Monk Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

We’ll cover everything you need to know to create your Monk. We’ll help you choose your monastic tradition, skills, ability scores, and other build options to prepare your monk. We’ll also look at famous examples of monks fantasy fiction, movies, television shows, and more to inspire your next character, and as well as roleplaying ideas to help develop your Monk’s background, personality, and martial tradition.

____________________________
Watch us play live Tuesdays 6-9 PM EDT on Twitch:

Join our Patreon community:

Get our custom t-shirts:

Pick up your next D&D book on Amazon using our affiliate links below to help support the channel:

[DungeonDudes]

As always, we'd love to hear about your favourite examples of Monks from fiction, games, and more!

[brandonribeirobr]

You guys should look into making videos of low level builds. It's all too often that I play a game that never makes it to the really big boy levels so to have a guide suggesting the most damage or best tank at level 4, 6, 8 or even 2 honestly could be really cool and helpful.
Just also wanted to say you guys do an amazing job and are definitely the best d&d channel I've seen.

[jordanhansen]

Ty Lee from Avatar The Last Airbender is a great example of a monk and offers some pretty great role-playing options if you choose to base a character off of her. Not to mention that if you compare the Base class abilities to what she does in the series then it can help you understand how this class functions. I think the best Ty Lee build would be to do a monk wood elf with an entertainer background.

[Syntheticbreed]

Dude I loved playing a Long Death monk. When I hit level 18, our DM brought in a nemesis from my characters backstory for a second time. I rolled second in initiative and on my turn, closed the 50ft distance and one shot this guy who was supposed to be one of the BBG's (big bad guys). You can put 1 to 10 ki points into Touch of the Long Death and it does 2d10 damager per ki point spent, giving it the potential to double the damage Quivering Palm would do if it doesn't reduce to 0. I actually ended up doing 160+ damage in one hit. When I declared I was pumping 10 ki points into it, our DM seemed intrigued. When I one shot the dude, he face palmed and was like, "God dammit, I had this awesome encounter planned out."

[NachoBran_CandyCabbage]

I remember about a week after Xanathar's guide came out some friends of mine invited me to a one-shot to test out some of the new subclasses and one of the characters was a 'outback' kensei monk named Liam. He talked with a really exaggerated Australian accent, wore short shorts, and used a whip and a bunch of boomerangs as his primary weapons. Because the kensei abilities, the boomerand did 2d4+3 damage, and the DM allowed him to use the whip as a rope and Indiana jones'd the party over a pit of spikes. It was a really cool character and a far step in the right direction away from the traditional monk.

[JosephJohnsonvenomwithin]

Multiclassing the monk into sorcerer and/or druid, warlock, etc makes for some awesome Mortal Kombat characters! Sub-zero is beast!

[ddesouz]

Kung Fu Hustle is a great martial arts movie with a d&d twist. Highly recommended!

[horizon]

This is a bit less usual, but if your DM allows it, the Ghostwise Halfling variant from SCAG gets +2 Dex and +1 Wis bonuses, and along with their halfling luck this makes them a great monk race choice. The telepathy adds a bit of flavor for role playing the stoic silent type of monk, as well.

[Chronopie]

Neo, from the Matrix trilogy. And his fight against the thousand Smiths in particular.


And you barely mentioned the unarmored movement! 10-30 feet extra per turn. Double the speed of anyone else. From level 9, physics become guidelines rather than rules. Liquids are just another surface, and gravity a suggestion. (Slow fall from level 4 helps too)

[Lobomaru]

Here's a really obscure Monk: Haschel from Legend of Dragoon. Where everybody else in the party has a weapon, he needs only his fists and his ancestral Rouge Martial Art. Dude brought down a huge stone door with one punch, and he's _old._ The man's pushing at least 60 and moves like a man a third his age.

[SAIMONch]

Honestly what I love most about monks is that they could be wearing nothing but a bedsheet, holding a torch in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other, and still be completely unhindered in kicking ass.

[polvotierno]

Another backstory for a monk is someone who was raised among the animals like Tarzan or the little boy in Jungle Book, Mowgli. They develop styles related to the animals that raised them.

[NarutoGeek]

One of my favorite against-type monks is the Scout from Team Fortress 2. If you think about it he can easily fit the role. He's very mobile, he's got the agility for a high-dex build, he's got a good bit of street smarts (wisdom), his baseball bat can be either a club or a quarterstaff for the purposes of monk weapons. His shotgun can be a reflavored version of the Burning hands offered by the Way of the Sun Soul's Searing Arc Strike, and his pistol a reflavored version of the subclass's Radiant Sun Bolt.

[jgr]

PC: "may I play an Aaracokra?"
DM: "of course! just don't forget that you may be taken down by Falling damage"

throws back arrows like a boss!

[luckyworm]

them: "grace, agility, unarmored combat styles"
me: *accidently hits a civilian in the face with my quarter staff*

[polvotierno]

Let's keep in mind that historically, there were martial monks in pretty much all cultures. There were spiritual warriors from Africa, the Ancient Americas, India, Middle East, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Hawaii, South Pacific and more. They had special physical training exercises to increase their abilities in martial situations. Many were led by a spirit who guided them to their path.

[BaldursPicketFence]

Ang from Avatar : the last air bender is an archetype of a monk I totally love....

[shawns.]

This was fun to watch! I'mm 32 and finally started to play D&D back in February. I went with a Drunken Master Monk, we're lvl4 and I'm loving it so far. He was exiled for a crime he didn't commit, was taken in by a monastery and learned from them, and found out that he's a hell of cook. But he started to drink, and found out as well he fights better while shit faced. He left the monastery because of the people that are hunting him, he doesn't want his fellow Monks mixed up in his past mistakes.

[EasyPhil]

"I would totally play a dwarven drunken master monk", I already am and she is one of my favorites to roleplay. My DM allowed me to replace "Dwarven combat training" with the "tavern brawler" feat (minus the stat increase) making her play a lot like Jackie Chan with the way she uses everything around her to defend herself. Ladders, benches, tables, glass bottles, quills, torches all weapons in her hands. She recently came across a talking racist dwarf skull (called Carter) tied it to a rope and uses it as an improvised meteor hammer (a Shaolin weapon which is basically a metal ball on the end of a long piece of rope).

She has the "Urban Bounty Hunter" backgound which she uses to get booze money. Her basic backstory is that after she left her monastery due to a tragedy, she turned to alcohol and did something to get her exiled from the stronghold. As she was begging to get money for booze, she got caught up in a tavern brawl and after knocking them out found that one of them had a bounty on his head and spent the lot on booze. Noticing this, the tavern owner struck a deal where he would give her info on bounties for a cut and she can use the rest on as much drink as she can handle.

I imagined the philosphy of the monastery she left as being a clan of dwarves that temper the steel Moradin crafted them from into axes that never dull and shields that never break. Strengthening thier bond with him through medetation, concentrating on their breath, the same kind of breath that Moradin used to cool their casts and give them life. However to those outside the clan there's a popular rumour about the clan founder that he was a failed mercenary that dropped every weapon he tried to use, so he eventually gave up and started punching things.

Also looking forward to getting the "Dwarven Fortitude" feat as that means I can use a hit die when I use a dodge action to heal adding my con mod to the roll, which, as a monk, you can use as the "patient defense" bonus action for the price of a single Ki point. Then maybe the "Durable" feat to boost the healing from the hit dice so the minimum roll you get from the hit dice is double your con modifier (which for me is +3 (although after the con bonuses from Dwarven fortitude and Durable would bring it up to a +4) so healing a minimum roll of 8 on a d8 so minimum 11 healing for a bonus action as well as imposing disadvantage on incoming attacks from patient defense) leading to a surprisingly tanky monk character.

[thegneech]

Dude! You talk about Volo's Guide and then forget tabaxi? Tabaxi are crazy-powerful monks. Their claws count as monk weapons, and when you combine Feline Agility with monk movement, you really do have a character who can literally just be anywhere on the map you want them to be. Tabaxi monks FTW!