Best Feats for Open Hand Monk 5e
by B. Landrum
When you decide to play a Monk, one sometimes asks: how do I make myself even more Monk-like. My good sir/ma'am, this is it. When it comes to portraying a monastery's Grandmaster, this is how you make it... unless it is a monastery dedicated to a particular Monk style.
A consideration for you: this Monk subclass is the most martial support subclass in the game. You will make every martial around you happy starting at level three, and this affection will not decrease as you gain levels. If you do not name this character "Alley Oop" then you have missed an opportunity. This subclass has a couple of unique issues that make it contradictory at times. We will get into that shortly.
The good part about this subclass is that it doesn't really need to be optimized outside of making sure that your highest two traits are in DEX and WIS. If you are looking ahead towards the higher end subclass abilities, then you are probably trying to figure out how to maximize their effectiveness for your play style. It is much easier to play this subclass as a "yin" and "yang." For your racial selection, the best options are going to be either ones with defensive abilities or racial support or utility spells. This has the unfortunate (but normal) side effect of a super weak level one and two Monk. Do not pretend to be front line. Take the Dodge action, throw darts, or administer health potions as needed. Best races to improve this are Bugbear (gain reach, but most of the other abilities will be wasted), most any Elf (Fey Ancestry, High gets utility cantrip, Wood has higher movement and stealth better natural stealth, Eladrin gets evasion, Drow gets utility spells), Firbolg (outstanding utility magic with Detect Magic, Disguise Self, and communicate with beasts and plants), Gnome (generic magic defense second to none outside of direct immunity, Forest gains the Minor Illusion cantrip and speak with small beasts), Goliath (Mountain's Endurance to reduce damage occasionally and cold resistance), Half-Orc (Relentless Endurance), Halflings (Brave, Stout Resistance, and Nimbleness are great), Tabaxi (for the Feline Agility), Tiefling (the base version is probably the best as I would rather have the Hellish Rebuke vs Burning Hands, and they have fire resistance). Triton (spells, cold resistance and communicating with sea creatures), Warforged (Constructed Resilience, Sentry's Rest), and of course Variant Human for all of your modular needs. My personal choice is either Forest Gnome or Firbolg, followed by Bugbear (the things you can do with additional reach). Background is completely up to you, but I would look for something that nets you Perception, Medicine Intimidation or Persuasion for role play use. With this subclass it is important to increase your DEX to improve your ability to strike and your WIS to boost your AC and raise the DC for your subclass abilities.
For the subclass abilities gained at level three, it all reads as opponent manipulation, but only when you hit with Flurry of Blows during your bonus action. This means you must Attack to use Flurry of Blows, and you must spend a Ki to use them. But, you can split targets as long as you can reach them. Just aim for the most important target first in case you miss or they save on the DC of the first attack. At level six, you gain the only prime Monk subclass healing ability (Way of Mercy was added way later), and it is a good one. Once per long rest you can heal 3 hit points per Monk level (about 40% of your max HP if you rolled average) as an action. This is one of the few Monk abilities that is once per Long Rest. I guess they thought having a healing ability that took Ki was too powerful (looking at you, Way of Mercy). At level 11, you start the day with a Sanctuary spell effect that lasts until you start your next long rest. You will forever attempt to use this to your advantage, and this is why it is important to raise your WIS. Since all direct attacks against you require a WIS save or it is potentially a lost attack, normally this puts you right in the middle of the melee, but since you literally have no other abilities that aid you in this process naturally, you would have to take feats or multiclass into a Wisdom Caster like Cleric or Druid to improve upon it. Area effects or indirect attacks are your enemy, but most of those are DEX saves anyway and you are really good at those. If not, they will be either a CON for poison or thunder or high end magic for WIS or CHA. Monks gain all save proficiencies at level 14 and if you take the Gnome suggestion, then it becomes very difficult for magic to affect you. You will spend much of your time finding ways to not "make an attack, cast a spell that affects an enemy, or deal damage to another creature" so your Tranquility sticks around. It is also why this subclass melds so nicely with a Cleric (Peace Domain for maximum effortlessness). For the early go if you do not have support or utility spells at hand, that means you will be Dodging, Distracting, Helping or Goading somehow. You want enemies to waste their time on you while your friends carve them up. At level 17, you kill targets with (apparently) a questionable maneuver in Quivering Palm. If the creature fails a CON save against your WIS casting ability, they drop to ZERO HP. If they make the save, they still take 10d10 necrotic damage. This is like Geas, but not terrible. This is also why I suggested taking persuasion (or intimidation) for skills. You hit them once and then you tell them to obey you or you will end them. Pretty powerful effect if you were feeling evil or malicious. Most good characters would not use it to this effect without some negative RP effect, so be careful about "morality" issues or conversations.
All Monk subclass selections work best in low magic settings. Mobs can overtake you, but you can incapacitate multiple enemies per turn. Hopefully your party is cleaning up the trash you leave behind. Dispel magic can affect your Tranquility, so casters are your enemy if they can figure out what is affecting you. How does this subclass compare to other Monk subclasses? You don't gain any additional form of damage until level 17, but you do gain both a self-heal and a strong defensive ability if you can support it. The defensive ability really does not gain any means of supporting itself with the other subclass abilities, which is a huge shame, so unless you grab several feats to give you other actions to take in the place of an attack you will be improvising and dodging often for no real reason. It does kind of shoehorn your play style, as per being a trick pony (most Monks have this problem due to the way they level up: all hardwired abilities and mostly "meh" abilities). This can make playing them a little vanilla at times. This subclass gains the ability to disable opponents, heal self, become extremely difficult to target/hit/hurt, and then you gain a cheap Power Word Kill ability that can leave someone on the ropes for nearly a month if you were being evil. That is a pretty spread out list of features. This subclass does great multiclassing with a healing and support style Cleric. Gain Tranquility, then the remaining levels into Cleric or even Druid will get you plenty of spells. If/when you run out of spell slots, you are still doing ying yang play style with Stun and Prone.
In order to use this character most effectively in a campaign, you want two things. Have a good meat shield companion, and be prepared to have a ying yang play style. For the meat shield, paladins will get you some heals when needed and provide you with auras to boost you and smites to home run off your stunned targets. Just make sure you are helping them not break their oaths. Once you get to level three, you can keep knocking targets prone (Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins start smashing), or removing their ability to take reactions (Rogues or other glass cannon players). Once you get Stunning Strike, the DM will have to swarm you to keep you in check. Main attack will consist of Stunning Strike and your Flurry of Blows will consist of knocking opponents prone. You will non-magically disable up to four enemies per turn. You will continue this in combat through to level 11. At that point you will have a "change of heart" and decide not to fight in order to save yourself. This is a hard 180 play style when your casters are gaining access to pretty significant spells and fighters are gaining a third attack. I dunno why, maybe claim PTSD? There are several ways to maximize Tranquility, but most of them involve looking outside your normal Monk capabilities. If you want to improve this while remaining a Monk, stay neutral in combat to stay under Tranquility until your party seems to be either wearing out (running low on spell slots, heals limited abilities, ammunition, etc). Then you tag in and return to Stun, Stun, Prone, Prone for your turn. This yin yang play style is how you will continue for the rest of the campaign. If this sounds like a one-trick pony, you are wrong. It is a TWO-trick pony. Eldritch Blast Warlock is the one-trick pony.
For the purposes of this Feat list, I will be going "by the book" for selections. If your table homebrews, things will be different and you have to adjust accordingly. Most Monks will focus on maxing out their DEX and WIS to be at AC 20 for ASI, and this subclass is no different. You need to be able to hit, and you need your opponent to have to roll against your high save DCs (STR for prone, DEX for push, CON for stun and quiver and then WIS for sanctuary) against your abilities. It just means that you are going to have limited Ability Feats to choose from to improve your stance unless you rolled well. As an Open Hand monk there are so many options for you to take that will improve your ability to support melee or to magically support the party. You can take the standard Monk martial abilities, and you can take a few that gain you utility or support spells to help Tranquility. My personal opinion is that the best way to maximize Tranquility is to multiclass into a Cleric (maybe Druid, maybe Bard). I won't get too much into that option, but will give you some "yin" non-attack abilities to look into as well the standard monk "yang" attack boosting abilities. If you want to maximize your Stunning Strike (which is generic Monk FANTASTIC), be careful about taking feats that take your action or bonus action. In order to take Flurry of Blows, you MUST take an Attack for your action, so anything that replaces that will significantly alter your best basic options (this is fine if you are still under Tranquility and you are not actively finding ways to violate that. Even when you take Flurry of Blows to knock enemies prone, you can still Stunning Strike those targets as well (if you spend several Ki per turn). If you do that you WILL run out of Ki quickly, so be careful.
Best Feats for Way of the Open Hand Monk 5e.
Crusher (yang): This works with your Martial Arts unarmed attacks and if your monastery specializes in bludgeoning weapons, it essentially gives you free manipulation that doesn't require alternate actions. Getting a crit makes your party's attacks have advantage, which just continues to add to you being a melee support subclass. When playing a Monk, I will always advocate to use a quarterstaff, and this is a third of the reasons why.
Fey Touched (WIS; yin and yang): Improves your ability DC modifier, gains you a defensive spell as well as another spell. If you want to boost your party go with Bless or Heroism. If you are looking for straight up utility there are several options (Beast Bond, Detect Evil and Good, Detect Magic, Identify, and Speak with Animals). If you want to boost your yang combat output, I suggest Hex to significantly add to your damage output. The disadvantage you give the target is probably best used on STR so they become easier to grapple, but you can use this spell for role play to affect someone's ability with a tool proficiency or something similar. Anything that can be used for multiple reasons is always a good thing.
Fighting Initiate (yang): There are several good options to choose, but you can't take them all as a Monk without losing some innate abilities. Blind Fighting (solid option if you have no other means of sensing around you), Dueling (helps your damage output for your Attack, but not your Flurry of Blows because it requires a melee weapon), Interception (uses your reaction to reduce opponent damage to one of your friends, as long as you are armed... do not caste this to the side), and Superior Technique (this is why we are here). Read below at Martial Adept for my reasoning.
Healer (yin): Once you get Tranquility, if you do not multiclass, this will turn you into a really good field medic that doesn't have to worry about getting attacked (in general) while healing others. If you took the medicine skill and proficiency in Healer's Kit (both at level one), all the better. That is probably the best way to maximize Tranquility without spending a bunch of precious feats on casting a limited amount of spells per day. You will find this works well in only a few certain scenarios. But if your healers are down, you will get all the kudos.
Mage Slayer (yang): If you really want to play a martial in a high magic setting, a Monk with Mage Slayer closes the gap better than anyone else. If you take this along with Sentinel, they won't be able to get away from you to cast spells, and now you can easily get them into a stun lock.
Magic Initiate (yin and yang): You can easily take this to increase your yang for attacking, making your low level difficulties disappear, but the purpose of looking at this is to help your Tranquility, not your attacks. Cleric nets you Guidance, Resistance, and (probably) Healing Word. Druid gains you Guidance, Resistance (or maybe an elemental utility spell) and several options for utility as well. Wizard gains you Find Familiar, as well as (probably) Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation or Mage Hand. Bottom line is every option can provide you some utility, but if you want to boost your yin, go for Bless or a Heal option. If you are looking for something besides healing, be careful about the caster modifier required for it.
Martial Adept (yang): By itself, this is barely any help because you get one Superiority die and no other way to improve upon this. If you also take Superior Technique as part of Fighting Initiate, now you have two dice and three maneuvers. This doesn't seem like a significant difference, but take what you can get and they work well together. Best options are pretty easy to point out if you are trying to maximize your play style with this subclass. For yin style, you are limited to the maneuvers that don't cause you to attack. The best one of those is Bait and Switch followed by Commander's Strike, Evasive Footwork, and Rally. For yang style, just remember that you want to occupy as few of your actions and bonus actions as possible in order to keep your Stun options fully available. The best options are likely to be Disarming Attack (against a Shield, Arcane Focus or Magic Item for maximum results), Distracting Strike (if you are setting up a Rogue or Smiting Paladin), Goading Attack (too bad this requires an attack to make this work otherwise this would work perfectly with Tranquility), Lunging Attack (gain 5 feet of reach, but only on your turn), Maneuvering Attack (just be careful because you are using that players reaction) and Riposte (sure, let's add a reaction attack in order to gain another attempt to Stunning Strike). In order to assist both styles, I would take Bait and Switch, Disarming Strike and Riposte.
Mobile (yin): The important part for this feat is actually the part that prevents Opportunity Attacks. If you are going to be a melee supporter, it helps if you don't get bogged down on the way there. This does have yang improvement as well, but it is mostly used to close the gap when you are attacking those with long range.
Polearm Master (yang): Only if you are wielding a quarterstaff (which you should in my opinion). If you take this feat, I assume that you are also going to take Sentinel. Who knew that this combo works well as a Monk as well? You can ignore the ability to gain the 1d4 strike bonus attack, but ask your DM about the damage (it *should* go up with your Martial Arts damage). The key ability gained is that creatures entering your reach provoke an Opportunity Attack. Not only does this work with Sentinel (dropping their speed to zero), but it also allows you to attempt to Stunning Strike them (or use a Superiority die; just make sure that the maneuver you select doesn't say Attack Action or Bonus Action as a part of it).
Sentinel (yang) Every part of this is desirable. When you hit on an Opportunity Strike, their speed becomes zero (add in Polearm Master and you will be getting many more Opportunity Attacks). Nullify Disengage ability if it is taken (these are the people trying to run away... not on your watch). If a creature within 5 feet of you doesn't try and attack you, you gain another Reaction attack to try and Stunning Strike them into submission (always say yes with this class to gain a Reaction Attack).
Shadow Touched (WIS; yin and yang): Not as many options as Fey Touched, but a similar effect. The best part is that the spell would run off your WIS modifier. Invisibility is a great utility all around. For your other spell the best options in my opinion will be False Life or Silent Image (yin), and then Color Spray (area effect blindness for your yang). I really wanted to say that Inflict Wounds or Ray of Sickness were good for this build, but you have no way of increasing their damage as you get to higher levels. If you really want a ranged spell attack, I would say Ray of Sickness is the better option due to the potential Poisoned condition you put them in.
Telekinetic (WIS; yin): Gaining WIS, nice. Gaining Mage Hand Cantrip, nice. Being able to "telekinetically shove one creature" that by the definition doesn't break Tranquility (because Mage Hand spell is not affecting the target, your telekinesis feat is), priceless. It is only 5 feet per turn, but if you don't multiclass into a full caster, you need to find ways to affect the battlefield without you attacking or casting spells. Plus, it is a bonus action.
Tough: Generic max HP increase keeps you alive when you run out of Ki.
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