The Midnight Guerrilla: Gloom Stalker Ranger

Author: pandaniel

The Midnight Guerilla is the final stepping stone to our Flagship Ranger. While we believe this build will do great in most games, similarly to the Umbral Stalker, this isn’t quite a Flagship Build. That is, however, coming very soon! 

If the Umbral Stalker is a lesson in stacking powerful features without regard for intra-character synergy, and the (spoiler!) Flagship Ranger is an exercise in the power of focusing on what the Gloom Stalker does best, then consider this a celebration of Ranger’s overall versatility. This build takes levels a similar level split to the Umbral Stalker, but instead opts for Battle Master Fighter levels (to increase overall nova damage capabilities), and Life Domain Cleric levels (for the ability to sustain a party with hit points).

If your party needs more out of combat healing or single target burst damage, or if your party already has a Twilight Domain Cleric or other form of temporary hit point generation, consider this build over the Umbral Stalker.

Just like the Umbral Stalker, the Cleric levels which are taken at the end can be changed to suit your game. If the combination of goodberry and Life Domain Cleric’s Disciple of Life (Lifeberry) won’t be able to be used in your game, we instead recommend the Peace Domain for its early level features, like Emboldening Bond, or the Forge Domain for its improved armor and weaponry. 

Race: Custom Lineage

Ability Score Increases – +2 Dexterity. Dexterity is very important to 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 something like a warhorse. 

Feat – Crossbow Expert. This is the greatest damage increase option we have 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 enemies 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 typically the skill with most impact, and also most commonly used and it is thus an important skill in the game for any character, and we will be great at it.  Stealth is important for gaining surprise, and we 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.

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.

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 equally low-impact and 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, helps with Perception, an extremely important skill, and both our Cleric and Ranger abilities will key off of it.  We need 13 Charisma to multiclass in or out of Sorcerer later in our career. We buy 14 Constitution for hit points and higher concentration saves. 

Background (Custom)

Skills – Arcana, Insight. Arcana proficiency will allow 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 important. As a Wisdom based class, we’re well equipped to use Insight during social situations. 

Tools – Mason’s tools, thieves’ tools. Proficiency in mason’s tools will allow us to have a +5 on Passive Perception involving stone structures (the most common material for dungeons!) and proficiency in thieves’ tools will result in a +5 bonus against traps. Obviously the latter will also be 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, or unseen servant spells. 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.

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 dumber 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 large supplies will be necessary for tables that track ammunition. 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. (This would be in a “tech box” if our website’s spaghetti code let us easily embed a tech box in a list.)
• Consumables: potions of healing, caltrops, ball bearings, the works.
• Magic weapons (if that is available in your game) 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.
• Rapiers for when we get booming blade.

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.

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 trick. Stay at the back, shoot things, and stay out of trouble. This doesn’t really change significantly for a while.

Level 2: Ranger

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.” Spells known is a difficult system to navigate but the standouts on the Ranger list make it easy for us. 

Spell Changes: +absorb elements, +goodberry.

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 singular large blasts, and the option to halve that amount will significantly improve your survivability. While elemental damage is incredibly deadly at this level if you come across it without absorb elements, you might expect to not see any of it. If so, swap this with fog cloud, 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, they’re the ideal way of turning leftover spell slots into healing during the next adventuring day. Goodberries are premium quality out of combat healing. We’ll be picking up a level in the Life Domain Cleric down the line, allowing us access to the renowned “Lifeberry.” 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 of the constant switching of targets for the spell eating bonus actions, it’s just not worth it for us to concentrate on; the math doesn’t work out in hunter’s mark’s favor until you have an implausibly long combat with a single enemy. Make sure to 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. Gloom Stalker greatly boosts our damage, especially our nova capabilities, while giving us incredibly relevant 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 can’t swap out spells learned through your subclass, disguise self is a spell that has out of combat utility, and longstrider (or any of the subclass spells we swap out) aren’t crucial to the build. 

Dread Ambusher (Gloom Stalker feature) – This ability is key to becoming a nova 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. 

Umbral Sight (Gloom Stalker feature) – This is a fantastic ability that also 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 see you using their Darkvision. This often allows us to get advantage, due to being unseen attackers while we still see our opponents, effectively increasing our damage.

This does not just help you out 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 a 90 feet total), which can often be a difference maker against enemies that have Blindsight of 60 feet in a dark area by allowing us to position in the 60-90 feet range band, thus being invisible to those creatures, despite their Blindsight. However, at this level we won’t be able to take advantage of this as our hand crossbow’s normal range is 30 feet.

Primal Awareness (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – Gain some more spells that you can cast for free once per day. This replaces another low-impact feature, Primeval Awareness. The rules on this feature are sadly rather unclear, and thus, due to table variance, we won’t comment 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. Obscurement turns attack rolls into flat rolls without Blindsight thanks to advantage and disadvantage canceling out, and hinders special enemies and casters as many useful spells and dangerous 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. Especially useful for fighting 3d6 wolves and, unsurprisingly, beholders. Pack Tactics crafted 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 enemies that are beasts into not attacking you or learn info you otherwise wouldn’t have access to, but we don’t particularly care for this too much.

Level 3 Strategy

Make sure to use darkness to your advantage to turn invisible. 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. 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 would consider casting something like fog cloud. Yes, the spell is great at blocking sight of certain threatening creatures, but never forget about the tactic of 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 would rapidly become 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-magic, 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.

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 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 exception is enemies that would die to a non-Sharpshooter attack, or very high AC targets. We also get to ignore ½ and ¾ cover, which might 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 further disincentives you from casting a spell on round 1.

At this level, using the power attack (-5 to hit, +10 damage) feature on Sharpshooter is correct the vast majority of the time. Without advantage or Favored Foe, it results in more damage against enemies with 19 AC or less with our hand crossbow. Changing to a heavy crossbow decreases the threshold by one (to 18 AC), making the attack with an extra d8 damage from Dread Ambusher decreases it by two to (17 AC),  and advantage increases it by one (20 AC again). Favored Foe complicates things, but just assuming that it decreases the threshold by one on the last attack of the turn and has no effect on other attacks is a good enough approximation. 

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 at all when you can just damage or kill your opponent. Furthermore, if we really need to grapple a monster, for example to ground a dragon so our melee party can do anything in the fight, the second try we get from this feature significantly increases our chances of success.

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 – 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 in general. 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 on a roll of 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 a 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 is something that will come up again and again. You should cast pass without trace as soon as you head into dangerous territory (i.e. 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 be moving stealthily—and you must do this as much as possible. Do not interact with inanimate elements of the dungeon unless absolutely necessary until the dungeon 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.

The increase in our proficiency bonus means the thresholds for power attack use are all increased by one compared to the 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 for pass without trace. Use Favored Foe whenever you are not concentrating. Add pass without trace to the list of spells you want to make scrolls of.

Level 6: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 1)

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.

Disciple of Life (Life Domain feature) – This gives us access to the fabled Lifeberry. This term is a blend of Life Domain Cleric and goodberry, the spell. It means to combine this Cleric Domain and spell to create a very efficient healing source: the Lifeberry. This feature will allow 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 a better option. This means that every one of your goodberries benefits from the bonus from the feature. This interaction has been clarified as Rules as Written 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 sadly won’t be a higher priority cast than pass without trace, and especially not something you drop concentration on pass without trace over. However, if you have run out of second level spell slots, and can use this before the combat starts, it can help you out immensely in the nova round. Keep in mind that using this on your first turn makes you lose out on your Dread Ambusher attack.

Cure wounds ^D – Never use this. Ever. Cast healing word in combat or goodberry outside it.

Detect magic – A handy ritual that every party can make use of.

Healing word – Use only in case of emergency, 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.

Sanctuary – A bonus action casting time spell that forces any enemy that tries to target the recipient of this spell 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 on someone who will dodge in a hallway to block off enemies from approaching closer.  

Guidance – One of the most useful and versatile cantrips in the game. Concentrate on it whenever you’re not concentrating on anything else, as the bonus also applies to initiative.

Light – Can be used to create… light. The big thing here is that we can put it on our ammunition, shoot a far away enemy with it, and kill them in a similar way to using a bullseye lantern, where we can see the enemy, and 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 7: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 1)

Fighting Style – Defense. A +1 AC bonus is very much 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 and you aren’t concentrating on pass without trace.

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

Action Surge – Yet another option that will be used to increase our nova, which will help us to delete an important enemy before they get to have a turn. Notice that the bonus attack from Dread Ambusher isn’t limited to once per turn, and so will also apply to the second Attack action we deliver with this feature, which heavily incentivises us to use Action Surge in round one of combat and not 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.

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 only care about round one damage and we use bless on ourselves and two allies doing damage with eldritch blast our target would need at least 24 AC for bless to do more damage than an entire Attack action with Dread Ambusher and Favored Foe. This might seem discouraging until we consider that other rounds actually matter, especially against high AC targets, who we can’t be sure we will be able to kill on round one. If we just consider the first two rounds with the same assumptions above, bless will do more damage against targets with 19 AC or more when we have advantage and 17 or more when we don’t. As a rule of thumb, if the enemy AC is high enough you have to consider not using your power attack feature, bless becomes a reasonable option. 

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 short rests. 

Menacing Attack – Use this against enemies that do not have ranged options. Frightened enemies cannot willingly move closer. If they don’t have ranged options, they will do nothing useful at all on their turn (assuming your party members have the common sense to not walk up to them; try to explicitly explain to them why that might not be in their best interest.)

Precision Attack – This is the nova option to one-shot priority targets round one of combat; it’s not efficient to use against targets that don’t matter.

Trip Attack – Knock (young) dragons out of the sky. Also note that in situations when you lack advantage this is the most damage efficient 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 (falling rules from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything say that falls of 500 feet or less happen instantly). This also generates advantage for allies that make melee attacks (conjured animals, your friendly PAM/GWM barbarian, etc).

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

This level adds another element of resource conservation to our strategy causing an enormous jump in complexity if you want to use them optimally. Superiority Dice are deceptively difficult to model, often moving people towards simplifications with fundamental mistakes, from just ignoring their limited nature to assuming dice are much more well behaved than they are in reality and thus ignoring the possibility of ending up with unused Superiority Dice when you reach the next short rest. Explaining how to make a correct model would need its own article, so we won’t focus on that here. Instead, we will provide some quick heuristics that should help streamline your decision-making.

Using Precision Attack to try to convert a miss by a small amount into a hit is, in general, the most efficient way 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 on misses 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 misses by a large amount even 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 an early hit 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. Against the average monster at this level, with an AC of 16 or 17, this is not worth doing, but it is worth it against monsters with AC 20 or more, against whom you would normally still use your power attack. When doing that, keep in mind that Precision Attack loses a large part of its value if you are not using your power attack feature.

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

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.

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.

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). 

Spellcasting – We’ve got some invaluable options to pick up here.

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.

Shield – This is a must-have spell for any optimized build, and another big reason for us to dip in Sorcerer. +5 AC for a whole round is highly valuable, and is often the difference between taking the full brunt of a monster’s attacks and going unscathed, taking no damage at all. Do not be afraid to use this, but when you do, think about what you could’ve done differently to avoid spending the valuable slot, especially at these lower levels.

Silvery barbs – This is a brand new 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.

Booming blade – We’re not going to use this at this level, but once we get War Caster at level 11, we will hold a rapier in one of our hands outside of our turn by drawing one at the end of our turns and dropping it on the ground when our next turn begins. That way we can capitalize a bit on the Opportunity Attack feature of War Caster whenever we find ourselves in melee, delivering this cantrip for a bit of extra thunder damage and an incentive for them not to leave our spirit guardians area in the form of extra damage triggered by movement.

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.

Minor illusion – Create a minor visual or auditory illusion. Very versatile utility cantrip.

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).

Level 11: Fighter (Ranger 5/Cleric 1/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – War Caster. Maintaining concentration on your spells over the course of a fight is a significant part of your combat effectiveness. War Caster makes that job much easier.

Level 12: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 2/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Channel Divinity (1/short rest) – Like all Clerics, we can use our Channel Divinity to Turn Undead, forcing all Undead within 30 feet who can see or hear us to make a Wisdom saving throw or have to use their action each turn for ten rounds to get as far away from us as possible. This most often takes things out of the fight completely, as long as your allies know not to do damage to turned enemies. Your party should be able to deal with everything else in the fight in a few rounds, and then focus fire or hunt down any turned enemies that are still around one at a time. With every ally taking a readied action (triggering on the signal of whichever ally goes after the target in initiative, naturally) and a full turn, few things will survive long enough to act at this level.

Preserve Life (Life Domain feature) – This won’t find much use compared to Harness Divine Power at this level, however we can use this to get multiple people up from 0, or potentially heal summons.

Harness Divine Power (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – We can exchange a use of our Channel Divinity for a spell slot of a level up to half our proficiency bonus (rounded up) as a bonus action once per long rest, which means a third level spell for us. Another pass without trace, yay!

Spell Changes: +ceremony.

Ceremony – Effects that mess with alignments can be a pain, so this could end up being quite useful. However, feel free to pick up anything else, this is not quintessential to the build.

Level 12 Strategy

The biggest change from last level to now is that we have Turn Undead and Preserve Life. Our decision flowchart for the first round of important fights is now, “Are we fighting a lot of undead? If so, turn them. If not, we will usually shoot the enemies a bunch. Afterwards, consider using your other spells.

Level 13: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 3/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Spell Changes: +aid, +lesser restoration ^D, +locate object, +silence, +spiritual weapon ^D, –ceremony, –detect poison and disease.

Aid – Increases both maximum and current hit points of three friendly creatures (which can include ourselves) by 5 for 8 hours. You should be looking to rest cast this whenever you end the day with a 2nd level spell slot (or higher, until we get access to better rest casts), and to use it in combat if multiple allies go down.

Lesser restoration ^D – The paralyzed condition in particular is a major threat to characters, but any of the effects this wards against can be debilitating. Similar to healing word, this is a reactive spell, so scribing it as a scroll is a good option.

Locate object – A useful thing to have available in dungeons, particularly if your DM treats “magic item” as a kind of object. Use it after you’ve cleared the parts of the dungeon that you know about to try to find areas and loot you might not know about. “Door” should be an uncontroversial use for helping find secret ones. Check out our Spell Spotlight on Locate Object for more information and other applications.

Silence – This is most commonly useful in situations where you face enemy spellcasters. Consider comboing this with counterspell or assisting wall of force microwaves.

Spiritual weapon ^D – Feel free to use this after your DM has destroyed your precious hand crossbow. Actually, scratch that. Just don’t.

Level 14: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 4/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Resilient (Con). Adding proficiency to concentration saves is the big draw for us, but other Constitution saves are quite common too, including most saves vs poison, paralysis, and effects that do necrotic or cold damage.

Spell Changes: +augury, +thaumaturgy.

Augury – Ritual cast this spell to figure out if taking a crucial short rest in your current location will risk being found or gain additional insight on another decision the party needs to make.

Thaumaturgy – This is mostly something to enhance your ability to roleplay a powerful being with a link to the divine, as it doesn’t have defined mechanical benefits, but DM-willing you might be able to use it to make yourself more intimidating, create distractions, or trick people.

Level 15: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 5/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Destroy Undead (CR ½) – If we use Channel Divinity: Turn Undead and any CR ½ or lower undead fail the save, they are instantly destroyed instead of being turned. Usually not a big difference in the end, but saves some cleanup.

Spell Changes: +animate dead, +beacon of hope ^D, +revivify ^D, +spirit guardians, –silence.

Animate dead – Most spells that give you extra creatures to control require concentration; this is one of the few exceptions. Having a few skeleton archers follow us around is a nice little bit of extra damage without a big resource commitment: just a 3rd level slot each time you want to animate a new one, and then a single 3rd level slot each day to maintain control over up to four of them. We are at a point now where we can afford to commit a 4th level spell slot to cast spirit guardians in any important fight, making it more likely you’ll have some spare 3rd level slots at the end of a day. If so, this is a cheap ongoing offensive boost by transforming leftover slots today into power tomorrow. The skeletons are fragile, but if they do die, you can just reanimate their bones again after they’re killed (see the techbox below).

Beacon of hope ^D – Cast bless, next!

Revivify ^D – Parties shouldn’t expect Clerics to cast a lot of healing spells, but expecting them to have this spell prepped once it’s available is legitimate. Make sure to keep diamonds on you to ensure you can cast this when you need it. As another reactive, situational spell, you can start scribing scrolls of revivify during downtime from here.

Spirit guardians – This spell damages enemies when they come within 15 feet of you, and also halves their speed while within the radius. Many DMs treat the area of the spell as equivalent to difficult terrain, but as written, enemies who enter the area have their speed halved, which means that if they’ve already spent half their original movement to get there, they are stopped in their tracks, which is better than difficult terrain. On the flip side, if an enemy starts 5 feet from you and spends 15 feet of movement to leave the area, their speed is restored to normal, having spent only 15 feet (not 25 feet as if they had been walking through difficult terrain). So when the effect of spirit guardians functions as written (versus difficult terrain), it’s harder for enemies to get to you, but easier for them to leave. Additionally, this speed reduction works in tandem with difficult terrain to make it nearly impossible for melee monsters to reach you and your party. Work with the other casters in your party to combine difficult terrain spells like web, entangle, plant growth (a slightly different movement mechanic but still stacks), and grease with the speed reduction and repeating damage from your own spirit guardians. Make sure to cast this just before the start of combat, as the long 10 minute duration gives you a lot of leeway. It can even last multiple combat encounters, provided they are close together!

Level 15 Strategy

You now have a new shiny big weapon in spirit guardians and you should use it if it will help your side win the fight with fewer overall resources spent (which includes hit points). Don’t be afraid to skip on using this for a fight, and don’t ignore your Channel Divinity. It may be less flashy than the big damage numbers, but you get it back on a short rest. Your basic flowchart still starts with Turn Undead if it applies.

Usually you should either be casting spirit guardians before combat happens, or after your nova turn using Dread Ambusher, but the value of casting a spell over big single target nova has to be weighted depending on the encounter. Our strategy using spirit guardians will usually be to stay back, and prevent enemies from closing the gap because of the debilitating movement effect of the spell. If there are a great number of potential targets, you’ll need to decide between staying back and wading into melee range of enemies while Dodging, as the damage of spirit guardians can solve encounters.

Level 16: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 6/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Blessed Healer (Life Domain feature) – We now get 3 hit points when casting healing word on our unconscious ally. This of course does not change our strategy in any way.

Channel Divinity (2/Rest) – Twice as many uses of Turn Undead or Blessed Healer. Pretty straightforward.

Spell Changes: +dispel magic.

Dispel magic – As a Cleric, you can easily prepare this spell, which is excellent for defending your party members and foiling enemy spells. Not as good as preventing the effects entirely like counterspell most of the time, but since you can focus on an individual, you can erase multiple spells on the same target, be they debuffs on allies or buffs on enemies. The 120 feet range also makes it more broadly usable.

Level 17: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 7/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Spell Changes: +death ward ^D, +divination, +guardian of faith ^D.

Death ward ^D – Like aid, this is an 8 hour duration spell that can be rest cast with any 4th or 5th level slots you have at the end of your long rest. Using your highest level slot on aid is still likely the first priority for rest casting, but you may as well use this on as many allies as you can with other remaining slots.

Divination – This can be used to get useful information about something your party plans to do. It’s a ritual, so it doesn’t use a spell slot, but it does have a material component with a gold cost which is consumed, so stock up on that incense. The DM gives you a truthful reply to your question, but expect table variation in how interpretable or cryptic the responses will be.

Guardian of faith ^D – A domain spell for the Life Domain. It’s written like it’s meant to be a camp spell, given the 8 hour duration, but it can actually be useful as a combat spell, particularly if your party has forced movement effects to trigger the damage, or there’s a choke point enemies have to move through. Do note that there is a cap to the amount of damage it can deal (60 total). You should probably hold off on using this until 4th level slots are not as big a resource. 

Level 18: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 8/Fighter 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. In rare cases you might use this to reroll attack rolls on your 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 decide between all three rolled dice. This works equally well if we really need to hit at disadvantage without having inflicted it upon ourselves.

Destroy Undead (CR 1) – Now ghouls and specters are instantly destroyed rather than sent running when you use Turn Undead.

Divine Strike – Nothing flashy, but we’ll take it as it increases our damage by a bit! 

Spell Changes: +banishment.

Banishment – Remove a creature from the fight if they fail a Charisma save, and they come back after the spell ends unless they’re native to another plane. As long as you can maintain concentration until the rest of the enemies are dealt with, it’s usually pretty easy to finish them off by dropping concentration right after their turn so everyone in your party gets both a readied action and a turn before they can act. This spell isn’t very valuable to cast with a 4th level slot, but when you upcast it with a 5th level slot, you can target two separate creatures. This is much higher value, removing potentially two large threats to a fight. Use this in fights where a 5th level spirit guardians would have less value, but be mindful of our somewhat low save DC.

Level 19: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 9/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Spell Changes: +dawn, +holy weapon, +mass cure wounds ^D, +raise dead ^D, –sanctuary.

Dawn – One of the few shortcomings of this build is a paucity of multitarget ranged options. We take this spell to fill this gap. This spell is mainly going to be used to flush enemies out of a fortified or entrenched position when you’re much too far away to close the distance and use spirit guardians. A 30 foot radius cylinder is large, and will take up a significant chunk of the map. Combine this with other movement restricting effects from your ally, forced movement to push enemies back in, or simply an insufficiently spacious room, and enemies will have a hard time finding their footing without getting burned. Bear in mind the height of the cylinder allows you to target a point above a wall and then have the spell descend down from your point of origin to hit your targets. No, we do not expect this to be a staple spell used regularly, but when it is warranted it is surprisingly good, especially when you consider the limited availability of viable ranged offense in the Cleric spell list. The light is also sunlight which can interact with certain enemies in your favor.

Holy weapon – Sometimes you fight a single powerful enemy with Legendary Resistances and high mobility, and your concentration might be best spent boosting your single-target damage output.

Mass cure wounds ^D – Use this when multiple people are unconscious and your DM rules against aid working in such situations. If you can get 4+ people in the radius it might be worth casting in other situations due to our Disciple of Life feature.

Raise dead ^D – Usually you just pick this up the day after someone dies. Life Domain Cleric gets it a day in advance. Cool. Use revivify instead when you can.

Level 20: Cleric (Ranger 5/Cleric 10/Fighter 4/Sorcerer 1)

Divine Intervention – You have a 1 in 10 chance of getting your deity to offer their assistance in a dire situation (well, it doesn’t have to be a dire situation, but since you can’t use this again for 7 days if it works, you probably don’t want to use it for a free sandwich). The odds of success aren’t high, so even if the impact would be great this is probably not something you want to use an action on in combat very often. However, you get the most mileage out of this feature if the party has big goals out of combat that would be difficult to accomplish otherwise (things like true resurrections of targets who’ve been dead too long to bring up with spells you have access to), and you can afford to try again each day until you succeed. Of course, if the party is about to die, this can be your “Hail Mary”.

Spell Changes: +greater restoration, +resistance.

Greater restoration – This is useful for somebody in the party to have on hand. A lot of the debuffs this clears are things that could be dealt with the next day, by prepping this when you know you need it, but there are some pretty nasty effects imposed by specific monster abilities that charm their target, and having this available if one of those sticks could really turn a dire situation into a manageable one. The spell consumes 100gp of diamond dust, so make sure to have some on hand.

Resistance – This is guidance, but for saving throws. Especially now, we might want to be prepared when handling strange artifacts out of combat.

Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

Pinterest

Tumblr

Email