The young monk clenched her fists, breathed in, and unclenched them as she exhaled. She broke form for just an instant to scratch an itch on the tip of her nose, then swiped her arm back into position, hoping no one would notice. Her sparring partner, a musclebound, bald-headed man in a simple training gi grinned at her. His gi hung open loosely, showing off his bulging, glistening muscles. She grimaced and took another breath.
“That’s good,” the master said, sitting cross-legged on a cushion across the room from the two hopefuls. “Connect with your breath. Before you fight, let rigid tension escape your body and allow free air to replace it. Stay relaxed, and your body will bend—not break.”
The monk’s opponent grinned again and cracked his neck loudly.
The master was a wizened woman whose silver hair sat in an immaculate bun atop her head, and she scrutinized her two apprentices through heavily lidded eyes. “For years, the two of you have trained in your home villages, struggling, meditating, bleeding… all for the opportunity to become my apprentice. You have both shown great spiritual and mental discipline. Now all that remains is for you to prove yourselves in combat. Stance!”
The monk locked eyes with her opponent.
“Prepare!”
He spit in the sand. She bent her knees and lowered her stance.
“Begin!”
The monk darted towards her opponent, who leapt into the air. A gust of wind burst from the soles of his bare feet, kicking a cloud of sand and dust into the air, engulfing the arena. She screwed her eyes shut and grinned in triumph as she was swallowed by the obscuring haze of dust and grit. The musclebound adept landed on the other side of the ring and immediately spun about with a low, sweeping kick—but his look of concentration soured into confusion. His strike hadn’t connected. His opponent wasn’t where he had thought she would be. In fact, she wasn’t anywhere at all.
Then he gasped. He lurched forward as all the air in his lungs was thrust from his body. A searing pain radiated throughout his back from a single point, and then everything went numb. Only the sound of a second strike—straight to the side of his head—registered in his senseless body, but the force of the blow brought him to the ground. Blood and mucus dribbled from his nose and mouth and mingled with the sand.
The dust cleared, and only one monk remained standing. She had darted through the cloud of dust and emerged, unseen, behind her opponent’s back. She straightened her posture and straightened her robe. She looked the master straight in the eye.
“I am ready,” she said.
"No," the master shook her head. She stood up, cast off her ceremonial cloak, and cracked her callused knuckles. "One test remains."
You are playing a monk, an ascetic warrior who fights using their own body and the primordial power within their own spirit. Your specialized training has granted you the power to manipulate ki, a fundamental force of life energy that dwells within all living things.
The monk’s abilities largely resemble media depictions of East Asian martial artists like Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan (depending on whether your character is serious or comedic), and on wuxia fantasy ranging from The House of Flying Daggers to Avatar: The Last Airbender. But while the D&D monk is definitely inspired by the pop media idea of fighting monks, players seeking a more realistic look at ascetic warriors in Asian history would do well to research the Shaolin monks of Henan province, China, and the historical sohei warrior monks of feudal Japan, and the Naga Sadhu militant Hindu monks of northern India.
Real-life Europe had little in the way of warrior monks, save for orders of knights that also happened to be monastics, such as the Knights Hospitalier. Perhaps the most famous outlaw monk in European fiction is Friar Tuck, companion of Robin Hood. He's not much of a warrior, but he's a good place to start from if you're looking for a monk who doesn't see eye-to-eye with the law. If you don’t have the time to do further research and just want to get to playing, you could do worse than drawing upon the monastic pseudo-spirituality of the Jedi Order from Star Wars to inspire your monk character.
Quick Build Expanded: Building Your Monk
This isn’t a character optimization guide, but the first step in playing your class effectively is building it effectively. The Quick Start guidelines in the Player’s Handbook are a good start, but don’t go far enough for most new players. Here’s an expanded Quick Start guide. This guide assumes you’re using the D&D Beyond Character Builder, which includes helper text for new players.
- Under “Character Preferences,” turn off “Playtest Content,” “Homebrew Content,” and “Eberron Content.”
- Choose your Race. While characters of any race can be a good monk, you may want to choose a race that improves your Dexterity or Wisdom scores.
- Humans are the quintessential monk, and their well-rounded ability scores suit the monk’s multifaceted skill set.
- Elves make for superior monks thanks to their latent bonus to Dexterity, and wood elves’ minor bonus to Wisdom only further heightens their suitability.
- Aarakocra are an unusual but excellent choice for a monk, thanks to their bonuses to both Dexterity and Wisdom, but also because their powerful flying movement synergizes perfectly with the monk class’s desire to move quickly and casually around the battlefield. Be careful, not all Dungeon Masters allow aarakocra at their table, and they are banned in D&D Adventurer’s League play.
- Choose Monk as your class (obviously).
- Choose skills that fit who you want your character to be. Skills that play to your strengths are useful, but also consider shoring up some of your weaknesses in order to make yourself a more balanced character. This part is up to you!
- Think about what role you want to fill in the party—Offense, Defense, or Support. Let’s look at this in greater detail in a moment.
- Choose where to put your ability scores. Generally, you will want to put your highest score in Dexterity, and place your second highest in Wisdom so that you can make full use of both your physical attacks and ki-empowered abilities. If you want to focus on ki and mysticism rather than physical force, place your highest score in Wisdom and your second highest in Dexterity.
- Select a background that supports your character concept. Your choice of background can help you make strong roleplaying choices; a monk that served as a soldier but was disillusioned by jingoism and the horrors of war will approach both life and combat in a completely different way than a monk who grew up as a circus performer in Waterdeep.
- Finally, choose your starting equipment by clicking on “EQUIPMENT” when promoted to “Choose EQUIPMENT or GOLD”. Choose:
- A shortsword or any simple weapon of your choice
- A dungeoneer’s pack or explorer’s pack, depending on whether you’ll be adventuring indoors or outdoors.
- 10 darts
What Kind of Monk are You?
Monks are melee fighters not unlike a Dexterity-based fighter or a ranger, but they are light and agile combatants that use their incredible movement abilities to compensate for their low hit points and Armor Class. Monks are most suited to taking on the role of Offense within their party, using that high mobility to engage foes with a barrage of rapid blows, and then escape for safety before their enemies can retaliate. However, certain monks can even take on a role of Defense, using their unusual abilities to redirect attacks and even use their mastery of ki to cheat death. Finally, one sinister monk subclass allows those adept in its shadowy arts to take on a Support role within their party, becoming akin to a ninja striking from the shadows.
(And note, this guide uses Offense, Defense, and Support as shorthand. No part of D&D refers to characters in this way, but it’s an easy way to discuss the different roles characters serve in the party.)
Your role in your adventuring party probably won’t crystallize until at least 3rd level, when you choose your Monastic Tradition (hereafter referred to as a subclass). You may wish to decide on which subclass you’ll choose now, so that you can plan your character’s theme, aesthetic, or mechanical build in advance.
Offense
As an offensive monk, you’ll use your advance mobility to engage enemies and deal massive damage with limited risk of reprisal. You don’t have much in the way of defenses, so you’ll need to rely on abilities like Step of the Wind to get you out of trouble. Your Offense-focused subclasses are the Way of the Four Elements (Player’s Handbook), Way of the Kensei (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything), Way of the Open Hand (Player’s Handbook), and the Way of the Sun Soul (Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide). Monks of the Way of the Kensei and the Open Hand focus on close-quarters combat, while those who follow the Way Four Elements and the Sun Soul focus on using mystical arts to engage in ranged combat.
Defense
As a defensive monk, you will use your martial and mystical abilities to keep yourself alive in even the direst of circumstances by granting yourself temporary hit points, using erratic movements to make yourself hard to hit, or by manipulating the forces of death itself to keep yourself alive. Your Defense-focused subclasses are the Way of the Drunken Master (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything) and the Way of the Long Death (Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide).
Support
The only Support-focused monk subclass is the Way of Shadow (Player’s Handbook), which allows you to cloak yourself and your allies in shadow in order to ambush and elude your foes. While this subclass doesn’t allow you to heal your allies like many other Support subclasses, its stealth buffs can turn unwinnable deathtraps into cunning ambushes.
Fighting like a Monk
For the first three levels of being a monk, your style of gameplay will be roughly the same no matter what kind of role you want to play in the party. While certain choices can change this, like playing a human and picking a role-defining feat at 1st level, playing a monk is generally fairly simple at low levels. Your role is primarily offensive before you choose your subclass, but you need to take care to not get torn apart by enemies, since you lack the armor of a paladin or the damage resistances of a barbarian.
If you do play a human, you can choose a feat at 1st level. Some feats are more or less powerful depending on the types of challenges your DM sets before you, but some always-good options include:
- Offensive monks can take the Grappler feat, if you’re in melee combat. This allows you to immerse yourself in the fantasy of a fist-fighter by tackling and pinning opponents in addition to simple kicks and punches. Sharpshooter is a good pick for ranged-focused monks, as it allows you to ignore cover and deal major damage at the cost of accuracy, if necessary.
- Grappler is also a useful choice for defensive monks, as it helps you restrain enemies, both preventing them from moving and making it easier for your allies to gang up and defeat them.
- Skulker. As a stealthy support monk, you want to remain out of sight for as long as possible. The Skulker feat allows you to make the most of your Dexterity (Stealth) checks and stay hidden even if you fail a stealthy attack.
All Monks
At 1st level, you gain the class-defining Unarmored Defense and Martial Arts features, which allow you to fight effectively as an unarmed and unarmored fighter. Unlike the barbarian’s often ignorable Unarmored Defense trait, both of these features are significant, since you have precious few armor and weapon proficiencies as a monk.
At 2nd level, you gain the equally class-defining Ki and Unarmored Movement features. The latter feature grants you a permanent, passive increase to your movement speed that scales with your monk level, capping out at a +30 ft. bonus at 18th level.
The Ki feature grants you three iconic abilities at 2nd level, but also interacts with many of your other monk traits, including those granted by your choice of subclass. Your ki pool starts small (at only 2 points), but you regain all of your ki points at the end of a short or long rest. Your starting ki-powered traits are a mix of offense, defense, and mobility, with Flurry of Blows allowing you to make two additional unarmed strikes in a turn, Patient Defense allowing you to impose disadvantage on all attack rolls against you until the start of your next turn, and Step of the Wind allowing you to disengage as a bonus action like a rogue.
At 3rd level, you get to choose your subclass, and gain a special feature dependent on which subclass you chose. See your party role’s section below for more information. Additionally, you gain the Deflect Missiles ability, which lets you use your reaction to pluck ranged weapons right out of the air, reducing your damage taken from ranged enemies, and possibly even increasing your offensive abilities by letting you catch and throw some missiles.
At 4th level, you gain an Ability Score Improvement or a feat. You should either increase your Dexterity or Wisdom by 2 points or choose a feat that suits your combat role. A few of these feats are listed at the top of the “Fighting like a Monk” section.
You also gain the Slow Fall feature, which is a situational but very cool ability that lets you reduce or negate falling damage.
At 5th level, you gain an Extra Attack whenever you take the Attack action, effectively doubling your damage output (though it doesn’t grant you any extra attacks through Flurry of Blows). You also gain the Stunning Strike trait, which allows you to spend ki to temporarily stun enemies that you hit with a melee weapon attack.
Offense
If you chose the Way of the Four Elements at 3rd level, you have some choices in your future. When you gain the Disciple of the Elements feature at 3rd level, you gain two elemental disciplines that mimic the effects of elemental wizard spells when you spend ki to cast them. First, you must gain the Elemental Attunement discipline, which lets you perform minor elemental effects. Second, you can choose from:
- Fangs of the Fire Snake (increase your melee attack reach and deal fire damage with melee attacks for 1 turn)
- Fist of Four Thunders (you cast thunderwave)
- Fist of Unbroken Air (you push a creature up to 20 feet and deal some damage)
- Rush of the Gale Spirits (you cast gust of wind)
- Shape of the Flowing River (you can shape water and ice, but can’t use it to injure or trap a creature)
- Sweeping Cinder Strike (you cast burning hands
- Water Whip (you knock a creature prone or pull it towards you, and deal some damage)
You learn additional elemental disciplines as you gain monk levels, and even gain access to more powerful ones. Your spellcasting progression is essentially the same as a “1/3 caster” like an Eldritch Knight fighter or Arcane Trickster rogue.
If you chose the Way of the Kensei at 3rd level, you get to choose two weapons to be special kensei weapons. These weapons gain all the same benefits as your monk weapons, and they also allow you to perform the following special moves: Agile Parry, which lets you increase your AC while fighting with a melee kensei weapon in one hand and making an unarmed strike with the other, and Kensei’s Shot, which lets you deal more damage with ranged kensei weapons.
If you chose the Way of the Open Hand at 3rd level, you gain several extra effects which you can add to your Flurry of Blows attacks, allowing you to debilitate your enemies while fighting.
If you chose the Way of the Sun Soul at 3rd level, you can hurl radiant magic at creatures within 30 feet of you in place of any one of your attacks (except Flurry of Blows). This attack is as powerful as your melee attacks, but is ranged and deals hard-to-resist radiant damage.
Defense
If you chose the Way of the Drunken Master at 3rd level, you gain a handful of bonus proficiencies which help heighten the class fantasy of being a drink-loving monk. You also gain the the mobility-enhancing Drunken Technique, which allows you to Disengage with no action required whenever you use the Flurry of Blows attack—which is essentially a 2-for-1 ki deal, since it gives you a free Step of the Wind on turns that you Flurry!
If you chose the Way of the Long Death at 3rd level, you gain the Touch of Death feature. Whenever you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain a small number of temporary hit points, which scales with your monk level and Wisdom modifier. Even though temporary hit points don’t stack, being able to consistently replenish your hit points while in combat is a major boon, especially if you’re fighting a horde of weak enemies.
Support
The Way of Shadow is the only Support subclass available to monks. If you chose this subclass at 3rd level, you gain access to a number of spells which you can cast using your ki. These spells can buff both you and your allies, specifically pass without trace, and hinder your enemies with effects like darkness and silence.
Making Your Monk Your Own
Monks are one of D&D’s least conventional classes, and they are packed to bursting with exciting abilities that you can base a character around. You may find that one of your monk class features consistently saves your life, like Deflect Missiles or Slow Fall, or that your Flurry of Blows always seems to strike lethal blows. Lean into these random twists of fate and try bending your character concept to incorporate your favorite traits.
As always, this guide is not an optimization guide. Its goal is not to create a superpowered monk, but to show you a simple, effective, and fun way to create a character that will help you play a monk for the very first time and enjoy it. Choose abilities that speak to you, optimization be damned, and play the character you want to play. This guide will help you create a balance between having fun playing your own unique concept, and having fun because you’re kicking ass in combat.
Now go punch some orcs square in the face!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and is also a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah, their Way of Shadows kitty-monk Marzipan, and their Way of the Sun Soul kitty-monk Mei. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Why tho.
I mean, all the subclasses to monk seem to just give more options on how to use KI
I'm not a very experienced player, but it seems that many of the abilities you can get have some utility you didn't had as a monk before. Like pulling or pushing opponents from a distance, becoming mist, using the base "cantrip" of the subclass. Maybe getting magic initiate:druid feat a few times and stacking the elemental druid cantrips to round it out.
Would enable you to create a character that's still a master of melee combat, BUT can manipulate the battlefield in various ways. For instance on lvl20, you could burn 8 KI to cast levitate and invisibility on yourself, then fly right into the middle of the enemy, cast thunderwave as a surprise attack THEN take patient defense for 1 ki as a bonus action.
Next turn you can attack normally and then you may take step of the wind and disengage. This reduces your KI back to 0, ensuring you gain another 4 the next fight.
But enough rants, I do concede that it feels as if the kit you get is lacking (there aren't even enough spells to make a specialized monk, like Earth or Fire), and this is kinda proven by the fact that I want to get druid cantrips for my elemental monk. But I would like to hear in detail as how it's the worst subclass. In what regard and how is it lacking compared to the others?
Without getting into it too much, look at the ki costs for Way of the 4 elements and compare them to Way of Shadow. Way of the 4 Elements pays more for their ki abilities than any other sub-class, for example, hold person a second level spell costs 3 ki points compared to Way of Shadow that can cast darkness, darkvision, pass without trace, and silence for 2 ki points.
Every Way of the 4 Elements spell is upcast like that, so you're burning through ki points much faster than the other sub classes.
Another negative aspect of Way of the 4 elements is that every ability costs ki points. There are no passive abilities that you can take advantage of. Let's look at Way of the Shadows again, Shadow Step, Cloak of Shadows, and Opportunist all don't cost ki points.
That is why Way of the 4 Elements is bad.
Way of the Four Elements is basically meant to be the monk equivalent of Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster. You'll notice that the levels the monk gets new spells roughly corresponds to when the EK and AT get them as well.
The problem is that the elemental monk doesn't get spell slots but must draw from ki (a rather restricted source when you consider that most games end around level 10, and a single spell will often drain half your ki), you get no other benefits beyond spells whereas EK and AT get several, the spell options are extremely limited with many in the form of AoEs when you should be mostly punching and nothing to help with the Concentration spells if you get hit (and you will get hit, because you're mainly a melee person).
Now, its not to say that the Elemental monk is unplayable, it is. There's a handful of abilities that work well together. But its definitely one of the worst subclasses in the game; not as bad as Beastmaster, but worse than Berserker. People just seem to have play issues with the class, both in terms of mechanics (ki exhastion) and in terms of fun (it just doesn't snyergize well or pull off the archetype well).
When he was talking about Tabaxi and Aarakocra with non monks, like Barbarians.
What about Demon Armour ( DM guide).
We can agree to disagree. We're from two different camps. I may not be the norm, but personally I focus on who I'm playing rather than what I'm playing. For me it has nothing to do with the numbers and everything to do with skill and experience. I will admit that I haven't done much comparison. I've been role-playing for about 35 years, but watching Critical Role for the last couple years I've really tried to divest myself from player knowledge vs character knowledge. I used to pour through the books for the fun of it, but I noticed with that show, if it's not specific to their character they don't look it up. In fact looking at other class stats or a monster's write up they equate that with cheating. I admire that so I haven't looked at other monk paths, because they're not paths my monk follows. In addition, in the course of the campaign we've met monks from other paths and not knowing what they can and cannot do until I actually see them in action has made for very interesting games. So long story short I haven't done an evaluation of other paths, but saying that, I've never been one for extremism so I don't believe in 'worst' or 'best'. The other paths certainly have their advantages, as well as weaknesses. It all depends on what you're wanting to do and how you do it. The base monk is identical across the board, and the paths are focused for certain purposes. In those fields they very well may excel, but that doesn't mean the other paths are any less valid.
Just to play devil's advocators for a moment (at the risk of being hypocritical as I just posted that we can agree to disagree, so I apologize).... Of course Elements Monks are required to be sixth level for Hold Person so 3 Ki is understandable. That all the talents are 4 Ki is incorrect. Only the ones from 11th level on are. There are six talents that aren't level specific that cost only 1 or 2 ki. Also nearly all of the elemental talents are scalable so they can be increased in power by adding Ki. No other path (to my knowledge) does that. True, empowering them may burn through Ki faster, but you do more with them when you do. They get Elemental Attunement for free and yes it's essentially a cantrip, but you get that from the start and I have found it immensely useful. Looking in the book just now I see Shadow Step, Cloak of Shadows, and Opportunist are free, but you don't get them until 6th, 11th, and 17th levels respectively, so it doesn't matter if they're free or not if you're not of a level to use them. Another thing to consider is the elemental disciplines received at similar levels are by choice, so you can guide your monk on a path of your own choosing for what works best for you. Another very handy trait and very useful. You can be in a room with three shadow monks and can essentially evaluate what each one can or can't do. Three elemental monks until they unleash you have no idea what you're in for and what to defend against. They may not have as much mobility or Ki as others, but their versatility and raw power can very much make up for it in my experience.
With respect, your argument is wholly based on being ignorant of the game outside of the options that you're currently playing. A Way of the 4 Elements monk was the first character I made, because I like the flavor so much. My critiques of the subclass aren't intended to demean or admonish anyone who intends on playing or is currently playing it. Some people get frustrated when they perceive a power imbalance (see beast master Ranger), some people simply like to educate themselves on the mechanics before diving into a character. The fact that you don't doesn't mean that is bad.
When I say Way of the 4 Elements is sub-par compared to the other sub-classes, I am attempting to present an objective case so that we do not get lackluster sub-classes in the future. Observing what Way of the 4 Elements does wrong is just as important as praising what it does right.
And I'm sorry to say that the pitfalls of Way of the 4 elements do mean that it's MECHANICS are less valid than other subclasses.
Scaling abilities with ki points isn't an exclusive ability of Way of the 4 elements. Take a look at Way of the Sun Soul. You could make the level analogy about any subclass feature and just because you don't have access to the abilities doesn't mean them being poorly designed is any less of a demerit when looking at the overall subclass. I'm only considering mechanics, any meta narrative explanations you have are outside of the purview of my critique.
I think that the Paladin would actually be quite fitting. Knight monks were a thing in medieval Europe— they protected pilgrims going to sacred sites and stuff. The way I see it is that in a European monestary system with D&D classes, the monks/nuns would be Devotion paladins with the players takingas many Int and Wis skills as possible (from the Paladin list, and whatever background (hermit or acolyte, not sure which yet)), the priests/abbots who ruled over the monestary would be Clerics with Light or Life domain, and maybe even the occasional corrupt church would have a warlock who has taken a pact with whatever god (it would be just God in Christian traditions in real medieval europe); iterated as The Great Old One, with Vengeance paladins as the monks/nuns.
Also UPDATE: “had vows of pacifism” if you want to play that kind of monk just take Oath of Redemption
If you choose a minotor then unarmed strikes deal 1d6 plus Dex or strength mod
I like taking Magic Initiate (Druid) as a first-level feat, and giving the monk a tonfa (basically a wooden club with a handle attached at 90 degrees near the base.) Then take Shillelagh as a cantrip, and start doing 1d8 damage with the tonfa. You won't hit that damage until around 11th level otherwise. You can also take longstrider as the first level spell to bump up the monk's mobility a bit more.
Can anyone suggest how I include monk weapons onto the dnd beyond character sheet?
The low Ki points makes them a poor fighter in the first few level. I played the ninja one and found that using any of the Way of the Shadow abilities burned up Ki as they took 2 Ki points to activate. And then the second issue at low levels - most of your bonuses are for being unarmoured. Combined together these two factors relegated my character to a poor quality fighter and he tended to get knocked out each fight.
I'm not so sure - I would say the unarmed strikes don't mix. A tabaxi monk could use the monks martial arts or the tabaxi claws but not use some of both features.
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/11/18/so-that-1d4-tabaxi-would-grow-as-you-grow-with-monk-levels/
Jeremy Crawford covered this already.
About the Sun Soul... The book says "You gain a new Attack option that you can use with the Attack action"
But this article says "You can hurl radiant magic at creatures within 30 feet of you in place of any one of your attacks"
So, which is correct? The book or the article?
They both mean the same thing if you read the full description in the book:
Radiant Sun Bolt
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you can hurl searing bolts of magical radiance.
You gain a new attack option that you can use with the Attack action. This special attack is a ranged spell attack with a range of 30 feet. You are proficient with it, and you add your Dexterity modifier to its attack and damage rolls. Its damage is radiant, and its damage die is a d4. This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table.
When you take the Attack action on your turn and use this special attack as part of it, you can spend 1 ki point to make the special attack twice as a bonus action.
When you gain the Extra Attack feature, this special attack can be used for any of the attacks you make as part of the Attack action.
I know this is 2 years late here, but there are plenty of ways to play a monk using various cultures as your inspiration. What you are looking for is a warrior tradition among non-nobility. Things like heavy armor and weapon training beyond the basics (daggers, hammers, and spears) were historically only affordable by the nobility whether we're talking about east or west, and a need to even the playing field without expensive tools is where "monks" come from. So go for someone like an idealized Scottish farmer/warrior (way of Kensei would work great with this), a traveling Italian merchant who has trained with Rondel daggers, a French sailor/savate expert, a Portuguese shepherd/stick fighter, a guard for a poor abbey using something like a partisan. Classical European boxing (pankration) has a history that fits in well with monks, you just have to look for it.
Really, you can look at just about any culture and find those people who didn't have the money to afford state-of-the-art weapons but did have the time to train. Those people are your monks. Because there was not a lot of metal work, but a lot of spiritual importance to combat, the indigenous cultures of the Americas provide a ton of great monk cultural examples if you want to do something different than an eastern themed monk. It's not hard to re-imagine the Aztecs as a wood elf nation supported by an army of Way of the Long Death monks.