Flagship Build: Gloom Stalker Ranger

Authors: Moonsilver | Stefan / pandaniel / Esker / TauNeutrino / faket15 / Rentarou / Majin Evelyn

This D&D 5E build, built upon a 5-level core of the Gloom Stalker Ranger, excels in three specific niches: first turn nova damage, pass without trace uptime combined with continued contribution to combats while maintaining concentration, and enabling high-encounter-density adventuring days by providing peerless healing through “Lifeberries.” The Flagship Ranger hyper-focuses on these three niches, eschewing the utility, control, and individual power that the full casters in the Flagship Builds series bring to the table.

The Gloom Stalker fulfills its expected role in Tiers 1 and 2, functioning primarily as a first-turn nova striker. It capitalizes on its valuable subclass features and core functionality of using Archery Fighting Style/Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter to be an effective martial. At level 5 we get access to pass without trace, unlocking the reason we can put this build in a Flagship position.

Pass without trace is the cornerstone of this build and—when used optimally—nearly doubles the power of your entire party. The mechanical strength of surprise is overwhelming. Because early damage in a fight denies more actions than damage later in a fight, the early damage will be more valuable. Monsters will have to save twice against spells like web because surprise still grants them their turn; they are simply unable to act. Your party gets to set up positioning and difficult terrain to halt enemies, and you can usually kill the most threatening monster in the encounter outright without letting them take an action. This will allow your party to take on far more challenging encounters than would be possible without this spell. 

It is, therefore, crucial to get your party to buy into this playstyle. You should communicate with your party to take proficiency in Stealth at character creation, so that your minimum possible rolls are extremely likely to beat most monsters’ passive Perception. Even if your party does not buy in to this degree, the build will nonetheless function just fine, though not at full power.

However, if party members completely refuse to engage in stealth gameplay, even after you explain the sheer power of this tactic, this build becomes far less potent. If the DM house rules how Stealth and surprise works or misunderstands what those rules say “as written,” this build will not perform up to Flagship standards. That being said, this build is still potent and maximizes the strengths of the class: using other premium spells like spike growth will give you an effective mid-high optimization Ranger. If you want to play a different one of our Ranger builds instead, consider the Midnight Guerrilla, the Umbral Stalker, or our Basic Build Ranger.  

We detail the mechanics around surprise in Rules Refresh: Hiding, Surprise, and More, but to quickly summarize why we believe it is possible to use pass without trace as a cornerstone to a build: 

This part of the rules gives player characters two conditions they must fulfill in order to be able to surprise their enemies. First, they need to be traveling at a slow pace. This should generally be feasible, unless the player characters are under some extreme time constraint. Second, they must not be in the open. An open field surrounding a watchtower, an island in the middle of a lake or a long, straight, featureless hallway leading directly into a room are examples of environments where it would reasonably be impossible to approach undetected. The labyrinthine hallways of a dungeon, the many rooms of a mansion separated by doors, and the curved passages in caves are examples of environments where the player characters are reasonably able to attempt to remain hidden. Notably, a character carefully opening a door and glancing into another room does not put them in the open. If an adventuring party fulfills these two conditions, they are eligible to attempt surprising enemies they encounter, allowing the players to roll Stealth (Dexterity) checks to determine if they indeed do so.

The reason for the existence of this build compared to our other Flagships that can cast pass without trace, i.e. our Flagship Druid, and the variants for our Flagship Cleric and Flagship Sorcerer, is that this build keeps contributing while they are concentrating on pass without trace. All the other mentioned builds are not as efficient at using the spell as they lack the ability to cast other strong concentration spells during combat without the need to spend even more spell slots to recast pass without trace after they are done with an encounter. Meanwhile, the Flagship Ranger gets to start off combat with great nova damage and follow up with consistent output thereafter. Of course, our other Flagships would still get to cast cantrips or spells that don’t require concentration, but this would simply not be enough in difficult encounters, lacking the raw damage output of our Sharpshooter-fueled attacks.

After 5 levels in Ranger, the build occupies itself in Tier 2 with a level in Life Cleric for the power of Disciple of Life-boosted goodberries, then takes 3 levels in Battle Master to increase the power of our first-turn nova with Action Surge and Precision Attack. 

Late Tier 2 and Tier 3 is where the build starts to look funky. We are taking 3 levels in The Hexblade Warlock so that we can regain 2nd level slots on short rests, which will fuel our pass without trace uptime and keep our Lifeberries plentifully stocked, renewing whichever is more relevant based on the situation. The Hexblade also provides us with an additional source of nova damage with Hexblade’s Curse, though we may not always be in range to use it. It further provides us with shield, a defensive spell that is frankly required at this level of optimization. Then, we take levels in Assassin Rogue, which gives us more consistent advantage in the first round of combat, making us less reliant on factors like lighting conditions, enemies failing on a Trip Attack Maneuver, and contribution from other party members for our nova damage. This protects us against a significant part of the long tail of unlucky outcomes that can happen in this game. Unlike a straight-classed Assassin Rogue, this build has access to the grotesque bonus of pass without trace, allowing us to get consistent value from the Assassinate feature’s guaranteed critical hits. 

Our final levels are used to take low opportunity cost boons, opened up to us through our extreme amount of multiclassing. Two more levels in Warlock gives us Eldritch Smite as another way to spike our damage and access to 3rd level Pact Slots. One level in Divine Soul Sorcerer gives us silvery barbs and Favored by the Gods, and reaching level 4 in Fighter and Rogue gives us more feats.

Unlike other Flagship Builds, this build does not have a variant in the conventional sense. However, due to the highly-multiclassed nature of the build, the character is more “modular” than the other Flagships, so we go into significantly higher detail about certain branch-off points for build and alterations you may want to make due to your campaign’s level range, party composition, etc. If you have specific questions about adapting the build to your campaign, feel free to join our Discord server and discuss with the community and authors.

Race: Custom Lineage

Ability Score Increases – +2 Dex. Dexterity is the best increase we can take at character creation since we are a character focused on using ranged weapons.
Size – Medium. Custom Lineage lets us choose between Small or Medium size. This decision can reasonably go either way. We go with Medium, as it allows us to use heavy weapons (like a longbow, or heavy crossbow) without disadvantage, and later grapple bigger creatures if it comes up.
Going with Small would allow you to fit through tiny spaces, and to ride Medium sized mounts which are a lot less expensive than the likes of a warhorse.
Feat – Crossbow Expert. This option maximizes our damage at level 1, outclassing Sharpshooter for now and synergizing with it when we pick it up at level 4.
Variable Trait – Darkvision. It’s usually more useful to have Darkvision than to have proficiency in another skill.
Languages – Common, Undercommon. We are picking Undercommon, as it is the second most common language right behind Common. You might want to pick something else; consider your campaign and select a language commonly spoken by NPCs that are least likely to also speak Common. Alternatively, sharing a rare language amongst all members of your party can allow you to speak freely amongst NPCs without your plans being divulged. It is not incredibly important what language you pick here.

Class: Ranger

Skills – Perception, Stealth, Athletics. Perception is extremely impactful, as it’s perhaps the most commonly used skill and has a defined and significant mechanical impact. It is thus an important skill for any character—and we will choose to be great at it. Stealth is important for gaining surprise, and we will have the tools to achieve this. Finally, Athletics might come as a shock, but considering average monster statistics, the ability to shove an enemy, later even multiple times using Extra Attack, and potentially still getting to attack is better than using Acrobatics and your entire action to get out of a grapple situation. Additionally, this allows us to grapple enemies well ourselves, should the (rare) need arise.
Favored Foe (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – This gives us some minor free damage at this level, replacing the very low-impact and campaign-dependent Favored Enemy feature.
Deft Explorer (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – Canny. Perception, Draconic, Dwarvish. The languages should be picked with some thought to the campaign, or towards the party. Stealth is an alternate Expertise that can be worth having at higher levels. This replaces the campaign-dependent Natural Explorer.

Ability Scores

9 Str, 14+2 Dex, 14 Con, 8 Int, 14 Wis, 13 Cha

Dexterity is our main attacking stat and helps with initiative to give us a better chance of going first to damage or even kill important targets. Wisdom allows us to multiclass out of Ranger and into Cleric, helps with Perception, is an important save to be good at, and some of our Cleric and Ranger abilities key off of it. We need 13 Charisma to multiclass into Sorcerer and Warlock later in our career. We buy 14 Constitution for hit points and Constitution saves (important for concentration, among other things). 

Background (Custom)

Skills – Arcana, Nature. Arcana proficiency allows us to scribe scrolls during downtime. This is especially useful if there’s a Wizard in the party who can learn spells from those scrolls, but even if not, it’s nice to have extra spells on hand. If you play with the spell identification variant rule from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, proficiency in Arcana becomes even more applicable. We pick Nature in anticipation for our third level in Rogue, where we get proficiency in the poisoner’s kit, which will allow us to make good use of poisons. If you won’t get to that level, pick Insight instead, which allows us to be well equipped during social situations, as we are playing a Wisdom-based class.
Tools – Mason’s tools, carpenter’s tools. Proficiency in mason’s tools gives us a +5 bonus on passive Perception involving stone structures (the most common material for dungeons!) and proficiency in carpenter’s tools works the same for wooden buildings (also quite common!). We detail both of these in our Complete Guide to Tools in DnD 5E. If neither of these options feels appropriate or accessible in your game, feel free to pick another listed option that seems good. If you know you will not take Rogue levels before the end of the campaign, pick thieves’ tools instead of carpenter’s tools.
Feature – Researcher. We might not often be the smartest person in the room, but we certainly know where to find the information we need! This background feature funnily enough comes up more the more ignorant you are. Maybe you are a fraud who got through college by sheer luck, who knows.
Creator’s Note – Making a custom background is RAW, as page 125 of the PHB states: “The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds.” Using this, we are making a custom background and using the Researcher feature.

Equipment

Ranger Starting Equipment

• Scale mail. This gives us much better AC than leather armor.
• 2 shortswords. Worth the most to sell.
• An explorer’s pack.
• Longbow and a quiver of 20 arrows.

Investigator Starting Equipment

• A magnifying glass.
• A trinket from the Horror Trinkets table.
• A set of common clothes.
• 10 gp.

Purchasing Goals

• Hand crossbow.
• Supplies of bolts. We shoot quite rapidly, so having a lot of ammunition will be necessary. Use unencumbered party members as packhorses if necessary.
• A heavy crossbow that we will use on our nova rounds starting at level 3.
• Half plate. The best armor we are proficient with for AC.
• A component pouch.
• Bullseye lantern. A directional light source, especially useful for us Gloom Stalker Rangers.
• Silvered weapons. While the Player’s Handbook gives us the option to silver our ammunition, we are better off getting our weapons silvered instead. (If we knew how to make tech boxes in lists, we would do so here.)
• Consumables: potions of healing, caltrops, ball bearings, the works.
• Magic weapons as we head into higher levels to keep at least our own damage relevant against creatures with resistance or immunity to non-magical attacks. A magic hand crossbow is a higher priority than a magic heavy crossbow.
• A warhorse/riding horse, to both carry our cargo and serve us as a mount in battle.

Level 1 Strategy

Assuming you can sell starting equipment for half of the base cost, you should sell your magnifying glass, shortswords, longbow, quiver and arrows for a total of 86 gp, or 96 gp if you add the starting gold from your background. That’s enough to buy a hand crossbow, a bullseye lantern and a good amount of ammunition. Keeping the longbow in reserve just for its extreme range is a possibility, but only if you can still get a hand crossbow somehow. If you do sell your longbow, you should try to acquire another one with arrows in the future.

You don’t have any concentration spells to worry about yet, so throwing Favored Foe at anything likely to not die instantly is a good strategy. Stay near the back, use cover, shoot things, and stay out of trouble. This doesn’t really change significantly for a while.

Level 2: Ranger

Spellcasting Focus (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – We do not expect to be using this at all, but it’s literally free, so we might as well take it.
Additional Ranger Spells (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – This feature expands the Ranger spell list for us. While we aren’t planning on taking any of these spells, it will allow us to cast them off of spell scrolls when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, so it’s also strictly an upgrade.
Fighting Style – Archery. This gives us a significant to-hit bonus, which will be even more impactful once we get the Sharpshooter feat later.
Spellcasting – Being a half caster elevates Ranger above the oft-quoted “Fighter with a bow.” Selecting spells known is often tricky with spontaneous casters, but the standouts on the Ranger list make it easy for us.

Absorb elements – We likely won’t be using this much at low levels, but it will only become more valuable throughout your adventuring career. Elemental damage tends to come in single, large chunks, and the ability to halve it will significantly improve your survivability. While elemental damage is lethal at this level if you come across it without absorb elements, you might expect to not see any of it. If so, take fog cloud instead, and pick up absorb elements when we suggest you pick up fog cloud at level 3.
Goodberry – A spell that conjures 10 berries that restore 1 hit point each and last 24 hours; the ideal way of turning leftover spell slots into healing for the next adventuring day. Goodberries are premium out of combat healing. We’ll be picking up a level in the Life Domain Cleric down the line, allowing us access to the “Lifeberry,” which makes our healing singularly efficient. A single berry also “provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day,” which is unfortunate if your DM wanted to make food procurement or starvation serious considerations in their campaign.

Level 2 Strategy

No hunter’s mark? We don’t need it! Because we use Crossbow Expert, we have a much more consistent source of bonus action damage. Because we have to use a bonus action to move hunter’s mark every time we switch targets, it’s just not worth it for us to concentrate on; the math doesn’t work out in hunter’s mark’s favor unless you have an implausibly long combat against a single enemy. Use your spells to enhance the survivability of your character and the rest of your party instead. Otherwise, keep shooting.

Whenever you have downtime, scribe scrolls of absorb elements and goodberry.

Level 3: Ranger

Ranger Archetype – Gloom Stalker. We take the uncontested best Ranger subclass, which greatly boosts our damage, especially in the first (and most important) round of combat, while giving us powerful defensive boons.
Gloom Stalker Magic (Gloom Stalker Feature) – You learn additional Ranger spells based on your level. As we gain a level in Ranger, we can immediately swap out disguise self and take longstrider instead. Don’t worry if you’re not allowed to swap out spells learned through your subclass in your game; disguise self has decent utility outside of combat, and longstrider isn’t at all crucial to the build (and a small spoiler: we’ll keep rope trick at level 5).
Dread Ambusher (Gloom Stalker feature) – This ability is key to becoming a burst damage machine. During the first turn of a combat, your walking speed is increased by 10 feet, and you get to make an additional weapon attack with a d8 extra damage when taking the Attack action. Additionally, you gain a bonus to initiative equal to your Wisdom modifier, which will help you beat enemies to the punch–often killing them before they get to take a turn. 
Umbral Sight (Gloom Stalker feature) – This is a fantastic ability that increases your damage per round. While you would already be unseen to creatures without Darkvision in the dark, this makes you invisible to creatures that would otherwise only see you using their Darkvision. This often allows us to get advantage due to being unseen by our opponents while still able to see them, increasing our damage–frequently by up to 50%.
This helps not only offensively, but also defensively, as abilities that require sight won’t be able to harm you at all, and attacks against you will have disadvantage.
Because we already had Darkvision through our race, its range is increased by 30 feet (to 90 feet total), which can often make a huge difference. For example, in a dark area against enemies that have Blindsight 60 feet, this allows us to be unseen by those creatures when between 60-90 feet away, despite their Blindsight. Unfortunately, at this level we won’t be able to take full advantage of this, since our hand crossbow’s normal range is 30 feet. We will fix this next level by taking Sharpshooter. 
Primal Awareness (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – Gain some more spells that you can cast for free once per day. This replaces yet another low-impact feature from the base Ranger class, Primeval Awareness. The rules on this feature are unfortunately somewhat unclear, so due to table variance, we won’t comment much on it beyond getting to cast these spells at least a few times.

Spell Changes: +longstrider ^GSM, +fog cloud, +speak with animals ^PA.

Longstrider – Longstrider is a useful buff that grants additional movement, and is cheap to boot, costing only a 1st level slot and no concentration. Use this to assist allies in kiting away from melee enemies, or to assist your friend who insists on playing melee to move closer into the enemies, and towards their untimely demise. 
Fog cloud – This is a very convenient spell for equalizing bad situations. Heavy obscurement turns attack rolls into flat rolls thanks to advantage and disadvantage canceling out (as long as Blindsight and Tremorsense aren’t involved) and hinders special enemies and casters, since many dangerous spells and abilities require sight. Keep in mind that creatures that don’t take the Hide action to conceal their noises will still have their location known, which means that you can still attack your enemies and they can still attack you, since everyone’s location is known. This spell is especially useful for fighting 3d6 wolves and, unsurprisingly, beholders. Pack Tactics made a great video about fog cloud that you can view here.
Speak with animals – It does what it says on the tin. You might be able to bribe beasts (rations are very cheap to us but very precious to them!) into not attacking you or learn info you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Bards and Druids can learn this spell, and ritual cast it to boot. Spell slots aren’t cheap, but we get it for free, and this spell can be situationally pretty useful.

Level 3 Strategy

Make sure to use darkness to your advantage to remain unseen. In order to help you achieve that more consistently, travel at night and don’t hesitate to kite monsters to previously darkened areas of a dungeon. If you can arrange to destroy or disable light sources (without giving up too much party output or defense), this can improve your damage by giving you the unseen attacker benefits. Dread Ambusher will give you great round 1 damage for the rest of your adventuring career, so make sure to get the most out of your round 1 potential by killing priority targets first—keep this especially in mind when you consider casting fog cloud, yes the spell is great at blocking sight of certain threatening creatures, but never forget about the tactic of just straight up killing them. 

At this level you should start carrying a heavy crossbow to use during the first round of every encounter for a small amount of extra damage. When you use the Attack action on the first round, make one attack with the heavy crossbow then drop it (without using any part of your action economy), draw the hand crossbow with your item interaction and attack with it twice, using Dread Ambusher and the bonus action attack from Crossbow Expert. Right now, the weapon switching is only possible on your first turn, as you need to make at least one attack with the hand crossbow during your Attack action if you want to use your bonus action attack. Even at higher levels, we only recommend switching weapons on your first turn, as doing it more than that quickly becomes impractical.

Another thing to keep in mind for the future is that access to magic weapons can change the value of weapon switching. If your DM gives you the choice between a magic hand crossbow and a magic heavy crossbow, you should definitely choose the former. If you have a magic hand crossbow with a bonus to attack and damage rolls (e.g. a +1 hand crossbow) but your heavy crossbow is still non-magical, you are usually better off just using the hand crossbow for all of your attack rolls. However, if your magic hand crossbow lacks those bonuses (e.g. a hand crossbow of warning), weapon switching is still correct unless you are fighting a monster with resistance or immunity to non-magical piercing damage.

Note that the rules around dropping items are unclear and our rules interpretation here relies on commonly accepted developer statements that do not constitute Rules as Written; furthermore, some groups might find the mental image of frequent weapon dropping jarring. If for whatever reason your group is opposed to this tactic, just don’t do it; it’s a minute optimization at best and pales in comparison to the total power of this build. It’s not worth starting an argument at the table.

Start to scribe scrolls of longstrider and fog cloud as well.

Level 4: Ranger

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Sharpshooter. Taking this improves our effective range significantly, as we no longer suffer disadvantage between 30 and 120 feet (meaning we’re better at outranging enemies’ senses as well as their overall threat range now). For most ACs that we will see, taking the penalty to hit is worth it to use the -5/+10 portion of this feat. The only common exceptions are enemies that would die to a non-Sharpshooter attack (which tends to be unreliable to gauge unless you know their exact current HP) or very high AC targets. We also get to ignore ½ and ¾ cover, which can be a huge benefit, taking away 2 to 5 AC from enemies we want to target.

Level 4 Strategy

Sharpshooter at this level compounds our already good ability to deal significant amounts of damage to a priority target round 1, so the strategy itself doesn’t change, it just becomes more effective—and usually deters us from casting a spell round one. Losing the long range penalty of our hand crossbow now means we can effectively make use of our increased darkvision range against creatures whose Darkvision (or Blindsight) only extends out to 60 feet. 

At this level, you should use the power attack (-5 to hit, +10 damage) feature of Sharpshooter the vast majority of the time. We have made a heuristic for breakpoints to keep in mind when using Sharpshooter at your table. This heuristic assumes a baseline AC for which you want to use your power attack (and of course you will want to use power attack against lower ACs than that as well), and then lists a variety of circumstances that either increase or decrease this threshold. For example, at this level a straight roll has a threshold AC of 19 (12+7). If we have advantage this becomes 20 (12+7+1), and if we have disadvantage it becomes 14 (12+7-5). If it is a Dread Ambusher attack you can decrease the appropriate thresholds by one for straight rolls (to 12+7-1=18) and rolls with advantage (to 12+7+1-1=19), for disadvantage you need to decrease the appropriate threshold by four (to 12+7-5-4=10). If a shot is made with a heavy crossbow instead, decrease the threshold by one.

If our heuristic is not accurate enough for you, you can use an average damage per round calculator like Cephalon’s. If you select SS/GWM, there is an option under “Feats & Special” called “Use SS/GWM only when optimal” which will show you when and when you shouldn’t use your power attack.

Level 5: Ranger

Extra Attack – We do more damage. Great. Our main job! This also allows us to more effectively break grapples against large and smaller creatures by shoving them away from us using the Athletics skill, which only costs one attack rather than an entire action, often leaving us in a position where we can get two more crossbow attacks after breaking the grapple. However, do carefully assess the situation and really consider if breaking the grapple is worth it when you can just damage or kill your opponent. Extra Attack also gives us an improved chance of success if we really need to grapple a monster ourselves (for example, to ground a dragon so our melee party members can do anything in the fight)—the second attempt we get from this feature significantly increases our odds.

Spell Changes: +beast sense ^PA, +pass without trace, +rope trick ^GSM.

Beast sense ^PA – A cute spell that might allow us to scout things. Your Wizard’s familiar will do a better job, though.
Pass without trace – By far the most important spell for this build. Going by the Rules as Written Stealth and Surprise rules, pass without trace is our premier 2nd level spell and one of the best spells in the game overall. This is and will stay our bread and butter for the rest of our career. The long duration allows us to cast this spell way before entering combat, and the +10 bonus will allow you and allies—even ones with poor Stealth modifiers and with disadvantage on Stealth from armor—to beat most monsters’ passive Perception consistently, often even if they roll a natural 1 on the check. In other words, this allows you to surprise almost every encounter.
Rope trick ^GSM – Create an extradimensional refuge as an action. The best 2nd level defensive spell in the game. Not as good for us as it is for a Wizard concentrating on web or hypnotic pattern, but it’s still very useful, especially because allies can also join you in the refuge when necessary.

Level 5 Strategy

It is important to properly understand how to make best use of pass without trace, as it will come up again and again. You should cast it as soon as you head into dangerous territory (e.g. walk up to the dungeon). Treat every door you open, every corner you go around like there might be an encounter behind the obstruction. You do not need to know of a threat ahead of time to surprise it; all you must do is move at a slow pace and do so stealthily. You must do this as much as possible. Do not interact with inanimate elements of the dungeon unless absolutely necessary until the area is cleared—it doesn’t matter what this contraption we found in the dungeon room does, we’re opening this door and surprising any monsters that might be behind it. Kill the entire dungeon area first until you have to rest or pass without trace ends; backtrack later to explore the dungeon and loot it. If something can be done stealthily, you do it stealthily.

If you traverse open fields, and thus are unable to easily surprise enemies, you can instead pull out your longbow and attack from its maximum range. If the enemy runs towards you, run backwards; if the enemy runs away from you, follow them! This tactic allows you to kill most monsters in the game before they get to attack you. Even if they have their own longbows, they’re stuck dealing with your cover and making rolls at disadvantage, while you get to ignore cover and shoot straight rolls while dealing much higher damage output with Sharpshooter.

The increase in our proficiency bonus means the thresholds for power attack use are all increased by one compared to last level. It also means we get a third daily use of Favored Foe, which may end up unused anyway as we need our concentration to leave pass without trace up between encounters. Use Favored Foe whenever you are not concentrating, or if you are nearly certain the lost spell slot from recasting it after combat won’t matter. 

Add pass without trace to the list of spells you want to make scrolls of.

*Lifeberry is explained below in the Disciple of Life (Life Domain feature) blurb in our first Cleric level.

Level 6: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 1)

Additional Cleric Spells (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature)– This feature expands the Cleric spell list for us. While we aren’t planning on taking any of these spells, it will allow us to cast them off of spell scrolls when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, so we won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Divine Domain – Life Domain. We are picking this up for Disciple of Life. Another great option would be the Peace Domain Cleric, which is especially useful in an optimized party due to its Emboldening Bond feature.
Bonus Proficiency (Life Domain feature) – Heavy armor. We won’t be using this unless our party is permanently mounted, causing the speed penalty to not matter at all.
Disciple of Life (Life Domain feature) – This gives us access to the fabled Lifeberry. This combination is named after a portmanteau of the Cleric’s Life Domain and the spell goodberry; together, they interact to create an enormous reservoir of out of combat healing for you and your party. This feature allows us to add an additional 2 + the level of the spell of healing on healing spells you use, which makes upcasting goodberry at the end of the day an even more powerful ability. Notably, every single one of your goodberries benefits from the feature’s healing bonus, multiplying the spell’s healing potential by a factor of at least 4. This interaction is Rules as Written (though not easy to parse) and has been clarified to be the intended meaning in the Sage Advice Compendium.
Spellcasting – Holy! Even more spells.

Bless ^D – One of the best 1st level spells in the game. If you like Kobolds, as you should, a particularly bright one spoke about bless here. This likely won’t be a higher priority than pass without trace. On occasion, however, you will want to use this despite already concentrating on pass without trace, since you need the output for this combat. Keep your resource management in mind; balance using your currently limited spell slots for more power in combat with maintaining pass without trace through the whole day.  Keep in mind that for now, using this on your first turn makes you lose out on your Dread Ambusher attack.
Cure wounds ^D – Healing word in combat, goodberry on conscious allies out of combat. The only use of this spell is to get a party member up from 0 HP directly after combat (or if somehow knocked out outside combat) in games where feeding a goodberry to another creature is not allowed.
Detect magic – A handy ritual that every party can make use of.
Healing word – Use only in case of emergency, when you need to pick someone back up from 0 hit points. Rarely do you want to use this preemptively, and never to “top people off”; it’s just not an efficient use of your spell slots. Goodberry does a much better job at that.
Sanctuary – This bonus action casting time spell forces any enemy that tries to target the recipient with an attack or harmful spell to make a Wisdom save or redirect or lose the attack or spell. We can put this on an ally who is concentrating on a big spell, or stifle enemy damage by putting it on someone who will dodge in a hallway to block enemies from approaching closer.  
Guidance – One of the most versatile and useful cantrips in the game. Concentrate on it whenever you’re not concentrating on anything else, as the bonus also applies to initiative. (Don’t forego casting pass without trace to concentrate on guidance, though!)
Light – Can be used to create… light. The main thing here is that we can put it on our ammunition, shoot a distant enemy with it, and kill them in a similar way to using a bullseye lantern, where we can see the enemy, but they can’t see us.
Mending – Repairing objects or some specific constructs is a bit of neat utility. Artillerist Artificers and the like will thank us. This also opens up some thrifting opportunities.

Level 6 Strategy

Lifeberries fundamentally change the optimal resource management of a group. To leverage them to their maximum potential, we need to get as many of them as we reasonably can. For this purpose, it’s very important to spend all your remaining spell slots at the end of a day to create more of them, allowing you to start your next day at full resources and with a bunch of Lifeberries ready to go. Ideally, you cast the spell right before the end of your long rest, to maximize how long they last into the next day and so you have spell slots at the ready should you be ambushed during your rest. Doing this means we now start our day with abundant healing available: if we spend all our slots (for example, because we had downtime or spent the previous day traveling), we have 260 hit points of healing available to us at this level, easily more than the healing provided by the whole party’s hit dice put together.

Now that we have set up this immensely powerful tool, we should understand how it changes our strategy and that of our party: We now have more hit points over the course of a day than we previously had, this means expending other resources to defend our hit points has become less efficient. As such, we must now be more willing to hold back on resources (e.g. spell slots, magic item charges, limited use class abilities) than at previous levels, and we must be more willing to take some extra damage in return—since we can just heal it right off after the encounter using Lifeberries. We still must expend resources to keep the party above 0 hit points—Lifeberries, unfortunately, don’t bring back the dead. There are still plenty of situations where expending resources will be well worth it to conserve hit points, such as casting fog cloud to prevent beholders from hitting the party with Disintegration Rays or casting rope trick to allow the party to avoid a salvo of incoming fireball spells. The exact balance of expending Lifeberries versus expending other resources is out of scope for this strategy section and changes depending on how many Lifeberries you were able to create during the previous day; review how many Lifeberries and spell slots you have remaining at the end of your adventuring days, and adapt your strategy for future days. If you had Lifeberries but no spell slots, be more conservative with spell slots; if you had spell slots but no Lifeberries and ran out of hit points, be more proactive with your spell slots. However, a decent heuristic to play by is: if you have a good amount of Lifeberries left in the tank, do not expend resources to close out fights—usually this happens in round 3 and later—and instead take the additional chip damage and close out the encounter with your party’s at will damage. (Said at-will damage is likely at least decent, given your ranged combat abilities.)

It is very important to understand that this strategy change applies to your entire party, not just you. Do your best to communicate this and make sure the other players understand that they can go far longer into a day than they could before if they just pace their resources right.

Level 7: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 1)

Fighting Style Options (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – This feature expands the list of fighting style options. We only situationally want to make use of it, mostly eyeing Superior Technique.
Fighting Style – Defense. A +1 AC bonus is welcome for a character that cannot wield a shield while being effective. We now have 18 AC while wearing half plate, bringing us closer to our sturdy caster friends.

Second Wind – Use this whenever you begin a short rest while injured. You can also short rest multiple times in a row to heal more if time permits. Though this does allow you to heal in combat, it’s a small amount of healing, and your bonus actions are generally spent shooting with Crossbow Expert.

Level 8: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 2)

Action Surge – Yet another option that increases our nova damage, which will help us delete an important enemy before they can take a turn. Note that the bonus attack from Dread Ambusher isn’t limited to once per turn, so it will also apply to the second Attack action we use with this feature, which even further incentivizes us to use Action Surge in round one of combat rather than later.

Level 8 Strategy

With Action Surge we are now able to attack 7 times in our nova round, 5 of those with a heavy crossbow. This doesn’t have a very large effect on our damage per round, when averaged over an entire adventuring day, but it significantly improves our round one damage, increasing it by around 80% in the most important fights. Given the value of early nova in important fights, this is a sizable bonus to our contribution. This nova capability becomes doubly important thanks to Lifeberry healing, since we lose so few resources in the encounters where we don’t need Action Surge nova.

One other option given to us by Action Surge is the ability to cast a spell on round one while still making 4 attack rolls. This is not something we will do against most opponents, but against very high AC targets (e.g. armored casters with shield) we can actually do more damage with bless and 4 attacks than we do with 7 attacks when we count the extra damage dealt by our party members. If we use bless on ourselves and two allies doing damage close to that of eldritch blast with the Agonizing Blast invocation, this strategy leads to more damage than just attacking if the enemy has a higher AC than your Sharpshooter power attack threshold minus two. Especially against targets with high AC, fights might be long, making the effects of bless over multiple rounds shine, and that is not even accounting for the boost to saving throws! However, we still don’t have a lot of spell slots for pass without trace, so only use this if you truly need the added power in this fight more than the resource efficiency in combats later in the day.

Level 9: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3)

Martial Archetype – Battle Master. We pick Battle Master for its excellent increase to our single target nova damage through Combat Superiority, especially Precision Attack.
Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Trip Attack. We have 4 superiority dice (d8’s), which we regain on a short or long rest. 
Menacing Attack – Use this against enemies that lack effective ranged options. Frightened enemies cannot willingly move closer to the source of their fear, so if they don’t have ranged options, they can’t do anything useful on their turn. (Assuming your party members have the common sense not to walk up to them, that is—try to explicitly explain why that might not be in their best interest.)
Precision Attack – This is the nova option to one-shot priority targets on round one of combat; it’s not efficient to use against less important targets.
Trip Attack – Knock young dragons out of the sky. Also note that in situations when you lack advantage and are within walking distance, this is the most damage efficient maneuver option in your arsenal. If you hit someone with the first attack on your turn, you can trip them, and if that is successful, you can walk up to 5 feet range and unload, possibly with Action Surge and Dread Ambusher, and thanks to Crossbow Expert all of that will be at advantage. This also generates advantage for melee attacking allies that will take a turn before the enemy does.
Student of War (Battle Master feature) – Cobbler’s tools. While not the flashiest tool in the game, the ability to increase travel speed in the exploration phase can very easily come in handy and hiding things can help you carry contraband (or your component pouch) into cities.

Level 9 Strategy

Using Precision Attack to try to convert a miss of a power attack by a small amount into a hit is, in general, one of the most efficient ways to use Superiority Dice for damage. When using Superiority Dice to maximize nova damage (as opposed to maximizing DPR) we don’t have the luxury of only using them when we miss by a small amount, as we won’t get enough of those on attack rolls that actually matter.

Using Menacing Attack or Trip Attack just for damage on a critical hit and sometimes even on a normal hit can be more efficient than using Precision Attack on relatively high-margin misses—even when ignoring the secondary effects of those maneuvers. When making attacks with a hand crossbow and Sharpshooter, for instance, Menacing Attack on critical hits is more efficient than Precision Attack on misses by 5 or more, and even on normal hits, it is more efficient than Precision Attack on misses by 7 or 8. The exact numbers change depending on the damage of the attack, but the general trend continues.

When we don’t have advantage and we can safely move next to our target after it’s knocked prone, using Trip Attack on a hit with our first attack is an extremely efficient way to use our Superiority Dice. On our full nova rounds, with Action Surge, we make enough attack rolls that trying again if the enemy succeeds on the saving throw the first time is also justified. We also have the option to make attack rolls without the power attack feature from Sharpshooter to increase our chance to hit the enemy with Trip Attack early in our turn. Use this tactic on Action Surge turns when you lack advantage and against monsters with an AC beyond your power attack threshold AC without using Precision Attack. 

Now that both our proficiency bonus has gone up, and we have gained Precision Attack, it is time to revisit the heuristic. If not taking resource expenditure into account (e.g. in all-out nova turns), you can take Precision Attack into account by looking at its average increase (+4.5) and adding that to the threshold—simply cut off any number after the decimal point at the end of the calculation. 

Furthermore, enjoy your extra use of Favored Foe and keep using it whenever you can without dropping concentration on something! It’s not a ton of damage, but every bit helps.

Level 10: Warlock (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 1)

Additional Warlock Spells (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – These once again expand our options for spell scroll use.
Otherworldly Patron – The Hexblade. We now pick up our first level of Warlock in order to boost our defenses and spellcasting. The Hexblade is a strong choice that provides a selection of useful spells, including shield. We will also make great use out of Hexblade’s Curse.
Expanded Spell List (Hexblade feature) – Shield is great. Hopefully we’ve driven that point home by now. 
Hex Warrior (Hexblade feature) – We get to select a one-handed weapon and use our Charisma modifier in place of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls. We won’t be using this.
Hexblade’s Curse (Hexblade feature) – Attacking 6 times with the bonus damage from Hexblade’s Curse is enough to compensate for the loss of our bonus action attack, so this will aid us in having an even bigger nova. The downside is that we need to be within 30 feet of our target to curse them—a task made substantially easier by using a mount.
Pact Magic – Warlock’s spell slot progression is unique and recharges on a short rest. Ideally, your party should be amenable to short resting at least once, preferably twice on an adventuring day as it stands right now. Later, when your pact slots scale to level 2, you should be looking to always explore and engage combat with pass without trace up, given the enormous benefits it gives your party. This means you might start taking even more short rests on longer adventuring days to make sure you always have the spell slots to have the spell up and running permanently so you and your party can reap its enormous benefits. Always use your Pact Magic spell slots first, even to cast your non-Warlock spells, when able.

Expeditious retreat – This spell might not be immediately useful, but it’s a great spell to scribe scrolls of, if you are capable of doing so. This spell can help you kite enemies more easily in combat, or speed up your short distance travel if you need to get somewhere in a hurry. Sometimes, the ability to outspeed foes can simplify encounters significantly with minimal resource expenditure.
Shield – As you will see across the Flagship Build series, shield is a must-have spell for any build and in contention to be called the best spell in 5E. That we delay picking it up for this long is a testament to the power of nova damage. +5 AC for a whole round is huge, and is often the difference between taking the full brunt of a monster’s attacks and going unscathed, taking no damage at all. 
Mage hand – This spell on its own is a good utility spell. Open doors, check for mimics, and activate/investigate traps. That being said, this late in the game you can probably pick whatever cantrip you want.
Minor illusion – Create a minor visual or auditory illusion. Very versatile utility cantrip.

Level 10 Strategy

With the addition of pact slots, our Lifeberry strategy gets an immense upgrade: we can now generate them on a short rest. We already know why Lifeberries are good, we just get more of them now, further shifting our resource expenditure tendencies towards holding spell slots and taking even more chip damage. Make sure to cast goodberry every time you start a short rest—you cannot cast it at the end, as that would interrupt your short rest.

Furthermore, make use of goodberry while taking multiple consecutive short rests: if you have time with nothing to do (for example during a day of downtime), cast goodberry with your pact slots and immediately start your next short rest. On a day where you have nothing else to do, this will grant you 16 extra castings of the spell (8 hours to sleep and long rest leave 16 hours for short resting), healing a total of 640 HP the next day. This number will double to 1280 HP when you gain your second level in Warlock, and it will increase by another 25% when you reach your third level in Warlock, to 1600 HP. While you won’t be able to get that many short rests every day—for example, because you had to travel or adventure the last day—this should show you the potential healing you can provide if you aggressively short rest, and especially if you manage to convince your party to delay exploring a location by a day so you can set up a goodberry life support system.

Note that this will cause your Lifeberries to fade at an hourly rate during the next day, which will lead to situations where the conserving of non-Lifeberry resources in favor of taking chip damage becomes correct when it wouldn’t have been during previous levels, as the Lifeberries themselves would otherwise expire without going used—which would mean you wasted resources.

A quick intermission to your strategy: Keeping track of when these Lifeberries fade can be a hassle. If you are struggling with this, we would recommend you to make a spreadsheet or something similar where you note down when you cast your spells. We have made an example sheet here. Here you can fill in the level of the spell slot you expend for your different castings of goodberry, the number of goodberries you have remaining, and at what point you cast the spell. Additionally, you can either enable or disable Life Domain Cleric’s Disciple of Life, and how much time has passed since your first casting of goodberry that you are tracking. Everything else is done automatically for you, allowing you to see how many hit points you can heal and how many berries still retain their potency.

The addition of Hexblade’s Curse changes our full nova routine. At previous levels, we made seven attacks with the combination of Action Surge, Dread Ambusher and the bonus action attack from Crossbow Expert, switching weapons in the middle of our turn to get the extra damage from heavy crossbow shots while still qualifying for our bonus action attack. Now we start with Hexblade’s Curse and only make six attacks, all of them with a heavy crossbow. We wait to switch weapons on round two, when we need to. We only do this once per short rest, keeping the same strategy as before in our other fights. To see what happens to the AC threshold for your power attacks, check the heuristic—usually Hexblade’s Curse being active on the target reduces your threshold by 1. You can now start to scribe scrolls of shield and expeditious retreat, as the former is a spell we will use very often and the latter is something we will get rid of in a few levels.

Level 11: Warlock (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 2)

Eldritch Invocations – Devil’s Sight, Eldritch Mind.
Devil’s Sight – We get to outrange enemies’ way of perceiving us even more often, and our quality of vision is improved, removing the annoying disadvantage on Perception checks for areas that are dim to us (as everything is brightly lit)!
Eldritch Mind – This is War Caster for the cool kids. We don’t get the opportunity attack or spell component parts of War Caster, but we do get advantage on any saving throw to maintain concentration, unlike War Caster which only works when the saving throw is caused by taking damage. We’re getting most of the power of a feat for a fraction of a level up–an excellent deal.

Spell Changes: +unseen servant.

Unseen servant – Create a mindless, shapeless force which acts at your command within 60 feet of you for an hour. This can solve a lot of problems and prevent a lot of headaches. Even though it is a ritual spell, and thus better cast by ritual casters, like a Bard or a Wizard, we still take it as there is not much of an opportunity cost with the Warlock’s quite barren 1st level spell list.

Level 12: Warlock (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 3)

Pact Boon – Pact of the Blade. We’re picking up this pact because it gives us access to a couple of good invocations that help us increase our nova damage. This weapon counts as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks and damage, so no need to worry about finding yet another magic weapon. There’s a common misconception that you’d need to summon this weapon as an action at the start of combat: this is not the case, you can summon it well ahead of time and carry it on your person like any other weapon.
Eldritch Invocations – Devil’s Sight, Eldritch Mind, Improved Pact Weapon.
Improved Pact Weapon – This invocation lets us pick a heavy crossbow as our pact weapon. It will also turn our pact weapon into a magical +1 weapon, aiding us in hitting our attacks and increasing our damage. Note that having a ranged pact weapon becomes crucial when we take Eldritch Smite with our 5th Warlock level since that feature requires you to hit with your pact weapon. If you have a magic ranged weapon you are using at this point in the game, you can use Pact of the Blade to make it your pact weapon, without requiring this invocation—in this case, do not pick this invocation, keep Devil’s Sight instead.

Spell Changes: +invisibility, +misty step, –expeditious retreat.

Invisibility – This spell has nice utility, and allows us or our party’s familiars to scout while unseen and we can simply regain the slot by short resting before entering the scouted site.
Misty step – This is your spell to escape situations you otherwise cannot handle. Primarily this is used to get out of wall of force spells, in rarer occasions you might use it to traverse challenging terrain, reposition, or move away from an enemy; but always consider your alternative options: Can you kill an enemy grappling you or shove them away? Do you have to teleport and run away from this monster or can you take their attacks and make them either miss with a shield spell or simply take the chip damage to later regain the hit points from lifeberries? Misty step is a good spell, but don’t invest your slot unless you genuinely have to. 

Level 12 Strategy

While the ability to take a heavy crossbow as a pact weapon is an improvement to our nova round, the real reason for the 3rd Warlock level is that we now are equipped with 2nd level pact slots, which makes maintaining pass without trace up during the whole day way easier. Note that since weapons from Pact of the Blade can be dismissed with no action required, you can now execute the weapon swapping strategy described at level 3 regardless of rulings regarding the dropping of objects.

As we are soon gaining Cunning Action, expeditious retreat’s future is no longer looking bright. We are swapping it out in advance to not waste a spell known in our list for 2 out of the next 3 levels.

We improved one of our weapons! You should know what this means by now, but check back here if you forgot.

Level 13: Rogue (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 3/Rogue 1)

Skills – Investigation. This is an all around useful skill that will especially help us in detecting traps and glyph of warding spells. Note that this is used exactly like passive Perception as long as you are on the lookout for traps—which you should be at all times. Communicate this to your DM ahead of time so you don’t get into arguments after you’ve already stepped on a bear trap.

Expertise – Stealth, Athletics. Both of these simply make us better at what we were already doing. Expertise in Stealth makes our scouting abilities somewhat more reliable—though it is strongly encouraged that a find familiar spell is put in danger to scout, rather than “taking one for the team.” The improvement in Athletics significantly upgrades our grapple and shove success chances for those niche situations where it does come up. Note that Investigation is a valid alternative here if you need to act as a trap radar for your party—just make sure that Expertise actually puts you at the highest modifier for that skill in the party because you only need one character to spot a trap and the second best character might as well be terrible at the detection skill. Remember to take into account the boost to passive Investigation against traps you gain at this level via thieves’ tools proficiency.

Tools – Thieves’ tools. This is obviously somewhat useful in dealing with locks and traps, though both of those challenges were likely circumventable already by just a little bit of critical thinking involving ten foot poles, crowbars, adamantine mauls, or fire bolt spells. The big gain here is that this proficiency will give you advantage on Investigation and Perception checks against traps, resulting in a +5 bonus to each skill’s respective passive score, as described in this article.
Sneak Attack – Once per turn when we hit with an attack with a finesse or ranged weapon, we can deal an extra 1d6 damage whenever there’s an ally within 5 feet of the target or we have advantage, scaling based on Rogue level. Another addition to our damage. 
Thieves’ Cant – Luckily, we can. This is a language. It can be spoken to people. People can speak it to you. It’ll be as useful or useless as you and your DM make it.

Level 13 Strategy

Sneak Attack only applies once per turn, but will be doubled on a critical hit, meaning that holding off on activating the extra damage on a normal hit can be correct in some situations to wait for a crit later on in the turn that cashes in on the extra dice. A generally good strategy for Sneak Attack application goes as follows: 

• If you have straight rolls, hold off on using Sneak Attack if you hit but don’t crit until you have only three attacks left.
• If you have advantage, hold off on using Sneak Attack if you hit but don’t crit until you have only two attacks left.

Our proficiency went up by one AND we got Sneak Attack, cool! Check the heuristic to see what this means for your Sharpshooter AC thresholds.

Level 14: Rogue (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 3/Rogue 2)

This level is overall quite weak, but it’s worth it since it sets up for the following level.

Cunning Action – We can use a bonus action on our turn to Dash, Disengage, or Hide. Dash improves upon what expeditious retreat did for us previously. The hide action in combination with pass without trace’s Stealth bonus allows us to consistently hide our location when we have to make it harder to be targeted by dangerous foes.

Level 15: Rogue (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 3/Rogue 3)

Sneak Attack – Sneak Attack scales to 2d6, which is okay given the other feature we get at this level.
Roguish Archetype – Assassin. Many builds that utilize Assassin do so for the “guaranteed” critical hits,  but usually don’t have a way to actually gain surprise consistently, severely neutering the impact of this feature. This build still likes that feature—and actually has a significant chance of utilizing it thanks to pass without trace—but the primary utility of Assassin is its advantage generation when you win initiative against your target in round one. This makes us way more resistant to unfavorable lighting conditions, allowing us to blow up targets more effectively at the start of combat. Thanks Lyric for the inspiration.
Assassinate (Assassin feature) – In a build that’s this good at getting surprise, auto-crits help your nova damage quite a bit, especially since they apply to Sneak Attack and the upcoming add-on of Eldritch Smite. Note that—according to the Rules as Intended—you must win initiative against the surprised target you want to have guaranteed critical hits against. However, the reason this feature is taken is to insure us against adverse lighting conditions, allowing us to more reliably gain advantage against the priority targets we need to kill quickly without always having to rely on Umbral Stalker or Trip Attack. Check the heuristic to see what happens to our power attack AC threshold when we know we will crit.
Bonus Proficiencies (Assassin feature) – We gain proficiency with the disguise kit and the poisoner’s kit. The former is incredibly circumstantial and is unlikely to be useful in typical campaigns, but the latter can be used to harvest poison as explained in our Complete Guide to Tools.
Steady Aim (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – We can use a bonus action to grant ourselves advantage on our next attack, at the cost of giving up our movement. We can just use this bonus action to attack an additional time with Crossbow Expert and two attacks with a straight roll are better than one at advantage, so we’re never using this, but it’s free, so we take it anyway.

Level 16: Warlock (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 4/Rogue 3)

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Alert. These are very straightforward bonuses, not getting surprised and going earlier makes us better at killing the target that needs killing before they cast meteor swarm on the party. This especially synergizes with Assassinate, increasing the chance we gain advantage against a priority target if we don’t already have it from darkness, and making the “automatic” crits against surprised targets more reliable as well.

Spell Changes: +borrowed knowledge, +spider climb, +friends, –unseen servant.

Borrowed knowledge – We can get proficiency in a skill for an hour. Since we can quickly recharge pact slots, this can be useful during downtime.
Spider climb – If you have a wall or ceiling of the right height, which is pretty likely to come up, this one hour concentration spell ends up as a pretty nice defensive maneuver. We can even go prone between turns to give disadvantage to incoming ranged attacks and just to stand up during our turn to deliver the pain.
Friends – We can use it for identity tests, angering people, and most importantly: we’re running out of useful cantrips and friends is what we have to cope with.

Level 17: Warlock (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 5/Rogue 3)

Eldritch Invocations – Eldritch Mind, Eldritch Smite, Improved Pact Weapon.
Eldritch Smite – We can use a Pact Slot to deliver an extra 4d8 of force damage (8d8 against surprised targets because of the Assassinate feature, or if we simply crit on the attack), which we will mostly use during our first turn in order to elevate our nova potential to even greater heights. We can also knock Huge or smaller targets prone without offering a saving throw, which is useful for knocking down flying targets. Note that this requires you to hit with your pact weapon.

Spell Changes: +counterspell, +fly, –spider climb.

Counterspell – Using one of your two precious pact slots on a counterspell is rarely going to feel good, but eating an enemy’s fireball/web/slow/hypnotic pattern/etc. is absolutely going to feel worse. Don’t save your slots to make sure you can cast this on demand but consider using it when you know something nasty is coming your way. Keep in mind that our Charisma score is quite low, and you are therefore mediocre at counterspelling spells of a higher level than 3rd, as this requires a spellcasting ability check keying off of Charisma. Another thing to remember is that if the encounter doesn’t threaten death, you can likely heal off a fireball with Lifeberries. Lastly, consider that converting this spell slot into an Eldritch Smite instead has a high chance of preventing future action from that opponent. The most likely use for this spell is in “counterspell chains” where you counterspell an enemy’s third level counterspell to allow an ally’s spell to go through. Also note that third level (as opposed to a higher level) counterspell is especially prevalent in monsters with innate casting abilities. Another excellent use of this spell is to void a shield spell of the target we are in the process of blowing up.
Fly – This is a situational spell that does not require a high spellcasting ability modifier and is therefore well suited for our build. This spell allows melee allies to participate in three dimensional combats (such as against flying enemies), can be used to get around obstacles in dungeons and exploration, defeat melee-only enemies (which somehow remain common even at high levels) with ease by simply being outside of their reach while you kill them as your party waits in the previous dungeon room for you to finish the job, etc. Sometimes the speed increase from 30 to 60 is enough for melee allies to get to unleash multiple attacks rather than not being able to contribute in a round of combat. However, it is very possible that your action and an Eldritch Smite, along with the resources you save in not having to re-cast pass without trace after this fight, will contribute more to the fight than your melee ally getting involved, so make sure that their character is actually effective before you invest your resources into them. 

Should these situations already be covered by your party, hunger of hadar is a substitution to consider, as it often allows you to force a large number of melee-only monsters to use their actions to dash rather than attack–while the spell does have a save attached to it, its prime feature is the difficult terrain it creates, which works regardless of your spell save DC; just make sure to use this after attacking on your turn as to not ruin your likely advantage on attack rolls. Also note that the Devil’s Sight Eldritch Invocation cannot see through the blackness created by this spell.

Level 17 Strategy

Eldritch Smite allows us to have our nova reach even greater heights, but at the same time poses an interesting question about resource management. Preferably, you would want to use a Warlock pact slot on pass without trace, to buy surprise for your party using a short rest resource. However, that leaves you with only one Eldritch Smite to use for the short rest, which is also the only full nova opportunity you have in that time frame. This means using one pact slot on pass without trace and the other on Eldritch Smite for nova is very convenient, but there are other options you might prefer to do instead depending on the situation you encounter in your game. You might have to spend a pact slot on counterspell or fly, or you might expend an Eldritch Smite outside of your nova turn to knock a flying target such as an adult dragon prone without offering a save they could negate with Legendary Resistance.

Our proficiency went up by one, which changes our thresholds. You might notice that there is no mention of Eldritch Smite in our heuristic. This is because it is quite likely you hit at least once during your first turn of combat (where you should preferably be using this feature)—though feel free to forgo power attacking to make sure you hit the very last attack on your turn so you can proc Eldritch Smite if you really need to and missed everything else on your turn.

Level 18: Sorcerer (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 3/Warlock 5/Rogue 3/Sorcerer 1)

Additional Sorcerer Spells (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – We are once again expanding our options for spell scroll use.
Sorcerous Origin – Divine Soul. We are shoring up our lacking defenses through this dip, but also increase our nova potential simultaneously.
Favored by the Gods (Divine Soul feature) – While this feature is conventionally used almost exclusively to boost saving throws, this build marks an exception: feel free to use this on an attack in your nova rounds after you have already used Precision Attack on the same attack or ran out of Superiority Dice. 
Adding 2d4 means you have over an 80% chance of converting a failed save or missed attack into a successful one if you missed by 4, over a 60% chance if you missed by 5, but less than a 40% chance if you missed by 6, and less than a 20% chance if you missed by 7. Keep these numbers in your head when assessing whether it might be worth using this. If the stakes are high enough, it might be worth using even with somewhat poor odds of success, but the worse the odds the higher the stakes should be to justify spending this resource, which you can use once per short rest. Check the heuristic if you want to see what this does to AC thresholds if you know ahead of time that you’re willing to commit it to the attack.
Divine Magic (Divine Soul feature) – You learn one additional spell based on the affinity of the source of your divine power (this is not an alignment restriction). As we gain a level in Sorcerer, we can immediately swap out bless and take healing word instead. Note that we did not do this on the Flagship Hexclock build as Clockwork Magic has the same wording and it is ambiguous whether you “gain a Sorcerer level” during character creation, but here we are unambiguously gaining a Sorcerer level, which lets us unlearn a spell for another.

Spell Changes: +detect poison and disease, –healing word.

Detect poison and disease – There aren’t many first level Cleric spells left, but we are swapping out healing word for this, as we are more likely to want to keep that in our repertoire through Divine Soul Sorcerer than this. This spell is thus a flex pick, change it when you want to on a particular day. This helps us—as the name would suggest—find and identify poisons and diseases as a ritual, which might come up.
Feather fall – A situational spell, but one of the strongest situational spells in the game. We don’t have that many good options left, and this can be a lifesaver, or at least save the party quite a lot of hit points. 
Silvery barbs – This is a spell that is both potent and flexible. With this spell you primarily inflict a debuff on a target without an attached saving throw, and then if that wasn’t good enough for a first level spell, you simultaneously buff an ally as well. We will mostly be using this to make spells that are reliant on enemies failing their saving throw land more often. The advantage you grant to an ally is less important, but it’s nice regardless. This is a must pick for anyone that can get it this easily.
Control flames – Double the area of your bullseye lanterns, or dim or completely extinguish a torch from 60 feet away to make sure your Umbral Sight works in a fight. The component for this spell is only somatic, so you might not immediately alert enemies to your location.
Fire bolt – Fire bolt is an addition to our repertoire because unlike other cantrips, it can damage objects. Feel free to pick something else if you’re not planning on destroying doorways and other objects–though we strongly recommend keeping this option open unless it’s covered by someone else in the party already.
Mold earth – A handy cantrip that can be used to quickly create a wall and/or a trench, or simply a small area of cover if you are in terrain with loose dirt (whatever that means). If you are laying an ambush, you can use it to create a small area of difficult terrain (only two squares, but that can make a difference in the right situation).
Resistance – This is guidance, but for saving throws. Especially now, we might want to be prepared when handling strange artifacts out of combat.

Level 19: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 4/Warlock 5/Rogue 3/Sorcerer 1)

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Resilient (Con). Constitution saves are always plenty common and considerably unpleasant to fail, this feat gives us an increased chance to pass them. This also helps in making the concentration saves to keep pass without trace up and running, which in turn means we will be able to Eldritch Smite more often due to having more spell slots available, increasing our damage output.

Why Resilient (Con) over Resilient (Wis)? There are several reasons. First, the vast majority of our in-combat contribution is expected to occur prior to the most threatening enemy getting to act and thus before we are targeted by a debilitating Wisdom save effect; if we are targeted after our nova turn and fail the save, only a small part of our contribution to the current encounter will be lost. Second, we are quite adept at avoiding being seen, a key criterion for many debilitating effects: Umbral Sight against non-Truesight creatures, and Cunning Action to Dash out of range or Hide with our huge Stealth bonus. Wisdom saves are indeed scary, which is why we try to kill the thing that forces us to make Wisdom saves on round 1.

If the reasons mentioned above, and the potential use of Favored by the Gods is not enough for you, you can opt to take Resilient (Wis) instead here, which is a fine option. As always, you know your table better than we do, and you shouldn’t be afraid to make changes to the build based on your evaluation of your situation.

Martial Versatility (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – Ambush, Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Trip Attack. If we still have Trip Attack, it is starting to become less useful as we now have a very consistent way to generate advantage due to our Assassin levels.
Ambush – This increases our initiative roll, allowing us to act before enemies. This is of critical importance to utilize Assassinate. Use this in nova situations where you were also planning on using Precision Attack.

Level 20: Rogue (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 4/Warlock 5/Rogue 4/Sorcerer 1)

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Lucky. A classic feat for tacking on to the end of a build. This is mostly useful for saving throws, but it is also great for rerolling low initiative rolls, significantly increasing our chance to get Assassinate advantage and critical hits. We might also use this on an important counterspell roll. In rare cases we might use this to reroll attack rolls on our nova turns. Lastly, if we really need to hit something when we do not have advantage, we can close our eyes, fire our crossbow at disadvantage, and use Lucky to roll an additional dice and then pick the highest of all three rolled dice. This works equally well if we really need to hit at disadvantage without having inflicted it upon ourselves.

Full Recap

Right from Tier 1, the aim of this build is to leverage two specific strategies that it excels at: using Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Umbral Sight, and Dread Ambusher to deal as much damage as possible from range to a single priority target, particularly on the first turn–where it’s most effective–and using a finely tuned selection of spells (goodberry, absorb elements, and fog cloud) to make the most of what little magic we have. 

The latter strategy has a peak at level 5 when we get pass without trace, possibly the single most efficient spell in the entire game, which we can afford to keep up constantly due to our focus on the Attack action as opposed to relying on higher level concentration spells. 

From that point on we simply focus on improving these two strategies as much as possible, leading to Battle Master Fighter for damage and Life Domain Cleric for better casting. Extra Attack at level 5, Action Surge at level 8, and Battlemaster Maneuvers at level 9 all stack with each other to push up our round one damage, while Life Cleric at level 6 gives us access to a second most efficient spell option in Disciple of Life boosted goodberry. 

Starting from 10, we take Warlock up to 3 for its prowess at contributing to both goals. Hexblade’s Curse at level 10 and Improved Pact Weapon at level 12 once again bump our damage, while access to short rest Pact Magic slots massively expands how often we can cast our powerful 1st and 2nd level spells and the shield spell gives us appropriate defenses.

Level 13 sees us start taking Rogue up to 3 for Assassinate at 15, the last major resourceless damage boost available, making us more consistent–regardless of lighting–through the advantage it grants. We also have a really easy time fulfilling its normally stringent condition–requiring surprised targets–thanks to pass without trace. 

For Levels 16 and 17 we go back to Warlock to pick up Eldritch Smite, a way for us to optionally trade slots for damage that’s made more efficient by Assassinate giving us an increased ability to crit.

18 and beyond sees the end of big power spikes and a turn towards rounding the build out a bit by taking low opportunity cost levels with relatively impactful features. Divine Soul Sorcerer at 18 improves our defenses slightly with a blessing that we can convert to damage if needed, and Fighter 4 and Rogue 4 let us pick up good to have feats.

The Flagship Ranger wraps up a small mini-series of three Ranger builds that we have recently published. Once again, note that pass without trace uptime (in the sense that scenarios akin to the one presented in the Player’s Handbook that would adjudicate contested checks for surprise are rolled for frequently) is a key component of this build, and without it, would not reach the power of the other Flagships. For Ranger builds that are less dependent on the power granted by consistent surprise rounds, check out our other Ranger builds: the Umbral Stalker, for an example of a half caster/full caster hybrid build, or the Midnight Guerrilla, for a nova-focused Ranger that doesn’t hold the same assumptions as our Flagship Ranger.

Bonus Content: AC Threshold Heuristic for Sharpshooter’s Power Attack

Sharpshooter’s -5+10 mechanic is a mostly trivial spreadsheet numbers game, which for the most part purely offers you the opportunity to make you perform worse than you should, which you can easily avoid by bringing a laptop with an appropriate spreadsheet program to the table.

Since some people might find this jarring, we have constructed a heuristic–a suboptimal yet practical plan–that fits on an index card and should make it easier for you to make the calculation if taking the penalty to hit is stupid or correct: You start your running count with a base value of 12, add your to-hit modifier and then check every property of your attack line by line. If one applies, do what is indicated in the second column.

Now cut off everything behind the decimal point so that you are left with an integer number.

If you expect (or know) the target’s AC to be at or below that number, take the -5 penalty. If you expect (or know) the target’s AC to be above that number, do not use Sharpshooter on the attack.

If you prefer some more automation for this heuristic, you can make a copy of a calculator we made which implements the heuristic, and use that to get an integer number instead, without much hassle. Note that the written heuristic and automated spreadsheet ask slightly different questions and in a different order, but that the outcome will be the same.

Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

Pinterest

Tumblr

Email