I am traveling with Shadowheart and am curious about the best build to use for her. I’ve had a look at a couple of optimisers’ takes on Shadowheart. In this little note, I look at the newcomers and then review an older perspective which comes primarily from Treantmonk. I look at those who comment on her low probability to hit score and propose a rule for building Shadowheart as a trickery domain cleric as she was written. This requires two or three mods.
The Optimisers
Colby of D4 Networks presents a typically clever build. He suggests taking a wizard level at level 4 to obtain chromatic orb and some more cantrips[1]. He then takes another 3 levels of cleric. This build is thus not well optimised for obtaining feats, [or at feats atFextralife’s wiki]. He recommends when you get to the opportunity to change her class, to change it to Tempest domain cleric and to use call lightning[2] as the centre of your aggression. He’s quite relaxed after level 7 suggesting some more levels of wizard, at least one to get the wizard subclass, and also suggests shifting to sorcerer to get the meta-magic abilities. This is all at the cost of the higher level clerical spells.
Fextralife makes a Shadowheart build of C3/Ro9 and looks to cause damage using “sneak attack”. This isn’t what I want, either thematically or mechanically, by switching out so early, the build loses Spirit Guardians and I suspect changing to Paladin would make a more powerful damage dealer although at the expense of unfeasible ability scores. Fextralife’s build uses ranged weapons; I am of the view that sneak attack is much less effective than spirit guardians. Not for me!
Jolmes offers an interesting take on respecking Shadowheart although the article is entitled “how to make Shadowheart hit”. He proposes to leave her as ½ elf, high elf which gets the cantrip sacred flame. Initially my problem with Jolmes’ approach is he’s enhancing her ability to hit i.e. making her a melee fighter.[3] He also recommends respecing her as a light cleric which gives her fire spells; the consequent duplication of sacred flame is the reason he’s unhappy with the high elf selection. On reflection, I may have underestimated the need for a high to hit bonus for unarmed strike which is useful in order to effectively use the touch invoked damage spells.
Cephapocolypse illustrates a Tempest Cleric build. He argues for enhanced strength with high CON & WISdom. He also argues that the trickery domain is weak because most of their domain spells are in fact divine spells and it’s better to expand the choice you have by either earning unique or other class spells. I suggest that at earlier levels the constraint is the number of spell slots and not the list you can choose from.
These four authors, three of whom[4] have a body of work which I respect, are all dissing the trickery domain and stanning the Tempest domain, either that or light or life domain.
I also like, ItalianSpartacus who did a clerical build video which is quite straight forward, and he talks about level 12 which gets you one 6th level spell. While more balanced than some of the other authors on the topic of subclasses, he again prefers other domains and fails to talk about the melee attack based spells.
New Old School i.e. Treantmonk
This all seems to contradict what to me one of the most knowledgeable[5] commentators has said. Treantmonk argues, before BG 3, that you need to choose if your cleric is a cantrip user or melee fighter. I prefer the former. He argues that a melee cleric is probably more powerful up to 4th level and a cantrip user more powerful after.
He also argues to use spiritual weapon and shield guardians as the major forms of attack which leaves the action available for other spells. Ashley Johnson when playing Pike used guiding bolt. Laura Bailey used or co- invented Treantmonk’s policy and was also keen on Toll the dead. In his Clerical levels video, Treantmonk has Trickery as the top sub-class primarily due to its domain specific spell list. Laura Bailey illustrated the power of invoke duplicity albeit at a higher level than available to BG3 players, she used it to multiply the range of mass heal. Her character, Jester, was 18th or 20th level, and BG3 has nerfed invoke duplicity. i.e. this cannot be replicated in BG3.
Given Treantmonk’s classification of the Trickery domain as the most powerful playable subclass behind his two S class subclasses. NB for him S class means game breaking. Why do these later arrivals to 5e, or at least later to my horizon, all diss the Trickery domain? Treantmonk is a big fan of polymorph and dimension door, and I am a big fan of mirror image. Is trickery really the worst, or at least, significantly weaker than life, light, or tempest domains?
Treantmonk has also made a video on the best feats for cleric, and he considers the top three to be Lucky, Resilient Constitution, and Warcaster. On the way to his top three he considers magic initiate but that is in order to obtain booming blade and green flame blade which are not implemented in Baldurs Gate 3, and neither is Toll the dead. One needs ‘all 5E spells’ mod and one would need to check that the author has implemented the last of these cantrips. Baldur’s Goonsack says and demonstrates that the mod does include ‘Toll the Dead’.
So what to do
If tuning her to be a melee fighter, or at least ensuring that her touch spells can be effective, even when using dex based weapons, everyone still argues that her wisdom should be prioritised. The cleric however has a couple of spells tightly bound with the attack action, such as Inflict wounds and Contagion. Maybe the best policy is to maximise wisdom, pump strength and constitution and in the case of Shadowheart, since she is a ½ elf, have intelligence at 10. I also don’t like playing characters with low intelligence. She should be well armoured and have a shield to compensate for the mediocre dex and I need to study the strength/armour nexus, BG3’s interpretation is documented on the BG3 wiki. Maybe a feat should be used to enhance the capability of her armour, however she has the ability to use medium armour without augmentation. Maybe tough should be used to increase her CONstitution but that doesn’t really leave much room for Treantmonk’s top three feats nor for ASIs.
I took resilient constitution for the first feat.
Is it possible to play her as a trickery domain cleric? I first considered the big nerf to be invoke duplicity and this can be fixed using a mod, called UA6 invoke duplicity. The author says,
UA6 Invoke Duplicity Playtest 6 of the 2024 Core Rulebooks for D&D overhauled the Trickery domain for Clerics, including making big improvements to Invoke Duplicity. This mod replaces BG3’s homebrew Invoke Duplicity with a faithful representation of the playtest version, taking some inspiration from Echo Knight to fill the gaps in the description.
While looking for UA6 invoke duplicity, I came across a mod called “trickery domain overhaul”. This claims to correct some of the nerfs and may in fact buff the class when compared with the DnD rulebook version. The mod’s page documents potential conflicts and the required installation orders.
[1] Why not magic initiate feat?
[2] The difference between call lightening and spirit guardians is d10 (electric) vs d8 (radiant/necrotic), although the Tempest domain has a means of using their channel divinity to maximise the damage of their lightening spells. In theory, radiant/necrotic damage is less likely to be resisted.
[3] I have rethought this, Clerics have important touch attack spells, such as inflict wounds and contagion; even a cantrip user needs to be able to hit. Since as STR goes up, DEX comes down, a Cleric needs good armour.
[4] This is the first of Jolmes videos I have seen, so it’s premature to say I admire his body of work.
[5] IMO