Summary
Monks are the masters of balance, serenity, and peace — everywhere is peaceful after you beat everyone up, after all.Baldur’s Gate 3adapts and significantly buffs the monks from Dungeons & Dragons, making them one of the most dangerous melee combatants, if not the most dangerous, thanks to these changes and proper equipment.
All that said, you may optimize your monk even more with the game’s races, ensuring that whichever you choose will fit the gameplay style you want, whether it’s fighting from the shadows, bending elements with your ki, or the old-fashioned punches and kicks on people’s faces.
Updated on June 04, 2025, by Lucas Olah:Sadly, the game has had no new races added to it - unless you’re counting mods. Still, it’s always nice to look back upon previous work and check if our information holds up, ensuring your monk will be as deadly as you can make them. There’s also one race we looked over, the half-orcs, which, while not the best compared to other entries here, is still worth talking about. Thus, let’s take a deep breath and get our flurry of blows ready.
8Wood Elf
For A Longsword Monk
An important feature that will be significant for a few race choices here is the Monk Weapon trait. It allows youto use Dexterityinstead of Strength on any weapon you’re proficient with, as long as they don’t have the Heavy or Two-Handed properties.
Versatile weapons — weapons that can be used with one or two hands — don’t count as Two-Handed, and that opens some opportunities.
Every elf is proficient with longswords, giving you access to many weapons you may find on your adventure. They also come with free Perception, resistance against charm effects, immunity from being put to sleep, and Darkvision.
We recommend wood elves because they also get Stealth skill and extra movement, which will stack with all the bonus movement from your class, letting you go pretty far without dashing.
7Wood Half-Elf
Not As Good As The Elf, But Far From Bad
The benefits for the wood half-elf aren’t too different from the usual wood elf. You’ll still get Darkvision, resistance to Charm, immunity to Sleep, extra movement, and the Stealth skill. The major changes are the lack of free Perception and weapon proficiencies.
Most weapon proficiencies here are two-handed, meaning they won’t serve you. In the end, you’ll still get a good bonus, light armor proficiency, or shield proficiency if you don’t want to focus on wisdom, and you’ll be able to use adexterity-based glaivefrom Act 3, though it still won’t count as a monk weapon. Still, while the wood half-elf is effective, we recommend the wood elf over them.
6Githyanki
Everywhere Is Within Reach
The gith are another option for wielding longswords, but the rest of their features change significantly. They get Astral Knowledge, which will help you diminish your weak skills and even help with dialogue,as Charismais likely not your strong suit.
But the most significant benefit here is mobility. As you level up, you’ll get Enhance Leap andMisty Step. Jumping comes from Strength, which you probably don’t have either, so the bonus is very helpful, along with Misty Step, ensuring you’ll reach opponents even if they’re exceptionally far.
Monks eventually get a 6m bonus to their jump, which also stacks here, not to mention their constant movement speed boosts, making gith monks one of the best builds in terms of sheer mobility.
5Gold Dwarf
Less Squishy Than The Average Monk
Dwarves also have great potential to become monks. Similar to Elves, they get a few extra weapon proficiencies, with one of them being warhammers. They have the same damage and properties as the longswords, but their damage type is bludgeoning, which is slightly better than slashing due to enemies' resistances and weaknesses.
Dwarves, in general, get resistance against poison, a pretty common effect, thus making the resistance useful, along withDarkvision, and Gold Dwarves, in particular, get a slight buff to their hit points, which is pretty helpful considering that the monk’s health is based on the d8, a relatively low hit die.
4Duergar
Hit Harder, Hide Better
We have one more dwarf subrace worth mentioning. The Duergar will get everything mentioned above minus the hit point increase. Instead, they’ll get Superior Darkvision (doubling the range to 24m), and they’ll get both Enlarge at level three and Invisibility at five.
Invisibility alone is highly useful as you can start many surprise rounds, and Enlarge will increase your damage a bit, making it useful for emergencies. They are a good fit for Way of the Shadow, though they’ll work with any subclass.
3Half-Orc
Resist Death And Be Brutal
While half-orcs may not be the best option in the long run, they are a good choice for early levels, especially inan honor mode campaign,where survival is very important. Aside from a free Intimidation proficiency, you get Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks. Oh, and Darkvision.
Savage Attacks give you an extra die when you land a critical attack with a melee weapon - sadly, your unarmed strikes don’t count. As for Relentless Endurance, you get to stay alive with a single hit point whenever someone drops you to zero hit points once per long rest. While Savage Attacks will eventually be less useful if you stop using weapons, Relentless Endurance is effective all the way.
Though you can wield longswords and warhammers with these builds, unarmed strikes may hit harder depending on your subclass and gear, as many gloves will help with unarmed strikes. Weapons will be useful at early levels, though, since it takes a while for you to fully replace them with your fists.
Still, there are powerful weapons in the game that are good to wield, and their chance to hit may be higher even if the damage is lower.
Feel free to research the game’s legendary weapons, see what fits, and still ensure your unarmed attacks hit hard, as you’re able to use them with your bonus action.
2Halfling (Any)
Who Needs Skills When You Have Luck?
Halflings are perfect as any class, as their features are just good in general, meaning you should consider halfling for any character you make. They have Halfling Luck, allowing them to re-roll any natural one once, regardless if it’s for Attack Rolls, Saving Throws, or Ability Checks, meaning you have to roll two nat-ones in a row to actually get a critical failure.
Both subraces work well here. Lightfoot gets an advantage on stealth checks, meaning Way of the Shadow will also benefit from them, while Strongheart will give you resistance to poison similar to dwarves, which is more useful if you intend to make a monk that goes head-first into danger and stays in the frontline, as resistances can save your small health bar from imminent danger.
Both halflings and dwarves get less movement speed, but due to monk’s extra movement, it balances things out. You’ll still move a lot as a monk even if you pick one of these races.
1Dragonborn
Get A Resistance And Look Good While You’re At It
Despite the amazing aesthetic, dragonborns aren’t very good in terms of optimization. However, since monks don’t need many features to thrive, dragonborns can be a good choice merely due to the damage resistance they get, as you have many options to choose from.
Their breath weapon can be occasionally helpful, too, if your monk subclass doesn’t provide area attacks, as you may still use your bonus action to give two more punches along with it. We recommend cold or lightning damage, as few are resistant to these, or fire or poison for the resistance, though your breath weapon may be less effective, as resistance to these types is more common.
