Baldur's Gate 3 - Striker/Scout Monk - Class Guide

hello everyone and welcome back to the channel my name is balko and here today I'm gonna talk about the Monk class and go over the first few levels and how you might want to think about building out a monk in your playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 in fact I'm actually using a higherling right now to do this video so there's a few things that might look a little different in terms of my menus but I'll talk about some things and you'll notice I'm also on I get the Yankee right now and it's because there's actually two builds you might want to consider when making a monk and there's a few things that aren't really obvious and we're actually going to go all the way to level four today and talk about you know why why that is and what are some of these less than obvious choices so first of all monks are the classic martial artists in terms of their proficiencies they get simple weapons and short swords additionally they can use Flurry of Blows as a bonus action to do two melee attacks and then they can also just regularly make one melee attack and then um use their bonus action to make a second attack so monks are all about making a whole bunch of attacks in a round as a result they do pretty good damage and they are going to fill the role of a striker typically they also sometimes have decent dexterity and good wisdom which makes them decent Scouts they'll have good stealth as well as the ability to spot traps and things like that because wisdom is a very important attribute for the monk as well looking at their Base Class features they have a key which is like an ability Point sort of resource system you can use this right away to use flurry blows at level one you also get unarmored defense which lets you use your wisdom in addition to your dexterity so if you have an array that looks like this which is a pretty good build so with your 16 in decks a 16 in wisdom that means you'll have plus three and plus three from both of those giving you 16 as a base armor class level one which is not too shabby you're not going to be incredibly tanky but it's not bad unfortunately monks are very multi-attribute dependent meaning they want their wisdom and their decks to keep going and alternatively they also want potentially strength instead of decks or you could even just be put pumping con to get more HP because they don't have a huge hit dice so they kind of have this weird place where they're kind of squishy they don't have a lot of hit points they don't have a ton of armor and they do kind of like medium damage but one thing that they really do excel at is hitting many many times and this can be good in a lot of situations because when you have a lot of low Health enemies a monk is zipping around the battlefield finishing them off if there's one high Health enemy they can dump all their attacks into that one enemy if there's enemy casters they can force them to make a whole bunch of concentrations checks by punching them over and over and over so there's a lot of cool things you can do and then obviously a lot of the goodies we'll talk about as we go here so we uh we also have dexterous attacks which lets us use our dexterity instead of strength for unarmed attacks but there's a feat later on that we're gonna take that might not make dexterity the best build because all that you're getting for being unarmored typically is getting to use your wisdom bonus instead in addition to your dexterity modifier but if you go instead for a strength focused you could have a very comparable AC with a little bit of strength and so there's there is a build where you go something like a Geth Yankee or a dwarf and you get into medium armor right at level one and you kind of forego a little bit of dexterity and pick up a little bit more strength and then you take the tavern brawler feet at level four and that's gonna let you double your strength modifier whenever you're making an unarmed attack and all of a sudden your monk is doing incredible damage but it's not necessarily the flavor a lot of people are looking for when they're playing a monk so for this build I am mostly gonna just play through sort of the typical choices so this looks pretty good at level one you don't have a ton of options in terms of like abilities or anything like that so we'll just continue from here at level two you're gonna get a little bit of hit points you gain unarmored movement so this lets you move a little bit further if you are going to go for the traditional monk builds you do sacrifice this if you are gonna go for a strength monk build you get more key points and you get patient defense so this is you get to use your bonus action and a key point to Grant disadvantage on attack rolls against you and advantage on dexterity saving throws so this gets you kind of to be a little bit of a Dodge this this helps you be tanky but it costs key which is a limited resource next you do have step of the Wind which means you can turn this on it doubles your movement speed and you can jump without having to spend your bonus action but you did have to spend it obviously to get there this makes monks incredibly mobile they're able to this is kind of what I talked about earlier about finishing off targets so they can fly around the battlefield and fish a couple archers like you know kill one up on the cliff and then jump to the opposite cliff and kill the other one um they're so mobile but it does use up your bonus action so getting those multiple attacks you're not going to have as many you know level five you'll have two attacks still to do that um but it does it's not going to be your full Flurry of Blows if you're using this and then next step of the win to disengage um you can use your bonus action and this once again contributes that Mobility uh if you need to go finish off a high priority Target or just get away and use the help action to get an ally up in the fight if you need to there's a little bit more Mobility there so definitely a solid uh set of abilities but we don't necessarily get anything to choose at level two so we still have all these same abilities now at level three we're making a choice so we have a few options here so um we're ignoring that because that's a racial bonus we have wave the four elements we have way of the open hand and way of the Shadow so this is going to give us a lot of options in terms of how we want to play our Monk and level three is really when you're coming online right so wave the four elements this is giving you a few spells so as an action you can regain half your key round it down this is huge this is going to let your monk stay in the fight normally on the tabletop version this is one of the biggest problems with monks is they run out of key points constantly but it's really easy to get a few back and you can keep going um in terms of your spells you actually have a nice selection of uh of spells here that are they're actually quite quite good so um blade of rhyme is sort of like ice knife chill of the mountain this is essentially rare Frost fangs of the fire snake um this is a sort of like a six meter like ranged attack which is pretty cool um it does good single Target damage fist of four Thunders this is Thunder Wave effectively fist of unbroken air this is um a sort of ranged knockback High single Target damage um Rush of Gale Spirits this is sort of like a gust of wind that you can knock people back and knock them off balance it's really powerful in terms of like those z-axis abusing abilities it is very very fun for that uh create a climbable ice cube the shaping of the ice like this is just fun utility you can get as a monk uh really really neat sphere of Elemental balance is essentially chromatic orb just the Thunder version it it does good damage a single Target at a nice range it is expensive though so it's two key points whereas a lot of well some of these are two so some of these more powerful ones that are more equivalent to like a leveled spell are two key points and the ones that are like a can trip are one key point so you know this is like a first level spell so it's two key points this is a can trip so it's like one key Point um this is burning hands um a little AOE definitely nice um this is shocking grass but there's a little bit more damage and then typical um notably chill of the mountain as well so these are scaled up one dice so instead of d8 these are d10s and then uh water whip it's sort of like a Omega version of thornweb um does a quite a bit of damage um pulls people towards you and has a chance to knock them prone so a very nice selection of ranged attacks AOE effects uh good single Target damage and a little bit of fun utility in here so for me personally I like to mix things up I like to have a variety so I would probably go with something like you know something like a Thunder Wave potentially depending on what I need um maybe a little bit of an AOE um freezing area and then I'd probably also consider taking like a single Target maybe like slightly fewer key points so maybe something like the uh um bit bangs of the fire snake like a nice single Target uh like kind of medium range uh it does 1d6 plus the 1d10 and then um your next attack also deals additional 1d4 fire damage like gives me some single Target this gives me like a range day-oe this gives me a point blank AOE good variety there um and I think I have like some knockback I have some knock down some range so for me this is something this is kind of how I would build Out The Way of the four elements wave the open hand is specifically using that unarmed combat using your hands and your control key to heal or inflict Grievous hurt so you actually get the ability to punch twice and knock the target prone which can set up additional attacks and note this is a bonus action so you can pop this and then subsequent attacks you can then get advantage on because they're prone stagger punch twice and stagger the target making it unable to take reactions um I think that's all it does yep and then once again it is a bonus action so you could pop your your bonus action stagger them and then move away so this is kind of another disengage tool it should be noted though step of the wind would let you disengage guaranteed this you're kind of gambling so it relies on you actually hitting your target it does do damage and it's a bonus action so there is some Advantage there in the sense that like you might even just finish a Target off like that's a good amount of damage however if you absolutely need to disengage you have a step of the wind already and then flurry it blows push um this just lets you knock them away so in terms of like functionality there is similar things you're doing here because if you're pushing them away it's very similar to them just not being able to take those reactions by getting them out of your face um so you could just like knock them off a ledge and then walk away wherever you want because they're obviously not going to have an opportunity to hack against you but there are other ways enemies might want to use their reaction so for example a spellcaster can no longer cast counter spell or shield and there is absolutely enemies in this game later on that are casting counter spell and being able to use up their reaction so they can't counter spell your Mage who's going up next that's a really useful thing to do so um yeah not not completely useless and there so there are some use cases for uh staggering your opponent over just knocking them away I just wanted to clarify that and then finally wave the shadow this is uh the monk I've actually seen played with the most I've dm'd for a way of the Shadow monk for a fairly lengthy campaign it was really cool um so I'm I'm sort of familiar with this in tabletop but it was definitely from the other side of the screen and this is that monk that really wants to be like sneaky in the shadows really really useful for being a scout if you want to take on that role of like the Scout uh in your party and you do have the wisdom to find all the traps so it makes an excellent choice so you get Shadow Arts um so you can just hide from enemies with a bonus action which is amazing um and then get advantage on your attacks against them uh pass without Trace gives you a plus 10 to stealth checks um it's very good it does cost two key points so this is a thing that you might might not have up all the time it does last a long time though it is concentration though so uh you might lose concentration you've taken damage Shadow Arts Darkness as like the spell it's just a nice obscuring uh area that can you know blind everybody in it can prevent people like having a line of sight which means they can't Target you with certain spells and that's always fun um Shadow Arts dark vision it just lets you see in the dark um so if you're a gift Yankee and you wanted to go for that Medium armor strength build this could potentially counteract not being able to see in the dark for yourself it does just last till a long rest um so then there's no concentration or anything so that's kind of nice and then silence um it is concentration it has a lot of really fun and unique uses once again if you want to do things that are making noise and you don't be able to find you you want to be that like sort of scout stealth character that's awesome it's also really good at shutting down spell casters so this is just having this utility on your sort of like mobile Striker character who isn't necessarily your spellcaster is really really flexible and and it is nice to round out your party If you're sort of running a typical like well-rounded party this could slot in nicely and yeah so that's level three uh for me personally I definitely love like the Avatar Vibe of wave of the four elements and then just being able to get my key points back so we can just like use lots of abilities all the time this is more towards what I would like so um let's just pretend that uh I'm gonna take that right now and we will go from there so level four um you get the ability to uh you can use your reaction to gain resistance to Falling damage so getting knocked off cliffs is much less scary or even just if you want to um yeah there's some places where you might be taking some fall damage in the game and just getting down from high places taking less damage is always great the the big one I wanted to talk about really though is Tavern brawler so Tavern brawler is a half feet so if you are gonna go for the strength build it could be worth having all the way up to 17 strength at level one and then lowering your wisdom and your dexterity a little bit because you're not necessarily needing them as much because you do get uh you you like you're going to be getting armor mostly from wearing armor and additionally getting like a plus one scale Mill that's gonna give you that 16 armor right away without any stats if you still get up to 14 decks which you would have a few points left over to do and then have 17 into your strength and then a few points into wisdom and a couple points into con and dumping into in Charisma um you'll have probably like you might have to sacrifice a little bit of hit points and your wisdom won't be as high so your saves aren't going to be as good with some of your abilities but all of a sudden you're eight you're hitting 18 strength at level four and your melee attacks are doing plus eight damage and when you are flurry of blowing like doing your Flurry of Blows you're getting that like plus eight damage on three attacks around that is devastating so this could be worth considering as sort of like a fun bonus option but this is definitely not the typical monk build and it is not the flavor I know a lot of us are are kind of seeking if we're making a monk but if you do want that like big Burly armored just like brawler this is absolutely fantastic so I do recommend that so with that said let's actually go and talk about multi-class options so when it comes to multi-classing monk they aren't the best at multi-classing because they have mainly this unique class resource in key that is going to augment a lot of their abilities so every level you're taking that isn't a monk level can really slow you down as a dip they do potentially provide some interesting options if you want to go with certain flavor for like a druid or cleric because you can get that unarmored defense right away for being a monk and it would let you be sort of like a druid or a cleric and like a robe that would still have really good AC and there's maybe something there but it's not amazing and there's you're probably better off doing something else one notable standout is definitely Ranger because Rangers uh will give you right away off the bat they share first of all decks and wisdom as primary stats and interestingly you'll get a fighting style early on and you can pick up Gloom stalker which is going to give sort of really interesting combinations and it might help pair well with the the shadow monk um also spells like Hunter's Mark or hex that Target off of whenever you hit your enemy um those are going to be awesome on a monk because you're hitting your enemy so many times so when you hex or Hunter's Mark um your Foe and then you're attacking them from multiple attacks you get to trigger that a whole bunch of times so there is a little bit of synergy in combo there but other than that monks really are looking to be sort of a full uh a full class there also I I've heard I haven't tested this out I I've been you know doing so many things but I haven't been able to play around with monk too far um I I've heard that monk weapons quote unquote or any weapons you're proficient in so also taking some of the Marshall classes to get additional weapon proficiencies like you could potentially be like a barbarian Monk and then you get to add your wisdom your Constitution and your decks for your armor class with while you're unarmored and then you could fly into a rage and then have resistance and that would make you a lot tankier and you could still use a two-handed weapon and then be doing weird flurry of blow things so there are potential combos I'm I'm not a hundred percent of those ones are are fully realized but they do exist um but I still personally would maybe lean more towards just going pure monk if you want that flavor um and then taking the subclass of monk that sort of better aligns with what you're doing so that is my overview on the monk Monk Is arguably one of the classes I have the least amount of expertise in like I've mentioned before I dm'd for for a monk for a long time um and I'm sort of familiar with what they're doing but generally it is that mobile character they are very fun uh you get so many attacks if you love rolling dice it is absolutely fantastic um if you like making all those attacks just by the nature of them making so many attacks I also think that you might want to consider which uh race you want to be for your monks or something like a half orc that's going to benefit from critting Lots uh that could be really cool because you get so many chances to create because you have so many dice um and uh yeah I think though that's that's pretty much it so thanks again for watching sorry if I uh was once again getting distracted by all the things I want to tell you about monks they are very cool um if you enjoyed the video definitely appreciate a thumbs up or any questions below and I will catch you in the next one thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: BulkoIV

Views: 1,473

Keywords: baldur's gate 3, baldurs gate 3, bg3, monk, class guide

Id: tDZZqxSkOFE

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023