Barbarian/Monk

[Calandir]

Think it will work well? I'm thinking of making pure rage beast who just punches everything to death. Viable?

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by Runic Tunic:

Originally posted by medicinezombie:

haha yeah I feel like I'm the only one who thinks the potential Human polearm proficiency is awesome lol, especially if monks can use them too.

I'm considering a human warlock for a 2nd or 3rd playthrough, might be possible to squeeze in Polearm Master, Sentinal, Warcaster if all of them are in game

Making a knockback Eldritch Blast Opportunity attack that stops enemy movement if someone comes within 10 ft of me sounds fun lol

human's with polearm proficiency is great. Polearms are amazing, especially if you cheese with certain builds. I think people are sleeping on it for humans.

I'm gonna do a warlock run as well but I'm not sure what to do yet. Pact of the Blade apparently got reworked into a hexblade-like, so I'm tempted to play with that.

Why humans specifically? Polearms looks great for any race.

[Runic Tunic]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

Originally posted by Runic Tunic:

human's with polearm proficiency is great. Polearms are amazing, especially if you cheese with certain builds. I think people are sleeping on it for humans.

I'm gonna do a warlock run as well but I'm not sure what to do yet. Pact of the Blade apparently got reworked into a hexblade-like, so I'm tempted to play with that.

Why humans specifically? Polearms looks great for any race.

Mainly because they can get it Lvl 1, if recent info about BG3 is to be believed. They basically get a head start on builds and free up a proficiency feat option on leveling, which can be great for min-maxing.

You are right though, it can work for pretty much any race.

[Lily]

We saw a monk wearing armor in the preview for it so their features might not be locked if you're proficient in armor but that's only speculation on my part. We do know that you don't need 13 dex and 13 wis to take monk so You can dump wisdom if you want to. In fact, I'd say focus Strength, Dex and Con and if You can use armor, keep Dex at 14 and focus strength. You will get the rage bonus from unarmed strikes if you're using strength. So that's something to consider. IF you can't use your monk features with armor I'd still go for the barbarian's unarmored defense over monk's because the stats are more favorable to you. So you'd need to start as a barbarian if it works like it does in 5e.

Your stunning strikes will be weaker as a consequence, but if they're dead you don't need to stun them.

[Bijat]

for some broken ac build you could go 1barb/1sorc(draconic)/4cleric(trickery)/6monk with 16(20 at 12)dex/14con/14wis
10 base ac
5ac dex
2ac con
2ac wis
3ac draconic
2ac shield of faith
3ac mage armor
9ac mirror image
=36 ac (self buffed without items)

Was just going abit hard on the ac route. If i recall correct doing something similar was kinda meta for soloing some other dnd game. Issue is your a gimped monk with high ac as your only poney trick

More fun is prob going 4barb/8monk or 8barb/4monk and go for the medium armor/str route. Your rage is good agen! but your ac will only be something like ~25 :(

[sevensided]

Originally posted by Bijat:

for some broken ac build you could go 1barb/1sorc(draconic)/4cleric(trickery)/6monk with 16(20 at 12)dex/14con/14wis
10 base ac
5ac dex
2ac con
2ac wis
3ac draconic
2ac shield of faith
3ac mage armor
9ac mirror image
=36 ac (self buffed without items)

Was just going abit hard on the ac route. If i recall correct doing something similar was kinda meta for soloing some other dnd game. Issue is your a gimped monk with high ac as your only poney trick

More fun is prob going 4barb/8monk or 8barb/4monk and go for the medium armor/str route. Your rage is good agen! but your ac will only be something like ~25 :(

Unarmed defense from Monk and Barb, as well as Draconic defense from sorc do not stack. They replace each other, ie, you have to pick which one you want.

[AsianGirlLover]

Only one way to find out. Thank goodness you can easily reset your character’s class

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by sevensided:

Originally posted by Bijat:

for some broken ac build you could go 1barb/1sorc(draconic)/4cleric(trickery)/6monk with 16(20 at 12)dex/14con/14wis
10 base ac
5ac dex
2ac con
2ac wis
3ac draconic
2ac shield of faith
3ac mage armor
9ac mirror image
=36 ac (self buffed without items)

Was just going abit hard on the ac route. If i recall correct doing something similar was kinda meta for soloing some other dnd game. Issue is your a gimped monk with high ac as your only poney trick

More fun is prob going 4barb/8monk or 8barb/4monk and go for the medium armor/str route. Your rage is good agen! but your ac will only be something like ~25 :(

Unarmed defense from Monk and Barb, as well as Draconic defense from sorc do not stack. They replace each other, ie, you have to pick which one you want.

Mage Armor also shouldn't be working with any of those features.

[sevensided]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Mage Armor also shouldn't be working with any of those features.

Indeed , I missed that one!

[Rance-sama]

toad style is immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon
when properly used its almost invincible

[Calandir]

Originally posted by Rance-sama:

toad style is immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon
when properly used its almost invincible

What is toad style?

[Dragon Master]

It's an interesting combination and can work, you'd just have to be a strength based monk so your AC will be a lot lower than it otherwise would be, but that in turn is offset by a barbarian using Con to help with AC.

Hmm, with dice rolls it can be very powerful, flurry of blows with extra rage damage could be powerful, add in stunning strike....it could work.

The first few levels would be hell though. Your stats would be spread pretty thin across 4 stats that you want to be at least 14 each and point buy will not cover that.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by Runic Tunic:

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

Why humans specifically? Polearms looks great for any race.

Mainly because they can get it Lvl 1, if recent info about BG3 is to be believed. They basically get a head start on builds and free up a proficiency feat option on leveling, which can be great for min-maxing.

You are right though, it can work for pretty much any race.

That would be amazing if true, I am beginning to like the 5e dnd rules but there is way to few feat, being able to start with a feat would just make certain character builds amazing.

Whilst I hope it is true I doubt it, larian seems to want people to play a variety of races as soon as you give one of these races a feat, that race will be 80%+ of what is being played.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

It's an interesting combination and can work, you'd just have to be a strength based monk so your AC will be a lot lower than it otherwise would be, but that in turn is offset by a barbarian using Con to help with AC.

Hmm, with dice rolls it can be very powerful, flurry of blows with extra rage damage could be powerful, add in stunning strike....it could work.

The first few levels would be hell though. Your stats would be spread pretty thin across 4 stats that you want to be at least 14 each and point buy will not cover that.

As a monk you need 3, Dex, Con and Wis. As a Barbarian monk you can drop Dex and just go Str, Con, Wis.

You still have 2 stats that boost AC, Wis boosts you effects. So it is almost on pat as a standard monk.

Maybe get Magic adept - Druid, as a feat pick up Shalleyli (spelling?) That allows you to use a club or quarter staff with you wis modifier. As a bonus 2nd centripetal vine whip to drag victims closer and goodberry to heal the enviable dmg.

Strangely this build is were the 1,1,1,1,1,1 bonus for the original humans would have been good.

[badvillain666]

Only if you're looking for stat Mongering and now I'm going to explain why this build will not work the way you think it will.

Let's see what synergies we have to work with:

Barbarian rage goes together really well with temporary hit points

Temporary hit points are great and rage makes them last longer, so if we go with Long Death Monk for the temporary hit points we can stretch those temporary hit points out a LOT longer. This build is inevitably going to have pretty crap AC so being able to use those temp HP to tank with helps a great deal. It also fits the "brick" image of the guy who can shake off hits without getting a scratch.

Leveraging Flurry of Blows

Flurry of Blows is fun but it doesn't really do much damage. Getting a +2 bonus to rage damage helps more when you're making more attacks. Also, more attacks mean more chances for crits, and getting an advantage whenever you want means more chances for crits (reckless attack). Of course a crit by itself isn't useful if the damage you're doubling is small and we're pretty limited on that front. That's where the Crusher feat comes in. Nice little stat boost, situationally useful knockback, and wonderful effect that procs on crits that we'll be getting more than our share of. Also, the image of you knocking people around and dazing them fits wonderfully with the brick archetype we're going for here.

Elbow Drop of Doom!

This is more situational but barbarians are good at grappling (due to advantages on strength checks while raging) and monks have slow fall. This opens up the tactic of grappling someone and then simply stepping off any cliffs that are conveniently located nearby. Your enemy takes full fall damage while your damage is mitigated by rage's damage resistance and monk's slow fall. Also, this is hilarious.

Athleticism

Monks are fast and get slow fall and barbarians getting advantage on strength checks helps to use athletics to move around obstacles. Parkour!


Strike Fear Into the Hearts of Evil Doers!

One annoying thing about D&D is that strength-based characters (with the exception of paladins) generally suck at being scary (with a few exceptions like paladins). But this build gets Hour of Reaping. That's a nice added bonus.

Evasion and Danger Sense

That's a nice combo for dodging fireballs and whatnot. Shame about our sucky dex.

But What About that AC?

Yeah, this build is going to have craptacular AC. No way around that unless we have Jesus roll stats for us. Using reckless attacks all the time is just going to make that worse. So let's just say screw it and accept that we'll be easy to hit. How can we mitigate that? Well if we have enough tempt HPs we can just eat some hits. This build is also pretty good at hit-and-run attacks. If we have some tin can buddies we can hit the enemies, disengage, and then run for it. If the enemies chase us they have to eat AoOs from our buddies. But how to disengage?

Well, there's always a step of the wind but we don't want to blow ki points on that regularly. Drunk monks are great at disengaging but we want long death for the temp HPs, Eagle barbarian is also a possibility but doesn't really have enough oomph. The mobile feat is also a great choice but I think we can get some mileage out of crusher. Simply knock people back out of our faces and then move on. It isn't perfect but we can HP tank decently so that might work well enough until we can get our hands on mobile feat.


So what does this build look like?

If you're starting at level 1 taking barbarian for the extra HPs and to get rage right off the bat seems wise. If you're starting at higher levels, consider taking Monk at level 1 to laugh in the face of dex saves. Then, just like with almost any melee build, you need extra attack ASAP so take five levels in monk after the barb dip at level 1. It'll hurt to put off the second two levels of barb, but the extra attack is pretty damn important.

Then it's back to barbarian for level 2 (reckless attack!) and probably level 3 as well. For barbarian subclasses, if you pick up the mobile feat then ancestral guardian could be a great addition to hit-and-run tactics. Barbarian is also very tempting for obvious reasons.


Weapon:

-It's gotta be a quarterstaff until our martial arts damage gets higher...

Stats:

Strength: you need as much of this as you can get your hands on.

Con: HPs are always good.

Dex: you need 13 for the multiclass, not really a priority.

Int: dump!

Wis: you need 13 for the multiclass, it also helps with long death temp HPs, perhaps AC, and saves.

Cha: dump!

So it's MAD but not cripplingly so.

Race: I'd lean towards Vhuman to get the great crusher feat right off the bat.

Thoughts? It's not a powerhouse by ANY means but is it powerful enough to be fun in your average non-optimized group?

[AsianGirlLover]

Originally posted by badvillain666:

Only if you're looking for stat Mongering and now I'm going to explain why this build will not work the way you think it will.

Let's see what synergies we have to work with:

Barbarian rage goes together really well with temporary hit points

Temporary hit points are great and rage makes them last longer, so if we go with Long Death Monk for the temporary hit points we can stretch those temporary hit points out a LOT longer. This build is inevitably going to have pretty crap AC so being able to use those temp HP to tank with helps a great deal. It also fits the "brick" image of the guy who can shake off hits without getting a scratch.

Leveraging Flurry of Blows

Flurry of Blows is fun but it doesn't really do much damage. Getting a +2 bonus to rage damage helps more when you're making more attacks. Also, more attacks mean more chances for crits, and getting an advantage whenever you want means more chances for crits (reckless attack). Of course a crit by itself isn't useful if the damage you're doubling is small and we're pretty limited on that front. That's where the Crusher feat comes in. Nice little stat boost, situationally useful knockback, and wonderful effect that procs on crits that we'll be getting more than our share of. Also, the image of you knocking people around and dazing them fits wonderfully with the brick archetype we're going for here.

Elbow Drop of Doom!

This is more situational but barbarians are good at grappling (due to advantages on strength checks while raging) and monks have slow fall. This opens up the tactic of grappling someone and then simply stepping off any cliffs that are conveniently located nearby. Your enemy takes full fall damage while your damage is mitigated by rage's damage resistance and monk's slow fall. Also, this is hilarious.

Athleticism

Monks are fast and get slow fall and barbarians getting advantage on strength checks helps to use athletics to move around obstacles. Parkour!


Strike Fear Into the Hearts of Evil Doers!

One annoying thing about D&D is that strength-based characters (with the exception of paladins) generally suck at being scary (with a few exceptions like paladins). But this build gets Hour of Reaping. That's a nice added bonus.

Evasion and Danger Sense

That's a nice combo for dodging fireballs and whatnot. Shame about our sucky dex.

But What About that AC?

Yeah, this build is going to have craptacular AC. No way around that unless we have Jesus roll stats for us. Using reckless attacks all the time is just going to make that worse. So let's just say screw it and accept that we'll be easy to hit. How can we mitigate that? Well if we have enough tempt HPs we can just eat some hits. This build is also pretty good at hit-and-run attacks. If we have some tin can buddies we can hit the enemies, disengage, and then run for it. If the enemies chase us they have to eat AoOs from our buddies. But how to disengage?

Well, there's always a step of the wind but we don't want to blow ki points on that regularly. Drunk monks are great at disengaging but we want long death for the temp HPs, Eagle barbarian is also a possibility but doesn't really have enough oomph. The mobile feat is also a great choice but I think we can get some mileage out of crusher. Simply knock people back out of our faces and then move on. It isn't perfect but we can HP tank decently so that might work well enough until we can get our hands on mobile feat.


So what does this build look like?

If you're starting at level 1 taking barbarian for the extra HPs and to get rage right off the bat seems wise. If you're starting at higher levels, consider taking Monk at level 1 to laugh in the face of dex saves. Then, just like with almost any melee build, you need extra attack ASAP so take five levels in monk after the barb dip at level 1. It'll hurt to put off the second two levels of barb, but the extra attack is pretty damn important.

Then it's back to barbarian for level 2 (reckless attack!) and probably level 3 as well. For barbarian subclasses, if you pick up the mobile feat then ancestral guardian could be a great addition to hit-and-run tactics. Barbarian is also very tempting for obvious reasons.


Weapon:

-It's gotta be a quarterstaff until our martial arts damage gets higher...

Stats:

Strength: you need as much of this as you can get your hands on.

Con: HPs are always good.

Dex: you need 13 for the multiclass, not really a priority.

Int: dump!

Wis: you need 13 for the multiclass, it also helps with long death temp HPs, perhaps AC, and saves.

Cha: dump!

So it's MAD but not cripplingly so.

Race: I'd lean towards Vhuman to get the great crusher feat right off the bat.

Thoughts? It's not a powerhouse by ANY means but is it powerful enough to be fun in your average non-optimized group?

This is an awesome explanation! One issue, though: BG3 is removing stat requirements for Multiclassing. You can dip into literally every class by level 12.