Quote:
Originally Posted by
stoutstien
it's not a good choice until after you max your Dex/wisdom. The long death features l work better the higher your defense is. The THP last longer if you don't get hit and the master of death works better the less times it's required. It's sounds counter intuitive but the same hold true for the feat. The less it's needed the better it gets.
Basically. There are quite a few factors at work here that all add up.
1) First, being a Hill Dwarf delays your Dexterity progression, which is absolutely crucial for a Monk both offensively and defensively. Taking Dwarven Fortitude aggravates this drawback, to the point that with point buy you won't even have enough ASIs to max Dex and Wis by level 20.
So for example, in order to compete with a Dex/Wis race Monk, you'd need Hill Dwarf's benefits to be comparable to +2 AC, +2 initiative, +2 Dex saves, +2 to hit, +2 damage per hit (for a class that has many attacks), more Deflect Missiles reduction, +5 speed,
and the benefits of a different race. Even things like your poison resistance won't matter once your Monk gets straight up poison immunity at level 10.
And it's not like the Dex/Wis races are short on racial features. That Wood Elf over there gets +5 movement instead of -5, plus all the things that make elves good in general in 5e, and took Elven Accuracy without even slowing down their Dex/Wis progression. The VHuman just straight up gets an extra feat (which can easily be something like Tough, if they actually valued raw max HP above other things). The Aarakocra just sort of... does the unholy aarakocra things that inspired Alfred Hitchcock to direct horror classic "The Birds."
2) A Hill Dwarf will have more hit points, but each hit point they have is less valuable.
This is both because they're easier to hit (both with attacks and Dex/Wis saves) and have less active defenses (e.g. deflect missiles, initiative, stunning, movement, fear DC, stealth, simply killing the enemy sooner by doing more damage, etc).
3) The Dodge action basically multiplies how hard it
already is to hit you. If your AC sucks, (such as by being a dwarf Monk that's at -4 on their Dex/Wis progression), the way the math works out is that the Dodge action helps a lot less.
Basically
this curve is even more pronounced with Dodge.
4) The effectiveness of Long Death features are multiplied by Dex/Wis, too.
Every hit point generated by Touch of Death is more valuable if it's harder to take those hit points away. And you'll generate more of them if you have a better offense (such as by having +4 Dex or Wis, +10 movement speed, and Elven Accuracy on that Wood Elf). And you'll generate more of them from having a higher Wisdom modifier, too.
Likewise for Death Mastery. Once you're at the 0hp gate, it doesn't matter how much HP damage an enemy's doing per hit, only how often they hit. So if the enemy's missing your AC or Evasion-enhanced Dex saves more, it's gonna be meaningfully harder for an enemy to chew through your ki.
5) The healing aspect of Dwarven Fortitude has a few factors that limit it.
Dwarven Fortitude only does anything while you're actually Dodging in combat, which won't always be the best defensive choice compared to things like Stunning Flurry of Blows or Hour of Reaping or the like. Depends on the situation.
It also doesn't actually increase your total amount of healing throughout the day; it just lets you use one of your hit dice sooner rather than later in the adventuring day.
Also, you're always going to be getting 1d8+4 per dodge action (assuming point buy build). That doesn't increase as you level up.
This small amount of healing, especially attached to a specific action choice, can be rather situational for a Long Death Monk in practice. For example: Got knocked to the death gate and stayed up with Mastery of Death? Well, now you can Dodge and go up to 9 hp! Which... may not actually change the number of hits it takes to trigger another Mastery of Death ki point being used up.