Beast Barbarian / Drunken Monk (natural vs unarmed)

[Nefariis]

I've been playing with PhoenixPhyre's RED calculator quite a bit and I was surprised at how well Monk faired until level 11 or 12 - certainly much better than I gave them credit for.

So I have been building a few different Monks to see if I could improve upon the base RED calculation, but I never seem to get the Natural Weapons vs unarmed strikes correct - so I wanted to run a build past you guys to see if this is actually legal.

Beast Barb 3 / Drunken Monk 17

levels 1-3 - Beast Barbarian
levels 4-20 - Drunken Monk

Feats - Fey Touched for Hex with +1 Wisdom
Magic Items - Eldritch Claw Tattoo & Insignia of Claws

The base of the build is that beast barbarian will get 3 attacks as apart of their attack action and 2 more attacks as apart of monk's flurry of blows for a total of 5 attacks at level 8. Then at level 20, the drunken master capstone increases the flurry of blows to 5, allowing for a total of 8 attacks.

Hex seems pretty clear, you can add a d6 to each of the attacks - as a bonus, you can give them disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws which seems pretty nice for Stunning Strike opportunities.

Now what I would like is a little help on is sorting out the nitty gritty of Natural Weapons vs Unarmed attacks


Beast Barbarian says - "Until the rage ends, you manifest a natural weapon. It counts as a simple melee weapon for you, and you add your Strength modifier to the attack and damage rolls when you attack with it, as normal."

So these are natural weapons that count as simple melee weapons that you are proficient in - but they are not unarmed strikes, correct?


Eldritch Claw Tattoo says -
Magical Strikes. While the tattoo is on your skin, your unarmed strikes are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming immunity and resistance to nonmagical attacks, and you gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with unarmed strikes.

Eldritch Maul. As a bonus action, you can empower the tattoo for 1 minute. For the duration, each of your melee attacks with a weapon or an unarmed strike can reach a target up to 15 feet away from you, as inky tendrils launch toward the target. In addition, your melee attacks deal an extra 1d6 force damage on a hit. Once used, this bonus action can't be used again until the next dawn.


So Magical Strikes would work to give +1/+1 on Flurry of Blows and Martial Arts because those are made with unarmed strikes, correct? - and Eldritch Maul would allow all your attacks to gain 15ft and then separately, just your base 3 main attacks will gain an extra d6.


Insignia of Claws says - While wearing the insignia, you gain a +1 bonus to the attack rolls and the damage rolls you make with unarmed strikes and natural weapons. Such attacks are considered to be magical.

This pretty clearly gives +1/+1 to all your attacks.

So if a level 8 character has 20 STR

He should have three attacks at +9 (+1 tattoos, +3 Prof, +5 STR) to hit and 9d6+24 damage (3d6+5+1(tattoo)+2(rage) per attack natural claw) and two more attacks (flurry of blows) for +10 (+2 tattoos, +3 Prof, +5 STR) to hit and 6d6+18 damage (3d6+5+2(tattoo)+2(rage) per attack unarmed strikes)

So 15d6+42 = 94.5 at level 8

At level 20, this should be 13d6(claws)+5d10(unarmed, drunken flurry)+59 = 132

Am I doing that right?

I thought Bugbear could be a fun race to combine with Eldritch Maul for 20ft of reach - also Slasher and or Sentinel seems like a pretty good fit.

Rogue doesn't seem to work with either Natural Weapons or Unarmed Strikes - so that seems like a no go.

Outside of the math, does anyone see any ways to improve this build? It seems like this build will hit a lull between 8 and 19 in the RED calculation until the level 20 burst. Is there anything that can be added to it to fill that gap?

EDIT: I thought of a couple, Enlarge will add 1d4 every hit and Spores Druid would add 1d6 every hit.

SECOND EDIT: Actually I need to redo this to make this a Strength Monk Build - if you quote me while I am editing, my bad

[meandean]

FYI, hex affects ability checks, not saving throws.

[Nefariis]

FYI, hex affects ability checks, not saving throws.

Whoops - good catch

[kazaryu]

I've been playing with PhoenixPhyre's RED calculator quite a bit and I was surprised at how well Monk faired until level 11 or 12 - certainly much better than I gave them credit for.

So I have been building a few different Monks to see if I could improve upon the base RED calculation, but I never seem to get the Natural Weapons vs unarmed strikes correct - so I wanted to run a build past you guys to see if this is actually legal.

Beast Barb 3 / Drunken Monk 17

levels 1-3 - Beast Barbarian
levels 4-20 - Drunken Monk

Feats - Fey Touched for Hex with +1 Wisdom
Magic Items - Eldritch Claw Tattoo & Insignia of Claws

The base of the build is that beast barbarian will get 3 attacks as apart of their attack action and 2 more attacks as apart of monk's flurry of blows for a total of 5 attacks at level 8. Then at level 20, the drunken master capstone increases the flurry of blows to 5, allowing for a total of 8 attacks.

Hex seems pretty clear, you can add a d6 to each of the attacks - as a bonus, you can give them disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws which seems pretty nice for Stunning Strike opportunities.

Now what I would like is a little help on is sorting out the nitty gritty of Natural Weapons vs Unarmed attacks



So these are natural weapons that count as simple melee weapons that you are proficient in - but they are not unarmed strikes, correct?



So Magical Strikes would work to give +1/+1 on Flurry of Blows and Martial Arts because those are made with unarmed strikes, correct? - and Eldritch Maul would allow all your attacks to gain 15ft and then separately, just your base 3 main attacks will gain an extra d6.



This pretty clearly gives +1/+1 to all your attacks.

So if a level 8 character has 20 STR

He should have three attacks at +9 (+1 tattoos, +3 Prof, +5 STR) to hit and 9d6+24 damage (3d6+5+1(tattoo)+2(rage) per attack natural claw) and two more attacks (flurry of blows) for +10 (+2 tattoos, +3 Prof, +5 STR) to hit and 6d6+18 damage (3d6+5+2(tattoo)+2(rage) per attack unarmed strikes)

So 15d6+42 = 94.5 at level 8

At level 20, this should be 13d6(claws)+5d10(unarmed, drunken flurry)+59 = 132

Am I doing that right?

I thought Bugbear could be a fun race to combine with Eldritch Maul for 20ft of reach - also Slasher and or Sentinel seems like a pretty good fit.

Rogue doesn't seem to work with either Natural Weapons or Unarmed Strikes - so that seems like a no go.

Outside of the math, does anyone see any ways to improve this build? It seems like this build will hit a lull between 8 and 19 in the RED calculation until the level 20 burst. Is there anything that can be added to it to fill that gap?

EDIT: I thought of a couple, Enlarge will add 1d4 every hit and Spores Druid would add 1d6 every hit.

SECOND EDIT: Actually I need to redo this to make this a Strength Monk Build - if you quote me while I am editing, my bad

i understand you're editing, but a few things you're overlooking.

1. you can't concentrate on hex/enlarge at the same time. this isn't a huge problem if you can get an ally to enlarge you.
2. you can't concentrate on hex while raging
3. racially, if you just want pure damage, then helf-orc would probably be a better race than bugbear. if you're attacking 8 times in a turn, at advantage, then you're gonna be critting pretty frequently, and half-orcs get a small damge bump to crits.
4. if you go spore druid then you cant reach level 17 for monk
5. even if hex gave disadvantage on saving throws (it doesn't) stunning strike is a constitution save, not wisdom. (obviously a nitpick, since you could instead hex for con. but really dex/str are what you want to hex for, in order to give them disadvatage on grapple checks. Or, if you're a sneaky type, wisdom for disadvantage on perception (and a -5 to passive eprception).


Edit: however, you are correct that the claw attacks from a beast barbarian don't count as unarmed strikes (although they do count as monk weapons, and so would benefit from the marial arts die)

[Nefariis]

i understand you're editing, but a few things you're overlooking.

1. you can't concentrate on hex/enlarge at the same time. this isn't a huge problem if you can get an ally to enlarge you.
2. you can't concentrate on hex while raging
3. racially, if you just want pure damage, then helf-orc would probably be a better race than bugbear. if you're attacking 8 times in a turn, at advantage, then you're gonna be critting pretty frequently, and half-orcs get a small damge bump to crits.
4. if you go spore druid then you cant reach level 17 for monk
5. even if hex gave disadvantage on saving throws (it doesn't) stunning strike is a constitution save, not wisdom. (obviously a nitpick, since you could instead hex for con. but really dex/str are what you want to hex for, in order to give them disadvatage on grapple checks. Or, if you're a sneaky type, wisdom for disadvantage on perception (and a -5 to passive eprception).


Edit: however, you are correct that the claw attacks from a beast barbarian don't count as unarmed strikes (although they do count as monk weapons, and so would benefit from the marial arts die)


1 & 4 - The enlarge / spore druid was just me tossing out a few ideas - the only thing that I don't really like about the build is that a chunk of the damage doesn't come online until 20 - so between 8 and 20, the damage output is fairly flat (though I suppose adding a flat d4 or d6 to each hit doesn't help with level scaling either)
2 - Good catch
3 - Good call
5 - All good call outs - but either way, I still think I like Fey Touched better than Magic Initiate to pick up Hex, and I still like Hex better than Hunter's Mark for this build.

Your Edit - wait, so does the d6 claws become D10 then at level 17 for the first 3 attacks?

[Damon_Tor]

Your Edit - wait, so does the d6 claws become D10 then at level 17?

Yes, it does.

[kazaryu]

1 & 4 - The enlarge / spore druid was just me tossing out a few ideas - the only thing that I don't really like about the build is that a chunk of the damage doesn't come online until 20 - so between 8 and 20, the damage output is fairly flat
2 - Good catch
3 - Good call
5 - Either way, I still think I like Fey Touched better than Magic Initiate to pick up Hex, and I still like Hex better than Hunter's Mark for this build - but those are all good call outs.

Your Edit - wait, so does the d6 claws become D10 then at level 17? yup, and a D8 at level 11. at least, as far as i can tell. i might be overlooking something, but the claws are counted as simple weapons, which puts them as monk weapons.

and...i mean, im not really sure you want, or need, hex/hunter's mark. if you hes you're getting an extra 3.5 damage per attack, at the loss of the 2 rage damage and extra attack from beast barbarian, and it only applies to a max of 4 attacks. so 14 damage. whereas just the 8 attacks with rage is 16 damage. AND on top of that, its an extra turn you have to wait before you can flurry. by the time it comes online, the fight will be mostly over, and at the very least most of the mook will be taken care of already. thus making your capstone useless.

[Nefariis]

and it only applies to a max of 4 attacks.

Why only 4 attacks?

[kazaryu]

Why only 4 attacks?

the extra attacks from the drunken flurry thing only works if you attack different creatures with each attack.