For some reason, I called, "Prey Sense," "Prey Sight" in that section, apologies for the mess up guys! I also forgot to showcase that the Spider gets a special jump!!! Full Beastmaster Abilities ► bg3.wiki/wiki/Beast_Master Companion List ► bg3.wiki/wiki/Summon_Companion Follow me on Twitch! ► www.twitch.tv/italianspartacus More Guides ► ru-vid.com/group/PLDLBnN-W_m2n6nk1Y5-snG4PpOuj9b-7g&si=j1T4BfjqOcSClZFS Become Part of the Community ► discord.gg/UuPSgYDKSy
I also feel like they fixed this issue in one of the patches. I remember the first week I got really annoyed with the companion always getting stuck but it feels improved now
I am so happy at how Larian redesigned Beastmaster. It reminds me of having a hired sidekick character, but as a class feature, and some of them get kind of close to being an animal version of subclassed player class (most obviously Bear, Boar, and Wolf Spider).
4:10 Getting shot with a ranged weapon goes against the target's AC, it's not a dex saving throw, a fireball is an example of what would be a dex saving throw.
@@italianspartacus np, the idea behind beastmaster is interesting, but i feel like in practice the pet's damage is way too low for it to be meaningful, still plan on making one soon and testing it out, looks fun at least.
The spider's ability to get infinite webs for free, without any concentration, is pretty much a game changer. If you set up an area before starting, then the enemies can barely even touch you. It also messes up enemy pathfinding - they might Dash through a web and then Jump back to where they started, for example.
One other cool thing that alot of people miss about web is that it acts as soft ground, so jumping off a high ledge onto a webbed area results in you taking 0 fall dmg. The spider is so good.
You can get boots with infinite feather-fall in the underdark in the arcane tower, located in the mundane chest. They weigh 0.2 and age not at all cumbersome to carry around for the entirety of your play. They are in act 1.
@@matthewseevers3565The webs are more usable midfight, since you aren't going out of your way to equip the boots and cast featherfall on the party. It's cool when you get the boots that make you immune to webs and put them on your beastmaster.
Don’t worry about the level 11 thing. There is a LOT of game in act 3. You’ll end up maxing out at level 12 shortly after you arrive in act 3 (assuming you’ve hit major locations and quests on the way). It feels like there is enough experience to get you to level 15 or maybe level 16. It’s a very big game.
A lot of it is because MANY quests are based on what you did earlier in the game, so the devs needed to ensure there was enough quest EXP for someone who skipped chapter 1 and 2 content to hit max level.
@@Callerofcats cheats aren’t a thing to feel proud of. You should feel guilty. If I were you I wouldn’t even tell anyone I was doing it. Cheating is like banging a fat chick. Do it once in a while if you feel you really need to. But, never all the time, and never tell people about it. Jesus.
My first character (Just arrived in Baldur's Gate last night) is a Lolth-Sworn 5/5 Cleric/Ranger, the idea being a priestess commando who led/accompanied drow raids on the surface and fully integrated the survival and skirmishing tactics on top of her priestly training. The big wolf spider companion lent so much authenticity to the concept, and it's ability to web up half the battlefield in a couple turns made several early encounters almost trivial on Tactician difficulty. With extra attack and two hand crossbows + Sharpshooter she's the DPS of the party, and the spider alone gives her excellent crowd control on top basically for free. Really, really satisfied that I took Beastmaster Ranger for my first run.
Typically wolf/bear are the supreme options and in some sense they still are but the battles in this game quite often give you difficult terrain or archers on ridiculously difficult heights that aren’t easy to run towards. This makes that raven so deadly good.
At level 11, flying with the raven leaves a dark cloud on every landing that blinds all creatures. Pretty impossible to use with other melee builds for attacking the same enemy.
Warning when using Beastmaster, when entering areas with NPCs some of your summons can scare them off. (Dammon in Act 2 in the Last Light's Inn can be scared off into the shadows and die, which locks out your Karlach companion quest)
true, i used to have a big spider and lil spider (familiar) as companions and they always scared people off, so i had to keep them outside settlements. Now i always go with crows and people even love them, specially kids.
I find it strange that the bear, a solitary animal, gets a second bear, while the wolf, a pack animal, does not get a second wolf. I feel like Larion just wanted a Sif companion.
Use it to your advantage while they are following my pet the rouge is picking locks and robbing the place blind because npcs follow you and turn their backs on things
Seems like the wolf/bear abilities and stats are mixed up. You’d think the bear would have the most health and would gain the cleave ability while the wolf would have the ability to summon a second wolf. Just odd thematically
It's for balancing. High health, high damage would make all other pets not worth using, ever. Wolf has a passive that allies within 5m of it get advantage on an enemy, so your characters are the pack. The general public are quite simple. They won't think of intricate tactics with the pets.
@@RazielTheUnborn Wolf has the innate problem of fearing Shadowheart tho. Many players will avoid summoning Wolf just because of that reason alone, me included. If you're not the Cleric, Shadowheart is kind of mandatory.
@@Chokobohthe wolf actually doesn’t scare her, only enemy wolves from what I’ve seen. Though imo the wolf is one of the least useful ones. Bear can disarm/prone/provoke. Boar can prone multiple units at a time, slow and rage + can atk more than once which can useful if u have hunters mark active. Though is a bit of a slow starter Raven has 2 great debuffs the blind mainly with high dex so they’re ideally gonna take the first turn w/ your ranger. Spider can setup lots of webs before the actual fight and has heavy cc with cocoon. Wolf is just there to do mediocre damage and have an aoe cone at lvl 11, prone has a low chance to proc and can get stuck everywhere. Every other pet has a good niche whereas wolf is really just there for its mediocre damage. As someone who always has a beast master in every playthrough my tierlist would be S - Raven A - Boar, Spider B - Bear C- Wolf
Something about the dire wolf that is often overlooked. That infectious bite plus bane from a cleric on a tough enemy with high con saves can really help put when you got a con save spell you wanna push through. As the game gets tough many enemies have a higher con save, so casting bane then usin the necrotic bite makes the enemies often fail con saves
You can dash, disengage, and help all the time, but at level 7 you can do them as a bonus action. This means that you can now do an attack or whatever other action available and then also dash or help up a downed ally, give them advantage, or just disengage and fly out of range after the attack as well with your bonus action. It adds to the action economy in a very noticeable and beneficial way. It is like when a rogue gets their cunning abilities and can do a sneak attack and then hide again in the same turn. It is an extra opportunity to make a move to keep things alive in the same turn. Getting extra actions or bonus actions can be one of the most exponential increases in power in D&d. Instead of deciding whether you want to bring an unconscious ally back into the battle or attack, or whether your choice would usually be to get into position for the next attack or to make the attack, you no longer have to decide. You can just do both. Managing your action economy is one of the skills you need to master as fast as you can and this makes you twice as efficient as you were before.
This is exactly why summons are powerful. Besides acting as meat shields, they also have a separate action pool which is basically free real estate. Even a cantrip like mage hand can be useful for throws (like potions, bombs, etc) if you set it up before the fight starts.
Beast master with wolf spider is very good early game because infinite web is great and goblins get enwebbed easily. The gap between level 3 and level 4 can be a long one for some builds and the webs can help the party a lot. Unfortunately the pathing breaks frequently after the wilderness and enemies just stop getting enwebbed, so it drops off hard.
@@sicdyna Yeas sadly multiclassing is not really an option unless it's a 1lvl dip. You want 11llvl beatmaster for all companion bonuses. So maybe Cleric or Fighter I'd say.
Apologies if I missed a clarification somewhere but it isn't correct to say that attack rolls are a dex saving throw. Some special class or weapon abilities do trigger a dex saving throw, but they usually use a normal attack as well. Normal ranged weapon attacks don't trigger a saving throw, they just roll against armor class to hit.
I played a Beastmaster Ranger as my first character, but my companion always got stuck on terrain without me immediately noticing. Then, in the next combat, i would notice that my companion is missing. Because of that, i started over as circle of the moon druid.
Spider also bugged for me with its pathing; but bear was better anyway. It’s an awesome tank with a 6th level aid. Chose to use the Heavy Armored favored ability, and Duel Wielder at level 4.
Spider is so meta at lvl 3 I took out the phase spider, the minotaurus, and the spectator at lvl 4 when I leveled, slowing and stopping enemies in AOE effects like cloud of daggers so stupidly powerful
Gloom and Hunter are basicly just buffing ranged play or thief stuff, beastmaster is a different animal (hue hue get it). I remember the beast companions sometimes bugging around, if thats gone they are viable.
I totally agree to your statement about tactician difficulty. After reaching act 3 in my first playthrough I understood the mechanics an was a bit disappointed about the game's difficulty, so I began a new game on tactician, and I can tell that I'm rather a roleplayer, than a min-maxer; But even with not much more D&D knowledge above BG3, tactician is playable really fun and smooth. So if you don't have huge problems in understanding the game: Don't fear to toucch tactician difficulty. It doesn't let strong, important fights look like tutorials. ^^
I switch to tactician halfway through my first playthrough (which Im still on) and it was the correct choice. I played a ton of D&D so the mechanics were not new to me and the fights felt tricky at times. I will say that I started min-maxing my multiclasses because of my experience from D&D somy experience might not be the norm with tactician. The true end game boss on tacician is the need for 80 camp supplies instead of 40. My powerful god fighting adventurers have a hard time scraping enough food together to take a long rest which does force me to swithc characters in and out and actual consider when to rest which is probably a good thing.
@@peterrautenbach1298 I'm not sure why, but in my tactician playthrough I do care more about long rests really needed or not, but I didn't experience such a scarcity in camp supplies, as you describe. I have some experience with the D&D rules by playing the Pathfinder-videogames, but wasn't anything near a pro in doing so. ^^ But yes: You need more long rests, and they're double as expensive. In tactician the camp supplies are a true mechanic in comparison to normal difficulty.
I'm soloing tactician (went ranger > gloomstalker) and yeah it absolutely was harder between lvl 2-4, and after lv 5 I basically haven't looked back it's been noticeably easier.
Just a note, both Druid and Beast Master Ranger are notoriously difficult to Multiclass OUT of because the primary class features are tied so heavily to class levels. Some Multiclassing that works well with beast master are. fighter 4, Druid 1 (shillelagh, let’s you build a max wisdom caster ranger that can still make good use of great weapon master and extra attack) and Cleric 1 (either life domain for a small buff to healing, or my favourite War domain for 3 extra attacks per day)
If you want to make attacks using Wisdom, there are 2 companion related weapons at the end of act 2 which would allow that(the one is trash, while other is a decent +2 weapon that would carry you through the game(if you don't want to use legendary weapons))
I appreciate the showcase of the beastmaster. I was exploring beastmaster when I was looking into my Necromancer as having an archer with a strong tank pet would set up other summons nicely. However after some testing it feels like the subclass is being taxed for trying to do two things at once. First you need to invest heavily in your pet in order to make it competitive, but then you miss out on multiclass opportunities and the flexibility/power it affords you. You already get Extra attack on Base Ranger, but not being able to roll in modifiers like Sneak attack, Pact of the blade, Rage or Maneuvers really hurts the output of the Ranger itself. Meanwhile the pet doesn't benefit from other classes bonuses (like better summons on necro) so I couldn't find a good multiclass for the build. It is fun to have the strong companion, but with the lack of features at 9th level, and the capstone for the class being pushed all the way back to 11th, the subclass just misses the mark for me.
I wanted to like Beast Master, but too many NPC's get scared of your pet and it breaks some encounters. Like some scenes or cutscenes that are supposed to play get skipped because the NPC's run away in a panic or rush over to gawk at my pet
I haven't tried Ranger Beastmaster in the game because I've seen pet type classes tend to gravitate to being "Big Suckage." That said, you going over Dire Raven casting Darkness on its Fly ability location has synergy with a number of Warlock builds out there. There's an Eldritch Invocation called Devil's Sight to see through the dark, both natural and artificial, i.e. Darkness. Warlocks like using Darkness + Devil's Sight to have a protective area where they sit in and not be attacked, while still being able to see through and out of it, and using their own abilities and attacks.
The only problem with the Raven's Darkness is that it will affect your party (and you too) so any time they fly and land it casts the blindess which isn't always the best thing for you or your party in certain situations.
@@jacobyrassilon The point is that Warlocks can be immune to the Darkness. You can even get one more demon pet that is also immune if you want. The main problem is that being permanently invulnerable to enemies is rather boring.
Careful with trying to maintain concentration as a shapeshifted druid. In BG3, you are able to maintain concentration, but you will not be able to re-target spells (IE call lightning, hunter's mark, etc). The way they coded it in the game it still thinks it's a spell cast they just remove the resource cost.
As someone who has been playing Beast Master with the rules from Tasha's Guide, that was my immediate first character with BG3 and they feel similar in a lot of fun ways while also feeling fresh in BG3. Definitely my favorite subclass
Its honestly not worth the trouble. Beastmaster is absolutely broken, not gameplay wise, but it makes NPCs around you bug out like crazy. Every Animal Companion either makes NPCs run away from you or follow you around, totaly messing with some game triggers and even if it doesnt break something, it is annoying as hell to have to chase your freaking vendor or Quest NPC... In act 2 you can even accidently kill an NPC thats important to a companions quests if he gets scared in a bad direction... Until Larian fixes this, Beastmaster is honestly not worth playing.
The fact that everything but the raven sends npc's running away makes them unplayable. It is a horrible mechanic that adds zero realism and ruins a whole class. At least the raven is pretty much the most useful companion.
I think if i was going to multiclass the ranger, it would be moon druid, then you have a bunch of animals running about wrecking everything, xD I do wish that legendary weapons were aquired sooner...on my most recent play through, i got the bow right before the game ended, xD
Level 7, doesn't unlock dash, disengage and help, it only allows them to be used as BONUS action instead of normal action (which is op af)... (which also means u can do each twice per turn)
My problem with the beast master is that every animal terrorize guards and npc , so questing is not possible , only the bird doesn't affect enemies ... So i couldn't play with the boar in baldur's gate and forgot always to conjure it.. in the end i just change it to hunter class
Ranger beast master / fighter dual welding is honest the most broken build ive ever used lol so many crits and plenty of ppl to hide behind as well as beast to blind or curse. They cant touch you and if they do they will wish they didnt because u can attack 3/4 times
Pets are like having an extra attack and/or bonus action. I don't get why everyone hates Rangers. They are bring a lot to a party if used correctly. Hell any class sucks if played incorrect.
I really wish I didnt have to level beastmaster to make the pets actually useable. I also wish when I leveled them I was given a choice to not equip a terrible looking helmet.
The pets are decent as bear shields basically... but ranger gameplay in 5E in general is a weird class. The skill tree for it is just not as action packed as some other classes feel.
Entirely agree. In BG3 they literally get nothing at 9 and get their capstone at 11 vs most at 9 or 10. Couple that with a somewhat underwhelming druid spell list on a half caster and its ends up being too much of a generalist. Thematically they should be versatile and adept problem solvers but in practice they end up as worse bow-fighters. Personally I would like to see a "Way of the 4 elements" type subclass using some of the Elemental arrow type Skills from DOS2 and maybe bumping the subclass to full caster for the slots for their special spells. Being able to make all sorts of surfaces made for some really powerful combos in DOS2.
I normally go Gloomstalker when playing Ranger simply because it multiclasses better, and I don't have to worry about having a pet that freaks out all the npc's when in town. If they ever fix that particular issue I might consider doing a Drow/Spider Beastmaster play through. I love the ranger class, but the Beastmaster subclass still needs a bit of loving. I also agree the beast companion final form should come at lvl 10 not lvl 11.
People love the warlock for the eldritch sight invocation and how that meshes with the darkness spell. Sounds like a ranger with a raven would support that warlock combo so the warlock isn't effectively all alone in the darkness with the rest of the party unable to do anything.
That’s pact of the chain for the warlock. Deepened pact give your familiar fancy abilities as well. I don’t think they’re as good as the ranger but if you’re using them to harass casters/archers then you can easily do that.
@@corvin_nl3455 currently trying out pact of the chain. Only at level 8 so far. At this point it feels like absolute trash. I’m going to give it another level then switch to tome. Chain is terrible. I have it in a group with a Beastmaster and it doesn’t compare even remotely.
Very good video production. The audio is great. The video quality is good. You’re speaking with confidence and it seems like your thought process is clear.
They suffered a whole lot from the 5E PHB ranger being really terrible, unfortunately. It would have been amazing to see what Vex and Trinket could have done with the alternative features/rule variants that came out later.
Being able to send the raven off to use help as a bonus action is actually pretty strong, that's a free Healing Word essentially, albeit the range comes with exchanging some mobility.
Absofuckinglutely :) I have a walking arsenal barbarian build. I've been sitting on. I'm waiting for all of these RPGs to calm down and us to get closer to season 2!
Hands down, the biggest reason to play a beastmaster is . . . initiative control. As it always has been. 5e took that away from Animal Companions, and Rangers became a lot weaker for it. Adding it back in makes them really strong again.
I would like BM a lot better if you could only choose 1 companion like you do a barbarian animal style, but in exchange that companion was a lot more versatile. IE be part of your identity/build instead of a tool you swap in and out depending on the situation.
I never played any of the Baldur’s Gate or D&D games before. This game is dope. I want to make a mercenary sell sword type character but I’m stuck on how I should do it. Maybe a cross between Deathstroke and a Witcher, any suggestions? I was thinking Rogue/Ranger, or Fighter/Rogue, or Warlock/Fighter. This game has so many options 😪😂
My favourite part of the subclass is my pet getting stuck 3 rooms back as i end up in a fight cause it gets stuck on everything all the time. bet its really good past this, but it happened so often for me it got really annoying.
4:15 No, getting shot by a ranged weapon is not a dex saving throw. It's a ranged weapon attack versus AC. standing within the area of a Fireball and most (not all) AoE spells is a dex saving throw.
A bit note for the "not spoiling the story" I recommend to dissmiss all of your party member, solely because they may or may not change their show-up icon depending on your choices Like wyll on the bottom left
The fact that summons have their own turn in combat now is such an enormous buff for this archetype of character. I personally consider Beast Master to be infinitely better than any other Ranger subclass, especially after the nerf to Gloom Stalkers that forces them to only have one extra attack per turn (no triggering it repeatedly with action surge/haste). Even if your companions just got one attack per turn and no other benefits whatsoever, they’d be head and shoulders above the other relatively mediocre subclasses, but instead we’ve got a whole array of fun abilities that can substantially improve the functionality of not just the Ranger, but the whole party.
Ya know... I started several characters (I'll elaborate for those curious folks at the bottom), but after I learned the mechanics of the game, pulling from my experience with games like Kotor, and table top dnd, I find the ranger with druid, fighter, or rogue subclass to be the most versatile. It's a very story driven game and unless you're running some crazy reclassed party and now poor gale is an ursa major summoning thief, I feel like the ranger just belongs in that world, talking to animals, saving druids and rejecting the worms kinda thing. I'm using the stereotypical "wood elf ranger chick" rp aspect for my first FULL playthrough with SH, gale, and I'll swap astarion with the "good elf chick" but he's too useful for now with all his lockpick bonuses lol, anyway... Here's the list of the others i made cuz the story aspect grabbed me: Dark urge female drow necromancer, evil (super fun btw) Dragonborn male oathbreaker paladin, gonna subclass with draconic sorcerer and see how it goes
Love beast master I went s/sh and took the perk to give disadvantage to attacks to allies since pet is always near me and love it buff the pet and its pretty fun to play in group or solo
Who doesn't love a pet!? Any sort of adds are absolutely powerful in any game with turn based combat and limited action economy. This is especially true for Baldur's Gate. Not only from the Beast Master, but any class that can summon a familiar, raise the dead, or call fourth an elemental or planar ally has the potential to snowball encounters with a swarm of actions and bonus actions. I'm looking at you, Scratch. Even mage hand, which is not intended to be used in combat, can still finish off weakened enemies with throw actions. My personal favorite right now? Cleric and Necromancer wizard stocked with Animate Dead. The wizard can summon multiple buffed skellies per spell slot, bringing my group from four up to seven; toss in the doggo, and drop my highest level Aid spell, and BAM! A party of eight combatants with unbelievable survivability and early game utility. This made even stronger by the AI's tendency to target player characters over summons, allowing the hail of free arrows and gnawed ankles to go unpunished.
At 14:50 the "Help" Action is marked as a normal action but in the text, your script and the wiki page you showed off it is cleary stated that i should be a bonus action. Is that a visual bug or what is going on here? Btw great vid i will give it a try myself ^^
You're right, I'm stupid. I was thinking they're a Dex ATTACK roll, not saving throw. But! The enemies make dex saving throws against some of your spells so there that
@@Ashannon888 Yeah , but I am playing via Nvidia Now and can't use mods . It really sucks because in my 1st playtrougt I wanted to play beastmaster , but was forced to abandon it once I reached Act 3 .
The pathing issue is a major drawback. Even if it does work properly it's more management that becomes cumbersome. Same with necromancy and conjuring, while it's super powerful, it's just not fun to keep track of all of them when they constantly can jump and get stuck everywhere. It's just cumbersome and slows down the experience. Otherwise the beasts are situational, you can only summon 1 per rest and you can't switch when one would fit the situation better than the one you have. Edit: it's a very fun class for role play though. Something about a ranger and their companion, just speaks to me.
Yeah it's the same problem I have with loot in this game. There's so much stuff to collect and containers to open, but 99.9% of them are worthless. Sure, it's realistic, but it just makes looting a chore.
BM was my first play through and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but the animal path finding is not that great for wolf, spider, and sometimes bear. I found myself using the Dire Raven along with find familiar Raven, giving me two controllable companions that could pretty much range the entire battlefield. And whatever you do don't do like I did on multiple occasions, which is to cast Hunter's Mark and then immediately nullify it by casting spike growth, both which are concentration spells, haha. Overall, I loved the Ranger BM class, even though they don't do the dmg that other classes do (the monk, OMG!), they are really fun to play.
I think the biggest issue is that players see another ‘body’ on the playing field and expect PC performance out of it. Your companion is an extra attack at level three. Longsword-level damage, and a bunch of other cool extra abilities. Then they just keep getting better! As soon as you grok that fact this class becomes amazing. So many different things to do in combat across a variety of buddies. Thanks for the awesome and well researched video. BTW: “…look at that big bear butt!” please _never change_
