D&D General The 10th level 2024 Monk can do 3 attacks with a BA, but only 2 with an AA

[Zardnaar]

I know this is the feeling of many but I really dont get it.

• You get for free 1/2/3 armour (level 3/4/8) and if you ever find the rare +2 cha book you get another one. This costs you no money, no (magic) item slot, is always active and brings no disadvantages to skills or any limitations.
• You get free attacks if you use bardic inspiration in combat. No ressource cost like other subclasses to gain a benefit you just get it for doing whst you already like to do. And you ste not forced to do basic attacks you can still do whatever you want with your actions like casting leveled spells.
• You gain for free slightly improved melee attacks over normal bards while having a hand free/not needing a (magic) item slot. Simple weapons are 1d6 you get 1d8 at level 5 and it goes up to 1d12.
• You gain one of the best uses of bardic inspiration. Giving everyone +1d8 on initiative means everyone gets in average +4.5 to initiative which is in average 22.5% of an extra turn. This goes up to 32.5% later with an average party of 5 this is 1.6 extra turns (with movement action and bonus action) for no action cost and just 1 use of bardic inspiration.
• You can, again for free, instead of doing an attack on an enemy, grant an ally extra movement, by giving up some of yours. Like you can at the first turn give a fighter bardic inspiration, which you might want to do anyway, grab them, they choose to fail the saving throw, and then move them half your movement speed, which can help them to reach the enemy. This again gained the fighter or other martial 1 full attack action.
• You can also as a reaction (by using bardic inspiration so this is not free) do extra attacks, extra movement and grant 1 ally extra movement. This also means that a melee enemy which has not an at least 50% higher movement speed than you, will never be able to catch you to attack. Since they need dash action to catch up to you to which you can then hit then and get away.
• You can also in an important fight spam your ressources to get 2 extra attacks each turn. 1 from the bonus action and 1 from the reaction (if you end turn next to an enemy they either can move away and get hit or stand there and you can use your bardic reaction to hit them), and all that while still using actions to cast leveled spells!
• You get later also evasion which you can even share. (And because of the grabing / dancing) you want to stand next to an ally normally anyway.

Of course some of this only applies if a GM makes interesting encounters where movement is useful.

What level does all that come online?

What you really get.
Ribbon ability on meh skill

Dex+ charisma to AC. Nice to have.

Mediocre bonus action attack very limited frequency

Level 6. Movement that may or may not matter. Very situational.

Blow a bard dice for initiative boost. Lvl 6. Cartographer grants d4 and advantage if it wants. All the time. That bard dice is one less attack. Your mediocre damage just got even less.

And yeah level 14 probably won't happen.

 

[Corinnguard]

Dance Bard - Unarmed Monk combo?

I prefer Way over Warrior. So, Way of the Dancing Monk?

 

[Baumi]

I play a Dance Bard Lvl 15 Character, more for flavor reasons than min/maxing and he is very fun to play. The AC is nice and the Initiative Bonus really awesome, but the Unarmed Attacks are nearly never in play.

I always seem to lack Inspiration Dice to spend it for the reaction move (rather give it out to boost someone and for Initiative) and if I give some Inspiration out I often am not standing beside an enemy. Even with my d12 damage die, I rather use True Strike (higher Cha than Dex and magic weapon) with my dagger if I would spend my main action to attack. I certainly hold no candle to our monk in unarmed combat and I dont see to gain much if I would multiclass (which I do not like anyway).

But I do think that to Unarmed Attack is a nice to have, not the main attraction of the dance bard, which you might easily assume.

Oh yeah, Evasion is always nice, but it didn't come up much so far.

 

[Tigris]

So I thought a bit about this:

• You need a class which has a really strong action (and optimally no useful bonus action).
• You are unfortunately limited to Wis and Dex classes, since Warlock might have been ideal with eldritch blast, since there a low level dip is enough (if you would be cha based).
• I think one of the best monk subclass (if using the old ones is fine) would be astral self, since they can max Wisdom (and in level 11 they get another martial arts die of damage). This would allow to use Druid or Cleric, of which most likely cleric is better since they dont have a class feature which is bonus action focused, but I am not sure might depend more on the spells. Chassis is similar for both, both get at level 7 wis to cantrip and have same subclass progression etc.
• Since in the beginning (when first going monk) you wont have many spell slots you first need to have strong cantrips
  • If you allow old spells, create bonfire could potentially do damage over several turns (or force opportunity attacks especially when 2 characters are around or when fighting an enemy having the size of more than 1 square.
  • Of course you can also get this (if allowed) from some origin or race. But also having thorn whip makes for a nice combo
  • A simpler alternative is just using a wisdom toll the dead, (and getting it not through multi classing)
• The problem with cantrips is that at least at level 20 with the monk capstone 2 of your basic attacks will be better, so for later level you need some good spells to make it worth.
• A simple alternative might also just be to use a subclass which has a strong alternative action, like warrior of the elements with the elemental blast, if you can catch 2 enemies in it, its better for sure than basic attacking.

What level does all that come online?

What you really get.
Ribbon ability on meh skill

Dex+ charisma to AC. Nice to have.

Mediocre bonus action attack very limited frequency

Level 6. Movement that may or may not matter. Very situational.

Blow a bard dice for initiative boost. Lvl 6. Cartographer grants d4 and advantage if it wants. All the time. That bard dice is one less attack. Your mediocre damage just got even less.

And yeah level 14 probably won't happen.

Ok lets compare Valor Bard with Dance Bard:

• Level 3:
  • 1d6 vs 1d8 damage (with melee attack).
    • + 3 bonus attacks per day
      • An attack does in average 6.5 damage, so roughly 20 damage, so you need to do more than 20 basic attacks a day as a valor bard to put even, and this is not even counting that burst damage is better than sustained.
  • 16 armor for free vs 15 armor for 50g or 17 armor for 60 g (and using a shield)
  • Alternative use of inspiration (which grants a bit power in flexibility) vs alternatively use of bonus attack to give free movement to an ally (grab them with your attack and move them) instead of doing a bonus attack. (Which can mean 1 more action to attack for the ally not needing a dash etc.)
• Level 4:
  • 4 bonus attacks, so 26 damage so needing 26 attacks to go even with dance bard as valor bard
  • 17 armor for free going even with shield bard
• Level 5
  • 1d8 vs 1d8 damage drawing even.
    • With 2 short rests 3 times 4 bonus attacks on top of that
  • 17 armor vs potential 18 for 400 gold (still with shield)
• Level 6
  • Valor bard finally gets bonus attacks. 1 Bonus attack per cantrip cast.
    • So in a long adventure day (with not many short rests) they will get more bonus attacks
  • Dance bard can now also do a bonus attack as a reaction, and granting extra movement to allies as alternate use of bardic inspiration
    • This increases burst potential (2 bonus attacks + 1 full spell per turn),
  • Dance bard gets additionally the possibility to trade 1 bonus attack per combat to grant the party in average 1 more full turn. Which is equal to at least 2 bonus attacks.
  • So in a long adventure day with 2 short rests and 2 fights per short rest, and 2.5 turns per combat a valor bard gets 15 Bonus attacks, if they never cast a spell as an action.
    • Meanwhile the dance bard grants 6 X 1 complete action being worth 2+ attacks and still does 6 bonus attacks itself. This equals to 18+ bonus attacks.
    • If we assume that from the 10 leveled spells a bard has half are cast in combat as actions, then the number of bonus attacks from the valor bard goes even down to 10
  • Also since not only average damage counts, but in important combats also burst, we can also compare this:
    • Even if we assume that a cantrip is the best option (instead of a leveled spell), and we assume that the bonus to initiative did nothing we still have 2 bonus attacks vs 4 bonus attacks in the first 2 turns. Even if we consider the first 3 turns, its 4 bonus attacks (with the option of using a level 1 spell slot for a 5th one (and another for a 6th one)) vs 3.
• Level 7 no changes
• Level 8
  • 18 AC for free vs 18 AC with chance of gaining 19 AC (with shield) for 750 gold but gaining disadvantage on stealth
  • Dancer number of bonus attacks increase by 3. (While with more spell slots number of cantrips used goes down for valor bard until level 11).
• Level 9 no changes (just more spell slots so less cantrips)
• Level 10:
  • Dance Bard Damage increases to 1d10 overtaking valor bard
  • Initiative bonus increases to 5.5 or 27.5% so even more bonus turns through initiative bonus
    • For a party of 5 this means 1.37 bonus turns per combat
• Level 11:
  • Cantrips increase potency, so more often cantrips use instead of spell slots, so more bonus attacks again for Valor bard
  • Meanwhile bonus turns are now worth more like 3 extra attacks
• Level 12:
  • AC increases to 19 for Dance Bard (taking even with valor bard even if they use shield and have disadvantage on stealth)
• Level 13: Nothing just more spell slots (so low level ones can more freely be used to generate more bardic inspiration/bonus attacks if needed)
• Level 14:
  • Valor Bard gets big boost, they now get a bonus attack on each turn (instead of only when using a cantrip). So this means 15 bonus attacks in the long adventure day example.
    • While for the dance bard with 6 combats and 15 bardic inspiration, that is 6*1.37 * 2+ (more like 3) + 9 = 25.5+ Bonus attacks
  • Dance Bard also gets improved evasion and can share it with neighbours.
• Level 15:
  • Dance bard attack increases to 1d12 now 2 higher in average than Valor
  • Also Initiative Bonus increases to 32.5 so 1.6 extra turns in combat in average (for a party of 5)
• Level 16:
  • Dance bard armor increases to 20 overtaking valor bard in all cases
• Level 17: Nothing just more spell slots (so low level ones can more freely be used to generate more bardic inspiration/bonus attacks if needed)
• Level 18:
  • At least 2 bardic inspiration per fight, meaning that this is up to 6 more bonus attacks for dance bard (in 3x2 fight adventuring day)
• Level 19/20: Nothing just more spell slots

So in almost all levels the dance bard is just better than the valor bard, unless you have really long adventure days, (or give them higher bonuses with magical items than the dance bard... Because also as a dance bard you can also get armor increasing items (bracers of defense) and attack increasing ones with Wraps of Unarmed Power etc.)


And yes it may well be that it is better to "not be in melee" as Baumi said, but this is also true for the valor bard. They are still a full caster and similar to the dancer bard, they will often just be better out of melee, just that they lose most class features if they do, while the dance bard does not. (They even have 1 feature to keep them out of melee!)

 

[Willie the Duck]

So I thought a bit about this:

• You need a class which has a really strong action (and optimally no useful bonus action).
• You are unfortunately limited to Wis and Dex classes

The simplest example I can think of (that minimizes non-monk class level requirements) would be 3 levels of cleric for a Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person, followed by 3 bonus action punches.

 

[Tigris]

The simplest example I can think of (that minimizes non-monk class level requirements) would be 3 levels of cleric for a Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person, followed by 3 bonus action punches.

The question is more how strong this is level 13+, but yes definitly a good example.

 

[Clint_L]

The simplest example I can think of (that minimizes non-monk class level requirements) would be 3 levels of cleric for a Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person, followed by 3 bonus action punches.

But that’s three levels to do basically what the grappler feat gets you for free every round.

 

[Willie the Duck]

But that’s three levels to do basically what the grappler feat gets you for free every round.

Both of those spells do more than grappler (hold person, for example, makes those follow-up punches into critical hits; blindness stops the opponent from misty step-ing away). However, in the grand scheme, you're not exactly wrong. I'm not trying to find a situation where this is a worthwhile tradeoff-- I don't think it is. I'm trying to find a situation where it is valuable, and minimize the levels of investment it would take. Because someone somewhere already is dipping 1-3 levels of cleric or druid with 10 levels of monk, so for them OP's realization has some kind of value.

 

[Silam]

You need a class which has a really strong action (and optimally no useful bonus action).

Yep.

Monk is one of the few where the 20th level class feature is actually attractive, making dips harder to justify... so while I think most gishes would for sure benefit, say, from taking a Fighter 2 dip for Action Surge and the other things, I find it a harder pill to swallow if comparing, e.g., a Monk 20 versus a Monk 18 / Fighter 2.

So if you're going to take non-Monk levels, then I would say, let's lean into them in a non-trivial way. So for example, 7 levels of Druid can get you CME, which synergizes well with having lots of attacks. A few build ideas with 7+ levels of Druid and 10+ levels of Monk could include:

1. Monk 13 / Druid 7. Simple, and gets you Deflect Energy at will to reduce damage from any type by 1d10 + 18 (assuming 20 Dex), which is pretty nice.
2. Monk 12 / Druid 8 if you want two Epic Boons and a 22 stat (not as nice as the two 24 stats a Monk 20 could have, but a good consolation prize I guess).
3. Monk 11 (the minimum to get to 1d10 damage) / Druid 7 / Fighter 2. With that one, you could get Weapon Mastery on a Nick weapon and do 3 attacks on the AA and 3 more on the BA, all of which would be at 1d10 assuming they're Monk weapons. On a nova round, you could cast CME as your action, then do 3 attacks with Action Surge and 3 more with your BA, and then keep doing 6 attacks on subsequent rounds too.

If the Monk side is the UA's Warrior of the Mystic Arts, then you can have a few extra spellcasting levels to bump the slot level of CME a tad higher, and also get access to stuff like Shield, Mirror Image, Haste (once you run out of slots to cast CME with) and other niceties.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think single class Monk that uses an attack action and then uses flurry to attack more is probably the better thing most of the time as they get 5 attacks.

Maybe if they got the ability to use a cantrip such as through species like Tiefling, then it might be better just using attack + flurry of blows in certain situations. Such as the tactical reason to use a ranged cantrip to attack a target a Monk isn't bothering to get to and flurry of blows for the ones they can get to.