The other day, I had an idea for a combination of Fighter (Psi Warrior), Monk (Way of the Astral Self), and Wizard (Bladesinging) - who uses no weapons - and I just can't shake the idea. Basically, the goal is to make a perfectly effective build that prioritizes Intelligence and Wisdom. This is the build:
Race: Amethyst Dragonborn. Put the 3 +1s into Con, Int, and Wis.
Ability scores: With point buy, you can start with stats as follows: 10/13/14/14/16/9. The 13 Dex is necessary to multiclass into Monk, and it helps slightly with AC.
Classes: Start with 1 level of Fighter for the Unarmed Fighting fighting style. Then, go 4 levels of Monk for your subclass (Astral Self) and an ASI. Back to Fighter for a total of 14 Fighter levels, and at some point grab 2 levels of Wizard for Bladesinging.
ASI's: Your first two ASI's (Monk 4 and Fighter 4) will increase Wis to 20. The next two (Fighter 6 and 8) increase Int to 18. With the final two (Fighter 12 and 14), you'll take half-feats to max your Int, like Telekinetic and Telepathic (both with Int). You'll end up with stats of 10/13/14/20/20/9.
Now... the fun stuff. From what I can tell, Unarmed Fighting applies to attack you make with your Arms of the Astral Self. The relevant parts of each read as follows:
Unarmed Fighting Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier on a hit. If you aren’t wielding any weapons or a shield when you make the attack roll, the d6 becomes a d8.
And...
Arms of the Astral Self
You can use the spectral arms to make unarmed strikes.
The unarmed strikes you make with the arms can use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Strength or Dexterity modifier for the attack and damage rolls, and their damage type is force.
Both just say "unarmed strikes." From what I can tell (tell me if I'm wrong), the fighting style changes your unarmed strikes to d6/d8 (d8 for this build since we're not wielding weapons), and the astral arms let you use Wis instead of Str, as well as change the damage to force. Therefore, your unarmed strikes will do 1d8+5, and you can get like 8 of them in on one turn if you use Flurry of Blows and Action Surge.
On top of that, the levels in Monk let you get 16 AC without armor (+1 Dex, +5 Wis). AC 16 is decent but not great, which is why I added the Bladesinger levels. During your Bladesong, your AC goes up to 21, and you have shield if your AC is still lacking. Any Psi Warrior needs an Int that's at least decent, anyway, so this helps reinforce the high Int's usefulness. And as a very minor thing, since Bladesong increases your movement speed, it'll let you fly even faster while Psi-Powered Leap is up.
What do you think? Does this build work the way I think it does? Feedback would be great!
I'm not seeing the value of Bladesong in this build. The Psi Warrior subclass has relatively few abilities that actually key off of Intelligence, which is useful and all, but they're both fairly high abilities (one at level 7, the next at 15, the last at 18). By that point your Proficiency Bonus will be quite a bit higher, and you'll have hit several ASI's, so you can top off your INT a bit. EDIT: Plus, Bladesong and Astral Arms are both triggered with a Bonus Action, and the Astral Arms are basically required but Bladesong is purely optional as an AC boost.
Meanwhile, if you focus on WIS/DEX with INT as your secondary ability, you'll still have good armor, and you'll be able to level up Monk enough to get Stunning Strike, or at least get more Ki... if your fighting style is 100% built on the assumption of summoning the arms in every combat (since you have very weak STR/DEX to fall back on if you're out of Ki), you're going to at least want more than 3 Ki points.
Overall this just feels too sloppy and MAD for me. I like the flavor of it... a character who fights exclusively with psychic force arms and has cool psychic abilities to modify their attacks. But the fact that a Monk can only use their Martial Arts feature when not wearing armor makes it overall harder to take advantage of.
Actually, I'm reading the Martial Arts feature more closely, and I'm realizing... I think you can justify wearing armor with this build and still comfortably drop Bladesong from this build. So... the Martial Arts feature allows you to attack with DEX instead of STR with unarmed strikes, but the Astral Arms override that and just change it to attacking with WIS. It allows you to deal damage equal to your Martial Arts Die for Unarmed Strikes... but the Unarmed Fighting Style overrides that as well. The two things you lose is the ability to make a single Unarmed Bonus Action Attack after taking the attack action, and Unarmored Movement... which is a great feature that sucks to lose out on. But you could still just wear half-plate and carry a shield to get 19AC with just a DEX score of 14.
I dunno... I want this idea to work, but it all just feels too clunky to me. I feel like I would enjoy going full Astral Monk or full Psi Warrior more than trying to get them to work together. I also feel like Psi Warrior and Bladesinger pair together more easily, although you lose the ability to attack without relying on STR or DEX, which seems to be the most important feature of this build.
Okay… those are some good points. I think the lack of Ki points is one of the big drawbacks of the build. With a little rearranging, I (1) swapped the Wizard levels for 2 more in Monk and (2) changed the ability scores to 10/18/14/16/20/9. (Doing this also involved trading one of the half-feats for a straight ASI and changing the other to Gift of the Gem Dragon (Wisdom).)This gets an AC of 19, a Ki save DC of 19, a Dragonborn Breath Weapon save DC of 16, and a Psi Warrior save DC of 17 (as opposed to AC and Force Breath save DC of 16, Ki and Psi Warrior save DC of 19). 3 points of AC in exchange for 2 points off the Psi Warrior save DC… pretty good. The walking speed in also up to 45 feet.
Question: Which is better, Fighter 14/Monk 6 or Fighter 12/Monk 8? You’d get the same number of ASI’s and same number of attacks, as well as Evasion, Stillness of Mind, and most importantly more Ki points, but you’d lose one use of Indomitable. That’s a pretty good trade, though: more uses of your core feature, as well as some other buffs, in exchange for a use of a defensive feature.
I would 100% go for Fighter 12/Monk 8... Evasion is one of the best skills in the game... it guarantees that you'll only take half-damage on DEX saves (one of the most common saves in the game), and potentially avoid all damage. More importantly, it's just a straight upgrade to your DEX saves... it doesn't cost a resource or anything. Indomitable has more versatility since it applies to all Saves and not just Dex, but think of it this way... if you fail a DEX save and use indomitable, you can give yourself a second chance of reducing the damage by half, whereas that half-damage is what you still get with a success on Evasion. Plus, as always... more Ki Points to fuel your arms. Two extra levels of Monk means you can have your arms out for two more fights, even if you don't use them on anything else.
The only challenge I'm seeing here is that your 7th level Monk feature competes with your 10th level Fighter feature... it's a difficult balance to maintain. The Fighter Feature makes you resistant to Psychic Damage, but both features also let you end the Frightened/Charmed Condition on yourself... although the Fighter Feature costs a Psionic Die, but occurs as a free action, whereas the Monk Feature doesn't cost any resources but costs a full action.
I suppose it is nice that you have the tactical ability to face those specific conditions... like if you're out of Psionic Die you can still clear it out, but I can't help but feel like maybe putting more levels into Monk than Fighter might pay off more. Body of the Astral Self lets you deal extra damage each round and allows you to reduce damage from multiple sources (instead of the relatively uncommon psychic damage), and maybe going an extra level in Monk gives you the ability to just functionally speak all languages. But the big downside is losing the 11th level Extra Attack boost... I think I might be overthinking the issue. I also didn't check to make sure you weren't losing ASI's, so maybe don't worry about the redundancy too much.
Don’t you need a STR of 13 to multi class from Fighter? For initial levels, having a 13 or 14 STR will help your damage a lot. But that also makes this character even more MAD, which is the principal drawback. You might need a to take a 10 CON to make his work.
I’d also suggest starting with an odd INT or WIS and taking the Telekinetic feat to round it out at the first ASI. That feat is just so consistent with the force projection build you’re going for that I think you’ll want it early. Maybe even go 5 levels in Fighter then Monk for 8 to get your feat and extra attack before switching over?
Multiclassing into or out of Fighter requires 13 Str OR 13 Dex.
In rebuilding the character I linked above, I did just that. Adjusted starting stats were 10/14/14/12/17/8 (+2 Wis, +1 Dex). First ASI was Gift of the Gem Dragon (Wisdom). You could easily switch that for Telekinetic (Wisdom).
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
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The other day, I had an idea for a combination of Fighter (Psi Warrior), Monk (Way of the Astral Self), and Wizard (Bladesinging) - who uses no weapons - and I just can't shake the idea. Basically, the goal is to make a perfectly effective build that prioritizes Intelligence and Wisdom. This is the build:
Now... the fun stuff. From what I can tell, Unarmed Fighting applies to attack you make with your Arms of the Astral Self. The relevant parts of each read as follows:
And...
Both just say "unarmed strikes." From what I can tell (tell me if I'm wrong), the fighting style changes your unarmed strikes to d6/d8 (d8 for this build since we're not wielding weapons), and the astral arms let you use Wis instead of Str, as well as change the damage to force. Therefore, your unarmed strikes will do 1d8+5, and you can get like 8 of them in on one turn if you use Flurry of Blows and Action Surge.
On top of that, the levels in Monk let you get 16 AC without armor (+1 Dex, +5 Wis). AC 16 is decent but not great, which is why I added the Bladesinger levels. During your Bladesong, your AC goes up to 21, and you have shield if your AC is still lacking. Any Psi Warrior needs an Int that's at least decent, anyway, so this helps reinforce the high Int's usefulness. And as a very minor thing, since Bladesong increases your movement speed, it'll let you fly even faster while Psi-Powered Leap is up.
What do you think? Does this build work the way I think it does? Feedback would be great!
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I'm not seeing the value of Bladesong in this build. The Psi Warrior subclass has relatively few abilities that actually key off of Intelligence, which is useful and all, but they're both fairly high abilities (one at level 7, the next at 15, the last at 18). By that point your Proficiency Bonus will be quite a bit higher, and you'll have hit several ASI's, so you can top off your INT a bit. EDIT: Plus, Bladesong and Astral Arms are both triggered with a Bonus Action, and the Astral Arms are basically required but Bladesong is purely optional as an AC boost.
Meanwhile, if you focus on WIS/DEX with INT as your secondary ability, you'll still have good armor, and you'll be able to level up Monk enough to get Stunning Strike, or at least get more Ki... if your fighting style is 100% built on the assumption of summoning the arms in every combat (since you have very weak STR/DEX to fall back on if you're out of Ki), you're going to at least want more than 3 Ki points.
Overall this just feels too sloppy and MAD for me. I like the flavor of it... a character who fights exclusively with psychic force arms and has cool psychic abilities to modify their attacks. But the fact that a Monk can only use their Martial Arts feature when not wearing armor makes it overall harder to take advantage of.
Actually, I'm reading the Martial Arts feature more closely, and I'm realizing... I think you can justify wearing armor with this build and still comfortably drop Bladesong from this build. So... the Martial Arts feature allows you to attack with DEX instead of STR with unarmed strikes, but the Astral Arms override that and just change it to attacking with WIS. It allows you to deal damage equal to your Martial Arts Die for Unarmed Strikes... but the Unarmed Fighting Style overrides that as well. The two things you lose is the ability to make a single Unarmed Bonus Action Attack after taking the attack action, and Unarmored Movement... which is a great feature that sucks to lose out on. But you could still just wear half-plate and carry a shield to get 19AC with just a DEX score of 14.
I dunno... I want this idea to work, but it all just feels too clunky to me. I feel like I would enjoy going full Astral Monk or full Psi Warrior more than trying to get them to work together. I also feel like Psi Warrior and Bladesinger pair together more easily, although you lose the ability to attack without relying on STR or DEX, which seems to be the most important feature of this build.
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Okay… those are some good points. I think the lack of Ki points is one of the big drawbacks of the build. With a little rearranging, I (1) swapped the Wizard levels for 2 more in Monk and (2) changed the ability scores to 10/18/14/16/20/9. (Doing this also involved trading one of the half-feats for a straight ASI and changing the other to Gift of the Gem Dragon (Wisdom).)This gets an AC of 19, a Ki save DC of 19, a Dragonborn Breath Weapon save DC of 16, and a Psi Warrior save DC of 17 (as opposed to AC and Force Breath save DC of 16, Ki and Psi Warrior save DC of 19). 3 points of AC in exchange for 2 points off the Psi Warrior save DC… pretty good. The walking speed in also up to 45 feet.
Question: Which is better, Fighter 14/Monk 6 or Fighter 12/Monk 8? You’d get the same number of ASI’s and same number of attacks, as well as Evasion, Stillness of Mind, and most importantly more Ki points, but you’d lose one use of Indomitable. That’s a pretty good trade, though: more uses of your core feature, as well as some other buffs, in exchange for a use of a defensive feature.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
This is the character, by the way: https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Helmut_McQuack/characters/66975114
The character sheet doesn't let Unarmed Fighting affect the Astral Arms attack, for some reason. Too complex, I guess.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I would 100% go for Fighter 12/Monk 8... Evasion is one of the best skills in the game... it guarantees that you'll only take half-damage on DEX saves (one of the most common saves in the game), and potentially avoid all damage. More importantly, it's just a straight upgrade to your DEX saves... it doesn't cost a resource or anything. Indomitable has more versatility since it applies to all Saves and not just Dex, but think of it this way... if you fail a DEX save and use indomitable, you can give yourself a second chance of reducing the damage by half, whereas that half-damage is what you still get with a success on Evasion. Plus, as always... more Ki Points to fuel your arms. Two extra levels of Monk means you can have your arms out for two more fights, even if you don't use them on anything else.
The only challenge I'm seeing here is that your 7th level Monk feature competes with your 10th level Fighter feature... it's a difficult balance to maintain. The Fighter Feature makes you resistant to Psychic Damage, but both features also let you end the Frightened/Charmed Condition on yourself... although the Fighter Feature costs a Psionic Die, but occurs as a free action, whereas the Monk Feature doesn't cost any resources but costs a full action.
I suppose it is nice that you have the tactical ability to face those specific conditions... like if you're out of Psionic Die you can still clear it out, but I can't help but feel like maybe putting more levels into Monk than Fighter might pay off more. Body of the Astral Self lets you deal extra damage each round and allows you to reduce damage from multiple sources (instead of the relatively uncommon psychic damage), and maybe going an extra level in Monk gives you the ability to just functionally speak all languages. But the big downside is losing the 11th level Extra Attack boost... I think I might be overthinking the issue. I also didn't check to make sure you weren't losing ASI's, so maybe don't worry about the redundancy too much.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Don’t you need a STR of 13 to multi class from Fighter? For initial levels, having a 13 or 14 STR will help your damage a lot. But that also makes this character even more MAD, which is the principal drawback. You might need a to take a 10 CON to make his work.
I’d also suggest starting with an odd INT or WIS and taking the Telekinetic feat to round it out at the first ASI. That feat is just so consistent with the force projection build you’re going for that I think you’ll want it early. Maybe even go 5 levels in Fighter then Monk for 8 to get your feat and extra attack before switching over?
Multiclassing into or out of Fighter requires 13 Str OR 13 Dex.
In rebuilding the character I linked above, I did just that. Adjusted starting stats were 10/14/14/12/17/8 (+2 Wis, +1 Dex). First ASI was Gift of the Gem Dragon (Wisdom). You could easily switch that for Telekinetic (Wisdom).
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.