Way of the Empty Hand Started as an Unarmed Kensei Variant. May seem like I gave the Monk alot, 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. Some abilities like Agile Maneuvers and Throw are fairly situational. Also the special focus on unarmed combat makes the monk weaker against enemies who are resistant or immune to bludgeoning damage.
Got some great feedback on what mechanics needed to be looked at. Tinkered with a bit and thought to showcase it a bit to see if it cuts the mustard this time. Special thanks to Gavorn! I may have proceeded in a different direction you suggested but your evaluation was still very helpful. (Also I wrote down your suggestions about reflavouring the Drunken Master, they may be very helpful for another sub class I'm now considering.)
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: All Contesting Athletics skill checks, such as a Grapple or a Shove, utilize Dexterity instead of Strenght. If a Contesting Athletics skill check against you fails you can, as a reaction, spend a ki point to to attempt to reverse it with an advantage. Clinch Fighting: While grappling your unarmed attacks have advantage, while restrained your unarmed attacks do not suffer disadvantage. However while restrained your unarmed attacks do not gain advantage against a vulnerable target even though they ignore the penalty of being restrained. Iron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you. Your AC bonus increases by +1 Throw: When you successfully knock a creature prone with a Contesting athletics check you can make them land on any square around you instead of its own square. 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. Immediately after a throw you can, as a bonus action, attempt a grapple check to pin the creature at your feet. If successful both you and the creature are restrained until the end of your grapple. The throw itself does not cause any damage. If the thrown creature is thrown on/through an object or falls further as a result of the throw the DM determines the damage the creature takes, if any. You can spend 1 ki point to throw the creature 5ft further.
6th Level Chokehold: While grappling a creature you can as an action attempt another grapple check to apply a chokehold. If successful the creature is now Restrained. However your attacks do not have an advantage against the creature as you have to struggle with them to maintain the hold. The creature survives in a chokehold a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). Every turn after that the creature begins in the hold it is Choking and has to make a Constitution saving throw. If it succeeds nothing happens, if it fails it takes a point of exhaustion. You can also choose to attempt to knock the creature unconscious. In that case the creature rolls this save with an advantage. You can spend a ki point to eliminate the advantage. If the creature remains in your chokehold after being knocked unconscious it is considered dying and cannot regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again. A creature that has more than a 100 hit points left cannot be knocked unconscious, the attempt, if successful will inflict the creature two levels of exhaustion instead of one. A creature in a chokehold can be pinned with a grapple check. You have advantage on the check, however the shifting position loosens the grip momentarily. The next round the creature doesn't have to attempt the Constitution save. If it was not yet choking it gains an additional round to survive. Applying chokehold while pinning a creature inflicts a -1 penalty to the Constitution saving throws as well as any attempts by the creature to break the hold. The creature breaks the chokehold by successfully breaking the grapple.
Relentless Flurry: You can swap your movement action for a third strike to your Flurry of Blows.
11th Level Intercepting Fist: If a creatures melee attack meets your AC but does not exceed it, you can, as a reaction, attempt to hit the creature with a melee attack. Upon a successful hit the creatures melee attack misses. If you are in Patient Defense your attack roll has advantage. If you are not in Patient Defense you can spend 2 ki points, as a reaction, to attack with an advantage against an attack that does exceed your AC. A critical hit will not miss, unless your attack was also a critical hit, but will be reduced to a normal attack.
17th Level (This could be swapped to Quivering Palm. I just wanted to explore a fun flavoured alternative) Fist of Fury: When you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike you can spend 3 ki points to inflict further 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.
AlternativeIron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you.Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing damage from an unarmed attack or a natural weapon is halved. (In case increase in AC is considered too op. A damage resistance might actually serve monks better than Barbarians considering the poor hit die and inability to wear armor. And this is only against unarmed attacks and natural weapons so it most definitely isn't op)
The only thing I find interesting, that isn't also clearly unbalanced, is Agile Maneuvers. Rather than allowing Dex to be used for Athletics, it would make more sense to let Monks utilize Acrobatics in place of Athletics for initiating a grapple/shove. RAW already allows characters to use Acrobatics to break or resist grapple/shove, and extending this to Monks for the initial check is the easiest thing to accomplish from the perspective of a DM & Beyond app functionality. If you were to just say "Athletics uses my DEX instead of STR for grapples", then you'd all have to either mentally remember that a single skill uses a different stat in specific circumstances, or to add a custom skill to your character sheet Athletics (Grapple/Shove) because those are not the only way Athletics can be used (climbing, jumping, swimming, etc. are still STR-based checks).
Relentless Fury is unwieldy and destroys one of the core concepts for Monk--you are supposed to be moving around the battlefield as much as possible.
Intercepting Fist simply has too way too many conditionals that need to be tracked, and too many branching circumstances. It will absolutely slow down the rate of play in combat:
DM must now has two distinct rule sets for attacks & AC in combat: one for only you, and one for literally everything else. That's already a deal breaker. Nobody wants this at their table.
DM must explicitly distinguish between a standard miss, a standard hit, and a hit that is exactly equal to your AC (and what that exact value is at all times).
Advantage on your Reaction attack? Dude, if you were using Patient Defense, then the attack roll against you already had disadvantage. Giving yourself advantage on a Reaction attack that would also negate the enemy attackthat still managed to hit you despite having already had disadvantage is insane. Not even Counterspell is that powerful.
After all the slog of dealing with #1 & #2, you get hit by an attack that exceeded your AC, but you could still just use 2 ki points to grant yourself advantage at a chance to both nullify the attack AND attack the enemy at the same time? As a Reaction? Bleep that.
You've given yourself the property of Adamantine Armor, which you are not allowed to wear as a Monk for obvious reasons, and made it better? NO.
Monks do need some help in the "making it harder to ravage the Monk via nova damage" category, so I could see part of this feature being viable if it were heavily stripped down.
Intercepting Fist: At 11th level, you gain the ability to sense and rapidly respond to danger. So long as you are unarmored and not wielding a shield, when a creature hits you with a melee attack roll, you can spend 4 ki points as a reaction to make an unarmed attack against the creature. On a hit, the creature's attack fails and has no effect, and the creature suffers the unarmed attack’s effects as normal. If the creature benefits from a feature granting it multiple attacks in a turn (i.e., Extra Attack, Multi-Attack, etc.), only the melee attack that triggered this feature is disrupted. The creature may continue its turn (if applicable) as normal.
Ex: As Elmond is fighting a group of Goblinoids, the Hobgoblin leader is confident that Elmond is too distracted to avoid getting hit by the Hobgoblin's greataxe. To the Hobgoblin's dismay, without turning around, Elmond thrusts his elbow directly into the Hobgoblin's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of the Hobgoblin and forcing the greataxe to narrowly miss Elmond.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Thanks for noting how the Agile maneuvers can be simplified by just making it Acrobatics. I thought of it from the earlier more complex versions so it felt like it made sense to me. Tbh I don't know if remembering it would be too complicated but thank you for pointing out it could be simpler.
The extended flurry of blows is also kind of a carry over from the earlier editions. I kind of like the idea for the monk to have more attack an actual flurry, but I understand in the new system just giving the monk more attacks would be op, so I thought that limiting the mobility would balance it. The monk can still use the Flurry of blows normal way but he can add more attacks by sacrificing an action (in the older editions it was afull round action anyway. No movement. OR perhaps I should just give the extra attack at a later level.
Jesus I didn't see the problems in the intercepting fist. It really needs to be reworked. and simplified. I think I was originally making it as a 17th level skill and then downgraded it so it came as too powerful. Thank you for proviging a workable alternative thought... Though on your example I can't help but to wonder if 4 ki points is a bit steep price for that. Anyway you have given me a lot to think about. Thanks for that.
Happy to help! Regarding older editions (I've played them all, so I know where you're coming from), the problem with trying to bring things from past editions into 5e is two-fold:
It's a completely different system that uses mechanics that are not cross-system compatible
WoTC has already done a ton of work to balance classes around the new action economy
"Full Attack" from 3e was frankly a really bad idea to begin with, and made combat either a slog or a sprint. There really wasn't any middle ground. Conceptually speaking, if you wanted to think about how a "Full Attack" would work in 5e, it would not be the combination of Attack & Move actions. It would be the combination of Attack & Bonus Attack. The Move action cannot be converted to any other type of action, nor should it be. It's much better this way, and Flurry is the perfect example of how Bonus actions are what really differentiates not only one class from another, but also how multiple players can differentiate how they play the same class. Attack action + Bonus action Flurry is already the "Full Attack".
Regarding Intercepting Fist, I honestly believe that only requiring 4 Ki points is very generous for what you're trying to accomplish. At level 11, you would have 11 Ki points. That's enough to use Flurry of Blows 3 times, and Intercept twice per short rest. At level 12, you could Intercept 3 times. By level 20, you would be able to attempt to Intercept 5 times per short rest. That's 5 opportunities to not only negate damage you definitively would have taken, but also cause damage to the attacker with a single reaction. Even stripped down, that is still a HUGE benefit, and no other class has a feature that even remotely approaches how powerful this could be. [Edit] I could potentially see this as a feature that doesn't use Ki points at all, but I would then limit its usage to (pick one) either once per short rest or twice per long rest. Maybe at level 20 you could gain another usage of the feature.
If your party or DM are not allowing you to take Short Rests in a dungeon, then your Monk is going to be hamstrung no matter what you do. Monks are meant to use those Ki points regularly, and they are meant to be skirmishers that move along the periphery of the battlefield. They are not meant to be tanks (not to say that they cannot be, but it's still dicey) that charge into the middle and stay planted while keeping the enemy controlled. If that is the type of combat style that you (as a player) would prefer, then I would highly suggest that you go the route of playing a Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian/Blood Hunter wielding a Glaive or Halberd, and take the Sentinel and Polearm Master feats.
I think you would enjoy Barbarian, and frankly you could even use the exact same character concept from most Monks... something like you were found by a group of monks as a baby, and were raised in their mountain monastery. You were trained in combat techniques. However, as the blood of your ancestors runs hot through your veins, you were never able to achieve the harmony of mind and body needed to master their spiritual techniques. Perfect setup for a Path of the Ancestral Guardian/Zealot/Totem Warrior Barbarian. I think you'd dig it.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Barbarians are cool I could think about something like that yeah. I have actually thought both in older editions and in this one that cross classing those two in some manner might be cool (though monks unfortunately cross class poorly). I'll have to think about that kinda barbarian back story, it would be cool character I'll admit it. But I do have to admit that I do like the martial artist idea and would like to play them sometimes. Fifth edition has gotten a lot closer to getting them right than other editions before, letting the monks attack and deal damage with dex without having to sacrifice feats for it did wonders. I do still kinda feel that the monk should perhaps be able to utilize dex for what was previous editions Combat Maneuvers or contesting athletics checks here should perhaps be done with dex since, while no martial arts expert I did practice a little in my younger days and I can say for certain that not just strength but speed(dex) plays also a big role in a lot of grappling, tripping balance and other kind of stuff if you know how to utilize it. A lot of smaller people than me owned my ass on the tatami with throws, locks and takedowns because they were faster and had better reflexes =D Perhaps that is more of a house rule thing but I thought it could be made into a monk ability (Agile Maneuvers, you might recognize is a feat from previous editions Pathfinder/3.5 though I added the ki point thing).
Still I do think that the problems of ridiculously low hit dies for monks and the lack of the ability to wear armor are still some what a problem, even though they are not meant to be tanks. If monks move in and out of combat they also get exposed to a lot of attacks of opportunity and martial art characters just for the sake of the stereotype that most people probably would like to play them as should either be harder to hit or be able to take more damage. Hence my thoughts on the different Iron Bodies.
I kinda agree that full attack thing wasn't probably the best idea I do like that you can move and use the flurry of blows. In previous editions a high level monk could attack like 8 times as a full flurry of blows attack. I agree something like that would be a bit much especially since he can move now. Somehow I still do kinda wonder about only one extra strike for 1 ki point (though the fact you gain ki points between short rests does help with that. I still usually first think ki points replenishing after 8 hour rest), since martial arts gives you one as a bonus action anyway. Perhaps I can't win with that or perhaps the monk could have an Extra Attack as an 11th level ability like the Fighter. or just think something else entirely and accept its perfectly well balanced.
On Intercepting Fist What would you say Intercepting Fist as a 6th level skill burning two ki points for you to make a Stunning Strike attack as a reaction when a melee attack hits you. That would kind of burn ki points away so the monk cant use it too often. Or if the possibility of stun is too much then a modified version of an open hand techique? Str save or be pushed back 10ft, or dex save and be tripped? For the price of 2 ki points or possibly even 1 its not like super effective. Sure the attack misses if they fail their save but if the creature has movement left they can walk back or get back up (without danger I might add since the 5th ed made the perplexing choice of not giving you an attack of opportunity even if you get up right next to an enemy, and even in an older edition the "reaction" would've been used already, unless you got one of those feats that gave you extra reactions/attacks of opportunity). and continue attacking? And of course if the creature makes the save the attack still hits.
Still I do think that the problems of ridiculously low hit dies for monks and the lack of the ability to wear armor are still some what a problem, even though they are not meant to be tanks.
Monks have a d8 hit die. That is the same as the Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Rogue. That is the standard for skirmishers/combat casters. Lack of armor is not a problem... the only version of Unarmored Defense that is better than the Monk is the Barbarian's version.
In previous editions a high level monk could attack like 8 times as a full flurry of blows attack.
Please stop referencing mechanics from previous editions as a measuring stick for this edition. Any comparison is apples-to-oranges. Creatures and PC classes have been balanced for themechanics of5e. Even then, a Drunken Master Monk can still achieve 7 attacks in a Flurry.
If monks move in and out of combat they also get exposed to a lot of attacks of opportunity
Drunken Master gains the benefit of Disengage automatically every turn that they use Flurry of Blows, so opportunity attacks are basically meaningless to Drunken Masters in most situations. At level 3. Without needing any extra Ki points. Wow!
You could also just take the Mobile feat on any character. Now you can dip in and out of melee as much as you want.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Yeah though those other classes do get a chance to wear armor. Though in 5e they did bring everyones armor class down so the difference isn't that glaring. Often when visiting forums I do still run to the same complaint about the monk being a glass canon. Bard, Cleric and Druid are also casters so you expect them to have smaller hit dies. Of course in 5e every non-caster class had a caster sub class which I did find a bit perplexing. Rogues sneak and backstab idea also makes it understandable that their primary function was not to be a head to head melee fighter. Even a Ranger, a half-caster that also first and foremost invokes the idea of a non-melee based fighter (unless were talking about a non-magical Aragorn variety) has a d10 which is a bit odd. I think we can debate about the Flurry of Blows and the amount of attacks and extra attacks and I can admit that it is very much possible that adding those could make the monk too powerful and or give an unfair advantage. However I do still think that even if the monk was always supposed to be more of a ninja variety than Tony Jaa or Donny Yen a d10 hit die wouldn't have given them an unfair advantage. Actually since Wisdom isn't anymore used to measure the amount of ki points one gets I'm a bit surprised they didn't change the monks AC to be measured by Dex and Con which might have solved some of the problem. If they chose Wisdom because it fits to the wise martial arts master-stereotype then they forgot that most of those stereotypes, even ninjas are not usually glass canons. The only glass canon monk I can think of is Elijah Woods character in Sin City and on the other hand that guy had a ridiculously high AC
My references to previous editions are in fact more in favour to 5 e. And I did note above that I think 5 e got monks alot better than previous editions as a whole. I do really like most simplified mechanics of 5e to the previous stuff. Pretty much every comparison I've made is more in favour of 5e in the end. Except maybe the above notion of what they could've done to solve the hp situation with Con as the AC calculator... and that grievance does apply to earlier editions as well I think. Even if Wisdom gave extra ki points before or would now I think most players would still gravitate towards con if it gave the AC boost as well. Extra ki points is nice but AC and hit points would be primary concern. I did note that 8 times or such was too much, and I agreed that it is better to be able to move around that to just stand still. All I did was to wonder if flurry could be increased a bit without making it overpowered. Perhaps it does I'll tinker around it a bit more and see.
Your example is good for Drunken Masters, I could of course work that into my build, I was trying to not borrow too directly from anything. Thats why I got cute with the Chokehold thing while it might have been a better answer just to give this unarmed monk the Grappler-feat at sixth or skills that would compliment the grappler feat if one takes it. I'll need to re-think that. I admit I had miss read or miss remembered Mobile. I seemed to remember that you had to hit with the melee attack for the enemy to not be able to use an attack of opportunity against you. That is pretty good.
If not increase AC, what would you think of a damage reduction ability? Something like: Iron Body: By spending 1 ki point you gain resistance to physical damage for 1 minute? (similar to Barbarians Rage ability)
Or since monks are going to need constitution anyway how about a resistance equal to their constitution modifier? As in Con 14 mod +2 = 2 points of damage resistance? Since the most important stats to monk are still Dex and Wis it is unlikely you gain a huge resistance in early levels unless at character creation phase you roll like three 18s which is not very common. Or the third one is a 16 or a17 (again not that usual with two 18s already I'd wager) and play as a race that gains +2 to constitution or a human and decide to dump the points to con (though with human probably would go for advancing dex or wis anyway) And at higher levels when fighting big badass monsters even a 5 point reduction isn't necessarily that big a reduction... though might be enough save his life?
Also may I ask what did you think of that new version of Intercepting Fist in my previous post... is it still too op or would that kind of thing work? If you don't wan't to scroll down here is
Intercepting Fist When a creature within your melee range hits you with a melee attack you can Spend 1 (or 2) ki point(s) as a reaction to make an attack of opportunity, if it hits the creature has to make a str save. If the creature fails the save it is pushed back 5-10ft and the attack misses or Spend 1 (or 2) ki point(s) as a reaction to make an attack of opportunity, if it hits the creature has to make a dex save If the creature fails the save it is knocked prone and the attack misses
Yeah I took away the stunning strike idea that seemed a bit too beneficial a possibility. Also if this seems like a too powerful combo with patient defense (even though I of course would remove the advantage on the attack thing) one could make a note that Intercepting Fist cannot be used while in Patient Defense, perhaps because the monk is so focused on dodging the attack that a possibility of a counterstrike doesn't even factor into the equation.
I'm new to 5e, trying to play a monk and um... ugh. I'm trying to picture how it is that a standard fighter wearing something like some really heavy armor, using a really heavy weapon, can manage 9 attacks in a turn (of really good damage) and some crazy builds out there doing in the range of 20-30 attacks in a turn.... while a monk can do... 4 a monk, who wearing nothing and is likely unarmed or using light weapons.. a person we all see as being fast, nimble, agile... can manage 4 attacks only in a turn.... Why do I feel like physics should apply here a bit more? How many punches and kick combo attacks can you manage in 6 seconds to a target efficiently? How many efficient swings of a massive sword can you manage in that same 6 seconds??? It also seems difficult to MC a monk into anything all that useful, then again most of what I see at the higher teir for monk is either situational or moot if you are effectively useless at helping the group defeat the big bad (which is likely immune to alm the effects you might be able to cause, with a good dc....)
I'm trying to picture how it is that a standard fighter wearing something like some really heavy armor, using a really heavy weapon, can manage 9 attacks in a turn (of really good damage) and some crazy builds out there doing in the range of 20-30 attacks in a turn....
Wait, hold on... uh... no. No, that is not possible at all. Nowhere even near 20 attacks. The absolute maximum number of attacks a 20th level Fighter could make in one round is 11, and that relies on party support & combat flow.
At 20th level, the Attack action lets you make 4 attacks. Action Surge provides you a second action which brings them up to 8 possible attacks in one turn. You cannot use Action Surge twice in the same round, so that's the soft-cap that any 20th level fighter is capable of.
If you have a feature that lets you make an attack as a bonus action (Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Two-Weapon Fighting, etc.), that brings the soft-cap up to 9. No (non-monk) bonus action features allow more than a single attack to be made.
If an enemy provokes an attack of opportunity from you, or if a party member has an ability that allows you to make an attack as a reaction (battlemaster maneuvers, mastermind rogue, bard, etc.), that brings the soft-cap up to 10 total attacks.
If you are under the effect of the Haste spell, you get an additional action that can be used for one attack. This establishes the hard-cap of 11 attacks.
The large boost in attacks via Action Surge can only be done once per rest all the way up to level 17 (max of twice per rest at this point), so it's not like they can run around doing this every turn of every combat. They also don't get more basic attacks from the Attack action than you until level 11, and even then it's still tied with Flurry of Blows--which you have enough Ki at this point to basically do every round--at 4 total attacks each (Action + Bonus Action).
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Even at a minimum, 4 attacks per round without a cost, vs 4 attacks per round at cost... it still makes no sense... no matter how it is parsed this heavily armored, heavy weapon using guy can naturally do more attacks than a naked, unarmed monk... that gap grows when abilities are used, by somebody with more ac, more damage, and more hp.....
Even at a minimum, 4 attacks per round without a cost
At level 20.
Until level 11, a Monk has the same number of guaranteed attacks via the Attack as a Fighter, and possibly more if the Fighter does not have a Bonus Action feature.
Fighting is--I would have thought it obvious--the entirety of what a Fighter is built to do. They should be better at it than a Monk. It is literally their "thing". They are completely different class design. Monks get a TON of features, and they're also a class that gets something new at every level they advance. There are no dead spots. You always gain something when you level up whether it's combat related or not.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I'm in agreement with Sigred. Fighters only real job and ability is to fight. And yet They still cannot sustain significantly more damage than a monk can do in combat for the same number of attacks without a very few specific builds. And other melee types only manage the same kinds of damage with a lot fewer attacks.
And in the spaces where the Monk falls down a little bit in damage compared to even the Fighter it more than makes up for with other advantages that it can apply to things such as the ability to stun opponents and other fun powers.
Where the disparity actually exists... At least perception wise... is at lower level. Fighters seem a bit lackluster because things like Paladins and ARchers have attack enhancing spells (with limited scaling on them that caps out fairly early in many cases) and the fighter looks like it does a bit more just because it rolls a bigger die than the Monk does.
However if you consider both a fighter and a Monk at just level 4 you find that things are not as far apart as they look and may go in a direction you didn't expect. Assuming max strength/dex. Ignoring all Feats and additional features and just single weapons. A fighter can have a max damage of 15-17. And it's average damage is roughly 11 damage a successful hit of which it can make 1 a round. The monk on the other hand has a max damage of 9 and an average damage of 7 per hit but has the ability to hit 2 times in a turn meaning that it's capable of a max damage of 18 with an average damage of 14. Even when you start adding in feats or abilities GWM and Flurry push both classes up to a max damage of about 27 at that level. And depending on the tradition/archetype your comparing both are either potentially capable of adding extra effects to some of that damage, additional options elsewhere in combat, and/or just outright additional damage to those numbers.
Even at Level 5 where the Fighter adds on it's second attack. The Monk is not only adding on a 3rd attack but it's damage die has also increased so every one of it's hits are going to have a slightly higher maximum and a slightly higher average damage to help compensate (max damage of 11 per hit, 8 damage average, and a total max damage for 3 hits of 33 and an average of 24 if all hits connect) And when adding in things like abilities level 5 is the point where monks pick up stunning strikes to compensate for the maybe 10 points maximum that the monk doesn't have in comparison.
At higher levels what little bits that the monk actually falls behind in damage (which is not actually much thanks to the increasing martial arts die). The monk actually gains an even wider arsenal of capability that they are actually able to pull off in the same amount of time and action economy that the Warrior dedicates to those hits. By level 17 when the Fighter is guaranteed to be able to take those 4 attacks. The monk is actually wielding d10 weapons of his own.
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Way of the Empty Hand
Started as an Unarmed Kensei Variant. May seem like I gave the Monk alot, 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. Some abilities like Agile Maneuvers and Throw are fairly situational. Also the special focus on unarmed combat makes the monk weaker against enemies who are resistant or immune to bludgeoning damage.
Got some great feedback on what mechanics needed to be looked at. Tinkered with a bit and thought to showcase it a bit to see if it cuts the mustard this time.
Special thanks to Gavorn! I may have proceeded in a different direction you suggested but your evaluation was still very helpful. (Also I wrote down your suggestions about
reflavouring the Drunken Master, they may be very helpful for another sub class I'm now considering.)
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: All Contesting Athletics skill checks, such as a Grapple or a Shove, utilize Dexterity instead of Strenght.
If a Contesting Athletics skill check against you fails you can, as a reaction, spend a ki point to to attempt to reverse it with an advantage.
Clinch Fighting: While grappling your unarmed attacks have advantage, while restrained your unarmed attacks do not suffer disadvantage.
However while restrained your unarmed attacks do not gain advantage against a vulnerable target even though they ignore the penalty of being restrained.
Iron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you.
Your AC bonus increases by +1
Throw: When you successfully knock a creature prone with a Contesting athletics check you can make them land on any square around you instead of its own square.
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.
Immediately after a throw you can, as a bonus action, attempt a grapple check to pin the creature at your feet.
If successful both you and the creature are restrained until the end of your grapple.
The throw itself does not cause any damage. If the thrown creature is thrown on/through an object
or falls further as a result of the throw the DM determines the damage the creature takes, if any.
You can spend 1 ki point to throw the creature 5ft further.
6th Level
Chokehold: While grappling a creature you can as an action attempt another grapple check to apply a chokehold.
If successful the creature is now Restrained. However your attacks do not have an advantage against the creature
as you have to struggle with them to maintain the hold.
The creature survives in a chokehold a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier
(minimum of 1 round). Every turn after that the creature begins in the hold it is Choking and has to make a Constitution saving throw.
If it succeeds nothing happens, if it fails it takes a point of exhaustion.
You can also choose to attempt to knock the creature unconscious.
In that case the creature rolls this save with an advantage. You can spend a ki point to eliminate the advantage.
If the creature remains in your chokehold after being knocked unconscious it is considered dying and cannot regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
A creature that has more than a 100 hit points left cannot be knocked unconscious, the attempt, if successful will inflict the creature two levels of exhaustion instead of one.
A creature in a chokehold can be pinned with a grapple check. You have advantage on the check, however the shifting position loosens the grip momentarily.
The next round the creature doesn't have to attempt the Constitution save. If it was not yet choking it gains an additional round to survive.
Applying chokehold while pinning a creature inflicts a -1 penalty to the Constitution saving throws as well as any attempts by the creature to break the hold.
The creature breaks the chokehold by successfully breaking the grapple.
Relentless Flurry: You can swap your movement action for a third strike to your Flurry of Blows.
11th Level
Intercepting Fist: If a creatures melee attack meets your AC but does not exceed it, you can, as a reaction, attempt to hit the creature with a melee attack. Upon a successful hit the creatures melee attack misses. If you are in Patient Defense your attack roll has advantage.
If you are not in Patient Defense you can spend 2 ki points, as a reaction, to attack with an advantage against an attack that does exceed your AC.
A critical hit will not miss, unless your attack was also a critical hit, but will be reduced to a normal attack.
17th Level (This could be swapped to Quivering Palm. I just wanted to explore a fun flavoured alternative)
Fist of Fury: When you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike you can spend 3 ki points to inflict further 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.
Alternative Iron Body: Your body has learned to ignore and shrug off some of the damage dealt to you.Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing damage from an unarmed attack or a natural weapon is halved. (In case increase in AC is considered too op. A damage resistance might actually serve monks better than Barbarians considering the poor hit die and inability to wear armor. And this is only against unarmed attacks and natural weapons so it most definitely isn't op)
The only thing I find interesting, that isn't also clearly unbalanced, is Agile Maneuvers. Rather than allowing Dex to be used for Athletics, it would make more sense to let Monks utilize Acrobatics in place of Athletics for initiating a grapple/shove. RAW already allows characters to use Acrobatics to break or resist grapple/shove, and extending this to Monks for the initial check is the easiest thing to accomplish from the perspective of a DM & Beyond app functionality. If you were to just say "Athletics uses my DEX instead of STR for grapples", then you'd all have to either mentally remember that a single skill uses a different stat in specific circumstances, or to add a custom skill to your character sheet Athletics (Grapple/Shove) because those are not the only way Athletics can be used (climbing, jumping, swimming, etc. are still STR-based checks).
Relentless Fury is unwieldy and destroys one of the core concepts for Monk--you are supposed to be moving around the battlefield as much as possible.
Intercepting Fist simply has too way too many conditionals that need to be tracked, and too many branching circumstances. It will absolutely slow down the rate of play in combat:
Monks do need some help in the "making it harder to ravage the Monk via nova damage" category, so I could see part of this feature being viable if it were heavily stripped down.
Intercepting Fist: At 11th level, you gain the ability to sense and rapidly respond to danger. So long as you are unarmored and not wielding a shield, when a creature hits you with a melee attack roll, you can spend 4 ki points as a reaction to make an unarmed attack against the creature. On a hit, the creature's attack fails and has no effect, and the creature suffers the unarmed attack’s effects as normal. If the creature benefits from a feature granting it multiple attacks in a turn (i.e., Extra Attack, Multi-Attack, etc.), only the melee attack that triggered this feature is disrupted. The creature may continue its turn (if applicable) as normal.
Ex: As Elmond is fighting a group of Goblinoids, the Hobgoblin leader is confident that Elmond is too distracted to avoid getting hit by the Hobgoblin's greataxe. To the Hobgoblin's dismay, without turning around, Elmond thrusts his elbow directly into the Hobgoblin's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of the Hobgoblin and forcing the greataxe to narrowly miss Elmond.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Hi Sigred.
Thanks for noting how the Agile maneuvers can be simplified by just making it Acrobatics. I thought of it from the earlier more complex versions so it
felt like it made sense to me. Tbh I don't know if remembering it would be too complicated but thank you for pointing out it could be simpler.
The extended flurry of blows is also kind of a carry over from the earlier editions. I kind of like the idea for the monk to have more attack an
actual flurry, but I understand in the new system just giving the monk more attacks would be op, so I thought that limiting the mobility would balance it.
The monk can still use the Flurry of blows normal way but he can add more attacks by sacrificing an action (in the older editions it was afull round action anyway. No movement.
OR perhaps I should just give the extra attack at a later level.
Jesus I didn't see the problems in the intercepting fist. It really needs to be reworked. and simplified. I think I was originally making it as a 17th level skill and then downgraded it so it came as too powerful. Thank you for proviging a workable alternative thought... Though on your example I can't help but to wonder if 4 ki points is a bit steep price for that. Anyway you have given me a lot to think about. Thanks for that.
Hi Elmond,
Happy to help! Regarding older editions (I've played them all, so I know where you're coming from), the problem with trying to bring things from past editions into 5e is two-fold:
"Full Attack" from 3e was frankly a really bad idea to begin with, and made combat either a slog or a sprint. There really wasn't any middle ground. Conceptually speaking, if you wanted to think about how a "Full Attack" would work in 5e, it would not be the combination of Attack & Move actions. It would be the combination of Attack & Bonus Attack. The Move action cannot be converted to any other type of action, nor should it be. It's much better this way, and Flurry is the perfect example of how Bonus actions are what really differentiates not only one class from another, but also how multiple players can differentiate how they play the same class. Attack action + Bonus action Flurry is already the "Full Attack".
Regarding Intercepting Fist, I honestly believe that only requiring 4 Ki points is very generous for what you're trying to accomplish. At level 11, you would have 11 Ki points. That's enough to use Flurry of Blows 3 times, and Intercept twice per short rest. At level 12, you could Intercept 3 times. By level 20, you would be able to attempt to Intercept 5 times per short rest. That's 5 opportunities to not only negate damage you definitively would have taken, but also cause damage to the attacker with a single reaction. Even stripped down, that is still a HUGE benefit, and no other class has a feature that even remotely approaches how powerful this could be. [Edit] I could potentially see this as a feature that doesn't use Ki points at all, but I would then limit its usage to (pick one) either once per short rest or twice per long rest. Maybe at level 20 you could gain another usage of the feature.
If your party or DM are not allowing you to take Short Rests in a dungeon, then your Monk is going to be hamstrung no matter what you do. Monks are meant to use those Ki points regularly, and they are meant to be skirmishers that move along the periphery of the battlefield. They are not meant to be tanks (not to say that they cannot be, but it's still dicey) that charge into the middle and stay planted while keeping the enemy controlled. If that is the type of combat style that you (as a player) would prefer, then I would highly suggest that you go the route of playing a Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian/Blood Hunter wielding a Glaive or Halberd, and take the Sentinel and Polearm Master feats.
I think you would enjoy Barbarian, and frankly you could even use the exact same character concept from most Monks... something like you were found by a group of monks as a baby, and were raised in their mountain monastery. You were trained in combat techniques. However, as the blood of your ancestors runs hot through your veins, you were never able to achieve the harmony of mind and body needed to master their spiritual techniques. Perfect setup for a Path of the Ancestral Guardian/Zealot/Totem Warrior Barbarian. I think you'd dig it.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Hi
Barbarians are cool I could think about something like that yeah. I have actually thought both in older editions and in this one that cross classing those two in some manner might be cool (though monks unfortunately cross class poorly). I'll have to think about that kinda barbarian back story, it would be cool character I'll admit it.
But I do have to admit that I do like the martial artist idea and would like to play them sometimes. Fifth edition has gotten a lot closer to getting them right than other editions before, letting the monks attack and deal damage with dex without having to sacrifice feats for it did wonders. I do still kinda feel that the monk should perhaps be able to utilize dex for what was previous editions Combat Maneuvers or contesting athletics checks here should perhaps be done with dex since, while no martial arts expert I did practice a little in my younger days and I can say for certain that not just strength but speed(dex) plays also a big role in a lot of grappling, tripping balance and other kind of stuff if you know how to utilize it. A lot of smaller people than me owned my ass on the tatami with throws, locks and takedowns because they were faster and had better reflexes =D
Perhaps that is more of a house rule thing but I thought it could be made into a monk ability (Agile Maneuvers, you might recognize is a feat from previous editions Pathfinder/3.5 though I added the ki point thing).
Still I do think that the problems of ridiculously low hit dies for monks and the lack of the ability to wear armor are still some what a problem, even though they are not meant to be tanks.
If monks move in and out of combat they also get exposed to a lot of attacks of opportunity and martial art characters just for the sake of the stereotype that most people probably would like to play them as should either be harder to hit or be able to take more damage. Hence my thoughts on the different Iron Bodies.
I kinda agree that full attack thing wasn't probably the best idea I do like that you can move and use the flurry of blows. In previous editions a high level monk could attack like 8 times as a full flurry of blows attack. I agree something like that would be a bit much especially since he can move now. Somehow I still do kinda wonder about only one extra strike for 1 ki point (though the fact you gain ki points between short rests does help with that. I still usually first think ki points replenishing after 8 hour rest), since martial arts gives you one as a bonus action anyway. Perhaps I can't win with that or perhaps the monk could have an Extra Attack as an 11th level ability like the Fighter.
or just think something else entirely and accept its perfectly well balanced.
On Intercepting Fist
What would you say Intercepting Fist as a 6th level skill burning two ki points for you to make a Stunning Strike attack as a reaction when a melee attack hits you.
That would kind of burn ki points away so the monk cant use it too often.
Or if the possibility of stun is too much then a modified version of an open hand techique? Str save or be pushed back 10ft, or dex save and be tripped?
For the price of 2 ki points or possibly even 1 its not like super effective. Sure the attack misses if they fail their save but if the creature has movement left
they can walk back or get back up (without danger I might add since the 5th ed made the perplexing choice of not giving you an attack of opportunity even if you get up right next to an enemy, and even in an older edition the "reaction" would've been used already, unless you got one of those feats that gave you extra reactions/attacks of opportunity).
and continue attacking? And of course if the creature makes the save the attack still hits.
Monks have a d8 hit die. That is the same as the Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Rogue. That is the standard for skirmishers/combat casters. Lack of armor is not a problem... the only version of Unarmored Defense that is better than the Monk is the Barbarian's version.
Please stop referencing mechanics from previous editions as a measuring stick for this edition. Any comparison is apples-to-oranges. Creatures and PC classes have been balanced for the mechanics of 5e. Even then, a Drunken Master Monk can still achieve 7 attacks in a Flurry.
Drunken Master gains the benefit of Disengage automatically every turn that they use Flurry of Blows, so opportunity attacks are basically meaningless to Drunken Masters in most situations. At level 3. Without needing any extra Ki points. Wow!
You could also just take the Mobile feat on any character. Now you can dip in and out of melee as much as you want.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Hi
Yeah though those other classes do get a chance to wear armor. Though in 5e they did bring everyones armor class down so the difference isn't that glaring.
Often when visiting forums I do still run to the same complaint about the monk being a glass canon.
Bard, Cleric and Druid are also casters
so you expect them to have smaller hit dies. Of course in 5e every non-caster class had a caster sub class which I did find a bit perplexing.
Rogues sneak and backstab idea also makes it understandable that their primary function was not to be a head to head melee fighter.
Even a Ranger, a half-caster that also first and foremost invokes the idea of a non-melee based fighter (unless were talking about a non-magical Aragorn variety)
has a d10 which is a bit odd.
I think we can debate about the Flurry of Blows and the amount of attacks and extra attacks and I can admit that it is very much possible that adding those could make the monk too powerful and or give an unfair advantage. However I do still think that even if the monk was always supposed to be more of a ninja variety than Tony Jaa or Donny Yen a d10 hit die wouldn't have given them an unfair advantage. Actually since Wisdom isn't anymore used to measure the amount of ki points one gets I'm a bit surprised they didn't change the monks AC to be measured by Dex and Con which might have solved some of the problem.
If they chose Wisdom because it fits to the wise martial arts master-stereotype then they forgot that most of those stereotypes, even ninjas are not usually glass canons.
The only glass canon monk I can think of is Elijah Woods character in Sin City and on the other hand that guy had a ridiculously high AC
My references to previous editions are in fact more in favour to 5 e. And I did note above that I think 5 e got monks alot better than previous editions as a whole.
I do really like most simplified mechanics of 5e to the previous stuff. Pretty much every comparison I've made is more in favour of 5e in the end. Except maybe the above notion
of what they could've done to solve the hp situation with Con as the AC calculator... and that grievance does apply to earlier editions as well I think. Even if Wisdom
gave extra ki points before or would now I think most players would still gravitate towards con if it gave the AC boost as well. Extra ki points is nice but AC and hit points
would be primary concern.
I did note that 8 times or such was too much, and I agreed that it is better to be able to move around that to just stand still. All I did was to wonder if flurry could be increased a bit without making it overpowered. Perhaps it does I'll tinker around it a bit more and see.
Your example is good for Drunken Masters, I could of course work that into my build, I was trying to not borrow too directly from anything. Thats why I got cute with the
Chokehold thing while it might have been a better answer just to give this unarmed monk the Grappler-feat at sixth or skills that would compliment the grappler feat if one takes it.
I'll need to re-think that.
I admit I had miss read or miss remembered Mobile. I seemed to remember that you had to hit with the melee attack for the enemy to not be able to use an attack
of opportunity against you. That is pretty good.
If not increase AC, what would you think of a damage reduction ability? Something like:
Iron Body: By spending 1 ki point you gain resistance to physical damage for 1 minute? (similar to Barbarians Rage ability)
Or since monks are going to need constitution anyway how about a resistance equal to their constitution modifier?
As in Con 14 mod +2 = 2 points of damage resistance? Since the most important stats to monk are still Dex and Wis
it is unlikely you gain a huge resistance in early levels unless at character creation phase you roll like three 18s which is
not very common. Or the third one is a 16 or a17 (again not that usual with two 18s already I'd wager) and play as a race that gains +2 to constitution
or a human and decide to dump the points to con (though with human probably would go for advancing dex or wis anyway)
And at higher levels when fighting big badass monsters even a 5 point reduction isn't necessarily that big a reduction... though might be enough save his life?
Also may I ask what did you think of that new version of Intercepting Fist in my previous post... is it still too op or
would that kind of thing work? If you don't wan't to scroll down here is
Intercepting Fist
When a creature within your melee range hits you with a melee attack you can
Spend 1 (or 2) ki point(s) as a reaction to make an attack of opportunity, if it hits the creature has to make a str save. If the creature fails the save it is pushed back 5-10ft and the attack misses
or
Spend 1 (or 2) ki point(s) as a reaction to make an attack of opportunity, if it hits the creature has to make a dex save If the creature fails the save it is knocked prone and the attack misses
Yeah I took away the stunning strike idea that seemed a bit too beneficial a possibility.
Also if this seems like a too powerful combo with patient defense (even though I of course would remove the advantage on the attack thing) one could make a note that Intercepting Fist cannot be used while in Patient Defense, perhaps because the monk is so focused on dodging the attack that a possibility of a counterstrike doesn't even factor into the equation.
I'm new to 5e, trying to play a monk and um... ugh. I'm trying to picture how it is that a standard fighter wearing something like some really heavy armor, using a really heavy weapon, can manage 9 attacks in a turn (of really good damage) and some crazy builds out there doing in the range of 20-30 attacks in a turn.... while a monk can do... 4 a monk, who wearing nothing and is likely unarmed or using light weapons.. a person we all see as being fast, nimble, agile... can manage 4 attacks only in a turn.... Why do I feel like physics should apply here a bit more? How many punches and kick combo attacks can you manage in 6 seconds to a target efficiently? How many efficient swings of a massive sword can you manage in that same 6 seconds??? It also seems difficult to MC a monk into anything all that useful, then again most of what I see at the higher teir for monk is either situational or moot if you are effectively useless at helping the group defeat the big bad (which is likely immune to alm the effects you might be able to cause, with a good dc....)
Wait, hold on... uh... no. No, that is not possible at all. Nowhere even near 20 attacks. The absolute maximum number of attacks a 20th level Fighter could make in one round is 11, and that relies on party support & combat flow.
At 20th level, the Attack action lets you make 4 attacks. Action Surge provides you a second action which brings them up to 8 possible attacks in one turn. You cannot use Action Surge twice in the same round, so that's the soft-cap that any 20th level fighter is capable of.
If you have a feature that lets you make an attack as a bonus action (Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Two-Weapon Fighting, etc.), that brings the soft-cap up to 9. No (non-monk) bonus action features allow more than a single attack to be made.
If an enemy provokes an attack of opportunity from you, or if a party member has an ability that allows you to make an attack as a reaction (battlemaster maneuvers, mastermind rogue, bard, etc.), that brings the soft-cap up to 10 total attacks.
If you are under the effect of the Haste spell, you get an additional action that can be used for one attack. This establishes the hard-cap of 11 attacks.
The large boost in attacks via Action Surge can only be done once per rest all the way up to level 17 (max of twice per rest at this point), so it's not like they can run around doing this every turn of every combat. They also don't get more basic attacks from the Attack action than you until level 11, and even then it's still tied with Flurry of Blows--which you have enough Ki at this point to basically do every round--at 4 total attacks each (Action + Bonus Action).
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Even at a minimum, 4 attacks per round without a cost, vs 4 attacks per round at cost... it still makes no sense... no matter how it is parsed this heavily armored, heavy weapon using guy can naturally do more attacks than a naked, unarmed monk... that gap grows when abilities are used, by somebody with more ac, more damage, and more hp.....
At level 20.
Until level 11, a Monk has the same number of guaranteed attacks via the Attack as a Fighter, and possibly more if the Fighter does not have a Bonus Action feature.
Fighting is--I would have thought it obvious--the entirety of what a Fighter is built to do. They should be better at it than a Monk. It is literally their "thing". They are completely different class design. Monks get a TON of features, and they're also a class that gets something new at every level they advance. There are no dead spots. You always gain something when you level up whether it's combat related or not.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I'm in agreement with Sigred. Fighters only real job and ability is to fight. And yet They still cannot sustain significantly more damage than a monk can do in combat for the same number of attacks without a very few specific builds. And other melee types only manage the same kinds of damage with a lot fewer attacks.
And in the spaces where the Monk falls down a little bit in damage compared to even the Fighter it more than makes up for with other advantages that it can apply to things such as the ability to stun opponents and other fun powers.
Where the disparity actually exists... At least perception wise... is at lower level. Fighters seem a bit lackluster because things like Paladins and ARchers have attack enhancing spells (with limited scaling on them that caps out fairly early in many cases) and the fighter looks like it does a bit more just because it rolls a bigger die than the Monk does.
However if you consider both a fighter and a Monk at just level 4 you find that things are not as far apart as they look and may go in a direction you didn't expect. Assuming max strength/dex. Ignoring all Feats and additional features and just single weapons. A fighter can have a max damage of 15-17. And it's average damage is roughly 11 damage a successful hit of which it can make 1 a round. The monk on the other hand has a max damage of 9 and an average damage of 7 per hit but has the ability to hit 2 times in a turn meaning that it's capable of a max damage of 18 with an average damage of 14. Even when you start adding in feats or abilities GWM and Flurry push both classes up to a max damage of about 27 at that level. And depending on the tradition/archetype your comparing both are either potentially capable of adding extra effects to some of that damage, additional options elsewhere in combat, and/or just outright additional damage to those numbers.
Even at Level 5 where the Fighter adds on it's second attack. The Monk is not only adding on a 3rd attack but it's damage die has also increased so every one of it's hits are going to have a slightly higher maximum and a slightly higher average damage to help compensate (max damage of 11 per hit, 8 damage average, and a total max damage for 3 hits of 33 and an average of 24 if all hits connect) And when adding in things like abilities level 5 is the point where monks pick up stunning strikes to compensate for the maybe 10 points maximum that the monk doesn't have in comparison.
At higher levels what little bits that the monk actually falls behind in damage (which is not actually much thanks to the increasing martial arts die). The monk actually gains an even wider arsenal of capability that they are actually able to pull off in the same amount of time and action economy that the Warrior dedicates to those hits. By level 17 when the Fighter is guaranteed to be able to take those 4 attacks. The monk is actually wielding d10 weapons of his own.