OK, I was looking through Tasha's and I saw the Bladesinger arcane tradition (we'll get onto the monk in a minute). I noticed nothing in it saying you couldn't smack ennemies with your fists instead of a blade, so I came up with a prospective multiclass - the fistsinger. You take 2 levels of wizard and then go the rest of the way as a monk. Or something similar (5th level, 10th level or 14th level).

You don't miss out on any of the major monk features (an ASI and Perfect Self, that's all), and because bladesong scales with proficiency bonus, you can get more songs as you level while taking monk levels.

The subclasses that lept to mind were the Way of the Cobalt Soul (this could work very nicely with spells (set up vulnerability and hit with a spell, and more use of rections so your bonus action spells are more tempting), and Way of the Drunken Master (because this just seemed really fun to play - a drunk wizardly monk).

Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

First of all the name needs some work. I would probably customize it for the Monk subclass you pick: Shadow Dancer for Way of Shadow, Sword Dancer for Kensei, maybe Sun Singer for Sun Soul.

Second, a two level dip for Bladesong is okay. Really the only thing a monk would get use out of is the +Int to their AC. The extra speed is pretty redundant for a monk and the boost to Con saves for concentration don't matter when the monk doesn't have anything to concentrate on. Now a 6 level dip to be able to cast a cantrip as part of the Attack action, which still trigger martial arts and Flurry of Blows might be something to think about. Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade would definitely help beef up the damage numbers and you'll also get 3rd level Wizard spells, making the concentration saves worth it. Oh and you could also mix up Radiant Sun Bolts with a Fire Bolt.

The Monk is MAD as it is, but to meet multiclassing minimums you'd need Int to be 13, which means a +1 to AC. Looking at the save proficiencies I would probably recommend starting as a Monk because Strength and Charisma will almost certainly be dump stats for this build.

I don't see any Monk subclass that has an immediately amazing looking synergy with the Bladesinger, but a Kensei with a Blade cantrip isn't bad or the aforementioned Sun Soul with Fire Bolt. I guess theoretically an Open Hand monk with a 2 level dip could use Mind Sliver to help make sure their Quivering Palm sticks.

I just thought to use those two monk levels that aren't too great. My thinking was that you could become a super hard to hit character, with 10 + Dex + Int + Wis + Shield every now and then, with free disengage from Drunken Master (not really free - flurry of blows gets you that effect). And naturally the name needs work (not my strong point).

Thanks!

I think this is actually VERY interesting. I have to disagree that the base features of Bladesong are not compatible with Monks. Nearly all of them make what Monks do better.

• Extra speed is what Monks are all about. With this, Unarmored Movement at max level, and the Mobile feat, Monks would be moving at +50 each turn. Absolutely bonkers! With several attacks each turn, it won't matter where all those enemies are: you can likely hit all of them in one turn.
• Extra AC based on something other than armor/shields? Yes please. The MC would require at least +1, but getting one more ASI and you can get to +2 INT easily. I think reaching 22 AC in Bladesong is going to be somewhat easy for Monks.
• Advantage on Acrobatics checks? Neat. Not as good as the other two, but really cool flavor, and your Monk will likely be able to jump out of the ceiling with this.
• Concentration bonus is fine -- there are decent Concentration spells for Wizards as cantrips and at first level (Create Bonfire, Fog Cloud, Tasha's Hideous Laughter), so any bonus to Concentration is not to be laughed at.

Getting things like Shield, Absorb Elements, and anything AOE (rush up to a group of enemies, cast, run away) can work well with a Monk. All in all this makes for a difficult-to-pull-off MC (tons of MAD) but a pretty neat combo.

Fistsinger ain't bad either. It's pretty blah, but immediately everyone should know what two builds you are referencing. "Sorlock" is a dumb word too, but it immediately brings a combo to mind.

+50 feet each turn is basically useless in most instances.  It sounds cool but it's basically entirely impractical for most situations.

22 AC is not out of the question for Monks to get to begin with by max level. So requiring yet another stat and another place to spend ASI's doesn't really help to do it.

Advantage in Acrobatics is not bad...but considering it's a dex based ability that they can actually gain proficiency in. It's questionable if it's all that needed.  Even if it sounds cool.

Concentration really isn't needed because there are better cantrips to be casting that don't require concentration and they have nothing else to use it on.  They don't get high enough level to get things like invisibility or haste or slow to really put that concentration to use let alone to need a boost to it.

You also don't get enough spell slots to truly make something like shield, absorb elements, or using any AoE's as anything useful from just 2 levels.

OK then. I've been having a think, and I have decided how to make this work a little better (the idea is to become as hard to hit as possible for durability). My thoughts are Monk/6 (I like Astral Self for this (using Wisdom for unarmed strikes is very useful), Wizard/11 (high level spells and damage absorption) and Sorcerer/3 (Quickened casting will be (extremely) helpful - I recommend shadow magic or divine soul).

Some spells you can cast now are things like Stoneskin, Misty step, Fly, Disintegrate, Haste and all of the fun elemental spells from Way of the Four Elements. Plus you get Stunning Strike every now and then.

The downside of this build is that you will rarely be using flurry of blows and the other bonus action options for the monk, because you can't use them very often and you will be using bonus actions to blast with quickened aoe effects.

The upsides include Tenser's Transformation (2d12 force damage to attacks (use with flurry of blows for maximum output)), and Stoneskin to help shrug off enemy attacks that actually hit - as well as all the powerful aoe spells you can get with up to 7th level spell slots (a fair few). I wouldn't bother with feats (but perhaps Lucky or Alert if you are a variant human).

The ability score spread of this looks terrible, but I promise it's not nearly as bad as it looks - you don't need your sorcery spells, you have far more wizard spells and should use them for saving throw spells and the like (wizards have all the important blasting spells). So Cha is a nice extra. Arms of the Astral Self reduces the need for Dex a lot - now this can be a 3rd priority. So you're left with a Wisdom/Intelligence split - manageable. You only get 4 ASIs though.

OK, so now we need three ability scores at 13+, most likely all of the mental abilities. Let's play around with point buy:

8 STR. Dump. Forget about it.
10 DEX. Weird for a Monk, but we need those higher numbers in other things. Can't totally dump because otherwise our AC goes down.
12 CON. Gonna need CON saves and some extra HP.
14 INT. For the Wizard.
15 WIS. For the Monk.
13 CHA. For the Sorcerer.

Now let's do the custom lineage: Our AC will constantly be affected by WIS (as opposed to only +INT with Bladesong), so I'd put at least a +1 bonus to that. Let's give +2 to INT and +1 to WIS. That gets us to 8/10/12/16/16/13. 

I'd start with Monk, I suppose? DEX save proficiency is nice since we are going to be made of glass. Right off the bat, our AC is 13.

Hard to decide how to split for each level. Let's go to the ASIs, which you said we get four of:

ASI1: Pump WIS up. We started as a Monk, we are Astral Self, so WIS is our attack modifier. Also going to help with those Stunning Strikes, and AC which is now 14.
ASI2: At this point, we are a Wizard. Take as much INT as possible. Now, with Bladesong, our AC goes from 14 to 18 when Bladesong is active.
ASI3: Probably still going Wizard. Max out INT, take AC from 14/BS19. We should be at 14th level (at least) so the spell attack modifier would be +10 and our Wizard spell save DC would be 18.
ASI4: Max out WIS here. AC stands at a constant 15/BS20. We're at the top tier of play, but we should only have about 109 HP by the time we reach level 20. That's yikes for our potentially-melee class with a base AC of 15.

Alternatively, if we leave out the Sorc and go the original Fistsinger idea of Monk 18/Bladesinger 2:

8 STR. Dump. Forget about it.
14 DEX. Helps our AC.
12 CON. Extra HP.
14 INT. For the Wizard.
15 WIS. For the Monk.
8 CHA. Now this gets dumped.

Start the same way, but this time pump DEX+2 and WIS+1 with our Race modifiers. Still Monk to start, get a nice 16 AC to start (would be 18 in Birdsong but not yet).

ASI1: Pump WIS up. Same logic as before AC is now 17.
ASI2: At this point, we are a Wizard. Take the INT boost, get that mod up to +3. We now have AC at 17 with a boost up to 20 when in Bladesong. Keep in mind, this would happen at player level ten, not super-late-game like it did in the last build.
ASI3: If we are still going Monk, keep it up with WIS. It would now be maxed out, upping our Ki save DC. AC gets boosted to a standing 18/BS21.
ASI4: Depending on whether you are pushing Wizard options or Monk options, you can go with either DEX or INT here. Either way, DC in Bladesong goes to 22. At max level, HP would be somewhere around 121. Not a huge difference, but if we are fighting melee that's one more hit we can take -- and we should be taking fewer hits, thanks to DEX saves and higher AC.

I think I definitely prefer the original method.

Yes, but I went with the second method because of a much increased damage output. Naturally, you will need one round to get fully set up - when you go with activating bladesong and Tenser's Transformation (50 additional HP by the way) (or Tahsa's otherworldly guise to save spell slots). Variant human helps us a lot here with the alert feat to boost our initiative so we're not taking too many hits; and remember Shield and Song of Defense to further decrease damage  taken - a 3rd level slot (of which you now have 3) more than makes up for the HP disparity. Just don't get surprised.

I have never yet played a high-level wizard who didn't have additional low-level spell slots at the end of the day - now you can use them to tank a few hits.

And obviously, this build won't come online for a lot of  levels (you'll want 3 Monk at least, 3 Sorcerer and about several (about 5 or 6) wizard). Then you keep going as wizard till 11th (in that class). Then monk till 6th. Then final 3 levels in wizard.

My original idea does work better for low levels.

I like this idea as well, even at earlier levels, since I don't assume creating lvl 20 builds is as realistic as it is fun.

Considering you could grab Booming Blade and/or Green-Flame Blade for combat fun and the other cantrips for non-combat flavor. And have your spell slots for spells that you don't need a high INT for, such as Shield or rituals, feels like very much fun package to play with. Perhaps keep Protection from Good and Bad up, or Fog Cloud.

But if you want to have INT bring you more AC, I suggest you dip deeper into a multiclass than just 2 levels. Or have the main class share INT as primary ability modifier.

Quote from Stephanie252 >>

And obviously, this build won't come online for a lot of  levels (you'll want 3 Monk at least, 3 Sorcerer and about several (about 5 or 6) wizard). Then you keep going as wizard till 11th (in that class). Then monk till 6th. Then final 3 levels in wizard.

My original idea does work better for low levels.

 Maybe i'm missing something here. But from what I remember of the stats you listed you have a problem. You need at least 13 Dex to multiclass out of Monk to get into Wizard or Sorcerer to begin with.  Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this basically getting you out of range of standard array and pointbuy stats to even be able to pull off. And would require most or all of your ASi's to get enough stats to get into all of these classes?  Requiring 4 of your stats to be 13 or Higher just to get into the classes and higher for any of them to be suitably viable for your purposes?

Choose the right racial ASIs and standard array, you can have 2 abilities of 13, a 15 and a 16. Plus an 8 and a 10. That gets you into the classes you want. I'll admit the MAD section of this build is probably its main weakness.

So, this may be a bit of a hot take. The Way of the Four Elements monk is certainly not the most popular (and for good reason), but it may be a good fit for a Fistsinger. Considering the high ki cost, you want to make sure and get the most bang for your buck out of each spell/discipline you cast. In this way, the bonus to concentration checks would be super helpful. Four Element Monks can potentially cast Hold Person, Gaseous Form, Fly, Wall of Fire, Wall of Stone, and Stoneskin; all of which require concentration.

Its a fairly minor benefit for a somewhat lackluster subclass, but combining it with the ki-empowered strikes optional feature could help it to hold its own. 

When you only have 6 ki points, I don't think spending them on spells you can cast with slots is an effective way of using them. You're better off using flurry of blows and stunning strikes in combat.

Quote from Stephanie252 >>

When you only have 6 ki points, I don't think spending them on spells you can cast with slots is an effective way of using them. You're better off using flurry of blows and stunning strikes in combat.

 While I mostly agree, its also important to remember that monks get ki points back on a short rest, whereas most casters get their spell slots back on a long rest. Also, if the build is to have all but two of the levels in monk, you wont have access to any spells above 1st level from the wizard part of the build. 

Now if the build is going to be the wizard/sorcerer/monk super combo, then yeah, four elements is kinda a moot point 

Yeah, with the original combo it looks nicer.

The only meaningful benefit of bladesong would be 1-2 ac. 

in exchange, your monk will be a generally worse monk. There just aren’t many synergies going on with it.

Quote from Kaboom979 >>

Quote from Stephanie252 >>

When you only have 6 ki points, I don't think spending them on spells you can cast with slots is an effective way of using them. You're better off using flurry of blows and stunning strikes in combat.

 While I mostly agree, its also important to remember that monks get ki points back on a short rest, whereas most casters get their spell slots back on a long rest. Also, if the build is to have all but two of the levels in monk, you wont have access to any spells above 1st level from the wizard part of the build. 

Now if the build is going to be the wizard/sorcerer/monk super combo, then yeah, four elements is kinda a moot point 

 Not only do monks get Ki back on a short rest. But when Monks have neglected their Wis in favor of Dex and only Dex until it's maxed out. Which could take as much as 2 or 3 ASI's meaning their Wis is not worked on until level at least level 12 on average. Then they may be spending multiple Ki just trying to Stun that enemy. And even if they are getting that stun off they are still potentially spending as much ki to stun and FoB.  The amount of Ki they may be wasting on attempting stunning blows actually goes up as the levels go up and con scores get better and their DC doesn't improve by much making it much easier to succeed at.  So the at a glance high costs on 4 elements monk are not necessarily ki points saved by any other monk if they are focused on stunning strike and aren't exactly built for it.

This problem is not always realized because people tend to get focused on hitting the enemy and dealing damage over everything else and most monks do not have a lot of DC save abilities but the 4 elements monk is actually stronger if you focus primarily on Wis and boosting your Dex as needed (or through ways of getting bonuses to attacks and such) until your wis is maxed out.  Then the Ki costs become a little more justified in comparison but there is still heavy ki management involved which can still be a problem.