It's not too powerful at all, it's just unthematic. Throwing people around is a very barbarian thing to do, not really a monk thing to do.
It's absolutely a monk thing to do, it's just that the thematic way of doing it involves using people's movement against them, which implies heavy use of reactions (or forcing saves without expending a reaction), which 5e is kinda allergic to.
more reactions are thematic for sure. most people are happy to point to flurry of blows or bonus action dodge as somehow satisfying that. I want more.
as for barbs and monks, they're two sides of the same coin. I do think there's room for kicks, grabs, and clonking two heads together with a hollow coconut sound in the barbarian toolbox. but, in many ways monk is the hand-me-down little brother to older big brother barbarian's wild style. monk has seen the way barbarian fights and took notes. monk is smaller, quicker, and has some improvements in mind but they're still in the family business of fighting dudes. less chaos, more discipline, but still sprinting into the thick of it. they're not opposites, they're brothers: it only makes sense to me if they both throw and wrestle similarly.
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It's not too powerful at all, it's just unthematic. Throwing people around is a very barbarian thing to do, not really a monk thing to do.
It's absolutely a monk thing to do, it's just that the thematic way of doing it involves using people's movement against them, which implies heavy use of reactions (or forcing saves without expending a reaction), which 5e is kinda allergic to.
Aikido, Hapkido, Jujitsu, Qin Na, Shuai Jiao, Baguazhang are all good starting ideas for a grappling/throwing/restraining Monk. Especially Baguazhang and Hapkido, which balance between strikes and grappling, which would fit very well with a Monk who definitely has strikes, and then adds grappling/throwing/restraining.
grapple could be great with just a few additions. like being able to swing/throw your grappled opponent into a foe. give martial artists some damage (and save vs prone) to both foes. maybe 5ft plus more distance with more Str, too. love to see a Wis based monk turn enemy's miss at melee into a throw or fall prone as well.
personally i always wondered why tavern brawler and grappler feats didn't include at the very least a flavor/lore blurb about using other people as improvised weapons.
Like a shove attack followed by a battle master maneuver “sweeping attack”? Mechanically it accomplishes the same as a throw + damaging two targets.
I'd be okay with battlemaster having a way to cobble together a similar effect, but I'm thinking monk would accomplish it in one attack/reaction. or we can call it too powerful so that it's funny when they give it to a barbarian subclass in the giants book later this month.
One of the elements of my reworked Monk is adding Battle Master maneuvers, and expanding the Battle Master maneuvers to include some maneuvers that are more grappling/throws/locks oriented.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed.
Precisely, though if people really insist on masteries on unarmed strikes, Hand monk should be the one subclass that gets to do that as part of the Open Hand Technique, all other monks use regular martial arts or the generic unarmed strikes.
I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
I agree with monks having more reaction options than the rest (or even having multiple reactions per round), but apparently it "slows down the game"... Some players and DMs waste far more time thinking about how to avoid an attack of opportunity than the attack and damage roll of that creature. If this is so inconvenient, then why not just take reactions away from the game to make it faster?
Also why would Counterstrike cost 1 DP? A single unarmed strike that triggers on a miss should be for free if it is at level 5
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed.
Precisely, though if people really insist on masteries on unarmed strikes, Hand monk should be the one subclass that gets to do that as part of the Open Hand Technique, all other monks use regular martial arts or the generic unarmed strikes.
I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
I agree with monks having more reaction options than the rest (or even having multiple reactions per round), but apparently it "slows down the game"... Some players and DMs waste far more time thinking about how to avoid an attack of opportunity than the attack and damage roll of that creature. If this is so inconvenient, then why not just take reactions away from the game to make it faster?
Also why would Counterstrike cost 1 DP? A single unarmed strike that triggers on a miss should be for free if it is at level 5
Counterstrike would need to be higher level if it was at no cost. It’s a deterrent to low health targets making attacks against you. Also I would never want multiple reactions per round. It does slow the game down.
H said something about making the fundamentals (FoB, SotW, Patient Defense) just consume the Bonus Action, and not a DP, because that right there is consuming a limited resource that sets you into one of three fundamental modes. I sort of took that to a different (sort of opposite) extreme:
When you’re expending a limited resource, you can do it in a way that is not the same as burning your action economy, but is still limiting and therefore balancing.
What I’m getting at is, for example, if you make it conditional on “using patient defense/benefitting from Dodge” (and therefore made them burn their action or bonus action)…. then you can limit something like Deflect Missiles solely by how much they burn DP to use it, Don’t make it burn a reaction, make both the deflect and the redirect cost DP (not just the redirect). Can they do it 5 times in a turn? yes…. but it has nothing to do with using their reaction. And it’s not unlimited, and far from it: if you’re doing 5 deflects every round, even a 20th level monk can only keep that up for 4 rounds (assuming they aren’t doing anything else that uses DP). Burning a Reaction isn’t the only way to limit a defense, so you don’t have to give more Reactions in order to give more defensive events.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
Agree, could be better simply revising the Unarmed Strike + Martial Arts stuff to fit with what a MA user should be able to do, not adding complexity and probably making it boring at long term as mentioned.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
Shove requires you to forego dealing damage and gives the target a choice of two different saving throws to resist it, meaning the success rate for Shove is well below 50% and it deals 0 damage at the same time. Push weapon mastery allows you to deal damage as normal, move a creature twice as far and has a 100% success rate, there is no reason to ever use Shove to move a creature anymore if you have access to weapon mastery. Topple at least the weapon mastery has a saving throw meaning your success rate is lower using a weapon than taking using Shove but if you're planning to use Topple to increase your DPR from advantage you're still better off using the weapon mastery than using Shove due to having to sacrifice damage to use Shove and Shove's low probability of success. This means every STR-based martial is better than the Monk at battlefield control and DPR thanks to weapon masteries. Martial Arts is not going to be significantly improved because of the scaling problem where Monk is pretty good at low levels already, since FoB comes online at level 2, so WotC is not going to buff their low-level performance.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
More boring than “I attack. <roll dice >. Ok that’s my turn”?
I am all for revising martial arts. I’ve asked for improvements in a lot of areas for monk, especially since they announced the 2024 update. But I’m not holding my breath for big changes. They already went back on the whole “short rest core features” bit. And I’m concerned Warlocks will go back to SR as well.
So my suggestions recently have been tempered by my suspicion that not a whole lot will change. Which is sad.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
Shove requires you to forego dealing damage and gives the target a choice of two different saving throws to resist it, meaning the success rate for Shove is well below 50% and it deals 0 damage at the same time. Push weapon mastery allows you to deal damage as normal, move a creature twice as far and has a 100% success rate, there is no reason to ever use Shove to move a creature anymore if you have access to weapon mastery. Topple at least the weapon mastery has a saving throw meaning your success rate is lower using a weapon than taking using Shove but if you're planning to use Topple to increase your DPR from advantage you're still better off using the weapon mastery than using Shove due to having to sacrifice damage to use Shove and Shove's low probability of success. This means every STR-based martial is better than the Monk at battlefield control and DPR thanks to weapon masteries. Martial Arts is not going to be significantly improved because of the scaling problem where Monk is pretty good at low levels already, since FoB comes online at level 2, so WotC is not going to buff their low-level performance.
None of that matters when push and topple are extremely situational. My point wasn’t about which was mechanically superior, it was about how often the choice to be used would actually occur in game. I also want arguing that nothing should be done to improve the monk. If you read any of my post you would know I do want monk improvements. Adding masteries to unarmed attacks is a boring way to go about it and wouldn’t actually fix the problem with monks. It would actually create new problems. Easy one to point is Open Hand Technique would need an immediate rewrite.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
More boring than “I attack. <roll dice >. Ok that’s my turn”?
I am all for revising martial arts. I’ve asked for improvements in a lot of areas for monk, especially since they announced the 2024 update. But I’m not holding my breath for big changes. They already went back on the whole “short rest core features” bit. And I’m concerned Warlocks will go back to SR as well.
So my suggestions recently have been tempered by my suspicion that not a whole lot will change. Which is sad.
If that’s how you describe your turns then equally boring. I attack my weapon has push. Okay that’s my turn. Lol
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed. Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature. The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks. I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
Shove requires you to forego dealing damage and gives the target a choice of two different saving throws to resist it, meaning the success rate for Shove is well below 50% and it deals 0 damage at the same time. Push weapon mastery allows you to deal damage as normal, move a creature twice as far and has a 100% success rate, there is no reason to ever use Shove to move a creature anymore if you have access to weapon mastery. Topple at least the weapon mastery has a saving throw meaning your success rate is lower using a weapon than taking using Shove but if you're planning to use Topple to increase your DPR from advantage you're still better off using the weapon mastery than using Shove due to having to sacrifice damage to use Shove and Shove's low probability of success. This means every STR-based martial is better than the Monk at battlefield control and DPR thanks to weapon masteries. Martial Arts is not going to be significantly improved because of the scaling problem where Monk is pretty good at low levels already, since FoB comes online at level 2, so WotC is not going to buff their low-level performance.
None of that matters when push and topple are extremely situational. My point wasn’t about which was mechanically superior, it was about how often the choice to be used would actually occur in game. I also want arguing that nothing should be done to improve the monk. If you read any of my post you would know I do want monk improvements. Adding masteries to unarmed attacks is a boring way to go about it and wouldn’t actually fix the problem with monks. It would actually create new problems. Easy one to point is Open Hand Technique would need an immediate rewrite.
Open Hand Technique already needs an immediate rewrite by the mere existence of Weapon Masteries, because it's abilities are not at all special anymore as every martial-weapon user can do the same thing equally well or better than them. Honestly, I would not be sad at all if they just merged Open Hand into the baseline monk and included Kensei in the PHB instead of Open Hand.
I am convinced that WotC can do much better than that. The monk class is very disappointing, even more so than in 5e.
1) Martia Arts pushes the monk toward unarmed combat, so why Weapon Mastery and not Unarmed Mastery? This could solve the problems of overuse of the bonus action with the NICK technique, and a technique could be created to use acrobatics instead of athletics for grab. It would be interesting to have more unarmed techniques accessible, but with the limitation of not being able to repeat the same technique on the same creature in the same turn. By leveling up, the monk could accumulate a number of unarmed techniques. 2) There is still no solution to the monk's MAD problem. 3) FoB is an attack that comes too early by the standards of other classes, I would propose an Iron Strike, a technique that boosts damage once per turn, and have an additional bonus unarmed strike that does not need resources at the 11th level. 4) The 11th level monk's subclass features are always defensive, when there should be an enhancement in the DPR. At this point it is better to move the subclass feature to 10th level and put a more concrete enhancement to the monk's base class. 5) Too many defensive features and half function as a protective talisman, If you know that some attacks do not work against the monk why use them. (Deflect Missiles, Deflect Energy). Some come too late and not in line with its strategic use. 6) Too many features that restore discipline points when all it takes is to be able to limit their use, and I see that it has been done quite well. 7) Instead of always creating new features, there should be an evolution of low-level features, such as "Bonus Unarmed Strike, Patient Defense, Step of the Wind,"...
If someone is interested in a martial artist who uses both weapons and unarmed attacks should multiclass, or upgrade the Kensei subclass that allows the use of some weapons as if they were his unarmed attacks. I am convinced that the monk should be a warrior of unarmed techniques.
Martial Arts: Very concetrated in unarmed confrontation, which makes it different from the fighter.
Unarmored Defense: I recommend being able to choose between WIS and CON for upgrading to AC. This would make it less MAD and more open to multiclassing.
Weapon Mastery: If the class is already geared toward unarmed combat, why not create an Unarmed Mastery specifically for the monk?
Martial Discipline: FoB is an attack that comes too early by the standards of other classes, I would propose an Iron Strike, that is an attack enhanced by a martial art die, and if you have advantage it can be sacrificed instead of spending 1 discipline point. To support Patient Defense and Wind Step, it is important that there is a NICK option in Unarmed Mastery techniques.
Unarmored Movement: In my opinion, this feature should integrate Dash and Disengage as bonus actions.
Deflect Missiles: A feature that should be part of Unarmed Mastery.
Slow Fall: To be useful, it would be interesting to expand the monk's aerial movement. Step of the Wind could also be given movement in the air.
Extra Attack: Nothing to complain about.
Stunning Strike: It should be part of the Unarmed Mastery techniques.
Empowered Strikes: Instead of messing with diferentiating unarmed combat with armed combat, why not be able to absorb simple weapons into one's body in tattoo form and use their power for unarmed attacks? This would equalize the classes regarding the use of magical weapons.
Evasion: Nothing to complain about.
Heightened Metabolism: By decreasing the consumption of discipline points through the features that use it is sufficed, this feature would turn out to be unnecessary.
Acrobatic Movement: It would be interesting if one could use the bonus action to avoid falling if at the end of the turn one is still in a vertical surface or on a liquid surface, somewhat like Spider Climb, but by losing a bonus action.
Self-Restoration: It is better to have advantage over these conditions than to have to use a bonus action.
Deflect Energy: The monk already has too many defensive features. Better to find a way to exploit Patient Defense better than to create unnecessary features.
Disciplined Survivor: Nothing to complain about. Maybe I would take it to 13th level and the constitution saving throw I would put in the Self-Restoration feature.
Perfect Discipline: There is the same mistake here as in the 5e version, because this feature should only work if you have no more discipline points, just change the sentence to "Every time you roll for initiative, you have at least 4 ki points." It doesn't make sense that the monk if left with 3 discipline points should have to scatter energy after one fight only to have 4 at the beginning of the next fight.
Superior Defense: Nice, but completely useless, especially at the 18th level. Especially not in line with the strategic use of the monk.
Defy Death: Nice, but completely useless. It would be interesting be able to choose a feature from another monk subclass.
I find that there is a marked improvement in ONE DND, but the classes are not balanced. I thought there was an intention to improve this aspect, but instead it seems to have gotten worse. The already excellent fighter is even stronger because of the Weapon Mastery techniques. The mage is also even more adaptable. The rogue can now do more techniques than the monk without even spending resources. Honestly, I feel mocked. The monk class is really disappointing, I pray you can find a solution.
I recommend going to this link, and write your opinion about the monk. Because frankly they did the bullshit with this monk class redesign in ONE DND.
Open Hand Technique already needs an immediate rewrite by the mere existence of Weapon Masteries, because it's abilities are not at all special anymore as every martial-weapon user can do the same thing equally well or better than them. Honestly, I would not be sad at all if they just merged Open Hand into the baseline monk and included Kensei in the PHB instead of Open Hand.
As nice as having Open Hand as part of the main class as it would be, I think there's really no chance of that happening, Battlemaster's Maneuvers been requested to be added to the fighter base class (and even all martial classes) several times, just cause of its flexibility. I understand that, but we'll be heading into a loop of subclasses being thrown into the main class, main class not being specialized in any single aspect, creating new subclasses to add specialization, asking those subclasses into the main class, repeat... Also Open Hand was the most basic of all monk subclasses, it didn't change what the player's intuition told was the class strategy, attack and FoB, Open Hand Technique was exactly that (wrongly limited to FoB only instead of all unarmed strikes, but what can we do?); the fact that Wholeness of Body and Tranquility felt as bland as they were reinforced the idea of it being THE basic subclass.
I read a suggestion (in this thread or another, I don't remember) of giving the monk the same thing cleric's got in the UA and warlocks with their Pact Boons, a base class specialization (a secondary subclass, basically), it would be interesting to do such a thing in order to reincorporate monk weapons, something like this:
Monk Weapons: all Simple weapons you are proficient with can use your Martial Arts die for the damage rolls instead of their normal damage. In addition, you can use your Dexterity instead of Strength for the DC of any mastery in your monk weapons.
Tactical Strikes: if you use your Unarmed Strikes to Grapple or Shove a creature, you can use your Dexterity instead of Strength for the DC.
Evasive Build: your unarmored defense is now calculated like this: 10 + Dex/Wis mod (your choice) + half your monk level (rounded up)
Although some people may want all of these present at the same time, making it more like a class customization may fit better.
Open Hand Technique already needs an immediate rewrite by the mere existence of Weapon Masteries, because it's abilities are not at all special anymore as every martial-weapon user can do the same thing equally well or better than them. Honestly, I would not be sad at all if they just merged Open Hand into the baseline monk and included Kensei in the PHB instead of Open Hand.
As nice as having Open Hand as part of the main class as it would be, I think there's really no chance of that happening, Battlemaster's Maneuvers been requested to be added to the fighter base class (and even all martial classes) several times, just cause of its flexibility. I understand that, but we'll be heading into a loop of subclasses being thrown into the main class, main class not being specialized in any single aspect, creating new subclasses to add specialization, asking those subclasses into the main class, repeat... Also Open Hand was the most basic of all monk subclasses, it didn't change what the player's intuition told was the class strategy, attack and FoB, Open Hand Technique was exactly that (wrongly limited to FoB only instead of all unarmed strikes, but what can we do?); the fact that Wholeness of Body and Tranquility felt as bland as they were reinforced the idea of it being THE basic subclass.
I read a suggestion (in this thread or another, I don't remember) of giving the monk the same thing cleric's got in the UA and warlocks with their Pact Boons, a base class specialization (a secondary subclass, basically), it would be interesting to do such a thing in order to reincorporate monk weapons, something like this:
Monk Weapons: all Simple weapons you are proficient with can use your Martial Arts die for the damage rolls instead of their normal damage. In addition, you can use your Dexterity instead of Strength for the DC of any mastery in your monk weapons.
Tactical Strikes: if you use your Unarmed Strikes to Grapple or Shove a creature, you can use your Dexterity instead of Strength for the DC.
Evasive Build: your unarmored defense is now calculated like this: 10 + Dex/Wis mod (your choice) + half your monk level (rounded up)
Although some people may want all of these present at the same time, making it more like a class customization may fit better.
First part is literally what I would have replied. They greatest damage to open hand technique is the save on addle. Push isn’t really that great for all martials, but is really good on a monk because low AC and mid HP regulates it to a skirmisher. Which I don’t believe they were designed to be. It just is what happened. For most martials push is very situational. Topple is great once they have extra attack, but before extra attack topple is dependent on the rest of the party. If you have ranged attackers and you only have one strike topple is bad. Easy fix for monks is to allow FoB to be a bonus action thing that doesn’t require an attack action first. What I found funny is that is something BG 3 did to make the monk more video game friendly. I think it would help the monk in TTRPG as well. Especially the Hand monk.
The monk weapons thing is too strong because of Nick. Nick breaks monk action economy. They can’t have all those attacks at d6 and d8 in t1. By T2 and T3 it’s probably the Dpr boost the monk actually needs but then it’s a forced option. Taking anything else is vastly nerfing yourself.
But there are some ideas I like, i.e. monk not depending so much of spending DP all the rounds. But in that case DP amount should be lesser? (like 1/2 of levels) and to be used in special situations. Then supply with some lesser free options for martial arts. Some of the options seems overpowered to me, because if you can hit and push at the same time, them move 40' away, the typical 30' movement foe cannot reach you, but this also applies to weapon masteries, so maybe they should be revised. And free stunning strike is too much.
But redistributing what requires DP and free options seems not bad. And making feasible the Str monk is something pending.
BUT the main issue is that breaks the compatibility, so don't expect this kind of changes in this revision.
more reactions are thematic for sure. most people are happy to point to flurry of blows or bonus action dodge as somehow satisfying that. I want more.
as for barbs and monks, they're two sides of the same coin. I do think there's room for kicks, grabs, and clonking two heads together with a hollow coconut sound in the barbarian toolbox. but, in many ways monk is the hand-me-down little brother to older big brother barbarian's wild style. monk has seen the way barbarian fights and took notes. monk is smaller, quicker, and has some improvements in mind but they're still in the family business of fighting dudes. less chaos, more discipline, but still sprinting into the thick of it. they're not opposites, they're brothers: it only makes sense to me if they both throw and wrestle similarly.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Aikido, Hapkido, Jujitsu, Qin Na, Shuai Jiao, Baguazhang are all good starting ideas for a grappling/throwing/restraining Monk. Especially Baguazhang and Hapkido, which balance between strikes and grappling, which would fit very well with a Monk who definitely has strikes, and then adds grappling/throwing/restraining.
One of the elements of my reworked Monk is adding Battle Master maneuvers, and expanding the Battle Master maneuvers to include some maneuvers that are more grappling/throws/locks oriented.
Again monk unarmed strikes can not be light weapons because it messes up other game mechanics. They should not put weapon masteries on their unarmed strikes because it’s a boring system and that would also cause wonky mechanics with some of the sub classes. Every would use Nick or graze if allowed.
Monks should be able to use Dex and/or Wis for grapple and shove DC because leg sweeps and martial arts locks and throws use precision and technique to hold or move the opponent not always strength. This should be added to the Martial Arts feature.
The term “Monk weapons” needs to be brought back for this class to be backwards compatible. Even if monk weapons are just simple weapon that aren’t two handed. As of now both Kensei and Astral need a rework to fit the base class and both cannot be in the 2024 PHB. I do expect Astral to make the book because they stole its feature and gave it to all monks.
I don’t believe monks should have more reactions, but I do believe more things should trigger their reactions. Maybe any creature that stands up from prone or moves 5ft, triggers a reaction from a monk within 5ft of it. At 5th level all monks should get Counterstrike, it would just be riposte, but with an unarmed strike and cost 1 dp.
Precisely, though if people really insist on masteries on unarmed strikes, Hand monk should be the one subclass that gets to do that as part of the Open Hand Technique, all other monks use regular martial arts or the generic unarmed strikes.
I agree with monks having more reaction options than the rest (or even having multiple reactions per round), but apparently it "slows down the game"... Some players and DMs waste far more time thinking about how to avoid an attack of opportunity than the attack and damage roll of that creature. If this is so inconvenient, then why not just take reactions away from the game to make it faster?
Also why would Counterstrike cost 1 DP? A single unarmed strike that triggers on a miss should be for free if it is at level 5
Counterstrike would need to be higher level if it was at no cost. It’s a deterrent to low health targets making attacks against you. Also I would never want multiple reactions per round. It does slow the game down.
H said something about making the fundamentals (FoB, SotW, Patient Defense) just consume the Bonus Action, and not a DP, because that right there is consuming a limited resource that sets you into one of three fundamental modes. I sort of took that to a different (sort of opposite) extreme:
When you’re expending a limited resource, you can do it in a way that is not the same as burning your action economy, but is still limiting and therefore balancing.
What I’m getting at is, for example, if you make it conditional on “using patient defense/benefitting from Dodge” (and therefore made them burn their action or bonus action)…. then you can limit something like Deflect Missiles solely by how much they burn DP to use it, Don’t make it burn a reaction, make both the deflect and the redirect cost DP (not just the redirect). Can they do it 5 times in a turn? yes…. but it has nothing to do with using their reaction. And it’s not unlimited, and far from it: if you’re doing 5 deflects every round, even a 20th level monk can only keep that up for 4 rounds (assuming they aren’t doing anything else that uses DP). Burning a Reaction isn’t the only way to limit a defense, so you don’t have to give more Reactions in order to give more defensive events.
Shove is a weapon mastery (a combination of either Push or Topple) except the weapon masteries don’t force you to forgo damage to accomplish. Unarmed Strikes don’t need all masteries but I think having some options would be nice. You may consider WM a boring system but I don’t.
I agree that unarmed can’t be light weapons.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
You will see how boring the system is after a while. It’s one choice with some choices being clearly better than others. Shove is something anyone can do without a weapon mastery. Push as a weapon mastery is situational. Especially for theater of the mind players. Topple isn’t good until you have extra attack or you have other melee party members. More importantly that can be solved with an improvement to martial arts. There is no need for masteries on unarmed attacks.
Agree, could be better simply revising the Unarmed Strike + Martial Arts stuff to fit with what a MA user should be able to do, not adding complexity and probably making it boring at long term as mentioned.
Shove requires you to forego dealing damage and gives the target a choice of two different saving throws to resist it, meaning the success rate for Shove is well below 50% and it deals 0 damage at the same time. Push weapon mastery allows you to deal damage as normal, move a creature twice as far and has a 100% success rate, there is no reason to ever use Shove to move a creature anymore if you have access to weapon mastery. Topple at least the weapon mastery has a saving throw meaning your success rate is lower using a weapon than taking using Shove but if you're planning to use Topple to increase your DPR from advantage you're still better off using the weapon mastery than using Shove due to having to sacrifice damage to use Shove and Shove's low probability of success. This means every STR-based martial is better than the Monk at battlefield control and DPR thanks to weapon masteries. Martial Arts is not going to be significantly improved because of the scaling problem where Monk is pretty good at low levels already, since FoB comes online at level 2, so WotC is not going to buff their low-level performance.
More boring than “I attack. <roll dice >. Ok that’s my turn”?
I am all for revising martial arts. I’ve asked for improvements in a lot of areas for monk, especially since they announced the 2024 update. But I’m not holding my breath for big changes. They already went back on the whole “short rest core features” bit. And I’m concerned Warlocks will go back to SR as well.
So my suggestions recently have been tempered by my suspicion that not a whole lot will change. Which is sad.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
None of that matters when push and topple are extremely situational. My point wasn’t about which was mechanically superior, it was about how often the choice to be used would actually occur in game. I also want arguing that nothing should be done to improve the monk. If you read any of my post you would know I do want monk improvements. Adding masteries to unarmed attacks is a boring way to go about it and wouldn’t actually fix the problem with monks. It would actually create new problems. Easy one to point is Open Hand Technique would need an immediate rewrite.
If that’s how you describe your turns then equally boring. I attack my weapon has push. Okay that’s my turn. Lol
Open Hand Technique already needs an immediate rewrite by the mere existence of Weapon Masteries, because it's abilities are not at all special anymore as every martial-weapon user can do the same thing equally well or better than them. Honestly, I would not be sad at all if they just merged Open Hand into the baseline monk and included Kensei in the PHB instead of Open Hand.
I am convinced that WotC can do much better than that. The monk class is very disappointing, even more so than in 5e.
1) Martia Arts pushes the monk toward unarmed combat, so why Weapon Mastery and not Unarmed Mastery? This could solve the problems of overuse of the bonus action with the NICK technique, and a technique could be created to use acrobatics instead of athletics for grab. It would be interesting to have more unarmed techniques accessible, but with the limitation of not being able to repeat the same technique on the same creature in the same turn. By leveling up, the monk could accumulate a number of unarmed techniques.
2) There is still no solution to the monk's MAD problem.
3) FoB is an attack that comes too early by the standards of other classes, I would propose an Iron Strike, a technique that boosts damage once per turn, and have an additional bonus unarmed strike that does not need resources at the 11th level.
4) The 11th level monk's subclass features are always defensive, when there should be an enhancement in the DPR. At this point it is better to move the subclass feature to 10th level and put a more concrete enhancement to the monk's base class.
5) Too many defensive features and half function as a protective talisman, If you know that some attacks do not work against the monk why use them. (Deflect Missiles, Deflect Energy). Some come too late and not in line with its strategic use.
6) Too many features that restore discipline points when all it takes is to be able to limit their use, and I see that it has been done quite well.
7) Instead of always creating new features, there should be an evolution of low-level features, such as "Bonus Unarmed Strike, Patient Defense, Step of the Wind,"...
If someone is interested in a martial artist who uses both weapons and unarmed attacks should multiclass, or upgrade the Kensei subclass that allows the use of some weapons as if they were his unarmed attacks. I am convinced that the monk should be a warrior of unarmed techniques.
Martial Arts: Very concetrated in unarmed confrontation, which makes it different from the fighter.
Unarmored Defense: I recommend being able to choose between WIS and CON for upgrading to AC. This would make it less MAD and more open to multiclassing.
Weapon Mastery: If the class is already geared toward unarmed combat, why not create an Unarmed Mastery specifically for the monk?
Martial Discipline: FoB is an attack that comes too early by the standards of other classes, I would propose an Iron Strike, that is an attack enhanced by a martial art die, and if you have advantage it can be sacrificed instead of spending 1 discipline point. To support Patient Defense and Wind Step, it is important that there is a NICK option in Unarmed Mastery techniques.
Unarmored Movement: In my opinion, this feature should integrate Dash and Disengage as bonus actions.
Deflect Missiles: A feature that should be part of Unarmed Mastery.
Slow Fall: To be useful, it would be interesting to expand the monk's aerial movement. Step of the Wind could also be given movement in the air.
Extra Attack: Nothing to complain about.
Stunning Strike: It should be part of the Unarmed Mastery techniques.
Empowered Strikes: Instead of messing with diferentiating unarmed combat with armed combat, why not be able to absorb simple weapons into one's body in tattoo form and use their power for unarmed attacks? This would equalize the classes regarding the use of magical weapons.
Evasion: Nothing to complain about.
Heightened Metabolism: By decreasing the consumption of discipline points through the features that use it is sufficed, this feature would turn out to be unnecessary.
Acrobatic Movement: It would be interesting if one could use the bonus action to avoid falling if at the end of the turn one is still in a vertical surface or on a liquid surface, somewhat like Spider Climb, but by losing a bonus action.
Self-Restoration: It is better to have advantage over these conditions than to have to use a bonus action.
Deflect Energy: The monk already has too many defensive features. Better to find a way to exploit Patient Defense better than to create unnecessary features.
Disciplined Survivor: Nothing to complain about. Maybe I would take it to 13th level and the constitution saving throw I would put in the Self-Restoration feature.
Perfect Discipline: There is the same mistake here as in the 5e version, because this feature should only work if you have no more discipline points, just change the sentence to "Every time you roll for initiative, you have at least 4 ki points." It doesn't make sense that the monk if left with 3 discipline points should have to scatter energy after one fight only to have 4 at the beginning of the next fight.
Superior Defense: Nice, but completely useless, especially at the 18th level. Especially not in line with the strategic use of the monk.
Defy Death: Nice, but completely useless. It would be interesting be able to choose a feature from another monk subclass.
I find that there is a marked improvement in ONE DND, but the classes are not balanced. I thought there was an intention to improve this aspect, but instead it seems to have gotten worse. The already excellent fighter is even stronger because of the Weapon Mastery techniques. The mage is also even more adaptable. The rogue can now do more techniques than the monk without even spending resources. Honestly, I feel mocked. The monk class is really disappointing, I pray you can find a solution.
I recommend going to this link, and write your opinion about the monk. Because frankly they did the bullshit with this monk class redesign in ONE DND.
https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/7418024/UA-2023-Players-Handbook-Playtest-6?userid=106669714
As nice as having Open Hand as part of the main class as it would be, I think there's really no chance of that happening, Battlemaster's Maneuvers been requested to be added to the fighter base class (and even all martial classes) several times, just cause of its flexibility. I understand that, but we'll be heading into a loop of subclasses being thrown into the main class, main class not being specialized in any single aspect, creating new subclasses to add specialization, asking those subclasses into the main class, repeat... Also Open Hand was the most basic of all monk subclasses, it didn't change what the player's intuition told was the class strategy, attack and FoB, Open Hand Technique was exactly that (wrongly limited to FoB only instead of all unarmed strikes, but what can we do?); the fact that Wholeness of Body and Tranquility felt as bland as they were reinforced the idea of it being THE basic subclass.
I read a suggestion (in this thread or another, I don't remember) of giving the monk the same thing cleric's got in the UA and warlocks with their Pact Boons, a base class specialization (a secondary subclass, basically), it would be interesting to do such a thing in order to reincorporate monk weapons, something like this:
Although some people may want all of these present at the same time, making it more like a class customization may fit better.
First part is literally what I would have replied. They greatest damage to open hand technique is the save on addle. Push isn’t really that great for all martials, but is really good on a monk because low AC and mid HP regulates it to a skirmisher. Which I don’t believe they were designed to be. It just is what happened. For most martials push is very situational. Topple is great once they have extra attack, but before extra attack topple is dependent on the rest of the party. If you have ranged attackers and you only have one strike topple is bad. Easy fix for monks is to allow FoB to be a bonus action thing that doesn’t require an attack action first. What I found funny is that is something BG 3 did to make the monk more video game friendly. I think it would help the monk in TTRPG as well. Especially the Hand monk.
The monk weapons thing is too strong because of Nick. Nick breaks monk action economy. They can’t have all those attacks at d6 and d8 in t1. By T2 and T3 it’s probably the Dpr boost the monk actually needs but then it’s a forced option. Taking anything else is vastly nerfing yourself.
But there are some ideas I like, i.e. monk not depending so much of spending DP all the rounds. But in that case DP amount should be lesser? (like 1/2 of levels) and to be used in special situations. Then supply with some lesser free options for martial arts. Some of the options seems overpowered to me, because if you can hit and push at the same time, them move 40' away, the typical 30' movement foe cannot reach you, but this also applies to weapon masteries, so maybe they should be revised. And free stunning strike is too much.
But redistributing what requires DP and free options seems not bad. And making feasible the Str monk is something pending.
BUT the main issue is that breaks the compatibility, so don't expect this kind of changes in this revision.