Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Ranger's elemental resistances

How does everyone feel about Rangers getting resistances to fire etc.?

A resistance i.e. 50% damage reduction seems like something you get from a powerful magical spell or item, or a physiological trait like Tieflings being half-devils. Not so much from a mundane skill or "experience" as the Ranger.

Mechanically, the Rangers resistance doesn't stack with magical sources. A Tiefling Ranger wouldn't be any more Fire Resistant than a human Ranger which is a bit of a flavor fail imo. The Ranger spells Absorb Elements, Protection from Poison and Protection from Elements all give you resistance which are redundant if you already have resistance.

Should Rangers get a Saving Throw Advantage instead that would nicely stack with Resistances from their spells?

I really like what they have done with the Ranger. The different Class options provide for a variety of roleplaying pathways when imagining your back story. I do not think that the elemental resistances are overpowered because you can get the same resistances from various race options.

I dont see any reason why would anyone who make Tiefling Ranger pick Fire restistance in the first place? O_o

It's worth noting that aside from getting a resistance as part of a racial perk (which duly takes up race value allotment), you generally don't get damage resistance from a class choice, and you only get it from subclass choices at later levels, not 1st level, so while it's not strictly overpowered as a perk, it is indelicate, and shows a lack of understanding of the nuances of how race, class, subclass and background work together to make a character without stepping on each others' toes too much.

A saving throw advantage of some sort would be more appropriate here, probably.

Which is the point here exactly. Larian designed it so that there is no reason to make a Tiefling Ranger with a background in Hell, which would be really flavorful and quite a logical choice. Instead Tiefling Rangers will now all come from some Tundra or Swamp region for mechanical reasons.

It's clumsy design that overlaps with a lot of other stuff like their own spells and racial traits. Like Niara pointed out, it feels like whoever designed this isn't really in sync with D&D and how stuff works.

I like it.

In my experience as both player and DM, the 5E Ranger (especially during the PHB era) struggled both mechanically and favor-wise, and I think this really gives something uniquely useful to the Ranger's core class without going too overboard.

Right now, other classes tend to their resistances around level 6, and almost always as secondary boost (i.e. only 1 part of the suite of goods you get). E.g. Draconic Sorcerer gets a elemental damage buff ability + an associated elemental resistance. Giving this earlier to Rangers kind of gives them a nice niche, and is by no means OP since you can easily get that at level 1 via racial traits anyway.



I mean, Rangers in D&D are fueled by nature/divine magic - Lore wise it's not like anyone just wandering aimlessly in an appropriate landscape is gaining this. Rangers are far more potent magic users om 5e than any edition before - they can literally bring people back to life now.



Absorb Elements and Protection from Energy will both still be useful for Rangers to protect them from the 4 other elements that they don't have resistance to. Both these spells can cover (one at a time) fire, cold, acid, lightning, and thunder.

Protection from Poison loses one aspect of its use if you already have poison damage resistance, as that doesn't stack. However, the saving throw advantage is still useful, as is the ability to neutralize active poisons. It's a little confusing, but the Poisoned Condition (usually a save) is NOT affected by Poison Resistance (affects damage only).




I don't know about this - it's a thing in 5e PnP too. Off the top of my head - other thematically class + race combos with stacking issues (many of which don't even give you a choice to go off-theme for another elemental type):
- Dragonborn + Draconic Sorcerer
- Celestial Warlock + Aasimar (no alts)
- Fire Genasi + Genie Warlock: Efreeti
- Triton + Fathomless Warlock (no alts)

And if you look outside of energy resistance, you'll run into things like the Triton + Storm Herald Barbarian both having redundant swim speeds, Fey Wanderer Ranger + Elf = stacking Charm Resistance, etc., too.



I'm not completely against it, but it's new mechanic to 5E that will need to be considered across the board (I assume if we are letting resistances stack, it needs to be across the board and not a Ranger exclusive). Do only permanent resistances stack this way? What happens when there's 3 sources? Another side-effect that will be hard to calculate isn't in the damage reduction, but what this helps you avoid when certain spells/abilities that do more than just damage. Very similar to the Poison Resistance vs. Poison Condition situation I outlined above.

I think Larian in general should remember Saving Throws is a core mechanic in D&D. Their surfaces and void bulbs etc. almost without exception ignore Saving Throws that should be there. I couldn't find Saving Throws on the character sheet either. So it probably didn't occur to them that Rangers could also get Saving Throw bonuses.

I mean there is many other overlaping stuff in this game ...
I gues we simply have to choose if we wish to minmax our stats, or roleplay. :-/

To Topgoon,


1varangian was only talking about giving a saving throw bonus instead of a resistance - since the saving throw bonus would compliment and add to the resistance. They werne't talking about stacking multiple resistances.

For the other bits:

5e design is more careful than you think about its style for allowing overlaps and double-ups.

For Dragonborn/dragon sorceress, it's like I said; you get a damage resistance from your race. You don't get it from your class, and you only get it from your subclass at a later level (level 6). In the case of dragon sorcs, the damage resistance is one part of the level 6 perk – and the lesser part at that. The perk at 6 lets you add your Cha modifier to all your element spells, which is a beefy perk since it's always-on. The ability to spend sorcery points for temporary resistance is negligible... It's not really a conflict as the value lost in overlap is nigh insignificant: the resistance you can gain comes only when you cast a spell of your ancestry element, and the the odds of you casting fire spells at something that's going to be dealing you repeated fire damage for the next hour is minuscule, in practice.

The other features of dragon sorc and dragonborn all compliment each other without any further overlap.

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Celestial Warlock and Aasimar have a double up on both gaining the light cantrip. It's not a big overlap. Again, the resistance base comes from your race. The subclass gets one of those resistances as only one part part of their 6th level perk, the more potent part of which is adding their modifier to all of their radiant and fire spells.

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Fire Genasi, again, fire resistance from your race... your subclass grants a fire resistance as one part of (once again) the 6th level perk. The more important part of that 6th level perk is the granting of a flying speed.

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Triton and fathomless is a repeat of the same: you get cold resistance from the race at 1st level, but the subclass only gives its double up resistance as one part of another perk, and only at a later level (once again, 6th). The other half of that 6th level perk lets you communicate both ways with any creature underwater, even if they wouldn't normally share your language or understand you.

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Giving flat fire resistance as an entire first level perk is a very clear misstep made by someone who is not well versed in the system and style of design, and doesn't understand properly how things are made to fit together.

My wording might have been a bit confusing, but that's exactly what I was talking about whenever I mention "stacking resistance" - as in normal resistance = 50% damage reduction. Stacked resistance = 50% damage reduction + Saving Throw advantage vs. the associated elemental type. That's what I mean by the Poison Resistance vs. Poison Condition - right now resistances do not help you against any "rider" effect of elemental spells.

Like I said, I'm not completely against it - it's just something that needs to be evaluated more deeply (i.e. to see what it affects overall). Many spells have a save for 1/2, so this means you're effectively giving further "expected" damage reduction in those cases. On the flipside, the extra saving throw means "rider effects" - aka Thunderwave's knockback for example, will also become less effective.



I actually talked about the design aspect at the beginning of my post:


My feeling on this is that while it deviates the current design conventions, I don't see a problem with it and feel like it gives the Ranger something unique, which neither PHB nor even Tasha's update really provides. The fact that elemental resistances is always given as just 1 part of 2 abilities at level 6/7 tells us that WoTC doesn't think it's powerful enough as a sole 6th+ level ability, which I agree with. Which is also why I don't think it's overpowered to be provided at level 1. The fact that this is put into the main class chassis vs. a subclass feature isn't a concern for me either. Some classes draw a lot more power from their subclasses (i.e. Warlock), others draw more from their base chassis (i.e. Paladins).

In regards to the elemental redundancy, just because the redundancy comes from racial + level 6 subclass feature, instead of racial + level 1 base class feature, doesn't change the core problem that having thematically aligned race/class choices leads to a suboptimal mechanical reward.

In fact, having a redundant feature come in at level 6 is WORST than having it at level 1 IMO. It's a much larger investment of levels. As you go up in levels, each class ability you get should be more attractive. Lastly, remember that the BG3 Ranger gives you a choice of abilities, whereas a Celestial Warlock/Aasimar, Draconic Sorcerer/Dragonborn, and Fathomless Warlock/Triton is actually 100% locked in.


I must disagree on this.

"This is how we've always done it" is not a fantastic design philosophy, and is exactly the line of thinking that led to some flawed 5E classes/mechanics not getting the fixes they needed, or just severely delayed - like the Sorcerer (i.e. the extra spells with Clockwork / Aberrant Mind). Very grateful that has changed. Some of the best fixes in 5E comes from uprooting previous designs (i.e. most of the current summon spells), and I think each of these updates need to be evaluated not by how much it matches the previous design language, but it's actual impact in the game.

At the end of the day, WoTC is involved with BG3 as this is IP as well, and if there was a fundamental issue with it, it would've been flagged.

To each their own, but I'll remain very firm that having it stand as your entire 1st level perk is a more egregious overlap waste than having it pop in as the lesser half of a 6th level perk, each of which come with an independent aspect that adds more flavour and function to the class at the same time. One of these feels like a bigger waste than the other and, as the originator of this post is pointing out, it feels like a very big waste, and a strong disincentive to have a character align the elements of the background - whereas in the current style for 5e design, it doesn't really; it's a minor overlap at best, because it doesn't cost you any great amount of actual investment value overall.

Having saving throw advantage on various things is not new, with dwarven resilience being the most common easy example - it gives resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws against poison - Not just adv against poison damage, but adv against any and all poison, which anything that would inflict the poisoned condition is going to count for, and it's a design feature that nothing that inflicts the poisoned condition does so without some kind of save for this to work with.

It's not about doing as it's always been done - it's about doing in a way that fits together more smoothly, as the system is designed to work. I absolutely agree that things like sorcerer expanded spell list have been along time coming, and I've been strongly pushing that the anniversary release should include, in its various updates and retrofits, the presentation of like sets for all sorcerer subclasses (Though I was more leery of the new version of summoning spells; they step slightly away from the simplicity philosophy, on the player side of the game, and more than I think they should, even if the spells themselves are nice). There are a lot of things that aren't quite right with 5e, and many things that need tweaked or adjusted - but ignoring the established design structure for the pure sake of doing so is only going to cause conflicts if it's not done carefully and with consideration to what you're changing - as we see right here.

WotC are not terribly involved with this game - money changed hands and permissions of licence were granted, and beyond that, Wizards' involvement in this entire project has been virtually nil compared to their interest in other previous projects that they've been associated with. They don't care, because this game being publicly a flop is just as much to their benefit as it being good - all that matters, for Wizards, is that it's big, boom or bust. They win either way, and staying mostly hands off is the best way to ensure they maximise their minimum outcome.