Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
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Massive Consensus as you put it is not necessarily right. It's mostly just a bunch of hearsay being parroted around by people who don't know better but believe they got it from somebody that did the actual work and they've deamed an authority in some way but don't question it themselves. Your baffled by people defending it or saying it's not that way because your simply saying "Group think is more important than the truth" We know for a Fact Group think is often not correct and is often based on misunderstood information if not outright lies. We know this to the point that in that same group think there are popular phrases such as "Gossip Travels Faster than the News." and "Outrage spreads farther and faster than the Truth." And many other various sayings that basically all boil down to the same thing. Popular Opinion is not necessarily always right and you should think and ask questions for yourself.
Or if you want a TLDR on Mass Consensus. Just remember that for the longest time Mass Consensus demanded that the world was flat and everything revolved around the earth. To the point that there are people that still believe this even to this day and that all proof to the contrary is just one big conspiracy theory.
Consensus is also necessary and present in all academic communities. When something has been discussed at length, the community (social, academic, political, etc) will generally have a common feeling on it, even if there are small deviations. Its true that this consensus COULD be completely wrong, but generally a large body of people who "study" something on a regular basis agreeing on something means that there is some merit to that consensus. We aren't talking about people who hear something once, accept it, and move on. We are talking about people who hear this idea from multiple different sources and who play the game on at least a semi-regular basis and interact with the source material.
Saying that the consensus is wrong and that everyone who believes it is just mindlessly parroting someone more powerful is dismissive of other people's opinions. You have every right to state what you think works well about the 4 elements subclass, but there is no need to undermine or insult others.
I still do not hold four elements monk as being a strong subclass, nor do I share your opinion that EK, AT, and Bladesinger are somehow relying on their subclass features to play catch-up with something that you claim the four elements monk is already good at. Its also worth reminding at this point that prior to Tasha's, four elements monk had no way of making any other martial attack on their turn after using their elemental discipline. They could not attack or use any other ki features like Flurry of Blows, so there was no blending of their magical abilities with their martial ones. That only came with Ki-Fueled Attack, and even then, an extra attack after using one is a nice bonus...but I wouldn't call it the pinnacle of a Gish playstyle either.
Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
Your actually wrong. Way of the Long Death actually requires multiple ki to be used. Maxing out at 20. Far above anything that 4 elements maxes out as.
Way of the Drunken Master's canceling out of disadvantage is per attack so it can actually cost you as much as 8 per single turn (assuming your not using their bigger FoB and then you can be more like 12 or 14ki expenditure potential for the single turn just to hit things since you do things like remove advantage before you roll and not after in most instances). This means that it's a second one that is actually costing you more than 4 elements. But it's easy to ignore because 3 to 4 (or 7) costs of 2ki a piece just looks so much better on paper than it actually is because you can fool yourself into thinking. "Oh that's not much" without actually thinking about what it means in practicality. To avoid multiple costs over multiple hits you will instead have to spend other resources for things like non damaging attacks, feats, or other things to turn lack of disadvantage on one hit into lack of advantage on other hits.
Way of the Astral Self as you've pointed out is 5 ki cost to activate all of it's abilities.
Mercy is another one that is that expensive with 5 ki points. For a level 3 spell mind you and can only be done at the top tiers of play where actual healers are casting much better resurrection type spells. It's not even close to 3 spells in one. Raise Dead is a full heal, The only thing that it doesn't replace is missing limbs but it does remove all hp damage. And it removes things like poisons and diseases from the target as well, I'd have to check the list to see all of the conditions it removes automatically. So it does everything mercy does but better and the Healer can do it at much lower level, with the downside being that it costs a decently pricey spell component to do so. But then as you get higher level these costs get mitigated and mean less anyway because available cash is just so much more and potentially time over several levels to stock up on these things for when they needed.
Searing Sunburst is not nearly as good as it's made out to be. It requires you to spend a bunch of ki just to be a fireball. 4 elements monk actually gets a fireball and then can upcast it if they choose to. Pretty much everybody would rather have 4 elements fireball than searing sunbursts fireball. And it's the only ability that Sun Soul has that is aoe. Unlike with 4 elements Monk which have aoe spells of various ranges available at various different levels. Searing Sunburst also has the issue that it has even more issues of subclass synergy than 4 elements does And even when you ignore those it's still lackluster.
Kensei's costs are low but constant if you want to make the best use out of them. On top of costs of various things about the core monk that people are goign to want to use. One of them which is overlooked is often the multiple ki over multiple strikes to attempt stunning strikes. To often achieve maybe one.
Way of the Open Hand is actually too cheap in general as a subclass but at the same time it's actually more limited in how a lot of it's stuff can work than most people take into account. And when it comes to it's so called ultimate move which costs 3 ki. It Actually trades the ki costs by requiring multiple actions in multiple turns to activate instead. People often ignore the fact that this ability costs you multiple actions to achieve. It's damage is only marginally more than what a monk can do over those same two turns without doing anything particularly flashy if the fail is succeeded. And if it's failed it still doesn't actually kill like it did in older editions. It just renders the target unconcious by dropping their hp to 0. So if your not there to finish the job. There is the very real possibility that they ultimately survive this supposed ultimate attack. In some ways your actually better off if you seriously injure them and they make the con save than you are if they fail the con save. Primarily because most things that are likely to fail the con save have lower hit point totals to begin with and so this power isn't likely doing significantly more damage by failing the save as passing it. People play up this whole power because in previous editions it would actually kill the target and on the grounds that it downs some truely formidable threat despite the fact that it's unlikely to do so in any practical application. But hey at least you get to try again by spending 2 more turns and you may have to actually try to use this ability more than once to really down your foes. If your wondering how I can say this. By basic math analysis the level 17 ability we're discussing does an average of 50 damage on a successful save. A monk making 4 attacks by spending 1 ki point for FoB is averaging 10hp a hit at level 17 for a total of 40 average damage a turn.
Shadows Abilities that you get for the subclass are just as high cost as 4 elements at low level (the same cost as 4 elements in fact). The Fact that they don't go up and that they are spells that people see as requirements is the reason why this is given a pass. All the rest of their abilities require particular setups to work or they just plain don't. The Teleport requires shadows to be present and to be in places that they are actually useful. Something that tends to get white washed but doesn't always happen. The Teleport also has another issue. You have to be able to see where your going. That means using your magical darkness to teleport actually doesn't work because you can't see into it. Not even if you also cast darkvision on yourself or you have it because of your race or a magical item. So while you can use it in darkness. The reality may be that you can't actually use it in darkness. The invisibility? It eats up your action economy. Particularly if your relying on it to get advantage for some reason. Basically halving the damage your doing. So it's true purpose is really only out of combat and first turn of engagement. Meaning that it's value can be somewhat limited. it's biggest weakness is also a low level spell primarily, but also various kinds of alternate senses. Invisibility is really one of the easiest beaten powers in the game, which make sense because it's also fairly prevalent. The ability is also made completely pointless by the time you get to level 18 because your better off spending the 4 ki for the much better invisibility if you want to be invisible. And the 17th level ability requires you to stay within threat range of enemies that are also engaged with other allies to make use of. Which means team work is required despite most theory crafting being all about just yourself and team work be damned.
All Monks actually have a 4 cost Improved Invisibility power. And Most Dex based Monks are going to waste multiple ki per turn on Stunning strikes meaning that it's real cost is not actually 1 but more like 2 or 3 or even 4 most of the time. People forget that a lot of monks played by most of the guides that are out there have easily gone through 4 or 5 Ki in a turn easily just to attain a single effect like Stunning Strike. And that new players have even complained about this being an issue with why they don't like monks in the past.
This whole "It all costs so much more" Is an argument that applies to monk in general and not just to 4 elements monk make it out to be. But people ignore it. Because they either don't take into account how many times they may have to actually use things in practice. Or they just don't plain look anywhere past surface level and optimal white room usage which rarely reflects what happens in actual play.
And while we're talking about it all. You need to apply things a bit more evenly than you really are. You act like the costs not going up on Shadow are a good thing because eventually they aren't so high cost but ignore the fact that you can actually basically do the same thing on a 4 elements monk. Some of their greatest abilities can actually be picked up at low level. Aren't spells, and if you don't want to you never have to use past their initial 1 to 2 ki point costs. But unlike Way of the Shadow, The 4 elements monk can always choose that they aren't getting enough out of them and beef them up to do more any time they want to. Fireball is great. But things like Water Whip and Fangs of the Fire Snake never actually lose their value. They are always beneficial. The fact that if and when I choose to I can turn a 3d10 move into as much as a 7d10 move just because i want to dependant upon my level and a few more ki points? That's not the bad thing that you make it out to be. it means I can scale these abilities based on whether I'm fighting the Fodder or I'm fighting the BBEG in ways that most other monks can't.
EVERYBODY CALM DOWN. Let's not let this become hostile. Please, no aggressive or even passive-aggressive statements on this thread.
Please.
I am calm. The Truth is that I have issues even knowing Tone at times. Including my own. So I've been told that I can come off fairly cold which can make people defensive.
Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
Your actually wrong. Way of the Long Death actually requires multiple ki to be used. Maxing out at 20. Far above anything that 4 elements maxes out as.
Way of the Drunken Master's canceling out of disadvantage is per attack so it can actually cost you as much as 8 per single turn (assuming your not using their bigger FoB and then you can be more like 12 or 14ki expenditure potential for the single turn just to hit things since you do things like remove advantage before you roll and not after in most instances). This means that it's a second one that is actually costing you more than 4 elements. But it's easy to ignore because 3 to 4 (or 7) costs of 2ki a piece just looks so much better on paper than it actually is because you can fool yourself into thinking. "Oh that's not much" without actually thinking about what it means in practicality. To avoid multiple costs over multiple hits you will instead have to spend other resources for things like non damaging attacks, feats, or other things to turn lack of disadvantage on one hit into lack of advantage on other hits.
Way of the Astral Self as you've pointed out is 5 ki cost to activate all of it's abilities.
Mercy is another one that is that expensive with 5 ki points. For a level 3 spell mind you and can only be done at the top tiers of play where actual healers are casting much better resurrection type spells. It's not even close to 3 spells in one. Raise Dead is a full heal, The only thing that it doesn't replace is missing limbs but it does remove all hp damage. And it removes things like poisons and diseases from the target as well, I'd have to check the list to see all of the conditions it removes automatically. So it does everything mercy does but better and the Healer can do it at much lower level, with the downside being that it costs a decently pricey spell component to do so. But then as you get higher level these costs get mitigated and mean less anyway because available cash is just so much more and potentially time over several levels to stock up on these things for when they needed.
Searing Sunburst is not nearly as good as it's made out to be. It requires you to spend a bunch of ki just to be a fireball. 4 elements monk actually gets a fireball and then can upcast it if they choose to. Pretty much everybody would rather have 4 elements fireball than searing sunbursts fireball. And it's the only ability that Sun Soul has that is aoe. Unlike with 4 elements Monk which have aoe spells of various ranges available at various different levels. Searing Sunburst also has the issue that it has even more issues of subclass synergy than 4 elements does And even when you ignore those it's still lackluster.
Kensei's costs are low but constant if you want to make the best use out of them. On top of costs of various things about the core monk that people are goign to want to use. One of them which is overlooked is often the multiple ki over multiple strikes to attempt stunning strikes. To often achieve maybe one.
Way of the Open Hand is actually too cheap in general as a subclass but at the same time it's actually more limited in how a lot of it's stuff can work than most people take into account. And when it comes to it's so called ultimate move which costs 3 ki. It Actually trades the ki costs by requiring multiple actions in multiple turns to activate instead. People often ignore the fact that this ability costs you multiple actions to achieve. It's damage is only marginally more than what a monk can do over those same two turns without doing anything particularly flashy if the fail is succeeded. And if it's failed it still doesn't actually kill like it did in older editions. It just renders the target unconcious by dropping their hp to 0. So if your not there to finish the job. There is the very real possibility that they ultimately survive this supposed ultimate attack. In some ways your actually better off if you seriously injure them and they make the con save than you are if they fail the con save. Primarily because most things that are likely to fail the con save have lower hit point totals to begin with and so this power isn't likely doing significantly more damage by failing the save as passing it. People play up this whole power because in previous editions it would actually kill the target and on the grounds that it downs some truely formidable threat despite the fact that it's unlikely to do so in any practical application. But hey at least you get to try again by spending 2 more turns and you may have to actually try to use this ability more than once to really down your foes. If your wondering how I can say this. By basic math analysis the level 17 ability we're discussing does an average of 50 damage on a successful save. A monk making 4 attacks by spending 1 ki point for FoB is averaging 15hp a hit at level 17 for a total of 60 average damage a turn. Quivering Palm only does a bit more damage for the times that it actually rolls more than average damage... and even fewer times it does more than even the max damage of a monks 4 martial arts attacks.
Shadows Abilities that you get for the subclass are just as high cost as 4 elements at low level (the same cost as 4 elements in fact). The Fact that they don't go up and that they are spells that people see as requirements is the reason why this is given a pass. All the rest of their abilities require particular setups to work or they just plain don't. The Teleport requires shadows to be present and to be in places that they are actually useful. Something that tends to get white washed but doesn't always happen. The Teleport also has another issue. You have to be able to see where your going. That means using your magical darkness to teleport actually doesn't work because you can't see into it. Not even if you also cast darkvision on yourself or you have it because of your race or a magical item. So while you can use it in darkness. The reality may be that you can't actually use it in darkness. The invisibility? It eats up your action economy. Particularly if your relying on it to get advantage for some reason. Basically halving the damage your doing. So it's true purpose is really only out of combat and first turn of engagement. Meaning that it's value can be somewhat limited. it's biggest weakness is also a low level spell primarily, but also various kinds of alternate senses. Invisibility is really one of the easiest beaten powers in the game, which make sense because it's also fairly prevalent. The ability is also made completely pointless by the time you get to level 18 because your better off spending the 4 ki for the much better invisibility if you want to be invisible. And the 17th level ability requires you to stay within threat range of enemies that are also engaged with other allies to make use of. Which means team work is required despite most theory crafting being all about just yourself and team work be damned.
All Monks actually have a 4 cost Improved Invisibility power. And Most Dex based Monks are going to waste multiple ki per turn on Stunning strikes meaning that it's real cost is not actually 1 but more like 2 or 3 or even 4 most of the time. People forget that a lot of monks played by most of the guides that are out there have easily gone through 4 or 5 Ki in a turn easily just to attain a single effect like Stunning Strike. And that new players have even complained about this being an issue with why they don't like monks in the past.
This whole "It all costs so much more" Is an argument that applies to monk in general and not just to 4 elements monk make it out to be. But people ignore it. Because they either don't take into account how many times they may have to actually use things in practice. Or they just don't plain look anywhere past surface level and optimal white room usage which rarely reflects what happens in actual play.
And while we're talking about it all. You need to apply things a bit more evenly than you really are. You act like the costs not going up on Shadow are a good thing because eventually they aren't so high cost but ignore the fact that you can actually basically do the same thing on a 4 elements monk. Some of their greatest abilities can actually be picked up at low level. Aren't spells, and if you don't want to you never have to use past their initial 1 to 2 ki point costs. But unlike Way of the Shadow, The 4 elements monk can always choose that they aren't getting enough out of them and beef them up to do more any time they want to. Fireball is great. But things like Water Whip and Fangs of the Fire Snake never actually lose their value. They are always beneficial. The fact that if and when I choose to I can turn a 3d10 move into as much as a 7d10 move just because i want to dependant upon my level and a few more ki points? That's not the bad thing that you make it out to be. it means I can scale these abilities based on whether I'm fighting the Fodder or I'm fighting the BBEG in ways that most other monks can't.
This analysis of their abilities seems to assume that you will be stuck in situations where you have to "upcast" all of the monks abilities to their maximum amount.
My analysis provided what the base cost for using the abilities are. Before even considering what situation you find yourself in (which could be infinite with various adventures and DM), four elements monks have to ante up more ki on average then the other subclasses, regardless of if its a specific situation that calls for upcasting or not.
No one makes a Long Death Monk spend 20 ki points to avoid death, thats a player choice (not to mention the scenario of one having to use the max possible ki points in one turn is incredibly unlikely). No one makes a Drunken Master try to negate every instance of disadvantage, thats a player choice. The minimum cost to use those features is 1 ki. But if you want to cast shatter or fireball? You gotta put up 3 or 4 ki points no matter how effective it ends up being in the long run.
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This analysis of their abilities seems to assume that you will be stuck in situations where you have to "upcast" all of the monks abilities to their maximum amount.
My analysis provided what the base cost for using the abilities are. Before even considering what situation you find yourself in (which could be infinite with various adventures and DM), four elements monks have to ante up more ki on average then the other subclasses, regardless of if its a specific situation that calls for upcasting or not.
No one makes a Long Death Monk spend 20 ki points to avoid death, thats a player choice (not to mention the scenario of one having to use the max possible ki points in one turn is incredibly unlikely). No one makes a Drunken Master try to negate every instance of disadvantage, thats a player choice. The minimum cost to use those features is 1 ki. But if you want to cast shatter or fireball? You gotta put up 3 or 4 ki points no matter how effective it ends up being in the long run.
Your Analysis does not actually take in base costs. It takes in the costs that are more favorable to the position that your taking. That you have the adamant stance that it costs more to be 4 elements Monk. When it does not.
Here's a reality for you. Without upcasting. The average Ki per ability possible at it's lowest is actually about 1.8ki in average cost (which is a very viable build) and not the basically 3.5 to 4 you made it out to be. You either went for the highest that you could find and then lowered it slightly while basically making the heavy assumption that as a 4 elements monk they are going to switch out for the highest level and highest cost abilities that they can at any particular time or you took all of the abilities well beyond the number that you can actually have to come up with your average number. you also ignored a lot of practical matters in your estimations when they weren't favorable to you about anything to do with any other subclass. When the reality and the practicality actually is much more varied and much different from what you made it out to be.
As for Long Death. I wasn't talking about their Cheat death ability... which could still easily cost 3 or 4 ki at least just from one or two opponents pushing them that far. I was talking about their level 17 ability which is their version of a killing blow type manuever. Which you've conveniently ignored or considered at bare minimum cost to make your story even knowing that people wouldn't actually use it that way and that many people consider the ability bad because they would in fact not use it that way.
Edit: I'll even do give an example just to show how your math isn't really correct. One of the more typical builds for 4 elements monks that I've seen that people enjoy is actually a little over 2 ki in average cost. At highest level it tends to Consist of Water Whip, Unbroken Air, Fangs of the Fire Snake, Hold Person, and then most often fireball though a few take Cone of Cold instead or trade into it at 17th level. The Ki costs of these abilities are 2, 2, 1, 3, and then 4 or 6 depending on fireball or Cone of Cold. Considering the ones that don't really change average out to 2 ki base cost... Your looking at 2.25 or 2.50 for average base cost of all of the abilities that your trying to say are more like 3.5.
Another deep flaw of Four Elements monks is how they have to spend their entire action on their abilities, since they're casting a spell, so none of them have any synergy with martial arts (or any of its many ki-powered abilities, like flurry of blows or stunning strike). Contrast with both of the Tasha's monks, who gain core abilities at L3 that fundamentally work with martial arts and flurry, or at least don't stop them (I don't, like, have an issue with monk abilities that instead buff patient defense or step of the wind).
Another deep flaw of Four Elements monks is how they have to spend their entire action on their abilities, since they're casting a spell, so none of them have any synergy with martial arts (or any of its many ki-powered abilities, like flurry of blows or stunning strike). Contrast with both of the Tasha's monks, who gain core abilities at L3 that fundamentally work with martial arts and flurry, or at least don't stop them (I don't, like, have an issue with monk abilities that instead buff patient defense or step of the wind).
This is actually incorrect. While Tasha's makes it so you can in fact attack through a bonus action.
The lack of synergies you mention are the primary ones and there are exceptions even to this, Which I've addressed before. Stunning Strikes and FoB might not be usable with the majority of them but that is far from the only abilities that a monk has or would even use. And the not working with Martial arts is mitigated by the fact that most of them do damage. But if you really want to be fully martial while using abilities from 4 Elements you can do so. Not only does Fangs of the Fire Snake work fully with Martial Arts, FoB, and Stunning Blows. But there are certain other indirect interactions that synergize such as the advantages to melee that Hold Person gives that Monks, or more likely their fellow party members can take a lot of advantage of since they tend to need the help in hitting and gain more out of crit fishing than the monk themselves does. And Hold Person has a potential for being effective multiple rounds for a single casting. Fly can be synergized by allowing you to be able to attack creatures that would normally be out of your reach such as aerial creatures where losing a single round to activate the Elemental Discipline is far less loss than what you would end up with either trying to ranged attack it or waiting around until it got close to the ground.
Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
I don't think you're being entirely honest here. As in there are some disingenuous comparisons being made.
Quivering Palm does, indeed, hit for a lot of damage even on a successful saving throw: 55 (10d10) necrotic damage to a single target. But by the same token, Breath of Winter is a 60-foot cone that deals 36 (8d8) cold damage to each target if they fail, or 18 cold damage if they succeed. Now, factor in the area of effect. The DMG adjudicates that, if not using a grid, as hitting six targets. Now we're talking about an average of 108 cold damage that's been spread out. It's important to remember that a lot of those elemental spells deal damage as an area of effect. That should not be ignored, nor should it be held against them.
Shadow Arts does grant several spells for cheap. They also stay cheap because they have no saving throws and cannot be upcast to increase in potency. Way of the Shadow monks get additional subclass features at 6, 11, and 17 because what little magic they do receive cannot grow in power.
And, as others have mentioned, a number of elemental disciplines have lengthy durations. Clench of the North Wind, River of Flame, and Rush of the Gale Spirits might only last 1 minute, but that could still be an entire fight. Ride the Wind and Wave of Rolling Earth can last for 10 minutes. Eternal Mountain Defense and Mist Stance can last for an hour. Shape the Flowing River might as well be permanent. Yes, it can be expensive in the heat of the moment. But it can also be efficient in the long term.
Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
I don't think you're being entirely honest here. As in there are some disingenuous comparisons being made.
Quivering Palm does, indeed, hit for a lot of damage even on a successful saving throw: 55 (10d10) necrotic damage to a single target. But by the same token, Breath of Winter is a 60-foot cone that deals 36 (8d8) cold damage to each target if they fail, or 18 cold damage if they succeed. Now, factor in the area of effect. The DMG adjudicates that, if not using a grid, as hitting six targets. Now we're talking about an average of 108 cold damage that's been spread out. It's important to remember that a lot of those elemental spells deal damage as an area of effect. That should not be ignored, nor should it be held against them.
Shadow Arts does grant several spells for cheap. They also stay cheap because they have no saving throws and cannot be upcast to increase in potency. Way of the Shadow monks get additional subclass features at 6, 11, and 17 because what little magic they do receive cannot grow in power.
And, as others have mentioned, a number of elemental disciplines have lengthy durations. Clench of the North Wind, River of Flame, and Rush of the Gale Spirits might only last 1 minute, but that could still be an entire fight. Ride the Wind and Wave of Rolling Earth can last for 10 minutes. Eternal Mountain Defense and Mist Stance can last for an hour. Shape the Flowing River might as well be permanent. Yes, it can be expensive in the heat of the moment. But it can also be efficient in the long term
These are all good points. While we can't assume that a spell will hit the maximum number of creatures within its area nor that they will all fail their saves, it would seem that as long as you target 3-4 creatures one of these high ki cost abilities would be better overall damage than just using Quivering Palm twice (unless of course both creatures have 200+ HP and fails their saves against quivering palm and drops directly to 0, but that's an extreme example).
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This analysis of their abilities seems to assume that you will be stuck in situations where you have to "upcast" all of the monks abilities to their maximum amount.
My analysis provided what the base cost for using the abilities are. Before even considering what situation you find yourself in (which could be infinite with various adventures and DM), four elements monks have to ante up more ki on average then the other subclasses, regardless of if its a specific situation that calls for upcasting or not.
No one makes a Long Death Monk spend 20 ki points to avoid death, thats a player choice (not to mention the scenario of one having to use the max possible ki points in one turn is incredibly unlikely). No one makes a Drunken Master try to negate every instance of disadvantage, thats a player choice. The minimum cost to use those features is 1 ki. But if you want to cast shatter or fireball? You gotta put up 3 or 4 ki points no matter how effective it ends up being in the long run.
Your Analysis does not actually take in base costs. It takes in the costs that are more favorable to the position that your taking. That you have the adamant stance that it costs more to be 4 elements Monk. When it does not.
Here's a reality for you. Without upcasting. The average Ki per ability possible at it's lowest is actually about 1.8ki in average cost (which is a very viable build) and not the basically 3.5 to 4 you made it out to be. You either went for the highest that you could find and then lowered it slightly while basically making the heavy assumption that as a 4 elements monk they are going to switch out for the highest level and highest cost abilities that they can at any particular time or you took all of the abilities well beyond the number that you can actually have to come up with your average number. you also ignored a lot of practical matters in your estimations when they weren't favorable to you about anything to do with any other subclass. When the reality and the practicality actually is much more varied and much different from what you made it out to be.
As for Long Death. I wasn't talking about their Cheat death ability... which could still easily cost 3 or 4 ki at least just from one or two opponents pushing them that far. I was talking about their level 17 ability which is their version of a killing blow type manuever. Which you've conveniently ignored or considered at bare minimum cost to make your story even knowing that people wouldn't actually use it that way and that many people consider the ability bad because they would in fact not use it that way.
Edit: I'll even do give an example just to show how your math isn't really correct. One of the more typical builds for 4 elements monks that I've seen that people enjoy is actually a little over 2 ki in average cost. At highest level it tends to Consist of Water Whip, Unbroken Air, Fangs of the Fire Snake, Hold Person, and then most often fireball though a few take Cone of Cold instead or trade into it at 17th level. The Ki costs of these abilities are 2, 2, 1, 3, and then 4 or 6 depending on fireball or Cone of Cold. Considering the ones that don't really change average out to 2 ki base cost... Your looking at 2.25 or 2.50 for average base cost of all of the abilities that your trying to say are more like 3.5.
All of the values I used for calculating were the base costs. I averaged all of the costs of all of the elemental disciplines excluding elemental attunement. Now, while a full build will not have all of the possible attunements, I cannot account for which ones a player is going to take by the time they reach level 17. So the most baseline thing I can do is average the ki cost for those listed in the PHB, which comes out to around 3.25 (I made some small error in my original calculation). Of course there will be builds that cost less and those that will cost more, but with a less costly build also comes less powerful abilities.
I did not make up any numbers used. All I did was take the most standard average possible and report the number I got and I did not include any extra ki points spent to upcast. Even your example of a build falls nowhere near the 1.8 average cost you claim, and it still relies on three of the cheapest options available without upcasting.
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This whole "It all costs so much more" Is an argument that applies to monk in general and not just to 4 elements monk make it out to be. But people ignore it. Because they either don't take into account how many times they may have to actually use things in practice. Or they just don't plain look anywhere past surface level and optimal white room usage which rarely reflects what happens in actual play.
This is misunderstanding their argument quite a bit. The fact that there are a lot of ways for a monk to spend ki is part of the problem they're highlighting because the 4E monk has to essentially opt-out to some extent from those baseline class features to utilize their subclass at all. You talk about a monk burning a bunch of ki to Stun as being comparable, but a 4E monk who burns Ki on stunning strike effectively loses their subclass (and of course, the opposite, a 4E monk who uses their subclass features loses a lot of their baseline). Far from ignoring it, it's precisely why some people are so frustrated with 4E's mechanics.
I did not make up any numbers used. All I did was take the most standard average possible and report the number I got and I did not include any extra ki points spent to upcast. Even your example of a build falls nowhere near the 1.8 average cost you claim, and it still relies on three of the cheapest options available without upcasting.
I don't think average cost is really meaningful though. Generally, you're going to cast elemental spells with a specific purpose in mind, not randomly to generate average distribution. Arguably their limited ki pool even incentivizes them to be conservative and judicious and therefore trend away from the more expensive options outside specific scenarios.
This whole "It all costs so much more" Is an argument that applies to monk in general and not just to 4 elements monk make it out to be. But people ignore it. Because they either don't take into account how many times they may have to actually use things in practice. Or they just don't plain look anywhere past surface level and optimal white room usage which rarely reflects what happens in actual play.
This is misunderstanding their argument quite a bit. The fact that there are a lot of ways for a monk to spend ki is part of the problem they're highlighting because the 4E monk has to essentially opt-out to some extent from those baseline class features to utilize their subclass at all. You talk about a monk burning a bunch of ki to Stun as being comparable, but a 4E monk who burns Ki on stunning strike effectively loses their subclass (and of course, the opposite, a 4E monk who uses their subclass features loses a lot of their baseline). Far from ignoring it, it's precisely why some people are so frustrated with 4E's mechanics.
This is a disengenuous argument. Because you can make the same claim about any of a number of these other abilities. Doing a bunch of stunning STrikes potentially means being unable to cast the spells of a Shadow Monk at low level. And Casting one of those spells before you get into combat can mean that you can do almost nothing in combat. Just like the accusations of the 2 ki cost abilities of the 4 elements monk at low levels.
Each time you Water Whip takes away from your ability to patient defense, Or Step of the Wind, or FoB or the like. And each time you do one of the later you potentially block out Water Whip.
But here's the thing. This kind of claim can be made all over the place on all kinds of subclasses if we ignore certain details about them and just make general statements. That's part of being the monk. Striking a Balance and using what is useful for the time. Trying to say this is ok on every other Monk when this is a Monk Problem but that it's not ok for the 4 Elements monk is showing your general disfavor over one instead of part of the strengths and weaknesses of Monk itself. This issue of it stopping you from doing a core monk thing or a subclass thing is true of all subclasses in some way shape or form if that's how you want to look at things. Just like Many monk things are blocked out when you do Subclass things because they cost you actions or Bonus Actions. Or you can't do certain things with your Subclass because you do a main class thing.
Quivering Palm means giving up a round of attacks and everything related to them (such as FoB and Stunning STrike) on top of the round that it takes to apply. But it goes deeper than that with Open Hand. The Tranquility power from the same subclass means you have to forgo ALL combat if you want it to be useful, but once you do a single thing that makes an enemy save or roll an attack against them you have forgone the Sanctuary ability for all encounters fort he rest of the day. It's litterally all or nothing in a be a monk, or be a bystander kind of choice. There is no in between.
The Spells of Shadow have the same issue as anything from 4 elements. They are all actions. Teleporting around always uses up your bonus action. meaning no FoB's and no patient defense and no step of the wind. Cloak of Shadows gives you invisiblity but it costs your action and you can do nothing offensive if you want to keep it functioning and it can still just fail if there just happens to be a big enough body of light between where you are and where you want to get to.
Sun Soul has almost no synergies. Most of it's abilities are either do sun Soul Stuff or do monk Stuff. There is very limited synergy in the Burning hands ability because it's a bonus action and can be stuck onto melee martial arts moves. But Radiant Bolt allows for no stunning Strikes. You could potentially FoB off it but reality is your rarely going to be positioned for that so your going to have to spend ki on it's version of FoB. It's Discount Fireball doesn't play well with most monk abilities. Sun Shield technically can be used in conjunction with Monk. But that's because it flies in the face of the entire rest of it's own subclass and if your playing to your subclass your likely not in range for it to work. And they still have to hit you with the right kind of attack. And it still requires your Bonus Action to set up and your Reaction to make use of.
Long Death either needs specific circumstances, Requires your Action which blocks FoB and Stunning Strike, and/or potentially requires a bunch of ki be poured into them to make them effective which drains your resources for all of your monk abilities.
Kensei is actually one of the better Synergistic Classes when it comes to the core Monk Abilities. But that doesn't stop people from giving it less synergy than it has because they want to capitalize on Weapon Damage so they basically take the stance that FoB is unusable and certain abilities can actually block out all other bonus action core monk abilities from usage. Though the biggest one adds to ranged combat. Sharpen the blade is a bonus action on top of a ki expenditure. Again stopping most monk abilities on the turn you use it.
But there are things about several of these that you can make counter arguments for like the fact that they last multiple turns and things like that. Such arguments can be made for some 4 elements monk abilities as well. There are several of them that either hit multiple targets, last multiple rounds, Or do something else in addition to causing damage that is being ignored. And there is always the option to either use them or use core monk abilities just like with any other monk of any other subclass.
I did not make up any numbers used. All I did was take the most standard average possible and report the number I got and I did not include any extra ki points spent to upcast. Even your example of a build falls nowhere near the 1.8 average cost you claim, and it still relies on three of the cheapest options available without upcasting.
The build I named is not the lowest cost possible build available. But you didn't bother to really look at the abilities to know that did you?
The one i named is one that is more common. And so what if it uses 3 of the 2 cost abilities? They are strong abilities that serve a strong purpose. I even know alterations to that build that your going to completely ignore and the fact that many of those alterations aren't actually made until higher level. I even stated the average cost of the abilities in the most common build which your choosing to ignore. which was much lower than your average. i stated the way you reached your number had to be one of two possibilities that weren't actually representative of many 4 elements monks and your even saying here that I was right.
You just went ahead and averaged everything to get an entirely misleading total that has little actual meaning because not all of those can be taken by the book. Not even lose to it since there are 17 abilities listed in the books and your only going to get 5 of them. And your going to get at max 2 of the level 17 abilities if you really build and try for it at a point where you have a lot more ki to use in general. I can even show how this is an unrealistic average just by breaking down the amount of things you get at different levels.
There is 1 cantrip (cost 0), There are a total of 7 abilities that cost ki and are gainable at the start, 2 added 6th level abilities, 3 11th level abilities, and 4 17th level abilities.
These high level abilities are going to skew the entire average upward by having some of the highest costs and between the top two levels having the highest costs. A person that really tries can have 3 of those abilities but the average build is not. The average build is going to have between 1 and 2 of the 7 abilities split between the 11th and 17th level brackets.
What does this mean for the averages? That your usually going to have more 1 and 2 cost abilities than you are going to have 4,5, and 6 cost abilities. The Lower Cost abilities also are not necessarily weaker. They tend to either have different purposes from the higher cost abilities or they tend to modify different things.
Even if somebody took a 4 and a 6 cost ability at level 11 and 17 there is still a very strong chance that they have a 1, 2, and 2. for their lower abilities which comes out at an average cost of 3. Even switching out a 2 for a 3 by insisting that one of every level division has to be bought because that's when you get a new power and it should be of max level still nets you an average cost of 3.
In short The averages that your choosing to use here are basically arbitrary and not telling the actual picture. It takes particular builds and particular efforts to push that number up but they aren't necessarily representative of actual play or the usefulness of various abilities at certain levels. 4 elements monks non-spell abilities at low level tend to be viable at higher levels of play for various reasons and make them practical to continue to keep in use in practice. But even if we ignore that, when your really looking there is a laundry list of abilities that cost as much or nearly as much ki for other Subclasses or combinations of abilities either from the core monk or from other Subclasses. Either in white room stacking or practical use that are going to add up to being just as much as those of 4 elements in most circumstances. It's only on the surface of looking at numbers without really looking at them indepth that the conclusion that it is so much more costly to use when actually reached.
Question. With Fist Of Unbroken Air it says on failed save you can push them up to 20 feet and knock prone. If you don’t want to knock them that far (maybe it takes them out of melee range of your frontliners) could you instead knock them back 5 feet and prone, or even 0-1 feet and prone? Like the air just knocks their feet out from under them?
Question. With Fist Of Unbroken Air it says on failed save you can push them up to 20 feet and knock prone. If you don’t want to knock them that far (maybe it takes them out of melee range of your frontliners) could you instead knock them back 5 feet and prone, or even 0-1 feet and prone? Like the air just knocks their feet out from under them?
By the Way it's written? You hit it anywhere within it's 30' range (it is not a purely melee ability). And then you can move it anywhere from 0' to 20' And you can knock it prone as well.
I could swear in my older book it was an or between knocking it prone and moving it. But looking it up through DDB and a couple other sources online since I don't have access to my book right now does in fact say AND after the Can. So you get any combination of distance and knocking it prone you wish with the way it is written now. To show how old my book is. It still has Water Whip as a Bonus Action.
Water Whip just for clarification is however an OR ability. Either Knock it prone or drag it a chosen distance toward you. Not both. It is not an "Can" and "And" ability like Unbroken Air.
I'd also point out that in practical builds I've seen If a person does go for a level 11 and a level 17 ability. Or pushes for 2 level 17 abilities. It's usually one of these two that they replace depending on the tactics of their party.
Question. With Fist Of Unbroken Air it says on failed save you can push them up to 20 feet and knock prone. If you don’t want to knock them that far (maybe it takes them out of melee range of your frontliners) could you instead knock them back 5 feet and prone, or even 0-1 feet and prone? Like the air just knocks their feet out from under them?
By the Way it's written? You hit it anywhere within it's 30' range (it is not a purely melee ability). And then you can move it anywhere from 0' to 20' And you can knock it prone as well.
I could swear in my older book it was an or between knocking it prone and moving it. But looking it up through DDB and a couple other sources online since I don't have access to my book right now does in fact say AND after the Can. So you get any combination of distance and knocking it prone you wish with the way it is written now. To show how old my book is. It still has Water Whip as a Bonus Action.
Water Whip just for clarification is however an OR ability. Either Knock it prone or drag it a chosen distance toward you. Not both. It is not an "Can" and "And" ability like Unbroken Air.
I'd also point out that in practical builds I've seen If a person does go for a level 11 and a level 17 ability. Or pushes for 2 level 17 abilities. It's usually one of these two that they replace depending on the tactics of their party.
I only have my copy from DDB, and noticed the difference in wording between Unbroken Air and Water Whip. That’s why I ask as it seems to make FoUA a more versatile option. The ability to knock prone then Ki Fueled Strike at advantage or the rest of the party getting advantage as well. Or being able to knock them back and prone if you need to get away, and various other situations where this control would be advantageous.
Question. With Fist Of Unbroken Air it says on failed save you can push them up to 20 feet and knock prone. If you don’t want to knock them that far (maybe it takes them out of melee range of your frontliners) could you instead knock them back 5 feet and prone, or even 0-1 feet and prone? Like the air just knocks their feet out from under them?
By the Way it's written? You hit it anywhere within it's 30' range (it is not a purely melee ability). And then you can move it anywhere from 0' to 20' And you can knock it prone as well.
I could swear in my older book it was an or between knocking it prone and moving it. But looking it up through DDB and a couple other sources online since I don't have access to my book right now does in fact say AND after the Can. So you get any combination of distance and knocking it prone you wish with the way it is written now. To show how old my book is. It still has Water Whip as a Bonus Action.
Water Whip just for clarification is however an OR ability. Either Knock it prone or drag it a chosen distance toward you. Not both. It is not an "Can" and "And" ability like Unbroken Air.
I'd also point out that in practical builds I've seen If a person does go for a level 11 and a level 17 ability. Or pushes for 2 level 17 abilities. It's usually one of these two that they replace depending on the tactics of their party.
I only have my copy from DDB, and noticed the difference in wording between Unbroken Air and Water Whip. That’s why I ask as it seems to make FoUA a more versatile option. The ability to knock prone then Ki Fueled Strike at advantage or the rest of the party getting advantage as well. Or being able to knock them back and prone if you need to get away, and various other situations where this control would be advantageous.
I can tell you that pulling them to you or knocking them down can be just as valuable depending on the group and a bit on your own style. Remember that knocking something down at a distance has the downside that it gives ranged attacks Disadvantage. So knocking them away and knocking them down could work against you or your allies as much as it could help. But I've found great use in pulling enemies into a small cluster of melee's so the melee characters don't ahve to move as much and can focus on things like protecting and attacking. It's also been useful for avoiding area's that are hazardous for various reasons that we would have had to engage enemies in more than once. So each one has quite a bit of value. They do similar but different things but both can be valuable and useful. Exactly which one is best will depend on your party and your style.
Water Whip pulling AND knocking prone would be borderline OP. Doing 3d10 damage AND taking a ranged character into reach of your melee fighters AND knocking them prone for said melee fighters would be tremendously powerful if the initiative sequences lines up right. It is much harder to set it up where you can Fist of Unbroken Air a character away from you but into a crowd of allies for them to take advantage of prone via melee attack advantage.
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Way of the Four Elements monk is the ONLY monk subclass that makes you spend 5 or 6 ki points to use its higher level abilities (spells) at their base cost. No upcasting, no "improving", base cost.
Way of the Open Hand: Your most costly ki feature is Quivering Palm at 3 ki points, which delivers 10d10 necrotic damage OR just reduces them to 0 HP. 3 ki points with 4 elements gets you a base level Shatter at best
Way of the Shadow: Your most costly ki feature is casting a Shadow Art at 2 ki points, and that cost never goes up. All of your other subclass features work without you spending ki
Way of the Drunken Master: Your most costly ki feature is Drunkard's Luck, which costs 2 ki points to cancel disadvantage.
Way of the Kensei: Your most costly ki feature is Sharpen the Blade, which costs up to 3 ki points providing a +3 bonus to weapon attack and damage rolls for a full minute
Way of the Sun Soul: Your most costly ki feature is arguably Searing Sunburst, which if you choose to expend 3 ki points gives you a radiant fireball with 8d6 damage. Granted there are differences between it and fireball, but in 4 elements 3 ki points isn't even enough to cast fireball. Searing Arc Strike is up there because it lets you cast burning hands for 2 ki points and upcast it, so the cost here is comparable to 4 elements. That being said, Sun Soul also gets Radiant Sun Bolt and Sun Shield and the base version of Searing Sunburst that cost nothing to use at their most basic level.
Way of Mercy: Your most costly ki feature is Hand of Ultimate Mercy. It costs 5 ki points and lets you bascially use a magical effect that falls somewhere between Revivify and Raise Dead but has the benefit of 1) not having a component cost 2) Restoring 4d10+wis hit points 3) removing a harmful effect on the creature. Thats like three spells in one for 5 ki points
Way of the Astral Self: Your most costly ki feature is Awakened Astral Self which costs 5 ki points. This effect is a buff that lasts for 10 minutes.
Averaging all of the Elemental Disciplines (besides attunement) the cost of using your disciplines comes out to around 3.5 ki to cast at their base level. All other monk features for other subclasses (outside of the capstones for Mercy and Astral Self and Searing Arc Strike) cost 3 ki or less. Sometime nothing at all.
Way of the four elements is the most ki costly subclass out of the bunch.
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Consensus is also necessary and present in all academic communities. When something has been discussed at length, the community (social, academic, political, etc) will generally have a common feeling on it, even if there are small deviations. Its true that this consensus COULD be completely wrong, but generally a large body of people who "study" something on a regular basis agreeing on something means that there is some merit to that consensus. We aren't talking about people who hear something once, accept it, and move on. We are talking about people who hear this idea from multiple different sources and who play the game on at least a semi-regular basis and interact with the source material.
Saying that the consensus is wrong and that everyone who believes it is just mindlessly parroting someone more powerful is dismissive of other people's opinions. You have every right to state what you think works well about the 4 elements subclass, but there is no need to undermine or insult others.
I still do not hold four elements monk as being a strong subclass, nor do I share your opinion that EK, AT, and Bladesinger are somehow relying on their subclass features to play catch-up with something that you claim the four elements monk is already good at. Its also worth reminding at this point that prior to Tasha's, four elements monk had no way of making any other martial attack on their turn after using their elemental discipline. They could not attack or use any other ki features like Flurry of Blows, so there was no blending of their magical abilities with their martial ones. That only came with Ki-Fueled Attack, and even then, an extra attack after using one is a nice bonus...but I wouldn't call it the pinnacle of a Gish playstyle either.
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Your actually wrong. Way of the Long Death actually requires multiple ki to be used. Maxing out at 20. Far above anything that 4 elements maxes out as.
Way of the Drunken Master's canceling out of disadvantage is per attack so it can actually cost you as much as 8 per single turn (assuming your not using their bigger FoB and then you can be more like 12 or 14ki expenditure potential for the single turn just to hit things since you do things like remove advantage before you roll and not after in most instances). This means that it's a second one that is actually costing you more than 4 elements. But it's easy to ignore because 3 to 4 (or 7) costs of 2ki a piece just looks so much better on paper than it actually is because you can fool yourself into thinking. "Oh that's not much" without actually thinking about what it means in practicality. To avoid multiple costs over multiple hits you will instead have to spend other resources for things like non damaging attacks, feats, or other things to turn lack of disadvantage on one hit into lack of advantage on other hits.
Way of the Astral Self as you've pointed out is 5 ki cost to activate all of it's abilities.
Mercy is another one that is that expensive with 5 ki points. For a level 3 spell mind you and can only be done at the top tiers of play where actual healers are casting much better resurrection type spells. It's not even close to 3 spells in one. Raise Dead is a full heal, The only thing that it doesn't replace is missing limbs but it does remove all hp damage. And it removes things like poisons and diseases from the target as well, I'd have to check the list to see all of the conditions it removes automatically. So it does everything mercy does but better and the Healer can do it at much lower level, with the downside being that it costs a decently pricey spell component to do so. But then as you get higher level these costs get mitigated and mean less anyway because available cash is just so much more and potentially time over several levels to stock up on these things for when they needed.
Searing Sunburst is not nearly as good as it's made out to be. It requires you to spend a bunch of ki just to be a fireball. 4 elements monk actually gets a fireball and then can upcast it if they choose to. Pretty much everybody would rather have 4 elements fireball than searing sunbursts fireball. And it's the only ability that Sun Soul has that is aoe. Unlike with 4 elements Monk which have aoe spells of various ranges available at various different levels. Searing Sunburst also has the issue that it has even more issues of subclass synergy than 4 elements does And even when you ignore those it's still lackluster.
Kensei's costs are low but constant if you want to make the best use out of them. On top of costs of various things about the core monk that people are goign to want to use. One of them which is overlooked is often the multiple ki over multiple strikes to attempt stunning strikes. To often achieve maybe one.
Way of the Open Hand is actually too cheap in general as a subclass but at the same time it's actually more limited in how a lot of it's stuff can work than most people take into account. And when it comes to it's so called ultimate move which costs 3 ki. It Actually trades the ki costs by requiring multiple actions in multiple turns to activate instead. People often ignore the fact that this ability costs you multiple actions to achieve. It's damage is only marginally more than what a monk can do over those same two turns without doing anything particularly flashy if the fail is succeeded. And if it's failed it still doesn't actually kill like it did in older editions. It just renders the target unconcious by dropping their hp to 0. So if your not there to finish the job. There is the very real possibility that they ultimately survive this supposed ultimate attack. In some ways your actually better off if you seriously injure them and they make the con save than you are if they fail the con save. Primarily because most things that are likely to fail the con save have lower hit point totals to begin with and so this power isn't likely doing significantly more damage by failing the save as passing it. People play up this whole power because in previous editions it would actually kill the target and on the grounds that it downs some truely formidable threat despite the fact that it's unlikely to do so in any practical application. But hey at least you get to try again by spending 2 more turns and you may have to actually try to use this ability more than once to really down your foes. If your wondering how I can say this. By basic math analysis the level 17 ability we're discussing does an average of 50 damage on a successful save. A monk making 4 attacks by spending 1 ki point for FoB is averaging 10hp a hit at level 17 for a total of 40 average damage a turn.
Shadows Abilities that you get for the subclass are just as high cost as 4 elements at low level (the same cost as 4 elements in fact). The Fact that they don't go up and that they are spells that people see as requirements is the reason why this is given a pass. All the rest of their abilities require particular setups to work or they just plain don't. The Teleport requires shadows to be present and to be in places that they are actually useful. Something that tends to get white washed but doesn't always happen. The Teleport also has another issue. You have to be able to see where your going. That means using your magical darkness to teleport actually doesn't work because you can't see into it. Not even if you also cast darkvision on yourself or you have it because of your race or a magical item. So while you can use it in darkness. The reality may be that you can't actually use it in darkness. The invisibility? It eats up your action economy. Particularly if your relying on it to get advantage for some reason. Basically halving the damage your doing. So it's true purpose is really only out of combat and first turn of engagement. Meaning that it's value can be somewhat limited. it's biggest weakness is also a low level spell primarily, but also various kinds of alternate senses. Invisibility is really one of the easiest beaten powers in the game, which make sense because it's also fairly prevalent. The ability is also made completely pointless by the time you get to level 18 because your better off spending the 4 ki for the much better invisibility if you want to be invisible. And the 17th level ability requires you to stay within threat range of enemies that are also engaged with other allies to make use of. Which means team work is required despite most theory crafting being all about just yourself and team work be damned.
All Monks actually have a 4 cost Improved Invisibility power. And Most Dex based Monks are going to waste multiple ki per turn on Stunning strikes meaning that it's real cost is not actually 1 but more like 2 or 3 or even 4 most of the time. People forget that a lot of monks played by most of the guides that are out there have easily gone through 4 or 5 Ki in a turn easily just to attain a single effect like Stunning Strike. And that new players have even complained about this being an issue with why they don't like monks in the past.
This whole "It all costs so much more" Is an argument that applies to monk in general and not just to 4 elements monk make it out to be. But people ignore it. Because they either don't take into account how many times they may have to actually use things in practice. Or they just don't plain look anywhere past surface level and optimal white room usage which rarely reflects what happens in actual play.
And while we're talking about it all. You need to apply things a bit more evenly than you really are. You act like the costs not going up on Shadow are a good thing because eventually they aren't so high cost but ignore the fact that you can actually basically do the same thing on a 4 elements monk. Some of their greatest abilities can actually be picked up at low level. Aren't spells, and if you don't want to you never have to use past their initial 1 to 2 ki point costs. But unlike Way of the Shadow, The 4 elements monk can always choose that they aren't getting enough out of them and beef them up to do more any time they want to. Fireball is great. But things like Water Whip and Fangs of the Fire Snake never actually lose their value. They are always beneficial. The fact that if and when I choose to I can turn a 3d10 move into as much as a 7d10 move just because i want to dependant upon my level and a few more ki points? That's not the bad thing that you make it out to be. it means I can scale these abilities based on whether I'm fighting the Fodder or I'm fighting the BBEG in ways that most other monks can't.
I am calm. The Truth is that I have issues even knowing Tone at times. Including my own. So I've been told that I can come off fairly cold which can make people defensive.
This analysis of their abilities seems to assume that you will be stuck in situations where you have to "upcast" all of the monks abilities to their maximum amount.
My analysis provided what the base cost for using the abilities are. Before even considering what situation you find yourself in (which could be infinite with various adventures and DM), four elements monks have to ante up more ki on average then the other subclasses, regardless of if its a specific situation that calls for upcasting or not.
No one makes a Long Death Monk spend 20 ki points to avoid death, thats a player choice (not to mention the scenario of one having to use the max possible ki points in one turn is incredibly unlikely). No one makes a Drunken Master try to negate every instance of disadvantage, thats a player choice. The minimum cost to use those features is 1 ki. But if you want to cast shatter or fireball? You gotta put up 3 or 4 ki points no matter how effective it ends up being in the long run.
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Your Analysis does not actually take in base costs. It takes in the costs that are more favorable to the position that your taking. That you have the adamant stance that it costs more to be 4 elements Monk. When it does not.
Here's a reality for you. Without upcasting. The average Ki per ability possible at it's lowest is actually about 1.8ki in average cost (which is a very viable build) and not the basically 3.5 to 4 you made it out to be. You either went for the highest that you could find and then lowered it slightly while basically making the heavy assumption that as a 4 elements monk they are going to switch out for the highest level and highest cost abilities that they can at any particular time or you took all of the abilities well beyond the number that you can actually have to come up with your average number. you also ignored a lot of practical matters in your estimations when they weren't favorable to you about anything to do with any other subclass. When the reality and the practicality actually is much more varied and much different from what you made it out to be.
As for Long Death. I wasn't talking about their Cheat death ability... which could still easily cost 3 or 4 ki at least just from one or two opponents pushing them that far. I was talking about their level 17 ability which is their version of a killing blow type manuever. Which you've conveniently ignored or considered at bare minimum cost to make your story even knowing that people wouldn't actually use it that way and that many people consider the ability bad because they would in fact not use it that way.
Edit: I'll even do give an example just to show how your math isn't really correct. One of the more typical builds for 4 elements monks that I've seen that people enjoy is actually a little over 2 ki in average cost. At highest level it tends to Consist of Water Whip, Unbroken Air, Fangs of the Fire Snake, Hold Person, and then most often fireball though a few take Cone of Cold instead or trade into it at 17th level. The Ki costs of these abilities are 2, 2, 1, 3, and then 4 or 6 depending on fireball or Cone of Cold. Considering the ones that don't really change average out to 2 ki base cost... Your looking at 2.25 or 2.50 for average base cost of all of the abilities that your trying to say are more like 3.5.
Another deep flaw of Four Elements monks is how they have to spend their entire action on their abilities, since they're casting a spell, so none of them have any synergy with martial arts (or any of its many ki-powered abilities, like flurry of blows or stunning strike). Contrast with both of the Tasha's monks, who gain core abilities at L3 that fundamentally work with martial arts and flurry, or at least don't stop them (I don't, like, have an issue with monk abilities that instead buff patient defense or step of the wind).
This is actually incorrect. While Tasha's makes it so you can in fact attack through a bonus action.
The lack of synergies you mention are the primary ones and there are exceptions even to this, Which I've addressed before. Stunning Strikes and FoB might not be usable with the majority of them but that is far from the only abilities that a monk has or would even use. And the not working with Martial arts is mitigated by the fact that most of them do damage. But if you really want to be fully martial while using abilities from 4 Elements you can do so. Not only does Fangs of the Fire Snake work fully with Martial Arts, FoB, and Stunning Blows. But there are certain other indirect interactions that synergize such as the advantages to melee that Hold Person gives that Monks, or more likely their fellow party members can take a lot of advantage of since they tend to need the help in hitting and gain more out of crit fishing than the monk themselves does. And Hold Person has a potential for being effective multiple rounds for a single casting. Fly can be synergized by allowing you to be able to attack creatures that would normally be out of your reach such as aerial creatures where losing a single round to activate the Elemental Discipline is far less loss than what you would end up with either trying to ranged attack it or waiting around until it got close to the ground.
I don't think you're being entirely honest here. As in there are some disingenuous comparisons being made.
Quivering Palm does, indeed, hit for a lot of damage even on a successful saving throw: 55 (10d10) necrotic damage to a single target. But by the same token, Breath of Winter is a 60-foot cone that deals 36 (8d8) cold damage to each target if they fail, or 18 cold damage if they succeed. Now, factor in the area of effect. The DMG adjudicates that, if not using a grid, as hitting six targets. Now we're talking about an average of 108 cold damage that's been spread out. It's important to remember that a lot of those elemental spells deal damage as an area of effect. That should not be ignored, nor should it be held against them.
Shadow Arts does grant several spells for cheap. They also stay cheap because they have no saving throws and cannot be upcast to increase in potency. Way of the Shadow monks get additional subclass features at 6, 11, and 17 because what little magic they do receive cannot grow in power.
And, as others have mentioned, a number of elemental disciplines have lengthy durations. Clench of the North Wind, River of Flame, and Rush of the Gale Spirits might only last 1 minute, but that could still be an entire fight. Ride the Wind and Wave of Rolling Earth can last for 10 minutes. Eternal Mountain Defense and Mist Stance can last for an hour. Shape the Flowing River might as well be permanent. Yes, it can be expensive in the heat of the moment. But it can also be efficient in the long term.
Edit: Changed my mind about what I had originally stated in this comment. Please ignore
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These are all good points. While we can't assume that a spell will hit the maximum number of creatures within its area nor that they will all fail their saves, it would seem that as long as you target 3-4 creatures one of these high ki cost abilities would be better overall damage than just using Quivering Palm twice (unless of course both creatures have 200+ HP and fails their saves against quivering palm and drops directly to 0, but that's an extreme example).
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All of the values I used for calculating were the base costs. I averaged all of the costs of all of the elemental disciplines excluding elemental attunement. Now, while a full build will not have all of the possible attunements, I cannot account for which ones a player is going to take by the time they reach level 17. So the most baseline thing I can do is average the ki cost for those listed in the PHB, which comes out to around 3.25 (I made some small error in my original calculation). Of course there will be builds that cost less and those that will cost more, but with a less costly build also comes less powerful abilities.
I did not make up any numbers used. All I did was take the most standard average possible and report the number I got and I did not include any extra ki points spent to upcast. Even your example of a build falls nowhere near the 1.8 average cost you claim, and it still relies on three of the cheapest options available without upcasting.
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This is misunderstanding their argument quite a bit. The fact that there are a lot of ways for a monk to spend ki is part of the problem they're highlighting because the 4E monk has to essentially opt-out to some extent from those baseline class features to utilize their subclass at all. You talk about a monk burning a bunch of ki to Stun as being comparable, but a 4E monk who burns Ki on stunning strike effectively loses their subclass (and of course, the opposite, a 4E monk who uses their subclass features loses a lot of their baseline). Far from ignoring it, it's precisely why some people are so frustrated with 4E's mechanics.
I don't think average cost is really meaningful though. Generally, you're going to cast elemental spells with a specific purpose in mind, not randomly to generate average distribution. Arguably their limited ki pool even incentivizes them to be conservative and judicious and therefore trend away from the more expensive options outside specific scenarios.
This is a disengenuous argument. Because you can make the same claim about any of a number of these other abilities. Doing a bunch of stunning STrikes potentially means being unable to cast the spells of a Shadow Monk at low level. And Casting one of those spells before you get into combat can mean that you can do almost nothing in combat. Just like the accusations of the 2 ki cost abilities of the 4 elements monk at low levels.
Each time you Water Whip takes away from your ability to patient defense, Or Step of the Wind, or FoB or the like. And each time you do one of the later you potentially block out Water Whip.
But here's the thing. This kind of claim can be made all over the place on all kinds of subclasses if we ignore certain details about them and just make general statements. That's part of being the monk. Striking a Balance and using what is useful for the time. Trying to say this is ok on every other Monk when this is a Monk Problem but that it's not ok for the 4 Elements monk is showing your general disfavor over one instead of part of the strengths and weaknesses of Monk itself. This issue of it stopping you from doing a core monk thing or a subclass thing is true of all subclasses in some way shape or form if that's how you want to look at things. Just like Many monk things are blocked out when you do Subclass things because they cost you actions or Bonus Actions. Or you can't do certain things with your Subclass because you do a main class thing.
Quivering Palm means giving up a round of attacks and everything related to them (such as FoB and Stunning STrike) on top of the round that it takes to apply. But it goes deeper than that with Open Hand. The Tranquility power from the same subclass means you have to forgo ALL combat if you want it to be useful, but once you do a single thing that makes an enemy save or roll an attack against them you have forgone the Sanctuary ability for all encounters fort he rest of the day. It's litterally all or nothing in a be a monk, or be a bystander kind of choice. There is no in between.
The Spells of Shadow have the same issue as anything from 4 elements. They are all actions. Teleporting around always uses up your bonus action. meaning no FoB's and no patient defense and no step of the wind. Cloak of Shadows gives you invisiblity but it costs your action and you can do nothing offensive if you want to keep it functioning and it can still just fail if there just happens to be a big enough body of light between where you are and where you want to get to.
Sun Soul has almost no synergies. Most of it's abilities are either do sun Soul Stuff or do monk Stuff. There is very limited synergy in the Burning hands ability because it's a bonus action and can be stuck onto melee martial arts moves. But Radiant Bolt allows for no stunning Strikes. You could potentially FoB off it but reality is your rarely going to be positioned for that so your going to have to spend ki on it's version of FoB. It's Discount Fireball doesn't play well with most monk abilities. Sun Shield technically can be used in conjunction with Monk. But that's because it flies in the face of the entire rest of it's own subclass and if your playing to your subclass your likely not in range for it to work. And they still have to hit you with the right kind of attack. And it still requires your Bonus Action to set up and your Reaction to make use of.
Long Death either needs specific circumstances, Requires your Action which blocks FoB and Stunning Strike, and/or potentially requires a bunch of ki be poured into them to make them effective which drains your resources for all of your monk abilities.
Kensei is actually one of the better Synergistic Classes when it comes to the core Monk Abilities. But that doesn't stop people from giving it less synergy than it has because they want to capitalize on Weapon Damage so they basically take the stance that FoB is unusable and certain abilities can actually block out all other bonus action core monk abilities from usage. Though the biggest one adds to ranged combat. Sharpen the blade is a bonus action on top of a ki expenditure. Again stopping most monk abilities on the turn you use it.
But there are things about several of these that you can make counter arguments for like the fact that they last multiple turns and things like that. Such arguments can be made for some 4 elements monk abilities as well. There are several of them that either hit multiple targets, last multiple rounds, Or do something else in addition to causing damage that is being ignored. And there is always the option to either use them or use core monk abilities just like with any other monk of any other subclass.
The build I named is not the lowest cost possible build available. But you didn't bother to really look at the abilities to know that did you?
The one i named is one that is more common. And so what if it uses 3 of the 2 cost abilities? They are strong abilities that serve a strong purpose. I even know alterations to that build that your going to completely ignore and the fact that many of those alterations aren't actually made until higher level. I even stated the average cost of the abilities in the most common build which your choosing to ignore. which was much lower than your average. i stated the way you reached your number had to be one of two possibilities that weren't actually representative of many 4 elements monks and your even saying here that I was right.
You just went ahead and averaged everything to get an entirely misleading total that has little actual meaning because not all of those can be taken by the book. Not even lose to it since there are 17 abilities listed in the books and your only going to get 5 of them. And your going to get at max 2 of the level 17 abilities if you really build and try for it at a point where you have a lot more ki to use in general. I can even show how this is an unrealistic average just by breaking down the amount of things you get at different levels.
There is 1 cantrip (cost 0), There are a total of 7 abilities that cost ki and are gainable at the start, 2 added 6th level abilities, 3 11th level abilities, and 4 17th level abilities.
These high level abilities are going to skew the entire average upward by having some of the highest costs and between the top two levels having the highest costs. A person that really tries can have 3 of those abilities but the average build is not. The average build is going to have between 1 and 2 of the 7 abilities split between the 11th and 17th level brackets.
What does this mean for the averages? That your usually going to have more 1 and 2 cost abilities than you are going to have 4,5, and 6 cost abilities. The Lower Cost abilities also are not necessarily weaker. They tend to either have different purposes from the higher cost abilities or they tend to modify different things.
Even if somebody took a 4 and a 6 cost ability at level 11 and 17 there is still a very strong chance that they have a 1, 2, and 2. for their lower abilities which comes out at an average cost of 3. Even switching out a 2 for a 3 by insisting that one of every level division has to be bought because that's when you get a new power and it should be of max level still nets you an average cost of 3.
In short The averages that your choosing to use here are basically arbitrary and not telling the actual picture. It takes particular builds and particular efforts to push that number up but they aren't necessarily representative of actual play or the usefulness of various abilities at certain levels. 4 elements monks non-spell abilities at low level tend to be viable at higher levels of play for various reasons and make them practical to continue to keep in use in practice. But even if we ignore that, when your really looking there is a laundry list of abilities that cost as much or nearly as much ki for other Subclasses or combinations of abilities either from the core monk or from other Subclasses. Either in white room stacking or practical use that are going to add up to being just as much as those of 4 elements in most circumstances. It's only on the surface of looking at numbers without really looking at them indepth that the conclusion that it is so much more costly to use when actually reached.
Question. With Fist Of Unbroken Air it says on failed save you can push them up to 20 feet and knock prone. If you don’t want to knock them that far (maybe it takes them out of melee range of your frontliners) could you instead knock them back 5 feet and prone, or even 0-1 feet and prone? Like the air just knocks their feet out from under them?
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By the Way it's written? You hit it anywhere within it's 30' range (it is not a purely melee ability). And then you can move it anywhere from 0' to 20' And you can knock it prone as well.
I could swear in my older book it was an or between knocking it prone and moving it. But looking it up through DDB and a couple other sources online since I don't have access to my book right now does in fact say AND after the Can. So you get any combination of distance and knocking it prone you wish with the way it is written now. To show how old my book is. It still has Water Whip as a Bonus Action.
Water Whip just for clarification is however an OR ability. Either Knock it prone or drag it a chosen distance toward you. Not both. It is not an "Can" and "And" ability like Unbroken Air.
I'd also point out that in practical builds I've seen If a person does go for a level 11 and a level 17 ability. Or pushes for 2 level 17 abilities. It's usually one of these two that they replace depending on the tactics of their party.
I only have my copy from DDB, and noticed the difference in wording between Unbroken Air and Water Whip. That’s why I ask as it seems to make FoUA a more versatile option. The ability to knock prone then Ki Fueled Strike at advantage or the rest of the party getting advantage as well. Or being able to knock them back and prone if you need to get away, and various other situations where this control would be advantageous.
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I can tell you that pulling them to you or knocking them down can be just as valuable depending on the group and a bit on your own style. Remember that knocking something down at a distance has the downside that it gives ranged attacks Disadvantage. So knocking them away and knocking them down could work against you or your allies as much as it could help. But I've found great use in pulling enemies into a small cluster of melee's so the melee characters don't ahve to move as much and can focus on things like protecting and attacking. It's also been useful for avoiding area's that are hazardous for various reasons that we would have had to engage enemies in more than once. So each one has quite a bit of value. They do similar but different things but both can be valuable and useful. Exactly which one is best will depend on your party and your style.
Water Whip pulling AND knocking prone would be borderline OP. Doing 3d10 damage AND taking a ranged character into reach of your melee fighters AND knocking them prone for said melee fighters would be tremendously powerful if the initiative sequences lines up right. It is much harder to set it up where you can Fist of Unbroken Air a character away from you but into a crowd of allies for them to take advantage of prone via melee attack advantage.