Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Ranger question!

Hey everyone! I'm planning on playing a sneaky Beast Master Ranger (with a companion raven) at launch, but I'm slightly confused with a few options; I was thinking of choosing the 'Urchin' background for Sleight of Hand and Stealth, and 'Urban Tracker' in the class section, which gives Proficiency with the disguise kits and thieves' tools.

Now I'm a complete newbie with Baldur's Gate and Dungeons and Dragons, so will these options clash or go well together? 😆

Thank you!

There is no disguise kits in game, as far as i know ...
And no tools proficiency ...

Thieves tools uses Sleight of Hand ...
And i believe the other proficiency you get from Urban Tracker is Stealth ... not sure tho.

So they clash perfectly, you dont stact two proficiencies, nor the game (at least not in EA) gives you option to pick other proficiency if you get one twice.
So ... personaly i suggest switch one of them for anything different.

In BG3 urban tracker gives you sleight of hand proficiency, so it clashes with the urchin background, like Ragnarok, I suggest you pick one or the other.

In early access, I wasn't at all impressed with disguise things, and as far as I remember, there wasn't even a *kit* per se - I used spells, Shadowheart comes with these.
What this does is, it sets your race to something else of your choosing. It's funny to suddenly be a bearded Dwarf for sure, I guess. But. The game already expects you to be one of these races, so nothing really changes there. I don't think you get racial dialogue options either, but I could be wrong here. When it comes to enemies - they're your enemy, disguised or not. You don't disguise yourself as a goblin guard or something. This might be different in the full game, I just don't know.

Another post that needs to be in Hints, Tips, and Tricks.

having said that.

There IS a disguise kit in the full game, they talked about in the PFH.

These are all excellent options that will mesh well together. have fun.

Ah I thought they might clash, but I was hoping they'd work together perfectly haha! 😆 In that case, I'll have to think of a better match!

You can pick Urban Tracker for Slight of Hand and "Criminal" background for Stealth and Deception.

Depending if you are ready to RP a criminal, seems like a good fit. Really flavorful character - urban ranger with rogue skills and a raven companion.

Wwww that sounds fun, I was actually thinking of role-playing a Robin Hood kind of character, a good thief type! This might be PERFECT! Thank you! 😊

If you want to play a stealthy ranger then you should consider the "Gloomstalker", which was not in EA but will be available at launch. It's a very popular, if not the the most popular, Ranger subclass in D&D and fits the description of what you're going for perfectly.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't play a Beast Master who is stealthy. If you had your heart set on Beast Master, then that's fine, pick that and you'll do fine. But in terms of optimization, you will be better at it by choosing the Gloomstalker for stealth purposes. You can also still get spells like FInd Familur and Speak with Animals if you don't want to lose the animal component of the Ranger.

Will I be able to get a companion that Beast Master gets at level 3? I've looked into the other subclasses, but for some reason, I'm drawn to having a proper pet companion haha! 😂

No, you won't get a companion with gloomstalker. So if you set on the raven, I would stick with beast master.

I suspect the studio has properly overhauled that class and let your animal companion have its own action seperate from yours... And in that case I'll probably give that a try, too. But if it's the PnP Beast Master... That is arguably the worst subclass in the entire PHB.

This is true. You can, however, gain the Find Familiar spell and have a raven with you pretty much at all times.

Not only do I play a lot of TT D&D but I'm also going for a very similar build for my first BG3 playthrough. Wood Elf or half-elf will get you the Stealth skill, Charlatan background will get you proficiency in Deception and Sleight of Hand. Then you will not have to pick Urban Tracker and you can pick Beast Tamer for your Natural Explorer choice instead, which is what gives you the Find Familiar spell. Then you of course get all the Gloomstalker spells and abilities like Umbral Sight which essentially just makes you straight up invisible in the dark.

I guess it depends on what's more important to you. If you want to lean more into the stealthy "rogue" aspect but still have an animal companion that you can summon, go Gloomstalker. If you want to lean way more into the animal companion, forest dweller ranger, then go Beast Master with some stealth abilities. It's all a matter of personal preferences.

That sounds like loads of fun, will it work with a Lightfoot Halfling (I believe they get stealth)?

What stealth abilities do Gloomstalkers get, do you recommend committing the full 12 levels into it? 😀

Just confirming that in the version of the game I played in Ghent rangers were still able to select the Beast Tamer option instead of a favoured terrain to get the ability to summon a small animal pet/familiar from level 1, instead of or as well as the animal companion they get at level 3 as a Beast Master. I think I’m right that raven is one of the familiar options?

It is, albeit a smaller, weaker version of the animal companion raven.

We don't know for sure if Larian will change some things about the Gloomstalker but here are a couple features from the TT version that players get in the early levels of play:

DREAD AMBUSHER:
At 3rd level, you master the art of the ambush. You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier.
At the start of your first turn of each combat, your walking speed increases by 10 feet, which lasts until the end of that turn. If you take the Attack action on that turn, you can make one additional weapon attack as part of that action. If that attack hits, the target takes an extra 1d8 damage of the weapon’s damage type.

UMBRAL SIGHT:
At 3rd level, you gain darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. If you already have darkvision from your race, its range increases by 30 feet.
You are also adept at evading creatures that rely on darkvision. While in darkness, you are invisible to any creature that relies on darkvision to see you in that darkness.

The spells you get access to include Disguise Self and Rope Trick. Rope Trick is a fantastic spell and I'm really hoping Larian includes it in the game. While it wasn't on the spell list that they've released already, it has been confirmed that several more spells will be in the game, so here's hoping it's one of them. The description is:

You touch a length of rope that is up to 60 feet long. One end of the rope then rises into the air until the whole rope hangs perpendicular to the ground. At the upper end of the rope, an invisible entrance opens to an extradimensional space that lasts until the spell ends.
The extradimensional space can be reached by climbing to the top of the rope. The space can hold as many as eight Medium or smaller creatures. The rope can be pulled into the space, making the rope disappear from view outside the space.
Attacks and spells can't cross through the entrance into or out of the extradimensional space, but those inside can see out of it as if through a 3-foot-by-5- foot window centered on the rope.
Anything inside the extradimensional space drops out when the spell ends.

I just DM'd a campaign where my wife was playing a Gloomstalker/Fighter multiclass and Rope Trick saved the party's ass on two occasions. One was when they infiltrating a Duegar stronghold only to be caught by the entire army so they just climbed up the rope and "hung out" for an hour until the heat died down. The second time was a classic room filling with water trap, they climbed the rope to safety while one PC who could breathe underwater was able to jump down to disarm the trap.

As far as taking to level 12 goes, it wouldn't be terrible but honestly, this is probably a class that would benefit from multiclassing. A very popular option is taking some levels of Assassin Rogue, my wife took a two level dip in fighter which is also another common move--this gets you Action Surge and sets it up so you can potentially attack up to 4 times on your first turn. Shadow Monk levels would also be pretty cool I think but I haven't looked closely at that, nor do I know exactly what to expect from Larian's Monk, other than we know it will be better than the PHB Monk.

But yeah, Gloomstalker is awesome and I know a lot of people are very excited to see they included it in the game.

Oh and yeah, Lightfoot Halflings do get Stealth so they would work as well.