Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Then that's probably something you should have specified in the initial question.
"Drunken Master" doesn't seem to be a core rules official thing until at least 3rd Edition, when it was a Prestige Class. If it's something that came up in an issue of Dragon magazine or some less popular supplement, it's probably going to fall on you to track what you remember down; neither the 2nd edition Complete Fighter's Handbook (1989) or the Complete Priest's Handbook (1990) have any drunken master-specific monk details. Nothing in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook (1978) either, just a core Monk class. Nothing in Unearthed Arcana (1985).
🎵I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation, wreaking death and devastation with my mind.
As the power that I've found erupts freely from the ground, I will cackle from the top of the world.🎵
Charisma Saving Throw: DC 18, Failure: 20d6 Psychic Damage, Success: Half damage
I did not know there have been any iterations of drunken master since then. Now I do. Do you recommend the next time I ask for something I should mention a list of disclaimers such as I know nothing about the 2014 rules and universe?
The default assumption when you are asking a question on a forum for the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons is that questions that don't specify an edition are about the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, be it the 2014 or 2024 version. If you want answers about previous editions, just say that's what you want in the initial question.
🎵I'm on top of the world, looking down on creation, wreaking death and devastation with my mind.
As the power that I've found erupts freely from the ground, I will cackle from the top of the world.🎵
Charisma Saving Throw: DC 18, Failure: 20d6 Psychic Damage, Success: Half damage
I disagree with that. With new people joining since the 2024 rules came out, that should be the default. I did not know there was anything about 2014 until I was on here a while. A lot of confusion for myself and as you may have noticed other new people. New rules in other table top games is always the default as with in 12-18 months of new rules coming out, the old rules are now ignored/unsupported. I have never seen old rules hang on so long as they do on this site. With other games, the old rules are always compatible to allow people to transition, but basically almost all do, but then this is the only role playing game I have ever experienced. So not sure how long people default to >10 year rules.
This is inherently flawed since it gives the monk another resource to track. My Mystic Brew probably works better on a fighter subclass. This is me just putting ideas out in the world and I didn’t even attempt to balance the the shots needed to use the drunken powers. Also a better name than powers is needed. I originally wrote drunken technique but remembered that is their first level feature. I guess I could have called it Mystic techniques.
3rd Level Drunken Technique
All an Act. You gain proficiency in Performance or Deception (your choice), and may add your Wisdom modifier to ability checks you make with the chosen skill.
Hit and Run. Whenever you use Flurry of Blows, you gain the benefit of the Disengage action, and your walking speed increases by 10 feet until the end of the current turn.
Wobble Away. When you use the Deflect Attacks you may move up to half your speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks as part of the same reaction.
6th Level Tipsy Sway
Leap to Your Feet. When you’re prone, you can stand up by spending 5 feet of movement, rather than half your speed. Additionally if you use Deflect Attacks while prone you can stand up as part of the same reaction.
Redirect Attack. Same as new UA
Revel in the Fray. You gain +1 bonus to your Unarmored Defense AC calculation for each enemy except one within 5 feet of you up to a maximum bonus equal to your proficiency bonus.
6th Level Mystic Brew
You gain proficiency with Brewer’s Supplies if you don't already have it. While holding Brewer’s Supplies and a bottle or cask you may spend 10 minutes to magically create a magical beverage. This 10 minutes can be part of a Short rest. You may expend a Focus point to shorten the 10 minutes to one action. 10 + half your monk level rounded down shots of the beverage appear in the bottle or cask. If any of the beverage remains when you complete a long rest it loses its magic and becomes a normal beverage. Once you have created a Mystic Brew you can not do so again until you complete a long rest.
Drinking the Beverage. A creature holding the container can use a bonus action to drink a single shot or an action to drink up to 4 shots. Only you gain Mystic Stacks from the beverage. You gain a Mystic Stack for each shot you drink. Some Drunken powers consume stacks. Some Stack levels increase the duration. The duration refreshes to the maximum whenever your Stack level changes up. The duration can never be longer than the duration of your current stack level (so if your stack level was 10 and you had 40 mins remaining and use Cinnamon Dragon dropping your Stack level to 9 the duration would decrease to 10 mins. If your remaining duration at 10 stacks was 5 mins it would remain at 5 mins when dropping to 9 stacks.) Other creatures that consume the beverage must make a DC 10 Con save or gain the poisoned condition for the duration. The usable/active Drunken powers depend on the number of Mystic Stacks you have.
Duration:
1-3 Stacks 1 min
4-9 Stacks 10 mins
10+ Stacks 1 hour
Drunken Techniques:
Blue Lightning. Same as UA just available earlier. Active at 8 Stacks
Cinnamon Dragon. Same as UA. Usable at 1 Stack, Consumes at 1 Stack each activation.
Dancing Devil. When you use Deflect Attacks or Redirect Attacks you can move half your speed as part of the same reaction. Active at 5 stacks.
Heavenly Spirit. Same as UA. Usable at 3 stacks. Consumes 1 stack to activate persist for the duration of Mystic Stacks
Refreshing Dip. Same as UA. Usable at 3 stacks. Consumes 1 stack to activate persist for the duration of Mystic Stacks
Sour Hag. As a Magic Action you exhale a 5 feet wide 30 feet long line of necrotic gas. Every creature in the line must make a Con save or take 4 MA die + Wis necrotic damage and be slowed on a failure or only take half the damage a success. Usable at 2 stacks, consumes 1 stack each activation.
Sparkling Troll Blood. As a bonus action you may expend a hit die and roll it and regain hit points equal to the roll + your wisdom modifier. Usable at 10 stacks
Toasty Tempest. You have resistance to cold damage and when you hit with an attack from flurry of blows you deal additional fire damage equal to your Wisdom modifier. Usable at 10 stacks, consumes 2 stakes to activate, persists for the duration of Mystic Stacks.
11th Level Drunkard’s Luck
When you make an attack roll, or a saving throw and have disadvantage on the roll, you can expend 1 Focus point to cancel the disadvantage for that roll. While you have Stacks from a Mystic Brew you may use this feature once without expending a Focus point. You regain the ability to use this feature without expending a Focus point when you drink a shot of Mystic Brew. Additionally when you use an action to drink 4 shots of your Mystic Brew you also gain Heroic Inspiration.
17th Level Intoxicated Frenzy
Drinks All Around. When you use your Flurry of Blows, you can make up to three additional attacks with it (up to a total of six Flurry of Blows attacks), provided that each Flurry of Blows attack targets a different creature this turn.
Hard Shot of Something. When you use your Flurry of Blows, you can target one creature or object with all of the attacks so rapidly they become one. Roll all three Flurry of Blows attack rolls and choose one result and apply it to all 3 attacks. Then roll all three damage rolls and choose one result after adding modifiers, the target takes that damage for each hit.
this is imo, an underrated comment. Game mechanics which encourage players to "game" the clock are just as bad as those that encourage the player to "game" the action economy.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
what if the point isnt to 'game' the clock, but rather to have a class that gets stronger after the first battle/ throughout the day.
the level neither feature, nore brew overall is powerful enough to justify its existwnce at level 11 unless there is some type of stacking affect. It also puts the brews into too much of a direct competition, especially for something that you have to decide at the last rest. Basically you must pick blue lightning if you can only be effected by one drink.
And i think for a drunken master, 1 brew per day isnt that intoxicated.
Essentially what in saying, is, if its not designed such that you gain more power throughout the day by soending time drinking, then it needs a lot more work in terms of power, versatility, and interesting mechanics.
Now, i can see a flaw being that drunken monks are going to have more incentive to SR, and maybe some DMs dont love having to DM around that, but i would solve that by making it take time, In truth though, the short rest is the simplest way for it to happen after 1 or 2 encounters in the day, if thats the intent, and make the drunken monk always spend short rests drinking thematically.
No matter what it ends up gamey, if you are counting drunken points, or if you allow someone to get inebriated in 2 rounds, etc
Make improvised weapons MONK weapons
Allow Performance checks to use DEX instead of CHA
I would like a feature for one turn to be able to use Redirect Attack DEX MOD per turn (once per short rest)
The Elixir ability to instead be 1 Focus Point and a Bonus action to drink some alcohol and have an effect. (Usable WIS MOD times per short rest)
-----Treat Ale like a portion of healing
----Gain damage resistance to B/S/P till end of next turn or Damage reduction equal to PB.
I can't find any reference to Drunken Master/Drunken Boxing in OD&D, BX, BECMI, 1st edition (For that I checked PHB, DMG, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, and relevant Dragon issues) or 2nd edition (PHB, DMG, Complete Fighter, Complete Priest, Complete Ninja, relevant Dragon Issues) In the 1st ed DMG on page 82 is rules for the effects of alcohol and drugs *in general*, not specific to any character build or class. If you're remembering anything from the 80s around Drunken Boxing, I think it might have been homebrew.
The earliest version I found was a 3rd edition 10-level prestige class in the Sword and Fist: Guidebook to Fighters and Monks.
The drunken master is based on a Jackie Chan movie role. I do not remember the character source exactly. You had a couple of movies in the late 70s so my memory says it was the 80s, it could have been the 3rd edition version.
Gwar if the intent is to allow the player to have more than one of the powers at the same time why not just let them do it? Why put a short rest mechanic in there which makes the experience different at every table? As it is written it’s not about getting stronger each battle. It’s about getting stronger each short rest. If you haven’t drank your brew and your team starts a short rest, you should always drink it and spend a focus point on it to make it last 8 hours and choose a different brew to make during the rest.
Honestly the easy fix it and keep the UA mostly in tack is just give the Blue Lightning abilities to the player any time they drink any brew. They have said many times if a choice makes you feel like you are playing wrong to not make the choice it’s a poorly designed feature. Blue Lightning is the clear choice and thus shouldn’t be a choice.
because the intent may be that the drunken master gets drunker throughout the day. Not all at once with a single swig, or in 12 seconds. You mentioned gameyness, but getting deunk instantly is fairly gamey. And this creates a legitamately different gameplay/daily flow than other charachters. There are a few classes that power up on short rests, but few that become more powerful. And if its not the intent, as you and others have said. the features are underpowered.
As for why not blue lightning all the time, 1 because they feel its powerlevel is in the 11 range, and also people might not always use blue lightning, Its the best overall combat skill, but some people may choose something like the breath attack + health regain, or health+heroic inspiration. Blue lightning is going to be the choice 75% of the time once they have it, but having the option that other 25% is worthwhile.
Hiwever, if you only get 1 brew at a time it goes from having 2 effects of your choice after first rest, with blue lightning being one of them 75% of time, to only using anything else 25% of the time.
While i can see some issues with tying things to short rests, because dif people like to rest differently, In 2024, short rests are much more baseline since almost everyone gets something of value besides hit points. They could make it just 10=30 minutes of time mostly idle drinking, but thats generally what they use short rests for in 5e, anything thematically like taking a breather, or resting is essnetially what short rests is intended to represent.
while i said after a battle, its not so much a battle power up, as the intent is that as the day goes on they get drunker. Specifically the more time they spend drinking throughout the day.
Regardless, its playtest, and i thiink if the feedback is people dont want to wait, they may adapt. However, with so much being the same or remixes of other classes/features, it was nice to have a subclass that has a whole different rhythm of getting more powerful in the 2nd hlaf of the adventuring day rather than the same or less powerful like most other classes. We'll see what ends up happening based on feedback
I’m all for different and new mechanics, but this is trash,. Calling it a different rhythm is wrong. It’s more like doesn’t work at most tables because it will be weak unless you are an optimizer or your DM goes out of their way to make sure you get to have multiple brews going at once. If your DM likes random encounters you might have 0 brews drank. If it’s early in the day. Or worse you may have gamed for 2 brews and because it’s later than 8 hours from the first you still only have 1 active. It’s bad design by their own philosophy. At 11th when you get Blue Lightning instead increasing your power it becomes the best combat choice and competes with your other powers. That is why I said they should just give you that when you drink another brew. You could still try to combine the other powers, but you know you have blue lightning as well, so even if you can’t actually get 2 brews active at the same time you would have at least 2 powers active at the same time at 11th level and beyond. Thankfully it is playtest and I will be letting them know I think it’s not fun, unnecessarily complicated, and wouldn’t work at my table unless the player was an optimizer or I went out of my way to remind them and give them additional short rest.
IS till like the idea of Monk spending 1 Focus Point and taking a Bonus action to drink some alcohol to letting it do something either right then or there (As part of the same bonus action. Or during the rest of their turn (Either till the end of their current turn on their next turn)
Alcohol acts as a Healing Potion
They can spit out a spray of alcohol that poisons and maybe gives the target the blinded condition until they use a bonus actin to wipe their eyes.
Stuff like that.
No magically creating an elixir with no ingredients That does nothing for a while until they enter combat. and later just vanishes.
how do you figure its an additional short rest? it works after a long rest or a short rest, not only after short rests. So it starts the day with one effect, after the first short rests per day, they have 2 effects. Having zero short rests per day is not really normal.
Short rests are baseline the main way for classes to recover HP in the game. You should probably be encouraging or giving at least 1 short rests regardless of this class
short rests are also generally decided by the players, with the DM modifying it by interupting the rest, And i wouldnt interrupt 100% of short rests as a DM. The big worry is actually that players themselves often get swept in the flow and forget, or dont short rest. But i think thats less common in 2024 with 90% classes gaining back something onSR even if they dont need Hp
I dont think they need to literally make the drink disapear, or even expressly label it as magical, they can just have its effects be for the monk, and require time.
While they could make the effects instant, there is nothing about that, which is inherently less 'gamey' or than it taking time, or accumulating. Its a fine preference but its not inherently better.
Also, keep in mind monks need their BA and their action, and are currently.not great at damage with both of those, so if they do have in combat drinking it would need to be a free action,, or it would need to be powerful enough to justify giving up 50-70% of your damage and utility and delaying first strike potential
I feel it would be better if this subclass was called Way of the Brew Master.
Way of the Not Condoning Irresponsible Drinking for Legal Reasons (tm)
1. Wrong. You don’t start the day with any brew power active. If you are attacked shortly after a long rest you have the brew made, but not drank.
2. Oh at least 1 rest a day, cool. That still doesn’t mean this monk would have two brew powers active when they are useable. That relies on the DM placing combat within certain time windows.
3. The problem you are refusing to acknowledge is the player who has combat before their first short rest, and the player that has 2 short rest before one big combat would have vastly different experiences with this subclass. Also from my play experience no one SR after non combat encounters unless the take damage.
at the end of any long rest/ short rest, you can create a brew, it tajes 1 minute to consume a brew. Unless you are literally going to as DM decide that combat occurs at the literal 6th hour, but before a single minute passes, (time to consume a brew) you will always have 1 effect at the start of the day. If they get ambushed, its generally going to interupt the rest, so thats not really relevant. Everyone is screwed when you interupt their long rests. They can also get around this by not taking the last watch of a long rest, and thus will have 1 minute while the other rest. Even in this case, that could be solved by a small semantic change to cover that edge case.
2, the DM would have to try hard to make it so, within a 16 hour day, and combat lasting for only a few minutes out of that day, there is no overlap of the long rest, or multiple chances to ret. A short rest is basically any hour long stretch where you do nothing strenuous. Eating lunch is a short rest, sitting in a wagon is a short rest, waiting at the bar is a short rest. But yes, sometimes they may only have one buff, thats ok because some times they have two buffs. And i wouldnt mind them just setting a duration, the reason they likely didnt is because thats what short rests are supposed to represent. DMs might be overally pedantic, but the intent is, if there is a lull in the action, or players are taking abreather, thats a short rest. If you are going to say it takes 20 minutes to create and consume a brew, thats fine, but if you got 20 minutes to drink, you probably are in the conceptual/narrative space that short rest is trying to represent, even though mechanically it takes an hour.
3. The case where you dont have a minute after a rest is extreme pedanticness on the oart of the. DM as i said, if the rest is interupted, its interupted, if its complete you probably had a minute, a DM who is going to quibble over that is just looking for arbitrary trouble. A short rest is actually any extended time period of inaction, people usually dont declare it because it has no need, if they havent used resources, however its fairly common at tables i play at, or observe, to ask, would i have gotten a short rest since X. To which the dm almost always replies, yeah sure if they were doing nothing major/relaxing since that event. The mechanical rules in 5e are supposed to be used in context, as you mentioned, its generally not the intent to be highly "gamey" The DM just as often may declare after a period of relative rest, you gain the benefits of a short rest, if the pkayers dont mention it, but they were relaxing for an hour. In the case or a drunken monk, id expect them to narratively allways be drinking outside of combat.
If they want to make it less likely to be played differently by different tables they can do that, but that generally adds more complexity and is going to be more 'gamey' since its tied to game mechanics and not regular world stuff. Like counting intoxication level, and swigs etc.
Which, may be fine, maybe they go that route, but its going to be just as gamey, and also have weird mechanical interactions and usecases where it works oddly
To be clear, i wouldn't mind them tightening the language, or relaxing how directly its tied to short rests, I think they should keep at least some partial benefit wereby the drunker they are, the more powerful they become, very possibly over a longer period than 12 seconds.
And i wouldnt be super upset if they abandoned that for something quicker, but it would be a less interesting mechanic, that leans less into the drunken warrior concept. However there is a benefit of avoiding overly pedantic DMs screwing you over, but to be honest those type of DMs do the same thing with everything. Like everyone would be annoyed if they did nothing but sit in a bar for 2 hours, but the DM declares they didnt get a short rests because they didnt declare it.