1 Level Cleric Dip for Sun Soul Monk: Light or War?

[Spo]

In an Adventurer League game right now going through Decent into Avernus. At level 4 and thinking of playing a Sun Soul Monk with a 1 level cleric dip. The choices I am looking at are:

War Domain with domain spells of divine favor and shield of faith; bonus proficiency with martial weapons; War Priest when you use Attack action you can use one weapon attack as a bonus action.

Light Domain with domain spells of burning hands and faerie fire; bonus cantrip of light; Warding Flare when you attack, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack.

Which dip would you recommend?

ps: other party members include Moon Druid; Zealot Barbarian; Warlock; Paladin; and Cleric (don't know domain).

Thanks

[JNAProductions]

War Domain's bonus attack is largely useless-you already get a BA attack from Martial Arts.

Light Domain gets you a useful reaction, as well as Faerie Fire, which is baller.

[thoroughlyS]

I second the Light domain. It expands your options in more meaningful ways than the War domain.

[djreynolds]

Divine favor is great. But the war clerics goodies are wasted on a monk... aside from divine favor.

But IMO what about knowledge cleric. Seriously you have no brains in the party

Knowledge cleric. Just spam bless all the time.

Arcana and history.... with expertise.... could be very useful... even religion.

Religion and history are very much monk skills.

Good luck too you

[stoutstien]

Trickery can be a solid pick to cover down for H armor users. Depends on how much your party uses stealth.
Knowledge is nice as is forge (pass out a magical weapon is huge).

Nature can work for Wis focused builds but are fairly restricted.

[Foxhound438]

War... Lock

Okay, okay, I was kidding. Kind of.

[Scarytincan]

I'm gonna say war myself. Monks already have plenty to do with reactions, and spells like ff are gonna be less useful in hell where everything has magic resistance. Divine favor is baller on monk, and the bonus attack can be used with ranged weapons when u don't wanna spend the ki at range, or with magic weapons if u happen to get one. But did I mention divine favor? I feel like I should mention divine favor... On 4 attacks...

[HiveStriker]

In an Adventurer League game right now going through Decent into Avernus. At level 4 and thinking of playing a Sun Soul Monk with a 1 level cleric dip. The choices I am looking at are:

War Domain with domain spells of divine favor and shield of faith; bonus proficiency with martial weapons; War Priest when you use Attack action you can use one weapon attack as a bonus action.

Light Domain with domain spells of burning hands and faerie fire; bonus cantrip of light; Warding Flare when you attack, you can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on the attack.

Which dip would you recommend?

ps: other party members include Moon Druid; Zealot Barbarian; Warlock; Paladin; and Cleric (don't know domain).

Thanks
Hi!

There is no real choice here to be honest: War brings near nothing to the table, while 90% of Light is "new".

War brings...
a) Divine Favor: decent spell, but completely worthless for you as a Monk that will have only 2 slots for the whole day: you'd better Bless yourself and others (helps you hit, so helps Stunning Strike attempts, as well as Acrobatics / Athletics checks, same with two others)...
Or maybe use a Shield of Faith to off-tank or Sanctuary to escape.
Or maybe even replacing your healer in casting a Healing Words because it's better in initiative turns.
Or maybe, *maybe even* trying a Guiding Blot to help upcoming Paladin/Rogue to bring nova damage (okay, honestly, that's a big strech here, unless you're like all out of Ki and the only one that can generate advantage right now ^^).
In short, there are largely enough good spells from base Cleric to make Divine Favor simply unworthy (would be different if you actually had a decent slot pool, like lvl 5+ caster).

b) WIS mod per long day extra attack as bonus action: as far as melee attacks go, it will lose value VERY quickly. As soon as you hip Monk 5 it will amount to only 1 extra damage per round. Completely useless.
There is also the ranged thing: you could use this bonus attack action with a bow: but honestly, how often will that extra ranged attack make a real difference in how you help fastening the win? Especially since as you get more levels, so more Ki, more mobility, you'll want to focus on playing your strengh, aka get into melee range (and back ^^).
So that low-level boon will lose value and become a ribbon-like feature in the end.

c) Proficiencies: longbow is a nice touch, but shortbow is usually enough. Armors are wasted.

Light brings...
a) Burning Hands: see Divine Favor, except actually worse in that it falls off extremely quick. Unless you dip until level 3, basically a dead spell.

b) Faerie Fire: actually a pretty decent alternative to Bless for quite a bit of time (probably majority of your career), since it provides advantage on every attack from all allies, melee and ranged alike.
When facing tight groups of mobs and/or mobs where you expect this to have a high chance to land, it's largely worth the shot.
The other big value being denying invisibility benefits to a creature (it can happen to face such enemies, and without countermeasures, they can be a big pain to deal with).

And otherwise, like Divine Favor, you will have many other great spells to use those measly two slots on every day, every situation. So when that spell starts failing regularly because you face enemies with too high a save, and you decide to "retire it", at least you can reflect on the fact it helped you so much until that moment. :)

c) Warding Flare: can be compared, more or less, to the Defensive Duelist feat effect (reaction for defense against a single attack), with a comparative minus* (at high level worth a bit less than a flat +6) and a comparative (big) bonus (can negate a crit if opponent didn't have advantage, and at least negate an advantage).
The WIS mods a day is still annoying, but at least that's something that really complements your Monk arsenal (since usable against melee attacks too).
And considering that the number and lethality of enemy attacks increase regularly up to a very dangerous level, that ability to weaken risk of attack (or worse, crit) keeps very relevant.

* Also, Defensive Duelist works on any weapon attacks, but against ranged Attacks Monk already has better with Deflect Arrows so... ^^

Bonus point for Light: natural synergy of fluff with Sun Soul. :)

[diplomancer]

Mechanically, I don't think either dip is better than single class. If you do want it for flavor reasons, than basically go War if you want to up your offense, Light if you want to up your defense.

[AgenderArcee]

Divine Favor and War Priest are great, but not as much on a Sun Soul Monk, since they only apply to weapon attacks and Radiant Sun Bolt is a spell attack. You'll get more use out of Bless or Faerie Fire from Light, and Warding Flare is both useful and fitting.

[KorvinStarmast]

You'll get more use out of Bless or Faerie Fire from Light, and Warding Flare is both useful and fitting. Plus, it fits so much better thematically. :smallcool: