Is Tavern Brawler viable for a Dex monk?

[recoveryjedi]

If it's a Strength bonus modifier. What if strength is only 10 (no bonus)? Will the Tavern Brawler feat do anything for this build?

[wendigo211]

If you're going to do a strength monk for Tavern Brawler, wear armor. The 18 dex item is a pair of bracers, which you want for a +damage item as a Monk. I think you only lose the Wisdom bonus to AC and fast movement in armor.

[wardenwolf]

Originally posted by Ephemerant:

Originally posted by wardenwolf:

Same buff as what, the damage from a DEX build? My point was that there are gloves that buff unarmed damage directly, and that was all. The damage is added to the Monk's combat whether they're a STR or DEX build.

At the end of the day, if you build a STR Monk for Tavern Brawler, and then use gear to buff your DEX for AC, you'll be doing slightly more damage than a pure DEX build Monk. BUT, that won't really come to fruition until ACT 2 at the earliest so you'd need to be prepared to accept that slowdown on the character's power curve, so to speak.

It's not a slowdown though, and it's achievable in Act 1. You can dump Dex to 10, and all of your attacks would use STR since it's higher. It would be the same until level 4 where you take Tavern Brawler, and you're heavily outdamaging Dex Monk because you hit more often, and have a higher modifier being added.

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. A monk without their buffed AC is a poor fighter substitute. I was talking about making a STR monk that would still have high DEX, which if you go down the STR route, you cannot achieve in Act 1; instead you'll just be an easily hit, squishy character that punches things.

Now, if we made a dwarf monk that started with heavy armor (or medium) and said "just screw dexterity", sure, maybe you'd be harder to hit so you could live to do your damage output, but then you'd be walling yourself off from many of the other monk abilities.

I try and live by the old "just because you can doesn't mean you should". It's why (outside of actually playing D&D tabletop where you can better explore nuance) I don't cram my wizards and sorcerers into heavy armor. Because there are better classes (or subclasses) for what I'd be trying to do.

[Vizual]

Originally posted by Ephemerant:

Originally posted by wardenwolf:

Same buff as what, the damage from a DEX build? My point was that there are gloves that buff unarmed damage directly, and that was all. The damage is added to the Monk's combat whether they're a STR or DEX build.

At the end of the day, if you build a STR Monk for Tavern Brawler, and then use gear to buff your DEX for AC, you'll be doing slightly more damage than a pure DEX build Monk. BUT, that won't really come to fruition until ACT 2 at the earliest so you'd need to be prepared to accept that slowdown on the character's power curve, so to speak.

It's not a slowdown though, and it's achievable in Act 1. You can dump Dex to 10, and all of your attacks would use STR since it's higher. It would be the same until level 4 where you take Tavern Brawler, and you're heavily outdamaging Dex Monk because you hit more often, and have a higher modifier being added.

If you're dumping dex to 10, you're no longer building a dex monk, you're building a str monk.

The OP asked if tavern brawler was viable for a dex monk. To that I replied it's viable but not optimal. You asked why it would not be optimal, and are now stating why it's not optimal with your very posts.... I don't think you know what optimal means lol

[Ephemerant]

Originally posted by Vizual:

Originally posted by Ephemerant:

It's not a slowdown though, and it's achievable in Act 1. You can dump Dex to 10, and all of your attacks would use STR since it's higher. It would be the same until level 4 where you take Tavern Brawler, and you're heavily outdamaging Dex Monk because you hit more often, and have a higher modifier being added.

If you're dumping dex to 10, you're no longer building a dex monk, you're building a str monk.

The OP asked if tavern brawler was viable for a dex monk. To that I replied it's viable but not optimal. You asked why it would not be optimal, and are now stating why it's not optimal with your very posts.... I don't think you know what optimal means lol

The only difference of a DEX monk is that they typically want to use Unarmored Defense. Gloves of Dexterity brings you to 18, you can have a 16 WIS from character creation. Add to that STR with Tavern Brawler, and you have a "DEX" Monk with higher damage. You can use Potion of Hill Giant Strength if you further want a boost, pump WIS with ASI's to help AC and Save DC.

Hell, at this point, I could tell him to just stock up on Hill Giant potions and forget all that other stuff. Tavern Brawler + Hill giant potion, AC of DEX monk.

[wardenwolf]

Originally posted by Ephemerant:

Originally posted by Vizual:

If you're dumping dex to 10, you're no longer building a dex monk, you're building a str monk.

The OP asked if tavern brawler was viable for a dex monk. To that I replied it's viable but not optimal. You asked why it would not be optimal, and are now stating why it's not optimal with your very posts.... I don't think you know what optimal means lol

The only difference of a DEX monk is that they typically want to use Unarmored Defense. Gloves of Dexterity brings you to 18, you can have a 16 WIS from character creation. Add to that STR with Tavern Brawler, and you have a "DEX" Monk with higher damage. You can use Potion of Hill Giant Strength if you further want a boost, pump WIS with ASI's to help AC and Save DC.

Hell, at this point, I could tell him to just stock up on Hill Giant potions and forget all that other stuff. Tavern Brawler + Hill giant potion, AC of DEX monk.

You can't start buffing your other stats until level 8 because you used your feat at 4 for Tavern Brawler. Look, any way you slice it it's either a bad build or you're not coming into parity with the rest of the party until late-game.

The real solution is they shouldn't have taken away the human bonus feat at level one. Game gets one star from me for such a poor choice.

[Ephemerant]

Originally posted by wardenwolf:

Originally posted by Ephemerant:

The only difference of a DEX monk is that they typically want to use Unarmored Defense. Gloves of Dexterity brings you to 18, you can have a 16 WIS from character creation. Add to that STR with Tavern Brawler, and you have a "DEX" Monk with higher damage. You can use Potion of Hill Giant Strength if you further want a boost, pump WIS with ASI's to help AC and Save DC.

Hell, at this point, I could tell him to just stock up on Hill Giant potions and forget all that other stuff. Tavern Brawler + Hill giant potion, AC of DEX monk.

You can't start buffing your other stats until level 8 because you used your feat at 4 for Tavern Brawler. Look, any way you slice it it's either a bad build or you're not coming into parity with the rest of the party until late-game.

The real solution is they shouldn't have taken away the human bonus feat at level one. Game gets one star from me for such a poor choice.

If you buff your DEX at 4, that brings you to base 19 with no items. That's still a +4, which is only an increase of 1 to your AC. If you buff your WIS to 18 at 4, that's still an increase of 1 to your AC and saves. Monks feasibly get 4 attacks with Ki Points and Bonus Action depending at level 4. Tavern Brawler STR Monk is hitting harder AND more often because that's how percentages work. There are too many stat-boosting items in this game to really care about boosting stats through ASIs.

[LArc7thHeaven]

Just chug some elixir of giant strength or cloud giant ezpz, you can dump str, get max dex, max wis, then stock sh*tload of potion to prevent you wasting on short rest and long rest

[Clive Hawkins]

If you are a Tavern Brawler Monk then you want 14 Dex, Medium Armor, and/or a Shield.
That get's you 19 AC and you still hit like a truck.

The only thing you lose from wearing armor is Unarmored Movement.
That's perfectly fine as that is replaced by being able to Jump 30 Feet (STR Build) instead of 5 Feet (DEX Build).
Or just bamf around as a Shadow Monk