Dank Knight: A 2024 Monk build
Hey you! Do YOU wanna deal high mostly-resourceless single-target dpr? And you wanna do it in melee with like 17,5 AC? Boy have I got a build for you. Disclaimer: this build is pretty fucking boring to play. You just punch a lot.
Tech used: Consult the tech glossary on the following:
- Bite Critfishing
- Fighting Initiate Fighting Style dupe
- Unarmed Strike replacement stack
- Ghostlance sorta (really, just know how Echo works)
- Zhentarim Tactics free OA
Specie: Dhampir. 1d4+Con, here we come.
Feat: Alert.
Stats: 9 Str/15+2 Dex/13+1 Con/14 Wis/8 Int/13 Cha.
Fighter 1
We wanna start with Fighter for Con save prof.
Fighting Style: Unarmed Fighting. Extra 1d8, we'll take it.
Second Wind: More hit die, cool.
Weapon Mastery: Hand Crossbow, Dagger for Nick, and Sling for throwing Magic Stones a friend gives us.
Fighter 1/Monk 1
Watch that AC-- you've got enough damage to warrant going unarmored into melee (this build is stupid like that), but remember that 1 PC HP is worth more than 1 enemy HP.Martial Arts: Tavern
Brawler's Str and Dhampir's Con are now both Dex, and we get another
instance of Dex on top of that, and most importantly a BA attack. Our
dpr is now 2*0.65(1d4+1d8+3*Dex)=2*0.65(2,5+4,5+9)=20,8. It's not just
you-- I also can't believe the class fantasy of hitting hard in melee is
actually working.
The split gets weird from here, so feel free to consider whether to priorize Fighter, Lock or Monk.
Fighter 1/Monk 1/Lock 1
LotFO is fucking insane. Unseen Servant also chucks Oil for us, boosting our dpr even further.
Eldritch Invocations: Lessons of the First Ones (Tavern Brawler): pile on another 1d4+Dex. Fuck yeah.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Blade Ward, Your favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Unseen Servant, Armor of Agathys
Fighter 1/Monk 2/Lock 1
Monk's Focus: 2/SR, we get to delete something faster. We can now also run away better if needed.Unarmored movement: Neat, let's you (retches) close the gap more easily or (un-retches) kite better.
Uncanny Metabolism: 2 more punches. Whoop dee doo.
Dedicated Weapon: Hand Crossbow, I guess. Doesn't do anything for now.
Fighter 1/Elements 3/Lock 1
Deflect Attacks: We've got nothing better to do with our reaction so far, so sure. Not worth FP unless you need the target dead yesterday.
Elemental Attunement: Huge.
We get to circumvent resistance/immunity, participate in the Oil meta,
sometimes maybe actually kite a melee enemy with a combination of +10 ft
reach, Spider Climb and 45 ft movement, makes you better at cheese
grating enemies through Spike Growth, improves your rugby game, and
finally gives Repelling Blast but with a Str save that'll likely be
passed with that +2 Wis of ours.
Manipulate Elements: This
is useless unless we go by the Sil interpretation of shaping something
into an item making it that item. I couldn't find any tech with this
cantrip, sorry.
Ki-Fueled Attack: You
can now shoot with a Hand Xbow, Nick with a Dagger, then make a Hand
Xbow attack as a BA. Not exactly our main gameplan, but it's something.
Fighter 1/Elements 4/Lock 1
Feat: Grappler.
This generates Adv, gives +1 Dex to round that up, makes us better at
grating and rugby, and deals some chip damage in combination with
Unarmed Fighting's 1d4 to grappled creature benefit.
Quickened Healing: If you're somehow not out of FP when you SR, then you can get some HP as a treat.
Slow Fall: Neat.
Fighter 1/Elements 5/Lock 1
Extra Attack: Another punch. Yippee.
Stunning Strike: Note
its synergy with Net. You mostly wanna conserve FP for Elemental
Attunement and FoB, but this is worth writing on your sheet just in case
you need the Ki-Fueled Attack proc, Stun a (flying) creature and/or see
value in that half speed and Adv.
Focused Aim: If you miss by a little against a critical target, then this is enormously helpful.
For
a dpr break-down (I'm simplifying Grappler's Adv as just +0.5 acc,
which is a low-ball): sustained, we've got 3*0.7(1d4+1d8+1d4+Con+3*Dex) =
3*0.7(2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12): 49,35 dpr. We'll lazily add another 1 dpr from
Unarmed Fighting's 1d4 to grappled creature benefit.
then,
assuming 2 SR's, all our FP is spent on activating Elemental Attunement
1/SR, spending half our remaining FP (round up) on FoB and then the
other half (round down) on hitting with an attack which missed by 1 or
2, we've got 5+4*2=13 FP for these purposes, which over 40 rounds a day
works out to
(7*0,7(2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12))/40+(6*(2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12)/40=4,52375 dpr
Dmg for FoB is 0,7(2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12)=16,45 dmg and for Focused Aim (2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12)=23,5 dmg.
Fighter 2/Elements 5/Lock 1
Action Surge: 2*0.7(2,5+4,5+2,5+2+12)=32,9 dmg bomb 1/SR. Cool.
Tactical Mind: Not even deserving of a 'neat'.
Echo 3/Elements 5/Lock 1
Manifest Echo: Huge.
Firstly, we get to keep more distance, which helps our defense.
Secondly and more importantly, we get to deal big damage through
Opportunity Attacking: Elemental Attunement's push can cause the Echo to
proc the OA of yours. In other words, we just get another attack (at
the cost of turning our Deflect Attacks off).
Unleash Incarnation: 2/LR bomb, sure, I guess.
Echo 4/Elements 5/Lock 1
Note that you can forgo the feat now to trade it in with being better much later on.
Feat: Fighting Initiate (Unarmed Fighting): And another 1d8+Dex. Idc to do calcs anymore, you get the point: this build does a lot of damage.
Echo 4/Elements 5/Lock 2
Note that there are better origin feats, but I'm assuming another Lock has all of that covered.
Magical Cunning: Another spell slot. It's something.
Eldritch Invocations: LotFO
(Zhentarim Rhuffian). So without this, we deal, with Echo's OA,
0.7(2,5+4,5+2,5+4,5+2+16)=22,4 dpr. With this, we instead deal
0.7(0.25*2(2,5+2,5+3+4)+0.125*2(4,5*4+5+6+7+8)+2+12)=24,5 dpr, a 2,1 dpr
difference. We're just here to qualify for Zhentarim Tactics, which
will obviously be a big buff.
I'll ignore the extra dpr this contributes moving onwards due to being annoying to calc.
Eldritch Invocations: Eldritch
Mind. This is currently just decreasing the chance we drop conc on
Blade Ward (which is good enough on its own, honestly), this'll get more
and more important as we can Bard levels.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Blade Ward, Your favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Unseen Servant, Armor of Agathys, Detect Magic
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3
This is impatient, but Bard 1 and 2 are so fucking dead that I wanna get +4 dpr and Spike Growth.
Genie's Vessel: Lounge and damage. Neat.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Blade Ward, Your favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Unseen Servant, Armor of Agathys, Detect Magic
Lv 2: Spike Growth, Darkness
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Bard 1
Bardic Inspiration: We buff a singular save I guess.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second and third favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Comprehend Languages, Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Bard 2
We get no features.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second and third favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Comprehend Languages, Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word, Whatever the Fuck
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Dance 3
God damn, finally, I feel like I am getting levels!
Dazzling Footwork: Throw it onto the pile.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second and third favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Comprehend Languages, Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word, Whatever the Fuck
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Dance 4
Feat: Zhentarim
Tactics. Go punch us, fuck, see what it gets you. If you won't spend
significant time at lv 20, then increase Cha here instead of Dex,
because it's super important that we have another Bardic for our
upcoming Tandem Footwork feature. 4.5 Init for the whole party is just
so enormous.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second, third and fourth favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Comprehend Languages, Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Dance 5
Our
Bardic die is now 1d8, which is a small increase in dpr. Seriously
consider expending spell slots to regain Bardics, especially at next
level.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second, third and fourth favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word
Lv 3: Plant Growth, Fear, Cacophonic Shield (this spell normally sucks, but we're gonna be in melee anyway, so sure, more damage)
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 3/Dance 6
Inspiring Movement: Don't write this on your sheet.
Tandem Footwork: Excellent, amazing, everything we could want.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Your second, third and fourth favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Disguise Self, Longstrider, Healing Word
Lv 3: Plant Growth, Fear, Cacophonic Shield, Catnap (A
lot better than usual when you have SR slots for it soon, want as much
FP as possible and don't need to worry much about in-combat spells)
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 4/Dance 6
Feat, please.
Feat: Boon
of Fluid Forms. I haven't actually looked at this, but it's a
transformation effect, so it's probably the most broken thing we can
get. Otherwise, Combat Prowess is really strong, probably. Why are you
playing lv 19 5e, anyway?
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Blade Ward, Your favorite and fifth favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Unseen Servant, Armor of Agathys
Lv 2: Spike Growth, Darkness, I don't care
Echo 4/Elements 5/Dao 5/Dance 6
Yes, Bard's lv 4 spell list is so bad that this is optimal. Hell, I'd get another Monk rather over another Bard level.
Spellcasting:
Cantrip: Blade Ward, Your favorite and fifth favorite utility cantrip
Lv 1: Unseen Servant, Armor of Agathys
Lv 2: Spike Growth, Darkness, I don't care
Lv 3: Counterspell, Hunger of Hadar
Comments