Turn your fists into implements of healing and harm with this updated monk subclass.
What is a warrior of mercy?
Masked bringers of both life and death, warriors of mercy are monks that can heal and harm in equal measure. Such warriors can enhance their strikes with necrotic damage, while healing an ally in the same move.
Most warriors of mercy wear masks to hide their faces. This grants them an anonymous persona, enabling them to be both healer and swift bringer of death when the wounded are beyond their help. These wandering monks are physicians with ideologies steeped in the realism of life; not everyone can be saved. Whether that be from death, or simply their own wrong ways.
Originally released in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, this subclass has been updated in line with the huge improvements made to the 2024 monk. My guide will take you through how you can optimise one of these benevolent battlers.
At a glance
- Hit and run melee class ideal for fighting alongside allies
- Launch a flurry of attacks at your enemies
- Enhance your attacks with poison and the powers of death
- Combine damage and healing to grant support to allies
What’s changed in D&D 2024?
Hardly anything. The only change is that flurry of healing and harm can only be used a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier each long rest instead of having no limit.
Warrior of mercy features
Hand of harm – Lv3
How it works
Deal extra necrotic damage once per turn when you make an unarmed strike and expend a focus point.
Tactics
- This is essentially the same extra damage as flurry of blows (prior to level 10) but without the chance of missing.
- On top of this, it preserves your action economy allowing you to still use your bonus action on something else (like flurry of blows or an unarmed strike).
- If it’s a choice between this and flurry of blows (due to focus point limitations), then this is better prior to level 10. Once you hit level 10 and gain an additional unarmed strike with flurry of blows, it will tend to perform better. At this point though, you have more focus points to play with so both are much more of an option. This will also work well when you want to preserve your bonus action for something else too.
Hand of healing – Lv3
How it works
Use your action to provide a small amount of healing (uses a focus point) or replace one of the unarmed strikes from flurry of blows to heal instead without using a focus points.
Tactics
- Unless you desperately need to use your bonus action for something else, you might as well use this with flurry of blows to save on the focus points cost.
- The healing is small so mostly only good for reviving fallen allies, but at low levels, could help you keep an ally in the game.
Implements of mercy – Lv3
How it works
Gain proficiency in insight, medicine and the herbalism kit.
Physician’s touch – Lv6
How it works
Hand of harm can now apply the poisoned condition for a turn. Hand of healing can now end certain conditions.
Tactics
- Causing poisoned automatically, even for just a turn, is very useful and makes this worth the extra focus points, even in comparison to flurry of blows.
- Ending a condition essentially brings an ally back into battle at full competency which is hugely useful and at the expense of a single attack (plus healing). Not even requiring the use of a single focus points if using flurry of blows makes it considerably more economical than something similar like lesser restoration.
Flurry of healing and harm – Lv11
How it works
You can now use hand of healing on each unarmed strike from flurry of blows without using a focus point and can use hand of harm without expending a focus point (but only once per turn). But you only get to use these abilities this way a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier per long rest.
Tactics
- These ways of using hand of healing and hand of harm appear to be independent of previous ways of using them. So you can now replace a single unarmed strike from flurry of blows with hand of healing without expending focus points or these uses, but when you replace every unarmed strike, it will expend a usage of flurry of healing and harm.
- This is similar for hand of harm which can be expended this way or with a focus point.
- This essentially gives you more opportunities to enhance your strikes.
Hand of ultimate mercy – Lv17
How it works
Bring a creature back to life if they died in the last 24hrs using 5 focus points. You also provide 4d10 healing and remove certain conditions.
Tactics
- At this point, you’re basically replacing your cleric/druid with both healing and resurrection.
- It’s better than revivify with more time to use, more hit points healed and conditions removed. It’s inferior to resurrection (a level 7 spell) though with less hit points healed and less time allowed since death, though hand of ultimate mercy also doesn’t cause any penalties either.
Building a warrior of mercy
All monks have quite a lot to manage between their martial and wisdom focus, with a need to be combat ready as well as stealthy and skilful.
Below I’ve gone through suggestions for creating an optimal build for the warrior of mercy monk.
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Dexterity: Your most important ability score. You need this for your AC and attacks as well as some other things.
- 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 also increases the power and number of uses of your hand of harm/healing features.
- 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 important.
Options to avoid
- Strength: You don’t need this as dexterity is used for your unarmed strikes and monk weapon attacks.
- 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
There are a few things to consider when choosing a species for a mercy 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 of great use to a mercy monk.
- 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.
Recommended options
- Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get much for crowd control so the breath weapon is nice (and you can still use flurry of blows and extra attack). Flight is good for hit and run tactics and you 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.
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
Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background.
You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.
Primarily, you want to focus on increasing key ability scores (dexterity and wisdom or possibly constitution for you) with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for a mercy 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 top option too.
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.
Below are some feats I’d recommend for a warrior of mercy monk:
Origin feats
- 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.
- Tough – More hit points is very useful for a relatively vulnerable martial class.
General feats
- 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 harder 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.
- 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.
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 far better for a warrior of mercy monk. Here’s why:
- Hand of harm/healing only works with 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).
Armor
You shouldn’t wear armor, you have unarmored defense and armor will hamper many of your abilities.
Other class guides
Not sure a warrior of mercy monk is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other D&D 2024 class and subclass guides.
“Compared to flurry of blows, this is basically half the power (flurry of blows grants 2 extra attacks, this grants the same damage as 1 attack) with the same cost in focus points. On top of this, flurry of blows gains another attack at level 10.
So if the choice is between this or flurry of blows, flurry of blows is better. However it’s not that simple.
Flurry of blows can miss the target, this only uses a focus point once you’ve hit. Still, flurry of blows will deal more damage on average.”
This is incorrect, Flurry of Blows gives you one attack (two at level 10) for one focus point, that is because you already have a free bonus action attack from Level 1: Martial Arts Bonus Unarmed Strike. So with Flurry of Blows before level 10 you are expanding one focus point for only one attack more than you would have otherwise and that attack has a chance to miss, meaning before level 10, unless you have some damage bonus on top of your unarmed strikes (like Hex/Hunter’s Mark or Eldritch Claw Tattoo) Hand of Harm is going to be better than Flurry of Blows from a damage per focus point perspective. It also has the added benefit of no action economy cost, meaning that if your bonus action is occupied by something else, you still have a way to boost your damage, something that is not available for most monks. So before level 10 flurry of blows is only useful on turns you want to do even more damage in conjunction to Hand of Harm, if you have a good enough damage bonus per-hit, if the enemy is resistant/immune to necrotic or if you want to use the other uses of Unarmed Strikes, like grapples or shoves, otherwise Hand of Harm is strictly better.
Besides that, very good analysis.
Thanks for reading and you’re absolutely right! I’d neglected the martial arts unarmed strike you can use instead of flurry of blows. I’ve amended above and thanks for your feedback!