There is a lot of good content here so I thought I would add my 2c. For a lot of the posters I see the trend of comments and information about 4e monks trending toward… How do I make a OP 4e Monk. Well… if thats what you are seeking an answer for, I have played both Open hand and 4e separately through the game content in about 4 different variants each. It's my first contribution and post here so please take it easy on me.
I love min max builds… as I love mathematical challenges. Before I provide some build suggestions for OP 4e monk, Avatar junkies out there, let me start with some background “truths” before going into the build suggestions. FYI, I have always considered a 4e or any multi-class if labeled as such much have at least half their levels in Monk to be considered a Monk based multiclass. for example : Rogue 9, Monk 3 would not count nor would Fighter 4, Rogue 4, Monk 4.
Firstly
?If you wanna play monk to level 12 then Open Hand is always gonna be better DPS output on average and Burst as well but as far as winning encounters on both Solo Tacitician and Group play I have been able to finish nearly every encounter on Solo Tactician with 4e Monk as well as my Open Hand build that trivializes the game just not by as much margin. I can tell you for certain that having played both in co-op play not only did I enjoy my 4e build more than my open hand build but so did my other co-op party members. For that matter I enjoyed the 4e build more than any of my other dozen or so builds for my TAV or my optimized companion builds.
Secondly
And unfortunately, ?If you want to close the DPS gap (and yes you can Definitely do this despite some nay saying out there) you MUST multiclass your 4e monk. If your unwilling to do this then… stop here cause, its the only way both on my spreadsheets and in game. Just remember a dead enemy is a dead enemy. Yes, a burst assassin is a gonna do more alpha damage. But you don't get a single benefit for "overkilling" an opponent. Whether its a group encounter or Solo tactician, you wanna complete the fight kill X number of mobs in Y number of rounds. Thats my criteria, and of course in tactician solo you need to Survive them attacking back. There are test encounters in the game like Shar's temple or earlier in Act 1 or later in Act 3 that you can test your builds with a BASELINE using the criteria above to get an objective mathematical result. Besides, that build is less monk much less Avatar clone than Rogue multiclass. Some of the most prolific build publishers out there have stated as much and I am inclined to agree with them. I wanted to giver some DETAILED guidance on a 4e monk so this is gonna be a long read. I find many builds just don't explain enough so I wanted to provide more detail while still not going to much into itemization because that can get too far into spoiler territory sometimes.
?Thirdly
Your gonna need Tavern Brawler asap as your first feat. Usually at level 4, unless your multi-classed at level 1 and dipped early (which is a requirement almost as your gonna NEED heavy armour). And yes.. I know you can get heavy armour from a feat but I have tried that too, and I can tell you its NOT the way to go. We just get to few feats to burn on on heavy armour rather than using a level dip to accomplish this.
This means you will be level 5 total but level 4 monk when you get Tavern Brawler. Don’t wait any more than Level 5 (take a single level dip only before beginning your avatar/monk journey). If you wait longer then you will not enjoy it as there is a huge power spike with Tavern Brawler that if you miss taking this within the first 5 levels, you WILL regret it. This is less so for other monk subclasses but a HUGE issue for 4e monks.
Fourthly
?You need strength. A lot of strength. With equipment and some quest or game quest rewards that give strength bonuses you can get 20 plus strength easily or use them potions of giant strength. I don’t like using giant strength potions because I can’t use them with bloodlust potions. Blood lust potions last until a long rest so its easy to have enough for your whole game journey. The numbers just bear it out that Extra attack on kill from Bloodlust potions is > potion strength.
5) ?
You don’t need as much wisdom maybe like 10-12 max cause… sorry your gonna mostly be married to Fangs of the Fire snake which is NOT a spell in the BG3 game but counts as an unarmed attack. Its your bread and butter. End of story. It costs 1ki and is far better than the version in 5e pen and paper. 6. ?Along with being a high strength monk your gonna need dex… there are some gloves to can get your 18 dex that are earlier game-ish. Dex also controls initiative and saving throws against many spells etc.
Dump Charisma and Intelligence and use modest constitution because your gonna need both str and dex. This is a MAD build not a SAD Build so plan accordingly early on and be patient.
7) ?
Sorry again but if you want to min max 4e, I have tried using Strength potions and tavern brawler on a naked monk… it is not anywhere near as good for 4e than taking heavy armour with tavern brawler and high natural strength. There are a lot of ways to take heavy armour. So think Earth kingdom or Fire Kingdom bender where a lot of those characters in Avatar are wearing east Asian armour and have weapons and bend too. Don’t think Air or Water bending tribe. Heavy armour AC is just Always gonna crush unarmoured monk AC. It’s a huge difference on tactician but makes a difference at any difficulty, really.
8)
I got more bad news if you wanna try to climb to OP 4e monk. Your gonna need a shield (even more AC plus some nice bonus stats and spell effects) and wield a weapon and I Don’t mean staffs. This is because you will want to attack with a big damage one hander or versatile or even at times a light finesse weapon because depending on the situation you want to pull damage from different sources (like sneak attack) to get your damage cause a high damage one hander plus your strength modifier and attack bonus even though it won’t be doubled with Tavern Brawler, you will still get the flat damage modifier with your high strength stat.
9)
The weapon choices are very very numerous and so are the shield choices. Wanna do more damage than that?… well this is where, as everyone knows… rogue comes into play. Sneak attack is a great damage add for your non Ki-attacks. You get your weapon damage plus an ability modifier on the weapon, plus fire snake bonuses on any follow up attack whether that is another firesnake attack, bonus unarmed strike, on which that bonus damage will proc or flurry of blows follow ups, which adds Huge tavern brawler huge bonuses on hit as well as damage again from your uber strength because they are unarmed attacks.
Wanna save Ki? Just use a melee weapon attack with your normal actions which again, you can choose from any one handed weapon, versatile or finesse light weapon of choice your going to sneak attack with. It’s actually a lot of fun before each fight to have my “weapon selection” choices laid out… I get all the fun of collecting heavy armour, shield and weapon combos for different encounters types. When playing pure monk to 12 which I have done, I missed out on all the fun of itemization that I deeply enjoy with this build. The goal here is to develop high damage main hand attacks with or without the sneak attack as a heavy damage option and use them situationally and mix then into you Ki based attacks when you are in Ki conservation mode or when appropriate, burst with chained Ki strikes like 2 Fangs plus 2 flurrys using the second bonus attack from rogue you will gain at rogue level three when you get this from the thief subclass.
NOW.... I have tried ALL of them and I have my favorites but it really depends on your play style preferences. This is where the build suggestions , level by level, come in to ensure you have a good "journey at every part of the game in all 3 ACTs :
Level 1)
ya got choices here but you will need heavy armour from somewhere so… your choices are :
• ?Fighter 1 which eventually leads much later on to action surge at fighter 2 and all the other good stuff fighter offers later on if ya go that way. Its a good choice overall
• ?Cleric (Tempest) you can also mess with War Cleric , but I Prefer Tempest for Wrath of the Storm which while just an okay use of your bonus action does Double damage if the enemies are wet. Sort of very Water bender and Fire bender type combo (remember.. Lighting is considered an elevated form of Fire bending in the Avatar Lore) Wrath of the Storm as reaction attack can do DOUBLE lighting damage to wet opponents as a reaction using both Lighting (and use water and the wet condition to do the double the damage. 4d8 reaction action damage is nothing to sneer at when it does not use Ki, or an action or a bonus action to do. FYI, they take half damage regardless even if they make the saving throw. I am still working on an ICE version which would be sooo cool, I know it can be done but I am still working on this as well as electrified steam cloud double damage combo. (this one even the Avatar series did not include in their lore...but should have!) For now...Water and Lightening combo bending attack- watch my kungfu! Remember here... usually Wet can also spread to everything that is wet should can add shock damage to multiple enemies in a huge water patch. It also screws of enemy pathing and movement as the AI will get confused... as they should... I would be confused to if everywhere I steps I got shocked. That means it helps greatly with survivability.
Plus ya get spells. 2 slots which you can use for self buffs like shield, bless, sanctuary (which is not available to open hand until level 11!) not to mention cantrips like blade ward, and resistance that take no spell slots to cast. Note here the aforementioned war priest gets divine favor which is an offensive bonus damage buff and potentially makes it also a good choice as war priest charges also allow you to do nifty things with turning bonus actions into main attacks. I still prefer Tempest Cleric over War. But they are both good options.
Level 2)
Monk 1 - the usual
Level 3)
Monk 2 - the usual
Level 4)
Monk 3 and this is where we go 4 elements monk as our subclass and by now we already have deflect missles which is okay … but we are here for Fangs of the fire snake. Like I mentioned before… this is our bread and butter.
We are building our monk partially with this PLUS our one handed melee weapon non-ki attacks for ki management. For my other two attacks, I choose water whip and fist of unbroken air. They are good for push and pull mechanics situationally but cost too much ki to use at this point unless your pushing or pulling a mob into am damage field or off a cliff -good a little later when we have more Ki to work with but always situational. Otherwise, it Fangs followed by Flurry for high ki dmg spike or unarmed bonus attack which adds fangs fire dmg bonus and after level 4 monk coming very soon, add tavern brawler bonuses if you wanna use less ki or melee attack route and later on in levels with rogue sneak attack for non-ki related more than respectable damage once you get your melee weapons you like best, depending on what weapons are available at your level and part of the game you have reached at this point. The options are many here.
Level 5)
Monk 4 and now we get the Tavern Brawler feat which makes it all come together. You get DOUBLE your attack to hit bonus from your strength modifier and to Damage. That is like +10 to hit and +10 to damage for every single one of your attacks. It very nearly game unbalancing, you will almost never miss even if attacking with disadvantage now AND you hit like a truck every time you land which is nearly every attack you launch. Even your one-handed attacks which don't get tavern brawler still get your flat strength bonus modifiers.
Level 6)
Monk 5 now you get extra attack and with it, Another Huge dmg spike,.... two levels in a row and at this point your loving life now cause now your really hurting the mobs as much as any other build out there. And with Harmony of fire and water, that you got at level 3, you finally have a decent amount of Ki as restoring half of it with this while not in combat is gonna be very helpful. This is even more especially since your ki comes all back to you on a short rest. If you have a bard in your party you get 3 short rests between long rests and you get to use harmony of fire and water too and if you add the ki restoring amulet at the late part of act 1, your gonna feel really really good about yourself.
Use that ki for fangs, flurry, which get fire bonus plus tavern brawler bonus, and you have 2 actions and one bonus action that if you go flurry with your bonus action your getting 2 attacks rather than the one bonus unarmed strike. Add haste and now it becomes 3 attacks and one bonus attack which you can use flurry to turn into 2 attacks with that one bonus attack. Add the Bloodlust potion and now its 4 attacks and 1 bonus action...at level 6. Even if you don't consider this OP, it is very strong. Wanna save ki… just use your melee attack in there from time to time instead. remember your also getting a reaction attach from the tempest cleric lighting double damaged when wet, Wrath of the storm reaction attack as well when someone attacks you. I wish I could figure out how to make this proc an ice attack from an item when it procs so the enemies get that double damage from lighting and then the water turn to ice on the ground making them fall down prone but... still working on that as I said. -there are ways to be immune myself from slipping on ice.
Level 7)
This is a time for tough choices for our Monk. Do we take MOnk 6? or Rogue 1? or if you went fighter at level 1 instead of cleric at level 1 …is it Fighter 2 for action surge? What should you do?
I am writing this as more of a leveling guide rather than an OP end game build that comes online when it too late to have any fun in the game. Whats the difference you say? Well you want to feel good as you play the game and not be miserable for large portions of the Leveling experience because of a poor leveling strategy. I have outline some choices below... but you choose because I also want to provide something with flexibility for those who have different personal preferences in play styles.
At Level 6 monk, you “some good things” but a big power spike it is decidedly not. Remember you have just come from level 4 and 5 of monk where both were great power spikes. Its gonna feel like coming down from a sugar high at this point. Taking level 6 monk gives you 1 additional ki point for a total of 7 ki points…thats good, but hardly a game changing experience. Unarmoured movement? well this doesn’t apply as we are wearing armour.
The big thing here SHOULD have been our 4e spells but they are all really useless (I really have to agree with everyone who ever struggled with the 4e monk here - the other abilities COST TOO MUCH KI). I mean 3ki plus and an action point for what???!! terrible spells? with terrible ki resource economy? Meanwhile, Open Hand monks get awesome bonus damage and at this point pulls ahead of the 4e monks if we take level 6 monk here because their manifestations are zero cost passives that add huge damage if they have a high wisdom modifier, though a lot of open hand monks don’t have 18 plus wisdom to use for that build.
Anyway… open hand monks are gonna be feeling really really good now. I know that I did at this point with my parallel open hand monk build which I split off a save game string at this point. Oh and they also get Wholeness of body which is decidedly better than our ki restoration skill, Harmony. Oh and by the way it gives them a free bonus action for 3 freaking turns. How do we match this???
Heck, even Way of shadow gets shadow step which costs only a bonus action and no ki, which is a teleport and stealth and it gives your next attack advantage all rolled into one move. Man I gotta tell you on my first play through as I just mentioned, this is where I respected into way of the open hand just to play around with it and decided to complete a parallel playthrough from here because they were getting just a huge power spike here.
Anyway...Back to 4e monk Avatar build…We do get ki empowered strikes here just like the other monk sub classes which at least helps us bypass resistances against our unarmed strikes. but is it really worth it here?? I mean we are gonna take this monk level eventually, but do we take it now?? Its a hard pill to swallow. if we do take monk here then we can’t get our bonus action till we have three rogue levels and by then we are character level 10. If we go rogue now however, we get sneak attack now and in 2 more levels we get fast hands and our extra bonus action all by character level 9, remember we are using unarmed strikes less than other traditional 4e builds because we are leaning into sneak attack to develop our one-=handed melee weapons attack string to help with our Ki management. Believe it or not, with the right equipment, I can sometimes do even more damage with that non-ki attack string than by Ki-intensive monk attack string.
If we took fighter 1 instead of cleric then here we could take Fighter 2? for action surge which is good but only once per short rest. Still pretty good as it renews on short rest. decisions decisions…
Well I tried them all… I went rogue has its advantages help me close the distance with Open hand. Remember Open hand here gets 1d4 plus bonuse damage wisdom modifier but they get this to dmg not to hit. Also, with 12 wisdom that is just plus 1. Even if your wisdom is 14 that is just plus 2 for a total of 1d4 plus 2. At 16 wisdom it begins to really impressive. On the other handed, comparatively, with our fangs of the fire snake we get that 1d4 added like open hand’s manifestations but way earlier than them. But how do we make up the other bonus damage difference that open hands gets here? Well… rogue gets sneak attack at level 1 as I mentioned. Well, 1d6 is pretty good because though it can only be used with finesse weapon, there a lot of those weapons out there that you can choose from that are gonna have this property. Even some big longswords and spears have this. Whats more… while you don’t get the tavern brawler bonus you DO get that flat Strength modifier to this attack and dmg, even though its a finesse weapon. And with super high strength, which we have, we are gonna get that bonus which is still significant, and we get to also use RANGED sneak attack and if your using titan string…. (Kaboom)! I would say, we are doing really good here.
Sneak attack also scales to 2d6 at level 3 while manifestation does not. Its less bursty but more flexible and more consistent as our regular one-handed melee sneak attacks land for more damage and since sneak attack requires, we have advantage when we do them they land more often. There are SOOO many ways to get sneak attack nearly every turn... I can't go into them here as this guide is already ridiculously long, try going to a rogue sneak attack guide to get those suggestions. We also get expertise which doubles our proficiency in 2 skills we are proficient in. not too shabby for our FIRST level dip of rogue. Does this pull us even with open hand?… well not exactly but we are definitely keeping up, albeit in a slightly different way…
Both options for one more level of monk and shifting to rogue or just going rogue here and now… are good. I went rogue and really did not miss the extra one ki point but not having magical unarmed attacks until later did make some difference but since we are using melee weapons it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Your choice here. But for pure dmg output rogue is the better choice here if you wanna keep up level by level with Open hand. But if your going rogue now, then we are making a straight sprint to Get fast hands from our thief subclass at level 3 rogue. No more details or going back to Monk until we get all three levels of rogue. Cunning action at level 2 rogue on our journey to level 3 thief is also good as we can move more without the ki drain from step of the wind dash, even though we don’t get to jump free afterwards.
Level 8)
Monk 5 cleric 1 rogue 2
cunning dash etc… (sorry not every level can be a power spike)
Level 9)
Monk 5 cleric 1 rogue 3
POWERSPIKE! lol
This is where it gets really good. and we get our next power spike and that yummy second bonus action we get every turn is just wonderous. 2 attacks, 2 bonus actions, AND our reaction which can trigger every turn if someone attacks us from our tempest cleric passive along with sneak attack damage now which is boosted at this level to 2D6 rather than 1D6 at level 1 rogue, which are bonuses on our ranged sneak attack as well as melee weapon attacks! This means we can burst as well as Open hand no doubt. At least in my testing it proved to be roughly equivalent.
Only one problem here… if we do our max burst which would be 2 fangs, 2 flurrys it will eat through more than 2/3 of our ki in a single turn. yikes. The alternative? well its 2 one-handed melee attacks (first of which in a round is enhanced by sneak attack) and 2 unarmed strikes all of which take Zero ki and with sneak attack is alos very good damage or mix them up for perhaps more sustainable dmg with good ki management.
Level 10)
Cleric 1 Monk 6 rogue 3
We get our 7th Ki point and our unarmed strikes are now magical. We get new spells?…. yes but they all are horrible for Ki management (please Larian, do something) well you heard about this before… functionally useless extra spells, so we are sticking with the originals. fangs and water whip and fist of unbroken air. Its almost as bad at level 9 for us too as the ones we WANT to get power boosts for don't get them like our fangs. With Water whip being the ONLY one that is a useful power getting a power boost. Not enough value to shoot for that later... sorry there is always some bad news.
Level 11)
Cleric 1 Monk 7 rogue 3
8 ki points and now I am starting to feel better again about my ki economy catching up with my action and bonus action economy.
That is….Until I use haste and of course and we can't forget about blood lust potions proccing extra attack on kills. With both haste and extra attack from our blood lust potion we have a total of 4 actions and 2 bonus actions. However, If we use fangs 4 times and flurry twice we have spent a total of 6 ki hitting our enemies 8 times cause flurry hits twice each time. But we are now using 3/4 of our ki in a single turn.
yikes again. Same advice applies here …. mix it up with Sneak attack opening with one-handed melee weapon attack to manage your ki. Harmony, plus amulet and short rest recovery should make you good for long battles or several mid-size encounters before a long rest is necessary.
That is assuming blood lust only triggers once a turn which I will tell you I often trigger it 2 times a turn. If that happens, I empty my ki bar in a single turn for 5 fangs, 2 flurries for one mythical burst round dealing :
5d6 plus 5d10 plus 4d4 fire dmg plus 50 from tavern brawler all just from fangs which is NOT a spell and counts as an unarmed attack,
Plus an additional 4d6 plus 40 from tavern brawler again on our follow up flurries and again plus 4d4 from fire dmg bonus assuming that we are hasted and blood lust triggering twice.
For a max cap of 226 dmg in a turn. Thats pretty nice when not even counting equipment bonus dmg effects or crits. (numbers can get upto 300 a turn with the right equipment and buffs) But after going super nova, I am spent.
The good news?…. if you mix it up with sneak attack plus rare weapon damage plus flat strength dmg modifier and a bunch of unarmed strikes using the same 5 attacks and two bonus actions, at Zero ki spent here as mentioned before. Mixing up here and there I can stretch this out to about 2 encounters with heavy dmg then harmony or short rest…. many times my bards and casters and paladins run out of spell slots before I run out of burst dmg rounds before having to long rest….all the while looking waaaaaaaay better and more stylish than other monks subclasses… haha
level 12 - Cleric 1 Monk 8 rogue 3 ?? or Cleric 1 Monk 7 rogue 4 ?? or fighter 1 monk 7 rogue 4? or Fighter 2, rogue 3 monk 7 for action surge but we lose our second feat.
Again we are sort of at another conundrum.
This level could give us 9 ki points and… a feat. for the feat we also have a lot of choices… dual wield won’t work for us that well. we don’t have two weapon fighting which would make it work and only really then for our melee rogue chain attack. though we can add one fangs to get the fire dmg bonus to even that chain. unless, instead of cleric, we took fighter for our first level. But tempest cleric is just so good with all its buffs and wet status lighting reaction dmg shenanigans and sanctuary at level 1… To put this in context ….open hand gets tranquility once only per long rest at level 11 (omg). Very useless for them but very useful for us because we got it at level 1. which makes it more useful…..or perhaps we could take savage attacker… it only works on our weapon attacks but we are doing lots of those and with sneak attack and savage attacker with all the rest of bonuses stacked in our non-ki melee weapon attack chain….its a very very good feeling….but we get this at level 12… which is end game… would have been way more useful earlier in the game. we could get our second feat earlier by going rogue 4 but we lose a level of monk to do that. Nope I don’t like that one.
Savage attacker for every melee weapon attack is more consistent than action surge once per short rest. If we go monk 8 and rogue 4 we get 3 feats but to get our heavy armour in this way…we would have to burn one of those feats for heavy armour which we get as a part of a level one dip in the beginning and we are back where we started with 2 feats anyway. plus…we would lose all our tempest cleric goodness and rogue 4 doesn't give us much as we don’t get 3d6 sneak attack boost until rogue 5. so the most viable build is still really Cleric 1 Monk 8 rogue 3 or fighter 1 monk 8 rogue 3 or fighter 2, monk 6 rogue 4. This last one gives you action surge, 2 feats used for tavern brawler and savage attacker or dual wield with two weapon fighting utilizing finesse weapons for sneak attack. However, thats gonna leave us with only 7 ki points to work with rather than 9ki points. ouch… I am pretty sure that action surge even coupled with dual wield and two weapon fighting is still less reliable than have 9 ki points to draw from plus savage attacker on every main hand melee swing with Tavern brawler for our unarmed attack follow ups ….as at least these leave our bonus actions available for unarmed attack or flurries. Dual wield and your bonus attacks get absorbed there instead.
But here is where the heavy armour strength 4e monk has some options that others don’t. With the many heavy armour choices and being able to use martial weapons proficiency from the tempest cleric level we have lot of weapons, shield and armour bonus dmg and spell effects on those Armours that normal monks don’t have. Yes we lose some movement for wearing heavy armour and using a shield but if you know anything about movement enhancing items and potions this is NOT much of a limitation especially with the rogue subclass movement enhancements and HUGE leaping capabilities for having high strength and items.
And... Did I mention we look cool while doing all this?? I mean Soooo cool. My Open hand can be built the same way but while its MAAAybe a little stronger it is nowhere near as stylish while burning, electrocuting, pushing with booming air fists off cliffs, and yanking with water whip tentacles, into damage fields as the 4e Avatar... that does not have an earth type attack... so should really be called a 3e monk. Well... I guess we still need to train more to get that black belt in earth bending in a DLC later... here is hoping Larian helps us in the future with completing our Avatar training.
