TRICKERY CLERIC IS NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK - Lore Friendly Shadowheart Build | Baldur's Gate 3

if you're looking for a lore friendly Shadow heart build that actually makes use of the trickery domain cleric subass then you've come to the right place hail Adventurer I'm myotis and I'm going to walk you through this trickery cleric Thief Rogue multiclass I wanted to make something that fits the lore of Shadow heart being a trickery cleric of Shar and being sent out to steal the astral prism this character is going to do a combination of support by debuffing enemies while also doing pretty moderate damage with the thief's extra bonus action we're going to dual wield hand crossbows so we can use our main action to cast power cleric spells especially ones specific to truri clerics like fear and dominate person then using our bonus action to make two off-hand weapon attacks to stack radiating orbs on our enemies do half decent damage and potentially stack Arcane Acuity so our enemies have a harder time resisting our spell effects I took this build through most of my honor mode playthrough myself so it's definitely viable on all difficulties you could definitely play this as a custom character but I made it with Shadow heart in mind so I'm going to take her through the level progression and this build would be great for An Origin Shadow heart playthrough as well shadow heart is a high half elf this gives her proficiency with Spears Pikes hell birds and glaes as well as light armor and shields 12 M of dark vision as well as advantage on saving throws against being Charmed and she can't be put to sleep by Magic High half elves also get a cantrip now this cantrip is specifically from The Wizard school this means that it's going to scale off intelligence but our intelligence is going to be just God awful as a companion she's stuck with Firebolt you won't ever use this to attack enemies you'll just use it to set things on fire if it's relevant but if you're doing this as an origin playthrough you can switch this out there's a couple of decent options here like friends minor illusion and Mage hand but we're actually going to need the light can trip later down the line and taking it here frees up our choices as cleric if I had the choice this is what I'd take but I'm kind of going to assume this Shadow heart is your companion so I'm going to leave her with Firebolt for now basically any other race would be fine wood elf for their increased movement speed halfling for halfling luck to roll ones durar for invisibility gith for Misty step and astral knowledge basically all the races have something to offer but those are probably the top ones Shadow heart has the acolyte background which gives her proficiency and insight in religion you can basically take any background that suits you if you're specifically looking for skills you want ones that use wisdom like insight and perception or dexterity like slight of hand and stealth now origin Shadow heart is forced to start off as a cleric but when you're taking Rogue levels I think it's actually better to start off as a level one Rogue this will give us a lot more skill options and this character is perfect to be your lock picker and trap dis armor so I like to get expertise inight of hand really early so I'm going to go talk to Withers to finish up our level one choices now instead of starting Shadow heart off as a cleric at level one we're going to switch over to Rogue here we'll get sneak attack which we will be making some use of let's go over our skills and abilities think the default spread is pretty close to what we want but we can drop this intelligence completely as well as the Charisma and I'm going to move our plus one bonus into wisdom and keep the plus two and dexterity we're going to be using our dual hand crossbows a lot so we want this stat to be pretty high I'm even going to leave it at 17 here this is potentially a good character to use The Hags hair on if you're going to I'm also going to leave our constitution at 14 then move wisdom up to 16 so we get a plus three in that as well and I'm going to drop these last two ability points into strength it's just nice to be able to jump a little more easily in the environment alternatively you could potentially pump Constitution up to a 15 with the intention of improving it to 16 with an ability score Improvement or if this is one of your main characters you could pump Charisma so that your dialogue checks aren't too horrible I'm going to stick with strength then we can choose our skills we have religion and insight from being an acolyte and I really want all of these dexterity skills acrobatics slight of hand and stealth then this last point that we have does kind of make sense in deception for shadow heart but we'll get a much bigger total bonus if we put it into perception then as a rogue we also get expertise in two skills letting us double the proficiency bonus to the skill that we're already proficient in we want slight of hand for sure for the lockpicking and trap disarming and we probably don't need stealth it might be better to put that into perception that'll make you most likely to see hidden things in the environment I'm going to confirm this and move to level two and this is where I want to start taking cleric levels this will give us Proficiency in medium armor and shields that we wouldn't otherwise have as a rogue then we get to pick three canant trips most of the cleric cantrips are actually pretty good but I think it's best to start with guidance being able to add a D4 to any ability check is just one of the better abilities in the game then resistance is similar with a less common application this adds a D4 to saving throws saving throws do occasionally come up in dialogue so having it on hand can definitely be very useful but if you're going into an encounter where you know you're going to be rolling a lot of saving throws then this can be good to cast there as well then I like to take at least one attacking can trip and this build is going to be built around radiant damage a little bit so I'm going to take sacred flame there's a little bit of a meme that shadow heart always misses with this attack which feels a little bit true in the early game but it does get better over time then I'm going to leave Shadow heart as a trickery domain cleric this is Shadow heart's kind of Canon subass and it's often considered one of the worst subclasses for clerics but it actually has one of the better domain spell lists you get blessing of the trickster which is honestly a pretty bad ability it's a little bit more useful in tabletop but in balder's Gate stealth is so focused on Vision cones the granting advantage to a creature just isn't that useful maybe if you could Target yourself with it but as it is it's it's just not very good especially since it requires concentration for our domain spells you get disguise self which can actually be quite useful to get you through certain dialogue encounters or fit through tight spaces in turn person is probably not quite as useful but it might help you get through a difficult dialogue check then as a level one cleric we get level one spells I'm not going to go too in depth on spells here since we prepare spells we can switch them out at any time so at the end of the build we'll go over a good set but some important ones to look out for are bless healing word command and either in fct wounds for some damage or Bane to debuff enemies we'll go to level three as the level two cleric we get channel Divinity we have one charge per short or long rest right now and we can use it to either use turn Undead which is very useful in act two to send Undead fleeing and we get invoke duplicity this ability is not quite as good as it is in tabletop but I also don't think it's as useless as some people make it out to be this grants advantage to attacks on you and allies within 3 m and of Illusion you place so long as their target is also within 3 m of the illusion I think that's about 15 ft this is definitely a little bit limited but the illusion also counts as a separate creature so it will actually draw aggro from enemies which I think is its more important feature a turn-based game like this is all about trading up on action economy so if you've used your action to cast invoke duplicity and a few enemies use their actions to attack it then you're doing just fine its biggest downside is that it requires concentration so in most fights you'd probably prefer to be concentrating on things like blast and spe guardians but this is a great ability to have when you're trying to conserve your spell slots for more important fights or you're running low on resources in a tough one but with that let's go to level four as a level three cleric we now have level two spells as a trickery domain cleric we get Mirror Image this is a great non-concentration for a cleric to have we'll have medium armor and a shield so we'll already have a pretty decent AC so bumping it by another nine with a spell is really really good this will make you really tanky and difficult to hit in a way that other cleric subclasses don't have access to and we also get passed Without a Trace which is not great again this is a stealth bonus and it's just not really going to come up very much it's at its best with the spell greater invisibility which we won't have access to but if you have a scroll or another party member with that spell then maybe you'll get some use out of it some of the other level two spells to look out for are Aid blindness enhance ability hold person and spiritual weapon obviously we don't have space for all that i' probably take at least Aid and then pick one that suits whatever your goal is maybe cing opponents dealing some damage or succeeding on skill checks then we probably still want command and bless we go to level five as a level four cleric we're going to gain a new can trip I would take light here unless you already have it thery for better intimidation checks or blade Ward are both good Alternatives if you do but in my current build path it's really important that I grab this for some future items we can prepare a seventh spell here and we also get a feat now we have a few different options here alert is a pretty solid go-to having some kind of initiative bonus on your character is pretty important if you really want to focus on doing ranged damage you could take Sharpshooter I think though that this character is less focused on dealing damage and more about applying statuses with their attacks so I don't really think we need it our best option is probably to take ability Improvement if you took the hags hair you could get your dexterity to 20 here or for a more balanced approach you could take your wisdom up to 18 and if you ended up with a 15 in Constitution you would put that up by one as well as your dexterity to make sure that all of your stats are even for your ability modifiers but if you ended up not getting the hag's hair and also have an uneven dexterity score like me you'd be better to take athlete to get that dexterity up you'll even get a little bit of a jump distance bonus this character also has the possibility to wear the gloves of dexterity should automatically make your dexterity an 18 in which case your probably just bumping up your wisdom but I think there are actually better gloves for us to be wearing so I'm going to go with this and move to level five now we're level six overall and a level five cleric which finally brings us to some of our most important level three spells as a trickery domain cleric we get bestow curse which I think is not particularly good can maybe have some uses if you really want to debuff a specific enemy a certain way or get a little bit of bonus damage if you think a combat's going to go for a few rounds but more importantly we get fear here fear is one of the better crowd control effects in the game and trickery cleric is the only subass that gains access to it now fear is different than frightened this gives disadvantage to Ability checks and attack roles and it makes it so that creatures affected by it have to run away from the source of the fear and they can't take any additional actions it also causes them to drop their weapons so you can Mass disarm a group of enemies and there are a lot of other great level three spells let's make a little bit of room here probably some of the best ones are mass healing word and spirit Guardians I said before that we're going to play into radiant damage a little bit so Spirit Guardians is going to be one of our go-to spells and it'll be especially good a little bit later when we gain cunning action and we can bonus action Dash to really run around the battlefield it can be nice to have rify so you don't have to rely on Scrolls and Glyph of warning is a great area of an effect spell that gives you a diverse range of damage options protection from energy remove curse and daylight are all spells that have some Niche use and it can be even nice to have animate dead if you want to do more of a Summoner thing now we're going to be a level seven character and I want to jump back over to Rogue levels for a little bit cutting action really improves our action economy you could cast Spirit Guardians with your action and then B bonus action Dash to hit every enemy on the field disengage to get out of a bad situation and even spend some turns hiding so enemies have a hard time tracking you down the dash is probably the most useful but what we really want comes at level three as a level eight character we'll take the thief subass and sneak attack will increase to 2 D6 damage instead of 1d6 and as a thief we get a second bonus action as a claron a rogue there's a lot of different stuff we can do with that now we can make multiple offhand attacks a turn we can use any of our cunning actions and still make an offhand attack we can also cast spells like healing word and sanctuary as we need them we also get resistance to Falling damage here although that's less important most of our turns in combat now are going to be spent using our action to cast a high impact spell or maybe using a special arrow and then making more attacks with our offhand crossbow shots and as we move on to level 9 we're going to swap back into cleric here we get a new channel Divinity use with cloak of Shadows we're probably casting invoke duplicity less and less now so cloak of Shadows is a great use of our Channel Divinity charges to help sneak through different locations or to start combats with the surprise round we can also prepare n spells now 10 if you put up your wisdom earlier then at level 10 we're going to get even more new spells the true C cleric we get polymorph which can be a useful CC spell against a large enemy and dimension door which doesn't have a lot of uses but there are definitely a few Encounters in the game where it's really really nice to have dimension door on hand now our level four cleric spells aren't fantastic banishment is pretty good single Target CC but I think since we have polymorph we don't really need it in the way that other clerk subclasses might want it although it is nice to have access to freedom of movement you don't even have to pre-cast the spell if one of your allies get stunned or paralyzed in a fight you can cast freedom of movement on them and it'll unlock them from that condition so might drop some stuff that I don't want pick up Freedom Movement and some other good lower level spells for something like that move on to level 11 here I think we want at least one more cleric level level eight we get Divine strike poison so once per turn you can add 1d8 poison damage to a weapon attack what's nice about this is that we can spend our first action casting a spell and then we have one offhand attack to use to apply the Divine strike poison damage and another offhand attack to apply sneak attack so we really get to make use of all the abilities from all our class levels together we can prepare another spell and we get a second feat here you could keep increasing your statistics but what I think what we might want a little bit more than that at this point is warcaster concentrating on spells is really important for a cleric and will basically always have either fear Spirit guardians or bless online in any fight so having advantage on those concentration checks is something that we really want there are a few items that you can get it from and if you decide to go with one of those items then you can swap this out for something else you get 20 decks 18 wisdom Sharp shooter maybe but with the equipment I want to use I'm going to take warcaster and then we'll move on to our final level where we kind of have one of two options the first would be to take that fourth level of Rogue per another feet maybe you really want it alert or you can keep maxing out your ability scores but I think it might be a little bit better to go with that ninth level of cleric for level five spells to trickery domain cleric we get seaming which is pretty bad it's actually kind of useful in tabletop but these illusion spells are not quite as applicable in a video game setting but we also get dominate person I think one or two of the other cleric subclasses does also get this but either way this is a great way to turn the tides of a fight as far as other level five spells go Mass healing W flame strike and insect plague are all pretty solid choices I'm going to knock out all of these prepared spells and take a look at what a final list might look like still think you always want healing word and bless command is always a solid CC spell we probably don't need the rest of this stuff prepared I really like to have enhance ability on hand and Aid is really useful too blindness is great against enemy spellcasters and can even shut off some boss legendary actions whole person is another solid CC spell then I want healing word and spirit Guardians I liked having freedom of movement Mass cure wounds in case something starts to go wrong in a fight and then probably either flame strike or insect plague I think that one's a little bit more fun although since it's concentration maybe you just want flame strike before we hit that equipment let's talk quickly about some multiclass options more Rogue levels don't really give us a lot but we're definitely missing those level six spell slots from cleric the most important in my eyes is probably Heroes Feast it's just such a huge buff to your whole party so you could make this build a full cleric or 11 cleric one Rogue that would still give you expertise on some important skills but give you back those level six cleric spell slots and if you wanted to lean more into the archery combat you definitely want the archery fighting style I think you still want at least five levels of cleric for fear and spirit Guardians and then three levels of Rogue for the thief bonus action so that doesn't give us enough leftover levels to grab extra attack from another class but you could still grab three levels of Ranger for gloomstalker for the initiative bonus extra attack in the first round and archery fighting style or two or more levels of fighter for that archery fighting style and for Action surge of course if you really want Ranger levels then I'd make this more of a ranger cleric multiclass and kind of drop the Rogue levels but the double bonus action is just so fun now as an Archer build we want access to all kinds of special arrows we can't get as much out of them as extra attack users since you can't use them on your bonus action attacks so stuff that hits multiple targets like The Arrow of many targets and smoke pwder arrows will help make the most of that one action attack and since we're still a support character arrows of sving to help out your allies can be useful in act one you're going to want to find some hand crossbows as quickly as you can random vendors will sell them and you can even come across plus one hand crossbows pretty early for your main hand weapon something like the staff of Arcane blessing is probably the best just something that boost your support ability otherwise the blood of the ther is a great choice it's an easy way to have light on yourself gives you a great casting of a spell and helps prevent your party from wiping in a bad encounter and then in your off hand you just want the best Shield you can find and by the end of act one that's going to be the adamantine shield for your main armor piece you just want the best medium armor you can find for the most part the adaman and scale mail is really good for that reducing damage and avoiding critical hit is a great way to stay tanky but for this build we really want to lean into some radiant damage with the Luminous armor this sends off a radiant shock wave every time we deal radiant damage applying two stacks of radiating orbs and a small AOE now in the early game that'll mostly be main action sacred Flames until we're at level five Clara can get Spirit Guardians there's also an act two item that'll really make the whole build take off now if you want to be a little more supportive you could go with the Hell Riders Pride gloves basically just granting blade Ward to allies that you heal but eventually we want the Luminous gloves this will just double the number of radiating orb stacks we can apply at one time so you can very quickly make it so that enemies can't land attacks like the Luminous armor this requires us to deal radiant damage as I mentioned before if you wanted to drop your decks you could use the gloves of dexterity this would let you have a higher Constitution and wisdom stat but I think the Luminous gloves are a little bit more powerful than that and then since we're always going to be concentrating on a spell I think the boots of striding are one of our best in slot Footwear options this makes it so that when we're concentrating we can't be knocked prone or moved against our will we also get the ring of Arcane Synergy in this act and I think our go-to turns at this point are going to involve casting sacred flame and then making offhand crossbow attacks so we'll make great use of the extra damage from Arcane Synergy we also have two solid necklace choices in act one if you want to lead more towards support you'd probably go with the Amulet of restoration extra castings of healing W and mass healing W are great especially when combined with the Hell Riders gloves but if you want to focus a little more on damage the D6 poison damage from brood mother's Revenge works great on hand crossbows but it's an act to that we can get most of our most synergistic equipment I think this build can work for shadow heart no matter which path you take with her although it's probably a little bit more accurate for a dark just dis Shadow heart but regardless you probably want to equip whatever spear you end up with if you go the dark justicier route then this character fits great inside a Darkness party Shar Spear of evening grants a cantrip casting of Darkness as well as immunity to the blinded condition this is a great combination and you can start a combat by casting darkness and still making two offhand attacks of course if you go with this Luna version of Shadow heart story then the advantage on wisdom saving throws and perception checks is just a great bonus on any character and moon beam is a great damaging concentration spell that clerics don't otherwise have access to and it also deals damage for all of our radiating orb applying equipment now because we're a big spellcaster and we're making a weapon attacks we're great users of the helmet of Arcane Acuity with this you'd start your turn by making two shots with your hand crossbow then with those Arcane Acuity Stacks you can use your action to cast a big control spell otherwise the Thematic choice is the Dark justicier Helmet it has some defense built in with a plus one to saving throws and plus one to Constitution saving throws and improves our critical hit chance to a 19 so long as we're obscured the justicier helmet is obviously the cooler option in the slot but it's hard to beat the strength of the helmet of Arcane acuity then if you've gone the dark justicier route you have access to the dark justicier half plate this gives you advantage on saving throws so you could switch out war cter with a different feet but I think we have better stuff to concentrate on than Shield of Faith so you're not really ever going to get the shs protection bonus the Luminous armor I think is just a better pick then at this point the Sentinel Shield is probably your best Shield option although the more thematic choice would be the justicier great Shield you can also get the dark justicier boots in this act but I just don't think they're very good Shadow teleportation is once per short rest and it's an action if you want a teleport ability on your boots you're just better to use the disintegrating night Walkers and we also get some good ring options in this act the callus glow ring really brings this whole build online so long as you're illuminated with something like the light can trip that we took earlier you'll do two radiant damage whenever you deal any kind of damage so this means all of our spells and our weapon attacks are going to deal that radiant damage also applying radiating orbs and if you want even more radiating orb you can also get the cation ring which will apply two more Stacks every time you deal spell damage it's not as universally useful but if you find you're mostly using Spirit Guardians then this is probably a pretty good pick and then we get our hand crossbows of choice in this act you get the Hellfire hand crossbow which is a plus two weapon that can also inflict burning if you're hiding or invisible we won't be invisible often but we can hide as a bonus action with our Rogue levels and then on our off hand we want the Nar misser the most interesting thing about this hand crossbow is that because it deals Force damage our sneak attack damage will also be Force damage if we're using this weapon it also helps us get around resistance to piercing damage I just think these are our two best options and by act three if you're not enjoying the spear and shield combination then you could dual wield melee weapons as well I'd probably take the justicier simitar to potentially blind enemies and Rap City from act three the up to plus three bonus on attack rolls damage and spell save DC are exactly what this build is looking to do you can also switch your helmet out for the hood of the weave if you'd rather have just a flat plus two bonus to spell save DC instead of having to worry about Arcane Acuity the hell dust gloves are also an okay option toop that spell save DC and add a little damage to your weapon attacks but luminous gloves are probably still better then if you want to be teleporting the hellus boots have the best option for that and make it so that we can't be Force moved kind of like the boots of striding the cloak of the weave is another good way to add just a little bit of extra spell save DC we can upgrade our Shield to the shield of the undo this will give us an additional level one spell slot but more importantly it'll give creatures disadvantage on saving throws to resist our spells and actions that inflict fear this isn't frightened but specifically fear like the fear spell finally you could switch out your amulet for the Amulet of The Devout for another plus two bonus to spell save DC all this bonus to spell save DC will help offset our wisdom score or depending on how you did your stats you could use ked's gift to get an even wisdom score if you've planned ahead to account for it this build is kind of like the reverse of Band of the Mystic scoundrel builds instead of making main action attacks and then casting an enchantment or illusion spells in bonus action this lets us use our bonus action to make two attacks and then use any other action we'd like for our main action fear Spirit Guardians dominate person special Arrow attacks we have a diverse range of options available to us the last thing I like to talk about in these build guides is how to round out your team composition with the character this character has great support and control options it does a little bit of damage but ites does have some weaknesses we could fill if you add a character that can stack mental fatigue to make it even more likely the enemies fail the saving throws for your powerful control spells it' be a great Synergy for this character they'd also go well with the tanky frontliner something like a fighter a barbarian or a paladin something that's capable of dealing a lot more solid damage and can take hits from enemies pretty easily most of our spell casting is either going to be focused on applying radiating orbs or casting big control spells so an evoker Wizard or a sorcerer that can take advantage of those control spells with big heavy hitting Nova damage is a great followup to this character's turn finally since we're really only a partial support character another full or hybrid support like a b or a druid could help the survivability of your party and keep it really well-rounded I really like having a lore friendly build for my party companions but trying to make trickery cleric work was a little bit tricky if you like the build let me know by liking the video and subscribing to make sure you don't miss the next one new balers Gate 3 builds go up every week so until the next time happy adventuring

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Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, BG3, Baldur's Gate, Build Guide, 5e, DnD, D&D, Dungeons and dragons, larian, larian studios, build, class, darkness, darkness spell, cleric, trickery cleric, trickery, trickery domain, shadowheart, lore friendly, lore friendly build, shadowheart build, rogue, thief rogue, thief subclass, subclass, dark justiciar, band of the mystic Scoundrel, Fear, Spirit Guardians, Hand Crossbows, Hand Crossbow, Crossbow, Radiating Orbs, Lore Friendly, Lore-Friendly

Id: JkgBJJb3YfI

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024