The BEST MONK in Baldur's Gate 3 - Honour Mode Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today we're going to cover my pick for the best monk build in balder's Gate as part of my basic builds series the goal here is to create a powerful build that works out of the box requiring no specific items and using no exploits that showcases the power of the Monk class as much as possible while also taking the majority of its levels in monk luckily that's something that we really want to do because monks power up significantly as you put more levels into them according to the stats that larion just released monk is the second least picked character class which is funny because I think in a vacuum it's actually the single strongest class in balder's gate because it gets access to no resource disables in the form of stunning strike or very low resource rather you need to spend a key point on it but stunning strike taking away an enemy's whole turn while continuing to do solid consistent damage is an incredible L powerful effect and it costs you very few resources to use not to mention that monks are also just one of the best DPS classes in the game out of the box so you're going to end up with an incredibly powerful character that will be very viable for Honor mode or of course any lower difficulty settings I'm using lelle here as the example character both because it fits with her being a gith yanki just in terms of flavor but also because Gian I think are in the top two or three races for monks having access to the gith Yan's racial Misty step is extremely strong for monks any additional teleportation or Mobility on this already Mobility focused class makes you able to solve priority problems across the battlefield very very easily and since you will end up doing so much damage that you can bring pretty much en any enemy from Full to zero in a single round getting right next to them is very useful other races to consider are dgar for the invisibility and enlarge both of which are extremely strong for monks as well as wood elf because this is a Mobility focused class so the classic additional move speed from wood elf is very valuable for you as well all right let's get into it and start building this monk so the first thing that I have to address is probably the elephant in the room for monks which is that they are the class the single class that benefits the most from abusing strength Elixir if you're not aware there is very early on in the game a that will sell you these elixir of Hill giant strength that will set your strength to 20 and because monks are so multiattribute dependent or mad they're the the maddest character class in the game um that can enable you to take a much cleaner and better stat spread on the character and that will power up your character significantly if you drink a strength Elixir every day we're not going to do that in this build because I find it one like I said this build is designed to work with no specific items and two I find it aesthetically a little ugly that your powerful Warrior has to rely on on steroids every day in order to actually power up but if you want to do that then that will power up your build so it's definitely worth mentioning right here off the beginning to set up our stat spread we have to take into account that multi-attribute dependency because monks need strength to deal damage this is very important even though you get dexterity based unarmed attacks because the most powerful damage combo for monks that we'll see later on in the game relies on having a strength score a high strength score you need dexterity for Armor class and initiative you need constitution of course for hit points and because you are a Melee character it's really important that we get decent Constitution and have decent hit points and you'll also end up with lower AC than most other characters because despite having unarmored defense which allows you to gain additional armor while Armor class while not wearing armor you're still going to end up with lower armor value than characters that are wearing armor or have shields or anything along those lines and you also need wisdom because that's the source of your unarmored defense and also the source of a lot of your scaling in terms of your class abilities so that's four attributes that we need very high and we'd like to max out at least one of them so that means that our stats are very heavily uh stretched in terms of what we're trying to do for that reason we're going to have to make a couple sacrifices unless as I talked about you do the strength Elixir build I'll show you a stat array that works for each of those builds the one that we are going to go with here is 17 strength to start with and you'll see why we're taking the odd number as we go only 12 dexterity which is extremely low for one of my builds but unfortunately we do have to make sacrifices because we require uh our stats to be so high in certain areas and we will we'll do some some things to mitigate this low dexterity the low initiative that that brings and so on as we go 14 Constitution that's just the minimum that we can possibly get away with 14 wisdom because it's very important that we have high wisdom this increases our AC and will also be very useful for damage and so on later on and then with our remaining two points unfortunately there's not much that we can do that's useful here so we're going to put them in intelligence because that's the of intelligence and Charisma the more important of the two saving throws you notice that this is a very poor stat spread and that is one of the balancing factors for monks monks require lots of different stats and in return for that they get to just be an extremely strong character I'll talk about sort of what makes them so powerful as we go if you are going to use strength Elixir then you can take only eight strengths and that lets you save a lot of points obviously um which you can then put elsewhere so that will let you get 16 dexterity 15 Constitution again I will talk about about why that is later on um still 10 intelligence and 16 wisdom this is a much cleaner stat spread that gives you access to all three of the stats that you really want but requires you to drink an Elixir every day you could also even take 17 wisdom if you uh reverse these um to get 16 dexterity and 17 wisdom and plan on taking anti ethyl's deal to bring your wisdom to 18 which will save you a feet later on that will be even better uh but of course isn't 100% reliable on honor mode because you might accidentally kill her or fail the dialogue checks required to do that all right so I did have to talk a lot about the character's stat spread but for monks it's really important that you kind of get the the stat spread set up the way that it should be because monks are so attribute Reliant so let's bring this back to our 17 12 148 14 or 1410 148 and talk a little bit about the monks class features and why it's so still so good to pick this character class even though it requires you to take this odd stat spread and the reason is basically this ability right here flurry of B blows for a bonus action you get to attack twice with your off hand which is incredibly strong um and this will SC with either your strength or dexterity whichever is higher um although the tool tip here is broken you can see it shows 1 D4 plus 1 this will be 1 D4 plus 3 just so you know that for whatever reason the tool tip in the level up screen is is broken um and something that I talk about a lot in a lot of my builds is that very few characters get access to multiple attacks before level five while monks not only get two attacks at level one they get three attacks at level one tripling the number of attacks that almost every other character can make at level one they also get to add their attribute bonus to all of these attacks so unlike a character that just is holding two weapons these are fully featured attacks the base damage die is lower cuz they're only 1 D4 as opposed to like the 1 d10 of a long sword or something like that but making three attacks and adding your strength to each of them means that already you outpace every other character in terms of damage starting at level one and it only gets better from here you also get uh just normally an extra attack whenever you make an attack with a monk weapon or a normal attack um at level one also it's probably worth using a weapon though later on you're going to want to switch to purely unarmed with one exception that I'll talk about at the end of the game or at the end of the video when I go into itemization um Additionally you get unarmored defense allowing you to add your wisdom to your armor class so we'll have 13 AC starting at level one which is not great um given that we only have 12 dexterity and 14 wisdom so any additional boosts to our AC that we can get like the bracers of defense that give you AC while you're on Armored or a ring of protection or a cloak of uh protection are going to be extremely valuable for monks because having low Armor class and being a Melee character is pretty dangerous again you mitigate this somewhat if you're willing to do the Elixir abuse so that there are a lot of good reasons to do that all right let's get into leveling up and we're going to level our character at monk level two you don't have to make any decisions but you do get additional movement speed while you're not wearing armor um this is very powerful obviously I've talked extensively about how good movement speed is but remember that Monk's basic sort of play pattern is going to be picking a priority Target running to it beating the crap out of them in one turn and then leaving and the more movement speed you have the less it matters that you're going to have relatively low hit points and relatively low AC because you can just get out of range of the other enemies in the engagement if you move in hit an enemy a few times and then just run away you also get a few bonus actions and these are all pretty useful patient defense gives attackers disadvantage which can be used to mitigate somewhat your low AC um at step of the wind doubles your movement speed for a bonus action this does come at the cost of multiple attacks but if you just really need to leave an area this is good it's also especially valuable on honor mode where sometimes just running away from a combat is the best thing that you can be doing so having step of the wind making that easier is really nice and disengage lets you do this uh safely um this is the same is the Rogue feature basically you spend a bonus action to disengage and not take an opportunity attack this is useful but less useful than the other two most of the time it's better to take the opportunity attack and then just get further away thanks to using step of the wind than it is to spend your bonus action on disengaging um and the reason for that is that you then if you just disengage and just move away the enemy may be able to just follow you and attack you again whereas if you double move away they they will most certainly not be able to get in range for a second attack so it's often better to just take the opportunity attack and deny them future attacks you gain more control over the battlefield by doing that every level you also get an additional key point which is additional times per day that you can whack enemies more times at monk level three we again have to make a very important decision which is what subass we're going to take and of the three subclasses one thing that's kind of nice about monks is all three of these are really good but for the most powerful and sort of most efficient subass we're going to go with the way of the Open Hand this gives you both control and damage which are extremely strong so you get Flurry of Blows topple for example which is basically the same as the Battle Master trip attack maneuver but with two unarmed attacks instead of a normal attack um which is tons of damage as well as knocking the enemy prone setting up future attacks in that round for Advantage as well as uh sometimes preventing enemies from taking turns under certain circumstances you can also get stagger which can prevent reactions this is especially good against enemies that you know have counter spell you can stagger them and then get a counter spell off or rather get a spell off without fear of it being counter spelled and then also you get Flurry of Blows push allowing you to shove an En away so basically you get two of the best Battle Master Maneuvers from wave of the open hand and then of course you're going to get more excellent class features as you continue to level up at monk level four we get our first feat and this is why we took an odd number in strength we also get slowfall which mostly doesn't matter although is I suppose a reasonable option in combat you can jump off of high surfaces without uh and take less damage um useful because you'll have lower hit points and something to keep in mind is that monks are essentially melee glass cannons they're very very squishy even if you have the strength Elixir build that has a little more HP um so you need to be quite careful with where you position your monk things like jumping off of a high surface and taking some damage that another character would ignore the monk is actually sometimes at risk from all right we are going to take for our first feat Tavern brawler it says when you make an unarmed attack on it and we are going to be making only unarmed attacks but more importantly we double our strength modifier to attack and damage roles which is why we increased our strength and we get to boost our strength up to 18 from the one point from Tavern brawler if you're the strength Elixir build then you would have taken 15 Constitution and would go up to 16 con from this this is incredibly powerful one because we're doing this at currently three times per turn and that's with no additional you know haste or anything like that um no additional sources of attacks from any other party members or anything meaning that we're going to be applying our 18 strength three times every turn and even more importantly we double our to hit chance meaning that you are extremely likely to hit this is allows you to uh break what's called bounded accuracy which is the concept in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition that your to hit chance will never be too high high or too low essentially um it tries to keep your hit chance constrained within a fairly narrow band against onlevel enemies in order to make combat exciting where you'll miss uh almost as often as you hit when we are doubling our to hit modifier from strength we're breaking that constraint and this character is going to hit way out of both much harder and way out of scale in terms of number of hits that for other enemies which is why we're the best damage dealing class in the game from sort of a basic character sense and you do this with almost no resources already at monk level five it gets even better because you get extra attack so now you're attacking four times per round with your main hand um you also if you're a gith Yankee get access to Misti step this does mean you're trading to attacks cuz every time you use your bonus action on something that isn't Flurry of Blows you're giving up two attacks which at this level is going to be uh your each of these attacks adds plus eight to your strength so each of these attacks adds plus eight to damage from your strength so it's really important to bear in mind how much damage you're giving up every time you use your bonus action for something that's not Flurry of Blows but having the option to do this is very important you also get access to one of the best abilities in the game stunning strike which causes an enemy to make a saving throw or be stunned in tabletop the save DC is based on your wisdom but oddly enough in in balder's Gate currently uh as of the date of recording the save DC is based on your strength or dexterity whichever is higher meaning that you are going to have your stunning strikes go off much more often even though we took lower wisdom uh so that's another thing that's really powerful about this character and this just stops the enemy from acting for a turn which is unbelievably strong um trading one it's not even your whole action it's trading one attack action for an entire enemy's turn which is an incredible action efficiency way better than just about any other way of disabling enemies and the only thing it takes is a key point so it's basically resourceless because key points are very cheap you get a ton of them you get another one every time you level [Music] up at monk level six we get the other thing that makes way of the Open Hand monk so good in fact two things that make way of the hand open hand monk really good um all monks get magic attacks meaning that they ignore resistance to uh against unmagical damage against non-magical damage which is really useful in a few fights there's there are some that where enemies just have resistance to all non-magical damage so getting the key empowered strikes is very valuable you also get even faster so you'll be even more mobile as you go across the battlefield which is very useful and you get the manifestation subass which lets you add a D4 plus your wisdom modifier to every one of your attacks while we're attacking four times around so that's going to be our whatever our wisdom modifier is currently only two plus 4 D4 uh so this is an additional 44 Plus 8 damage every round um and that's again without any additional sources of attacks like haste from a party member you also get uh wholeness of body which lets you recharge key points and have an extra bonus action when you are in the wholeness effect this does take your action but remember every bonus action you have is another Flurry of Blows so this can let you spend this uh feature to gain six attacks every round multiplying the double damage from your Tavern brawler multiplying the damage from your whole from your manifestations even more also important with these manifestations you can only have one active at a time but you can always always inspect your enemies and you can switch freely between them to see if there's a damage they're weak to if they're resistant to one of these damage types and swap which damage you're using appropriate to the enemy you're attacking at monk level s we get evasion Which is less good for this version of the the monk because of the tavern brawler monk because our dexterity is a little lower so we do have a weaker dexterity saving throw but it's still nice it prevents you from taking damage and you also get Stillness of mind which is lets you remove two of the most common wisdom affecting effects two of the most common ways for you to lose your turn are tered or frightened so this is really good it it prevents you from uh suffering from some of the most debilitating effects in the game it's just a really powerful defensive tool and especially because monks are so squishy getting stunned is very bad for them so removing Charmed and frightened is quite valuable at monk level eight we get another feat and so here I'm actually going to suggest something a little odd and that is because we have low initiative we should take rather than increasing our our strength to 20 to boost our damage we're actually going to take the alert feet because monks are like I said glass cannons whose main role in a fight is to pick an enemy and just annihilate them before they get to take a turn um in a single round having alert and getting to go first means that you are able to do that much much more reliably and the fact that you are relatively low HP relatively low AC is much less important for alert uh for for the monk if you have the strength Elixir version of the build this is still very good although less important you could consider just increasing your wisdom at this level um which would be B6 remember because the strength Elixir version gets better stats but I think alert is really really valuable for monks and worth considering on every character especially for Honor mode but especially for a character like this that's designed around burst damage next up we have a choice we can either continue in monk or we can try to gain the benefits of another class monk continues to get good stuff as you level it up but I think for one specific reason there's another class that will give us some more power as we continue to go so I'm going to recommend that at level 9 you take a Gip into Rogue this might look a little odd at first because there's a lot of things that Rogue gets that you can't really use on monk for example sneak attack can only apply to weapon damage since we're making unarmed attacks we won't get sneak attack and monks are not going to often be the uh skill users of the party so the expertises are not incredible although of course gaining access to stealth and putting stealth putting expertise into stealth does give you a lot of extra options in combat even with relatively low dexterity plus seven stealth is pretty good and because monks want to start off every fight it's very important to have good stealth athletic expertise which also is one of the most important skills excuse me skills to have access to is really good because pushing and shoving enemies is one of the best things you can do since you're so mobile you can really help reposition enemies around the battlefield using your Athletics so Athletics expertise is still very good something along these lines is kind of what I would suggest for skills however there's one thing that makes it really worth it to get into Rogue um we already get most of these effects but at level three Rogue we can take the thief Rogue subass giving us an extra bonus action monks have so many great uses for Bon bonus actions and of course the best use typically is just going to be a second or even third depending on your um the way that you have structured your turns or whether you've used wholeness of body Flurry of Blows meaning that you on a default turn where you spend two key points will now be able to make six attacks in a round up to eight up to maybe even 10 if you have an elixir of blood lust or 12 if you have an elixir of blood lust and haste um even more than that if you are not on honor mode because uh or sorry uh nine if you have an Elixir or blood lust or 10 if with an Elixir blood lust or haste up to 12 if you are on tactician or below where you gain the benefits of extra attack on those hasted actions but in honor mode 10 attacks Each of which is applying your wisdom plus twice your strength plus whatever other bonuses you have is going to be enough damage to one shot pretty much every enemy and for the very very few that you can't you can spend a few charges of stunning strike stunning strike is also one of the best ways to burn through enemy legendary resistances so you can make certain that you are going to stun these enemies uh even the most powerful bosses in the game the only enemies that are immune to only enemies that are completely immune to stun are going to be able to avoid just getting stunned by you locked down never get to take a turn and just have uh the tar beaten out of them as soon as you get access to them which you will be able to do very easily thanks to the incredible mobility of monks finally for our last level we simply just take a fourth level in Rogue to get access to a feat and increase our strength to 20 um again if you are not if you're using the strength Elixir build and don't need to put these points into strength you can put them into wisdom to increase your AC as well as your damage from your or manifestation of Mind Etc um but since the this version of the build is based on not using Elixir we're going to want to max out our our strength as quickly as we can to maximize Tavern brawler in terms of items um monks pretty much all of the items that monks can use say that they can use them on them so for example uh anything that increases your unarmed strike damage such as the gloves of Cinder and Sizzle here are going to be very very good for monks anything that increases your AC not in armor like a cloak of deflection uh let me I think I've got that one here yeah the cloak of protection increases your armor class and Saves by one and isn't armor um a good armor piece a good armor set is the cat's Grace armor which just increases your dexterity by two and any points and stats you can get you're very hungry for so that's very much worth doing um if you are lazel specifically These Boots of uh or no sorry not the boots of pionic movement um the disintegrating night Walkers are very good if you are uh especially if you're not a g yane giving you access to Misti step every character should have access to misy step and even though you're not a barbarian brutal leap from the bone Spike boots with your very high strength is going to be a decent way to knock enemies prone and deal uh damage it does require your bonus action but your jump distances should be incred so the bone Spike boots are very good for you as well for a typical combat turn um just make sure first off that you have your manifestations on and then you're just going to pick an enemy that you want dead and just beat the absolute stuffing out of them so let's just take a quick look in turnbas mode at what that will look like so you are going to make a Flurry of Blows attack uh Flurry of Blows attack with or without out one of these bonus effects so for example Flurry of Blows topple that's two attacks and another Flurry of Blows topple Each of which is hitting for uh each of those two attacks hitting for a D6 plus 10 plus a D4 plus two um plus any additional bonuses that you might have from gear or anything else from an ally then you can make two stunning strikes as an attack making sure that an enemy will be stunned and that only costs your four of your nine available key points which recharge on a short rest if you've pre-buff with wholeness of body you can make an additional set of attacks so overall you're going to average um something like 150 or 200 damage in a round before you add any other bonuses um meaning that monks are just some of the best damage dealers in the game and also lock down enemies incredibly easily you have excellent Mobility you don't offer a lot of utility to your party other than just the stunning strikes but knocking an enemy over is very useful for that kind of thing and obviously stunning strike is incredibly strong utility so even though that in and of itself is the only utility you offer it's so good that it's just incredible to have access to in a party all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the and if you have definitely please take the time to leave a comment like the video both of those things help a ton with the algorithm and you can subscribe to my channel for more Boulders Gate 3 character guides Boulders Gate 3 content and other strategy game videos as we go forwards cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 43,271

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: GSIV_uEd3nI

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2023