Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion The Heavy Armour Monk

Hi, this is the original creator of both the lizardfolk heavy armour shadow monk build, and the battlemaster gloomstalker assassin war cleric war wizard pentaclass that people keep plagiarising/independently recreating lesser versions of after its debut post-Xanathar.

This is a guide on how to build a heavy armour monk in Baldur's Gate 3 if you're into that kind of thing.

Why play a Heavy Armour Monk?

• It has more mobility than any other melee class, and this is actually pretty important in BG3
• It can nope ranged attacks once per round
• It can halve fall damage from unexpected changes in terrain, which suddenly becomes a thing since Feather Fall was nerfed into a bonus action spell for some reason
• It can hit really damn hard - pure monks deal double that of Fighters in the first few levels before you get your armor in exchange for dying easily, marginally superior to Fighters for the next 6 levels before falling behind at exactly level 11 once they get their third attack
• Due to the removal of the Dodge action for unknown reasons, it's also the hardest class in the game to kill between it and Evasion
• As martial arts in BG3 is not disabled by wearing heavy armor, you don't need a Lizardfolk, Aarakocra, Tabaxi or Minotaur to be able to do acceptable damage with unarmed strikes while heavily armoured, so if multiclassing you can do this with any race
• You CAN get Great Weapon Master and that's what makes melee martials worth playing at all relative to archer builds or casters
• You like the monk flavour and conversation options but don't want to be less useful than literally any caster

What do you lose relative to Dex-based Unarmoured Monks?

• You lose the increased base speed, but you don't lose the ability to dash as a bonus action
• Your Dex is crud so your initiative will suck, and you can't serve as the dedicated party untrapper/unlocker if you take Charlatan or Urchin
• Some people will insist you're not a monk because you're not using exclusively unarmed strikes and you're not unarmored, even though nearly no actual monk combatant in history had only unarmed training, and you have 12 monk levels

This is a pretty damn short list. The dice loss in Martial Arts doesn't apply in BG3, and the loss of Unarmed Strike (the free one) will only apply if you're using a heavy weapon. So it basically applies after level 8, once you have enough Ki to ignore its existence in the case that GWM's own bonus action strike doesn't proc. Finally, nobody cares what others think in a single player game, and if you play co-op you can simply ignore the target attacking them and let them die before using your Revivify scroll to assert dominance, because you will always die last.

What do you gain relative to Dex-based Unarmoured Monks?

• The ability to abuse Shove, because you're an STR build, if that's your thing, though I don't like doing it much because 5E isn't balanced (ha, ha) that way, and some instant kill shove options also delete loot
• About double the DPR after factoring in Great Weapon Master (Dex melee builds max at 37.5, GWM STR builds max at 69)
• The ability to haul a shit ton of gear/loot for the pack rats among you
• The ability to screw over enemies that hit you with certain armour based proc effects

The Pure Option

For people who want pure monks for more Ki points and the potential to get Diamond Soul when importing characters or something for future content:

1. You need a Githyanki. No other race jumps you straight to Medium Armour.
2. Starting stats are 17-8-14-10/8-16-8/10. I do not recommend boosting Con at the expense of Wis as skills are extremely important in this game, Wis saves are useful particularly if you use a particular weapon that can heal your monk, and it affects the DC of your Stunning Strike in the rare occasions where using it is a better idea than Flurry of Blows or Patient Defense.
3. Progress to level 4 (it's actually very fast, then the levelling speed drops sharply at level 4 itself), and take Heavily Armoured. This gets you your 18th Str point as well as the proficiency to wear heavy armour.
4. Take Great Weapon Master at level 8, then finish at 12 with Mage Slayer or 20 Strength or 18 Wisdom or Alert or Lucky.
5. Skills wise Athletics is compulsory, but on top of that your other three skills should avoid one stat. I personally went Sage with Religion to make mine a partial int-build, but it is also possible to take Wis/Cha skills with these instead and leave Int blank.
6. Now because you're a Githyanki you can choose an entire stat's worth of skills to be proficient in each day. I take Wis with this so that I have ultra high checks in every Wis skill, using the base Int skills for those, and hoping there's a non-Cha way of dealing with social encounters. So far, there have been a lot of those, so there's no need to do save manipulation - you can just facetank every social encounter with an Int/Wis monk and still have good enough checks to pass. This will be placed in the stat you avoided in step 5.
7. Use monk weapons where possible in early levels to ensure you can proc the bonus action unarmed strike, though you are free to choose anything you're proficient with at level 5 depending on their magical effects, and at level 8 you should be using exclusively Greatswords.

What you sacrifice when playing a pure Gith monk is the ability to make any good long-ranged attack, even though medium range is still possible with thrown javelins and the like. This is surprisingly inconsequential after factoring in Step of the Wind and if playing Shadow, Shadow Step (the range of Shadow Step is equal to that of a shortbow!).

The Multiclass Option

For people who want multiclassed monks to play non-Gith races and better ranged attacks:

1. This time you can play anything, though I'd advise not playing a Gith as the proficiencies will be wasted. And you kind of look like a monkey.
2. Start as a Tempest or War Domain cleric. The main cantrips you'll want are Guidance, Sacred Flame, and Thaumaturgy - the last one gives you some interesting options for conversations even if your Charisma isn't that high. Tempest has a better reaction, War has extra bonus action attacks to act as a buffer if you run out of ki to Flurry with while swinging your greatsword around, but the largest powerhouse of War Domain in 5th Edition is Divine Favour, which was nerfed into a really eh level in BG3, so it's no longer a no-brainer like it is in tabletop.
3. From level 2, level as a Monk to Monk 5 (Character level 6). At level 5, you may find that Sacred Flame + Flurry of Blows is the highest damage possibility, because for some reason, you don't need to make an attack to qualify to use Flurry in BG3. From here your choices fork into either going Monk 11 for the 1d8 dice on your Flurry and more Ki points, or taking 4 Gloom Stalker levels to gain a third attack on the first turn and additional movement speed, before ending the game with Cleric 1 Monk 7 Gloom Stalker 4 (these specific numbers get you more spell slots than Monk 8 Gloom 3). Races without Darkvision who are not intending to take Way of Shadow may find the Darkvision from Gloom Stalker useful.
4. Starting stats are 16-8-14-12/8-16-8/12. Wis 16 is compulsory this time because of how important it is to both the Cleric and Gloom Stalker multiclasses. 16-8-16-8-16-8 is also a possibility, but it will make you really suck at non-Wis skill checks. Because you only get two ASIs regardless in the multiclass, you must take Great Weapon Master first, then the other can go to Mage Slayer, 18 Strength, 18 Wisdom, Alert or Lucky. You can use Mauls, Halberds, Glaives and Greataxes well with this build on top of Greatswords though, while pure Githyanki monks only have Greatswords as an option.

How to spend Ki

• Do you absolutely need Darkvision or stealth right now? If so, cast Pass Without Trace or Darkvision as a Shadow Monk.
• Do you need mobility, particularly to shut down a caster? If so, Step of the Wind.
• Do you need open hand's Flurry CC effects? If so, Flurry of Blows.
• Can you kill a whole bunch of trash at once with AoE? If so and a 4E monk, use an AoE effect.
• Are you tanking a boss or multiple mobs? If yes, Patient Defense.
• Did you not proc Great Weapon Master? If yes, Flurry of Blows.
• Are you fighting a caster? If yes, Stunning Strike.
• Are you planning to rest immediately after this? If yes, Stunning Strike.
• Do you have spare points out of combat immediately before a short rest? If yes and a Shadow Monk, cast Pass Without Trace or Darkvision.

Follow this order exactly. If you run out of Ki because you were spamming Stunning Strikes on a high Con boss or on the mob that dies in that same hit due to the GWM damage, it's your own fault.

Subclasses

Shadow monks have easy Darkvision for the whole party as well as extremely good stealth (+10 is enough to cover the lack of proficiency, -1 Dex AND heavy armour disadvantage, then invisibility later), allowing for better non-combat resolutions to things, as well as insane mobility with Shadow Step. Open Hand has better Flurry options which matters more than in tabletop since Flurry doesn't require attacking beforehand here. Four Elements is actually not terrible in BG3 relative to its tabletop counterpart, operating like a hybrid between a monk and a warlock giving some AoE options (but not as good as a pure caster's). Because Githyanki don't have Darkvision, pure Heavy Armour Monks may find Shadow relatively more appealing, while those which multiclass may find Open Hand's CC features more useful since they're more likely to do things that isn't two greatsword strikes with their main action.

Custom Skill Bars

Because Heavy Armour Monks, like all good non-Paladin melee martials, use Great Weapon Master a lot, it is important to know when to switch it off (i.e., hitrate < 70%). To do so you can click Passives on the bottom of the action bar to toggle it, but I would recommend setting up a custom bar instead to make your life literally two times easier. Since for some reason a lot of players don't know this exists, to use it, press K to open your Spellbook (even if you're not a caster), and drag the abilities you actually use into the Custom bar at the bottom. The top row defaults with hotkeys 1 to =, can be remapped with Settings, and with this you can make the GWM toggle literally a keypress away. Jump is still Z, Crouch is still C, Throw is still X and Shove is still V, so leave these out for more assignable commands. This means you can control 3 characters as fast as most players control 1, once you get used to it. Please use this, for your own sake, and for the sake of the poor developer who made this great function that so many players don't know about.

This is great.
I'll try it.
Many thanks.

BTW this is not so unlikely a marriage as one might suppose - the medieval Tibetan Empire was a military culture of super- heavy ( mailed ) cataphract cavalry lancers ....... an interesting world of Buddhist monks, powerful fortress monasteries, arms and armourers and heavy armour, and centuries of martial exploits through Central Asia and into Tang Dynasty China, and through Nepal into India.