Way of the Astral Self seems like it would be really cool until you actually read it. I feel like subclass abilities should all be very impactful, but this does next to nothing. At 6th level, you get the ability to talk loud?? And advantage on insight checks?? Body of the Astral Self (11th level) literally gives you a nerfed version of Deflect Energy that you can't redirect, so who cares that it's two levels earlier, that will literally become completely obsolete and useless in two levels. The extra martial arts die of damage is nice, but still. And the big capstone ability is that you get to make unarmed strikes three times???? I've been doing that for seven levels already! I get that the point is you don't have to spend focus points, but it costs five focus points to do that, so unless I have a combat where I use six bonus actions to make unarmed strikes, what is the point? and even so, I have seventeen focus points. I won't complain about a +2 to AC though. Regardless, this whole subclass feels incredibly redundant with the monk class in general and it's annoying to read because I feel like the fantasy of it is very cool.
Keep in mind that Way of the Astral Self was from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and thus was designed to work with the 2014 version of the Monk class. Deflect Energy didn't exist at all back then, nor did the level 10 Heightened Focus feature that gives you an extra attack with Flurry of Blows.
What you're seeing is less of a "sick joke" and more of elements of this subclass having been brought into the redesigned version of the base class years later.
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pronouns: he/she/they
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Way of the Astral Self seems like it would be really cool until you actually read it. I feel like subclass abilities should all be very impactful, but this does next to nothing. At 6th level, you get the ability to talk loud?? And advantage on insight checks?? Body of the Astral Self (11th level) literally gives you a nerfed version of Deflect Energy that you can't redirect, so who cares that it's two levels earlier, that will literally become completely obsolete and useless in two levels. The extra martial arts die of damage is nice, but still. And the big capstone ability is that you get to make unarmed strikes three times???? I've been doing that for seven levels already! I get that the point is you don't have to spend focus points, but it costs five focus points to do that, so unless I have a combat where I use six bonus actions to make unarmed strikes, what is the point? and even so, I have seventeen focus points. I won't complain about a +2 to AC though. Regardless, this whole subclass feels incredibly redundant with the monk class in general and it's annoying to read because I feel like the fantasy of it is very cool.
Keep in mind that Way of the Astral Self was from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and thus was designed to work with the 2014 version of the Monk class. Deflect Energy didn't exist at all back then, nor did the level 10 Heightened Focus feature that gives you an extra attack with Flurry of Blows.
What you're seeing is less of a "sick joke" and more of elements of this subclass having been brought into the redesigned version of the base class years later.
pronouns: he/she/they