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

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.