Best monk build: lvl 1-6 Monk, lvl 7-11 Swords bard, lvl 12 Wizard. The rogue cheese that everyone and their grandmother copies from the streamers is far from the best monk build

Just go way of open hand and pump up your dex. Use stunning strike a lot

Starting class barbarian,

Starting stats: Str 17, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 8

Medium armor and shield

Skill: Athletics, anything else you like

On level 2 to 7 multi class Monk.

Level 3 subclass: way of open hand

Feat: Tavern Brawler

Level 8 to 10 multi-class rogue

subclass: thief

Level 11 to 12 multi-class fighter

style: dueling fighting style

--

get close ki attacks, whole body

been using it for a bit, pretty good.

Just become the avatar.

I mean just use the tavern brawler monk build and literally punch gods to death lol. Experience what it actually means to be OP

OH 6 / light cleric 6 is a good one. You get medium armor and shield and can use radiating orb gear to debuff enemies, plus a very strong AOE radiant damage attack twice per short rest and Spirit Guardians.

4e is just as good if not better than OH until level 6 when OH gets manifests and even then I’m inclined to say it’s not that far behind. You can play it just like OH 8/4 thief, or for more magical vibe play it 5/7 spore Druid split for 4th level flame blade. Pyroquickness hat triggers off flame blade attacks, your usual turn goes: fire snake > flurry > flame blade attack > flurry/ bonus unarmed strike depending on Ki.

Hey, I think making Monk and making it effective revolves around one multiclass - Rogue. Then it's either Thief or Assassin. I am a proponent of Thief, especially as you do not want to miss some interesting dialogues.

Thief is by far the most optimal option as your bonus action in the late game will result in 50-100 bonus damage with the correct setup. Assassin criticals are great, but again, this requires you to always start combat from surprise.

I would like to share the builds I have made for this class

Open Hand Monk Build - The strongest option by majority opinion. Flurries give you additional control like stagger, prone, and push. Moreover, at level 6, you add additional elemental damage based on spellcasting modifier. This build shines with Tavern Brawler and Strength Elixirs, due to MAD. So if you want to bash stuff this is for you.

Four Elements Monk - This is an interesting one. It's not better than Open Hand, but it gives a nice feeling of Avatar, with all elemental control. You can do basic attacks using Fire Strike for additional 1d10 fire damage. Moreover, you can do some tricks with Create Water (from a Cleric or Storm Sorcerer) and apply some good damage with Chill of the Mountain.

Shadow Monk build - okay this one surprised me. I spent the most time making it, and it feels very authentic. This build can become invisible at will and use both weapon attacks and flurries. Its main damage will come from flurries via bonus action. Action will be used to constantly become invisible and break enemy AI. In Act 3 you can even have 3 bonus actions, for some huge damage.

Feel free to ask any questions if anything is unclear.

Go Open Hand Monk, it’s solid, tanky and Dex/Wis scale well for both damage and AC without being busted.

4 Elements is fun too. Damage isn’t as high imo but it’s way more versatile, and playing only for damage gets boring fast.

If you start High Elf you can pick up Booming Blade and combo it with the staff and thunder gloves for a kind of Thunder Monk vibe. Pretty cool build.

Shadow Monk + Thief is great, you can do some unique things and you're highly mobile. It works best in a party with someone that can cast Darkness, or use your Ki to cast Darkness because flurry of Blows isn't as useful on Shadow Monk as it is for the other monk Classes. This would pretty much require you to slot the Eversight Ring to be effective.

You can use the [Slicing Shortsword](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Slicing Shortsword) to make enemies bleed with no save after using Shadow Step.

You can use the Shadow Blade Ring + Resonance Stone to do a psychic damage heat seeking missile. There are other synergies to this too, like the brain drain gloves.

Shars Spear of Evening is GOATed for this because it grants freecast darkness and blindness/darkness immunity. An interesting build setup with these tools is picking up the Sentinel feat for Sentinel Snare, which makes it so you do opportunity attacks with advantage, and when you hit enemies with an opportunity attack they cannot move. When you get this spear, you also get other Dark Justiciar gear, like the Dark Justiciar Gauntlets which grant the unique bonus action cantrip Beckoning Darkness which causes an enemy to take 2d8 Necrotic if they start thier turn outside of full light. This all comes together with Shadow Monk + Thief. You start combat using your Action to cast Darkness directly on top of your target across the map, usually a caster you want to shut down. Then you use Shadow Step to immediately warp right up next to them. Then you use your extra bonus action to cast Beckoning Darkness on them. Beckoning Darkness is a DC 14 CHA save spell, and can be completely negated. CHA 14 isn't the easiest save, but it's also not particularly difficult. You can use the Gloves of Baneful Striking + Oil of Bane to grant the enemy -2d4 to thier saves on your next turn by attacking them. Or, you could use the Resonance Stone to give them disadvantage on mental saves like CHA. Even better is to use both. Plus, Shadow Monks make Great Resonance Stone holders because they can shadow step directly to enemies you want to Debuff with it, and also warp away form your team mates so they don't suffer the harsh effects. Plus with this build you're usually sitting in Darkness so you really can't be targeted to make a mental save by a caster anyway because they can't see you.

Dex 4 Elements Monk with Phalar Aluve is pretty good.

Shriek ability as well as Fangs of the Fire Snake can add a lot of extra damage to your punches.

Since Phalar Aluve is a Finnese weapon, you can proc sneak attacks with it, which will come in handy, when you multiclass Into Rogue.

Since it's a Longsword, you can also utilize Great Weapon Master feat.

Hat of Fire Acuity / hat of Storm scions power should work with Fire Snake / Phalar Aluve , and stack it twice as fast when using Flurry of Blows.

This is good, because once you get some Acuity stacks, you can basically guarantee that your Stunning Strike  or Clench of the. North Wind (4E Monks version of hold person) hits.

Doesn't matter if you don't deal highest possible Dps, if you can just stun everything to death.

So to do this you'll need to do at least one evil choice (killing the nightsong):

11 shadow monk + 1 rogue. You go one rogue for sneak attack, 11 shadow monk for shadow strike. Killing nightsong gives you the dark justiciar half-plate. One of your feats will have to be moderately armored for this to work obviously. So not only do you get advantage on con save throws, and shar's aegis, you get advantage on stealth checks while obscured, as well as shar's spear of evening, arguably the best weapon in the game (and since monks have proficiency with simple weapons, it will count as a monk weapon), giving you advantage on saving throws while lightly or heavily obscured, immunity to blind, and shar's darkness castable every turn.

For your other feat besides moderately armored, take dual wielder. This way you can get the ring from arabella in act 2 that gives you a cast of shadow blade, use shadow blade in your main hand and the spear in your offhand, and since you'll have advantage on con saving throws you hopefully will just never break concentration.

Finally, make sure to pick up the resonance stone in the oubliette, making everything around you vulnerable to psychic damage.

I forget the exact number since I only did this build once a long time ago, but 2x shadow strike with the above-mentioned setup and something like a bloodlust elixir I'm pretty sure does something like 120 damage per swing with sneak attack modifier. The downside is it literally doesn't come online until level 11 which is when you get shadow strike (or 12 if you picked the one level of rogue earlier so you can get extra proficiencies), so you can just play it like a normal shadow monk until then

I’m thinking about 6 Shadow Monk / 6 Death Cleric.

But I’ve had a TB Open Hand Monk that I removed TB from. It went from op to subpar. Just due to not wielding a +2 weapon. So OH Monks need it. A dex focus with 14 str would put it on par. I should have skipped it, gone Shadow in act 3 and found myself a fun weapon, perhaps with Tenacity.

Four Seasons is the coolest Monk subclass, by far.

In my opinion.

The basics of monks in low-level 5e is that they attack with DEX instead of STR, can punch people as a bonus action, are a little faster than everyone else and can soak a certain amount of fall damage. Their AC is based on their DEX and WIS, so they don't need armour. They also can spend a few Ki points per short rest on special moves like punching even more, dodging, disengaging or later stunning enemies, and specialities depending on subclass. Monks are the least tanky melee fighters, so besides needing DEX and WIS, they also need a high CON to make up for that.

The design is based on quickly getting in, needling the enemy with multiple light attacks, and getting out. There's much controversy around how well this design is actually supported by the rules, so Larian said that they're going to buff the class up to balance the game - something WotC tried themselves this week and arguably ... did not do well lol

The base class moves very fast, doesn't wear armor or use shields, and has the largest amount of attacks due to getting extra attacks from martial arts. They do low but consistent damage like most monk classes in games, and are generally good at hit and run tactics or forcing mages to make many concentration saves.

Their weapon selection is a bit limited, typically you go unarmed (which now scales well due to their base feature) or you can use any non-heavy weapon, including longswords and battleaxes with optional dedicated weapon rules for them. Most use quarterstaff or spears.

Monks use Ki as their main resource and typically rely on it heavily to the point where it's one of their biggest weaknesses because they don't get a lot (something Larian is fixing supposedly)

Open Hand monk is kind of your traditional martial arts monk, lots of your traditional martial arts moves, tossing people around, knocking them prone, etc.

Way of Shadows monk is basically a ninja with ninjutsu, which is called Shadow Arts in this game. They get to cast spells as abilities like Darkness, Silence, Minor Illusion, and Pass Without Trace which have some really great utility in and out of combat. They also get to teleport around with shadowstep and eventually passively turn invisible in darkness.

Four Elements monk is basically a bender from Avatar. They translate traditional spells as martial moves and also have unique abilities like a ranged air shove or water whip that really works like thorn whip but still. They are incredibly ki dependant however for not much bang, so people love the flavor but hate how they play... this subclass probably needs the most love.

In general, monks fall behind in damage, aren't the best at multiclassing, and tend to be pretty squishy despite Unarmored Defense, which is why they usually use hit and run tactics. Unlike say a Rogue, though, they're not going to explode from the shadows with tons of Sneak Attack damage or anything, and unlike a pal or barb or fighter, you're also not tanking while still doing decent damage if not hitting like a truck.

This is why most people dislike monk unless you're doing it for flavor or fun, you're not doing anything someone else can't do far better while having other features to boot or not being as squishy. However, I'm trusting Larian's homebrew to make them comparable to other classes (and fun). We'll see in a few hours.

In table top, they are essentially just a martial class that is quicker, unarmored, and fights with unarmed attacks. Larian has stated that they will be buffed, because they are generally quite weak past level five, so unfortunately I will not be able to provide the whole description other than that

There’s karate kid monks, ninja monks and airbender monks.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/monk

In my opinion, the strongest monk build damage-wise is a dexterity-based Open Hand Monk 8 / Thief Rogue 4, putting 2 feats into increasing Dexterity and 1 into increasing Wisdom.

With that build, by the time you hit Level 12 you can be completely naked with no gear and still have an AC of 19 and hit for up to 42-102 damage every round (6 attacks of 1d6+1d4+5). Add gear that enhances your unarmed strikes, and you start to do truly unhinged amounts of damage.

For attribute prioritize dex and wis, you will set your strength so there is no point investing into it.

Best is OH Tavern Brawler that uses strength elixirs with either 3 or 4 thief levels. Strength club in off-hand works ok too. Don't multiclass before level 5 because that will just gimp your monk early game as you get an extra attack and stunning strike is awesome.

Thief level really depends if you want to use Ki Resonation which I personally enjoy a lot as it can be used to spread conditions with certain items and allows you to punch while holding two light weapons for item specific buffs.

You set strength to minimum and set dex and wisdom to 16 and con to 15. Everything else is irrelevant although INT is the next most useful stat because mind flayers have powers that require INT saves.

At level 4 take Tavern Brawler and get CON to 16. Later upgrade WIS as you get boots that add WIS to your unarmed damage and OH have abilities that increase unarmed damage that get boosted by WIS too.

Use the soul coins for difficult fights. They are bugged for unarmed and actually add 2D4 fire damage and the buff is always active.

I actually prefer pure OH monk myself because you get poison immunity at level 10 and fighting inside cloudkill is very amusing to me but it is worse DPS wise.

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

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.

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.

Tavern brawler open hand is one of the strongest builds in the game, there's probably hundreds of guides on how to build it.

4e is like warlock gish, worse spells but better martial due to tavern brawler. But it's a worse martial than oh and the spells lack utility to justify losing out on martial prowess.

Shadow is more thematic. Best ninja class, but doesn't get many bonuses to deal more damage, so it falls a bit behind. Grab weapon proficiencies with race, shadow teleport behind your enemies and finish them off with style.

Open hand thief tavern brawler and a fairly specific gear for lots of big punches

Shadow monk thief for teleporting from shadow to shadow and slaughtering them in the darkness.

4 elements is open hand with a few wizard-like spells mixed in because ???

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

Don’t stress the TB OH talk. You’ll be fine with any class.

Poison builds are never optimal, but still fun if you can stomach only coming online in Act III and not being a damage god.

Last run, I got tired of Jaheira not having much to do with her scimitars, and I'd managed to pick up most of the poison gear in the game, so I figured I'd re-class her into something more true to her fighter/druid past. I think the build went 5 fighter/7druid.

For fighter, I took battlemaster and went with disarming attack and trip attack, knowing her damage output wouldn't be extreme and her time might better be used pinning key opponents down and wasting their turns. For druid, circle of land to get haste and misty step. The idea was to zone in on an opponent of choice fast and occupy them with a flurry of poisoned blows, and then disarm/trip them once they had disadvantage on checks.

Gear:

• Kagha's amulet. This coats your weapon in poison whenever you're healed. You'll have to kill Kagha for it, so be sure not to bring her over to the light when fighting the shadow druids.

• Thorn blade. This is a rare scimitar sold by Dammon in Act II only, so be sure not to miss it. 1d4 poison damage per melee hit if you're concentrating on a spell, which you'll plan to be doing with haste.

• Poisoner's gloves. Found in the chest in the room after beating Malus Thorm. Important for the build idea, as they force a CON throw against being poisoned every time you do poison damage, which will be four to five times a round ideally.

• Ring of Regeneration. Heals 1-4 at the start of your turn, which procs the amulet. Sold at Sorcerous Sundries by Rolan

• The Whispering Promise. Blesses you for two rounds when you're healed and combos with Ring of Regen. Sold by Volo at any point in the game.

In the offhand I gave her another scimitar because I love the rizz of it, but there are definitely lots of better options (again, not an s-tier build).

All in all, this was a solid nifty out of ten that could reliably pin down most individual enemies in Act III. The big downside with anything poison based is that Act II is full of undead, so if you're planning on building from the start, it's probably going to be pretty unfun in the midgame.

Fire Axe dual wielder. All the heat gear, 12 levels of fighter, use Karlach for inbuilt fire resistance and soul coins.

These classes have access to stuff that interacts well with some shadow monk abilities without being too strong.

Shadow Magic Sorcerer focused on support. 

Hexblade without pact of the blade(so no extra attack). 

A pure land druid. Cloudkill counts as heavily obscured for items and abilities and both monks and land druids become immune to poison even without Heroes' Feast.

You can play through honor mode just fine with a normal lvl12 open hand monk withOUT Tavern Brawler

Throwing in thief does make things a lot easier though. But depending on when you decide to make the split you don’t really notice it until level 10 or 12. Either 6-4-2 or 8-4.

Because IMO you want to hit 6monk asap you your hits do extra damage (radiant/psychic/necrotic)

Thief bring a lot for monk; the extra bonus action is incredibly good when you have flurry of blows.

Pure monk is still really good, not just as min-maxed as monk/thief.

So you might have answered this somewhere and I’m missing it, but what is your ideal party to pair with Monk?

I think the best argument for monks is that they don't really compete for gear a whole lot actually. They can do VERY well with gear that is basically useless for any other class. They do have some solid save defenses due to the nuts good endgame gloves. Their AC is comparable with any other optimized martial I've seen.

They unequivocally do not do the highest single target sustained DPS in the game, that goes to a Tavern Brawler throw build of which the best lvl 12 version does not even care about bonus action usage, and only moderately competes for gear other builds like and scales better with both strength elixer use AND bloodlust elixers.

It’s quite a shame that Ascended Astarion is the best monk since I find it hard to connect him as a character to this play style. I usually try to run optimized builds because I play for the gameplay as much as the role play reasons and I like how thought out the build is.

And one super minor thing, specifically about the Sentient Amulet, you can complete the Monk’s quest by killing him to turn the Ki Restoration into a greater version, which in the Wiki says can regenerate a random number of Ki Points (At level 8 Monk 1-6, Level 9 1-8), not just two. I think this is worthy of taking note of since it can show more benefits for potentially shifting from 8/4 to 9/3. There are other ways of increasing your AC (I’m thinking +1 from Warding Bond, Precasting Mirror Image and Shield of Faith Scrolls), and you can get more Ki Points to spend on a fight and then replace the amulet with something more useful, like Khalid’s Gift even the Constitution Amulet to get better Concentration saves for Shield of Faith.

These are just my thoughts on how I would personally alter the guide to fit my play style. I believe that your guide is very optimized and honestly can wreck BG3’s fights. Let me know your thoughts on mine because I’m all up for discussion

Shadow Monk plus Assassin is an incredibly fun Embrace Durge build, you teleport around the darkness stabbing people for crits and vanishing and they never see you.

Shadow Monk 8/Thief Rogue 4 is very fun for Astarion. Bite Stab Kick then Step into the Shadows

Tavern Brawler Open Hand Monk is probably the strongest single target build in the whole game and has a couple levels of rogue.

11 shadow monk 1 rogue. It literally doesn't come online until level 12 but God damn sneak attack shadow strike crit with the resonance stone does an INSANE amount of damage, like 120+ a hit

9 Shadow Monk/3 Thief Rogue has been pretty fun in my latest playthrough. The shadow step at shadow monk level 6 is god send.

A Medium with the Medium of the Master archetype is monk-adjacent.

It synergizes well with Spirit Focus (Champion).

If you have a decent point buy I’ve been playing an unchained monk/sorcerer going into mystery cultist.

4 level of scaled fist nets you ki, upgrade in unarmed damage, fast movement.

3 levels of eldritch scrapper sorcerer so you can get martial flexibility. I went with phoenix bloodline since their third level ability works well with monk.

Mystery cultist gives you sorcerer spells full progression while being a 3/4 BaB. Not many ways to achieve that. You do lose a level of spellcasting but I took the two feats to get it back.

I worshiped falyana, her obedience gives you a +4 to grapple. Lower levels id use enlarge person but eventually plan on doing some beast shape into a dire tiger to full attack and get free grapple.

Mystery cultist gives some really fun abilities too

Hobgoblins get an archetype called the Ironskin Monk, you trade out pretty much all of the mysticism of kung-fu in exchange for a surprising amount of hardiness and the flavour of someone too stubborn and mean-spirited to die.

In theory you can even wear light armour because you trade out everything that's lost from wearing armour, but ask your DM.

It can also double-up with a Hungry Ghost Monk, and once you reach level seven or nine, you're able to passively gain temporary HP with your flurry, effectively doubling your native DR.

By level eleven, unless you get eaten by a whale and forget you still have Abundent Step, you're almost as unkillable as a normie Paladin.

I played one in Reign of Winter, and a Witch threw a critical Snowball at me, and because I managed to natural 20 my Fort Saved, ignored something like thirty damage at level five before grabbing the Witch and beating her face in like Zeus at the end of God of War 3.

It was fantastic, I recommend giving it a look.

Master of many styles that takes grabbing and kraken style so you can grab and pin multiple opponents, works best on tiny-large sized, CMD often gets silly high for huge +

Champion of enlightenment is one of my favorite, could pair with scaled monk, my GM let me take the 3.5 feat Serenity so I could use wisdom for paladin things, but you can wield a reach weapon because martial proficiency from paladin, and still threaten adjacent because monk

Another master of many styles can take slashing grace and boar style for dex to damage and snake style to be a swashbuckler that fights unarmed

You're gonna have to give us some guidance on what you are looking for.

Open hand 9/Thief 3 with Tavern brawler. Buy Hill giant/Cloud Giant elixirs for very high strength and melt literally everything. It’s possibly the most potent build in the game

Fighter 1 / OH Monk 6 / Fighter 1 / Thief 4.

Having Constitution Proficiency and be able to wear a Shield is really good. Yeah, you lose the bonus movespeed, but if you are being hasted you have enough anyway.

OH monk/thief. Look at the prestigiousjuice builds on this sub

Monks spiral out of control from Tavern Brawler, and should just stay pretty good if you avoid the feat. Effects that occasionally add dice to your damage will help supplement things well enough, and Tavern Brawler really just makes it go slightly off the rails.

There are plenty of ways and builds that “break” monks thats why people talk such high praise. But really if you just play normal monk and dont take tavern brawler or thief rogue with allied haste shenanigans, they are great but not OP. They excel in single target damage and high mobility.

Balances: Their range is limited, and to make use of unarmored perks they cant wear anything but clothing, no using that shiny new medium armor. There are many monk items in game that are amazing but it also means without them you can fall behind other martials. They lack AoE options too, so for the big army style fights or multiple small enemies they do very little, as opposed to a good ol fireball.

To me they are the strongest and most fun martial with a tavern brawler build, which is nice since monk fans have dealt with them being garbage in table top for a long time. I’d say one of the main things balancing them as a main character is that they aren’t a charisma class

Monks have pretty much no meaningful ranged option (we don’t talk about four elements, it doesn’t exist). Monk itself gets pretty great with all the items, but so long as you’re not using tavern brawler or multiclassing into thief for the extra bonus action it doesn’t get absurd. I ran pure open hand monk on my tactician run and had a great time.

Yeah, four elements has been a meme forever in the tabletop community. They did some work to improve lackluster features for a lot of things in BG3, or added items to make up for it (hence how monk ends up being one of the highest DPR classes in BG3 while they’re by far the lowest in 5e), but there’s just no fixing four elements it seems. The cost of using the “spells” is simply too high to be sustainable. At least with BG3 you can simply rest constantly if you really wanted to.

I went 9 monk / 3 thief for 1d8 punch dmg and resonating.

The value of the fighter dip on monk is vastly overstated. It fixes your ac early but at massive cost by delaying your levels, sacrificing initiative, and costing you unarmored movement. I honestly can’t believe that anyone who has tried the unarmored version would ever recommend fighter again. Going first and having the movement to kill 3-5 enemies vastly outweighs the little bit of ac you get. Action surge is another trap choice for monks, who rely more on bonus actions. 2 fighter levels means 2 less ki: action surge gives you 2 more attacks per short rest, 2 ki gives you 4 more attacks per short rest.

Warding bond, haste, bracers of defense, gloves of dexterity, graceful cloth, there are many ways to mitigate the lack of ac on a monk. I would recommend starting with a spread of 17 str, 14 dex, 14 con, 13 wis. Round strength with tavern brawler at 4 and wis with auntie Ethel hair. Your ac and initiative will be solid and your damage will be insane. You can keep this spread for awhile and use graceful cloth and damage gloves, or you can respec and use dexterity gloves when you get them which would allow you to go 17 str 8 dex 16 con 15 wis. Act 3 you dump con and use the amulet.

9 monk 3 thief just feels massively better than the fighter version, and you’re able to equip some of the insane stat sticks.

I went 6 monk 4 thief 2 fighter for the extra feat

Open hand monk 9, thief 3. Monk 9 has the all important resonant ki attack which can be made unarmed automatically. Usually the extra unarmed attack that costs a bonus action must be after a melee weapon attack. Your turn order would look like Melee attack, melee attack, unarmed attack. Action and bonus action spent. Or you could flurry of blows and spend a ki point for two unarmed attacks, and then Melee attack twice with your action. But you don't get to use the extra unarmed attack from doing melee attacks. Feels wasteful, especially when you have unarmed attack improving gear. You. Want. To. Be. Punching. Not quarterstaff and then punch.

Ki resonance attacks can be unarmed automatically, using your action. That means your turn is now ki punch, ki punch with your action; then ki punch again with your bonus action. So with double bonus action from thief 3, you can ping pong around the battlefield doing 4 unarmed attacks with all the stacked up gear and abilities making them very strong. Then by just spending a ki point, no action or bonus action cost you can do the resonant ki-blast for a 3d6 force damage in an area of effect around one target.. AND...if you ki blast a target who is next to another ki punched target who is resonating; they also detonate for 3d6 area of effect force damage.

So if you do all other unarmed damage improving gear including staff's that improve unarmed attack and gloves and rings for extra damage on unarmed strike; truly insane numbers.

Depends on the fight. The second feat was less impactful for me since I was Tavern Brawler using Str potions, therefore the main use would be +2 Wisdom.

That is decent, but the extra burst from Action Surge is great.

Resonating blast is a good way to give monk AOE, but my casters do the AoE while I single target

It's also for heavy armour + shield, if you're into sacrificing your monk movement and unamoured features.

Tavern brawler is definitely the best version but going full dex really isn't much under it for those wanting a dex playthrough. I made the mistake of going monk on my first playthrough because I've mained monk in every game going back to Everquest and without looking anything up (minus the house of hope gloves I looked those up) did 9 monk 3 thief and would finish most fights in just my monks turn. It was fun being insanely OP but I barely got to play the other characters lol.

Could do fighter 2 for heavy armor, shields, and action surge. Then monk 6 thief 4. My monk has like 28 AC buffed.

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)

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.

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.

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

The problem with 4 elements is that the spells from it are not as good as the spells other classes cast for free, they're really ki costly, and the only good ones do things like make a target fall prone or push them...which the open hand monk already adds on to their flurry of blows bonus action for free. So 4 elements is a poorer caster compared to other casters and a poorer monk compared to other monks.

I tried playing 4 elements and respecced to open hand, and I'm having a lot of fun. Made a full monk/cleric build I called the murim lord, actually just uploaded the build here! https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17qb6ui/the_murim_lord_build/

Shoutout to Prestigious Juice for this excellent monk guide. I did my first full playthrough recently and this monk carried the team. Crazy mobility and crazy damage. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/171kt8r/the_best_sustained_single_target_damage_optimal/