Warrior of the Pestilent Haze Monk: Crooked Moon D&D 5e Optimisation Guide

Plague your enemies with this high damage, debuffing monk subclass for the Crooked Moon setting.

At a glance

Warrior of the Pestilent Haze features

Contagious discipline (Lv 3) – 5/5

Turning your bludgeoning damage into slashing damage is alright and can bypass the odd resistance. However, flurry of blows attacks each getting a damage boost of another roll of your martial arts die is very strong! That’s an average boost of 7 damage at level 3 but by level 11, you’re getting 3 attacks with a d10 martials arts die from flurry of blows for a boost of 16.5 damage.

The closest an official monk subclass gets to this is the warrior of mercy who, once per turn, can add necrotic damage to an unarmed strike of a roll of their martial arts die + wisdom modifier. That costs 1 focus point too. Yes this relies on using flurry of blows, but most monks will be using that quite frequently. Already, this is a much better feature.

But this feature gets even better! Miasmic plague will let you attempt to cause poisoned once per turn for free or add another roll of your martial arts die for even more necrotic damage.

This is another free boost to your attacks each turn which definitely makes this the most deadly monk at this level. The focus point cost is actually fairly small compared to using it for something else like flurry of blows. I’d say that if you need to be sparing with your focus points, then save it for something more impactful. However, if you have plenty to spare, you can blast enemies more quickly by using it.

Gift of pestilence (Lv3) – 4/5

You get some solid resilience here with 2 common damage types in poison and necrotic and resilience against the poisoned condition (one of the more common conditions).

Communication with vermin is situationally useful and might let you get simple pieces of information out of these common critters. How far you can take this may depend on the generosity of your DM though.

Potent plague (Lv6) – 3/5

Ignoring resistance to poison and necrotic damage is useful considering how often you cause necrotic damage. You don’t tend to cause poison damage as standard, but it could be something you pick up from magic items for instance.

Tolling censer (Lv6) – 4/5

Some AoE damage fills a bit of a gap for monks. The damage isn’t a lot, but it’s worth being aware that the miasmic plague you cause adds another roll of your martial arts die, but only on a failed saving throw. It makes things a tad convoluted, but not by loads.

It does mean causing the poisoned condition at scale though, and handily, you can choose for this not to affect allies, which is good because monks tend to like having allies between them and enemies.

Miasmic contagion (Lv11) – 4/5

Disadvantage for creatures on saving throws against your miasmic plague makes it more likely to succeed. You can also potentially cause miasmic plague by using step of the wind and moving next to enemies. Monks are fast and you may want to just move past as many enemies as possible to accomplish this.

This can give an interesting approach to tackling crowds. Just remember that monks can easily be overwhelmed by too many enemies.

Epidemic (Lv17) – 3/5

Ignoring immunity to the poisoned condition is useful for a subclass reliant on the poisoned condition, but immunity isn’t overly common. The extra necrotic damage is welcome, especially because you have a lot of opportunities to spread your miasmic plague and deal necrotic damage.

My issue here though is there are now a lot of ifs and buts for when different types of damage apply. You’ve got necrotic damage from flurry of blows attacks, from miasmic plague (but only if you use a focus point), from tolling censer and now this, but only if dealing necrotic damage and only if affected by miasmic plague which is something else to keep track of.

There’s a surprising amount to keep track of and that could easily get a bit messy with all the damage add ones with different rules for when they’re added.

How good is the pestilent haze subclass?

The warrior of the pestilent haze is a high damage, debuffing subclass. It weaves in loads of extra necrotic damage into its attacks while making enemies weaker through the poisoned condition. It spreads all this out a lot making it easy to afflict multiple enemies with these issues.

It’s in spreading disease around the battlefield that the pestilent haze subclass is at its best. You want to be nullifying as many enemies as possible for the biggest impact you can make.

The subclass is a tad complicated by all the sources of necrotic damage and tracking all the plagued enemies. It’s not necessarily overwhelming, but it is a factor.

It also stacks its best feature at level 3 and that scales quickly through levels. The level 17 feature happens to be just average, but I tend to weight earlier features more heavily in these evaluations as those are the features most characters will receive whereas level 17 features tend not to end up used often. This is why ultimately, I think this subclass gets a 5/5 score.

5/5

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Building a pestilent haze monk

Largely, a warrior of the pestilent haze can be optimised in the same ways as other monks. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my monk optimisation guide.

As this is a Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for this monk subclass.

Species/race

I’d consider the following species from Crooked Moon for the warrior of the pestilent haze:

• Ashborn: Minor illusion and invisibility work well on a stealth class. Darkvision is important on a scout class and fiendish fortune is some great additional resilience. Scorpion sting feels like it should work with your martial arts so you can use your superior martial arts die for the damage. I’d check with your DM though as this interpretation isn’t necessarily clear. This would mean you can sometimes enhance your unarmed strikes with some extra damage.
• Azureborn: Flight works great for a scout and for hit and run tactics (keeping you away from danger a bit more. Improving initiative rolls for the party is great for anyone and guidance works really well for skills.
• Graveborn: Darkvision is important on a scout class. An extra resistance is good, as is more healing between short rests. Infused drakkonite gives another chance to deal necrotic damage which can interact with epidemic and is an extra source of damage. Ignoring resistances is useful at lower levels, but pestilent haze monks eventually can already do this with their necrotic and poison damage and monks can make their unarmed strikes deal force damage which is rarely resisted.
• Harvestborn: More damage is good and the fact it’s necrotic let’s it interact with other features like ignoring resistances to necrotic and triggering epidemic. Some bonus action healing is tricky to squeeze in to a monk’s action economy, but useful for emergencies.
• Plagueborn: Stealth proficiency and darkvision are useful. Resilience against the poisoned condition isn’t needed as you already get this through your subclass. Plague bearer is interesting as it gives a 2nd chance to apply a weaker debuff than your miasmic plague (in case miasmic plague is succeeded). Resistances will also be ignored for the poison damage it causes.

Backgrounds

Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a pestilent haze monk:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Crossroads gambler	Any	Fate gambler	Deception and insight	One kind of gaming set
Cultist	Any	Cult initiate	Arcana and one other	Calligrapher’s supplies
Druskenvald dweller	Any	Any	Survival and one other	Choose one
Reflected wanderer	Any	Unreflected	Deception, investigation	Disguise kit

Feats

I’d consider the following feats for a warrior of the pestilent haze:

• Cult initiate: A couple of warlock cantrips and a 1st level spell can be really handy. Minor illusion and mage hand are great options for your cantrips while unseen servant can be good for stealth too or detect magic if no one else has taken this. Monks naturally have a good spellcasting ability in wisdom.
• Fate gambler: Easy access to heroic inspiration as you should kill a fair number of creatures and can impose saving throws regularly through your miasmic plague and stunning strike.
• Unreflected: Hiding among people is going to be more handy for a monk and gives you somewhere else to go unseen (parties, soirees and busy streets).
• Death defier: Being harder to kill is always good and the extra hit points when knocked to 0HP means you might outlast your next hit (at least at higher levels). Being tougher against death saving throws is also nice.

More from Crooked Moon

Interested in what else is available from The Crooked Moon? Why not check out some of our other guides?