To cap off working on the SCAG subclasses, I am now presenting my ideas for fixing the Way of the Long Death subclass for the monk. This rework is part of a larger series of homebrew called FIFY WotC
Version 1
Way of the Long Death (work in progress, V 1.0)
Monks of the Way of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Touch of Death
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your monk level (minimum of 1 temporary hit point).
Mastery of Death (FIFY)
Beginning at 6th level, you use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend 1 ki point (no action required) to have 1 hit point instead. You cannot use this feature more than once per turn.
Veil of Demise (FIFY, new feature)
Starting at 11th level, your extraction of vitality veils you in darkness, dooming the souls of those around you. While you have temporary hit points from your Touch of Death feature, you gain the following benefits:
You are immune to necrotic damage.
You can move through creatures or objects as if they are difficult terrain, but cannot end your movement in such a space.
As an action, you can focus on a creature that you can see. If the target has less than half of its maximum hit points, you learn whether its current hit points are greater or fewer than your own, ignoring any temporary hit points either of you have.
When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can choose to reduce your remaining temporary hit points (to a minimum of 0) and deal additional necrotic damage to the target equal to the amount reduced.
Curse of Long Death (FIFY, new feature)
At 17th level, after you hit a creature within 5 feet of you with a melee weapon attack, you can expend 2 ki points to mark the target. While the mark remains, any time you are reduced to 0 hit points, any remaining damage beyond that point is dealt to the marked target, provided it does not equal or exceed your hit point maximum, after which point the mark immediately vanishes. This remaining damage is dealt to the marked target regardless of if you use a spell or feature that would allow you to have 1 hit point instead of dropping to 0 (such as Death Ward or your Mastery of Death feature).
You can only have one creature marked at a time by this feature. A mark can be removed early by the effect of a Remove Curse spell or similar magic.
Version 2
Way of the Long Death
Monks of the Way of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Touch of Death
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your monk level (minimum of 1 temporary hit point).
Curse of Long Death (FIFY, new feature)
At 6th level, after you hit a creature within 5 feet of you with a melee weapon attack, you can expend 2 ki points to mark the target. While the mark remains, whenever you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, any remaining damage beyond reducing you to 0 hit points is dealt to the marked target after which point the mark immediately vanishes.
You can only have one creature marked at a time by this feature. The mark can be removed early by the effect of a Remove Curse spell or similar magic. The mark is also removed if the target is no longer on the same plane as you.
Mastery of Death (FIFY)
Beginning at 11th level, you use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend 1 ki point (no action required) to have 1 hit point instead. A creature marked by your Curse of Long Death takes any remaining damage as normal.
Veil of Demise (FIFY, new feature)
Starting at 17th level, your extraction of vitality veils you in darkness, dooming the souls of those around you. While you have temporary hit points from your Touch of Death feature, you gain the following benefits:
You are immune to necrotic damage.
You do not need to expend a ki point to use Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, or Step of the Wind while you are within 5 feet of a creature marked by your Curse of Long Death.
When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can choose to reduce your remaining temporary hit points (to a minimum of 0) and deal additional necrotic damage to the target equal to the amount reduced.
Design Notes
General: My main design direction is to try and make the Way of the Long Death monk mechanically play into the "lifesteal" idea of games. Its primary Touch of Death feature is very nice (awarding temp HP for finishing off enemies) so I have left this unchanged.
Mastery of Death: I decided to move this feature to 6th level, removing Hour of Reaping. Since this ability is limited by your number of ki points, giving it at a lower level shouldnt be a problem, as you have less to play with per rest. That being said, I feel like this ability (even in its original place) may be too strong, so I am toying with limiting its usage to once per turn. It can still be used multiple times per round, but will not be able to stave off things like multiattack.
Veil of Demise: This is a new 11th level feature meant to build off of your Touch of Death feature and give the character a way to produce burst damage to potential "refill" their tempHP. The idea is that while you have your temp HP you can more effectively chase down your next target and even choose to channel the life stolen into your attacks (which if used strategically could reduce a creature to 0 HP and immediately give you back you temp HP).
Curse of Long Death: I am not a big fan of Touch of Long Death, as it feels like a less effective Quivering Palm, requiring your full action to use and even if you apply 5 ki points you would only be dealing as much damage as Quivering Palm's successful save condition. In this way I designed Curse of the Long Death as a marking feature to allow you to transfer excess damage to the marked target. The most ideal scenario for this ability is you are sitting at 1 HP and mark a target on your turn. On the next turn, a creature damages you and all but 1 of that damage is transferred to the marked target. You then use your Mastery of Death feature to remain at 1 HP and, if the marked target is reduced to 0 HP by this damage, you also gain temp HP from your Touch of Death feature.
Version 3 - 2024 Rules
Warrior of Long Death (2024)
Monks following the path of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Level 3: Touch of Death
Your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your Monk level. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can remove 5 or more Temporary Hit Points that you have. For every 5 Temporary Hit Points removed this way, the target takes extra Necrotic damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts Die.
Level 3: Unnatural Metabolism
Whenever you use your Uncanny Metabolism feature, do not roll your Martial Arts Die. You instead regain a number of Hit Points equal to your Monk level plus the highest number possible for your Martial Arts Die. For example, at Monk level 8 you would regain 16 Hit Points, instead of rolling 1d8 and adding 8 to it.
Level 6: Hour of Reaping
You gain the ability to unsettle or terrify those around you, for your soul has been touched by the shadow of death. As a Magic action, each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you that can see you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature is be Frightened of you until the end of your next turn. An affected creature can use an Action to repeat its Wisdom saving throw, ending the effect early on a success.
Whenever you deal damage with your Unarmed Strike against a creature which failed its save against this feature, you can expend two Focus Points to extend the duration of this feature by 1 minute for that creature.
Level 11: Mastery of Death
You use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you would drop to 0 Hit Points, you can expend 1 Focus Point to drop to 1 Hit Point instead.
Level 17: Reaper’s Focus
Your Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind gain the following benefits.
Flurry of Blows. You do not need to expend a Focus Point to use Flurry of Blows, provided each Unarmed Strike you make targets a creature that is Frightened of you.
Patient Defense. When you expend a Focus Point to use Patient Defense, do not roll your Martial Arts Die twice for determining the number of Temporary Hit Points you gain. Instead, you gain 25 Temporary Hit Points.
Step of the Wind. When you expend a Focus Point to use Step of the Wind, you gain a Flying speed equal to your Speed until the end of your turn.
1. Mastery of Death. I don't think that you should add the limitation of once per turn because the whole point is that these monks can keep escaping death. Also, by limiting it, you would be severely nerfing these monks' abilities to last as a front-liner. It also weakens your 17th-level feature.
2. Veil of demise. I think this is a cool new feat, but would advise two changes. 1. I don't think that being able to move through creatures and objects should be part of this feat since this ghost-like ability would make it more like the phantom rogue and the purpose of these monks is to avoid death entirely, not embrace undeath. 2. I think that rather than forcing the player to expend the temporary hitpoints that this feat relies upon, it would be better to say something like "as long as you have these temporary hitpoints, your melee weapon attacks deal additional necrotic damage equal to your wisdom modifier."
3. Curse of the Long Death. To me, the original 17th-level feature always seemed too much like the Way of the Open Hand 17th-level feature. I really like how you designed this feature and the interesting combat strategies it could lead to.
1. Mastery of Death. I don't think that you should add the limitation of once per turn because the whole point is that these monks can keep escaping death. Also, by limiting it, you would be severely nerfing these monks' abilities to last as a front-liner. It also weakens your 17th-level feature.
2. Veil of demise. I think this is a cool new feat, but would advise two changes. 1. I don't think that being able to move through creatures and objects should be part of this feat since this ghost-like ability would make it more like the phantom rogue and the purpose of these monks is to avoid death entirely, not embrace undeath. 2. I think that rather than forcing the player to expend the temporary hitpoints that this feat relies upon, it would be better to say something like "as long as you have these temporary hitpoints, your melee weapon attacks deal additional necrotic damage equal to your wisdom modifier."
3. Curse of the Long Death. To me, the original 17th-level feature always seemed too much like the Way of the Open Hand 17th-level feature. I really like how you designed this feature and the interesting combat strategies it could lead to.
1. Thats a fair point. I have always felt their 11th level feature was pretty strong, so I wanted to play with weakening it a little with the limitation, but I agree it will synergize better closer to its original form.
2.1 I agree with removing the passing through objects effect. When I was originally designing the effect, I started by basing it off of the Avatar of Death but as I played with it more I started to move away with that. I want to come up with some other benefit they can have to improve their ability to act like a reaper and more efficiently "hunt down" other doomed creatures. Perhaps while covered by the veil the monk can have some approximate read on how much health an enemy has so they can more efficiently use Touch of Death. That being said, many DMs have their own ways of describing enemies being close to death already, so it may not be necessary. Got play with some ideas.
2.2 One thing about this feature is that it does not cost any ki, it is just a flat bonus you get when you have the temp HP, which I think helps to make this monk more ki-efficient but also means considerations need to be taken in limiting its power. What I like about the way I have the effect now is you are choosing to lessen your protections and how long you have the bonus in order to deal more damage. The monk can take two different approach: slowly apply smaller amounts of extra damage to keep the veil up longer or give it up to deal reliable burst damage (i.e. a flat amount that wont fluctuate with rolls). The decision I want to be going through the player's mind is "If I give up some of my temp HP to deal more damage, what are the chances I will reduce the creature to 0 hit points and reset my temp HP back to full?" Overall, since its a free bonus to having temp HP I think its a fair tradeoff to give up some of that extra protection for extra damage in critical moments.
3. I agree. There are definitely some fun distinctions between them, but I wanted to try and design something more unique.
I have made a new version (in the original post to this thread). The main changes are to move Curse of Long Death to 6th level, Mastery of Death back to 11th level, and then Veil of Demise up to 17th level.
Curse of Long Death is an ability that will lend itself to being more useful at lower levels, as you will be more likely to drop to 0 HP to begin with and the temp HP from Touch of Death wont be too strong. By having it come before Mastery of Death, it will be more situational for the first 5 levels or so, but still nice to have if you are in a deadly fight where you expect to go down.
With Mastery of Death coming afterwards, this gives a buff to your Curse of Long Death (making sitting at low HP more sustainable) while still being strong on its own.
By moving Veil of Demise to 17th level, I can have it play off of all of the features that came before. In this way, I gave it a benefit that while you are close to a creature you have marked, you become more Ki-efficient, reflecting your ability to damage, maneuver around, and dodge a creature you have marked for death. My only worry is that free Flurry of Blows may be too powerful, even for a capstone feature, so I may end up reducing it to just Step of the Wind and Patient Defense.
I like it. Each new ability now stacks with the one before it very nicely.
I'm just seeing a 17th-level monk with this subclass who decides to strap rats all over his body. One of them is marked so the monk can always use Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind for free. The others allow the monk to just constantly expend all of the temp hp as damage because if the blow doesn't kill the target, they just kill a rat to get it all back.
This would be awesome and I really want to try it now.
I like it. Each new ability now stacks with the one before it very nicely.
I'm just seeing a 17th-level monk with this subclass who decides to strap rats all over his body. One of them is marked so the monk can always use Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind for free. The others allow the monk to just constantly expend all of the temp hp as damage because if the blow doesn't kill the target, they just kill a rat to get it all back.
This would be awesome and I really want to try it now.
That lies right in the grey zone between "exploit" and "player creativity", exactly where you want wacky ideas in D&D, lol
Heya, I just stumbled onto this and while I really like it, I am a little concerned that it relies so heavily on getting a killing blow to begin with.
Post level 11 the monk really doesn't keep up with the other classes in terms of damage, which is a problem in and of itself, but against a single enemy or even just multiple tough ones I could see this becoming a problem in the later levels.
I can't help but feel like there ought to be a way to proc Touch of Death without necessarily landing a killing blow. Perhaps when it crits?
Heya, I just stumbled onto this and while I really like it, I am a little concerned that it relies so heavily on getting a killing blow to begin with.
Post level 11 the monk really doesn't keep up with the other classes in terms of damage, which is a problem in and of itself, but against a single enemy or even just multiple tough ones I could see this becoming a problem in the later levels.
I can't help but feel like there ought to be a way to proc Touch of Death without necessarily landing a killing blow. Perhaps when it crits?
I'm more worried about the fact that if you mark a target with your Curse of Long Death and the monster has a higher priority target, you basically don't have a lvl 6 subclass feature.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hey! I make (what I believe to be, could use some feedback) good homebrew!
Thanks for the more recent feedback, that being said the version posted at the start of the thread is 2 years old at this point. Since then, and since the release of the 2024 rules, I have taken the chance to update my revised concepts to better play with some of the new features the monk gets. Ill post it here if anyone is interested.
Warrior of Long Death (2024)
Monks following the path of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Level 3: Touch of Death
Your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your Monk level. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can remove 5 or more Temporary Hit Points that you have. For every 5 Temporary Hit Points removed this way, the target takes extra Necrotic damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts Die.
Level 3: Unnatural Metabolism
Whenever you use your Uncanny Metabolism feature, do not roll your Martial Arts Die. You instead regain a number of Hit Points equal to your Monk level plus the highest number possible for your Martial Arts Die. For example, at Monk level 8 you would regain 16 Hit Points, instead of rolling 1d8 and adding 8 to it.
Level 6: Hour of Reaping
You gain the ability to unsettle or terrify those around you, for your soul has been touched by the shadow of death. As a Magic action, each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you that can see you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature is be Frightened of you until the end of your next turn. An affected creature can use an Action to repeat its Wisdom saving throw, ending the effect early on a success.
Whenever you deal damage with your Unarmed Strike against a creature which failed its save against this feature, you can expend two Focus Points to extend the duration of this feature by 1 minute for that creature.
Level 11: Mastery of Death
You use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you would drop to 0 Hit Points, you can expend 1 Focus Point to drop to 1 Hit Point instead.
Level 17: Reaper’s Focus
Your Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind gain the following benefits.
Flurry of Blows. You do not need to expend a Focus Point to use Flurry of Blows, provided each Unarmed Strike you make targets a creature that is Frightened of you.
Patient Defense. When you expend a Focus Point to use Patient Defense, do not roll your Martial Arts Die twice for determining the number of Temporary Hit Points you gain. Instead, you gain 25 Temporary Hit Points.
Step of the Wind. When you expend a Focus Point to use Step of the Wind, you gain a Flying speed equal to your Speed until the end of your turn.
To cap off working on the SCAG subclasses, I am now presenting my ideas for fixing the Way of the Long Death subclass for the monk. This rework is part of a larger series of homebrew called FIFY WotC
Version 1
Way of the Long Death (work in progress, V 1.0)
Monks of the Way of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Touch of Death
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your monk level (minimum of 1 temporary hit point).
Mastery of Death (FIFY)
Beginning at 6th level, you use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend 1 ki point (no action required) to have 1 hit point instead.
You cannot use this feature more than once per turn.Veil of Demise (FIFY, new feature)
Starting at 11th level, your extraction of vitality veils you in darkness, dooming the souls of those around you. While you have temporary hit points from your Touch of Death feature, you gain the following benefits:
You can move through creatures or objects as if they are difficult terrain, but cannot end your movement in such a space.Curse of Long Death (FIFY, new feature)
At 17th level, after you hit a creature within 5 feet of you with a melee weapon attack, you can expend 2 ki points to mark the target. While the mark remains, any time you are reduced to 0 hit points, any remaining damage beyond that point is dealt to the marked target, provided it does not equal or exceed your hit point maximum, after which point the mark immediately vanishes. This remaining damage is dealt to the marked target regardless of if you use a spell or feature that would allow you to have 1 hit point instead of dropping to 0 (such as Death Ward or your Mastery of Death feature).
You can only have one creature marked at a time by this feature. A mark can be removed early by the effect of a Remove Curse spell or similar magic.
Version 2
Way of the Long Death
Monks of the Way of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Touch of Death
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your monk level (minimum of 1 temporary hit point).
Curse of Long Death (FIFY, new feature)
At 6th level, after you hit a creature within 5 feet of you with a melee weapon attack, you can expend 2 ki points to mark the target. While the mark remains, whenever you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, any remaining damage beyond reducing you to 0 hit points is dealt to the marked target after which point the mark immediately vanishes.
You can only have one creature marked at a time by this feature. The mark can be removed early by the effect of a Remove Curse spell or similar magic. The mark is also removed if the target is no longer on the same plane as you.
Mastery of Death (FIFY)
Beginning at 11th level, you use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can expend 1 ki point (no action required) to have 1 hit point instead. A creature marked by your Curse of Long Death takes any remaining damage as normal.
Veil of Demise (FIFY, new feature)
Starting at 17th level, your extraction of vitality veils you in darkness, dooming the souls of those around you. While you have temporary hit points from your Touch of Death feature, you gain the following benefits:
Design Notes
General: My main design direction is to try and make the Way of the Long Death monk mechanically play into the "lifesteal" idea of games. Its primary Touch of Death feature is very nice (awarding temp HP for finishing off enemies) so I have left this unchanged.
Mastery of Death: I decided to move this feature to 6th level, removing Hour of Reaping. Since this ability is limited by your number of ki points, giving it at a lower level shouldnt be a problem, as you have less to play with per rest. That being said, I feel like this ability (even in its original place) may be too strong, so I am toying with limiting its usage to once per turn. It can still be used multiple times per round, but will not be able to stave off things like multiattack.
Veil of Demise: This is a new 11th level feature meant to build off of your Touch of Death feature and give the character a way to produce burst damage to potential "refill" their tempHP. The idea is that while you have your temp HP you can more effectively chase down your next target and even choose to channel the life stolen into your attacks (which if used strategically could reduce a creature to 0 HP and immediately give you back you temp HP).
Curse of Long Death: I am not a big fan of Touch of Long Death, as it feels like a less effective Quivering Palm, requiring your full action to use and even if you apply 5 ki points you would only be dealing as much damage as Quivering Palm's successful save condition. In this way I designed Curse of the Long Death as a marking feature to allow you to transfer excess damage to the marked target. The most ideal scenario for this ability is you are sitting at 1 HP and mark a target on your turn. On the next turn, a creature damages you and all but 1 of that damage is transferred to the marked target. You then use your Mastery of Death feature to remain at 1 HP and, if the marked target is reduced to 0 HP by this damage, you also gain temp HP from your Touch of Death feature.
Version 3 - 2024 Rules
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
1. Mastery of Death. I don't think that you should add the limitation of once per turn because the whole point is that these monks can keep escaping death. Also, by limiting it, you would be severely nerfing these monks' abilities to last as a front-liner. It also weakens your 17th-level feature.
2. Veil of demise. I think this is a cool new feat, but would advise two changes. 1. I don't think that being able to move through creatures and objects should be part of this feat since this ghost-like ability would make it more like the phantom rogue and the purpose of these monks is to avoid death entirely, not embrace undeath. 2. I think that rather than forcing the player to expend the temporary hitpoints that this feat relies upon, it would be better to say something like "as long as you have these temporary hitpoints, your melee weapon attacks deal additional necrotic damage equal to your wisdom modifier."
3. Curse of the Long Death. To me, the original 17th-level feature always seemed too much like the Way of the Open Hand 17th-level feature. I really like how you designed this feature and the interesting combat strategies it could lead to.
1. Thats a fair point. I have always felt their 11th level feature was pretty strong, so I wanted to play with weakening it a little with the limitation, but I agree it will synergize better closer to its original form.
2.1 I agree with removing the passing through objects effect. When I was originally designing the effect, I started by basing it off of the Avatar of Death but as I played with it more I started to move away with that. I want to come up with some other benefit they can have to improve their ability to act like a reaper and more efficiently "hunt down" other doomed creatures. Perhaps while covered by the veil the monk can have some approximate read on how much health an enemy has so they can more efficiently use Touch of Death. That being said, many DMs have their own ways of describing enemies being close to death already, so it may not be necessary. Got play with some ideas.
2.2 One thing about this feature is that it does not cost any ki, it is just a flat bonus you get when you have the temp HP, which I think helps to make this monk more ki-efficient but also means considerations need to be taken in limiting its power. What I like about the way I have the effect now is you are choosing to lessen your protections and how long you have the bonus in order to deal more damage. The monk can take two different approach: slowly apply smaller amounts of extra damage to keep the veil up longer or give it up to deal reliable burst damage (i.e. a flat amount that wont fluctuate with rolls). The decision I want to be going through the player's mind is "If I give up some of my temp HP to deal more damage, what are the chances I will reduce the creature to 0 hit points and reset my temp HP back to full?" Overall, since its a free bonus to having temp HP I think its a fair tradeoff to give up some of that extra protection for extra damage in critical moments.
3. I agree. There are definitely some fun distinctions between them, but I wanted to try and design something more unique.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I have made a new version (in the original post to this thread). The main changes are to move Curse of Long Death to 6th level, Mastery of Death back to 11th level, and then Veil of Demise up to 17th level.
Curse of Long Death is an ability that will lend itself to being more useful at lower levels, as you will be more likely to drop to 0 HP to begin with and the temp HP from Touch of Death wont be too strong. By having it come before Mastery of Death, it will be more situational for the first 5 levels or so, but still nice to have if you are in a deadly fight where you expect to go down.
With Mastery of Death coming afterwards, this gives a buff to your Curse of Long Death (making sitting at low HP more sustainable) while still being strong on its own.
By moving Veil of Demise to 17th level, I can have it play off of all of the features that came before. In this way, I gave it a benefit that while you are close to a creature you have marked, you become more Ki-efficient, reflecting your ability to damage, maneuver around, and dodge a creature you have marked for death. My only worry is that free Flurry of Blows may be too powerful, even for a capstone feature, so I may end up reducing it to just Step of the Wind and Patient Defense.
Thoughts?
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I like it. Each new ability now stacks with the one before it very nicely.
I'm just seeing a 17th-level monk with this subclass who decides to strap rats all over his body. One of them is marked so the monk can always use Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind for free. The others allow the monk to just constantly expend all of the temp hp as damage because if the blow doesn't kill the target, they just kill a rat to get it all back.
This would be awesome and I really want to try it now.
That lies right in the grey zone between "exploit" and "player creativity", exactly where you want wacky ideas in D&D, lol
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Heya, I just stumbled onto this and while I really like it, I am a little concerned that it relies so heavily on getting a killing blow to begin with.
Post level 11 the monk really doesn't keep up with the other classes in terms of damage, which is a problem in and of itself, but against a single enemy or even just multiple tough ones I could see this becoming a problem in the later levels.
I can't help but feel like there ought to be a way to proc Touch of Death without necessarily landing a killing blow. Perhaps when it crits?
I'm more worried about the fact that if you mark a target with your Curse of Long Death and the monster has a higher priority target, you basically don't have a lvl 6 subclass feature.
Hey! I make (what I believe to be, could use some feedback) good homebrew!
Click here!
Please tell me what you think!
Thanks for the more recent feedback, that being said the version posted at the start of the thread is 2 years old at this point. Since then, and since the release of the 2024 rules, I have taken the chance to update my revised concepts to better play with some of the new features the monk gets. Ill post it here if anyone is interested.
Warrior of Long Death (2024)
Monks following the path of the Long Death are obsessed with the meaning and mechanics of dying. They capture creatures and prepare elaborate experiments to capture, record, and understand the moments of their demise. They then use this knowledge to guide their understanding of martial arts, yielding a deadly fighting style.
Level 3: Touch of Death
Your study of death allows you to extract vitality from another creature as it nears its demise. When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your Wisdom modifier + your Monk level. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can remove 5 or more Temporary Hit Points that you have. For every 5 Temporary Hit Points removed this way, the target takes extra Necrotic damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts Die.
Level 3: Unnatural Metabolism
Whenever you use your Uncanny Metabolism feature, do not roll your Martial Arts Die. You instead regain a number of Hit Points equal to your Monk level plus the highest number possible for your Martial Arts Die. For example, at Monk level 8 you would regain 16 Hit Points, instead of rolling 1d8 and adding 8 to it.
Level 6: Hour of Reaping
You gain the ability to unsettle or terrify those around you, for your soul has been touched by the shadow of death. As a Magic action, each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you that can see you must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature is be Frightened of you until the end of your next turn. An affected creature can use an Action to repeat its Wisdom saving throw, ending the effect early on a success.
Whenever you deal damage with your Unarmed Strike against a creature which failed its save against this feature, you can expend two Focus Points to extend the duration of this feature by 1 minute for that creature.
Level 11: Mastery of Death
You use your familiarity with death to escape its grasp. When you would drop to 0 Hit Points, you can expend 1 Focus Point to drop to 1 Hit Point instead.
Level 17: Reaper’s Focus
Your Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind gain the following benefits.
Flurry of Blows. You do not need to expend a Focus Point to use Flurry of Blows, provided each Unarmed Strike you make targets a creature that is Frightened of you.
Patient Defense. When you expend a Focus Point to use Patient Defense, do not roll your Martial Arts Die twice for determining the number of Temporary Hit Points you gain. Instead, you gain 25 Temporary Hit Points.
Step of the Wind. When you expend a Focus Point to use Step of the Wind, you gain a Flying speed equal to your Speed until the end of your turn.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!