Ranger - Beast Master subclass

[Bloodonmoon]

Hi there !

I love having furred compagnions with me, so I picked Beast Master subclass for my ranger, but after starting a new game several time, I ended taking the Hunter subclass once, and I feel like Beast master is a bit... underpowered ?

I mean, I essentialy used the spider lady as beast master because my furred friends missed almost all their hits (I mean, they all have low 40-60% hitting chances, without the advantages taking into account). So they happened to do really low dmg, to die quickly (not that much HPs), if you've forgotten to summon them before fight or if they die quickly it's like you have no subclass at all (as you can't summon DURING fight), and thus, the only point to me in the end was spamming webs with my spider and sending Astarion with web proof boots to attack.

Did I miss something with that subclass or is it really underpowered compared to the Hunter subclass ? I don't expect the beasts to be super strong, but at least to bring some cc (taunt never worked with bear...), only the spider webs worked, and the fact that you can't summon during fight made me do half or more of my combats without any lvl3 advantage in the end. :/

[SnarkOne]

yes, BM is underpowered. It doesn't suck but there's better options

[Jack Hawklight]

Yes, the beast master currently seems to be way less powerful than going hunter. Its an issue. Have to see how Larian will handle the summon once we can reach lvl 5. Hopefully we will get some better ones as we progress in levels. On the brightside.... the hunter is fun as hell to play. I mean the beastmaster was pretty good too with the spider jumping all around the map. Its where I got the idea to do it with my druid. Can threaten ranged enemies in one turn using that jump.

[deepgreenbear]

Oh cool, it's not just me. I thought BM seemed... lacking as well.

[Bloodonmoon]

Well, if at least we could summon during battle, that would help, so you could still have a beast if it gets killed or forgot to summon one before engaging.

I'm glad to see it's not just me. ^^ I hope they'll do something about it, because I like having beasts around. ^^

[Wyrlish]

Yes, BM is underpowered. Welcome to both this game and DnD 5th edition lol.

[Mosey]

You get a Druid shapechanger that lives in your pocket, up to you how useful that is.

[Morgan Freeman]

Originally posted by Bloodonmoon:

Hi there !

I love having furred compagnions with me, so I picked Beast Master subclass for my ranger, but after starting a new game several time, I ended taking the Hunter subclass once, and I feel like Beast master is a bit... underpowered ?

I mean, I essentialy used the spider lady as beast master because my furred friends missed almost all their hits (I mean, they all have low 40-60% hitting chances, without the advantages taking into account). So they happened to do really low dmg, to die quickly (not that much HPs), if you've forgotten to summon them before fight or if they die quickly it's like you have no subclass at all (as you can't summon DURING fight), and thus, the only point to me in the end was spamming webs with my spider and sending Astarion with web proof boots to attack.

Did I miss something with that subclass or is it really underpowered compared to the Hunter subclass ? I don't expect the beasts to be super strong, but at least to bring some cc (taunt never worked with bear...), only the spider webs worked, and the fact that you can't summon during fight made me do half or more of my combats without any lvl3 advantage in the end. :/

Beastmaster is underpowered?

Uhh... yeah... that's a feature courtesy of WoTC.

It's a faithful translation from TT.

Rangers suck, beastmasters suck even more.

WoTC doesn't like beasts and bows.

[Indure]

Originally posted by Wyrlish:

Yes, BM is underpowered. Welcome to both this game and DnD 5th edition lol.

That's the thing though, beastmaster in BG3 is way better than the table top version, but is still lacking compared to other classes.

Like the moon druid it really comes down to what animal companions they get and how they are balanced. Currently it seems Larian didn't spend even a second critically thinking about how to implement animal companions. Hopefully this changes later in development.

[HASKII_17]

Ranger is awful, beastmaster is trash. A simple imp summon is a whole lot better than all of the beasts and it isn't even close to what the warlock can actually do. (I still picked up beastmaster tho, who knows why)

[Zangetsu]

Originally posted by HASKII_17:

Ranger is awful, beastmaster is trash. A simple imp summon is a whole lot better than all of the beasts and it isn't even close to what the warlock can actually do. (I still picked up beastmaster tho, who knows why)

The giant raven is very similar to the imp except it can blind instead of extra poison damage.

I think rangers are alright if you take archery and hunters mark at lvl 2. Most of the rest of their spells are weak just take cure wounds or something. But hunters mark increases dps by 1d6 and archery makes the shot accurate. And of course you can reapply hunters mark when the enemy dies.

Warlocks are very similar with hex and agonizing blast, except they deal force damage which is the least resisted damage type in the game.

[Kingsly]

The only problem with going hunter over BM is that Colossal Slayer and hunter's mark don't stack for some reason. Before the Spider had 30 hit points, now it has I think 11? So the raven is the best one. Unfortunately the bear and wolf are the two worst.

Might as well just go a dexterity fighter. =/

[Shadalar]

Originally posted by Wyrlish:

Yes, BM is underpowered. Welcome to both this game and DnD 5th edition lol.

To be fair Tasha's has revamped the BM as a whole so it is actually much better now, and while it would be a lot of work i would like to see Larian rework some things considering th new stuff WotC has released for 5e

[Wyrlish]

Originally posted by Shadalar:

Originally posted by Wyrlish:

Yes, BM is underpowered. Welcome to both this game and DnD 5th edition lol.

To be fair Tasha's has revamped the BM as a whole so it is actually much better now, and while it would be a lot of work i would like to see Larian rework some things considering th new stuff WotC has released for 5e

That would be nice and yeah, Tasha's actually makes BM one of the better choices now, just hope this game can give rangers in general better ability than "I shoot arrows"

[Hobocop]

The fact that the companion gets its own initiative and action economy in BG3 already makes it better than the PHB incarnation by leaps and bounds.

They just need to implement proper scaling and do something about the redundancy of the Beast Taming feature you can pick at 1st level with the stuff you get at 3rd since they don't stack, making that 1st level choice a dead feature if you go BM.