Arm your Open Hand Monk to be a Powerful Psychic Warrior - Monk of the Shadowhand - Baldur's Gate 3

all right hello and welcome today the video is on monk 6 that's open hand monk three Battle Master fighter and three thief the leveling order is not exactly that but we'll get to all that later for now let me just show you this nice 70 that's not bad at all that's uh even more than 70 on that that's 893 for a flurry 48 58 68 78 15 933 again for the flurry oh and look at that action surge dead can't I can't reach him can I got to end somewhere so yeah I could have hit for another 70ish here so in total with the initial one we'll count that as part of it 70 94 93 or whatever 93 and 70 again and could have got one more actually two if I had uh started round out right and so really that's over 300 damage around with the action surge it's only two something without the action surge this is this would be the exact amount you would do without action surge so it would be 140 plus 180 so got 320 DPR no action surge all right now let's as always figure out how we get there now this build you will be starting off as monk as I said open hand Monk now we're going to be doing our stats such that your deck will be 16 con 17 wisdom 15 that's two odd numbers which usually we don't like odd numbers but we're going to be taking Tavern brawler and so that'll take care of the con odd number and then in terms of the wisdom we won't actually deal with that number that's odd for a long time so you can leave the wisdom at 14 and put your strength or something at 10 but as you'll see here this this is after I've used my Elixir elixir of Hill giant strength very common in monk builds and after I've gotten Tavern brawler so now my con is 18 makes you a little heftier in the early game as you see I have 39 Total Health 15 AC which isn't amazing but it's not bad now in the early items um I took an old file of mine so I want to show you some items that I haven't really shown much in the early game these are ones you might have if you don't have access to some of the ones now the haste Helm always the case momentum for three turns great especially for a monk who already gets a bonus movement speed this means you're always in melee at your target robe of Summer pretty good little mediocre early game robe resistance to cold damage cold damage doesn't come up much but not many robes come up much early game either so Rob a summer it is gloves of the growling Underdog these are good because they give you advantage on Mele attacks while surrounded by two or more foes which again in the early game that comes up a lot especially when you hit the goblin Camp there's a lot of goblins and they're often surrounding you so free Advantage great swi Z shoes increased jump distance also helps with closing the Gap if you need to although you generally as a monk at this level be using your bonus actions for flurries instead Moon drop pendant a way to not get opportunity attacks when you're a bit low and like I said Monk's already a little squishy so this is fine another one that's based on when you're 50% or less you get a little extra movement spur band is fun and decent in the early game and finally ring of poison resistance so we got poison and frost resistance which is kind of nice for early game stuff but otherwise this is a pretty generic build and it does okay damage just by the fact that it's an open hand monk with Tavern brawler we don't need to go too much more into that for anyone who doesn't know Tavern brawler open hand monk is one of the highest damage builds in the game that's partially why I use it here but as you saw the actual focus of this build is based on Psychic damage and we'll get into how this all interacts in a little bit now here at level six we'll have hit the max level of open hand monk that we're going to be putting levels into so we'll be level six open hand we haven't multiclassed yet now gears Chang a little bit Helm and robe are the same boots are the same ring uh one changed to Crushers ring standard good movement speed beyond that only thing that really changed is the sparkle hands now the sparkle hands is an amazing weapon or not weapon excuse me amazing gloves but for a monk it operates like a weapon because on hit with an unarmed attack the wearer gains two lightning charges doesn't sound like a lot but when you start doing flurries each flurry is two unarmed attacks so you gain four lightning charges per flurry which means per turn at level six you're putting out one flurry and two normal attacks that's four total attacks that's eight potential lightning charges and then just to boot you get advantage against any foes or constructs wearing metal armor while you have lightning charges amazing gloves some of the best for monk in the entire game I suggest using these as long as you can and um this build right now is still pretty just normal standard monk nothing special yet the special parts of this build don't come in until a little bit later as we're about to see at level eight is when you'll start getting the gear to support the build that you see at the end but I will let you know that you still shouldn't be actually equipping this gear until you get out of act two I'll explain a little bit more why but it it has to do with the item resonance Stone now resonance Stone you only can obtain once you go into the ilth colony at the end of act two now I I'll explain more about why resent stone is so good later but for right now I'll just show you some of the items we have now got as you see there's a lot of different items here now one of them will be the graceful cloth amazing armor best monk armor you can wear in the early game without a doubt the plus two decks is nice but the Nimble as a cat uh sorry not not Nimble as a cat here that's nice too but above it the cat's Grace it doesn't doesn't really explain what that means you gain cat's Grace but has advantage on deex checks and only takes half damage from falling Advantage from Dex checks is a big deal cuz now it means all your stealth all your slide of hand they're all at Advantage put this on anyone who's trying to be your party's Rogue basically or the person who opens locks or doors and man it's free okay so besides that we got finally a cloak cloak of protection plus one AC plus one saving throws standard good another one that's standard good is the disintegrating night Walkers can't be in webbed entangled or in snared and can't slip on Grease or ice free use of Misty step fantastic boots these are some of the best boots in the game from the mid till the late now um I'll show you one more item surgeon subjugation amulet once per long rest when scoring a critical hit on a humanoid the wearer can paralyze the target for two turns this makes uh a lot of sense for this build because since you're putting out so many attacks if you crit once now any future attacks against that Target are basically going to be crit once you paralyze them because when you paralyze someone attacks against entities are always Critical Hits if the attacker is within 10 feet so this is just a way to get free crits on a class that throws out a lot of dice now there's three items I haven't mentioned yet now I will mention them all but I will say that these are actually not to be worn yet these two rings and this helmet these I I I got them here but and you could wear them they can work in your build but it's very much optimal to wait now we we took level two Rogue here so we could get cutting action but really because we're going to get thief on the next level you still have the sparkle hands but now we'll talk about these gears okay diadem of Arcane Synergy when you inflict a condition gain Arcane Synergy for two rounds now Arcane Synergy only works with weapon attacks that's partly why this I'm grouping with the two rings now as an open hand monk you're usually not using weapon weapon attacks but then we got this item here Shadow Blade ring very interesting item Shadow Blade Let You cast Shadow Blade concentration short rest bonus action we a shadowy SW sword that in your hand that deals 2 to 16 psychic damage when you use the sword to attack a Target that is in dim light or Darkness you make attack with Advantage um and it can be unequipped and re-equipped but it requires concentration so that kind of sucks but we're not much of a Caster so we don't have much to concentrate on besides this anyway so now I could if I were playing this level I could wear this blade this will get benefit from my diadem of Arcane Synergy and strange conduit ring while concentrating on a spell the wearer's weapon attack deals an additional one to four psychic now obviously we're always concentrating now so this is just one to four extra psychic on your 28 plus4 psychic the reason Shadow Blade is so important is because 100% of its damage is psychic most weapons that have an extra type of damage will be a base piercing or slashing or blunt bludgeoning and then they'll add an element or psychic or some such radiant right this blade is only psychic and that is a big deal it turns out but like I said at these levels you would not be wearing these because the reason it's a big deal is what I was talking about earlier the resonance Stone until until then you can wear a a lot of things I mean there's a a good number of choices um ring of mental inhibition is actually pretty good on an open hand monk because each one of your flurries has a chance to do a special effect and so this means this will trigger every time you use one or use your stunning strike and um it it com combines with some stuff that's nice later or just helps your party you can also wear um something simple like the fetish of Cardin smooth hats to get invisibility um we have this is also weapons only so not that and if if nothing better just wear you know more Crushers ring and uh spur band until later and then for helmet you can just throw on well we can wear light armor now but you want to keep it unarmored still so probably wear the circlet here or one this ciret one of the nice little circlets until you get to the ID colony which is about the next level so I just wanted to put that all in there that's when you get those items but remember we're not using them really till level 9 and now at level 10 once we're outside the colony you'll get to see what actually has changed and that main thing is like I told you at the beginning was resonance Stone now I'll start describing it um the resonance Stone since we'll have it now does an aura effect it's something you keep in your inventory but affects everyone around you it gives you and your party members and enemies all of these different Buffs now it doesn't say any here look it's not very special but when you look here it gives you this buff right here or debuff as you might consider it steeped in Bliss now steeped in Bliss doesn't sound great because it has a nice advantage on physical checks but disadvantage on mental saving throws and also vulnerable to psychic damage now again this doesn't sound great except this both the good and the bad is to us and to all enemies around us and allies so as a monk you're going to be thick into the melee side of combat so that means you can throw on your Shadow Blade and at these levels with this you'll see even Gail here steeped in Bliss and let's make sure I don't have a yeah okay so now I want to mention this last time but I uh I thought it'd be better to bring up once I have the stone with open hand monk you get to choose one of three passive Elemental damages necrotic psychic or radiant now this is a psychic build so we are picking psychic this means now that your unarmed attacks deal an additional 4 to7 psychic which means your flurries deal an additional 8 to 14 psychic which doubled by the resonance Stone means you're doing 16 to 28 psychic per flurry doesn't sound like a ton but we saw at the end how these numbers really add up now we'll go over the other items to add in real quick so you'll see also here I did change the stats a bit we have to Respec when we hit Level 10 because it's the first level we get fighter and it's the first time we want to put our fighter level first this will give us access to heavier armor but I didn't wear heavy armor on the other hand it also gives us the uh the time to change our stat here which is we want to have the 17 higher decks because we have now items like these boots that uh additional damage equal to your wisdom modifier for unarmed and then we also have the passive here this this damage is based on your wisdom as well and besides all that having fighter in your first slot will make you have Proficiency in con saves this is important because if you remember Shadow Blade is concentration and if you want to keep concentration on it we need Proficiency in con saves okay so other items we added now these rings are the ones I showed you last time we've added finally a bow we didn't really have a good bow up until now this is just dark fire short bow gives you two resistance Es as well as haste use of haste is not too bad and can give you something to uh concentrate on if your Shadow Blade is down which does happen especially before you hit max level um for a necklace I just wore the corvid token this one's fun and I like turning into a bird if you like having fun this one might be for you if not keep the other paralyzed one on or something like that and we put this helmet back on the dim of arcade and Synergy but we now wear the clo of displacement one of the best cloaks in the game you could also wear the durge cloak here which is what I did in my honor run but on this one I only wore the cloak of displacement this was not a durge run okay so even now you would be able to see that when I hit someone I can't hit him with a seek attack can I no that's okay actually so just to show what I'm doing here so I want to show this this actually didn't add the sneak attack damage because I hit him too hard but this is the damage before the sneak attack now any sneak attack dice that would add here which would be 2d6 only will actually be doubled too because any sneak attack you do does the base damage of the weapon you're using the weapon I'm using is psychic so now my sneak attack my 2d6 that's an average of only seven damage but that seven becomes 14 so that would have added on to this to make it 74 that this is where the numbers start really getting high and um that's why we'll go straight into level 12 it's a very simple build but the reason we went fighter as the uh third class was what I'm about to show you here is once we get up to three fighter we get to pick a subass and we're picking Battle Master now the main um maneuvers you want to pick for this are menacing attack and repost the third one you can kind of choose on your own I picked maneuvering attack on my on my first test when I ran this in honor mode but it didn't come up very often on this second test I tried sweeping attack but the damage is extremely low so I suggest menacing and repost you can't see here because it's a reaction repost but repost will give you a way to attack back which is fun and honestly we don't use our uh our superiority dice that much they come back on short rest just like our key so that's why we did Battle Master monk everything comes back on short rest you have a lot of power per short rest um and but even without the superiority dice we actually have an access to a maneuver that costs nothing that is because of a new addition the bone Spike helmet when you rage hostile creatures in a 10ft radius blah blah blah that part doesn't matter I do wish it kind of did because the psychic damage would be nice in our build but the second part of it there I mean intimidate plus two that's nice but really what we're here for is menacing attack this is once per turn not per short rest not per long rest per turn that means we have one free maneuver every turn and as you see with our uh Elixir up with our u d our ring up and with our dueling and others such we are doing a total of 2 d8 + 10 plus 1 D4 + 1 17 to 34 pyic that's before it's doubled by vulnerability now besides the bone Spike helmet this is another very important item we got a couple really important items that come here really only at the end I could have got this one a little earlier but I didn't have the gold robe of supreme defenses while concentrating hint hint you add your spell casting modifi ability modifier to your saving throws and gain a plus one bonus to Armor class because of this and because of the fact that our wiiz is now 18 our con we get four from con four from proficiency and four from from Supreme defenses a plus 12 to our con concentration checks basically means we'll almost never uh break concentration meaning we'll almost never lose the dagger now this isn't true if we get knocked prone prone is the one way we really generally still lose the dagger so we want to watch out for that mobs that prone either kill them first or avoid them now another really important item this is the best monk gloves in the game for almost every monk build these are the gloves you're going to use gloves of Soul catching your unarmed attacks deal additional 1 to 10 Force damage once per turn on an unarmed hit you regain 10 hit points free 10 hit point regain alternatively you may foro healing to gain advantage on attack rolls and saving throws until the end of your next turn and it gives a plus two to your con to boot amazing gloves these These are from a very high level end encounter so rush it if you need to but otherwise um you won't get these till the end now boots of uninhibited Kush I showed you these they just give wisdom to unarm strikes these rings are the same we we put on the Deadshot um gives you a crit range so that you actually just do a little extra damage we're already throwing around a good amount of dice thanks to uh the Shadow Blade and such as you see here and so critting with the Shadow Blade is pretty nice um besides the Deadshot though there was one more item ked's gift now this one for a lot of builds isn't that great but because we had that odd wisdom this allows us to take it to 18 the other part um cannot be cursed that's only for jira so it doesn't matter unless you want to make your character jira that could be fun but curses don't come up that much anyway so not that big a deal it also gives you a free use of Aid so your monk who already has a lower HP than some will now have a higher HP than most as you see in my party here and well beyond that there's not much else to say it's very straightforward let's see how it fights it's very consistent because monk is very consistent thanks to Tavern brawler now Tavern brawler adds your strength and extra time to your hit and damage with unarmed attacks because of this your flurries are almost assured now because we're using menacing attack menacing attack besides doing extra damage which is partly why we use it we also are potentially frightening our enemies now one of our flurries is flurry topple topple is good because it knocks things prone when you combine this with the fact that so here's toppel chance to prone and when you combine this with the fact that menacing attack is a chance to frighten I've explained this before in other videos but for anyone who doesn't know when you frighten and prone a Target that Target cannot stand up off the ground so this is a way not only for you to do a ton of damage with a build but to lock down a boss and not let them ever get up so we'll start it off as the first I won't won't crit her this time just hit her for normal and this is the fight I always like to use but you're going to see as as we do this I'm going to make pretty quick work of these guys dead dead we give this guy the crit and see that guy didn't get crit but he still took a 70 damage okay so this was around with action surge but if we if we take out that first attack we did that was before combat this was actually a normal round of attacks so let's see this is 42 63 73 79 86 106 110 1229 [Music] 129 149 152 162 171 and then 140 more so that's 311 on a normal round I I did make one autoc crit for this one but it didn't really do a high roll I mean as you see here this one rolled almost as high just because it rolled Max damage on those 2 dd8 um but still over 300 damage with no with with not counting the fact that I could have action surged for an extra 140 so about 450 damage when you action surge now I again this character only has a 18 AC but with things like deflect missiles I mean even your deflect missiles is doing extra psychic damage and saving you from taking damage and 18 AC is about as tanky as you need to be in this game to really survive long enough especially for a character with this much damage output having more AC is good but only if you need to stick around for more rounds I should be able to wipe out the rest of these in two rounds so let's go on to the lady here who's a little bit heftier oh let's go okay topple so she's prone that was 110 damage now here I tried to show you this earlier I didn't show but here you'll see this is the sneak attack damage but as it added psychic it's all also makes them vulnerable to it so again that's a 62 hit now since she's almost dead I'll just finish her off 72 crit that's why we wearing the Deadshot and I'll walk up and just finish him you're still here and now here's that free 10 healing from um the gloves I forgot to do it last round but that's okay I don't even need to do this but I'll do it just to show it can be done boom boom dead and yeah I could have done the uh base one first but I knew I was going to go hit this lady right after so it is what it is Bop and and dead and as you see very consistent damage I barely took any damage myself this build is awesome it it seems like to some that you might be doing a little bit less than normal open hand but because of the doubling the vulnerable you get from the steeped in Bliss it totally makes everything worth it um Beyond this you can also you know use some of the eled powers if you want I turned all mine off here um like calling the weak and stuff but they also benefit from it mind mind blast doubles its damage so potentially 70 damage mind blast AOE stuns um yeah I I've been enjoying testing resonance Stone recently I will probably have another couple builds utilizing it sometime soon so if you enjoyed this let me know and let me know what else you want to see thanks everyone for watching

Channel: Robert Plays Videogames

Views: 4,997

Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, Build, Guide, BG3, Monk, Open Hand, High DPS, Psychic, Resonance Stone, Assassin

Id: PdRBVzJh0Dg

Length: 28min 23sec (1703 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024