Open Hand: Dexterity or Wisdom?

[LudicSavant]

My DM and I are having a sort of philosophical debate on the Open Hand monk I want to play in his upcoming campaign.

I say: With how many attacks you can spam as a monk, having a higher Wisdom first (as in, earlier in the character's build) is better, since you'll most likely hit anyway from volume, and the higher Save DCs ensure that your Open Hand and Stunning Fist effects stick.

He says: Dexterity is tied directly to your defense, attack, and damage, and Ki is too limited a resource. You loose too much of your main combat effectiveness in that exchange.

So. Who's right? Should an OH Monk prioritize maximizing Wisdom or Dexterity first?

Dexterity helps you make your stuns stick too, because enemies who don't get hit don't get stunned. It also increases your chances of going first, and thus Stunning them before they get their action.

Wisdom makes your Stunning Strikes more ki-efficient.

[sithlordnergal]

I have used a level of war cleric on a shadowmonk before - awesome fun. Great weapon mastery, greatsword, plate mail and teleporting about the shadows. Using divine shield and protection from good and evil as needed for tanking or some healing orblessing...

The thing is, a lot of the monk abilities are just offsetting the lack of armour. Losing unarmoured defence doesn't hurt if you have plate mail on, losing martial arts is no loss when you would be using your BA for something else anyway and already have proficiency in martial weapons, loss of flurry of blows similarly doesn't matter if you are happy to save Ki for stunning strike and have good bonus actions. Loss of unarmoured movement matters a lot less when you can teleport.

I mean...you technically keep Flurry of Blows, you just can't use Dexterity for your Flurry and you use your regular unarmed strike. The only things you lose by wearing armor as a Monk are Martial Arts, which has nothing to do with Ki or using Ki, Unarmored Movement, and Unarmored Defense. Meaning you can technically make a Lizardfolk Monk that uses Strength, dip into a class that gets armor, and still be a very effective Monk while wearing said armor. You'll have a d6 Unarmed Strike, nearly all of your Monk abilities, and a high AC.

[Throne12]

Your a open hand monk go wisdom first. My reason is because getting your saves to stick is harder then it it to hit things. It easily to generate advantage on attacks which will help a lot when trying to land a hit. Also think about going vhuman for the lucky feat.

[Tanarii]

My reason is because getting your saves to stick is harder then it it to hit things. It easily to generate advantage on attacks which will help a lot when trying to land a hit.

Conversely, defender saves are usually (but not always) worse than AC for the same attacker modifier. A save is the equivalent in AC of 14+defenders mod. Although saves being worse than AC is less often true with Str/Dex/Con than the mental attributes.

[Scarytincan]

Conversely, defender saves are usually (but not always) worse than AC for the same attacker modifier. A save is the equivalent in AC of 14+defenders mod. Although saves being worse than AC is less often true with Str/Dex/Con than the mental attributes.

And even when it is true, usually not bad enough to offset 4 chances to hit each round, especially not targets that a monk really wants to focus most of the time. Admittedly that's mostly referring to the con save abilities, I will make a concession for having only 2 flurry attacks vs targets you may want to knock prone...

But ya overall, the results will be pretty darn close either choice.

[Keravath]

That's pretty neat. Did you include any of the specific powers of the Monk's subclasses in the calculation?

An Open Hand Monk has no reason to not use the rider effects when a Flurry of Blows blow hits, for example, and two of them require a save, so that makes a lot more saves.

In my case, my character is a shadow monk and I was specifically looking only at the chances to stun a target. However, I think the basic concept holds no matter what monk ability you are trying to use since they all require hitting the target before the save is made. Higher dex increases to hit probability while higher wis increases the target DC. So the effect should be more or less the same no matter which monk ability you are looking at.