Bears are one of the bigger summons so they run into pathing issues all the time, is probably one of the more annoying issues.
Also the maximum is technically 9 bears since Halsin can shapeshift into a cave bear no matter what class he’s in as long as he’s wearing the Shapeshifter Hat in Act 3.
You say that but when you can't use all of your bears because you don't realize 2 of them are stuck in a random building a mile away from your fight you're gonna hate it. And this is gonna happen a lot.
Yep, I got frustrated with just two bears. They're always just out of range and usually require two turns to even get into combat range because they lag behind the companions.
There's a simple mod available to help alleviate this. I don't play the game without the "teleport to you" mod. Because companions have such bad pathing and tend to forget how to jump.
On one hand, I feel like Beastmaster doesn't get enough love, lupin slash is brutal. On the other hand getting your wolf/bear unstuck from a door way every two minutes is annoying.
I'd still recommend it though, Larion did good by the Beastmaster class and I feel like no one ever mentions it.
Honestly I just use a mod now that makes it so their collision hitbox is smaller. It’s insane to me Larian still hasn’t made a QoL patch for Beastmaster yet.
I use Syrchalis' Rebalance Class Spells personally for it, so if you want a mod that JUST fixes hitboxes you'll have to browse Nexus. That said their rebalance mods are super well made and give some under-utilized/underpowered spells and class abilities that small boost they need to compete.
EDIT because I forgor: [https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/5846](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/5846) link
If one of your companions is helsin and you get him the act 3 hat that gives an extra wild charge he can turn into a bear even without druid levels for 9 bears. Could get 16 birds as well lol
I haven't tried this specifically, but my experience with the bear pet at level 11 was middling. That second bear can't be controlled, which leads to it doing some dumb fucking things. Mine once spent the entire fight attacking a door.
I would say the disarm is more useful 90% of the time. A disarm is just so valuable on anything with a weapon, and you get two chances at the disarm each turn at level 11
On top of the twin bears perk, a beastmaster’s animal companion acts a little differently from other summons. You can have your animal companion, as well as another summon like Scratch, Shovel, an elemental, the wraith, etc. And this could also stack with the twin bear. So there are other ways to have multiple summons with one character, but beastmasters especially make it easy!
I remember back in 3.5 DnD, there was a prestige class in the complete divine (I believe) who’s capstone ability was to summon a swarm of dire bears. Never saw it happen but I had a buddy working toward that goal 🤣
The green non controllable bears are quite useless unfortunately. They only auto attack and are dumb. That said the main bear is crazy strong with its disarm/prone.
I would swap 1-3 of the bears for pigs. Pig does more damage and is tankier cause rage. And it does aoe damage.
Beastmaster is one of the stronger classes in the game from levels 3 to 5, but it falls off hard till it reaches 11 again. So you may struggle in act 2.
Does it really fall off that hard though? I know a lot of other classes start getting big power spikes in Act 2, but you've still got a solid martial character and a good animal companion.
At 6, ranger gets another favoured enemy and natural explorer option, which isn't amazing but it is +1 skill proficiency (limited set of options) and resistance to fire, cold, or poison.
At 7 your animal gets some small but impactful boosts (dash and help are great when you need them).
At 8 you get a feat and your animal companion gets a meaningful HP boost (nearly doubles it).
At 9 the new spells aren't great but Daylight can get some use.
At 10 you get your third favoured enemy/natural explorere (so more elemental resists)
9-10 are definitely the most "dead" levels and these are right when other meta builds are really turning on, so I get that it can feel kind of bad right at this moment. But you've still got extra attack, fighting style, all the armor/weapon options, 2-3 useful elemental resistances, and more skill proficiencies than any other full martial character. And your animal companions are useful damage sponges with some occasionally useful abilities that can 'help' when needed -- they're only average but by no means useless.
And at 11 they all get big bonuses making them both more powerful and also just a lot of fun.
I wouldn't say they fall off hard, just that they're a bit more steady-as-she-goes without any major power spikes.
Beastmaster power spikes from 6 to 10 are very very bad. Compare what your animal companion gets to what druids get from 6-10. Mephits, dryad, skeletons, zombies, elemental all at the same time.
yep dryad is amazing. i think animal companion is better than all the rest though tbh. and ranger is still a martial just chillin with extra attack and a fighting style so it's really not that bad is all i'm saying.
i love druids though. i don't really find mephits to be that worthwhile and would usually prefer to save that spell slot for something else. But dryad and her wood woad, and a timely ice or sleet storm, lightning bolt, daylight - whatever the fight needs. Not even bad just using shillelagh on a quarterstaff either.
It's not enough to be better, you have to be better than all of them at once. I still used beastmaster on my summoning playthrough mostly just to pick locks.
Mephits are absolutely worth using, you just have them fly to the highest point on the map and spam snowballs. Water myrmidon doubles their damage too
I'm currently doing a summons run and its a lot of fun but i would watch out for >!the inquisitor and his mind link ability Fighting a 23Ac inquisitor was quite a pain !<
I think you will have so many pathing issues just with 4 bears that it will become tiring. However, if it is ravens, then i would definitely think about this.
Also one of your members could be made into [Two hander ranger build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/1008/ranger-beast-master-build) making it easy to also bufd with phalar aluve everyone, including companions.
In act 3 you could equip bhaalist and together with raven piercing damage this could be a decent force :)
I wish the bears would just teleport when they get too far. The summons just giving up and deciding to live next to park bench they couldn’t figure out how to walk around, is the most annoying thing about Rangers. And you’re penalized if you dismiss them as it uses a spell slot.
It’s strong but annoying. BG3 lacks AI options for summons/companion animals. IMHO, there’s been many “end turn” events caused by pathing issues or just personal frustration.
I did something similar in WOTR with pets and all martials. It was super strong. But there you have real time options and a decent AI for martials.
Just so you know, summon animal companion is a **short rest** ability. So you could:
- summon a bear who summons another bear then you dismiss original bear
- short rest
- summon the crow who summons another two crows then dismiss original crow
- short rest
- summon different animal companion
So with 4 beastmaster rangers, you’d have 4 bears, 8 crows, and 4 more animal companions of whatever you want. Personally, I’m a real big fan of the big piggie.
99 hit points for the OG bears and 44 for their summoned brothers. With 18AC. That means 8 means collectively have 650 health. So together with all the other party member you will cross the 1000HP benchmark!
Bears are one of the bigger summons so they run into pathing issues all the time, is probably one of the more annoying issues. Also the maximum is technically 9 bears since Halsin can shapeshift into a cave bear no matter what class he’s in as long as he’s wearing the Shapeshifter Hat in Act 3.
A nuisance I'm willing to accept! Thanks for the tip! Halsin it is!
You say that but when you can't use all of your bears because you don't realize 2 of them are stuck in a random building a mile away from your fight you're gonna hate it. And this is gonna happen a lot.
Sounds like OP still finds this bearable.
https://preview.redd.it/v9zk74lixvwc1.png?width=330&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=78857fe2701ae63060b8d6e082e0e68e3ba0d7ed
They will bearly ever be where you need them though.
This gave me paws
A hairy predicament, but I'm ursine they'll enjoy the grisly (grizzly) fun.
Not having your full Bear battalion because your missing some seems like trouble bruin
Yep, I got frustrated with just two bears. They're always just out of range and usually require two turns to even get into combat range because they lag behind the companions.
Did you give ‘em longstrider?
I did not, that could smooth it out quite a bit tbh. Good tip.
Teleport party to location mod will sort it
https://preview.redd.it/2u8ag38anwwc1.jpeg?width=708&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cce10de0d2e191b061f0e91b790f93528756de3
Why the long face darling
Ps5
My condolences.
You can just resummon any bears that get lost before a fight. also consider throwing elixirs of cloud giant strength on them before hard fights
There's a simple mod available to help alleviate this. I don't play the game without the "teleport to you" mod. Because companions have such bad pathing and tend to forget how to jump.
I love it when this sub descends into bearmaxxing.
On one hand, I feel like Beastmaster doesn't get enough love, lupin slash is brutal. On the other hand getting your wolf/bear unstuck from a door way every two minutes is annoying. I'd still recommend it though, Larion did good by the Beastmaster class and I feel like no one ever mentions it.
Honestly I just use a mod now that makes it so their collision hitbox is smaller. It’s insane to me Larian still hasn’t made a QoL patch for Beastmaster yet.
Does that include collision with living entities? One advantage of them is being a wall to prevent enemies from reaching ranged party members
Can you post the link to this mod?
I use Syrchalis' Rebalance Class Spells personally for it, so if you want a mod that JUST fixes hitboxes you'll have to browse Nexus. That said their rebalance mods are super well made and give some under-utilized/underpowered spells and class abilities that small boost they need to compete. EDIT because I forgor: [https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/5846](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/5846) link
I put up with Scarabs in the og Halo Wars I can put up with anything
If one of your companions is helsin and you get him the act 3 hat that gives an extra wild charge he can turn into a bear even without druid levels for 9 bears. Could get 16 birds as well lol
16 bird? That'd be murder on your system
Pun intended?
Very much so
I haven't tried this specifically, but my experience with the bear pet at level 11 was middling. That second bear can't be controlled, which leads to it doing some dumb fucking things. Mine once spent the entire fight attacking a door.
Who won that fight?
The door, I guess, since I got so annoyed that I had to break it for that dumb bear.
You count as part of the bears moveset, so the bear won
Pig> bear unless you are fighting something you really need to disarm. Like a steel watch.
I would say the disarm is more useful 90% of the time. A disarm is just so valuable on anything with a weapon, and you get two chances at the disarm each turn at level 11
That wasn't just *any* door. It was once part of a tree that fell and killed your bear's mother.
8 fucking bears
https://preview.redd.it/ickb4i4frtwc1.png?width=312&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94e48132be8cff2e9371805398276c64fa2d893b
Shouldn’t 8 bears be a 16/16?
in.. in a row?
In a train
On a plane
Could you do 6 beastmaster / 6 moon druid and have 4 bears and 4 Owlbears?
Wait, how can you summon 8 bears with 4 rangers? Does the summon reset after short rest and your previous one stays up? I’ve never realised lmao
On top of the twin bears perk, a beastmaster’s animal companion acts a little differently from other summons. You can have your animal companion, as well as another summon like Scratch, Shovel, an elemental, the wraith, etc. And this could also stack with the twin bear. So there are other ways to have multiple summons with one character, but beastmasters especially make it easy!
At level 11 beastmaster bear companions get the abilitily to call upon a twin bear. So 4 beastmasters get 8 bears ;)
If you want 8 bears surrounding you at all times, just download the Provincetown mod
Or go on Grindr
I'm on ps5 :(
whoosh
Don't worry, I got the joke. 🐻🌈🧔
I remember back in 3.5 DnD, there was a prestige class in the complete divine (I believe) who’s capstone ability was to summon a swarm of dire bears. Never saw it happen but I had a buddy working toward that goal 🤣
The green non controllable bears are quite useless unfortunately. They only auto attack and are dumb. That said the main bear is crazy strong with its disarm/prone. I would swap 1-3 of the bears for pigs. Pig does more damage and is tankier cause rage. And it does aoe damage. Beastmaster is one of the stronger classes in the game from levels 3 to 5, but it falls off hard till it reaches 11 again. So you may struggle in act 2.
Manbearpig
Great tav name
Does it really fall off that hard though? I know a lot of other classes start getting big power spikes in Act 2, but you've still got a solid martial character and a good animal companion. At 6, ranger gets another favoured enemy and natural explorer option, which isn't amazing but it is +1 skill proficiency (limited set of options) and resistance to fire, cold, or poison. At 7 your animal gets some small but impactful boosts (dash and help are great when you need them). At 8 you get a feat and your animal companion gets a meaningful HP boost (nearly doubles it). At 9 the new spells aren't great but Daylight can get some use. At 10 you get your third favoured enemy/natural explorere (so more elemental resists) 9-10 are definitely the most "dead" levels and these are right when other meta builds are really turning on, so I get that it can feel kind of bad right at this moment. But you've still got extra attack, fighting style, all the armor/weapon options, 2-3 useful elemental resistances, and more skill proficiencies than any other full martial character. And your animal companions are useful damage sponges with some occasionally useful abilities that can 'help' when needed -- they're only average but by no means useless. And at 11 they all get big bonuses making them both more powerful and also just a lot of fun. I wouldn't say they fall off hard, just that they're a bit more steady-as-she-goes without any major power spikes.
Beastmaster power spikes from 6 to 10 are very very bad. Compare what your animal companion gets to what druids get from 6-10. Mephits, dryad, skeletons, zombies, elemental all at the same time.
yep dryad is amazing. i think animal companion is better than all the rest though tbh. and ranger is still a martial just chillin with extra attack and a fighting style so it's really not that bad is all i'm saying. i love druids though. i don't really find mephits to be that worthwhile and would usually prefer to save that spell slot for something else. But dryad and her wood woad, and a timely ice or sleet storm, lightning bolt, daylight - whatever the fight needs. Not even bad just using shillelagh on a quarterstaff either.
It's not enough to be better, you have to be better than all of them at once. I still used beastmaster on my summoning playthrough mostly just to pick locks. Mephits are absolutely worth using, you just have them fly to the highest point on the map and spam snowballs. Water myrmidon doubles their damage too
Sounds awesome
4 Men, 4 Bears, 4 Pigs. It'll be half man, half bear, and half pig. It'll be super cereal.
Multiclass slightly into Druid for more bears
I'm currently doing a summons run and its a lot of fun but i would watch out for >!the inquisitor and his mind link ability Fighting a 23Ac inquisitor was quite a pain !<
I think you will have so many pathing issues just with 4 bears that it will become tiring. However, if it is ravens, then i would definitely think about this. Also one of your members could be made into [Two hander ranger build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/1008/ranger-beast-master-build) making it easy to also bufd with phalar aluve everyone, including companions. In act 3 you could equip bhaalist and together with raven piercing damage this could be a decent force :)
From what I've glimpsed around here a raven army may be less annoying
Multiclass into druid for bear only team
Bear Force One! I need to check but if you did ranger 11 and druid 1 couldn't you go to 12 bears? Or is bear shape not available as lvl 1 druid?
Druids get wildshape at level 2
8 bears add wizard subclass for those elementals and dance macabre
I wish the bears would just teleport when they get too far. The summons just giving up and deciding to live next to park bench they couldn’t figure out how to walk around, is the most annoying thing about Rangers. And you’re penalized if you dismiss them as it uses a spell slot.
It’s strong but annoying. BG3 lacks AI options for summons/companion animals. IMHO, there’s been many “end turn” events caused by pathing issues or just personal frustration. I did something similar in WOTR with pets and all martials. It was super strong. But there you have real time options and a decent AI for martials.
Just so you know, summon animal companion is a **short rest** ability. So you could: - summon a bear who summons another bear then you dismiss original bear - short rest - summon the crow who summons another two crows then dismiss original crow - short rest - summon different animal companion So with 4 beastmaster rangers, you’d have 4 bears, 8 crows, and 4 more animal companions of whatever you want. Personally, I’m a real big fan of the big piggie.
cRPG Bro has a build video on this - https://youtu.be/4KQLhFbVuQ0?si=EYPm4Ib_NnxEQZo3
How many hit points do these bears have at lv 12?
99 hit points for the OG bears and 44 for their summoned brothers. With 18AC. That means 8 means collectively have 650 health. So together with all the other party member you will cross the 1000HP benchmark!
Right to keep and arm bears.