Of the classes in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, none may have gotten more of a facelift in Baldur’s Gate 3 than the Monk. Access to ki early on is a huge boon to its early-game power. But early ki is nothing without a good foundation.
Choosing the correct race and ability score layout is crucial to the Monk, more so than any other class. Considering you have little more than your fists and stats, you need to make sure that your build is optimized right out of the gate if you want to be useful in the early few fights.
Monks serve as powerful damage dealers and combat controllers on the frontlines. They use a limited weapon pool and no armor, but gain high AC thanks to their ability to add Wisdom to their Armor Class while unarmored. Using their Ki Pool, monks gain access to high in-combat damage and fantastic mobility in and out of battle.
While the Monk is a hard class to use, their high damage and potential for crowd control make them very enjoyable in burst encounters.
Best race for the Monk in BG3
The best race for a Monk in BG3 is the Wood Elf. One of the Monk’s biggest flaws is getting into melee range consistently. The Wood Elf’s incredible 35 feet of movement speed gets them into melee early and often. You also get proficiency with several bows, like Longbows, that you can use when enemies are completely out of punching distance. Finally, Perception proficiency lets you use that extremely high Wisdom to your advantage, finding all sorts of things.
Wood Elves—and to a lesser extent, Wood Half-Elves—provide the Monk with the early game mobility it needs to consistently get into combat. A Monk that can’t punch people is a Monk not living up to its full potential. Add in the extra Perception modifier for out-of-combat and you have a recipe for a legitimately strong character.
That being said, the Monk benefits the most from their racial benefits out of any class. You can make a lot of builds with the Monk from many races. Just remember that they cannot benefit from many Monk abilities while armored, so races like the Shield Dwarf and Githyanki fall a bit behind in terms of flexibility.
- Gold Dwarves provide a small boost to health that help Monks keep up with their contemporaries in melee. Their stubby movement speed is often ameliorated by their resistance to Poison, a very common damage type throughout the entirety of BG3.
- Dragonborn offer Monks an area of effect option, something hard to dig up on the Monk without using the oft-ridiculed Way of the Four Elements.
- Drow provide Superior Darkvision, good movement speed, and access to okay ranged options like the Hand Crossbow. They also get free Perception proficiency, a god-like skill to have on a Monk without any investment.
- Deep Gnomes provide Superior Darkvision, like the drow. However, their poor movement speed is compensated by advantage on mental saving throws and advantage on Stealth checks.
- High Elves can give the Monk an out-of-combat option in a cantrip, such as Mage Hand or Minor Illusion.
Many other races work fine for Monks. However, the Monk is a class with a lot of holes in its game plan that need patching, like reliance on melee, weak ranged options, and only passable out-of-combat tools. If your race can help stop the leaks as much as possible, then you should take the opportunity to make the ship as sturdy as possible.
Best ability scores for the Monk in BG3
The best ability scores for the general Monk in BG3 are locked in at Strength 10, Dexterity 16, Constitution 15, Intelligence eight, Wisdom 16, and Charisma eight. If you want to guarantee good use of the Tavern Brawler feat, you may instead put your Strength to 14 and Constitution to 12. However, this is a risky build and there are magical items that can help to make Tavern Brawler work much better.
Here’s a rundown of each stat and why they are where they are.
- Dexterity is your money maker. Since your fists naturally use Dexterity for attack and damage as a Monk, you can ignore Strength for damage entirely. This lets you pump the best stat in the game, DEX. That improves your AC, initiative, and your DEX save. You will be prioritizing this on level-ups as well. Most of your Feats will, sadly, go into Dexterity.
- Wisdom is very important. Wisdom adds to your AC, your Wisdom saving throw, and your skill checks. Wisdom is perhaps the most important ability when it comes to skill checks in BG3. It applies to Perception, Survival, and Medicine, three huge out-of-combat abilities.
- Constitution improves your health, something the monk has shockingly little of. We recommend keeping this around the plus-two level. Here, we have it at an odd number to allow for feats like Tavern Brawler or Durable to bump it to 16, as well as add a little bonus. For Tavern Brawler, plan to give your Monk an item like the Club of Hill Giant Strength for a strength boost.
- Intelligence and Charisma are useless, and Strength is almost useless. Feel free to drop these stats to eight in a variety of ways. Strength is arguably the best of them, since the Monk will be rolling Athletics checks more often than Intelligence or Charisma checks. Leave those two mental skills to other party members.
Tavern Brawler Monk
If you’re not too worried about your Monk’s AC and just want them to hit like a truck, BG3‘s interpretation of the Tavern Brawler feat gives you double your Strength bonus on unarmed attacks. Maximizing your Tavern Brawler Monk means that you are basically ditching unarmored mastery and using Ki points almost exclusively for mobility or doubling up on Flurry of Blows.
We suggest using the respec feature for this build, if you want to maximize early-game survivability and then transition to a damage-dealing powerhouse. You can theoretically build this from the beginning and focus solely on leveling Monk though.
For this build, go either Githyanki or Shield Dwarf for Medium Armor proficiency, or consider starting as a Fighter and multiclassing into Monk later. Action Surge, Barbarian Rage, or Thief’s extra bonus action might come in handy. Then, your stats can look like Strength 17, Dexterity 14, Constitution 16, Intelligence eight, Wisdom 10, Charisma eight. If you are planning on multiclassing from Fighter or Ranger, you can instead put your 14 Dexterity into Wisdom.
Again, this build sacrifices most things that make Monk good at frontline crowd control and instead focuses on pure, unadulterated damage. Wearing armor means you don’t really need Wisdom anymore, since you don’t add it to your AC. You’ll also be slow to get to the frontlines, so we suggest Githyanki for their slight increase in movement speed or a Multiclass to do it for you. At level four Monk, you use Tavern Brawler to get your Strength to 18 and watch enemies collapse to pieces before you. Flurry of Blows will turn enemies into paste.
