Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Ranger favored enemies feel a bit underwhelming

Sort of wish some of these options provided a bit more flavor to the ranger. At the moment bounty hunter and ranger knight are sort of the only ones worth taking because they actually give really nice passives with Thieves can't and heavy armor. The others don't really add a lot. Mage breaker has true strike which isn't very good, keeper of the vale has protection from good and evil which is easily acquired elsewhere, and sanctified stalker has sacred flame which is low damage and very easily saved against. The extra boosts to proficiencies are also super minor (+1 I believe).
I would sort of like if these favored enemy bonuses were rethought a bit. My first thought would be to expand the ranger spell lists a little bit depending on favored enemy. For example mage breakers would have the option to pick something like silence as a spell when leveling up, or sanctified stalkers would be able to pick guiding bolt. Something to set these three aside a little more than a protection spell that isn't particularly useful and easily cast elsewhere (Keeper of vale) or cantrips that will likely never be used (Mage breaker/Sanctified stalker). Would be curious what other people think?

well frankly i would cut those in half and merge them and add one more so you end up with 3 choices. Bounty hunter as far as i seen still doesn't work.

problems is some of those spells need a bit of a tweaking by themselfs like true strike with concetration is just bad.. Sacred flame could do with abit of a damage boost or lowering it and giving it extra effect. Lots of things they could do to make them better.

Bounty hunter works for me just fine! Did you check the combat log?

Personally, I like "Keeper of the vale" because of Protection from Good and Evil. It's a very pertinent spell to have in the story given that we have already face aberrations, fey, fiends, and undead and I wouldn't be surprised to face more of them in the future (as well as celestials and elementals).

Given that this spell only applies to one person and is ideally cast at the beginning of the fight, I like to give that spell to all my characters/companions where I can. Also, given how often we encounters (or might) those types of creature, I don't want to rely on scrolls.

That being said, it would be nice to have more options, as always 😅.

Edit : plus, it doesn't even cost a spell slot, which is huge in my opinion.

Sacred flame I think is a bit worse than true strike. At least true strike actually does give you advantage on your next attack. Sacred flame will probably just get saved against. It feels like that spell is saved against to the point it should only be used if that's your only available course of action. At least with access to say something like guiding bolt the sanctified stalker would be able to mark a target for advantage.

Sacred flame does get an "upcas"t upon reaching certain levels, from the PHB :

From the meta build and reviews I found online talking about this cantrip (here and here), it seems to be considered as one of "the best source of radiant damage in the game", because of how it scales when leveling up.

Source

And since, it's a cantrip, it doesn't cost any spell slot!

Oh, I didn’t know that. That would potentially help a sanctified stalker do some extra damage against enemies vulnerable to radiant damage that would make them feel different.

I’m actually pretty happy that the existing Favoured Enemies do let us create rangers with different flavours, and think they’re at the right sort of level for a starting character. Though I agree True Strike in particular isn’t really useful, and it would also be disappointing if there’s no development of these flavours as the game progresses.

Unlike many folk here, I’m not a 5e expert, and anyway I believe Larian have made tweaks to the base ranger class, but I think that there are improvements to Favoured Enemy skills in 5e at levels higher than we get to in EA?

In the original form of Ranger, you should be getting extra enemy types and languages at levels 6 and 14, giving you three total from base Ranger. That's how it worked in the PHB. I'm not sure what Larian is planning with their homebrewed feature, might just be extra bits, same as PHB.

Personally, I really liked the replacement feature, Favored Foe, when it appeared in UA, but they changed it it when they published the feature in Tasha's, which made me sad.

Thanks for the info! Allowing players to pick additional Favoured Enemy options at levels 6 and 14 would seem a bit weird in BG3 given the way that the ones available at level 1 have been written as a sort of background to your character, which I do like. As per the OP, giving players options for spells or abilities thematically appropriate to their selected Favoured Enemy at those levels, or even more frequently, might make more narrative sense.

But as you say, it’s a home brew so there are multiple ways Larian could be planning to go.

Just tried it again on the save i had. Apparently i had Sanctified stalker picked my bad no clue why. So no wonder it didn't work. and sadly it doesn't work on other abilities/spells that need STR saving throws if it did it would be cool because hitting STR St is a nighmare as is, most of the time.

The ensnare is an active spell. Just like sneak attack they made it way worse. It should work the same way! As a passive on weapon attack easly done with new reactions. Same thing for hail of thorns. instead of letting me use it twice per turn by prebuffing it. Ow and then we have hord braker again active instead of passive lowering usefulness once again.
For some reason those are still all actives so the value you get out of it is smaller.

Like i said if we could pick two of those at the same time sure it would be ok. if not i would prefer Solastas Favored Enemies over this particular homebrew. The one DnD new hunters mark would be best though. That way i can at least keep up with berserker paladin somewhat.

Definitely agree that these ranger abilities are great candidates to get the “Divine Smite” treatment now that Larian have updated their engine to better cope with reactions and reaction-like conditional actions. Good point!

That applies to cleric since they don't get extra attack or any way of consolidating their weapon attack stat to wisdom but not ranger.

3d6 gives 10.5 expected damage on a hit. A mundane long bow fired twice, if you some how still have 16 dex would be 15. Sacred flame is hitting harder than that against radiant weak enemies. But add in hunters mark and it's a wash, bump dex to a realistic level and the fact magic weapons do exist and it's the bow even against radiant weak. And even in pen and paper with the same wis / dex the bow is going to have better accuracy with far more options for improving it, and in BG3 it's much worse. And that's before getting into Crossbow Expert and Sharp Shooter.

Sacred Flame isn't useless but it's far more situational for ranger.

Thanks for this additional commentary. To me this actually sounds perfect for a Sanctified Stalker ranger, that they would normally want to use their weapon but that in some specific situations when dealing with enemies vulnerable to radiant damage, they have an option in their toolkit not available to other rangers. As long as the damage still increases for rangers at later levels so as to at least keep the cantrip situationally useful.

Yes, that's pretty much how I see it 🙂
It's still useful, if only a bit more situational.

Yeah that's why I think it would be nice if they had something more generally useful. Like a small additional passive (small addition to wisdom saving throws?) or the option to chose some cleric spells without having to chose initiate as a feat. A ranger with guiding bolt would actually be kinda nice in dark places. Radiant damage plus advantage on your next attack. They could also get a passive that makes sacred flame harder for enemies to save against to make it more reliable damage. My biggest problem with the sacred flame cantrip is how often it is saved against. Especially as a ranger with lower wisdom than a cleric. Even with the level 5 jump in damage it's far less reliable than risking a shot with a bow or hit with a melee weapon (unless sacred flame is all that can reach enemies). I guess it's kind of nice that sacred flame ignores height and most obstacles at least.

Also just had a thought, though this might be a bit OP depending on how many radiant vulnerable enemies you face in the game, but they could change a sanctified stalkers hunters mark so it does an extra 1d6 radiant damage instead of slashing damage.

better yet give it 1 extra radiant damage 1d6 weapon damage + 1 radiant... rangers need all the help they can get.

Even with the features from the Player's Handbook, which are significantly weaker than what we have in BG3, Rangers are pretty strong all the way up to level 5. It's from level 6 onwards they start to fall apart since they scale so weirdly.

On a more specific note for BG3, I think there needs to be some rebalance of the natural explorer and favored enemy mechanics. For one, maybe not have even more bonus skills here? Rangers are a 3 skill class normally. In BG3 they are now a 4 skill class at the minimum, which the option to pick up another from Urban Tracker. Except it is more like getting 2 skills, since they use Sleight of Hand for both Sleight of Hand and Thieves' Tools. So Rangers are now a 4-6 proficiency class. Rogues have 4 skills and Thieves Tools normally, but actually have to spend a proficiency on Slight of Hand for Thieves' Tools in BG3, so they're down a skill.

Then you have the options like Keeper of the Veil and Find Familiar on ritual... like, what? A free Protection from Evil and Good every long rest in a Mind Flayer story is a significant boon, as is getting a familiar for free. These abilities are very powerful as far as first level features go and arguably makes Rangers too strong compared to Rogues and Fighters for our current levels.

I think Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer should probably have been implemented more akin to their optional variants in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.



Deft Explorer



Favored Foe

Well first of all we don't know how many we gonna be fighting but ok and lot of casters have that.

Second they give us item that does the same thing really fast. So on it's own it's bad. If it was packed with one more thing from that list sure...as is it's whatever.

If you read the list of what PfEG protects you from, you'd see that getting a free usage is pretty neat. Undead, aberrations, fiends...

And don't dismiss getting it on someone who isn't a full caster. Casters usually have more important / impactful spells they have to keep concentration on, the list of which only becomes longer the higher level we get.

Generally speaking, the current FE and NE features are probably too strong for what they are. The Ranger never needed help at low levels, only at their higher level scaling. As things are now, Rogues have gotten a very bad deal because of the Ranger.