Why isn't Ranger/Mage a possible combination?
StevenAus
Member Posts: 8
Is it because when you have a multi-class, you can't have more critical stats than you have classes? I know Ranger needs Constitution as well as the Divine Spell requirement Wisdom, and Mage needs Intelligence. Cleric/Mage and Cleric/Ranger only have two critical stats each. It can't be that Elves can only get 17 Constitution, because Half-Elves can't get Ranger/Mage and they don't have the Constitution restriction. And even though Rangers must be Good, Mages can be Good too.
Or is it simply because Ranger/Mage would be too powerful, with Grand Mastery in Long Bows and the Elf bonus for Long Bows (or even without the Elf Long Bow bonus)?
Or is it simply because Ranger/Mage would be too powerful, with Grand Mastery in Long Bows and the Elf bonus for Long Bows (or even without the Elf Long Bow bonus)?
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Pretty much covered it. Because it's not allowed in ADnD 2E.
Don't try to make sense of ADnD's rules, you'll only go insane.
rangers are nature's stewards, similarly to druids, they draw power from it and mages' arcane power is unnatural and often corrupting so these two are sources of power that can't be reconciled.
a compromise has been made with stalker and avenger kits.
also i don't think i'm going insane, i'd never allow this combination myself
Because Ranger/Mage is flat out superior to Fighter/Mage in every way?
Because Ranger/Mage/Thief would be confusing to implement with multiple stealth granting classes to consider?
Because then people would make a Stalker/Mage/Cleric and win Baldur's Gate forever?
Because AD&D multiclasses were incredibly arbitrary and nobody's got around to letting people mod in new multiclass combinations yet for Baldurs Gate?
Ah yes, that's the one.
It's actually not that hard to win Baldur's Gate forever.
coolest combo and it isn't even in the game
And agreed. Druid/Mage would prompt yet another playthrough if they enabled it as a choice, even if I was stuck with the bunny.
Plus, I don't see much of an advantage over an F/M/T either. The backstab rate is worse, the THAC0 is worse, the weapon selection is worse. Not having find traps makes a big difference unless you use a lot of metagame knowledge. Cleric buffs are admittedly great, but mage buffs are more than enough anyway. Healing? Who cares - why are you getting hit? Plus, three words: Use Any Item. There's definitely an argument to be made for the S/M/C, but it doesn't exactly seem like a seismic shift to me - more of a little tweak.
Thus, mages are the epitome of civilization in the Forgotten Realms. Rangers and druids don't *like* civilization, or at least, they don't trust it.
So, magery is like the polar opposite profession of being a ranger or a druid.
It's a roleplaying thing. If I had been the game developer, making ranger/druid and mage incompatible is something I would have done.
That said, in third edition, all bets are off. Third edition is pretty much "anything goes".
But, alas, BG is *second* edition, and really closer to *first* edition AD&D, which has a kind of charm of its own, even with all its arbitrary limitations on what a character can do and be.
Incidentally, I never knew second edition - I grew up on AD&D, and BG never struck me as any different from the first edition AD&D rules, except for the presence of bards, monks, and sorcerers, which seemed kind of tacked on.
FYI, bards and monks were in 1st Edition AD&D rules. Bards were different in 1st edition - you had to dual from fighter to thief and then to bard, and they cast Druid spells instead of Mage spells. Plus, they were in the Appendices. Monks, however, were one of the basic classes in the Players Handbook.
Sorcerers are a 3rd edition "back port" for BG2.
So, what nixed the idea of Ranger/Mage? Overlap between the two classes already (Rangers already got some mage spells at higher levels). Lack of stats for most people to qualify for both classes at once, and when you get down to it, lack of sub-classes to multi class with another sub-class. The only sub-class that even got mentioned in the allowable multi-class list was Cleric/Ranger. No others. And then, only to half-elves, who were the only ones able to be both of those classes (And even so, they were level-limited in the Ranger class AND the Cleric class as well- only humans could have unlimited level advancement in any class (Thievery was the exception to the this general rule)).
It wasn't until 3e that all limits on level and multi-classing were dropped. (And yeah, I know, Level Limits were horrible. But it came out of E. Gary Gygax wanting a world where humans were supreme, and the other races could live much, much longer than humans. If the levels weren't limited and High Elves could live 2500 years where humans were limited to the high 70's to low 90's, what was to prevent elves, dwarves and so on, from continuing to accumulate experience and be so much better that the humans couldn't compete? I mean, someone who has had 90 years to practice archery and swordplay is going to be staggeringly better than one who has only had 5 or 10- much more than even a +1 to bows and swords can explain away. I'm not saying it was right, but it was meant to support the Tolkienesque subtext that Elves and Dwarves were the "Elder Races" whose time was passing and were being supplanted by humans. It was meant to give humans a leg up on the vastly longer-lived races and make "human" the most attractive race to play if you wanted to power game. I'm not saying it was necessarily a good idea- it was a mechanical way to back up the kind of race-based stories E.G.G. wanted to underlay his world. Later versions of AD&D/D&D had different assumptions about the fantasy worlds they were creating.)