Way of Water

Followers of the way of water are both calm and serene as well as quick and deadly.  Monks of this order understand that water can be found and exploited in many surprising ways.

-Disciple of Water:  At 3rd level, your connection to the life giving waters of the world grant you amazing powers.  You gain the following benefits:

     -Amphibious:  You gain a swim speed equal to your base speed.  If you already have a swim speed, your swim speed increases by 10ft.  Alternatively, you can spend 1 Ki point to walk on the water’s surface for 10 minutes.

     -Frigid Strikes:  By focusing your Ki you can choose for your unarmed attacks to deal cold damage instead of bludgeoning.

-Ice Veins:  At 6th level, your increasing Ki control allows you to drop the temperature of water.  You gain the following benefits:

     -Razor Ice:  You can spend 1 Ki point to cause ice to sheathe your limbs or weapons.  This causes your weapon or unarmed attack to deal additional cold damage equal to your martial arts die.  This effect lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

     -Icicle:  when you take the attack action you can replace any of your unarmed or weapon attacks with a dart of ice. This projectile deals cold damage equal to your martial arts die with a range of 60 feet.

-Scalding Breath:  At 11th level, you gain the ability to superheat water and unleash it as a scalding breath weapon.  As an action, you exhale searing hot steam in a 30ft cone.  Each creature in that area must make a Dexterity saving throw against your Ki save DC, taking 3d4 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

     You can increase this damage by spending Ki points.  Each point you spend, up to a maximum of 3, increase the damage by 3d4.

-Blood Worker:  At 17th level you gain a limited, but potent, command of the vital waters that fill mortal shells.  As a bonus action you may spend 3 Ki points to use one of the following abilities:

     -Blood Puppet:  You exert control over the fluids in an opponents body and may force your will over them.  You learn the Command spell.  You can also choose to disrupt the flow of a body to cast Blindness or Deafness.  You can spend additional Ki points to cast Command or Blindness/Deafness as higher level spells.  Each additional Ki point you spend increases the spell’s level by 1.  The maximum number of Ki points (2 plus any additional points) that you can spend on these spells equals half your monk level.

     -Hemorrhage:  In a gore filled show of violence you rip the blood from an enemies arteries and veins.  A target within 30ft of you must make a Constitution saving throw against your Ki save DC, taking 8d12 necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.  Once you use this feature you must finish a short rest before you can use it again.

     These abilities do not effect enemies that do not possess blood or other bodily fluids.

Another solid subclass! I can't think of too many critiques, but I'll try...

For the Icicle feature, I feel like it needs a few more details. I feel like the mechanics are fairly easy to assume, but it doesn't explicitly spell out exactly how it should work. Considering you already put Thorn Whip as a spell, maybe it would make more sense to just swap this with Ice Knife.

I like scalding breath... it's fairly low damage, but I like that you can use it at its lowest level without spending Ki... it's definitely something you're not going to use consistently, but for those moments where a group of weaker enemies are bunched up together it seems like it would be a lot of fun.

I think the Blood Puppet feature needs a second pass just to clean it up. I get the basic idea, but it feels like one of those abilities I need to double-check every time I use it to make sure I remember exactly how it works. I like Hemmorrhage pretty much as-is, though. It feels appropriately powerful for a 17th level feature, but not so powerful that it will break the game by having it come back on a short rest.

I just rolled some 3d4s and got 7, 5, 6, and 5. This wouldn't even kill most CR 1/8 creatures and I don't think it would see a lot of use at level 11+. I think designing it more like the Ascended Dragon breath would work better in play. Basing the dice on the martial arts die helps it scale a bit and it still gives you some free uses before you need to spend ki.

I'm also not really sold on Scalding Breath in general. I get that it's a different way to use water, but dealing fire damage just feels off to me (and it's not a great damage type to boot). Between this and ice veins this might feel more like a hot/cold theme rather than a water theme.

Shape Water would give a player a bit more to roleplay with outside of combat. In my Four Elements monk I let the water monk cast this as a bonus action, and add a new way to use it that has a lot of the same effects as Ice Veins.

Part of my thinking behind scalding breath is that you see water casters blast out ice all the time but you never really get a chance to see the other end of the temp spectrum.

if you pump the feature full of Ki points you end up with a total of 12d4, even the basic 3d4 has a min of 3 and max of 12 against multiple enemies….butttt when looking back on it it does seem on the underwhelming side.

Made a few revisions to my 3rd and 6th level abilities that might make this a bit more cohesive