The Warrior of the Elements Monk in the 2024 Player's Handbook lets you channel the power of water, earth, fire, and air (and lightning, acid, and thunder) to enhance your martial arts mastery. This subclass builds upon the legacy of the Way of the Four Elements Monk from the 2014 Player's Handbook, but offers a more streamlined approach to unleash your inner elemental warrior.
Let's take a look at the new Warrior of the Elements Monk subclass in the 2024 Player's Handbook!
- Elemental Attunement — Level 3
- Manipulate Elements — Level 3
- Elemental Burst — Level 6
- Stride of the Elements — Level 11
- Elemental Epitome — Level 17
Explore the New Monk
The 2024 Monk class has seen more prominent changes compared to most classes in the 2024 Player's Handbook. Their features more efficiently use Focus Points (previously Ki Points), they are able to regain their resources more easily, and they're offered more options that aren't tied to this expendable resource.
This revamping is extended to the new Warrior of the Elements subclass, as well as the other three Monk subclasses included in the 2024 Player's Handbook, Warrior of Mercy, Warrior of Shadow, and Warrior of the Open Hand.
Warrior of the Elements Monk Features
Elemental Attunement — Level 3
This feature is the core power of the Warrior of the Elements Monk. It infuses your Unarmed Strikes with elemental energy, extends your reach to 10 feet, allows you to output Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage, and provides the potential to toss your enemies around the battlefield.
Monks who want to throw elemental hands as soon as they can and for as long as they can will be happy to hear that this is an extremely efficient feature. You can enter Elemental Attunement for 1 Focus Point at the start of your turn, so you're not wasting an action or Bonus Action, and this state lasts 10 minutes or until you have the Incapacitated condition.
A Disciple No Longer
This is a complete redesign from the previous Way of the Four Elements Monk in the 2014 Player's Handbook, which was built around learning various Elemental Disciplines, most of which came in the form of spells.
This change was meant to simplify the elemental Monk and make their Focus Point expenditure more effective. Instead of having to spend a handful of points every turn to use your elemental powers, you only have to activate it once, leaving more points to do more fun Monk stuff.
Unarmed Striker
Seeing as Elemental Attunement only works with Unarmed Strikes, this feature means your Warrior of the Elements Monk will be more likely to be an unarmed fighter rather than a Monk weapon wielder.
Striking out with with elemental-infused punches and kicks will be even more fun for the 2024 Monk, as their Martial Arts dice have been upgraded at each level. Now, level 1 monks dish out 1d6 with each Unarmed Strike. Their Martial Arts dice max out at 1d12 at level 17.
Reach Out and Grab 'Em
If you're looking to spice things up, the new Grappler feat combines exceptionally well with the Warrior of the Elements' extended reach and the 2024 Monk's ability to grapple using Dexterity. With the Grappler feat, you can attempt to grapple a creature you hit as part of the same Attack action you use to make an Unarmed Strike.
Seeing as being Grappled reduces a creature's Speed to 0, you can easily hold them out of reach and wail on them with your elemental strikes, which you'll now get Advantage on thanks to Grappler.
On top of being a mechanically powerful ability, this adds to the power fantasy of wielding the elements against your foes. You can flavor your grapples to be temporary ice chunks that hold your foes in place or swirls of air that catch your enemies and prevent them from moving.
Manipulate Elements — Level 3
This feature gives you access to Elementalism, a new cantrip in the 2024 Player's Handbook. This is kind of the utility knife of your elemental monk and will allow you to channel water, earth, fire, and air into minor effects. You can create a breeze, light candles, and conjure water when you need access to a certain element. Good for setting the mood, but you might need a bit more firepower if you're thinking of burning down a fortified stronghold made of stone.
Elemental Burst — Level 6
At the cost of only 2 Focus Points and a Magic action, you'll be happy you've got Elemental Burst when you need to break out the flashy, kaboom-y side of elemental combat.
This feature allows you to detonate a 20-foot radius sphere explosion of Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage. Targets in the sphere that fail their Dexterity saving throw take damage equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts dice, which is a d8 at level 6.
Elemental Sustainability
While it might not be as damaging as a Fireball yet, this is just the beginning of your bursting career. As your Martial Arts dice increases, so too will the damage you output with this ability, maxing out at 3d12 at level 17. At that point, you'll have enough Focus Points to chuck more elemental blasts than a major-league pitcher.
Expanding Your Toolbox
Monks don't always have much to do when they're far away from their enemies or have ways to capitalize when their enemies have bunched up. Elemental Burst solves both these issues by giving you an AoE option with a 120-foot range, so feel free to sit in the backline and blast away if you're low on Hit Points.
You also have the solid upside of being able to choose from five different damage options each time you use this feature, which can help you avoid resistances and capitalize on weaknesses.
Stride of the Elements — Level 11
This upgrades your Elemental Attunement, providing a Fly speed and Swim speed equal to your Speed while it's active.
While this feature may mechanically give you a Fly speed and Swim speed, in my head, it's so much more. Part of the power fantasy of this subclass is allowing you to imagine your character incorporating elemental powers into everything they do. And, of course, this includes making an ice slide or using jets of fire to propel themselves across the battlefield.
Also, thanks to Unarmored Movement, this means you'll likely have a baseline Fly and Swim speed of 50 feet when you receive this feature.
Nice Moves, Twinkletoes
Having a reach of 10 feet on your Unarmed Strikes plus a consistent Fly speed will make you almost impossible to pin down in combat. Plus, you have Elemental Burst that you can rain down on your opponents from on high.
If your enemies ever get too close, you can use Step of the Wind and Dash away. You can even bring your friends along by level 10—no flying bison required.
Elemental Epitome — Level 17
This well-named feature is the epitome of your Elemental Attunement. It provides a defensive, movement-based, and offensive boost to your kit and really makes you feel like a master of the elements.
First, you gain resistance to Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage and you can change which damage type your resistance applies to at the start of each of your turns.
Next, your Step of the Wind gets a buff, allowing you to travel 20 feet further (while flying or swimming, I may remind you) and dish out elemental damage equal to one of your Martial Arts dice to any creature you get within 5 feet of.
Last, when you hit with an Unarmed Strike, you can deal extra damage equal to one of your Martial Arts dice once per turn. Seeing as your Elemental Attunement comes with elemental damage baked in, this extra damage is the same type of element you've chosen.
Master All the Elements!
If you've ever wanted to ferociously attack with blasts of fire, weather damage like a rock, dance around the battlefield like a breeze, or hamper your enemies with water, the new Warrior of the Elements Monk in the 2024 Player's Handbook is for you. Its streamlined approach, combined with the buffs from the base Monk class, means you'll never run out of cool, elementally-fueled things to do. Plus, you'll get to channel all the elements, not just one, even if you don't have blue tattoos or glowing white eyes!
We're excited to share more of what you can expect from the 2024 core rulebooks, so stay tuned for additional guides previewing the 2024 Player's Handbook, which is releasing September 17!
Ready to see what's next for D&D? The 2024 Player’s Handbook, 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, and 2024 Monster Manual are all available for preorder on the D&D Beyond marketplace. Plus, you can save $60 and get exclusive digital bonuses when you preorder the Digital & Physical Core Rulebook Bundle!
Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 10, 2024Does the feature that allows you to deal Force damage mean you can do so with the Elemental strikes?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 10, 2024That’s what we were discussing earlier. I don’t think so.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024Sorry, I didn't see that; kinda new to these forums.
That said, both features say they apply to the monk's unarmed strikes, and neither say they can't both work at the same time. I don't feel any DM would rule against it.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024Maybe but the flavor text and Jeremy Crawford stated in the monk video that the extended reach portion of elemental strikes was due to the monk using the elements to reach out to attack, not by having stretchy arms like Mr. Fantastic or One Piece. Just like the benders in Avatar the Last Airbender the elements monk uses the elements to attack. Bludgeoning and Force damage are not considered elemental attacks and elemental strikes specifically state that the elemental types allowed are acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder. I suppose that a DM can rule that bludgeoning and force damage can be used with elemental strikes but, for me, that would kind of defeat the point of using the elements since you don’t really need any other damage type if you can just use force damage as almost no monsters are resistant or immune to force damage.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024I think you can play the subclass both as avatar and dbz inspiration. The abilites implements this. So this is kinda a success. A SUB-class. Adding flavour.
The 3d12 force dmg is a bit low tho to the point I dont think people will ever use it.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024Facts
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024I'm seeing a lot of dumb stuff here.
A level 3 spell slot fireball against 2 targets does comparable average damage as a monk that uses 3 focus points to burst then flurry. If you have more than 2 targets, it becomes even more extreme. Also the Monk feature doesn't mention a save for half here, despite that text being in the playtest. Which means no damage on a successful save. This means the average damage is ACTUALLY lower, with a DC19, vs a +0 save, your damage drops by 5% to 15.675. It's -5% x their bonus. Fireball by comparison, drops 2.5% per point, making it 27.3 on average at the same DC. In general, you can expect a wizard to have int +1 or +2 over a Monk's wisdom until high level, which makes the difference even worse. Another poster pointed out, a monk is likely better off using extra attack. Getting to then next comment
A fireball on a fire resistant target from a level 6 wizard with 18 int against a target with a +0 mod will deal 12.25 on average, a level 6 monk with 16 wisdom will deal 9.45 on average. If the half-damage on successful save text is in the final version, we can expect 11.475 damage from the monk, which is still going to be lower damage until the die becomes a d10, at which point it becomes 12.325. Being a non-magical nature of the ability is noteworthy, especially if your DM uses a lot of counterspells, but that's going to be very DM dependent and there are ways to play around it, but if I had a DM using that many counterspells for it to be relevant without that being spoken about at session 0, I would likely not play at that table as that sounds exceedingly boring. It's also noteworthy for fire immune targets. But while Fireball is the most comparable spell since they become available around the same time, Wizard has other spells that deal other damage types. Scribes wizard can change the damage type of spells(Bludgeoning fireballs anyone?). Evocation wizard adds int to damage, which allows them to tie a level 17 Monk while hitting a target with fire resistance.
Between these two points, when the starts align, when you're fighting 2-3 fire resistant enemies and you drop a burst and punch them twice with a flurry, you finally deal more damage than one of the wizard's level 3 spells. But you probably deal less damage than the Monk who decided to punch 4 times instead, unless the monsters have a ridiculously bad dex save or high AC.
All this said, even if the Elements Monk had no level 6 feature, it's still in a good place. It still has the ability to fly and grapple with reach. And while it'd be difficult to work out the exact numbers, there are some benefits. But I think it's overall just hyper situational. Some of things it does well:
It's a 120 ft range spell with a 20 ft aoe, meaning a level 6 monk could dash, cover 80 ft, then fire a spell that hits 135 feet away, for a total of 215 range covered. It's pretty impressive at that level.
It also offers something against flying enemies from level 6 through 9.
In a target rich environment against enemies with low dexterity, this can out damage extra attack, but overall it's going to be hard to justify losing 2 focus points that could be spent on flurry/stunning strikes/etc for one elemental burst. I don't think this ability will see play in every campaign with an elemental monk, which makes me rate it overall bad. As a bridge between the martial/caster divide, it trips and falls on it's face.
TL;DR: This feature is fairly situational, but you can not use it and this subclass will still be good. It's range does offer opportunities to the monk, but those have diminishing returns and cost resources that can be used for other, better, actions.
Edit:Typos
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024Intesteting changes but man that splashart is ugly as sin
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024"Nice moves, Twinkletoes!"
"Keep your knees high, Twinkletoes!"
"Rock on!"
"What's your fighting name, the 'fancy dancer?' "
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 11, 2024Did you keep in mind that all unarmed strikes and elemental burst increase their damage as they level up, flurry of blows increases to 3 attacks, and that elemental burst can be done significantly more often that a wizard can cast fireball all while not getting more expensive to use these abilities? Wizards have to spend higher level slots to beef up fireball which means they must sacrifice casting higher level spells, monks give up attacking twice for one turn. Spell slots recover every long rest, focus points recover every short rest.
A monk can use elemental burst 3 times at level 6 every short rest, 6 times with uncanny metabolism once per long rest. A wizard can cast fireball 3 times, 4 with arcane recovery every long rest and then have no level 3 spell slots to use for the remainder of the day, which means no 3rd level spells.
The point is that wizards live and die by their spell slots which is why spells are so powerful, the new monk can be completely out of focus points and be just fine. Just because elemental burst doesn’t deal as much damage as a fireball, doesn’t mean it’s a bad skill, because it’s not. I can guarantee that an elements monk will use elemental burst more often than a wizard will use fireball simply because the new monk can be a whole lot more cavalier with their focus points while wizards still get the same amount of spell slots and take a long time to recover. Not everything is about one instance of damage, take the whole picture into account.
Last couple of points. As you mentioned, fireball can be counter spelled which means wizards can be shut down for a turn, elemental burst cannot be countered. Elemental burst is save for half as seen in the UA. Seeing as the subclass barely changed at all from the UA, I don’t think this would be removed as 99.9% of reflex saves are save for half, that’s why evasion is so darn good.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 12, 2024What if your reach is already 10 feet?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 12, 2024Well, the UA says “your reach is 10 ft. greater than normal”. Which means you get. 20 ft. reach. However, the article says “it extends your reach to 10 ft”. In which case you will get no benefit. We’ll have to see what the book says when it comes out.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 12, 2024Time to combine this with Delver Claws, now that they can be considered monk weapons. Enemies are gonna get a Uppercut From the Underground!!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 12, 2024Classic earth bending.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 12, 2024All that looks good except Elemental Burst. Only slightly better than burning hands at low levels (avg 3 damage more) and something you likely wont use at higher level because it takes your action to do for relatively low damage while expending 2 KI points.
Useful at low level like burning hands. Nearly forgotten (like burning hands again) at higher levels as it doesn't scale well.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 15, 2024Why so many Avatar The Last Airbender references
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 16, 2024Optimizers out here missing the purpose of the AOE. Its not to have a spammable fireball replacement so that you stop using your martial arts. Its a way for Monks to overcome the obstacle of a horde of low HP enemies it can't make enough individual attacks to take down. Seriously, why play any other subclass or use youe focus for anything else if they can drop fireballs for free on short rests.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 16, 2024The DnD community thinking they're smart but really missing the point. Also is it not crazy this monk can move people 30ft+ per round from level 3???
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 16, 2024I feel like it goes without saying but you can't justify published balance based on your particular group's homebrew. This very good feature is broken for your table, it sounds like. But that doesn't mean its broken in every table.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 16, 2024So, 2 things about this.
1. Hopefully no one is expecting this thing to do actual fireball levels of damage. However the biggest complaint on the feature is the Ki (or focus points) cost and the full action requirement. At the cost of 2 points each times means you can do this 3 times at level 6. at that level you could be doing 6 flurry of blows for a total of 12 extra attacks as a bonus action on top of the attack action. So either 3d8 times 3 for a total of 9d8 in 3 rounds, or (1d8 times 2 in 6 rounds) 12d8 + (1d8 times 2 in 6 rounds) 12d8 = 24D8. You'd have to hit 3+ enemies each time you use it to justify the action and ki (focus) point economy to exceed the damage you'd do just... punching.
It will really depend on your DM if this will ever get used, because the simple math is more then 2 enemies within 20 feat? Elemental Burst. Less then 3 enemies in 20ft? no elemental burst. But what campaign are you playing? And how smart does your DM has the mobs act? Is it a lot of caves with lots of swarming creatures? Yea, then this feature will feel really good. Is it a lot of open space with a very small amount of high health bosses? Well, when will you ever use this feature?
It even gets worse at level 10, because the dice for damage is the same, but flurry of blows increases by 1 extra attack for a total of 5d8 each round for 10 rounds vs the 3d8 in aoe each round for 5 rounds. (50d8 single target over a longer time, or 15d8 per enemy in 20 feat over 5 rounds(15 times 3 =45, so from level 10+ you need to hit 4 creatures to make it worth)
Let alone the percentages for hitting and missing, 5 chances on a dex save or 10 chances versus AC? Statistically you'd be hard pressed to not take the 10 chances here*. (* it is unknown what a failed save does. If it's half damage on a failed save, then it gets better. If it's 0 damage on a failed save, then it's hot garbage).
Over time you have to hit more and more creatures to make it worth the points and action economy.
2. You're not contesting other sub-classes. You're contesting other monk base features. Flurry of blows? Well shit, I took a magic action not an attack action, none of that. Stunning strike? Well shit, I didn't strike anyone, none of that either. Deflect attacks? Well it takes 1 point so 1 less elemental burst.
You're trading out versatility and potential for AoE damage. It's really hard to justify taking this action.
Is it all bad? Nah.
However, is very dependent on campaign and DM to get any effective use out of.
A third complaint on this would be that it is really not as versatile as the 2014 Way of the Four Elements monk. No defensive casts, No crowd control casts, No utility casts. However I won't make this argument, as the (ki/focus) Point Spread and complication on the 2014 subclass was horrid and a lot of those options got rolled into the subclass for free. It's a pity the 2024 feature doesn't also give something like "elemental wall" and "elemental defense" to be equal in versatility while still being less complex. I personally feel it's a missed opportunity and am slightly disappointed.
------------
*All math has been done without odds calculating of success or failure, the comparisons between Attack vs AC and Cast vs Save gets too messy to calculate from my head. I think the amount of attacks gives you a higher chance to succeed then the dex save does, and it would probably scale better per level, as your hit chance does increase but your spell save doesn't (Could be wrong on this). 10 chances to hit vs 5 chances to save at level 10 seems highly in favor of attacks. Let alone critical strike chances. But this also includes amount of targets hit, which makes it even more complicated.*