Addlecove challenged me again, and again I could not really hold back and had to develop it immediately XD
So here it is, a polearm-focused monk subclass:
Way of the Long Arm
Taking the use of the staff to the next level, the tradition of the Way of the Long Arm teaches monks to widen the variety of pole weapons they can use, and make them integral part of their fighting style, taking advantage of the longer reach and mobility-enhancing features deriving from such versatile weapons.
Reach Training
At 3rd level, you become proficient with the Glaive and the Pike, and these weapons now count as monk weapons for you. Additionally, whenever you use a Quartestaff, the weapon gains the Reach quality.
Vaulting Escape
At 3rd level, whenever an enemy misses you with a melee attack or you successfully perform a DEX saving throw, and you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can spend your Reaction to vault over the danger, landing in any unoccupied space in a 10 foot cone in front of you without provoking attacks of opportunity, as if you had taken the disengage action. Should you decide to land behind the attacker, you can decide to spend 1 Ki point to grant advantage to your next attack against them. You can use Vaulting Escape a number of times equal to your DEX modifier each long rest.
Swiping Lizard Tail
At 6th level, as an Action on your turn when you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can spend 2 Ki points to perform an attack against all targets in a 10 feet circle around you. Each target in the area has to perform a DEX saving throw (normal Ki save DC) or suffer damage equal to the weapon damage plus one martial art die plus your DEX modifier and be knocked Prone. On a successful save, the target will suffer half damage and avoid being knocked Prone.
Crane Stance
At 11th level when you use Vaulting Escape you can instead move 10 feet up in the air. You remain there until the end of your next turn.
Heaven's Fall
At 11th level, at the beginning of your turn after you use your Crane Stance, and as one of the attacks of your Attack Action, you can spend 2 Ki points to perform a falling attack on any target within 10 feet from you. The attack is performed with advantage and it deals additional damage equal to your Martial Arts die.
Peacock Wheel Stance
At 17th level, as an Action at the beginning of your turn when you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can decide to spend 3 Ki points and start spinning your weapon in front and around you, gaining the following benefits:
Your add half your proficiency bonus to your AC;
Your movement speed is reduced to 0, and you use your Reaction to keep the stance active;
In your turn, you can perform only your normal attacks with the Attack action, and cannot use your Vaulting Escape feature, any Bonus action involving movement or use the Dodge action;
You can perform one weapon attack against any creature attacking and missing you with a melee attack;
At any point during the duration of this feature, you can decide to interrupt it and perform one single weapon attack, which will count as a critical hit and dealing additional damage equal to one of your Martial Arts die;
The Stance lasts a number of turns equal to half your DEX modifier, or until you stop it, die or fall unconscious, and can be used a number of times equal to your WIS modifier each long rest.
Hope to see some feedback on this one as well, and thanks to everyone in advance :)
Question! Vaulting Escape doesn't say otherwise, so I assume it will trigger a reaction attack. I imagine this isn't the intetion. Figured I'd bring that up :D
And once again you make a monk class i desperately wish to try out some time .
Question! Vaulting Escape doesn't say otherwise, so I assume it will trigger a reaction attack. I imagine this isn't the intetion. Figured I'd bring that up :D
And once again you make a monk class i desperately wish to try out some time .
Hey KageAkuma! :D Thank you for the pointing out, I didn't make that into consideration, so you just fixed an unintended flaw :)
Happy and humbled to see you want to try my Monk classes out! I promise I will publish them all here on DDB as soon as the Homebrew subclasses tool will be live.
In the meantime, should you want an offline and prettier version of all of them, I have published them in the DM's Guild as a "Pay-what-you-want" off, so you can have them later out in a more official-looking way for free (thanks homebrewery for the layout and fonts). I always uptade the file connected to the DM's Guild page, so nothing gets lost or outdated anywhere.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
A'ight. Now that I've read it over and took some time to think about it I got some suggestions.
Reach Training
This looks good as it is. Emphasizes using reach weapons which is a refreshing change from the other monk subclasses.
Vaulting Escape
Another good ability, and Im glad you added that it doesn't trigger opprotunity attacks. It can however be reworded and made simplier to read, which I'll work on soon to give an example.
Swiping Lizard Tail
This one is weird. The single attack roll makes it streamlined, but having a different damage roll for each opponent hit in a 10 foot circle could be a crazy amount of dice and bookkeeping. I believe this could be made easier with a dex saving throw and a save for half damage effect like thunderwave (i cant do tooltips on my phone.) Something like weapon damage + monk damage die + dex. Enemies who fail take full and fall prone, enemies who succeed take half but dont fall prone.
If you keep it as it is I will say I'm confused about the strength bit. Are we using strength instead of dex? Are we adding strength on top of dex? It makes it a little MAD to be used to its fullest in either case. And of course does this take an action or one of your attacks? If its just an attack then RAW with enough Ki a monk could do this twice in a turn. My suggestion would make it an action.
Crane Stance
A simple reword makes this ability easier to understand. My example:
When you use Vaulting Escape you can instead move 10 feet up in the air. You remain there until the end of your next turn.
Heaven's Fall
I dig this one. 2 ki to do an awesome attack from midair has some pretty sweet thematics. But I have a similar question as I did with sweeping lizard tail above. Does this take your action or just one of your attacks? This one makes sense for it to be one of your attacks.
Also, does this grant advatage on the attack? You mention it benefits from advatage, but all attacks of any kind do, which makes me think you were saying it has advatage. I think you should cut that and reduce the cost to 1 ki. There's plenty of ways to get advatage and this doesn't need that.
Peacock Wheel Stance
This is cool and thematic, but its also clunky. With the increased AC bonus (which at that level makes your AC 26 without any magic item!) they could feasibly attack every time an enemy attacks. There's no restriction to how many so even a boss with multi attack who cant hit that already high AC will end up getting smacked. Thats a lot of free attacks.
Suggestions: Cut the AC bonus to half prof.
The bonus attack should be your reaction on a miss. Add your martial arts die to the damage.
As an action you can end the stance and make a single attack with advatage. If it hits its an auto crit. Max damage is a bit much, so add a martial arts die.
You can use your bonus action to keep the stance going. Otherwise it ends.
Remove the restriction on reactions and bonus actions.
If you use your reaction to use vaulting escape you can immediately use heaven's fall as part of the same reaction.
Using your reaction for anything but the counter attack given by this feature ends the stance.
My wordings pretty clunky, but I find this way keeps it from interuptinf the action economy too much and a bit more balanced.
Again though i love this and I plan to use it as soon as I can.
Thank you for the in-depth analysis KageAcuma! \o/
Let's have a look at your feedback...
Reach Training
This looks good as it is. Emphasizes using reach weapons which is a refreshing change from the other monk subclasses.
Thank you very much, but the basic idea comes from Addlcove, so the credit on the freshness of the subclass is all for him :)
Vaulting Escape
Another good ability, and Im glad you added that it doesn't trigger opprotunity attacks. It can however be reworded and made simplier to read, which I'll work on soon to give an example.
Indeed, my wording can sometimes be a bit heavy and convoluted, the downsides of not being a native English speaker :-/ I'll try to simplify as much as I can without sacrificing flavor or clarity.
Swiping Lizard Tail
This one is weird. The single attack roll makes it streamlined, but having a different damage roll for each opponent hit in a 10 foot circle could be a crazy amount of dice and bookkeeping. I believe this could be made easier with a dex saving throw and a save for half damage effect like thunderwave (i cant do tooltips on my phone.) Something like weapon damage + monk damage die + dex. Enemies who fail take full and fall prone, enemies who succeed take half but dont fall prone.
If you keep it as it is I will say I'm confused about the strength bit. Are we using strength instead of dex? Are we adding strength on top of dex? It makes it a little MAD to be used to its fullest in either case. And of course does this take an action or one of your attacks? If its just an attack then RAW with enough Ki a monk could do this twice in a turn. My suggestion would make it an action.
I like the idea of making it a saving throw instead of an attack roll, and the prone addition on a failed save. The damage idea also sounds ok, my initial addition of STR was to signify the "powering through" several enemies, but it indeed risks to put unecessary focus on a stat that would be otherwise useless for a Monk. It was indeed intended to be a full action, I forgot to specify it (sometimes I leave out these "little details" XD), thank you for catching that!
Crane Stance
A simple reword makes this ability easier to understand. My example: When you use Vaulting Escape you can instead move 10 feet up in the air. You remain there until the end of your next turn.
Synthesis accepted, it is indeed shorter and clearer :P
Heaven's Fall
I dig this one. 2 ki to do an awesome attack from midair has some pretty sweet thematics. But I have a similar question as I did with sweeping lizard tail above. Does this take your action or just one of your attacks? This one makes sense for it to be one of your attacks.
Also, does this grant advatage on the attack? You mention it benefits from advatage, but all attacks of any kind do, which makes me think you were saying it has advatage. I think you should cut that and reduce the cost to 1 ki. There's plenty of ways to get advatage and this doesn't need that.
This was intended as you suspect, as one of your attacks in the turn, I'll specify that. And yeah, it was meant to signify you get advantage on the attack ^^". I'd leave the advantage in, to be honest, just in case it's a 1-on-1 combat, I'd like to make those 2 Ki points worth it (1 Ki feels a bit too little even considering to take out advantage).
Peacock Wheel Stance
This is cool and thematic, but its also clunky. With the increased AC bonus (which at that level makes your AC 26 without any magic item!) they could feasibly attack every time an enemy attacks. There's no restriction to how many so even a boss with multi attack who cant hit that already high AC will end up getting smacked. Thats a lot of free attacks.
Suggestions: Cut the AC bonus to half prof.
The bonus attack should be your reaction on a miss. Add your martial arts die to the damage.
As an action you can end the stance and make a single attack with advatage. If it hits its an auto crit. Max damage is a bit much, so add a martial arts die.
You can use your bonus action to keep the stance going. Otherwise it ends.
Remove the restriction on reactions and bonus actions.
If you use your reaction to use vaulting escape you can immediately use heaven's fall as part of the same reaction.
Using your reaction for anything but the counter attack given by this feature ends the stance.
My wordings pretty clunky, but I find this way keeps it from interuptinf the action economy too much and a bit more balanced.
The idea I had in mind was that the monk would focus solely on defense and counterattack with this, so probably there's some bits missing from the description :P The example application would be: As an action Stance activation (AC Bonus) -> No attack, Bonus Action or Reaction within duration -> Each miss from an enemy gets a counter attack -> At any point within duration the stance can be interrupted to make the crit attack (I agree the max damage might be a tad too much, so I'll probably do as you propose and change it for an additional martial arts die). This way the monk can virtually only move in their turn, but have "infinite" counter attacks as long as the stance is active (which is still 2-3 turns at best).
EDIT: I noticed now that I mistakenly stated that normal attacks could be performed, my bad. ^^"
Let me know what you think of this, meanwhile I will implement the other changes and reword Peacock Wheel Stance to make clearer what my intention was.
2 to 3 turns of an 'absolute defense' makes sense, but I'm not sure how I feel about it fitting in with the rest of the abilities. Most involve pole vaulting over your enemies foe advatages and maximizing on the reach of your staff.
On top of that its incredibly different from the other subclass capstones. The closest one I found would be the Sun Souls.
[Spoiler]
Sun Shield
At 17th level, you become wreathed in a luminous, magical aura. You shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. You can extinguish or restore the light as a bonus action.
If a creature hits you with a melee attack while this light shines, you can use your reaction to deal radiant damage to the creature. The radiant damage equals 5 + your Wisdom modifier.[/spoiler]
That only deals a max of 10 radient damage (without magic items) for your reaction, but it lasts permanetly, only shutting off when you use your bonus action to do so. Similarly, all other subclasses have an ability that either can be used once per turn or uses a lot of ki (way of long death for example.) They also only have one effect, unlike the peacock wheel stance.
2 to 3 turns of an 'absolute defense' makes sense, but I'm not sure how I feel about it fitting in with the rest of the abilities. Most involve pole vaulting over your enemies foe advatages and maximizing on the reach of your staff.
On top of that its incredibly different from the other subclass capstones. The closest one I found would be the Sun Souls.
Sun Shield
At 17th level, you become wreathed in a luminous, magical aura. You shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. You can extinguish or restore the light as a bonus action.
If a creature hits you with a melee attack while this light shines, you can use your reaction to deal radiant damage to the creature. The radiant damage equals 5 + your Wisdom modifier.
That only deals a max of 10 radient damage (without magic items) for your reaction, but it lasts permanetly, only shutting off when you use your bonus action to do so. Similarly, all other subclasses have an ability that either can be used once per turn or uses a lot of ki (way of long death for example.) They also only have one effect, unlike the peacock wheel stance.
I think I see your point. So in your opinion only being able to move and "react" to attacks and for a very limited amount of time would still not balance out the possible increased damage output? (asking honestly)
As for the flavor, I thought it would still remain in line with the concept of the subclass, since the rotation of polearms is part of the martial arts training that also teaches how to use them to move around (at least to my knowledge of martial arts).
Honestly I'm unsure. It seems powerful, but in a way its lole the drunken master flurry. It needs a lot of enemies to really be powerful.
The AC bonus is still crazy though. 26 is higher than Tiamat's base AC, and with an ability that punishes every missed attack tied to it its pretty crazy. Shield gives you a +5 for a turn, but thats at thr cost of your reaction so you wouldn't be able to strike back. A heavily min maxed sorcadin (paladin 2 / dragon sorcerer 18) baised on dex with a rapier and a shield would have an ac of 20 and be able to use shield to beef up to 25 but wouldn't be able to make even a single counter attack let alone an 'unlimited' amount.
Also just saw you changed it to half. That makes more sense for the counter attacking aspect, as its not a pure defence.
As for the flavor you're right. For some reason i was thinking a dragoon like character from final fantasy. Jumping around and attacking from the air sorta deal. XD
Honestly I'm unsure. It seems powerful, but in a way its lole the drunken master flurry. It needs a lot of enemies to really be powerful.
The AC bonus is still crazy though. 26 is higher than Tiamat's base AC, and with an ability that punishes every missed attack tied to it its pretty crazy. Shield gives you a +5 for a turn, but thats at thr cost of your reaction so you wouldn't be able to strike back. A heavily min maxed sorcadin (paladin 2 / dragon sorcerer 18) baised on dex with a rapier and a shield would have an ac of 20 and be able to use shield to beef up to 25 but wouldn't be able to make even a single counter attack let alone an 'unlimited' amount.
Also just saw you changed it to half. That makes more sense for the counter attacking aspect, as its not a pure defence.
As for the flavor you're right. For some reason i was thinking a dragoon like character from final fantasy. Jumping around and attacking from the air sorta deal. XD
I will most probably develop a Dragoon subclass at some point, just have to decide if I want it to be for the Fighter or for the Paladin ;)
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
But yeah. I say keep it as you have now and try to play test it some time. Maybe host a session of playtesting your homebrew classes or two.
Fighter sounds like a good idea ;) maybe I'll make a poll though, just because :P
Playtesting my (now quite extensive) series of subclasses is something I'd love to do, but I've only recently moved here in Madrid, so I do not yet have a stable and "trustworthy" enough group to do that... but the future might hold good surprises, so it's never too late :)
In the meantime, anyone able to playtest any of my subclasses is more than welcome to share the results and in-game thoughts :)
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I'm just going to point out that the average of 2dN is N+1, meaning that max damage on one die is slightly weaker than adding another die of the same type.
Also, how about limiting the off-turn attack in Peacock Wheel Stance to once per turn?
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I'm just going to point out that the average of 2dN is N+1, meaning that max damage on one die is slightly weaker than adding another die of the same type.
Also, how about limiting the off-turn attack in Peacock Wheel Stance to once per turn?
Hi Matthias, thank you for your comment and feedback :)
The thing about adding a second dice was to counterbalance taking out the automatic max damage that was previously the added bonus of the finishing hit from Peacock Wheel. Adding another die indeed brings the maximum total damage a bit higher, but it is still a variable instead of a certainty now.
The "limitless" off-turn attack is to compensate for the character not actually being able to perform any attack on their turn while the stance is active, but I see it could get out of hand pretty quickly... How about limiting the number of attacks in the round to natural DEX modifier (so not counting magical DEX enhancements)? This way even if the character starts running around triggering attacks of opportunity (which are still an option, not mandatory to perform, so a smart enemy could just decide not to attack him) the character could only get as many as 5 counter attacks.
Also, how about limiting the off-turn attack in Peacock Wheel Stance to once per turn?
The "limitless" off-turn attack is to compensate for the character not actually being able to perform any attack on their turn while the stance is active, but I see it could get out of hand pretty quickly... How about limiting the number of attacks in the round to natural DEX modifier (so not counting magical DEX enhancements)? This way even if the character starts running around triggering attacks of opportunity (which are still an option, not mandatory to perform, so a smart enemy could just decide not to attack him) the character could only get as many as 5 counter attacks.
What do you guys think?
Reduce movement to 0 instead. It's easier on the players, it works with the rules, and it's more cinematically thematic.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Also, how about limiting the off-turn attack in Peacock Wheel Stance to once per turn?
The "limitless" off-turn attack is to compensate for the character not actually being able to perform any attack on their turn while the stance is active, but I see it could get out of hand pretty quickly... How about limiting the number of attacks in the round to natural DEX modifier (so not counting magical DEX enhancements)? This way even if the character starts running around triggering attacks of opportunity (which are still an option, not mandatory to perform, so a smart enemy could just decide not to attack him) the character could only get as many as 5 counter attacks.
What do you guys think?
Reduce movement to 0 instead. It's easier on the players, it works with the rules, and it's more cinematically thematic.
Oooh :o good point, I didn't think about that! It indeed makes a lot of sense for it to impede movement while active, and this way the "infinite counter" is balanced out by not being able to "force" enemies to attack.
Great idea! Thank you Matthias :D
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Your movement speed is reduced to 0, and you use your Reaction to keep the stance active;
In your turn, you can perform only your normal attacks with the Attack action, and cannot use your Vaulting Escape feature, any Bonus action involving movement or use the Dodge action;
The "no Action" seemed a bit to much with speed reduced to 0, so I opted for allowing the character to do at least something during their turn.
You guys let me know what you think!
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Addlecove challenged me again, and again I could not really hold back and had to develop it immediately XD
So here it is, a polearm-focused monk subclass:
Way of the Long Arm
Taking the use of the staff to the next level, the tradition of the Way of the Long Arm teaches monks to widen the variety of pole weapons they can use, and make them integral part of their fighting style, taking advantage of the longer reach and mobility-enhancing features deriving from such versatile weapons.
Reach Training
At 3rd level, you become proficient with the Glaive and the Pike, and these weapons now count as monk weapons for you. Additionally, whenever you use a Quartestaff, the weapon gains the Reach quality.
Vaulting Escape
At 3rd level, whenever an enemy misses you with a melee attack or you successfully perform a DEX saving throw, and you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can spend your Reaction to vault over the danger, landing in any unoccupied space in a 10 foot cone in front of you without provoking attacks of opportunity, as if you had taken the disengage action.
Should you decide to land behind the attacker, you can decide to spend 1 Ki point to grant advantage to your next attack against them.
You can use Vaulting Escape a number of times equal to your DEX modifier each long rest.
Swiping Lizard Tail
At 6th level, as an Action on your turn when you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can spend 2 Ki points to perform an attack against all targets in a 10 feet circle around you. Each target in the area has to perform a DEX saving throw (normal Ki save DC) or suffer damage equal to the weapon damage plus one martial art die plus your DEX modifier and be knocked Prone. On a successful save, the target will suffer half damage and avoid being knocked Prone.
Crane Stance
At 11th level when you use Vaulting Escape you can instead move 10 feet up in the air. You remain there until the end of your next turn.
Heaven's Fall
At 11th level, at the beginning of your turn after you use your Crane Stance, and as one of the attacks of your Attack Action, you can spend 2 Ki points to perform a falling attack on any target within 10 feet from you. The attack is performed with advantage and it deals additional damage equal to your Martial Arts die.
Peacock Wheel Stance
At 17th level, as an Action at the beginning of your turn when you are wielding a Quarterstaff, Glaive or Pike, you can decide to spend 3 Ki points and start spinning your weapon in front and around you, gaining the following benefits:
The Stance lasts a number of turns equal to half your DEX modifier, or until you stop it, die or fall unconscious, and can be used a number of times equal to your WIS modifier each long rest.
Hope to see some feedback on this one as well, and thanks to everyone in advance :)
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I think you should use the Pike rather than the Lance as that is mostly for mounted combat.
Other than that I really like this.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Question! Vaulting Escape doesn't say otherwise, so I assume it will trigger a reaction attack. I imagine this isn't the intetion. Figured I'd bring that up :D
And once again you make a monk class i desperately wish to try out some time .
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
A'ight. Now that I've read it over and took some time to think about it I got some suggestions.
Reach Training
This looks good as it is. Emphasizes using reach weapons which is a refreshing change from the other monk subclasses.
Vaulting Escape
Another good ability, and Im glad you added that it doesn't trigger opprotunity attacks. It can however be reworded and made simplier to read, which I'll work on soon to give an example.
Swiping Lizard Tail
This one is weird. The single attack roll makes it streamlined, but having a different damage roll for each opponent hit in a 10 foot circle could be a crazy amount of dice and bookkeeping. I believe this could be made easier with a dex saving throw and a save for half damage effect like thunderwave (i cant do tooltips on my phone.) Something like weapon damage + monk damage die + dex. Enemies who fail take full and fall prone, enemies who succeed take half but dont fall prone.
If you keep it as it is I will say I'm confused about the strength bit. Are we using strength instead of dex? Are we adding strength on top of dex? It makes it a little MAD to be used to its fullest in either case. And of course does this take an action or one of your attacks? If its just an attack then RAW with enough Ki a monk could do this twice in a turn. My suggestion would make it an action.
Crane Stance
A simple reword makes this ability easier to understand. My example:
When you use Vaulting Escape you can instead move 10 feet up in the air. You remain there until the end of your next turn.
Heaven's Fall
I dig this one. 2 ki to do an awesome attack from midair has some pretty sweet thematics. But I have a similar question as I did with sweeping lizard tail above. Does this take your action or just one of your attacks? This one makes sense for it to be one of your attacks.
Also, does this grant advatage on the attack? You mention it benefits from advatage, but all attacks of any kind do, which makes me think you were saying it has advatage. I think you should cut that and reduce the cost to 1 ki. There's plenty of ways to get advatage and this doesn't need that.
Peacock Wheel Stance
This is cool and thematic, but its also clunky. With the increased AC bonus (which at that level makes your AC 26 without any magic item!) they could feasibly attack every time an enemy attacks. There's no restriction to how many so even a boss with multi attack who cant hit that already high AC will end up getting smacked. Thats a lot of free attacks.
Suggestions: Cut the AC bonus to half prof.
The bonus attack should be your reaction on a miss. Add your martial arts die to the damage.
As an action you can end the stance and make a single attack with advatage. If it hits its an auto crit. Max damage is a bit much, so add a martial arts die.
You can use your bonus action to keep the stance going. Otherwise it ends.
Remove the restriction on reactions and bonus actions.
If you use your reaction to use vaulting escape you can immediately use heaven's fall as part of the same reaction.
Using your reaction for anything but the counter attack given by this feature ends the stance.
My wordings pretty clunky, but I find this way keeps it from interuptinf the action economy too much and a bit more balanced.
Again though i love this and I plan to use it as soon as I can.
Thank you for the in-depth analysis KageAcuma! \o/
Let's have a look at your feedback...
Thank you very much, but the basic idea comes from Addlcove, so the credit on the freshness of the subclass is all for him :)
Indeed, my wording can sometimes be a bit heavy and convoluted, the downsides of not being a native English speaker :-/
I'll try to simplify as much as I can without sacrificing flavor or clarity.
I like the idea of making it a saving throw instead of an attack roll, and the prone addition on a failed save. The damage idea also sounds ok, my initial addition of STR was to signify the "powering through" several enemies, but it indeed risks to put unecessary focus on a stat that would be otherwise useless for a Monk.
It was indeed intended to be a full action, I forgot to specify it (sometimes I leave out these "little details" XD), thank you for catching that!
Synthesis accepted, it is indeed shorter and clearer :P
This was intended as you suspect, as one of your attacks in the turn, I'll specify that. And yeah, it was meant to signify you get advantage on the attack ^^".
I'd leave the advantage in, to be honest, just in case it's a 1-on-1 combat, I'd like to make those 2 Ki points worth it (1 Ki feels a bit too little even considering to take out advantage).
The idea I had in mind was that the monk would focus solely on defense and counterattack with this, so probably there's some bits missing from the description :P
The example application would be: As an action Stance activation (AC Bonus) -> No attack, Bonus Action or Reaction within duration -> Each miss from an enemy gets a counter attack -> At any point within duration the stance can be interrupted to make the crit attack (I agree the max damage might be a tad too much, so I'll probably do as you propose and change it for an additional martial arts die).
This way the monk can virtually only move in their turn, but have "infinite" counter attacks as long as the stance is active (which is still 2-3 turns at best).
EDIT: I noticed now that I mistakenly stated that normal attacks could be performed, my bad. ^^"
Let me know what you think of this, meanwhile I will implement the other changes and reword Peacock Wheel Stance to make clearer what my intention was.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
2 to 3 turns of an 'absolute defense' makes sense, but I'm not sure how I feel about it fitting in with the rest of the abilities. Most involve pole vaulting over your enemies foe advatages and maximizing on the reach of your staff.
On top of that its incredibly different from the other subclass capstones. The closest one I found would be the Sun Souls.
[Spoiler]
Sun Shield
At 17th level, you become wreathed in a luminous, magical aura. You shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. You can extinguish or restore the light as a bonus action.
If a creature hits you with a melee attack while this light shines, you can use your reaction to deal radiant damage to the creature. The radiant damage equals 5 + your Wisdom modifier.[/spoiler]
That only deals a max of 10 radient damage (without magic items) for your reaction, but it lasts permanetly, only shutting off when you use your bonus action to do so. Similarly, all other subclasses have an ability that either can be used once per turn or uses a lot of ki (way of long death for example.) They also only have one effect, unlike the peacock wheel stance.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Honestly I'm unsure. It seems powerful, but in a way its lole the drunken master flurry. It needs a lot of enemies to really be powerful.
The AC bonus is still crazy though. 26 is higher than Tiamat's base AC, and with an ability that punishes every missed attack tied to it its pretty crazy. Shield gives you a +5 for a turn, but thats at thr cost of your reaction so you wouldn't be able to strike back. A heavily min maxed sorcadin (paladin 2 / dragon sorcerer 18) baised on dex with a rapier and a shield would have an ac of 20 and be able to use shield to beef up to 25 but wouldn't be able to make even a single counter attack let alone an 'unlimited' amount.
Also just saw you changed it to half. That makes more sense for the counter attacking aspect, as its not a pure defence.
As for the flavor you're right. For some reason i was thinking a dragoon like character from final fantasy. Jumping around and attacking from the air sorta deal. XD
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I am really digging the updated sheet, brilliant feedback KageAcuma, and nice work, as usual, LeK ;)
Fighter for sure. .p.
But yeah. I say keep it as you have now and try to play test it some time. Maybe host a session of playtesting your homebrew classes or two.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I'm just going to point out that the average of 2dN is N+1, meaning that max damage on one die is slightly weaker than adding another die of the same type.
Also, how about limiting the off-turn attack in Peacock Wheel Stance to once per turn?
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Added the following:
The "no Action" seemed a bit to much with speed reduced to 0, so I opted for allowing the character to do at least something during their turn.
You guys let me know what you think!
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
liking the changes, now I can finally make a "oberyn martell" archetype :)