All Levels: The "Forgive me Sensei"
Race
For the race we will use a variant human with the point buy system. This time we are trying to maximize the amount of damage we can do in one turn as a monk. And for that we need a feat, the magic initiate feat.
Stats
Here Dexterity will be our most important stat as it will be the modifier for our ultimate combo. Wisdom will help us for our armor class and some class features. Finally Constitution will give us an extra life point every level we obtain.
We choose warlock and get the hex spell. Which will let us do an extra 1d6 points of damage every hit we land.
Magic Initiate: Choose a class: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You learn two cantrips of your choice from that class's spell list. In addition, choose one 1st-level spell to learn from that same list. Using this feat, you can cast the spell once at its lowest level, and you must finish a long rest before you can cast it in this way again.
Your spellcasting ability for these spells depends on the class you chose: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, or warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid; or Intelligence for wizard.
Stats
Our stats will look as follows:
Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Cha |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
8 | 16 | 13 | 10 | 16 | 10 |
Here Dexterity will be our most important stat as it will be the modifier for our ultimate combo. Wisdom will help us for our armor class and some class features. Finally Constitution will give us an extra life point every level we obtain.
Progression
We are going to do something different this time for this part. We are going to advance trough each level explaining how our ultimate combo will evolve.
Level 1
At this point our combo consists on just attacking with a weapon we have and making an unarmed strike while having Hex active. If we assume our monk is using a quarterstaff with two hands; this means that if we hit every attack the damage done will be:
1d8 + 1d4 + 2d6 + 6 → 20
The number at the right side of the arrow is the expected amount of damage given the dices rolled. This assumes that no attacks were critical hits and every attack hit. In the last part of this post will be some calculators to compute the expected damage given an enemy's armor class and under certain conditions.
Level 2
Now we have access to ki, and more important, flurry of blows. With another unarmored strike the damage we can do in a turn escalates to this number:
1d8 + 2d4 + 3d6 + 9 → 29
Level 3
Its time to choose our subclass, here we will choose the Way of the Four Elements and as our elemental disciple we will choose the Fangs of the Fire Snake.
Fangs of the Fire Snake: When you use the Attack action on your turn, you can spend 1 ki point to cause tendrils of flame to stretch out from your fists and feet. Your reach with your unarmed strikes increases by 10 feet for that action, as well as the rest of the turn. A hit with such an attack deals fire damage instead of bludgeoning damage, and if you spend 1 ki point when the attack hits, it also deals an extra 1d10 fire damage.With this, the damage we can do on a single turn by expending 1 ki point to trigger the fangs of the fire snake; 1 ki point to use flurry of blows; and 1 ki point to augment the damage of an unarmed strike is:
1d8 + 2d4 + 1d10 + 3d6 + 9 → 34.5
Level 4
Here we will take the ability score improvement and add 2 to our Dexterity, increasing it to 18. We can also use another ki point on our deadly combo to add another d10 to the mix, leaving it in:
1d8 + 2d4 + 2d10 + 3d6 + 12 → 42
Level 5
We get extra attack and another ki point! Also, our unarmored strikes are d6 now. Using our second attack of the extra attack as an unarmored strike we can do another extra d10 by expending a ki point. Adding these all up we get:
1d8 + 3d6 + 3d10 + 4d6 + 16 → 61.5
Level 6
We will multiclass to a fighter now given our high dexterity, and we will take dueling fighting style so we can use our weapon with one hand. You may be tempted to get the great weapon fighting style as we are using the quarterstaff with two hands. However the expected damage of the one-handed quarterstaff with one hand plus dueling is 5.5, while the two-handed quarterstaff with great weapon fighting is 5.25.
All of this will only mean we get a small damage boost to our ultimate combo as it just scales to:
1d6 + 2 + 3d6 + 3d10 + 4d6 + 16 → 62.5
Level 7
Now's when things get insane as we get access to Action Surge with our second fighter level. This means we get two more attacks with the quarterstaff on a turn, to a total of 6 attacks on one turn. This leaves us with:
3d6 + 6 + 3d6 + 3d10 + 6d6 + 24 → 88.5
Level 8
Here we get another power spike as we choose the Battlemaster Subclass on our third level of fighter. We will choose the Goading Attack, Menacing Attack and Trip Attack maneuvers. This will make our combo even more deadly as the enemy will also have to pass saving throws apart from the extra damage we are dealing.
We will use all our superiority dice in our ultimate combo, leaving us with a total damage of:
3d6 + 6 + 3d6 + 3d10 + 6d6 + 4d8 + 24 → 106.5
Level 9
Its time for our next ability score improvement as our fourth fighter level, which we are going to use to add 2 to our Dexterity, leaving it in 20. This will leave the combo in:
3d6 + 6 + 3d6 + 3d10 + 6d6 + 4d8 + 30 → 112.5
Level 10 - 12
We are back to our monk levels and our objective now is to replace the quarterstaff with our unarmed fire monk strikes! For our next ability score improvement we can take the Martial Adept Feat to learn some maneuvers and get an extra superiority die. All this will leave us with a total damage for our combo of:
6d6 + 6d10 + 6d6 + 5d8 + 30 → 127.5
Level 13 - 20
Here we want to get to be a level 11 fighter. This is because of Extra Attack (2) which will let us do 2 more attacks in our combo. Also by this point we get another superiority die and our superiority dice turn to d10s.
Our last level will be used as a monk so we can get one last ki point. As we can no longer improve the damage of every unarmed strike with a ki point, one of our attacks will be done with the quarterstaff. Adding all this our combo escalates to:
1d6 + 2 + 7d6 + 7d10 + 8d6 + 6d10 + 40 → 169.5
Result
I think up until level 12 this build gets very close to the maximum amount of damage you can do as a monk in one turn without magical weapons and other things of the sort. I haven't played any characters that are more than level 5 so I haven't really looked into the abilities of higher level classes. I also didn't took into account the possibility of teamwork, there are various spells that can further increase the power of this combo, like Enlarge/Reduce for example.
Now for the calculator I promised.
Expected Damage: 0