what would you like to hear in that video let me know in the comments below [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Fextralife

Views: 349,697

Keywords: baldurs gate 3 ranger gloomstalker, baldurs gate 3 ranger class, bg3 ranger class, bg3 ranger subclass, bg3 rogue arcane trickster, bg3 rogue subclasses, bg3 rogue multiclass, bg3 rogue thief, bg3 rogue vs ranger, baldurs gate 3 rogue vs ranger, baldurs gate 3 rogue subclasses, baldurs gate 3 rogue build, baldurs gate 3 rogue thief, baldurs gate 3 rogue sneak attack, baldurs gate 3 rogue abilities, BG3 Class, Baldur's Gate 3 Classes, BG3 Classes, bg3 ranger, bg3 rogue

Id: Dlcoe0EbCdI

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023