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The Way of the Astral Self Monk was introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. It’s an interesting and unique take on a Monk. This article will review the Astral Self features and assess how these work with the core Monk class features. I’ll appraise feat, race, and multiclass options, then combine them into some build concepts.
Monks of the Way of the Astral Self understand that the mortal body is an illusion. Their ki represents their true form: their Astral Self. It sounds like they’ve been at the magic mushrooms to me. I’m like, totally playing an Astral Self as a tripped-out junkie, man. Woah.
As always, these are just my thoughts. If you have any other ideas about the Astral Self Monk, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
1st Level (Quick Note for Later)
Choose proficiency in the Insight skill. You will thank me when you reach level six.
3rd Level – Arms of the Astral Self
At third level, you can summon the Arms of your Astral Self to beat up enemies. Summoning your arms requires one ki point and a bonus action for ten minutes of manifestation. The Arms vanish if you become incapacitated, die (duh), or experience the whiplash of a psychedelic trip (DM discretion).
When you summon your Arms as a bonus action, the manifestation causes a blast effect. Each creature of your choice within range will suffer two Martial Arts dice of force damage (2d4 initially, 2d10 eventually) with a Dex save for no damage. Position yourself appropriately on the battlefield to maximize this feature.
Once manifested, your spectral arms allow you to use Wisdom instead of Strength for ability checks and saving throws. This can be great for grappling (inflicting or escaping) and shoving.
The spectral arms add five feet of reach to your unarmed strikes. You deal force damage with spectral arms can use Wisdom for attack and damage rolls with them.
Magic force damage at level three is great against nasty low-CR monsters who would resist your normal unarmed strikes. The extra reach is fantastic for a Monk, feeding nicely into my favorite hit-and-run Monk playstyle.
Concerns about the Spectral Arms
Several problems are present with the Arms of the Astral Self feature. This feature is sabotaged by its own sourcebook.
It’s really irritating that a Fighter can select Unarmed Fighting for their Fighting Style to get a d6 or d8 for unarmed strikes that they will likely never use. The Monk relies on unarmed strikes yet starts with a d4. What kind of class design is that? Sure, unarmed strikes will deal more damage as a Monk progresses in Martial Arts, but at level three, Monk unarmed strikes deal d4 damage.
The problem gets worse! Your Monk weapons can deal d8 damage with a versatile quarterstaff or spear; your Dedicated Weapon feature from Tasha’s enables d10 damage (versatile longsword or similar weapon). This means the spectral arms deal suboptimal damage at low levels. This reminds me of the problems with the Sun Soul Monk.
This subclass is better off if you play in a game that starts you at a higher level. If you start at a low level, consider grabbing the Unarmed Fighting Style from Fighter multiclassing or the new Fighting Initiate feat. The Fighting Style will give you a d8 unarmed strike weapon die. If your DM interprets the Unarmed Fighting Style as compatible with your spectral arms, you’re good to go.
Dexterity vs. Wisdom
It may seem like you can focus entirely on Wisdom with your Monk, but think twice. Dexterity is used for many Astral Self and base Monk features.
- Dexterity: Initiative Evasion, Deflect Missiles, Stealth, Acrobatics.
- Wisdom: Stunning Strikes, Insight, Strength rolls*, and several other features incoming for this subclass.
- Both/Either: AC, attack rolls*, damage rolls*.
*= only if Arms are active to use Wisdom
It’s close, but I would probably go for Dexterity first. You will almost certainly run out of magic mushrooms (I mean, ki points) because Monks are notorious for burning through ki. If your Dexterity is low, you’ll be awful in combat until you can take a short rest to regain ki points and fuel your spectral arms.
Wise resource managers may not run into this problem. They’ll plan to always have ki for their spectral arms to manifest. The spectral arms last for ten minutes, so they can reliably last for several back-to-back combat encounters.
6th Level – Visage of the Astral Self
More of your Astral Self appears! This is activated and ended in the same ways as your Arms: bonus action and one ki point for ten minutes, stopping with incapacitation, death, or a bad trip. You can merge the bonus actions into one, but not the ki cost, unfortunately. You’ll spend two ki points and one bonus action to simultaneously active Arms and Visage.
The flavor is free! You can determine the appearance of your visage (I picture a Batman mask).
You gain three benefits while Visage is active (courtesy of “Tasha’s Cauldron of Feature Bloat”):
- Astral Sight: Impressive darkvision that also sees through magical darkness.
- That sobbing noise you hear is Drow orphans as you literally see through basic Drow tricks.
- Wisdom of the Spirit: Advantage on Insight and Intimidation checks.
- Monks don’t get Intimidation as a skill and will almost certainly dump Charisma.
- Insight is fine if you choose proficiency with it at level one.
- Word of the Spirit: You can direct your voice to one creature within sixty feet and only that creature can hear you. Or you can make it so that all creatures within six hundred feet can hear you.
These benefits are somewhat situational. Seeing through magical darkness is rare and powerful, although you might not want to know what a Warlock gets up to in magical darkness.
The sixty-foot whisper can be handy for tactical coordination (or giving endless, useless, off-topic advice to the party face when they are in the depths of a tricky negotiation). I would absolutely ask my DM to let me use WhatsApp for this.
11th Level – Body of the Astral Self
More of your ‘real you’ manifests from the Astral Plane. Summoning your astral body requires you to have both Arms and Visage active (no action needed). You determine the appearance of your body (yellow submarine with eight spider legs, for me).
You get two more abilities while you manifest your spectral body:
- Deflect energy: Reduce fire, acid, cold, lightning, thunder or force damage by 1d10 + Wisdom mod as a reaction.
- Not a huge reduction. Monks also get Evasion so this might help in cases where that didn’t work, particularly if you invested in Wisdom more than Dexterity.
- Empowered Arms: Once on each of your turns when you hit with your spectral arms, you get a bonus to damage of one Martial Arts die.
- Doing some extra damage for ten minutes is OK.
These abilities are not massively impactful at level eleven. The Long Death Monk becomes practically immune to death at this point by way of comparison. A little extra damage is nice since this is the point where the Monk’s damage starts to tail off compared to most martial classes.
17th Level – Awakened Astral Self
Now you reach Transcendence and become Awakened. For five ki and a bonus action, you can summon all your other bits all at the same time and ‘awaken’ them (gain more benefits for having your entire super-suit on). This awakening appears to cost three extra ki points if you subtract the usual two ki points required for spectral arms and visage. That’s a lot of ki points, so it had better be awesome…
Two more features:
- Armor of the Spirit: +2 to AC.
- Astral Barrage: Three main attacks instead of two, if using your Arms for all of them. It’s like a Fighter’s Extra Attack upgrade at level eleven.
Not bad! You can now attack five times per turn with your d10 force damage attacks (using your Flurry of Blows). You’ll add one extra d10 damage per turn from Empowered Arms, all with a five-foot extra reach. Don’t forget the 2d10 AOE damage you did to activate Arms.
The bonus AC is nice, too. Monks are not blessed defensively because other martial classes can get magical shields and magical armor at high-level play. I think it would’ve been better to receive half cover like several other Tasha’s subclasses did. Half cover grants +2 to AC and Dexterity saving throws. In fact, the armor bonus probably would’ve been fine at level eleven with Body of the Astral Self.
The Awakened state feels like it could’ve gone one step further to dazzle players and make them want to play this subclass. It’s even worse to consider that it requires five ki points to summon the entire astral outfit and awaken it, but the level-twenty Monk capstone only gifts you four ki points when you’re depleted.
Astral Self Monk Subclass Summary
This Monk is one feat short of being pretty damn good.
Given the steep cost for Awaken, it’s probably best to only use Arms most of the time. Add Visage and Body only where needed, saving Awaken for boss fights. Visage has several out-of-combat uses, which is unusual for a Monk monastic tradition.
It feels like the ki cost can add up for these abilities. I predict players hoarding ki in case they need it. Excess ki can always be dumped on Quickened Healing before a rest (another new Monk feature from Tasha’s).
It’s worth stressing that the Astral Self doesn’t get a single feature that is ki-free. Not even a useless Mask. Don’t run out of shrooms, man.
Astral Self Monk Feat Options
Take the Fighting Initiate feat for the Unarmed Fighting Style (or a level in Fighter). Eventually, at level eleven, the Martial Arts weapon dice catch up with the Fighting Style. Swap out the Fighting Style at level twelve’s ASI for another Fighting Style. I like Blind Fighting for the swap.
My favorite feat for Monks is usually Mobile because it puts the Monk’s movement to work. You avoid opportunity attacks from a single enemy you have attacked; however, your extra reach means you don’t really need it when using your spectral arms.
You’re playing this subclass so you can use your spectral arms. Your attacks will be doing force damage, so Crusher is a useless feat for you.
If you want to do more damage, you can take Fey Touched and choose Hex as your spell. The once-a-day Misty Step is nice too, as is a bonus point of Wisdom. If you have a level in a spellcasting class (such as Cleric), you can cast Hex from Fey Touched with regular spell slots. Hex will add a d6 of necrotic damage to each of your attacks vs. a hexed target. Hex lasts an hour with concentration, has a ninety-foot range, and takes a bonus action to cast/reassign. The extra damage from this stacks nicely with your multiple attacks.
Basically, the usual Monk feats are mostly invalidated by this subclass. This could be a good thing if you want to try other feats or invest in your stats.
Character Race Options
Variant Human and Custom Lineage give you that free feat at level one. It’s boring beyond the feat, but you may need that feat to realize your vision for this subclass. As mentioned before, the Fighting Initiate feat is useful for gaining the Unarmed Fighting style of fighting to boost a Monk’s damage potential at low levels greatly. Increasing the size of the damage dice for unarmed strikes at level one is massive for a Monk.
Ironically, this subclass might utilize the Darkness spell better than the Way of Shadow Monk. Some races can innately cast Darkness once per long rest: Drow, Half-Drow, and some Tieflings. This ties in really nicely with the Visage ability that lets you see through magical darkness. You will get advantage on all your attacks for the duration while you’re unseen in the darkness, and everyone else will get disadvantage attacking you. If you do go for (Half) Drow, this could also tie in quite nicely with Elven Accuracy, a feat that was not actually mentioned earlier.
Multiclassing with the Astral Self Monk
I like grabbing a level of Cleric for my Monk. Most Monks don’t do anything with their concentration. Spellcasting gives you additional ways to contribute.
A level of Fighter is necessary for the Unarmed Fighting style if you can’t manage the feat.
For this particular review, only one multiclass idea hits the sweet spot for me: two levels of Druid for the Spores Druid. Free mushrooms, say no more. This is more than a thematic meme character of my fungus-induced dreams, and I’ll explain why in the next section of this review.
Astral Self Character Concepts / Build Ideas
My former favorite build for an Astral Self Monk was Custom Lineage with Fighting Initiate (Unarmed Fighting), taking one level of Cleric at level two, and then Monk the rest of the way. Add Fey Touched later on to boost late-game damage.
Another option is Half-Elf (Drow origin), again with one Cleric level, Fighting Initiate at level 4, Elven Accuracy later once you’ve maxed your Dex.
Now there is a new favorite. We need a similar start, Custom Lineage, Fighting Initiate, then two levels of Spores Druid. We level up as a Monk the rest of the way.
- Wild Shape is the best trip ever, man.
- Symbiotic Entity gives a 1d6 damage boost per melee attack (Monks get lots of those) and works well with a hit-and-run play style (keep those temp hit points up as long as possible). Symbiotic Entity lasts ten minutes, fitting perfectly with the manifestations of the Astral Self.
- Wild Shape is amazing and will vastly improve your out-of-combat usefulness. Using Wild Shape to get a Familiar (even for an hour) is also great with Tasha’s Wild Companion feature for Druids.
- Druid spells and cantrips, too. It’s a good build.
Astral Self as a Grappler
The other option for an Astral Self Monk is to lean into the Wisdom-based Athletics checks and go for a grappler build.
- The Unarmed Fighting Style also gives you a bonus 1d4 damage to anything you have grappled at the start of the turn.
- Expertise in Athletics from a one-level dip into Rogue or Ranger (or a feat, Skill Expert or Prodigy), making grapples and shoves nearly impossible to avoid/escape.
- When building a grappler, I tend to avoid the Grappler and Tavern Brawler feats and instead use both grapple and shove together. A grappled target can’t use its movement and a prone+grappled target can’t get up (standing requires using movement). The victim of this combination will need to break the grapple first or teleport away. Breaking a grapple usually requires an action.
- A prone enemy attacks at disadvantage (so your strictly average AC doesn’t matter so much) and melee attacks against it within five feet have advantage.
- Astral Self unarmed strikes come from your spectral arms so you can grapple two targets with your regular arms and batter them to death with force damage from your spectral ones. Actually, any Monk can grapple two targets and still attack. Unarmed strikes can be made with head, knees and feet.
- You could grapple three targets as a Loxodon, or four as a Simic Hybrid. This is not very practical, the action economy is not really in your favor here. It would be fun though.
- Duergar can cast Enlarge (from Enlarge/Reduce) on themselves to provide advantage on Athletics checks.
- This is an interesting and fairly unique play style for a Monk. This one probably does want to go for Wisdom first.
Summary
The Astral Self Monk is strong if you take the right options or start at higher levels. The fact that all its features require ki is definitely a negative. I would roleplay it spaced out on magic mushrooms all the time, with only a tenuous connection to reality, yet with the odd, surprisingly insightful contribution.
This wraps up my review of the Way of the Astral Self! The theme of the subclass is a welcome addition to D&D 5e, and it inspires me with many character concepts from pop culture and my own imagination. Cast Message in the comments below to tell me about your own ideas and impressions regarding the Way of the Astral Self Monk.
Have an exciting adventure this weekend. Cheers!
