D&D 5E Building a better Monk

[Helldritch]

Truly you do not understand the Monk.

Hit and run is the Monk.
Extra speed? It's so you can get back out having crossed the distance to engage in melee.
D8 hit dice? It's because they're supposed to avoid being hit.
Most Martial Arts features not working in armour or with a shield? You're not supposed to tank as a Monk.

Mobile might give you a lot of features you can already access, but all of them either stack, or are outright free compared to without the feat.

Most of this is true. But the monk is not solely for hit and run. Patient defense is there. Especialy if the monk is hasted as I have suffered a player do in my games. 1Ki on flurry, 1 Ki on patient defense. 5 attacks, and I was attacking him with disadvantage. With a +1 ring of protection the little guy had AC 19 at level 12. Not an easy character to hit. He could keep that up for 6 rounds if needed be (less if he used Ki for something else).

 

[outsider]

Most of this is true. But the monk is not solely for hit and run. Patient defense is there. Especialy if the monk is hasted as I have suffered a player do in my games. 1Ki on flurry, 1 Ki on patient defense. 5 attacks, and I was attacking him with disadvantage. With a +1 ring of protection the little guy had AC 19 at level 12. Not an easy character to hit. He could keep that up for 6 rounds if needed be (less if he used Ki for something else).

Haste isn't part of the class, so it's not a great idea to consider it in monk balance discussions. Patient defense is actually pretty awesome. But it requires your bonus action. Which is true of most of the monk abilities. The strength of Mobile is that you don't have to use your bonus action, and you don't have to use your ki. If you're hasted it's probably not quite as good, but the default assumption shouldn't be that you're hasted.

 

[outsider]

The debate on Mobile for monk is an interesting one. One side says "It overlaps with things you already have. Useless." The other says "It improves your ki/action economy. Awesome." Both sides are actually correct in their fact gathering, but come to completely different conclusions. I suspect it's a difference of opinion on what a feat should actually do for you.

For me, Mobile looks -awesome- at level 1, and low levels in general. I think it loses some of it's value later though(you gain more ki, gain different options to separate yourself from your enemy, etc) and becomes merely -good-. I would absolutely take it on a variant Human monk without hesitation. Not sure I would on a nonhuman monk though. I wouldn't want to delay the ASI's, and by the time you have Dex and Wis up to 20, Mobile doesn't look quite as good anymore(though I guess Lucky would be the only feat I'd put much above it, even then).

 

[ad_hoc]

Haste isn't part of the class, so it's not a great idea to consider it in monk balance discussions. Patient defense is actually pretty awesome. But it requires your bonus action. Which is true of most of the monk abilities. The strength of Mobile is that you don't have to use your bonus action, and you don't have to use your ki. If you're hasted it's probably not quite as good, but the default assumption shouldn't be that you're hasted.

But you do have to waste an entire feat which is a huge resource for the ability to do something that you can already do when needed with a variety of your Monk features.

Both Open Hand and Shadow get additional features which allow them to get away from enemies as well.

It's also usually not a great idea to run away. Most of the time the enemy will be able to just attack you on their turn or another party member.

 

[ad_hoc]

The debate on Mobile for monk is an interesting one. One side says "It overlaps with things you already have. Useless." The other says "It improves your ki/action economy. Awesome." Both sides are actually correct in their fact gathering, but come to completely different conclusions. I suspect it's a difference of opinion on what a feat should actually do for you.

For me, Mobile looks -awesome- at level 1, and low levels in general. I think it loses some of it's value later though(you gain more ki, gain different options to separate yourself from your enemy, etc) and becomes merely -good-. I would absolutely take it on a variant Human monk without hesitation. Not sure I would on a nonhuman monk though. I wouldn't want to delay the ASI's, and by the time you have Dex and Wis up to 20, Mobile doesn't look quite as good anymore(though I guess Lucky would be the only feat I'd put much above it, even then).

There are a ton of better feats for a Monk.

Resilient - Con for example is much better.

Mobile allows you to be fancy and take up a lot of time on your turn, but that doesn't mean that you are actually being useful.

 

[outsider]

There are a ton of better feats for a Monk.


Resilient - Con for example is much better.


Mobile allows you to be fancy and take up a lot of time on your turn, but that doesn't mean that you are actually being useful.

Resilient is quite good, yes. It gets rendered useless eventually though(though not totally if you build for an odd con). Mobile starts quite good, and ends good.

Mobile basically allows you, whenever you were going to use your bonus action to disengage, to instead do a Flurry of Blows and still get that safe movement. Doing 2 more attacks and getting away is more useful than just getting away.

You're of the opinion that you shouldn't be trying to get away that often. In certain parties I can see that being the case. If you've got a solid front line though, it's in your best interest to hit and run, letting them hold the enemy.

 

[CTurbo]

The Mobile feat is always good on any character. So is Lucky, Alert, and Resilient.

 

[Gnomosapien]

The trick to a lvl one to four monk is sit back and observe then intervene at the right moment. Consider the falling leaf or catch the pebble from my hand...Maybe players should read up on some monk theory and actually play like a monk would for shaolins sake!

Picking a faster race and mixing up the starting features also helps alot. Defensive duelist with unarmoured defence or dual weilder combined with martial arts goes very well to either improve survivability or take down npc's before they can react.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using EN World mobile app

 

[Yunru]

There are a ton of better feats for a Monk.

Resilient - Con for example is much better.

Mobile allows you to be fancy and take up a lot of time on your turn, but that doesn't mean that you are actually being useful.

Resilient is probably the single worst feat for a Monk.

Mobile might cover the same area, but it does so in a complimentary way. Resilient ends up completely null and void excepting the +1 to a stat. So well done, you traded a +2 for a +1.

And why Con of all things? You don't even have things to concentrate on (in most cases), and it's not exactly a common save.

I'm just going to assume you've never played a Monk.
(Especially given that Patient Defense and Flurry of Blows both require a Bonus action, thus the afformentioned character couldn't possibly have done both in the same turn.)

 

[outsider]

Picking a faster race and mixing up the starting features also helps alot. Defensive duelist with unarmoured defence or dual weilder combined with martial arts goes very well to either improve survivability or take down npc's before they can react.]

Defensive duelist is a pretty solid monk feat. I'd pick it up later than level 1 though. Two weapon fighting requires a bonus action to get a second attack. Martial arts also requires a bonus action to get a second attack. You only get one bonus action. Two weapon fighting thus has no use on a monk.

The first thing I look at when evaluating a class or build is it's action economy. What can be done with an action, a bonus action, and a reaction. Monk is heavily choked on the bonus action front. Many of it's abilities you'd want to use on a round to round basis require your bonus action. Mobile helps as it allows you to disengage without using your bonus action.