Reconsidered my stance on the Hex changes. Hex and the near identical Ranger spell Hunter's Mark is a staple for both classes as it provides a needed damage boost, but comes at the cost of flexibility (locks down concentration on a long duration 1st level spell). This limits player agency and fun for each class.
The change might be RAW, but it kind of hurts gameplay - perhaps more so in a computer game where combat is more prevalent than in D&D proper. We see with One D&D (proposed future version of D&D) that Hunter's Mark is turned into a non-concentration class feature/spell. Would hope Larian reexamines both spells (I assume Hunter's Mark is treated the same as Hex) alongside the aforementioned streamlining of the ability curse to afford both Warlocks and Rangers with a little more flexibility.
For Rangers, yes. Which is a good change that, in combination with making two weapon fighting independent of the bonus actions, cleans up a lot of the concentration and bonus action bloat Rangers suffers from.
I'd happily take the OneD&D version of this feature over what we have in BG3, including tossing out the current Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer features. They 'fixed' those features in BG3 by making Rangers better at being Rogues than Rogues are. It's 3.5 all over again.
Sorry, I know that the above quote is from the separate thread about hex, but thought querying the ranger aspects would be better done here!
TomReneth, you say “They 'fixed' those features in BG3 by making Rangers better at being Rogues than Rogues are” which makes me think I’m doing Ranger wrong. Though admittedly I’ve only played one, he certainly wasn’t as good a Rogue as Astarion. Okay, the fact he could hide as a bonus action and attack with advantage in the same round at low levels was probably OTT, but he couldn’t sneak attack and while he could have taken Sleight of Hand (though didn’t) I don’t think he got options for Skill Expertise. And then the rogue subclasses take things still further in different directions.
It is certainly possible to play what we have of BG3 with a ranger instead of a rogue - and I’m all for that, as I enjoy playing with different party configurations - but I still think I’d find Rogues better at traditional rogue stuff, with the Ranger having an overlapping but different set of skills.
Perhaps you were just exaggerating for effect, but I’m particularly interested as I’m planning a run with an Urban Tracker/Bounty Hunter ranger who I do want to have a bit of a rogue-y flavour!
