Good fighter/monk interactions

[adb82]

Hello,
I'm not so expert about monks in 5e, but i would like to consider some good split with the fighter class, for a dex based tank that can deal a good amount of damage, starting fighter, race Shadar Kai. Monk is a class that i never played, so i don't know all the subclasses, but even just action surge and manuvers or echo seem a good add to their melee potential; however i often readed that it's difficult to multiclass a monk as they are very ki dependent. I should play with a group with a glamour bard, a healer and a ranged artificer. So, do you have some suggestions about a build fitting with the other members of the group? I was thinking about kensei, or a grappler astral self, for let the ranged artificer do damage, or maybe an open end that can knock enemies prone, but as i said i know just few subclasses and i anyway don't know how to split the levels.

Ps the build have to start with 1 lv of fighter.

[strangebloke]

Monk is a bad class to dip because their strong features require ki and you need to stay a monk to have enough ki to use those features consistently, but monk also really benefits from dipping other classes for 1-3 levels, because their biggest problem is that although they're consistent at dealing melee damage, they don't deal a lot of melee damage and don't really have a ton of out of combat potential or flexibility.

Fighter is probably one of their best MC options, right up there with cleric. Pretty much any monk build gets better with at least one level of fighter, and going as high as level 3 or 4 can be justified as well. Fighter gives you lots of damage via maneuvers, fighting style, and action surge. For some quick examples:

Go for bllindfighting style as a fighter, then go shadow monk and cast darkness with ki. Very solid combo that gives you on-demand advantage and gives your foes disadvantage.
Go for archery style and play a ranged monk / gun monk. Focused aim + Precision attack is very efficient and makes you a top-tier damage dealer.
Ambush lets you massively boost stealth and/or initiative, and combos well with Pass Without Trace from the shadow monk.

[Unoriginal]

Hello,
I'm not so expert about monks in 5e, but i would like to consider some good split with the fighter class, for a dex based tank that can deal a good amount of damage, starting fighter, race Shadar Kai. Monk is a class that i never played, so i don't know all the subclasses, but even just action surge and manuvers or echo seem a good add to their melee potential; however i often readed that it's difficult to multiclass a monk as they are very ki dependent. I should play with a group with a glamour bard, a healer and a ranged artificer. So, do you have some suggestions about a build fitting with the other members of the group? I was thinking about kensei, but as i said i know just few subclasses and i anyway don't know how to split the levels.

Ps the build have to start with 1 lv of fighter.

Fighter/Monk can work if you want something very specific out of the interaction, but it's mostly not worth it, as you generally end up with either a worse Monk or a worse Fighter.

Furthermore while it's possible to make a Monk Tank, you won't really have room for Fighter multiclassing if you go that road.

The question is, what do you want the Monk to provide?

If you want a DEX-based Tank that can still do good damage and have other abilities I would suggest the Psi Warrior Fighter.

[RogueJK]

As with just about any multiclassing in 5E, it's going to be better to pick a primary class and dip just 1 or 2 levels in the other one. And Fighter/Monk is a combo that's only going to be worth considering in a very few niche builds.

A) Fighter 1 or 2/Monk X. This allows you to grab a Fighting Style, which could be somewhat handy to grab Archery for a Longbow/Musket Kensei with Sharpshooter, or to boost your unarmed strike damage to d8 for the first 10 levels before your Monk gets that anyway. From there, you could potentially go one level further to grab Action Surge, but the Monk wouldn't really benefit from Action Surge as much as other classes, especially spellcasters, since Monks already have ways to extend their action economy by doing certain things as Bonus Actions anyway. That's not really worth being 2 full levels behind in Monk abilities or Ki points. However, a 1 level Fighter dip does open up the possibility of stuff like an armored STR-based Monk that ignores Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense and relies on armor/shield and weapon attacks, which is not exactly an optimized choice but could potentially be a fun nontraditional build.

B) Monk 1/Fighter X. This allows you to grab Unarmored Defense, Martial Arts BA unarmed attacks, and potentially DEX-based unarmed strikes. This is possibly worthwhile on a Fighter who's taking the Unarmed fighting style and will be focusing on unarmed strikes and grappling. This could potentially work on something like a bareknuckle Rune Knight or Battle Master grappler with a high DEX and moderate STR, potentially even with the Skill Expert feat to grab Athletics Expertise. You'll just eventually have to find a way to overcome the lack of magical damage on your unarmed strikes, using a magic item like the Eldritch Claw tattoo.


But either way you slice it, most of these abilities are going to be able to be duplicated by race or feat choices (Tortle or Lizardfolk or Loxodon for unarmored defense on a Fighter, Fighting Initiate for a fighting style on a Monk, Mountain Dwarf for medium armor and weapons on a Monk, Longtooth Shifter or Minotaur or Shield Master or Tavern Brawler for BA attack/grapple/shove options on a Fighter, etc.)

So in the grand scheme of things, a Fighter dipping Monk or a Monk dipping Fighter doesn't really gain you enough to justify being a level behind in your primary class.

[Amechra]

a dex based tank that can deal a good amount of damage

Depending on what you call as a "good amount of damage", this might already be a sign that you don't want to play a Monk.

Most of the time, you're going to get better results if you approach the Monk as if it were a version of the Rogue that trades raw damage for better disruptive tools — there's a reason that the "good" Monk subclasses are Kensei (which gives you a solid ranged option), Mercy (which lets you heal and hit people with the poisoned condition without a save), and Shadow (which gives you bonus stealth tools plus Darkness and Silence, which can drastically alter the course of encounters by themselves).

One of the big reasons that the Monk is so hard to multiclass with is that the first two levels are almost entirely dead if you aren't on the "unarmed strikes + no armor" train (with the first level being entirely dead). If you're starting off as a Fighter, that means that you're either losing an entire level worth of features or you're dropping your AC and damage for a few levels.

[RogueJK]

Depending on what you call as a "good amount of damage", this might already be a sign that you don't want to play a Monk.


I couldn't agree more. Melee monks are not the ones that are going to be putting up the big damage numbers. They just aren't. They simply don't have access to the means to add significant extra damage to their attacks via stuff like Sneak Attack, GWM, Smite, Spells, etc. That's just not what their role is.

The only Monk build I've ever seen that's able to drop big damage numbers is the ranged Kensei Gunk/Bonk with a Musket/Longbow and Sharpshooter.


But in this particular case, the OP is wanting not only good damage numbers, but also wants the character to be a tank. A ranged Monk is definitely not a tank. Heck, it takes significant non-optimal build investment and party support to make a melee Monk even come close to being a tank, and even then they're going to seriously lag behind any number of other more well-suited tank options.


Therefore, look elsewhere for what you're wanting.

[Amechra]

With the group you've got, adb82, I'd suggest holding off on the Monk and just going for straight Fighter (or Barbarian/Paladin/Ranger) — that party looks like it really needs someone who can get stuck in in melee to keep monsters from getting to all of your ranged characters, and the Monk doesn't do that very well (for the same reason that a Rogue doesn't).


So many of the Monk's problems could have been solved if they had just bumped up the AC bonus from Unarmored Defense by 1-2 points.

Currently, a Monk's starting AC is 14-to-16, and that's really bad. The only other characters who start with 14-to-15 AC are ranged characters that don't want to be in melee in the first place (Rogues included) OR they're characters who have sacrificed some defense for offense (Barbarian with a two-handed weapon and Dex 13)... and Monks fall in neither camp. On top of that, they lack the "extra HP" that the other two "I have low-ish AC but being in melee isn't suicide for me" classes have (Barbarians with their d12 HD and Rage resistances, Rogues with Uncanny Dodge) — their equivalent appears to be Patient Defense, but that's both super expensive and clashes with Flurry of Blows (your big damage buff).

If they started with AC 16-to-18, on the other hand, they'd sit in the same range as Fighters/Paladins/Rangers, which is closer to where they should be. It'd also make them feel considerably less MAD — instead of needing both good Dexterity and good Wisdom to get decent AC, they'd start with decent AC and increasing both stats would give them great AC.

The Monk suffers quite a bit stat-wise from the original design team wildly over-estimating how impactful natural weapons/natural armor are in D&D. Those kinds of things are really good in, say, games built around intrigue and spy shenanigans, where having a concealed weapon that can't be taken away from you is a HUGE advantage... whereas D&D very rarely sets up situations where you, say, need your plate armor but aren't wearing it. Unless your DM really likes putting you in prison break scenarios, Monk 1 effectively ends up being a couple mediocre pieces of starting gear masquerading as class features plus a slightly upgraded version of the TWF style.

It also doesn't help that the OG team decided to that all natural weapons should have a d4 damage die and banned them from being used with Divine Smite and Sneak Attack. Which are, you know, the two class features that might make you interested in a weapon with a bad damage die but some cool extra features. This isn't just a Monk problem — if Divine Smite worked with unarmed strikes, Tavern Brawler Paladins would be a really cool way to make an unarmed brawler character.

[strangebloke]

Fighter/Monk can work if you want something very specific out of the interaction, but it's mostly not worth it, as you generally end up with either a worse Monk or a worse Fighter.


As with just about any multiclassing in 5E, it's going to be better to pick a primary class and dip just 1 or 2 levels in the other one. And Fighter/Monk is a combo that's only going to be worth considering in a very few niche builds.
...
So in the grand scheme of things, a Fighter dipping Monk or a Monk dipping Fighter doesn't really gain you enough to justify being a level behind in your primary class.
:confused:

Really have to disagree here. While these are some general truisms, fighters really offer a lot that monks don't have an easy way of getting access to otherwise. Sure you can "just grab fighting initiate" to get a fighting style, but that requires you sacrificing a valuable ASI, of which you only get 3 by level 12. Monks scale really heavily off ASIs, and if you could sacrifice a monk level to get an extra one, you usually would.

Archery style for sharpshooters is obvious, but blindfighting for a darkness-reliant character is quite strong as well.

Furthermore, I would advocate for a 3 level fighter dip. Battlemaster is insanely frontloaded, and the maneuvers you gain access to more than compensate for the lost ki points.

Sure you're getting access to monk high level features later, but are high level monk features that much of a priority? This guys is focused on damage and surviving, which don't really require things like monk 9 all that much.

I couldn't agree more. Melee monks are not the ones that are going to be putting up the big damage numbers. They just aren't. They simply don't have access to the means to add significant extra damage to their attacks via stuff like Sneak Attack, GWM, Smite, Spells, etc. That's just not what their role is.

This, I almost completely agree with. Super Tanky High Damage Melee is a vengeance paladin or a hexblade or a vpallyhexasorcadin or something like that.

The closest vanilla build here with monk would be a bugbear longsword kensei. You can have four attacks on round one with the surprise attack feature pushing your damage. You can make three accurate attacks per turn with something like a flametongue (which you can turn into a +3 flametongue via STB).... and you can also make yourself pretty tanky via Patient Defense + Agile Parry...

...But you can't do all those at once, and you can't do that when you're out of ki. Bonus Action competition really hurts you here, especially if OP goes shadarkai instead of bugbear. And a fighter in most instances would deal comparable or better damage.

The other route would be the aforementioned darkness cheese, which is very efficient and does put up good-ish damage numbers while also keeping you very safe when it works. It doesn't work against blindsight, but outside of that you can be an elf with elven accuracy for triple advantage and all enemy attacks made at disadvantage. Again, the damage isn't insane relative to top tier melee builds, but at a moderately optimized table I've seen this build put up respectable numbers.

Otherwise though, just go paladin lol. Way more fitting with the stated goals.

[Bosh]

Fighter blind fighting goes very nicely with shadow monk.

[Greywander]

Monks are actually tankier than they get credit for. Yes, they have lower HP than most other martials (d8 instead of d10). And yes, their AC gets online a bit slower. However, here are the things they do get that improve their defenses:

Patient Defense. Disadvantage on attacks against you, and advantage on DEX saves. And all it costs you is your BA and 1 ki.
Deflect Missiles. Not only are ranged (weapon) attacks less effective against you, but you can turn around and launch the projectile right back. Sure, you could just close the gap and deliver a beatdown to the enemy archer, but you could also just ignore them and let them kill themselves by trying to shoot you. A shame it doesn't work with spell attacks.
Slow Fall. If you like fighting enemies that use forced movement in places with long drops, this can save your bacon.
Evasion. You also already have high DEX, and DEX save proficiency, so a lot of the time you'll take straight up no damage from AoEs. Except pesky cold or poison AoEs, which are usually CON saves instead.
Purity of Body. Okay nevermind, you don't have to worry about poison anymore.
Diamond Soul. Proficiency in all saves, and you can keep spending ki until you pass. Or run out. By this time your AC should be around 18 or so, so you don't really have any glaring weaknesses anymore.
Empty Body. Greater Invisibility that also gives resistance to all damage except force. This one is actually bonkers, but to be fair tier 4 is supposed to be bonkers.

Seriously, don't sleep on Patient Defense. Unfortunately, it precludes Flurry and Ki-Fueled Attack. But my point is that monks have a lot of terrific defensive abilities. Sadly, they're also quite MAD, so you have fewer opportunities for feats. I like Defensive Duelist as a melee complement to Deflect Missiles, and the extra HP from Tough is always welcome.

Patient Defense and defensive feats do unfortunately come at the cost of offense. Monks are actually kind of terrible at dealing damage. In the early levels they're great, but the problem is that they barely see a bump in damage after 5th level. The increasing Martial Arts die helps a little bit, but most of their extra damage comes from being able to Flurry more often without exhausting their ki, which doesn't really show up when doing on-paper analysis. What monks are good at is positioning themselves in inconvenient places, or getting up close and personal with someone who thought they were well away from the fighting. Think of them like light cavalry: great for attacking the enemy's undefended back line, but they crumple against serious resistance. Enough damage to down a mage, but not enough to down a barbarian.

[Amechra]

The Monk is designed to be really good at staying at range, and also really hard to kill at range, with the weakness that they die pretty quickly if stuck in melee. A tank, however, wants to be stuck in melee. I'm sure that you can see the issue here. :p

Patient Defense is kinda interesting because it's a really powerful defensive feature that just so happens to belong to the one class that's the worst at taking advantage of it. So much of the Monk's damage is bound up in its bonus action that using Patient Defense means that you're literally sacrificing half of your damage that round to do it. If your goal is pure damage prevention, Step of the Wind is oftentimes going to be a better option, since you can disengage + jump up into a tree (or something) to completely remove yourself from melee (which turns on Deflect Missiles).

...

If you want the real irony, though... Dwarven Fortitude + Patient Defense gives you a legitimately powerful bonus action (heal + boost your defenses for a turn as a bonus action? Sweet!)... but it ends up being a trap because, on top of halving your damage that turn, it also asks you to spend an ASI on something that isn't boosting Dex/Wis to satisfy your Monk's MAD hunger for stat boosts. If, say, the Barbarian got the ability to Dodge as a bonus action once per short rest, you'd see a bunch more people taking the feat.

[Leon]

Fighter is a good but bland way to achieve a number of things with almost any class depending in what your overall goal is ~ gets you all the weapons and armour and some fighting styles that can really focus what your choice of combat. How many levels is down to what features and or feats/ASI you want from both classes and how it fits the theme you envision for the character. Its generally better and more fun to play a character that you want to play over trying to force a fit to what others may or may not be doing, 5e is soft enough that anything will work.

[SharkForce]

mechanically, monk and fighter don't really combine well. I do think 11 levels of fighter followed by 9 levels of monk is better than a pure fighter build, but that's not because it's a particularly strong combination, it's because fighter has very little to gain from levels 12-19 for the most part that you can pretty much take any other class and gain more.

furthermore, to my mind at least you don't really seem to have a particularly compelling *mechanical* reason to actually make a fighter/monk... what concept are you going for? a fighter who grew up in a fighting monk monastery can be very easily done by taking a battlemaster fighter, and saying that their background is that they're from a monastery, for example. or you can just build a single-classed monk and roleplay them to have whatever fighter-y background you're thinking of (though in my opinion, monks are going to struggle with being a tank until the higher levels).

or, basically... what is your actual mechanical reason for making a fighter/monk? is there some combination of mechanical features that you urgently want to have?

[adb82]

Ok guys, i had few time for read some of the other subclasses and yea, seem monks are not that good about deal damage. So, I'll probably go other route, as my party seem to need someone able to deal damage. In the other post i made i was considering a Dex based eldricht Knight that seem a more solid choice, unless I'll find some fighter/Barbarian (or fighter/rogue, but it probably would tank much less) build that make me change my mind I'll probably go with it.

[adb82]

mechanically, monk and fighter don't really combine well. I do think 11 levels of fighter followed by 9 levels of monk is better than a pure fighter build, but that's not because it's a particularly strong combination, it's because fighter has very little to gain from levels 12-19 for the most part that you can pretty much take any other class and gain more.

furthermore, to my mind at least you don't really seem to have a particularly compelling *mechanical* reason to actually make a fighter/monk... what concept are you going for? a fighter who grew up in a fighting monk monastery can be very easily done by taking a battlemaster fighter, and saying that their background is that they're from a monastery, for example. or you can just build a single-classed monk and roleplay them to have whatever fighter-y background you're thinking of (though in my opinion, monks are going to struggle with being a tank until the higher levels).

or, basically... what is your actual mechanical reason for making a fighter/monk? is there some combination of mechanical features that you urgently want to have?

Well, actually just bcs in 25 years of D&D i never played a monk (only one tbh, but was a monk 1/bladesinger x that use a quarterstaff with dex and pull enemies in his own hazardous spells). 🤣 But well, i can play it in the next campaign, as for this one my character must start fighter, and as i said, watching the party components, i think they really need a tank able to deal a good amount of damage, and i realized that monks probably can't help with that.

Ps while i love the idea to mix up shadow monk and fighter, it's a build that depend too much from the object interactions of other characters in my party, because they are all casters or ranged, that darkness will bother them a lot.

[Greywander]

Monk is still a fun class, it's just not a good choice if you're looking for both damage and tankiness. Its mobility might still be pretty useful in a mostly ranged party, as the last thing you want is to have to slowly jog back to your party if something gets behind you.

Hmm, you should look into Conquest paladin. Not only are paladins pretty tough on their own and have big nova potential with smites, but Conquest specifically is good at locking an area down. Their aura acts almost like an AoE grapple effect, though it requires you to have an AoE fear effect you can use. Wrathful Smite is an excellent single target lockdown; note that only the initial roll is a save and subsequent rolls are ability checks... which the target has disadvantage to because they're frightened. My top pick would be to go dragonborn, specifically one from the Fizban book, then get the Dragon Fear feat for another AoE fear effect. Fallen aasimar and leonin also have racial fear options, though they only last one round but don't require a feat. You also have a handful of fear spells and your Channel Divinity. And if an enemy is immune to fear, you're still a paladin and can smite them into next week.

Another great option would be the Echo Knight fighter. You can use your echo to cover more area to provoke opportunity attacks, and it doesn't have to be right next to you, either. You could put your echo behind the party while you go in front, for example. The echo is also free to summon, so you never have to worry about running out. Being able to switch places with your echo can also help with your mobility, making it easier to move around the battlefield and be where you need to be to defend your party.

[RogueJK]

Hmm, you should look into Conquest paladin. Not only are paladins pretty tough on their own and have big nova potential with smites, but Conquest specifically is good at locking an area down. Their aura acts almost like an AoE grapple effect, though it requires you to have an AoE fear effect you can use. Wrathful Smite is an excellent single target lockdown; note that only the initial roll is a save and subsequent rolls are ability checks... which the target has disadvantage to because they're frightened. My top pick would be to go dragonborn, specifically one from the Fizban book, then get the Dragon Fear feat for another AoE fear effect. Fallen aasimar and leonin also have racial fear options, though they only last one round but don't require a feat. You also have a handful of fear spells and your Channel Divinity. And if an enemy is immune to fear, you're still a paladin and can smite them into next week.

Undead Warlock 1 is almost a must-have on a Conquest Paladin.

Paladins in general benefit from considering dipping a single level into Warlock or Sorcerer to shore up their lack of decent ranged options via a damage cantrip, plus get some Level 1 subclass abilities.

Undead Warlock 1 specifically has a lot to offer a Conquest Paladin in particular, thanks to their Form of Dread. This gives you a BA activated 1 minute ability to attempt to Frighten one enemy you hit per turn, without requiring any additional action or spell expenditure like Dragon Fear/Cause Fear/Wrathful Smite/etc. And best of all, your Form of Dread uses per day will scale with Proficiency, not with Warlock levels.

Then you also grab a ranged cantrip like Eldritch Blast along with either a utility cantrip or Booming Blade (to pair with Warcaster for OAs and tide you over for the 1 level delay to Extra Attack), and a couple 1st level Warlock spells like Cause Fear for another Frighten option plus something like Bane or Hex. And you'll also have a Short Rest recharging 1st level slot to reserve for Smiting or for Fear spells like Cause Fear and Wrathful Smite.

Good points for a Conquest Paladin to dip Undead Warlock include:
-Right at the start, if you're starting at 2nd Level or above and don't need Heavy Armor proficiency, or
-After Paladin 2, to get Divine Smite online ASAP, or
-After Paladin 6, to get your Aura of Protection online ASAP, or
-After Paladin 7 to get your Aura of Conquest online ASAP

Personally, I'd rather have the Warlock stuff available sooner than later, so Character Level 1 or 3 is ideal, even if it means a slight delay to your Extra Attack and Auras. As mentioned above, taking Booming Blade as your second Warlock cantrip can cover that delay to Extra Attack.

And because the 1 level of Undead Warlock opens up multiple additional options for Fear effects, you don't need to chase racial Fear effects, which opens up your racial options (and frees us an ASI that you could have been spending on Dragon Fear).


*Note: Apparently the OP's character is already locked into Fighter 1 as their first level, so Conquest Paladin - with or without a Warlock dip - isn't necessarily a great option in that light for this particular situation...*

[Dalinar]

As far as Monk is concerned, it's pretty hard to build a tanky Monk.

Your hit dice are lower than every other traditional fighter. Your AC is capped at around 20 and you won't typically achieve that until level 12, forgoing feats along the way. A heavy-armor character hits that number with a shield and plate armor as soon as they acquire the latter. You also can't take advantage of magic armor or shields that give bonus AC, which means you'll fall further behind if the DM throws a few of those around (and you have an Artificer in the party, which IIRC only can boost AC by buffing armor and shields, so there's that too).

As far as saves go, Diamond Soul is awesome, but that doesn't come online until 14. Paladin by contrast gets its big saving throw buff at 6 and extends it to everyone nearby as well.

You have Patient Defense which is really strong in a vacuum, but it eats up both a Ki that could have been spent on an additional attack, and a bonus action that likely also would have been an attack. Deflect Missiles is good mitigation against long-ranged attackers, though if you're mixing it up in melee with a tough opponent it won't help you.

Monk also gets a lot of defensive value out of being very mobile, but your party mostly seems to need someone that can stand their ground.

And while Stunning Strike is one of the most rewarding single-target control abilities in the game, any of a series of encounter-design choices can render it much weaker than it seems: the target needs to not be immune, you need to be in melee, you need to hit an attack against potentially high AC, you need the enemy to fail a CON save that it is likely to be good at (across all monsters in published first-party material, CON is the strongest save), and the target will probably use legendary resistance if it has it. Also, in encounters where the difficulty comes from the quantity of opponents rather than their individual difficulty, you've accomplished less than against a single boss that probably has one of the above litany of ways to mitigate the ability anyway. Granted, in situations where none of the above are a factor, Stunning Strike becomes insane, and that does come up with inexperienced DMs or, hopefully, with DMs that want to give the Monk a chance to pop off. But across an entire campaign, I wouldn't rely on it too hard to protect your friends.

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I think when it comes to "bulky frontliner that deals a lot of damage" there is some degree to which all roads lead to Sorcadin. In particular Conquest 7/Undead Warlock 1-2/Sorcerer-of-choice X is kind of an absurd frontline controller that (like many Paladin multiclasses) smites better than any pure Paladin, applies fear better than pure Conquest Paladin, gets more *out of* fear than anything not-a-Conquest-Paladin, is hard to run past thanks to Quickened Booming Blade (and the usual suite of OA-related feats if you take any), comes jam-packed with control spells (especially if you grab some relevant invocations from Warlock 2, though you might prefer getting to Sorcerer faster), and even for enemies that get past all of its control it's harder to kill than any three of those classes are individually between paladin aura, heavy armor proficiency, access to the Shield spell among others, and the handful of temp HP from Form of Dread.

Of course, the OP specified DEX-based, so we ought to look elsewhere. I think having a lot of caster levels is also against the flavor OP is looking for, though maybe I'm reading into that too much.

Psi Warrior has a really nice suite of abilities that reduce incoming damage and increase outgoing damage (death is the best crowd control, as they say), and it doesn't lose a whole lot by going DEX over STR (it's a bit easier to get high AC on STR, and generally finesse weapons are a bit worse than their STR counterparts, but typically DEX saves are nastier and the ability to go first more often is a boon). Might be worth picking up Fey-touched too, as both Misty Step and the first-level spell (probably Silvery Barbs) are going to help with this role. Battle Master and Rune Knight are also good fighter subclasses for this, though RK lends itself to STR a lot more considering how good it is at grappling (you can get +11 and advantage to Athletics pretty easily by early T2). Eldritch Knight has been jokingly called "the Fighter that can cast Shield" many times but honestly playing it that way is also a good way to execute on this concept.

Outside of Fighter, my next stop at being a DEX tank is probably either some kind of Ranger or a Bladesinger Wizard.

[adb82]

As far as Monk is concerned, it's pretty hard to build a tanky Monk.

Your hit dice are lower than every other traditional fighter. Your AC is capped at around 20 and you won't typically achieve that until level 12, forgoing feats along the way. A heavy-armor character hits that number with a shield and plate armor as soon as they acquire the latter. You also can't take advantage of magic armor or shields that give bonus AC, which means you'll fall further behind if the DM throws a few of those around (and you have an Artificer in the party, which IIRC only can boost AC by buffing armor and shields, so there's that too).

As far as saves go, Diamond Soul is awesome, but that doesn't come online until 14. Paladin by contrast gets its big saving throw buff at 6 and extends it to everyone nearby as well.

You have Patient Defense which is really strong in a vacuum, but it eats up both a Ki that could have been spent on an additional attack, and a bonus action that likely also would have been an attack. Deflect Missiles is good mitigation against long-ranged attackers, though if you're mixing it up in melee with a tough opponent it won't help you.

Monk also gets a lot of defensive value out of being very mobile, but your party mostly seems to need someone that can stand their ground.

And while Stunning Strike is one of the most rewarding single-target control abilities in the game, any of a series of encounter-design choices can render it much weaker than it seems: the target needs to not be immune, you need to be in melee, you need to hit an attack against potentially high AC, you need the enemy to fail a CON save that it is likely to be good at (across all monsters in published first-party material, CON is the strongest save), and the target will probably use legendary resistance if it has it. Also, in encounters where the difficulty comes from the quantity of opponents rather than their individual difficulty, you've accomplished less than against a single boss that probably has one of the above litany of ways to mitigate the ability anyway. Granted, in situations where none of the above are a factor, Stunning Strike becomes insane, and that does come up with inexperienced DMs or, hopefully, with DMs that want to give the Monk a chance to pop off. But across an entire campaign, I wouldn't rely on it too hard to protect your friends.

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I think when it comes to "bulky frontliner that deals a lot of damage" there is some degree to which all roads lead to Sorcadin. In particular Conquest 7/Undead Warlock 1-2/Sorcerer-of-choice X is kind of an absurd frontline controller that (like many Paladin multiclasses) smites better than any pure Paladin, applies fear better than pure Conquest Paladin, gets more *out of* fear than anything not-a-Conquest-Paladin, is hard to run past thanks to Quickened Booming Blade (and the usual suite of OA-related feats if you take any), comes jam-packed with control spells (especially if you grab some relevant invocations from Warlock 2, though you might prefer getting to Sorcerer faster), and even for enemies that get past all of its control it's harder to kill than any three of those classes are individually between paladin aura, heavy armor proficiency, access to the Shield spell among others, and the handful of temp HP from Form of Dread.

Of course, the OP specified DEX-based, so we ought to look elsewhere. I think having a lot of caster levels is also against the flavor OP is looking for, though maybe I'm reading into that too much.

Psi Warrior has a really nice suite of abilities that reduce incoming damage and increase outgoing damage (death is the best crowd control, as they say), and it doesn't lose a whole lot by going DEX over STR (it's a bit easier to get high AC on STR, and generally finesse weapons are a bit worse than their STR counterparts, but typically DEX saves are nastier and the ability to go first more often is a boon). Might be worth picking up Fey-touched too, as both Misty Step and the first-level spell (probably Silvery Barbs) are going to help with this role. Battle Master and Rune Knight are also good fighter subclasses for this, though RK lends itself to STR a lot more considering how good it is at grappling (you can get +11 and advantage to Athletics pretty easily by early T2). Eldritch Knight has been jokingly called "the Fighter that can cast Shield" many times but honestly playing it that way is also a good way to execute on this concept.

Outside of Fighter, my next stop at being a DEX tank is probably either some kind of Ranger or a Bladesinger Wizard.

I think I'm gonna go eldricht Knight indeed, at least till lv 11. The fact that he can cast shield, use a shield and still keep damage up with shadow blade (only from lv 8) seem exactly what this party need, and also gishes are my favourite kind of characters so it's ok, I'll play something different next time.

About the conquest paladin, I've played one without multiclass, in a pirates battleship thematic campaign, very funny, much more than the vengance one in my opinion. The point with the multiclass paladin/fullcaster (especially sorcerer) is that i see how it play, my friend played a vengance paladin/sorcerer/warlock, but that thing can seriously play solo 😅 I felt it a bit overpowered compared with anything else: never go out of smites, he have aura, good concentration spells, hight AC, crits on 19/20 with triple advantage if you get elven accuracy...it's really difficult to put him in trouble, it's far better than a Paladin (that is already a very solid choice) and it's something that in 5e happen really rarely, i found this 5e really well balanced and multiclass friendly (I mean: with a minimum of common sense, you can multiclass almost whatever and still have a playable character) in general terms, but paladin/fullcaster seem to have a really different curve.

[sithlordnergal]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that Fighter/Monks can make for interesting and handy builds. However, they're all utility builds instead of high damage builds. Though you can make an extremely good, if unorthodox, Tank Monk. However, it is very unorthodox, and requires you to be a Strength Monk instead of a Dex Monk.

[tieren]

I'm playing a bladesinger/monk now which started with one level of fighter (Con save proficiency and fighting style). Then took 6 levels of wizard for the special extra attack bladesingers get (can replace one attack with a cantrip). Now working my way up through shadow monk trying to get to level 6 way of shadow for the resourceless bonus action teleports Then I'll pick up fighter 2 for action surge and aim to end up somewhere around fighter 2/wizard 9/monk 9.

Bladesinger AC is crazy high. We got to start with an uncommon magic item so I took headband of intellect. My AC with mage armor up is 21, 23 when bladesinging, 25 while bladesinging and under the effects of Haste (then up to 30 with Shield spell if needed), unarmored its one less right now.

If I concentrate on Spirit Shroud, I can use a cantrip and attack as my main action and an unarmed strike with martial arts as my bonus action doing (1d8+4 piercing + 1d8 thunder + 1d8 radiant) + (1d8+4 piercing + 1d8 radiant) + (1d4+4 bludgeoning + 1d8 radiant) = 1d4+6d8+12 at level 8 (more if the thing moves on its turn). Eventually add on some flurry of blows or action surge and the number of attacks is silly.