Best Feats for Ascendant Dragon Monk 5e
by Prince Phantom
Sadly nerfed from it’s Unearthed Arcana version, the Way of the Ascendant Dragon is a monk that strangly specializes in area of effect damage, and performs at it exactly like you’d expect a monk to, poorly. The breath weapon provided here does absolutely pitiful damage to as small of an area as possible, literally beaten out by the Dragonborn race revised in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, the same book that this subclass was printed in!
The other features aren’t much better. A one turn flight that really equates to a fancy jump at level 6, a side grade bonus action option or a resistance at 11, and a complete disappointment at level 17, giving a tiny and useless bump to our breath weapon, blindsight (which fighters could get at level 1), and a third feature that will never do anything because monsters are too good at saving throws at this level. What’s worse, there are practically no feats that improve or fix any of this. This leaves me in a tough spot, but let’s see what corner cases we can come up with.
Best Feats for Ascendant Dragon Monk 5e
Gift of the Gem Dragon (Lv 4): This feat provides a defensive option while also boosting our Wisdom, which is good as Wisdom is the stat used to set our breath weapon DC. The 10ft push can be used to interrupt a monster’s multiattack, assuming they don’t have enough movement to get back into range after we push them away. Monks are actually quite well equipped for this strategy thanks to their high mobility, allowing you to get either far enough away that the enemy can’t reach you at all, or at least far enough that the push interrupts their attacks with this feat.
Alert (Lv 4): You’ll find your breath weapon to be very hard to use effectively once your allies and enemies are locked in melee combat, so there’s a good chance that if you don’t do well on initiative you may never find a time to use it. Granted, not getting to use your breath weapon probably isn’t that big of a loss considering how little damage it does, but I’m grasping at straws here, cut me some slack.
Elemental Adept (Lv 8): I cannot believe that this subclass is making me talk about this abysmal feat, but if anyone is going to get any use out of it, it just might be this monk. Maybe. Probably not. First do not take this before maxing out your Dexterity and probably your Wisdom too. If you’ve done that, only take this feat for Acid damage, as that is the least resisted or immune-d damage type of the available options. Then make all of your attacks and breath weapons as acid damage. Thanks to the high number of attacks a monk makes, you will find that this feat gives you a small damage boost. Again, simply increasing your Dexterity will provide much more damage, but if you already have your stats at max and are struggling to find a good feat, this just might be an okay option. Again, maybe.
Fey/Shadow Touched (Lv 8): Both provide good spells that expand our options both in and out of combat. I personally believe that Fey provides the better spells, but if you want your monk to be more stealthy, Shadow might be the pick for you. Or just do both if you really want.
Ritual Caster (Lv 12): If you really want to be useful out of combat, talk to your DM about this feat and see if they will let you collect rituals throughout the campaign, as by this level you have access to basically every ritual spell in the game. Right off the bat you can grab Find Familiar, which by itself is reason enough to grab this feat.
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