Best Feats for Shadow Monk 5e
by Prince Phantom
The Way of Shadow Monk is my pick for the second best monk subclass, though it’s a distant second place behind the Mercy Monk. Thankfully, this monk gets its best feature right at level 3, with the ability to cast Silence, Pass without Trace, Darkness, or Darkvision for 2 Ki points. Pass Without Trace is the best 2nd level spell in the game, Silence is an amazing silver bullet against casters, Darkness has some really cool synergies, and you should probably never use this to cast Blindsight, but hey, 3/4 ain’t bad.
Our 6th level feature is nice but you may find it hard to use, same applies for 11th level, and our capstone is laughably bad. This means that the primary use for our subclass abilities is utility, not really combat, leading this subclass to work well with multiclassing, something that most other monk subclasses can’t say. This means that feat selection should probably be geared towards combat, and thankfully this subclass does have a few cool combat synergies with a couple of feats.
Best Feats for Shadow Monk 5e
Crusher/Slasher (Lv 4): The best way to deal damage as a monk in melee is to get proficiency with a longsword and make our main attacks with that while punching with our bonus action, meaning we can actually take advantage of both of these feats in a single turn, allowing us to push and slow enemies. I’d probably seek to get one of these at level 1 and the other at level 4 if this was my strategy. This also buffs our crits, something that monks desperately need. If you’ve ever seen a monk crit, you know that it frequently just means one or two extra points of damage on average.
Eldritch Adept: Devil’s Sight (Lv 4): With this feat, we gain the ability to see through our own Darkness spell. Warlocks famously take advantage of this combo frequently, but I’d wager that a monk might be able to get even more benefit from this than your average Warlock. For one, we get advantage on all our attacks when our enemy can’t see us but we can see them, meaning our flurry of strikes every turn are all made with advantage, and also since our enemy can’t see us, they have disadvantage on their attacks, boosting our defense. This also gives us an easy way to create darkness for our 6th and 11th level abilities, as not being able to see through that darkness ironically means you can’t use your level 6 ability to teleport as the teleportation requires line of sight to your destination. This feat just fixes a lot of the problems with this subclass all in one fell swoop, and I believe it is a must have.
Fey/Shadow Touched (Lv 8): Obviously Shadow Touched is a big flavor win with this subclass, and adding Invisibility and Silent Image to your list of spells will definitely increase your options both in and out of combat. Fey gives Misty Step, which you may feel that you don’t need if you find darkness and dim light easy enough to find in your campaign, but it is nice to know that in a pinch situation where there is no darkness, you’ve still got at least one teleport. Silvery Barbs is the bigger gain, though only being able to cast it once is a bummer. I’d probably go with Shadow personally, but both are good options.
Metamagic Adept (Lv 8): Quicken Spell allows us to cast Darkness as a bonus action, meaning we can still make attack with our action on that turn. Granted, we can only do this once per day, but if you don’t tend to have many combats each day then that might be enough for you. Extending the duration of Pass Without Trace might be worth it as well.
Tough (Lv 12): As a monk that is probably going to spend a lot of time in melee, additional HP is really nice to have. Not much more to it than that, and I’d probably increase my Dexterity to max before taking this.
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