So, I'm gonna start out saying, somebody had probably made something like this and probably done a much better job, but I had this idea and I kinda want to share it.
Now, I don't want this to sound like I hate wizards, or I that I want to dunk on the original writer, this is a personal nitpick and I do love the game. I'm sure they put a ton of effort into making these classes, but as I read through the monk's martial arts feature, I kinda felt myself a little disappointed. Its only an increasing damage block every level tier, making it almost worthless to multiclass into, and considering its the only viable unarmed combat options, that's just sad. Going through it, I thought about how I would change it, and I came up with a few idea's. First off, give each of the dice, the ( d4, d6, d8, d10) right off at level one. before you cry "overpowered," Let me be clear, at level one only the d4 has the optional bonus attack feature. The idea is basically that you treat each dice as a separate weapon, named "styles" so the d4 is the light style option, the d6 the medium, the d8 the heavy, and the d10 the focused, with the d10 being treated as a two handed weapon, basically an attack that you focus your whole body into and, at first level, means you have to use your strength for attack and damage rolls. You can switch styles once per turn, and it counts as you free item action, like drawing your sword or pulling out a material component, in this case just shifting your body to a new style. Now this is for the first level, and as you gain levels, more of the feature unlocks, like at level 5, when you'd normally just get the d6, here your d6 unlocks the additional bonus attack. In addition, it also unlocks a new feature for the previous die, so at level 5, you get a bonus attack for the d6, and if you use fury of blows on the d4, you get one extra attack with the d4. At level 11, when you unlock the d8 bonus attack, when you use patient defense with the d6, you get to counterattack with one d6, and get one extra attack in fury of blows with the d4 (think moving to a more free style that lets you move easier for a counter attack.) At level 17, when you get the d10 bonus attack, it unlocks the d10's two-handed restriction, allowing you to use dex for attack and damage. And, when you use the d8 you use your step of the wind in place of your normal bonus action attack and add an extra d8 to the attack, as well as adding another attack to the d4 and an extra damage dice to the d6 for their respective features. Finally at level 20, replace the instant ki points feature with the final martial arts feature. It increase each styles feature dice block by one, and gives one for the d10, that being when you land at least one regular attack during your action phase and your bonus attack, you regain one free ki point( this gives you more control over how you regain your ki, letting you use the 10 to make a quick recovery, then switching around as needed later in the fight.)
It's a a bit complicated, but I think it really brings out the potential of the martial arts feature, without making it, at least in my opinion, overpowered. It allows other classes to make the monk dip and use the martial arts feature for some flavor without giving them too much power. Want a punchy blade singer? go ahead, seeing as in order to make it over powered, you'd need to make a character be high in 4 separate states to make it that overpowered. Want a cleric that can punch with the power of its god? have at it. But it doesn't just make the monk more multiclass viable, it also gives a real weight and use to his martial arts abilities. instead of just getting a better punch each tier, this gives a monk a full arsenal of fists and kicks.
but again, this is just my opinion, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, if you feel it can be improved, I'm grateful for any feedback.
level 1: Martial arts, you know the basic styles of martial arts attacks:
Light style: This style is based on quick slaps, thrusting shoves and kicking attacks made to deliver numerous sharp stinging attacks to keep your opponent on the defensive. These attacks deal d4 damage ,examples of this type of attack are: delivering a series of fast slaps to a targets ears, mouth and chest or a series of quick kicks to their thighs and shins to force them off balance.
Medium style: these are attacks delivered to joints and muscles with the aim of causing pain and causing muscles and joints to tense up. These attacks deal d6 damage. Examples of this attack would be kicks delivered to the side of an opponents head or back of the knee joint or punches or thrusting chops int shoulder or elbow joints.
Heavy Style: these attacks are stiff, aimed attacks targeting an opponents vital areas (eyes, nose, throat etc). These attacks deal d8 damage. Examples of this type of attack would be eye gouging, chopping a targets throat or kicks to the groin.
Focused Style (as a wrestling fan I can't help but call it Strong style and picture the wrestlers Minoru Suzuki, Shinsuke Nakamura or Pete Dunn): These attacks involve using the whole body to put maximum strength into an attack and deal d10 damage although at first level you can only use strength modifiers to determine to hit and damage bonuses. Examples of this type of attack would be head butts or using a "double axe handle" fist attack.
When using the attack action you can adopt a maximum of two fighting styles, so if you had 2 attacks per round you may start off with a light style slap to the face on the first attack and switch to a focused style head butt tot he bridge of the nose for a second attack. The decision to change style must be made before any attack roll is made.
At first level you can only use the Flurry of Blows ability with the Light style of martial arts techniques (flurry of blows is a bonus action so does not count towards the limit of using a maximum of 2 fighting styles a turn).
level 5: You can now use your flurry of blows to deliver medium style techniques or light style. If you use medium style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 2 extra attacks and they deal d6 damage with each attack, if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 3 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. All attack made with a flurry of blows must come from the same style.
level 11: You can now use your flurry of blows to deliver heavy style techniques. If you use heavy style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 2 extra attacks and they deal d8 damage with each attack, if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 4 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. All attack made with a flurry of blows must come from the same style. If you elect to use the attack action using medium style attacks and take Patient defense as a bonus action you can ready yourself to counter attack, if an opponents makes a melee attack against you whilst you are using medium style and patient defense you can use your Reaction to make one medium style attack against the attacker.
level 17: When using the focused style you can now use your Dex modifier for calculating to hit and damage bonuses. Additionally if you use the attack action an use only heavy style attacks and use your bonus action with Step of the Wind you can use your Reaction to make one melee attack against an opponent in range. if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 5 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. If you use medium style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 3 extra attacks instead of 2 and they deal d6 damage with each attack
level 20: The monk ability "Perfect Self" changes to: Light attacks now deal d6 damage, Medium style now deals d8 damage, heavy style now deals d10 damage and focused style now deals d12 damage,. Additionally if you hit with at least one attack as an action and one as a bonus action or reaction you regain 1 Ki point.
reading through, you've done a much better job rephrasing my jumbled words into viable rules, but there are a few difference
before level 5, not only can you not use fury of blows with any style besides light(d4) but only the d4 can use the martial arts feature :
"When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. For example, if you take the Attack action and attack with a quarterstaff, you can also make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, assuming you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn."
at each tier ( level 5, level 11, and level 17) more styles unlock not just fury of blows but also the bonus attack feature,
For each style, my mentality was that the added feature corresponded one of the ki abilities you get at level 2, so if you used fury of blows wile also using light style at level 5 and above, you would get an extra attack, increasing at each tier. If you used patient defense at level 11 and above while using medium style, you'd still use your bonus action to give disadvantage, but if that result in a miss, you'd be able to use your reaction to counterattack, with the damage starting at 1d6, and increasing to 2d6 at level 17 and 3d6 at level 20. Finally, at level 17 and above, if you used the step of wind ability while using heavy style, you still be able to dash, disengage or jump double your distance, but you'd also be able to to deliver a 1d8 attack as you did, increasing to a 2d8 attack at 20.
on the level 20 trait (and I'll admit, I wasn't too clear on this,) but it wasn't to just boost each stiles base damage dice, but that each feature the styles got would get one extra dice, so light style fury of blows world get one more attack, and the damage for the other features increases by one, like damaging cantrips at certain levels.
other than that, you have it spot on, I'm sorry if I was too confusing, I was more venting my ideas on this. I wanted to recreate this so you could have a barbarian make a small monk dip to make his fists just as viable as a battleaxe and not relaying on fluff to make your barbarian able to make an effective fist. But more than that, I wanted martial arts to feel more like a measure of style and tactics for the game rather than an increasingly stronger hit.
What you describe for Counter Attack and the Step of the Wind Attack is that automatic damage or is there a to hit roll? If it is automatic it maybe a tad to powerful as the Fighter/Battlemaster Maneuvers (specifically riposte) do a similar thing but would require a melee attack roll.
Also would these be limited to melee attacks as if you took the tradition way of the sun soul you could shoot beams of radiant damage out to 30ft and its damage scales with the monk martial arts.
Overall I like the idea of a Monk using different forms of martial arts all from level 1, light form being equivalent to club, medium to mace, heavy to warhammers and focused to two handed warhammer, in essence it'll be no different to a fighter using a rapier in one had and a dagger in the other for their attacks and switching to dual wield maces.
I think the only warning maybe.....if you add something you might look at taking away something to avoid them over powering every other fighting class. They will get some pretty funky abilities through their monastic traditions so if you give them something good, they need something bad to balance it out. Maybe something like the exertion of using their reaction in that way means they cannot use Ki during their next round so they have to have a round to "cool down" and center themselves before being able to martial their ki again.
Ok...maybe a second warning.....having damage scale could be over powered...a spell caster will only get to cast 1 cantrip a round (2 if a sorcerer with quicken spell) so if you are already doing multiple attacks per round having another attack with scaling damage could also step on the spell casters toes.
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* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
for your first question, I would say hit to roll, and as for taking something out, I can understand what you mean, and having a round to cool down sounds like a good idea. My problem is I don't really like the "give one thing, take away another" mentality to game design in general, it feels a little to restrictive for me. Not in power, but rather, I feel that its a effort to try and assure balance at any cost, as if there's no such thing as overbalanced. I find this as a central problem with 5e in general, the game designers, rightfully fear over tuning one favorite aspect of the game, so they approached 5e with a mentality of over balancing. certain aspects and spells were kept in the game for nostalgia sake, but the more I look through 5e the more I feel it might have been to finely tuned. Like a string instrument, with one string twisted over and over to reach a sense of perfection, and while making sure its in key is important, a good musician will tell you that sometimes you want to lean into a off key note to make a unique spin in the composition.
In terms of 5e, I see a system deathly afraid of its own meta, that underplays its own systems to prevent or mitigate as many meta builds as possible. This is why I think so many feel like the game is built against gish builds, to me, it feels like its designed both with the meta-gamer in mind and how to subvert him. And I get it, gish builds can be annoying, but I feel like wizards is afraid to explore these kind of features in fear that every player will want to a gish build player. And I have a problem with that mentality, not every player is a meta-gamer, and somebody will want to run that wizard barbarian multi class just to have fun. I get the need and focus on game balance, in game like this, you need to limit your players or power creep will get you. But by that same token, I am a firm believer that there is such a thing as overbalancing, that relying on a give and take mentality to design can make you go to far and take out more than you intend.
sorry, venting again, and to your final point, I do coincide you have a point, I would take out the scaling damage, I was more throwing it out to see if it could scale well enough with cantrips, but you have a point, it would be overkill.
no problem..****y other thought I had was to do those counter attack and step of the wind bits as a feats rather than class abilities, that way the down side would be you having to invest in the feat and it would then function in a way similar to someone taking the Martial Adept or Sentinel feats.
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* Need a character idea? Search for "Rob76's Unused" in the Story and Lore section.
Neat ideas. Too bad it's limited to the Monk. I wish there was an 'open hand' style for Fighters, to help simulate a lot of the Chinese style fantasy films.
There is the new optional fighting style Unarmed Fighting, made available via Tasha's Cauldron of Everything: 1d6 + STR for unarmed attacks (1d8 + STR if no weapons/shield wielded), can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to a grappled creature start of each turn.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
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So, I'm gonna start out saying, somebody had probably made something like this and probably done a much better job, but I had this idea and I kinda want to share it.
Now, I don't want this to sound like I hate wizards, or I that I want to dunk on the original writer, this is a personal nitpick and I do love the game. I'm sure they put a ton of effort into making these classes, but as I read through the monk's martial arts feature, I kinda felt myself a little disappointed. Its only an increasing damage block every level tier, making it almost worthless to multiclass into, and considering its the only viable unarmed combat options, that's just sad. Going through it, I thought about how I would change it, and I came up with a few idea's. First off, give each of the dice, the ( d4, d6, d8, d10) right off at level one. before you cry "overpowered," Let me be clear, at level one only the d4 has the optional bonus attack feature. The idea is basically that you treat each dice as a separate weapon, named "styles" so the d4 is the light style option, the d6 the medium, the d8 the heavy, and the d10 the focused, with the d10 being treated as a two handed weapon, basically an attack that you focus your whole body into and, at first level, means you have to use your strength for attack and damage rolls. You can switch styles once per turn, and it counts as you free item action, like drawing your sword or pulling out a material component, in this case just shifting your body to a new style. Now this is for the first level, and as you gain levels, more of the feature unlocks, like at level 5, when you'd normally just get the d6, here your d6 unlocks the additional bonus attack. In addition, it also unlocks a new feature for the previous die, so at level 5, you get a bonus attack for the d6, and if you use fury of blows on the d4, you get one extra attack with the d4. At level 11, when you unlock the d8 bonus attack, when you use patient defense with the d6, you get to counterattack with one d6, and get one extra attack in fury of blows with the d4 (think moving to a more free style that lets you move easier for a counter attack.) At level 17, when you get the d10 bonus attack, it unlocks the d10's two-handed restriction, allowing you to use dex for attack and damage. And, when you use the d8 you use your step of the wind in place of your normal bonus action attack and add an extra d8 to the attack, as well as adding another attack to the d4 and an extra damage dice to the d6 for their respective features. Finally at level 20, replace the instant ki points feature with the final martial arts feature. It increase each styles feature dice block by one, and gives one for the d10, that being when you land at least one regular attack during your action phase and your bonus attack, you regain one free ki point( this gives you more control over how you regain your ki, letting you use the 10 to make a quick recovery, then switching around as needed later in the fight.)
It's a a bit complicated, but I think it really brings out the potential of the martial arts feature, without making it, at least in my opinion, overpowered. It allows other classes to make the monk dip and use the martial arts feature for some flavor without giving them too much power. Want a punchy blade singer? go ahead, seeing as in order to make it over powered, you'd need to make a character be high in 4 separate states to make it that overpowered. Want a cleric that can punch with the power of its god? have at it. But it doesn't just make the monk more multiclass viable, it also gives a real weight and use to his martial arts abilities. instead of just getting a better punch each tier, this gives a monk a full arsenal of fists and kicks.
but again, this is just my opinion, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, if you feel it can be improved, I'm grateful for any feedback.
I think I follow it.....do you mean:
level 1: Martial arts, you know the basic styles of martial arts attacks:
Light style: This style is based on quick slaps, thrusting shoves and kicking attacks made to deliver numerous sharp stinging attacks to keep your opponent on the defensive. These attacks deal d4 damage ,examples of this type of attack are: delivering a series of fast slaps to a targets ears, mouth and chest or a series of quick kicks to their thighs and shins to force them off balance.
Medium style: these are attacks delivered to joints and muscles with the aim of causing pain and causing muscles and joints to tense up. These attacks deal d6 damage. Examples of this attack would be kicks delivered to the side of an opponents head or back of the knee joint or punches or thrusting chops int shoulder or elbow joints.
Heavy Style: these attacks are stiff, aimed attacks targeting an opponents vital areas (eyes, nose, throat etc). These attacks deal d8 damage. Examples of this type of attack would be eye gouging, chopping a targets throat or kicks to the groin.
Focused Style (as a wrestling fan I can't help but call it Strong style and picture the wrestlers Minoru Suzuki, Shinsuke Nakamura or Pete Dunn): These attacks involve using the whole body to put maximum strength into an attack and deal d10 damage although at first level you can only use strength modifiers to determine to hit and damage bonuses. Examples of this type of attack would be head butts or using a "double axe handle" fist attack.
When using the attack action you can adopt a maximum of two fighting styles, so if you had 2 attacks per round you may start off with a light style slap to the face on the first attack and switch to a focused style head butt tot he bridge of the nose for a second attack. The decision to change style must be made before any attack roll is made.
At first level you can only use the Flurry of Blows ability with the Light style of martial arts techniques (flurry of blows is a bonus action so does not count towards the limit of using a maximum of 2 fighting styles a turn).
level 5: You can now use your flurry of blows to deliver medium style techniques or light style. If you use medium style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 2 extra attacks and they deal d6 damage with each attack, if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 3 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. All attack made with a flurry of blows must come from the same style.
level 11: You can now use your flurry of blows to deliver heavy style techniques. If you use heavy style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 2 extra attacks and they deal d8 damage with each attack, if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 4 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. All attack made with a flurry of blows must come from the same style. If you elect to use the attack action using medium style attacks and take Patient defense as a bonus action you can ready yourself to counter attack, if an opponents makes a melee attack against you whilst you are using medium style and patient defense you can use your Reaction to make one medium style attack against the attacker.
level 17: When using the focused style you can now use your Dex modifier for calculating to hit and damage bonuses. Additionally if you use the attack action an use only heavy style attacks and use your bonus action with Step of the Wind you can use your Reaction to make one melee attack against an opponent in range. if you opt to use the light style attacks with your flurry of blows you still deal d4 damage with each additional attack but you gain 5 extra attacks with your flurry instead of 2. If you use medium style attacks with your flurry of blows you gain 3 extra attacks instead of 2 and they deal d6 damage with each attack
level 20: The monk ability "Perfect Self" changes to: Light attacks now deal d6 damage, Medium style now deals d8 damage, heavy style now deals d10 damage and focused style now deals d12 damage,. Additionally if you hit with at least one attack as an action and one as a bonus action or reaction you regain 1 Ki point.
Does that sound about right?
reading through, you've done a much better job rephrasing my jumbled words into viable rules, but there are a few difference
before level 5, not only can you not use fury of blows with any style besides light(d4) but only the d4 can use the martial arts feature :
"When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. For example, if you take the Attack action and attack with a quarterstaff, you can also make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, assuming you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn."
at each tier ( level 5, level 11, and level 17) more styles unlock not just fury of blows but also the bonus attack feature,
For each style, my mentality was that the added feature corresponded one of the ki abilities you get at level 2, so if you used fury of blows wile also using light style at level 5 and above, you would get an extra attack, increasing at each tier. If you used patient defense at level 11 and above while using medium style, you'd still use your bonus action to give disadvantage, but if that result in a miss, you'd be able to use your reaction to counterattack, with the damage starting at 1d6, and increasing to 2d6 at level 17 and 3d6 at level 20. Finally, at level 17 and above, if you used the step of wind ability while using heavy style, you still be able to dash, disengage or jump double your distance, but you'd also be able to to deliver a 1d8 attack as you did, increasing to a 2d8 attack at 20.
on the level 20 trait (and I'll admit, I wasn't too clear on this,) but it wasn't to just boost each stiles base damage dice, but that each feature the styles got would get one extra dice, so light style fury of blows world get one more attack, and the damage for the other features increases by one, like damaging cantrips at certain levels.
other than that, you have it spot on, I'm sorry if I was too confusing, I was more venting my ideas on this. I wanted to recreate this so you could have a barbarian make a small monk dip to make his fists just as viable as a battleaxe and not relaying on fluff to make your barbarian able to make an effective fist. But more than that, I wanted martial arts to feel more like a measure of style and tactics for the game rather than an increasingly stronger hit.
Don't worry, venting is good!
What you describe for Counter Attack and the Step of the Wind Attack is that automatic damage or is there a to hit roll? If it is automatic it maybe a tad to powerful as the Fighter/Battlemaster Maneuvers (specifically riposte) do a similar thing but would require a melee attack roll.
Also would these be limited to melee attacks as if you took the tradition way of the sun soul you could shoot beams of radiant damage out to 30ft and its damage scales with the monk martial arts.
Overall I like the idea of a Monk using different forms of martial arts all from level 1, light form being equivalent to club, medium to mace, heavy to warhammers and focused to two handed warhammer, in essence it'll be no different to a fighter using a rapier in one had and a dagger in the other for their attacks and switching to dual wield maces.
I think the only warning maybe.....if you add something you might look at taking away something to avoid them over powering every other fighting class. They will get some pretty funky abilities through their monastic traditions so if you give them something good, they need something bad to balance it out. Maybe something like the exertion of using their reaction in that way means they cannot use Ki during their next round so they have to have a round to "cool down" and center themselves before being able to martial their ki again.
Ok...maybe a second warning.....having damage scale could be over powered...a spell caster will only get to cast 1 cantrip a round (2 if a sorcerer with quicken spell) so if you are already doing multiple attacks per round having another attack with scaling damage could also step on the spell casters toes.
for your first question, I would say hit to roll, and as for taking something out, I can understand what you mean, and having a round to cool down sounds like a good idea. My problem is I don't really like the "give one thing, take away another" mentality to game design in general, it feels a little to restrictive for me. Not in power, but rather, I feel that its a effort to try and assure balance at any cost, as if there's no such thing as overbalanced. I find this as a central problem with 5e in general, the game designers, rightfully fear over tuning one favorite aspect of the game, so they approached 5e with a mentality of over balancing. certain aspects and spells were kept in the game for nostalgia sake, but the more I look through 5e the more I feel it might have been to finely tuned. Like a string instrument, with one string twisted over and over to reach a sense of perfection, and while making sure its in key is important, a good musician will tell you that sometimes you want to lean into a off key note to make a unique spin in the composition.
In terms of 5e, I see a system deathly afraid of its own meta, that underplays its own systems to prevent or mitigate as many meta builds as possible. This is why I think so many feel like the game is built against gish builds, to me, it feels like its designed both with the meta-gamer in mind and how to subvert him. And I get it, gish builds can be annoying, but I feel like wizards is afraid to explore these kind of features in fear that every player will want to a gish build player. And I have a problem with that mentality, not every player is a meta-gamer, and somebody will want to run that wizard barbarian multi class just to have fun. I get the need and focus on game balance, in game like this, you need to limit your players or power creep will get you. But by that same token, I am a firm believer that there is such a thing as overbalancing, that relying on a give and take mentality to design can make you go to far and take out more than you intend.
sorry, venting again, and to your final point, I do coincide you have a point, I would take out the scaling damage, I was more throwing it out to see if it could scale well enough with cantrips, but you have a point, it would be overkill.
no problem..****y other thought I had was to do those counter attack and step of the wind bits as a feats rather than class abilities, that way the down side would be you having to invest in the feat and it would then function in a way similar to someone taking the Martial Adept or Sentinel feats.
Neat ideas. Too bad it's limited to the Monk. I wish there was an 'open hand' style for Fighters, to help simulate a lot of the Chinese style fantasy films.
There is the new optional fighting style Unarmed Fighting, made available via Tasha's Cauldron of Everything: 1d6 + STR for unarmed attacks (1d8 + STR if no weapons/shield wielded), can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to a grappled creature start of each turn.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)