Alert, skill expert (boost dex and acrobatics), mobile, observant, sentinel, tough, crusher (I am the tank of the party, so tough and crusher will be handy).
Sentinel is nice, locks down the foe and might prevent them reaching someone squishier. Tough - extra HP would be nice if you have to tank Skill Expert is a nice half-feat, in it can round off an odd Dex or Wis score as needed and offer some more proficiencies. Alert can be handy, but less so than the above IMO Mobile is better if you're a skirmisher working beside a tank Crusher to me seems pointless as if you want to move someone you can under FoB, Also Str and Con are under Dex and Wis for stats. Observant if you're also the scout (Small party if the Monk is doing all these things lol) and again rounds out an odd Wis score.
That's the order I would prioritize them in. I am Open hand as well (Genasi) and we just hit 12. I kind of wish I'd gotten my Wis higher sooner, to have a better DC on Stunning Strike and my FoB options, if advice for leveling means anything to you lol. I boosted Dex higher first, thinking better raw damage and stuff, but in retrospect, I think I'd have gotten more favorable results in combat (more stuns landed, emenies knocked prone, etc) if I'd pushed Wis a bit more.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Crusher to me seems pointless as if you want to move someone you can under FoB, Also Str and Con are under Dex and Wis for stats.
Actually I'm a huge fan of Crusher on a Monk, as it works both with unarmed strikes and a quarterstaff. While STR and CON aren't stats you're likely to prioritise, you can still use the bonus to even them out (i.e- put an odd score in CON, take the feat in CON to get the +1 to the modifier).
While you can shove and such using your Flurry of Blows as Open Hand, with Crusher you don't have to; you can do it just by hitting something with an attack. Similarly to the Mobile feat you can use this to disengage from a lone enemy, or you can force an enemy away from an ally so that they can disengage (since you can pick the direction the enemy is moved). Plus you can still combine it with your Flurry of Blows bonuses to push them up to 20 feet, or 5 feet and prone and so-on.
Meanwhile the critical hit bonus is like a free stun (not as good as a full Stunning Strike, but still very handy) and on a Monk using Flurry of Blows we have a pretty good chance of getting critical hits.
Mobile used to my favourite for a Monk, but Crusher offers a similar(-ish) benefit with some additional potential uses, and it's a half-feat which is great if you have an odd score (or build with this feat in mind), meanwhile a Monk doesn't really need the extra speed that Mobile gives.
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tough is better taken at a later level, if you need it to try to maximize the initial HP bump. If you are just straight up monk, I'd probably go with sentinel.
There are some fun feats to take if you multiclass Monk with something else, but for a straight up monk Sentinel is pretty great, especially if you are the tank.
Crusher. A lot of what it offers compliments what a monk already does and uses. It can be useful to conserve ki, or when your out of ki.
the critical chance to support the party with advantage is kind of low to be reliable even though the monk can attack a lot. It should be noted that the critical effect bypasses basically all defensive features in 5e as it doesn’t rely on saves or magic. Under normal circumstances gritting and making use of stunning strike is probably a waste of resources, but these features can work together well to whittle down legendary resistance while still potentially debuffing the creature along the way.
Is Athlete not a good choice? It let's you bump dex by 1 and saves you movement on jumping and rising from prone.
I don’t like the athlete feat in general, and dislike it even more for a monk. Standing up for half your movement when proned seems to happen, in my experience, by fall damage or landing in difficult terrain after a jump.
the monk has slow fall so they can usually negate the fall damage that would otherwise prone them. A monk would usually also have proficiency in acrobatics, which would make it unlikely to fail the DC 10 Acrobatics check to land on their feet in difficult terrain.
there is a kind of gorilla warfare style where you may opt to prone yourself to impose disadvantage vs ranged attackers, and then stand up to continue to generate distance. This tactic usually doesn’t seem viable to me as it doesn’t seem to work synergistically with most group dynamics.
the 2nd half of athelte is what is useful for a monk:
Climbing doesn't cost you extra movement. While you can run up walls, there is still stuff that needs climbing.
You can make a running long jump or a running high jump after moving only 5 feet on foot, rather than 10 feet. You can jump even further beyond your enemies
A monk at level 9 can run up "vertical surfaces" how much that needs to be climbed when you have this feature is up tothe DM (he could for example say the cliff is at an angle of 89 degrees and therefore unarmored movement doesn't help but I would expect once you get to level 9 the abilty to clime without using extra movement is niche at best.
Step of the wind strictly better than this, admittedly for the cost of a ki but the frequncy to will need to make a standing jump means that is not a major issue.
Athlete has some benefits on a monk but there are many feats that will serve more use. Unfortunately monks are MAD and it is rarely better to take a feat before maxing out Dex and Wis (with the exception of a half feat if you have an odd score.
Athletic is really situational based on how your table works, if there a lot of obstacles that need to be jumped over or if climbing and standing from prone come in very often… you probably have acrobatics as a monk, so you really don’t need athletics unless you intend to do a lot of Grappling (which, is actually a really cool build… but you need to build into STR for that)
Crusher, for all the reasons mentioned above, is a good pick. Obviously with CON as opposed to STR for the stat bump
Mobile is good, as it further increases your mobility and also lets you move through crowds better in case you need to hit someone in the back line (punch this guy, run past him… punch that guy, run past him.. get to enemy caster and Flurry of blows!)
Im biased towards observant, as I like half feats that actually improve on Character Role Playing, and a +5 to passive perception / investigation checks is nice. And reading lips is always cool for any character. For that matter, Keen Mind is also good, but there are far fewer situations where knowing which way North is will be useful or necessary.
for the above reason with half-feats, Skill Expert is good… although don’t feel that you need to take acrobatics as the double proficiency part… perception, stealth and even slight of hand all have their uses for a nimble character
Tough, as mentioned, is good.. but not quite worth taking until higher levels, due to how it takes to get the benefit of extra HP.
It might also be worth lookin go into Fey or Shadow Touched, as they are half feats, and some of those spell abilities could help to improve your character role playing image
When I have to create a Monk, very often I feel almost obliged to choose the human variant race, clearly to take a feat. I recommend the "Mobile", or even better "Crusher" feat. At 5th monk level take 3 ranger levels for "Hunter mark" and "Druidic warrior" combat style for the spells "Create bonfire" and "Guidance". "Create bonfire" combined with "Crusher" feat and the open hands martial arts synnergy could have good results. (haven't tried yet). The spells the ranger offers are gold. "zephyr strike", "absorb elements", "black lotus assault",....
Too bad the ranger doesn't reload spells like warlocks do. That would be epic.
In the character builder AURORA I found this subclass for the ranger. If it wasn't a homebrew, I would always take the first 3 levels of this subclass to make a monk.
NENTYAR HUNTER The Nentyar archdruid of the Circle of Leth grants unique primal abilities to a special conclave of rangers in their employ. These rangers master a greater command of druidic and totemic powers. Using these gifts, the Nentyar Hunters, as they are called, root out evil that would threaten the forest and the natural order.
In Other Settings Outside the Forgotten Realms, these rangers are referred to as Wildheart Striders, named for their greater connection to the natural world. In worlds such as Eberron, these rangers serve the druids in the Eldeen Reaches. In Ravnica, these rangers might be guardians of the Selesnya Conclave’s guildhall, Vitu- Ghazi, or gifted scouts of the Gruul Clans. However you might choose to use them, these rangers are often considered champions of the primeval.
NENTYAR HUNTER MAGIC Starting at 3rd level, you learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Nentyar Hunter Spells table. The spell counts as a ranger spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.
NATURE’S GRACE You can leap, bound, dive, and swim gracefully through any environment. At 3rd level, you gain proficiency in Acrobatics, if you aren’t already proficient, and as long as you are not wearing armor heavier than light armor, and have at least one hand free, you have a climb and swim speed equal to your movement speed.
NATURE’S FURY When you access the primal powers granted to you through your spells, it invigorates your inner hunter. Starting at 3rd level, while you concentrate on a ranger spell, your movement speed increases by 10 feet, and you gain a bonus to weapon damage rolls equal to your proficiency bonus. Additionally, once per long rest you may change a normal hit from a weapon attack into a critical hit.
AGILITY OF THE WILD Starting at 7th level, you have resistance to the damage dealt by opportunity attacks. Also, when you provoke an opportunity attack, you can use your reaction to cause the opportunity attack to miss you, but you must choose to do so before the attack roll is made against you.
You can use this reaction a number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier (minimum of 1). You regain all expended uses of this feature when you finish a long rest.
MASTER OF THE HUNT You swiftly coordinate hunts to the utmost efficiency, ending them faster than they began. Beginning at 11th level, you have advantage on initiative rolls. Also, when you roll for initiative, every allied creature within 30 feet of you gains a bonus to their initiative rolls and weapon damage rolls during the first round of combat equal to your Wisdom modifier.
UNTAMED FEROCITY When challenged, you fearlessly strike back at all that would oppose you. Starting at 15th level, you can no longer be frightened.
Additionally, when a creature misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to make an attack against the creature as long as it is within range of your weapon.
I am an open hand vanilla human btw.
Alert, skill expert (boost dex and acrobatics), mobile, observant, sentinel, tough, crusher (I am the tank of the party, so tough and crusher will be handy).
Any other feat I should consider?
-Can't get lucky.
What class are you?
Monk, this thread is published in monk page and In the details I said I am open hand.
Sentinel is nice, locks down the foe and might prevent them reaching someone squishier.
Tough - extra HP would be nice if you have to tank
Skill Expert is a nice half-feat, in it can round off an odd Dex or Wis score as needed and offer some more proficiencies.
Alert can be handy, but less so than the above IMO
Mobile is better if you're a skirmisher working beside a tank
Crusher to me seems pointless as if you want to move someone you can under FoB, Also Str and Con are under Dex and Wis for stats.
Observant if you're also the scout (Small party if the Monk is doing all these things lol) and again rounds out an odd Wis score.
That's the order I would prioritize them in. I am Open hand as well (Genasi) and we just hit 12. I kind of wish I'd gotten my Wis higher sooner, to have a better DC on Stunning Strike and my FoB options, if advice for leveling means anything to you lol. I boosted Dex higher first, thinking better raw damage and stuff, but in retrospect, I think I'd have gotten more favorable results in combat (more stuns landed, emenies knocked prone, etc) if I'd pushed Wis a bit more.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Actually I'm a huge fan of Crusher on a Monk, as it works both with unarmed strikes and a quarterstaff. While STR and CON aren't stats you're likely to prioritise, you can still use the bonus to even them out (i.e- put an odd score in CON, take the feat in CON to get the +1 to the modifier).
While you can shove and such using your Flurry of Blows as Open Hand, with Crusher you don't have to; you can do it just by hitting something with an attack. Similarly to the Mobile feat you can use this to disengage from a lone enemy, or you can force an enemy away from an ally so that they can disengage (since you can pick the direction the enemy is moved). Plus you can still combine it with your Flurry of Blows bonuses to push them up to 20 feet, or 5 feet and prone and so-on.
Meanwhile the critical hit bonus is like a free stun (not as good as a full Stunning Strike, but still very handy) and on a Monk using Flurry of Blows we have a pretty good chance of getting critical hits.
Mobile used to my favourite for a Monk, but Crusher offers a similar(-ish) benefit with some additional potential uses, and it's a half-feat which is great if you have an odd score (or build with this feat in mind), meanwhile a Monk doesn't really need the extra speed that Mobile gives.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
tough is better taken at a later level, if you need it to try to maximize the initial HP bump. If you are just straight up monk, I'd probably go with sentinel.
There are some fun feats to take if you multiclass Monk with something else, but for a straight up monk Sentinel is pretty great, especially if you are the tank.
Crusher. A lot of what it offers compliments what a monk already does and uses. It can be useful to conserve ki, or when your out of ki.
the critical chance to support the party with advantage is kind of low to be reliable even though the monk can attack a lot. It should be noted that the critical effect bypasses basically all defensive features in 5e as it doesn’t rely on saves or magic. Under normal circumstances gritting and making use of stunning strike is probably a waste of resources, but these features can work together well to whittle down legendary resistance while still potentially debuffing the creature along the way.
Is Athlete not a good choice? It let's you bump dex by 1 and saves you movement on jumping and rising from prone.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I don’t like the athlete feat in general, and dislike it even more for a monk. Standing up for half your movement when proned seems to happen, in my experience, by fall damage or landing in difficult terrain after a jump.
the monk has slow fall so they can usually negate the fall damage that would otherwise prone them. A monk would usually also have proficiency in acrobatics, which would make it unlikely to fail the DC 10 Acrobatics check to land on their feet in difficult terrain.
there is a kind of gorilla warfare style where you may opt to prone yourself to impose disadvantage vs ranged attackers, and then stand up to continue to generate distance. This tactic usually doesn’t seem viable to me as it doesn’t seem to work synergistically with most group dynamics.
the 2nd half of athelte is what is useful for a monk:
A monk at level 9 can run up "vertical surfaces" how much that needs to be climbed when you have this feature is up tothe DM (he could for example say the cliff is at an angle of 89 degrees and therefore unarmored movement doesn't help but I would expect once you get to level 9 the abilty to clime without using extra movement is niche at best.
Step of the wind strictly better than this, admittedly for the cost of a ki but the frequncy to will need to make a standing jump means that is not a major issue.
Athlete has some benefits on a monk but there are many feats that will serve more use. Unfortunately monks are MAD and it is rarely better to take a feat before maxing out Dex and Wis (with the exception of a half feat if you have an odd score.
Athletic is really situational based on how your table works, if there a lot of obstacles that need to be jumped over or if climbing and standing from prone come in very often… you probably have acrobatics as a monk, so you really don’t need athletics unless you intend to do a lot of Grappling (which, is actually a really cool build… but you need to build into STR for that)
Crusher, for all the reasons mentioned above, is a good pick. Obviously with CON as opposed to STR for the stat bump
Mobile is good, as it further increases your mobility and also lets you move through crowds better in case you need to hit someone in the back line (punch this guy, run past him… punch that guy, run past him.. get to enemy caster and Flurry of blows!)
Im biased towards observant, as I like half feats that actually improve on Character Role Playing, and a +5 to passive perception / investigation checks is nice. And reading lips is always cool for any character. For that matter, Keen Mind is also good, but there are far fewer situations where knowing which way North is will be useful or necessary.
for the above reason with half-feats, Skill Expert is good… although don’t feel that you need to take acrobatics as the double proficiency part… perception, stealth and even slight of hand all have their uses for a nimble character
Tough, as mentioned, is good.. but not quite worth taking until higher levels, due to how it takes to get the benefit of extra HP.
It might also be worth lookin go into Fey or Shadow Touched, as they are half feats, and some of those spell abilities could help to improve your character role playing image
If I had to recommend a Feat I would go with:
For movement and combat:
For survival
For magic and more utility:
If I were to recommend how to create a monk:
When I have to create a Monk, very often I feel almost obliged to choose the human variant race, clearly to take a feat. I recommend the "Mobile", or even better "Crusher" feat. At 5th monk level take 3 ranger levels for "Hunter mark" and "Druidic warrior" combat style for the spells "Create bonfire" and "Guidance". "Create bonfire" combined with "Crusher" feat and the open hands martial arts synnergy could have good results. (haven't tried yet). The spells the ranger offers are gold. "zephyr strike", "absorb elements", "black lotus assault",....
Too bad the ranger doesn't reload spells like warlocks do. That would be epic.
In the character builder AURORA I found this subclass for the ranger. If it wasn't a homebrew, I would always take the first 3 levels of this subclass to make a monk.
NENTYAR HUNTER
The Nentyar archdruid of the Circle of Leth grants unique primal abilities to a special conclave of rangers in their employ. These rangers master a greater command of druidic and totemic powers. Using these gifts, the Nentyar Hunters, as they are called, root out evil that would threaten the forest and the natural order.
In Other Settings
Outside the Forgotten Realms, these rangers are referred to as Wildheart Striders, named for their greater connection to the natural world. In worlds such as Eberron, these rangers serve the druids in the Eldeen Reaches. In Ravnica, these rangers might be guardians of the Selesnya Conclave’s guildhall, Vitu- Ghazi, or gifted scouts of the Gruul Clans. However you might choose to use them, these rangers are often considered champions of the primeval.
NENTYAR HUNTER MAGIC
Starting at 3rd level, you learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Nentyar Hunter Spells table. The spell counts as a ranger spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.
Nentyar Hunter Spells
Ranger Level Spell
3rd entangle
5th enhance ability
9th dispel magic
13th dominate beast
17th hold monster
NATURE’S GRACE
You can leap, bound, dive, and swim gracefully through any environment. At 3rd level, you gain proficiency in Acrobatics, if you aren’t already proficient, and as long as you are not wearing armor heavier than light armor, and have at least one hand free, you have a climb and swim speed equal to your movement speed.
NATURE’S FURY
When you access the primal powers granted to you through your spells, it invigorates your inner hunter. Starting at 3rd level, while you concentrate on a ranger spell, your movement speed increases by 10 feet, and you gain a bonus to weapon damage rolls equal to your proficiency bonus. Additionally, once per long rest you may change a normal hit from a weapon attack into a critical hit.
AGILITY OF THE WILD
Starting at 7th level, you have resistance to the damage dealt by opportunity attacks. Also, when you provoke an opportunity attack, you can use your reaction to cause the opportunity attack to miss you, but you must choose to do so before the attack roll is made against you.
You can use this reaction a number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier (minimum of 1). You regain all expended uses of this feature when you finish a long rest.
MASTER OF THE HUNT
You swiftly coordinate hunts to the utmost efficiency, ending them faster than they began. Beginning at 11th level, you have advantage on initiative rolls. Also, when you roll for initiative, every allied creature within 30 feet of you gains a bonus to their initiative rolls and weapon damage rolls during the first round of combat equal to your Wisdom modifier.
UNTAMED FEROCITY
When challenged, you fearlessly strike back at all that would oppose you. Starting at 15th level, you can no longer be frightened.
Additionally, when a creature misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to make an attack against the creature as long as it is within range of your weapon.