Best Feats for Gloom Stalker Ranger 5e
by James Hopkinson
The Ranger is probably my favourite class. Mental images of running around like Legolas are too hard to ignore and I think all the ranger sub-classes can bring something useful to the table. The Gloom Stalker is all about initiation and in a lot of circumstances you will be begging your party to attack at night or deliberately trying to influence the party to trawl through the darkest dungeons. Why? Because the Gloom Stalker loves to “do it in the dark”.
You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier. You are invisible to any creature that relies on darkvision to see you and make the encounter even more horrifying for your enemy. If you take the attack action on the first turn of each combat, you can make one additional weapon attack as part of that action. If you were to take a dip into fighter and a dip into war cleric there are ways to fire your bow 5 or 6 times in the first turn using action surge or the war cleric's innate ability.
The only real downside of the Gloom Stalker is that when you are outside fighting in the daylight or fighting creatures that don’t rely on darkvision you might feel that you don’t bring enough utility to the encounter. On the other hand, when you fight at night you may well find yourself obliterating an important foe in the opening turn. With that in mind, you can either take feats that will average out your influence in encounters or you can go for full-on situational glass cannon heroics. The Ranger is all about utility, they can output a lot of damage but can also heal the party or use a tricksy spell such as Rope Trick to get everyone out of a tight spot. The utility is endless and the following feats will enhance your Gloom Stalker whichever way you decide to play it.
Best Feats for Gloom Stalker Ranger 5e
Sharpshooter: This feat absolutely cannot be ignored. It will give you the option to stay behind a wall, or in a wood peppering the enemy with arrows from a safe distance which may even mean you can stay hidden, you can take the -5 to hit for the extra damage as you will have +2 from archery fighting style and be able to ignore the cover modifiers. I believe every Gloom Stalker should take this.
Piercer (Dex): Utterly amazing on a Gloom Stalker as you will be firing a lot of arrows and the more shots you have the more likely you are to crit. Imagine fighting darkvision enemies so you are invisible to them and potentially gaining advantage on 6 shots in the opening round of combat. It will be over before you have a chance to say peek-a-boo.
Fey Touched (Wis): A personal favourite of mine for pure utility. For a start, Rangers like extra Wisdom but don’t like to prioritise it over Dex, so here we get 1 Wis as a bonus. You can relocate casting misty step for free once per long rest as a bonus action so if you reveal yourself somehow you can reset and start again. It might also stop you from being melted by that boiling oil trap you failed to spot. You also get another spell to add to your list and there’s also something that feels right about a woodland elf being in touch with the fey world.
Fey Teleportation (Cha): If there is no rogue in your party and you’ve gone for a more charisma-based hunter, take this instead of Fey Touched as you get to use misty step every short rest instead of long rest. Plus, if you have high charisma you’ll be able to chat people up in the taverns and tell them how great you are when the lights go out.
Alert: This is absolute overkill in terms of initiative as you will be adding your Wis modifier on top of your Dex anyway, but you will almost certainly be going first with this feat. You might not always need to go first just for pure damage output but perhaps a quick escape or a relocation is needed.
Crossbow Expert: If you are considering a melee/hand crossbow build this is a must, but if you can convince your hard-nosed DM to let you go crossbows akimbo by “ignoring the loading properties” or by finding a repeating hand crossbow, then this is an exceptionally fun build.
Mobile: Being faster than the enemy means you are less likely to be caught, meaning you can kite enemies to death. If you happen to be a pesky woodland elf then you’re even faster. If you get caught with your pants down by a stealthy adversary you can make a melee attack with your longbow and as a result, you will be able to move away without provoking an attack of opportunity.
Elven Accuracy (Dex): If you are an elf this is fantastic, you will be creating a lot of situations where you gain advantage on attack rolls, so being able to reroll one of those dice is tantamount to a 3 dice attack roll. If you combine that with the piercer feat, it is truly devastating.
Lucky: The real power of the Lucky feat is to try and reign yourself in from using the luck points on attack rolls and save them for saving throws. Avoiding being toasted by a dragon’s breath for example is far more powerful than getting an extra D8 damage from your longbow. Using lucky this way makes you surprisingly resilient.
Skulker: Hiding when only lightly obscured? Yes, please! There’s nothing more satisfying than attacking from behind a glass of water or a plant pot. If you are a wood elf you’ll probably skip this feat but if not then it can be quite useful for a Gloom Stalker.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
