Monk - D&D 2024 Class Optimisation Guide (5.5e)

Strike with speed and precision with this enhanced martial class for D&D 2024.

The martial artists of the D&D universe, monks channel spiritual energy to enhance their precise combat skills. Different monks specialise in different aspects of martial artistry, manifesting their powers in a variety of ways. Some might operate like stealthy ninjas, others are healers while some can even harness elemental powers to enhance their strikes.

The 2014 monk was lacking in clout and some amount of synergy in their features making them one of the least powerful classes. The 2024 revision has not only remedied this, it’s actually made monks one of the more powerful classes (not overpowered, just strong). It remains a tricky class to play and isn’t usually recommended for new players, but play them right and you’ll have a very satisfying and capable character on your hands.

This guide will take you through tactics as well as optimisations you can use when building and playing as this martial class.

At a glance

Strengths

Melee martial artists
Make more attacks than any other class
Monk’s focus enhances combat abilities to make them hit more, stay safe or stun enemies
Stealthy class
Great at hit and run tactics
Fastest class around
Make great grapplers

Weaknesses

Lack durability, especially for a martial class
Can be complicated to play for newer players
No spellcasting capabilities

What’s changing for monks in D&D 2024?

Monk warrior of the open hand — Monk: Wizards of the Coast

Monks just didn’t land well as a class in the 2014 version. They felt underpowered, difficult to use, didn’t scale well with levels and were very easy to kill for a melee class. In fact, Wizard’s surveys found they rated the lowest of any 2014 class (even lower than the ranger).

The 2024 revision goes a long way to addressing these issues, making monks hit harder, gaining more resilience features and scaling their features better as they gain levels. These are all the changes you can expect to the class:

Martial arts – You get a broader range of monk weapons. Martial arts dice increase in size at all levels and you can now use dexterity for grapples and shoves allowing monks to be good at all aspects of unarmed strikes (not just punching).
Monk’s focus – This is the new name for your ki. Patient defense and step of the wind both get weakened versions that don’t require using focus points allowing you to disengage or dash as a bonus action without using any focus points. You can still spend a focus points to use the full version of these focus abilities.
Uncanny metabolism – A new feature that lets you recover all focus points and some hp once per long rest.
Deflect attacks – You can now deflect melee attacks too but there are now damage type limitations.
Stunning strike – Can now only be used with unarmed strikes and monk weapons. Also ends at the start of your next turn rather than the end, reducing it’s effectiveness a little (it was too powerful before). However, if you fail to stun the target, they still have their speed halved and the next attack against them is made with advantage.
Empowered strike – Now comes a level earlier and makes your attacks deal force damage rather than making them magical.
Heightened focus – A brand new feature that enhances you monk’s focus abilities making them scale better. This means that; flurry of blows gets an extra attack, patient defense grants you some temporary hit points and step of the wind lets you move an ally as well.
Self restoration – A new feature that lets you end the charmed, frightened or poisoned condition on yourself at the end of your turn as well as preventing exhaustion from a lack of food or drink.
Deflect energy – An upgrade to deflect attacks that lets you deflect any damage type.
Perfect focus – Let’s you restore some focus points when you roll initiative. This seems to take aspects of the old level 20 feature and alters it for level 15.
Superior defense – A new feature that lets you become resistant to all damage types except force at the cost of 3 focus points.
Body and mind – You can now gain 4 dexterity and wisdom for a potential maximum of 25 allowing you to exceed the usual maximum of 20.

Related articles

Tactics

Monks are melee warriors with little in the way of ranged capabilities, but they’re also not hugely resilient like paladins and barbarians. This makes them a little tricky to keep safe in combat, but this is possible, especially with allies. I’d consider some of the below tactics for a monk.

Unarmed strikes – Monks are built around their unarmed capabilities. They can now perform grapples and shoves using their dexterity. Useful as they don’t get weapon mastery options. If you combine this with the tavern brawler and grappler feats, you’ll be able to hit and push or grapple as part of the same unarmed strike. Pushes can be a great way to jump out of combat by shoving your opponent out of reach for opportunity attacks. Grappling will let you move enemies around and with the grappler feat, will give you advantage on attacks rolls against them.
Hit and run tactics – To stay safe, you’ll want to be hopping in and out of combat. Combine with allied martials to let them occupy enemies while you move to safety. Your enhanced speed will help with with this. If you can’t push an opponent away, you can use step of the wind or patient defense to help you disengage (or just suffer the opportunity attacks). You could also grab something like misty step through the High Elf species or the fey-touched feat (but you’ll only get to use this once per long rest).
Stun your enemies – Stunning is one of the best uses of your focus points. It will nullify an opponent at the cost of a single focus point, which is more effective than the extra attack from flurry of blows for instance.
Unarmored – Monks are just less effective in armor. Your unarmored defense can be decent at low levels and strong once you can max out your dexterity and wisdom. Just make sure you invest in a high dexterity and wisdom.

Optimising a monk

Monk warrior of the elements — Monk: Wizards of the Coast

Monks will struggle with a poor build so getting the various options right is important. Below I’ve gone through how I’d recommend building a monk. Remember though that there can be various good ways to build a character so feel free to deviate where necessary.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Dexterity: Your most important ability score. You need this for your AC (especially with a lack of armor options) and attacks.
Wisdom: Also a crucial ability for all monks. This will also enhance your AC as well as being used for your DC on monk’s focus abilities like stunning strike. It’s also used a lot for various subclass features too.
Constitution: You might be dodging in and out of danger, but you’ll still likely find yourself regularly getting a bruising. Monks are not naturally durable for a melee martial so a good constitution is going to help you last longer.

Options to avoid

Strength: You don’t need this as dexterity is used for your unarmed strikes and monk weapon attacks (including grapples and shoves).
Intelligence: Also of no use to a monk.
Charisma: You can improve this if more important skills are already maximised, but there’s not much room for charisma on monks.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	10
Dexterity	15	15
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	15	14
Charisma	8	12

Skills

Recommended options

Acrobatics: Good for any physical activities and works with your dexterity, unlike athletics.
History: Decent enough knowledge skill.
Insight: Great face skill. Not crucial for a monk, but you might pick up on things that others don’t.
Religion: Decent enough knowledge skill.
Stealth: Essential for a monk. Unless you have a rogue around, you’ll be expected to do all the stealthing (and even if you do have a rogue, you might want to buddy up or sneak as a party).

Options to avoid

Athletics: You’re far better off going for acrobatics.

Species/race

I’d consider the following when picking a species for a monk:

Safety first: Monks are not very durable, but do need to get in close and personal to enemies. Anything that helps you to make hit and run attacks or increases your durability is going to be really handy.
Innate spellcasting: You can’t repeat cast spells and likely won’t be investing heavily in a spellcasting ability so even with a strong wisdom score, innate spellcasting usually isn’t your best option.
Damage output: Monks want to be dealing as much damage as possible while disabling their enemies. Species that enhance this are useful for monks.
Action economy: Monks are notoriously reliant on their bonus action so will often struggle to use other bonus action options. It’s worth being aware that a species bonus action option either needs to be worth replacing focus abilities, or is likely to go unused in most cases.

Recommended options

Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get much for AoE damage so the breath weapon is nice (and you can still use flurry of blows and extra attack with it). Flight is good for hit and run tactics as you can fly out of melee range and then back in again. You also get a resistance for extra durability.
Dwarves (2024): Extra hit points will help you stay in combat for longer. Resistance to poison and advantage against the poisoned condition all add up to make you one of the most durable monks around.
Goliath (2024): Take hill’s tumble to knock enemies prone for easy hit and run tactics. Cloud’s jaunt can also help here by giving you a form of misty step. Alternatively, go for fire’s burn to land extra damage. Don’t be tempted by stone’s endurance for more durability though, you’ve got deflect attacks for this. Increased move speed is great for a monk and if you want to play a grappler, use large form to grapple even bigger creatures.
Human (2024): You might be quite keen to take tavern brawler and another origin feat, but only sailor gets tavern brawler. If that’s the case, then Human is your friend as it’ll give you an extra origin feat. You’ll also get an extra skill proficiency and a regular supply of heroic inspiration.

Options to avoid

Elves (2024): Too much focus on spells that you can’t recast.
Tiefling (2024): Too much focus on spells that you can’t recast.

Backgrounds

Your background will give you an origin feat, ability score increases and skill and tool proficiencies.

The most important thing though, is to ensure you have the right ability score improvements (dexterity, wisdom and constitution). If you want shove available when you strike and a few other unarmed benefits, getting tavern brawler is important too.

Below I’ve included the backgrounds that work well for a monk.

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Criminal	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Alert	Sleight of hand, stealth	Thieves tools
Charlatan	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Skilled	Deception, sleight of hand	Forgery kit
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guide	Dexterity, constitution, wisdom	Magic initiate (druid)	stealth, survival	Cartographer’s tools
Sailor	Strength, dexterity, wisdom	Tavern brawler	Acrobatics, perception	Navigator’s tools
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	One kind of gaming set
Wayfarer	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Lucky	Insight, stealth	Thieves’ tools

Sailor is your best option here. With both dexterity and wisdom increases as well as tavern brawler (to be able to hit and push for hit and run tactics), this is the best background for a monk. Wayfarer is a good option too.

Choosing your subclass

Different monks are trained in different arts and techniques, channelling their powers differently. Some are shadowy ninjas, others strike with elemental power while some are devoted to both combat and healing. Your subclass should be determined by the abilities you want to possess and how you want to play.

If you need a bit of help choosing your subclass, you can take a look at my monk subclass guide.

Warrior of mercy

Masked bringers of both life and death, warriors of mercy are monks that can heal and harm in equal measure.

Warrior of mercy

Warrior of shadow

Shadow monks are the ninjas of the D&D universe, with the speed and skill that all monks possess, but aided by darkness, shadow and magically enhanced stealth.

Warrior of shadow

Warrior of the elements

Tapping into elemental powers, these monks have their attacks empowered, striking with fiery fists and thunderous force.

Warrior of the elements

Warrior of the open hand

Unarmed masters, open hand monks are adept at rapidly dodging in and out of combat. They strike foes with a flurry of attacks while using techniques to push and topple their enemies allowing them to gain the upper hand in battle.

Warrior of the open hand

Feats

At 1st level, you can grab an origin feat through your background and from level 4, you can pick up a general feat (or another origin feat if you want) instead of an ability score increase. When you hit level 19 you can pick up an epic boon feat too. You can pick up additional epic boons each time you level up beyond level 20 too.

I’d suggest the following feats for a monk:

Origin feats

Recommended options

Lucky – More ways to be reliable at important rolls is universally beneficial.
Musician – A universally great feat for dishing out heroic inspiration. Great for altruistic monks. Plus you can ensure you have some heroic inspiration available too.
Skilled – If you need to fill in for a rogue as a stealth specialist or scout, you might want something like sleight of hand and perception which you don’t get as standard but monks can be really good at.
Tavern brawler – Makes hit and run tactics much easier by being able to push your opponent away as you deal damage. You can also reroll 1s for damage.
Tough – More hit points is very useful for a relatively vulnerable martial class.

General feats

Recommended options

Charger – You can keep pushing your opponent away and then running off for hit and run tactics, or deal some extra damage.
Grappler – Punch and grapple at the same time. Hit grappled creatures better and move faster while grappling. These are all massively effective for the best, unarmed class in the game.
Inspiring leader – Grab the wisdom increase and dish out loads of temporary hit points to allies each rest.
Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
Ritual caster – Grab it for some out of combat utility spells. Find familiar should be a go to for any class from here. Check out my guide to ritual spells for ideas on how best to use this.
Skill expert – Get really good at a skill. Stealth is really good here.
Speedy – Good for hit and run tactics when you don’t want to use your bonus action on disengaging.

Epic boon feats

Boon of combat prowess – More accurate attacks is handy for a melee warrior.
Boon of dimensional travel – Teleport every turn to get where you need to be in combat. Really useful for a hit and run specialist meaning you don’t need to use disengage and can just flurry of blows each turn instead.
Boon of fate – Turn failed d20 tests into successes.
Boon of fortitude – More resilience for a martial lacking durability is welcome.
Boon of recovery – Survive longer by restoring hit points (including when you get knocked to 0hp).
Boon of truesight – Handle invisible creatures and illusions.

Weapons

At low levels, a weapon will give you a bit of extra damage, but d8 is the best you can do here with a rapier. However, unarmed strikes are better in most instances for a monk. Here’s why:

Some subclass features only work for unarmed strikes
You can grapple, push or knock prone in place of an unarmed attack
Grabbing the tavern brawler feat will let you push while damaging for easy hit and run tactics
The grappler feat will let you grapple and deal damage for easy grapple tactics
You don’t have weapon mastery with weapons anyway
Monk features like flurry of blows and empowered strike only work with unarmed strikes

Essentially, damage is strong enough and there are so many other benefits to unarmed strikes for a monk, that it just ends up being your best option. You can read my full guide to unarmed combat to know more about how it works.

For the occasional ranged combat (which you should rarely bother with unless you have no other option) grab a light crossbow until level 5 then switch to a shortbow (so you can use your extra attack). Alternatively, grab some daggers to throw instead.

In fact, with a pair of daggers, you can get yourself an extra attack while still enjoying your unarmed benefits. It works by grabbing the weapon mastery feat, giving you access to the nick property. You then take the attack action, dual wielding your daggers with nick allowing you to take your extra dual wielding attack with your action. You then stow a dagger and use flurry of blows, redrawing your dagger once this is done. Daggers are monk weapons so their damage scales with your martial arts die. It’s a little fiddly, but gets you 5 attacks at level 5 and 6 at level 10!

Armor

You shouldn’t wear armor, you have unarmored defense and armor will hamper many of your abilities.

Monk builds

While most monks work in a similar fashion (hit and run melee specialists), you can lean into certain aspects of the class more heavily. Much of the advice around build remains similar though it can be worth considering different species, feats and subclasses to fit these roles best.