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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leugren" data-source="post: 6763946" data-attributes="member: 44754">Not true.  My Maul-Wielding Berserker gets an additional reaction attack almost every round thanks to Retaliation.  The Maul-Wielding Totem Barbarian, by contrast, has no consistent source of reaction attacks.  The Maul-Wielding Berserker also has a much more reliable source of bonus action attacks for at least one encounter per day (usually the key encounter).  By your own set of definitions, the Maul-Wielding Berserker is therefore more optimized than the Maul-Wielding Totem Warrior because he makes better use of the action economy.Getting back to low-level monks, however, the best strategies I've heard so far involve hanging back and shooting your light crossbow from round to round, perhaps darting in to kill a foe with your extra unarmed strike if he looks like he is about to topple. Running in and trying to go toe-to-toe as a general strategy still seems like a terrible idea for a low-level monk that only looks good on paper to an armchair optimizer.  Your AC is going to be 16 if you are a human, wood elf, or aarakocra; 14-15 if you are anything else.  You don't have high HP, resistance to damage, self-healing, or any other abilities that increase your melee durability beyond the norm.  In terms of melee durability, you are not even on par with a wizard that has Mage Armor and the Shield spell. You are therefore a perfect target for focus fire by your opponents, especially if you are dealing a good bit of damage with your attacks. The exception is if you have an ally with the Sentinel feat or the Protection fighting style who can punish opponents for trying to hit you.  Otherwise, you are apt to find yourself mobbed and wasting turns to use the Dodge action, when you could instead be making ranged attacks reliably.  That doesn't seem like an optimal strategy to me; that seems like really bad advice.  Of course, if you have played a low-level monk yourself, please feel free to correct me, and to provide some details on the winning strategy that worked for you.EDIT:  You're MommyWasAnOrc from the WOTC boards, aren't you?  I just realized it. Normally, I agree with a lot of what you post.  I'm quite familiar with general optimization theory from years and years on the WOTC boards. In this case, however, I'm really just looking for testimonials from people who have actually played monks.</blockquote>

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