Monk Subclasses 5e
Published on December 12, 2024
Explore the best Monk subclasses in D&D 5e. Discover how each archetype fuels your Monk’s Ki-empowered martial arts!
Igor Kieryluk - Wizards of the Coast - Center Soul
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Learn more.Your Guide to DnD 5e Monk Subclasses
The Monk’s subclass doesn’t drastically overhaul the core mechanics of the class, which still focuses on Marital Arts and Ki, but it plays a big role in shaping your playstyle and flavor. Your choice of Monastic Tradition determines your unique abilities, your approach to combat, and can even dictate the philosophy that drives your character’s journey.
What is this guide?
This guide is meant as a deep dive into the 5e monks subclasses. For the full overview of the monk class, check out our monk class guide.
To allow you to scan through the options quickly, we use the following color rating scheme:
- Red : Isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
- Orange : Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
- Green : A good option
- Blue : A great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
- Sky Blue: An amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized
Way of Mercy
Way of Mercy monks gain access to healing features as well as the ability to channel necromantic forces against their enemies.
3rd level
- Implements of Mercy: Insight is a decent skill but Medicine is rather useless due to the plentiful healing options available in 5e. The herbalism kit doesn’t do much, either.
- Hand of Healing: The healing from this ability doesn’t equate to a 1st-level cure wounds until 11th level, which makes it pretty meager. That said, using it as part of a Flurry of Blows to get an extra attack plus small amount of healing makes this worthwhile. As this ability is touch, you’ll be healing yourself most of the time.
- Hand of Harm: This one is a bit of a toss up until 6th level, when it gets a major buff. It’s a better damage type than your Flurry of Blows, but it uses your WIS modifier rather than DEX. If your WIS is as high as DEX, it’s worth it to get the guaranteed damage because you can activate it on a hit.
6th level
- Physician’s Touch: Bake in lesser restoration to your Hand of Healing, which can be helpful when you or a party member is suffering from a condition. The best use for this will still be using it on yourself (or another nearby ally) as part of your Flurry of Blows. The second feature, automatically imposing the poisoned condition when you use Hand of Harm, is a huge buff to the feature as you can all but guarantee disadvantage on an enemy’s attacks when you land a hit.
11th level
- Flurry of Healing and Harm: This provides a meager increase in ki point efficiency for your Hand of Healing and Hand of Harm features. Unfortunately, unless you really need healing, this feature is largely useless because of the gamble you have to make waiting for Flurry of Blows to use Hand of Harm. If you land a hit during your normal attacks, will you forgo using your Hand of Harm so that you can use it for free as part of your Flurry of Blows? What if both your Flurry attacks miss? This uncertainty takes a lot of the benefit out of this ability.
17th level
- Hand of Ultimate Mercy: a 24-hour revivify, plus healing and lesser restoration. It’s a solid effect, but comes too late in the game to make a huge difference. At this point, bards and clerics will have access to resurrection and paladins and artificers will have raise dead. If you’ve gotten this far in your campaign without reviving magic, I commend you, but it’s unlikely.
Way of Shadow
As the name implies, Way of Shadow allows the monk to assume more of a stealth role. In that respect, this subclass is a ton of fun. Unfortunately, rogues can do most of it better.
3rd level
- Shadow Arts:
- Darkness: Great to confuse, avoid, or escape.
- Darkvision: Darkvision comes in handy so often, plus this spell lasts for 8 hours.
- Minor Illusion: You get this amazing cantrip for free. So much utility!
- Pass Without Trace: Makes sneaking for your whole party so much easier.
- Silence: Your anti-magic ability since verbal components are a part of many spells.
6th level
- Shadow Step: Teleportation! Sadly it only works in dim light or darkness and advantage on a single attack won’t do all that much considering you have Flurry of Blows.
11th level
- Cloak of Shadows: Free invisibility but also limited to dim light and darkness.
17th level
- Opportunist: It’s like an opportunity attack that doesn’t require the enemy to be moving past you. Helps you pile on more damage per round.
Way of the Ascendant Dragon
Channel the awesome power of dragons into your ki and monk abilities!
3rd level
- Draconic Disciple: Being able to reroll Persuasion and Intimidation checks will certainly help monks in social situations, as they rarely stack into CHA. Changing your unarmed strike’s damage on the fly to an elemental damage is helpful for working around resistances, and draconic is one of the most likely languages to come up during a campaign. Altogether three small features that provide a surprising amount of value.
- Breath of the Dragon: A close approximation to the dragonborn’s breath weapon, instead you now get to choose between a 20ft cone or 30ft line. The damage lags behind the breath weapon quite substantially, but you’re able to replace one of your attacks with the breath weapon and use it your prof. times per long rest, which makes up for that.
6th level
- Wings Unfurled: 1 ki point to Disengage/Dash as a bonus action plus gain a flying speed for your turn is certainly added value, but often will flight speed that only lasts for one turn won’t matter much if you can already avoid opportunity attacks. That said, getting access to flight is always useful both inside and outside combat, even if it’s only 30ft (60ft if you Dash) at a time.
11th level
- Aspect of the Wyrm: An aura that doesn’t initially use ki as a resource? Monks rejoice! while only 20ft in diameter, the frighten effect and resistance are both solid options in combat.
17th level
- Ascendant Aspect: This is quite the capstone. Not only do you get a ki-powered buff to your breath weapon, but you passively gain blindsight and get a free buff to your Aspect of the Wyrm. All of these features are solid value that you’ll need for the final stretch of your campaign.
Way of the Astral Self
Augment with your body with your astral self, a spiritual force that transcends planes
3rd level
- Arms of the Astral Self: This is a solid ability for 1 ki point. Not only do you get some burst damage when it activates, but you get 10min of extended reach with unarmed attack and an upgraded damage type on unarmed attacks. When compared to Flurry of Blows, the damage is middling because you don’t get to apply modifiers, but if you can hit more than one creature, it definitely becomes worth it. Because using your WIS modifier in place of STR or DEX is optional, you don’t need to spend extra resources buffing your WIS, which may be best as DEX is usually the best choice for monks to stack initially.
6th level
- Visage of the Astral Self: Upgraded darkvision, advantage on Insight and Intimidation checks, and some pseudo telepathy aren’t all that exciting when compared to other monk subclass features at 6th level.
11th level
- Body of the Astral Self: You can now reduce damage for certain common elemental damage types and get to deal some extra damage when you hit with Arms of the Astral Self. Honestly, nothing particularly exciting here as the Deflect Energy is strictly worse than a rogue’s Uncanny Dodge and the Empowered Arms only deal an extra 4 damage per turn. Oh, AND you have to have your Arms and Visage summoned, which costs a bonus action and 2 ki points.
17th level
- Awakened Astral Self: A relatively heavy investment of ki points but it has a solid return. The bonus to AC is a wonderful addition for monks, who often have survivability issues, and gaining a full extra attack is wicked, especially because at the point, your arms will be dealing 1d10 damage, on top of putting out force damage with a 10ft reach.
Way of the Drunken Master
Surprisingly, Way of the Drunken Master excels at mobility and is a great option if you like to move around the battlefield.
3rd level
- Bonus Proficiencies: Performance isn’t a skill that one usually hopes to be proficient in, but perhaps it does make sense flavor-wise given the drunken nature of this subclass. The brewer’s supplies proficiency also falls into this category.
- Drunken Technique: Somehow in your drunken stupor you can combine Flurry of Blows with the Disengage action and heightened mobility. Great for weaving in and out of combat.
6th level
- Tipsy Sway:
- Leap to Your Feet: Only really good if you get knocked prone and need to hightail it out of there. Otherwise, after being knocked prone half your movement should usually suffice.
- Redirect Attack: This feature feels awesome to use, but only comes in handy when you’re near more than one enemy. Even still, it’s really effective at increasing damage output per turn.
11th level
- Drunkard’s Luck: Negating disadvantage on a saving throw could potentially save your skin. The same could be true to a lesser extent for ability checks and attack rolls.
17th level
- Intoxicated Frenzy: Combined with Drunken Technique you’re in for a wild ride. Your party members will stare in awe as you sprint around the battlefield punching anything that moves.
Way of the Four Elements
Perhaps the most versatile and unique Monastic Tradition, allowing you to cast spells. Unfortunately using the elemental disciplines is quite expensive in terms of ki points, meaning more often than not you'll still end up using Flurry of Blows.
Cantrip
- Elemental Attunement: Not as useful as Minor Illusion or Prestidigitation, but you get this automatically.
- Fangs of the Fire Snake: The damage isn’t great, but 10 feet of range and fire damage could come in handy.
- Fist of the Four Thunders: Thunderwave is a fairly good spell for a melee character who is pretty squishy, since it has a chance to push them away.
- Fist of Unbroken Air: Knocking an enemy prone won’t help you directly since you already attacked for the turn, but it can set up some nice damage for your Rogue’s Sneak Attack.
- Rush of the Gale Spirits: If you want to push enemies, use Fist of the Four Thunders because it does damage as well.
- Shape of the Flowing River: If you are near water or ice, Shape of the Flowing River is amazing. If you are literally anywhere else, it sucks.
- Sweeping Cinder Strike: Burning Hands isn’t usually the best spell, but as a Monk you’ll take what you can get.
- Water Whip: Another way to move your enemies and knock them prone.
6th level
- Clench of the North Wind: Hold Person can turn the tide of a fight by taking out the scariest humanoid opponent.
- Gong of the Summit: Destroying armor and weapons your opponents have is pretty funny, since you will then proceed to show them that fists are better anyways.
11th level
- Flames of the Phoenix: Fireball is always awesome. At higher levels you will have to spend quite a few ki points for the damage to remain significant, making this expensive.
- Mist Stance: Enhances your ability to get in and out of places you shouldn’t be.
- Ride the Wind: Flight is usually a massive combat advantage, but most of the Monk’s abilities are only useful when in melee distance.
17th level
- Breath of Winter: If you took Flames of the Phoenix, you already have a solid AoE option. If not, this is worth considering.
- Eternal Mountain Defense: Coupled with a good AC, Eternal Mountain Defense will make your Monk capable of tanking quite well.
- River of Hungry Flame: Wall spells are strong. They let you split up the fight, escape, or prevent escape.
- Wave of Rolling Earth: Same as River of Hungry Flame. You can also use this to make a bridge or ramp.
Way of the Kensei
Way of the Kensei offers an interesting take on the 5e monk class, but access to more weapons doesn't make the subclass particularly good. It's cool, but your fists will do just fine.
3rd level
- Kensei Weapons: There are some good options, but very few.
- Melee
- Battleaxe: The best damage available for any of the melee weapons (1d10).
- Longsword: Same as battleaxe.
- Warhammer: Same as battleaxe.
- Whip: Poor damage, but the damage die does scale with your level and it gives you reach.
- Ranged
- Longbow: Better than crossbows since they don’t have the loading property.
- Crossbows: The problem with crossbows is that they have the loading property, which can only be mitigated by the Crossbow Mastery feat. Monks are better off taking other feats or using ASI instead.
- Agile Parry: Monks critically need the bonus AC that Agile Parry grants. Remember that you must make an unarmed strike as one of your attacks to use this.
- Kensei’s Shot: Necessary to make your ranged attacks viable, it takes up your bonus action but the damage applies to both strikes. Also, if you are in ranged distance, you likely don’t need to make that extra unarmed strike.
- Way of the Brush: Useless.
6th level
- One with the Blade:
- Magic Kensei Weapons: Similar to the class feature Ki-Empowered Strikes. Really great if your weapon isn’t magical.
- Deft Strike: By the time you reach 6th level, you will have access to a lot of Ki points that can recharge on a short rest. This is a great way to sneak extra damage in when you need it.
11th level
- Sharpen the Blade: Sharpen the Blade is fantastic if you want to mainly stick with your weapon as a source of damage. Otherwise, save your ki for Flurry of Blows.
17th level
- Unerring Accuracy: More reliable damage output with your Kensei weapon of choice.
Way of the Long Death
Way of the Long Death assumes a more robust role for the monk. Take this Monastic Tradition if you want to be similar to a tank character.
3rd level
- Touch of Death: Temporary hit points keep you in the fight and are especially good at early levels when your AC and regular hit points are still quite low. The fact that you can use this every time a creature near you is hit to 0 hit points is very powerful.
6th level
- Hour of Reaping: Very similar to the Fear spell. Great for crowd control and getting out of a sticky situation.
11th level
- Mastery of Death: Makes you near unkillable as long as you have ki points left to burn.
17th level
- Touch of the Long Death: Good as a burst of damage if you know you won’t be needing any more ki points and choose to spend a fair few. If you don’t have many ki points left or want to save them, just use your fists.
Way of the Open Hand
Way of the Open Hand is what would be considered the classic approach to the monk class. It allows for the typical playstyle of the class but can't really do anything special.
3rd level
- Open Hand Technique: Adds a little spice to your Flurry of Blows. Knocking enemies prone, pushing them away, or blocking their reactions are all useful options to both you and your party.
6th level
- Wholeness of Body: It’s great to be able to heal yourself without your party members having to waste their spell slots or other resources. Scales fairly well.
11th level
- Tranquility: Tranquility is hardly, if ever, useful. Sometimes you really don’t want to be hit, but at that point you’ve likely already attacked and therefore the effect of Tranquility has already ended.
17th level
- Quivering Palm: Instant killing is insanely good, especially since it only costs 3 ki so you can do it multiple times. Even on a failed save 10d10 damage is quite a lot.
Way of the Sun Soul
Way of the Sun Soul is relatively unexciting, and the damage largely depends on how much ki you are willing to part with. If you're willing to live with these downsides, the Way of the Sun Soul monk is viable as a hybrid melee and ranged character.
3rd level
- Radiant Sun Bolt: Ranged attack with a relatively weak damage die unless you spend ki.
6th level
- Searing Arc Strike: Casting Burning Hands as a bonus action can add lots of damage. Probably best used in combination with your ranged attack (Radiant Sun Bolt) so that you can catch as many enemies as possible in the cone.
11th level
- Searing Sunburst: Again, weak damage die unless you spend a HEFTY amount of ki points.
17th level
- Sun Shield: If your enemies want to focus on you Sun Shield will make them pay for it.
Sources Used in This Guide
- : 2014 Player's Handbook
- 2024 PHB: 2024 Player's Handbook
- BR: Basic Rules
- GotG: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
- SotDQ: Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
- ERLW: Eberron: Rising from the Last War
- EEPC: Elemental Evil Player’s Companion
- EGtW: Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount
- FToD: Fizban's Treasury of Dragon
- GGtR: Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
- MotM: Monsters of the Multiverse
- MToF: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
- MOoT: Mythic Odyessys of Theros
- PAitM: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse
- PHB: Player's Handbook
- SAiS: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
- SCoC: Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
- SCAG: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
- TCoE: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
- TTP: The Tortle Package
- WBtW: The Wild Beyond The Witchlight
- : Unearthed Arcana
- VRGtR: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
- VGtM: Volo's Guide to Monsters
- XGtE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Other Monk Guides
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