Monk Questions & Spell Interactions?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all, I had a few questions about the Monk class as after almost 25 years of playing D&D I haven't ever played one.

1) Can you use monk weapons with Flurry of Blows?
2) Is a Shadow Blade formed by the spell a monk weapon, it counts as a simple melee weapon with the Finesse keyword so I think it does fit the requirements. But I wanted to make sure?

[Grimmnist]

1) Flurry of Blow allows you to make 2 unarmed attacks with your bonus action whenever you take the Attack action. So what type of weapons you wield on your attack action won't effect your ability to perform Flurry (note the Martial Arts feature that gives one unarmed strike as a bonus action does require you to be wielding Monk weapons).

2) Monks weapons are "shortswords and any simple melee weapon that don't have the two-handed or heavy property." So since Shadowblade is a simple melee weapon it is a Monk weapon.

[Citadel97501]

I had another question or 2 on monks mainly on their bonus action attacks?

3) If you have less than 5 levels of monk, and use your Action to make a shove action, do you get to attack with Flurry of Blows still? This seems to work but I wanted to make sure.

4) Am I reading it correctly that you can't sacrifice your bonus action attacks to make additional or initial shove actions?

[Palfatreos]

yet to both 3 and 4

[Vogie]

Tangentially related:

You can use one of your flurry of blows attacks, or your free bonus action unarmed attack, to shove or grapple your target, which other classes have to pick up Tavern Brawler (or Shield Master) to do.

[DeTess]

Tangentially related:

You can use one of your flurry of blows attacks, or your free bonus action unarmed attack, to shove or grapple your target, which other classes have to pick up Tavern Brawler (or Shield Master) to do.


Where does it say you can do this? Generally grapple and shove require you to take the attack action, which the monk martial arts bonus action or flurry of blows isn't.

[rlc]

Tangentially related:

You can use one of your flurry of blows attacks, or your free bonus action unarmed attack, to shove or grapple your target, which other classes have to pick up Tavern Brawler (or Shield Master) to do.


This sounds like a house rule, but as long as you don't try grappling more than one target before you get extra attack, the order of doing things isn't that important.

[Vogie]

Where does it say you can do this? Generally grapple and shove require you to take the attack action, which the monk martial arts bonus action or flurry of blows isn't.

They are all attacks granted by those are still attacks, and are only available if you took the attack action.

In general, though, you won't do this - If you're going to shove or grapple, you want to do that first, so you have advantage on the rest of the attacks that turn.

[DeTess]

They are all attacks granted by those are still attacks, and are only available if you took the attack action.

In general, though, you won't do this - If you're going to shove or grapple, you want to do that first, so you have advantage on the rest of the attacks that turn.

The bonus action attacks are not attacks granted by the attack action and therefore can't be used to shove or grapple. You can only take the bonus action attack if you've already taken the attack action, but they are not the same as taking the attack action. Otherwise I could use the same logic to have my shieldmaster grapple as a bonus action, or use tavern brawler to shove.

[JackPhoenix]

They are all attacks granted by those are still attacks, and are only available if you took the attack action.

In general, though, you won't do this - If you're going to shove or grapple, you want to do that first, so you have advantage on the rest of the attacks that turn.

When you get bonus action (you don't have any BA available by default), it tells you exactly what you can do with it. You can't use it for anything else. You can only use Flurry of Blows to make two unarmed attacks. Not shoves, not grapples, not attacks with weapons.