Way of the Empty Hand Started as an Unarmed Kensei Variant. May seem like I gave the Monk a lot, but being entirely unarmed pretty much forces the monk to be in the thick of the melee even more so than before, so I wanted to fix the ”glass cannon” issue. Also some abilities like Agile Maneuvers and Throw are fairly situational. Furthermore the special focus on unarmed combat makes the monk weaker against enemies who are resistant or immune to bludgeoning damage since Ki-Empowered strikes overcomes resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks but as far as I've understood it doesn't affect resistance or immunity to other specific kinds of damage such as Bludgeoning. Please tell me if I'm wrong and if that, or something else makes this monk too OP. Or if there are other problems with it. I do have ideas on how to tinker with different abilities and am open to suggestions.
3rd Level Empty Hand Technique You have eschewed all weapons in favour of mastering the art of unarmed combat. All damage from weapons you are or acquire proficiency with is considered 1+ Dexterity modifier. You gain the following abilities: Agile Maneuvers: Contesting Athletics skill check, such as a Grapple or a Shove is made with Dexterity instead of Strenght. Deflect Blows: You can, as a reaction, Deflect Melee Attacks similarly to Deflect Missiles. If you reduce the damage of a melee attack to 0, you catch the weapon in your hand(s). You can spend a ki point as a part of the same reaction to make an attempt with advantage to knock the creature prone. Feint: You can use your bonus action, before your regular action, to purposefully miss your Martial Arts bonus attack. The creature then has to make a Wisdom saving throw or the regular Attack Action will have advantage (If the attack is a Critical hit the Extra attack gained at 5th level will also have an advantage). Iron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you. Your Base AC increases by 1.
6th Level Throw: When you successfully knock an opponent prone you can make them land on any square around you. The thrown creature cannot be more than one size category larger than you. If the square is occupied by another creature it is pushed back 5ft unless it makes a Reflex save. On a successful Reflex save the thrown creature lands on an adjacent square. You can spend 1 ki point to throw the creature 5ft further. Unarmed Expertise: You add a third unarmed strike to your Flurry of Blows.
11th Level Blind Fight: You can spend 2 ki points to enhance your senses. While you are in this state whether you are Blinded or fight against invisible creatures their attacks do not have advantage against you and your melee attacks are not at a disadvantage against them. This effect lasts 1 hour *If you also have or gain Deafened condition Ranged attacks regain advantage against you.
17th Level Fist of Fury: When you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike you can spend 3 ki points to inflict 12d12 Force damage to the creature. You can reroll 1's and 2's. When you use this action the creature must make a Constitution saving throw. If it succeeds it takes half of the damage. The creature is also pushed back 30 feet. You can use this ability only once per round.
Empty hand technique seems weird and not needed. Monk Weapons and Martial Arts do what your trying to do but better. Agile Maneuvers honestly don't need more things to make DEX ((the god stat)) do. Deflect blows seems OP to give at level 3, Drunken Monk has something similar given at 6. And the knocking prone seems excessive if your already reducing damage to 0. Feint: sacrificing a bonus action for a monk is not worth just gaining Advantage. You are giving up an attack to give advantage on another attack. And also losing out flurry. Doesnt mesh well with monks. Iron Body a base plus 1 ac seems... eh. Its already double dipping into the fluff for Monks Armor calculations. Base Kensei gives you a +2 for not attacking with a weapon.
Throw i get the fluff of it, and i can understand the Judo aspect. Probably some tweaking to make sense of it. Unarmed expertise is going to even more make Feint a never used ability. 5 attacks at level 6 is a bit...crazy.
2 ki points for blindsense for an hour seems long. Maybe work on duration and range.
12d12 force damage is a lot, but Open palm has this skill but better.
Honestly alot of this can be gain from just going Open Palm monk... not sure what your looking for thats missing from that subclass.
Thanks for the input. I'll answer the question of what I was trying to do first. I thought it might be interesting to have a path that focuses even more on the unarmed combat and what was known in earlier editions as Combat maneuvers. Perhaps I'll tinker more with Agile Maneuvers and Throw to make that aspect more apparent. That is also the reason for Dex for contesting skill checks. 5e did good to have monk automatically use dex for attack and damage (previously you had to sacrifice a feat for that) and simplifying combat maneuvers to a contesting athletics roll, but considering that monk is still pretty dependent on three stats Dex, Wis and Con due to ridiculous hit die for a melee fighter and inability to wear armor, I kinda feel like that aspect could be made a dex thing too.
Iron body was again because of the poor armor class and inability to wear armor (though granted 5e has helped here by seeming to drop everyones armor class). I still dont see it as that bad especially when you consider the monks poor hit die. Perhaps I still shall rethink that or remake that as a few point damage resistance or something.
Deflect Blows: Perhaps that should be a later addition at a later level. I was wondering what the ki point could do at that point. Perhaps a Stunning Strike. I originally considered that a combat maneuver would be better because it could be applied against a reach weapon as well... so originally I went for disarm. But disarming an opponent against an even more unarmed specialized monk seemed more op to me that knocking them prone... or am I wrong?
Feint: I thought it as cool fluff wise and one way not to burn ki points so fast (although partially I think I considered that also because I'm used to the earlier versions Ki regenerating after a long rest, while in 5e it comes back already after a short one, so perhaps this should be rethought.) I did consider that at later levels with more ki points it would probably be a less used ability. Would it be more useful if the feint automatically gives advantages to both attacks (if the creature fails their save), not just if first one is a Critical? On a different note... Even if Feint is unusable no matter how I twist it with unarmed attacks I've been also thinking of making a different monk... more weapon heavy/specialized. Would Feint work with that kind of path since Flurry of Blows is always an unarmed attack?
Throw: Nice to know this one made sense, even if it needs a bit tweaking. I'll look into it.
Unarmed Expertise: While 5e did a lot for the monk I appreciate some things left like they were befor like the poor hit die and the inability to make a good combat maneuver proficient monk mentioned above irked me... however one thing that kinda irked me alot as well was the stripping down of the Flurry of Blows. I really liked in earlier editions the extra amount of attacks that the flurry had which made it seem truly like a flurry. One extra attack to your martial arts-thing for a ki point seemed to me a bit high price and it didn't really seem like a Flurry seemed to me barely a combo. Though I grant that the 7+ attacks of Pathfinder and the like would be a bit much especially now that you can move with it and it is no longer a full round action. So I thought that adding just one more would make it a little closer to a flurry. I do agree that I have a bit of a concern with the amount of attacks at that level though they do not do yet too much damage and I was considering again how still possibly at that early level conserving ki points might be a thing and that would make a difference as well (again still used to thinking you need 8 hours to regain ki points). Could it work if it was moved a little towards its original version... Like you can add a third unarmed strike to your flurry of blows if you sacrifice your movement action or reaction? Or Perhaps this extra attack should be the 11th level ability and I'll move the Blind Fight earlier or come up with something different in its place. Speaking of...
Blind Fight: Something like Darkvision as a spell is a 2nd level spell and lasts for 8 hours so I'm not entirely sure if the duration or the cost is too much of a problem at 11th level. if I move it earlier as I planned I certainly will downgrade it.
Fist of Fury: Yeah the Quivering Palm is better against a lot of things save or die and even if you save you take the 10d10 damage. Although I'm pretty sure it doesn't work against undead, constructs and other such differing creatures. (or perhaps now it does I just remember the original Quivering palm from earlier editions). I kinda felt like I wanted something that would cause alot of damage against pretty much any target and have some other extra effect since dying was off the table... And I didn't want to just copy the Quivering Palm. I just wondered would this be fun variant? Though perhaps it still also needs more work. While I am fond of the fluff of the attack pushing a creature back... 30 feet or six squares might be a bit much.
Thank you very much for your input. I hope I've made it more understandable what I was trying to achieve and if that springs to mind more suggestions to how that might be achieved I would be happy to hear them. Meanwhile its back to the drawing board for me
Feint: I thought it as cool fluff wise and one way not to burn ki points so fast (although partially I think I considered that also because I'm used to the earlier versions Ki regenerating after a long rest, while in 5e it comes back already after a short one, so perhaps this should be rethought.) I did consider that at later levels with more ki points it would probably be a less used ability. Would it be more useful if the feint automatically gives advantages to both attacks (if the creature fails their save), not just if first one is a Critical? On a different note... Even if Feint is unusable no matter how I twist it with unarmed attacks I've been also thinking of making a different monk... more weapon heavy/specialized. Would Feint work with that kind of path since Flurry of Blows is always an unarmed attack?
Well your sacrificing a Melee attack to make just one of your main attacks have advantage and then for just the cost of 1 ki your then sacrificing two attacks for one with advantage. Samurai Fighter's main ability is basically this plus it gives you Temp HP.
Also Quivering Palm effects all creatures there is no limitation to it.
I suggest reading up on the current builds it might help with this since you seem to be more aware of past editions than 5e, but i see the style of what your going for and i understand it. You could try re-flavoring Drunken Monk to be blind instead of drunk.
I do see your point about feint. I really do like the fluff idea of it. You know pretending to attack one way to get opening for other attacks to have advantage... but maybe thats something to discuss with a DM instead of making it a core ability.
Oh okay cool to know that the Quivering Palm is updated to effect the undead as well. I guess I just assumed because of the original way. I kind of like the fluff idea for Fist of Fury as well. You know punching someone so hard they might go through a wall and suffer a lot of damage but if those original limitations have been removed then yes Quivering Palm is unquestionably better. Maybe I'll look into that ability as well.
re-flavoring is an interesting idea especially for a Zatoichi type monk. I'll think about that too. Thanks for the idea! :) Though right now I've been trying to build something from the ground up. So with the unarmed combat I'll try not to borrow too heavily from other builds. I will read up on them as you suggested though so I'll have a bit more updated memory of what they could or could not do and see if that inspires me.
I like it. It’s how I’m playing my half orc monk currently. And I feel like yeah open palm has some good utility but this helps in other areas and to be honest with a minor boost to AC and knocking people prone on a deflect gives the right amount of control needed.
I think put deflect at LV6 and change faint so that all attack rolls on your next turn have advantage. Also maybe make Crit on a 19 from like LV6 on those advantage rolls. This should make up for the lost attacks from the bonus action as-well as make people want to use it instead of forgetting about it to use unarmed strike every time.
Thanks for the idea. I went through a second version some months back and I think unintentionally OP'd it a bit too much. Got called out on it too. I am currently working on a homebrew based on some of the same concepts here but one that isn't necessarily completely unarmed, (though I too mostly would probably still play it that way). I'll post it here when its finished. I'll look at your suggestions and see if I can implement them there or if I'll do another unarmed build
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Way of the Empty Hand
Started as an Unarmed Kensei Variant. May seem like I gave the Monk a lot, but being entirely unarmed pretty much forces the monk to be in the thick of the melee even more so than before, so I wanted to fix the ”glass cannon” issue. Also some abilities like Agile Maneuvers and Throw are fairly situational. Furthermore the special focus on unarmed combat makes the monk weaker against enemies who are resistant or immune to bludgeoning damage since Ki-Empowered strikes overcomes resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks but as far as I've understood it doesn't affect resistance or immunity to other specific kinds of damage such as Bludgeoning. Please tell me if I'm wrong and if that, or something else makes this monk too OP. Or if there are other problems with it. I do have ideas on how to tinker with different abilities and am open to suggestions.
3rd Level
Empty Hand Technique
You have eschewed all weapons in favour of mastering the art of unarmed combat. All damage from weapons you are or acquire proficiency with is considered 1+ Dexterity modifier.
You gain the following abilities:
Agile Maneuvers: Contesting Athletics skill check, such as a Grapple or a Shove is made with Dexterity instead of Strenght.
Deflect Blows: You can, as a reaction, Deflect Melee Attacks similarly to Deflect Missiles. If you reduce the damage of a melee attack to 0, you catch the weapon in your hand(s). You can spend a ki point as a part of the same reaction to make an attempt with advantage to knock the creature prone.
Feint: You can use your bonus action, before your regular action, to purposefully miss your Martial Arts bonus attack. The creature then has to make a Wisdom saving throw or the regular Attack Action will have advantage (If the attack is a Critical hit the Extra attack gained at 5th level will also have an advantage).
Iron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you. Your Base AC increases by 1.
6th Level
Throw: When you successfully knock an opponent prone you can make them land on any square around you. The thrown creature cannot be more than one size category larger than you.
If the square is occupied by another creature it is pushed back 5ft unless it makes a Reflex save.
On a successful Reflex save the thrown creature lands on an adjacent square.
You can spend 1 ki point to throw the creature 5ft further.
Unarmed Expertise: You add a third unarmed strike to your Flurry of Blows.
11th Level
Blind Fight: You can spend 2 ki points to enhance your senses. While you are in this state whether you are Blinded or fight against invisible creatures their attacks do not have advantage against you and your melee attacks are not at a disadvantage against them. This effect lasts 1 hour
*If you also have or gain Deafened condition Ranged attacks regain advantage against you.
17th Level
Fist of Fury: When you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike you can spend 3 ki points to inflict 12d12 Force damage to the creature.
You can reroll 1's and 2's.
When you use this action the creature must make a Constitution saving throw. If it succeeds it takes half of the damage. The creature is also pushed back 30 feet.
You can use this ability only once per round.
Empty hand technique seems weird and not needed. Monk Weapons and Martial Arts do what your trying to do but better.
Agile Maneuvers honestly don't need more things to make DEX ((the god stat)) do.
Deflect blows seems OP to give at level 3, Drunken Monk has something similar given at 6. And the knocking prone seems excessive if your already reducing damage to 0.
Feint: sacrificing a bonus action for a monk is not worth just gaining Advantage. You are giving up an attack to give advantage on another attack. And also losing out flurry. Doesnt mesh well with monks.
Iron Body a base plus 1 ac seems... eh. Its already double dipping into the fluff for Monks Armor calculations. Base Kensei gives you a +2 for not attacking with a weapon.
Throw i get the fluff of it, and i can understand the Judo aspect. Probably some tweaking to make sense of it.
Unarmed expertise is going to even more make Feint a never used ability. 5 attacks at level 6 is a bit...crazy.
2 ki points for blindsense for an hour seems long. Maybe work on duration and range.
12d12 force damage is a lot, but Open palm has this skill but better.
Honestly alot of this can be gain from just going Open Palm monk... not sure what your looking for thats missing from that subclass.
Hi
Thanks for the input. I'll answer the question of what I was trying to do first.
I thought it might be interesting to have a path that focuses even more on the unarmed combat and what was known in earlier editions as
Combat maneuvers. Perhaps I'll tinker more with Agile Maneuvers and Throw to make that aspect more apparent. That is also the reason
for Dex for contesting skill checks. 5e did good to have monk automatically use dex for attack and damage (previously you had to sacrifice a feat for that)
and simplifying combat maneuvers to a contesting athletics roll, but considering that monk is still pretty dependent on three stats Dex, Wis and Con due to ridiculous hit die
for a melee fighter and inability to wear armor, I kinda feel like that aspect could be made a dex thing too.
Iron body was again because of the poor armor class and inability to wear armor (though granted 5e has helped here by seeming to drop everyones armor class).
I still dont see it as that bad especially when you consider the monks poor hit die.
Perhaps I still shall rethink that or remake that as a few point damage resistance or something.
Deflect Blows: Perhaps that should be a later addition at a later level. I was wondering what the ki point could do at that point. Perhaps a Stunning Strike.
I originally considered that a combat maneuver would be better because it could be applied against a reach weapon as well... so originally I went for disarm.
But disarming an opponent against an even more unarmed specialized monk seemed more op to me that knocking them prone... or am I wrong?
Feint: I thought it as cool fluff wise and one way not to burn ki points so fast (although partially I think I considered that also because I'm used to the earlier versions
Ki regenerating after a long rest, while in 5e it comes back already after a short one, so perhaps this should be rethought.) I did consider that at later levels with more ki points it would probably be a less used ability. Would it be more useful if the feint automatically gives advantages to both attacks (if the creature fails their save), not just if first one is a Critical?
On a different note... Even if Feint is unusable no matter how I twist it with unarmed attacks I've been also thinking of making a different monk... more weapon heavy/specialized. Would Feint work with that kind of path since Flurry of Blows is always an unarmed attack?
Throw: Nice to know this one made sense, even if it needs a bit tweaking. I'll look into it.
Unarmed Expertise: While 5e did a lot for the monk I appreciate some things left like they were befor like the poor hit die and the inability to make a good combat maneuver proficient monk mentioned above irked me...
however one thing that kinda irked me alot as well was the stripping down of the Flurry of Blows. I really liked in earlier editions the extra amount of attacks that the flurry had which made it seem truly like a flurry. One extra attack to your martial arts-thing for a ki point seemed to me a bit high price and it didn't really seem like a Flurry seemed to me barely a combo. Though I grant that the 7+ attacks of Pathfinder and the like would be a bit much especially now that you can move with it and it is no longer a full round action. So I thought that adding just one more would make it a little closer to a flurry.
I do agree that I have a bit of a concern with the amount of attacks at that level though they do not do yet too much damage and I was considering again how still possibly at that early level conserving ki points might be a thing and that would make a difference as well (again still used to thinking you need 8 hours to regain ki points).
Could it work if it was moved a little towards its original version... Like you can add a third unarmed strike to your flurry of blows if you sacrifice your movement action or reaction?
Or Perhaps this extra attack should be the 11th level ability and I'll move the Blind Fight earlier or come up with something different in its place.
Speaking of...
Blind Fight: Something like Darkvision as a spell is a 2nd level spell and lasts for 8 hours so I'm not entirely sure if the duration or the cost is too much
of a problem at 11th level. if I move it earlier as I planned I certainly will downgrade it.
Fist of Fury: Yeah the Quivering Palm is better against a lot of things save or die and even if you save you take the 10d10 damage.
Although I'm pretty sure it doesn't work against undead, constructs and other such differing creatures. (or perhaps now it does I just remember the
original Quivering palm from earlier editions).
I kinda felt like I wanted something that would cause alot of damage against pretty much any target and have some other extra effect
since dying was off the table... And I didn't want to just copy the Quivering Palm. I just wondered would this be fun variant?
Though perhaps it still also needs more work. While I am fond of the fluff of the attack pushing a creature back... 30 feet or six squares might
be a bit much.
Thank you very much for your input. I hope I've made it more understandable what I was trying to achieve and if that springs to mind more suggestions
to how that might be achieved I would be happy to hear them. Meanwhile its back to the drawing board for me
Well your sacrificing a Melee attack to make just one of your main attacks have advantage and then for just the cost of 1 ki your then sacrificing two attacks for one with advantage. Samurai Fighter's main ability is basically this plus it gives you Temp HP.
Also Quivering Palm effects all creatures there is no limitation to it.
I suggest reading up on the current builds it might help with this since you seem to be more aware of past editions than 5e, but i see the style of what your going for and i understand it. You could try re-flavoring Drunken Monk to be blind instead of drunk.
Hi
I do see your point about feint. I really do like the fluff idea of it. You know pretending to attack one way to get opening for other attacks to
have advantage... but maybe thats something to discuss with a DM instead of making it a core ability.
Oh okay cool to know that the Quivering Palm is updated to effect the undead as well. I guess I just assumed because of the
original way. I kind of like the fluff idea for Fist of Fury as well. You know punching someone so hard they might go through a wall and
suffer a lot of damage but if those original limitations have been removed then yes Quivering Palm is unquestionably better.
Maybe I'll look into that ability as well.
re-flavoring is an interesting idea especially for a Zatoichi type monk. I'll think about that too. Thanks for the idea! :)
Though right now I've been trying to build something from the ground up. So with the unarmed combat I'll try not to borrow too
heavily from other builds. I will read up on them as you suggested though so I'll have a bit more updated memory of
what they could or could not do and see if that inspires me.
Thank you again for the input :)
I like it. It’s how I’m playing my half orc monk currently. And I feel like yeah open palm has some good utility but this helps in other areas and to be honest with a minor boost to AC and knocking people prone on a deflect gives the right amount of control needed.
I think put deflect at LV6 and change faint so that all attack rolls on your next turn have advantage. Also maybe make Crit on a 19 from like LV6 on those advantage rolls. This should make up for the lost attacks from the bonus action as-well as make people want to use it instead of forgetting about it to use unarmed strike every time.
Thanks for the idea.
I went through a second version some months back and I think unintentionally OP'd it a bit too much. Got called out on it too.
I am currently working on a homebrew based on some of the same concepts here but one that isn't necessarily completely unarmed,
(though I too mostly would probably still play it that way).
I'll post it here when its finished. I'll look at your suggestions and see if I can implement them there or if I'll do another unarmed build