Monks in BG3 offer excellence in melee combats. Due to their expertise in hand-to-hand combat, Monks offer Wisdom and Dexterity as their main abilities. Selecting the best race for Monk in Baldur’s Gate 3 is to work on further increasing these attributes.
Monks make use of their kung fu abilities as well. However, getting into range encounters can also be a disadvantage. This class has a lot of steep steps to climb as it does not offer much compared to others. For this reason, we have selected the following races to help the Monk character overcome their shortcomings.
- Wood-Elves
- Drow
- High-Elves
- Deep Gnomes
- Githyanki
Wood-Elves
Wood Elves is a subrace of the Elves and best for Monk because it offers increased movement speed. This can help the Monks in stealth and Athletics. Furthermore, this subrace inherits Darkvision and the Elven weapon training that offers Proficiency in bows and long and short swords.
Drow
The Drow race mainly offers Proficiency in weapons like Hand crossbows, rapiers, and shortswords and increases your base racial speed to aid you in combats as usual. This race best suits a stealth-based approach in Baldur’s Gate 3. It also comes along with Darkvision and Fey Ancestry.
High-Elves
The high elves subrace from the Elves race gives you access to a cantrip that can benefit you in out-of-hand combats. You also inherit the base Elves race features previously mentioned in Wood-Elves, like Darkvision and Elven weapon training.
Deep Gnomes
With their default abilities like intelligence, wisdom, and charisma due to the Gnome Cunning ability, this race is also a good choice for the Monk in Baldur’s Gate 3. Specifically, Deep Gnomes offers Stone camouflage that allows you to pass stealth checks. It comes in handy when traversing evasively. Darkvision is also included in this subrace.
Githyanki
Unfortunately, this race does not offer subraces, but it gives you Martial Prodigy, which offers Proficiency in light and medium Armor, Shortswords, Longswords, and Greatswords. Cantrip is also included if you choose this race for the Monk class in BG3. Additionally, we have Astral Knowledge equipped here, giving you Proficiency in all skills of a chosen ability.
With all the best races for the monk mentioned above, we recommend you go with the Githyanki race for your Tavern Brawler Monk build. This will allow you to wear various armor sets and even use close-range melee weapons. However, if you go with Open Hand Monk build, the best race is Wood Elves.
