BG3 Honor Build: The Ranger

Author: Majin Evelyn

Introduction

<160 char blurb: Strike from the shadows and dominate Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3 with this Ranger build!

Ranger has many new tools in Baldur’s Gate 3, but it maintains its core gameplay that utilizes the Archery Fighting Style and Extra Attack. The biggest game changer is the way Beast Master’s Animal Companions work, giving unique spells to all of them. They’re all useful in their own way, but the Spider Companion stands above the rest for its at-will, web spell that doesn’t use concentration or have an in-combat restriction like the Druid Wild Shape Form does. This lets the Beast Master dominate Act 1 and beyond with simple but effective control.

Ranger can also be very effective and perform a very similar role to its 5e optimization counterpart, through strong nova damage with its Gloom Stalker subclass. This build uses both subclasses at different points in its progression, with Beast Master being stronger early and Gloom Stalker gaining relative usefulness later.

Races/Origins

There are various choices for your race/origin that fit in nicely for this build. Drow and duergar races can optionally be combined with The Dark Urge Origin, or you can choose Astarion as your Origin character for the below unique benefits.

Astarion – Early in Act 1 (or from the start of the game if he is your Avatar character), Astarion can bite enemies for the Happy buff, which increases your chance to hit. Later in act 3, there is a story choice available that further increases his damage output. Duergar – The invisibility available from level 5 is quite valuable. It’s usable every combat and out of combat, so you’ll almost always enter combat invisible, giving you unimpeded opportunities to attack at advantage. Drow – Superior Darkvision, Perception proficiency and one free cast of darkness per day are all valuable. Drow isn’t as valuable as it is for the caster builds in this series, but it’s still good.

Ability Scores

12 Str, 14+2 Dex, 15+1 Con, 8 Int, 14 Wis, 8 Cha We can easily get our Dexterity and Constitution to 16 with our racial bonuses, as well as the slightly less important stat Wisdom to 14. 12 Strength helps increase your jump distance, which comes up for mobility in combination with enhance leap more often than intelligence or charisma saving throws. If you later take the deal in Act 1 for a +1 bonus to Dexterity (spoiler), respec this build to the following, so that your Dexterity will be 18 after the bonus: 10 Str, 15+2 Dex, 15+1 Con, 8 Int, 14 Wis, 8 Cha

Skills

Skill proficiencies come from your Background, Class, and Race choices. It’s ultimately unimportant to plan for skill proficiencies in Honor Mode, especially if the character in question isn’t your Avatar (the one directly controlled and made by the player, who will usually be active in conversations and making ability checks). Since the Ranger won’t be investing in any Charisma, this build doesn’t have high priority for being your Avatar character, and therefore your skill choices are even less important. Origin characters will have their Background choices locked, but if you’re making a custom character, you have some freedom. By starting with Ranger you can choose Stealth and Perception proficiency, in combination with either the Charlatan or Urchin backgrounds, which both grant Sleight of Hand proficiency. Sleight of Hand is used as a skill check to unlock the many chests and doors in the game, which comes up very often. If you select any (non-Half) Elf race, you’ll also get Perception proficiency by default. You can select Survival proficiency instead from Ranger with that race choice.

Level Progression

Down below you can find a level progression that can be followed in your Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough. You may opt to respec less often or even more often to maximize your combat prowess, though that is not necessary for this build to be very strong.

Ranger has an exceptional first few levels in Act 1. The very few early encounters at level 2 after the Nautiloid will be carried by ranged weapons with the Archery Fighting Style. Once you reach level 3, you’ll have access to the best control option available, your Spider Companion’s at-will web spell, which demolishes most Act 1 encounters with minimal resources spent. It’s free difficult terrain, which sometimes enwebs enemies that try to walk through it. In a ranged party, especially with any pushing effects like Repelling Blast, this will carry you.

We get Light Domain Cleric 1 right after Extra Attack from Ranger 5, as a pretty significant improvement to our survivability from Warding Flare and Shield of Faith. The rest of the build, whether you choose to stick with Beast Master later or not, just improves our damage output. The first progression below assumes you will be using Titanstring Bow for your main weapon after level 8, and the second assumes you’ll be using whatever the best Hand Crossbows you have available to you for the whole game.

Level 1: Ranger
Favoured Enemy – Ranger Knight Natural Explorer – Beast Tamer Level 2: Ranger (Ranger 2)
Fighting Style – Archery Level 3: Ranger (Ranger 3)
Subclass – Beast Master Level 4: Ranger (Ranger 4)
Feat – Sharpshooter Level 5: Ranger (Ranger 5)
Level 6: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 1) Subclass – Light Domain Level 7: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 2) Level 8: Fighter (Respec) (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 2)
Fighting Style — Defence Ranger Subclass – ~~Beast Master~~ Gloom Stalker Level 9: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3)
Fighter Subclass – Battle Master Manoeuvres — Precision Attack, Trip Attack, Menacing Attack Level 10: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 4) Feat – +2 Dexterity Level 11: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 5) Level 12: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 6) Feat — +2 Dexterity (or Alert if your Dexterity is already 20)

Alternate: When you respec at level 8, you can definitely keep your Ranger subclass as Beast Master, but this depends on your party composition. By this level, if you have casters in your party using the exceptionally strong control effects of sleet storm and hunger of hadar (especially at the same time), then the value of your spider’s web likely will be completely unneeded. However, the webs are still a very strong control effect. So if your party lacks the above mentioned strong control effects, Beast Master will continue to be your best subclass choice from levels 8 to 12.

Additionally, if you choose to not use the Titanstring Bow for this build, use the following progression, as the additional bonus actions granted from Thief Rogue will benefit you more for a Hand Crossbow-based weapon loadout.

Level 1: Ranger
Favoured Enemy – Ranger Knight Natural Explorer – Beast Tamer Level 2: Ranger (Ranger 2)
Fighting Style – Archery Level 3: Ranger (Ranger 3)
Subclass – Beast Master Level 4: Ranger (Ranger 4)
Feat – Sharpshooter Level 5: Ranger (Ranger 5)
Level 6: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 1) Subclass – Light Domain Level 7: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 2) Level 8: Rogue (Respec) (Ranger 5/Rogue 3)
Ranger Subclass – ~~Beast Master~~ Gloom Stalker Rogue Subclass – Thief Expertise — Sleight of Hand, Stealth Level 9: Cleric (Ranger 5/Rogue 3/Cleric 1)
Subclass – Light Domain Level 10: Rogue (Ranger 5/Rogue 4/Cleric 1) Feat – +2 Dexterity Level 11: Fighter (Ranger 5/Rogue 4/Cleric 1/Fighter 1) Fighting Style – Two-Weapon Fighting Level 12: Fighter (Ranger 5/Rogue 4/Cleric 1/Fighter 2)

Key Spells

1. bless, enhance leap, longstrider sanctuary, shield of faith 2.\ pass without trace

Your first level ranger spell preparations can be used to give longstrider and enhance leap to your team at-will, but the spell slots themselves won’t get used much. When you have Cleric levels, you can simply give yourself shield of faith, which lasts until long rest and grants +2 AC, protecting your concentration on the spell. Situationally, bless and sanctuary can also be very impactful in-combat. Pass without trace can be used to skip past some encounters or engage encounters at different angles while still getting the benefits of Surprise.

Items

We always want the best Medium Armor and Shield we can get our hands on. From about level 3, we can use Hand Crossbows until getting access to the Titanstring Bow that becomes core to the build from that point on. All other items listed here will passively improve our damage in some way, or keep us alive to keep making attacks.

Footwear

Disintegrating Night Walkers (Act 1) – Very useful for mobility. There are a lot of other options for footwear that similarly have useful utility but do not increase damage.

Rings

Caustic Band (Act 1) Strange Conduit Ring (Act 1) - ** To get the bonus damage you’ll want to concentrate on a spell that lasts until long rest, like shield of faith or pass without trace. **Risky Ring (Act 2) – You’ll attack at Advantage, but make Saving Throws at Disadvantage. Very powerful for your damage and worth the risk.

Cloak

The Deathstalker Mantle (Act 1) Cloak of Elemental Absorption (Act 2) Cloak of Protection (Act 2) Cloak of Displacement (Act 3)

Ranged Weapons

Hand Crossbow (Act 1) Hand Crossbow +1 (Act 1) Titanstring Bow (Act 1-2) – When used with Hill or Cloud Strength Elixirs, this Bow does exceptional damage, beating out Hand Crossbows with a dedicated build. Hellfire Hand Crossbow (Act 2) Hand Crossbow +2 (Act 3)

Melee Weapons

Knife of the Undermountain King (Act 2) Rhapsody (Act 3)

Shields

Any Mundane Shield (Act 1) Adamantine Shield (Act 1) Shield +1 (Act 2)

Consumables

Elixir of Hill Giant Strength (Act 1) – Available early and cheaply, and a core part of the build if you’re using the Titanstring Bow. Replaced by the following in Act 3. Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength (Act 3) – Just an upgrade to 27 strength over the previous elixir, can be obtained from vendors as soon as you enter Act 3. Elixir of Bloodlust (Act 1 & 3) – These are more scarce and expensive than the Hill Giant Elixirs. On Honor Mode, the extra action only grants you one attack. Generally these aren’t worth giving up the synergy with Titanstring Bow, especially not on Honor Mode.

Strategy

Your gameplan is very straightforward with this build. From level 1 onward, all of your actions will be attacks. At level 2, you’ll start getting access to your ranger spells. For the handful of fights where you won’t have hand crossbows (you can acquire two right away from the first town), you can spend your spell slots on hunter’s mark if you want, but these fights are very easy anyway. You can use your learned ranger spells for the two rituals enhance leap and longstrider, which are very powerful mobility options for your party, and will free up some prepared spells for your other spellcasters who may otherwise be able to learn these spells.

Level 3 grants you access to the Beast Master subclass and the Summon Companion feature. The Wolf Spider Companion option for this feature is the biggest reason to be a Beast Master, and has one exceptionally powerful ability you may recognize from 5e optimization: the web spell. But this spider can cast it infinitely, at-will, without concentration, and without using the ranger’s action economy. So before and during a fight, you can easily layer the path between the enemies and you with webs. Especially in combination with a party member using Repelling Blast, this control effect is extremely powerful. The spider itself dying will turn off this feature of course, but you can resummon it once per short rest. You’ll want to keep the spider safe at range to prolong the number of fights it can control though. Some situations may not need the spider, or have a lot of ranged enemies with elevation. In those cases, the Dire Raven Companion is quite useful and mobile.

Level 5 upgrades your spider’s spell save DC to 15, and adds a new control spell to its arsenal, cocoon. It effectively stuns the target until they take damage or succeed on a repeated saving throw. Web is still better, but you may occasionally find situations where an extra web isn’t any more helpful, as it’s easy to quickly fill up an encounter with webs.

Level 6 gives you spells that you’ll actually want to spend spell slots on, from the cleric spell list, outlined in the previous section. Warding flare is also an exceptionally useful defensive feature, which will increase your survivability for a build that never gets access to the shield spell.

At level 7, you gain more spell slots, and an occasionally useful action once per short rest, the Radiance of the Dawn Channel Divinity from Light cleric. This is the only level we’ll use this in the listed progression, as next level we will respec out of the second Light level.

Level 8’s respec is a little dependent on party composition, and how much control effects your other party members are using, as well as if you want to use Titanstring Bow or Hand Crossbows. While the Wolf Spider Companion’s web is powerful for the whole game, if you have one or multiple party members casting sleet storm, possibly in combination with hunger of hadar, you should consider Gloom Stalker as your option for the rest of the game. Ice and web surfaces are mutually exclusive, and there are several ways to make the ice surface saving throw DC very high. They’re both difficult terrain, but ice has a saving throw against Prone, which ends your turn immediately, while the enweb effect from web immobilizes the enemy. It’s worth considering that in some very large encounters, you can still get value out of web by covering areas that sleet storm/hunger of hadar does not. If your party does not have any such casters, then Beast Master will likely continue to be your best option. Your choice of weapon will only change the non-Ranger levels you take, with Hand Crossbows favoring Thief Rogue for extra bonus action attacks, and Titanstring Bow favoring earlier Fighter levels for Action Surge and more feats. In any case, your gameplay will be mostly the same - shoot the most threatening targets with your powerful attacks every turn.

If your party has access to the spell greater invisibility from a Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, or Circle of the Land Druid, you can use this in combination with your own pass without trace spell to ambush encounters repeatedly from stealth. Between Stealth proficiency, high dexterity, and the +10 bonus from pass without trace, you are guaranteed to make a few attacks without breaking invisibility. The second progression with Rogue levels also has Expertise in Stealth, meaning your lowest possible Stealth roll is even higher.