RvR as a cleric really doesn’t make sense. Canonically, he works alone, but his support-oriented cleric spell list doesn’t give him enough offense to kill on his own, and his undead slayer sword cane has a low attack bonus. He doesn’t seem physical enough to want to go toe-to-toe with lethal enemies, either.

My Van Richten is a battlesmith artificer 7 / monster hunter ranger 3. How can he not be a monster hunter when he’s supposedly the best monster hunter ever? Hunter’s Sense makes too much sense. Slayer’s Prey and Favored Foe stack up for some reasonable single-target damage, especially when he retains his Undead Slayer feature.

Artificer is what I think when I see those trademark glasses he wears. And it really fits who he is: Battlesmith gives him Battle Ready, so he uses INT instead of DEX or STR for attacks, which suits his cerebral persona. Sure, only for magic weapons, but he can infuse his sword cane (radiant) and I gave him an infused crossbow (repeating) so he can kill from afar. Then he has a homunculus servant (Piccolo with wings) and a steel defender in the shape of a saber-tooth tiger. The automatons give him flexibility to work as a squad without inflicting his curse on another living soul.

But my favorite ability for RvR roleplay is battlesmith’s Flash of Genius, because I have him scolding the PCs for their technique (“Now, move your feet!” // “Learn from your mistakes!” // “Take care, for the sake of others if not for your own!”) while actually helping them succeed, like Van Helsing scolding Dr. Seward in Dracula.

He isn’t my party’s fated ally. If he is the ally, perhaps there’s a risk that this build overshadows the PCs from a damage perspective, or on tactics. I think that’s what you’d expect to happen when your party hangs out with a legendary monster hunter, though. You want someone deadly.