Beast Master: Not as Weak as We Thought. (Possible Spoilers)

[Crenshinibon]

As many of you know, the Beast Master is considered by many as the worst class. Why? Probably because he can't use metal weapons and his spells aren't that good. Oh yeah, he can't use metal armor either. Not to mention his benefits aren't really that helpful. A bonus to stealth (scouting only gets you so far), the weapon specialization which isn't that good, the racial enemy which all rangers get and of course the charm animal spell which can only be used on animals and they are of course weak.

Well, I wasn't too sure as to why the guys at BIS would stick in such a weak character so I created one and leveled him through the console, thinking that it could have something to do with the summons. Maybe they were special and leveled over time. Nope. Nothing of the sort. I gave him a Staff of the Ram +6 and ordered him to attack my fighter with -18 AC. That's where things got interesting. With the staff he did a stead 60-68 damage. Upon checking the character sheet I saw that his to hit bonus was +4 and his to damage bonus was +10. In case this was a discrepancy i created another one and at level 16 (ToB) he still had the same bonus. This damage and bonus exceeds that of the Kensai if I am correct. But hacking away at everything is just so boring.

The Beast Master is the only ranger kit that can dual class to a cleric... or dual class at all. I did so. Well, without a shield on and his regular attire he had -12 AC. Not that impressive, right? Right. Anyway, I leveled the Cleric so it was a 16 Beast Master/ 34 Cleric and I used his spells to buff him. With the staff the damage was around a steady 78, the bonus being +5 to hit, +15 to damage and the life at 334. With Improved Haste (from the Improved Cloak of Protection +2) I got six attacks per round. Eight when dualwielding Club of Detonation +5 and Blackblood whose damage, when buffed was a steady 58. Unbuffed the damage was a steady 48. Around that.

Even with low AC, this character can hold his own due to the spells from his cleric side. Also, I'm sure everyone knows that any mix of ranger and cleric also grants you all of the druid spells too. Just keep that in mind. Anyway, to protect himself he has Iron Skins and Aura of Flaming death for the AC boost and even then, just Iron Skins is fine. Fully buffed I got his THAC0 to as low as -18 so he can basically hit anything. Normally his THAC0) is around -6 but you can boost it by six more with Champion's Strength. Even when damage DOES get through, you have your regeneration spells healing you so you're almost invulnerable. The Beast Master portion is one hell of a damage dealer though.

Remember, the character was automatically leveled so he did not receive any benefits from the hell trials or the Machine of Lum the Mad so he can still become stronger.

Apparently what was once thought as the worst class is better than most of the classes designed to deal damage.

[Thrifalas]

The +4/+10 bonus most likely is from having 22 strenght. Hitting for 60-68 damage sounds just insane though. Tell me what you used to get it and I'll try it out on my own, I have a feeling that something's terrible wrong with either your gamecopy or the game itself.

[Crenshinibon]

All he has is the Staff of the Ram +6. I have the latest game patch and no mods. The discs are from the Special Edition version and the Bonus CD material is installed.

[stryder88]

Sounds good to me! one of the few things I haven't tried out - the beastmaster. Currently playing a fighter/thief. Standard.

[BlueSky]

Now you're done it Crenshinibon...:laugh:
You've got a bunch of us now going back and giving the Beastmaster a try.
Never had played as one, because of the thinking that this was a "weak" class.

[Crenshinibon]

Well, I figured that the creators wouldn't put a class that's absolutely useless in the game, right?

All classes have their strengths and weaknesses. All of them, even if it is through bugs. Although, you do have to wonder if the creators knew about some of them and left them like that on purpose...

Certain bugs are in BGI as well, such as being able to dispel magical weapons, like a the claws from a bear form.

You give me a class and I'll tell you why you need it. XD

[VonDondu]

Crenshinibon, I don't understand the numbers you reported for damage. I just rolled up a Beastmaster, and she apparently receives a +4 THAC0 bonus and a +4 damage bonus for clubs and quarterstaffs at every level (above and beyond the standard bonuses for Strength, weapon specialization, weapon enchantments, etc.). I found that an 8th level Beast Master with Strength 14 (no Strength bonuses), two proficiency points in Quarterstaff, two proficiency points in Two Handed Weapon Style, and armed with a plain old quarterstaff has a THAC0 of 8 and can do 6-11 points of damage per hit. An ordinary Ranger with the same stats has a THAC0 of 12 and can do 2-7 points of damage per hit. The base THAC0 is 13, and there is +1 bonus for weapon specialization. I didn't see any effects under the "Affects" tab in ShadowKeeper besides the stealth bonus, so apparently the +4 bonuses I saw are "built in" to the kit. There is no Armor Class bonus; however, she and the ordinary Ranger both had 10 extra hit points on the "Easy" game setting

Armed with the Staff of the Ram +6, my Beast Master had a THAC0 of -8 at 18th level and she did a steady 18-23 points of damage per hit. This doesn't match the expected damage of 1-6 base damage + 12 crushing damage + 1d4 piercing damage + 1 (weapon specialization bonus) + 4 Beast Master bonus damage, and it isn't anywhere near the damage figures that you reported, so I don't know what's going on.

I did my testing in TOB with the latest official patch, the G3 FixPack, and a bunch of mods (I don't remember installing any mods that changed the abilities of the Beast Master kit). I encountered the usual bug that affects the weapon proficiencies of a Ranger dual-classed to a Cleric (the same bug affected a Stalker dualled to a Cleric in the original release of SOA before TOB eliminated that particular dual-class option)--i.e., proficiency points are still visible on the "level up" screen for weapons that are not useable by her class. I also encountered a bug that I had never seen before: if I gave the Beast Master two proficiency points in Sword and Shield Style, she lost her +4 bonuses to THAC0 and damage. Maybe there's a bug in the Staff of the Ram +6 that fails to add the 1d34 piercing damage, but I've never heard of that before. In any case, your numbers do not match my own results.

EDIT: I just loaded a clean copy of TOB onto my hard drive that has the official patch but no mods. When I created a Beast Master, she did not have any special combat bonuses that an ordinary Ranger doesn't have. As was the case in the previous game, she and an ordinary Ranger both had 10 extra hit points on the "Easy" game setting (I never noticed this before). As I said earlier, I don't remember installing any mods that would have given the Beast Master kit any special combat bonuses, but one of the mods I installed must have made a few changes. I installed some but not all of the components in the G3 FixPack, the G3 Tweak Pack, the Oversight Mod, and the SimDing0 Tweak Pack and maybe a couple of others. The rest of the mods I installed were NPC mods.

Frankly, I don't see anything special about the Beast Master class.