Class is in session! If you want to play the ultimate martial arts master, you’ve come to the right monastery. This week, we take a deep dive into a monastic tradition that allows you to emulate the great martial artists of the ancient world—and the flashy martial artists of Hollywood and Hong Kong kung-fu and wuxia films. The Way of the Open Hand grants you all this power and more.
Story of the Way of the Open Hand
“You would draw blades against me?” The monk looked at the trio of hobgoblins that stood before him with incredulity. He looked small and weak and practically naked before them, wearing only a simple tunic while they wore heavy, spiked plate armor.
The monk opened wide his hands, displaying to all that he was unarmed. “I’ve studied in monasteries across the Moonsea. The monks of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose taught me how to fight with infinite vigor at altitudes where the air is thin as smoke. At the Black Raven Monastery, I learned how to sense the flowing rivers of ki within my foes’ body—and how to disrupt them with a touch. And at the House of the Broken God, I learned how to fight in a way that showed mercy and grace towards all living beings.”
At this, the hobgoblins only laughed, and drew closer. The monk scowled, and clenched his fists. “Yet you—You are testing the limits of my mercy. I will demonstrate to you what I have learned.”
The Way of the Open Hand instantly draws comparison to the stars of Hong Kong action cinema, like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Cheng Pei-Pei—perhaps even more than it draws comparison to actual martial arts! This is to be expected, since D&D’s somewhat abstract combat system encourages cinematic action over gritty realism. Though the class is named “monk,” you must dispel any images of Friar Tuck that appear in your mind. The class’s name was probably coined perhaps in reference to Shaolin monks, who were renowned for their martial arts prowess—but the monk class has no inherent ties to faith, unlike the Christian monks of medieval Europe or the Buddhist monks of feudal China or Japan.
When creating a monk—especially one who follows the Way of the Open Hand, which is the platonic ideal of a martial artist monk—try to think of stories that feature monastic warriors, who fight in the name of an organization or a philosophical ideal rather than a faith or a god. For monks who wield weapons in addition to unarmed strikes—like in D&D—think of the souhei, warrior-monks of feudal Japan, especially during the sengoku jidai, or Warring States period. These monastic warriors often fought with bows and naginata spears, like any sensible soldier of the time. For a non-historical example, think of the Jedi knights from Star Wars, and how their fighting style melds weaponry, sorcery, and philosophy.
Finally, be sure to read the “Monastic Orders” sidebar in the Player’s Handbook. This elaborates that while most monasteries that teach a martial art in the Forgotten Realms are Shou in origin—and thus have a broad “East Asian” aesthetic—monasteries dedicated to gods rather than ideals or philosophies are common on the Sword Coast. The monk class isn’t monolithic, and neither is the Way of the Open Hand. It’s kind of like the differences between Hong Kong and Hollywood martial arts movies; similar in topic, but wildly different in content, tone, and approach.
Way of the Open Hand Features
As stated earlier, the Way of the Open Hand is the most iconic, essential ideal of the monk class. As such, its class features tend to enhance the class’s strengths and leave its weaknesses relatively untouched. The features of this subclass grant you the ability to manipulate not just the ki (energy) within your own body, but the ki within other creatures, as well. Generally, these features either allow you to cause harm to enemies or heal harm done to your own body. The monk gains access to four subclass features in addition to their monk class features, gained at increasingly wide intervals at 3rd, 6th, 11th, and 17th level.
You can read all of the Way of the Open Hand features for free in the D&D Basic Rules. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:
- Use martial arts to hinder your enemies’ movement or reactions.
- Manipulate your own ki to heal your wounds.
- Surround yourself with an aura of peace.
- Kill a creature with a single strike.
Benefits of Playing a Way of the Open Hand Monk
Monks who follow the Way of the Open Hand rely predominantly on skills as martial artists, rather than upon any sort of supernatural powers, making them more akin to Cheng Chao-an (Bruce Lee’s street-fighting protagonist in The Big Boss) than to Yin Chik-ha (Wu Ma’s ghost-fighting Taoist priest in A Chinese Ghost Story). Or, for a more contemporary example, more like Ty Lee or Suki than Azula or Zuko (all from Avatar: The Last Airbender).
As such, your subclass focuses on making you a well-balanced melee combatant, and does a good job at it. It strikes an impressive balance of offense and defense, and gets to the good stuff quickly while still tantalizing you with one of the most striking “capstone” features in the game. Your Open Hand Technique, the first feature you gain in this subclass, grants you a diversity of tactical offensive options that allow you to manipulate your enemies’ position on the battlefield. Knocking an enemy prone can set up a devastating Sneak Attack combo with your party’s rogue, and battlefields with hazardous terrain like acid pits or lava, or active spell effects like moonbeam make pushing a creature up to 15 feet a niche but useful ability.
Wholeness of Body’s healing isn’t as useful as a fighter’s Second Wind trait in the heat of combat, it can still provide some additional healing between battles. Fortunately, it scales better than Second Wind, making it useful even as you rise into higher levels. Additionally, Tranquility shouldn’t be underestimated as a defensive feature. Gaining the effects of a sanctuary that lasts your entire adventuring day—or until you take hostile action yourself—protects you from ambushes in the first combat encounter of any given day. This isn’t the best in long dungeon crawls, but it is useful when traveling long distances, such as in the jungles of Chult or the Faerûn’s Savage Frontier.
This subclass’s most exciting feature, gained at 17th level, is Quivering Palm. By spending 3 ki points, you can fill a creature’s body with imperceptible vibrations that last for a number of days equal to your monk level. At any point during that time, you can use another action to turn those vibrations into a lethal disruption of that creature’s ki—forcing them to make a successful Constitution saving throw or die instantly. Even on a successful save, the creature takes a significant amount of damage. The power to kill a creature instantly on a single failed save is always impressive, and its low ki cost makes it even more appealing. Creatures that can instantly succeed on saving throws thanks to Legendary Resistance aren’t quite as intimidated by this ability. Nevertheless, the thought of killing an ancient red dragon by tricking it into spending its Legendary Resistances on trivial spells, only to slay it with a Quivering Palm is enough to drive any monk mad with power.
Drawbacks of Playing a Way of the Open Hand Monk
The monk’s central crisis is that it’s torn between being a frontline fighter and a stealthy speedster—and isn’t always able to do both. Spending a bonus action to Disengage by using Step of the Wind is nice, but is it really worth sacrificing using your bonus action to attack two more times with Flurry of Blows? Your Open Hand Technique helps somewhat by allowing you to disable an enemy’s reactions, allowing you to dart in, attack, and escape, but this subclass does nothing to solve the problem of the monk’s mediocre hit points or middling Armor Class—and while it provides some defensive abilities in the form of Wholeness of Body and Tranquility, neither of them are tremendously useful in the midst of combat.
In a phrase, the Way of the Open Hand does nothing to address the iconic weaknesses of the monk class, such as mediocre defenses, dependence on a wide array of ability scores, and lack of ranged attack options.
Along these lines, since you don’t have any magical powers or proficiency with martial weapons, your ability to fight from afar is severely limited. You can pick up a handful of thrown weapons like handaxes or javelins, and a few ranged weapons like shortbows or light crossbows, but finding magic items that support your limited ranged options can be difficult. A single +1 handaxe won’t get you far. Here are all potential options available to you from the core rulebooks. Of all of these options, the javelin of lightning is probably the most exciting—essentially transforming the thrown javelin into a lightning bolt, piercing all creatures between you and your target with crackling energy. All other options are simply weapon types (like vicious weapon or weapon of warning) that can apply to any weapon in D&D.
Suggested Build
If you’re playing a monk from 1st level, you should choose a race that improves either Dexterity, Constitution, or Wisdom—ideally two of the three. Dexterity will make your attacks stronger and more accurate, Constitution will grant you more hit points, which will help you last longer on the front lines, and Wisdom will increase your Armor Class and make it harder for foes to resist your martial abilities.
Wood elves gain a bonus to both Dexterity and Wisdom, making them agile and cunning martial artists. Likewise, stout halflings gain a bonus to both Dexterity and Constitution, making them nimble but durable skirmishers. And, as always, humans gain either a small bonus to all ability scores, or can gain a feat by taking the “variant human” race, making them more flexible in their builds.
Once you’ve prioritized your primary ability scores, you should consider which among your Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma are strongest and weakest. A high Strength will make it easier for you to initiate grapples and resist being overpowered in those few situations when your Dexterity won’t allow you to slip out of a creature’s grip. A high Intelligence will help you make the most of knowledge skills like Religion and History. A high Charisma will help you interact better with NPCs, and make alliances with them by showing them either compassion or intimidating them into submission. As usual, your character’s background is up to you. You can make your character more unique by choosing unusual backgrounds like Criminal, representing a convict who turned to a monastic life out of penance, or follow a more traditional archetype by choosing a background like Acolyte, representing someone who has dedicated themselves to their faith since birth.
Choose EQUIPMENT instead of GOLD at the end of character creation. Choose a shortsword or another simple melee weapon of your choice. While other Dexterity-based combatants have to worry about choosing weapons with the Finesse property, you don't have to. Any monk weapon—that is, shortswords and any simple melee weapons that don’t have the two-handed or heavy property—allows you to add your Dexterity bonus to attack and damage rolls.
You won’t choose your Way of the Open Hand subclass until you reach 3rd level as a monk, so use this time as a 1st- and 2nd-level monk to figure out if Way of the Open Hand is really the right path for you. Are you enjoying the fantasy of being a peerless martial artist? Do you feel like you need more Avatar-style elemental magic? Or would you rather embrace the shadows as a ninja? If you’re enjoying yourself, stay the course.
Feats
Once you’ve reached 4th level in this class—or even at 1st level, if you selected the “variant human” race—you have the option to select a feat or improve your ability scores. As a monk, you have a lot of flexibility built into your core class already, and a lot ability scores you want to make as high as possible (Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom), so eschewing feats entirely isn’t a bad idea. Nevertheless, if you want to customize your character further, consider some of the following feats:
- Athlete. Monks are already highly mobile combatants, but improving your Strength or Dexterity score while also making it harder for the environment to restrict your movement can be a potent, if niche, benefit.
- Martial Adept. This feat is an interesting one; if you want to be an even more tactically oriented combatant, taking the Martial Adept feat will grant you access to two maneuvers from the fighter’s Battle Master subclass, which could help you pull off the cinematic stunts your class is themed around.
- Mobile. Monks are already incredible speedsters; taking the Mobile feat makes them nearly impossible to slow down, netting them an additional movement speed buff, an immunity to the slowing effect of difficult terrain when you take the Dash action (which you can do as a bonus action through your Step of the Wind feature), and an easy way to shut down opportunity attacks, just by attacking a creature. With all these features at your disposal, a Mobile monk can speed around even the most hostile battlefields, throwing out attacks with impunity.
- Resilient (Wisdom). Monks are proficient in Strength and Dexterity saving throws, but gaining proficiency in Wisdom saving throws and improving that ability score by 1 is a significant boost to your defenses against magical effects. Note that, if you plan on playing into high levels, this feat loses some oomph, as you gain proficiency in all saving throws when you reach level 14 in this class.
- Skulker. If your party doesn’t have a rogue, you may be the closest thing to a scout or stealth specialist your party has. The Skulker feat will help you fill this role even better.
If you want more advice for building a monk, check out Monk 101: A Beginner's Guide to Mystical Combat. Have you ever played a Way of the Open Hand monk? What advice would you give to players that want to make a character like this?
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, the DM of Worlds Apart, and 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 and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
I'd throw in Tough with the other feats as more hit points are great no matter what class you play, but might be too generic to mention?
One great thing that I’ve learned from playing it: choose wisely from your Open Way Technique options. Sometimes your ally wants to be hit by an opportunity attack(ex. to land a Hellish Rebuke) and you disable the target’s reactions. That’s not good. Always keep in mind such options.
Great article about this very fun class. Being able to move around the battle, striking and stunning opponents makes for some many memorable moments. I played a monk in a home-brew campaign up to level 9 and had a blast. She was a little squishy before level five or so. She kept getting taken down by big bosses that she would always run up and challenge. My group eventually found a Ring of Protection which she used to great effect. Also, once our wizard learned Haste, the monk was a powerhouse of pain.
I ended up taking the "Observant" feat, since I had an odd numbered Wisdom score. The reading lips skill came in a handy a couple times, but that +5 to passive perception was HUGE. It was very hard to sneak up on our group if the monk was awake. She even detected invisible enemies at one point, and saved the wizard and rogue from getting destroyed by Barlguras. Anyway, had a lot of fun playing that character, and would love to play an open hand monk again some time... maybe a pupil or rival to my previous monk character. :)
It's a racial feat from Xanther's guide to everything, "Wood Elf Magic."
It'd copy and paste it but I don't think it's SRD. But if you have Xanther's digitally it's here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats
Great article, as always! Just one question, at the end you said, “If you want more advice for building a fighter, check out...” I might have read it wrong, but did you mean monk instead of fighter?
Also if you are an Elf you get Long Bow proficiency, thus solving the ranged problem.
Yup. Just a templating error. =)
The final class ability here is just one big "omea wa mou shindeiru" and I love it.
I love being a monk, I don't have to carry anything, I don't have to worry about what I'm wearing. I don't even carry money half the time. I let the party have everything and not once have they let me die. Once a Staff of Thunderbolts came along, I didn't even have to argue for it. Now I have a staff, a nice outfit, free food. Life as a monk feels pretty good
I used Hill Dwarf for my Way of the Open Hand monk and her dwarven constitution made her a great tank. She also took the grappler feat, which I think is great for monks.
As a couple people have alluded to in previous comments, one of the quintessential embodiments of this class is Kenshiro from the manga/anime “Fist of the North Star.” He pretty much does everything you can do with this class in one form or another.
If you want to see what it would look like if a lv20 Way of the Open Hand monk started mowing down an army of lv1-5 mooks, look up some clips on YouTube (warning: it’s very graphic; like, exploding heads are common).
By 19th, actually, and while I like this optimization, if I were going that way I'd be sorely tempted by Bladesinger for those juicy AC and move bonuses.
Can you do a build on Way of the Four Elements? Also do you think there will ever be additional moves in a future book? The moves, though a good selection, are few when it comes to flavor. I’m personally making a Storm Monk, and would like the Fangs of the Fire Snake move with a lightning variation. The problem is I’m aiming for AL, and it’s not AL to do lightning damage with Fangs of the Fire Snake even if I flavor the fire as streaks of lightning. Would there ever be a variant to include more elemental moves?
I would also just add that while Quivering Palm is nice, you could certainly make an argument it's not worth it relative to the multiclass options on the table. Prior to QP, you have several levels of underwhelming abilities. Diamond Soul is nice, but given there are 3 saves that make up 90% of the saves in the game (Dex, Con, Wis), and you are already proficient in one of them, and the cost of proficiency in another is half a feat, the value of Diamond Soul is roughly one feat's worth.
While QP is save-or-suck, a lot of Big Bads can autosave, and that's not the only problem. By the time the party is 17th level, assuming a minimal level of optimization, there is VIRTUALLY NOTHING that can survive giving the party a free round to do whatever they like. That's a good way to get trapped in a forcecage, pushed off a cliff, or hit with a half-dozen strokes of a fighter's Holy-Weaponed greataxe.
Therefore, by the time 17th level rolls around, Stunning Strike is in effect a save-or-suck ability, because being stunned in the face of a 17th-level party is 90% of the way to being dead. And Stunning Strike is cheaper, faster, and can be used up to four times per round. So while I wouldn't kick QP out of bed in the morning, there are many other options for a devastating Empty Hand build that multiclass out at 14th, 12th, 11th, or even 9th level. When I play straight through, I find I use Empty Body (Greater Invisibility + Stoneskin, without concentration!) far more often than Quivering Palm.
Well, flavor is as much a matter of imagination as it is game mechanics. With Empty Hand, just giving a maneuver a cool name and visualizing it can go a long way.
Stunning strike -- "Nerve Cluster Attack"
15 foot push -- "Wave Strikes Rock"
Knock prone -- "Sweeping Leg Attack," "Hook kick" "Hip throw"
No reactions -- "Sun Dazzles Monkey"
Flurry of Blows -- "Eight-fisted Ape"
Step of the Wind -- "Mantis Leap"
…and so forth.
An AL-legal elemental monk that is MORE elemental than the standard 4E monk is a tall order -- that's what the 4E monk is supposed to be. I would start with a race whose natural weapons can be used to make unarmed strikes. Then look for a build that grants a weapon lightning damage -- eg, Elemental Weapon. Candidates include the Artificer (not sure if AL legal -- likely not?) the Paladin (and fair fit but a long wait for 9th level), Lore Bard (good choice for a ninja build) or hexblade (your eldritch blast becomes a ki blast and so forth.)
If it's really the look of lightning you're after, I suggest the Sun Soul, with the cosmetic note that its radiant damage comes in the form of "ki lightning." Radiant damage is rarely resisted, it doesn't light things on fire, etc., so you could treat it like magical soul-powered lightning with no game effects.
Alert (attacking early is a huge gain, plus the benefits around being surprised) , Sentinel (monks should usually be right in the fray) , and Defensive Duelist (short swords are monk weapons) all seem like good feats too.
I think multiclassing is out of scope for a "101" article. 101 articles are aimed at beginners, and the only multiclassing advice I would give a beginner is "Don't do it until you've been playing a while." It's too easy to cripple yourself and end up way behind the rest of the party.
The only thing I would add to the article is a bit about the power of Stunning Strike. It's the monk's single most devastating ability, but it requires coordinating with the rest of the party to get real value out of it, which is something a newbie monk player ought to know. (Basically: Make sure the rest of the party is ready to unload their best attacks on a boss monster, then use Stunning Strike on it. Don't forget that you can Stunning Strike with every single hit, so if you use Extra Attack and Flurry of Blows, you can blast out as many as 4 stun saves in a single round, which virtually guarantees that any non-legendary monster will fail one. This is very ki-intensive, but often worth it.)
Never really played it but the portion on commenting about fluidity and decision reminds me of many tolerances of effort brought by force in nature.
Was playing a dwarven monk once, with grappler feat. Couldn't hit a particular foe (magic defences), so grappled them and threw them into a team-mate's Storm of Blades spell. Heheh.
Love the grappler feat!