Cleric/Ranger

Remove all ads!

I am going to make another no-reloads attempt of the whole BG saga. I have no illusions of making it all the way, but I´d like to see how far I will get. My first attempt was with an Undead Hunter and I did not reroll stats at creation with him. He always had really low hitpoints, for a Paladin.
I finished BG1 and almost everything in chapters 2-3 but died in Umar Hills fighting the buddies of the guy that wants to buy silver dragon blood. I had not expected them to cast 3 Abi-Dalzim´s Horrid Wiltings at the same time...
In hindsight, as soon as I saw they were mages, I should have stepped closer with Aerie and polymorphed her to a Mustard Jelly.

My new character has rerolled (to super) stats. I am going to make her a Beastmaster level 7 -> Cleric. Nice to be able to start by summoning a Faerie Dragon and be at 20 hit points. No single lucky arrow that is going to kill her, no siree. I could´ve had 6 more HP if I had chosen other alignments but I like the Faerie Dragon for the ability to make the whole party invisible early on. Lets you pull off some cool stunts.

The downsides are the armor restriction (up to Studded Leather only) and the severe lack of weapon options. After she gets the Ranger abillities back, she can only use slings, clubs and staffs! I was toying with the idea of dual-wielding clubs early on, but the lack of magical ones put me off. It´s also a lot of hassle to switch items if I want to use the sling. So I started with ** in Sling and in Quarter Staff.

She´ll get the Ranger abilities back in late BG1, but she will be 24000 off from it at the start of BG II, so she´ll get them back in Irenicus´dungeon.

 

Shields can quite nicely compensate the lack of armour, since rangers get two stars in two weapon skill it's not that bad either (although good clubs are scarce in that game). Good luck, Beastmaster is not the most popular Ranger kit (by far) but as a Cleric it should be quite fun to play.

 

The only difference I've noticed sofar is that my cleric/ranger cannot pick the HLA summon elemental prince, which is a druid HLA. Jaheira on the other hand is able to pick that HLA. It's not that big a deal, because I prefer aura of flaming death as a level 7 anyway.

 

You can't shapechange either, but shapechanging is not that good.

 

Unless you use the totally overpowered Weimer shapechanging mod from the Tweakpack...

 

OK, another question about Beast Masters in general. At character creation, I was told that I´d lose my Ranger abilities if my reputation ever goes below 10. Can this really be true? If so, that is really harsh in BG 1 where I tend to kill certain tempting (innocent) characters, both for XP and items, plus if I want the "evil" Bhaal powers. As I will be a Cleric later, it makes a lot more sense to get LMD, Ghoul Touch/Horror and Vamp. Touch than abilties that I will have as spells anyway (although extra-speedy healing and Slow Poison abilities do have some merit).
I remember that Rangers became Fallen at rep 3 or 4 with the old BG1 rules.

 

AFAIK rangers fall beyond 3 and paladins beyond 10 rep.