Some families are broken by war, plague, or foul deeds. Some are never fully realized, with orphan creating orphan and parents abandoning their children at birth. Some families, however, span for generations - dynasties older than kingdoms, watched over by mighty ancestral spirits. You come from one of these great families. While growing up, you learned to call upon these ancient spirits guarding your family, harnessing their energy to further your martial pursuits. Over time, you have gained knowledge about each of these spirits, and can now attune your physical body to your family's guardians.
I hope you guys will take a look at it and give me some feedback!
First of all! Using intelligence is cool, but makes the Monk m.a.d. In a bad way. They use dex for their attacks, wis for their class feature saving throws, and then need int for their subclass.
It would be better to make these features Wis based.
Second: the abilities are awesome. The animal marks. Well, 'animals' given the dragon addition. Really the biggest issue is the fact you loose the passive if you invoke them. The Ox doesn't let you spend more Ki, and 10 becomes negligible at high levels. I'd find a way to let the abilities spend more Ki to improve their effects.
And rather then having the passive be unusable until a long rest, I'd let them keep the passive but can only invoke the marks x amount of times per long rest. They pick from their available marks, letting them adapt to situations as needex without the fear they might need to fly in the next encounter too, so they should save it.
On that note, eagel is *incredibly* powerful compared to the other abilities. Most of them are 1st level spells, but this is a faster, non concentration version of the Fly spell. Fly gives a 50 foot fly speed for 1 min, with concentration, for a 3rd level slot.
This ability lets a monk, who's speed is already 35+ at level 3, fly for 70 feet a round as normal movement. I'd figure something else out for the Eagle. Maybe follow how the Barbarian totem uses the eagle instead?
Level 11 feature is useless. Monks get proficiency in all saves at 14. Giving them an early int save is a waste of a feature.
For now, that's all I got. I really love the theme of this subclass though!
I actually think that using INT in this subclass is a fair-enough tradeoff. Choices are good, and in this case, you can choose to boost your INT/DEX to gain more from your subclass rather than WIS/DEX to gain more from your class. If you can get all 3 to 20, well....great! But I think that there's something to be gained from having choices in D&D. Besides - if you're worried about monk ability saves, there are other subclasses that are less M.A.D.
I went back and forth with the Eagle mark, and ultimately may go with increasing the initially Ki cost to 3. That makes it restricting enough at low levels, without making it useless. I'll compare to Barbarian Eagle Totem though, nice idea.
Ox should scale, I agree.
The 11th level feature was admittedly an oversight on my part. That feature was a survivor from a different Int-based subclass. I'll change it.
The passive removal IMO is a fair enough tradeoff. If you compare this to many of the other monk subclasses - many of them have far fewer bells & whistles than this one, and I thought the removal was a way to keep them balanced. And also, you have the 17th-level ability which allows you to keep the passives.
But look at it this way. A monk needs their dex for attack and AC. Wisdom for their class saves and AC. Constitution for their HP.
Sacrificing any of this is brutal. Using a standard array, they'll never get an ability score to 20 without leaving one of the now 4 abilities at 0. That's low subclass features, low AC and either main class saves/attacks, or low HP. It makes this class undesirable unless you've been lucky enough to roll amazing.
That's really the only big thing I'd like to stress.
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Hello!
I've been working on a homebrew subclass for the Monk - Way of the Ancestral Spirits.
A little snippet -
Some families are broken by war, plague, or foul deeds. Some are never fully realized, with orphan creating orphan and parents abandoning their children at birth. Some families, however, span for generations - dynasties older than kingdoms, watched over by mighty ancestral spirits. You come from one of these great families. While growing up, you learned to call upon these ancient spirits guarding your family, harnessing their energy to further your martial pursuits. Over time, you have gained knowledge about each of these spirits, and can now attune your physical body to your family's guardians.
I hope you guys will take a look at it and give me some feedback!
Alright, oh boy.
First of all! Using intelligence is cool, but makes the Monk m.a.d. In a bad way. They use dex for their attacks, wis for their class feature saving throws, and then need int for their subclass.
It would be better to make these features Wis based.
Second: the abilities are awesome. The animal marks. Well, 'animals' given the dragon addition. Really the biggest issue is the fact you loose the passive if you invoke them. The Ox doesn't let you spend more Ki, and 10 becomes negligible at high levels. I'd find a way to let the abilities spend more Ki to improve their effects.
And rather then having the passive be unusable until a long rest, I'd let them keep the passive but can only invoke the marks x amount of times per long rest. They pick from their available marks, letting them adapt to situations as needex without the fear they might need to fly in the next encounter too, so they should save it.
On that note, eagel is *incredibly* powerful compared to the other abilities. Most of them are 1st level spells, but this is a faster, non concentration version of the Fly spell. Fly gives a 50 foot fly speed for 1 min, with concentration, for a 3rd level slot.
This ability lets a monk, who's speed is already 35+ at level 3, fly for 70 feet a round as normal movement. I'd figure something else out for the Eagle. Maybe follow how the Barbarian totem uses the eagle instead?
Level 11 feature is useless. Monks get proficiency in all saves at 14. Giving them an early int save is a waste of a feature.
For now, that's all I got. I really love the theme of this subclass though!
Thanks for the feedback!
I actually think that using INT in this subclass is a fair-enough tradeoff. Choices are good, and in this case, you can choose to boost your INT/DEX to gain more from your subclass rather than WIS/DEX to gain more from your class. If you can get all 3 to 20, well....great! But I think that there's something to be gained from having choices in D&D. Besides - if you're worried about monk ability saves, there are other subclasses that are less M.A.D.
I went back and forth with the Eagle mark, and ultimately may go with increasing the initially Ki cost to 3. That makes it restricting enough at low levels, without making it useless. I'll compare to Barbarian Eagle Totem though, nice idea.
Ox should scale, I agree.
The 11th level feature was admittedly an oversight on my part. That feature was a survivor from a different Int-based subclass. I'll change it.
The passive removal IMO is a fair enough tradeoff. If you compare this to many of the other monk subclasses - many of them have far fewer bells & whistles than this one, and I thought the removal was a way to keep them balanced. And also, you have the 17th-level ability which allows you to keep the passives.
All in all, great feedback, thanks!
It's ultimately your choice!
But look at it this way. A monk needs their dex for attack and AC. Wisdom for their class saves and AC. Constitution for their HP.
Sacrificing any of this is brutal. Using a standard array, they'll never get an ability score to 20 without leaving one of the now 4 abilities at 0. That's low subclass features, low AC and either main class saves/attacks, or low HP. It makes this class undesirable unless you've been lucky enough to roll amazing.
That's really the only big thing I'd like to stress.