Common tropes of D&D where PCs typically are unarmed and unarmored.
1. Barfight
2. Attacked while sleeping
3. In the nobles court
4. Captured and jailed
5. Bushwhacked by an enemy waiting for you to let your guard down
6. Equipment destroying traps and monsters.
7. Bushwhacking an enemy by appearing to have let your guard down
8. Impersonating someone who is unarmed and unarmored
1. Unless the tavern has a weapons locker, the real reason you're not using your favoured weapon here is so you don't kill anyone. a Fighter could probably improvise a club out of a table leg and still be able to do better than the natural 1 dmg of bare fists.
2. Yes that happens at least once in a while. If it happens repeatedly, your DM just wants you to die because nobody's getting their long rest on.
3. Unarmed I can see, but there are ceremonial armors so why not? And if naughty word hits the fan it's probably possible to get some kind of weapon in that kind of environment, like from a guard.
4. That happens yeah. Not all the time, but it's nice to have a monk... or a caster that doesn't need components to cast... Or a druid.
5. That's the same damn thing as 2.
6. Augh. Not a fan of that.
7. and 8. are basically the same thing, and if your Fighter isn't at their peak, or at least doesn't have a good weapon handy, then your plan was lame from the start.
So, how many more "builds" are hiding in plain sight? You only see hats, others see elephants swallowed by snakes.
Builds are for editions that have trap options. 5e has few of those.see the Lizardperson monk for example...(it is playable)...use the options to make characters instead.
To be fair, the Lizardfolk aren't in the PHB, so they aren't on my radar most of the time. And how does Bite interact with Martial Arts? Would you still be able to use DEX for it? If it does and you grab a shield... you need to use STR now because your Martial Arts benefit go out the window. Do you have good STR?
Aside from races with natural AC or natural weapon, all the races end up playing Monk very similarly. Especially if you only have the PHB.
Level 3+ being able to cast pass without trace for party stealth boost of +10 each.... It's at least comparable in power to all the rogue skill bonuses and expertise. (for levels 1-10 which is what this thread is evaluating).
It's good, there's no denying it... but it's ONE skill, so it's not exactly a 'skill monkey', it's just a good specialist. And it is fuelled by your combat resource, meaning that if you use that stealth and get into a fight, you're 2 Ki points down...
Open Hand (Variant Human) Monk 5 - Feats Tavern Brawler, Prodigy (Grappler at 8th, or increase Dex, then the final 3 ASI's are Dex and Wisdom increases)
S 12 (+1 Tavern Brawler, +1 Vuman) 14
D 15 (+1 Vuman) 16
C 14
I 8
W 14
Ch 8
AC 15, 38 HP
Athletics +8, Acrobatics +6, others.
- Whenever he hits a creature with an unarmed strike on his turn, he can use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target (+8). He can also Stun the target with Stunning fist as part of the same punch.
- Once grappled, he can use his Open Hand Technique on the following round to knock it prone simply by hitting it with a Flurry attack (if it's Stunned it automatically fails its Dex save to resist)
It's now Grappled and Prone until it wastes an action (and beats the Monks +8 Athletics) to break free. While Grappled and Prone, it cant stand up, and the Monk (and everyone else) has advantage to hit it, and it has disadvantage to hit everyone else.
He can drag his victim around (at half speed, 20' seeing as he moves 40' base) and hurl it off cliffs and such using his OH technique to toss it 15' by hitting it with a Flurry attack (if stunned it automatically fails the Save and is hurled 15' backwards)
Seems viable to me.
It's much more optimal to go a Toitle (you can dump Dex to the wazoo and retain your AC, and rely wholly on Strength, you miss out on Prodigy but with a high Strength (18 by 4th level when you take Tavern Brawler) you wont need it.
Neat!
AC 15 at level 5 is generally considered low... And your Stun DC is 13, so that's gonna be rare that your grappled target will be also stunned...Especially as the target that would be good to grapple (I know grappling them doesn't take up any of your ressources when you do it, but it does mean you can't take advantage of your full monk speed anymore, and you had to make some trade off at char gen) would usually be ones with tons of HP that could be whittled down by focus fire at advantage... thus high CON characters... or maybe they're hard to touch in the first place, meaning you might have trouble grabbing them in the first place because your DEX is only +3... How well would the Tortle version work at level 1 and 2 without feat support?
It looks fun, but not as smooth as it first appears... I'm not sure how it would compare in terms of efficiency to a monk that just beats people up instead. But it certainly shows that Open Hand is the best Monk Subclass if you can pull off this kind of shenanigans.
Still wish there was a proper grappler subclass with its own special locks... but since DnD is filled with enemies that are too big for a medium creature to grapple, they probably think it would be too limited :/