Good ranger build?

[Mighty Warlord Ghandi]

First time player here, went with ranger class. I rolled a 93 with the stats being:
STR: 16
DEX: 17
CON: 17
INT: 14
WIS: 14
CHA: 13

Is this a good build or should I move some points around?

[danconnors]

Ranger's a brand of fighter. Hike your strength up to 18. Ditto: your constitution should be 18. Ditto: your dexterity should be 18. Take it out of your intelligence. Rangers need to be wise, not all that smart.

Keep rolling. Rangers get ridiculously high stat rolls. Keep rolling till you get at least a 96.

[DnD Detective]

No need to keep rolling with a number like that. Just take some from intelligence and charisma and max out your strength, dexterity, and constitution.

[Socipat]

You don't need to up your strength. Putting anymore in your strength is just a waist as you can easily pop it with the Gaunlets of Ogre strength. Plus you still get a nice bonus to hit and damage at 16. The only real reason to get an 18 on any character is for extra carrying cap and the use of the compond bow. But like I said it just way easier to get magick gear that pops your strength to 18(00).

You might want to consider placing one more into Dex and going with studded leather to get the ability to hide in shadows and still keep your AC low.

A 17 Con is great becasue you get a nice AC bonus everytime you level.

What I would do is drop your int by two and place it in Wis as Rangers get the ability to cast Cleric spells and a Wis of 16 gets you two extra level 1 and 2 cleric spells. If you drop your Int by three and raise your Wis to 17 you will get 2 extra level 1 spells, two extra level 2 spells and 1 extra level 1 spell.

As for rerolling. I wouldn't. You have a good character there that just needs a little tweeking in stat placement. Why waste your time on trying to get the munchkin character when you got a good one already in front of you.

[Mighty Warlord Ghandi]

Thanks!

[Mighty Warlord Ghandi]

Update: Re-rolled, got a 94, final stats are:
STR: 18/91
DEX: 19
CON: 17
INT: 13
WIS: 17
CHA:10
Thanks for your help!

[danconnors]

Leaving constitution at 17 costs you 14 to 16 hit points in Baldur's Gate. If you don't mind having less hit points it's okay, but you get +1 hit points/level for 18 and +1 hit points/level for a 19 constitution. There's a tome of constitution that can raise it to a total of 19.

Unless you are playing as an elf, whose highest constitution is a 17. As a human ranger it might be worthwhile to leave your wisdom at 17, to give yourself the option to dual class to a cleric when you have enough power as a ranger.

[Mighty Warlord Ghandi]

Playing an elf, so 17 con is the maximum, just put extra points into wisdom, dexterity and strength

[Socipat]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Leaving constitution at 17 costs you 14 to 16 hit points in Baldur's Gate. If you don't mind having less hit points it's okay, but you get +1 hit points/level for 18 and +1 hit points/level for a 19 constitution. There's a tome of constitution that can raise it to a total of 19.

If your trying to tank a Ranger than you are playing a Ranger wrong. Rangers don't tank or if you old school Rangers are not meat shields. The Barbarian with his higher Con and Hit Dice and ability to go berserk is a much better "tank" than a Ranger. Same hold true to the STR argument. If you gonna run the Ranger as a fighter than just role up a Fighter. The Fighter's ability to master any weapon and fighting style out weight any benifit you get from the Ranger class. The number one benifit of playing a ranger is his ability to hide in shadows and scout ahead of the party. Send him out with the thief and you got a team that can handle any small encounter as well as a team that can locate and disarm any traps along the way.

Originally posted by danconnors:

Unless you are playing as an elf, whose highest constitution is a 17. As a human ranger it might be worthwhile to leave your wisdom at 17, to give yourself the option to dual class to a cleric when you have enough power as a ranger.

This actually shows a good example of PPP (P I S S Poor Planing or P I S S Poor Playing). Your playing an elf. Elves can not dual class. Elves multiclass. Second, Rangers gain druid spells at level 8. Finally there is no benifit to dual classing a Ranger. Unless your a dual classing to the Ranger class. What many of these dual class thinker beleave is that they are making there character stronger. This is not always the case. What they neglect to tell you is that the class you dual out of is frozen at that level for the remainder of you characters life. In your case at level X is when you leave Ranger and go into Cleric. You will not be able to use your ranger skills till your cleric skills surpass level X. After which your THAC0, proficiency, and hit dice will level at the rate of the cleric which is considerably less than a Ranger.

[danconnors]

Even a mage can benefit from extra hit points. There is no character or type in the game that DOESN'T benefit from more hit points. Seven extra hit points, on a character knocked down to six hit points, is the difference between life and death.

A ranger is a sub class of fighter. One of the things he must be able to do is fight. He may not be the primary or most powerful fighter in the group, but he IS supposed to be able to fight.

Your critique is a good example of failing to read even the text you have copied. I said ...as a HUMAN ranger it might be worthwhile to consider later becoming a cleric. Dual classed humans are the most powerful combinations in the game. A dual class berserker/mage is probably THE most powerful character you can play.

Starting as a 10th or 11th level berserker, the berkmage sacrifices ONE level in the mage part of his dual character. He loses NO spells in his final spellbook. He can kick the living daylights out of ANY multiclass fighter/mage. To play as a single class mage, when you can be a dual class berkmage makes no sense at all. A berkmage is a mage who can double as a tank, a tank that can stop time, disintegrate enemies, incinerate amies.

[Hjelpmooglene]

Originally posted by danconnors:

To play as a single class mage, when you can be a dual class berkmage makes no sense at all.

There are other ways to support a team other than being tanky dps.

[Socipat]

Your critique is a good example of failing to read even the text you have copied - I did not fail to read it. My apology if for not makeing my self clear. When I said Your I was talking to Mighty Warlord Ghandi.

However you should take your own advice and read my post again. I did not say dual classing was bad. As a matter of fact I said dual classing from a cleric to a ranger was a good thing. Going from Ranger to just about any other class is not.

Also your example of a Berserker/Mage. The Berserker is a fighter class kit, it is not even a class of its own, it dose not even qualify as a sub-class. Now the FIGHTER is the base class that all other classes are built off. Dualing out of the fighter class will always garner benifits. Again I'm going to use your Berkmage. The benifits you garner from that combination will decrease as your progress in mage skills as you are stuck at level 10 or 11 as a berserker. Your ability to tank will also decrease as you gain more levels in you mage class. The benifits however still do out weight the negatives.

As for your statment of a dual class Berk\mage beating a multi class Fighter\mage, your wrong. The downfall of the berkmage is that he must follow the rules of the dual class system. A level 11 Berserker/11 mage dual will not have acceses to his Berserker powers. He would have to be a level 11 Berserker/12 mage, And even then he woulde not be allowed to use any ranged attacks or armour. This would drasticly cut his powers. This is not an issue for the fighter/mage as he would have all his powers availble.

As for your statment of dual class characters being the most powerful characters in the game. This has been proven false as there is a XP cap of 161,000. Which puts fighters around level 8( and before you ask I actually looked it up before I posted it here.) If you play through both games the cap is like 8 million (putting you at about level 40). Your dual class level 8 Berserker/ level 40 Mage is now just a level 40 Mage as the benifits of the beserker kit has become unbenifical. And i expect that cap to go up when they add on the extra 25 hours of game play with the new "add" on. ( I put add in perenthises becasue everybody is just calling it Baulder's Gate 1.5)

Dan your issue is your playing this game like it is the end. Baulder's Gate is just the beginning.

[danconnors]

I'm thinking of Baldur's Gate 2 when I talk about dual classing. It doesn't make any sense to dual class in BG1. The transition from berserker level 10 to berserker/mage level 11 takes about 5 minutes. The strategy is to save all scrolls found as loot until the berserker duals to mage. There will be 30 to 40 scrolls by then, of all levels. In BG2 I've found 9th level scrolls left lying after a battle in the sewers.

When you transition, you immediately dismiss your entire party, so that you get all the experience earned by the party. Then you start scribing scrolls. For some reason you get 1,000 XP for every mage scroll level memorized. A level 3 scroll gets 3,000 XP; a level 9 gets 9,000. I often go straight from 10th level berserker to 11th level berkmage in one sitting.

Having a 15th level mage with 170 + hit points is much better than having a 16th level mage with maybe 80 hit points max. When the mage can carry a tower shield, swing Crom Feayr with a THAC0 of -9, and do 30 hit points of damage with a single hit, it beats hell out of a dagger. Who needs great skill with a longbow when you can toss 5 Melf's Minute Meteors per round instead.

The benefits of the berserker part of the berkmage diminish over time, but mine managed to kill a level 20 something Sarevok in Throne of Bhaal after he was dire charmed and started attacking me. If I plan to play all the way through Throne of Bhaal I'll probably let the fighter go up to level 12 or 13, where he gets his last extra attack per round before dual classing. By then I usually have enough gold to buy the spells I need to advance quickly through the lower levels of magedom.

My berkmage usually ends up with AC-9 before the end of BG2. By then armor is nearly pointless, since THAC0 -9 can hit AC-9 with a roll of 2 on the d20.

[Socipat]

So Dan, basicly your entire attempt to help a person barley starting out was based on the second game and held no real value to the OP. And your argument to my input was just you trying to feel superior to someone else. (Your entire argument was based on not reading my input or on the actual game in question.)
Dan that makes you a troll. and I do not feed trolls.

[danconnors]

It's based on the assumption that he will want to continue his character into the second game. It's possible to make some crucial errors in character developement in the first game, if you know nothing of the second.

The advice you gave: Leave your strength mediocre, don't go for max hit points, the main use of your ranger is to hide in shadows, etc. is BAD advice. Trying to turn a ranger into some wierd type of thief who can't do any thieving is stupid. Try to picture Minsc attempting to hide in shadows. Try telling Kivan that he's not a fighter.

Calling me a troll makes you an idiot.

[Socipat]

Originally posted by danconnors:

It's based on the assumption that he will want to continue his character into the second game. It's possible to make some crucial errors in character developement in the first game, if you know nothing of the second.

The advice you gave: Leave your strength mediocre, don't go for max hit points, the main use of your ranger is to hide in shadows, etc. is BAD advice. Trying to turn a ranger into some wierd type of thief who can't do any thieving is stupid. Try to picture Minsc attempting to hide in shadows. Try telling Kivan that he's not a fighter.

Calling me a troll makes you an idiot.

I told my self I wasn't going to answer, buuut,
In my original post I said it is way to easy to pop str with magic. You know like how your Crom Feayr boosts you characters strength to 25. Or how the spell strength pops the strength to 18 (50) and how the cleric spell strength of on gives everybody in the party a strenght of 18 (75) for one turn. Lets not also forget the potions of strength that can be purchased.

Also on Con. He is not playing the tank. Like I said if you want to play like that. A fighter or Barbarian is a better choise. Con 17 is just fine for a Ranger.

As for the Hide in shadows. Ever heard of a SCOUT. As a matter of fact I said TEAMING your Ranger with You THIEF was a great SCOUTING COMBINATION. It is called Tatics.

As for telling them they are not fighter. (If they was real), Ya I would tell them to there faces. "Kivan, Your not a fighter you an Archer. Get your ass back here." As for Minsc, He himself says he is not a ranger but a Berserker from the east. It's in his Bio. Try reading it sometime.

Dan you that dumb troll that got tricked by them billy goats aint you.