ranger cleric dual class

[Guest Morgoth]

Got a question about ranger cleric dual class. 

If I'm ranger 13/cleric 20, will the druidic spells level rely on the first class or the second class? 

[guyudennis]

It will always disregard your ranger levels and instead always use your cleric levels for caster level determination.

[Guest Morgoth]

This is great, thanks!

[ahungry]

I'm on a playthrough as this atm (7 ranger, 10 cleric) - such a fun combo (assuming the ini setting to maintain the cross-class spells) - especially with a mega mod that adds lots of fun priestly spells!

[Endarire]

Explain to me the appeal of this class combo since it just seemed like it gimped each side too much.

[ahungry]

Cleric that can cast iron skins/insect swarm and hit like a truck

On my mega mod setup, I don't have any drastic game play altering mods on atm (subtledoctor ones that I usually play with).

In fact, if the alignment matches up, there's almost no reason *not* to start any given cleric as a ranger and dual class at level 2 - you get the 2 free pips in dual wield, and 2(+?) to place elsewhere - then when you dual, you level as a straight cleric with ~4 more pips than you'd have began with, and all druid spells are available to you (with spell mods, this is great - you get the cleric heals, and the druid HoTs). 

Granted a lot of the power is in mod gear (although I ran my tweaks to limit bonus APR to 1/2 APR per item max to help smooth this over), and Anthology Tweaks opening up the blade weapons from ranger to cleric when it's unlocked (not stuck with just blunts, but that'd still be acceptable).

So, at level 7 ranger/10 cleric, my current toon melee stats are: 6 APR (dual wielding with some boots that grant haste), 3 MH/OH thac0 (elf using long/short swords), and damage range of ~24-32 (currently at 22'ish strength thanks to items - no buffs up). 

Needless to say, she absolutely slaughters and has great survivability.

[jmerry]

I actually tested it when someone else asked about this.

For all ranger/cleric combos, they get spell slots at each level from whichever class is better. For example, a ranger 17/cleric 2 (dual from cleric) with 18 Wis gets 4 level 1 spell slots (2+2 from cleric 1), 3 level 2 slots (ranger 17), and 3 level 3 slots (ranger 17) in the BG series.

For spell access, they get access to all cleric spells, plus all ranger (druid) spells that a ranger of their level could cast. In that previous example, the ranger 17/cleric 2 could cast level 3 cleric-only spells despite their cleric casting not reaching that level.

For caster level, only the cleric level matters. That ranger 17/cleric 2 casts all of their spells at caster level 2, so a DUHM would give only +1 to stats or a Resist Fire and Cold would last only three rounds. (Most spells have a "minimum" caster level for their effects, corresponding to the level a full caster would need to have a spell slot of that level.)

[Jarno Mikkola]

21 hours ago, jmerry said:

(Most spells have a "minimum" caster level for their effects, corresponding to the level a full caster would need to have a spell slot of that level.)

And this can* crash the game if your caster level isn't high enough. *At least in the past it did, when spells didn't carry level 1 versions of themselves... And you can still likely see this in spells like fireball, when a level 1 mage casts fireball spell, it's casts at level 7 with respect of looking at the damage (7d6).

[Guest Morgoth]

If you read here: 

it seems that in the classic baldur's gate you could get all the druid spells by going ranger/cleric, while in EE you can only get up to the level 4 druid spells.

Is the person above wrong, or did it really work that way in classical bg? I seem to remember the answer is no,  but I'm hesitant to say that I'm right.

 

[polytope]

2 hours ago, Guest Morgoth said:

Is the person above wrong, or did it really work that way in classical bg? I seem to remember the answer is no,  but I'm hesitant to say that I'm right.

It certainly works that way on the original engine, one of the main reasons Beamdog added an option to allow it by editing baldur.lua after a flood of player requests for the original overpowered ranger/cleric, they wouldn't reenable something that never worked.

What the R/C misses is druid specific HLAs like Greater Elemental Summoning.

[Guest Morgoth]

The user in the reddit's post claims the following: 

Current EE, without touching the ini --> ranger/cleric gets no druid spells.
EE with the ini touched ---> ranger/cleric gets druid spells up to level 4, all the other spells level above 4 are missing.
Classical BG: EE --> ranger/cleric gets all druid spells 

 

Are you telling me that the post above is wrong, and that the ranger/cleric with the .ini option touched gets ALL druid spells, beside the HLA?

[subtledoctor]

On 10/28/2022 at 5:25 AM, Guest Morgoth said:

The user in the reddit's post claims the following: 

Current EE, without touching the ini --> ranger/cleric gets no druid spells.
EE with the ini touched ---> ranger/cleric gets druid spells up to level 4, all the other spells level above 4 are missing.
Classical BG: EE --> ranger/cleric gets all druid spells

No that is wrong.

1. Current EE  unmodded behavior: R/C gets all  druid spells that a ranger would normally get. (Rangers usually get up to 3rd-level spellcasting right? So R/C gets 1st- through 3rd-level druid spells. (I do not know if this changes if your ranger spell table has been tweaked to allow higher-level spellcasting.))
2. EE behavior if you change that baldur.lua setting: R/C gets all druid spells up to 7th-level spells (but not HLAs), at the time when you normally get cleric spells of the same level.
3. Pre-EE BG2 behavior: R/C gets all druid spells up to 7th-level spells (but not HLAs), at the tome when you normally get cleric spells of the same level.

#2 and #3 are the same.

Edited October 9, 2023 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

27 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

1. Current EE  unmodded behavior: R/C gets all  druid spells that a ranger would normally get. (Rangers usually get up to 3rd-level spellcasting right? So R/C gets 1st- through 3rd-level druid spells. (I do not know if this changes if your ranger spell table has been tweaked to allow higher-level spellcasting.))
2. EE behavior if you change that baldur.lua setting: R/C gets all druid spells up to 7th-level spells (but not HLAs), at the tome when you normally get cleric spells of the same level.
3. Pre-EE BG2 behavior: R/C gets all druid spells up to 7th-level spells (but not HLAs), at the tome when you normally get cleric spells of the same level.

In other words, prior to EE the fighter/druid multiclass was strictly worse than the ranger/cleric (who had better weapon selection, better level progression and access to cleric restricted spells).

When dual classing humans, the fighter kits and weapon grandmastery might give the advantage to a berskerer or kensai->druid over a ranger->cleric... it's debatable.

With EE's default fix however, a ranger/cleric is pointless compared to a fighter/cleric mutliclass, who could be a dwarf for better saving throws, or a half orc for better stats, which are realistically more useful than the level 1-3 druid spells, except the very circumstantial Call Lightning. Same applies when dual classing.

It's been unsatisfying for a while, perhaps Ranger/Clerics should get the druid specific spells at one circle higher? I.e. Ironskin and Insect Plague at 6th, no access to Creeping Doom or Nature's Beauty.

[subtledoctor]

28 minutes ago, polytope said:

With EE's default fix however, a ranger/cleric is pointless compared to a fighter/cleric mutliclass, who could be a dwarf for better saving throws, or a half orc for better stats, which are realistically more useful than the level 1-3 druid spells

Hogwash. It may be perfectly true that, in the context of this particular campaign and with the particular house rules that Bioware applied to their computer game, a dwarven fighter/cleric can be mechanically superior to a half-elf ranger/cleric. If you think about it in terms of this particular variant ruleset and in an artificial one-to-one cage-match  scenario, then sure that's easy. But that hardly means the R/C is "pointless." In exchange for better saving throws, Turn Undead, and having to be a dwarf, you get stealth and three levels of druid spells. And, y'know, you get to be a Strider-like ranger(/cleric) instead of a grumbly stony fighter(/cleric)! That may not balance the mechanics, but there is certainly a point to it.

And not to mention, in the PnP rules dwarves had level limits.  Fracking level limits, man. And in PnP Forgotten Realms, ranger/clerics could use weapons like longbows. Bioware chose to ignore certain rules and enforce other rules when they converted the  2E rules into a RTwP tactical combat game, and they didn't seem to care much about whether it made certain classes appear "pointless." But if they had adhered to all the rules, a ranger-cleric certainly would not be.

As for how to address the imbalance: if one thinks it needs fixing, there are plenty of obvious solutions:

• Give rangers more distinct abilities
• Change the equipment available to each class
• Add more and better low-level druid spells
• Address the  spell system systematically so it isn't a binary choice of "all the spellz " vs. "half the spellz "

There are mods to do all of this, players can pretty much have things however they want these days.

[Guest Morgoth]

Thank you both!
For anyone reading, the third bullet above was meant to be  Classical BG --> ranger/cleric gets all druid spells and not classical BG:EE, but luckily you both understood what I meant.

I've got a question - any way to force the ranger/cleric dual class to access also the druid HLA?