Is the monk fun to play?

[anti678]

I want to play an unarmed monk in baldur's gate 3 but i feel like they have practically no abilities. Any thoughts?

[Rex is back, baby!]

Yes. Heck one of the subclasses makes you Avatar: the last Airbender

[Orion Invictus]

Yes.

[MugiCharlie]

what? they are very good in bg3. even on the nautiloid they are one of the best class to mess with the commander due 2 always having 2 attacks per turn thanks to their unarmed strikes. they just scale up and up and you also encounter a ton of monk items

[solaris32]

Strength monk with tavern brawler and multiclassed fighter level 4 for the extra feat and heavy armor proficiency is fun. Heavy armor gives more dc than the unarmored bonuses, but the increased movement from being an unarmored monk can be nice too. However you want to play, but you're missing a lot of power if you don't go strength and tavern brawler. Make dex a 10 and use heavy armor. Way of the open hand of course.

[Wackywolf75]

Yes, just make sure you don't have any two handed weapons equipped

[Harukage]

Depends.
Open Hand Monks get decent on demand control abilities and later on can set up ki blast explosions chains for fun.
Four Elements can be utter ♥♥♥♥ or demigod blasters, depending on what Elemetal Arts you take.
Shadows is an oddball, with no real combat abilities and a million unnecessary utility oriented around stealth, untill he gets shadow step at 6 and shadow strike at 11. But still fun to cosplay a ninja.

[Askew]

Way of the Open Hand (the unarmed focused subclass) is extremely fun, gives an ability at level 6? I think that gives you an additional bonus action for three turns. Combine that with Thief lvl 3 for Fast Hands and you get a third bonus action and so many Extra Attack procs you'll feel like Bruce Lee. Class resource completely refreshes with a short rest, too.

[anti678]

Originally posted by Askew:

Way of the Open Hand (the unarmed focused subclass) is extremely fun, gives an ability at level 6? I think that gives you an additional bonus action for three turns. Combine that with Thief lvl 3 for Fast Hands and you get a third bonus action and so many Extra Attack procs you'll feel like Bruce Lee. Class resource completely refreshes with a short rest, too.

Should you not give your monk a weapon if you are using way of the open hand?

[Morgian]

I play a monk of the open hand and he is way more fun than a paladin. High movement and all the class specials he gets make him a mobile enemy extinguisher.

[Harukage]

Open Gand get passives that grant his unarmed atacks additional elemental damage, that you can also stack with damage from gauntlets. Why would you even want weapons?
It is Shadows that want weapons, not Open Hand.

[Askew]

Originally posted by anti678:

Originally posted by Askew:

Way of the Open Hand (the unarmed focused subclass) is extremely fun, gives an ability at level 6? I think that gives you an additional bonus action for three turns. Combine that with Thief lvl 3 for Fast Hands and you get a third bonus action and so many Extra Attack procs you'll feel like Bruce Lee. Class resource completely refreshes with a short rest, too.

Should you not give your monk a weapon if you are using way of the open hand?

Yep, you get extra damage from one of the class passives that gives you extra radiant, necrotic, or psychic damage on unarmed attacks that won't work with any weapon. Before getting that passive I'd say it might better to use some kind of magic weapon for any passives/spells it gives you, but it's not super necessary if you really wanna stick to unarmed.

[anti678]

Originally posted by Askew:

Originally posted by anti678:

Should you not give your monk a weapon if you are using way of the open hand?

Yep, you get extra damage from one of the class passives that gives you extra radiant, necrotic, or psychic damage on unarmed attacks that won't work with any weapon. Before getting that passive I'd say it might better to use some kind of magic weapon for any passives/spells it gives you, but it's not super necessary if you really wanna stick to unarmed.

Yeah either I read somewhere or I misread somewhere that quarterstaffs don't really affect way of the open hand monks. They still get all of their benefits. So I was curious if that was true or not.

[Lur Nen Rue]

i know that everyone and their father is abusing tavern brawler and elixir so that their 8 str and 8 dex monk unarmed attack pack a punch
but there is still fun and viable way to play any other monk
warlock 5 monk 5 for example, you can wield twohand for GWM, attack 3 times, use flurry to proc lightning and hex thereafter and stack damage instance be it from your paladin, phalar aluve or psychic buff, stat wise DEX and WIS is your focus dump INT and CHA
now you can still use your weapon abilities like that legendary weapon, or any smite weapon and coat your weapon with the most deadly spit known to man

[Askew]

Originally posted by anti678:

Originally posted by Askew:

Yep, you get extra damage from one of the class passives that gives you extra radiant, necrotic, or psychic damage on unarmed attacks that won't work with any weapon. Before getting that passive I'd say it might better to use some kind of magic weapon for any passives/spells it gives you, but it's not super necessary if you really wanna stick to unarmed.

Yeah either I read somewhere or I misread somewhere that quarterstaffs don't really affect way of the open hand monks. They still get all of their benefits. So I was curious if that was true or not.

I remember testing that in my game a week or so ago (cuz I wanted to stick to quarterstaff, I enjoyed the animations) so it might be different now if they intended quarterstaff to qualify as an unarmed weapon and they patched it, but from what I remember the damage wasn't proc'ing when I hit with a quarterstaff while I had the extra damage toggled on.

[Crom]

Originally posted by anti678:

I want to play an unarmed monk in baldur's gate 3 but i feel like they have practically no abilities. Any thoughts?

You will be bombarded with Monks gear and weapons, so dont worry...