Gunk is a good Monk Build! - Dnd 5E 

This works with Kensei btw but its weaker in my eyes. This also works with CBE/SS but if you do that, you have to grab fighter 1 first level.

>monk >way of shadow >uses gun >gloomstalker ranger >assassin rogue Congratulations, you've made a historically accurate ninja

My friend built one of these one night while we were trying to make new characters. We were shocked because we realized it worked better than other monks, and neither of us like monks mechanically. Its crazy.

For people saying the flavor's not there, shadow monks are meant to be the dnd equivalent of ninjas more or less, and one of the most famous examples of a ninja doing their job is when a ninja used a musket (it was an arqebus, but still) to attempt to assassinate Oda Nobunaga, who was more or less the Abraham Lincoln of Japan. Ninja's used guns, and they avoided getting into melee as best as possible, with most of their training going into how to avoid and escape fighting someone face to face.

its mildly funny that treantmonk tried not to step on pack tactics tail only to stumble onto pack tactics tail

Fun fact, ninjas loved guns. So this works flavour wise too.

this reminds me of the picture of Buddhist monks with guns and the quote over it "patience has limits" and I now desperately want to do this

I like how Kobold went from "I will never discuss martials on this channel" to "here's a way to optimize a martial which is notorious for being the class that is hardest to optimize". That's character development right there.

I love this. There were real Japanese monks that rolled around with muskets, good times

This is by far the best defence of the monk I have seen, well done pack tactics!

There was a Buddhist monk monastery in Japan that focused on honing ones skills with black powder firearms so this awesome and has historical Precedent. Ranged monks are real monks!

We’re gonna defeat you with the power of friendship! And this gun I found!

My monk used a grenade launcher as his monk weapon. He multiclassed into artificer since we were playing Descent into Avernus, and ended up making a grenade launcher alongside being the mechanic for the party's war machines. It was a fun time tbh. He was a sun soul monk, and he rode around on a devil's ride (big ass motorcycle), also carrying a chained sickle. The DM eventually flavored him to always have slightly glowing feathers (he was a kenku) that looked like hot coals, so they started calling him ghost rider. Probably one of my most fun characters I ever played.

Behold, gun kata the class! This is a gun-fu build! Definitely using this in a modern setting to become a dnd John Wick.

To those that think ranged monks aren't a thing, clearly you have never seen Equilibrium or heard of Gun-kata

Playing a Giff Gunk as a jolly hunter sounds like a good time to me.

There is only one major problem with pass Without Trace being paired with a gun, and this is going to depend on your table more than it depends on the rules. Muskets are *loud*... like, REALLY loud. By RAW this isn't a factor, but depending on your DM there's a chance that at minimum firing your weapon in a dungeon will put all the other monsters in the dungeon on alert, meaning no more passive perceptions, but it could also lead to enemies from other rooms in the dungeon to come and investigate who's firing what amounts to a small cannon in this other room. I don't really have a good way around this other than spending *even more ki* casting silence, but that's a stopgap measure and not a real solution.

I’m currently running an Warforged Astral Monk with two revolvers in an old west game on my channel right now. He’s recently gotten an Arcane Propulsion Arm that the DM lets do Monk things at a distance; feels good!

Flavor-wise, I think the idea actually does work. Basically, think Neo from the Matrix or John Preston from Equilibrium, perhaps even John Wick. It's within the spirit of what a monk is, it's just a twist on the idea.

I was recently considering how to make a ranged monk, then the idea hit me to use guns, not because it is the optimal monk strategy, but because for some reason the idea of cowboys came to my brain and I was like "Monk is the perfect cowboy because Weapons+Unarmored=Cowboy." Cool to see that the Gunk conclusion can be reached through much more optimal thinking. lol

Tasha really helped monk a lot with dedicated weapon and focused aim, opened up a lot of creative builds

"I dont think anyone knows about the gunk." Me, sitting on a gunk build for the right campaign: "Of course I know him. Hes me."

Leaving aside quibbles about firing off three Musket shots a round being somewhat incompatible with stealth over the medium time frame, this is still great, if for no other reason than it's a bit different. It's a fun change of pace, and that's good. Been playing Gloomstalker or Battlemaster archers? Why not try Monk, and have a character who feels really unique for the first five levels?

Love seeing the love for Shadow Monks on this channel. Being able to spam PWT alone has been how my Shadow Monk maintained relevance with the rest of his party when he couldnt keep up with DPR or Tanking

Swarmkeeper is the better ranger route for a ranged monk multiclass. Especially shadow monk using a gun. Snipe a target from 100 feet away and use your swarm of shadows to yeet the target 15 feet in any horizontal direction. 15 feet over the outer wall of a castle rampart. 15 feet over a bottomless pit. 15 feet to the left of whatever tree branch, platform, or watchtower the enemy was perched on. Swarmkeeper is phenomenal. If you're gonna recommend a 4 class multiclass might as well dive into the shadow theme. 8 shadow monk/4 echo knight fighter/6 swarmkeeper ranger/2 war wizard. Put your shadow bullets, shadow clones, and shadow swarm everywhere on the battlefield.

This was actually my first monk about 2 or 3 years ago! Tabaxi Kensei with a Tal'dorei pepperbox while playing CoS. My DM and I hashed out how/why in my backstory. Misfires meant martial arts were a good fallback, and my speed and range made me a nearly untouchable encounter breaker, even in confined spaces. We agreed to put my previous PC (a way over level necromancer/nuker with Strahd's brides as support) as a boss just challenge us after level 6

I made a village of gunks in a Korean-themed setting, so it's nice to see them getting more recognition! Loved the build!

I made a build for this a few months ago. I went Kensei 3 for the 6th level feature allowing you to use 1 ki to add 1d8 to an attack. this allows you to use the third level feature for the bonus action attack. as you said, gunner at lvl 1 and sharpshooter at lvl 4. Adding 4 levels of gloomstalker gives archery, hunter's mark, and 4 attacks on round 1. taking further ranger gives you pass without trace, eventually letting you have your cake and eat it too. appreciate this topic being covered!

About that last point, you gain versatility by being able to fight at both melee and range. Against ranged enemies, you can use your superior speed to close the gap and use unarmed strikes and flurry of blows to stun them. Against melee enemies you want to keep your distance. That being said, it doesn't fit every character concept. And it shouldn't. This is the answer for "how to build the best damage dealing monk". If your character concept is more unarmed strike based, then this isn't the build for you. Everyone plays differently and no one build is superior to the rest because people have different criteria for fun.

Not gonna lie - I’ve had an idea for a warforged hunter character, that was stealthy, and used firearms, and I think this type of build is a really good route to go! Great video! Not entirely optimized, but shadow monk + eldritch adept can also be really good with this build, essentially providing yourself both cover and making it hard for enemies to enter melee with you

Thanks for your hard work!

Hold up. You're forgetting something about the Monk Weapon property. "You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike or monk weapon. (!)This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table." This means no matter what weapon you're using as long as it has the Monk Weapon property. we can substitute the damage die for our martial arts die. And from Dedicated Weapon: "Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can touch one weapon, focus your ki on it, and then count that weapon as a *monk weapon* until you use this feature again." As long as we have proficiency with the weapon, we can deal 1d4 to 1d10 damage depending on level. This means Sling, which benefits from Crusher thanks to its damage type, is a very competitive ranged weapon for a Monk. We can also accomplish all of this with a Hand Crossbow and Crossbow Expert, and we don't have to badger our DM into adding, and not mangling, the PHB version of guns.

I have a question, I have a character idea that’ll eventually be a level 12 gunslinger fighter and level 8 kensei monk and want some advice on how to optimize this.

You know, if we assume we can use a musket or pistol, I'd actually kinda like to see a build specifically making the most of those weapons.

Let's gooooooo! I been waiting for this all morning

Going to build this but due to how im gonna multi class I will only have 3 feats for a long time. So I start out with alert lvl 1. Should I pick up sharpshooter level 4 and gunner at 8 or bump dex and then gunner?

Correction Muskets are *Firearms* Ranged weapon not simple or martial that dedicated weapon requires.

It should really say something about WotC writing/game making that the mathematical best option following RAW is to ignore features.

Now this is a monk I could get behind. Thanks for this!

So if I'm understanding ki-fueled attack correctly, I could use a ki point to use flurry of blows as my bonus action, and thanks to that, I get to make an additional attack during my bonus action, thus I can potentially make 5+ attacks per round?

Won't this burn through your ki at lightspeed? At level 5 you have 5 ki, minus 2 for pass without trace. That leaves 3 ki for two or three uses of focused aim and ki-fueled. If we assume you optimize by only using focused aim once per turn to maximize the number of bonus action attacks your ki buys you and we assume that focused aim will guarantee a hit, and that you only need to spend 1 ki, your dpr for those three turns is 37.875 [20.5+(41*.4)+(.05*19.5)]. Making similar assumptions about a CBE/SS battlemaster fighter (precision guarantees one hit per turn), they can do about 35 dpr [17.5+(35*.5)] for four turns and 52.5 [17.5+(70*.5)] on a turn with action surge. Gunk doesn't exactly compete with the archetypal big damage build in sustain or burst, but the utility of pass without trace probably outweighs the meager utility from other bm maneuvers. The disparity in damage yawns rather wide if you assume we're fighting for more than a few rounds per short rest. I won't bother with the math but it's easy to see since the fighter build can make ba attacks all day and night. tl;dr Good damage for a few rounds and then your socks will return to their rightful position on your feet.

A little sus to say "PwT makes monk's own damage irrelevant" since now we need to justify Monk over Ranger (Gloomstalker outdamages and brings *more* utility) or Druid (full caster). Not a discussion monk wishes to enter.

I thought this was serious for a solid 3-4 minutes of the video. You got me, Kobold. You got me.

Hey Kobold! Is there any way you can cover damage dealing features like the Cruelty Feat or Dark Gift: Touch of Death and see if there's any possible way to make them viable?

Be a monk, get a gun, congrats you’re now a ninja.

I like the respect between Bagpipes and Treantmonk, the gunk is a rather specific topic around the same time. The only requirement beyond the PHB is guns, and I like it.

Question: would Rune Knight work in place of Battlemaster? Stone Rune and Fire Rune give some nice CC and damage, and Giant's Might lets you bump one of your attacks that hit by 1d6, and it isn't limited to a melee weapon. Psi Warrior would be fun, but that's stat hell with it needing a decent int.

The Warlock baseline table at 10:44. Could you please link to something that explains the template for those formulae, and how to use them? TY.

Nice vid! Just FYI: • Pass w/out Trace does *not* work against magical means • There is no such thing as a surprise round, only the surprised condition - which does *not* confer advantage against surprised creatures. Altho being hidden would give adv on the player’s first attacks. Anyway, You and Treeantmonk should do a collab on this, since he released his video on the Gunk as well!

Looking at Chinese and Japanese history it’s lore accurate too

I ended up making a Githzerai Gunk by complete accident for my first ever 5E character: built a pretty straightforward Monk for Tomb of Annihilation in the expectation they’d die before too long, but even though they were knocked down to 0 HP over 20 times on the journey they recently made it to Omu and to Level 8 and picked up Gunner to take advantage of a bevy of firearms and gunpowder supplies the party picked up along the way that no one could actually use. That was only three weeks ago, so pretty funny timing to see this video pop up so soon after when I was looking around and hadn’t seen much of any discussion of gun-monks in the usual spaces. Stunning Strike to meet the Ki-Expenditure requirement followed by two point blank shots to the face (with advantage!) is both pretty powerful and a hilarious mental image.

Would taking elven accuracy be beneficial for this build? race was not really discussed for this build, so I'm not entirely sure if it's better go bugbear for sneak or elf for elven accuracy.

Man. Haven’t thought about a gun monk in a long time. Though I was going more for a melee CQC style fighter.

The best way to get a musket at level 1 is simply picking up the gladiator background. It lets you pick a bunch of weapons and musket is one of the options

I enjoy my Monk/cleric multiclass Sometimes it's way of long death and grave domain, sometimes it's war and kensei, Shadow and twilight/or trickery combo. It's fun

So now that hunting rifles and revolvers have been added, would it be better to use the hunting rifle or a revolver and have another item in the other hand?

For any Monk who does not want to use a gun (or can’t), there is the Mobile feat which further increases speed, makes Dashes remove the cost of difficult terrain, and most importantly remove the risk of opportunity attacks if you attack someone, hit or miss. It does cost a feat, which does not help the MAD case of the Monk, and Gunk is probably still better due to the power of range, but this is an option.

April 1st? The best use of a monk is by the necromancer after the three failed death saves. I'm (mostly) kidding folks. Put the torches and pitchforks down, folks. :)

This might be my new favorite channel

Have you used monk flurry + tensers transformation? Its a killing machine. Like a bladesinger 11/,monk6

Elven Monk: "after three decades cloistered in the mountains, I have FINALLY mastered this weapon! With it my kensei by my side, you, oh foolish overlord, shall stand no chance!" Combat begins BBEG gets FUCKIN' BLASTED. "Just as I said. Well faught, mighty foe, but you stood no chance against my Monasterial Mastery."

I just like imagining a meeting of monks. Theres these ancient looking masters with Bo staffs and rope darts and dao swords. And one dude with a big f*****g musket on his back. Plus this is literally gunfu Btw, a musket can double as a staff(just saying)

Question, why not use a longbow or other martial ranged weapon? Looking at the feature, it's any martial or simple weapon.

Ahh I'm playing one of these it's great fun, I'm interested to see where you go with the build.

Peace Cleric!? This is all an April Fool's Joke on Treantmonk, isn't it?

i mean....You may as well play a ranger with crossbow expert. You'd get pass without traces. If you want mobility take ritual caster and learn phantom steed

I love that the stealth assassin idea can still work as tou can cast silemce so that your musket doesnt alert the enemies. Really cool

As the discussion about ranged Monks has gone on, the more I've been convinced that it's the best way to play a Monk. I imagine a Monk sniper running up the side of a building to set up shots on the roof, or running up a tree and hanging from a branch by his legs. This strategy mitigates the low AC issue, takes advantage of wallrunning in combat, and even lets you make frequent use of Slow Fall. A Cleric dip (War or Forge Domains seem like the best options) provides the spellcasting feature, allowing a Shadow Monk to pick up Eldritch Adept (Devil's Sight) for Darkness shenanigans. Aside from the usual Advantage this combo offers, a Shadow Monk can also freely teleport within their own Darkness at Monk 6. An archer Shadow Monk seems really good in Tiers 1 and 2, on par with half-casters. In higher tiers, I'd expect true half-casters to pull ahead, but I'd bet this Monk still has an edge over non-caster martials, with maybe the exception of Echo Knight.

Ironically enough, from what I’ve heard, monks are the most powerful they’ve ever been, as they’ve been downright trash in every previous edition that included them.

I'm glad that someone is finally pointing out this build and we can get past the meme that monks are irredeemably bad

War cleric 1, covers the occasional need for bonus action attack without ki fuelled attack and provides great buff spells. Also Divine favour is a nice extra 1d4 of radiant that adds to all future attacks for a minute without the annoying need of hex/hunters mark to swap targets..

Doesn't the Loading feature of the musket negate the Ki Fueled Attack ability? Since you can only fire 1 piece of ammo from it?

Haven't watched the video yet, but didn't treantmonk debunk the gunk?

lol this is the build im running now except my monk uses a concealed pistol and just shoots people in the back of the head. cheers :D

Quick suggestion. 8th level, pointbuy, all official content, restriction on buying magic items(+1/+2 weapon, and +1/+2 ammunition available). Straight shadow monk or monk5/gloomstalker3? also, if a hunting rifle(2d10, but reload5(need action/bonus action to reload)) is available, is it better than a musket?

I actually had a version of this but with the short bow that ended at 8 shadow monk/6 assassin rogue. This was before Tasha’s, but it was a good build for the extra monk things (patient defense, stunning strike, stillness of mind in a dragon-heavy campaign), but range with sneak attack. I amped it on the assassin end that, if Jon were to come up to an enemy to go in melee, it’s starting in with a poisoned blade and stunning strike.

I find it funny how different your take to the gunk is so different to Treantmonks

a-april fools?

what are your thoughts on going Monk 5/Ranger 2 instead of Monk 5/Fighter 1 to get Archery? favored foe seems pretty good to me, and then you can pick up Gloomstalker which feels like it should be pretty good. also, i’m of the opinion that Custom Lineage is optimal for this build rather than Vuman because you can get 18 DEX, which makes it much easier to not improve your stats on the ASI you get Sharpshooter.

Paladin: So uhhh, monk, what do you usually meditate on? Monk: how to upgrade my rifle for sub MOA accuracy and multiple drills I’m gonna do like mag drills, failure to stop drills, low ready, high ready, Bill drills, half Bill drills, tact reloads, plate carrier setup, oh the usual

The only thing that it took to make Monks decent was *a literal gun.* ...And putting most of your levels in another class.

We have a monk doing this but with Longbow and Kensei. Allowing them to spend a Ki during attack without needing a miss. We have some players that like failing stealth checks so it sounds like Kensei was the right choice for our group.

Thoughts on using samurai instead of battle master?

I remember using pass without trace when I (ranger with expertise in stealth) and a rogue who also had expertise in stealth both got natural ones and still managed to sneak through.

It should be noted that even with Pass Without Trace some DM's will rule that a creature with direct line of sight to you sees you anyway. This ruling is RAW, even if it isn't always fun.

I have some fairly complex thoughts about the idea of this build, especially at low level, but it's basically a relevant for me. In period in almost 15 years of playing DND I have never DMed or been in a party that had a DM that had firearms as a part of the campaign

There is one monk build I've personally found a fair bit of success with: Astral Bully With bugbear you can increase your attack range by 5 feet. Since a grapple is a special melee attack, you can now grapple most melee creatures outside of their range. With astral monk you can use wisdom in place of strength for strength checks, and in place of your dex for unarmed attacks. Along with having 5 feet longer range when making unarmed attacks (Which a grapple is counted as in One D&D). Add on expertise in athletics and you have something which is HEINOUS in terms of control, you can grapple 2 creatures at once and still attack, because you use the funny blue fists for attacking, with ONE attack you can inflict a condition that requires a melee enemy to give up their action just to attempt to end, otherwise they have to rely on ranged attacks. The spectral fists only cost 1 ki point to summon, allowing you to spend your remaining ki points on stunning strike, which have high dcs as wisdom is the stat you use for ALL OF THIS.

So Pass Without a Trace only works for the first round? Then you just stay out in the open for the rest of the fight? Or do you use your actions to hide on even rounds? Or is PT operating on the assumption that your passive stealth is beating passive perception, thus you remain hidden?

Monks may be underpowered in optimization, but man can they wreck ass in non-optimized parties… in my game, the monk player is definitely the strongest character to deal with in combat, and she’s playing way of the four elements, which is considered a bad subclass…

Hm, sounds not so valuable to use ki for other things than PWT unless high level full monk tbh. Doesn't really sound like this is any special. I do support this as a supportive character. Calculating dpr on the other classes using equal weapon just doesn't make this shine in any way :\ But keep mind a multiclassed monk will not be able to use PWT AND ki for precision so I just dont see the possibility to use any monk features here really. And will so little ki, let's not use it to calculate damage like we had precision because then there are no other ki features useful anyway. Are we also using it to attack with bonus action? And every miss? Like we're burning 1-2 ki per turn minimum. Nah I dont like this, it doesn't outperform any other great bow build really and ALL of it's abilities narrowed down into ki >_< But hey you get to wear a monk toga and still be kind of armoured. Nice. BM --> GS in particular is a strong bow user. But even just a straight fighter is a strong bow user.

I love the Monk/Rouge build. Ultra stealthy, awesome mobility, and overall a lot of fun, especially with the Way of Shadow.

6:52 Forge Cleric is also a good option going into Tier 3 with Shadow Monk if you aren't given a magical gun/ammo. Your unarmed strikes do magical damage, but your gun doesn't. You also get Identify as a ritual, and 2 casts of Bless per day.

Oh yay, wow, another sharpshooter build… I love that the meta on damage completely revolves around GWM and SS, it makes builds so varied and diverse.

I've seen this build passed around the tabletopbuilds crowd and I hate it. It might work in a permissive mini wargaming type game where every interaction with the rules is codified, but this isn't a real build at the tables I play dnd at. Those have DMs that play with a well fleshed out and deep campaign where you can't just come around and ask for a musket. Well you can, but you ain't getting it in those games. Then the flow of the story might not accommodate for short rests a the rate the underlying math supports and ... where have all the ki points gone ? The only insight here imo is that shadow monk is undervalued and can be a good support. But this build is so fringe when I compare it to the games I've played in, it doesn't in the slightest convince me monks aren't the worst in 5e.

I built s Dragoon style build using the drakenward ranger with gunner and mounted combatant with the same kind of thought process. He rides his dragon around the outside of the battlefield taking shots at the enemy. This forces the enemy to either allow him to attack them unchallenged or go way out of their way to deal with just one enemy.

The way I see it, instead of fighter 1 after monk 5 you get ranger 2 to get the archery feature which also gives the favoured foe optional feature and not only some smites but also the hunters mark spell and another level nets gloom stalker or go rogue 1 for even more damage dice, or even fighter to pick up that sweet superiority dice for whatever you're having trouble with at level 8-9. With your turn being 3 attacks at 1d12(base)+1d6(hunters mark) and also a +2 to attack rolls, I think ranger 2 is the better move after monk 5 and you only have to wait 1 more level for the +2 to ranged. Either that or with a feat you pick up hunters mark but that means you only get 1 use a day. Either way, hunters mark would be great here. From there, rogue assassin 3 for free crits in surprise round, and your first one has +2d6 damage stapled to it, which also multiplies on a crit, the other 2 levels in fighter for superiority dice and the other stuff. From there pick up asi or feats for the next couple levels? Dunno, maybe the rest in fighter or rogue. Maybe level 5 in fighter and rogue which leaves you with 1 level left and you can spend it on fighter for the last class asi or put it somewhere else. It's a fairly modular build, slotting things in when you need them instead of having a clear trail to follow. Actually quite similar to real monks who each follow their own path to reach enlightenment.

Making a monk that is not a "monk" makes the best monk. 😂

I saw "Gunk", and I thought "Grappler monk", which is my absolute favorite build. Expertise in athletics on a shadow monk is such a sniper. You want to control the enemy caster? Cast Darkness on yourself and go grapple them, shove them prone, and drag them to your front lines. Grappler monk is not a DPS build, but it absolutely locks down specific targets while always having an exit strategy. Also, Stunning Strike is a Ki trap, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Anything you want to stun will be able to resist it most times.

For calculations, what if you went Kensai monk. Between Focused Aim and Deft Strike you always get the bonus action attack? Would that make the math easier?

I have a player right now who is kind of running this build, only a little different and a bit suboptimal (kensei). However, we were thinking about getting her the eldrich claw tattoo so that she could turn that ability on and then use flurry of blows from 15 feet away, giving her 4 attacks at 4th level: two with the gun (one with ki fueled strike) and two more for 2d4+10 +2d6 damage. SUre that's once per day, but when it happens I think it will do great damage.