Dd 5e Do You Have to Use Dexterity for Monk Martial Arts?

Monk

Her fists a mistiness every bit they deflect an incoming hail of arrows, a one-half-elf springs over a barricade and throws herself into the massed ranks of hobgoblins on the other side. She whirls among them, knocking their blows aside and sending them reeling, until at terminal she stands alone.

Taking a deep breath, a human covered in tattoos settles into a battle stance. As the starting time charging orcs reach him, he exhales and a blast of fire roars from his mouth, engulfing his foes.

Moving with the silence of the night, a black-clad halfling steps into a shadow beneath an curvation and emerges from another inky shadow on a balustrade a stone's throw away. She slides her blade gratis of its material-wrapped scabbard and peers through the open up window at the tyrant prince, and so vulnerable in the grip of sleep.

Whatever their discipline, monks are united in their ability to magically harness the energy that flows in their bodies. Whether channeled equally a striking display of combat prowess or a subtler focus of defensive power and speed, this energy infuses all that a monk does.

The Magic of Ki

Monks make careful study of a magical energy that about monastic traditions call ki. This energy is an element of the magic that suffuses the multiverse—specifically, the element that flows through living bodies. Monks harness this power within themselves to create magical furnishings and exceed their bodies' concrete capabilities, and some of their special attacks can hinder the flow of ki in their opponents. Using this energy, monks channel uncanny speed and force into their unarmed strikes. Every bit they gain experience, their martial grooming and their mastery of ki gives them more power over their bodies and the bodies of their foes.

Training and Asceticism

Small walled cloisters dot the landscapes of the worlds of D&D, tiny refuges from the flow of ordinary life, where time seems to stand still. The monks who live there seek personal perfection through contemplation and rigorous training. Many entered the monastery as children, sent to live there when their parents died, when food couldn't be establish to support them, or in render for some kindness that the monks had performed for their families.

Some monks live entirely apart from the surrounding population, secluded from anything that might impede their spiritual progress. Others are sworn to isolation, emerging only to serve as spies or assassins at the command of their leader, a noble patron, or some other mortal or divine power.

The majority of monks don't shun their neighbors, making frequent visits to nearby towns or villages and exchanging their service for food and other goods. As versatile warriors, monks oftentimes end upwards protecting their neighbors from monsters or tyrants.

For a monk, becoming an adventurer means leaving a structured, communal lifestyle to become a wanderer. This can exist a harsh transition, and monks don't undertake it lightly. Those who leave their cloisters take their work seriously, approaching their adventures equally personal tests of their physical and spiritual growth. As a dominion, monks care little for material wealth and are driven by a desire to reach a greater mission than merely slaying monsters and plundering their treasure.

Creating a Monk

Equally you brand your monk graphic symbol, think near your connection to the monastery where you learned your skills and spent your determinative years. Were you an orphan or a child left on the monastery's threshold? Did your parents promise you to the monastery in gratitude for a service performed past the monks? Did you enter this secluded life to hibernate from a criminal offence you lot committed? Or did you choose the monastic life for yourself?

Consider why you left. Did the head of your monastery choose you for a specially important mission beyond the cloister? Perhaps you were cast out because of some violation of the community's rules. Did you dread leaving, or were you happy to go? Is there something you lot hope to achieve outside the monastery? Are you lot eager to return to your abode?

Equally a consequence of the structured life of a monastic community and the discipline required to harness ki, monks are nigh ever lawful in alignment.

QUICK BUILD

You lot can make a monk quickly by following these suggestions. First, make Dexterity your highest ability score, followed by Wisdom. Second, choose the hermit background.

The Monk Table

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Martial Arts	Ki Points	Unarmored Movement	Features
1st	+ii	1d4	—	—	Unarmored Defence force, Martial Arts
2d	+2	1d4	ii	+x ft.	Ki, Unarmored Movement
3rd	+ii	1d4	3	+10 ft.	Monastic Tradition, Deflect Missiles
4th	+two	1d4	4	+10 ft.	Power Score Improvement, Dull Fall
fifth	+3	1d6	5	+x ft.	Actress Attack, Stunning Strike
sixth	+3	1d6	vi	+15 ft.	Ki-Empowered Strikes, Monastic Tradition Feature
7th	+three	1d6	7	+xv ft.	Evasion, Stillness of Heed
8th	+3	1d6	eight	+15 ft.	Ability Score Improvement
ninth	+4	1d6	9	+xv ft.	Unarmored Movement Comeback
10th	+4	1d6	x	+twenty ft.	Purity of Body
11th	+4	1d8	11	+xx ft.	Monastic Tradition Feature
12th	+4	1d8	12	+20 ft.	Ability Score Improvement
13th	+5	1d8	13	+20 ft.	Tongue of the Sun and Moon
14th	+5	1d8	14	+25 ft.	Diamond Soul
15th	+v	1d8	15	+25 ft.	Timeless Body
16th	+5	1d8	16	+25 ft.	Ability Score Improvement
17th	+6	1d10	17	+25 ft.	Monastic Tradition Characteristic
18th	+6	1d10	18	+xxx ft.	Empty Body
19th	+six	1d10	19	+30 ft.	Ability Score Comeback
20th	+six	1d10	20	+30 ft.	Perfect Cocky

Class Features

As a monk, you gain the following form features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8 per monk level
Hitting Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constitution modifier per monk level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: None
Weapons: Simple weapons, shortswords
Tools: Choose one type of artisan's tools or one musical instrument
Saving Throws: Force, Dexterity
Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Religion, and Stealth

Equipment

Yous commencement with the following equipment, in improver to the equipment granted by your groundwork:

• (a) a shortsword or (b) any simple weapon
• (a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack
• 10 darts

Unarmored Defense

Beginning at 1st level, while you are wearing no armor and not wielding a shield, your Air-conditioning equals ten + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier.

Martial Arts

At 1st level, your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use unarmed strikes and monk weapons, which are shortswords and whatever unproblematic melee weapons that don't have the ii-handed or heavy holding.

You lot gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding simply monk weapons and you aren't wearing armor or wielding a shield:

• You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the assault and harm rolls of your unarmed strikes and monk weapons.
• You tin whorl a d4 in place of the normal impairment of your unarmed strike or monk weapon. This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts cavalcade of the Monk table.
• When y'all use the Set on activity with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your plow, you tin can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. For example, if you have the Attack activity and assault with a quarterstaff, you can besides make an unarmed strike equally a bonus action, bold you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn.

Certain monasteries utilize specialized forms of the monk weapons. For example, you lot might utilize a club that is two lengths of wood connected by a short chain (called a nunchaku) or a sickle with a shorter, straighter blade (called a kama). Whatever name you employ for a monk weapon, you lot can use the game statistics provided for the weapon in the Weapons section.

Ki

Starting at 2nd level, your training allows you to harness the mystic energy of ki. Your admission to this energy is represented by a number of ki points. Your monk level determines the number of points you lot have, as shown in the Ki Points column of the Monk table.

You can spend these points to fuel various ki features. You start knowing three such features: Flurry of Blows, Patient Defence, and Step of the Air current. You learn more than ki features as you gain levels in this course.

When y'all spend a ki signal, information technology is unavailable until you cease a brusque or long remainder, at the end of which you draw all of your expended ki back into yourself. You must spend at least 30 minutes of the rest meditating to regain your ki points.

Some of your ki features require your target to make a saving throw to resist the feature's effects. The saving throw DC is calculated equally follows:

Ki save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Flurry of Blows

Immediately after you take the Assail action on your turn, yous can spend 1 ki indicate to make ii unarmed strikes as a bonus action.

Patient Defense

You lot can spend 1 ki point to take the Dodge action as a bonus activity on your turn.

Step of the Air current

Yous tin can spend 1 ki indicate to take the Undo or Dash activeness as a bonus action on your turn, and your jump altitude is doubled for the turn.

Unarmored Motion

Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while y'all are not wearing armor or wielding a shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain monk levels, as shown in the Monk table.

At ninth level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the motion.

Monastic Tradition

When you achieve third level, you commit yourself to a monastic tradition: the Way of the Open Manus, detailed at the end of the class description or one from another source. Your tradition grants you lot features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.

Deflect Missiles

Starting at 3rd level, y'all tin can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack. When y'all do then, the damage you lot take from the assault is reduced by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + your monk level.

If you reduce the damage to 0, you tin catch the missile if information technology is small enough for you to agree in one manus and you have at to the lowest degree i hand gratis. If you catch a missile in this fashion, you tin spend 1 ki indicate to make a ranged attack with the weapon or slice of ammunition you lot just defenseless, as function of the same reaction. Y'all brand this assail with proficiency, regardless of your weapon proficiencies, and the missile counts as a monk weapon for the set on, which has a normal range of xx anxiety and a long range of threescore anxiety.

Power Score Improvement

When y'all reach 4th level, and once more at eighth, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you lot tin can increment one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increment two power scores of your option by 1. Every bit normal, you lot can't increment an ability score above twenty using this feature.

Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking this characteristic to take a feat of your choice instead.

Tiresome Autumn

Showtime at fourth level, you can use your reaction when you autumn to reduce any falling damage yous have by an amount equal to 5 times your monk level.

First at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever y'all take the Attack action on your turn.

Stunning Strike

Starting at 5th level, you can interfere with the menstruum of ki in an opponent's body. When you lot striking another beast with a melee weapon assault, you tin spend 1 ki signal to try a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

Ki-Empowered Strikes

Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes count equally magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and amnesty to nonmagical attacks and impairment.

Unarmored Motility

At 6th level, your Unarmored Speed speed bonus increases to fifteen feet while you lot are not wearing armor or wielding a shield.

Evasion

At seventh level, your instinctive agility lets you contrivance out of the way of certain area effects, such equally a blue dragon's lightning breath or a fireball spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take simply one-half harm, you instead take no damage if y'all succeed on the saving throw, and only one-half damage if you fail.

Stillness of Listen

Starting at 7th level, you can use your action to end 1 consequence on yourself that is causing you lot to be charmed or frightened.

Unarmored Motion Comeback

At 9th level, y'all gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during your motility.

Purity of Body

At 10th level, your mastery of the ki flowing through you makes you immune to illness and poison.

Unarmored Motility

At 10th level, your Unarmored Speed speed bonus increases to 20 feet while you are not wearing armor or wielding a shield.

Tongue of the Sun and Moon

Starting at 13th level, you larn to bear on the ki of other minds and so that you understand all spoken languages. Moreover, whatever animate being that can empathize a linguistic communication tin understand what you say.

Diamond Soul

First at 14th level, your mastery of ki grants you lot proficiency in all saving throws.

Additionally, whenever you lot brand a saving throw and fail, you can spend ane ki indicate to reroll it and take the 2d result.

Unarmored Movement

At 14th level, your Unarmored Speed speed bonus increases to 25 feet while yous are non wearing armor or wielding a shield.

Timeless Torso

At 15th level, your ki sustains you so that you lot suffer none of the frailty of old age, and y'all can't be aged magically. You can all the same dice of old age, all the same. In addition, you no longer demand food or water.

Empty Body

Beginning at 18th level, you lot tin can use your action to spend iv ki points to go invisible for 1 minute. During that time, y'all also accept resistance to all damage simply force damage.

Additionally, you can spend 8 ki points to bandage the astral projection spell, without needing material components. When you do so, you lot can't take any other creatures with you.

Unarmored Motility

At 18th level, your Unarmored Speed speed bonus increases to thirty feet while you are not wearing armor or wielding a shield.

Perfect Self

At 20th level, when y'all roll for initiative and have no ki points remaining, you regain iv ki points.

Monastic Traditions

Iii traditions of monastic pursuit are common in the monasteries scattered across the multiverse. Most monasteries practise i tradition exclusively, but a few laurels the iii traditions and instruct each monk according to his or her aptitude and interest. All three traditions rely on the aforementioned basic techniques, diverging as the student grows more adept. Thus, a monk demand cull a tradition only upon reaching 3rd level.

Manner of the Cobalt Soul

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Driven by the pursuit of knowledge and its scholars' worship of the Knowing Mentor, the Library of the Cobalt Soul is i of the best-respected and most heavily guarded repositories of tomes, history, and information in all Exandria. People from all lands come up to the library to seek knowledge, and those specially dedicated to the virtues of truth oft pledge their minds and bodies to the Cobalt Soul'due south crusade. To become a member of the Cobalt Soul is to give oneself over to a quest defended to unveiling life's mysteries, bringing light to the secrets of concealed evil, and guarding the most powerful and unsafe of truths from those whose unwholesome thirst for noesis might bring death and suffering to others.

The monks of the Cobalt Soul are the embodiment of the maxim: "Know your enemy." Through tireless enquiry, they steel themselves against the unrelenting tides of evil. Through rigorous training, they learn to suspension through their foes' mental and physical defenses. Then, once the fight is done, they record their findings for future generations of monks to study.

Starting at third level, you can strike pressure level points to intuit crucial data about a foe. When y'all hit a creature with one of the attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows, you can analyze information technology. Whenever an analyzed creature misses you with an attack, you can immediately use your reaction to make an unarmed strike against that creature if it'southward inside your accomplish. This benefit lasts until you cease a short or long rest.

Additionally, when you lot clarify a creature, yous learn all of its impairment vulnerabilities, damage resistances, impairment immunities, and status immunities.

Extort Truth

Starting at 6th level, yous tin can precisely strike a hidden cluster of nerves on a creature, temporarily preventing it from masking its truthful thoughts and intent. When you hitting a creature with an unarmed strike, y'all tin can spend 1 ki point to force it to brand a Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, the animate being is unable to speak a deliberate lie, and all Charisma checks directed at the creature are fabricated with reward for up to 10 minutes. You know if it succeeded or failed on its saving throw.

An afflicted creature is aware of the effect and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a prevarication. Such a brute can be evasive in its answers every bit long as the issue lasts.

If you wish to impose this effect on a fauna without injuring information technology, y'all tin attack the creature to simply affect it, dealing no damage on a hit.

Mystical Erudition

Also by 6th level, you take extensively studied the history and lore within the archives of the Cobalt Soul. You learn one language of your choice, and you gain proficiency with one of the post-obit skills of your choice: Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, or Religion. If yous already have proficiency in 1 of the listed skills, you can instead choose to double your proficiency bonus for any ability cheque y'all make that uses the chosen proficiency.

You gain an boosted language and an additional skill proficiency from the above listing (or yous tin double the bonus of an existing proficiency from the list) at 11th and 17th level.

Mind of Mercury

Starting at 11th level, you've honed your sensation and reflexes through mental aptitude and pattern recognition. Once per plow, if you lot've already taken your reaction, yous may spend 1 ki point to take an additional reaction. Y'all tin use only one reaction per triggering event.

Mystical Erudition (Additional)

You proceeds an additional language and an additional skill proficiency from the above list (or you can double the bonus of an existing proficiency from the listing) at 11th level.

Debilitating Barrage

Upon reaching 17th level, you lot've gained the noesis to manipulate a creature'southward ki to undermine their fortitude. When you hit a beast with an unarmed strike, y'all can spend 3 ki points to cause the animal to gain vulnerability to 1 damage blazon of your choice for 1 infinitesimal, or until the terminate of a turn in which information technology has taken damage of that blazon.

If a animal has resistance to the impairment type you choose, this resistance is suppressed for 1 minute, rather than gaining vulnerability. A creature that is allowed to the impairment type you choose is unaffected. A fauna who is affected past this feature cannot be affected past it once more for 24 hours.

Mystical Erudition (Additional)

You proceeds an boosted language and an additional skill proficiency from the above list (or you can double the bonus of an existing proficiency from the list) at 17th level.

Way of the Open Manus

Monks of the Way of the Open Hand are the ultimate masters of martial arts gainsay, whether armed or unarmed. They learn techniques to push and trip their opponents, manipulate ki to heal damage to their bodies, and practice advanced meditation that tin protect them from harm.

Open Paw Technique

Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you tin dispense your enemy's ki when you harness your own. Whenever you lot hit a creature with one of the attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows, y'all can impose one of the following effects on that target:

• It must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone.
• It must make a Strength saving throw. If information technology fails, you lot tin push button it up to 15 feet away from you.
• Information technology tin't take reactions until the end of your next turn.

Wholeness of Body

At 6th level, you lot gain the ability to heal yourself. As an activeness, you can regain hit points equal to three times your monk level. You must cease a long rest before you can employ this feature over again.

Tranquility

Outset at 11th level, you tin can enter a special meditation that surrounds you lot with an aureola of peace. At the finish of a long rest, yous gain the event of a sanctuary spell that lasts until the starting time of your adjacent long rest (the spell can end early on as normal). The saving throw DC for the spell equals viii + your Wisdom modifier + your proficiency bonus.

Quivering Palm

At 17th level, you gain the ability to prepare lethal vibrations in someone'due south body. When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you tin spend 3 ki points to outset these ephemeral vibrations, which last for a number of days equal to your monk level. The vibrations are harmless unless you lot use your activeness to end them. To do so, you lot and the target must be on the aforementioned aeroplane of beingness. When you use this action, the creature must make a Constitution saving throw. If information technology fails, information technology is reduced to 0 striking points. If information technology succeeds, it takes 10d10 necrotic damage.

You can have only one creature nether the upshot of this characteristic at a time. Yous tin choose to terminate the vibrations harmlessly without using an activity.

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Source: https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/monk

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