Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 52nd episode of our feat series. Today we’re going to be taking a look at the stealth archer feat also known as dnd 5e skulker feat. If you’ve ever played skyrim you will 1000% get the reference and you will appreciate the aspect behind this particular choice.
That being said, skulker is found in the player’s handbook and it attracts a very certain kind of playstyle to it as i’m sure you will notice here in a bit. That being said, let’s take a look at it’s description and kind of look at what we’re dealing with here.
Table of Contents
Description
First and foremost it might be worth noting that there is a prerequisite for this feat and that is that you have to have a dexterity of 13 or higher before you pick it. And it kind of make sense, that being said, let’s take a look at the full description here. So you can kind of get a better idea as to why and how this functions.
You are expert at slinking through shadows. You gain the following benefits: You can try to hide when you are lightly obscured from the creature from which you are hiding. When you are hidden from a creature and miss it with a ranged weapon attack, making the attack doesn’t reveal your position. Dim light doesn’t impose disadvantage on your Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on sight.
Super cool stuff! You can kind of see what i mean when this would attract a certain play style. That being said, let’s take a look at the walkthrough and break it down just a little bit further.
Walkthrough
First and foremost the hiding will your lightly obscured, super-great means you can essentially roll a hide when you have a very little cover, very little visibility loss between you and the target. Super helpful for getting out of a pinch as well and then not being able to get your position notice through missing a super beneficial.
Man if i had a nickel everytime, i was in the campaign and i hit and then i took a shot and i missed only to have a compromise my position and put me in a really rough spot, well then i’d have quite a few nickles. That being said, really good there and dim light doesn’t impose disadvantage on your perception checks. Which is super great even outside of combat. With that all out of the way let’s take a look at my personal thoughts.
Thoughts
I absolutely love this one from a role play aspect, from a thematic aspect and from a mechanical aspect i find it to be one of the stronger feats in the game. My only criticism of it really is that it doesn’t stack with levels the same way a lot of the other ones do. That being said, i mean the ability to hide in the faintest of cover is super great. Now what else get something very similar as a racial ability but for the most part this is a good way for everyone and get access to it.
The ability to miss an attack do not have a screw up your whole plan is also super great. The dim light part phenomenal too because it really does open up the versatility of your character quite a bit and there’s not a whole lot of popular races that have dark visions, this is a good way to kind of get around that.
In terms of who benefits most from this? you know i gotta say the rogue when they don’t have dark vision already. I think that’s pretty fair, they can hide as a bonus action which is really nice and then they can really take advantage of their sneak attack a little bit further.
Outside of that, i’m not actually too sure. The rogues are the obvious choice. My biggest criticism of this particular feat is that it doesn’t incorporate spell attacks or ranged spell attack. So that’s a little bit of a misnomer there rangers for sure, there’s a certain multi class build with our ranger and bard so that’s pretty cool. But rogues and rangers primarily would benefit from this.
The kensei monk might as well if you go with the bow and arrow as your kensei weapons. So you could do that and outside of those three i can’t really think of anything else would benefit to too much from this. It kind of depends a thematic aspect of your charater though. In the arcane archer could as well that’s another one. So four total.
Conclusion
In any case if you have any ideas for which class could working with this any combo ideas, any comments, any cool stories or any thoughts involving skulker i’d really like to hear them down in the comments below, i love reading them i know everyone else does as well. Thank you so much again you guys and as always a happy adventuring.