Way of the Astral Self (Monk) Build Guide in D&D 5e - HDIWDT

what is up fellow nerds and welcome back to the Dapper Snapper gaming channel and welcome back to how do I want to do this this is our Series where we take a look all playable options available to players in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition then we rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 and either build them or fix them depending on how they rank now today we're going to be bringing you the final video looking at the astral self Monk and I am very excited to be bringing this video for you I really like this subclass and I have a really fun way to look at this build in today's video so before we jump into it make sure to leave a like on the video and subscribe if you haven't already as you can see most people who watch the channel are not subscribed so please don't be one of those people help us to reach our goal of 5000 by the end of this year I really think we can do it but I need your help to do so especially since we have been losing a lot of viewers ever since this ogl thing started and so please share this video with your friends and make sure to click the Bell so that you're notified when videos are uploaded so that you don't miss any future video videos so the way the astral self monk is a really interesting take on the mug of course it's our only our first subclass that we are actually talking about in this series we have a lot to come but it actually starts us off on a pretty good foot with this we get to focus on our wisdom modifier rather than always being focused on dexterity with this we get to deal Force damage and so it's going to be very rarely resisted which is nice it's going to obviously be magical because of just the monk kit in general we get a lot of really cool stuff actually with this kit and it's it's really interesting however there are a few things that I find that are weaknesses both with the Monk class and the combination of the Monk class with this subclass and so I wanted to make a build today that kind of addressed those as best as possible but still took as many monk levels as possible so that we have as many key as we can possibly get I really think that this is about as good as we can get if we're starting off at really early level and we're going to be taking one level elsewhere and the rest is going to be in monk which is pretty good for me normally it's at least three most of the time more than that and so yeah we get to actually really focus down on the monk today because it's just going to be better for everything one thing I want to tell you about though before we jump into the build today is that in the description below I have left a link to a document now I'm going to be trying to put documents up like this on all of my videos eventually and going back through my catalog of videos and making these for previous builds as well so I want to check about what you all think about this I want you to let me know in the comments section what you like about this document what you don't like about this document if there's anything on there that you think is unnecessary if you think there's something that's missing from there if you just don't like the formatting at all just let me know know what you think down below I really want to make sure that this is a well put together document and this is just kind of the first draft so I'm going to be doing a few of these and updating them as I go and so hopefully this will end up being really good and eventually I will have them for all of them but I want to make sure I get the right format down before I start making a ton of them so that I don't make all of them wrong and waste a bunch of time so I'd appreciate if you would let me know down in the comments below but without any further Ado let's go ahead and take a look at this build starting off as always we have our race and I considered going with the option of just your standard custom lineage very human all all that good stuff but I decided against it for this week because even though a feat might do us some good at level one I actually feel better going one level in another class than taking a feat that emulates sum of what it is that we would get from taking this class I I think we get a lot more bang for our buck by taking a level rather than taking a feat and so this frees up our racial slot so now we can be anything we want to be which is really good for me I think that the Earth genocity actually ends up being our best option here and it gives us a number of really cool benefits number one of course we get dark vision and a lot of races get that but if you don't have dark vision on your character you're gonna be upset so I mean don't don't count this out this is important to have on a character however of course I'm looking more so at the other two features that we get from this and the first one of course is going to be our merge with stone feature and merge with stone gives us two key spells number one we get Blade Ward but normally I when I talk about blade Ward I talk about it being a bad spell because it's not worth your action well wouldn't you know they buffed it in this when we're looking at the monsters of the Multiverse version of this race and so we are going to be able to cast this as a bonus action proficiency bonus times per day which is actually pretty cool I really like this feature and it gives us another really cool defensive option that actually can help us save some key going forward if we don't want to necessarily take the Dodge action as our bonus action on this then we don't have to we can take a different defensive option and save our key for Flurry of Blows or getting our astral arms out or any of other our other features that we're going to get as we go down the road so I think that we get a lot more bang for our buck with this and we also get passed without Trace which is just an amazing spell in general and it's just a really nice support spell for our party and of course we get to cast that also and and I really really like that the other big thing that we get is earthwalk and earthwalk sounds like something that's kind of situational and usually it is however we are going to be making a decent amount of use of this and I really like how we can combine this with our our bit of multi-classing you see this allows us to ignore any kind of difficult terrain as long as it's on the ground and so we're going to be able to cast a couple spells and one of those spells happens to make difficult terrain this allows us to ignore that and if a creature that is our enemy is stuck in this that means we can run in attack and run back out and not have to worry about suffering a movement penalty so this is really really nice in combination with everything and of course we will talk about what that is in just a second as for our stats of course we're using our modified standard array as always if your table uses Point by uses regular standard array uses rolled stats anything like that of course your stats will look different than mine and that's totally okay you can just adjust these accordingly and just go ahead and focus on whatever my highest stat is and just kind of go down the line from there the bottom three stats usually don't matter unless it's a kind of a Mad build in this case it's actually not terribly mad at least for a monk so it's not going to be terribly difficult to follow we're going to put our highest score into our wisdom here rather than our dexterity which is strange for a monk most of the time but because we can actually attack with wisdom with our astral arms it makes a lot of sense to actually Focus with on that instead because it also helps us to boost our key save faster which just means that our stunning strikes are going to be more effective when we get that at monk five so that all is working together really well second stat of course is going to be dexterity so that's going to help us out for now it's going to help us out with our Armor class should we choose to use unarmored defense which we are and it also is going to help us out with our initiative with our stealth checks that are boosted by that pass without Trace once we hit fifth level and several other things dexterity is basically the best stat in the game and so we really want to have a decent Dex and this allows us to do that and keep in mind this also will be our unarmed strikes anytime that we don't have our astral arms out so we don't want this to be bad so just keep that in mind and on top of all of that we have to multi-class into this because we're starting with a different level so we have to have at least 13 to start so for all of those reasons I would take my second best stat here in this dexterity and then after that I would take Constitution because we need some decent hit points we're going to need an okay amount of support there for our concentration because our spell that we're casting actually does require concentration so we don't want to necessarily be dropping that every two seconds because we're going to have very few spell slots and so that would kind of feel like a waste so for all those reasons that's on my top three besides that it really doesn't matter I'm gonna put my I'm going to put my 12 into Charisma just because it goes with the feature that we get with the Visage at monk six but otherwise there's not really a huge reason to go into that so really the bottom three are kind of pick your favorites I would dump intelligence every single time just because intelligence is not going to come up very often where you're having to make intelligence checks or saving throws so I would probably just dump that and move on so that's it for the stats as as far as equipment goes we really don't need much which makes sense for a monk right we're going to take a Quarter Staff which I know what you're thinking wait a minute your your whole thing about this subclass is taking unarmed strikes and that's true but it also presents us with a bit of an issue which we will talk about when I explain our multi-classing and we'll get to that in a second but go ahead and grab a Quarter Staff and if you want to wear leather armor and carry a shield at level one you can I personally would just kind of skate through that level and not do it but if you want to it's fine you'll be able to with your first level but after that we're going to be using our unarmored defense and so you'll need to throw away both the shield and the armor so I would probably just not waste my money on those and just wait until you get our get your monk levels but that's just me it's it's up to you whatever you want to do and finally we're going to need an Arcane Focus for our class that we are actually starting in with all that core stuff out of the way let's go ahead and start taking some levels at level one like I said we are not going to be starting with Monk and there are a couple of reasons for this number one what happens when we are out of key this is going to happen somewhat often because key is a precious and limited resource and we're not always going to have the key to be able to summon our astral arms yes you can save one key but I mean it's not something that you can necessarily say is going to be able to happen every single fight and so we want to make sure that we have a good backup plan and for right now we're actually going to make that our primary plan and use the arms as a backup plan at least for a little while just so that we can be a little bit more effective on top of that we are looking at only a D4 as our damage die for our unarmed strikes which of course is incredibly low with certain other features we can actually bump that to a d8 right off the bat and so we can use that as our primary weapon until we actually get access to that d8 in our unarmed strikes which comes of course at monk 11. I know that's very late to be getting something like this but at the same time I want to make sure that I am effective as possible and this is just a way to kind of get around that not to say that the arms are completely useless and not to use unarmed strikes it's just we we can find ways to save key and be able to focus entirely on wisdom through some other means and we're going to talk about that with our first level that we take finally of course if we don't have that key to spend our arms are going to be using our dexterity and our dexterity is not going to be as good as our wisdom or the majority of the levels of this build and that's just kind of how it works out regardless of what type of method you used for getting stats unless you did rolled stats and got really high on everything then you're probably going to have a mediocre at best dexterity and you're gonna have a good wisdom and Constitution right and so this is going to be something that we're going to be struggling with our whole time is getting that dexterity up after we've bumped up our wisdom so we'll get to how we're going to deal with that as we go but I'll just say we really don't have time for beats in this build until we get all of those stats back maxed out at least in my opinion with all that out of the way what are we starting with well originally this build started with fighter and we will talk about that in the honorable mentions at the end however I felt that it would be a lot more favorable for me and a lot easier for me to focus on wisdom if I started with a different class entirely and so for this build we're going to be starting with Druid now Druid is a really effective class of course I talked about it in this video up in the icard above and it has a lot of really good stuff going for it now typically Druids are not thought of as a great one level dip but actually in this case it really is it gives us a lot of really cool benefits it gives us some spells it gives us a couple features that we may be able to uh to deal with here and it gives us kind of a hidden feature as well that you don't really hear anybody talk about at least normally but in our case it's actually pretty cool that we get it I'll go ahead and start with that and it's the fact that we are switching our saving throw proficiencies on this build so for this of course we're not going to be getting our dexterity or our primary good saving throw we are getting wisdom why is that significant well for this build we are going to get evasion eventually on this at monk 7. at monk 7 of course we will not be able to take any more than half damage on anything that requires a deck save anyway so losing out on that proficiency really isn't that big of a deal if we fail it's fine so I would rather take Proficiency in wisdom where I'm going to be able to actually get a huge benefit out of this and then let evasion catch me later once I get access to that feature so overall I think it's better on this build to get a wisdom saving their proficiency and eventually of course we will get proficiency with dexterity saving throws when we get diamond soul but to me I think this is way better for or most of our levels moving on of course to our spell casting of course we also have dritic but that's more of a flavor thing but we get spell casting and with this we get a couple of things we of course get access to a couple of canned trips and cantrips are kind of important to this build at least one of them is and of course we get access to shalali shillelagh is going to allow us to do a few things with our Quarter Staff number one as a bonus action and as a can trip which means you can do it all the time you can make it magical now not only is it dealing magical bludgeoning damage but it also uses your wisdom modifier rather than strength or dexterity this is already going to be a huge improvement over what you could have done before because we're not having to wait until we get our sub class at level three of Monk to start actually moving over so we don't have to feel kind of bad about what we're doing with our stats we just start off on the right foot so I really like that of course we're dealing a d8 of damage rather than a D4 as well so that's going to help our damage out by a decent margin and so I'm happy about that as well and of course we also get one other can trip the other one isn't nearly as important I would probably take either Thorn Whip or guidance depending on what type of a role you want to fill in your party depending on what type of character You're Building whether you want to be a support type of person or if you would rather be more on the damaging side either of those options are perfectly viable as far as first level spells of course there are plenty of Classics on here cure wounds healing word good Berry things like that but one that I want to bring your attention to that I would prepare pretty much every day is the entangle spell the entangle spell is honestly a steal at first level and it allows you to restrain enemies if they fail a saving throw of course we are focusing down on our wisdom here so we're gonna have a decent spell save and we're going to be focusing on getting that as high as possible as soon as possible so that's going to be really nice and of course there are plenty of other great options on this list like the ones I mentioned there are a few others eventually you'll have access to six of these on a given day five from your wisdom on fire one from your level in Druid and so you can just swap them out every single day now after we get to monk four I would actually suggest taking something like jump jump is one that I normally don't mention at all because typically it's incredibly situational and you don't want to end up hurting yourself however you have access to slow fall after you reach monk four and at that point it becomes kind of interesting because now you can jump really high and not hurt yourself on the way down so I'm sure there are going to be plenty of times that you can find a use for this type of ability and I'm interested to know what you have used the jump spell for in the past I personally normally don't see a lot of value in it but I really think that you could get some use out of it here with that bit of a safety net that you have built into the Monk class in general of course at the next level we're going to be level two and this is where I'm just gonna go ahead and go Monk and I'm gonna stay there the rest of the build I really don't think I'm gonna get a ton of value out of going different classes in this build just because I'm so reliant on having key and of course I get one extra key point for every time I level up to me it's a lot more valuable to take as many levels in monk as possible to get all those key up it's going to give me extra attack faster it's going to give me stunning strike faster it's going to give me evasion faster all of those nice options that we have on that Monk class even though they're kind of few and far between it does give those to me a little bit quicker and so I don't want to multi-class at all anymore we're going monk rest of the way of course now at monk one we're gonna get a couple of features number one is unarmored defense an armored defense is going to give us an immediate boost to our AC making it 10 plus decks plus wisdom and so now we actually have a decent AC probably around 16 or 17 depending on your stats and that's going to feel really good it's not the best AC in the world and your Paladin is going to be making fun of you for it but still it's not bad and so I'm actually totally fine with having an AC around this level especially at level two it's going to be just fine getting away with something like this we also get martial arts which is going to give us a bonus action unarmed strike on top of our regular attack that we're already making with our magical Chalet lead Quarter Staff which is really cool so that's just upping our damage just a little bit more of course course this will be a D4 and based on your dexterity not your wisdom just make sure to keep those two separated because they are likely going to be different numbers maybe they're not for you depending on what you rolled slash did in your point by but they're likely going to be different so just make sure to keep those separate at level three we will of course be a monk two and this is going to give us access to key and this is really important obviously we're going to have one key per month level and we can spend those on for right now three different options of course if you do not know much about the Monk class in general I will of course put the video up in the icard above that I did for the Monk class it goes into a lot more detail on the class itself so that is a lot more specific for things like this and of course also at this level we're going to get access to unarmored movement which is going to bump our movement speed up to 40 at this point and of course that will eventually make it to 60 by the time we get to late level which is really really nice actually being able to zip around the battlefield possibly spreading around some stunning strikes as we go not a terrible way to do things so that actually could be rather fun at level 4 We're of course going to be a monk 3 and this is going to give us access to our subclass so we now can summon the arms of the astral self those arms of course do cost a key point so just keep that in mind of course key run out quickly you have three per rest at this point which isn't much so if you don't have any it's fine you have your Quarter Staff there to deal extra damage to still use your wisdom but of course your unarmed strikes will not be dealing wisdom damage they will not be dealing Force damage they will just be dexterity based unarmed strikes that deal regular bludgeoning damage but that's fine it's it's one of those things where I just want to make sure that we are as effective as possible at low level as we possibly can I will say that if you started this build at much later level then it's probably best to just skip the Druid level entirely but honestly the combination nation of having the entangle spell plus our ability to get in and get out without having to worry about the difficult terrain is just such a nice combo that it's Gotta at least be considered right it's just a really really fun option to be able to lock down opponents go in whack them with a stick and then get out and not really suffer hardly any consequences which is pretty pretty nice at level five we're gonna be of course a monk four and we get our first ASI or feet we're only a level eight so that's not too bad I honestly I don't think that there's anything better that I can do than bumping my wisdom modifier here I would go plus two into wisdom here just to make sure that I'm getting that max out as quickly as possible of course with my stat array I'm now maxed out if yours isn't that's fine just get it as high as possible at this level at level 6 we're gonna be a monk five and this is going to give us access to extra attack and stunning strike and this is actually even a bigger level than that which we'll get to in a second so we get access of course to extra attack so now we Bonk twice rather than once on our action which feels really good this of course can be done with your unarmed strikes but those are only going to be d6s as of this level so that did just improve so you're probably still better off using the stick at least for now for your main action and then if you can get your astral arms out then that will be really great to Flurry of Blows with on your bonus action however it's probably even better to be considering going for stunning strikes stunning strike of course is one of the best features in the monk kit and honestly I don't know that anybody would play monks if they didn't have this feature stunning strike of course allows you to possibly stun an enemy if they fail a constitution saving throw now obviously Khan unsaves are normally pretty good on Monsters but we are going to be getting that key save really high as quickly as we can and so that's going to feel really good that key save is gonna be as high as possible and so we're gonna get more success than a lot of other monks would so that feels pretty good for for something like this of course at this point we also get a bonus to our proficiency bonus and like I said our unarmed strike damage goes up at this point as well so all of that gets improved in one level it's a really really good level for monks next level of course we're going to be a monk 6 at level seven we get key empowered strikes so we can now punch ghosts which is really good so magical punches which In fairness I really think that our Force punches our our astral self punches should have been just considered magical in general but I guess technically they're not I don't know we get it here anyway so it's totally fine of course we also get our second subclass feature which is the Visage of the astral self and honestly I probably wouldn't use this in combat like hardly ever unless you need magical dark vision that's the only time I would worry about using this in combat otherwise I would probably just leave it alone and just summon the arms it saves you the key and you probably aren't going to be using any of those other features unless you specifically are dealing with a DM who's doing like the darkness hex blade type of thing otherwise you're probably not going to really need it level 8 will be among seven and we now get evasion so now we get a huge buff to our dexterity saving throws where we now can no longer take any more than half damage and if we happen to actually succeed which our bonus isn't awful I guess um but if we happen to succeed on that saving throw then we actually go ahead and just take no damage at all so this is on breath weapons this is on traps this is on pretty much anything that's a deck safe so that's really really good of course with this we also get Stillness of mind which is not that great of a feature it costs too much to do it yes it's nice to be able to end this but honestly it should be a free action it should not be an action to do this because an action is just way too much and there are certain types of frighten and charm effects that would cause you to waste your action anyway or not even not even give you one and so then this feature gets thrown out in that case too so either way I don't think this is a winning feature I really think that this should have been for free or at the very most a bonus action at level 9 will of course be a monk 8 and this will give us access to one more ASI or feat if you have not maxed out your wisdom score yet go ahead and do that if you have let's move on to dexterity which is what I'm going to be doing for these purposes of course getting these two stats as high as possible as quickly as possible is going to be the name of the game here and making sure that you are effective as possible as a monk and so that feels really good making sure that we have both of these as high as possible is going to make sure that we have not only a really good saving throw proficiency we have a good key save it means that we're hitting as hard as we can with our arms no matter whether they are astral or just our regular unarmed strikes because we might run out of keys sometimes and if we run out of key we're using decks so we don't want that to be bad per se so it's going to be a good thing to boost both of them up before we consider doing anything else with our stats level 10 will be among nine and we get an improvement to our unarmored movement feature which means that we can run on liquids and up vertical surfaces which actually is pretty cool this does give us a really neat movement option that normally a lot of people wouldn't actually have access to unless you have something like spider climb for vertical surfaces but even then that has nothing to do with water so this can give you a really cool Advantage if you are dealing with something that kind of like pops out of the water if you're finding something like that or just getting over a large body of water maybe you can run faster than what people can even row about so that could be pretty cool as well so I I think that's really interesting gives you a really nice movement option especially combined with the jump spell I think that all of that actually gives you some really really cool options that pretty much nobody else can do unless they have flight so that's not too bad level 11 will be among 10 and of course we get purity of body which is fine it's really only going to be relevant if you're taking a cloud kill to the face otherwise I don't really see this being used all that much maybe that's just me personally but I just don't think that this feature is nearly as good as it sounds just because poison damage depending on your campaign of course is normally not the most common thing in the world unless you're doing something that has it everywhere which which is totally totally fine but I'm saying that at the same time I don't think this is something that is uh terribly common all the time so I wouldn't get too excited about this feature it's just not quite all that it seems of course at level 12 we will be among 11 and get our third round of our subclass features which is great we will of course get the body of the astral self so now if we spin two key points one for the arms one for the Visage we get the body as well the body of course gives us a nice little defensive feature very similar to a light version of absorb Elements which we do have access to through our Druid level which is pretty cool um so those might end up being a little redundant with each other or you may want to use both kind of up to you but we also can deal extra damage with our astral arms once per turn which does feel pretty good and especially since now at this level is kind of when I would start waning off the quarter staff and start moving towards using the arms as your primary option I would still keep the stick around I wouldn't get rid of it but I would start transitioning over to your actual unarmed strikes as your primary method of attack from now on because at the next level at level 12 we will be a monk 11 which is going to mean that we get another Improvement to our martial arts die up to a d8 so we might as well use the reach we might as well use the force damage we might as well use all of that that is built in and we have a decent amount of key at this point so hopefully you'll have enough key to be able to use this feature sure anytime that you need it so I think it's a really good time to be able to do this yes it's late but I mean there's really not anything we can do about that just because the progression is so slow like I've said in my regular Monk guide I I really wish that the monk progressed quicker in that and actually got up to a D12 eventually uh but you know it is what it is and I I don't make the rules so there you go it kind of is what it is at level 13 we're gonna be among 12 which is going to give us yet another ASR feat again we're just bumping up dexterity if we've already maxed out wisdom which I assume you have uh we're just going to be bumping dexterity that's the best thing that we can possibly do for our character and at level 14 will be among 13 which gives us tongue of the Sun and Moon which is fine but totally replaceable by a comprehend languages spell so I don't really like getting something like this this late it just feels like kind of a waste when somebody else has been able to do this the very beginning however at the very next level though we get diamond Soul which is incredibly good we get Proficiency in all saving throws and one thing that I didn't mention in my original video was the fact that this does include death saving throws that is included that is a saving throw so it all gets tied in there so you actually get a bonus of your proficiency on your death saves which is pretty good and really when I say it can be a life or death difference that very much can be and so that's really really nice eventually of course you're going to have a plus six to this so as long as you don't roll lower than a four then you're good so I mean you've only got a 15 chance to fail your death save that's really good actually having an 85 percent success rate is going to feel really good on death saves um that's that's just going to be super nice for your survival especially since you don't have a ton of HP so maybe you're going down a decent amount because you're up in the front line a lot so this is definitely going to be a huge help to your survivability at level 16 we're going to be among 15 and of course we get Timeless body which again is more of a ribbon feature I'm not really super interested in this feature it it's just kind of a flavor thing I don't really care then of course at the next level we're going to be among 16 which gives us yet another asir feat now assuming that you have not maxed out your dexterity or wisdom then I would continue doing that if you have however I want to go ahead and offer you what I'm going to be taking there are two options here for me and the first one is taking the tough beat the tough beat of course gives us extra health and health is never a bad thing especially for us being a front liner most of the time getting two extra HP on all of our levels is going to be really good in helping us to beef up a little bit and just take some hits that we normally wouldn't be able to take however I do have kind of a middle ground play on this that gives us a couple of things and that's just bumping our constitution I know normally I'm kind of the person that wants to take a bunch of feeds but in this case I think our stats are just as important and Feats just kind of aren't nearly in the spotlight like what they normally would be just because we are so mad on a build like this with this of course we would be able to not only boost our HP some but not quite as much as tough wood however at the same time we would be boosting our concentration checks and just Constitution saving throws in general of course we picked up proficiency when we got Diamond Soul a few levels ago but we do not have any kind of extra on top of that our modifier is not great and so this would of course help with that modifier getting a little bit higher and helping out just one more on that pile can make the difference whether or not you keep or lose concentration on entangle and I would prefer to keep it so those are both completely valid options if you want to take either of those level 18 we will of course be among 17 and this gives us our final subclass feature the awakened astral self which means that now we can summon every bit of our astral self or five key points which is expensive however we get all of the features that we've talked about so far plus we get a plus two to our AC and we can make an extra attack every time we take the extra attack feature so now it is three attacks per action which is really nice and of course this is not counting what we can do if Gloria blows on our bonus action this is another chance to possibly land a stunning strike uh there are a lot of things that you can do with an extra attack here and that is only going to be a good thing now at this level it's interesting because we could actually multi-class again at this level if we wanted to and so I'm going to talk about this briefly um you could take two fighter levels here if you wanted to have your final uh your final level be getting action surge then actually this wouldn't be the worst option in the world what are you missing out on though you're missing out on two key points and an ASI flash beat that's kind of what you have to weigh out here I'm personally not going with this option but it is perfectly valid to take fighter grab the defense fighting style for a possible 23 AC assuming you don't have like braces of defense or something like that giving you another boost but that could end up being a decent option you're now making six attacks in one turn per rest and of course you could then Flurry of Blows on top of that for eight attacks in a kind of Nova turn which is pretty cool and if you've got some neat magic items which I would hope that you do but obviously I can't account for those in a build like this you would then be stacking everything else on top of that with those eight attacks in a turn which is really cool you're gonna be making the fighter kind of blush a little bit and make them feel a little bit like well wait a minute why does why is everybody getting stuff like this uh but that's going to be really cool that's going to give you something a little bit extra that you can do however for this build I'm going to stay with monk the whole way because one that's what I said I would do and two another feet is also not a bad option I want as many key points as I can possibly have and this is going to get us there plus we get a feat and I can make use of that as well so at level 19 we will be among 18 and we get empty body which is fine I guess it's not the best features not the worst feature uh it's it's fine and then at level 20 we of course get another ASI or feet and I'm going to pick either another plus two to our constitution or a first one if you took tough the first time whichever way you want to do it or you could also take Eldridge Adept here and Eldridge Adept would actually be an interesting fee to take here as we focus on the Eldridge mind now I'm sure that you could find some way to work this into your story because I think that all Feats need to have a story reason at least me that's my personal opinion and so this would be a really really cool uh a really cool story Point here at the very end if you're dealing with some like demons or something really evil maybe you had kind of an influence or you learned something from them and now that's kind of bothering you as you've hit this this top level uh that could be a really interesting story point to keep pushing your narrative as you go I think that's fun so either one of those is fine but again that is a focus on our concentration checks overall so that is our build for today what do you think about this astral self build it's pretty simple but I think it is actually pretty effective and it works really nicely so let's go ahead and talk about our honorable mentions though before we go and so let's go ahead and start with other races of course I mentioned going with custom lineage or variant human and with that I probably would have taken the magic initiate feat and picked of course Druids so that we could pick up the two cantrips and of course we would get access to one casting of entangle per day again I really think that picking up that level in Druid in order to not only get two castings of entangle per day but also getting access to wisdom saving throw proficiency off the bat is really just gonna be better for our survivability in the long run and so that's why I went with what I did but that option is completely viable if you wanted to do something like that another option that I chose here and originally this is what this build was is the bug bear from Monsters of the Multiverse the bugbear of course gives you access to Long limbed which would have comboed with your astral arms to give you a 15 foot reach which is pretty fantastic the reason honestly that I didn't go with this is because we would have been constantly having to think twice about a few things and I would have probably wanted to take the Sentinel feet with this but the problem is that the Sentinel feet doesn't combo with your astral arms and of course we'll we may or may not mention that in the feed section um but yeah I just think that that would have been just kind of a gimmick type of thing and I think the 10 feet is probably going to be fine especially with how high of a movement speed we're going to have on a character like this and finally I wanted to mention the lock sedon now this subclass actually is really good for a Grappler type of creature as well so you can of course grapple multiple creatures and then punch them with your astral arms and that way you have arms free technically so you can grapple one arm two arm and your trunk and then just punch them like crazy with your floating astral arms which is pretty awesome so that's another option that you could have gone with for this as for Feats of course I mentioned Sentinel already Sentinel though does not not work with your astral arms which is unfortunate it only will work with your actual punches so that kind of feels bad but it's okay it is something that would definitely work on most monks though and I will about guarantee you that we will be taking the Sentinel at least once if not a bunch of times on one of these builds going down the line another one that I would like to mention here is metamagic adept metamagic Adept of course would have allowed us to move our entangles to our bonus action and this one came very close to being on the actual build just because this frees up our action to be able to make a couple of attacks remember we could we would not be able to actually make our Flurry of Blows on the same turn that we cast in tangle just because that's not us taking the attack action so we would have to wait until the next turn in order to deal any kind of damage so this would have gotten around that so it's not a bad thing to consider and as far as as far as this goes finally let's talk about other classes and of course fighter was the main one that came to my mind originally with this and of course we're going to be looking at the roon night fighter here just because we're going to be dealing feeling a little bit of extra damage with those and we can grow as well so that also gives us a little bit more reach technically which would have comboed with our astral arms so we would have not only been big but we also would have had really big astral arms too which could have been a really cool flavor piece so that's something to consider um cleric is also a decent option and one to at least think about the nature cleric could have given us something very similar to what we got with the Druid however I do think that the Druid kit is probably a little bit better in this case just for what we want rather than going with cleric but it is an option to at least think about and finally Ranger would have been really nice that would have given us access to something like Hunter's Mark although it would have been a little bit deeper of an investment to get something like that so that is all for today's video let me know what you thought down below and let me know what you thought of the printout that is down in the description as well until next time when we talk about the ascendant Dragon monk which I am so excited to be talking about uh I hope you guys have a great week and so stay safe out there stay healthy we'll see you later bye [Music]

Channel: DapperSnapper Gaming

Views: 1,187

Keywords: astral self monk, astral self build, monk build, monk dnd

Id: M3OYfL7fkcM

Length: 43min 29sec (2609 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023