I am currently playing a Halfling Open Hand Monk and am interested in multiclassing after I get my ASI at level 8. I've got a couple options of which direction to go and wanted to get some feedback to see what others thought.
I made a list of what I would get from each class and what I would get for staying as a monk for comparison purposes.
Monk levels 9-11: 3 ki, 3d8 hp, Purity of Body (immune to poisons and diseases), +5 movement speed, ability to run across water and vertical surfaces, boost to 1d8 martial arts die, Tranquility
The main advantages here are the extra Ki and getting the martial arts die to a d8, a couple other things are nice but nothing critical.
There are a lot of really great abilities that Fighters get very early, the extra hp and fighting style are good, I haven't decided whether I would be better off going with Battle Master or Rune Knight.
Rangers also get more hp than Monks, a variety of abilities of varied usage, some spells (I'm guessing just Hunter's Mark, Absorb Elements and something else) and the abilities from Gloomstalker are great.
This seemed like an interesting possibility. It doesn't get any more hp than the Monk would but the Hexblade abilities are great and Invocations give a lot of added options. There isn't really much gained by doing Pact of the Blade like most Hexblades so I would probably chose a different option, perhaps Chain. Since the only thing that is gained from the 3rd level of Warlock is the Pact and level 2 spells, I would also have the option of just doing 2 levels instead of 3 like the others.
At the moment I'm leaning towards Fighter because a lot of those abilities add to what I'm already doing without requiring a lot of extra actions which some of the Ranger abilities do. Does anyone have any suggestions or alternatives I might have overlooked?
Open Hands 11 is an empty ribbon, so I don’t fault you for bailing now. I do think that Monk 14 is a great threshold to reach, and I like the poison immunity at 10, and for a subclass that is devoted to flurrying EVERY round more ki is helpful, but... there’s worse things in the world than multiclassing out now, if you get short rests often enough that 8 gets you through the day.
I dont think anything has much synergy with open hand features, really, but I suppose being able to Attack, flurry immediately, knock prone, then get one more flurry attack, one more attack attack, then action surge for two more attacks... that’s ok. Probably easy enough to do as a battlemaster/monk WITHOUT being an open hand, but having two ways to do it isn’t bad. Battlemaster would be my pick, because you’ve signaled with open hand that you flurry a lot, and battlemasters love making attacks. You probably don’t have the Con for great Rune Knight DC, and I don’t see much synergy there anyway until much higher levels in the subclass.
I like Gloomstalker, since it front loads damage and action economy in a fight, rather than delaying it by asking you to use a bonus action to make later turns stronger. That’s good. Also, in night fights or underground... advantage in ALL your attacks, against everyone, and disadvantage on all against you? Amazing... if you fight in the dark, which some groups never will. Hunters Mark obviously scales great with Flurry, but again, I hate skipping attacks in one round as a monk to make later rounds do more, I think it’s a losing proposition... focus on Favored Foe instead, and other utility spells, not Hunters Mark.
The Genie Warlock is fun, and with Tome pact you can have a familiar and cast rituals and know Guidance. If your Cha is actually good, maybe Swords Bard should be considered as well, it buffs your attacks and has a fighting style (see if your DM lets Blindfighting be an option).
Like chicken I love poison immunity. Poison is a very common damage type if often occurs in response to a hit and the number of hits a monk makes that damage quickly ramps up. And it is just awesome to laugh in the face of a green dragons poison breath. I have also found the ability to run up vertical surfaces has allowed be to get attacks in on flying creatures or those firing from atop a castle wall of something. Unless you know your camapaign will end before then, diamond soul is huge so taking 3 levels in another class will either greatly delay or rule out having this entirely. More Ki is always good even if you know it is a single combat per short rest you have to ration your ki as a single class and it gets really difficult as a multiclass. In an ideal word you would be using upt o 5 ki a round (stunning strike on each hit with flurry of blows if a stun is successful move on to the next bad guy incapacitating as many of them as possible) limiting yourself to and average of 2.5 gives you more than half the effecrtivelness but not massivley more.
3 levels of fighter or ranger Fighter or ranger will get an extra 3 HP (on average if you roll) that is small enough to be virtually irrelevent. What fighting style are tyou intending dueling will work on your main action attacks (if you use a weapon) but not to your flurry of blows, other than that the only real option is protection (it is a pity mariner fighting style didn't make it into Tasha's). The main things you are getting are action surge and your manouvers.
Gloomstalker will really ncrease your power in darkness but you are also invisible to youe allies, if you go down the cleric cannort cast healing word on you. Going single class Empty body gets you all the benefits whater the light conditions and resistance to nearly all damage but it is a long way away at monk 18 and takes an action to cast so you a lot less good when you don't know you are about t ogo into combat.
Can you even qualify for warlock? Monk is such a MAD class that you typically don't see MCs that don't rely on DEX or WIS.
Although I love to MC, I feel like there's real benefit to staying with monk. I've played one at high levels and Purity of Body has been extremely useful. The movement enhancements may not apply often, but when they do you're really glad you have them. Likewise, Tranquility can be useful - I took 2 levels of Cleric after 16 and Sanctuary has actually been pretty useful for me. It's nice when you fumble initiative or if you have a 1st round buff action (for me it's the Peace Domain's Emboldening Bond) you can run out front and draw some attacks.
I've got pretty good Charisma and Constitution, one of the reasons I'm considering these options, though obviously not as good as my Dexterity and Wisdom (although ASI are still going into Dex or Wisdom so they aren't going to get any better over the life of the character.) The interest in Rune Knight is more thematic, I just love the idea of a Halfling martial artist trained by Giants who can jump two size categories in a fight. Honestly, if I had known about that subclass when I made my character that is probably what I would have been from the start. The DM and I discussed it as a replacement character if I died but I figured why not incorporate it now. Having said that, I do like the abilities it gives, I would probably take the Fire and Stone runes since both can temporarily take enemies out of the fight. For Battlemaster I would be most interested in Bait and Switch (an extra d8 on top of my already high AC could make me almost impossible to hit for a turn, especially if I Dodge), Brace (for more attacks before out of turn), Riposte (same reason), Commander's Strike (I could use this on our Rogue so they could Sneak Attack again on my turn, right?) or Menacing Attack. Ironically the DC to resist these maneuvers would actually be better than the DC for my Monk abilities because I would have maxed out Dexterity by that point.
I really liked the extra buffs from Gloomstalker, thus far we've been in darkness about half the time although it generally hasn't been relevant because we all have Darkvision from one thing or another so it really only comes up when we're figuring out if we can see a particular enemy or not. I can see Hunter's Mark becoming a liability in some circumstances but it would give me something good to do with my bonus action on the first turn if I'm Dodging (this happens relatively frequently if the enemies know we are there and I don't want to engage before the Wizard has a chance to drop a Fireball on them). On the other hand, if I were a Gloomstalker I would lose the first turn bonuses if I chose to Dodge and Hunters Mark so that might happen less. I honestly never considered the downside to being invisible in darkness, that is certainly a danger to be considered, in addition to healing it would prevent my allies from using other buffing spells or abilities on me.
The Fighting Style I am looking at in either case is actually Blind Fighting. Our party has had some success using Darkness defensively and this could let me ignore a lot of the downsides of being inside a big ball of magical darkness.
I think you both have a good point that I may have undervalued Poison immunity. In addition to the poison damage, the Poisoned condition is very unpleasant I got hit with that at the end of a big fight and it severely reduced my ability to hit enemies, if I had been hit with that a few turns earlier the fight might not have ended in our favor. Forestalling some of the higher level monk abilities that may come later (I don't know how long this game will go) is a concern as well. Although there may not be a ton of things I want from 9-11, there definitely are later on.
Champion and crusher feat? Your making 4 attacks per round between extra attack and flurry of blows.
you’d have a 34.39% chance to crit atleast once per turn between all attacks, while attacking normally without advantage on your attacks. 56.95% chance to crit already once if you have advantage on your attacks. Your landing a crit would give the rest of your team advantage for the rest of the round regardless of the targets features or legendary saves. Action surge would further increase your damage and chances to crit. This will passively give some of the benefits of a stunning strike without you having to spend those multiple ki points.
Your smaller size would limit your ability to move creatures with the feat though. If you can still move the targets because they are within the size restrictions, then the movement would also stack with your open hand techniques.
Champion and crusher feat? Your making 4 attacks per round between extra attack and flurry of blows.
you’d have a 34.39% chance to crit atleast once per turn between all attacks, while attacking normally without advantage on your attacks. 56.95% chance to crit already once if you have advantage on your attacks. Your landing a crit would give the rest of your team advantage for the rest of the round regardless of the targets features or legendary saves. Action surge would further increase your damage and chances to crit. This will passively give some of the benefits of a stunning strike without you having to spend those multiple ki points.
Your smaller size would limit your ability to move creatures with the feat though. If you can still move the targets because they are within the size restrictions, then the movement would also stack with your open hand techniques.
That's a lot of crits. The improved critical is definitely good, its just the only thing that Champion gets as opposed to a variety of other fun abilities from other subclasses. Of course it is also always in effect so there is that. My size may be a slight detriment but I don't think it will be too major, the only thing I'm missing out on is Large creatures compared to most other races.
Champion and crusher feat? Your making 4 attacks per round between extra attack and flurry of blows.
you’d have a 34.39% chance to crit atleast once per turn between all attacks, while attacking normally without advantage on your attacks. 56.95% chance to crit already once if you have advantage on your attacks. Your landing a crit would give the rest of your team advantage for the rest of the round regardless of the targets features or legendary saves. Action surge would further increase your damage and chances to crit. This will passively give some of the benefits of a stunning strike without you having to spend those multiple ki points.
Your smaller size would limit your ability to move creatures with the feat though. If you can still move the targets because they are within the size restrictions, then the movement would also stack with your open hand techniques.
That's a lot of crits. The improved critical is definitely good, its just the only thing that Champion gets as opposed to a variety of other fun abilities from other subclasses. Of course it is also always in effect so there is that. My size may be a slight detriment but I don't think it will be too major, the only thing I'm missing out on is Large creatures compared to most other races.
As long as you aren't concerned about having a slashing weapon and were only looking at the level 3 version of the improved critical, Butcher's Bib can help. It won't work on unarmed strikes unless you were a race that had slashing unarmed strikes, and then only if your DM allows it since it only works on weapon attacks.
Whenever building a Monk, my #1 pick for a dip is always 2 levels of Ranger with the option for a 3rd. But 2 levels of Ranger brings a lot to the table for any Monk. And with the optional features from Tasha’s the dip provides more “punch” (sorry, couldn’t resist) and also opens up options for you since Hunters Mark isn’t an autoinclude anymore. After careful consideration Zephyr’s Strike keeps looking like a really strong synergy for Monks when the timing is right, even more so if you took Favored Foe too since you can do the switcheroo gimmick with it.
After that, Druid, and after that o might consider Cleric as a potential dip depending on the party’s composition. (Maybe Death or Twilight.)
I think you both have a good point that I may have undervalued Poison immunity. In addition to the poison damage, the Poisoned condition is very unpleasant I got hit with that at the end of a big fight and it severely reduced my ability to hit enemies, if I had been hit with that a few turns earlier the fight might not have ended in our favor.
I am currently playing a Halfling Open Hand Monk and am interested in multiclassing after I get my ASI at level 8. I've got a couple options of which direction to go and wanted to get some feedback to see what others thought.
I made a list of what I would get from each class and what I would get for staying as a monk for comparison purposes.
Monk levels 9-11: 3 ki, 3d8 hp, Purity of Body (immune to poisons and diseases), +5 movement speed, ability to run across water and vertical surfaces, boost to 1d8 martial arts die, Tranquility
The main advantages here are the extra Ki and getting the martial arts die to a d8, a couple other things are nice but nothing critical.
Fighter level 1-3: 3d10 hp, Action Surge, Second Wind, Fighting Style, Archetype bonus (Battle Master maneuvers, Rune Knight runes and Giant’s Might)
There are a lot of really great abilities that Fighters get very early, the extra hp and fighting style are good, I haven't decided whether I would be better off going with Battle Master or Rune Knight.
Ranger level 1-3: 3d10 hp, Favored Enemy/Favored Foe, Natural Explorer/Deft Explorer, Fighting Style, Primeval Awareness/Primal Awareness, Spells (3 lvl 1), Archetype bonus (Dread Ambusher and Umbral Sight)
Rangers also get more hp than Monks, a variety of abilities of varied usage, some spells (I'm guessing just Hunter's Mark, Absorb Elements and something else) and the abilities from Gloomstalker are great.
Warlock level 1-3: 3d8 hp, Patron bonus (Hexblade Curse and Hex Warrior), Spells (2 cantrip, 4 spells, 2 slots, lvl 2 max), Eldritch Invocations (2), Pact Boon (Chain?)
This seemed like an interesting possibility. It doesn't get any more hp than the Monk would but the Hexblade abilities are great and Invocations give a lot of added options. There isn't really much gained by doing Pact of the Blade like most Hexblades so I would probably chose a different option, perhaps Chain. Since the only thing that is gained from the 3rd level of Warlock is the Pact and level 2 spells, I would also have the option of just doing 2 levels instead of 3 like the others.
At the moment I'm leaning towards Fighter because a lot of those abilities add to what I'm already doing without requiring a lot of extra actions which some of the Ranger abilities do. Does anyone have any suggestions or alternatives I might have overlooked?
Open Hands 11 is an empty ribbon, so I don’t fault you for bailing now. I do think that Monk 14 is a great threshold to reach, and I like the poison immunity at 10, and for a subclass that is devoted to flurrying EVERY round more ki is helpful, but... there’s worse things in the world than multiclassing out now, if you get short rests often enough that 8 gets you through the day.
I dont think anything has much synergy with open hand features, really, but I suppose being able to Attack, flurry immediately, knock prone, then get one more flurry attack, one more attack attack, then action surge for two more attacks... that’s ok. Probably easy enough to do as a battlemaster/monk WITHOUT being an open hand, but having two ways to do it isn’t bad. Battlemaster would be my pick, because you’ve signaled with open hand that you flurry a lot, and battlemasters love making attacks. You probably don’t have the Con for great Rune Knight DC, and I don’t see much synergy there anyway until much higher levels in the subclass.
I like Gloomstalker, since it front loads damage and action economy in a fight, rather than delaying it by asking you to use a bonus action to make later turns stronger. That’s good. Also, in night fights or underground... advantage in ALL your attacks, against everyone, and disadvantage on all against you? Amazing... if you fight in the dark, which some groups never will. Hunters Mark obviously scales great with Flurry, but again, I hate skipping attacks in one round as a monk to make later rounds do more, I think it’s a losing proposition... focus on Favored Foe instead, and other utility spells, not Hunters Mark.
The Genie Warlock is fun, and with Tome pact you can have a familiar and cast rituals and know Guidance. If your Cha is actually good, maybe Swords Bard should be considered as well, it buffs your attacks and has a fighting style (see if your DM lets Blindfighting be an option).
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Like chicken I love poison immunity. Poison is a very common damage type if often occurs in response to a hit and the number of hits a monk makes that damage quickly ramps up. And it is just awesome to laugh in the face of a green dragons poison breath. I have also found the ability to run up vertical surfaces has allowed be to get attacks in on flying creatures or those firing from atop a castle wall of something. Unless you know your camapaign will end before then, diamond soul is huge so taking 3 levels in another class will either greatly delay or rule out having this entirely. More Ki is always good even if you know it is a single combat per short rest you have to ration your ki as a single class and it gets really difficult as a multiclass. In an ideal word you would be using upt o 5 ki a round (stunning strike on each hit with flurry of blows if a stun is successful move on to the next bad guy incapacitating as many of them as possible) limiting yourself to and average of 2.5 gives you more than half the effecrtivelness but not massivley more.
3 levels of fighter or ranger Fighter or ranger will get an extra 3 HP (on average if you roll) that is small enough to be virtually irrelevent. What fighting style are tyou intending dueling will work on your main action attacks (if you use a weapon) but not to your flurry of blows, other than that the only real option is protection (it is a pity mariner fighting style didn't make it into Tasha's). The main things you are getting are action surge and your manouvers.
Gloomstalker will really ncrease your power in darkness but you are also invisible to youe allies, if you go down the cleric cannort cast healing word on you. Going single class Empty body gets you all the benefits whater the light conditions and resistance to nearly all damage but it is a long way away at monk 18 and takes an action to cast so you a lot less good when you don't know you are about t ogo into combat.
Can you even qualify for warlock? Monk is such a MAD class that you typically don't see MCs that don't rely on DEX or WIS.
Although I love to MC, I feel like there's real benefit to staying with monk. I've played one at high levels and Purity of Body has been extremely useful. The movement enhancements may not apply often, but when they do you're really glad you have them. Likewise, Tranquility can be useful - I took 2 levels of Cleric after 16 and Sanctuary has actually been pretty useful for me. It's nice when you fumble initiative or if you have a 1st round buff action (for me it's the Peace Domain's Emboldening Bond) you can run out front and draw some attacks.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I've got pretty good Charisma and Constitution, one of the reasons I'm considering these options, though obviously not as good as my Dexterity and Wisdom (although ASI are still going into Dex or Wisdom so they aren't going to get any better over the life of the character.) The interest in Rune Knight is more thematic, I just love the idea of a Halfling martial artist trained by Giants who can jump two size categories in a fight. Honestly, if I had known about that subclass when I made my character that is probably what I would have been from the start. The DM and I discussed it as a replacement character if I died but I figured why not incorporate it now. Having said that, I do like the abilities it gives, I would probably take the Fire and Stone runes since both can temporarily take enemies out of the fight. For Battlemaster I would be most interested in Bait and Switch (an extra d8 on top of my already high AC could make me almost impossible to hit for a turn, especially if I Dodge), Brace (for more attacks before out of turn), Riposte (same reason), Commander's Strike (I could use this on our Rogue so they could Sneak Attack again on my turn, right?) or Menacing Attack. Ironically the DC to resist these maneuvers would actually be better than the DC for my Monk abilities because I would have maxed out Dexterity by that point.
I really liked the extra buffs from Gloomstalker, thus far we've been in darkness about half the time although it generally hasn't been relevant because we all have Darkvision from one thing or another so it really only comes up when we're figuring out if we can see a particular enemy or not. I can see Hunter's Mark becoming a liability in some circumstances but it would give me something good to do with my bonus action on the first turn if I'm Dodging (this happens relatively frequently if the enemies know we are there and I don't want to engage before the Wizard has a chance to drop a Fireball on them). On the other hand, if I were a Gloomstalker I would lose the first turn bonuses if I chose to Dodge and Hunters Mark so that might happen less. I honestly never considered the downside to being invisible in darkness, that is certainly a danger to be considered, in addition to healing it would prevent my allies from using other buffing spells or abilities on me.
The Fighting Style I am looking at in either case is actually Blind Fighting. Our party has had some success using Darkness defensively and this could let me ignore a lot of the downsides of being inside a big ball of magical darkness.
I think you both have a good point that I may have undervalued Poison immunity. In addition to the poison damage, the Poisoned condition is very unpleasant I got hit with that at the end of a big fight and it severely reduced my ability to hit enemies, if I had been hit with that a few turns earlier the fight might not have ended in our favor. Forestalling some of the higher level monk abilities that may come later (I don't know how long this game will go) is a concern as well. Although there may not be a ton of things I want from 9-11, there definitely are later on.
Champion and crusher feat? Your making 4 attacks per round between extra attack and flurry of blows.
you’d have a 34.39% chance to crit atleast once per turn between all attacks, while attacking normally without advantage on your attacks. 56.95% chance to crit already once if you have advantage on your attacks. Your landing a crit would give the rest of your team advantage for the rest of the round regardless of the targets features or legendary saves. Action surge would further increase your damage and chances to crit. This will passively give some of the benefits of a stunning strike without you having to spend those multiple ki points.
Your smaller size would limit your ability to move creatures with the feat though. If you can still move the targets because they are within the size restrictions, then the movement would also stack with your open hand techniques.
That's a lot of crits. The improved critical is definitely good, its just the only thing that Champion gets as opposed to a variety of other fun abilities from other subclasses. Of course it is also always in effect so there is that. My size may be a slight detriment but I don't think it will be too major, the only thing I'm missing out on is Large creatures compared to most other races.
As long as you aren't concerned about having a slashing weapon and were only looking at the level 3 version of the improved critical, Butcher's Bib can help. It won't work on unarmed strikes unless you were a race that had slashing unarmed strikes, and then only if your DM allows it since it only works on weapon attacks.
Whenever building a Monk, my #1 pick for a dip is always 2 levels of Ranger with the option for a 3rd. But 2 levels of Ranger brings a lot to the table for any Monk. And with the optional features from Tasha’s the dip provides more “punch” (sorry, couldn’t resist) and also opens up options for you since Hunters Mark isn’t an autoinclude anymore. After careful consideration Zephyr’s Strike keeps looking like a really strong synergy for Monks when the timing is right, even more so if you took Favored Foe too since you can do the switcheroo gimmick with it.
After that, Druid, and after that o might consider Cleric as a potential dip depending on the party’s composition. (Maybe Death or Twilight.)
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You also laugh in the face of several spells including ray of sickness, stinking cloud, and cloudkill.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm