6 Open Hand Monk 4 Thief, 2 Fighter.

Wear Armor of Persistence, Sentinel's Shield, Hellrider's Longbow, and Helmet of Grit.

Feats +2 Strength asi and Tavern Brawler.

This gives gives 4 Bonus actions (Base, Helmet of Grit, Thief, Wholeness of body)

2 main actions +action Surge + Bloodlust Elixir + potion of Speed.

24 AC for your dodging needs through Armor of Persistence, Cloak of protection, Ring of Protection and Sentinel's Shield.

5 thief for uncanny dodge, 5 OH Monk for monk and 2 fighter for surge aka kaioken

You want high AC for high dodge. YouTube "high AC BG3 Monk" and there should be some builds.

And probably get at least 3 divination wizard to get mirror image, blur, and Kamehameha, I mean scorch ray.

It really depends on what sort of build you want. Traditional monk I would start with 17 dex, 16 wis, and 15 con, bumping con and dex by 1 at level 4.

If you want to use tavern brawler and plan to use heavy armor and shield, obviously you want strength. This is not a usual monk build, but in BG3 it can become extremely powerful. If you want to use stunning strike or otherwise want a good DC, you will also want wisdom. If you just want damage, I would go 17 str, 16 con, so that tavern brawler gets you to 18 strength.

Monks are insanely strong even without tavern brawler, so tavern brawler risks trivialising the game. If you aren’t respeccing start with Fighter and go str 17, dex 14, con 12, int 8, wis 14, cha 10. Use medium armour and a shield then monk up to 7 then rogue to 10 for thief, fighter 11 for action surge, thief last for the feat. Alternatively when you get a certain piece of armour you could spec out of fighter.

I haven’t tried the build yet but

Common monks benefit from dex and wis for unarmoured AC and speed

The onepunch man strength build with tavern brawler isn’t available until you get your feat so taking a strength build right from the beginning makes you struggle at the beginning compared to respec’ing it later once you’re levelled enough I think

17 str/12 dex/14 con/8 int/14 wis/10 cha

You can drop some dex once you get good heavy armor if you want.

Question: For a strength build can you not just focus on dex and con and use elixirs for strength and later on >!Gauntless of Hill Giant Strength !< or is that just being silly?

Classic monk

dump strength, int, Charisma and go Dex>wis>Con.

One trick tavern brawler monk

dump int and charisma and go strength > Con > Wis/dex.

If you're trying to min/max, the absolute best monk build is gonna be 9 open hand monk and 3 thief. There are some arguments for 8 monk and 4 thief so you get an extra feat, but I really like ki resonance blast (which you get at open hand 9)

If you go OH Monk, Str elixirs are essential, like one guy already said, but don't overlook your Wis. Your passive, unarmoured defense, scales with Wis, as well as your passive punch buffs, the radiant/necrotic/psychic one. You also get boots that give your Wis modifier to each punch at the end of Act 2. So, as soon as you get lvl 6 monk and open the passive punch, respec, dump Str because you're using elixirs, and take ASI to round out Wis and Dex. TB rounds out Con. Careful not to use ANY armour for the passive. If enemies are suddenly focusing you, you probably equipped a piece, cause your AC goes way down. There are many good Clothings, so it wont be a problem.

What kind of Monk? No matter the monk, Tavern Brawler feat is pretty amazing as it adds your Str to attack and damage rolls... Again.

If it's an Open Hand Monk, then you've a few options. I'm fond of Monk 8/Thief Rogue 4 to get all 3 feats and an extra bonus action for more punches. Others will argue for Monk 7/Thief 3/Fighter 2 for Action Surge, but I like my feats.

Max strength and get the tavern brawler feat. You'll be hitting like a truck. Get anything that allows your unarmed strikes to deal additional damage. Other than that, punch them in the face.

8/4 OH TB Monk

https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/qHxUPRAO8z

Iirc, the monk build usually has two options.

The first option is you go for damage reflection, in which case you go for equipment that allows you to get damage reflect(e.g. curse of blood, spiked gauntlets, spiked shield, etc.). You should maximise your health for this build, so likely buy heavy armour and get as much constitution as you can.

The other option is going for a pure tank build. This build also relies on maxing out your health, i.e. heavy armour and high constitution. However, instead of damage reflection, you want to get as much health regeneration as possible. There's a few ways to do this: 20 constitution+ 20 wisdom will give you 2 stability(3 Regen/second). A few relics give you Regen that scales with max health, and the ancient elixir quest gives you a similar ability. There's also the well-built trait, which gives you +1 stability when it awakens, or the wild trait, which gives you +1 regeneration when awakened.(Note that Regen caps at 3 stacks though).

Tempest fury + charged staff + bell + freez on cast with profane ritual + ghost + herald of lightning + siphoning strike. Melts bosses under a minute.

I've built a luck based lighting Acolyte monk

Lots of crit chance, Redflare Conduit Anchorite Garb, the Acolyte luck based node, and then everything else into damage

I think the closest is fist judgment paladin, or cinder strike gloves rogue. The rogue will be incredibly squishy, and the judgment paladin's visual fantasy is way off.

No sorry. My favourite unarmed style combat is in Nioh 2, which is a 3rd person arpg soulslike mix and if you want the isometric camera, Poe 2's monk is quite fun and satisfying to play too.

Falconer with unarmed Falcon Fists is all I got.

LE doesn't have anything close in themes/fantasy, and when it comes to melee in general, most melee skills don't look or feel like actual melee attacks. More like spells that cover half of your screen in particles and involve limply waving your weapon vaguely in the direction of mobs.

Shuriken Rogue uses a bo staff for leveling but eventually swaps to daggers. No unarmed afaik

I play way of the open first. I'm sure I'm nowhere near fully optimized but here is a breakdown I am pretty happy with.

I use the Graceful Cloth armor you can after the start of act 2. It gives you cats grace which is advantage on all dexterity checks and saves, it increases your dexterity score by two to a maximum of 20 so you only need to invest up to 18 in dex.

I use The Bracers of Defense with give +2 AC for wearing no armor/shield.

I use Evasive Shoes for +1 to AC and Acrobatics. The Cloak of protection for +1 to AC and saving throws.

The Warped Headband of Intellect for setting Intelligence to 17 allowing me to use it as a dump stat of 8.

I Use the Sentient Amulet for Ki point recovery and bonus shatter spell.

Crushers ring for 3m more move distance.

Finally, my other ring is True Loves Caress for resistance to all damage and +1 to AC and saving throws.

This gives me an AC of 22, three attacks per turn, resistance to all damage, 50ish feet of movement, +11 to hit, 6-11 magical bludgeoning damage + 3-6 radiant, psychic, or necrotic damage depending on your choice of manifestation from level 6, advantage of all dex checks and saves, and +2 on saves across the board.

I'm level 8 right now.

Anyone know how to do tavern brawl monk without using elixirs and such? Or is it best just to do dex monk at that point.

And what kind of items and buffs should I be on the lookout for?

Tavern Brawler Open Hand Monk.

Have fun being a DBZ character.

Monk main since 0.1. Unfortunately, on end game you either go ice or lightning if you really want to clear the maps (the only viable skill on the Wind Skill is Wind Blast). Vaulting Impact is 50/50 hit. Whirling Assault is clunky. Other physical skills that works is Flicker and technically Siphoning Strike (high damage, but the downside is it's a single target and it's best utilized for its dependent mechanic: shock the target first for SS to charge blast).

Other notable skills that not much is using is Gathering Storm - it's actually powerful, but players tend to shun away because you really need to prep your time if you want to maximized it and always plan your aim, despite this skill can easily clear and is my main boss fight skill.

Another notable skill that is well powerfully recognized but not much is also taking is Falling Thunder (heavily reliant on Power Charges, but at this point, end game Monks would rather try to the Flicker instead for the charges).

Unique combo that is also powerful but is tricky is Shattering Palm + Frozen Locus. These 2 combo kind of bugs (having a weird interaction, triggering the FL to blast, killing all mobs very near it, good clearing). Tricky because the FL can sometimes not proc at all and all Palm interactions (for some odd reason) triggers the mobs to have a guaranteed hit on you as a retaliation).

Long-story short: Monk as of now is either go Ice of Lightning. I am still very much positive that GGG would somehow remember or try to take some little time with honest intent on what to do with the rest of the Wind Skills (was hoping that in 0.2, we'd get at least 3 diff builds - wind, ice and lightning, but sadly this ain't still the time yet).

I use locus and gathering storm for t4 and mapping. It’s a lot of flipping, dodging through movement of the skills, and feels very monk like to me and pairs nicely with evasion and energy shield mechanics. Using movement for defense and offense is why I like this melee build so much.

https://preview.redd.it/jnsbarmx8tff1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63044aadfafb58480030f5d6e2244a27d24b92d6

Locus gets unnecessarily strong, and gathering storm is massive damage too. Very overkill though for mapping though. There’s a support gem for gathering storm that gives you a massive damage boost and last 10 seconds and refreshes so scaling damage is super easy even with weak gear. Locus is very mana extensive

Honestly u can do so much if you dive into a screen clear tech. Trampletoe works amazing early on for clearing with any high damage skill and easy to get. For mapping it’s all about aoe and there are lots of ways to blow em all up.

I use evasion/es with chaos inoculation and eternal youth as an invoker. Lets me chase more stats on gear for defense or offense since I don’t need spirit, life or chaos resistance rolls on anything. Really made getting into t15 and t4 bossing quicker for me since I had immunity’s to chaos, bleed and poison while having extra stat rolls I need.

If you play melee, good stun threshold and/wind dancer is going to get you out of a mess when surrounded. Ghost dance is always on my build and really helps for effective hp.

Skills speed is amazing, easy access to a lot of it with monk and it impacts everything u do

the best builds for it are now: ice strike, flicker, lightning spear. others can be played, but much worse

I think falling thunder build is really fun to play. Use support gem that gives ekstra projectiles but makes projectiles go in random directions. Then you use cast on crit with profane ritual for constant power charge generation. Herald of Thunder is a given. Storm Wave to supplement when you're out of charges. You should be able to find a couple of videos on this. Don't remember the setup for single target precisely. But you can have a scepter and some skellies on weapon swap. Then you can sacrifice them and cast profane ritual on them. Then have an ekstra Falling Thunder without the spreading projectile to be able to hit the boss easier with more of the projectiles.

I also tried using the Ricochet support gem that gives projectiles a chance to chain from terrain. That worked quite well for clearing.

Gathering storm and frozen locus