The Umbral Stalker: Gloom Stalker Ranger

Author: pandaniel

Finally, our Gloom Stalker Ranger build, the Umbral Stalker!

Is this the Flagship Ranger, you might be wondering? Well…no. Consider this a preamble to the Flagship Ranger. A build we made along the way that’s strong, interesting, and different enough to be published on its own.

Instead of leaning as hard as it can into its strongest niches, this build explores the path of multiclassing a half caster into a full caster after obtaining Extra Attack, and exploring the great tools that can bring to the table. Its kit might not have the self-synergy you’ve come to expect with our builds—and that’s okay! Twilight Sanctuary turns off Umbral Sight, Archery and spirit guardians want different engagement ranges, spirit guardians and pass without trace both want concentration, etc—but that doesn’t matter as much as you might expect. Synergy is good to have, but it isn’t an automatic prerequisite for optimization. Sometimes features make up for not working well together by just being really, really powerful individually, as is the case here. Even with the Cleric tools not getting as much scaling as they do in Flagship Cleric, smashing together two of the best subclasses ever made will still end up with a great character worthy of a build. It almost can’t be helped! 

This build isn’t a Flagship–there are even stronger things we can do with Gloom Stalker–but it will do great in most games, with its combination of high attack damage, stealth, party protection, and healing. 

Given the simplicity of the core concept—take Ranger to 5 levels, dip 1 level for shield, and then multiclass into a Wisdom caster and profit—there’s lots of room for variation. You could change your Cleric subclass for something like Life Domain Cleric or Forge Domain Cleric, or even change from Cleric entirely and take levels into Druid instead. In that case, you would probably want to go Circle of the Shepherd for Bear Totem and conjure animals. We opted to not take levels in Druid such that no reader needs to go through asking about those pesky questions that come up when playing one.

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 due to being the one that is most commonly rolled for, and is thus an important skill in the game for any character, and we will choose to 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. Last point in Strength marginally increases our carrying capacity.

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. (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.
• Rapiers for when we get booming blade.

Level 1 Strategy

Assuming you can sell starting equipment before the start of the game, you should sell your magnifying glass, shortswords, longbow, quiver and arrows for half of the base cost, granting you 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 tactic. 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, whether you will encounter any or not is campaign-dependent. 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. 

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 your 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 is 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. Losing the normal range penalty of our hand crossbow now means we can effectively make use of our increased darkvision range against creatures whose darkvision only extends out to 60 feet. 

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: Sorcerer (Ranger 5/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.

Bless – 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.

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 10, 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, 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 7: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 1)

Divine Domain – Twilight Domain. One of the most powerful kits offered by a subclass in the game thus far, with every one of its features being valuable. The main reason we are picking this up is because of its Channel Divinity: Twilight Sanctuary, which we will be able to use to contribute significantly to the survivability of our party by providing them a fountain of refreshing temporary hit points and ending charm or frighten effects.

Bonus Proficiencies (Twilight Domain feature) – We gain proficiency in heavy armor. This is not something we will be using.

Eyes of the Night (Twilight Domain feature) – We gain Darkvision up to a range of 300 feet. The 300 feet means that in combat you’re never going to be “out-distanced” by an enemy as far as Darkvision range goes. You can also share the Darkvision of this feature with willing creatures you can see within 10 feet of you, up to a number of creatures equal to your Wisdom modifier, which will be 2 creatures. It lasts for one hour, which might be tight for running through an entire dungeon, but could be enough to stealthily get through a good chunk of one without having to light up torches or lanterns. While in total darkness, you can use this difference in Darkvision range to gain advantage over your enemies, as monsters typically have more limited Darkvision, if any at all (30 feet, 60 feet, and uncommonly 90 feet).

You can also expend a spell slot of any level to do it again—which is probably not worthwhile early on, but might be later in the game if you have excess resources.

Vigilant Blessing (Twilight Domain feature) – We can give advantage to initiative checks to one creature, which can include yourself. This only applies to one creature at a time, but otherwise can be used an unlimited number of times, which means you should always have it active on someone. Similar in impact to gift of alacrity, one of the best spells in the game, for one person in your party, in every combat. You can always swap who has this benefit before each encounter, but if you have a competent controller in your party, they will likely see the most benefit from receiving your Vigilant Blessing. Early in the game, this might even be you.

Spellcasting – The strongest feature in the game.

Detect magic – This is just a handy ritual that every party needs. If you have a Wizard in the party, they could grab the spell instead to open up a preparation for you down the road.

Faerie fire ^D – A domain spell. A decent buff to your allies, offering only one save to enemies in a 20 feet cube, and giving everyone advantage against them if they fail the Dexterity saving throw. It has some situational use for countering invisibility, but most of the time you’re likely better off using bless, which just works, no roll required.

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.”; Iit’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.  

Sleep ^D – At level 1 this would have been fantastic, now it is a circumstantial spell that might come into play in non-combat scenarios.

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 8: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 2)

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.

Twilight Sanctuary (Twilight Domain feature) – As an action, create an extremely strong buff for your party. While this definitely isn’t as strong as getting it at level 2, it still offers allies a great source of temporary hit points (with no set duration, which by default will last until the next long rest) in a generous radius. You can also casually end some of the most debilitating effects in the game like vampire Charms, enemy hypnotic patterns, a dragon’s Frightful Presence, etc. Beyond the initial action, there’s no action economy cost to apply or reapply the buffs. There are some interesting interactions from this, like removing the darkness created by the darkness spell (it’s magical light, so it can illuminate the darkness, and it’s not created by a spell of 2nd level or lower, so the light isn’t dispelled). Did we mention that it’s non-concentration? Activating this while concentrating on a spell if the encounter warrants it is a very potent option. Some of you might rightfully point out that this feature is anti-synergistic with our Umbral Sight feature. However, the powerhouse that is Twilight Sanctuary more than makes up for the offensive and defensive power of Umbral Sight. For now, we’re limited to one per rest, so save it for tougher fights.

Harness Divine Power (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – Bonus action to regain an expended spell slot, the level of which can’t be higher than half your proficiency bonus rounded up. For many other domains, this feature is one that gives Clerics some more resources back on a short rest, as some domains don’t have powerful Channel Divinity options. Not so for us, as the regained spell slot would typically be better off used on activating Twilight Sanctuary before the rest and giving everyone a nice bit of temporary hit points if they don’t already have any. If your party needs to short rest and you have multiple Channel Divinity uses left (which might happen starting at Cleric 6), use one to give everyone their temporary hit points then convert the remaining use(s) to get your slots back.

Spell Changes: +detect poison and disease.

Detect poison and disease – This helps us—as the name would suggest—find and identify poisons and diseases as a ritual, which might come up.

Level 8 Strategy

The biggest change from last level to now is that we have Turn Undead and Twilight Sanctuary. 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 Twilight Sanctuary or one of your other spells.

Additionally, after a long rest, you can use Twilight Sanctuary and follow it up with a short rest before adventuring to start the party off with a nice temporary hit point buffer.

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

Spell Changes: +aid, +locate object, +moonbeam ^D, +see invisibility ^D, –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.

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.

Moonbeam ^D – Moonbeam is… well, it’s okay. It’s a situational spell to help out against werewolves, vampires, and other shapechangers. We usually won’t be casting this except maybe against the above enemies.

See invisibility ^D – Another minor piece of utility that can sometimes come up. Second level domain spells are definitely not the reason we chose this subclass.

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

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.

Spell Changes: +augury, +lesser restoration, +thaumaturgy, -detect magic.

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.

Lesser restoration – 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.

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 11: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 5)

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: +aura of vitality ^D, +Leomund’s tiny hut ^D, +revivify, +spirit guardians, –locate object.

Aura of vitality ^D – This is best used as a strong heal outside of combat (20d6 total, divided how you choose), but in a fight where a party member keeps falling unconscious, you can use this to bring them back from 0 repeatedly and keep them in the fight. Harness Divine Power lets you have more resources to spend on this spell, but for this level it is still competing with your concentration and spell slot for spirit guardians.

Leomund’s tiny hut ^D – Create a dome of force that your allies can pass through freely, but outsiders can’t, as a ritual. Resting has never been easier. If you’re wary of the potential threat of dispel magic per the healthy paranoia principles, you can defend against this as well by casting the spell multiple times, creating multiple nested domes which would require several castings of dispel magic to get through. A very nice ritual to get for free from our domain, potentially freeing up a known spell for another caster in the party.

Revivify – 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 11 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.

From here on out, our strategy does not change much. Higher level Cleric spells tend to be obviously situational or best cast out of combat, which will be described in the appropriate spell blurbs. Judge whether or not spirit guardians is the best use of your concentration, and focus down priority enemies with your powerful nova abilities, as you have been doing.

Level 12: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 6)

Steps of Night (Twilight Domain feature) – When in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action you can grant yourself a flying speed equal to your walking speed for 1 minute, up to a proficiency bonus number of times per long rest. We are already used to skulking in the dark, so this shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish. As we mentioned at level 8, Twilight Sanctuary may or may not provide the dim light necessary to activate Steps of Night. Give friendly Variant Humans Darkvision from Eyes of Night and be good to go! Remember that Twilight Sanctuary and spirit guardians emanate from you in every direction, so you can still maneuver to have creatures end their turn in each respective zone even if you are flying. Since this is a magical form of flight holding us aloft, we can also go prone in the air (if you can wrap your brain around that). This restricts your means of movement to crawling, which you cannot do in the air, so you must stay in place until you use half your speed to stand again. You still impose disadvantage on ranged attacks, while not having to worry about the melee downside, as long as you are flying safely out of reach.

Channel Divinity (2/ short rest) – Twice as many uses of Twilight Sanctuary. If you can pace a six encounter adventuring day to have 2 encounters per rest (short rest, short rest, long rest), you will have 100% uptime. Don’t be overly cautious about using your signature feature!

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 13: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 7)

Spell Changes: +aura of life ^D, +death ward, +divination, +greater invisibility ^D, –augury.

Aura of life ^D – There are only a few situations where the spell’s benefits are worth your concentration and 4th level slot compared to your other options. One such niche use is described in a moment.

Death ward – 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.

Greater invisibility ^D – This spell likely will not see very much use. That said, there could be moments when a party member needs to become briefly invisible for one reason or another and the utility this offers will be welcomed.

Level 14: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 8)

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.

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: +animate dead.

Level 15: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 9)

Spell Changes: +circle of power ^D, +dawn, +holy weapon, +mislead ^D, –divination.

Circle of power ^D – This gives the entire party advantage on saves against spells, and if the saves are successful, they take no damage from them. Being able to effectively nullify an encounter with enemy casters is excellent if it comes up, and damaging spells tend to be commonplace at higher levels. This will be more situational on a Twilight Cleric because of the numerous powerful tools we already have available, but it’s still a good spell to have in our back pocket against spellcasters specifically.

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.

Mislead ^D – An illusion-based scouting spell with unlimited range. Need to talk to someone who might try to stab you during the conversation? Cast mislead instead of walking in yourself. As your illusory double is an illusion, it may very well be able to pass through solid objects as well, but ask your DM before doing so with this spell.

Level 16: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 10)

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, so 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, +banishment, +resistance, –lesser restoration.

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 petrify 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.

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.

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

Level 17: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 11)

Destroy Undead (CR 2) – Now featuring ghasts, minotaur skeletons, poltergeists, and will-o’-wisps, among other things.

Spell Changes: +heal.

Heal – This one’s pretty straightforward: you heal yourself or an ally for 70 hit points. A control spell or spirit guardians may prevent more incoming damage, but this spell gets relatively better compared to control options the stronger your party’s defenses are. In terms of total hit points healed, an upcast aid provides slightly more, but if the enemies are focusing their damage, it’s useful to be able to concentrate the healing in one place. Besides, you could just upcast aid the night before and then use heal in the thick of things when warranted.

Level 17 Strategy

It’s probably worth being a bit stingy with your 6th level spell slot in case you find yourself needing to cast heal. However, you probably have enough 4th and 5th level slots to use one in any fight if you need to, which means you can basically always be upcasting spirit guardians to 4th or 5th level or upcasting banishment to 5th level, which frees your lower level slots for non-concentration spells like silvery barbs, or dispel magic. 

Level 18: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 12)

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.

Spell Changes: +heroes’ feast.

Heroes’ feast – In this tier of play where gold flows more comfortably, stock up on gem-encrusted bowls (the material component for this spell) and cast it every night before the party goes to bed if you haven’t used your 6th level slot. Or, provided nobody is secretly a Mogwai, cast it into the rest to give everyone a midnight (or 5 A.M.) feast, powering them through the next night’s rest. Advantage on Wisdom saves, immunity to poison and the frightened condition, and an increase to everyone’s maximum hit points (which stacks with those from aid, as, unlike with temporary hit points, there is no rule preventing this type of hit point buff from stacking) is a very nice package indeed. If gold is scarcer in your game you might not be able to do this every night, but if you know you’re facing a green dragon the next day, this is an instant win button. It’s well worth it if you expect to face any kind of big enemy that packs more than attack rolls and damage spells—Wisdom saves are by far the most common of the mental saves after all.  

If you find yourself unable to reliably cast this spell because of the cost, check out our Complete Guide to Tools for some methods of gold generation. In the short term, consider blade barrier, which provides ¾ cover, or -5 to enemy attack rolls which an ally with Sharpshooter can ignore entirely—this includes us; this is a potent debuff to enemy ranged attacks that should leave your ranged ally or allies unhindered. Place it in front of your party and not in front of enemy ranged attackers to prevent them from simply walking through it to avoid the debuff. Holy weapon also accomplishes something similar in that it buffs the damage of an ally with ranged weaponry, but bless might be better if the encounter involves saving throws.

Level 19: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 13)

Spell Changes: +conjure celestial.

Conjure celestial – This spell really ought to just be called “conjure couatl,” since that’s what you’re using it for. Listed at a mere CR 4, the couatl punches well above its weight, featuring a number of handy spells, a high AC that gets higher with the benefit of its 3/day shield spell, immunity to nonmagical physical damage from attacks, a 90 feet flying speed, and a bite attack that can render enemies who aren’t immune to poison unconscious if they fail a DC 13 Constitution save—with no chance to wake up, this is effectively a save-or-die. Most interestingly, its Change Shape feature gives it the ability to assume the form of any humanoid or beast of CR 4 or below. We further detail the spell in our Wish Spell Spotlight with some more advanced uses of the couatl’s Change Shape feature, which can potentially provide you and your fellow Lawful Good party members with lycanthropy-based benefits.

Level 20: Cleric (Ranger 5/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 14)

Destroy Undead (CR 3) – Mummies, wights, and sword wraith warriors, among many other setting and adventure-specific undead, join the club of creatures that are instantly dusted for the crime of not rolling high enough on their Wisdom save.

Spell Changes: +divine word.

Divine word – All of the power of this spell is in the last sentence. The hit point-gated status effects are pretty underwhelming, since at this level of play, by the time an enemy has hit points that low, they can likely be killed with at-will attacks or much lower level area-of-effect spells. But in a situation where you’re facing celestials, elementals, fey or fiends, a bonus action multi-target banishment that doesn’t require concentration is well worth the spell slot. In a sense, this can be considered one of the best novas in the game, as anything that fails the saving throw is removed from the encounter and isn’t coming back.

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