Rangers Aren't Rangers In BG 3?

[Nifty]

Okay, so there's basically two approaches to Rangers in isometrics.

1. They all function like the beast master subclass essentially getting a summonable or permanent animal companion

2. They get essentially extra attack rolls and dmg against the enemy race they like to "hunt"

3. Charm animal to temporarily convert beasts to their side

My understanding is that for BG 3 they didn't go the main stream route of option 1, fair enough.

But they also removed option 2 and 3 from BG 2.

So everyone is saying Rangers are useless now?

So its not just the subclasses that are bad, but some of the most pivotal classes in the game are unplayable?

[Phoenix]

Not sure what you're asking here?
Rangers have 3 subclasses, beast master subclass functions as your first subclass you mentioned
There is also favourable enemies so number 2 is checked
and charm animal is an option for many classes, including ranger

Ranger and all its subclasses are pretty good, I have done 2 playthroughs as a ranger, 1 as a beastmaster and 1 as a gloomstalker, both were very powerful, arguably you can do some nutty things with rangers and bows in general

Beast master functions as what it sounds like, summon a powerful pet which grows stronger as you do
Hunter, which focuses more on i'd say more on defeating multiple enemies, with optional bonuses on specifics
Gloomstalker, stealth assassin ranger

all 3 have customizable favourable enemies so you have all that you mentioned in your first post

[pirate135246]

op rolled 8 int irl

[Cartesian Duelist]

Originally posted by Nifty:

Okay, so there's basically two approaches to Rangers in isometrics.

Baldur's Gate 3 uses the D&D 5e rules. You might want to look at how Rangers work there rather than how they work in every other fantasy game.

[jonnin]

massive overhaul and nerfs. Now they are just fighter-druids. The favored enemy is gone (eg, orcs or undead) and was replaced by something of the same name that makes zero sense. They also no longer get anything special for archery or dual wield, but follow the same frustrating path as a fighter for that. Animal interactions/nature lover stuff is similar to before, but your pet lacks durability and you lack the buff spells to get it through tough fights. Gone too are trapping skills, craft trap & set trap etc.

That said, rangers are not at all 'useless'. You have a fighter class that has all the same stuff most of the others do: armor, hit points, extra attacks. But it also has a fair number of extra damage options like hunter's mark spell, or the pet's attacks (if you can keep it alive), or colossus slayer etc (extra d8 every round). It has healing spells and other useful bits as well, and while there are other ways to get these things, you can set it up to have slight of hand, resists to elements, heavy armor, or other goodies that you may prefer.

Its flexible, and its fine, but the gap has been narrowed... a fighter gets extra feats & one more attack per round, while the other fighter types have their special abilities instead of the extra attack and feats. And that extra attack scales with haste, so fighter has a leg up on most of the others once haste is in the picture.

Bg3 has a lot of things you really wouldn't do (or DM denied stuff) that make some classes scale better than normal. For a simple example of this, you can sleep after every battle, and still have food left over ... and there is no DM telling you that calling it a day after one minor encounter is nonsense. So exploiting that, you can always have all your spells, and that makes things like the fighter extra attack scale to the moon, whereas in tabletop you would run out of haste spells or have to save them for the harder fights. BG3 is also very free with the loot, and allows you to respec every time you find loot that justifies it...