So I'm about to play a Kensei monk. My question is do I need the Dual Wielder feat and/or the 2 weapon fighting style to use both? I'm asking because I'm not sure where i picked this up but I don't believe monks normally need it for some reason when using monk weapons (shortswords and simple weapons normally) however Kensei monks can make additional weapons monk weapons. I'm kinda confused and couldn't find an definitive answer. Thanks
I wouldn't bother with Dual Wielder personally unless you really want the +1 AC, but as a Kensei you have a way to gain +2 AC (use one unarmed strike) so it's not that important. I'm also not sure about taking Fighting Initiate just to get the fighting style, if you were thinking levels in Fighter than that might make more sense, but in both cases you're losing something for not a huge benefit to the two weapon fighting, as you're not adding a lot of extra damage (and for monk weapons your martial arts will cause it to scale up anyway).
The main problem mechanically with two weapon fighting on a Monk though is that you have so many other ways to use your bonus action, and two of those involve making extra attacks (Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows) so you've arguably got better options than striking again with the weapon, especially when you factor in Patient Defence, Step of the Wind etc.
Having a two-weapon monk is cool thematically, but personally I'd speak with my DM and ask if they'd let me just RP it that way. You might also ask if you can swap the damage type on your unarmed strikes to match your "dual" weapons to better reflect it; it shouldn't be OP and a common criticism of the Kensei is you spend most of your time dealing bludgeoning damage for some reason, a simple damage swap would have solved that in the original class.
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.
Except for The look and theming of the visual image of using two Weapons. Martial Arts is really equal to or superior to dual weapon fighting from level 5 on.
The reason that i say this is it basically wraps the fighting style up into it anyway since all that does is add you attribute damage to the second weapon. When your doing 1d6 for three hits, Or potentially 1d8 for 2 attacks and then 1d6 for a third, your basically doing the same damage with them as you would be with most of two weapon fighting. The Dual Wielder Feat only slightly ups the damage because at best you can wield two d8 weapons. So really the big thing you'd be getting out of that is the +1 AC. But Kensei does better than that but only when you choose to. So it's kind of a trade off. But the value is not there to be getting for the Monk, Particularly the Kensei, since there are much better options if you were going to get a feat.
So really that means that Haravikk's option of talking to your DM of reflavoring the look while still using the mechanics by potentially changing the type of damage with your martial arts in some way is really ultimately the best option if it's available. My suggestion wuold be to make your actual weapon from something like the Kensei be your larger weapon and your "flavored" weapon be some kind of smaller weapon to account for the slight difference in damage, And it would fit into the image when using the Kensei's agile defense since several styles of fighting that did use two weapons often had a smaller defensive weapon as the second weapon.
So I'm about to play a Kensei monk. My question is do I need the Dual Wielder feat and/or the 2 weapon fighting style to use both? I'm asking because I'm not sure where i picked this up but I don't believe monks normally need it for some reason when using monk weapons (shortswords and simple weapons normally) however Kensei monks can make additional weapons monk weapons. I'm kinda confused and couldn't find an definitive answer. Thanks
It works like this:
Kensei Weapons will let you gain proficiency in two weapons, a melee and a ranged. Both are made monk weapons for you, but due to Dedicated Weapon, which you'll already have by the time you become a Kensei, only the ranged weapon can benefit, and only if you pick longbow. I'll continue as if you picked battleaxe and longbow as your two weapons.
You can now attack with a battleaxe wielded in two hands and then kick as a bonus action (just as you could before with a spear). In fact, you can do the same thing with a longbow, but unless you have reach with your kicks, like a bugbear does, that'll usually not be useful (this is the same reason you don't usually see monks with whips, even if they can be proficient in them).
At level 5, if you use Stunning Strike with your battleaxe, then just as a non-Kensei could with a spear, you can attack with the battleaxe again as a bonus action, due to Ki-Fueled Attack. This also works if you use Focused Aim - spending at least one ki point as part of your Action is what qualifies.
At level 6, you can use Deft Strike to qualify for Ki-Fueled Attack.
Now, in terms of spending feats on the twf style using Fighting Initiate, or dual wielder:
If you're a monk who's proficient in longswords, battleaxes, or warhammers, as Kenseis pretty much always will be, wielding two weapons loses you an extra point of damage relative to not doing so. I'll go over the math below.
The two-weapon fighting style will preclude using your battleaxe or unarmed strikes at all prior to level 5, and even from that point on, is a bad idea.
Dual Wielder will preclude unarmed strikes prior to level 5, and even from that point on, is a bad idea.
Here are the damage values you can accomplish as a monk at various levels, assuming kensei is the subclass, and assuming your race doesn't grant you martial weapon proficiencies, and assuming you don't multiclass; I'll assume your level 1 Dexterity and Wisdom are 16:
Dual wielding anything would be less damage: 1d6 + 3 + 1d6 = 10
Level 2: Flurry of Blows is now possible, and precludes usefully dual wielding, because you only get one bonus action. Damage should usually be 1d8 + 3 + 2*(1d4 + 3) = 18.5
Level 3: You now have a battleaxe! In addition, if you kick someone as part of your Attack - dropping your damage by 3, essentially - you gain +2 AC in exchange, which does not work with dual wielding yet - you need Extra Attack to engage in two-weapon fighting and also use Agile Parry. As a reminder, your base AC is 16 right now.
Battleaxe plus kick: 1d10 + 1d4 + 3*2 = 14
Dual wield: 1d6 *2 + 3 = 10 (assuming hand-axes)
Flurry: 1d10 + 1d4*2 + 3*3 = 19.5
Agile Parry: (1d4+3)*2 = 11, AC 18
Agile Parry Flurry: (1d4+3)*3 = 16.5, AC 18
Level 4: Lots to cover, because this is the main thrust of your question. There are 3 competing uses of your ASI: +2 Dex, TWF style since you asked about it, Dual Wielder since you asked about it.
+2 Dex (AC 17)
Axe+Kick: 1d10 + 1d4 + 4*2 = 16
Dual wield: 1d6 *2 + 4 = 11 (assuming hand-axes)
Flurry: 1d10 + 1d4*2 + 4*3 = 22.5
Agile Parry: (1d4+4)*2 = 13, AC 19
Agile Parry Flurry: (1d4+4)*3 = 19.5, AC 19
Fighting Initiate: Two-Weapon Fighting (AC 16)
Axe+Kick: 1d10 + 1d4 + 3*2 = 14
Dual Wield: (1d6 + 3)*2 = 13 <-- only benefit, and does inferior damage to Axe+Kick; assuming hand-axes
Flurry: 1d10 + 1d4*2 + 3*3 = 19.5
Agile Parry: (1d4+3)*2 = 11, AC 18
Agile Parry Flurry: (1d4+3)*3 = 16.5, AC 18
Dual Wielder (AC 17):
Battleaxe plus kick: 1d10 + 1d4 + 3*2 = 14
Dual wield: 1d8*2 + 3 = 12 <-- only benefit, and does inferior damage to Axe+Kick
Flurry: 1d10 + 1d4*2 + 3*3 = 19.5
Agile Parry: (1d4+3)*2 = 11, AC 19
Agile Parry Flurry: (1d4+3)*3 = 16.5, AC 19
Level 5: Extra Attack changes everything, because you can make one attack that lets you twf, and one attack like a normal person. Ki-fueled attack is now firmly online (at level 4 you only had access to Quickened Healing as a way to make it work), but because Stunning Strike doesn't do damage, I'll put that off until level 6:
+2 Dex (AC 17)
Axe+Kick: 1d10*2 + 1d6 + 4*3 = 26.5
Dual wield: Does nothing - your martial arts die is now 1d6, so twf is strictly inferior to martial arts.
I hope you get the idea. At level 6 there's a very slight benefit to dual wielding that axe+kick doesn't get: since you can only buff axe damage, if all of your Action axe strikes miss, a bonus action axe has a chance to deal deft strike damage and a bonus action kick or kicks doesn't. But by the same token, if you land a deft strike axe blow, you can make a bonus action axe blow at 1d10+dex without dual wielder or twf style. And as you level up, dual wielder and twf just keep getting worse. At level 11, you actively hate dual wielding, because Sharpen the Blade ends Sharpen the Blade early - you can't apply it to two weapons at once.
If you're curious, here's Deft Strike vs its primary competitor, Hand of Harm from Way of Mercy, competing at level 12 with Dex 20 Wis 18 (AC 19):
Kensei, 3 ki points spent earlier on Sharpen the Blade on the axe, spending a ki point on Deft Strike during the attack action: (1d10+5+3)*3+1d8 = 45
Same but with Agile Parry: (1d10+3)*2+1d8*2+5*3 = 41, AC 21
Mercy Monk, spending 1 ki point on Flurry of Blows and throwing 4 punches: (1d8+5)*4 + 1d8 + 4 = 46.5, target is poisoned
Same, but Mercy Monk slaps themselves with a heal (costs a punch, nothing else): (1d8+5)*3 + 1d8 + 4 = 37, target is poisoned, Monk heals 8.5 and is cured of being poisoned
Generally speaking, regardless of subclass, Monks are too MAD for feats, because they want to spend 4 of their ASIs getting to Dex 20 Wis 20. You can afford a feat at level 19, but most campaigns never get that far. If you have a racial feat from the two races that have one, that's a whole different story, but neither dual wielder nor the terrible fighting initiate feat are really good enough to be worth considering.
Need to Correct things a bit on the details of the whip.
First. Monks do not naturally have Proficiency in them. It has to be picked up. This limits the ability for Monks to ever use it effectively or use it with dedicated weapon since dedicated weapon only works on weapons your proficient with.
Secondly for those that do have ways to get it they do not usually take it because they mostly care about damage. Not the reach portion of it so for it's low damage they bypass the whip unless they are doing a unique build that calls for it.
Finally the issue with the whip is nothing like the issue with the Bow because the Bow can hit vast ranges and quite regularly is used to hit ranges that you cannot simply move across in a single move action in a single turn. Where as with the Whip you can move closer easily across that small range in most circumstances without trouble, and you do not get disadvantage if you attack a slightly farther enemy from you while within melee range with a closer one as you would with a bow that is classified as a ranged weapon.
Otherwise very great post. I was mostly just working on generalities and giving benefit of the doubt about possibly dual wielding d8 weapons in that without doing the full math so I erred on the side of caution just to be safe as I quickly wrote my response.
FWIW, I play a Monk who uses a whip, though it's reskinned as a meteor hammer / rope dart (basically a rope with a weight on the end). It's mostly there for aesthetic cool points, but I have found it useful in some situations. It can be handy for kiting enemies around without letting them get close enough to hit you, you've got a much bigger orbit within which an attack of opportunity can trigger, and sometimes you get the opportunity to pop a stunning strike at someone an ally is fighting, while still being able to unarmed strike the enemy in front of your face. It isn't the maximum damage choice, so it isn't something I'd recommend as your first kensei weapon... but bearing in mind you get additional weapons at 6th, 11th, and 17th, it's not bad as a utility option - it is the only kensei weapon option that has reach, since (IIRC?) all the other reach weapons are two-handed, and thus not viable options.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So I'm about to play a Kensei monk. My question is do I need the Dual Wielder feat and/or the 2 weapon fighting style to use both? I'm asking because I'm not sure where i picked this up but I don't believe monks normally need it for some reason when using monk weapons (shortswords and simple weapons normally) however Kensei monks can make additional weapons monk weapons. I'm kinda confused and couldn't find an definitive answer. Thanks
I wouldn't bother with Dual Wielder personally unless you really want the +1 AC, but as a Kensei you have a way to gain +2 AC (use one unarmed strike) so it's not that important. I'm also not sure about taking Fighting Initiate just to get the fighting style, if you were thinking levels in Fighter than that might make more sense, but in both cases you're losing something for not a huge benefit to the two weapon fighting, as you're not adding a lot of extra damage (and for monk weapons your martial arts will cause it to scale up anyway).
The main problem mechanically with two weapon fighting on a Monk though is that you have so many other ways to use your bonus action, and two of those involve making extra attacks (Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows) so you've arguably got better options than striking again with the weapon, especially when you factor in Patient Defence, Step of the Wind etc.
Having a two-weapon monk is cool thematically, but personally I'd speak with my DM and ask if they'd let me just RP it that way. You might also ask if you can swap the damage type on your unarmed strikes to match your "dual" weapons to better reflect it; it shouldn't be OP and a common criticism of the Kensei is you spend most of your time dealing bludgeoning damage for some reason, a simple damage swap would have solved that in the original class.
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.
Except for The look and theming of the visual image of using two Weapons. Martial Arts is really equal to or superior to dual weapon fighting from level 5 on.
The reason that i say this is it basically wraps the fighting style up into it anyway since all that does is add you attribute damage to the second weapon. When your doing 1d6 for three hits, Or potentially 1d8 for 2 attacks and then 1d6 for a third, your basically doing the same damage with them as you would be with most of two weapon fighting. The Dual Wielder Feat only slightly ups the damage because at best you can wield two d8 weapons. So really the big thing you'd be getting out of that is the +1 AC. But Kensei does better than that but only when you choose to. So it's kind of a trade off. But the value is not there to be getting for the Monk, Particularly the Kensei, since there are much better options if you were going to get a feat.
So really that means that Haravikk's option of talking to your DM of reflavoring the look while still using the mechanics by potentially changing the type of damage with your martial arts in some way is really ultimately the best option if it's available. My suggestion wuold be to make your actual weapon from something like the Kensei be your larger weapon and your "flavored" weapon be some kind of smaller weapon to account for the slight difference in damage, And it would fit into the image when using the Kensei's agile defense since several styles of fighting that did use two weapons often had a smaller defensive weapon as the second weapon.
It works like this:
Now, in terms of spending feats on the twf style using Fighting Initiate, or dual wielder:
I hope you get the idea. At level 6 there's a very slight benefit to dual wielding that axe+kick doesn't get: since you can only buff axe damage, if all of your Action axe strikes miss, a bonus action axe has a chance to deal deft strike damage and a bonus action kick or kicks doesn't. But by the same token, if you land a deft strike axe blow, you can make a bonus action axe blow at 1d10+dex without dual wielder or twf style. And as you level up, dual wielder and twf just keep getting worse. At level 11, you actively hate dual wielding, because Sharpen the Blade ends Sharpen the Blade early - you can't apply it to two weapons at once.
If you're curious, here's Deft Strike vs its primary competitor, Hand of Harm from Way of Mercy, competing at level 12 with Dex 20 Wis 18 (AC 19):
Generally speaking, regardless of subclass, Monks are too MAD for feats, because they want to spend 4 of their ASIs getting to Dex 20 Wis 20. You can afford a feat at level 19, but most campaigns never get that far. If you have a racial feat from the two races that have one, that's a whole different story, but neither dual wielder nor the terrible fighting initiate feat are really good enough to be worth considering.
Need to Correct things a bit on the details of the whip.
First. Monks do not naturally have Proficiency in them. It has to be picked up. This limits the ability for Monks to ever use it effectively or use it with dedicated weapon since dedicated weapon only works on weapons your proficient with.
Secondly for those that do have ways to get it they do not usually take it because they mostly care about damage. Not the reach portion of it so for it's low damage they bypass the whip unless they are doing a unique build that calls for it.
Finally the issue with the whip is nothing like the issue with the Bow because the Bow can hit vast ranges and quite regularly is used to hit ranges that you cannot simply move across in a single move action in a single turn. Where as with the Whip you can move closer easily across that small range in most circumstances without trouble, and you do not get disadvantage if you attack a slightly farther enemy from you while within melee range with a closer one as you would with a bow that is classified as a ranged weapon.
Otherwise very great post. I was mostly just working on generalities and giving benefit of the doubt about possibly dual wielding d8 weapons in that without doing the full math so I erred on the side of caution just to be safe as I quickly wrote my response.
FWIW, I play a Monk who uses a whip, though it's reskinned as a meteor hammer / rope dart (basically a rope with a weight on the end). It's mostly there for aesthetic cool points, but I have found it useful in some situations. It can be handy for kiting enemies around without letting them get close enough to hit you, you've got a much bigger orbit within which an attack of opportunity can trigger, and sometimes you get the opportunity to pop a stunning strike at someone an ally is fighting, while still being able to unarmed strike the enemy in front of your face. It isn't the maximum damage choice, so it isn't something I'd recommend as your first kensei weapon... but bearing in mind you get additional weapons at 6th, 11th, and 17th, it's not bad as a utility option - it is the only kensei weapon option that has reach, since (IIRC?) all the other reach weapons are two-handed, and thus not viable options.