My Next Build: The Way of Fury

Hey folks, I am in the testing and footage part of my next build and thought y’all might enjoy a sneak peek! I’m also scripting a companions tier list for the entire BG series, I will be posting an early look at that for y’all soon as well!

The Way of Fury – Barbarian 6/Monk 6

This build combines Barbarian and Monk to get make an unstoppable brawling juggernaut.

Here is the gist. Late game Monks are very potent damage dealers that lack durability. Late game Barbarians have raid boss durability, but lack damage. Combining them synergizes into a build that is both insanely durable and has high damage.

Becoming an Unkillable Raid Boss

So, what are the core features which synergize? The first is Bearheart + Aspect of Stallion + Step of the Wind: Dash. I discussed this before with my Queenguard Karlach build. Wildheart Barbarians can get Aspect of the Stallion, which adds double their Barbarian level as temporary hit-points every time they dash. Bearheart gives resistance to all damage types except psychic while raging, which practically doubles the value of the temp HP from stallion. It’s a beautiful combo, but Barbarians on their own don’t have a way to dash on a bonus action besides Eagleheart, which is mutually exclusive to Bearheart. This is where Step of the Wind: Dash enters. At level 2, Monks can spend a kit point to Dash on a bonus action, unlocking the Bearheart + Aspect of Stallion combo!

Late game, we can also get the Bonespike Garb, which adds flat damage reduction and retaliation damage that scales with our constitution score. As I’ve said before, flat damage reduction synergizes beautifully with resistances stacking from Bearheart, since the percentage reduction is applied before the flat reduction, giving us even more value from the temporary HP! The retaliation damage is also great for us since we want to be building max constitution anyways.

Becoming an Offensive Murder Machine

But what about damage? There are three core factors to building great melee damage in BG3. They are:

1. Making lots of attacks
2. Hitting every attack
3. Dealing lots of damage on every hit

This build excels at all three!

Making Attacks

First, making attacks. We get extra attack, so that is two attacks on our action. We’ll also Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows, which gives us an attack on our bonus action every round OR two attacks on our bonus action if we spend a ki point. So, we’ve got 3-4 attacks per round; this is a good start.

The next step is to get more bonus actions. We don’t have the levels to pick up Fast Hands from a Rogue dip, so lets put that option aside. We can still get more bonus actions with the Helm of Grit in act 3. This will proc as long as we are below half HP, which is doable for us, because even at half HP we are extremely durable for the reasons we discussed in the section above. If we choose the Way of the Open Hand as our Monk subclass, we can also get Wholeness of Body, which will give us another bonus action per turn for three turns as well as return ki points. Its once per long rest, so save it for boss fights.

Add all these up we have a baseline of 4 attacks per round (5 if hasted) but can go as high 8 attacks per round (9 if hasted) if we spend the resources. This is a lot of attacks!

Hit Accuracy

So, we are making a lot of attacks, but can we hit them? Yes! Monk and Barbarian combine for the highest consistent accuracy in the game that I know of. Barbarians give Reckless Attack for advantage every round. Monks + Tavern Brawler doubles our strength bonus. We’ll miss one in every 400 attacks, roughly. Its insane!

Damage Calculation

Now all we have to do is stack as much damage on our attacks as possible. We’re taking Tavern Brawler + Strength Elixirs, so that’s a +10-14 bonus to damage there. Late game, we’ll also be utilizing the overloaded Gloves of Soul Catching, which will give us an extra 1d10 force damage per hit (5.5 extra damage per hit on average). From our classes, we get +2 damage while raging and + 1d6 psychic damage from Manifestation of Mind. We can get another 1d4 psychic damage from Psionic Overload tadpole power (once per short rest). Naturally, we can then double all that psychic damage with the Resonance Stone, for a total of +12 psychic damage per hit on average. Callous Glow Ring can get us an additional +2, and finally, since we’ll be dashing every now and then to refresh our temp HP, we can grab linebreaker boots for the occasional bonus to damage from wrath.

Here is what our bonus damage will look like late game:

• Base Damage: 3.5
• Tavern Brawler: 14
• Rage: 2
• Manifestation of Mind: 3.5
• Psionic Overload: 2.5
• Resonance Stone: 6
• Gloves of Soul Catching: 5.5
• Callous Glow Ring: 2
• Total: 39

This is not factoring in Linebreaker boots or crits. Multiply this by our number of attacks and we are averaging hundreds of damage per round against even the highest AC targets in the game!

Additional Notes

This build is also highly mobile, because it gets movement speed boosts both from Monk and Barbarian and can dash on a bonus action. Here is a spreadsheet guide to the build.