how about leaving behind advantage and disadvantage to play up some other mechanisms? specifically, cover. half cover is a default rule for guys-in-the-way, but it's situational and, in my experience, easily forgotten.
RAW that is already a thing, making it limited use and gated behind a feat is a negative IMO, especially for monks. I might be remembering the wrong Tavern Brawler, but having Grapple compete for a BA is again bad for monks since that is still replacing 1 or 2 attacks made with a BA compared to 1 attack with their action.
But it is kind of pointless discussing it TBH as the grappling rules haven't come up in the UAs in ages so I assume they are essentially set in stone. But grappling in 5e for monks is more viable than grappling in UA8 for monks. And grappling for Barbarians is incredibly effective in 5e but a mere shadow of that in UA. Yet even in 5e hardly anyone uses grappling. So they are certainly not going to start doing so in One D&D.
In 5e it is an Athletics check vs the enemy's athletics or acrobatics check, the only RAW enemies with proficiency in those skills are Giants so 95% of the time a 5e character that mains STR and has proficiency in Athletics (or with +0 STR and Expertise in Athletics) will have > 50% chance of success. Tons of stuff can buff that chance from Rage, Enlarge/Reduce, Enhance Ability, Bardic Inspiration, and Guidance. Likewise tons of stuff can debuff the enemy check - being poisoned, frightened, or Hexed. If you get Expertise on a STR character then you instantly have a 75% or higher chance of a successful grapple with no other buffs or debuffs. And still it is almost never used.
In One D&D, it is a Strength or Dexterity save, the only way to increase your DC is to increase your STR or DEX (if monk), tons of monsters have proficiency in STR or DEX saves, Legendary Resistances apply, and there are only a handful of abilities / spells that can debuff the enemy's save. On average your success rate will be ~50%. Or you could get a weapon with Push or Topple and just use a regular weapon attack with full damage to attempt the same thing. There's simply no contest, why would you ever Grapple/Shove in One D&D?
how about leaving behind advantage and disadvantage to play up some other mechanisms? specifically, cover. half cover is a default rule for guys-in-the-way, but it's situational and, in my experience, easily forgotten.
RAW that is already a thing, making it limited use and gated behind a feat is a negative IMO, especially for monks. I might be remembering the wrong Tavern Brawler, but having Grapple compete for a BA is again bad for monks since that is still replacing 1 or 2 attacks made with a BA compared to 1 attack with their action.
But it is kind of pointless discussing it TBH as the grappling rules haven't come up in the UAs in ages so I assume they are essentially set in stone. But grappling in 5e for monks is more viable than grappling in UA8 for monks. And grappling for Barbarians is incredibly effective in 5e but a mere shadow of that in UA. Yet even in 5e hardly anyone uses grappling. So they are certainly not going to start doing so in One D&D.
In 5e it is an Athletics check vs the enemy's athletics or acrobatics check, the only RAW enemies with proficiency in those skills are Giants so 95% of the time a 5e character that mains STR and has proficiency in Athletics (or with +0 STR and Expertise in Athletics) will have > 50% chance of success. Tons of stuff can buff that chance from Rage, Enlarge/Reduce, Enhance Ability, Bardic Inspiration, and Guidance. Likewise tons of stuff can debuff the enemy check - being poisoned, frightened, or Hexed. If you get Expertise on a STR character then you instantly have a 75% or higher chance of a successful grapple with no other buffs or debuffs. And still it is almost never used.
In One D&D, it is a Strength or Dexterity save, the only way to increase your DC is to increase your STR or DEX (if monk), tons of monsters have proficiency in STR or DEX saves, Legendary Resistances apply, and there are only a handful of abilities / spells that can debuff the enemy's save. On average your success rate will be ~50%. Or you could get a weapon with Push or Topple and just use a regular weapon attack with full damage to attempt the same thing. There's simply no contest, why would you ever Grapple/Shove in One D&D?
So tavern brawler from UA 1 is a first level feat that allows you to shove and still do damage as part of an unarmed strike once per turn. It also allows you to reroll unarmed strike damage.
Grappler feat from UA 2 allows you to still do damage as part of your unarmed strikes attempt to grapple once per turn. With these 2 feats you give up nothing to attempt to grapple or shove once per turn. No BA required, no loss of damage. You just get to attempt it for free.
Is this something EVERY monk should do. No absolutely not. But it is something they can do and do fairly well.
A warrior of the hand monk with the grappler feat from UA 2 can flurry of blows and on hit deal its martial arts die + dex, stunning strike, open hand topple and attempt to grapple all on a singular hit of FoB. If the enemy fails the stun they auto fail the grapple and the topple. If they don't then they take martial arts die + wis mod damage and still have to make 2 saves.
how about leaving behind advantage and disadvantage to play up some other mechanisms? specifically, cover. half cover is a default rule for guys-in-the-way, but it's situational and, in my experience, easily forgotten.
RAW that is already a thing, making it limited use and gated behind a feat is a negative IMO, especially for monks. I might be remembering the wrong Tavern Brawler, but having Grapple compete for a BA is again bad for monks since that is still replacing 1 or 2 attacks made with a BA compared to 1 attack with their action.
But it is kind of pointless discussing it TBH as the grappling rules haven't come up in the UAs in ages so I assume they are essentially set in stone. But grappling in 5e for monks is more viable than grappling in UA8 for monks. And grappling for Barbarians is incredibly effective in 5e but a mere shadow of that in UA. Yet even in 5e hardly anyone uses grappling. So they are certainly not going to start doing so in One D&D.
In 5e it is an Athletics check vs the enemy's athletics or acrobatics check, the only RAW enemies with proficiency in those skills are Giants so 95% of the time a 5e character that mains STR and has proficiency in Athletics (or with +0 STR and Expertise in Athletics) will have > 50% chance of success. Tons of stuff can buff that chance from Rage, Enlarge/Reduce, Enhance Ability, Bardic Inspiration, and Guidance. Likewise tons of stuff can debuff the enemy check - being poisoned, frightened, or Hexed. If you get Expertise on a STR character then you instantly have a 75% or higher chance of a successful grapple with no other buffs or debuffs. And still it is almost never used.
In One D&D, it is a Strength or Dexterity save, the only way to increase your DC is to increase your STR or DEX (if monk), tons of monsters have proficiency in STR or DEX saves, Legendary Resistances apply, and there are only a handful of abilities / spells that can debuff the enemy's save. On average your success rate will be ~50%. Or you could get a weapon with Push or Topple and just use a regular weapon attack with full damage to attempt the same thing. There's simply no contest, why would you ever Grapple/Shove in One D&D?
so the one dnd tavern brawler lets you push 5 feet with an attack once per turn, no save, lets you reroll 1s, and turns furniture in to clubs. (and clubs are simple weapons, so full monk damage). overall its decent for a monk. as a lvl 1 feat.
grappler gives you advantage versus grappled targets, lets you grapple on hit once per turn. (doesnt say you need a check, but when they made it, grappling was done via attack) and let's you move targets without penalty.
I feel like both of these will change in final version, but not sure in what way.
regardless you aren't giving up an attack to use either feat.
so the big advantage of grappler is its a 1 per round grapple mastery+ which gives you advantage in subsequent attacks. Tavern brawler increases your unarmed dps, and the push amounts to a free disengage on hit. Basically these two feats give you a taste of unarmed mastery.
even though grapple isnt commonly used its very powerful.
I do feel they need to rework the grapple rules. The first iteration suggested a lot higher of a success rate for grapple. The current iteration is basically equalizes all str characters and monk. I don't think its great, its more about the target than the player. But ultimately its the result of people caring more about resisting grapple than using grapple, which is a bit odd, sinse most of the npcs who grapple don't do it contested.
also grapple is different than push or topple, you control the enemies movement. ideally you want to grapple a prone opponent, so both are useful. grapple also requires an action to escape, enemy either gives up movement, has disadvantage on other targets, or needs to waste an action to attempt to be free. pretty powerful.
how about leaving behind advantage and disadvantage to play up some other mechanisms? specifically, cover. half cover is a default rule for guys-in-the-way, but it's situational and, in my experience, easily forgotten.
RAW that is already a thing, making it limited use and gated behind a feat is a negative IMO, especially for monks. I might be remembering the wrong Tavern Brawler, but having Grapple compete for a BA is again bad for monks since that is still replacing 1 or 2 attacks made with a BA compared to 1 attack with their action
as I mentioned, "half cover is a default rule ... but it's situational" and I further acknowledged it later when clarifying that the 3/4 cover bonus "is not cumulative with any half cover provided by the same enemy." because someone might ask. so, it's not gated behind a feat. also, I'm not sure that grapple would be 'competing' for action or bonus action if the character was picking this feat in order to do grappling. my concern wasn't damage per round.
...But it is kind of pointless discussing it TBH as the grappling rules haven't come up in the UAs in ages so I assume they are essentially set in stone.
...There's simply no contest, why would you ever Grapple/Shove in One D&D?
I set out a plan to maybe make grappling not terrible sometimes despite the set in stone rules. my plan involves gutting the existing Grappler feat. I explained why I thought it deserved gutting. I even provided a "too long; didn't read" at the end that I thought kinda explained why sometimes someone might want this. but still you pooh-pooh the how and still you wonder why.
okay. thanks for the words.
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also grapple is different than push or topple, you control the enemies movement. ideally you want to grapple a prone opponent, so both are useful. grapple also requires an action to escape, enemy either gives up movement, has disadvantage on other targets, or needs to waste an action to attempt to be free. pretty powerful.
The problem with this is that this is absolutely the worse way to attempt to escape a grapple, but it is the one listed in the rules so it's what people think is how you are supposed to escape a grapple. (I tried to pointed this out in the UA survey as well) But the reality is that a grapple ends if the grapplee is ever farther away from the grappler than the grappler's reach. Which means almost any forced movement will break a grapple, so using a Shove, a weapon with Push, or any of the other forced movement options they have added to the game breaks a grapple without wasting your whole action, and is vastly superior way to escape that the "use an action" option or the "make a save at the end of your turn" which have been the two options presented in the UAs.
The problem with this is that this is absolutely the worse way to attempt to escape a grapple, but it is the one listed in the rules so it's what people think is how you are supposed to escape a grapple. (I tried to pointed this out in the UA survey as well) But the reality is that a grapple ends if the grapplee is ever farther away from the grappler than the grappler's reach. Which means almost any forced movement will break a grapple, so using a Shove, a weapon with Push, or any of the other forced movement options they have added to the game breaks a grapple without wasting your whole action, and is vastly superior way to escape that the "use an action" option or the "make a save at the end of your turn" which have been the two options presented in the UAs.
Unless monsters use Weapon Masteries we don’t have to worry about forced movement being how most will attempt to end a grapple. Now their is nothing saying monsters won’t have weapon masteries. Don’t think we will know until we get the 2024 MM
also grapple is different than push or topple, you control the enemies movement. ideally you want to grapple a prone opponent, so both are useful. grapple also requires an action to escape, enemy either gives up movement, has disadvantage on other targets, or needs to waste an action to attempt to be free. pretty powerful.
The problem with this is that this is absolutely the worse way to attempt to escape a grapple, but it is the one listed in the rules so it's what people think is how you are supposed to escape a grapple. (I tried to pointed this out in the UA survey as well) But the reality is that a grapple ends if the grapplee is ever farther away from the grappler than the grappler's reach. Which means almost any forced movement will break a grapple, so using a Shove, a weapon with Push, or any of the other forced movement options they have added to the game breaks a grapple without wasting your whole action, and is vastly superior way to escape that the "use an action" option or the "make a save at the end of your turn" which have been the two options presented in the UAs.
well, this discussion is in the context of a player grappling a monster, so, for a monster, they dont have extra attack, they have multiattack, which says exactly which skills are available to them. For most monsters, they will need to use a whole action to shove. so for the monster, shove is basically the same, or slightly worse than trying to break the grapple, because the opponent chooses the save, and the average roll on a 20 is a 10.5, but the DC is set by an 8.
monsters also currently dont have weapon masteries, if they are meant to have that functionality, its built into the attack descriptions.
Monsters with forced movement options can get out, but thats just how it is, some monsters negate certain tactics, its not that common.
point being grapple is a very effective tool for players.
Unless monsters use Weapon Masteries we don’t have to worry about forced movement being how most will attempt to end a grapple. Now their is nothing saying monsters won’t have weapon masteries. Don’t think we will know until we get the 2024 MM
i doubt they will, unless its part of the flavor, monsters already have "masteries" its just built into the descriptions. Monster stat blocks are made to be simplified and require as little looking up, calculation or referencing as possible. The monsters who would have push masteries, just have skills that can push enemies. Prone, slow, grapple, etc.
That said, they may give monsters a lot more special abilities, so they are less boring, but i doubt they would give many push with no save.
Thoughts on new open hand monk after going a little deeper.
Open hand technique - at first glance addle seems better because there is no more saving throw. Previously this feature prevented reactions, now it only stops attacks of opportunity. Preventing reactions is way better so this ends up being ok but not as great as i initially thought. This should prevent reactions. Fighters get push and topple for free but open hand monks have to pay ki for the same stuff. This feels like cunning action vs step of the wind all over again. Your going to use FOB anyways so its still good, but it does not feel special anymore. The good news is you can FOB and topple someone before your attack action and then get advantage with your attack action. This will also increase to three topple/addle/push attempts with an extra FOB at level 10. I am hoping for some bumps to push and topple since you are paying a resource cost. Maybe increase the distance of push and add a movement penalty to a toppled creature for a little extra control.
Wholeness of body - i will take it because its free but overall its meh.
Fleet step - at first glance i thought this was great. Now its gets worse every time i look at it. The obvious use of this is FOB + 1ki for sotw disengage and dash. But do you really need to do that when you already have FOB + addle and 50 feet (or more) of movement at this level? How often are you really going to need that extra 50 feet of movement? and do you really need to run away when deflect attack is so good? I think a healthy monk would use all three FOB to topple or push and instead of spending a ki on sotw i would take the OA (maybe at disadvantage because of topple) and spend the ki on deflect attack. If i got hit i could possibly do more damage to the monster as i take off. I do think addle makes this feature slightly irrelevant. Maybe if you had a bonus action from multiclassing ( hunters mark or hex) then combining the bonus actions would be ok. But overall the monk already has so much movement at this level plus addle i think this feature way over promises and under delivers. You could combine sotw with wholeness of body but who really cares. Moving a team mate with sotw could be useful. Overall this feature seems interesting but very situational.
Quivering palm - this may be broken. If i read it correctly, you can do flurry of blows or BA unarmed strike first (since they are not tied to the attack action) to set up quivering palm. Then, on the same round activate quivering palm for 10d12 force damage (save for half) as one of your attacks on the attack action. With FOB you would be getting 5 attacks per round at this level, and one of those attacks does 10d12 force damage with save for half. Thats a five ki per round expenditure so you could nova for 3 rounds and on the next fight go back to full ki with level 2 feature uncanny metabolism. I think its fine since its level 17 and monks have always lacked a nova option and it is also balanced out by the high ki cost.
palm is usable as a nova option in this form but ya have to say goodbye to your ki ,
I still miss the" your already dead" version but at least its better then the last version.
Thoughts on new open hand monk after going a little deeper.
Open hand technique - at first glance addle seems better because there is no more saving throw. Previously this feature prevented reactions, now it only stops attacks of opportunity. Preventing reactions is way better so this ends up being ok but not as great as i initially thought. This should prevent reactions. Fighters get push and topple for free but open hand monks have to pay ki for the same stuff. This feels like cunning action vs step of the wind all over again. Your going to use FOB anyways so its still good, but it does not feel special anymore. The good news is you can FOB and topple someone before your attack action and then get advantage with your attack action. This will also increase to three topple/addle/push attempts with an extra FOB at level 10. I am hoping for some bumps to push and topple since you are paying a resource cost. Maybe increase the distance of push and add a movement penalty to a toppled creature for a little extra control.
Wholeness of body - i will take it because its free but overall its meh.
Fleet step - at first glance i thought this was great. Now its gets worse every time i look at it. The obvious use of this is FOB + 1ki for sotw disengage and dash. But do you really need to do that when you already have FOB + addle and 50 feet (or more) of movement at this level? How often are you really going to need that extra 50 feet of movement? and do you really need to run away when deflect attack is so good? I think a healthy monk would use all three FOB to topple or push and instead of spending a ki on sotw i would take the OA (maybe at disadvantage because of topple) and spend the ki on deflect attack. If i got hit i could possibly do more damage to the monster as i take off. I do think addle makes this feature slightly irrelevant. Maybe if you had a bonus action from multiclassing ( hunters mark or hex) then combining the bonus actions would be ok. But overall the monk already has so much movement at this level plus addle i think this feature way over promises and under delivers. You could combine sotw with wholeness of body but who really cares. Moving a team mate with sotw could be useful. Overall this feature seems interesting but very situational.
Quivering palm - this may be broken. If i read it correctly, you can do flurry of blows or BA unarmed strike first (since they are not tied to the attack action) to set up quivering palm. Then, on the same round activate quivering palm for 10d12 force damage (save for half) as one of your attacks on the attack action. With FOB you would be getting 5 attacks per round at this level, and one of those attacks does 10d12 force damage with save for half. Thats a five ki per round expenditure so you could nova for 3 rounds and on the next fight go back to full ki with level 2 feature uncanny metabolism. I think its fine since its level 17 and monks have always lacked a nova option and it is also balanced out by the high ki cost.
RE: Quivering Palm : It's not broken when you consider that this is a 17th level feature that effectively has a hard cap on number of attempts per combat. 10d12 is great on a lucky hit, but on average that's only roughly 65dpr on a success in exchange for 3+ FOBs worth of DP. And given that players can now make at least 5 attacks with a d12 while using FOB (possibly 6 or more depending on how Nick gets ruled) that's a big gamble to come out on top of the more reliable dpr.
Basically, it averages out to only maybe 10-20 points higher dpr than if you did regular a regular Attack+FOB round, and it severely reduces the number of times you can FOB in a big end-game combat. Compare to the new Brutal Strike feature of Barbarians or a Paladin chaining Smites and I'm pretty sure this ends up being just fine.
Open Hand Technique: they have systematically moved all Legendary Actions to take Reactions in new books and it seems that they are doing this in preparation for the 2024 Monster Manual. So Addle as written would have efectively been "turn off the monster's Legendary Actions." It's harsh, but in that context it makes sense why they couldn't leave it unchanged.
Fleet Step: The combat applications without Ki are limited, but I can see other instances where being in initiative order you might want to do something else that takes a Bonus Action. Also, Step of the Wind + DP at 11th level allows you to carry an ally with you so that's a huge benefit to an opening alpha strike - launch yourself and the Barbarian or Paladin 100 feet forward and make 5+ attacks with the option to Stunning Strike or Grapple. That's a powerful opening move and now you have an ally on the front to take advantage of it.
Open Hand Technique: they have systematically moved all Legendary Actions to take Reactions in new books and it seems that they are doing this in preparation for the 2024 Monster Manual. So Addle as written would have efectively been "turn off the monster's Legendary Actions." It's harsh, but in that context it makes sense why they couldn't leave it unchanged.
Open Hand Technique: they have systematically moved all Legendary Actions to take Reactions in new books and it seems that they are doing this in preparation for the 2024 Monster Manual. So Addle as written would have efectively been "turn off the monster's Legendary Actions." It's harsh, but in that context it makes sense why they couldn't leave it unchanged.
This isn't entirely true. The monsters in BoMT have legendary actions.
It could be that they used previous versions as a test balloon to see what the impact would be and plan to just errata the rest in 2024. That's basically what the Tasha's Cauldron alternative features were.
This isn't entirely true. The monsters in BoMT have legendary actions.
Really, it isn't true for any book except Bigby Presents, which suggests a quirk by the author of that book rather than a policy change.
What about that Vecna statblock they released a couple of months back?
Vecna the Archlich wouldn't have worked using legendary actions as both of his reactions are in response to things happening during the turn, rather than at the end (one being a special counterspell, the other being a teleport when damaged).
While it's theoretically possible to convert all legendary actions into reactions that just happen at the end of another creature's turn, I'm not sure that that's the intention for all monsters, it seems more like they're either trialling the idea like Thecactusman17 suggests, or only doing it when a monster needs more complex triggers, for example the ancient time dragon which has one reaction that happens at the end of the turn like a regular legendary action, but it also has two others that happen during the turn, so ordinary legendary actions alone wouldn't work.
Personally I'd prefer to see them redefine legendary actions as a special category of reaction, i.e- remove the "end of another's turn only" part from the text going forward and just give each legendary action it's own trigger. In this way they'd basically be reactions that don't consume the creature's normal reaction, and can't be blocked by effects that prevent normal reactions (since they wouldn't be called reactions, just function like them).
It'd be silly to ditch legendary actions as a concept as it would only risk causing problems with true polymorph and similar which specifically don't grant legendary actions because those exist to improve a boss monster's action economy when facing a group of players.
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Disagree with this last statement. You have many per turn tactical choices. Unarmed strikes are now viable for shoving and grappling with monk so any attack can become a shove or grapple, bonus action can be used to attack, or dash, or disengage. You can use your action to dodge and then attack as a bonus action still. The monk has arguably some of the most tactical decisions to make turn to turn of any martial without spending resources and get more when they start spending resources.
(Not willing to speak on the math because I have not done the math or the builds yet).
Disagree, grapple & shove are not viable for anyone - there are so many forced movement as part of an attack and knock prone as part of an attack features now and the success rate for Grapple / Shove is so low now that it's really pointless to attempt them. In current 5e Grapple & Shove are WAY more viable than in One D&D and still they are hardly ever used. Grapple & Shove in One D&D are trap options.
Dodging with your action is still doesn't make sense until 11th level and you can swap 2 Attacks with your action + BA dodge for 1 DP for Dodge with your action and 3 attacks as a BA with FoB.
If you use your BA for anything other than attacking you're DPR will drop below that of any other warrior class, sure its an option but its not a good option.
hoping some other subclasses up the dpr a bit more like , mabye kensei and astral self
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RAW that is already a thing, making it limited use and gated behind a feat is a negative IMO, especially for monks. I might be remembering the wrong Tavern Brawler, but having Grapple compete for a BA is again bad for monks since that is still replacing 1 or 2 attacks made with a BA compared to 1 attack with their action.
But it is kind of pointless discussing it TBH as the grappling rules haven't come up in the UAs in ages so I assume they are essentially set in stone. But grappling in 5e for monks is more viable than grappling in UA8 for monks. And grappling for Barbarians is incredibly effective in 5e but a mere shadow of that in UA. Yet even in 5e hardly anyone uses grappling. So they are certainly not going to start doing so in One D&D.
In 5e it is an Athletics check vs the enemy's athletics or acrobatics check, the only RAW enemies with proficiency in those skills are Giants so 95% of the time a 5e character that mains STR and has proficiency in Athletics (or with +0 STR and Expertise in Athletics) will have > 50% chance of success. Tons of stuff can buff that chance from Rage, Enlarge/Reduce, Enhance Ability, Bardic Inspiration, and Guidance. Likewise tons of stuff can debuff the enemy check - being poisoned, frightened, or Hexed. If you get Expertise on a STR character then you instantly have a 75% or higher chance of a successful grapple with no other buffs or debuffs. And still it is almost never used.
In One D&D, it is a Strength or Dexterity save, the only way to increase your DC is to increase your STR or DEX (if monk), tons of monsters have proficiency in STR or DEX saves, Legendary Resistances apply, and there are only a handful of abilities / spells that can debuff the enemy's save. On average your success rate will be ~50%. Or you could get a weapon with Push or Topple and just use a regular weapon attack with full damage to attempt the same thing. There's simply no contest, why would you ever Grapple/Shove in One D&D?
So tavern brawler from UA 1 is a first level feat that allows you to shove and still do damage as part of an unarmed strike once per turn. It also allows you to reroll unarmed strike damage.
Grappler feat from UA 2 allows you to still do damage as part of your unarmed strikes attempt to grapple once per turn. With these 2 feats you give up nothing to attempt to grapple or shove once per turn. No BA required, no loss of damage. You just get to attempt it for free.
Is this something EVERY monk should do. No absolutely not. But it is something they can do and do fairly well.
A warrior of the hand monk with the grappler feat from UA 2 can flurry of blows and on hit deal its martial arts die + dex, stunning strike, open hand topple and attempt to grapple all on a singular hit of FoB. If the enemy fails the stun they auto fail the grapple and the topple. If they don't then they take martial arts die + wis mod damage and still have to make 2 saves.
so the one dnd tavern brawler lets you push 5 feet with an attack once per turn, no save, lets you reroll 1s, and turns furniture in to clubs. (and clubs are simple weapons, so full monk damage). overall its decent for a monk. as a lvl 1 feat.
grappler gives you advantage versus grappled targets, lets you grapple on hit once per turn. (doesnt say you need a check, but when they made it, grappling was done via attack) and let's you move targets without penalty.
I feel like both of these will change in final version, but not sure in what way.
regardless you aren't giving up an attack to use either feat.
so the big advantage of grappler is its a 1 per round grapple mastery+ which gives you advantage in subsequent attacks. Tavern brawler increases your unarmed dps, and the push amounts to a free disengage on hit. Basically these two feats give you a taste of unarmed mastery.
even though grapple isnt commonly used its very powerful.
I do feel they need to rework the grapple rules. The first iteration suggested a lot higher of a success rate for grapple. The current iteration is basically equalizes all str characters and monk. I don't think its great, its more about the target than the player. But ultimately its the result of people caring more about resisting grapple than using grapple, which is a bit odd, sinse most of the npcs who grapple don't do it contested.
also grapple is different than push or topple, you control the enemies movement. ideally you want to grapple a prone opponent, so both are useful. grapple also requires an action to escape, enemy either gives up movement, has disadvantage on other targets, or needs to waste an action to attempt to be free. pretty powerful.
anyhow its pretty useful on hit effect.
as I mentioned, "half cover is a default rule ... but it's situational" and I further acknowledged it later when clarifying that the 3/4 cover bonus "is not cumulative with any half cover provided by the same enemy." because someone might ask. so, it's not gated behind a feat. also, I'm not sure that grapple would be 'competing' for action or bonus action if the character was picking this feat in order to do grappling. my concern wasn't damage per round.
I set out a plan to maybe make grappling not terrible sometimes despite the set in stone rules. my plan involves gutting the existing Grappler feat. I explained why I thought it deserved gutting. I even provided a "too long; didn't read" at the end that I thought kinda explained why sometimes someone might want this. but still you pooh-pooh the how and still you wonder why.
okay. thanks for the words.
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Step of the wind and Addle do not do the same thing.
The problem with this is that this is absolutely the worse way to attempt to escape a grapple, but it is the one listed in the rules so it's what people think is how you are supposed to escape a grapple. (I tried to pointed this out in the UA survey as well) But the reality is that a grapple ends if the grapplee is ever farther away from the grappler than the grappler's reach. Which means almost any forced movement will break a grapple, so using a Shove, a weapon with Push, or any of the other forced movement options they have added to the game breaks a grapple without wasting your whole action, and is vastly superior way to escape that the "use an action" option or the "make a save at the end of your turn" which have been the two options presented in the UAs.
Unless monsters use Weapon Masteries we don’t have to worry about forced movement being how most will attempt to end a grapple. Now their is nothing saying monsters won’t have weapon masteries. Don’t think we will know until we get the 2024 MM
well, this discussion is in the context of a player grappling a monster, so, for a monster, they dont have extra attack, they have multiattack, which says exactly which skills are available to them. For most monsters, they will need to use a whole action to shove. so for the monster, shove is basically the same, or slightly worse than trying to break the grapple, because the opponent chooses the save, and the average roll on a 20 is a 10.5, but the DC is set by an 8.
monsters also currently dont have weapon masteries, if they are meant to have that functionality, its built into the attack descriptions.
Monsters with forced movement options can get out, but thats just how it is, some monsters negate certain tactics, its not that common.
point being grapple is a very effective tool for players.
i doubt they will, unless its part of the flavor, monsters already have "masteries" its just built into the descriptions. Monster stat blocks are made to be simplified and require as little looking up, calculation or referencing as possible. The monsters who would have push masteries, just have skills that can push enemies. Prone, slow, grapple, etc.
That said, they may give monsters a lot more special abilities, so they are less boring, but i doubt they would give many push with no save.
palm is usable as a nova option in this form but ya have to say goodbye to your ki ,
I still miss the" your already dead" version but at least its better then the last version.
RE: Quivering Palm : It's not broken when you consider that this is a 17th level feature that effectively has a hard cap on number of attempts per combat. 10d12 is great on a lucky hit, but on average that's only roughly 65dpr on a success in exchange for 3+ FOBs worth of DP. And given that players can now make at least 5 attacks with a d12 while using FOB (possibly 6 or more depending on how Nick gets ruled) that's a big gamble to come out on top of the more reliable dpr.
Basically, it averages out to only maybe 10-20 points higher dpr than if you did regular a regular Attack+FOB round, and it severely reduces the number of times you can FOB in a big end-game combat. Compare to the new Brutal Strike feature of Barbarians or a Paladin chaining Smites and I'm pretty sure this ends up being just fine.
Open Hand Technique: they have systematically moved all Legendary Actions to take Reactions in new books and it seems that they are doing this in preparation for the 2024 Monster Manual. So Addle as written would have efectively been "turn off the monster's Legendary Actions." It's harsh, but in that context it makes sense why they couldn't leave it unchanged.
Fleet Step: The combat applications without Ki are limited, but I can see other instances where being in initiative order you might want to do something else that takes a Bonus Action. Also, Step of the Wind + DP at 11th level allows you to carry an ally with you so that's a huge benefit to an opening alpha strike - launch yourself and the Barbarian or Paladin 100 feet forward and make 5+ attacks with the option to Stunning Strike or Grapple. That's a powerful opening move and now you have an ally on the front to take advantage of it.
Ah..that does makes sense. Too bad.
This isn't entirely true. The monsters in BoMT have legendary actions.
Really, it isn't true for any book except Bigby Presents, which suggests a quirk by the author of that book rather than a policy change.
what about books that came after? planescape?
What about that Vecna statblock they released a couple of months back?
It could be that they used previous versions as a test balloon to see what the impact would be and plan to just errata the rest in 2024. That's basically what the Tasha's Cauldron alternative features were.
Vecna the Archlich wouldn't have worked using legendary actions as both of his reactions are in response to things happening during the turn, rather than at the end (one being a special counterspell, the other being a teleport when damaged).
While it's theoretically possible to convert all legendary actions into reactions that just happen at the end of another creature's turn, I'm not sure that that's the intention for all monsters, it seems more like they're either trialling the idea like Thecactusman17 suggests, or only doing it when a monster needs more complex triggers, for example the ancient time dragon which has one reaction that happens at the end of the turn like a regular legendary action, but it also has two others that happen during the turn, so ordinary legendary actions alone wouldn't work.
Personally I'd prefer to see them redefine legendary actions as a special category of reaction, i.e- remove the "end of another's turn only" part from the text going forward and just give each legendary action it's own trigger. In this way they'd basically be reactions that don't consume the creature's normal reaction, and can't be blocked by effects that prevent normal reactions (since they wouldn't be called reactions, just function like them).
It'd be silly to ditch legendary actions as a concept as it would only risk causing problems with true polymorph and similar which specifically don't grant legendary actions because those exist to improve a boss monster's action economy when facing a group of players.
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Yeah, 'triggered legendary actions' is something I've felt would be useful to have on monster writeups anyway.
I'd suggest (and house rule) that monks get additional ki equal to their WIS modifier.
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hoping some other subclasses up the dpr a bit more like , mabye kensei and astral self