The Monk, some questions

[Calathes]

Hey everyone! I'm starting a new campaign soon and wanted to play a monk, first time for me. We start at level 5, the party contains a barbarian, ranger, Warlock, bard and mystic I believe so far.

And I have 2 questions;
1. Race. What race should I pick? Aarakocra is what I'm doing now but my other choices were variant human and ghastly halfling, any thoughts on those?

2. Open palm or shadow? I'm leaning towards open palm right now.

Also anything else on monks is appreciated!

[nickl_2000]

You are asking a difficult question to us without more information.

What are the focuses of the Ranger, Warlock, Bard, and Mystic? Will you have front line support already or will you have Ranged? The race you pick also has something to do with the Monk subclass you go into. A Halfling will limit your movement some, but will give you some other feature (like lucky, which has helped me more times than I ever considered possible).

Do you enjoy playing blasters or rogues better? Does you party need someone more roguish (it seems like it does)?




If you ask my opinion, I love the Shadow Monk subclass with a Lightfoot halfling. then you dip or go into Rogue and it's a killer class. However, that is the style I enjoy playing more.

[Calathes]

Ranger: has a pet focuses on using a bow
Bard: Support role I believe
Warlock: blasting
Mystic: not 100% sure right there, I know he is some kind of goblin or kobold I think he's more range?
Barbarian: rage, smash

That's as much as I know right now, we're having a session tonight, should know more.

[cloner4000]

Monk is a great skirmisher class. Pick up a shortbow and you can do range/melee attack and have lots of flexibility in any combat situations.

I played a shadow monk and really like the roguish aspect I get from it. You are great at sneaking you get pass without trace, minor illusion at lv3 which along with your high dex means you can replace the parties rogue regarding to sneak/lock picking. There are people that pick magic initiate to get minor illusions. Pick up a thieves tools from your background and you should be good to go as a rogue replacement. Not to mention the shadow step have both in and out of combat uses. As anakora with flying speed, pass without trace, and minor illusion there is not many places that you get sneak into.

Also open hand monk can try to knock people down as part of the flurry of blow, but as your party doesn't have a rogue and most are range? that is actually bad for them. Also barbarian already got reckless attacks. Their other abilities is also more tied to combat/self healing.

[jaappleton]

Ghostwise Halfling Shadow Monk

Your party lacks a Rogue type character. This fills it nicely.

Using Pass Without Trace enables you and others to scout, casting Silence can neutralize enemy mages (and prevents the Barbarian from making too much noise, or prevents enemy screams from drawing attention), and Darkness can help..... well, the Warlock, that's pretty much it.

But Stunning Strike will help everybody. Stunned enemies grant Advantage to attack rolls against them, while also preventing the enemy from doing anything.

Everyone appreciates a Monk.

And as a Ghostwise, you can telepathically tell your allies what you see from the shadows as you scout.

Plus.... I mean, don't you want the Barbarian to throw you into an enemy, you Stun it, then teleport away to the shadows as the Warlock blasts it without a Fireball (since a Stunned enemy would auto-fail the Dex save)?

[Arkhios]

Ghostwise Halfling Shadow Monk

Your party lacks a Rogue type character. This fills it nicely.

Using Pass Without Trace enables you and others to scout, casting Silence can neutralize enemy mages (and prevents the Barbarian from making too much noise, or prevents enemy screams from drawing attention), and Darkness can help..... well, the Warlock, that's pretty much it.

But Stunning Strike will help everybody. Stunned enemies grant Advantage to attack rolls against them, while also preventing the enemy from doing anything.

Everyone appreciates a Monk.

And as a Ghostwise, you can telepathically tell your allies what you see from the shadows as you scout.

Plus.... I mean, don't you want the Barbarian to throw you into an enemy, you Stun it, then teleport away to the shadows as the Warlock blasts it without a Fireball (since a Stunned enemy would auto-fail the Dex save)?

I cast my vote on this, as well.
If there's anything else Darkness can do to the benefit of your whole party, it's that you could potentially help the party escape/advance unnoticed by cutting out the line of sight, assuming your opponents can't see in magical darkness.