The BEST SHADOW MONK in Baldur's Gate 3 - Astarion Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 class guide hope you're all doing well today I will be covering my pick for the best Shadow monk build in Boulder's Gate Shadow monk is a really interesting class I'm using estaran as the example character here because it's a shadow monk of course so it wants to stick to the shadows and use stealth very on theme for aaran as well he also gets a unique melee attack that synergizes extremely well with the Monk's kit and also give him a gives him a buff that will work very well with what we're trying to do on this class monk I think is one of the hardest characters to build because let me go to the attributes here it is what we call mad or multi-attribute dependent monks need dexterity or strength if they are doing damage based on dexterity or strength and regardless you're going to need at least some dexterity for your armor class and your initiative they need Constitution because every character needs good hit points and you're a Melee character so you don't want to be too squishy they need wisdom for their Armor class as well as the save DC of their stunning strikes so you need a lot of different attributes to make a monk work and it can be hard I think to have a good build this build is going to aim to be a very valuable build for a party and it's also going to be quite strong as a solo build Shadow monk I think is one of the better classes to solo the game with so if you wanted to do a main character for a solo tactician run this is a pretty good choice you will end up being very evasive very hard to hit and very hard to see and also hitting like a truck in melee combat so that's going to be the goal if you are doing this for a main character rather than for a staran I would recommend D for the once per day darkness as well as hand crossbow proficiency are both quite useful um wood elf because they're always good and also get perception as a skill proficiency which is valuable on a sort of on a character that wants to have some wisdom also just any character needs perception or my personal pick is dgar because the enlarge synergizes extremely well with the damage of your unarmed attacks we're going to be focusing this character around unarmed attacks both because I think it's very powerful and also because it is most on Flavor for a monk and I really want to focus on the attributes of monk that make them you know monk like so that's what we're going to go with to solve our multi-attribute dependency problem I'm going to be showing you two versions of this build one which tries to do it the hard way by actually having our stats manually and one where we use items to mitigate the issues that we will otherwise run into with our stats so let's do the first one first where we're building it the hard way and we're going to clear this this attribute spread as usual the default attribute spread Is Not Great although the one for monk I think is actually closer to correct than most of the recommended attribute spreads because it only gives you one odd number rather than three like many of them do but let's clear this and we're going to end up with a very odd stat spread in order to mitigate how many different stats we need we'll stick with 14 Constitution we get it like so we're going to go up to 16 dexterity because we need that for our Armor class and initiative and we're going to go with 15 strength I know I just said we don't want odd numbers but bear with me for a minute here because we are going to be a strength based character our remaining points we can use to get up to 12 wisdom unfortunately we can't hit 14 wisdom with this build which means that our save DCS on our stunning strikes are going to be a little low and our AC will not be as high as we'd like but such is the difficulty of playing a monk our last two points we can put kind of wherever intelligence and Charisma are both roughly equally value valuable saving throws so I would stick these maybe in Charisma if you're a main character just to have better dialogue skills but those last two points don't matter matter a ton for our skills I would highly recommend taking Athletics because we are a strength-based character and the ability to push and reposition enemies is incredibly powerful also as a shadow monk we're going to be able to teleport from Shadow to Shadow and one of the most fun play patterns in this for this character is to teleport up next to someone and shove them into a pit or off of a hill or something for our second skill I highly recommend that you have Proficiency in stealth because we're going to be using that a lot and we want to be sticking to the Shadows anyways stealth is also super powerful making all of your attacks have advantage and so on so with that slightly odd stat build stat spread that's what we're going to go with to begin with at level two monks really get a lot of stuff you get 10 feet of extra movement speed which is very powerful you also get bonus action dashes also incredibly strong and bonus action disengages less useful for this character but with the uh ability to disengage and jump for just a bonus action that can be very valuable as well it does cost a key point but it's still extremely useful patient defense is not bad it does help mitigate our low AC but I would recommend trying to take enemies out of the fight rather than spend your bonus actions on patient defense since you have Flurry of Blows a bonus action can be two extra attacks which is much better usually than patient defense but keep in eye keep in mind that you have access to all of these options no not add class just level up at level three we are of course taking a shadow monk because this is a shadow monk build which gets you bonus action hide very powerful um cuz you can use it to you can disengage jump into darkness and hide that is something that you can do uh off of your turn which gives you the ability to evade enemies very well you have the ability to cast darkness which is one of the most powerful effects in the game it has no saving throw for blinding and no saving throw for preventing ranged enemies from attacking into or out of it which means you can guarantee repositioning enemies around it will also blind you if you're in it but against ranged enemies you would rather force them into melee and have you both be blinded um and against melee enemies it can still be valuable especially if you can stay on the edge of it so that they're blinded and you're not uh and we will also be using a trick to get around the darkness blinding you later on but for now we're going to be focusing on placing it next to us so that the enemies are stuck in it and we aren't minor illusion is also quite a good cant trip to have especially on a Melee character because it likewise has no save repositioning enemies is very powerful and finally silence is also very good of course against spellcaster you can use this to lock down a spellcaster and prevent them from casting at level four we get our first feat and this is why we took 15 strength because the first feat that we are going to take is Tavern brawler Tavern brawler lets us gain an extra point in an attribute but more importantly it doubles our strength modifier when we make an unarmed attack or improvised attack or Throne object all of which we can do but specifically to unarm attacks since we make three unarmed attacks per round doubling our strength modifier both for hits and damage is incredibly powerful and means that we're at this point already one of the highest damage output characters available at level four I'm going to kind of show you how that works so let's take a quick look here so when you attack because we have Tavern brawler we're doubling the damage output from our fists meaning that our unarmed attacks do 1d6 plus 6 and we get three of them per round thanks to our main hand attack plus Flurry of Blows with three times 1d6 plus 6 that's an average damage output of 27 and a half in a round with a maximum damage output of 36 so you're already doing an incredible amount of damage uh to start with and that's only at level four once we go to level five that damage goes up even more of course because you get extra attack meaning that you are now making four attacks in a round instead of only three you also get access to stunning strike which is still incredibly powerful um although less so for this particular version of the build than it will be for some other monks because the safety C is based on your wisdom and we only get plus one wisdom so the safety C is going to be a little low but but it's still often worth spending a key point on this to make sure that your enemies just are half to roll saves and some characters especially ones that you really want to stun will have quite low saving throws such as Wizards or archers and you can force them to make saves even against low DCS there's often a decent chance that they'll save it that they'll fail it at level six you get improved unarmored movement so that will bring your movement speed to 45 ft is really strong if you're a Wood Elf up to 50 ft that means you can basically cover the any arena in a single movement especially with your bonus action Dash so you're very very fast um key empowered strikes is also extremely useful because some enemies are resistant or immune to non-magical damage and this gets around it me meaning that you are going to be doing extra damage to those as well and you get the namesake or the most important ability for the shadow monk Shadow step teleport from Shadow to Shadow this costs no key points and has no cool down so you can just keep on doing it is really really nice um and then you gain advantage on your next attack roll so you can blink to an enemy hit them with advantage and use that to reposition around the battlefield significantly you're going to be wanting to extinguish light sources before you start fights which you can often do with ranged attacks or throw in water if you've ever played like the thief series of games think about your spaces more like that than like a d andd space once you have unlocked this ability incredibly strong one of the most versatile abilities in the game great for getting into fights great for getting out of fights just an excellent ability overall monk level seven we get uh evasion which is really good you'll have very good dexterity saves thanks to your high decks and your Proficiency in decks and only taking and taking no damage from some damaging spell effects is incredibly strong as well uh Stillness of mind is a minor boost but nice to have at level eight we're just going to be increasing our strength because each point of strength is twice as valuable for this character as it is for other characters thanks to Tavern brawler but at this point we have kind of a decision to make at level nine monks get a pretty good PL class feature Advanced unarmored movement giving you 20 ft of additional jump speed increases your jump your your Mobility quite significantly and is very useful but um that would come either at the cost of forcing us to take monk all the way to level 12 and they don't get a lot past level 9 or of costing us a feat so I think that the best thing to do is to dip out of monk at level eight go into another class CL which might have some better options for us in terms of our overall build and make sure that we're still getting all of the Feats that we need so we're going to take another class at level 9 and that other class is going to be Rogue you may want at this point to Respec your character to take Rogue at level one because it will get you additional skill proficiencies to do that since Rogues get more skill proficiencies um and then level up in monk uh after that but for now I'm just going to be assuming that you're not doing that for your expertises uh slight of hand and stealth are a really good one so that's totally fine but you could also consider expertise in athletics to ensure that you're passing those skill checks being able to guaranteed push someone is really nice but expertise in stealth means you'll never fail stealth checks basically and expertise in slight of hand is very useful cuz opening locks is useful at level two Rogue we mostly get redundant features so this one does doesn't increase our damage significantly or increase our power level significantly because we already have effectively cunning action hide although action Dash and cunning action dis disengage allow you to do this without spending key points which normally the monk has to do so it's slightly better to have these abilities than the Monk's version of the abilities overall but the real reason that we're here is at level three we get a second D6 of sneak attack which does increase our damage output somewhat but more importantly we get the subass thief thief gives you the fast hands ability for an additional bonus action and every bonus action on this character is two attacks for 1d6 plus double our strength damage so that means that we are now going to be able to attack six times a round which is an incredible amount of attacks per round uh we will also be able to sneak attack some of these attacks will be made with with Advantage we can guarantee sneak attack with our shadow step ability and at level 12 of course we're going to hit an ability Improvement and max out our strength this way all of our attacks hit for 1d6 + 12 or 1d6 plus 10 1d6 plus double our strength meaning that in a single turn we make six attacks thanks to extra attack and double Flurry of Blows each of those is 1d6 + 10 uh and that so that is an average per round damage of 81 which is very very high of course um with a maximum damage output of 116 plus our sneak attack actually so that the average goes up a little bit the average is 88 with a maximum damage output of 128 in a single round of combat and you can repeat this over and over again because it only costs you key points to make these flurry attacks and even if you don't have any key points left you're still attacking four times around with your bonus action attacks from uh Marshall from from the monks uh Marshall Arts proficiency um key points you have eight of them and they restore on a short rest so it's very cheap to continue to make these Flurry of Blows attacks and you can really put the Herd on someone in a single round and then continue to do it over and over again every round while dipping in and out of Shadows blocking off spellcasters with silence blocking off enemy sight lines with Darkness extremely strong max level cap that said there's some bonuses that we can get if we use a couple items so one thing that this version of the build can use that very effectively is any item that increases the damages damage of your unarmed attacks for example these gloves of crushing give your unarmed attacks two additional damage when you're making six attacks round that's just 12 extra damage a round some things will give you an extra D4 of damage each of those is two and a half on average so that would be an extra uh 15 damage around even better so keep an eye out for any form of gloves like that another item that is extremely valuable for this character is this eversight ring it gives you blind immunity and I believe you find it in uh act two in the shadow cursed lands um when you are wearing the eversight ring you can cast your Darkness on yourself and be immune to the blindedness this allows you to fight melee enemies while they always have disadvantage and you always have Advantage because you're attacking them out of Darkness incredibly powerful effect um from that ring and I highly recommend picking it up and using it on this character of course you will also be uh turning off all the lights wherever you are so many enemies will be taking disadvantage just cuz they are in the dark finally let me talk about how we can solve the multi-attribute dependency problem that I talked about from that I mentioned right at the beginning there are two particular items that are extremely valuable for this the first is these gloves of dexterity you find these late in act one and they set your dexterity to 18 meaning that instead of investing in 16 dexterity off the beginning you could Respec and set and invest that dexterity into 16 wisdom that that'll increase your AC massively so if we had 18 dexterity that would be plus4 AC plus 16 wisdom putting our AC from 14 to 17 um as well as increasing the safety C of our stunning strike so highly recommend that the other thing that we can do that's incredibly powerful is every day we could drink one of these elixir of Hill giant strength if you do this then you don't have to put points into strength or spend Feats on leveling strength which means that you basically single-handedly solve the problem of multi-attribute dependency on this character you can stockpile these in act one there's a vendor that sells three of them every day so just buy enough that you'll never have to buy anymore plus you can make a few or find a few um over the course of the game and as long as you're drinking one of these every day you can start your character with eight strength meaning that we can if we use both of these items or even if we don't want to use the gloves of dexterity cuz we want to have have our glove slot open for a more damaging glove which we often might you could take an attribute spread where we don't have to put any points into strength which frees up a lot of points to get you to 16 wisdom and this is a much cleaner attribute spread you're much happier with something like this overall um this will give you as long as you are drinking the potions you will gain access to a lot more stat points you'll have way better AC thanks to your high wisdom and you'll have much better saf DC on your stunning strikes as well Additionally you will get two additional Feats which I will show you which ones we probably want as I'm just going to put those points wherever so in addition to Tavern brawler if you're doing the elix build the two Feats that you're going to want as you level up are most likely mobile which allows you to enter and leave um combat without provoking opportunity attacks as well as Dash through difficult terrain which is incredibly strong it also gives you additional movement speed which synergizes extremely well with your monk movement speed um and one thing that you can really do very efficiently on a a shadow Monk Is run in punch someone run away and then hide because you have bonus action hides so you can use your action your attacks to hit them and then run away and hide preventing enemies from Ever Getting to take turns against you uh the second one is less important so maybe you want to stay at three Thief for the bonus action and get the bonus jump distance from hitting monk n otherwise you might consider Sentinel and the enemy keeping enemies locked in place means they won't easily be able to leave your Darkness if you've set up Darkness on top of them and if you're using the ring to make you not blinded um lucky is just always good giving you uh advantage or causing an enemy to fail rolls it's not as powerful as it is in tabletop where you get to see the roll first but uh lucky is still good and another one that I like quite a lot is Mage Slayer because you can attack attack enemies and knock them out of concentration this also gives you a use for your reaction which you don't have particularly on this character otherwise um so that can be very valuable but probably the best overall is just going to be alert because the bonus initiative an inability to be surprised alert is just the best feat in the game probably overall um almost every character wants it and if you are soloing you definitely want alert something that's worth keeping in mind in balers gate is that in tabletop Dungeons and Dragons initiative is rolled on a D20 and then any bonuses are added in Boulders gate it's rolled on a D4 which means that these bonuses such as alert are five times as valuable as they are in tabletop and alert is already a top tier feat in tabletop Dungeons and Dragons so it's that much better in balder's Gate there's also several story events where your character gets surprised no matter what you do um but alert prevents that so that is very valuable winning initiative and getting to take the first turn especially when that first turn often consists of Disappearing entirely and being unable to be attacked is extremely strong all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the shadow monk the incredible damage output mobility and versatility of this character I think are really fun to play and this is my pick for the way to maximize the effectiveness of the character whether that be with the build using Hill giant Elixir or not using Hill giant Elixir is really up to you and how much you feel like spamming magic items every day if you've enjoyed this video then of course feel free to leave a comment uh like the video both of those help out a ton with the algorithm I should also mention that if you've been enjoying these class guides I do have um YouTube channel memberships set up so if you feel so inclined I would of course you know appreciate anyone who wants to join the channel or leave a I think they call them super thanks obviously no obligation to do that but you know if you are feeling particularly generous then that would be wonderful of course and you can subscribe to my channel for more of these and other strategy game content cheers my friends and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 15,746

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

Id: Ea_IHXPZ-ZY

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023