Paladin Monk Build?

[Fluffykeith]

Am considering trying something like this, probably using Shadow Monk (breathe teleport is hilarious) and I’m wondering how much wisdom Monks actually need to get by?

[Detective Costeau]

Well, as I recall wearing armor makes a huge chunk of your monk abilities simply not work, so if you skimp on Wis you'd have to find some other way to get decent AC.
Suppose you could just do something like have 10 WIS then have someone cast Mage Armor on you once per day. That'd give you the equivalent of a 16 Wisdom without having to put any points into it.

[Panda]

There is nearly no point to spend your little “mana” just for the blink (less levels means less spell slots, no slots - no smites, no smites - switch to a fighter class), vengeance paladin already has the blink if you need, you can also just fly instead of running which is far better.

In general monk needs as much Wis as you can provide, not for armour, but for damage, but I can’t see a reason for it since paladin is a heavy armour user while monk can wear armour too, but not from the beginning.

Also pure paladin is a no-brainer option with considerable amount of damage.
No bonus action also means no 3rd attack from two handed master feat.

[jonnin]

If tavern brawler is still broken, you get as much from that, and much earlier, than trying to get wis to damage. In the end, I think both str & wis end up adding +2 damage per bonus point (eg stat 16 is 3 bonus and 6 damage). But the str monk does this at level 4, the wis monk does it after the end of act 2 I think. NOTHING PREVENTS having both!

Paladin armor lets you go light on dex, so you could go max str and decent (16+) wis or you can try to move the stats around into con, cha, etc. It sort of depends on what you want to be best at ... raw damage or flexible commando, or even tanking.

Everything works fine in armor except wis to ac is dropped and you no longer move a little extra each round. It has no effect on anything else and its a fine tradeoff.

You really need to make some up front (or respec and try them out) decisions, though... weapon or unarmed, shield or not, cha or wis for your paladin abilities and how much of them... and its best to run to 2nd attack asap, probably means monk 5 paladin 1 at level 6, or monk 1 and paladin 5. Both work. If you go monk first you won't have a paladin spell until near end of the game, while if you go paladin first, you won't see your level 3 specialty stuff from monk until end of game... many multi class are like this and can't split evenly due to the level 5 attack; you have to do one then the other and delay a lot of abilities until so late in the game they are no longer fun/cool.

[JayPAC]

If you were to exploit the hell out of your camp companions and hirelings using warding bond you can basically ignore Con as a stat. Survivability can be provided by other means. So you could go for 16 dex, 16 wis, 14 cha and 11 con with +1 con from tavern brawler at level 4. ASI into wis for every feat after that. I think you're gonna go 8 paladin/4 monk?

The problem with wisdom for monks is that they can double dip into it for damage after act 2. Triple dip if you're playing way of the open hand. So by skimping on their main stat you're shooting yourself in the foot.

[Fluffykeith]

Sorry to be denser than Karlach’s thighs, but I’m not understanding how the “double dip for damage with wisdom” is working, please?

[JayPAC]

The double dip for damage in wisdom is

Originally posted by Fluffykeith:

Sorry to be denser than Karlach’s thighs, but I’m not understanding how the “double dip for damage with wisdom” is working, please?

I'm sorry I somewhat messed my earler message up. It isn't a double dip in a strict sense, with the boots of uninhabited kushigo you get your wisdom modifier to your unarmed attacks.
That's just a single dip, it's a double dip in the sense that you get strength(with TB) or dex without tb and Wisdom as your damage modifiers now.
It increases even further if you play way of the open hand monk because his special magical damage on unarmed attacks gets you 1d4+wis modifier as psychic, necrotic or radiant damage.

[Fluffykeith]

Originally posted by JayPAC:

The double dip for damage in wisdom is

Originally posted by Fluffykeith:

Sorry to be denser than Karlach’s thighs, but I’m not understanding how the “double dip for damage with wisdom” is working, please?

I'm sorry I somewhat messed my earler message up. It isn't a double dip in a strict sense, with the boots of uninhabited kushigo you get your wisdom modifier to your unarmed attacks.
That's just a single dip, it's a double dip in the sense that you get strength(with TB) or dex without tb and Wisdom as your damage modifiers now.
It increases even further if you play way of the open hand monk because his special magical damage on unarmed attacks gets you 1d4+wis modifier as psychic, necrotic or radiant damage.

Great thanks. I understand now.

I don’t think that will be very applicable if I go down the Shadow monk route?