Ranger Favored Enemy....all useless.

[Knightmage Bael]

Bounty Hunter-
-->Ensare requires concentration, overrides Hunter's mark. Investigation INT based, so no.

Keeper of the Veil-
-->Protection from Good and Evil. If there's ever an opportunity to use this? Arcana INT based so no, also.

Mage Breaker-
--> True strike inferior to Hunter's Mark, which does damage. Far as I know they don't stack, either. Arcana Proficiency useless on Ranger.

Ranger Knight-
-->Heavy Armor. Possibly least useless depending on build choice (STR>DEX, dual wield, colossus, hunter's mark, High Elf for the Blade Ward cantrip, have cleric use Armor for +2 AC and you get a tanky Ranger Knight that'll do like 40 damage per hit)

--History Proficiency. INT based. Also useless.

Sanctified Stalker-

-->Sacred Flame. Why would you EVER use this as a Ranger? Requires main action, so no bow used here. Doesn't benefit from Colossus or Hunter's Mark either, I believe. Hit chance is very poor, and can be negated by enemy with Dex save, which is most of the time.

--Religion proficiency. ALSO INT BASED.

Rangers are DEX (usually) + WIS. INT is a dump stat left at 8. No INT based proficiencies are ever worth it. Literally half of all these abilities are useless from the get-go. The other feature to the "Favored Enemy" are also largely useless because the abilities they offer are either redundant or an inferior action to something you could do instead.

Favored Enemy needs to be reworked. I don't see any of these as being useful, ever unless you're doing a very specific custom campaign with friends - which is out of the scope of Early Access. Or Unless you're doing that fancy CQC dual-wield ranger I mentioned earlier.

Now, if BG3 final release has a custom campaign maker (which would be AWESOME, btw), then I can see Favored Enemy having more use, but right now? No. They're all useless.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Agreed, only one I see as useful is Ranger Knight.

[dolby]

i mean nothing new here you got noob traps like that all around wait till we get all clasess i'm sure more things like those will pile on.. maybe they get fixed by the end of EA who knows. i mean nothing like people playing warlocks without eldrich blast and so on and then you have posts that game is to hard.


And Sacred Flame is ok if you have prone enemies.

Spells like True strike and others are just whatever due to how easy highground and backstab are so why would anyone waste an action on one round spell like that.
You even have items that do the same thing.

Stuff like that with spells will happen all over the game, Some concentration spells will have same problems.. Spells will just not get used. DUe to porting and homebrew instead of making the game from ground up as a video game. We will see how they manage all of it at the end.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

I'm kind of the mind that "noob traps" shouldn't exist in the first place - but games are hard to balance, so they should at least be kept to a minimum.

There are so many bad spells in 5e, and concentration really doesn't help.

[dolby]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

I'm kind of the mind that "noob traps" shouldn't exist in the first place - but games are hard to balance, so they should at least be kept to a minimum.

There are so many bad spells in 5e, and concentration really doesn't help.

well they just have to rebalance stuff i have no problems with them changing spells.

loads of things they could do with concetration or with spells. But due to no feedback there is just no way to know what will they do, if anything maybe they don't even see it as a problem frankly i have no clue..

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by dolby:

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

I'm kind of the mind that "noob traps" shouldn't exist in the first place - but games are hard to balance, so they should at least be kept to a minimum.

There are so many bad spells in 5e, and concentration really doesn't help.

well they just have to rebalance stuff i have no problems with them changing spells.

loads of things they could do with concetration or with spells. But due to no feedback there is just no way to know what will they do if anything at all.

What do you mean "no feedback"?

[dolby]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

Originally posted by dolby:

well they just have to rebalance stuff i have no problems with them changing spells.

loads of things they could do with concetration or with spells. But due to no feedback there is just no way to know what will they do if anything at all.

What do you mean "no feedback"?

There is no information on this and other things how they see them as devs. I mean loads of good examples out there from other devs studios.. We have way way less info then we had on dos 1 or dos 2 Ea.

apparently we are getting feedback on how they collect feedback next at least that was said in a patch notes from last month.

[Dorok]

Concentration spell force make a choice and avoid boredom of excessive pre buff or buff at start at combat. It's a bit surprising at first, but I don't see what's bad.

[Knightmage Bael]

Originally posted by dolby:

i mean nothing new here you got noob traps like that all around wait till we get all clasess i'm sure more things like those will pile on.. maybe they get fixed by the end of EA who knows. i mean nothing like people playing warlocks without eldrich blast and so on and then you have posts that game is to hard.


And Sacred Flame is ok if you have prone enemies.

Spells like True strike and others are just whatever due to how easy highground and backstab are so why would anyone waste an action on one round spell like that.
You even have items that do the same thing.

Stuff like that with spells will happen all over the game, Some concentration spells will have same problems.. Spells will just not get used. DUe to porting and homebrew instead of making the game from ground up as a video game. We will see how they manage all of it at the end.

This is...very true actually.

You also make a great point about sacred flame. So apparently it says Attack/Save: Dexterity, but that means the enemy makes a save using its attack stat, or its dex stat? a little unclear there.

Knocking enemies prone is like an extra action. Happens if you shove someone off a cliff, or use the "topple" action, a wizard + staff, or whatever. Not a lot of abilities that actually straight up knock someone prone unless you use an item or you're in a specific circumstance. Its a cantrip that doesn't require concentration so that's good.

If you're out a spell slot you're out of a spell slot, and can't use either Ensare, OR Hunter's Mark either, since they both require a spell charge, but then sacred flame does 1d8, as opposed to 1d10 + colossus at the very least, if you have a longbow (if you're a ranger, you should, lets be honest).

However, sacred flame COULD be useful at some point, I agree.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Archmage_Bael:

Originally posted by dolby:

i mean nothing new here you got noob traps like that all around wait till we get all clasess i'm sure more things like those will pile on.. maybe they get fixed by the end of EA who knows. i mean nothing like people playing warlocks without eldrich blast and so on and then you have posts that game is to hard.


And Sacred Flame is ok if you have prone enemies.

Spells like True strike and others are just whatever due to how easy highground and backstab are so why would anyone waste an action on one round spell like that.
You even have items that do the same thing.

Stuff like that with spells will happen all over the game, Some concentration spells will have same problems.. Spells will just not get used. DUe to porting and homebrew instead of making the game from ground up as a video game. We will see how they manage all of it at the end.

This is...very true actually.

You also make a great point about sacred flame. So apparently it says Attack/Save: Dexterity, but that means the enemy makes a save using its attack stat, or its dex stat? a little unclear there.

Knocking enemies prone is like an extra action. Happens if you shove someone off a cliff, or use the "topple" action, a wizard + staff, or whatever. Not a lot of abilities that actually straight up knock someone prone unless you use an item or you're in a specific circumstance. Its a cantrip that doesn't require concentration so that's good.

If you're out a spell slot you're out of a spell slot, and can't use either Ensare, OR Hunter's Mark either, since they both require a spell charge, but then sacred flame does 1d8, as opposed to 1d10 + colossus at the very least, if you have a longbow (if you're a ranger, you should, lets be honest).

However, sacred flame COULD be useful at some point, I agree.

The idea is a party combo you use grease from stealth on enemies.
They go prone you get a surprise round on them you ignite the grease let say a fireball and then you use sacred flame with 100% hit chance the main thing here is the 100% hit rate on prone enemies cos they do not get a dex save throw.


THe dnd idea behind it is you can use it on enemies that are in cover cos saves do not get AC bonus. But due to no cover in BG 3 that's not an option. What makes it even worse is the high ground bonues to attacks and attack spells the saving throws spells are worst off compared to Attack spells.

SO you are really only left with prone, webed edge cases...
in short they need to rebalance save spells on global scale one by one.

[Dorok]

This isn't just prone, isn't immobilizing enough as it works for cancelling DEX armor, Entangle and Command should work, perhaps not Ensnaring, Shocking Grasp, or Pin Down.

It's not just a pure problem of rebalance, but also consider tools to increase chance.

[RealDealBreaker]

Originally posted by Archmage_Bael:

Bounty Hunter-
-->Ensare requires concentration, overrides Hunter's mark. Investigation INT based, so no.

Keeper of the Veil-
-->Protection from Good and Evil. If there's ever an opportunity to use this? Arcana INT based so no, also.

Mage Breaker-
--> True strike inferior to Hunter's Mark, which does damage. Far as I know they don't stack, either. Arcana Proficiency useless on Ranger.

Ranger Knight-
-->Heavy Armor. Possibly least useless depending on build choice (STR>DEX, dual wield, colossus, hunter's mark, High Elf for the Blade Ward cantrip, have cleric use Armor for +2 AC and you get a tanky Ranger Knight that'll do like 40 damage per hit)

--History Proficiency. INT based. Also useless.

Sanctified Stalker-

-->Sacred Flame. Why would you EVER use this as a Ranger? Requires main action, so no bow used here. Doesn't benefit from Colossus or Hunter's Mark either, I believe. Hit chance is very poor, and can be negated by enemy with Dex save, which is most of the time.

--Religion proficiency. ALSO INT BASED.

Rangers are DEX (usually) + WIS. INT is a dump stat left at 8. No INT based proficiencies are ever worth it. Literally half of all these abilities are useless from the get-go. The other feature to the "Favored Enemy" are also largely useless because the abilities they offer are either redundant or an inferior action to something you could do instead.

Favored Enemy needs to be reworked. I don't see any of these as being useful, ever unless you're doing a very specific custom campaign with friends - which is out of the scope of Early Access. Or Unless you're doing that fancy CQC dual-wield ranger I mentioned earlier.

Now, if BG3 final release has a custom campaign maker (which would be AWESOME, btw), then I can see Favored Enemy having more use, but right now? No. They're all useless.

Gee, it's a role playing game. So maybe, just maybe, a player may want to play a role of an intelligent ranger. Not everyone is an optimiser and the game (table top or BG3) does not require an optimised character to be successful. MANY of the options in d&d are there to accommodate varied character concepts.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by RealDealBreaker:

Originally posted by Archmage_Bael:

Bounty Hunter-
-->Ensare requires concentration, overrides Hunter's mark. Investigation INT based, so no.

Keeper of the Veil-
-->Protection from Good and Evil. If there's ever an opportunity to use this? Arcana INT based so no, also.

Mage Breaker-
--> True strike inferior to Hunter's Mark, which does damage. Far as I know they don't stack, either. Arcana Proficiency useless on Ranger.

Ranger Knight-
-->Heavy Armor. Possibly least useless depending on build choice (STR>DEX, dual wield, colossus, hunter's mark, High Elf for the Blade Ward cantrip, have cleric use Armor for +2 AC and you get a tanky Ranger Knight that'll do like 40 damage per hit)

--History Proficiency. INT based. Also useless.

Sanctified Stalker-

-->Sacred Flame. Why would you EVER use this as a Ranger? Requires main action, so no bow used here. Doesn't benefit from Colossus or Hunter's Mark either, I believe. Hit chance is very poor, and can be negated by enemy with Dex save, which is most of the time.

--Religion proficiency. ALSO INT BASED.

Rangers are DEX (usually) + WIS. INT is a dump stat left at 8. No INT based proficiencies are ever worth it. Literally half of all these abilities are useless from the get-go. The other feature to the "Favored Enemy" are also largely useless because the abilities they offer are either redundant or an inferior action to something you could do instead.

Favored Enemy needs to be reworked. I don't see any of these as being useful, ever unless you're doing a very specific custom campaign with friends - which is out of the scope of Early Access. Or Unless you're doing that fancy CQC dual-wield ranger I mentioned earlier.

Now, if BG3 final release has a custom campaign maker (which would be AWESOME, btw), then I can see Favored Enemy having more use, but right now? No. They're all useless.

Gee, it's a role playing game. So maybe, just maybe, a player may want to play a role of an intelligent ranger. Not everyone is an optimiser and the game (table top or BG3) does not require an optimised character to be successful. MANY of the options in d&d are there to accommodate varied character concepts.

Roleplaying doesn't exclude the possibility of making these options more appealing, the two are not mutually exclusive.

[dolby]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

Originally posted by RealDealBreaker:

Gee, it's a role playing game. So maybe, just maybe, a player may want to play a role of an intelligent ranger. Not everyone is an optimiser and the game (table top or BG3) does not require an optimised character to be successful. MANY of the options in d&d are there to accommodate varied character concepts.

Roleplaying doesn't exclude the possibility of making these options more appealing, the two are not mutually exclusive.

yep you can still roleplay it with balanced skills abilities and effects. infact we could make up better Favored Enemies right now and make them way more friendly and better for roleplay at the same time.

i mean if you gonna give me arcane skill proficiency you may as well make it so it scales with wisdom.
Just like it's done with some spells.. makes them even more roleplay viable.

[Dorok]

So that's Larian stuff? Or if that's D&D stuff why the designs?

[Knightmage Bael]

Well I'm glad people are discussing this. I've enjoyed reading people's reactions quite a bit. Larian says they go through the feedback, so maybe there's a possibility that they tweak these a bit, but who knows. I know they're busy on the game and everything.

Still, Favored Enemy abilities that have some would be nice. Even if all they do for a temporary fix is to switch the INT skill bonuses into WIS or DEX ones, then tweak the other abilities later.