Monks are a curious class inDungeons & Dragons. They take a few levels to become powerful, and even then, they’re not the strongest class in the game by any means. What makes them challenging for Dungeon Masters is how easily they escape from multiple situations, having an amazing defense as part of their features.
It also doesn’t help how much movement they can have, making their lives as melee characters relatively easy as they run through the battlefield, attacking and stunning multiple foes with their high number of attacks and ki points. Thus, how do you ensure your monk is being properly challenged throughout the adventure?
Our goal here is to help you balance difficult and deadly encounters in the game. Using these tricks too often or using many of them in the same fight can render the monk useless, which won’t be a fun time for your player or could even kill the character. Use these tricks with moderation.
1Give Yourself A Small Health Boost Or Increase The Number Of Enemies
Dealing With Low-Level Monks Is Simple
Monks are not particularly difficult to handle at first. They can have a decent AC (Armor Class) by combining their dexterity and wisdom, making them a bit harder to hit, but they won’t have a lot of health either, so these things annul one another.
The biggest issue here is that they’re a class that easily gets two attacks at level one, with that being a default for all monks, regardless of build ideas. Make sure your enemies can take multiple hits, either by having a decent health bar or by having more enemies around (the second option will make the fight harder than the first option).
Still, this is a low-level scenario, so be careful not to go too overboard; one extra enemy or a hard-to-kill opponent this early can result in a TPK (Total Party Kill).
2Use Difficult Terrain
Restrict Their Movement
Monks have a feature called Unarmored Movement, which will give them extra movement as long as they’re not wearing armor, and that movement also increases at certain levels. Level nine also lets them walk on non-solid surfaces, such as running through water and even running on walls.
To make sure they won’t move around as much, you can restrain or paralyze them, but you can also use difficult terrain, either from the scenario or through spells that turn the terrain difficult, such as the Plant Growth spell.
As a side note, if your monk player has wings, you’re able to instead use tactics to make them fall, such as the previous conditions or abilities like trip attack, as well as simply having a lot of ranged attacks or enemies that also fly. They’ll likely not take the fall damage, as we’ll get into, but enemies will be able to reach them at least.
3Have A Good Constitution Score
Don’t Get Stunned
One of the most powerful features monks get is Stunning Strike, which forces an enemy they hit into a constitution Saving Throw, and they’ll be stunned if they fail said roll. Monks can use this whenever - at the cost of a ki point per attempt - and a high-level monk can punch multiple people and still apply a Stunning Strike on each punch with ease.
The easy solution here is to give your creatures a decent constitution bonus accompanied by proficiency in constitution Saving Throws. For bosses, you can go as far as giving them immunity from being stunned or using Legendary Resistance.
4Beware Of Saving Throws
Especially Dexterity
This won’t be relevant at first, but as your monk levels up, making them fail their Saving Throws will become a harder challenge. At level seven, they get Evasion just like rogues, meaning that every time they pass a dexterity Saving Throw, they’ll take no damage, and they’ll only take half when they fail. In other words, they can evade a Fireball unscathed.
Then, at level 14, they get proficiency at all Saving Throws, and they can use ki points to re-roll a failed save. They’ll still take half the damage (if it’s not a dexterity roll), but in these situations, you may have a better chance with a direct attack than forcing these rolls on them.
5Beware Of The Conditions You’re Using
They Can Avoid A Few Things With Ease
A good way to thwart your players is to apply conditions on them - we even mentioned before about using restrained and paralyzed conditions on them, with the latter being one of the strongest options against anyone. There are two particular conditions you should avoid at higher levels, though: charmed and frightened.
At level seven, they can use their action to end any of these conditions on themselves. While that isn’t a complete loss since they’ll have to waste their action to do so, you can cause a lot more damage through other conditions - not to mention the whole Saving Throw ordeal we just mentioned, lowering the chances of applying a condition to even work in the first place.
6Don’t Rely On Fall Damage
Dropping Them Is Not Helpful
Few things are as fun in combat as using the environment to your advantage. Having the opportunity to drop an enemy is quite a fun thing to pull off, but there are also a few ways to avoid fall damage. One of these ways is being a monk.
They can even start doing that relatively early, at level four, and depending on the height they fall, it’s easy for them to take no damage (long falls can work, but then they can also be fatal). You have a better chance at simply attacking repeatedly rather than dropping them somewhere. Or use your shove to knock them prone and get advantage on your attacks instead of pushing.
7Rely On Magical Ranged Attacks
They Can’t Deflect It
A safe way to deal with melee enemies is through ranged attacks. However, monks can catch ranged attacks that are thrown at them to reduce damage, and if they manage to reduce it to zero, they can expand a ki point to throw the projectile back.
That means shooting an arrow at them could potentially end up with your archer getting killed by their own attack. Magic attacks don’t have this issue, however, so feel free to use Fire Bolt, Eldritch Blast, and many others on the monk.
Alternatively, you’re able to have minions do that and intentionally trigger Deflect Missiles to goad your player into wasting their ki points, preventing other tricks from being used in the fight, such as Flurry of Blows or the aforementioned Stunning Strike.
