Warrior Of The Open Hand Monk: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Dash around the battlefield tripping, shoving and punching your opponents with this rapid monk subclass.

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.

The warrior of the open hand is for players that want to excel at hit and run tactics above all else. They’re also a strong option for controlling the battlefield by keeping enemies where you want them and aiding allies to gain advantage on their attacks.

This is a refresh of an existing subclass from the 2014 Player’s Handbook. It doesn’t change the subclass in huge ways, but there are a fair number of changes that balance out power levels and make you an even more rapid monk.

In this article, I’ve detailed out exactly how you can play and optimise an open hand monk.

At a glance

Hit and run melee class ideal for fighting alongside allies
Launch a flurry of attacks at your enemies
Dodge in and out of combat for the ultimate hit and run warrior
Trip and push enemies to grant yourself tactical advantages

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

There have been quite a lot of tweaks to rebalance this subclass. These include:

Only preventing opportunity attacks, instead of all reactions with open hand technique.
Wholeness of body can now heal on a bonus action instead of an action.
Fleet step is a new feature that lets you use step of the wind at the same time as another use of your bonus action.
Quivering palm has been made less devastating (it still deals a lot of damage) but will still deal some damage on a passed saving throw making it more reliable.

Related articles

Warrior of the open hand features

Open hand technique – Lv3

How it works

Whenever you hit a target with an unarmed strike, you can either prevent the target taking opportunity attacks, push them 15ft or knock them prone.

Tactics

All of these options are designed to aid you in hit and run tactics as each will prevent your target striking back at you if you move out of their reach.
This might cause you to question why you’d bother with addle which only accomplishes this and nothing else, but addle is guaranteed to prevent opportunity attacks, the other 2 options give the enemy a saving throw.
As such, I’d save that for your final attack of the turn to ensure you can move away (if that’s going to be important).
I’d often start with a topple to give you advantage on subsequent unarmed strikes (it will also help your allies here). You can also topple and then grapple to keep enemies down on the floor too.
You can use push to knock enemies off ledges, into AoE spells, away from allies or just away from you.

Wholeness of body – Lv6

How it works

Use your bonus action a few times per day to provide minor healing to yourself.

At this stage, the healing is quite small compared to the other things you could be doing with your bonus action. Normally you want to save this type of healing for downed allies, but you can’t do this to yourself. It can be useful, but it’s a decent sized trade off in damage output.

Fleet step – Lv11

How it works

Use step of the wind when you make a different bonus action.

Tactics

You should never use step of the wind only for your bonus action now as you can do it and something else using this feature.
You shouldn’t need to expend a focus points to disengage with step of the wind either unless you’re surrounded by enemies (which you should avoid) as open hand technique should enable this anyway.
What it does mean is you can always be dashing. With your extra movement speed, this makes you really fast! This means you’re a great option for targeting enemies that like to stay away from melee combat that allies might not be able to reach easily (like spellcasters).

Quivering palm – Lv17

How it works

Deal 10d12 damage (or half as much on a successful saving throw) when you use 4 focus points.

Tactics

This is equal to the cost in focus points of 4 uses of flurry of blows. At this level, that’s equal to 12d12 damage plus your dexterity modifier x 12. Assuming you have 20 dexterity at this level, that’s an average of 138 damage. Compared to quivering palm, which only averages at 65 damage, the points cost doesn’t really stack up.
However, that’s only an issue if you need to be cautious with focus points expenditure. You’d have to spend 4 turns dealing that much damage from flurry of blows, whereas this can be accomplished in a single turn.
So in reality, you should be combining this and flurry of blows for explosive moments of damage. It’s also worth noting that this still causes half damage on a fail, flurry of blows deals 0 damage.

Building a warrior of the open hand

As with other monks, the warrior of the open hand is built for combat, and specifically, for hit and run techniques. Below, I’ve detailed out how you can build a really effective open hand monk.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Dexterity: Your most important ability score. You need this for your AC, attacks, stealth and other things too.
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 features like stunning strike.
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 warrior of the open hand:

Safety first: Monks are not very durable, but do need to get into melee range. Anything that helps increase your durability is of great use to an open hand monk.
Innate spellcasting: You can’t repeat cast spells 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 AoE damage 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): I’d, go for fire’s burn to land extra damage. Don’t be tempted by stone’s endurance for the extra durability, you’ve got deflect attacks for this. You can already topple enemies easily so hill’s tumble is a poor option too. Increased move speed is great for a constantly dashing monk and if you want to play a grappler, use large form to grapple even bigger creatures.
Human (2024): Tavern brawler is practically a must for a monk meaning if you want a different origin feat too, you’ll need something like a Human to grab it. An extra skill will help you get sleight of hand so you can fill in for a rogue. Free uses of heroic inspiration are always going to be useful too.

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 a monk) with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for a warrior of the open hand:

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 further), this is the best background for a monk. Wayfarer is a top option too, but tavern brawler is so useful for a monk, it’s hard to recommend anything other than sailor unless you have another way of getting tavern brawler.

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 the open hand 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 – You can combine the shove from your unarmed strike and open hand technique to push enemies even further (20ft to be precise).
Tough – More hit points is very useful for a relatively vulnerable martial class.

General feats

Charger – It’s really easy for open hand monks to get enough distance to make this work every turn. You’ll be dashing a lot so this works really well and the extra damage or push distance can be handy.
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 and can help you get advantage on attacks before you topple your opponent.
Skill expert – Get really good at a skill. Stealth is really good here.

Weapons

At low levels, a weapon will give you a bit of extra damage, but 1d8 is the best you can do here with a rapier. Open hand technique and other monk features will not work with weapon attacks so you’re far better off just using unarmed strikes.

You can read my full guide to unarmed combat to know more about how it works.

You may want to have something for ranged damage for flying enemies, but you’re so fast that reach should rarely be an issue.