Best Feats for Long Death Monk 5e
by Prince Phantom
The Long Death monk is a subclass that looks really good on paper, and in truth has some pretty good abilities, it’s just a shame that they are stuck on such a lackluster class that has trouble taking advantage of them. Touch of Death only benefits us if we kill in melee, and monks do such terrible damage in melee that it’s very unlikely that we land the killing blow. Hour of Reaping is an incredible and huge fear effect, but the potential of hitting our friends turns that massive area into a downside.
Mastery of Death sounds cool, but the hope would be that you used all your Ki points to prevent yourself from getting that low on HP, making this feature feel like more of a last resort than anything else. Touch of Long Death is the only feature I can say is good with no asterisk behind that statement, and that’s obtained at level 17, so needless to say my opinion of this subclass is less than glowing. That being said, there are a few feats that can help these abilities shine.
Best Feats for Long Death Monk 5e
Crusher (Lv 4): There’s no great way to improve the damage of our unarmed strikes, so instead we will try to get some utility out of them. Forced movement pairs incredibly well with fear effects, as we can push our enemies away from us and be assured that they will not be able to approach and attack back. The problem is that Hour of Reaping requires an action and the fear only lasts until the end of our next turn, meaning we cannot push and frighten in the same turn unless we spent a Ki point to do Flurry of Blows. To accomplish that without spending Ki we would need 2 Fighter levels for Action Surge, which I would personally consider heavily if I was to play this subclass. Even outside of that however, Crusher is still a solid pickup.
Slasher (Lv 4): If you know you’re not taking that Fighter dip, this might be a better option as a 10ft slow will work quite well on the turns where we aren’t frightening our targets or when our enemies are immune to fear. We are also able to wield rapiers as monk weapons as long as we have proficiency in them, and there are myriad ways to accomplish that. This also pairs really well with the next feat.
Mobile (Lv 8): So I’m not normally a big fan of Mobile, even on monks who are definitely the best class for this feat. Most monks already get plenty of movement and can disengage as a bonus action already. However, we need to get into positions where our Hour of Reaping will only hit our enemies and not our friends, and that becomes much easier to do with an extra 10ft of movement.
Dragon Fear (Lv 8, Fizban’s Dragonborn only): Fitting with the fear theme, this feat allows us to replace a breath weapon attack with a fear effect similar to Hour of Reaping (but without the friendly fire), and it only costs one of our attacks instead of our whole action. This is sort of a side-grade to Hour of Reaping intended to work alongside it and in situations where the friendly fire of Hour of Reaping would be unavoidable.
Tough (Lv 12): The cold hard truth of running into positions where Hour of Reaping won’t hit our friends means that we will be spending a lot of time at least 30ft away from our friends, making it really easy for enemies to focus us down. Tough will buy us a few more hits, and hopefully that will be enough.
Honorable Mentions:
Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter: Touch of Death only specifies that our enemy die within 5ft of us, not that we kill it with a melee attack, so you could technically use a hand crossbow in melee range when you feel it likely for an enemy to die and stay at long range when you think your attacks won’t down them or you already have temporary HP. I believe this to be the actual optimal way to play this subclass, as it does much more damage than we could do otherwise, though I know it runs counter to what most people want to do as a monk.
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