The way of the Shadowstalker | Baldur's Gate 3 Build Guide

so the way the shadow stalker is Mastery over darkness and you become an incredibly mobile fighter capable of many attacks per round and at later levels and often devastating first round of combat this build is a monk and Ranger hybrid taking the strong offensive and utility elements of Monk early bolstering that with Ranger and adding more skills to your repertoire finishing out those later levels with a couple of Feats and a potent defensive skill in monk so let's put this all together level by level starting a character creation I'm creating this character as a cell Doreen drow who has broken away from the Twisted teachings of lolt and is lived on the surface in service of their goddess goddess alistrahi raised and trained in a monastery devoting their lives to the shadows and the hunting of Twisted creatures from other planes threatening the way of life of the few drow who have stepped away from Life in the underdark if you want to create your own backstory for this character go right ahead like that's a hundred percent encouraged this is just the backstory that I've given the character so if you're concerned about dying a lot the alternative to drow would probably be the gethianki race so this gives you access to medium armor and long swords this way you have more access to weapons and a higher AC this comes at the cost of Mobility however as you do lose the unarmored movement skill and the unarmed defense passives which we'll discuss shortly for our class we are starting our journey with bunk giving us access to early features such as Flurry of Blows which is a great use of our bonus action unarmored defense which adds our wisdom modifier to our AC the express attacks which allows our attacks with monk weapons to scale with our dexterity instead of our strength now monk weapons are just any weapon that you're proficient with that doesn't have the two-handed or the heavy properties and finally death strikes which just states that your unarmed attacks deal 1d4 damage unless the damage that your weapon deals is higher I only mentioned this because this is what your flurry blows will scale off and it does increase at certain thresholds as you level so for the background I went with acolyte giving you insight and religion proficiency and it also just felt the most fitting thematically but you decide whatever works best for you for attributes I went with 10 strengths 15 dexterity plus 2 for 17 Constitution 14 intellect with intellect 9 wisdom 14 plus 1 for 15 and Charisma 9. this gives us two main stats with odd numbers for a later ability score increase the proficiencies that you'll start with are perception religion and insight they come from your background and your race and then stealth and acrobatics chosen by you that's it for level one so now just flurry blows your way off the ship and onwards to level two so at level two we're just getting utility and movement increases for our monk uh we are going to be getting unarmored movement which just means we'll be able to move an extra three meters each turn while not wearing armor or holding a shield will also get access to step of the wind disengage and dash now these are two separate abilities but basically they allow you to use either the dash ability or the disengage ability as per usual doubling your movement speed and allowing you to move away without prompting opportunity attacks but they also give you access to the jump skill built into them allowing you to jump without using a bonus action finally you get access to access access to Patient defense patient defense allows you to go into sort of like a defensive posture attack rolls against you have disadvantage and you have advantage on dexterity saving throws into your next Channel with level three upon us I feel like we're really starting to manifest some darker side of ourselves it may not necessarily be evil but it Taps into darker forces and you sort of cloak yourself in them using them to battle and at level three we take our Monk subclass and of course we're going to be taking Shadow Monk gentleman gives you access to the shadow Arts including Darkness pass without Trace fide dark vision and silence dark vision is of little use to you here as a drow you already have Superior dark vision so you can take that off your bar however pass Without a Trace is fantastic way to sneak past encounters or to get the drop on your enemy since it gives you a gives you or your party a plus 10 to stealth checks silence grants you a way to shut down most spell casters and it does not affect your melee attacks or flurry of Blues however there are a few caveats to that and we'll get to them later and hide as a bonus action is always great finally on Level 3 you get access to the deflect missile skill don't forget to set this in your reactions window to ask as this is a two-part ability firstly you are going to use your reaction to stop the arrow then you use your a key point to shoot it back at the enemy be careful with the second part or you'll find yourself out of key you can stop the arrows without shooting them back from there on to level four where we get our first feet this is where builds May differ as there are a few options I really like increasing your ability scores here and putting one point in dexterity and one point in con or wisdom probably wisdom but up to you however there are Feats such as mobile making it so that you don't provoke opportunity attacks and adding an additional three meters to your movement it also makes it so that you can't be slowed on difficult terrain when you use the dash action which it could be really powerful alert gives you plus five to your initiative so that you're more likely to go first in combat and you can't be surprised less important now but in a few levels this will be really great to have lucky which grants you three luck points per long rest which you can use to gain advantage on your roles or to give the enemy disadvantage on their attacks all our Master is an option but probably not your best option as you can't really make use of the extra attack bonus action feature that it comes with pick what suits you best but I'm gonna go with the ability score increase here next on level 4 you also gain the slow fall feature giving you resistance to Falling damage and this triggers as a reaction so that's really great so moving on to level five and now things are really starting to get interesting as you get access to stunning strike and extra attack two very potent abilities extra attack as described on the label lets you take an extra attack on your turn if you take the attack action awesome feature and pairing that with stunning strike which prevents an enemy from taking any actions bonus actions or even moving on their turn this effect also gives you advantage on your attacks against the target meaning you can deal a load of damage if you land this skill not only that you can chain the ability together with itself due to extra attack gaining Advantage after the initial stunning strike hits and stunning for as long as you have the key points for it just popping in here from the editing room I realized some of my wording wasn't great here you don't want to be using two stunning attacks in a row on the same tan as you'll just end up wasting your key points what I meant here was that you want to use stunning attack once in a turn then use your extra attack then in the next turn you want to use stunning strike again and you can chain them until you run out of key points permanently stunning an enemy level 5 is not done yet though as we also gain cloak of Shadows allowing us to truly blend into the shadows and granting us invisibility for our action as long as we remain obscured getting us around opportunity attacks making us difficult to Target without detection or AOE skills this is an awesome level but we're not done there though because at level 6 we also take that one step further as we can now teleport from Shadow to Shadow every turn without bonus action as we have gained the skill Shadow step this skill is crazy and the footage on screen shows how mobile you can be with its ability alone crossing the battlefield in an instant or getting out of the way of dangerous situations and repositioning don't forget this is also a bonus action so you can Shadow step away and then cloak of Shadows to be practically unkillable especially in Act 2 where there are shadows everywhere also on this level we gain key empowered strengths converting our unarmored damage to magical nothing else special here this is just for converting this is just for overcoming resistances for creatures who are immune to non-magical attacks finally add another 4.5 meters to your movement with improved unarmored movement you are just impossible to catch at this point just taking a break here quickly to chat about a few things at this sort of midpoint I would recommend that you grab yourself some form of Monk weapon if you haven't already if you're following the build this really only leaves quarter stars and Spears and that's fine uh or feel free to take any other versatile weapon that you are proficient with if you've deviated from the build somewhere I just say this because an important feature is coming up that requires you to have a weapon and these versatile weapons have the highest damage rolls because they allow you to hold them in two hands even though they're not categorized as two-handed weapons next Your Shadow Arts Silence has probably not hindered you very much at this point you've probably been using it just to shut down casters and whatnot however I will mention that shadow step is affected by silence so you will not be able to use it within the AOE finally equipment wise the blood guzzlers Garb is not a bad choice early on along with that there are a few other options the disintegrating nightwalkers the Spring Step boots gloves of power gloves of growling Underdog cap of Wrath and cloak of protection all these I'll just Chuck on the screen and you can sort of have a few ideas as to some equipment you might get if you find something else that's really awesome in the early game Chuck it in the comments so other people can use it too so we're back to the build and at level seven we are starting to expand our tracking abilities and hone our skills at tracking these aberrations from other planes taking our first level in Ranger and choosing The Keeper of the veil favorite enemy which is really thematic gaining Proficiency in Arcana and the ability to cast protection from Good and Evil spell once per day we also choose our natural Explorer type here personally as a drought I think poison resistance is the most thematic but pick your favorite if you want a familiar now's your chance not to be in confused with their companion there are only the options of spider Raven frog cat crab or rat [Music] which is a bit lame but it is what it is I guess and on to our second level in Ranger though uh level eight we get access to a fighting style unfortunately we can't really make use of any of these dueling and two weapon fighting would work if we were unarmed although due to the limitations Next Level we need to be building a weapon defense doesn't work without armored so two weapon fighting style it is just in case we do also gain some spell casting on this level though we get access to Hunter's Mark which is great granting us additional damage on our main hand attacks and it's also transferable once the main target dies for a bonus action so not using too many spell slots in one fight there are also several Mobility options here enhanced leap gives you extra jump distance and long strider for the moment is a little bit Overkill but those last two can be ritual cast out of combat so they're not consuming a spell slot leaving that open for Hunter's Mark then finally on level 9 we get access to our Ranger subclass at this point in our character's life I like to think that all the time in the underdark and in the shadow cursed lands has really impressed upon the how powerful the darkness is and through your Shadow jumping melding with the darkness and now learning the art of the Ambush you take the Gloom stalker subclass and gain access to dread ambusher now this ability is really why we are here and why we really want to be going first in combat this skill grants us an additional attack on the first round of combat that deals an extra d8 of damage so with Hunter's Mark that is three attacks in the first round of combat with a bonus 4 d8 of damage so with an elemental plus one weapon like this lighter creation here that is 3D 10 plus 6 for your modifier plus 4d8 plus 3d6 giving us an average damage for that first round of combat of 63 damage and that is not even the end just yet you do get a few more things from this subclass however and they are unfortunately effectively duplicates of skills you already have so we can skip over those for now [Music] but we have reached the last few levels of the build and there are two different paths for us to take from here first path we take is one more level in Ranger on level 10 giving us a feat we can bump our dexterity to 20 then take two levels in monk getting us to level 12 gaining an awesome passive called evasion on level 11 allowing us to avoid damage from spells completely if we save and only taking half damage if we get hit which is pretty great then we take our final level in Mount gaining another feat picking up whatever we want from the earlier list the second path however gives us quite a bit more damage at the cost of either maxing out of 30 or taking evasion this path takes levels 10 and 11 in fighter gaining second wind and more importantly action surge granting us another action on one of our turns resulting in another two attacks due to extra attack this means that five attacks on turn one six attacks on turn two with Flurry of Blows and four attacks every turn after resulting in some pretty crazy damage finally we take the last level in either Ranger or monk depending on what you prefer taking a feat and gaining the ability points or evasion so some closing thoughts this build has the potential to wreak havoc on the battlefield it is incredibly mobile with some decent utility options and some pretty incredible damage it is a thematic build however and this is not the highest damage possible it's just one option for a fun and thematic playthrough if the build lacks in any areas it's likely survivability if it starts to take a load of hits it may struggle if it can't Retreat to safety if you were looking for a way to improve this I would suggest taking some levels in fighter at seven or eight delaying access to dread ambusher and sacrificing your unarmed movement but gaining medium armor proficiency to help buffer your AC slightly for example a level 6 unarmored defense is granting 17 AC versus a medium armor granting 20 AC if you took the defense fighting style and that's a wrap thanks so much for watching to the end and if you have any questions or thoughts on the build leave them in the comments down below and in the meantime watch this fun short of another awesome build on the channel catch you in the next one see you later [Music]

Channel: MrSoulbound

Views: 22,153

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, bg3, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, character creation, official release, balders gate 3, baulders gate 3, boulders gate 3, rpg, rpg 2023, upcoming rpg baldurs gate 3, crpg, larian studios, mrsoulbound, soulbound, ideas, fun build, excited, hype, characters, world, guide, multiclass, Shadow, monk, ranger, gloomstalker, stealth, darkness

Id: bV4zwx4xI0c

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023