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Monks can afford little versatility with feats, so choose wisely! They will likely be padding their Wisdom and Dexterity stats instead of taking feats. Having said that, I've summarized how Monks can choose interesting, useful feats that complement their skillsets. I also provided my top five feats for monks based on my own analysis and taste. What do you think are the top five feats for Monks?
We have articles to accompany our videos, so read along here: https://www.flutesloot.com/best-monk-feats-dnd-5e/?utm_source=youtube
⏰Time Stamps:
00:00 Intro
00:44 Considerations for Choosing Monk Feats
02:25 #5 Elven Accuracy
03:33 #4 Fey Touched
05:32 #3 Sentinel
06:32 #2 Mobile
07:48 #1 Crusher
09:55 Other/Niche Feats
12:32 Remember to read more at flutesloot.com
12:53 We want to hear from you
13:32 Trap feats in my article
13:54 Subscribe, and I'll cya later
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0:00
Hey looters, today on FlutesLute, I would like to discuss what feats are best for monk characters in D&D 5th edition
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Let's check it out. Before I begin, if you are new here, Opel and I have accompanying articles on FlutesLute.com to go with each of these videos
0:26
You can find the article to go with this video in the description below. We are Flutes and Opel, a husband and wife duo, creating content with the written word and the YouTube word for Dungeons and Dragons content
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So subscribe if you would like more of that. So what must be considered when monks are choosing feats
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They are already mad, which stands for multiple ability score dependent. They need wisdom
0:51
They need dexterity. They need a little bit of constitution like every character. Some monks might switch out the dexterity for strength
0:57
But either way, you need two ability scores to be high. and one to be okay
1:01
This makes it difficult to choose feats as a monk because you might just want to invest in
1:06
your stats and make yourself statistically better. But there are a few feats that are worth choosing if your stats are already where you need
1:13
them to be and if you just want to have some fun with abilities and passive bonuses rather
1:20
than just statistical benefits from your stats. Monks also have very busy action economies
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Their actions are usually to attack or they can be dashed. to be extra mobile. Their bonus actions are usually for their unarmed strike, their flurry of blows
1:36
their patient defense, all those sorts of things. So action and bonus action are pretty busy
1:41
Even their reactions have a few options with slow fall and their ability to deflect missiles and
1:46
toss them back. Not to mention just the regular opportunity attacks made with reactions
1:50
So we don't want to choose feats that bog down that action economy with more options so you
1:55
actually have to choose between things so they become less valuable. We want to
1:59
to choose feats that enhance what you can already do as a monk without bogging down that action
2:05
economy or give you something totally new. Any feat that comes with a plus one stat boost is especially
2:11
good for a monk. I'll get into some niche options for monks since not everyone wants like the optimal
2:16
feats, but I will give you my top five choices for what monks usually want that will make them
2:22
better at what they already do. Number five, and this is only if you're an elf is elven accuracy
2:28
You can boost your dexterity or your wisdom by one, and that's already great, as I mentioned
2:34
for a feat being able to boost your stat. But being able to roll 3D20s when you have advantage can make it so you as a monk and your
2:41
flurry of many attacks are guaranteed to hit just about. Elven accuracy is typically considered really strong if you are crit fishing
2:50
You want critical hits. Monks don't need that so much because they're about quantity of attacks rather than
2:56
quantity of damage per attack. And so critical hits aren't as important, but it is important to
3:02
at least hit so that you can attempt stunning strikes and other important things. One of my top
3:07
choices for monk feats will pair well with this because it does give you some incentive to land
3:12
critical hits as a monk. Since it's a racial feat, I might not have considered it for my top five
3:16
but elves are very commonly chosen for monks because of wood elves' ability to increase their
3:21
movement speed and their stats before Tosh's when stats became more fluid
3:26
feeding well into monk dexterity and wisdom. And so elven accuracy is a comfortable fifth place for me
3:32
My number four pick is Fay It allow you to boost your wisdom score by one Again so important to boost your stats But you also gain an interesting escape mechanism in Misty Step
3:43
Monks are already difficult to tie down, but if you do get grappled, you get stuck in some muck and mud
3:50
you're stuck behind a porticole list. You need to clear a large chasm
3:55
Misty Step can be there for you as just like a one-off choice. Not as important for shadow monks, because they might just be teleporting anyway
4:02
That's not all. You also get to choose a spell of divination or enchantment from any spell list and learn it of level one
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I recommend Bless, Hunter's Mark, Hex, or Gift of Alacrity. Bless is great at early levels and at late levels, honestly, if your team just needs some more support options
4:22
Gift of alacrity is good because it doesn't require concentration and its duration is high enough that you can benefit from it
4:29
Hunter's Mark and Hex though are interesting because, as I mentioned earlier, you are trying to make a quantity of attacks with monks
4:37
And so the more you can enhance the damage at each of those attacks, the better. And Hunter's Mark and Hex do that, adding a D6 to all of your attacks
4:45
That ends up being 4D6 damage if you're using Flurry of Blows at level 5
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Those spells can bog down your action economy a little bit because they use your bonus action to cast
4:54
But if it's early on in combat where maybe you're not ready to attack your specific target
4:59
or you can't catch up to them yet, whatever, you can hunters mark or hex them
5:03
so that when you do attack them soon, you'll be doing extra damage
5:08
Hex is great for messing up grapple checks, because then you can make it so opponents have disadvantage on strength ability checks, like athletics
5:17
Or dexterity if you think they're going to use their acrobatics to resist your grapples
5:21
It's also good if it's a large opponent who is, is known to pick up and grapple you and your party so that your party will more easily be able to get out of those grapples and restraints
5:32
My third choice for monk feats is Sentinel. Now, Sentinel is already a strong feat
5:36
I think most people know that. But for monks, it's important because your job, or at least what you're good at and monks enjoy doing, is locking down specific opponents
5:46
whether it be the enemy wizard or a bruiser who's bad at their saving throws against your stunning strike, anything
5:52
You can make it so they are not moving when you opportunity attack them, and they can't just disengage from you
5:59
When you do this, their speed becomes zero. They're stuck right there next to you. This is going to couple really well with my number one feet choice, by the way
6:06
And so when you do that, you with your mobilization as a monk, because you're so fast, you move around the battlefield to the right person, and if you get there before they are even able to move, they might just be stuck there
6:17
You also get the teamwork factor where you can attack as a reaction if your, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're able to move. ally next to you is attacked by someone adjacent. So you can attempt a stunning strike on that as well
6:26
to try to save your ally from more attacks if they were about to get put down by a big bruiser
6:32
opponent like an ogre. Speaking of mobilization, my number two, my second best monk feat is
6:38
mobile, mobile, mobile, whatever you want to say. This feat boosts your speed by 10 just passively
6:44
which is great. That's like a permanent long strider spell. But the real thing you want
6:49
is the ability to move away from opponents you've attacked without having to disengage
6:55
You won't have to get opportunity attacked. You're free to use your action to attack
7:00
And regardless of whether you hit, just the fact that you attack them allows you to move away freely onto other things
7:07
So if you up against some frontline U slaves you could pop them both in the face and then move away from them and go after the U Sorcerer in the background and start hitting them with your flurry of blows potentially landing
7:21
stunning strikes on any of the three. Without the mobile feet, you might not be fast enough
7:26
there's that, but you'd also have to go wide around those thralls, those enslaved frontline fighters
7:31
in front of the sorcerer. Or you'd have to use your action or step of the wind to disengage
7:35
through them. But with mobile, you don't have to do either. You can just attack
7:39
them and keep moving and your action economy is maximized for the turn as you hit them all with
7:45
your attacks and go for your main target. And then my number one pick for monk feats is Crusher
7:51
the new feat out of Tosh's cauldron of everything. This feat comes with a boost to your constitution
7:56
or strength. Again, if you're a strength, I won't go for that, but you're probably going to go for constitution. Once per turn, you, when you land a bludgeoning damage attack, such as with your
8:06
unarmed strikes, you can push an enemy back five feet. No saving throw, you just push them back
8:12
This is going to come in handy in a few ways. With Sentinel, we're securing our opportunity attack
8:17
So if someone comes up and tries to get away from you, you can opportunity attack them to make their speed zero
8:24
and you can push them away from you because it's not your turn. It's someone else's turn
8:29
and you can do the Crusher five foot once per turn. Kind of like with rogue sneak attack
8:34
where they can sneak attack once per turn. So technically, if they're using their reaction
8:38
to attack on someone else's turn, they would get sneak attack on another turn
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So Crusher, you can do it on your turn to push someone around, and then as an opportunity attack, you can push them away
8:48
That also means once they're reduced to zero speed, if they were melee attackers
8:53
and you push them away from you, their speed's still zero, so if they don't have a reach weapon or some way to attack you from range
8:59
they now can't attack anyone because they're far away from you, the one who stopped them
9:03
and whoever they were going to go for or where they were going to try to escape to, they're just stuck there
9:08
Crusher gives you even more teamwork in that if you land a critical hit with these bludgeoning attacks
9:13
your allies and yourself will be able to attack that target with advantage until your next turn comes around
9:20
That means if you have a paladin on your team or a rogue, you're setting them up for their big smites, possible crits, their sneak attacks, everything
9:28
And so Crusher just does it all. You get a stat boost that's important and relevant
9:32
It's constitution, not your dexterity or wisdom, but still constitution's important. You get to push people around for battlefield control or to knock them into hazards, like a cloud kill, a lava pit, a cliff
9:43
and when you critically hit, you can give yourself an allies advantage
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It's just a really good feat that enhances everything monks are good at and that you probably want to do as a monk
9:53
And monks need all the help they can get. So with the top five choices out of the way for what I think is optimal
9:58
let's talk about some other choices that might be fun for you too. If you're a Kinsei monk or you're just using the dedicated weapon feature from Tasha's cauldron of everything
10:06
you might be using range attacks more as a monk. That would be a great opportunity to use a sharpshooter
10:12
You could really increase your damage output with that until enemies get close, at which point you give them the martial arts razzle-dazzle
10:17
give them the slam dance. You can utilize patient defense as your bonus action
10:21
while you're laying down arrows from far away as well because your bonus action as a monk is typically used
10:26
for your unarmed strikes, flora blows, and if you're not doing melee attacks, you won't be doing those
10:30
If you're away of the four elements monk, you might want to have a few other tricks up your sleeve
10:34
like the telekinetic feet, where you can push enemies and allies around to help get them around
10:39
Obviously, there's other options for you, but if you are playing a way of the four elements monk
10:43
you all ready kind of feeding into your desire to be a bit of a spellcaster and a monk And so even though the way of the four elements isn that great you obviously like enough to play it so maybe choose a few other feats that are just fun so telekinetic would be one of them if you want to be a mage slayer and just go after all those spellcasters uh you can get in their
11:01
face resist their saving throws really easily and opportunity attack them when they cast spells
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so unless they like missy step or something to get away from you you're basically going to be the Dennis rodman of monks up in their face getting all the rebounds which uh is all the spells
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that are failing against you, and then you just wail on them and give them a really bad time
11:22
If you want to be that monk who's like very perceptive, nothing gets by them, you could pick
11:26
alert and or observant. Observant can boost your wisdom and your passive perception goes up by five
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You can read lips. Alert makes it so you cannot be surprised and your initiative roles are going to be up by five
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All really important for monks. Not necessarily the best feats for monks based on, again, things we've already talked about
11:44
But it really feeds into if that's the kind of character you want to build, those are great. feats for you. If you're playing a variant human or a custom lineage, you can get a feet at level
11:52
one. You could take fighting initiate, get a fighting style, and you can pick the fighting style of unarmed
11:58
fighting, and you might think that's redundant, but it will turn your attacks as an unarmed striking
12:03
monk into D6s or even D8s, and later on when your martial art dice match that, making it irrelevant
12:12
you can switch out that fighting style because the feat lets you do that. So then you could pick
12:16
blind fighting or something like that so you could be like the monk Jedi character from
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Rogue One even though you're blind you still kick everyone's butts. I don't think you'd be
12:25
blind in this case but if you're ever in a cloud of smoke or in complete darkness you won't just
12:30
be a sitting duck, you'll be a standing monk. So you can read about a few other niche feats or
12:34
okay feet choices in the link in the description to my article on fluthsluid.com and we love it when
12:39
people engage with us and talk to us. I often have my views corrected about different rules or
12:46
concepts where I didn't consider something. And it's a great way for me to learn the rules and for other people to learn the rules too as we create a dialogue
12:53
And I mean it when I say, you know, cast message in the comments below or on flukesuit.com
12:57
because we love engaging with our audience and talking through your concepts, whether you're a DM
13:03
creating an encounter or a campaign idea and you want to learn how to do D&D without classes or start at level zero
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Those sorts of things we're happy to talk through them. Or if you're a character creating a backstory, you know, we have articles for that too
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and we love to talk through those things. We have a lot of resources to help you
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and we love to talk with you because D&D's a lot of fun
13:24
and no matter how much you play D&D, it always feels like it's not enough. And so talk to us
13:30
and we can help each other out in that way. My article also goes over a few feats
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that I think some people might think are good for monks when they're starting out, but they're kind of traps that you should avoid
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I think it's okay to pick feats that aren't optimal, but there are some that, like, well, just really make you feel bad
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if you didn't realize they're, they weren't great options. So those are my recommendations for how to consider feats for
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monks and my top five picks for what I think would make a monk really fun. I'll throw in a free
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short rest for you if you hit that subscribe button so you can regain all your key points to keep consuming d and d YouTube content all day or all night whatever you're doing or listening
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at work perhaps. Again I'm flutes saying ta-ta for now. Take care adventures. I'll see you in the next video
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