Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Problem with Shadowheart's Initiative

Shadowheart in my party is great except of her low initiative. Initiative is very important in my opinion. Earlier I used the Gloves of Dexterity and the Sentinel Shield for + 5 Initiative, but I have a better gloves/ring combo now and recently got Viconia's shield which is too good to ignore. Her feats currently are + 4 to Wisdom and "War Caster" (she either concentrates on Call Lightning or Spirit Guardians). But with that she has 2 initiative total, a no go.

What to do? I see some solutions:

1. Take two ASI and "Alert" as feats, however that would mean to skip "War Caster" which in my imagination helped in combat.
2. Take "Alert" and "War Caster" and only get to 18 Wisdom. I really don't like only 18 in my main attribute.
3. Find compensation, some to + Wisdom or + Initiative items or items which give advantage in Constitution saving throws
(that are not gloves or rings or shields. The Hellstrider Longbow is not available because already in use elsewhere. The shortbow with + 1 Initiative is too tiny a gain, especially as she uses her ranged weapon, Harolds Crossbow, frequently. I still wasn't in the House of Hope for this insane + Con amulet)

What would be your choice? Is it manageable with only 18 Wisdom in endgame? Is "War Caster" not that important?

If you already have Viconia's shield, did you try your luck with the Mirror of Loss for additional Wisdom? I like Alert on my low Dex group members and it usually does its job to push them to early spots in the initiative. The rest probably depends on how good your spell save/attack and your constitution are in general.

So, for me, I would choose upgrading her wisdom to 20 and picking Alert over Warcaster. That is what I always do and it works fine. I play her as trickery domain then life domain, however. There is an amulet in Jaheira’s basement that gives you +1 wisdom. However, it’s very special to Jaheira and personally I would only have her wear it. There is also a helmet or two that increases initiative in Act 3.

Vigilance elixirs.

Yes, dice failure on all chars except Astarion who got + 2 Dex up to 22 Dex.



I will probably do this. Yesterday I stumbled into the fight with Gortash and his fists (although I only wanted to look for Ansur), Shadowheart (20 Wis, Alert) lost concentration one time, that might be ok.



I'm very reluctant to use potions or scrolls in this game, but I will look for it. I don't think that I can produce them however.

Once you are in act three, potions are easy to craft & buy. There is one alchemist with ingredients in Wyrm's crossing, and the dwarven alchemist from Underdark in Lower City. I'm not sure what you mean by producing them, anyone can craft potions as long as you have the ingredients. If you mouse over ingredients in merchant's inventory it should say what they are used for.

Alternatively, you can use potions of peerless focus to replace war caster.

I meant that I was not sure wether I had the formula in my Alchemy window. Except for health I usually never use(d) potions. After I extracted all ingredients I saw the Elixir of Vigilance in my book. A good method to spare a feat. However I only have two available and did not find ingredients yet. Are there other potion dealers except the two mentioned (Mr. Ugly-Moustache and Mrs. Mushroom)?

If Shadowheart retains her default subclass (Trickery Cleric) and is a companion in your party, I would advise keeping her initiative as is. In this case, her default initiative (either 1 or, if her odd DEX is fixed later, 2) is perfect. She, being a cleric, has no need for a high initiative. She should ideally be the very last party member to act in every round of every battle. This is extremely important if she is tasked to keep your entire party safe from a disaster or even a potential party wipe.

• Imagine: during the first round of combat, your main character (Karlack for example) got struck down dead and after revived, downed again. If Shadowheart had already taken her turn (should she have a higher initiative), who else in your party would be there to get Karlach back to life to during the same round of combat? If Shadowheart had a low initiative, Karlach would be able to take her turn during the first round - even after downed twice!
• Imagine: during the first round of combat, your main character (Astarion for example) got struck down to just 1HP left. If Shadowheart had not taken her turn by then, she would be able to heal and (if necessary to help him avoid further attacks) sanctuary Astarion to keep him up and ready.
• Also imagine a rescue mission or a "help X survive" type of mission. If Shadowheart only takes her turn AFTER most of the others, she can choose to pick an appropriate action and/or bonus action to keep the mission target healed and/or sanctuaried and/or otherwise protected.
  • In Act 1: with her default initiative (which is 1 most likely), she may be able to remove the "Charmed" effect during a "Keep X survive" mission against several harpies.
  • In Act 2: with her default initiative (which is likely 2 now), she is able to single-handedly prevent an important NPC from getting struck down and thereby kidnapped (the kidnapper has an initiative very high at that stage of the game and can do a massive amount of damage in the very first round of combat).
• Exceptions: One potential exception is the final battle in her personal quest line in Act 3. You may want her to be on the front line with a high initiative. By that time, you must have got multiple items with which to temporarily raise her initiative for just a battle or two. Without using potions or the Alert feat, you can raise her initiative to about 10+, which is more than good enough. However, you will have to figure out what you want her, being just a cleric, to do if she is the first person to act in a battle. For me, in that final battle, I wanted her to disarm the key members of the opposing party. In general, we always prefer to disarm someone before they have a chance to use their weapons.

if you use Shadowheart as a front-line warrior, that can be a very different story. In this case, you will most likely have to change her class or at least change her subclass. In such a case, Shadowheart is just a name attached to, or a husk with which to carry, your preferred build. The same build can be tagged to or played under any other name of your choosing, such as Tav, Lae'zel, Wyll, or whatever you prefer.

Take Alert.

18 WIS is enough. 20 is better.

Skip War Caster. It gives only an advantage in maintaining concentration. Unless she needs to use a spell like Haste (the concentration failure of which leads to a mini disaster in the middle of heated combat), War Caster is not important. In general, War Caster is most relevant only to the pure arcane casters (Wizard and Sorcerer, not Bard). If they can't keep concentration as much as they like, they lose effectiveness in combat, which can even lead to their death. Cleric can fight with or without spells.


For end game combat: Alert > 18 to 20 WIS > War Caster

I like it to have my party rolling close together and first. I had bad experience where a char late in the action bar was already dead till the turn came to her.

With rolling together you also can (theoretically at least) do awesome combos, like yesterday in my first time Raphael fight. Gale indeed succeeded one time to put R. to sleep (with an ok-ish crit from Jaheira -Paladin/Bard- as result), and I got bold and tried a nice two glyph combo on 4 grouped up cambions, of course all resisted sleep ...
I still think that 1 successful sleep and 2 following failures on R. (and then loss of concentration despite Sanctuary) was a waste of one of my two lvl 6 spells, but that's another topic.

I followed the advice and made Shadowheart 20 Wis and with the Alert feat. Because with Jaheira now in my party I have another initiative gimp to care for.

If Shadowheart has the gloves of dexterity you could put her in the spidersilk armor. Her armor class would be fine and she would still have advantage on concentration checks.

I always take war caster - really helps in chapter 2 when trying to keep spirit guardians going.

Shadowheart now has the Helldusk armor, Viconia's shield, Balduran's helmet and the Con amulet. AC 26 unbuffed and 150 hp, constant physical damage resistance and Bless from items, among them gloves. I would not change this combo for anything else. So I take Alert as feat and two times ASI. The only disadvantage is that the armor looks terrible.