LumenPlacidum
2021-03-17, 08:22 PM
Breaking Face
A Guide to Heavyweight Monks
The monk in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is a puzzle. It can be difficult to include the class as an ingredient in a build because the ki mechanic is sticky. Ki makes it so that, whatever the ability was that made you think monk was good for you, if you just keep going in monk, then you'll be able to use that option more regularly. I see people talking about how monks can Flurry of Blows at level 5, and they can use Stunning Strike with every attack, and gosh! how many Constitution saving throws does Mr. Baddy have to make? See how effective we are? Not really. You just laid out all five of your ki points in one round. Now... you're a generic martial character with poor AC. You'll have a bonus action attack, but that's no different to anyone using Polearm Master, Dual Weapon Fighting, or the like, and your damage dice are almost always worse than other martials!
I posit that dumping a lot of ki points all at once is a luxury, and not a build goal. Yes, if you're fighting the big bad mage at the end of the campaign, then maybe it's worth forcing them to make a pile of Constitution saving throws or be stunned, since the stunning is likely to get your team a free turn, which has a solid chance of just letting you win you the fight. But, only if they don't have support. I'm going to support a different tack in this guide. It's something that makes the monk less MAD (one of the common complaints about it) and opens up some multiclassing options that didn't really exist prior -- namely, building for Strength and wearing armor. I am going to use the term featherweight monk to refer to the unarmored, Dexterity-based monk, and I'll use the term heavyweight monk to refer to the fully-armored, Strength-based monk.
Color Scheme: Bad, Pretty Bad, Okay, Good, and Excellent!
Class Features
Multiclassing - I think it should be mentioned that I do not typically suggest going full monk, especially if you are going to deny one of the core assumptions of the class. Mixing in some secret sauce from other classes that are designed to allow for this different play style will make the character stronger. However, I am going to be building for primarily monk. There is little reason to go above level 14. Maybe an Astral Self monk might be tempted by their subclass capstone at 17, but there's always a little room for multiclassing.
Unarmored Defense - Unarmored Defense is something of a trap. It requires a huge investment of character build to get both Dexterity and Wisdom to high levels. The best armor class you can reliably start with as a light monk is 16, which is barely sufficient for a melee character. Many classes can start with chain mail, which offers the same, but with no investiture of ability scores at all. You're probably thinking "No! There's a Strength requirement for that heavy armor." Yes, there is. And, I would suggest getting Strength to compensate for that. However, I also want to point out what it means to not have that Strength: You lose 10 feet of movement. Now, this is bad! Movement is clutch for melee characters to get stuck-in. But, it's not exactly world-ending. Besides, getting 13 or 15 Strength is much easier than getting 16 Dex and 16 Wis to get comparable AC at level 1. And, there are far more abilities that support improving AC when you have AC-providing equipment than when you do not. Moreover, a lot of those options that work when you don't have armor also work when you do.
The reason why I've made this ability orange instead of red is that it is pretty commonplace to have moments when you are without your armor. If your party is ambushed at night, you might be naked. So, this feature will sometimes add a little bit to your AC.
Martial Arts - In choosing to wear armor, we lose this feature. For many monks, this is the reason they took the class! The primary benefit of this is a bonus action attack that adds an ability score to the damage. We give that up. This makes the heavyweight monk significantly more free in terms of bonus actions than a typical monk, who is likely to spend turn after turn making bonus unarmed strike attacks, one at a time. In addition to losing the bonus action attack, we are going to be losing the ability to use Dex for our attacks (whatever), but also we're downgrading our unarmed strikes to 1 damage each! We do not intend to completely ignore unarmed strikes, although... you could! The ability to Dodge as a bonus action using ki is a pretty solid use of a bonus action if you're fighting a tough opponent. But, I will assume that we still intend to do some punching, kicking, and breaking faces with our bare hands. As a result, you are going to want another way to re-introduce an unarmed strike die, either with a race choice or with the Unarmed Fighting style. What's really sad is that, even if you only get a d4 from a race, that's not really that far behind the Martial Arts die for most of the character's career...
Once again, I've made this orange instead of red. You might not always be in your armor and be carrying weapons. If a fight breaks out in a party when you were dressed in your tux or gown and without a weapon, then this ability comes back into play.
Unarmored Movement - I feel the loss of this ability most of all. It hurts being slower! The lack of movement speed changes the role of the character from a hit-and-run skirmishing character to a get-stuck-in brute/tank. That's ok, you'll have the AC to handle that.
It's unclear whether or not the ability to run up walls and over water at 9th level is denied by wearing armor. I'd interpret that it is not, but you should ask your DM.
Ki - This is the true power of the monk. Successfully building a monk depends on finding cost-effective uses of your ki points! You start out with not many of them. If you've built for cost-effective options, then you will find that later monk levels give you plenty of ki points. If you want to bleed four ki points every turn with stuns and flurries and whatever, then you're never going to have enough! I think spending one ki point a turn for fights that look like they need it is not a waste. You'll run out fast at early levels, but at early levels you are essentially going to be hitting as hard as most martials anyway.
It should be mentioned that Flurry of Blows does not require that you be unarmored. With this, we mitigate the pain of losing the bonus action attack from Martial Arts, and we smile because when we're using this, we're just going to be better than a featherweight monk. The point becomes arguable at much later levels, when the Martial Arts die catches up with many weapon dice.
Never discount Patient Defense! If you are surrounded by foes and you have a very solid AC, the ability to impose disadvantage is amazing! If you go with a Barbarian dip, then this can be used to mitigate the problem of using Reckless Attack, but that's probably not necessary.
Step of the Wind - is fine. There are going to be some options that will lessen the importance of this, but this is a fine way to be able to close the distance, which is a weakness of the heavyweight monk (no Unarmored Speed boost, remember?). You might consider that it's not worth spending a ki point to close with an enemy. I'm going to point out that once you have Extra Attack, that ki point to Dash as a bonus action is going to get you your 2 attacks with a greatsword or whatever. If you're comfortable using a ki point to get 2 attacks with your unarmed strikes via Flurry, then you must recognize that doing so for greatsword damage is just better, right?
Dedicated Weapon - You will probably never use this optional feature. When you don't have your armor, making this relevant, you'll frequently not have your weapons either. For some subclasses, they will combine this with Ki-Fueled attack and it becomes pretty decent.
Deflect Missiles is circumstantial, but can be okay unless you have some other way to use your reaction. Don't throw the weapon back unless you DM rules that you can use Strength to do so.
Ki-Fueled Attack - This feature is good in concert with Focused Aim below. It can become a vital component of a monk build when using elemental disciplines from Way of the Four Elements or blasts of ki energy with Way of the Sun Soul (anything that lets you use ki as part of your Action not being the Attack action).
Slow Fall - It probably won't come up often, but it's pretty useful when it does.
Quickened Healing - God help you if this is looking appealing. It's no worse for a heavyweight than for a featherweight, but it's still pretty bad.
Extra Attack - Of course, attacks are the bread and butter of martial characters, and you're no exception. This is even better for you than for other monks because you're going to be making better use of your Attack action attacks than most monks will due to the fact that you're very sensibly attacking with a weapon!
Stunning Strike - You aren't going to be making a lot of use for this extremely ki-hungry ability. Nevertheless, this can be used whether you're punching someone in the gut or cleaving with a greataxe. You may have sacrificed some Wisdom for the sake of multiclassing. If not, then this is better.
Focused Aim - Missing sucks. Rather than taking the shotgun approach of most monks, which is to attack 4 times and just accept that only two are going to hit, you can hit way more often with this ability. Now, this ability is also extremely ki-hungry! It's worse than Stunning Strike in that regard! Or... is it? Spending the ki point with Stunning Strike gives you the chance that your target will be stunned. You get to see exactly what the cost and effect will be when you use Focused Aim. You attack a foe, getting a 17 and missing. You are pretty confident that if you add a ki point to get +2 to-hit, you'll hit. Well, then you should probably do that! If you're not sure, then don't do it! Accuracy is one of the main factors affecting damage output! People seriously downplay it a lot. For tiers I and II, you are typically cutting your expected damage in half when you account for accuracy! It becomes less of a problem in later levels.
Once you have this ability, it is very likely that the best decision-tree on your turn is to make the Attack action, getting two attacks with a weapon. If you miss with either attack, and you believe yourself to be 1 ki-point away from hitting, then you should spend 1 ki point on Focused Aim to hit with that weapon attack. Then, because yo uspent a ki point as part of your action, you get to use Ki-Fueled Attack to get a free attack with unarmed strike or with a monk weapon (which could be a Versatile Longsword for 1d10!). If you miss by more than that, Flurry of Blows. If you hit? Flurry of Blows. But, the option to get a partial flurry in with Ki-Fueled Attack and Focused Aim is effective!
Ki-Empowered Strikes - Yes please, and let's hopefully always do full damage.
Evasion - You aren't going to be passing Dex saves a lot, but you don't really need to! You take half damage regardless, which is what everyone else in your party who passes the save is taking! Good show!
Stillness of Mind - People seem to tout abilities like this a lot, and maybe they're playing different games than me. I almost never see this sort of thing come up. Still, I guess it's useful if you need it.
Purity of Body - Immunities are nice. Now I guess you could poison your weapons and not have to worry as much about harming yourself, but that's probably a waste of gold.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon - It's an interesting ribbon, but ribbons after a 13-level investment feel kinda bad, no?
Diamond Soul - Wow, this is good! If you're taking monk up to a high level, this ability is probably why! Otherwise, you'd secure a reasonable amount of ki and bail.
Timeless Body - Just about the only purpose of this, mechanically, is to make a ghost's ability to age you irrelevant. It's the kind of ability that would matter immensely to the character and not very much to the player.
Empty Body - This is pretty great. It's essentially a Concentration-less greater invisibility that also gives you the damage resistance akin to a Bear-totem Barbarian. It would be sky blue if it happened before 18th level.
Perfect Self - What did you do! Why are you rolling initiative after having spent TWENTY ki points or more already today?! You've done something wrong.
The big picture of the class abilities is that it's great to get to level 5 Monk. Going a little more for more reliable use of ki powers is probably a good idea depending on your subclass. So, for the heavyweight monk, I think I'd identify levels 5 (extra attack, focused aim), 6 (subclass feature, ki-empowered strikes), 8 (asi), 11 (subclass feature), or 14 (diamond soul) as the multiclass breakpoints. Most of the time, I'm going to go to level 8 or 11, securing a solid foundation in ki points and not diving into the several-level gulf that leads to Diamond Soul.
Subclasses
Not all of the monk subclasses are going to match well with the heavyweight monk playstyle, but you might be surprised to discover which ones are better and which ones are worse.
Way of the Astral Self
One of the key points of this subclass is that it grants you the ability to use Wisdom for Strength stuff and for Unarmed Strikes. This interacts with the rules for armor proficiency in an interesting way. The rules allow anyone to wear armor. All that happens if you wear armor with which you are not proficient is that you have disadvantage on Strength checks and saves (which just became Wisdom-based for you...), disadvantage on Dexterity checks and saves (you're dumping Dexterity anyway, and you eventually get Evasion to mitigate failing Dex saves), disadvantage on Strength-based or Dexterity-based attack rolls (you're using Wisdom now...) and you cannot cast spells (which you don't). This means that a Way of the Astral Self monk has no significant penalty for wearing armor with which it is not proficient beyond those imposed by the lack of a Martial Arts die. Now, it might not strictly-speaking be Strength-based, but such a character would have more in common with a heavyweight monk than a featherweight monk! You would need to select a race that will give you a damage die (see the Races section below), and maybe one that will get around the fact that you probably don't have the Strength for your armor (so, dwarf or something that starts with a faster movement speed in the first place).
The end result of this is that you actually don't need to multiclass to be a heavyweight Astral monk. However! You have made all of the sacrifices to be a heavyweight monk and you have gotten none of the benefits other than being SAD. You are likely going to be making four attacks with a 1d4 or 1d6 attack die (maybe 1d8 if you take the Unarmed Fighting style). It... could be good.
However, I would still choose to multiclass. I'd probably take one level of Cleric. Choosing the War domain would get you the Divine Favor spell, which boosts your damage reasonably well.
Arms of the Astral Self - Obviously, this is the key reason to take this subclass--you are now SAD with Wisdom. This means you can either go all-in on monk and actually get feats, or you can use this as an easier way to break away from the class earlier. You could multiclass with Cleric after level 3 or 5 to get enough ki points to be able to use the arms, attack with the arms at reach with Wisdom, be proficient with your armor and thus be allowed to cast your Cleric spells with it on, and use Spiritual Weapon instead of monk bonus attacks. You don't need Ki-Empowered strikes since the damage you deal is force damage. Going to level 6 isn't a terrible way for a Cleric to get the ability to see in magical darkness.
You should know that you are probably going to be getting less damage with this option than with some of the other heavyweight monks. But, you might get better versatility.
Visage of the Astral Self - The best thing here is the ability to see in magical darkness. This allows such a character to operate very nicely in a party that uses this strategy. Again, this makes it more useful to be able to mix this with spells.
Body of the Astral Self - If you've gone this far, then you're leaning in! The ability to deflect energy will come up quite a bit! You only have circumstantial opportunities for your reaction anyway, so another one just increases the chances that one will be useful.
The Empowered Arms ability remains as useful for a heavyweight Astral Monk as it does for a featherweight. You still have a Martial Arts die! You just don't get to replace normal Unarmed Strike damage with it. Once per turn getting +1d8 isn't excellent, but it's pretty welcome. If you're in a party using magical darkness, you might just have advantage on all of your attacks. With four attacks in a round, assuming you don't have Elven Accuracy, your chances of critting on one of them are about 33%, so you have a good shot at being able to double this die as well.
Awakened Astral Self - An extra +2 to Armor Class even when we already have excellent AC? Thank you very much! Bonuses to AC become more relevant when your AC is already high, so this is great! 5 ki points isn't crippling when you have so many. And, the ability to attack 5 times per round instead of 4 is a solid boost to damage. If you chose some way to get bonus damage per attacks (cleric dip, gaining Hex or Hunter's Mark with a feat), then having that bonus apply five times is, of course, pretty nice.
Way of the Drunken Master
I said that Ki was the ultimate strength of the monk, and that finding efficient ways to spend your limited pool of ki was how to ensure that you made an effective monk. The Way of the Drunken Master makes your ki more efficient and also leverages your excellent AC! This is a great match for the heavyweight monk!
Bonus Proficiencies - As ribbon abilities go, this one isn't bad, since it's actually two proficiencies. Even so, it's hard to imagine a lot of scenarios where your skill at brewing beer is going to matter a lot in a mechanical way.
Drunken Technique - Once you get this ability, with a single ki point on your turn you get 2 extra attacks, a free Disengage, and bonus movement. This might make it so that you can close the distance to the target and get your full sequence of attacks off! It could make it so that you bob and weave to the target that absolutely has to die. Efficiency is king when it comes to ki points, and the fact that this just layers more stuff onto a ki expenditure without increasing or replacing the cost is excellent.
Tipsy Sway - The ability to stand from prone for 5 feet of movement is okay. The ability to turn a missed attack against you into an auto-hit against someone else changes the way your monk is going to approach battle for the rest of its career! It is a simple fact that when you are a monk, everything hits harder than you do. You get your damage from a plurality of attacks, not from big hits! But! A lot of foes offer attacks that do twenty, thirty, even fifty points of damage! The ability to say "Ah, you missed my stupidly-high armor class. Hit your friend instead." is amazing. That you can do this 6 times per day when you first get it is silly. You're probably going to do this once or twice per day given how you're going to be Flurrying all the time. As you level up, this ability scales marvelously, as monster damage scales fast, but monster to-hit bonuses don't. If you have +1 full plate (maybe from a forge cleric dip), a shield, and the defensive fighting style (maybe from a fighter dip), then you have an AC of 22. A fire giant has an excellent to-hit bonus and has a 50% chance of hitting you and attacks twice. You expect to be able to use this against one of the fire giant's attacks each turn, dealing 6d6+7 damage to someone else nearby. Make sure there's someone else nearby!
Drunkard's Luck - This is sort of like a poor man's Devil Sight for your own attacks. If you are in Darkness or a Fog Coud, then you can cancel your disadvantage and just be left with the advantage from the fact that your opponent can't see you. Getting advantage on all of your attacks is great!
Intoxicated Frenzy - If only this weren't at level 17, it would be truly amazing. As it is, having seven attacks in a round can be great, especially if you have something from a feat boosting your attack damage. If you are a Monk 17, Barbarian 2, Fighter 1 with Hex from a feat, then you might be doing 7 attacks at 1d8+1d6+7 each, all made with advantage with a +11 bonus to-hit. That comes to an expected damage of 101 against AC 18 opponents. That's very good damage, even at level 20. This probably isn't strong enough to motivate you to continue in monk to this point, though.
All in all, I'd probably take a Drunken Master monk out to level 8. It mixes well with classes that make you harder to hit. I could imagine taking a Drunken Master monk to level 6 and only using ki for the reaction to turn aside blows.
Way of the Four Elements
People poo-poo the elemental monk, and they have since the PHB. It falls apart in a couple of ways, but it mostly has to do with a failure of synergy between the base monk abilities and the subclass abilities as well as being highly ki-inefficient. However, the Way of the Four Elements monk provides some interesting options to a heavyweight monk build. With the addition of the optional class feature Ki-Fueled Strike, when you spend ki on one of the elemental disciplines as an action, you get to make a free attack afterwards. You could be using a longsword and designating it as a monk weapon, in which case you get an attack with that.
Maybe if WotC had expanded the list of elemental disciplines as they had Battlemaster maneuvers and spells, then this class would have been better. A heavyweight monk is likely to have a weaker Wisdom than a featherweight monk, making their saving throw DCs lower, and rendering this class even less useful. It could be useful with a low-level dip (say, 3 to 5 levels) in monk, to grab utiities like Shape the Flowing River, which provides high-level battlefield terrain manipulation at low levels, but requires you to be fighting on a lake or something.
Way of the Kensei
I think Kensei is one of the hardest monk subclasses to build for. It has conflicts between concept and execution. A kensei, or 'sword saint' is good with a melee combatant, right? Well, they can be, but most of their offensive abilities are built around ranged attacks. They get the ability to defend themselves when wielding a kensei weapon, but... only if they're attacking with unarmed strikes.
From the standpoint of ki and action efficiency, kensei is excellent, since they only have two options that use ki points. One of them is a pre-combat or first-turn bonus action, and the other is an on-hit non-action. If only... they were good options.
Kensei Weapons is pretty dumb. It does let you get proficiency with the longbow, but we're a heavyweight monk! We don't have Dexterity! The designation of a monk weapon might be nice except that the primary reason to do that is to be able to apply your Martial Arts die to the weapon, which doesn't work for heavyweight monks.
Agile Parry - One option is to wield a weapon and attack only with your unarmed strikes, for +2 AC. Bonus armor is great, but the heavyweight monk doesn't have a great die for unarmed damage. However, using a shield, plate armor, and a kensei weapon, and kneeing someone in the crotch does provide you with 22 AC.
Kensei's Shot - This is an option for the character who will ignore unarmed damage completely! However, ranged weapons require Dexterity again, making it a little odd for the heavyweight. You could go with a pile of thrown weapons, and make two attacks with a thrown weapon using Extra Attack for something like 1d6+1d4+5 each. This allows for some multiclassing benefits, like the use of the Dueling and Thrown fighting styles, for as much as 1d6+1d4+9 damage per hit, twice. Then, you could even draw a javelin for the bonus AC from Agile Parry? I guess if you want a heavyweight javelin thrower for a character, this lets you do that and be ok with it? You don't need to go very far in terms of level to get this benefit.
Way of the Brush - Ribbon
Magic Kensei Weapons - Pretty solid, especially in a low-magic game.
Deft Strike - I think the designer wanted to give kenseis something to do with their ki, and so they dumped this crappy ability on the subclass. It's a mini (very, very mini) smite that costs a ki point. Pass.
Sharpen the Blade - Ok, so here is a way to get the maximum of +3 to-hit and damage from a magical weapon, but without actually needing to find such a weapon. I don't deny that this is a good ability. Once again, it's not synergistic with using unarmed strikes to attack.
Unerring Accuracy - Hahahaha, a single reroll per turn is fine for an attack roll, but at level 17? This is your subclass capstone? No.
Please, unless doing something odd with ranged attacks, don't take Kensei past level 3. It's a splash subclass. It's better for featherweights than for heavyweights, because then they can focus on using a longbow, or, better yet, a hand crossbow. Go Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter and all that good stuff. Then, replace your hand crossbow damage with a Martial Die. Go up to level 11 for the +3 to attack and damage plus getting a d8. It's not for heavyweights.
Way of the Long Death
I don't see people talk about this subclass often. It's not great, but it does have some good abilities. Moreover, its abilities are good for ki efficiency, except for the capstone.
Touch of Death - This lets you gain temporary hit points (honestly, quite a few!) when you drop someone. When combined with a barbarian dip for resistances, the thp last longer. Dropping things to 0 hp was probably something you wanted to do anyway, and there's no cost for this. So, this is the height of action economy and ki economy. Free. For something that's useful.
Hour of Reaping - Cool ability name! Has no synergy with the rest of anything else that you have. It makes you more survivable, which I suppose is the mechanical point, which is great given that you already have solid AC. You're debuffing all of the enemies to give them disadvantage on attacks while they can see you. But, it doesn't let you deal any damage with it. However, there is no limit to how often you can do this! It's a little like the Enchanter wizard's Hypnotic Gaze. However, while the wizard really appreciates the option to do something useful when out of spells, the monk feels kind of bad that he's just standing there flipping off the enemies and otherwise doing nothing while his party slaughters these foes who can barely fight back.
Mastery of Death - This ability is hilarious. You have 11 ki points at this level, and let us say that half of those are going towards using Flurry of Blows. Then, 5 times, you can Relentless Endurance. That's insane. It's not great if you're being targeted by a thousand mooks, but that's why you have good AC. The reason you want this is so that when the dragon drops you with its 100-damage breath weapon, you can just say "nope" and stay at 1. The staying power that this affords you is ridiculous!
Touch of the Long Death - This does good damage, but is too ki-hungry. Still, 10 ki points for a potential 20d10 damage is a lot of damage. I suppose if you can't spend 'em fast enough (and as a level 17 Long Death monk, I could imagine not being able to do more than 7 flurries in a day), then this lets you hit like a ton of bricks once.
Way of Mercy
This subclass is usually pretty solid, but is much worse in the hands of a character who plans to use more weapon attacks and fewer unarmed strikes. A heavyweight monk could take the Unarmed Fighting fighting style and not use a shield to have 1d8 damage for all of their attacks, and then be able to get extra damage reliably from attacking with that. But, if that's the build goal, then it might be better to just go with a featherweight monk.
If you do want to do a heavyweight monk build with this subclass, it gets much better at level 11, when you can get the Hands of Harm for free on a flurry of blows attack. At that point it becomes as good as many other options for a heavyweight.
Implements of Mercy - Wow, three bonus proficiencies with this subclass? And, they might even be useful? That's pretty solid.
Hands of Healing - The relative benefit of healing goes up with the resilience of the recipient. Since you are a heavyweight monk with good AC, being able to heal in place of a Flurry attack might be useful. This is especially true because then you become a yoyo healer extraordinaire! Someone goes down and you hardly have a hiccup in your offense in order to bring them back up.
Hands of Harm - There isn't great synergy between having boosted your ability to attack with weapons and gaining benefits on attacking unarmed. However, you will have the opportunity to use Hands of Harm a lot even if you're only making unarmed strikes with you Flurry of Blows. The only problem is, is 1d4+2 or 1d6+2 or 1d6+3 actually worth another ki point? Maybe. If your sole reason for using ki is to inflict damage, then frontloading that damage in a hard fight could get a foe out of the fight a little faster. Heck, feel free to wait for crits before you decide to use this ability. That's how I'd do it. Then it's definitely worth it.
Physician's Touch - You get to remove some terrible conditions without a roll and/or apply a highly debilitating condition when you use Hands of Harm with no additional cost. This ability is great! If only there weren't so many things immune to the poisoned condition, it might be sky blue.
Flurry of Healing and Harm - Let's assume that you go with the healing (keeping in mind that you might do both on the same turn). At this point you are a Strength-based martial with good AC who regenerates for something like 2d8+4 every round as a bonus action. Put that in with a splash of Barbarian for damage resistance and you will likely never go down. You won't be dealing a ton of damage, but your staying power is epic.
Otherwise, now Hands of Harm has no opportunity cost! Excellent!
Hands of Ultimate Mercy - Death revival. I guess it's better on the character whom you can be pretty sure is going to survive. It's ok, I guess.
Way of the Open Hand
There's no doubt that the ability to knock people over and back is fun. This subclass is pretty much as good for a heavyweight monk as for a featherweight. Any of these subclasses about making Flurry more effective benefit the character as much one way as the other.
Open Hand Technique - There are a lot of people who are proponents of getting Shield Master to be able to prone targets with a bonus action so that you can wail on them with your weapon with advantage to hit. Well, this ability lets you do damage while you go and lets you try twice with each Flurry of Blows bonus action! The downside is that it's a saving throw instead of an ability check. Still, this could prevent you from wanting a Barbarian dip for Reckless Attack. If you consider a Greatsword-wielding Centaur Fighter 1, Cleric 1, Monk 5 with the Way of the Open Hand and Str 18, Wis 16, that character is going to be using Flurry of Blows to try to prone its target before swinging its greatsword. Against a typical dummy target (AC 18, +4 to saves), they would have an expected damage with this strategy of 27.74. This is almost 4 times the level of the character, which is excellent.
Of course, with party members dropping hazard spells, you have the ability to choose instead to try to golf-swing your foes into them.
Wholeness of Body - It's good to have, but not as good as a lot of other abilities.
Tranquility - Sanctuary is good, but usually to save someone from dying. It's not a great way to start your day. You're going to attack an enemy pretty much as soon as you can.
Quivering Palm - It's pretty ki-efficient, it does a pile of damage if the target saves, it's a good ability! Shame that you had to wade through all the other abilities of the subclass to get to this.
Way of the Shadow
This subclass is a stealthy infiltrator scout of excellence. However, going with a heavyweight monk degrades your stealth advantage here to some degree. You're likely to have disadvantage on stealth checks due to armor. However, with this class you can literally be invisible, silent, and teleport around from shadow to shadow, never even crossing into the open.
This subclass in particular welcomes multiclassing. Rogue of course is the standard for good combinations here. Rogues don't have to be Dexterity-based in the same way that monk doesn't have to be. You can use a finesse weapon with Strength and get sneak attack. The advantage on a melee attack made after Shadow Stepping promotes the use of a single attack option.
The subclass suffers from no significant damage improvement over base monk, assuming that you have some other way to give yourself advantage on attacks. So, you are forced into other options to get greater impact in combat.
Shadow Arts - You get a good cantrip and the ability to spend 2 ki to cast Darkness, Darkvision, Pass without Trace, or Silence. Now, these are some pretty good spells. Pass without Trace is superb, and would probably feel extraneous on a featherweight shadow monk. On a heavyweight, it helps to offset the stealth penalty of having heavy armor plus no Dex... Darkvision is a very useful spell, but Darkness isn't that great because you cannot see through it. Spending a feat to take Eldritch Adept for Devil's Sight will help you out a lot.
If you are in a situation where the ability to use Darkness offensively is viable (i.e. you're alone and have the ability to mitigate the effect on yourself, or you're in a party that can all mitigate the effect), then Shadow Arts becomes an excellent way to give yourself or your party almost carte-blanche advantage on all of your attacks. It's nice to have a pseudo-caster character be the one focusing on the Darkness, since it's a Concentration spell and your main casters are going to want to concentrate on other things. Not only that, but as a character with a pile of attacks to unload, advantage might have greater effect on you than on anyone else. If you are a level 1 fighter / level 5 monk half-orc with the unarmed fighting style and Eldritch Adept for Devil's Sight, then in Darkness you can do 2x Greataxe +6 to-hit for 1d12+3 and 2x Unarmed Strike +6 to-hit for 1d6+3, with advantage on the attacks. That's 26.22 damage per round against a dummy target. This is not that much better than a barbarian who is also attacking with advantage on their attacks, but it needs to be said that this dramatically improves your defense as well, rather than hampering it, like Reckless Attack will.
Shadow Step - Who cares that you might have slowed down from donning heavy armor when you just teleport around everywhere anyway? Unfortunately, you have to be able to see where you're going, which means you really can't use the Darkness spell to provide a gate-able dark area. That you get advantage on the first melee attack you make after teleporting is an ok offensive option, especially for a character who has traded lots of attacks for heavier-hitting attacks, which is what the heavyweight monk does. This ability is good enough to build the character around it. The ability works on any melee attack, not specifying weapon or spell. Getting to level 6 and then proceeding with Cleric could give you a better ability to land such things as Booming Blade (Arcana cleric), Inflict Wounds, or Contagion.
Of course, this also mixes well with Sneak Attack, which can only happen once per turn anyway. A Strength-based Rogue gets Expertise, which could make you a very solid grappling character. I would probably halt in this subclass at this point.
Cloak of Shadows - Invisibility with an action is nice, especially when there's no duration on it. You could sleep invisibly each night. It's Concentration-less. Get someone to cast Breath of the Dragon on you and just run around doing breath-weapon damage. It will never break your invisibility. The only reason I'm not rating this higher is because you don't really have a lot of options to take advantage of your invisibility. Still, I love the fact that this doesn't require a ki point!
Opportunist - A reaction attack when something is struck next to you is, once again, great for a rogue. Unfortunately, if you got here, you have a maximum of 3 levels of rogue. Sad trombone. You are doing more damage with each attack than a featherweight monk, but not by enough to make 17 levels of monk good.
Way of the Sun Soul
There is precious-little synergy between this subclass and going with a heavyweight monk. This subclass can completely ignore unarmed strike damage.
Radiant Sun Bolt - This attack explicitly uses Dexterity, and since it's a spell attack, there aren't any mechanisms to switch it to anything else. One thing that might be interesting is that the attack is not impacted by wearing armor in any way. But, that doesn't mean that you can get away with not taking Dexterity, since the attack requires it.
Searing Arc Strike - Casting Burning Hands as a bonus action after swinging a greatsword twice could do some reasonably good damage. At 6th level, when you get this, you're probably attacking with +7 to-hit twice for 2d6+4 damage, and you have a save DC of 14. Against my standard dummy target, this would yield an expected damage of 21.85, which is actually pretty good. It quickly drops off in efficacy and efficiency.
Searing Sunburst Whatever. The ability to do long-range 20-ft-radius radiant damage turn after turn forever is good. If you spend a ki point to boost the damage, you can do a Ki-Fueled Strike with a ranged monk weapon if you want. Not worth it, but still if you happen to be here...
Sun Shield - So... a persistent Daylight spell with a sad reaction as a 17th level ability? Wow. That's bad.
A Guide to Heavyweight Monks
The monk in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is a puzzle. It can be difficult to include the class as an ingredient in a build because the ki mechanic is sticky. Ki makes it so that, whatever the ability was that made you think monk was good for you, if you just keep going in monk, then you'll be able to use that option more regularly. I see people talking about how monks can Flurry of Blows at level 5, and they can use Stunning Strike with every attack, and gosh! how many Constitution saving throws does Mr. Baddy have to make? See how effective we are? Not really. You just laid out all five of your ki points in one round. Now... you're a generic martial character with poor AC. You'll have a bonus action attack, but that's no different to anyone using Polearm Master, Dual Weapon Fighting, or the like, and your damage dice are almost always worse than other martials!
I posit that dumping a lot of ki points all at once is a luxury, and not a build goal. Yes, if you're fighting the big bad mage at the end of the campaign, then maybe it's worth forcing them to make a pile of Constitution saving throws or be stunned, since the stunning is likely to get your team a free turn, which has a solid chance of just letting you win you the fight. But, only if they don't have support. I'm going to support a different tack in this guide. It's something that makes the monk less MAD (one of the common complaints about it) and opens up some multiclassing options that didn't really exist prior -- namely, building for Strength and wearing armor. I am going to use the term featherweight monk to refer to the unarmored, Dexterity-based monk, and I'll use the term heavyweight monk to refer to the fully-armored, Strength-based monk.
Color Scheme: Bad, Pretty Bad, Okay, Good, and Excellent!
Class Features
Multiclassing - I think it should be mentioned that I do not typically suggest going full monk, especially if you are going to deny one of the core assumptions of the class. Mixing in some secret sauce from other classes that are designed to allow for this different play style will make the character stronger. However, I am going to be building for primarily monk. There is little reason to go above level 14. Maybe an Astral Self monk might be tempted by their subclass capstone at 17, but there's always a little room for multiclassing.
Unarmored Defense - Unarmored Defense is something of a trap. It requires a huge investment of character build to get both Dexterity and Wisdom to high levels. The best armor class you can reliably start with as a light monk is 16, which is barely sufficient for a melee character. Many classes can start with chain mail, which offers the same, but with no investiture of ability scores at all. You're probably thinking "No! There's a Strength requirement for that heavy armor." Yes, there is. And, I would suggest getting Strength to compensate for that. However, I also want to point out what it means to not have that Strength: You lose 10 feet of movement. Now, this is bad! Movement is clutch for melee characters to get stuck-in. But, it's not exactly world-ending. Besides, getting 13 or 15 Strength is much easier than getting 16 Dex and 16 Wis to get comparable AC at level 1. And, there are far more abilities that support improving AC when you have AC-providing equipment than when you do not. Moreover, a lot of those options that work when you don't have armor also work when you do.
The reason why I've made this ability orange instead of red is that it is pretty commonplace to have moments when you are without your armor. If your party is ambushed at night, you might be naked. So, this feature will sometimes add a little bit to your AC.
Martial Arts - In choosing to wear armor, we lose this feature. For many monks, this is the reason they took the class! The primary benefit of this is a bonus action attack that adds an ability score to the damage. We give that up. This makes the heavyweight monk significantly more free in terms of bonus actions than a typical monk, who is likely to spend turn after turn making bonus unarmed strike attacks, one at a time. In addition to losing the bonus action attack, we are going to be losing the ability to use Dex for our attacks (whatever), but also we're downgrading our unarmed strikes to 1 damage each! We do not intend to completely ignore unarmed strikes, although... you could! The ability to Dodge as a bonus action using ki is a pretty solid use of a bonus action if you're fighting a tough opponent. But, I will assume that we still intend to do some punching, kicking, and breaking faces with our bare hands. As a result, you are going to want another way to re-introduce an unarmed strike die, either with a race choice or with the Unarmed Fighting style. What's really sad is that, even if you only get a d4 from a race, that's not really that far behind the Martial Arts die for most of the character's career...
Once again, I've made this orange instead of red. You might not always be in your armor and be carrying weapons. If a fight breaks out in a party when you were dressed in your tux or gown and without a weapon, then this ability comes back into play.
Unarmored Movement - I feel the loss of this ability most of all. It hurts being slower! The lack of movement speed changes the role of the character from a hit-and-run skirmishing character to a get-stuck-in brute/tank. That's ok, you'll have the AC to handle that.
It's unclear whether or not the ability to run up walls and over water at 9th level is denied by wearing armor. I'd interpret that it is not, but you should ask your DM.
Ki - This is the true power of the monk. Successfully building a monk depends on finding cost-effective uses of your ki points! You start out with not many of them. If you've built for cost-effective options, then you will find that later monk levels give you plenty of ki points. If you want to bleed four ki points every turn with stuns and flurries and whatever, then you're never going to have enough! I think spending one ki point a turn for fights that look like they need it is not a waste. You'll run out fast at early levels, but at early levels you are essentially going to be hitting as hard as most martials anyway.
It should be mentioned that Flurry of Blows does not require that you be unarmored. With this, we mitigate the pain of losing the bonus action attack from Martial Arts, and we smile because when we're using this, we're just going to be better than a featherweight monk. The point becomes arguable at much later levels, when the Martial Arts die catches up with many weapon dice.
Never discount Patient Defense! If you are surrounded by foes and you have a very solid AC, the ability to impose disadvantage is amazing! If you go with a Barbarian dip, then this can be used to mitigate the problem of using Reckless Attack, but that's probably not necessary.
Step of the Wind - is fine. There are going to be some options that will lessen the importance of this, but this is a fine way to be able to close the distance, which is a weakness of the heavyweight monk (no Unarmored Speed boost, remember?). You might consider that it's not worth spending a ki point to close with an enemy. I'm going to point out that once you have Extra Attack, that ki point to Dash as a bonus action is going to get you your 2 attacks with a greatsword or whatever. If you're comfortable using a ki point to get 2 attacks with your unarmed strikes via Flurry, then you must recognize that doing so for greatsword damage is just better, right?
Dedicated Weapon - You will probably never use this optional feature. When you don't have your armor, making this relevant, you'll frequently not have your weapons either. For some subclasses, they will combine this with Ki-Fueled attack and it becomes pretty decent.
Deflect Missiles is circumstantial, but can be okay unless you have some other way to use your reaction. Don't throw the weapon back unless you DM rules that you can use Strength to do so.
Ki-Fueled Attack - This feature is good in concert with Focused Aim below. It can become a vital component of a monk build when using elemental disciplines from Way of the Four Elements or blasts of ki energy with Way of the Sun Soul (anything that lets you use ki as part of your Action not being the Attack action).
Slow Fall - It probably won't come up often, but it's pretty useful when it does.
Quickened Healing - God help you if this is looking appealing. It's no worse for a heavyweight than for a featherweight, but it's still pretty bad.
Extra Attack - Of course, attacks are the bread and butter of martial characters, and you're no exception. This is even better for you than for other monks because you're going to be making better use of your Attack action attacks than most monks will due to the fact that you're very sensibly attacking with a weapon!
Stunning Strike - You aren't going to be making a lot of use for this extremely ki-hungry ability. Nevertheless, this can be used whether you're punching someone in the gut or cleaving with a greataxe. You may have sacrificed some Wisdom for the sake of multiclassing. If not, then this is better.
Focused Aim - Missing sucks. Rather than taking the shotgun approach of most monks, which is to attack 4 times and just accept that only two are going to hit, you can hit way more often with this ability. Now, this ability is also extremely ki-hungry! It's worse than Stunning Strike in that regard! Or... is it? Spending the ki point with Stunning Strike gives you the chance that your target will be stunned. You get to see exactly what the cost and effect will be when you use Focused Aim. You attack a foe, getting a 17 and missing. You are pretty confident that if you add a ki point to get +2 to-hit, you'll hit. Well, then you should probably do that! If you're not sure, then don't do it! Accuracy is one of the main factors affecting damage output! People seriously downplay it a lot. For tiers I and II, you are typically cutting your expected damage in half when you account for accuracy! It becomes less of a problem in later levels.
Once you have this ability, it is very likely that the best decision-tree on your turn is to make the Attack action, getting two attacks with a weapon. If you miss with either attack, and you believe yourself to be 1 ki-point away from hitting, then you should spend 1 ki point on Focused Aim to hit with that weapon attack. Then, because yo uspent a ki point as part of your action, you get to use Ki-Fueled Attack to get a free attack with unarmed strike or with a monk weapon (which could be a Versatile Longsword for 1d10!). If you miss by more than that, Flurry of Blows. If you hit? Flurry of Blows. But, the option to get a partial flurry in with Ki-Fueled Attack and Focused Aim is effective!
Ki-Empowered Strikes - Yes please, and let's hopefully always do full damage.
Evasion - You aren't going to be passing Dex saves a lot, but you don't really need to! You take half damage regardless, which is what everyone else in your party who passes the save is taking! Good show!
Stillness of Mind - People seem to tout abilities like this a lot, and maybe they're playing different games than me. I almost never see this sort of thing come up. Still, I guess it's useful if you need it.
Purity of Body - Immunities are nice. Now I guess you could poison your weapons and not have to worry as much about harming yourself, but that's probably a waste of gold.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon - It's an interesting ribbon, but ribbons after a 13-level investment feel kinda bad, no?
Diamond Soul - Wow, this is good! If you're taking monk up to a high level, this ability is probably why! Otherwise, you'd secure a reasonable amount of ki and bail.
Timeless Body - Just about the only purpose of this, mechanically, is to make a ghost's ability to age you irrelevant. It's the kind of ability that would matter immensely to the character and not very much to the player.
Empty Body - This is pretty great. It's essentially a Concentration-less greater invisibility that also gives you the damage resistance akin to a Bear-totem Barbarian. It would be sky blue if it happened before 18th level.
Perfect Self - What did you do! Why are you rolling initiative after having spent TWENTY ki points or more already today?! You've done something wrong.
The big picture of the class abilities is that it's great to get to level 5 Monk. Going a little more for more reliable use of ki powers is probably a good idea depending on your subclass. So, for the heavyweight monk, I think I'd identify levels 5 (extra attack, focused aim), 6 (subclass feature, ki-empowered strikes), 8 (asi), 11 (subclass feature), or 14 (diamond soul) as the multiclass breakpoints. Most of the time, I'm going to go to level 8 or 11, securing a solid foundation in ki points and not diving into the several-level gulf that leads to Diamond Soul.
Subclasses
Not all of the monk subclasses are going to match well with the heavyweight monk playstyle, but you might be surprised to discover which ones are better and which ones are worse.
Way of the Astral Self
One of the key points of this subclass is that it grants you the ability to use Wisdom for Strength stuff and for Unarmed Strikes. This interacts with the rules for armor proficiency in an interesting way. The rules allow anyone to wear armor. All that happens if you wear armor with which you are not proficient is that you have disadvantage on Strength checks and saves (which just became Wisdom-based for you...), disadvantage on Dexterity checks and saves (you're dumping Dexterity anyway, and you eventually get Evasion to mitigate failing Dex saves), disadvantage on Strength-based or Dexterity-based attack rolls (you're using Wisdom now...) and you cannot cast spells (which you don't). This means that a Way of the Astral Self monk has no significant penalty for wearing armor with which it is not proficient beyond those imposed by the lack of a Martial Arts die. Now, it might not strictly-speaking be Strength-based, but such a character would have more in common with a heavyweight monk than a featherweight monk! You would need to select a race that will give you a damage die (see the Races section below), and maybe one that will get around the fact that you probably don't have the Strength for your armor (so, dwarf or something that starts with a faster movement speed in the first place).
The end result of this is that you actually don't need to multiclass to be a heavyweight Astral monk. However! You have made all of the sacrifices to be a heavyweight monk and you have gotten none of the benefits other than being SAD. You are likely going to be making four attacks with a 1d4 or 1d6 attack die (maybe 1d8 if you take the Unarmed Fighting style). It... could be good.
However, I would still choose to multiclass. I'd probably take one level of Cleric. Choosing the War domain would get you the Divine Favor spell, which boosts your damage reasonably well.
Arms of the Astral Self - Obviously, this is the key reason to take this subclass--you are now SAD with Wisdom. This means you can either go all-in on monk and actually get feats, or you can use this as an easier way to break away from the class earlier. You could multiclass with Cleric after level 3 or 5 to get enough ki points to be able to use the arms, attack with the arms at reach with Wisdom, be proficient with your armor and thus be allowed to cast your Cleric spells with it on, and use Spiritual Weapon instead of monk bonus attacks. You don't need Ki-Empowered strikes since the damage you deal is force damage. Going to level 6 isn't a terrible way for a Cleric to get the ability to see in magical darkness.
You should know that you are probably going to be getting less damage with this option than with some of the other heavyweight monks. But, you might get better versatility.
Visage of the Astral Self - The best thing here is the ability to see in magical darkness. This allows such a character to operate very nicely in a party that uses this strategy. Again, this makes it more useful to be able to mix this with spells.
Body of the Astral Self - If you've gone this far, then you're leaning in! The ability to deflect energy will come up quite a bit! You only have circumstantial opportunities for your reaction anyway, so another one just increases the chances that one will be useful.
The Empowered Arms ability remains as useful for a heavyweight Astral Monk as it does for a featherweight. You still have a Martial Arts die! You just don't get to replace normal Unarmed Strike damage with it. Once per turn getting +1d8 isn't excellent, but it's pretty welcome. If you're in a party using magical darkness, you might just have advantage on all of your attacks. With four attacks in a round, assuming you don't have Elven Accuracy, your chances of critting on one of them are about 33%, so you have a good shot at being able to double this die as well.
Awakened Astral Self - An extra +2 to Armor Class even when we already have excellent AC? Thank you very much! Bonuses to AC become more relevant when your AC is already high, so this is great! 5 ki points isn't crippling when you have so many. And, the ability to attack 5 times per round instead of 4 is a solid boost to damage. If you chose some way to get bonus damage per attacks (cleric dip, gaining Hex or Hunter's Mark with a feat), then having that bonus apply five times is, of course, pretty nice.
Way of the Drunken Master
I said that Ki was the ultimate strength of the monk, and that finding efficient ways to spend your limited pool of ki was how to ensure that you made an effective monk. The Way of the Drunken Master makes your ki more efficient and also leverages your excellent AC! This is a great match for the heavyweight monk!
Bonus Proficiencies - As ribbon abilities go, this one isn't bad, since it's actually two proficiencies. Even so, it's hard to imagine a lot of scenarios where your skill at brewing beer is going to matter a lot in a mechanical way.
Drunken Technique - Once you get this ability, with a single ki point on your turn you get 2 extra attacks, a free Disengage, and bonus movement. This might make it so that you can close the distance to the target and get your full sequence of attacks off! It could make it so that you bob and weave to the target that absolutely has to die. Efficiency is king when it comes to ki points, and the fact that this just layers more stuff onto a ki expenditure without increasing or replacing the cost is excellent.
Tipsy Sway - The ability to stand from prone for 5 feet of movement is okay. The ability to turn a missed attack against you into an auto-hit against someone else changes the way your monk is going to approach battle for the rest of its career! It is a simple fact that when you are a monk, everything hits harder than you do. You get your damage from a plurality of attacks, not from big hits! But! A lot of foes offer attacks that do twenty, thirty, even fifty points of damage! The ability to say "Ah, you missed my stupidly-high armor class. Hit your friend instead." is amazing. That you can do this 6 times per day when you first get it is silly. You're probably going to do this once or twice per day given how you're going to be Flurrying all the time. As you level up, this ability scales marvelously, as monster damage scales fast, but monster to-hit bonuses don't. If you have +1 full plate (maybe from a forge cleric dip), a shield, and the defensive fighting style (maybe from a fighter dip), then you have an AC of 22. A fire giant has an excellent to-hit bonus and has a 50% chance of hitting you and attacks twice. You expect to be able to use this against one of the fire giant's attacks each turn, dealing 6d6+7 damage to someone else nearby. Make sure there's someone else nearby!
Drunkard's Luck - This is sort of like a poor man's Devil Sight for your own attacks. If you are in Darkness or a Fog Coud, then you can cancel your disadvantage and just be left with the advantage from the fact that your opponent can't see you. Getting advantage on all of your attacks is great!
Intoxicated Frenzy - If only this weren't at level 17, it would be truly amazing. As it is, having seven attacks in a round can be great, especially if you have something from a feat boosting your attack damage. If you are a Monk 17, Barbarian 2, Fighter 1 with Hex from a feat, then you might be doing 7 attacks at 1d8+1d6+7 each, all made with advantage with a +11 bonus to-hit. That comes to an expected damage of 101 against AC 18 opponents. That's very good damage, even at level 20. This probably isn't strong enough to motivate you to continue in monk to this point, though.
All in all, I'd probably take a Drunken Master monk out to level 8. It mixes well with classes that make you harder to hit. I could imagine taking a Drunken Master monk to level 6 and only using ki for the reaction to turn aside blows.
Way of the Four Elements
People poo-poo the elemental monk, and they have since the PHB. It falls apart in a couple of ways, but it mostly has to do with a failure of synergy between the base monk abilities and the subclass abilities as well as being highly ki-inefficient. However, the Way of the Four Elements monk provides some interesting options to a heavyweight monk build. With the addition of the optional class feature Ki-Fueled Strike, when you spend ki on one of the elemental disciplines as an action, you get to make a free attack afterwards. You could be using a longsword and designating it as a monk weapon, in which case you get an attack with that.
Maybe if WotC had expanded the list of elemental disciplines as they had Battlemaster maneuvers and spells, then this class would have been better. A heavyweight monk is likely to have a weaker Wisdom than a featherweight monk, making their saving throw DCs lower, and rendering this class even less useful. It could be useful with a low-level dip (say, 3 to 5 levels) in monk, to grab utiities like Shape the Flowing River, which provides high-level battlefield terrain manipulation at low levels, but requires you to be fighting on a lake or something.
Way of the Kensei
I think Kensei is one of the hardest monk subclasses to build for. It has conflicts between concept and execution. A kensei, or 'sword saint' is good with a melee combatant, right? Well, they can be, but most of their offensive abilities are built around ranged attacks. They get the ability to defend themselves when wielding a kensei weapon, but... only if they're attacking with unarmed strikes.
From the standpoint of ki and action efficiency, kensei is excellent, since they only have two options that use ki points. One of them is a pre-combat or first-turn bonus action, and the other is an on-hit non-action. If only... they were good options.
Kensei Weapons is pretty dumb. It does let you get proficiency with the longbow, but we're a heavyweight monk! We don't have Dexterity! The designation of a monk weapon might be nice except that the primary reason to do that is to be able to apply your Martial Arts die to the weapon, which doesn't work for heavyweight monks.
Agile Parry - One option is to wield a weapon and attack only with your unarmed strikes, for +2 AC. Bonus armor is great, but the heavyweight monk doesn't have a great die for unarmed damage. However, using a shield, plate armor, and a kensei weapon, and kneeing someone in the crotch does provide you with 22 AC.
Kensei's Shot - This is an option for the character who will ignore unarmed damage completely! However, ranged weapons require Dexterity again, making it a little odd for the heavyweight. You could go with a pile of thrown weapons, and make two attacks with a thrown weapon using Extra Attack for something like 1d6+1d4+5 each. This allows for some multiclassing benefits, like the use of the Dueling and Thrown fighting styles, for as much as 1d6+1d4+9 damage per hit, twice. Then, you could even draw a javelin for the bonus AC from Agile Parry? I guess if you want a heavyweight javelin thrower for a character, this lets you do that and be ok with it? You don't need to go very far in terms of level to get this benefit.
Way of the Brush - Ribbon
Magic Kensei Weapons - Pretty solid, especially in a low-magic game.
Deft Strike - I think the designer wanted to give kenseis something to do with their ki, and so they dumped this crappy ability on the subclass. It's a mini (very, very mini) smite that costs a ki point. Pass.
Sharpen the Blade - Ok, so here is a way to get the maximum of +3 to-hit and damage from a magical weapon, but without actually needing to find such a weapon. I don't deny that this is a good ability. Once again, it's not synergistic with using unarmed strikes to attack.
Unerring Accuracy - Hahahaha, a single reroll per turn is fine for an attack roll, but at level 17? This is your subclass capstone? No.
Please, unless doing something odd with ranged attacks, don't take Kensei past level 3. It's a splash subclass. It's better for featherweights than for heavyweights, because then they can focus on using a longbow, or, better yet, a hand crossbow. Go Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter and all that good stuff. Then, replace your hand crossbow damage with a Martial Die. Go up to level 11 for the +3 to attack and damage plus getting a d8. It's not for heavyweights.
Way of the Long Death
I don't see people talk about this subclass often. It's not great, but it does have some good abilities. Moreover, its abilities are good for ki efficiency, except for the capstone.
Touch of Death - This lets you gain temporary hit points (honestly, quite a few!) when you drop someone. When combined with a barbarian dip for resistances, the thp last longer. Dropping things to 0 hp was probably something you wanted to do anyway, and there's no cost for this. So, this is the height of action economy and ki economy. Free. For something that's useful.
Hour of Reaping - Cool ability name! Has no synergy with the rest of anything else that you have. It makes you more survivable, which I suppose is the mechanical point, which is great given that you already have solid AC. You're debuffing all of the enemies to give them disadvantage on attacks while they can see you. But, it doesn't let you deal any damage with it. However, there is no limit to how often you can do this! It's a little like the Enchanter wizard's Hypnotic Gaze. However, while the wizard really appreciates the option to do something useful when out of spells, the monk feels kind of bad that he's just standing there flipping off the enemies and otherwise doing nothing while his party slaughters these foes who can barely fight back.
Mastery of Death - This ability is hilarious. You have 11 ki points at this level, and let us say that half of those are going towards using Flurry of Blows. Then, 5 times, you can Relentless Endurance. That's insane. It's not great if you're being targeted by a thousand mooks, but that's why you have good AC. The reason you want this is so that when the dragon drops you with its 100-damage breath weapon, you can just say "nope" and stay at 1. The staying power that this affords you is ridiculous!
Touch of the Long Death - This does good damage, but is too ki-hungry. Still, 10 ki points for a potential 20d10 damage is a lot of damage. I suppose if you can't spend 'em fast enough (and as a level 17 Long Death monk, I could imagine not being able to do more than 7 flurries in a day), then this lets you hit like a ton of bricks once.
Way of Mercy
This subclass is usually pretty solid, but is much worse in the hands of a character who plans to use more weapon attacks and fewer unarmed strikes. A heavyweight monk could take the Unarmed Fighting fighting style and not use a shield to have 1d8 damage for all of their attacks, and then be able to get extra damage reliably from attacking with that. But, if that's the build goal, then it might be better to just go with a featherweight monk.
If you do want to do a heavyweight monk build with this subclass, it gets much better at level 11, when you can get the Hands of Harm for free on a flurry of blows attack. At that point it becomes as good as many other options for a heavyweight.
Implements of Mercy - Wow, three bonus proficiencies with this subclass? And, they might even be useful? That's pretty solid.
Hands of Healing - The relative benefit of healing goes up with the resilience of the recipient. Since you are a heavyweight monk with good AC, being able to heal in place of a Flurry attack might be useful. This is especially true because then you become a yoyo healer extraordinaire! Someone goes down and you hardly have a hiccup in your offense in order to bring them back up.
Hands of Harm - There isn't great synergy between having boosted your ability to attack with weapons and gaining benefits on attacking unarmed. However, you will have the opportunity to use Hands of Harm a lot even if you're only making unarmed strikes with you Flurry of Blows. The only problem is, is 1d4+2 or 1d6+2 or 1d6+3 actually worth another ki point? Maybe. If your sole reason for using ki is to inflict damage, then frontloading that damage in a hard fight could get a foe out of the fight a little faster. Heck, feel free to wait for crits before you decide to use this ability. That's how I'd do it. Then it's definitely worth it.
Physician's Touch - You get to remove some terrible conditions without a roll and/or apply a highly debilitating condition when you use Hands of Harm with no additional cost. This ability is great! If only there weren't so many things immune to the poisoned condition, it might be sky blue.
Flurry of Healing and Harm - Let's assume that you go with the healing (keeping in mind that you might do both on the same turn). At this point you are a Strength-based martial with good AC who regenerates for something like 2d8+4 every round as a bonus action. Put that in with a splash of Barbarian for damage resistance and you will likely never go down. You won't be dealing a ton of damage, but your staying power is epic.
Otherwise, now Hands of Harm has no opportunity cost! Excellent!
Hands of Ultimate Mercy - Death revival. I guess it's better on the character whom you can be pretty sure is going to survive. It's ok, I guess.
Way of the Open Hand
There's no doubt that the ability to knock people over and back is fun. This subclass is pretty much as good for a heavyweight monk as for a featherweight. Any of these subclasses about making Flurry more effective benefit the character as much one way as the other.
Open Hand Technique - There are a lot of people who are proponents of getting Shield Master to be able to prone targets with a bonus action so that you can wail on them with your weapon with advantage to hit. Well, this ability lets you do damage while you go and lets you try twice with each Flurry of Blows bonus action! The downside is that it's a saving throw instead of an ability check. Still, this could prevent you from wanting a Barbarian dip for Reckless Attack. If you consider a Greatsword-wielding Centaur Fighter 1, Cleric 1, Monk 5 with the Way of the Open Hand and Str 18, Wis 16, that character is going to be using Flurry of Blows to try to prone its target before swinging its greatsword. Against a typical dummy target (AC 18, +4 to saves), they would have an expected damage with this strategy of 27.74. This is almost 4 times the level of the character, which is excellent.
Of course, with party members dropping hazard spells, you have the ability to choose instead to try to golf-swing your foes into them.
Wholeness of Body - It's good to have, but not as good as a lot of other abilities.
Tranquility - Sanctuary is good, but usually to save someone from dying. It's not a great way to start your day. You're going to attack an enemy pretty much as soon as you can.
Quivering Palm - It's pretty ki-efficient, it does a pile of damage if the target saves, it's a good ability! Shame that you had to wade through all the other abilities of the subclass to get to this.
Way of the Shadow
This subclass is a stealthy infiltrator scout of excellence. However, going with a heavyweight monk degrades your stealth advantage here to some degree. You're likely to have disadvantage on stealth checks due to armor. However, with this class you can literally be invisible, silent, and teleport around from shadow to shadow, never even crossing into the open.
This subclass in particular welcomes multiclassing. Rogue of course is the standard for good combinations here. Rogues don't have to be Dexterity-based in the same way that monk doesn't have to be. You can use a finesse weapon with Strength and get sneak attack. The advantage on a melee attack made after Shadow Stepping promotes the use of a single attack option.
The subclass suffers from no significant damage improvement over base monk, assuming that you have some other way to give yourself advantage on attacks. So, you are forced into other options to get greater impact in combat.
Shadow Arts - You get a good cantrip and the ability to spend 2 ki to cast Darkness, Darkvision, Pass without Trace, or Silence. Now, these are some pretty good spells. Pass without Trace is superb, and would probably feel extraneous on a featherweight shadow monk. On a heavyweight, it helps to offset the stealth penalty of having heavy armor plus no Dex... Darkvision is a very useful spell, but Darkness isn't that great because you cannot see through it. Spending a feat to take Eldritch Adept for Devil's Sight will help you out a lot.
If you are in a situation where the ability to use Darkness offensively is viable (i.e. you're alone and have the ability to mitigate the effect on yourself, or you're in a party that can all mitigate the effect), then Shadow Arts becomes an excellent way to give yourself or your party almost carte-blanche advantage on all of your attacks. It's nice to have a pseudo-caster character be the one focusing on the Darkness, since it's a Concentration spell and your main casters are going to want to concentrate on other things. Not only that, but as a character with a pile of attacks to unload, advantage might have greater effect on you than on anyone else. If you are a level 1 fighter / level 5 monk half-orc with the unarmed fighting style and Eldritch Adept for Devil's Sight, then in Darkness you can do 2x Greataxe +6 to-hit for 1d12+3 and 2x Unarmed Strike +6 to-hit for 1d6+3, with advantage on the attacks. That's 26.22 damage per round against a dummy target. This is not that much better than a barbarian who is also attacking with advantage on their attacks, but it needs to be said that this dramatically improves your defense as well, rather than hampering it, like Reckless Attack will.
Shadow Step - Who cares that you might have slowed down from donning heavy armor when you just teleport around everywhere anyway? Unfortunately, you have to be able to see where you're going, which means you really can't use the Darkness spell to provide a gate-able dark area. That you get advantage on the first melee attack you make after teleporting is an ok offensive option, especially for a character who has traded lots of attacks for heavier-hitting attacks, which is what the heavyweight monk does. This ability is good enough to build the character around it. The ability works on any melee attack, not specifying weapon or spell. Getting to level 6 and then proceeding with Cleric could give you a better ability to land such things as Booming Blade (Arcana cleric), Inflict Wounds, or Contagion.
Of course, this also mixes well with Sneak Attack, which can only happen once per turn anyway. A Strength-based Rogue gets Expertise, which could make you a very solid grappling character. I would probably halt in this subclass at this point.
Cloak of Shadows - Invisibility with an action is nice, especially when there's no duration on it. You could sleep invisibly each night. It's Concentration-less. Get someone to cast Breath of the Dragon on you and just run around doing breath-weapon damage. It will never break your invisibility. The only reason I'm not rating this higher is because you don't really have a lot of options to take advantage of your invisibility. Still, I love the fact that this doesn't require a ki point!
Opportunist - A reaction attack when something is struck next to you is, once again, great for a rogue. Unfortunately, if you got here, you have a maximum of 3 levels of rogue. Sad trombone. You are doing more damage with each attack than a featherweight monk, but not by enough to make 17 levels of monk good.
Way of the Sun Soul
There is precious-little synergy between this subclass and going with a heavyweight monk. This subclass can completely ignore unarmed strike damage.
Radiant Sun Bolt - This attack explicitly uses Dexterity, and since it's a spell attack, there aren't any mechanisms to switch it to anything else. One thing that might be interesting is that the attack is not impacted by wearing armor in any way. But, that doesn't mean that you can get away with not taking Dexterity, since the attack requires it.
Searing Arc Strike - Casting Burning Hands as a bonus action after swinging a greatsword twice could do some reasonably good damage. At 6th level, when you get this, you're probably attacking with +7 to-hit twice for 2d6+4 damage, and you have a save DC of 14. Against my standard dummy target, this would yield an expected damage of 21.85, which is actually pretty good. It quickly drops off in efficacy and efficiency.
Searing Sunburst Whatever. The ability to do long-range 20-ft-radius radiant damage turn after turn forever is good. If you spend a ki point to boost the damage, you can do a Ki-Fueled Strike with a ranged monk weapon if you want. Not worth it, but still if you happen to be here...
Sun Shield - So... a persistent Daylight spell with a sad reaction as a 17th level ability? Wow. That's bad.