Introduction
The most “generic” of the Monk’s subclasses, the Warrior of the Open Hand Monk is perhaps the most illustrative of the Monk as a class. It relies heavily on the Monk’s core features, adding onto the effects of Flurry of Blows, emphasizing the Monk’s ability to reposition and debuff enemies, and expanding the Monk’s exceptional mobility even further.
Warrior of the Open Hand adds little to the Monk’s damage output or durability. Instead, Open Hand Technique provides a small amount of crowd control. On top of the Monk’s roles as a Scout and Striker, Open Hand allows you to add a little bit of Controller to your capabilities by allowing you forcibly reposition your enemies.
This additional capability as a Controller makes the Open Hand Monk an effective force multiplier. The ability to both knock foes prone and reposition them significant distances makes the Open Hand Monk a powerful asset in a party with Blasters who can consistently produce area damage. Evoker Wizards work especially well, but anyone with a breath weapon or something similar will still enjoy your presence.
This article is for the 2024 DnD 5e rules. For the 2014 rules, see our 2014 Way of the Open Hand Monk Subclass Guide.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Disclaimer
- Warrior of the Open Hand Features
- Warrior of the Open Hand Backgrounds
- Warrior of the Open Hand Species
- Warrior of the Open Hand Ability Scores
- Warrior of the Open Hand Feats
- Warrior of the Open Hand Weapons
- Warrior of the Open Hand Armor
- Warrior of the Open Hand Multiclassing
- Example Warrior of the Open Hand Build – Tabaxi Combat Taxi
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.
The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.
Warrior of the Open Hand Features
- Open Hand Technique: This dramatically improves the
benefits of spending Focus Points points to use Flurry of Blows rather than
default to Martial Arts’ Bonus Attack.
- : If you need to get out of melee, preventing the target from taking Reactions prevents them from making an Opportunity Attack, so you can usually choose to use Flurry of Blows instead of using Step of the Wind to Disengage.
- : This pushes enemies “away”,
rather than “directly away”. Upward at an angle is still “away”,
allowing you to launch enemies into the air to cause falling damage and
knock them prone. If your first attack in a turn is from Flurry of
Blows, you can use this to knock enemies prone before spending the rest
of the turn attacking them with Advantage.
Provided that your target has a passable chance to fail the save, Push easily outdoes Addle and Topple. Pushing an enemy out of reach and knocking them prone with falling damage means that you won’t trigger an Opportunity Attack and that your target is prone, combining the benefits of Addle and Topple.
- : A great way to knock high-Strength foes prone. Those same foes can reliably pass the saves to resist Push or to resist you using an Unarmed Strike to knock them prone.
- : Basically a pool of additional Hit Point Dice. You should absolutely not use this in combat. The healing is too minor. If you’re feeling endangered, Dodge and prevent incoming damage rather than trying to repair it while still actively taking damage.
- : Effectively a free Dash every turn, massively improving your mobility. Take advantage of this to forcibly reposition enemies with a combination of Open Hand Technique and grappling. Put all of your enemies into a nice, neat little ball, then high-five your party’s Blaster.
- : 10d12 damage averages to
65. This costs 4 FP to create the vibrations, then another attack during an
Attack action to trigger the damage. The target makes a Constitution save,
and since Constitution saves are consistently high, we need to expect
enemies to pass the save. So is this worth the Focus Points to use?
For 4 FP, you can trigger Flurry of Blows twice and Stunning Blow twice. The 4 additional attacks compared to Martial Arts will deal 1d12+5 damage each. Assuming all four hit, that’s an average of 46 damage without considering the possibility of crits, falling damage from Open Hand Technique, etc. The two Stunning Fist uses might rob the target of two turns.
It’s difficult to make a direct comparison between Quivering Palm and our other options. Quivering Palm can be a big damage nuke delivered very quickly, but I don’t trust Constitution saves enough to make that gamble frequently. Personally, I would rather use Stunning Fist and spend a turn punching the target while they’re unable to retaliate.
Warrior of the Open Hand Backgrounds
No different from a typical Monk.
Warrior of the Open Hand Species
No different from a typical Monk.
Warrior of the Open Hand Ability Scores
No different from a typical Monk.
Warrior of the Open Hand Feats
For the most part, the Open Hand Monk’s feat options are no different from a typical Monk. What sets them apart is a few synergies with Open Hand Technique.
- (PHB): Crusher’s forced movement synergizes very well with Open Hand Technique’s ability to push enemies away.
Warrior of the Open Hand Weapons
No different from a typical Monk. You’re still fighting unarmed in the vast majority of cases.
Warrior of the Open Hand Armor
No different from a typical Monk. You’re still fighting unarmored.
Warrior of the Open Hand Multiclassing
No different from a typical Monk.
Example Warrior of the Open Hand Build – Tabaxi Combat Taxi
“Tyler, why do you always find a way to become a bus?” —Random Powell, circa 2022
Our 2014 Way of the Open Hand Monk Guide was built on a semantic argument that “away” does not mean the same thing as “directly away”. Roughly 6 months after publishing that guide, the same advice started appearing on TikTok, Youtube, and other social platforms where other DnD content creators discuss character optimization. Not long after that, Wizards of the Coast caught on and started experimenting with “horizontally away” in the Unearthed Arcana playtest for the 2024 rules, eventually settling on “directly away”, which better conveys the intended behavior. The vast majority of push effects in the 2024 rules now use “directly away”.
Oddly, WotC left Open Hand Technique’s push option unchanged. The wording still just says “away”. It’s not clear if WotC just missed one instance, or if they saw what I did with the 2014 rules and said “You know what? That’s the most Monk thing we’ve ever seen. Leave it in.” Regardless, it means that our 2014 shenanigans work almost completely unchanged.
But I’m not going to recycle those tactics. That’s boring.
I’m going to get so much worse.
This build is a highly mobile melee controller that relies on pushing and grappling to reposition enemies. Like our 2014 Open Hand Monk build, it thrives when paired with a friendly blaster. But, unlike the 2014 build, this build is much better equipped to capitalize on clever use of terrain. A big part of playing this build will depend on your own awareness of the world around you, often extending much further away
Ability Scores
Fairly standard for the Monk. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to hit 20 Dex/20 Wis before we get to level 20.
| Base | Adjusted | Level 20 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Str | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Dex | 15 | 17 | 24 |
| Con | 15 | 15 | Probably 16 |
| Int | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 15 | 16 | 22 |
| Cha | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Background
Sailor. We want Tavern Brawler, and the ability scores are good for us.
Species
Tabaxi. The skills are great, but we’re here for Feline Agility. Remember that, under the 2024 rules, we ignore the ability score increases from legacy species.
Skill and Tool Proficiencies
We get Acrobatics and Perception from Sailor. We get Perception and Stealth from Tabaxi. We’ll take any 2 skills from our Monk class skill options. It doesn’t matter to this build. History and Insight are fine options.
Unfortunately, the 2024 rules don’t have a rule for duplicate proficiencies like the 2014 rules did, so it appears that we do lose one proficiency.
Feats and Ability Score Increases
At level 1 we get Tavern Brawler from our Background. Rerolling 1’s on our unarmed strike damage feels nice, but we’re here for the Push feature, which allows us to push an enemy 5 feet away when we hit them with an unarmed strike once per turn. Notably, “once per turn”, not “once on each of your turns”.
At level 4 we’ll take Grappler and +1 Strength.
At level 8 we’ll take a +2 Dex increase.
At level 12 we’ll take Speedy and +1 Constitution.
At level 16 we’ll take +2 Wisdom.
At level 19 we’ll take Boon of Speed and +1 Dexterity.
Levels
| Level | Feat(s) and Features | Notes and Tactics |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Martial Arts Unarmored Defense | At this level, we’re a very standard monk. Stab things with a spear, slap them with your Bonus Attack, and try not to die with 10 hp and 16 AC. |
| 2 | Monk’s Focus Unarmored Movement + 10 ft. Uncanny Metabolism | Monk’s Focus gives us a little taste of the future. Flurry of Blows will eat most of our Focus Points, but we can also use Step of the Wind combined with Feline Agility to move incredibly fast for brief periods. Uncanny Metabolism is for when you get dragged into a fight on your way to your next Short Rest. Don’t use it as an excuse to not rest. |
| 3 | Deflect Attacks Subclass: Warrior of the Open Hand Open Hand Technique | Deflect Attacks makes it very difficult to kill a Monk in a one-on-one fight. Capitalize on this to get into melee with big enemies and keep them busy while your party deals with other problems until they can come help you. Open Hand Technique is where we start to feel cool. It only triggers when we use Flurry of Blows, so be sure to reserve your Focus Points for flurries. Open Hand Technique (Shove) is of particular importance to us. It allows us to push an enemy up to 15 feet away, including upward into the air. Combined with the once-per-turn push from Tavern Brawler, we can push them 20 feet into the air, causing them to fall, take 2d6 damage, and land prone. |
| 4 | Feat: Grappler Str 17 -> 18 Slow Fall | Grappler is fantastic for the Monk. Hit an enemy with an Unarmed Strike and grapple them (remember that you can use Dexterity for your save DC), then spend the rest of the turn attacking them with Advantage. As cool as Advantage is, Grappler’s Fast Wrestler feature is the real reason why we’re here. The ability to move a grapple allows us to precisely reposition grappled enemies, and it’s limited only by how far we can move in a turn. Step of the Wind allows us to Dash as a Bonus Action at no Focus Point cost, and we can combine that with Unarmored Movement and Feline Agility to have 160 feet of movement without consuming our Action. This gives us enough movement to put our grappled enemy wherever we want, including far away in a separate room where they’ll need to spend two turns Dashing to get back into combat. If you have an ally that can cast Spike Growth, the whole game is now on easy mode. Cheese grater your problems at super speed. Keep in mind that Feline Agility only recharges if you spend a turn not moving, so you may need to drag yourself back at normal speed. Alternatively, you and your unwilling passenger can spend a turn fighting one-on-one (which is often a winning decision thanks to Deflect Attacks) before you super speed back to the party. |
| 5 | Extra Attack Stunning Strike | Extra Attack is fantastic. While we can’t use Grappler to damage+grapple on more than one attack, we can still grapple one creature per empty hand, allowing us to forcibly Tabaxi taxi two enemies out of an encounter, leaving the rest of the party to handle whatever remains while we race back to help. Be cautious about doing this. Leaving yourself alone with two enemies makes you very vulnerable to crowd control effects or surprise critical hits. It can also leave enemies to go join up with other groups of enemies, compounding the difficulty of later encounters. If you’re going to place enemies outside of combat, do it somewhere that’s inconvenient for them and relatively safe for you. If our enemies are too large to grapple, punt them 20 feet into the air. Open Hand Technique doesn’t care how big they are. Also remember that we don’t need to use these grapple tactics purely offensively. Creatures can choose to fail a saving throw, so you can grapple your allies to reposition them. You have better speed than anyone in the party, so, in an encounter with a lot of space, dragging allies around can tip things in your favor in a way that enemies have no way to counter. This is also the level at which Haste becomes an option. An ally casting Haste on you makes all of this doubly effective. |
| 6 | Unarmored Movement + 15 ft. Empowered Strikes Wholeness of Body | Empowered Strikes lets us get past nearly all damage resistances. Wholeness of Body provides a splash of healing. It’s not enough to feel exciting. |
| 7 | Evasion | Always fantastic. |
| 8 | ASI: Dex 18 -> 20 | We do want more feats, but we also really need Dexterity to support all of our various shenanigans. |
| 9 | Acrobatic Movement | The intent of this feature is to allow monks to perform incredible feats of physicality, allowing you to non-magically traverse all sorts of terrain. And that’s what we’re going to do. Sort of. Acrobatic Movement doesn’t care if we’re grappling. Now we can use Acrobatic Movement to drag our enemies across liquid surfaces or up vertical surfaces. That’s right, we can grapple enemies and run them straight up a wall. With 45 feet of movement, Dash as a Bonus Action, and Feline Agility, we have 180 feet of movement to work with. Grapple an enemy, haul them up the tallest vertical thing you can find, and drop them. If you don’t have enough movement to run back down the wall, that’s fine. You have Slow Fall, and you can negate 45 points of falling damage at this level. Maximum fall damage is 20d6 (average 70), so you’re racing toward the ability to negate average fall damage from terminal velocity. |
| 10 | Unarmored Movement + 20 ft. Heightened Focus Self-Restoration | Heightened Focus further expands our Tabaxi taxi capabilities. If you spend a Focus Point when you use Step of the Wind, you can now bring a willing creature with you. You can grapple one ally with each hand and drag a third along behind you with Step of the Wind, allowing you to transport a party of 4 at Tabaxi taxi speed. If you Dash as your Action in the same turn and use Feline Agility, you can haul your entire party 300 feet in 6 seconds, which is roughly 34 miles per hour. You’re a Tabaxi taxi moving at actual taxi can speed (albeit briefly). Heightened Focus also takes Flurry of Blows from 2 attacks to 3 attacks, making Open Hand Technique even more awesome. |
| 11 | Fleet Step | We’ve been using Step of the Wind frequently until this point. Now we can go back to always punching things with our Bonus Action because we get the free Dash anyway. We have enough speed and attacks at this point that we can start Tabaxi taxi-ing enemies in batches. We have 5 attacks in total, so we could theoretically grapple and move 5 enemies, dropping them as we go only to run back to grab more. You can drag all of your enemies into a nice, neat ball, then race back to safety before your party fireballs the lot of them. |
| 12 | Feat: Speedy Con 15 -> 16 | +10 feet of speed brings us to 60 feet, raises our Constitution modifier to +3, and now we feel much safer running through enemies’ reach when we’re playing the Tabaxi taxi. |
| 13 | Deflect Energy | Yes, now you can deflect Eldritch Blast. |
| 14 | Unarmored Movement + 25 ft. Disciplined Survivor | Proficiency in all saving throws, including death saves. Also, we get even faster. |
| 15 | Perfect Focus | Open Hand Technique requires us to use Flurry of Blows, so starting a fight with no Focus Points is very limiting. |
| 16 | ASI: Wis 16 -> 18 | Boring, but impactful. |
| 17 | Quivering Palm | 65 damage in exchange for 2 attacks and 4 FP on a Con save for half. Using those points for Flurry of Blows and Stunning Strike will be more impactful in an extended fight. Quivering Palm’s appeal is speed. Use it to quickly eliminate high-priority targets when you just need to nuke something real fast. This isn’t a go-to tactic, but it is a tool in your toolbox. |
| 18 | Unarmored Movement + 30 ft. Superior Defense | Our speed is now 70 feet. We won’t need Superior Defense often. Save it for really hard fights. |
| 19 | Epic Boon: Boon of Speed Dexterity 20 -> 21 | Another 30 feet of speed dramatically expands the range at which we can do our Tabaxi taxi shenanigans. With a speed of 100 feet before considering buffs like Longstrider and Haste) and a guaranteed Dash every turn, we can give ourselves 400 feet of movement without spending our Action, easy allowing us to run two enemies up a wall 200 feet, drop them for 20d6 damage each, fall down while negating the fall damage, then potentially grapple them again, and then drag them up the wall again. If you manage this, I recommend running back within 5 feet of the ground to avoid taking fall damage and falling prone. And to think. Other Monks are just punching people, while you’re doing 20d6 to two targets and also punching people. Sure, this requires a 200-foot-tall vertical service, and those are vanishingly rare. But anything 30 feet tall or taller is enough to justify Tabaxi taxi-ing an enemy up a wall instead of just hitting them. If there’s a body of water nearby, you can run them 200 feet off shore and make them swim back at half speed. Barring those options, we can still haul enemies ridiculously far away to inconvenient places and either solo them or abandon them there. |
| 20 | Body and Mind | That math feels so good. We didn’t get our Wisdom to 20, so we’re not at 24 Dex/24 Wis, but 24/22 is still pretty awesome. |
