Ultimate Guide to Monks in D&D 5e

Guide by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

A person with perfect complete control over every element of themself defines the identity of Monk. Their bodies are lethal weapons, with a sharpened mind capable of shrugging off temptations. Through raw willpower, they can withstand the most horrific conditions like they were nothing. They are martial artists who have perfected their form over years of study and patience, masters of the self more so than any other class.

This core concept is front and center of all the mechanics the class brings to the table. They’re the pugilist-style fighters mixing unarmed strikes with other weaponry in perfect harmony. Monks dish out damage in blinding speed over multiple attacks, sometimes with enough precision to stun enemies where they stand.

This complete fantasy basically happens within the first five levels of the game; past that, monks are starved for features that give you a lot more to do, instead of leaning on the messy Ki resource to deliver improvements to your utility and raw power fight to fight.

Monk gets a lot of crap, and I think it's a bit overblown. No, this class isn’t by any stretch the most powerful martial option available. At most tables, though, that aren’t looking to stretch their characters to their absolute limits and get every ounce of power out of their levels and features, monks will deliver a fun play pattern that embodies the martial artist fantasy it sells. Within the first three or four levels, it can feel oppressively powerful at some newer groups, and it does contribute some backbreaking features that DMs have to consider fight to fight.

Using This Guide

Monk is centrally focused on managing Ki and making attacks. The majority of the time, your turns are going to be taking the attack action for two attacks, then using a ki point for two more attacks.

Newer players to Monk will want to focus on the first three or four levels and Monk’s starting proficiencies to lay a good starting point that will help you feel impactful as the game progresses.

If you’re a more experienced player, truthfully there aren’t a ton of areas within core monk you can make decisions outside of your Monastic Tradition and feat selections. Those sections will offer my thoughts on options to consider; beyond that, taking more short rests will empower your character.

The Monk Fundamentals

Monks are given proficiencies and hit dice that put them near rogue in survivability with some similar weapon proficiencies, decent saving throws, and two skills. The lack of armor proficiency isn’t a big deal, though, as they get Unarmored Defense at 1st level to give you an armor class built from your Wisdom modifier and Dexterity modifiers.

Ability Score Assignments

Monks typically are primarily Dexterity-based characters. Their AC, attack rolls, and a few of their most notable skill proficiency options all are Dex based. Wisdom is a close second, as it also enhances your AC and empowers your Ki save DC which becomes a major element of your character from 5th level and beyond.

I’d consider starting with a 15 in Wisdom if you can help it, as it opens up some spell granting feats at 4th level that will simultaneously improve your AC and Ki save DC while giving you some much needed out of combat spell options.

After these two stats, Constitution is a reasonable option to consider for your next highest score as you’re going to likely be fighting near danger. Upping your hit point total and Constitution save bonus can help keep you alive a bit longer fight to fight, or at least for long enough to give you time to disengage and get out of danger.

Intelligence and Charisma don’t play that large of a role in most of what Monks are doing, making them easy ability scores to sink for higher points in your more critical attributes.

Starting Proficiencies and Equipment

It's tricky to talk about your starting proficiencies without going heavily into your 1st level features. Unarmored Defense will result in you not needing armor or shields. Still, proficiency with simple weapons and shortswords is notable, as some do more damage than your unarmed strikes will deal for a few levels.

An important note is that Martial Arts codifies the weapons you are proficient with as “monk weapons” which have several benefits, the largest being you can use Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls made with them. This functionally grants all simple weapons the finesse trait.

Quarterstaffs are the highest damage option you have, as when held in to hands deal 1d8 damage, yet they don’t have the two-handed or heavy trait. You can freely use your Dexterity for hit and damage with them.

Shortbows and light crossbows are the other simple weapons you want to consider picking up at 1st level. Both are ranged weapons you are proficient with that you can use while skirmishing and engaging. Light crossbows deal slightly more damage, but their loading property makes them unable to work with Extra Attack past 5th level. Either on your character sheet will give you a versatile tool to make sure you always have options for attacking in combat, regardless of your location. Darts can work just fine, but do less damage than either other option. Thrown weapons like handaxes will generally be a bit better and still qualify as monk weapons if that's what you need.

1st Level: Unarmored Defense and Martial Arts

1st level sets monks up with how they’re going to navigate combats for most of the rest of the game with Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense. Neither is a big pool of fancy resources, instead feeling like extensions of your base proficiencies that can leave 1st level monks feeling a bit lacking in things to do.

Unarmored Defense

Basically from now until the rest of time, you’re going to want to be using your Unarmored Defense to calculate your AC. Not wearing armor is a condition for using your Martial Arts and some other features, making it mandatory on most builds.

Monk AC. Unarmored Defense means your AC is equal to 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier.

Starting with a 16 Dexterity and a 14 Wisdom gives you an easy AC calculation: 10+3+2, for a starting AC of 15. This goes up each time you improve either your Wisdom or Dexterity, making your Ability Score improvements have a bit higher impact. As mentioned prior, odd ability scores open up some feats to also improve your modifiers, which can be a way to squeak a bit more power out of a character.

Martial Arts

Martial Arts changes fundamentally how monks fight by empowering their unarmed strikes and weapons in some unique ways. To use any of the features it provides, you can’t be wearing armor or wielding a shield. So long as you meet that condition, you get a bunch of benefits:

Short-swords and simple melee weapons you use are considered monk weapons.
Unarmed strikes and attacks made with monk weapons can use Dexterity instead of Strength for their attack and damage rolls.
You can replace the damage dealt by your unarmed strikes or monk weapons with a d4. This dice size improves at 5th, 11th, and 17th levels to a d6, d8, and d10 respectively.
Whenever you take the Attack action and attack with an unarmed strike or monk weapon, you can make an unarmed strike as a bonus action.

This sets you up with a clear play pattern: attack with a monk weapon, like a quarterstaff, and get a bonus action unarmed strike. Attacks made using this bonus action aren’t considered two-weapon fighting, meaning they add the modifiers to their damage like normal.

Monk weapons will also pop up from time to time in subclass features when determining if you can do more things, and received a bit of expanded utility with the new features gifted to the class in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything you’ll unlock later.

Beyond combat, you’re getting nothing. Monks are all about punching and kicking at 1st level, and do get decent abilities to set this up.

2nd Level: Unarmored Movement, Ki, and Dedicated Weapon

2nd level is when monk really kicks off. You get three features, each pushing you towards monk’s end fantasy of the mobile master of combat swinging around battlefields and striking with grace: Ki, Unarmored Movement, and Dedicated Weapon.

Unarmored Movement

We’ll touch on the simplest feature first: Unarmored Movement. You passively go faster while not wearing armor. It starts at 10 feet and improves by 5 every four levels.

It improves your mobility at 9th level, giving you the power to run across liquids and along vertical surfaces without falling during the move. This little upgrade is easy to forget about but is a reasonable improvement to passively enhance your monks in the mid-tiers.

Ki

At Monk’s core is the Ki resource. You get a ki point for each level in monk you have, and regain all spent ki whenever you finish a short or long rest. Short rest recharge mechanics don’t always play great from table to table, and Ki is no exception. With just 2 ki points to start out with, many times you’re going to burn through them all in a single encounter and feel lacking. In the mid-tiers, you’ll start feeling reasonable, though, with three to four ki available from fight to fight between rests.

Ki also has a DC for future features called your Ki save DC. It equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier. At 2nd level, you have no features that use this save DC.

You do get three ways to spend your two ki points at 2nd level: Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind.

Flurry of Blows by far is the most commonly used ki feature. It lets you make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action instead of the one you normally get from Martial Arts with the same prerequisites. At 2nd level, two rounds of Flurry of Blows will feel similar to Action Surge in power, but more frequent. Two extra attacks are a ton of extra attacks to make at 2nd level. As you progress, you’ll often feel like you’re making three to four attacks every turn at a very minimal cost, which does bring out the feeling of striking a thousand times with your elbows, fists, and head.
Patient Defense is on the opposite end of usability; for a single ki point and a bonus action, you can take the Dodge action. This will have a few moments where it’ll pop up and feel decent, namely when you’re trying to draw attention and buy time for other allies. It suffers from competing with free bonus action attacks and Flurry of Blows in fights, as the best defense is killing whatever is trying to kill you to stop its damage outright, which both of those contribute to more than this does.
Step of the Wind contributes to Patient Defense feeling lackluster, as it provides a way better tool for escaping danger. 1 Ki for a bonus action disengage or dash while doubling your jump distance feels close to Cunning Action in its flexibility. Doubling your jump distance isn’t something to sleep on either for out-of-combat exploration. Normally, you’re limited to a running long jump equal to your Strength score; doubling that often takes it from 10 or 12 feet to 20 or 24 feet. This still costs you movement, but thanks to your improved speed with Unarmored Movement, you can run the 10 feet prior to getting a massive high and long jump with plenty of speed to spare. You can even get it after disengaging!
High jumps aren’t majorly impacted, mainly because you’re not likely going to have that great of a Strength modifier. When the distance is calculated as 3 + your Strength modifier feet, having no modifier makes the floor a 6 ft. jump with a run-up and Step of the Wind. Add on your height and you can reach slightly more places and is something to keep in mind while adventuring but isn’t going to have as many circumstances to shine as Step of the Wind will provide for long jumping.
Step of the Wind is a major element in making monks that zoom. That’s a popular fantasy and munchkin build to play around with, and one of my favorite elements of the class. I wish it just had three or four more features like this to give you a bit more to do besides just being good at hitting stuff.

Dedicated Weapon

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything added Dedicated Weapon to the monk class as well, which opens up non-heavy, non-special weapons you are proficient with to your arsenal as a monk weapon when you finish a rest.

This tends to matter most when paired with races that provide weapon proficiencies. Dwarves, for example, come with proficiency with warhammers. These function like a d10 version of the quarterstaff, which is a nice little damage upgrade to get.

Dedicated Weapon also lets you consider ranged weapons as monk weapons. With no bonus proficiencies, you can make your shortbow or darts count as monk weapons to ensure you’ve got access to your Martial Arts unarmed strike or Flurry of Blows when skirmishing. This is a useful tool to keep in mind when multiclassing especially, as any new non-heavy, non-special weapons you can get through another class can now work with your Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows.

3rd Level: Ki-Fueld Attack, Monastic Tradition, and Deflect Missiles

Monks get a robust stack of features at 3rd level that’s normally reserved for just a subclass. You get Ki-Fueled Attack (a quality of life upgrade), your Monastic Tradition, and a new reaction, Deflect Missiles.

Ki-Fueled Attacks

Some monk subclasses added ways to spend actions spending ki to do cool stuff. Prior to Ki-Fueled Attacks, you couldn’t use your Martial Arts bonus action attack after doing so. Now, you can! It majorly improves a lot of optional actions provided by the subclasses, but not so much that options like Way of the Four Elements feel good to play.

Monastic Tradition

The Monastic Traditions have a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of providing monks with utility out of combat and a unique deviation that sets them apart from every other martial artist out there. At their best, they completely embody the fantasy they present, meshing perfectly with the core monk ideal the class puts forward. At their worst, they offer little to no meaningful features as you progress that only change the appearance of what you’re doing and fail to meaningfully empower your character.

There are ten total Monatsitc Traditions to pick from: Way of the Astral Self, Way of the Ascendant Dragon, Way of the Drunken Master, Way of the Four Elements, Way of the Kensei, Way of the Long Death, Way of Mercy, Way of the Open Hand, Way of Shadow, and Way of the Sun Soul.

Way of the Ascendant Dragon offers a ton of juice out the gate with boons to Charisma checks, a way to augment your unarmed strikes damage type, a free pair of languages, and pool of breath weapons that refresh on long rest or by spending some ki. It's a huge improvement to what most other archetypes offer; you get the cosmetic adjustments that options like Astral Self and Sun Soul promise alongside meaningful out-of-combat utility boons and a new resource to improve your combat prowess.
Way of the Astral Self provides you with an astral form you can access for a 1 for ten minutes. It deals a bit of area of effect damage, lets you use Wisdom instead of Strength for Strength checks and saving throws, and offers you a reach weapon that attacks and deals damage with your Wisdom modifier instead of your Dexterity. As you progress you get a few interesting out-of-combat tools with some meaningful combat improvements, but I don’t feel it helps that much with most of monk's core struggles, especially in the lower tiers.
Way of the Drunken Master has basically one feature I’m eager to get: Tipsy Sway. That’s the option’s 6th-level feature, but is really good and sells the drunken master fantasy beautifully. Drunken Technique and the bonus proficiencies are nice enough and can lead to some interesting combat decisions, but they aren’t compelling enough that I’d consider this tradition if I wasn’t sure I’d be level six quickly. If you want a simple, reasonable option, Drunken Master will work just fine.
Way of the Four Elements matches the infamy of some of 5th edition’s worst subclasses like Berserker Barbarians and PHB Beast Master Rangers. Conceptually there is a lot to love here; you can build your own bender from Avatar, a monk whose mastery of fire lets them literally breathe it. In practice, the Elemental Disciplines are mostly way over costed for what they do. They’re like Pact Magic spell slots in terms of Ki costs and recharge for spells that go up in level at the same rate as the ⅓ casters like Eldritch Knight. The limitations in disciplines and mediocre spell choices certainly don’t help it; if you want to play an Elementalist, I’d seriously consider homebrew options online or 3rd party resources over this. It is that bad.
Way of the Kensei fills the samurai void the game has with a fighter/monk weapon master. It opens up some interesting options for bow-based monks while adding in additional defensive and offensive features. If you have a specific weapon in mind you want a character to focus on while still throwing knees as bonus actions, Kensei offers that, but not much else.
Way of the Long Death sells itself as an evil, soul-sucking monk dedicated to death, yet mechanically looks and feels more like a defensive “tank” monk. Touch of Death can provide a good chunk of survivability, but that on its own isn’t nearly enough to differentiate this option from the rest of the pack. If you can’t kill something, it has no text, making it something that will provide no benefit in many fights. The rest has a few interesting ideas, but largely lack substance, making it a subclass I would advise steering clear of unless you are dedicated to making a monk who wants to take blow after blow while harvesting souls to stay alive.
Way of Mercy’s core mechanics are the Hands of Healing and Hands of Harm which are improved as you go. As far as supportive monk archetypes, this is the best option you can get. The natural improvements to both at 6th level give you a great combat medic feel while also amping up your damage in a meaningful way. What’s more, the designers figured out how to cleanly integrate these new abilities into what monks want to be doing without costing them ludicrous amounts of their limited ki pool. It’s an inspired design.
It gets basically nothing beyond these two features, though, so know if you sign up for Way of Mercy, you’re going to be using your Hands of Healing and Harm a lot.
Way of the Open Hand exists as the default monk tradition. You enhance your Flurry of Blows in a major way, get some mediocre defensive features, and cap out with a tool to instantly kill people. The book ends are good enough I’d recommend this to players just wanting the classic monk experience.
Way of Shadow presents the ninja archetype in a similar way that Kensei presents the samurai. Where Kensei only is good at combat, though, Way of the Shadow gets some combat boons alongside the best monk exploration tools printed to date. Shadow Arts isn’t that compelling of a 3rd level feature, but Shadow Step and Cloak of Shadows radically empower your in and out of combat prowess. If you want a bit more edge and rogue on your monk, and know you can at least get to level 6, Way of Shadow is a blast.
Way of the Sun Soul rounds out the monk options with a spectacular-looking option that adds next to no relevant abilities to meaningfully empower your character. Ranged sun blasts look cool and splashy, but the only advantage it offers is a 30 ft. range over just making regular attacks. Searing Arc Strike is a bonus action Burning Hands, which plays against the only boon offered by the option as it has half the range (meaning you’re going to basically need to be in melee range anyway). Searing Sunburst and Sun Shield both pull you in different conflicting directions, leaving you with this mediocre toolbox of ranged options that feel like crap when positioned against any spellcaster’s 3rd level or higher spells.

Deflect Missiles

Finishing out monk’s third level features is Deflect Missiles. At no ki cost as a reaction, if you’re shot at, you can reduce the incoming damage by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + your monk level; that’s an insane amount of ranged damage mitigation for a free reaction.
On top of that, you get a cute place to put ki to get a reaction based 20/60 ranged weapon attack with the ammunition, and because the missile becomes a monk weapon when you throw it, you can use its damage or your martial arts die for damage with all the relevant modifiers. The attack is always ranged, meaning you add your Dexterity to hit and damage, and you’re always considered proficient with whatever you’re throwing. It embodies the martial artist dodging bullets and redirecting shurikens with ease beautifully.

Some encounters aren’t going to present ranged enemies or ranged enemies that specifically target you, making it somewhat inconsistent in power. It being granted on top of a subclass makes it a homerun feature in my mind that will shine brightly in some encounters, be a reasonable defensive option in others, and not work in a handful of fights.

4th Level: Feats, Quickened Healing, and Slow Fall

Where most martial characters have ample room to use feats to build in a handful of ways, Monks don’t really get that much of an opportunity. Kensai can make a Sharpshooter build kind of come together, but for the most part you’re going to find the benefits provided by most of the common weapon feats like Great Weapon Master and Sentinel are challenging to make use of.

Another major consideration is how hungry monks are for as high Dexterity as possible. When you’re making three to four attacks every round, the damage you’re adding to your attacks goes up multiplicatively while also improving your Dex saves and ability checks. A high wisdom score also is going to be a major consideration for Stunning Strike's save DC next level, as it’s a major element of what makes monks reasonably threatening to mid to upper-tier encounters. These factors make Ability Score Improvements very appealing, especially if you can start with something like a 17 and 15 in Dexterity and Wisdom respectively.

If you do want some new abilities through feats, there are some great options to keep in mind.

Feats to Take

Fey Touched, Shadow Touched, Ritual Caster, and Magic Initiate all are excellent feats for empowering your magical capabilities. Monks get a lot of stuff to make them feel like martial artists in combat, but few tools for out-of-combat exploration beyond running on walls and water at 9th level. Two spells from Fey and Shadow Touched, with the 2nd level options being tremendous boons to highly mobile skirmishers like monks, give you more stuff to interface with the game both in and out of combat with on a long rest cooldown. Ritual Caster and Magic Initiate both can offer access to Find Familiar for a major boost in out-of-combat utility. Ritual Caster also opens up other ritual effects you can accumulate as the game goes on, where Magic Initiate offers some cantrips like Mage Hand or Guidance should you want regular magical actions.
Any of the feats that offer bonus spells make non-caster characters feel like they bring so much more to navigating dungeons and making plans. Ones like Fey Touched and Shadow Touched that also can improve your Wisdom score fit particularly well on monks.
Crusher triggers once per turn when you hit with your unarmed strikes to push them around while also giving you a payoff for critical hits that empower your allies. The Constituion bump can be relevant, and when you’re making three to four attacks every turn, your chances of critting go up a lot, making the crit boon relevant in a lot of fights. If you want to hit better, Crusher is a great direction to go.
Mobile is commonly taken on monk, and while I’m not a massive fan, I do think it's at its best here. The bonus 10 feet stacks with all of your other speed-ups you’re getting, and being able to hit three or four creatures and move freely between them provides some interesting options when diving through enemies. Most of the time you’re still going to want to prioritize punching one thing to death at a time but having the option to attempt to get several stuns off in a round without provoking any attacks of opportunity should you miss is a decent upgrade.

Feats to Avoid (Most of the Time)

Polearm Master can seem like a natural direction to go with a quarterstaff based character. Unfortunately, half the text isn’t relevant as you already have a better bonus action attack available. The opportunity attack is decent still, but I don’t think I’d take this until I’d maxed out both my Dexterity and Wisdom and have run out of utility feats prior.
Tough gives you a hearty chunk of hit points. As a monk, you’re objective usually is to avoid taking damage through your bonuses to disengaging, dodging, and moving around. You don’t have great ways to add resistance on top of these hit points to make them worth more, nor is it usually up to you to take the brunt of the damage your party is facing.
Grappler is another feat I see monks taking fairly often and using rarely. The Strength requirement already isn’t great, as it forces you to have at least a 13 in a stat you don’t really care about. The bonuses it offers only stack up should you successfully forgo and attack to grapple the creature in the first place. That grapple check, once again, requires you use Strength to initiate. The subsequent advantage on two or three attacks could be good, but the fail case is incredibly high with another attack usually being better than attempting to grapple it in the first place. A grappler monk build requires a lot of high stats to function. I just don’t see it regularly successfully coming together.
Tavern Brawler fits in the exact same boat as Grappler. Hypothetically, monks are best prepared to make use of it as they already want to make unarmed strikes to get the bonus action grapple. The issue is you’re forgoing one to two attacks for the opportunity to drop a creature engaged with you’s speed to 0. Grappling isn’t always useful, and proficiency with improvised weapons is the only other somewhat relevant text here. As a flavorful addition to Drunk Master, I’m all for it. As a way to improve your build’s power, I’m not.

Slow Fall

Most classes just get an Ability Score Improvement at 4th level; not monks! You also get a neat exploration-ish feature in Slow Fall. Fall damage is equal to 1d6 per 10 feet dropped. You’re shrugging off nearly 20 feet of falling per monk level, making even 4th-level monks able to drop fifty feet with little to no issue (with generous dice).

Quickened Healing

Another Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything update monk received was the addition of Quick Healing. It lets you spend an action and 2 ki points to heal your martial arts die + your proficiency bonus. Normally, I’m all for more free stuff. This feature is horrendous, though. It can’t get you up from zero. You have to forgo two 1 ki point abilities to use this. The hit points restored are laughably small compared to something like Fighter’s Second Wind. Plus, if you do want the healing in a fight, you have to spend an action on it. Oof.

Honestly, your character sheet will be a bit cleaner to forgo this feature entirely. You will rarely find moments where the cost justifies the use.

5th Level: Extra Attack, Stunning Strike, and Focused Aim

Like the majority of other martial classes, monk gets Extra Attack at 5th level. Unlike them, it also gets two additional features: Stunning Strike and Focused Aim.

Extra Attack

Extra Attack is the biggest reason to stay in a martial class for 5 levels before exploring multiclass options, and it holds true for monk as well. One extra attack a round is comparatively worse on monks than other classes, as their attacks tend to deal less damage and are more plentiful already, but it’s still a massive upgrade. It's particularly notable because it empowers…

Stunning Strike

There aren’t a lot of features that DMs struggle to manage on Monk. But when Stunning Strike hits the table, a lot of DMs struggle to figure out tools to manage it. It is as cheap as it can be at just 1 ki point, takes no actions or bonus actions to use, can be used any amount of times each turn, and stuns targets on a failed save. With Extra Attack and Flurry of Blows, at 5th level you can stun four different creatures in a single turn while making four attacks. Where paladins can blow all of their resources at once for big bursts of damage, monks instead can blow all of their resources to skip enemy turns.

On top of that, all subsequent attacks against a stunned creature have advantage. This makes lone threatening enemies incredibly difficult to run as the monk just needs to have one stun land to make all of their remaining attacks and all allied attacks get advantage for a full round. Stunned creatures also automatically fail Strength and Dexterity saves, making even casters able to take advantage of the condition and pile on with Fireballs and Burning Hands.

As a monk, from this point forward, you’re balancing ki usage entirely around bonus extra attacks with Flurry of Blows weighed against opportunities to Stunning Strike. Every other ki-based feature comes nowhere close to being as good as this for the remainder of the game. More levels provide you with more ki, which usually results in more Stunning Strikes.

Focused Aim

Focused Aim, the last Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything feature, gives you a tool to spend ki to improve a missed roll into a higher result, potentially turning it into a hit. In a pinch, this will come into play, specifically on your last attack made in a round against an already gravely wounded enemy. It can be powerful to flip a miss into a hit like this and end an enemy before it gets one final action. Usually, it's going to be better to spend those points on additional Flurry of Blows or Stunning Strikes, though.

6th Level and Beyond

Nine features remain outside of subclass features. Of the remaining nine features, I actively want three of them on my sheet. The rest of monk’s upper-tier power comes from their speed and damage dice scaling, and neither goes up fast enough that I want to stay in monk for much longer.

Ki-Empowered Strikes

6th level offers Ki-Empowered Strikes which lets your damage work normally against the set of monsters that arbitrarily have non-magical damage resistance. It only counts your unarmed strikes and not monk weapons, though, so you still have to ask nicely for a magical quarterstaff or another monk weapon if you want to get around non-magical resistances with your weapon attacks.

Evasion

Evasion is the first of the two features I’m happy to get on my sheet. Dexterity saving throws are fairly common. Going from mitigating half on a success to all of the damage is a big deal, as is reducing the maximum damage you can take to half. It’s a great way to increase your survivability even if it’s a bit bland.

Stillness of Mind

Stillness of Mind comes alongside Evasion, and while less exciting, is also a reasonable defensive feature in giving you a way to end charms and fears on yourself. An action is a pretty steep cost, but sometimes you need to not be charmed by a siren. This gives you a guaranteed way to end the effect.

There will be some fights where the action cost won’t justify breaking the condition when you could just save out of it at the end of turn. Most encounters aren’t using these conditions either. There are definitely enough encounters that will care about these conditions or Dexterity saves that getting to level 7 in Monk will provide a good chunk of defensive abilities that cover a solid amount of encounters.

Purity of Body

It's hard to see immunity and call it bad, but in practice, immunity to diseases and poisons offered through Purity of Body isn’t enough. Monk is hard-pressed for things to do. Getting another niche defensive tool here that will show up two or three times for the entire rest of the game just doesn’t justify its space on your sheet. It being the only 10th-level feature you get is a real problem.

Tongue of the Sun and Moon

13th level gets worse than 10th; all you get is Tongue of the Sun and Moon, which functionally is the Tongues spell. Tongues is an unremarkable 3rd-level spell available to five classes that shows up rarely. Having it at will as a 14th-level feature is horrendous. Language barriers usually aren’t a pressing issue nine levels after translation has been readily available.

Diamond Soul

Proficiency in all saving throws is a lot of extra numbers added to your sheet. Getting a cheap tool to reroll saves is great. If Diamond Soul were earlier, or surrounded by features I cared about, I’d say it's worth getting to. Needing to lose two levels to Purity of Body and Tongue of the Sun and Moon is a hard sell.

Timeless Body

Timeless Body bookends Diamond Soul with a cute flavor ribbon with no mechanical benefit. Sure, you also get +5 speed, but by this point, I can’t possibly be excited about this, and +5 speed is not nearly enough for a 15th-level feature.

Empty Body

Level 18 comes with Empty Body which lets you spend 4 ki points to become invisible and get resistance to all but force damage. On top of that, you could waste 8 ki on an uncastable 9th-level spell that only works on you, Astral Projection.

The bulk of this text is a 4th-ish level spell (Greater Invisibility) paired with Bear Totem’s damage resistances. That’s excellent. It’s fairly cheap at this point too, as 4 out of 18 ki per fight for advantage on your attack rolls, imposing disadvantage on all enemy attack rolls, and resistance to all damage is superb. The biggest issue is needing to wade through Timeless Body, Tongue of the Sun and Moon, and some typically lackluster mid-tier subclass features to get here.

Perfect Self

Closing out monk is Perfect Self which isn’t so much of a capstone feature and more a bad reason to burn all of your ki. Regaining 4 when a fight starts when you have a pool of 20 will feel like nothing at this tier. That’s a single use of Empty Body and nothing else for fights involving 9th-level spells. That’s not nearly enough. Monks at this tier want Empty Body, three rounds of Flurry of Blows, and three or more Stunning Strikes coming out.
For this feature to do anything, you need to be grinding through fights that tax your ki majorly. Most games aren’t running enough fights to match that at this stage, especially given that you get all 20 back whenever you finish a short rest. You can burn 20 ki over two fights reasonably, making the bonus 4 on a third fight potentially matter, but you’ll still feel like crap in that fight.

The top end of 5e is a hot mess. Monks can’t be expected to compete with 9th, 8th, 7th, and 6th-level spell effects. This feature contributes to this disparity and clearly should be revised.

Playing a Monk

Like fighters, monks tend to do one thing: attack. Each of your turns is going to likely start with “I attack”, followed by some decisions as to when you want to Flurry of Blows or Stunning Strike. Most of the decisions you’ll make outside your subclass are about how and when these features come together. There are some things to keep in mind when using them to get as much as possible out of each.

When to Stunning Strike

It can be easy to want to stun each and every monster you face. Ki is a precious resource you can’t really afford to expend all of at once. If there are going to be two or more fights, having reserve points to deal with potential threats is critical.
Stunning Strike, then, should be used against priority targets that everyone recognizes needs to go down, and you’ll want to use it as soon as possible in a fight. There’s a bit of tension in the best targets for it, as it’s a Constitution saving throw that shines brightest against creatures with lots of hit points you need to burn through. The potential upside of success tends to make it worth it to try once or twice on the first turn, and should you succeed, massively sway the fight in your team’s favor.

The earlier you deny an enemy team actions, the more likely you can snowball your team’s action advantage into a victory. Stunning a creature to prevent it getting a turn in combat can often result in an execution of the target without it having had any opportunity to contribute.

Creatures that have already taken a lot of damage often are better to burn through with extra hits. Stunning something that will die in one or two more hits anyway has little value unless you’re successfully preventing it’s escape or massive threatening ability like a breath weapon. Stunning’s value is diminshed if the creature is not getting another turn anyway, or if only one or two attacks will get the advantage benefit from it.

Another creature to consider aiming Stunning Strikes for are hard to hit high Dexterity monsters. Flying monsters in particular can be gutted by this as it’ll often ground them and give your party the perfect opportunity to smack them around.

When to Flurry of Blows

The other major decision you have to make is when should you use your Flurry of Blows. It can be tempting to throw these out every round, but that isn’t necessarily true. In encounters prior to a rest, burning through your ki absolutely is worth it.

Using it as a tool to convert misses into more opportunities to hit and finish something off is going to feel like where it’s at its best. If you’re only facing down one enemy that is low, though, if a single extra hit drops them, the other unarmed strike is wasted, so that’s another consideration to make.

Initative count also plays into this. If a monster acts immediatly after your turn, having an extra hit to potentially deny it its turn can have an enormous impact. Alternatively, if you’ve got three allies that go before it, letting them finish the job without you needing to spend the ki will often be strategically advantageous.

When to Use the Other Ki Features

Your remaining options are Patient Defense, Step of the Wind, any subclass ki features, Deflect Missile’s return throw, Quickened Healing, Focused Aim, and Empty Body.

If you have Empty Body, setting up an encounter with it is where you want to be. Forgoing an action in a fight to do it is a lot harder of a sell; the first round in combat is the round where Stunning Strike typically has its highest impact making it something you really want to throw out.
Patient Defense doesn’t just cost a ki- it costs a bonus action attack. That, for dodging, will often not be worth it. It also means you’re forgoing using your mobility with Step of the Wind to get out of danager. This leaves it as a feature you should consider when you aren’t going to be the one killing anything around you, yet want them to keep attacking you. Those circumstances can pop up when a fight is going badly and you’re trying to attract attention to give a healer an opportunity to safely get the paladin or barbarian back up. Having it for these moments is nice, especially given it’s alongside plenty of options you’ll be happy to use round after round.
For Step of the Wind, I highly encourage writing down your jump distance with and without it. Knowing what distances you can cross and vertically reach can give you more opoprtunities to find utility with it outside of combat. Monks are hard pressed for these kinds of features; maximizing what you’ve got is worth working a bit for. In combat, Step gets you out of trouble with a bonus action disengage or dash alongside your increased Unarmored Movement speed. It’s a big contributor to feeling fast. It can be an engagement tool to get on top of a backline caster or archer, assist in a high-speed chase, or give you a need bust of energy you need to cross a 20 ft. gap. Keep Step of the Wind in mind in play; it’s probably my next most used ki feature after Stunning Strike and Flurry of Blows.
Deflect Missiles catch and return isn’t going to happen that often. If you can throw it back, though, 1 ki for a reaction attack at range is about as efficient as you can get. You really want to have a target within 20 feet of you to make sure the attack isn’t penalized. So long as you meet that condition, any extra juice you can get out of an already great reaction will power up your monk.
Quickened Healing isn’t worth the cost. At its best, it’s healing 1d10+6. 2 ki points could be spent stunning two things, Dodging twice to mitigate way more damage, or contribute to at least half of a minute long Invisibility. In the early tiers its even worse, acting as an expensive self-only Cure Wounds, but with lower dice sizes. If you are about to short rest anyway, and are gravely wounded, burning the rest of your ki on Quickened Healing will be reasonable, but consider that maybe if you used more ki in the fights that injured you so badly that maybe you wouldn’t be this injured in the first place. Plus, the short rest healing is likely more than enough with your hit dice to spend.
Finally, there is Focused Aim. While the cost is a bit steep, as you’re forgoing competitive options like an extra attack or a chance to stun, 1 ki point for +2 to hit when you are sure you’re converting a crucial attack from a miss to a hit will feel nice to have. Maximize it’s utility will come with watching closely as to what attacks hit and miss to discern enemy AC. You can’t afford to waste ki with this. If you aren’t sure if a +2 or +4 will change your miss to a hit, do not spend the ki. 3 is way too much to spend on this kind of effect as well unless you’re certain that the +6 is needed to make the miss a hit and that the hit will kill whatever you’re hitting.

Multiclassing Monk

Monks have a bit of a struggle multiclassing early because of how constrained they are by their limited ki pool. Once you get six or seven ki per short rest, you start to feel a lot better about stretching the pool over one or two fights.

Additionally, there aren’t a lot of classes that offer meaningfully supplement combative actions to monk. Rogue doens’t gell that well with multiattacking, and it’s Cunning Action directly competes with Step of the Wind, making it feel like overkill. Fighter and paladin have some features, like their Fighting Styles, that mostly don’t support unarmed strikes and your monk weapon attacks.

There are some reasonable directions to explore though. If you don’t care much for your 11th level Monastic Tradition feature, dipping out after 7th or 8th level can give the majority of what monk is about and open you up to other character empowering options.

Martial Multiclass Options

Rangers share Monk’s craving for a high Dexterity and Wisdom, making their innate spellcasting work beautifully alongside monk’s combative abilities. The Blind Fighting or Druidic Warrior fighting style work pretty well with monk’s attacks. Favored Foe will give you Sneak Attack like damage once a round, which is a fine option to have access to for no extra action cost, and Canny gives you a much needed skill improvement with Expertise in a single skill of your choice.
Swarmkeeper is a neat conclave to consider with monk, as the Gathered Swarm can give you a bit of extr adamage each round while also giving you action-free ways to move freely or push people around while stacking on a cantrip and expanded spells.
I’d be remiss to not mention Hunter’s Mark (and Hex, if you go with Warlock) which have a huge amount of potential. Unarmed strikes are categorized as melee weapon attacks, meaning they qualify for the bonus damage each provide on hit. Adding a d6 to every one of your 4 attacks a round is a ton of bonus damage at a fairly cheap cost. The main issue is with settup and cost of moving it around. If you can mark something prior to a fight, and that thing is robust enough to take three or four rounds of hits, it can be easily worth using. Many times, though, you’ll find forgoing one or two attacks to move it around feels clunky. You won’t make back enough damage from hitting enemies with Hunter’s Marked creatures than you’re losing by not taking bonus action attacks. It’s an akward juggling act that can be worth having access to, but won’t be great in every fight.
Fighters primarily offer Action Surge, Second Wind, and a subclass for three levels. Similarly, you can pick up Blind Fighting to empower some of your attacks in complete darkness, but the bulk of fighter’s power tends to come from their weapons and armor proficiencies stacked with powerful feats. Champion is an interetsing subclass to get on a character making four attacks a round, as you’re rate of critting goes up radically. This can pair well with Crusher to make a monk whose focus is hitting things to debilitate them with Stunning Strike and Crusher’s crit payoff, which is a neat direction to consider.
As mentioned earlier, Rogues overlap makes the multiclass less compelling. Cunning Action is one of the major reasons to consider a few levels in the class with Sneak Attack often covering missed damage elsewhere. When Cunning Action has to compete with all of the other bonus action stuff monk has going on, I’m a lot less interested. You can still aim to do some stuff with Way of Shadow and Assassin or other archetypes that care less about bonus actions, but you need to want a specific subclass feature to go this route I think.

Spellcasting Options

Druids and clerics both bring a lot to the table for monks. They’re Wisdom based casters, which pairs beautifully with monk’s Ki save DC. They each offer prepared casting and ritual casting for a robust suite of new ways to engage with the world in a variety of situations, and both come with the kinds of spells monk’s can get a lot of mileage out of in a fight.
Wild Shape is a blast to have on any character sheet. Your Unarmored Movement applies to your animal forms, leading to opportunities to zoom around faster than a speeding bullet. Circle of Spores gives you a melee ranged damaging at will reaction with a DC based on your Wisdom, and a tool to convert wild shape into an on hit bonus d6 damage. This is in perfect harmony with the four attacks you can make with Flurry of Blows so long as you have a round to spend the action converting prior to a fight. The 10 minute duration makes that fairly easy to achieve.
Clerics requrie even less of an investment to get a lot out of with their Domain offered at 1st level. Light Domain’s Warding Flare combines great with their flexible area of effect and ranged damaging spells to improve your flexibility in all ranges. Peace Domain has Emboldening Bond to empower you and other melee allies you rely on to keep you alive that also has useages scaling with your proficiency bonus, meaning you can use this basically for every fight you’re going into. Tempest Domain gives you a bunch of reaction based lightning blasts to punish things that hit you, and with one more level, a tool to let yo maximize that damage once per short rest.
All of these features don’t take into account the power of just getting a handful of 1st and 2nd level spells over three levels. That access to extra resources to get allies up from zero, Detect Magic to sense danger, or boost your speed further with effects like Longstrider is all the more reason to get two or three levels at least in these classes.

Munchkin Nonsense: How Fast Can We Go

Monk’s ability to impact the game in a way DM’s can struggle to manage is primarily through Stunning Strike, and there isn’t a lot to build around in that direction. More attacks certainly help, as can maximizing your Wisdom and Dexterity. Features like Action Surge can give you more attacks to stun more things, but none of that is so wild and crazy I’d really call it munchkin. Instead, I want to dive into their mobility to see just how fast we can get a monk to go in a single turn on their own.

The Rules of Speed

There are a few ways to adjust a creature’s speed on a given turn with some important rules to know. This fundamentally means we need to understand exactly how moving works, and that’s broken into two elements: movement and speed.

Movement is the fundamental mechanic that determines how far you can go on your turn. You can think of it like a pool that you can augment with different features and use to do different things.

Speed is a set numeric value that you add to the pool on each turn to use to get around. There are different forms of speed that can be spent to take different kinds of movement motions, such as fly or climb. Whichever speed you have as your highest determines the maximum amount of speed you add to your movement on a given turn. For example, if you have 30 foot speed and a 60 foot fly speed, with no other actions given to it, you can fly for a maximum of 60 feet, or move 30 feet on the ground and fly 30 feet beyond that.

You can only add speeds you’re able to use to you’re movement. If you have a 60 ft. swim speed and a 30 ft. speed, on land, you’ll only be able to add your 30 ft. speed to your movement. If you enter water mid turn that you can swim in, you can contribute the additional swim speed to your movement to functionally extend the distance you can go to a maximum of 30 additional feet swimming.

Gaining Speed is a bit messy, but thanks to rules clarifications on Twitter, we are able to determine augments to your speed affect all speeds your character has. For example, an aarakocra monk adds the Unarmored Movement speed bonus to their fly speed. This also applies to any special forms you are in so long as those forms qualify for the speed boons, such as being unarmored in the case of monk’s Unarmored Movement.

Dashing is an action that can be taken to get additional movement. When you Dash, you add up to your highest speed to your movement. Dashing can use whatever your fastest speed is to maximize distance travelled.

What makes speed so fun to mess around with is it multiplies with Dashing and speed doubling effects in hilarious ways that make characters that go supernaturally quickly. Features that double your speed typically double it after speed additives are stacked on top. Even in a world with flying wizards and fire-breathing lizards, you can look completely ridiculous with just a few abilities stacked on top of each other.

The Build

To start, we’ll need to pick a race with the most potential to go fast: Tabaxi. Tabaxi have a lovely little feature called Feline Agility that gives you a free way to double your speed until the end of your turn when you move. Beyond that, they have a base speed of 30; not the fastest in the game, but we’re going to need Feline Agility to double a lot more benefits.

Next, we need to be Monk for two reasons: Step of the Wind and Unarmored Movement. That requires two levels at least, giving us a +10 speed and a bonus action Dash to get going.

This base speed of 30 is an issue; we need to juice those numbers up. Two levels in Druid offers two critical components to our build, Wild Shape and Longstrider. Longstrider gives us another flat +10 speed, and Wild Shape allows us to transform into a Riding Horse to double our speed from 30 to 60. The issue is 60 seems a bit low still. Instead, we could stick it out for 8 levels in druid to get access to Giant Eagles, which come with an 80 ft. fly speed.

Eight levels in druid offer other opportunities we’re going to pick up on. We need Haste, and can get it by going Circle of the Land: Grassland. This uses our concentration slot nicely to give us another speed doubler and an extra Dash we can use to get more movement.

In druid we have a feat available; obviously, its going to be Mobile for an extra 10 feet onto our speed.

We’re going to need two levels in fighter (as most munchkin builds do) for Aciton Surge, as Action Surge gives us another opportunity to Dash.

Three levels of barbarian is also needed for a quick +15 speed while raging and unarmored from Path of the Totem Warrior’s Elk Totem Spirit. We’ll have to just be really angry to go our absolute fastest. Two more levels adds an extra 10 to our speed from barbarian’s Fast Movement, and offers another feat which doesn’t contribute any extra speed unfortunately.

Our final three levels unfortunately don’t give us a ton of options to increase our speed further. Our next move speed from Monk comes four levels from now and is only +5. For posterity, we’ll stick the final levels into monk for extra ki to Step of the Wind more often.

Math Time

For everything to work, we need to find a creature we can make hostile for a single round, ideally an irritable construct or zombie.

This all starts by casting Longstrider on ourself. Haste happens next while we’re able to cast spells, doubling our speed and granting us a hasted action, followed by making our Wild Shape transformation into a Giant Eagle for the base 80 speed.

While an eagle, we need to get angry, and will do so by raging as a bonus action on our next turn, then pecking something as our action to keep rage up until our next turn.

With all of the setup done, it’s time to move.

The next turn, we have a base speed of 80. We add Unarmored Movement, Mobile, Fast Movement, Longstrider, and Elk Totem for a total of 135 base speed, doubled to 270 from Haste. Then, as we start to move, we double our speed with Tabaxi’s Feline Grace for 540 speed we add to our movement.

Now, we need to start Dashing. We can dash as an action, a hasted action, a bonus action with Step of the Wind, and with an action we get through Action surge, giving us four dashes in a single round to add on top of our regular movement.

This results in being able to move 2,700 feet in a single round.

Thats 450 feet per second, or 306.818 miles per hour. Unfortunately, we’re still a fair ways under breaking the sound barrier, but that’s to shabby for a very angry bird with no magic items needed or other party members buffing you up.

Monks, at the Right Tables, Rule

Monks play perfectly fine at tables that aren’t being pushed to their strategic max. For casual players who want the monk fantasy, while the low amount of ki in the early game can feel pretty bad, around levels four you’ll start to feel a lot better about most of what you’re doing. Subclasses like Way of Shadows, Way of Mercy, and Way of the Ascendant Dragon will go a long way in contributing to your enjoyment of the class as they’re packed full of goodness that covers some of monk’s greatest weaknesses. Multiclassing druid or cleric also can radically improve the feeling of playing a monk, as any amount of spellcasting support will give you more ways to contribute to the team in each session.

I know many players that have adored their monks. At its center, there is a fun class here. Deflect Missiles, Step of the Wind, and Flurry of Blows help satisfy the martial artist fantasy it sells. If that’s what you’re looking for, and not an in depth, flexible class you can build in a dozen different ways, Monk will satisfy you.

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Monk 5e