Monster Hunter (Grim Hollow) - D&D 2024 Class Optimisation Guide

Slay monsters with this 3rd party martial class from Ghostfire Games.

Monster Hunter’s specialise in the hunting and slaying of, well, monsters of course. Each monster hunter specialises in a different method for defeating their foes. Some trap from the shadows, others harness magical powers for both their own use and to nullify monstrous magic and some even consume the flesh of their foes to absorb their powers.

While some may recognise the benefits of having a nearby monster hunter, these warriors are often maligned due to some of their strange and distasteful methods. These stereotypes are magnified by the grotesque habits of the devourer.

If you want to play a monster hunter, you can expect a heavy hitting martial warrior that will be extra effective against certain types of monsters.

The monster hunter class isn’t published by Wizards of the Coast. Instead, it is the creation of Ghostfire Games from their 3rd party supplement, the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide. In this article, I’m going to tackle how effective this class is and tactics you can use to optimise your play. I’m analysing the 2024 version of this class, but there’s also a version compatible with the 2014 rules.

At a glance

Strengths

Powerful martial warriors
Adept at killing monsters
Work best against their specialty creature types

Weaknesses

Lack of utility outside of combat
Some fairly situational features
Less adept against creatures they don’t specialise against

Tactics

Monster Hunter: Ghostfire Games — Monster Hunter slays a monster: Ghostfire Games

Monster slayers are martial warriors that are probably most akin to rangers and Matt Mercer’s 3rd party class, the blood hunter. All 3 are prone to be found in the great outdoors, stalking monsters and utilising traps, cunning and even, sometimes (or usually if you’re a blood hunter) occult powers to slay their quarry.

Unlike rangers, monster hunters are less primal protectors of the land and more geared towards killing monsters making them less of a utility class and more of a classic martial. They also lack the spellcasting acumen of rangers (though do have a subclass with spellcasting capabilities).

If you’re playing a monster hunter, below are some tactics you can utilise:

Build for melee or ranged combat: Monster hunters can work as ranged or melee builds, but largely, this will be dependant on your subclass. The split between strength and dexterity is your main challenge. You’ll need dexterity for AC (as you’re likely stuck with medium armor) but strength will get you harder hitting weapons. Just be aware that carvers and devourers tend to be built for melee combat while occultists and trappers tend to be equally capable at both melee or ranged combat.

Give intelligence a bit of love – Intelligence will help you hit harder from level 5 onwards and subclasses tend to use this to enhance a lot of their features. I’d make sure you have at least decent investment in intelligence, especially if you’re an occultist.

Attack specialist – Don’t let the level 11 extra attack fool you. While everyone else is getting their first extra attack at level 5, monster hunters secretly get there’s at level 2. So it’s a reaction attack and technically everyone can have an attack of opportunity, but often, these go unused.

Not for monster hunters though. They can use a reaction to attack something just before it makes an attack. You can even try again if you miss. If you’re really cunning, then you can grab a weapon mastery that will really complement this. For example, if a monster uses all its movement to reach a character and then attempts to attack them, but you have push mastery to knock them away, the attack could be wasted. Topple might mean that the monster must now attack with disadvantage. This can make monster hunters very tactically useful.

An excellent 2 level dip – In fact, studied response is so good, that I’d be tempted to make a 2 level dip into monster hunter if I’m already playing a martial just to grab it.

Choose the creatures you specialise in hunting wisely – Not all creatures are as common or problematic as others. If you know a bit about the campaign you’ll be playing, you could select creature types that fit the setting. Out of the Abyss is a great campaign to specialise in fiend hunting while Curse of Strahd makes for a great undead hunter.

If you don’t know what kinds of beasties you’ll be facing, then creature types that are common or problematic are best. Things like fiends, monstrosities, fey, undead and aberrations are likely to crop up in many campaigns and have large swathes of the monster manual dedicated to them. Things like plants, oozes, constructs and celestials are much rarer (or for celestials, less likely to be antagonists). Beasts on the other hand, tend to be less problematic. I also find that giants tend to be quite campaign specific too.

This may not seem too important at level 1, but at level 6 and 13, this feature gets considerably better making your choice of creature much more important.

Which fighting style? – While any fighting style feat and set of weapons can work for a monster hunter with the right build, I’d seriously consider dual wielding. It’s easy to make a dexterity build this way if needs be and your bonus action is rarely in demand so you can use it for extra attacks instead. Grab the nick weapon mastery and the dual wielder feat as well as the two weapon fighting style and you’ll be making 3 attacks per round at level 2 and 4 attacks by level 4. Add to this the fact that at level 5, you can add your intelligence modifier to the damage of all your attacks and you’re likely looking at an extra 6 damage per round (which can grow with levels) with your extra dual wielding attacks.

You’ll also be even more likely to land critical hits, which monster hunters get quite good at from level 6. Of course many other fighting styles can work just fine. Dueling is great if you want the greater protection of a shield or you can work to have your attacks make more impact with two handed weapons.

There’s also a bunch of new fighting styles to consider in the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide. Advanced weapon proficiency will get you access to more advanced weapons. There’s also opportunist which will take good advantage of your studied response for more accuracy and damage.

How good is the monster hunter?

The monster hunter isn’t as versatile as a ranger, but what they lack in versatility, they make up for in raw power. If you’re looking for a heavy hitting martial class with a bit more uniqueness than a fighter, then a monster hunter might be a really good fit.

Where they get a bit more interesting is through their subclasses, granting things like spellcasting, edible enhancements, traps or just being incredibly terrifying. Flavour-wise, I think the monster hunter really nails it and they definitely feel like the kind of gritty Witcher-esque class the creators were going for.

I suppose my main concern is that they are a tad front-loaded. With 2 attacks per round at level 2, allies may really feel the power-vacuum a little. I don’t think it’s overly problematic, but add to that the fact that the monster hunter can reattempt their attack reaction if they miss means a near guaranteed hit each round. Having said that, paladins will be pumping out smites at this point, rangers will have hunter’s mark and fighters will have action surge, but these are all a little more limited in use than studied response.

My other slight gripe is that the monster hunter has inherited the ranger’s favoured enemy issue it harboured throughout the 2014 version of 5e. Picking a limited number of enemies to be good at defeating means you’ll have a fairly significant aspect of your class that just doesn’t function for many encounters. The monster hunter improves on what the ranger had slightly by giving you an extra creature specialty, but it’s still a bit of an issue in my opinion.

Despite this, I think the monster hunter is pretty good and not broken or over-powered. This makes it a strong option for a 3rd party class and one I’d happily use at my table, even if it can get caught a little bit in a few features that are a bit situational.

4/5

Optimising a monster hunter build

Building an optimised monster hunter means balancing quite a few demands on your character stats. To help you build the most effective monstrous killing machine you can, I’ve given a load of advice on your various options in the sections below.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Strength: You’ll need this or dexterity high if you want to be doing what monster hunters do best, which is killing monsters. Build more into strength if you plan on using two handed weapons, thrown weapons or want to use heavy armor (which a carver can do).
Dexterity: You’ll want this at least at 14 and potentially more if you intend to use dexterity for your attacks. A dual wielder could go down the dexterity route or if you intend to use ranged weapons a lot, you can afford to drop strength and go all out on dexterity.
Constitution: You’ll want as much resilience as you can get, especially if you plan on playing a melee monster hunter, which carvers and devourers will almost certainly want to do (and other subclasses might want to do too).
Intelligence: This will affect how hard your attacks land from level 5 onwards. You’ll also find that many subclass features rely on intelligence and even your capabilities with saving throws rely on this from level 9 onwards.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: While some capabilities as a scout (with skills like perception) and with wisdom saving throws might be nice, Monster hunters are already juggling a few too many ability scores to afford to invest in wisdom.
Charisma: There’s not really much space to invest in charisma for these social pariahs.

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

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: Good skill and many monster hunters will have a high strength.
History: There aren’t many intelligence based classes making you a good option for knowledge skills.
Investigation: Great skill and you should have a decent intelligence.
Nature: Decent knowledge skill that goes well with your intelligence.
Perception: While your wisdom may be low, perception is good for anyone, especially someone that might be doing hunting.
Religion: Similarly good option for an intelligence based class.

Options to avoid

Medicine: You’re better off with a couple of people in the party with healing word.
Survival: While you seem like a natural fit for this, it’s rarely used for anything important and you lack the wisdom to be really good at survival.

Heritages (species)

For this section, I’m going to work under the assumption that you intend to use the heritage options in the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide if you’re already creating a monster hunter from there. Be aware that these diverge in capabilities from the standard Player’s Handbook. Of course, you can pick and choose traits if using Grim Hollow’s heritage system allowing any heritage to work for you so long as you pick your traits wisely. But for the purposes of these recommendations, I’m going to assume you’re using the traditional traits for each heritage.

Below are some general things you’ll want to gain from your heritage.

Toughen up: You’re likely going to be diving headlong into combat so anything that will increase your resilience is a good option.
Damage dealing: You’re also there to deal damage. Any species that can enhance this will be useful.
Innate spellcasting: Occultists have spellcasting of their own and all monster hunters should possess at least a decent intelligence score making monster hunters a good option for innate spellcasting.
Be aware of traits that require reactions: Some heritage traits require a reaction like the dreamers stalwart reserves, the ogresh’s enemy in motion, the Wulven’s pack hunter and the Grudgel’s battlefield control traits. As a monster hunter, you should expect to almost always be using your reaction on studied response making the best traits of some of these heritages wasted on you.

Recommended options

Dragonborn: Breath weapon and menacing roar give you some crowd control while damage resistance gives you some much need resilience.
Dwarves: Damage resistance gives you resistance to the most common damage type and toughness gives you more hit points for more resilience. You also get poison and prone resilience too making this one for really gnarly monster hunters.
Human: Since you’ll be landing criticals more often than other classes, getting even better critical hits is going to help to up your damage dealing. Add to that more damage when you strike before another creature and you’ve got a high damage monster hunter with a Human. Especially as monster hunters can easily have a high dexterity.
Arisen: Better saving throws for an ability score and against death plus more hit points makes for quite a tough monster hunter.
Dhampir: Great for a dexterity build where you can get +1 AC over what studded leather can offer. You can also gain easy temporary hit points through your natural weapons. Thematically, this also works really well with devourer as you can keep biting your foes.

Backgrounds

In Grim Hollow, your background will provide you with things like additional skill and tool proficiencies, an origin feat and starting equipment. To align with D&D 2024, it will also grant you 3 ability score increases, though the designers recommend choosing any ability scores rather than having this limited by your background. As this will vary from campaign to campaign, I’ve tried to make my recommendations with both approaches in mind.

As with the heritages section, I’ve stuck with the options provided in the grim Hollow Player’s Guide.

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Antiquarian	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Skilled	Arcana and history	Tinker’s tools
Executioner	Strength, constitution, intelligence	Deathbound	Athletics and medicine	Smith’s tools
Explorer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Alert	Athletics and survival	Navigator’s tools
Fey-blessed	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Magic initiate (wizard)	Arcana and performance	One kind of musical instrument
Free swords mercenary	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Free sword mercenary’s will	Acrobatics and athletics	Gaming set
Pit fighter	Strength, dexterity, charisma	Savage attacker	Athletics and performance	Gaming set
Prisoner	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Alert	Deception and sleight of hand	Thieves’ tools
Scion of the thaumaturge	Intelligence, wisdom, charisma	Fortune of the thaumaturge	Arcana and insight	Cartographer’s tools
Syndicate smuggler	Dexterity, intelligence, charisma	Resolution of the syndicate	History and stealth	Forgery kit

Of these, I think syndicate smuggler is perhaps your best option, especially for a dexterity build, giving you some much needed stealth proficiency and a pretty strong origin feat. Free swords mercenary is also a strong option. Just be aware that aspects of the origin feat do conflict with the attacks you’ll want to make with your reaction.

Choosing your subclass

Like all classes, monster hunters gain a subclass at level 3 known as a guild. You have 4 options here which I’ve detailed below (for a deeper dive, check out my Monster Hunter subclass guide):

Carver Guild

Fearless in the face of danger, carvers not only have the bravery to face the terrors of the world, but the preparation and the training. Their unflinching resolve and reputation can even strike fear into the very monsters they fight.

Devourer monster hunter: Ghostfire Games

Devourer Guild

To keep pace with the monsters they slay, devourers consume parts of fallen creatures, transmuting their bodies into something more powerful, if also more horrifying.

Occultist monster hunter: Ghostfire Games

Occultist Guild

Occultists are not only capable spellcasters, they are also capable mage hunters. Adept at handling monstrous wielders of magic, they destroy them with the very same magic.

Trapper Guild

These monster hunters are patient trackers. Rather than facing beasts head on, they lay traps and wait for the most opportune moment to strike, using their stealth to their advantage.

Feats

Origin feats

Below I’ve evaluated your origin feat options for a monster hunter, including both those found in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, and those found in the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide as both are available to monster hunters:

Recommended options

Alert: Earlier turns in combat is always useful.
Deathbound: Better healing during rests and better survival during death saving throws will help a character that will often be in harm’s way.
Fortune of the thaumaturge: The chance to turn d20 tests into successes at the expense of a hit point die is a pretty good trade off and works great for anyone.
Free sword mercenary’s will: Advantage on saving throws that cause a condition covers a lot of saving throws, making for a very resilient character. Add to this the ability to prevent yourself being pushed (even if it does conflict with your attacks from studied response).
Insightful collector: A free magic item and someone that can identify magic items is handy.
Lucky: Imposing advantage or disadvantage on a d20 test 3 times a day is always going to be good. I think I prefer fortune of the thaumaturge as you can decide to use it after rolling, you get more uses and it’s an addition to a roll making it easier to be successful.
Magic initiate: With a decent spellcasting ability, grabbing a few spells can be handy for a monster hunter.
Resolution of the syndicate: Like a lesser tough, but with bonus damage too. This will make you more resilient and help you deal more damage.
Tough: More hit points than resolution of the syndicate, so if you want to be more tough but don’t care for the small damage boost, then take this.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats. I’ve included both those found in the 2024 Player’s Handbook and the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide:

Crusher – A great way to get push working on your attacks without having a weapon with the push mastery. It’ll work on your turn and for your reaction as these are different turns too so double the use for a monster hunter. You also have more reliable criticals meaning this part of the feat is more likely to land for you.
Dual wielder – More attacks is great for a monster hunter to get that extra intelligence damage working as many times as possible. Pair this up with the nick weapon mastery for 2 extra attacks per round.
Expanded grip – This will give you access to d10 weapons while wielding a shield. Things like a battleaxe, longsword, warhammer and warpick are all going to be great options in this case.
Fey-touched – Misty step works well for moving where you need to be. I quite like the idea of grabbing hex or hunter’s mark for a monster hunter for even more damage. For more ways to optimise for this feat, check out my fey-touched guide.
Great weapon master – Decent extra damage if you’re wielding a heavy weapon. This is better from level 11 onwards though as the damage doesn’t apply to your studied response attack. More criticals for monster hunters means more chances to use hew. And with few uses for your bonus action, this is a good option to throw in there too.
Heavily armored – Proficiency with heavy armor will let you completely ignore dexterity if you want to go with a strength build. Carvers shouldn’t bother with this though, they already have heavy armor proficiency.
Heavy armor master – On that note, carvers that want a bit more resilience could go with this to reduce damage received.
Iron gut – Advantage against being poisoned plus some bonus action healing each short rest is pretty decent resilience for a frontline warrior.
Mage slayer – Get better at dealing with spellcasters plus the equivalent of one use of legendary resistance.
Medium armor master – Could help a dexterity build achieve better AC than they could in studded leather.
Shield master – A free push or prone per turn and better defence against AoE spells.
Slasher – Combine this with push mastery on your studied response to push away and really make it hard for them to reach their target. Your more likely criticals will help with the enhanced critical here too.
Thrown weapon master – Grab 2 more attacks through your bonus action (nick mastery can give you another) and you’ve got 5 attacks by level 4 (including studied response). At level 5, you’ll be adding your intelligence modifier to each of these attacks meaning some significant extra damage. If you’re using nick, you’ll be limited to daggers and light hammers, but spears and javelins will give you more damage. They’ll also return to you too.

Epic boon feats

At level 19, you can pick an epic boon feats (as well as at levels beyond level 20). I’d recommend the following. I’ve also included some of the epic boon feats available in the Grim Hollow Player’s Guide (though I’ve not included the transformation specific feats):

Boon of combat prowess: Great for a guaranteed hit each turn.
Boon of dimensional travel: Get wherever you need to be in combat really easily without expending actions economy.
Boon of fate: More reliable (or unreliable) d20 tests is great for anyone.
Boon of fortitude: A big stack of extra hit points is great for increasing your durability
Boon of irresistible offense: You have more chances than most to roll a 20 for an attack roll. And ignoring some resistances is handy too for a class that can often be stuck with bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage.
Boon of perfect flight: You can fly, and quite fast too, which is useful for anyone.
Boon of recovery: Allows you to heal yourself with a bonus action and recover half your hit points if you’re reduced to 0. Great for a somewhat tanky character.

Weapons

Monster hunter’s can capably use any weapons and be quite effective. Because of their damage boosts at level 5, I’d be quite tempted to go with a dual wielder to boost each attack. This means going for light weapons like shortswords and scimitars. The other way to maximise damage is to go with two handed weapons like a greatsword.

If you’d rather go defensive, a longsword and shield works well or some other d8 damage dealer.

For ranged attacks, you can go for thrown weapons like javelins or handaxes if you’re a strength build. If you’re a dexterity build, go for a heavy crossbow until you hit level 11 and get extra attack, then go with a longbow to get around the reloading.

The other thing to consider is the weapon mastery properties you want to be using. As mentioned before, things like topple and push can be really disruptive with your reaction so make a good option. This means weapons like tridents, battleaxes and heavy crossbows.

If you grab the advanced weapon proficiency fighting style feat, this will also open up a large range of additional weapons you can wield.

Armor

If you’re a strength build, get your dexterity up to 14 and grab some half plate for maximum AC. If you want to do some stealthing, grab a breastplate instead.

For a dexterity build, you can go for studded leather and get your dexterity as high as possible. A shield is a solid option if you want to go for more defence over damage.