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hello guys, i'm obsessing over the idea of a kinsei monk from unearthed arcana now that my Lizardfolk battle master keeps dying horribly at nearly every encounter, and since i wanna fight in a battle for more than 1 round without needing to be healed from being unconsciousn, I was thinking about something with just a tad more AC and a tad more utility than what I have. didn't roll the stats so it's dependent on it if / when my character dies, but I think I have a good idea using the kinsei class: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-RevisedSubclasses.pdf

the party he would be joining is around level 8, so I have some wiggle room. I don't want something broken, just something that seems a little more interesting / stable than a greatsword battle master, even if I love the class. As for race i'm thinking about elf for this, but If i have high enough rolls to start out with I may do another lizard folk character just because I love the idea a lot for them, and playing them is fun as an evil character.

so basic idea is to start out as a fighter and get 2 levels in that, gaining the starting gear, hit points, action surge and fighting style I want. then go into monk for the next 6 levels. I would already have a long sword and a bow for my kinsei weapons turning them into monk weapons and hopefully my dex will be high enough to support my need for AC. at 6th level I would have the ability to add extra damage, but I have a few questions on this idea.

for the precise strike feature feature I have no clue what kind of damage I get. do I get a flat 6 Damage for my martial arts? or do I just add another d6:

Precise Strike.When you hit a target with a kensei weapon, you can spend 1 ki point to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target equal to your Martial Arts die. You can use this feature only once on each of your turns.

second, what would be better for fighter's fighting style? Should I go for a two handed sword approach or should I go for a single handed in order to have more options?

third do I continue on the path for monk right away at lvl 9 or do I take the third lvl for fighter and get an archetype, maybe another battle master to have more martial arts trips and throughs, or a better defense? or maybe eldrich knight in order to have even more utility?

hopefully I can get some help on this for the future!

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
hello guys, i'm obsessing over the idea of a kinsei monk from unearthed arcana now that my Lizardfolk battle master keeps dying horribly at nearly every encounter, and since i wanna fight in a battle for more than 1 round without needing to be healed from being unconsciousn, I was thinking about something with just a tad more AC and a tad more utility than what I have. didn't roll the stats so it's dependent on it if / when my character dies, but I think I have a good idea using the kinsei class: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-RevisedSubclasses.pdf

Ok. Hmm. This has layers. First, something has gone wrong. Without any details I'm not sure what, but fighters have one of innately highest ACs (and 2nd highest HPs) in the game, and the math in 5e is really tightly bound. Dropping every combat just shouldn't be happening unless your character is built wrong (which is quite possible in 5e), or the DM is overdoing the encounters, ignoring (or misusing, which is quite easy) CR, or just plain fudging numbers. And battlemasters have some damage mitigation in the form of parry. (And magic items should be helping you out...)

the party he would be joining is around level 8, so I have some wiggle room. I don't want something broken, just something that seems a little more interesting / stable than a greatsword battle master, even if I love the class. As for race i'm thinking about elf for this, but If i have high enough rolls to start out with I may do another lizard folk character just because I love the idea a lot for them, and playing them is fun as an evil character.

A monk is going to be a straight downgrade to AC and durability.

so basic idea is to start out as a fighter and get 2 levels in that, gaining the starting gear, hit points, action surge and fighting style I want. then go into monk for the next 6 levels. I would already have a long sword and a bow for my kinsei weapons turning them into monk weapons and hopefully my dex will be high enough to support my need for AC. at 6th level I would have the ability to add extra damage, but I have a few questions on this idea.

Eh. Not a fan of this- any of it, actually. Rolling is the worst character generation method possible, especially for something like a monk which requires dex and wis to be maxed out as much as possible, and would like Con on top.
The multiclassing is...not ideal for fighty characters. You're putting ability progression in the gutter, and delaying other class features important to your actual class. Especially the former, since a monk must have those.

Fighter's starting gear is irrelevant, particularly for an 8th level character. As a monk, the armor and shield are garbage, and mundane gear options are largely unnecessary and well within any sort of budget.

for the precise strike feature feature I have no clue what kind of damage I get. do I get a flat 6 Damage for my martial arts? or do I just add another d6:

Precise Strike.When you hit a target with a kensei weapon, you can spend 1 ki point to cause the weapon to deal extra damage to the target equal to your Martial Arts die. You can use this feature only once on each of your turns.

Whatever your martial arts die currently is. (Which would be d6).

second, what would be better for fighter's fighting style? Should I go for a two handed sword approach or should I go for a single handed in order to have more options?

Single handed doesn't provide any options at all, unless you're a spellcaster or use a shield. Neither apply.
That said, the weapons you would want to use with a fighter feature all have the heavy property, so you can't take those. So that leaves out great weapon fighting.
The defense bonus doesn't apply, because you aren't wearing armor.
... this just isn't a good combination, but duelist is basically the default because the others are useless to a kensei. (Unless you want to be an archer- kensei, but honestly that is better done by being a straight fighter)

third do I continue on the path for monk right away at lvl 9 or do I take the third lvl for fighter and get an archetype, maybe another battle master to have more martial arts trips and throughs, or a better defense? or maybe eldrich knight in order to have even more utility?

First, eldritch knight would be terrible. That would be another stat requirement, and their spell progression (and availability) is pretty bad anyway. I suppose you could only do buff spells, but their limited spell selection means basically shield (for when you need it) and as an 8th level eldritch knight, casting blur (picking it up as the non-school spell allowed at that level- but that's a long way off with 6 levels dropped into monk)

With the kensei, that are a couple moving parts and they don't synergize very well.
- You can get a +2 AC bonus, but you have to use an Attack action to make an unarmed strike (ie, not strike with your weapon) and no, the unarmed strike you can get as a bonus action doesn't count (action != bonus action),

- you can burn a bonus action to get a trivial bonus (1d4) to ranged attacks. The way 5e hit points scale (read: bloat), this will never matter.

-Precise strike is... bad. You'll have a grand total of 6 ki points, and they do other things. Adding +1d6 is trivial- in fact it's actively worse than flurry of blows, which gives an extra unarmed attack over your normal unarmed attack, both of which hit for d6+dex. So basically you're blowing a ki point (a limited resource) to lose out on dex to damage.


I'm honestly unclear what monk is doing for you in this build. If you really want AC go straight fighter, plate and shield and the defensive fighting style. That plonks you at 21 AC, and most monsters of an appropriate CR are going to need a 14+ to hit you before you do anything else (magic items or buff spells).

If you want this to be even better and self reliant, go with paladin, and use shield of faith a lot (which puts you at 23)

If you really want durability, go barbarian. (Bear totem). Resistance to everything but psychic (while raging) and giant pile of hit points means laughing off most things.

Personally, I'd advise waiting a month for the new book that is bringing officially revised versions of a lot of these archetypes. At the moment the kensai looks like a good thing for a rogue to dip to pick up a better dex weapon and possibly an AC boost, but otherwise it's pretty trashy (and even the rogue isn't good because it delays class abilities that actually matter).

Voss wrote:


Ok. Hmm. This has layers. First, something has gone wrong. Without any details I'm not sure what, but fighters have one of innately highest ACs (and 2nd highest HPs) in the game, and the math in 5e is really tightly bound. Dropping every combat just shouldn't be happening unless your character is built wrong (which is quite possible in 5e), or the DM is overdoing the encounters, ignoring (or misusing, which is quite easy) CR, or just plain fudging numbers. And battlemasters have some damage mitigation in the form of parry. (And magic items should be helping you out...)

well something did go wrong; i rolled two ones during my character building because I expected to have good luck, and ended up having a constitution of 18 and a max hp of 71. the DM is stingy with magic items and I don't think I could afford plate so i'm stuck with +1 chainmail for now and haven't really had a chance to get an upgrade yet with other shenanigans around.

The multiclassing is...not ideal for fighty characters. You're putting ability progression in the gutter, and delaying other class features important to your actual class. Especially the former, since a monk must have those.

Fighter's starting gear is irrelevant, particularly for an 8th level character. As a monk, the armor and shield are garbage, and mundane gear options are largely unnecessary and well within any sort of budget.

I'm just a little nervous about that seeing as to start off we all took the basic starting gear for now...

for the precise strike feature feature I have no clue what kind of damage I get. do I get a flat 6 Damage for my martial arts? or do I just add another d6:

Single handed doesn't provide any options at all, unless you're a spellcaster or use a shield. Neither apply.
That said, the weapons you would want to use with a fighter feature all have the heavy property, so you can't take those. So that leaves out great weapon fighting.
The defense bonus doesn't apply, because you aren't wearing armor.
... this just isn't a good combination, but duelist is basically the default because the others are useless to a kensei. (Unless you want to be an archer- kensei, but honestly that is better done by being a straight fighter)

I personally was thinking more for the +2 damage or the re-roll ones or twos, which I would be able to use both since becoming a kinsei makes me be able to take a longsword as a monk weapon, and thus use dex as the basis for everything combat. I see your point though, but I do feel my damage output would be less based purely on the +2 bonus, which would help a lot if I didn't dip once into there at least, but I do see your point...

First, eldritch knight would be terrible. That would be another stat requirement, and their spell progression (and availability) is pretty bad anyway. I suppose you could only do buff spells, but their limited spell selection means basically shield (for when you need it) and as an 8th level eldritch knight, casting blur (picking it up as the non-school spell allowed at that level- but that's a long way off with 6 levels dropped into monk)

With the kensei, that are a couple moving parts and they don't synergize very well.
- You can get a +2 AC bonus, but you have to use an Attack action to make an unarmed strike (ie, not strike with your weapon) and no, the unarmed strike you can get as a bonus action doesn't count (action != bonus action),

- you can burn a bonus action to get a trivial bonus (1d4) to ranged attacks. The way 5e hit points scale (read: bloat), this will never matter.

-Precise strike is... bad. You'll have a grand total of 6 ki points, and they do other things. Adding +1d6 is trivial- in fact it's actively worse than flurry of blows, which gives an extra unarmed attack over your normal unarmed attack, both of which hit for d6+dex. So basically you're blowing a ki point (a limited resource) to lose out on dex to damage.


I'm honestly unclear what monk is doing for you in this build. If you really want AC go straight fighter, plate and shield and the defensive fighting style. That plonks you at 21 AC, and most monsters of an appropriate CR are going to need a 14+ to hit you before you do anything else (magic items or buff spells).

If you want this to be even better and self reliant, go with paladin, and use shield of faith a lot (which puts you at 23)

If you really want durability, go barbarian. (Bear totem). Resistance to everything but psychic (while raging) and giant pile of hit points means laughing off most things.

Personally, I'd advise waiting a month for the new book that is bringing officially revised versions of a lot of these archetypes. At the moment the kensai looks like a good thing for a rogue to dip to pick up a better dex weapon and possibly an AC boost, but otherwise it's pretty trashy (and even the rogue isn't good because it delays class abilities that actually matter).

Well, when you put it that way it does seem kinda sucky, When I have read the stats it made it sound like the unarmed strike during the bonus action triggered the +2 AC, which would have helped my abiltiy to survive. even just re-arranging stats to my current guy I would be at a 19 AC if it worked the way I thought, but the whole unarmed striking thing was where I got confused. I thought it was just part of your attack should you choose and you get the bonuses, but since I know arguably little about the game I didn't get the segmentation of it.

I will wait until I hear more about the book, but so far, yea, that just seems subpar compared to what I imagined, and with my character it wouldn't really work.

as It stands now, the party is 7 guys so the CR may be a little higher than anticipated even at level 8, and I think I just built my character wrong... here i'll just lat out the stats

HP 71, 8th lvl lizardfolk battle master AC 17
Equipment is +1 chainmail, +1 greatsword, various throwing equipment and night vision googles

Str: 18
Con 18
Dex 13
char 6
int 10

Feat is heavy weapon master, fighting style is great weapon master.
Maneuvers are riposte, disarming stike, tripping stike, feint and precision strike

Right now I usually take half my health in round one or to various hits outside of combat, band when fightning i'm having a hard time making people trip, and so my action surge combo is not working as planned because I don't have the ability to make every -5 feat roll hit reliably, so I cannot add +10 as often as I thought I could. I'm probably able to put out the most damage of the group, but I cannot last long it feels. So far my character died twice and almost every fight I get knocked down. the most success I've had though were killing two undead wights and slaughtering a crap ton of ghouls, but so far it's hard to really last.

Edit: also, pertinent info is that my character is going to be trained to become a lycanthrope without becoming an NPC according to my DM, and will be the only one in the party to be one.

Regarding Precise Strike- at various levels your martial arts die goes up (D4 -> D6 -> D8, etc). With Precise Strike, you spend 1 Ki point and get the addiitonal die (So a longsowrd for example would be D8+D6)

The other thing to remember, is there will be two levels where you are not getting many bonuses from being a monk. Until you reach level 5 (Fighter 2/Monk 3), you will have to rely on Strength for use with the longsword.

Personally, I prefer to mesh Kensai Monk with Rogue.

Both rely heavily on Dex and the Double proficiency bonus helps out. In addition, one melee attack (as long as it is a finesse weapon) deals an extra D6 damage.
My Wood Elf Sailor for example, (Rogue 1/Monk 8) can make 2 attacks with his shortsword, and two unarmed attacks. Each attack is at +9 (Dex 20, Prof +4) and deals D6 + 5 damage. Two attacks will deal an extra D6 damage (+1D6 for Sneak Attack, +1D6 for precise strike) for (assuming everything hits) 6D6+20. On top of that his AC is then 21 due to making one unarmed strike.

Shortsword To hit/damage and AC are actually higher due to magic, but still...

Tiger9gamer wrote:HP 71, 8th lvl lizardfolk battle master AC 17
Equipment is +1 chainmail, +1 greatsword, various throwing equipment and night vision googles

Str: 18
Con 18
Dex 13
char 6
int 10

Feat is heavy weapon master, fighting style is great weapon master.
Maneuvers are riposte, disarming stike, tripping stike, feint and precision strike

Right... some of this I can't really address, because it's about the DM and handing out treasure, but 5e assumes a number of randomly generated treasure piles over the course of a campaign- by level 8, were talking about 7 rolls on one table and roughly 9-10 rolls on a second table. Plus a bunch of indivdual treasure rolls from monsters, which are purely cash, What these can generate can vary wildly, but all of them come with cash. Plate should be zero problem at this point.

But as an 8th level fighter, you should have 10+7*6= 52 hp base, plus your con bonuses every level (8*4=32) so 84 hp.
That makes a fair bit of difference.

Right now I usually take half my health in round one or to various hits outside of combat

I... don't know what this means. Why would you be taking various hits outside combat, let alone half your health?

and when fightning i'm having a hard time making people trip, and so my action surge combo is not working as planned because I don't have the ability to make every -5 feat roll hit reliably, so I cannot add +10 as often as I thought I could.

Well, there are two things here. One, feats in the first 10 levels are a really bad trade for stat advancement. You're just worse in all ways, on every attack roll that you make as a fighter. And -5 is very harsh at this level- it's eating your strength bonus and a third of your very small proficiency bonus (So instead of +7 to hit (8 with the +1 greatsword) you attack at +2(3)) Most enemy ACs are in the teens at this point (some are still around 12), so you've got very bad odds of hitting- less than 50%, generally. Hitting reliably is much better than hitting once hard.

Not having a 20 strength is also affecting your DC for your trip attempts. Instead of 8+3+5, 16, its 8+3+4, 15). Not a huge deal, but it makes a difference. Against other melee brawlers, tripping is... not fantastic. But you should have a between a 50-70% success rate against most targets, as strength scores are pretty generally between 10-16 for monsters of large or smaller size, and most won't have proficiency in strength saves.

When I have read the stats it made it sound like the unarmed strike during the bonus action triggered the +2 AC, which would have helped my abiltiy to survive. even just re-arranging stats to my current guy I would be at a 19 AC if it worked the way I thought, but the whole unarmed striking thing was where I got confused. I thought it was just part of your attack should you choose and you get the bonuses, but since I know arguably little about the game I didn't get the segmentation of it.

Can't blame you for this. The language for this stuff is very precise, and the game isn't particularly clear about it. But what it boils down to is the _Attack Action_ is one thing (and is a specific game term), and using a _Bonus Action_ to attack is a different thing. For the Kensei special AC bonus (and a lot of stuff in general), the bonus only applies if you make an unarmed attack with your Attack Action.

A Kensei using this AC bonus is basically using the sword as shield while kicking and punching people with the other hand.

Happyjew wrote:Both rely heavily on Dex and the Double proficiency bonus helps out. In addition, one melee attack (as long as it is a finesse weapon) deals an extra D6 damage.
My Wood Elf Sailor for example, (Rogue 1/Monk 8) can make 2 attacks with his shortsword, and two unarmed attacks. Each attack is at +9 (Dex 20, Prof +4) and deals D6 + 5 damage. Two attacks will deal an extra D6 damage (+1D6 for Sneak Attack, +1D6 for precise strike) for (assuming everything hits) 6D6+20. On top of that his AC is then 21 due to making one unarmed strike.

Actually, see above. You wouldn't get the AC bonus in this circumstance, because the Attack Action is two shortsword attacks, not an unarmed strike (which is your Bonus Action, and so doesn't trigger the AC bonus).

And unless you spent a ki to use flurry of blows, you'd only get one unarmed strike- Extra Attack only applies to the Attack action, not to the bonus action you get to make an unarmed strike.

Voss wrote:

Happyjew wrote:Both rely heavily on Dex and the Double proficiency bonus helps out. In addition, one melee attack (as long as it is a finesse weapon) deals an extra D6 damage.
My Wood Elf Sailor for example, (Rogue 1/Monk 8) can make 2 attacks with his shortsword, and two unarmed attacks. Each attack is at +9 (Dex 20, Prof +4) and deals D6 + 5 damage. Two attacks will deal an extra D6 damage (+1D6 for Sneak Attack, +1D6 for precise strike) for (assuming everything hits) 6D6+20. On top of that his AC is then 21 due to making one unarmed strike.

Actually, see above. You wouldn't get the AC bonus in this circumstance, because the Attack Action is two shortsword attacks, not an unarmed strike (which is your Bonus Action, and so doesn't trigger the AC bonus).

And unless you spent a ki to use flurry of blows, you'd only get one unarmed strike- Extra Attack only applies to the Attack action, not to the bonus action you get to make an unarmed strike.

If I misunderstood how that works, I apologize. I was under the impression, that the bonus action was still an Attack action, albeit one with some limitations. Even then, you can swap one of those shortsword attacks for another unarmed attack, and still deal the same damage. As it is I almost always use Ki points for Flurry of Blows, unless I need to conserve them for some reason.

Voss wrote:

Can't blame you for this. The language for this stuff is very precise, and the game isn't particularly clear about it. But what it boils down to is the _Attack Action_ is one thing (and is a specific game term), and using a _Bonus Action_ to attack is a different thing. For the Kensei special AC bonus (and a lot of stuff in general), the bonus only applies if you make an unarmed attack with your Attack Action.

A Kensei using this AC bonus is basically using the sword as shield while kicking and punching people with the other hand.

This really feels like something I should ask the Dm for my games right now, or message wizard, but i'm not too worried anymore. I'm sure I can still build a fun dex based class some other way if I cannot do this, or just play it anyways because I like the idea of a clear-cut martial arts character for my dudes, and it's one step closer to my idea of a true sword master than what the battle master felt like based off my own personal experience from longsword fencing (stunning strike, a single blade being used to defend from attacks during a focus, striking during a fight and that sort of thing) mixed with more specialized stats.

But as an 8th level fighter, you should have 10+7*6= 52 hp base, plus your con bonuses every level (8*4=32) so 84 hp.

yea, I can really feel the difference right now, and I may have to buy some plate as soon as possible when I get back from lizard hell


Post 2017/10/15 19:12:42 Subject: DND 5E Kinsei monk, need help figuring out the plan
Tiger9gamer wrote:
HP 71, 8th lvl lizardfolk battle master AC 17
Equipment is +1 chainmail, +1 greatsword, various throwing equipment and night vision googles

Str: 18
Con 18
Dex 13
char 6
int 10

Feat is heavy weapon master, fighting style is great weapon master.
Maneuvers are riposte, disarming stike, tripping stike, feint and precision strike

Right... some of this I can't really address, because it's about the DM and handing out treasure, but 5e assumes a number of randomly generated treasure piles over the course of a campaign- by level 8, were talking about 7 rolls on one table and roughly 9-10 rolls on a second table. Plus a bunch of indivdual treasure rolls from monsters, which are purely cash, What these can generate can vary wildly, but all of them come with cash. Plate should be zero problem at this point.

But as an 8th level fighter, you should have 10+7*6= 52 hp base, plus your con bonuses every level (8*4=32) so 84 hp.
That makes a fair bit of difference.

I... don't know what this means. Why would you be taking various hits outside combat, let alone half your health?

It's mostly my party members being very careless with well traps and magical surges, as well as being very hesitant about certain areas... so other team-mate stuff I guess

Well, there are two things here. One, feats in the first 10 levels are a really bad trade for stat advancement. You're just worse in all ways, on every attack roll that you make as a fighter. And -5 is very harsh at this level- it's eating your strength bonus and a third of your very small proficiency bonus (So instead of +7 to hit (8 with the +1 greatsword) you attack at +2(3)) Most enemy ACs are in the teens at this point (some are still around 12), so you've got very bad odds of hitting- less than 50%, generally. Hitting reliably is much better than hitting once hard.

Not having a 20 strength is also affecting your DC for your trip attempts. Instead of 8+3+5, 16, its 8+3+4, 15). Not a huge deal, but it makes a difference. Against other melee brawlers, tripping is... not fantastic. But you should have a between a 50-70% success rate against most targets, as strength scores are pretty generally between 10-16 for monsters of large or smaller size, and most won't have proficiency in strength saves.

okay this makes a lot of sense now, as I heard I should take that early and I followed the advice given to me. Without taking it I would have been able to get a 20 strength by level 8 and I wouldn't have to have worried about that subtractions. Precision strike is not enough to fix this either, as I have a very limited pool for that. Yea this is good to think about for any potential revamp my DM could allow me to do.

hell, this is good advice for moving forward in general, as now with new characters I won't make the same mistake so thank you for your advice. In curiostiy are there exceptions to " stats before feats" ?