Surviving Strahd's Realm as a Long Death Monk

[SociopathFriend]

So one of my groups decided we'd do 5e's Ravenloft campaign once we get a few more levels done in the Mad Mage's Dungeon.

Most of the players have either never played Strahd's campaign or don't have the best memory of it. I myself largely retained nothing as my one successful run involved being a Barbarian that responded to every given threat with suicidal rage and violence. So I remember the vague plot of the campaign but specifics are generally gone.

This time around I thought I'd be more subtle. I'd not yet played a Monk in 5e and the Long Death Monk sounds all sorts of thematically fun for Ravenloft.

My current hard goals are:
Long Death Monk (main class)
Divination Wizard (at least 2 levels)

For the fun thematic of stuff like, "I've seen your killer in the future- I'm here" and, "You're already dead- I'm merely helping you accept that."

The last time we played the DM was forgiving to an extent. This time I have every reason to believe he'll be out for blood- or at least he won't pull punches.

What I'm asking though is if there are any particular Feats or techniques I should be working towards in order to increase survivability in Strahd's realm while also regularly engaging in melee? Our DM is definitely willing to engage in RP and not just direct combat scenarios.

[CTurbo]

5e Monks rely on high Dex and Wis therefor are best when those stats are maxed. 5e Monks also work best when they have as much ki as they can get. Multiclassing really hampers those things. 2 levels of Wizard will add a ton of utility to a Monk that doesn't really have any utility to speak of, but it's going to really hurt your ability to be a Monk.

For this character, I wouldn't take any feats, I'd get Dex maxed as quick as possible or do +2 Dex and then +2 Wis

[AttilatheYeon]

Protection from good/evil is your best friend.

[MisterD]

With DEX and WIS stats have you thought Cleric instead of Wizard?

[SociopathFriend]

With DEX and WIS stats have you thought Cleric instead of Wizard?

I have- but none of the Domains really fit the, "Death is inevitable and I am its bringer" sort of angle I wanted to work with like Divination Wizard.

[Spore]

I have- but none of the Domains really fit the, "Death is inevitable and I am its bringer" sort of angle I wanted to work with like Divination Wizard.

I'm sorry, but GRAVE cleric or Peace cleric is exactly that. Rest in Peace is an idiom for a reason.

Grave clerics bring true death for the undead as well as prolong it for those whose time has not yet come (healing downed allies). Peace cleric ironically makes your punching stronger with double Bless effects.

But optimization aside, a well-played monk is plenty strong in Barovia. A few pointers:

- Strahd is enigmatic, his power is shrouded in mystery, so staying vigilant and alert is important. He has his spies, but he has no divine powers. You are already a wisdom class, so Perception and Insight are the best things you bring to the table. If you are really paranoid, get Alert or Observant as feats. Seeing things is important.
- Roleplaying as a (western) monk might actually open you doors that the charisma face cannot open. Many people in Barovia are religious, and people who align themselves even with darker deities are welcome. (Religion is a good skill in a campaign with undead, too!)
- There are no "forced" encounters in Barovia, short of a few travel encounters. You can plan your engagements to your heart's contents. Beside that, the few locations were you stay longer (as in have more combat encounters) you should press your group for short rests. You can always tell them, you are maintaining the watch (with your excellent Perception) as you meditate to regain ki and recover.
- have a few tricks up your sleeve to keep your mobility up. a long death monk may gain temporary HP from kills, but if you are nailed down, you are as good as dead. Maybe get Fey-touched (or another level of wizard for 3 levels) for Misty Step. Have a good Acrobatics score to escape grapples. Use your superior mobility with Athletics checks to jump atop buildings (and use wizard cantrips, a crossbow (via Tasha's dedicated weapon) or a sling to soften melee encounters from afar).

I'll probably say a monk stays out of melee of dedicated brutes, and instead circumvents the frontline and gets to the casters. But I feel Barovia has more monsters in store who have spells and are still quite formidable in melee. Just imagine hags, werewolves, zombies or even the odd druid. Neither is TRULY at a loss when you engage them in melee.

[Phhase]

I'm sorry, but GRAVE cleric or Peace cleric is exactly that. Rest in Peace is an idiom for a reason.

Grave clerics bring true death for the undead as well as prolong it for those whose time has not yet come (healing downed allies). Peace cleric ironically makes your punching stronger with double Bless effects.


Thematically yes, but I think OP is enticed by how Divination Wizard allows one to specifically introduce determinism as a futuresight mechanic, which I also like. Frankly, seems like a good build! Just yeah, be sure not to skip too many ASIs.

[Spore]

Thematically yes, but I think OP is enticed by how Divination Wizard allows one to specifically introduce determinism as a futuresight mechanic, which I also like. Frankly, seems like a good build! Just yeah, be sure not to skip too many ASIs.

Oh good lord, you now remind me that I still need to do my Tiefling Long Death monk which is absolutely not Raziel from Soul Reaver. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbxNlS5kiCM)

Vampires, predestined fates and long death monks are a personal crossover from VERY long ago for me. Even though in my personal case the monk would play the agent liberated from destiny.

[SociopathFriend]

Oh good lord, you now remind me that I still need to do my Tiefling Long Death monk which is absolutely not Raziel from Soul Reaver. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbxNlS5kiCM)

Vampires, predestined fates and long death monks are a personal crossover from VERY long ago for me. Even though in my personal case the monk would play the agent liberated from destiny.

Hey- I wouldn't blame you for a minute for wanting to play Raziel OR Kain for that matter. Legacy of Kain is in the running for my favorite franchise of all time- certainly in the top 5.

[SociopathFriend]

But optimization aside, a well-played monk is plenty strong in Barovia. A few pointers:

- Strahd is enigmatic, his power is shrouded in mystery, so staying vigilant and alert is important. He has his spies, but he has no divine powers. You are already a wisdom class, so Perception and Insight are the best things you bring to the table. If you are really paranoid, get Alert or Observant as feats. Seeing things is important.
- Roleplaying as a (western) monk might actually open you doors that the charisma face cannot open. Many people in Barovia are religious, and people who align themselves even with darker deities are welcome. (Religion is a good skill in a campaign with undead, too!)
- There are no "forced" encounters in Barovia, short of a few travel encounters. You can plan your engagements to your heart's contents. Beside that, the few locations were you stay longer (as in have more combat encounters) you should press your group for short rests. You can always tell them, you are maintaining the watch (with your excellent Perception) as you meditate to regain ki and recover.
- have a few tricks up your sleeve to keep your mobility up. a long death monk may gain temporary HP from kills, but if you are nailed down, you are as good as dead. Maybe get Fey-touched (or another level of wizard for 3 levels) for Misty Step. Have a good Acrobatics score to escape grapples. Use your superior mobility with Athletics checks to jump atop buildings (and use wizard cantrips, a crossbow (via Tasha's dedicated weapon) or a sling to soften melee encounters from afar).

I'll probably say a monk stays out of melee of dedicated brutes, and instead circumvents the frontline and gets to the casters. But I feel Barovia has more monsters in store who have spells and are still quite formidable in melee. Just imagine hags, werewolves, zombies or even the odd druid. Neither is TRULY at a loss when you engage them in melee.

Sounds like I'd be set to grab stuff related to being the eyes and ears of the group- unless we have a Rogue or Bard willing to take up the slack.

I've had Observant before and I won't lie- passively beating illusions is in the running for the funniest thing to do to a DM.

[Opsimos]

I've had fun with a Dhampir Long Death Monk. It fits thematically, boosts movement (spider walk), and increases your survivability (restore hit points with bite) and damage (advantage on bites at half life). Since your features scale with Wisdom, I would max out Wisdom first, then Dexterity.

[RogueJK]

In order to reconcile the desire for Divination Wizard abilities with your need for DEX/WIS stats, consider the third party Prophecy domain from Odyssey of the Dragonlords. It's basically a "Divination Wizard Cleric". (If you use DnDBeyond, it's already programmed in there as a Homebrew subclass, since it's a relatively popular 3rd party campaign.)

Basically, 2 levels of Prophecy Cleric gets you the Divination Wizard's Portent ability for 10 minutes per short rest, which is ~3x as many rolls as the Divination Wizard gets each day, at the cost of the rolls only lasting 10 minutes each. Plus, it'd eliminated the need to make the already-MAD Monk class even more MAD by investing in INT, and gets you some WIS-based cantrips and 1st level spells (notably Protection from Good/Evil, which is clutch in a Ravenloft campaign).

Here's the first two levels of the Prophecy Domain abilities:

Prophecy Domain Spells
• 1st Level: detect magic, identify
• 3rd Level: augury, locate object
• 5th Level: beacon of hope, clairvoyance
• 7th Level: death ward, divination
• 9th Level: dream, scrying

Mindful Senses
When you choose this domain at 1st level, you gain
the message cantrip if you don’t already know it.
Additionally, you gain proficiency in the Perception skill.

Blessing of Foresight
Starting at 1st level, you use your divination spells to protect
your allies from future events. Whenever you cast a
divination spell of 1st level or higher, choose one creature
you can see. That creature gains temporary hit points
equal to your Wisdom modifier + your cleric level.

Channel Divinity: Prophetic Trance
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your Channel
Divinity to enter a prophetic trance. As an action, you
inhale hallucinatory vapors and enter a trance-like
state for 10 minutes. Roll two d20s and record the
numbers rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving
throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that
you can see with one of these prophecy rolls. You must
choose to do so before the roll is made. Each prophecy
roll can be used only once. You lose the prophecy rolls
when your trance ends.

[strangebloke]

Good find RogueJK, that looks really in flavor.

Personally though I think the divination wizard is fine. With point buy you can be a variant human with 16 DEX, 16 WIS, 13 INT and 12 CON. You would like your CON to be higher, of course, but your character has reactive defenses like Shield and Absorb Elements and Protection from Good and Evil so you'll really not be lacking defensively at all, especially as this is a long death monk. You'll have lots of THP and eventually saves that let you avoid death. if you go for a more defensive race choice like goliath instead of vhuman, you can make your life last longer.

Main thing is that monks are MAD and don't really want to slow their ability score progression. They really get a lot of their scaling power from DEX increases.

[1Pirate]

Good find RogueJK, that looks really in flavor.

Personally though I think the divination wizard is fine. With point buy you can be a variant human with 16 DEX, 16 WIS, 13 INT and 12 CON. You would like your CON to be higher, of course, but your character has reactive defenses like Shield and Absorb Elements and Protection from Good and Evil so you'll really not be lacking defensively at all, especially as this is a long death monk. You'll have lots of THP and eventually saves that let you avoid death. if you go for a more defensive race choice like goliath instead of vhuman, you can make your life last longer.

Main thing is that monks are MAD and don't really want to slow their ability score progression. They really get a lot of their scaling power from DEX increases.

It's somewhat important to note that as this is a published adventure there is likely to be a hard level cap. As written, CoS goes up to level 10(though homebrewing a longer version isn't uncommon).

So even without multi-classing, Mastery of Death and Diamond Soul are out of the picture. If they go Divination Wizard to level two, that's only 3 uses of those spells per day and it won't come "online" for some time, unless they delay some Monk abilities like Extra Attack. Curse of Strahd can have multiple tough encounters per day--especially if your DM isn't pulling punches. The PC wil run out of Absorb Elements long before [Spoiler] runs out of [Spoiler].

OP--you're going to want to get to Monk 6 pretty quickly as resistance to non-magical B/P/S damage is going to crop up increasingly by then. I'm not sure I can give a good breakdown of how to handle dipping wizard without spoilers, but consider what abilities you would find the most fun and try to get to those earlier, otherwise you might find yourself not enjoying those abilities for very long before the adventure is over.

[animorte]

…consider what abilities you would find the most fun and try to get to those earlier, otherwise you might find yourself not enjoying those abilities for very long before the adventure is over.
This is the advice I think is always most valuable, irrelevant of the adventure at hand.

[SociopathFriend]

It's somewhat important to note that as this is a published adventure there is likely to be a hard level cap. As written, CoS goes up to level 10(though homebrewing a longer version isn't uncommon).

OP--you're going to want to get to Monk 6 pretty quickly as resistance to non-magical B/P/S damage is going to crop up increasingly by then. I'm not sure I can give a good breakdown of how to handle dipping wizard without spoilers, but consider what abilities you would find the most fun and try to get to those earlier, otherwise you might find yourself not enjoying those abilities for very long before the adventure is over.

I definitely want access to Portent. That particular DM has a truly obnoxious talent for crit'ing (he has once done it 6 times in a row out in the open- with different dice offered to him) so there's an inherent self-interest in wanting the potential to turn THAT stuff off.

The Portent + Stunning Fist combo is certainly the dream to chase- both because I share a friendly rivalry with that DM and because that's the RP goal for the character: seeing death and pushing someone to accept it. In some scenarios Stunning Fist might not even be a 'strike' but instead something like a hand on someone's shoulder.

The weapons thing is a worry and a valid one- but I expect a party with at least two different members pulling from: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, or Cleric as I've never seen the two of my three party members pick anything else since 3.5. So I think the potential exists to get past that particular barrier or least have someone else taking up the slack.

[1Pirate]

The weapons thing is a worry and a valid one- but I expect a party with at least two different members pulling from: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, or Cleric as I've never seen the two of my three party members pick anything else since 3.5. So I think the potential exists to get past that particular barrier or least have someone else taking up the slack.
Ahem, well, um, I still want to avoid spoilers, but assuming they're going to have magic weapons by then might be a little bold of you.

As far as the Portents go, you're either going to be delaying them until level 7 or delaying Stunning Strike until level 7. I can't really give you much advice on how to break it down from there. I'd probably go to Monk 3 and make your decision from there.

[SociopathFriend]

Ahem, well, um, I still want to avoid spoilers, but assuming they're going to have magic weapons by then might be a little bold of you.

As far as the Portents go, you're either going to be delaying them until level 7 or delaying Stunning Strike until level 7. I can't really give you much advice on how to break it down from there. I'd probably go to Monk 3 and make your decision from there.

It's less "assume they have magic weapons" and more, "assume the party can get past that barrier".

Paladins for example can make weapons magical for an hour.

[SociopathFriend]

Ahem, well, um, I still want to avoid spoilers, but assuming they're going to have magic weapons by then might be a little bold of you.

As far as the Portents go, you're either going to be delaying them until level 7 or delaying Stunning Strike until level 7. I can't really give you much advice on how to break it down from there. I'd probably go to Monk 3 and make your decision from there.

I think that's going to be a party comp question- which nobody here will be able to help me with.

If everyone goes martial, and the odds are not bad about that, those early levels of Wizard might be the difference between having any magic at all for the first few Levels.

[Spore]

Barovia is EXTREMELY scarce on magic, and you will definitely get your money's worth out of spells like Magic Weapon or class abilities that provide you with that. It is balanced for "older" 5e content, where people usually stayed true to the design of "magic items are a gift, not a must". The enemies are balanced accordingly, but some areas become much easier if you have access to magic weapons.

Going Wizard 3 for Enlarge, Magic Weapon, Invisibility, Misty Step or Mirror Image is something your character can still utilize. 2nd level is very much a step up. If you go Wizard 2, Wizard 3 is a good idea too. Keep in mind, the adventure could end with you being Monk 7/Wiz 3 instead of Monk 8/Wiz 2, but I feel a slew of spells is worth more than an ASI.

[Sception]

This sounds like a really cool build stylistically, but mechanically I'm skeptical of long death monk in Curse of Strahd due to the way the campaign... well, ok, this is a very minor mechanical (not plot) spoiler. But if you want to go in completely blind ignore me, and don't read the below. But if I were the DM for a CoS game and one of my players mentioned wanting to play a Long Death Monk, I would really want them to know the following going in:

Run out of the book as is, CoS heavily nerfs the frighten condition by taking several broad categories of enemy types - enemies normally quite susceptible to frighten, and making them outright immune instead. It's not every enemy, so your 6th level feature won't be completely useless, but it will be significantly less useful than you would normally expect, and that's a big deal for a monk subclass in a campaign that typically runs from levels 1 to 10ish. ie, unless your DM extends the campaign beyond the initial adventure, you may never even see your 11th level subclass feature, and you're basically guaranteed not to see it if you multiclass /at all/.

So mechanically, your monk subclass choice is giving you exactly two features, and in this campaign the second and more exciting of the two is much more situational than it normally would be. If you still want to try and make it work, that's on you, but You might want to save this concept for a game where the mechanics work as expected.

Tangentially, this same reason is why CoS is the only campaign where I'd advise against what is otherwise my favorite subclass, the conquest paladin. As with Long Death Monk, it's just frustrating to play a subclass that leans so heavily on a condition that the campaign hands out blanket immunity to willy nilly.

If, knowing that, you still want to play long death monk, then so be it. But it shouldn't be a gotcha surprise.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Barovia is EXTREMELY scarce on magic, and you will definitely get your money's worth out of spells like Magic Weapon or class abilities that provide you with that.

FWIW CoS magic items available math PERFECTLY with DMG guidance on magic items quantity and rarity. I've done the homework. The designer/writer did, too.

So what?

The problem is available is not the same as in possession. The upshot is players are less likely to have magic items because they have not found them. And thus the perception that CoS is light on magic items, especially weapons, generally always useful items, and items players would like to have by end of tier 2.

And as to the OP's title, you don't survive Strahd. Ever.