Monk Tradition selection

[KnotaGuru]

Hi all,
We recently started playing Rime of the Frost Maiden. I'm playing a half-orc monk and we just hit level 3 at the end of the last session so I'll need to select my tradition before the next session. I'm debating between Open Hand and Long Death. No one has played a monk in any of our campaigns so I'm not sure which way to go. Here's a list of the party members:

Custom lineage (Orc) Wildfire Druid
Custom lineage (Goblin) Beastmaster Ranger (plans on going ranger 5, then cleric)
Hobgoblin War Wizard
Custom Half-orc Monk (me)

We're all members of The Chill mercenary guild, hence the goblinoids and orcs. We had the option to roll for stats and I rolled really well (20 Dex, 17 Con, 18 Wis after racial mods). I'm taking the Crusher feat at level 4 to even out my Con and +2 Wis at level 8.


Open Hand perks only apply when using flurry of blows, but they sure look fun (15' push or knock prone). The level 6 ability provides a little healing once per day.

Long Death has nice passive bonuses (temp hp when you kill an enemy) and the level 6 fear ability sounds cool, though it takes an action (so no punching faces that round, missing out on 2-4 attacks) and could affect your allies if not placed well.

Anyway, what do you all think?

[J-H]

I prefer Open Hand because it gives you something extra to do whenever you spend a Ki Point for Flurry of Blows.
Long Death is purely a passive bonus until 6th level.

[RogueJK]

You're faced with a bit of a conundrum, because your party is kind of hurting for frontliners, but Monks aren't really intended to be frontliners, being Strikers instead of Tanks. The Ranger/Cleric may be able to shoulder the bulk of it, unless he's planning to stick to ranged attacks and/or cantrips, and having the Beast Companion around can help tank a bit, although them switching out of Ranger will hurt its HP over the long run.

Either Monk subclass can handle the frontliner role in a pinch. Of these two, a Long Death Monk is likely the better option for a Monk who's standing on the front lines rather than ducking in and out of it. With either type of Monk, your excellent stats mean your AC and HP will already be pretty good for a Monk, you have access to defensive stuff like Bonus Action Dodge when needed, and you can Stun. But beyond those shared options, the Temp HP from Long Death edges out Open Hand's ability to shove or knock prone. (Even though as noted above it's "passive", and therefore potentially not as exciting as the Open Hand's "active" abilities.)

And towards the end of the campaign, Long Death's ability to stay at 1 HP as long as you still have Ki is very nice.

As you stated, I don't think the Fear ability will see much use. But it might be nice for the occasional time when things are going south and the party just needs a break for a turn, to reposition, cast, or heal. Fear + BA Disengage (via Step of the Wind) could get you and the party a much needed breather.

[Man_Over_Game]

Your team needs a bit more tankiness, although Open Hand helps mitigate enemy damage through its abilities for your party, so I'd say that Long Death would be only slightly better.

I'd say a lot comes down to how you like to play. Between the two, Open Hand is a skirmisher, whereas Long Death is a bruiser.

Do you run away in combat, or do you stand there? That'll decide which of the two is better for you.

[quindraco]

Hi all,
We recently started playing Rime of the Frost Maiden. I'm playing a half-orc monk and we just hit level 3 at the end of the last session so I'll need to select my tradition before the next session. I'm debating between Open Hand and Long Death. No one has played a monk in any of our campaigns so I'm not sure which way to go. Here's a list of the party members:

Custom lineage (Orc) Wildfire Druid
Custom lineage (Goblin) Beastmaster Ranger (plans on going ranger 5, then cleric)
Hobgoblin War Wizard
Custom Half-orc Monk (me)

We're all members of The Chill mercenary guild, hence the goblinoids and orcs. We had the option to roll for stats and I rolled really well (20 Dex, 17 Con, 18 Wis after racial mods). I'm taking the Crusher feat at level 4 to even out my Con and +2 Wis at level 8.


Open Hand perks only apply when using flurry of blows, but they sure look fun (15' push or knock prone). The level 6 ability provides a little healing once per day.

Long Death has nice passive bonuses (temp hp when you kill an enemy) and the level 6 fear ability sounds cool, though it takes an action (so no punching faces that round, missing out on 2-4 attacks) and could affect your allies if not placed well.

Anyway, what do you all think?

Custom Lineage is its own race. Do you just mean you modified your stats, or did you actually abandon the half-orc racials and you're a custom lineage that happens to look like a half-orc? The difference does matter. I'm curious how you're all functioning - I'm about to run this campaign myself, and I made it clear to my players I've read the Drizzt books and the local townsfolk will, if they find out you're a goblinoid or full orc under that cold weather outfit, react exactly as xenophobically as you'd expect. Those creatures would only show up in the Dale as harbingers of an invasion.

Anyway. Your statline is absolute bull**** - I may never understand why DMs permit rolling for stats, as both statlines like yours and the opposite kind where a player may end up with a 3 in something - so you can for sure pull off a good monk. Let's consider your options.

Open Hands: This has very poor synergy with your team, because you can't knock creatures prone until after your Attack action is over, and you and the planned to stop gaining more hp beast are the only two melee combatants on the team (knocking creatures prone generally buffs melee and debuffs ranged, and for Open Hand, it primarily buffs other melee, since you can't knock prone at normal bonus action speed). You have a lot of range in your party.

Long Death: Excellent tanking, no notes. A great choice, since your party is desperate for tanking.

Other options from Tasha's:

Astral Self will work a good deal like Open Hands only better, because you can use either of your Attack action attacks to Shove, using your Wisdom modifier. This does work a lot better with different feat progression - levels 4 and 8 would go to Fey Touched (Hex) and Skill Expert (Athletics) - but Astral Self monks are very good at shoving and grappling, with incredible ki efficiency. Big downside is that you won't be able to knock over Huge or Gargantuan opponents, but since you were planning on the Crusher feat, this may not bother you, as you were already planning on being worse against bigger opponents. Skill Expert could upgrade your Constitution rather than Wisdom if you felt the need.

Mercy is particularly interesting, because you can use the cleric's land beast - who should be attempting to knock targets prone - to crit-fish like a paladin, and half-orcs are built for crit-fishing. Against a prone target, do your normal thing of spear stab and kick, but if and only if the kick crits, buy Hand of Harm. Even now, before level the level 5 and 8 upticks from your planned progression, your hand of harm crit is 3d4 + 5 bludgeoning + 2d4 + 4 necrotic, which is no joke.

And, to borrow from one of LudicSavant's builds: his demonweb monk, only half-orc style. You won't be as good at it as his half-elf base, but you'll be amazing in synergy with your party - better than his monk is, due to Crusher. To make this work, your next level needs to be in fighter, not monk - you need the blind fighting style to make shadow monks work, and it's based on shadow monks. On the other hand, you're a half-orc. You want bigger damage dice, so you'll get more out of this than you might think. This is hands down my top recommendation, even over Long Death.

Here's what it looks like:
Monk 2/Fighter 1: Blind Fighting. Because you're not a half-drow like Ludic employed, you can't immediately put this to excellent use, so you'll need to wait 1 level to start shining, but hoo boy...
Monk 3/Fighter 1: Shadow Monk, and now things are permanently looney tunes for you. You cast Darkness on yourself and leap into battle with the enemy. All of your attacks are at advantage and theirs are at disadvantage if they can even target the correct square, and things are going to escalate next level. Not for nothing, you trade your spear for a warhammer, so now your Attack action attacks (and your Bonus if you spend a ki point, like on Darkness or Stunning Strike) are d10 base, better for half-orc brutal critical.
Monk 4/Fighter 1: Crusher is a complete game changer for the Demonweb build. Normally, you would otherwise just snuggle the enemy and start murdering - it's incredibly challenging for them to even know what square you're standing in to try to attack back, let alone land the hit if they guess correctly. But you're going to crit a lot. If you crit even once, and with 3 attacks at advantage for free and 4 with a ki point it's likely, you can then retreat away from the enemy, so they're no longer in darkness. Sure, this means they can attack out more credibly now - but your allies can attack them, and all of those attacks will be at advantage, and you control whether or not you make this choice, so you can choose to do it only when it makes tactical sense based on factors like positioning, initiative, etc. Both the Ranger and the Druid are going to be pretty damn happy you gave them and their pets more combat utility - especially the Beast of the Land, who can charge the target, attack with advantage, and possibly knock them prone. Not that I'm knocking the Ranger's bowshots or the Wildfire companion's flame seed or the Druid's Scorching Ray or... well, you get the idea.

tl;dr My top recommendations are Long Death from the options you gave and Shadow from the ones I gave, but the Shadow one needs a Fighter level to rev up.

[KnotaGuru]

Custom Lineage is its own race. Do you just mean you modified your stats, or did you actually abandon the half-orc racials and you're a custom lineage that happens to look like a half-orc? The difference does matter. I'm curious how you're all functioning - I'm about to run this campaign myself, and I made it clear to my players I've read the Drizzt books and the local townsfolk will, if they find out you're a goblinoid or full orc under that cold weather outfit, react exactly as xenophobically as you'd expect. Those creatures would only show up in the Dale as harbingers of an invasion.

The Druid and Ranger took the "Custom Lineage" option from Tash's and dumped the normal racial features to get a +2 ability score increase and a feat. The Hobgoblin kept everything as written. I used the "Customizing Origin" option from Tash's and moved the +2 from Str into Dex. I kept all the other half-orc features (+1 Con, darkvision, menacing, relentless endurance, savage attacks, and orc language). I wanted to keep the half-orc features to help with damage (savage attacks) and durability (relentless endurance) knowing I'm the only true frontliner. Although, the ranger took the Druidic Warrior fighting style for shillelagh.

The party needed a physical presence and my character is very imposing and has a no-nonsense approach to combat and social situations. I went monk for several reasons: none of us have played one, I rolled crazy good, and I don't have to rely on finding magic weapons. I took the criminal background with the enforcer specialty (went well with the intimidate skill). My character is a low-level enforcer for The Chill. The Chill (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Chill) consists of goblinoids, orcs, and kobolds. They remain friendly with neighboring communities because they are mercenaries and need the work. The Mercenary Veteran background from SCAG lists The Chill as an option so we based our backgrounds on that. We just thought it would be fun to play monstrous races for once and being part of The Chill gave a us a reason to all know each other.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It might be worth thinking about Way of Mercy. Getting to replace one of your Flurry of Blows attack with a shot of healing is not bad at all, especially with the weak beast companion--being able to wake it up from 0hp with so small an action/resource cost will be priceless.

[verbatim]

Your party members look like they cover ranged DPS, AoE, and battlefield control particularly well, but no one has the ability to draw significant enemy attention and tank it.

With your stats, at level 3 as a Long Death Monk you would gain 7 temp hp per kill you get, scaling +1 per level. This is the only feature you get that contributes to tankiness until 6 where you get to spend an action to force fear saves, which requires you to put yourself pretty out in the open to be far enough away to not hit your teammates while still hitting the enemies.

The Long Death's reputation as a tank subclass mainly stems (imo) from their level 11 ability, which you won't get until the campaign is nearly over.


With that being said, I'm actually gonna recommend Open Hand or Mercy instead. Neither can't tank hits quite as well as Long Death due to no temp hp, but they have more features for supporting your squishy teammates.


Open Hand's landing Flurry of Blows lets you take away an enemy's reaction for a turn without a save, which is very helpful when it comes to helping your teammates get out of danger.

The Mercy Monk's ability to heal mid fight overlaps with the druid and the ranger that will eventually multiclass cleric, but by being the person to spend their turn healing you enable them to use battlefield control spells or ranged DPS instead. As mentioned earlier in the thread, being able to apply Hands of Harm after you confirm a crit smite style synergizes very well with the Half-Orc's Savage Attacks.

[Spo]

Anyway. Your statline is absolute bull**** -.



Lol I was thinking the same thing.

We are knee deep into the module and a player was looking at open hand but ended up with brutality monk. He is doing a good job controlling the battlefield field but our team makeup is different than yours.

[micahaphone]

I haven't played or looked at that module, so just a general note.

Monks usually keep their survivability by dancing in and out of combat. But Long Death can do a little bit more of that than normal.

Don't sleep on Open Hand's ability to take away enemy's reactions, it's a free disengage and can later prevent counterspell.

[Seekergeek]

Lol I was thinking the same thing.

We are knee deep into the module and a player was looking at open hand but ended up with brutality monk. He is doing a good job controlling the battlefield field but our team makeup is different than yours.

brutality monk? Where is that kicking around? I’m likewise about to shuffle my way across the level 3 threshold and have been playing much more like a brawler than a traditionally fluffed monk and I’d be interested in taking a gander since that sounds like it may apply.

[Stattick]

I also like Long Death better. Reminds me of a character I wrote up. Long Death Monk w/ a 2 level dip into Death Cleric. Had Magic Initiate: Wizard w/ Chill Touch, Toll the Dead, & Find Familiar (refluffed as being animated by the soul of a departed companion who'd angered Kelemvor, who my character had killed when he stepped out of line. (Death Cleric lets you twin Necro cantrips, as long as the targets are within 5' of each other).

[loki_ragnarock]

Play a drunken master.

Advantages:
- Always have a flask. If anyone asks, you just taking a nip for warmth.
- Force the other players to step up as you step away; if they wanted a tank in the party, they should have played a dang tank. Ain't your fault they're incapable of slipping away from enemies as effectively as you. And once they die, maybe they'll play a tank instead of putting it on you.
- After they've made a tank to replace the squishy that died after which they'd expected you to protect, gain Tipsy Sway. An ability that lets you redirect attacks against you to other targets, making you an excellent toe to toe guy when there's lots of toes to go around.


Be a drunken master. What else but crippling addiction could explain why you wound up in this Stygian wasteland?

EDIT:
Also, you don't need to worry about your front line that much. The ranger has an extra sack of hp as a class feature. The wizard is a prototypical iron wizard, and can probably do nearly as well or better than a fighter if they feel like it. Druids can stand up if they have to.

My point is mostly: play what you feel like, don't get pigeonholed into a role you don't want to fill.

That said, drunken master abilities are very good at enhancing your ability to deal with multiple foes; the free disengage with flurry can be used to bounce out or reach of a solo, heavy monster. But it can also help ping you around the battle field and tap multiple monsters more easily. It's flexible that way. And while being able to do a little damage to alot of monsters isn't a well loved niche, it becomes substantially more effective when you've got a wizard that can AoE, a Wildfire Druid that can AoE as well; it could be just enough taps to take down multiple creatures a round.

So against the biggest, most soloist monsters, you are ineffable. Against multiple creatures, you are tapping them just enough into place to make that fireball kill them instead of wounding them.

It's a pretty great subclass. Lean into the Way of Crippling Addiction.