So, I'm branching out a bit to try and concoct a goblin character, as a sort of foray into the so-called "monstrous" races to see what it's like to have a player character who's more-or-less hated by the general populace.

But before I can embark on the glorious journey of Flak Vile, goblin mercenary, I need to determine the class features that best utilize the goblin features.

One would think that "Rogue" would be the ideal class for a goblin, what with the bonus to Dexterity...but it turns out, much of the goblin racial features overlap a bit poorly with the rogue features...or rather, they become redundant. "Nimble Escape" is overshadowed by a rogue's "Cunning Action"...bestowing the same effect. "Fury of the Small" adds substantial damage...at least over progression...so there is opportunity for even more damage, but I feel that extra damage can assist other classes.

A "Fighter" lends significant use to a goblin's features...a fighter would use their Action to make Attacks...and the bonus action "Hide" or "Disengage" would make them very nimble combatants for flexible combat strategy, and decent ambushers for the start of combat. "Battlemaster" seems a useful subclass, allowing a Dexterity goblin a chance to shine with ranged crossbows or as a skirmisher.

"Monk" is very interesting...the goblin stats support a monk's prime features, and the extra movement stacks well with "Nimble Escape". However, the bonus action interrupts a monk's love of punching things as much as possible...and "Step of the Wind" already gives "Disengage". It seems "Monk" has a similar redundancy as a "Rogue" does.

"Ranger" is perhaps the most "appropriate" goblin class...goblins tend to gather in the wilds, after all...waiting to ambush travelers. The goblin racial features give the Ranger everything they might desire from a Rogue multiclass, albeit to a lesser extent.

Finally, a Bard offers perhaps the most ridiculous class for a goblin...or perhaps one that offers the most shenanigans. Goblins aren't known for being very popular...the prospect of a goblin becoming a Bard is quite unusual. But a goblin who wishes to express themselves through art, story or song may provide a key reason why a goblin might be different from the other, primitive goblins. That, a "College of Swords" puts the goblin racial features to surprisingly good use...bonus movement stacks with "Nimble Escape", the Flourishes of Sword Bards don't require bonus actions, and "Fury of the Small" increases a bard's somewhat meager damage.

It's a puzzling matter...does anyone have any thoughts?

While we're at it, share some stories of your goblin characters!

I'm playing a Goblin Bard right now. Part of his backstory is that, as a flamboyant performer, he's deliberately non-threatening looking, so despite being a Goblin he stood out so deliberately that it didn't seem unusual. Still, as a Bard, there's a lot of abilities that benefit from stealthing or disengaging as a bonus actionl

You may want to consider an Artificer.

I've been toying with the idea of a sorcerer or warlock, using the bonus action to hide and get advantage on spell attack rolls(also hide adding some survivability if you have a dm that focuses down casters while NPCs have to figure out where these attacks are coming from.

Here's a funky notion for ya.

Goblin Barbarian.  Namely, an Ancestral Guardians Barbarian.

Hear me out: gobbos give you Dex and Con, both the components for a GARbarian's Unarmored Defense.  yeah, your attacks are generally restricted to strength as a barb, but depending on how your game does stats that can be worked around.  Either way, the bonus Disengage from being a gobbo lets your barbarian glide through fights delivering smashing wherever it needs to be, and in the case of Ancestral Guardian barb...whatever you tag first sucks at attacking anything but you. 

If you whack something, tag it with your Guardians, then Gobbo Disengage and saunter off somewhere else, the critter is strongly incentivized to follow you, which gives you some soft battlefield control of sorts in that you can drag certain, less intelligent creatures around by the nose.  Furthermore, Ancestral Guardians have good uses for their reactions but not for their bonus actions, so they don't conflict with Gobbo Cowardice on your turn.  You can disengage or hide freely without wasting a class feature action or some TWF nonsense or the like. 

Stock up on javelins (or even darts if you like - darts are technically melee weapons, and thus can use Strength for their attacks if you like as per the Finesse feature) and you can do it all from range, to boot.  Yeah okay, you don't get Rage bonus damage from thrown attacks, but sometimes being able to debuff a critter's attacks from twenty-odd feet away is worth sacrificing a couple points of damage for.  Especially with Fury of the Small waiting in the wings to pump up one particularly important attack per rest.

Plus?  you get the hilarity of being a goblin barbarian.  Rage Midgets are always comedy gold, great for livening up the roleplaying at your table, especially if you can land enough Strength for Flak Vile to be the swolest angry short man in all of Faerun.

So you reminded me of my old char blueberry https://ddb.ac/characters/9225323/OgKxCZ . He was a goblin strongman in a circus that got turned blue by a wild magic surge during a performance.

That goblin barbarian sounds awesome. I should work pretty well with a Monk too.

Not as well, unfortunately.  Monks have a lot of bonus-action options, one of which is a (ki-powered) disengage.  The best feature of the goblin species, as per Volo's Guide to Aggravating DMs, is the demi-Cunning Action they get to disengage or hide.  That and the goblin's natural stats work better for Barbaric Unarmored Defense than they do for Monastic Unarmored Defense.

A gobbo monk could absolutely work, and it'd be able to ignore Strength which is a boon, but you wouldn't get quite as much neat-and-tidy division of actions, nor the excellent reaction that Ancestral Guardian barbarians get.

Fighter or ranger for martial classes. Warlock or sorcerer for magic classes.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Here's a funky notion for ya.

Goblin Barbarian.  Namely, an Ancestral Guardians Barbarian.

Hear me out: gobbos give you Dex and Con, both the components for a GARbarian's Unarmored Defense.  yeah, your attacks are generally restricted to strength as a barb, but depending on how your game does stats that can be worked around.  Either way, the bonus Disengage from being a gobbo lets your barbarian glide through fights delivering smashing wherever it needs to be, and in the case of Ancestral Guardian barb...whatever you tag first sucks at attacking anything but you. 

If you whack something, tag it with your Guardians, then Gobbo Disengage and saunter off somewhere else, the critter is strongly incentivized to follow you, which gives you some soft battlefield control of sorts in that you can drag certain, less intelligent creatures around by the nose.  Furthermore, Ancestral Guardians have good uses for their reactions but not for their bonus actions, so they don't conflict with Gobbo Cowardice on your turn.  You can disengage or hide freely without wasting a class feature action or some TWF nonsense or the like. 

Stock up on javelins (or even darts if you like - darts are technically melee weapons, and thus can use Strength for their attacks if you like as per the Finesse feature) and you can do it all from range, to boot.  Yeah okay, you don't get Rage bonus damage from thrown attacks, but sometimes being able to debuff a critter's attacks from twenty-odd feet away is worth sacrificing a couple points of damage for.  Especially with Fury of the Small waiting in the wings to pump up one particularly important attack per rest.

Plus?  you get the hilarity of being a goblin barbarian.  Rage Midgets are always comedy gold, great for livening up the roleplaying at your table, especially if you can land enough Strength for Flak Vile to be the swolest angry short man in all of Faerun.

 That, and I'd wager that a goblin barbarian would have a LOT of ancestors...goblins tend to get themselves killed quite often.

 Heh.  I mean, everybody has a lot of ancestors.  But if your 'Ancestral Warriors' are less primal spirits of savage fury and more the ghosts of Uncle Ned, Auntie Fred, Cousin Ted and Cousin Dedd apparating around the target of your ancestral class features to heckle it with scavenged goblin weapons, spectral hamhocks and a healthy dose of Goblin-language cussing?  That's awesome.

I'm probably a bit late to the party on this topic but I'm reading several people saying that the Goblin's racial class skills take away from "Step of the Wind"'s ability to disengage. What I say to that is....it frees up a ki point that you would have to SPEND on SotW and use it for something more punchy.

I've been building a Gobbo Monko and I'm torn between Drunken Master or Way of the Ascendant Dragon. In our games we also get a free feat with a new character.

WotAD would be paired with the mobile feat to allow me to keep punching and running around the battlefield like a little bouncing ball without triggering opportunity attacks (we shall see if it's any good). This build has 55 speed and so can literally fly around smacking people and never be the main target unless they want to be.

DM would be so I would not need to choose the Mobile feat if I used Flurry of Blows against a singular enemy...so could maybe use the free feat on Athlete for the Dex increase. This build feels a bit less mobile (hur hur hur) and requires being in the midst of the fight to really utilise this sub-classes abilities.

Idk, I feel like I'm missing something here as across several forums I'm not seeing people make the case for using racial/feat abilities to save on ki point usage which seems to be the singular greatest thing a monk has to manage across multiple encounters.

Note: this does mean that the only benefits of being a Gobbo are bonus action hide, darkvision and Fury of the Small....which seems acceptable to me :)

Happy for feedback on this!

Ben's point is more true than you realize, if you haven't played a Monk.  Saving a Ki point is big at all times and being more "punchy" isn't always the best tactic for a Monk, because we are quite squishy and usually best served being out of range at the end of a turn.  Giving a Fighter a free disengage option is also good and could apply to a Ranger, both of which actually mesh pretty well with Goblin stats and racials.

Personally, I have a Goblin Wizard I am going to use at some point and he is going to be a ton of fun.  I don't think that would work, as it appears you are seeking a more "min/max" type result and Wizard is not in the Goblin's "optimal class" list until you go WAAY down.  That said, Goblins open tons of doors for fun RP opportunities, so don't count out pure, mindless fun for the character.

Ascendant dragon is probably the "Better" monk class, overall... most of the Drunken Master techniques are pretty niche. Like... at 6th Level a Dragon Monk can fly and also always does so with the benefit of Step of the Wind as well, which can be used at no additional cost beyond the Ki point used to SotW, while a 6th Level Drunken Monk can get up from prone more easily and can redirect an enemy's attack... assuming, of course, that first of all it's specifically a melee attack, that the melee attack then misses you, and there has to be at least one other viable target within five feet of yourself. 

That said... I actually like the idea of a Drunken Monk Goblin more than Dragon Monk mostly for the flavor of it all. I picture goblins as being inherently chaotic creatures, so the idea of a drunk little guy running around punching people in the crotch and juggling groups of enemies is a lot more appealing to me.

I also like that Drunken Master really opens you up to save Ki or use Bonus Actions more freely... if you need to disengage and save on Ki, then you've got your Goblin Nimble Escape... if you want to get in a little extra damage, then Flurry of Blows costs just one Ki to attack and Disengage, plus boost your movement. You'll basically never need to use Step of the Wind. Dragon, on the other hand, gives you a couple of different resources you need to track. Not that resource management is inherently a bad thing, but it does make the subclass a bit more work in the long run.

I would, however, recommend against taking the Athlete Feat if you do choose to go Drunken Master, because it has multiple redundancies. A Drunken Monk inherently learns how to get up from prone by only spending 5 feet... all monks eventually get the ability to run up vertical surfaces, so a bonus to climbing speed means nothing to them. And between slow fall and their already increased movement options, getting a minor boost to your long jump abilities will almost never come up. If you're set on taking a feat that increases DEX, I have a few suggestions:

Piercer would work if you use a spear as your primary weapon. This one's not too exciting... it doesn't apply to your unarmed strikes but it's a nice way to deal a little extra damage consistently.

Squat Nimbleness I recommend a bit more... it gives you an additional 5 feet of movement which, paired with being a monk, means you'll be zipping around the battlefield even faster. It also grants you proficiency with either Acrobatics or Athletics, which mostly frees you up to focus on other proficiencies with your class or background, since it's safe to assume you're going to, at the very least, want Acrobatics Proficiency. You also gain advantage on escaping from grapples because, if your DM is smart, they'll want to start trying to pin your character down since you'll be all over the map most of the time.

The last feat I think would work well is Skill Expert. The thing about Skill Expert is that it gives you a lot of room to customize your character... You get to increase any ability score you want, then learn any skill you want, and then gain expertise in any skill you want. The important thing, though, is that there's nothing in the wording that says any of these boosts have to be related. You could gain +1 DEX, then get proficiency with Charisma-based Deception, and also grant yourself expertise with Wisdom-based Perception... or whatever combination helps you to realize the character you have in your head. This is a great feat if you have a specific character concept in mind that your combination of race and class doesn't quite fully realize.