Base Class: Monk
An adherent to the Way of the Keen Edge trains extensively with weapons until they become an extension of themselves. With sufficient training, Ki flows through both weapon and body as they move in perfect harmony to block, parry and strike in fluid motions that are equal parts beautiful and deadly.
To walk the path of the keen edge is to be as much a philosopher as a warrior, for it is not enough to know simply how to use a weapon, but when and why it should be used – to be trained in this path, an aspirant must first prove they can abide by a moral code, and stand by their actions without doubt or remorse.
Path of the Keen Edge
3rd-level Way of the Keen Edge feature
Your special martial arts training leads you to master the use of certain weapons. You gain the following benefits:
Mastered Weapons. Choose two types of weapons to be your mastered weapons: one melee weapon and one ranged weapon. Each of these can be any simple or martial weapon that lacks the heavy and special properties. Your ranged choice may be the longbow. You gain proficiency with these weapons if you don’t already have it and they are considered Monk Weapons for you. In addition, when you use your free object interaction to stow one mastered weapon, you may also draw one other mastered weapon. You may choose one additional mastered melee or ranged weapon type at 6th, 11th and 17th level.
Agile Parry. While holding a mastered melee weapon you can use Deflect Missiles to deflect non-magical melee attacks.
Rapid Strikes. Your unarmed strikes may inflict the same base damage type as one mastered melee weapon you are holding.
Sharpen the Edge. As a bonus action during your turn you may spend one Ki point to focus your energy into a mastered weapon that you are holding. For one minute, the sharpened weapon gains a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. If the weapon already has a fixed bonus to attack or damage rolls you must choose which to use (they do not stack).
Way of the Brush. You gain proficiency with your choice of calligrapher's supplies or painter's supplies.
One With the Weapon
6th-level Way of the Keen Edge feature
You can extend more of your Ki into your mastered weapons, granting you the following benefits:
Magic Weapons. Your attacks with your mastered weapons count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Deft Strike. When you hit a target with a sharpened weapon, you can spend 1 Ki point to cause the attack to deal extra damage to the target equal to your Martial Arts die.
Empowered Parry. You may now use Agile Parry to deflect magical melee attacks.
Improved Sharpen the Edge. You may spend two Ki when sharpening a weapon to gain a +2 bonus instead of the normal +1.
Flowing Steel
11th-level Way of the Keen Edge feature
Your Ki flows effortlessly through your weapons, granting the following benefits:
Deadly Flurry. Rapid Strikes made during a Flurry of Blows while holding a sharpened melee weapon may add the weapon's sharpened attack and damage bonus.
Legendary Parry. While holding a sharpened melee weapon, you may use Agile Parry to deflect any type of attack.
Stillness of Body. As a bonus action at the start of your turn you may reduce your speed to zero and gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls on your sharpened ranged weapon attacks until the end of the turn.
Superior Sharpen the Edge. You may now spend three Ki points when sharpening a weapon to gain a +3 bonus instead of the normal +1. Your weapon(s) now remain sharpened for 10 minutes.
Unerring Accuracy
17th-level Way of the Keen Edge feature
Your mastery of weapons grants you extraordinary accuracy. After missing with a mastered weapon attack, you may choose to re-roll the attack. You may do this only once per turn.
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Posted Dec 28, 2022I’m actually using your class for a character currently and find it incredibly fun and not op as stated before. I would say this makes it comparable to other classes and be a contender as the strongest average subclass, barely beating out samurai.
There can be more flavor around possibly making their own weapons or improving weapons they find and giving them an buff towards being a sharpened weapon, example being: Forged or improved weapons can be sharpened for 1 ki point less than the initial cost. So if I want to give this improved weapon a +2 it’ll only cost 1 Ki instead of 2. You can also say it costs 100 go and requires a long rest and blacksmith tools or a forge to complete this improvement process. It gives that lvl 6 monk a bit more room with their Ki in a battle so they won’t have to waste a third of it towards sharpening their weapon.
Another addition would be a feature, possibly a 6th or 11th lvl, that gives the choice for the parry and if the damage is reduced to 0 you can use 1 Ki point to deal damage equal to either their original damage plus your martial die, or your weapon plus your martial die. Giving the feeling that not only did you stop this attack but damage them back. Obviously this’ll work far less as you lvl up just like deflect missile but during the lvl 6-10 areas of the game you can reliably keep up this rhythm and never feel like you can only do damage during your turn, unlike most martial classes.
I think these changes cover the lacking areas for Ki management and character enjoyment improve significantly while staying well clear of being OP. I’ve play tested with these add ons and I feel like I’m actually able to keep up with an fighter and barbarian while not doing their insane amount of damage but instead controlling one or two creatures with my stunning strikes and parries, or when fighting a boss I’m able to keep up the damage with this free sharpened weapon and using this one extra Ki point as another stunning strike or flurry of blows. In the end you’ve made this subclass a lot better than the original and entirely more enjoyable and I thank you for making a non mercy monk fun.
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Posted Jun 10, 2022You only get one reaction per round; so even with Patient Defence it's fairly easy for a Monk to be hit more than twice and only be able to reduce the damage of one, especially since Monks have comparatively low AC (and this version of agile parry is trading from a nearly permanent +2 AC).
I playtested this for a while on a character before releasing, and he still ended up taking plenty of damage, even when using Patient Defence. Stronger lone enemies with multiattack, or multiple weaker enemies will quickly blow through the defence, and actually enemies start getting multiattack sooner than most people think (iirc the earliest is CR 2-4), so even fairly small groups of weaker enemies can overwhelm you. It also has limits to how much damage it can absorb against higher level enemies (against whom the 50% reduction of Uncanny Dodge can actually still be superior, especially since it has no requirements about how and when you can use it). Against weaker attacks you're limited in how much damage you can actually ignore by the strength of the attack itself (get hit five times for 5 damage each, you can only ignore 5 damage, and still take the remaining 20).
I don't believe it's OP, it's just very good at going one-on-one with enemies that can't overwhelm it with attacks, and even if you use Patient Defence to maximise that, you're burning Ki and sacrificing damage of your own to do that, and Monk has no way to force an enemy to fight them over attacking someone else.
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Posted May 8, 2022So, it's an interesting version of the kensei but it's clearly op. The Agile Parry basically reflects every attack (at early levels you can use Deflect Missile at both ranged and melee attacks) and at late levels u can Deflect missile any attack. Combined with Patient Defense u are unkillable (except u know fireball, oh wait evasion) Also at 17th level u can auomatically hit once per turn.
Some of the additions are nice like Stillness of Body, Sharpen the Edge and Deadly Flurry but overall it is OP-
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Posted Nov 8, 2021This sub-class is a remastered version of the Way of the Kensei with the following notable differences:
I'm not going to say that this is better than Way of the Kensei, as personally I still love that sub-class as it is; but this version is intended to avoid some of the scaling pitfalls that Kensei can fall into, especially in some campaigns where Sharpen the Blade can be obsolete by the time you get it (due to magic weapons), as well as addressing some of the common complaints regarding the feel of using the old style Agile Parry (downgrading a weapon attack to an unarmed strike), still using unarmed strikes, and just the name Kensei as well.
While this sub-class can absolutely be used to build a sword-focused Monk, like the Kensei it's still intended to be used as a mixed range Monk (bow and blade) as it is good at both and switches easily between the two.