There is category from Edition be4 5. Weapons There are called Egzotic and used to have different category than martial or simple or was a sec category like.
Martial egzotic or simple egzotic that u needed to get prof. By trenning from this weapon user.
Ok so I was thinking about this but I have not been able to read through all 16 pages.
Here are my thoughts as to what can be done to make Monk a little better hopefully. First the 2 ideas that I have ready elsewhere that I think are a big boost. One is the Martial Arts die increases every 4 levels. so it is a d6 and 5, d8 and 9, d10 at 13, d12 at 17 and finally 2d12 as part of our 20th level feature.
Next is Stillness of mind reword it so that you can break out of mental effects that dictate how you spend your action.
Next is Ki points, as with warlocks Monk suffers pretty heavily from the short rest class idea and feels very starved for resources early on. To fix this I am again using an easy solution another has already brought up but you now get Ki= Monk level + Wisdom modifier. This gives about 3 to 4 extra ki at early levels which will feel like a big boost.
In addition, I love step of the wind as something that is free. Rogues already get this I don't see why it needs to be limited for monks.
Given those ideas I wanted to add a couple others. Drawing inspiration from both kung fu movies and anime one of the big tropes is the david vs goliath style fight with the martial artist being the little fast hard to hit guy vs the big hard to bring down powerful brute. You see this in Jackie chan movies, in the Ip Man movies, you even see it in anime all the time that size isn't what makes them powerful. As people are talking about Armor Class this is very relevant to that. My solution is 2 fold. First patient defense is rolled into martial arts, while you are not wearing a shield or armor you can take the dodge as a bonus action. At level 2 you gain patient defense and you may spend 1 ki when you take the dodge action to increase your AC by 2 till the start of your next turn. In this case it is a trade off between doing damage and being very hard to hit and I think that plays well into the monk power fantasy. Next we talk about the elephant in the room, the high level abilities are almost all ribbon features that don't really do anything. This is why it feels like monk falls off at higher levels. Purity of Body can sometimes help, Tongue of the Sun and moon you are not the party face and the spell casting face of your group probably had this ability 10 levels earlier. Timeless body, no one is paying attention to this in game and no one cares.
So my suggestion, level 10 Purity of body and timeless body are rolled into 1 and you can now recover from one level of exhaustion after a short rest. We just call it purity of body. Level 13 is now diamond soul, Level 14 is now an additional ASI, level 15 finally gives monk their high level power fantasy. In almost all cases high level martial artist fantasies have some form of limited flight. So here I am adding in "Ki powered flight: You may use your action and spend 3 ki to grant yourself a flight speed equal to your movement speed for 1 minute"
Finally level 20, in addition to the increased martial arts die from a d12 to 2d12 your unarmored movement also increases to 90 feet and at the start of EVERY fight you gain Ki= to your wisdom modifier.
Doing this in conjunction with changes to elemental, small changes to open hand and shadow monk and possibly creating an errata'd version of sun soul monk with a 60 foot range instead of 30 foot I believe could go a long way towards helping the monk not feel like it was falling off at higher levels and not so starved at lower levels.
Ok so I was thinking about this but I have not been able to read through all 16 pages.
Here are my thoughts as to what can be done to make Monk a little better hopefully. First the 2 ideas that I have ready elsewhere that I think are a big boost. One is the Martial Arts die increases every 4 levels. so it is a d6 and 5, d8 and 9, d10 at 13, d12 at 17 and finally 2d12 as part of our 20th level feature.
In place of a few more attacks, the unarmed damage die increases. Okay, but I would say review the damage evolution during the levels up. Something like 1d6 -1d10 - 2d8 - 2d10 - 2d12.
Next is Stillness of mind reword it so that you can break out of mental effects that dictate how you spend your action.
Next is Ki points, as with warlocks Monk suffers pretty heavily from the short rest class idea and feels very starved for resources early on. To fix this I am again using an easy solution another has already brought up but you now get Ki= Monk level + Wisdom modifier. This gives about 3 to 4 extra ki at early levels which will feel like a big boost.
Ki points = Monk level + Wisdom modifier
You are not the first to propose this solution, and in my opinion it is acceptable.
In addition, I love step of the wind as something that is free. Rogues already get this I don't see why it needs to be limited for monks.
Unfortunately step of the wind uses the bonus action, even though it doesn't cost ki, this falls back on the bonus attack and the chance to use the flurry of blow, basically stealing 2 attacks in the action. The Rogue doesn't have much use for his bonus action and this doesn't cause him any problems but for the monk it's a different story. Something like the "mobile" or "Crusher" feats would be better solutions.
Given those ideas I wanted to add a couple others. Drawing inspiration from both kung fu movies and anime one of the big tropes is the david vs goliath style fight with the martial artist being the little fast hard to hit guy vs the big hard to bring down powerful brute. You see this in Jackie chan movies, in the Ip Man movies, you even see it in anime all the time that size isn't what makes them powerful. As people are talking about Armor Class this is very relevant to that. My solution is 2 fold. First patient defense is rolled into martial arts, while you are not wearing a shield or armor you can take the dodge as a bonus action. At level 2 you gain patient defense and you may spend 1 ki when you take the dodge action to increase your AC by 2 till the start of your next turn.
Same problem as before, All your features fall on the bonus action, halving your number of attacks. Defense is not so extremely important if you know how to make the most of your speed. The monk is not a tank, otherwise they wouldn't have given him the movement speed to attack and escape.
In this case it is a trade off between doing damage and being very hard to hit and I think that plays well into the monk power fantasy. Next we talk about the elephant in the room, the high level abilities are almost all ribbon features that don't really do anything. This is why it feels like monk falls off at higher levels. Purity of Body can sometimes help, Tongue of the Sun and moon you are not the party face and the spell casting face of your group probably had this ability 10 levels earlier. Timeless body, no one is paying attention to this in game and no one cares.
So my suggestion, level 10 Purity of body and timeless body are rolled into 1 and you can now recover from one level of exhaustion after a short rest. We just call it purity of body.
If you're not a barbarian berserker, it doesn't seem very useful (There is also the Haste spell). I would go to more useful elements, something like this:
At 10th level, your mastery of the ki flowing through you makes you immune to disease and poison. You can use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Strength or Dextery modifier when making Acrobatics or Athletics checks.
Level 13 is now diamond soul, Level 14 is now an additional ASI, level 15 finally gives monk their high level power fantasy. In almost all cases high level martial artist fantasies have some form of limited flight. So here I am adding in "Ki powered flight: You may use your action and spend 3 ki to grant yourself a flight speed equal to your movement speed for 1 minute"
Walking in the sky is the ultimate dream. So a big OK!
But I would make it an evolution of the unarmored movement skill and give the ability to not fall during the end of the turn as a ki cost skill. Something like this:
Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you are not wearing heavy armor or wielding a shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain monk levels, as shown in the Monk table. At 9th level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the move. At 18th level, you gain the ability to move in the air on your turn without falling during the move.
Ki Movement (Prerequisite: 9th level): You can use your reaction to use 1 ki power to make your position stable for 1 minute, even outside your turn, when you use your movement and end your turn you no longer fall because you are in a complicated position.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon (Prerequisite: 13th level): You learn to touch the ki of other minds so that you understand all spoken languages. Moreover, any creature that can understand a language can understand what you say. In addition, you can use your Wisdom modifier, instead of your Charisma, when you make Charisma checks.
Beginning at 14th level, your mastery of ki grants you proficiency in all saving throw. Additionally, whenever you make a saving throw or an ability check and fail, you can spend 1 ki point to reroll it and take the second result.
I'm still looking for something useful to add in the timeless body.
Finally level 20, in addition to the increased martial arts die from a d12 to 2d12 your unarmored movement also increases to 90 feet and at the start of EVERY fight you gain Ki= to your wisdom modifier.
What do you need all that movement for? I find it a bit pointless. At this point I prefer teleportation at the cost of movement. Like Nightcrawler from the X-Men. Okay, but it doesn't change much from the original skill, just precise that you don't have to be at zero to activate the skill. It would be a bit strong because it would give advantages to all the attacks, but it would be cool.
Doing this in conjunction with changes to elemental, small changes to open hand and shadow monk and possibly creating an errata'd version of sun soul monk with a 60 foot range instead of 30 foot I believe could go a long way towards helping the monk not feel like it was falling off at higher levels and not so starved at lower levels.
In my opinion you're on the right track, but it's not enough to be on par with other classes. Below is an interesting example.
Ok idea to fix the bonus action issue. At level 1 as a part of martial arts you gain 3 abilities. Flurry of blows, Step of the wind and Patient defense. Flurry of blows: As a bonus action you can make 1 unarmed strike, Patient Defense As a bonus action you can take the dodge action, Step of the wind as a bonus action you can take the disengage or dash action. (Since this is part of martial arts it requires that you not be wearing armor or shield). At level 2 when you gain ki you gain an ability that states "Spend 1 ki, you may take an additional bonus actions this turn". At level 11, In addition to my suggested Damage die change, you also gain "extra bonus action, you may now take 2 bonus actions on each of your turns" this will allow for more attacks and this allows for some cool combinations with bonus actions from other classes and other things adding more synergy to the monk.
This said I really like the adding wisdom to your grapple checks very Judo/Jiu jitsu style which is great for monk, I wish it was earlier than level 10. That said the level 10 feature was just thinking "what does old age do and what do you wish to have from your youth." to go along with the whole timeless body thing. Point was I was wrapping a bunch of ribbon features together because they all add up to something significant when put together. Disease, poison immunity + exhaustion recovery is a lot of physical status effects that you just get to push through really well.
I still don't like the tongue thing because it comes way to late for you to become your parties face character and I would much rather see an expansion of our other roles outside of combat. Things like better insight, or even detect thoughts or something to act as the parties lie detector or even help act as the parties scout or investigator, or even better movement (like the not falling thing maybe) are all things I could get behind more than the talking thing.
As far as why I added more movement it was the capstone ability. I think the capstones should really be the character becoming great at what they are good at. Maybe in this case instead of the extra movement increase it could be "you can take 3 bonus actions on your turn" and also still have the 2d12 martial arts die.
Ki Fueled Action. You can spend 1ki point to gain an extra action on your turn. This action can only be used to take the Dodge, Disengage or Dash Action. When you use this feature to Dash or Disengage your jump distance is doubled for the turn.
The additional action has precedence with action surge and haste. And having it restricted to Dash, Dodge, Disengage keeps it balanced and your damage up since you still have your BA for FoB or unarmed strike.
I saw the ki fueled action and I actually like that idea a lot. It is technically where the inspiration for additional bonus actions came from. The issue is it HAS TO BE backwards compatible with current classes. We can't change fizban's subclasses or xanathar's sub classes, or tasha's subclasses. What ever is introduced must work within the current system. None of the consequences are unintended many classes have something they can do with their bonus action and Monk has historically been a difficult class to multi-class with. Now their is multi-class synergy. As you said there is precedence giving extra "actions" and this gives a very specific type of extra action. In addition, at higher levels the lack of continued attack growth is particularly harmful to the monk. They start out as the class with the most attacks but the fighter catches up and passes them at level 11 and it just gets worse for them from there. by doing this you don't need to have crazy high damage attacks each attack, because you can always "flurry of blows" for another attack. My suggestion at level 11 allows you to attack twice and then use your bonus action twice for 2 flurry of blows (which in this iteration are just 1 attack) without spending a ki, then you can spend 1 ki for an additional attack or dodge or dash. I am on board with the idea that it starts out a d6, then d8, then d10, d12, and finally 2d12. By level 11 being 5 attacks at a d10 or 4 attacks at a d10 and dash for 1 ki seems solid. (also since the bonus action attack has been renamed flurry of blows all of the monk subclasses that key off that get a boost.)
If we made the ki based bonus action read "you gain an extra bonus action and can use one of your monk bonus actions", which each of those bonus actions being named as suggested it would basically be the same thing as ki fueled action but is backwards compatible. At level 11 we still need to scale the monk with more than just attack die to keep the fantasy of the fast attacking hard to catch martial artist, i just thought extra bonus action was something unique to really give the monk it's own identity.
A secondary solution to keep Flurry of blows off the bonus action AND make it scale better is it reads "you may take another attack action this turn using your unarmed stikes" This means it would scale with extra attack. So at level 1-4 it is unchanged, but at level 5 you basically get 5 attacks, the issue again being that it doesnt scale past 5.
The point here I think is we have kind of discovered a lot of solutions while we also defined the issue. Bonus action bloat + lack of attack scaling past 5 to keep up with the fantasy. High level ribbon features that largely don't effect the game.
I saw the ki fueled action and I actually like that idea a lot. It is technically where the inspiration for additional bonus actions came from. The issue is it HAS TO BE backwards compatible with current classes. We can't change fizban's subclasses or xanathar's sub classes, or tasha's subclasses. What ever is introduced must work within the current system. None of the consequences are unintended many classes have something they can do with their bonus action and Monk has historically been a difficult class to multi-class with. Now their is multi-class synergy. As you said there is precedence giving extra "actions" and this gives a very specific type of extra action. In addition, at higher levels the lack of continued attack growth is particularly harmful to the monk. They start out as the class with the most attacks but the fighter catches up and passes them at level 11 and it just gets worse for them from there. by doing this you don't need to have crazy high damage attacks each attack, because you can always "flurry of blows" for another attack. My suggestion at level 11 allows you to attack twice and then use your bonus action twice for 2 flurry of blows (which in this iteration are just 1 attack) without spending a ki, then you can spend 1 ki for an additional attack or dodge or dash. I am on board with the idea that it starts out a d6, then d8, then d10, d12, and finally 2d12. By level 11 being 5 attacks at a d10 or 4 attacks at a d10 and dash for 1 ki seems solid. (also since the bonus action attack has been renamed flurry of blows all of the monk subclasses that key off that get a boost.)
If we made the ki based bonus action read "you gain an extra bonus action and can use one of your monk bonus actions", which each of those bonus actions being named as suggested it would basically be the same thing as ki fueled action but is backwards compatible. At level 11 we still need to scale the monk with more than just attack die to keep the fantasy of the fast attacking hard to catch martial artist, i just thought extra bonus action was something unique to really give the monk it's own identity.
A secondary solution to keep Flurry of blows off the bonus action AND make it scale better is it reads "you may take another attack action this turn using your unarmed stikes" This means it would scale with extra attack. So at level 1-4 it is unchanged, but at level 5 you basically get 5 attacks, the issue again being that it doesnt scale past 5.
The point here I think is we have kind of discovered a lot of solutions while we also defined the issue. Bonus action bloat + lack of attack scaling past 5 to keep up with the fantasy. High level ribbon features that largely don't effect the game.
Technically Ki-fueled does not give a bonus action, it only allows you to make an attack after an ability that uses an action and that uses ki power. According to martial arts you can only attack with your unarmed attack if you have used your action to attack.
When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
Ki fuel attack allows you to access the unarmed attack in your bonus action even if you used a 4 element spell or invisibility (empty body 18th level) and accessing the bonus attack also allows the use of flurry of blow.
Ki-Fueled Attack (Optional)
Also at 3rd level, if you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make one attack with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
The main difference is that actions which don't make attacks but do cost ki trigger Ki-Fueled Attack. For instance, if you are a Way of the Four Elements monk and you use your action to cast a spell, you can still make an attack as a bonus action with Ki-Fueled Attack.
Ki-Fueled Attack also allows you to make an attack with a monk weapon (which could be a ranged attack), so a Way of the Kensei monk who spends a ki point as part of their Attack action could make a bonus-action attack with their ranged kensei weapon.
The version in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything also allows monks to upgrade an unarmed strike to a weapon attack, if they qualify for both (unlike the version in UA: Class Feature Variants, which only allowed an unarmed strike).
I don't understand why we have to make this so complicated. If we want the monk to make an extra attack add it to the flurry of blow.
Flurry of blow already makes 2 attacks in its bonus action paying the price of a ki power. Making 3 or 4 attacks shouldn't change the rules of the game. The only one who would lose is the shadow monk, since he uses his shadow ability as a bonus action (the most absurd nonsense in the game).
Another solution is to turn flurry of blow as an action and paying a ki allows to add an extra attack. It would solve the problem of the shadow monk, but it would put in problem the 4 elements monk.
Another solution could be to make the flurry of blow an attack that can be inserted in any situation, during the monk's turn, so action or bonus action.
It should also be specified that it can only be used once per turn, a bit like the sneak attack of the rogue.
The fact is that monk is a class full of restrictions. You can't use your unarmored defense and your special movement if you're wearing armor. You can't use your martial art if you use weapons that have the two-handed or heavy property. Monk weapons are only simple weapons and not ranged. Only monk weapons can have damage progression. You can't attack with your unarmed bonus attack if you didn't attack during your action. Flurry of blow can only be performed by unarmed attacks. You cannot counterattack with your deflect missiles feature if you do not reduce the damage to 0.....
Honestly it sounds more like a monk in chains to me than a monk free to run and throw punches.
I saw the ki fueled action and I actually like that idea a lot. It is technically where the inspiration for additional bonus actions came from. The issue is it HAS TO BE backwards compatible with current classes. We can't change fizban's subclasses or xanathar's sub classes, or tasha's subclasses. What ever is introduced must work within the current system. None of the consequences are unintended many classes have something they can do with their bonus action and Monk has historically been a difficult class to multi-class with. Now their is multi-class synergy. As you said there is precedence giving extra "actions" and this gives a very specific type of extra action. In addition, at higher levels the lack of continued attack growth is particularly harmful to the monk. They start out as the class with the most attacks but the fighter catches up and passes them at level 11 and it just gets worse for them from there. by doing this you don't need to have crazy high damage attacks each attack, because you can always "flurry of blows" for another attack. My suggestion at level 11 allows you to attack twice and then use your bonus action twice for 2 flurry of blows (which in this iteration are just 1 attack) without spending a ki, then you can spend 1 ki for an additional attack or dodge or dash. I am on board with the idea that it starts out a d6, then d8, then d10, d12, and finally 2d12. By level 11 being 5 attacks at a d10 or 4 attacks at a d10 and dash for 1 ki seems solid. (also since the bonus action attack has been renamed flurry of blows all of the monk subclasses that key off that get a boost.)
If we made the ki based bonus action read "you gain an extra bonus action and can use one of your monk bonus actions", which each of those bonus actions being named as suggested it would basically be the same thing as ki fueled action but is backwards compatible. At level 11 we still need to scale the monk with more than just attack die to keep the fantasy of the fast attacking hard to catch martial artist, i just thought extra bonus action was something unique to really give the monk it's own identity.
A secondary solution to keep Flurry of blows off the bonus action AND make it scale better is it reads "you may take another attack action this turn using your unarmed stikes" This means it would scale with extra attack. So at level 1-4 it is unchanged, but at level 5 you basically get 5 attacks, the issue again being that it doesnt scale past 5.
The point here I think is we have kind of discovered a lot of solutions while we also defined the issue. Bonus action bloat + lack of attack scaling past 5 to keep up with the fantasy. High level ribbon features that largely don't effect the game.
Technically Ki-fueled does not give a bonus action, it only allows you to make an attack after an ability that uses an action and that uses ki power. According to martial arts you can only attack with your unarmed attack if you have used your action to attack.
When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
Ki fuel attack allows you to access the unarmed attack in your bonus action even if you used a 4 element spell or invisibility (empty body 18th level) and accessing the bonus attack also allows the use of flurry of blow.
Ki-Fueled Attack (Optional)
Also at 3rd level, if you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make one attack with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
The main difference is that actions which don't make attacks but do cost ki trigger Ki-Fueled Attack. For instance, if you are a Way of the Four Elements monk and you use your action to cast a spell, you can still make an attack as a bonus action with Ki-Fueled Attack.
Ki-Fueled Attack also allows you to make an attack with a monk weapon (which could be a ranged attack), so a Way of the Kensei monk who spends a ki point as part of their Attack action could make a bonus-action attack with their ranged kensei weapon.
The version in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything also allows monks to upgrade an unarmed strike to a weapon attack, if they qualify for both (unlike the version in UA: Class Feature Variants, which only allowed an unarmed strike).
Ok you need to read the thread called "Monk a simple fix" to understand what I am referencing here. I am not talking about Ki fueled ATTACK from tasha's I am talking about the new suggested homebrew ability called "Ki Fueled ACTION" in which he removes patient defense and Step of the wind with an ability called "Ki fueled action": "You may spend 1 ki point to gain an extra action, this action can only be used to take the dash, disengage or dodge actions" this was his solution to the bonus action bloat. My solution was instead of giving an ACTION we give extra bonus actions instead and just wrap flurry, step and patient defense into martial arts "options" that people can do with their bonus action. Then they can spend a ki to GAIN an additional bonus action.
Shadow Monk and Elemental Monks shouldnt be a problem with any changes to monk because they will likely be re-designed in the new PHB with the new monk. The real concern is Sun Soul, Drunken Master, Ascendant Dragon, Way of the Astral Self and Mercy Monks. They said the new book would be backwards compatible with Tasha's and Xanathar's so we can expect that these subclasses will still need to function with new monk. Adding attacks to Flurry of blows HURTS drunken master rather than helping it because of it's level 17 feature. Yes we should not balance around level 17 features, but I still think it needs to be taken into consideration. Sorry for the confusion you must have experienced reading my post without having read more threads. I should have been more clear.
I know it'll probably be divisive a suggestion, but would it be out of the question for the level 20 capstone to be the ability to use foresight? Either for a bunch of Ki, or a once a day thing. Not the full spell obviously! But a strict, much shorter time limited version of it.
It just thematically fits the idea of a monk so damn well for the absolute apex of their ability, the thing they strive for, to be hard earned natural foresight because you're so one with your Ki and for a moment can operate on pure instinctual reaction.
I know it'll probably be divisive a suggestion, but would it be out of the question for the level 20 capstone to be the ability to use foresight? Either for a bunch of Ki, or a once a day thing. Not the full spell obviously! But a strict, much shorter time limited version of it.
It just thematically fits the idea of a monk so damn well for the absolute apex of their ability, the thing they strive for, to be hard earned natural foresight because you're so one with your Ki and for a moment can operate on pure instinctual reaction.
From my point of view it is a spell that could be put at the 18th level "empty body". It could be put in place of astral projection.
But come to think of it, monk invisibility offers similar powers.
Foresight
9th level divination
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Touch
Target: A willing creature
Components: V S M (A hummingbird feather)
Duration: 8 hours
Classes: Bard, Druid, Warlock, Wizard
You touch a willing creature and bestow a limited ability to see into the immediate future. For the duration, the target can’t be surprised and has advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Additionally, other creatures have disadvantage on attack rolls against the target for the duration. This spell immediately ends if you cast it again before its duration ends.
New Flurry of blow: At the beginning of your turn, you can spend 1 ki point to to add one unarmed strikes in your action. If you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make this attack without having to use ki power. You can use this feature only once per turn. The number of extra attacks increases as you gain monk levels. This attacks increasing to two at 13th level and three at 20th level.
New Flurry of blow: At the beginning of your turn, you can spend 1 ki point to to add one unarmed strikes in your action. If you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make this attack without having to use ki power. You can use this feature only once per turn. The number of extra attacks increases as you gain monk levels. This attacks increasing to two at 13th level and three at 20th level.
Not bad the biggest issue with adding more than 2 attacks to flurry of blows is the anti-synergy with an ability like Drunken master's intoxicated flurry. Drunken master is not one of the corebook subclasses so the monk change needs to be backwards compatible. That said it isn't bad because it does improve other aspects of it and other subclasses in general including drunken master.
New Flurry of blow: At the beginning of your turn, you can spend 1 ki point to to add one unarmed strikes in your action. If you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make this attack without having to use ki power. You can use this feature only once per turn. The number of extra attacks increases as you gain monk levels. This attacks increasing to two at 13th level and three at 20th level.
Might need to work on wording as I was a bit confused. Your NewFoB has you spend a Ki at the beginning of your turn, but you don’t have to attack right then. But if you decide to use your action to do something that requires the use of a Ki point (4 elements Elemental Discipline, for example) the Ki you spent at the beginning of your turn is retroactively returned to you?
Would it make sense to have it usable “when you take the Attack action” or just when you use any action, like using Fist of Unbroken Air from 4E monk?
I've heard talk that they're afraid of improving the monk and it's subclesses because of Stunning Strike and how the character class is basically built around that 5th level skill. What if we replace Stunning Strike with an attack that only "Stuns" one limb on an enemy instead of taking away their whole turn? Think Chozen from Cobra Kai or Tai Lee from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Numbing Strike
"If an enemy insists on war, then you take away their ability to wage it."
Spend 1 ki point to target a pressure point on an individual appendage of a creature within 5 feet with an unarmed strike. Creature must make a constitution saving throw or that limb goes limp for the next 3 rounds. After that time the creature regains full control and functionality of their limb. Different effects are caused by striking different limbs as shown in the example list below:
Arm: Disarmed if that arm was holding a weapon or shield. Unable to perform unarmed attacks or grapple maneuvers with that arm.
Leg: Target must make DEX saving throw, DC 15, or fall prone and must make a DEX saving throw, DC 15 to get up. Target's speed is reduced to 5 feet, it can only move by hopping on its good leg(s), and must make a DEX saving throw, DC 15, when moving to avoid falling prone. Target falls prone with no saving throw if all legs it stands on are numbed, and its speed is reduced to 0 until the effect ends.
Wing: Target cannot fly if it depends on wings for flight. If creature has four or more wings, numbing one only halves flight speed.
Tail/Tentacle/Trunk: Appendage goes limp and is unable to perform unarmed attacks or grapple maneuvers.
Beholder's eye stalk: Stalk goes limp and is unable to project magic beams until it recovers.
New Flurry of blow: At the beginning of your turn, you can spend 1 ki point to to add one unarmed strikes in your action. If you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make this attack without having to use ki power. You can use this feature only once per turn. The number of extra attacks increases as you gain monk levels. This attacks increasing to two at 13th level and three at 20th level.
Not bad the biggest issue with adding more than 2 attacks to flurry of blows is the anti-synergy with an ability like Drunken master's intoxicated flurry. Drunken master is not one of the corebook subclasses so the monk change needs to be backwards compatible. That said it isn't bad because it does improve other aspects of it and other subclasses in general including drunken master.
So because of the Drunken master we can't touch the flurry of blow. I always thought "intoxixated Frenzy" was useless. An ability that forces you to run around and pull fists has all the enemies on the field. Great, but unfortunately if the enemy is alone, this skill is as if it did not exist. Does this make any sense?
Then the only solution to add new attacks is to create a new technique. We could give a sub verion of a perpetual "haste" to the monk as a power at 15th level "timeless body". It would have 1 more attack and more defense, and at 20th level it would become 2 attacks.
Might need to work on wording as I was a bit confused. Your NewFoB has you spend a Ki at the beginning of your turn, but you don’t have to attack right then. But if you decide to use your action to do something that requires the use of a Ki point (4 elements Elemental Discipline, for example) the Ki you spent at the beginning of your turn is retroactively returned to you?
Would it make sense to have it usable “when you take the Attack action” or just when you use any action, like using Fist of Unbroken Air from 4E monk?
The idea was to make flurry of blow not dependent on the bonus action, but make it an extension of the action. That would free up "patient defense" and "step of the wind". What I meant was any type of action, spell or attack. At the beginning of the turn the monk must declare if he will use flurry of blow (being part of the action) and if this is an ability like the 4 elements, the flurry of blow would not consume ki points.
I've heard talk that they're afraid of improving the monk and it's subclesses because of Stunning Strike and how the character class is basically built around that 5th level skill. What if we replace Stunning Strike with an attack that only "Stuns" one limb on an enemy instead of taking away their whole turn? Think Chozen from Cobra Kai or Tai Lee from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Numbing Strike
"If an enemy insists on war, then you take away their ability to wage it."
Spend 1 ki point to target a pressure point on an individual appendage of a creature within 5 feet with an unarmed strike. Creature must make a constitution saving throw or that limb goes limp for the next 3 rounds. After that time the creature regains full control and functionality of their limb. Different effects are caused by striking different limbs as shown in the example list below:
Arm: Disarmed if that arm was holding a weapon or shield. Unable to perform unarmed attacks or grapple maneuvers with that arm.
Leg: Target must make DEX saving throw, DC 15, or fall prone and must make a DEX saving throw, DC 15 to get up. Target's speed is reduced to 5 feet, it can only move by hopping on its good leg(s), and must make a DEX saving throw, DC 15, when moving to avoid falling prone. Target falls prone with no saving throw if all legs it stands on are numbed, and its speed is reduced to 0 until the effect ends.
Wing: Target cannot fly if it depends on wings for flight. If creature has four or more wings, numbing one only halves flight speed.
Tail/Tentacle/Trunk: Appendage goes limp and is unable to perform unarmed attacks or grapple maneuvers.
Beholder's eye stalk: Stalk goes limp and is unable to project magic beams until it recovers.
I think what you're doing is complicating a technique that works and is very simple. While I have to say your fighting techniques are interesting, what you're doing is turning the Stunning Strike into a new variation of open hand techniques. In my opinion, the only problem with the stunning strike is the possibility of doing so many attempts to stun on the same enemy during the same turn. In this regard I have already proposed this kind of solution:
Starting at 5th level, you can interfere with the flow of ki in an opponent's body. When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn. The stunning Strike is limited to one attempt per enemy hit during your turn. Beginning at 9th level, you are no longer limited in the use of your stunning Strike, and at 17th level every time you make a critical hit the enemy is automatically stunned until the end of your next turn.
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Here is an example of the exotic weapons.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0K8TKBWA_MNe7mpo16
GMbinder is a service used to host homebrew
this is a homebrew supplement and likely why you haven't seen it
edit: in this case it's being used as a example as to what these types of weapons could be, not necessary what they currently are.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Ok so I was thinking about this but I have not been able to read through all 16 pages.
Here are my thoughts as to what can be done to make Monk a little better hopefully.
First the 2 ideas that I have ready elsewhere that I think are a big boost. One is the Martial Arts die increases every 4 levels. so it is a d6 and 5, d8 and 9, d10 at 13, d12 at 17 and finally 2d12 as part of our 20th level feature.
Next is Stillness of mind reword it so that you can break out of mental effects that dictate how you spend your action.
Next is Ki points, as with warlocks Monk suffers pretty heavily from the short rest class idea and feels very starved for resources early on. To fix this I am again using an easy solution another has already brought up but you now get Ki= Monk level + Wisdom modifier. This gives about 3 to 4 extra ki at early levels which will feel like a big boost.
In addition, I love step of the wind as something that is free. Rogues already get this I don't see why it needs to be limited for monks.
Given those ideas I wanted to add a couple others. Drawing inspiration from both kung fu movies and anime one of the big tropes is the david vs goliath style fight with the martial artist being the little fast hard to hit guy vs the big hard to bring down powerful brute. You see this in Jackie chan movies, in the Ip Man movies, you even see it in anime all the time that size isn't what makes them powerful. As people are talking about Armor Class this is very relevant to that. My solution is 2 fold. First patient defense is rolled into martial arts, while you are not wearing a shield or armor you can take the dodge as a bonus action. At level 2 you gain patient defense and you may spend 1 ki when you take the dodge action to increase your AC by 2 till the start of your next turn.
In this case it is a trade off between doing damage and being very hard to hit and I think that plays well into the monk power fantasy.
Next we talk about the elephant in the room, the high level abilities are almost all ribbon features that don't really do anything. This is why it feels like monk falls off at higher levels. Purity of Body can sometimes help, Tongue of the Sun and moon you are not the party face and the spell casting face of your group probably had this ability 10 levels earlier. Timeless body, no one is paying attention to this in game and no one cares.
So my suggestion, level 10 Purity of body and timeless body are rolled into 1 and you can now recover from one level of exhaustion after a short rest. We just call it purity of body.
Level 13 is now diamond soul, Level 14 is now an additional ASI, level 15 finally gives monk their high level power fantasy. In almost all cases high level martial artist fantasies have some form of limited flight. So here I am adding in "Ki powered flight: You may use your action and spend 3 ki to grant yourself a flight speed equal to your movement speed for 1 minute"
Finally level 20, in addition to the increased martial arts die from a d12 to 2d12 your unarmored movement also increases to 90 feet and at the start of EVERY fight you gain Ki= to your wisdom modifier.
Doing this in conjunction with changes to elemental, small changes to open hand and shadow monk and possibly creating an errata'd version of sun soul monk with a 60 foot range instead of 30 foot I believe could go a long way towards helping the monk not feel like it was falling off at higher levels and not so starved at lower levels.
In place of a few more attacks, the unarmed damage die increases. Okay, but I would say review the damage evolution during the levels up. Something like 1d6 -1d10 - 2d8 - 2d10 - 2d12.
Ki points = Monk level + Wisdom modifier
You are not the first to propose this solution, and in my opinion it is acceptable.
Unfortunately step of the wind uses the bonus action, even though it doesn't cost ki, this falls back on the bonus attack and the chance to use the flurry of blow, basically stealing 2 attacks in the action. The Rogue doesn't have much use for his bonus action and this doesn't cause him any problems but for the monk it's a different story. Something like the "mobile" or "Crusher" feats would be better solutions.
Same problem as before, All your features fall on the bonus action, halving your number of attacks. Defense is not so extremely important if you know how to make the most of your speed. The monk is not a tank, otherwise they wouldn't have given him the movement speed to attack and escape.
If you're not a barbarian berserker, it doesn't seem very useful (There is also the Haste spell). I would go to more useful elements, something like this:
At 10th level, your mastery of the ki flowing through you makes you immune to disease and poison. You can use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Strength or Dextery modifier when making Acrobatics or Athletics checks.
Walking in the sky is the ultimate dream. So a big OK!
But I would make it an evolution of the unarmored movement skill and give the ability to not fall during the end of the turn as a ki cost skill. Something like this:
Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you are not wearing heavy armor or wielding a shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain monk levels, as shown in the Monk table. At 9th level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the move. At 18th level, you gain the ability to move in the air on your turn without falling during the move.
Beginning at 14th level, your mastery of ki grants you proficiency in all saving throw. Additionally, whenever you make a saving throw or an ability check and fail, you can spend 1 ki point to reroll it and take the second result.
I'm still looking for something useful to add in the timeless body.
What do you need all that movement for? I find it a bit pointless. At this point I prefer teleportation at the cost of movement. Like Nightcrawler from the X-Men. Okay, but it doesn't change much from the original skill, just precise that you don't have to be at zero to activate the skill. It would be a bit strong because it would give advantages to all the attacks, but it would be cool.
In my opinion you're on the right track, but it's not enough to be on par with other classes. Below is an interesting example.
MONK 1
MONK2
Ok idea to fix the bonus action issue. At level 1 as a part of martial arts you gain 3 abilities. Flurry of blows, Step of the wind and Patient defense. Flurry of blows: As a bonus action you can make 1 unarmed strike, Patient Defense As a bonus action you can take the dodge action, Step of the wind as a bonus action you can take the disengage or dash action. (Since this is part of martial arts it requires that you not be wearing armor or shield). At level 2 when you gain ki you gain an ability that states "Spend 1 ki, you may take an additional bonus actions this turn". At level 11, In addition to my suggested Damage die change, you also gain "extra bonus action, you may now take 2 bonus actions on each of your turns" this will allow for more attacks and this allows for some cool combinations with bonus actions from other classes and other things adding more synergy to the monk.
This said I really like the adding wisdom to your grapple checks very Judo/Jiu jitsu style which is great for monk, I wish it was earlier than level 10. That said the level 10 feature was just thinking "what does old age do and what do you wish to have from your youth." to go along with the whole timeless body thing. Point was I was wrapping a bunch of ribbon features together because they all add up to something significant when put together. Disease, poison immunity + exhaustion recovery is a lot of physical status effects that you just get to push through really well.
I still don't like the tongue thing because it comes way to late for you to become your parties face character and I would much rather see an expansion of our other roles outside of combat. Things like better insight, or even detect thoughts or something to act as the parties lie detector or even help act as the parties scout or investigator, or even better movement (like the not falling thing maybe) are all things I could get behind more than the talking thing.
As far as why I added more movement it was the capstone ability. I think the capstones should really be the character becoming great at what they are good at. Maybe in this case instead of the extra movement increase it could be "you can take 3 bonus actions on your turn" and also still have the 2d12 martial arts die.
What are your thoughts to this?
its an interesting idea but I’m not sure if granting additional bonus actions won’t have unintended consequences.
Masterofki had this idea Over in this thread
Ki Fueled Action. You can spend 1ki point to gain an extra action on your turn. This action can only be used to take the Dodge, Disengage or Dash Action. When you use this feature to Dash or Disengage your jump distance is doubled for the turn.
The additional action has precedence with action surge and haste. And having it restricted to Dash, Dodge, Disengage keeps it balanced and your damage up since you still have your BA for FoB or unarmed strike.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I still believe FOB shouldn't consume a BA.
I saw the ki fueled action and I actually like that idea a lot. It is technically where the inspiration for additional bonus actions came from. The issue is it HAS TO BE backwards compatible with current classes. We can't change fizban's subclasses or xanathar's sub classes, or tasha's subclasses. What ever is introduced must work within the current system. None of the consequences are unintended many classes have something they can do with their bonus action and Monk has historically been a difficult class to multi-class with. Now their is multi-class synergy. As you said there is precedence giving extra "actions" and this gives a very specific type of extra action. In addition, at higher levels the lack of continued attack growth is particularly harmful to the monk. They start out as the class with the most attacks but the fighter catches up and passes them at level 11 and it just gets worse for them from there. by doing this you don't need to have crazy high damage attacks each attack, because you can always "flurry of blows" for another attack. My suggestion at level 11 allows you to attack twice and then use your bonus action twice for 2 flurry of blows (which in this iteration are just 1 attack) without spending a ki, then you can spend 1 ki for an additional attack or dodge or dash. I am on board with the idea that it starts out a d6, then d8, then d10, d12, and finally 2d12. By level 11 being 5 attacks at a d10 or 4 attacks at a d10 and dash for 1 ki seems solid. (also since the bonus action attack has been renamed flurry of blows all of the monk subclasses that key off that get a boost.)
If we made the ki based bonus action read "you gain an extra bonus action and can use one of your monk bonus actions", which each of those bonus actions being named as suggested it would basically be the same thing as ki fueled action but is backwards compatible. At level 11 we still need to scale the monk with more than just attack die to keep the fantasy of the fast attacking hard to catch martial artist, i just thought extra bonus action was something unique to really give the monk it's own identity.
A secondary solution to keep Flurry of blows off the bonus action AND make it scale better is it reads "you may take another attack action this turn using your unarmed stikes" This means it would scale with extra attack. So at level 1-4 it is unchanged, but at level 5 you basically get 5 attacks, the issue again being that it doesnt scale past 5.
The point here I think is we have kind of discovered a lot of solutions while we also defined the issue. Bonus action bloat + lack of attack scaling past 5 to keep up with the fantasy. High level ribbon features that largely don't effect the game.
Technically Ki-fueled does not give a bonus action, it only allows you to make an attack after an ability that uses an action and that uses ki power. According to martial arts you can only attack with your unarmed attack if you have used your action to attack.
Ki fuel attack allows you to access the unarmed attack in your bonus action even if you used a 4 element spell or invisibility (empty body 18th level) and accessing the bonus attack also allows the use of flurry of blow.
Ki-Fueled Attack (Optional)
Also at 3rd level, if you spend 1 ki point or more as part of your action on your turn, you can make one attack with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
The main difference is that actions which don't make attacks but do cost ki trigger Ki-Fueled Attack. For instance, if you are a Way of the Four Elements monk and you use your action to cast a spell, you can still make an attack as a bonus action with Ki-Fueled Attack.
Ki-Fueled Attack also allows you to make an attack with a monk weapon (which could be a ranged attack), so a Way of the Kensei monk who spends a ki point as part of their Attack action could make a bonus-action attack with their ranged kensei weapon.
Ki-Fueled Attack was added to allow subclasses to make a bonus-action attack in situations where they didn't qualify for the bonus-action unarmed strike from Martial Arts.
The version in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything also allows monks to upgrade an unarmed strike to a weapon attack, if they qualify for both (unlike the version in UA: Class Feature Variants, which only allowed an unarmed strike).
Source : https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/177895/how-do-the-ki-fueled-attack-optional-feature-and-the-martial-arts-feature-differ
I don't understand why we have to make this so complicated. If we want the monk to make an extra attack add it to the flurry of blow.
Flurry of blow already makes 2 attacks in its bonus action paying the price of a ki power. Making 3 or 4 attacks shouldn't change the rules of the game. The only one who would lose is the shadow monk, since he uses his shadow ability as a bonus action (the most absurd nonsense in the game).
Another solution is to turn flurry of blow as an action and paying a ki allows to add an extra attack. It would solve the problem of the shadow monk, but it would put in problem the 4 elements monk.
Another solution could be to make the flurry of blow an attack that can be inserted in any situation, during the monk's turn, so action or bonus action.
It should also be specified that it can only be used once per turn, a bit like the sneak attack of the rogue.
The fact is that monk is a class full of restrictions. You can't use your unarmored defense and your special movement if you're wearing armor. You can't use your martial art if you use weapons that have the two-handed or heavy property. Monk weapons are only simple weapons and not ranged. Only monk weapons can have damage progression. You can't attack with your unarmed bonus attack if you didn't attack during your action. Flurry of blow can only be performed by unarmed attacks. You cannot counterattack with your deflect missiles feature if you do not reduce the damage to 0.....
Honestly it sounds more like a monk in chains to me than a monk free to run and throw punches.
Ok you need to read the thread called "Monk a simple fix" to understand what I am referencing here. I am not talking about Ki fueled ATTACK from tasha's I am talking about the new suggested homebrew ability called "Ki Fueled ACTION" in which he removes patient defense and Step of the wind with an ability called "Ki fueled action": "You may spend 1 ki point to gain an extra action, this action can only be used to take the dash, disengage or dodge actions" this was his solution to the bonus action bloat. My solution was instead of giving an ACTION we give extra bonus actions instead and just wrap flurry, step and patient defense into martial arts "options" that people can do with their bonus action. Then they can spend a ki to GAIN an additional bonus action.
Shadow Monk and Elemental Monks shouldnt be a problem with any changes to monk because they will likely be re-designed in the new PHB with the new monk. The real concern is Sun Soul, Drunken Master, Ascendant Dragon, Way of the Astral Self and Mercy Monks. They said the new book would be backwards compatible with Tasha's and Xanathar's so we can expect that these subclasses will still need to function with new monk. Adding attacks to Flurry of blows HURTS drunken master rather than helping it because of it's level 17 feature. Yes we should not balance around level 17 features, but I still think it needs to be taken into consideration.
Sorry for the confusion you must have experienced reading my post without having read more threads. I should have been more clear.
I know it'll probably be divisive a suggestion, but would it be out of the question for the level 20 capstone to be the ability to use foresight? Either for a bunch of Ki, or a once a day thing. Not the full spell obviously! But a strict, much shorter time limited version of it.
It just thematically fits the idea of a monk so damn well for the absolute apex of their ability, the thing they strive for, to be hard earned natural foresight because you're so one with your Ki and for a moment can operate on pure instinctual reaction.
From my point of view it is a spell that could be put at the 18th level "empty body". It could be put in place of astral projection.
But come to think of it, monk invisibility offers similar powers.
How about this solution:
Not bad the biggest issue with adding more than 2 attacks to flurry of blows is the anti-synergy with an ability like Drunken master's intoxicated flurry. Drunken master is not one of the corebook subclasses so the monk change needs to be backwards compatible. That said it isn't bad because it does improve other aspects of it and other subclasses in general including drunken master.
Might need to work on wording as I was a bit confused. Your NewFoB has you spend a Ki at the beginning of your turn, but you don’t have to attack right then. But if you decide to use your action to do something that requires the use of a Ki point (4 elements Elemental Discipline, for example) the Ki you spent at the beginning of your turn is retroactively returned to you?
Would it make sense to have it usable “when you take the Attack action” or just when you use any action, like using Fist of Unbroken Air from 4E monk?
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I've heard talk that they're afraid of improving the monk and it's subclesses because of Stunning Strike and how the character class is basically built around that 5th level skill. What if we replace Stunning Strike with an attack that only "Stuns" one limb on an enemy instead of taking away their whole turn? Think Chozen from Cobra Kai or Tai Lee from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Numbing Strike
Spend 1 ki point to target a pressure point on an individual appendage of a creature within 5 feet with an unarmed strike. Creature must make a constitution saving throw or that limb goes limp for the next 3 rounds. After that time the creature regains full control and functionality of their limb. Different effects are caused by striking different limbs as shown in the example list below:
So because of the Drunken master we can't touch the flurry of blow. I always thought "intoxixated Frenzy" was useless. An ability that forces you to run around and pull fists has all the enemies on the field. Great, but unfortunately if the enemy is alone, this skill is as if it did not exist. Does this make any sense?
Then the only solution to add new attacks is to create a new technique. We could give a sub verion of a perpetual "haste" to the monk as a power at 15th level "timeless body". It would have 1 more attack and more defense, and at 20th level it would become 2 attacks.
The idea was to make flurry of blow not dependent on the bonus action, but make it an extension of the action. That would free up "patient defense" and "step of the wind". What I meant was any type of action, spell or attack. At the beginning of the turn the monk must declare if he will use flurry of blow (being part of the action) and if this is an ability like the 4 elements, the flurry of blow would not consume ki points.
I think what you're doing is complicating a technique that works and is very simple. While I have to say your fighting techniques are interesting, what you're doing is turning the Stunning Strike into a new variation of open hand techniques. In my opinion, the only problem with the stunning strike is the possibility of doing so many attempts to stun on the same enemy during the same turn. In this regard I have already proposed this kind of solution:
Starting at 5th level, you can interfere with the flow of ki in an opponent's body. When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn. The stunning Strike is limited to one attempt per enemy hit during your turn. Beginning at 9th level, you are no longer limited in the use of your stunning Strike, and at 17th level every time you make a critical hit the enemy is automatically stunned until the end of your next turn.