This is an honest question.

After looking at the new Monk and playing as & DMing for players of the old one for almost a decade. I'm ready to toss Ki points out altogether.

It seems like the limitation of Action / Bonus / Move / Reaction is enough of a limitation without adding Ki points.

This falls in line with the 2024 push to remove the Short Rest and makes Monks capable warriors all the time.

It frees up design space taken up by trying to making sure Monks have Ki points.

Stunning Strike would need to be limited to one failed Save per turn. (In 4E it would've likely been an Encounter Power)

What other abilities need to be adjusted if we got rid of Ki Points?

What abuses am I missing?

Probably want to ditch FoB and tie most current powers into the bonus action.  So generally a weaker fighter with a really strong and versatile bonus action.  The stun could be restructured like the new smites so no extra damage but triggers on a successful attack and eats your bonus action.  Maybe move about half of them over to reaction so the class is characterized by it's strong bonus actions and reactions with relatively weak actions.

well, for starters you'd now need to add limits to other ki things. stuff like Elemental Attunement: what restrictions should there be that's more elegant than simply spending from a pool of spell slots action points? or Open Hand Technique. how do you decide how many Addle/Push/Topple are too many in an encounter? maybe they're not too powerful for every attack, I dunno, but now there's a saving throw every monk turn forever. seems like it would go from infrequently special to just another dice chore. etc.

Quote from waddingsly >>

Probably want to ditch FoB and tie most current powers into the bonus action.  So generally a weaker fighter with a really strong and versatile bonus action.  The stun could be restructured like the new smites so no extra damage but triggers on a successful attack and eats your bonus action.  Maybe move about half of them over to reaction so the class is characterized by it's strong bonus actions and reactions with relatively weak actions.

 This seems like a perfectly reasonable adjustment that removes an unnecessary restriction. Thanks for thinking about it!

Quote from rumloverum >>

well, for starters you'd now need to add limits to other ki things. stuff like Elemental Attunement: what restrictions should there be that's more elegant than simply spending from a pool of spell slots action points? or Open Hand Technique. how do you decide how many Addle/Push/Topple are too many in an encounter? maybe they're not too powerful for every attack, I dunno, but now there's a saving throw every monk turn forever. seems like it would go from infrequently special to just another dice chore. etc.

I don't see the problem with letting Monks have Elemental Attunement all the time.

Open Hand Technique doesn't cost a Disc Point, but I do agree it should not require a Save. Addle, Push, & Topple would be fine once per turn without the saves.

Also, thanks for thinking about it!

Actually, I'm all for it. Some of the more powerful techniques could be limited by the number of uses, but the basic monk functionality shouldn't consume their "fuel", they're martials after all.

well, OHT itself doesn't cost but flurry of blows to activate OHT does currently cost.

anyway, warrior of shadow's Shadow Step costs no ki, just a bonus action (and no "per-rest" limit!) so I guess there's some precedent for this no-points stuff. :)

For other effects simply make those monk subclasses 1/3 caster type. But this way I think they lose power.

Personally, I like the Points as a mechanical feature that distinguishes the Monk from the other classes.

Here's the problem I think you generally end up with... in the early game, you never have enough Ki Points... you burn through them in a single encounter and now you're stuck begging for a short rest to remain viable. So the solution at early levels seems to be to make the things you can do with Ki more impactful... such as with the new Discipline Points making Step of the Wind combine disengage and dash, which makes it actually feel worth a point compared to just feeling like a worse version of the Rogue's Cunning Action. But the problem with this solution is that, once you start getting into the double digits, you often find yourself in situations where you have far more Ki points than you necessarily need. High level monks can do some really cool stuff.

Personally? I think they need to restructure how the points work in the first place... instead of just being one-to-one with your character level, they should accrue at a rate that makes them useable. You should have about as many Ki Points as a caster has Spell Slots. I think as long as you had more Ki points at the early levels they wouldn't feel like such an impairment to the class's overall performance.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

From what y'all are saying it seems to come down to your vision of DnD (all of which are completely valid).

In my mind even Level 1 characters as heroes, they can do things commoners could never do, and I like to lean into that.

I enjoy cinematic scenes with high stakes and capable heroes both in and out of combat.

I definitely want to challenge the heroes, but I want the system handling that to be as elegant as possible and that means finding a balance between just letting PCs do whatever they want and overcomplicating their turns to the point of taking all the fun out. Bottom line: It feels like an unnecessary complication.

This came up in another thread, and my thought there was I’d be ok with letting some things like flurry of blows and some others not cost a ki point. But then you need to do something else to rein it in or it becomes practically a required dip for martials.

You could try 

Step of the Wind: free

Flurry of Blows: when you hit with your Martial Arts bonus action Unarmed strike, you can spend your reaction to make an additional unarmed strike. 

Patient Defense: As a bonus action you can take up a defensive stance to give your enemies disadvantage to attack you until the start of your next turn.. You can use this bonus action only if you haven’t moved during this turn, and after you use the bonus action, your speed is 0 until the end of the start of your next turn. (Reverse rogue’s Steady Aim)

Stunning Strike: Once on your turn when you hit with an unarmed strike or Simple Melee weapon you can perform a Stunning Strike. The creature takes no damage from the attack, but must make a Constitution saving throw or be Stunned until the start of your next turn. On a successful save, the creature has the Dazed Condition until the start of your next turn. You can make a Stunning Strike a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier. 

Deflect Missiles: free

I love the idea I saw about some or all of the core monk abilities being free, with discipline investment to make them have some additional pop. And to prevent dip exploitation, just make them require unarmored and/or limited to unarmed/simple weapons.

So my thoughts are make step the wind and patient defence a 1 minute duration. Leave Flurry as it is, allowing the defensive ones to get more significant bonus. The downside I see to this is people expecting to spend the first two rounds stacking their buffs, a possible fix for this would be that only Step of the Wind OR Patient Defense can be active at one time. Think of it like concentration, for abilities.

For the other direction where there is a base version and an upgraded version we again leave flurry of blows mostly alone, since monks essentially have a basic version available with their unarmed strike bonus attack when attacking with a bonus action. It's activated would give the additional attacks as part of the attack action leaving the BA available. Patient defense base version for a bonus action is the next attack against them is at disadvantage (only the next attack). The activated version is all attack rolls against them until their next turn are at disadvantage (no real change there). Step of the Winds base version would be Dash as a Bonus action,, or both dash and disengage like the current iteration for the activated version.

These to me feel like they wouldn't be wildly overpowered while giving just a small bump up to defensive versatility. While also trying to keep it from being overly complicated to implement.

Copied my post from the other thread.

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

Personally, I like the Points as a mechanical feature that distinguishes the Monk from the other classes.

Here's the problem I think you generally end up with... in the early game, you never have enough Ki Points... you burn through them in a single encounter and now you're stuck begging for a short rest to remain viable. So the solution at early levels seems to be to make the things you can do with Ki more impactful... such as with the new Discipline Points making Step of the Wind combine disengage and dash, which makes it actually feel worth a point compared to just feeling like a worse version of the Rogue's Cunning Action. But the problem with this solution is that, once you start getting into the double digits, you often find yourself in situations where you have far more Ki points than you necessarily need. High level monks can do some really cool stuff.

Personally? I think they need to restructure how the points work in the first place... instead of just being one-to-one with your character level, they should accrue at a rate that makes them useable. You should have about as many Ki Points as a caster has Spell Slots. I think as long as you had more Ki points at the early levels they wouldn't feel like such an impairment to the class's overall performance.

 I also like the points and other classes limited resources. The problem IMO is with the Rest system. Unlimited Short Rest but taking 1 hour, with characters recovering resources while others get nothing at all. It slows down the pace for everyone and generates discrepancy between characters Short and Long Rest types, because also in many times the Short Rest not only grants anything to some characters, but it destroys their buffs like False Life.

I'd change the Short Rest to:

- 5 or 10 minutes.

- Limit the number of times it restores resources, i.e. to 2 (each table would have its number). Healing rolling hit dice is not restore a resource, so not limited.

- Not changing other times, like attuning to magical item or rituals, so in those cases you have to extend that Short Rest but not for restoring resources.

Quote from Erik_Soong >>

I love the idea I saw about some or all of the core monk abilities being free, with discipline investment to make them have some additional pop. And to prevent dip exploitation, just make them require unarmored and/or limited to unarmed/simple weapons.

 I think you could combine this with ThrKreenWarrior's suggestion for how to simplify these abilities... I kind of like the idea that you can spend your reaction on your turn to get an additional attack to create flurry of blows... or you could spend a ki point and get that extra attack and still have your reaction handy in case you need it.

There's already precedent with Deflect Missiles... with our without Ki, you can always use your reaction to catch an arrow or other piece of ammunition, but if you want to throw it back you need to spend Ki.