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Worst part about the highest level 4 elements monk ability; that movement speed buff that lets you do damage? It’s basically the same thing as Ashardalon’s Stride from Fizzban’s; a 3rd level spell.
@@PackTactics Great points in this video! Why not have the monks gain Ki equal to their monk level + twice their proficiency? I don't get it!?! and let the chains of that stunning strike, FFS! Why only once per turn? I don't care if they lose the range option they added to it! Let the Kensei get the feature to stunning strike on range attacks! it is still targeting Con Saves! Also, the the elements monk should just be like a 1/3caster, like the eldritch knight or the arcane trickster, and also be able to use their Ki to some kind of effect like the sorcerer does! Ki-points metamagics maybe? Maybe let the elements monk pick up party members while they or their target floats on giagantic rocks! that could...ROCK!🎸
Loss of monk weapons also eliminates most of the magic weapon item drops for monks, so unless a DM specifically places a hand wrap or something, monks will not get magic bonuses/effects on their best attack.
@@codebrackerthere are (of course), but my point is would you rather do d4+2 with a dagger, or have the opportunity to do d10+2? As it is, it is very likely that a monk would have to choose between +2 to hit d4+2 damage and +0 to hit d10 damage, whereas before the monk could just use that dagger as a monk weapon and get +2 to hit d10+2. New monks would be forced to choose between +10% chance to hit and 4.5 damage per attack (before other bonuses) and +0% to hit and 5.5 dpa, where keeping monk weapon rules would offer them +10% chance to hit and 7.5 dpa.
@@codebracker you know even tho that would get old fast, I can kinda get behind a great club monk. Just flavor the great club as a tanabo and go full Shugoki on some tier one goons.
@@codebracker great club is a good point, but I have personally never seen a magic great club as part of loot, so again, my statement that you would either need a DM who specifically placed that weapon for you, or a liberal “magic shop” (which I don’t love). Also, great club, while mechanically is a good choice, does not match most of my character concepts around monks, so I would be forced to either make an optimized choice against character, or a character choice that is not optimal. More to the point, it’s an unnecessary nerf to a class that needs all the help it can get. It’s possible that I’m underestimating the impact of weapon mastery and is a necessary balance, but I don’t believe so.
Did the writers even look at the problems 5e had before writing these playtests? Like they do the most surface level buffs for the martials amd they just keep cranking up the problems to 11
I suspect they listened to other people. Monks being bad may be a popular topic in more optimization focussed communities, but I see "stunning strike op" being thrown around quite a bit as well. A shame.
Yes, they did, they certainly buffed monks quite a bit, but stunning strike nerf is good for the game. Monks need more buffs still, but this is the 1st revision, it will get there.
I said on a previous video on this channel that I would be OK with Stunning Strike being nerfed because it was a design black hole that devoured all the monk's potential by hogging all their ki. The stipulation being that a nerf to stunning strike would allow the monk to be buffed elsewhere and open up more diverse options for the monk than burning all their ki on stunning strike. Well, it looks like wizards of the coast forgot to buff the monk elsewhere. Good job.
I think what Monk needs is better options to use their Ki because if this is the only good feature Monk can rely on than of course people are going to use it. I don't think this feature needed a nerf because it still is a good and reliable option capared to the rest of the Monk's arsenal.
@@Shadeless8 Stunning Strike as it is in 5e is basically "Dump all your resources for a very high chance of robbing a creature of one of their turns". It's no fun for the player who has no more options because they're out of Ki, and it's no fun for the game master because it shuts down major components of their encounter very reliably. (Even though the "one creature encounter" just doesn't work in 5e without a lot of extra effort anyway) Imagine having a spell that guaranteed stunned a creature if it was the first spell you cast in a day, and after casting it you could cast no other spells for the rest of the day. That's basically stunning strike. That's what I want to see gone in favor of significant buffs to every other aspect of monk. I want Stunning Strike to be an option for monk, not their only late-game role.
@@kevingriffith6011, I agree with you that Monks need more reliable late-game options as well as making their current abilities much stronger. However, I don't think removing or nerfing Stunning Strike is the way to go as I firmly believe that it is one of the only abilities that remain useful into the late game.
@@Shadeless8 My problem with stunning strike is that to make it good demands an *immense* investment of ki from the monk to make it work. The entire reason that Stunning Strike is strong is that you can attempt it several times in a turn: Constitution is a strong save on most monsters, so odds are you'll be needing to dump several stunning strike attempts into a monster to actually get the stun, and each one eats a Ki point which you don't get back without a rest... and without Ki, the monk has almost no class features. Trying to get the stun off can lead to a monk in mid-level play spending up to a third of their ki in a single turn and still potentially not getting a result for it, and the reward is just "shut down one monster for one turn". A warlock can spend one spell slot to attempt to lock down an entire encounter, and even without their spell slots warlocks have tons of options, they still feel like a class that can do things. Say you're an 8th level monk, and you know your party will only short rest after every second combat. Assuming every combat is 4 rounds, that effectively gives you a budget of one ki point per round. Monks can't afford to burn up 3 ki points in a single round attempting to stun creatures.
Monk - i can stun a target a few times Open hand monk - i can cause instant death at 17th level Wizard - oh cool I can do.... Name every spell And of course wish Seems fair
I don't understand why the DND team cannot understand how bad monk is. This is a huge topic in the community, any who played monk into a high level campaign knows about this. It's almost like, the designers don't play the game
It's because they overvalue core aspects of the monk, which equate to ribbons in practical ways. Unarmored defense is really just a flavor ability, because any character with Medium+ armor can equal or exceed the ac of unarmored defense for far less investment and with more opportunities to scale themselves in other ways..A fighter with the worst heavy armor has the same AC as a 16 dex/wis monk. More if they use a shield the monk cannot. Hell, more if they take the defense fighting style the monk cannot. they also do more baseline damage for less investment. It doesn't really get better further on either. in 5e a human monk with 16 dex and 16 wis is doing less damage than a human fighter with a spear and shield, or a great weapon/polearm fighter and has less ac than either. The fighter also has less stat requirements to be ahead. This is because the fighters damage and defenses were covered by their starting proficiencies, while the monks damage and armor is covered by class features. The fighter is simply getting more from the starting prof baseline and the monk is playing a game of catch up from the get go. Which they can;t really win because the fighter has more compatibility with feats, and less stat requirements to function than the monk. If unarmed strike and unarmed defense were treated as flavor abilities, and monks got some real first level options, they'd probbaly start to be able to make some ground. But that's not whats happening.
@@joelsasmad The issue is they play the game differently from us. For example how they gauge the power of these things, is basically is on damage over 3 rounds, assuming classes are using everything to do the most damage as possible to a single target via guarenteed methods(meaning pure damage spells, not stuff that requires any variables like animate/conjure stuff). Thats how they gauge the power of classes, its wild.
Yes and no with how unarmed strikes are in one D&D you can do tricky stuff at the cost of the damage on a hit. Monks should get a feature let's them apply those effects without having to forgo the damage. That's three built in maneuvers exclusive to using a monk. You could still use the other masteries as well as long as you use a weapon in combo which most monks do.
@@CJAFTER5 except the point of weapon masteries is that you’re still doing damage while also getting rider effects. You give up dmg for control. Also, any str class is better at shoves and grapples than monk
With the new dazed condition, they could rename stunning strike to disorienting strike and make the feature daze instead of stun and maybe make it cost just 1 ki for the whole turn and apply to all hits of the attack action
Agreed, this would be acceptable and you can make stunning Strike come later as a trade off because it is desperately still necessary. Martails still need to be on par with casters and now need Way more Buffs thanks to WotC breaking casters. Except for Warlock cause they gutted that one ...
Some fixes I would do: - Martial arts should allow you to use your DEX instead of STR for jumping, grappling and shoving. - They should keep monk weapons to take advantage of the scaling die on Weapon Mastery interactions. - They should give them a fighting style, or at least access to the feat. - At 11th level, an improved flurry of blows should give you three unarmed strikes. - Give them a weaker version of Enhanced Metabolism at 2nd level that only lets you regain your Discipline points, and at 7th level improve it to the level of the current one. Either that, or make Perfect Discipline part of the Martial Discipline feature, but instead says: "When you roll initiative, you regain a number of Discipline Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus. - Turn Deflect Missiles into Deflect Attacks, to allow the monk to deflect melee attacks too.
They changed the prerequisite for picking a fighting style feat to you already have to have that feature. This is a change from the previous playtest that locked to martial classes and a couple of the experts that got fighting styles in their class. Weirdly this locks the barbarians from fighting styles again.
This is close to what I would also do. Instead of deflect attacks, I'd just make unarmored defense be 10+dex+wis+pb. That puts fully AC optimized monk on par with AC optimized paladin. For discipline points, I think it would be really important to gain them when you roll initiative already on early levels. I think that's the biggest thing that needs to be fixed.
@@gystes_ They are but the DC for the saving throw for grappling and shoving is still based on strength. The opponent gets to decide if they want to make a Dex or Strength saving throw so I think it makes sense that you should be able to choose whether to use dex or strength to determine the DC but currently it is strictly strength.
Wizards: War caster not strong enough, let’s make it a half feat! Also Wizards: Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are too strong, give it a nerf! Still Wizards: Who tf wrote stunning fist?! I’ll fire them!!!
Also WotC: we should improve the versatility and power of metamagic and wizards. Buff MM and give wizards the ability to alter their spells. Also WotC: Fighting styles aren't allowed on three of the mainly martial classes anymore. Sorry not sorry. Also, we're giving weapon masteries to non Warrior classes because we decided we don't want to use tags anymore. Sorry barbarian, monk, and fighter. Y'all aren't unique anymore.
@@Reapor234 Yeah exactly, basically telling us why be a pure martial if you want to be a martial character and not a half caster instead, but to be fair weapon masteries really aren't much of anything already as it does not deal with much of what martials needed to help them out
@@mohammadmurie masteries definitely helped martials, though. While it's still just "I swing my weapon" each turn, it adds variety to gameplay that they sorely needed.
GWM and SS are in fact broken and always have been. You can cry about martial classes being underpowered but relying on broken ass feats to make your experience better isn’t the issue.
@@trexdrew the feats are broken only because they are so strong compared to other feats. They are required for martials DPR to even be comparable to the average DPR of spellcasters. The issue with GWM and SS is that they are required in order for martials to be even decent at their only role (damage), so they should be given as base features, not as options
Man, I'm reliefed! I was afraid they noticed that the monk doesn't have to pay KI for breathing. Stunning strike nerf, empowered strike nerf, no weapon mastery for fists... but they get +1 average damage. The martial caster disparity is solved, guys! >.< Seriously, they could've given monk infinite KI, or at least 3 KI every turn, and it would still be average at best.
Here's an idea, Monks should have a very small pool of ki that recharge at the start of each of their turns and scale up as they level. That way the continuously can do monk things with the limitation being the number of monk things they can do on their turn and the costs to do them. That's what I'm doing on my monk rework
@@Ben-in3sbTHIS. I have been advocating for this. They should make Martial Arts a psionic power style option you can apply in lieu of one of your attacks. Or something
So kind of like legendary actions work? Hmm...I could see this working. Number could maybe be equal to your proficiency bonus. Use them on your turn or your reactions, all expended uses recharge when it comes back to your turn.
@@iselreads2908 exactly what I was going for, I was also thinking that you could lift the limitation of one use of flurry of blows per turn so you could spend as many ki points as you like on flurry of blows. This would let it scale as you gain more ki giving the monk some proper damage scaling as they level.
Base Monk should get the battlemaster features tweaked to suit the monk. This makes the monk versatile and able to use different abilities with fists or weapons and will make them unique.
Its crazy how they went and made the worst class worse. Its actually kind of impressive. Running theory is they are trying to make the monk almost unplayable so they don't have to support it anymore
@dwil0311 Very little actually got better either. Improvement: Damage Die is now 1 higher (wow, a +1 damage buff per hit.) Caviate: Monk Weapons no longer exists, and Monks are now hard locked to simple weapons where before they had various methods of making martial weapons monk weapons- leading to a decrease in damage on the attack action. Improvement: Monks get weapon masteries. Caviate: Their weapon damage no longer scales with their unarmed strikes, so when you choose to use those masteries you do so sacrificing your DPR- punishing a monk for engaging in WOTC's cool new system. Improvement: Step of the Wind is a little better, and eventually actually quite good, boosting their defense. Caviate: Stunning Strike has been nerfed so that you expend from a very limited pool to get an effect you may not even benefit from, harming their offense. Improvement: Stillness of mind now only requires a bonus action to use, not an action. Caviate: Monks lose their immunity to poison damage, a feature that helped partially make up for their generally aweful defense, all be it situationally. Every good change that has been made has also been cancelled out, as far as I can see, by an equally bad change- making this monk no better than the old monk! Calling me delusional is not an argument, it's name calling. *This* is an argument.
@dwil0311 The martial arts die affecting other features is a good point, and one I hadn't thought of. It's not enough for me to not consider Monk to be mostly the same as it was before, leaving all its flaws untouched, but it is enough for me to say you have a point. The abilities that scale on martial arts die are held back by one key point: the size of the dice scales, but not the number of dice- which is arguably more important. Take the Open Palm monk's healing. This is competing for your limited dicipline and your bonus action (which most monk features now use). This combined with the fact that despite being melee focused Monks are very fragile, it *should* be better than second wind. Instead, what would have been 5 average healing with old martial arts die becomes... 6 healing! The monks that benefit the most from this change are 100% mercy and four elements monk, and even that isn't great. 3d6 going to 3d12 is not a big enough improvement for their shatter-esque ability IMO. Besides, it shouldn't be up to a subclass to make up for a classes short comings when we are playtesting a *redesign*
I have barely even played Monk myself but every "design" decision WotC made for them is an afront to TTRPGs as a whole. The first Druid pass was laughably embarrassing, but this is downright infuriating. The designers must have playtested this in the vacuum of space, because no oxygen got to their brains on the revamp of an already underpowered class. Im pretty sure they forgot about Monk and just had an intern change some words in the 2014 PHB so it was "less broken" 5 minutes before the playtest release
Barbarian: "My rage duration increased 10 fold and I'm a super skill monkey!" 🙉 Fighter: "I'm a weapon master plus I'm awesome at saving throws!" 😎 Monk: *Sad punching noises* 😥
As a player who mains monk, and a dm, it’s frankly a stunning strike on me to see wizards get it so wrong. I mostly balanced it in my games years ago and homebrewed a half caster way of the third eye monk and somehow these grown ass adults are just like “instructions unclear ki points stuck in ceiling fan”
Since you can reposition darkness every turn, you can for free teleport 30 feet wherever you want by positioning the 15 foot radius sphere of darkness such that you and the destination are at the edges of the sphere.
It's honestly baffling how badly the Monk changes went. Like at least with most of the others they made sense and felt like genuine effort was put in, even if the community didn't like it. Like Warlock & Druid. Monk still sucks.
Idea: WEAPON MASTERY in MARTIAL ARTS. Take existing weapon masteries (that make sense) and describe how the monk performs these as unarmed strikes. Give styes equal to proficiency bonus. Players name their styles. "Toppling Rhino! Vexing Snake!"
Had a thought to help with Ki points... Monks get their wisdom modifier added to their Ki points. That would help in lower level play in increasing their resources without breaking the game.
You could literally double their ki and that wouldn't break anything. I'm with Kobold here that more of their abilities need to be free and others have a number of uses that can be done before using ki.
Easy fix for Step of the Wind: You can take the Dash or Disengage action as a bonus action on your turn. Alternatively, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to take both as a bonus action. If you do so, your jump distance is also doubled until the end of your turn.
I think if they arent going to give monk a d10 at least allow a monk to use Patient Defense as a bouns action without the cost of Ki. It would allow a player to make the choice between do you want to deal damage or have a chance to survive another round. If anything cook Paitent Defense into Unarmored Defense. Being self-restoration back down to 7 where stillness of mind was and let us get Heighten Metabolism eariler or cook it into another feature. Defy Death is cool to me but it comes way to late (capstone lawl) "Ki" should also be scaled off Monk level + proficiency bonus
My fix for ki points is to let you regenerate 1 ki point at the start of every turn of combat. That way, it's expected that you use a 1 point ki feature every turn. More expensive or using multiple features are what dip into your reserves. Not using ki would let you rebuild. Non-combat features and features that give you spells should not use ki and be limited to X times per long rest like other classes. Then, since ki is limited to combat features and ki regeneration is already high, just give all ki back when combat ends. Now we just need to change the later ki recovery features at levels 7 and 15. First off I'd swap the names. The level 7 feature would let you take an action that recovers several ki points that you can use x times recharging on a long rest. The level 15 feature would let you recover 2 ki points a turn instead of 1. Halving the ki point maximum might be a good balancing option, but that would require some playtesting before I'd commit to it. Otherwise some ki point cost fine tuning may be appropriate. I'd also want to drop the word ranged from the deflect missiles feature and rename it to deflect strikes. I never really understood why this only applied to ranged attacks when blocking and counterstrikes are a big part of the martial artist fantasy too. Its a nice defensive change for a melee fighter. Also a damage buff near level 11 that doesn't require another attack, for gameplay speed, would help keep damage consistent with other martials. Even if it's just a once per turn martial arts die damage bonus on a hit. Finally, bring back monk weapons to the 2014 version.
WOTC when they see martials with good abilities: NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF WOTC when they realized spell casters were only demigods in 5e: Pls take this buff my child.
Nah it is more like here you go martial have this small insignificant change that is a very minor buff if at all that should balance out everything as we NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF everything else, same thing for half casters While spellcasterss, nerf them? What for they are obviously the weakest classes in the game and need to buff all their spells they need all the help they can get
Like... I get why they'd make Stunning Strike 1/turn because rolling 4 attacks then forcing up to 4 saves was almost as annoying to process at the table as a Conjure spell horde, but forcing a single creature to make multiple save or sucks on a turn was also the one special niche they had in 5e. The devs totally dropped the ball on compensating them for it, though, and somehow thought also tuning down *any* of their other features was appropriate. In the design space they've set up, a consolation prize for a failed stun would absolutely be in order, whether that's applying a lesser condition like dazed, slowed, a free dodge for the monk, just something (maybe subclass-dependent). Speaking of, adding unarmed strike weapon masteries could be a cool way of both differentiating the subclasses and helping to compensate for the stun spam nerf. And is there any reason they shouldn't have a d10 hit die at this point? Also RIP to the poison *damage* immunity on that level 10 feature. Given how prevalent that damage type is, that's a huge defensive loss.
But kobold, the new monk capstone allows him to *remain* a dragon for longer once the wizard has turned him into one! After all, your number of Hit Points changes to the total you roll *instead* of dropping to 0 hit points, so polymorph doesn't end prematurely!
Think it looks like monk will again need to be multiclassed with to gain more utility. But with the decisions theyve been making with other classes its looked pretty obvious theyre trying to discourage multiclassing so monk is just extra boned while wizard and sorcerer get stronger like usual.
Homebrewed the Monk half caster to see if it was really broken but it is great. It scales well with others and makes you actually feel like a real avatar style bender. I am now on the Monk half caster band wagon
The point of the Four Elements burst attack is to use your range to push enemies close together, then use your ranged burst to hit them both, which is a super cool visual
The fact that we getting in-depth commentary on these changes from somoene who doesn't even work at the company shows Wizards of the Coast must not have dedicated players on their staff who know as much about their own product.
I had two buffs to monk For every odd level you get two ki (now at level 20 you get 30 Ki) And at level 11 you get another attack as well as a subclass Also revert stunning strike nerf
At least regarding Stunning Strike, if we keep the playtest version as is but add one thing, it might help in some way. Have it take away the target's ability to use reactions. Con saves are pretty good on m9nsters, so the odds of Stunning Strike working in the first place is low, so have the actual stun part of things be an additional penalty if they fail the save instead of being the only thing. Still helps to ensure getting SOMETHING out of it for expending your fleeting resources
I’m more bummed about the lack of new exciting features here rather than the nerf to Stunning Strike. I’ve always hated the feature because it encourages Monk players to drain all of their ki on a feature that works like 1/10th of the time at higher levels. And yes when it does it’s amazing, but with that CON save it’s just not even reliable. What they should’ve done is rewritten it to either not pull from your ki and limit its number of uses (based on when it succeeds, not when you use it), or just keep it the same and change the condition to Dazed. Honestly I’d rather they just remove the feature and do something far more cool and reliable to help the Monk be useful, but WOTC is probably looking at this and thinking they’ve made the monk OP now 😂 Love the videos!
Removing capstones just encourages players to multiclass because there's nothing to strive for late game, but then they spread out class features so much we're punished for trying to multiclass early and midgame. Thing is they've never had good balancing for late game, so almost nobody even tries to run high level campaigns. It's a collection of frustrating game design choices that only is getting worse.
Defy Death cost is damned expensive at a time where you are almost certain to be low or out of ki - unless you're nearly one-shot at the beginning of your first combat after a short rest, you're likely OUT OF KI before it comes up.
I like that you get to punch as a bonus action before you use Environmental Burst because it gives you the chance to push an enemy closer to other enemies, potentially increasing the number of creatures caught in the AoE damage. The punch even has 15ft reach so you don't really have to go into melee to try this.
*This is the best solution I found following WotC's design style. If they can't find a better solution I think I will play with my design.* *1st: Martial Arts - Quick Strike (Bonus Unarmed Strike).* When you use the Attack action with an Unarmed Strike or a Simple Weapon on your turn, you can make one Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action on the same turn. If you use a force point during your turn, you can decide to move your Bonus Unarmed Strike as part of the Attack action. It is still possible to make this extra attack only once per turn. *1st: Unarmed techniques (or Unarmed Mastery)* *2nd: Inner Force (Martial Discipline)* *Iron Strike (replaces Flurry of Blows).* Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you can choose to spend 1 Force point and add a Martial Arts die to the damage roll. *If you have advantage over a creature, you can decide to sacrifice it to perform an Iron Strike without having to spend Force points. *The additional damage is of the same type as your unarmed attacks. *Patient Defense.* [...] + If at the end of Patient Defense no one has attacked you, then you may use your reaction to make unarmed attack against a creature within your unarmed reach. *Step of the Wind.* [...] and your step is so light that for the turn you can run through the air. *2nd: Unarmored Movement* [...] + Additionally, while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, you can take the Dash or Disengage actionas as a bonus action on your turn. When you use one of this actions your jump distance is doubled *5th: Stunning Strike.* When you hit a creature with Iron Strike of your Inner Force feature, you can attempt a Stunning Strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the end of your next turn. You cannot use this feature in combination with another unarmed techniques. *6th: Assimilation (replaces Empowered Strike).* You can assimilate one simple weapon with magical properties into your body and use its magical properties with your unarmed attacks. A small tattoo that resembles the item absorbed appears on the skin of your arm. The absorbed item is undetectable by normal means, although the effect is detectable via Detect Magic. The item can be discharged as an action and the weapon is automatically equipped. You must be capable of holding the weapon or it falls to your feet (such as if you had no hands free). If you are unconscious or dead the assimilated weapon automatically separates from you. This feature can only be used with unarmed attacks and cannot be added to other items that enhance unarmed attacks. *10th: Self-Cultivation (Self-Restoration).* [...], and have advantage in saving throws against the Charmed, Frightened and Poisoned conditions. [...]. *11th: Flurry of Blows.* Your Martial Arts feature now confers two extra Quick Strikes rather than one. If you spend 1 force point or more as an action that is not an attack action on your turn, you can make the Flurry of Blow as a bonus action before the end of the turn. *15th: Patient Resistance.* When you have Patient Defense active and a creature that can be seen hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage by 1d10 plus your Dexterity modifier plus your monk level. *18th: Flurry of Iron Strikes.* Your unarmed attacks have never been more powerful. Now Iron Strike is no longer limited to once per turn, but that is only if you sacrifice advantage to execute it. *20th: Enlightenment.* Through your Inner Force and your physical and mental discipline, your being has achieved enlightenment. You raise three ability scores of your choice and increase them by 2. The maximum for those scores is now 30. Additionally, each time you roll for initiative, you always have a number of Force points equal or above your wisdom modifier.
Let's face it, DMs will have to allow homebrew for the martial classes if they have any hope of being as powerful and as helpful to the party as the other classes. I tried to make homebrew subclasses for the Barbarian, Fighter, and Monk, but the only one I am happy with is the Rune Smith I made for the fighter which takes the rune concept and adds customization to the class. In short with just the level 3 feature, you work with the DM to determine if a spell could be considered an activated or passive effect, you can choosespells from any spell list, you create one rune per long rest by inscribing it on a piece of equipment, you can give these rune inscribed items to your party members and they also can use the runes, you can activate the activated half of the rune a number of times equal to half your proficiency rounded down every short rest, and the only other downsides being you can only create a number of runes equal to twice your proficiency, creating a new rune when already at maximum removes the oldest rune, and you can only choose spells of a level a full caster of the same Fighter level can cast. As for monk, I would increase their Unarmored Defense by their proficiency on top of their DEX and WIS, and let them recover one ki point if they miss a bonus action attack or if a target succeeded on their saving throw against your monk features. That will give some needed power to the 5e monk.
The monk DEFINITELY needs help. They should start off with 4 ki at level 2, and need some serious damage boosts built into the BASE class past level 5 (maybe get something fantastic at level 10?).
Or, you can choose to do 2 attacks, 1 normal action, 1 bonus action, when you run out of KI (instead of 3 with flurry). Just saying, it's only 1 swing difference.
I always fixed monks by giving them: +their Wis mod KI, up their martial dice by 1 step d4->d6 etc), +1 stat on any level giving an ASI and if you are monk from level 1 you get+4 stats. Monks problems are primarily hp, ac and KI. These buffs mostly fix that i feel without messing too much with individual design elements or having to micro manage everything in the class
I wonder if monk would be fixed by just making flurry of blows not require ki, so all their ki abilities just become situational buffs rather than tied to their damage.
Someone made a monk homebrew that took the "my body is a weapon" part of monk literally, ty dnd creators for stuff like this. Ty pointyhat in particular.
My homebrew step of the wind for my monk player was a no ki cost copy of Cunning Action with Hide swapped out for Escape. You can take a bonus action on each of your turns in combat. This action can be used only to take the Dash, Disengage, or Escape action. To make then the ultimate uncatchable skirmisher
Reading through the playtests, one thing I did notice was the effort to move away from effects that can be triggered more than once per turn, like Stunning Strike. Divine Smite was made a bonus action spell, so you can’t divine smite multiple times on your turn, or stack it with another smite spell, or cast any other spell on your turn for that matter. Spells like Hex and Hunter’s Mark now only trigger the additional damage once per turn. Even Druids got an optional feature to add 1d8 to the damage of weapon attacks and Wild Shape attacks, but it is only allowed once per turn. I think WorC has a solid rule for the playtests that seems to be trying to curb ability spam in game. I honestly agree with the choice, to an extent, but it also means that the ability in question needs to be worth investing your turn and resources into.
You should regain 3 Ki per turn, scaling to 5 Ki per turn at level 11. On top of that, you should be able to regain all ki points after 1 minute of concentrated breathing out of combat. Also revert stunning strike.
I don't always agree with you, but you're 100% spot-on here. Monk got nerfed while other classes got stronger. I don't understand how the designers view Monk and why they're so scared of Stunning Strike. Monk is and continues to be squishier and more fragile than a Warlock; how does that make any sense?
I agree to nerf stunning strike. I would rather see a strike replacing one of the melee attacks once on the monks turn and gives the target dazed condition till starting of the monks next turn. The strike is an attack roll instead of a saving throw by the target which is much more reliable. And the target can spend their action to roll a con saving throw to end the condition at the end of their turn. The monk can do this strike without using ki but only wisdom modifier times per long rest. This way reduce the ki shortage problem and limit the spamming of the dazed strike which some seems to worry. Normally you should be looking at a 60-70% chance to land the strike which is not bad chance. The target usually have something like 60+% chance to make the con saving throw at the end of their turn to end the condition (if they choose not to take other action) but that will be the only action the target take on their turn. So depending on the initiative order, the strike can be more powerful if the monk's turn is directly after the target.
Some changes I'd suggest i could see them making with where their heads are at: > d10 hit die > Enhanced metabolism is like monks version of the new second wind or rage. >Enhanced metabolism should start out only restoring ki and later be allowed restore full short rest benefits > monks get a feature that lets them apply the alternate effects of unarmed attacks but not have to forgo damage. They can choose to use Dex or ki save for the DC. And can do this once a turn per option. > stunning strike changed to adding a new additional effect to unarmed strikes that lets you Daze on con save and spend ki point to force reroll. At higher levels it goes from daze to stun. > the feature that is timless body should add poison condition >Feature at higher level that lets you add an additional martial art die to damage like paladin feature > Deflect missles is changed to work on any attack and the ki point to return fire makes them take damage for range or apply an unarmed strike effect for melee.
Shadowmonk darkness can actually be moved significantly more than 60ft now. It can be moved _to anywhere within 60ft of you_ - which means that if last turn you took Step of the Wind, and moved directly away from your darkness, the furthest point from its previous location to which you could move it would amount to a distance of twice your movement plus 120ft. Even assuming you never move (or stay within a few squares), you can move it _anywhere_ within that 60ft radius of yourself, every turn.
Take Perfect Discipline/Self from level 15 down to 11. Add the following to it: When you roll initiative you gain a number of temporary Discipline (Ki) points equal to your initiative bonus. At the end of your turn you loose one temporary Discipline (Ki) Point if you did not spend any Discipline (Ki) points during that turn. At the end of combat any remaining temporary Discipline (Ki) points are instantly lost. You have abilities that cost 8 of the darn things and a base maximum of 20 at max level. You need to burn points to just keep up at this level so the bonus pool will not last all that long and any costly ability will quickly have you burning through your regular daily pool which really should be for letting your character shine rather than keep up.
Idea for stunning Strike for 2 points the CON save is made at disadvantage or for one point if the target is dazed on a fail (It is still costing one of your attacks and a Discipline Point. With the loss of MA die for Monk weapons after level 5 unarmed attacks are doing more damage than all but Great Club. are they trying to wean Monks off weapons
beautiful video, i see a lot of opinion about the new monk so i did what a normal personwould do: fixing the monk New monk Class & subclass Primary ability: dexterity and wisdom 1ST LEVEL: MARTIAL ARTS Change: none 1ST LEVEL: UNARMORED DEFENSE Change: none 1ST LEVEL: WEAPON MASTERY Change: not only the monk can use the Mastery proprety, but during a long rest he can select a wepon and use it as a monk wepon “using dex insted of str” (this last untile a long rest) 2ND LEVEL: MARTIAL DISCIPLINE Change: the number of Discipline points are equal to the monk lv + twice your proficency bonus >Step of the wind: cost nothing >patient defend: cost nothing 2ND LEVEL: UNARMORED MOVEMENT Change: none 3RD LEVEL: DEFLECT MISSILES Change: not only the monk as the ability to block Bludgeoning, Piercing Or Slashing damage; but he can also use this feature against any damage Type. Plus the damage and range increase with the monk lv (lv 3 = 60 feet & it dose two rolls of the martial arts die) (lv 9 = 120 feet & it dose three rolls of the martial arts die) (lv 12 = 180 feet & it dose four rolls of the martial arts die) (lv 16 = 240 feet & it dose five rolls of the martial arts die) 4TH LEVEL: SLOW FALL Change: no 5TH LEVEL: EXTRA ATTACK Change: no 5TH LEVEL: STUNNING STRIKE Change: make it so he can use more than one time stunning strike and he can use Simple weapon, monk weapon or unarmed strike 6TH LEVEL: EMPOWERED STRIKES Change: make the monk weapon also deal magical damage 7TH LEVEL: EVASION Change: none 7TH LEVEL: HEIGHTENED METABOLISM Change: none 9TH LEVEL: ACROBATIC MOVEMENT Change: none 10TH LEVEL: SELF-RESTORATION Change: maybe the monk as resisten to poison damage and he is immune to the poisoned condition And as a bonus action he can end on him self or a other allied with in 5 feet the following Condition: Charmed, Frightened, stunned, paralyzed and poisoned 11TH LEVEL: DEFLECT MAGICAL ENERGY Change: when you use your deflect missiles and you are targeted by a spell that need a saving throw and succed, you can spend 4 Discipline points and roll a D20 + your wisdom modifier and if you succed against the dc (that is equal 10 + the spell lv); if you fail the dc nothing happen’s but if you succed you return back to the caster 13TH LEVEL: IMPROVED UNARMORED DEFENSE Change: whe you reach this lv in monk your unarmord defense is now 13 + dex + wis, now when you use the step of the wind feature you do not provoke attack of opportunity, difficult terrain do not impose disadvantage, you have advantage with athletic and acrobatic abilities 14TH LEVEL: DISCIPLINED SURVIVOR Change: none 15TH LEVEL: PERFECT DISCIPLINE Change: When you roll Initiative, you regain four time your martial arts die if you have none remaining; plus now you can attack three times and your flurry of blows now makes four attacks 18TH LEVEL: SUPERIOR DEFENSE Change: instead of 1 minute is hour X LV, Additionally, you can spend 6 ki points to cast the astral projection spell, without needing material components. When you do so, you can't take any other creatures with you. 20TH LEVEL: MASTER OF LIFE, MASTER OF ENEMIES Change: you have trained body, mind and soul to surpass every difficulty in your path to then become a true master: you have advantage with all saving throw plus if you fail you can use 2 point of your Discipline points to succed instead; when you or an allied fall to 0 hit points you can spend 3 Discipline points to roll six time your martial arts die and regain the total number of those die enjoy :)
My personal favorite Monks are the Lacer from Incarnate, Last of the Lacers (An Avatar the Last Airbender adaptation of 5e) Lacers (benders) are like Ki based Half Casters, except they can pick from a number of bending forms that are similar to spells (in some cases worse in some cases better), and gain them at the same levels. 1st Level spells cost 2 Ki, Second Level Spells cost 3 Ki, 3rd cost 4, 4th cost 5, and 5th cost 6. More than that, they get an elemental strike that's essentially as good as getting Crossbow Expert at level 1. I'm playing as a Waterbender and I'm loving this Monk fix!
13:45 Surprise wasn't replaced like the death save thing or some spells, so it still is as it was in 5e. Especially considering how they directly mentioned the mechanic in the assassin, they either don't want it changed or forgot that they didn't actually say that the mechanic was replaced like they did with death saves.
Heres a couple ideas: Monks should get proficiency bonus number of ki points per turn, which helps fix their economy issue, and limits stunning strike at 5th to 2 tries. Flurry of blows should be changed to "when you hit with an unarmed strike or simple melee weapon, you can spend 1 ki to make 2 unarmed strikes as part of that attack". I leave the wording open enough to allow the monk to machinegun punch if they want to at their own peril. One idea i saw that ibliked alot was changing the abilities that use ki to be free, but inhanced by ki. Heres what i mean: You can dash or disengage as a bonus action, and can spend 1 ki to take one of these actions imediately after hitting and dealing damage with an unarmed strike or simple weapon. When you hit with an unarmed strike or simple weapon and do damage, you can force the target to make a wisdom save, or be slowed until the end of their turn. Spend one ki point to instead stun them on a failed save. Deflect missles should be changed to deflect/ parry, and allow you to use your reacrion to reduce the damage of an attack you take. You can spend one ki point during this reaction to use your attackers might against them, empowering your next attack by the damage reduced by this feature.
Like most people I'm pretty sad about the changes but after watching this and remembering the ranged monk build and i guess it becoming the more viable build I just wanna say level 4 shadow monk and level 16 gloomstalker ranger. You can create darkness for your gloomstalker abilities by yourself and dont have to force your party to fight at night. You can also move the darkness to react to the battlefield. Every fight you will be invisible if the enemy has true sight, blind sight or tremmor sense you can either use step of the wind or deflect missile. You also have atleast 120 feet darkvision and both classes need Dex, Wis and Con. You can also wear armor as none of the monk features you are using require you to be naked. So using the standard array + background bonus + a feat like piercer you could have 18 Dex, 14 Wis, 14 Con and use medium armor to get to around 16 AC
- Ki should be Level+WIS - Deflect Missiles should cost 0 resources and affect all projectiles out of the box - Step of the Wind should be free - Monk Weapons need to come back and/or give Unarmed Strikes mastery options - Poison Immunity should come back - Stunning Strike needs to be spammable - Give Monks a d10 Hit Die - Do SOMETHING to improve Monk AC. I saw someone mention 10+DEX+WIS+PB, which could get busted at higher levels but martials need some busted features and a nigh-unhittable ninja totally fits the class fantasy. - I’m tempted to suggest that Monks should have more Extra Attacks like Fighter
Here's my fix to Stunning strike, Make it a weapon master feature for monks, on unarmed strikes. Make it free, and make it so you can only stun a TARGET once per turn, so you can either focus fire damage, or go around spreading damage, but perhaps stunning multiple targets. but most important in this change, it leans into monks having any form of weapon specialization on unarmed strikes, and it now is just something that happens for free, and the once per turn is way less painful.
I think what would not just make monk better but still have the heavy resource management gameplay is if they had a way to regenerate individual ki points by performing certain actions (such as every time an enemy is defeated) or just get 1 ki point back each round, with later features giving ways to boost this for a turn or at higher levels just permanently.
this issue is they value Stun as about 13 damage of power, everything about the game translates into "Virtual damage" or "health" for them. Its a very funny way of looking at it. The classes are balanced around their power over 3 rounds against a single target using all of their resources(conservation is a issue for out of combat not in). Keep thing in mind when rating class features and it opens your perspective a bit on how they view the game.
@@bongosmcdongos4190 Yes. I actually tested this out, and found this to be true, its fucking insane. They mainly look at damage over 3 rounds assuming they are using EVERYTHING on a single target, no resource conversation, and mainly look at pure guaranteed consistent damage, any variables like summon/animate spells they do not consider. Any other ability is valued in "virtual" damage. You can see them use this exact same method for monsters in the DMG, this is not new.
They added new bold mechanics to the rogue, they could have easily done that with monk where you generate discipline with with each successful melee. BOLD, fun! Would encourage going into melee. The open palm monk does it's crazy stuff with it's bonus action, why cant the others? Run in, pop pop, cool I made discipline, with my bonus I use my ability that consumes them. Or, I'll save them for next round, because the more I have I can do something cooler, or the same abiility but stronger.
I love the idea of a monk pushing people around. But the way the subclass work, it sounds like in most fight, every single attack of the monk will force at least one saving throw. I hope they find a way to keep the "punch around" feeling without slowing down the game that much.
I'm gonna throw this out real quick, "most of which were inspired by the Player's Handbook survey in 2021". I would assume most suggested changed were made by frustrated dungeons masters. This is also the first monk playtest. The first Druid playtest was dreadful. Constructive change requires constructive feedback. Everyone be sure to suggest positive and noteworthy changes.
18:19 circles are squares on grids? is that like an offical thing? cause we just use the closest thing - either drawing a circle and counting any square with more than 50% coverage, or - for single AOE like fireball.. picking a point and seeing how many creatures are within range of it in a straight line
Kobold is actually wrong about this. Well MOST of the circles in dnd can be simplified as squares, once a circle is past a certain size it no longer covers the corners of a square. That and there are some spells that only effect creatures that are entirely inside the aoe, such as with the silence spell.
@@timthefluffydragon oh yeah, I didnt really think about the fact smaller circles are usually squares on the board anyway, good point - and its good to know I wasn't being crazy! Thanks
Some fixes I'd apply to the Monk: - Give them 2 reactions - Step of the Wind is free - 'Unarmoured' features work with light and medium armour (i.e. Dex + Wis + armour = ac; Monks should be hard to hit, thus the d8 hit die can be justified) - You choose which of your mental scores is used to calculate your dc and ac, giving players more freedom in character creation - Killing or knocking an enemy unconscious causes you to regain 1 ki - ASI at level 6 and 14 (to compensate for the multi ability score dependancy) - Extra attack at level 11 - Also at level 11, flurry of blows now gives 2 extra attacks
A way to fix things; Make Flurry not use a Ki point. It already uses your bonus action. Nothing else I can think of uses a resource point at the same time as the action.
I waited and I waited for them to improve the monk. I don't they could have done a worse job helping the worst class in the game. I was mad at how little the barbarian got, and the monk somehow suffered more! They must have told Joe the intern to write the monk changes on his lunch break. Joe's only instructions were: -Stunning Strike is too powerful as written. Tone it down (this bullet point was underlined several times). -Unarmed damage is too low. Make it more powerful, but only by a small amount. -The monk was a "glass cannon" in older editions so don't adjust the hit-points or Unarmored Defense feature of the current monk. The older players appreciate that nod to their starting rules. -Change the names of the less well-known abilities to make it seem like we're changing everything from top to bottom.
On dealing force damage instead of magical bludgeoning: There are nine creatures resistant to force (four of those are amethyst dragons) and seven immune to it, with only one of those being from the Monster Manual. Meanwhile there are 38 creatures resistant to bludgeoning damage, no matter if it is magical, (usually plants and swarms) and one being immune to it.
Honestly if they wanted to limit stunning strike, a good compromise might have been a number of times per short rest equal to proficiency bonus instead of once per turn. Separating it from ki to cut down on resource use; but also preventing the monk from stunning constantly like wotc has perceived.
Huge thing on the elemental monk. It increases reach by 10 feet GREATER than normal. Normal reach is 5, 10 feet great is actually 15. So elemental monk has insane area control. Grab sentinel. Combine with the later flying featue and you can lift enemies 3 times for fall damage on each attack.
I feel like Ki should be split into Mind and Body, with both of them being proficiency bonus/rest, idk between short or long. This means that their uses could be split between the 2 resources AND can be affected by subclasses differently.
There's another hidden nerf. Before you could multiclass into ranger to get hunter's mark and deal extra damage on each hit. 4 attacks makes Hunter's mark as a 1st level spell slot something barely decent. But now it works only once per turn. It also applies to hex and equivalents. So basically the only boost monks had in regarding other classes, which was early 4 attacks, it's gone.
I only wanted 2 things for monks a caetus/brass knuckles weapon type unique and locked to monks and a luchador/WWE subclass that works like the fighter battlemaster but all your techniques are different body slams and holds that have different effects
I don't love requiring a feat to make a class useful at its primary function, but Mobility makes a monk come alive as a melee scrapper. You can charge through a group striking and slide past them on the other side without reactions from whoever you even try to strike. Unless I missed an update about feats or functionality in this version, in which case I retract my selection on the basis of sheer ignorance.
17:25 are you sure you didn't mean a 1/3 caster? That would be more in line with every other martial extra casty stuff.. ohh.. imagine they get low level spells for their monk level compared to casters, but they could use ki - ahem- oh sorry.. "diSapLinE" to upcast them to do decent damage. So they could do like a really high level scorching ray or something.. wih their body!
Stunning Strike is basically a 1st level spell. Like, Stunned is a strong condition, but gating it behind both an attack roll and a Con save makes it mediocre even by the standards of a 1st level spell. The fact it used to get a uniquely cheap and effective Quicken was pretty good, but at best that raises it to the level of a 2nd level spell. This is the flagship feaure that WotC saw fit to nerf into the ground. You know what would be a way better version? Bringing back the OD&D Stunning Fist where if your attack roll exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more (or if you crit) it stuns until the start of your next turn. Yes, that style of feature comes from 1974, not PF2e. And it has a ton of nifty qualities. It's faster, because you don't need to roll an extra die. It keeps a resourceless feature from being overpowered against bosses. It removes a resource tax from the resource-strapped Monk. It gives Monks some extra defensive power in melee where they desperately need it. The duration ending at the start of your next turn prevents the worst sort of stunlocking loops.
It's not that hard to fix the monk... What i'd do... • free disengage or dash when you spend one or more ki on your turn • one more ASI at lv ~10 • some options to fighting styles • magic items to improve your unnarmed strikes (besides soul catching) • some way to get a "absorbtion damage pool", something like the abjurer's shield. Consistently without hurting the action ecconomy... maybe something like, your PB every time you spend a ki, with a limit equals your monk level.
The stunning strike nerf makes sense if and only if monk gets more Ki. It eats too much of the power budget of Ki because of you add more it allows SS spam to do more resistance fishing and multi enemy stunning. But they didn't really buff other ki features or give extra ki
another simple change to help monks with ki from level 2-6 is adding their wisdom mod to the amount of ki/disipline they get. wont impact high level as much but would give them extra for low level
also speaking of less options, rogues lost hand crossbows for some reason yet non many seem to have noticed it as it was in the old expert class ua too
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So when can we see the rest of the changes?
www.dndbeyond.com/sources/ua/ph-playtest-6
Everything running off Ki should be fine if you have enough Ki
Worst part about the highest level 4 elements monk ability; that movement speed buff that lets you do damage?
It’s basically the same thing as Ashardalon’s Stride from Fizzban’s; a 3rd level spell.
@@PackTactics Great points in this video!
Why not have the monks gain Ki equal to their monk level + twice their proficiency? I don't get it!?!
and let the chains of that stunning strike, FFS! Why only once per turn? I don't care if they lose the range option they added to it! Let the Kensei get the feature to stunning strike on range attacks! it is still targeting Con Saves!
Also, the the elements monk should just be like a 1/3caster, like the eldritch knight or the arcane trickster, and also be able to use their Ki to some kind of effect like the sorcerer does!
Ki-points metamagics maybe?
Maybe let the elements monk pick up party members while they or their target floats on giagantic rocks! that could...ROCK!🎸
The best OneDnD monk is the Dancer bard
Facts
And even it is probably the worst bard
New bard is great!
It's absolutely insane....
No extra attack, but ig spellcasting more than makes up for it
Nerfing the martial classes while buffing the magic classes is peak Wizards of the Coast /s!
@@dwil0311 buffs that amount to nothing, and still mostly nerfs, try again
it's wizards of the coast not martials who can boast
@@verdurite The buffs far far outweigh any of the nerfs, and the stunning strike nerf is good for the game.
@@teraxe No, nerfing things makes me want to play Monk even less now and makes the game worse.
@@teraxemofo acting as this is a Moba game.
Loss of monk weapons also eliminates most of the magic weapon item drops for monks, so unless a DM specifically places a hand wrap or something, monks will not get magic bonuses/effects on their best attack.
Are there not any magic simple weapons?
@@codebrackerthere are (of course), but my point is would you rather do d4+2 with a dagger, or have the opportunity to do d10+2? As it is, it is very likely that a monk would have to choose between +2 to hit d4+2 damage and +0 to hit d10 damage, whereas before the monk could just use that dagger as a monk weapon and get +2 to hit d10+2. New monks would be forced to choose between +10% chance to hit and 4.5 damage per attack (before other bonuses) and +0% to hit and 5.5 dpa, where keeping monk weapon rules would offer them +10% chance to hit and 7.5 dpa.
@@mevensen sure, but you can use a greatclub to knock them prone, then follow up with flurry of blows with advantage
@@codebracker you know even tho that would get old fast, I can kinda get behind a great club monk. Just flavor the great club as a tanabo and go full Shugoki on some tier one goons.
@@codebracker great club is a good point, but I have personally never seen a magic great club as part of loot, so again, my statement that you would either need a DM who specifically placed that weapon for you, or a liberal “magic shop” (which I don’t love). Also, great club, while mechanically is a good choice, does not match most of my character concepts around monks, so I would be forced to either make an optimized choice against character, or a character choice that is not optimal.
More to the point, it’s an unnecessary nerf to a class that needs all the help it can get. It’s possible that I’m underestimating the impact of weapon mastery and is a necessary balance, but I don’t believe so.
Did the writers even look at the problems 5e had before writing these playtests? Like they do the most surface level buffs for the martials amd they just keep cranking up the problems to 11
I suspect they listened to other people. Monks being bad may be a popular topic in more optimization focussed communities, but I see "stunning strike op" being thrown around quite a bit as well. A shame.
@@Kay-im6ht its thrown around in more of the casual crowed . which is the the largest amount if players
it looks more like throwing random things at the board and checking what sticks (what people say they like)
Yes, they did, they certainly buffed monks quite a bit, but stunning strike nerf is good for the game. Monks need more buffs still, but this is the 1st revision, it will get there.
@@teraxe bro did you not watch the video? Every problem with monk is still there and they nerfed the few good features it had
I said on a previous video on this channel that I would be OK with Stunning Strike being nerfed because it was a design black hole that devoured all the monk's potential by hogging all their ki. The stipulation being that a nerf to stunning strike would allow the monk to be buffed elsewhere and open up more diverse options for the monk than burning all their ki on stunning strike.
Well, it looks like wizards of the coast forgot to buff the monk elsewhere. Good job.
I remember that comment
I think what Monk needs is better options to use their Ki because if this is the only good feature Monk can rely on than of course people are going to use it. I don't think this feature needed a nerf because it still is a good and reliable option capared to the rest of the Monk's arsenal.
@@Shadeless8 Stunning Strike as it is in 5e is basically "Dump all your resources for a very high chance of robbing a creature of one of their turns". It's no fun for the player who has no more options because they're out of Ki, and it's no fun for the game master because it shuts down major components of their encounter very reliably. (Even though the "one creature encounter" just doesn't work in 5e without a lot of extra effort anyway)
Imagine having a spell that guaranteed stunned a creature if it was the first spell you cast in a day, and after casting it you could cast no other spells for the rest of the day. That's basically stunning strike. That's what I want to see gone in favor of significant buffs to every other aspect of monk. I want Stunning Strike to be an option for monk, not their only late-game role.
@@kevingriffith6011, I agree with you that Monks need more reliable late-game options as well as making their current abilities much stronger. However, I don't think removing or nerfing Stunning Strike is the way to go as I firmly believe that it is one of the only abilities that remain useful into the late game.
@@Shadeless8 My problem with stunning strike is that to make it good demands an *immense* investment of ki from the monk to make it work. The entire reason that Stunning Strike is strong is that you can attempt it several times in a turn: Constitution is a strong save on most monsters, so odds are you'll be needing to dump several stunning strike attempts into a monster to actually get the stun, and each one eats a Ki point which you don't get back without a rest... and without Ki, the monk has almost no class features.
Trying to get the stun off can lead to a monk in mid-level play spending up to a third of their ki in a single turn and still potentially not getting a result for it, and the reward is just "shut down one monster for one turn". A warlock can spend one spell slot to attempt to lock down an entire encounter, and even without their spell slots warlocks have tons of options, they still feel like a class that can do things.
Say you're an 8th level monk, and you know your party will only short rest after every second combat. Assuming every combat is 4 rounds, that effectively gives you a budget of one ki point per round. Monks can't afford to burn up 3 ki points in a single round attempting to stun creatures.
Monk - i can stun a target a few times
Open hand monk - i can cause instant death at 17th level
Wizard - oh cool
I can do.... Name every spell
And of course wish
Seems fair
It’s not even instant, takes 2 actions lol
@@burnin8trxx and it only cause instant death sometimes.
@@SamHoward-l9qAnd it no longer even works that way, nerfed to the ground as well!
I don't understand why the DND team cannot understand how bad monk is. This is a huge topic in the community, any who played monk into a high level campaign knows about this.
It's almost like, the designers don't play the game
It is like they not only don't play the game but don't look at the things people complain about.
It's changed because people constantly say stunning strike is too good. It eats all your KI blah blah blah
They have to get better 😔
It's because they overvalue core aspects of the monk, which equate to ribbons in practical ways.
Unarmored defense is really just a flavor ability, because any character with Medium+ armor can equal or exceed the ac of unarmored defense for far less investment and with more opportunities to scale themselves in other ways..A fighter with the worst heavy armor has the same AC as a 16 dex/wis monk. More if they use a shield the monk cannot. Hell, more if they take the defense fighting style the monk cannot. they also do more baseline damage for less investment. It doesn't really get better further on either.
in 5e a human monk with 16 dex and 16 wis is doing less damage than a human fighter with a spear and shield, or a great weapon/polearm fighter and has less ac than either. The fighter also has less stat requirements to be ahead. This is because the fighters damage and defenses were covered by their starting proficiencies, while the monks damage and armor is covered by class features. The fighter is simply getting more from the starting prof baseline and the monk is playing a game of catch up from the get go. Which they can;t really win because the fighter has more compatibility with feats, and less stat requirements to function than the monk.
If unarmed strike and unarmed defense were treated as flavor abilities, and monks got some real first level options, they'd probbaly start to be able to make some ground. But that's not whats happening.
@@joelsasmad The issue is they play the game differently from us.
For example how they gauge the power of these things, is basically is on damage over 3 rounds, assuming classes are using everything to do the most damage as possible to a single target via guarenteed methods(meaning pure damage spells, not stuff that requires any variables like animate/conjure stuff). Thats how they gauge the power of classes, its wild.
Monks should get Weapon Masterys in their Unarmed Strikes (at least those that can be applied to a punch 😅)
100%
Exactly!!
Yes and no with how unarmed strikes are in one D&D you can do tricky stuff at the cost of the damage on a hit. Monks should get a feature let's them apply those effects without having to forgo the damage. That's three built in maneuvers exclusive to using a monk. You could still use the other masteries as well as long as you use a weapon in combo which most monks do.
remember in one dnd unarmed strikes are also what u use for grapples and shoves, so in a way they do!
@@CJAFTER5 except the point of weapon masteries is that you’re still doing damage while also getting rider effects. You give up dmg for control. Also, any str class is better at shoves and grapples than monk
With the new dazed condition, they could rename stunning strike to disorienting strike and make the feature daze instead of stun and maybe make it cost just 1 ki for the whole turn and apply to all hits of the attack action
Agreed, this would be acceptable and you can make stunning Strike come later as a trade off because it is desperately still necessary. Martails still need to be on par with casters and now need Way more Buffs thanks to WotC breaking casters. Except for Warlock cause they gutted that one ...
In later levels giving it a feature that makes it stun on failure as well wouldn't be crazy later levels rogues can knock you out cold now
Embrace the daze
I'm baffled why they didn't do this. I've been assuming all along that the entire reason they created Dazed was for the revised Stunning Strike.
Some fixes I would do:
- Martial arts should allow you to use your DEX instead of STR for jumping, grappling and shoving.
- They should keep monk weapons to take advantage of the scaling die on Weapon Mastery interactions.
- They should give them a fighting style, or at least access to the feat.
- At 11th level, an improved flurry of blows should give you three unarmed strikes.
- Give them a weaker version of Enhanced Metabolism at 2nd level that only lets you regain your Discipline points, and at 7th level improve it to the level of the current one. Either that, or make Perfect Discipline part of the Martial Discipline feature, but instead says: "When you roll initiative, you regain a number of Discipline Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus.
- Turn Deflect Missiles into Deflect Attacks, to allow the monk to deflect melee attacks too.
They changed the prerequisite for picking a fighting style feat to you already have to have that feature. This is a change from the previous playtest that locked to martial classes and a couple of the experts that got fighting styles in their class. Weirdly this locks the barbarians from fighting styles again.
This is close to what I would also do. Instead of deflect attacks, I'd just make unarmored defense be 10+dex+wis+pb. That puts fully AC optimized monk on par with AC optimized paladin.
For discipline points, I think it would be really important to gain them when you roll initiative already on early levels. I think that's the biggest thing that needs to be fixed.
Shoving/grappling Dex monk is already in the playtest due to those actions being tied to unarmed strikes
@@gystes_ but they are no longer based on attack roll. They now have str based DC.
@@gystes_ They are but the DC for the saving throw for grappling and shoving is still based on strength. The opponent gets to decide if they want to make a Dex or Strength saving throw so I think it makes sense that you should be able to choose whether to use dex or strength to determine the DC but currently it is strictly strength.
Wizards: War caster not strong enough, let’s make it a half feat!
Also Wizards: Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are too strong, give it a nerf!
Still Wizards: Who tf wrote stunning fist?! I’ll fire them!!!
Also WotC: we should improve the versatility and power of metamagic and wizards. Buff MM and give wizards the ability to alter their spells.
Also WotC: Fighting styles aren't allowed on three of the mainly martial classes anymore. Sorry not sorry.
Also, we're giving weapon masteries to non Warrior classes because we decided we don't want to use tags anymore. Sorry barbarian, monk, and fighter. Y'all aren't unique anymore.
@@Reapor234 Yeah exactly, basically telling us why be a pure martial if you want to be a martial character and not a half caster instead, but to be fair weapon masteries really aren't much of anything already as it does not deal with much of what martials needed to help them out
@@mohammadmurie masteries definitely helped martials, though. While it's still just "I swing my weapon" each turn, it adds variety to gameplay that they sorely needed.
GWM and SS are in fact broken and always have been. You can cry about martial classes being underpowered but relying on broken ass feats to make your experience better isn’t the issue.
@@trexdrew the feats are broken only because they are so strong compared to other feats. They are required for martials DPR to even be comparable to the average DPR of spellcasters. The issue with GWM and SS is that they are required in order for martials to be even decent at their only role (damage), so they should be given as base features, not as options
Man, I'm reliefed!
I was afraid they noticed that the monk doesn't have to pay KI for breathing.
Stunning strike nerf, empowered strike nerf, no weapon mastery for fists... but they get +1 average damage. The martial caster disparity is solved, guys! >.<
Seriously, they could've given monk infinite KI, or at least 3 KI every turn, and it would still be average at best.
They could have changed stunning strike to the dazed condition to be for free and applied on every weapon/unarmed strike and it would still be weak.
Here's an idea, Monks should have a very small pool of ki that recharge at the start of each of their turns and scale up as they level. That way the continuously can do monk things with the limitation being the number of monk things they can do on their turn and the costs to do them. That's what I'm doing on my monk rework
This has always been my opinion. I think Kibblestasty's Psion does this exact thing perfectly
Aw nuts! I had that idea too!
@@Ben-in3sbTHIS. I have been advocating for this. They should make Martial Arts a psionic power style option you can apply in lieu of one of your attacks. Or something
So kind of like legendary actions work? Hmm...I could see this working. Number could maybe be equal to your proficiency bonus. Use them on your turn or your reactions, all expended uses recharge when it comes back to your turn.
@@iselreads2908 exactly what I was going for, I was also thinking that you could lift the limitation of one use of flurry of blows per turn so you could spend as many ki points as you like on flurry of blows. This would let it scale as you gain more ki giving the monk some proper damage scaling as they level.
The biggest nerf to melee monk was removing the anti OA feature from Mobile.
Base Monk should get the battlemaster features tweaked to suit the monk. This makes the monk versatile and able to use different abilities with fists or weapons and will make them unique.
And they did this! But they gave it to the rogue xD
I refuse to have a monk that has 4-6 special attacks and then does nothing interesting until they can get a short rest.
Its crazy how they went and made the worst class worse.
Its actually kind of impressive.
Running theory is they are trying to make the monk almost unplayable so they don't have to support it anymore
@@dwil0311 What are they good at now?
@@dwil0311 I can count the number of improvements on one hand, I could make a 10 minute video on all its issues
@@dwil0311 you're the delusional one buddy, keep living in denial of how bad the class is
@dwil0311 Very little actually got better either.
Improvement: Damage Die is now 1 higher (wow, a +1 damage buff per hit.)
Caviate: Monk Weapons no longer exists, and Monks are now hard locked to simple weapons where before they had various methods of making martial weapons monk weapons- leading to a decrease in damage on the attack action.
Improvement: Monks get weapon masteries.
Caviate: Their weapon damage no longer scales with their unarmed strikes, so when you choose to use those masteries you do so sacrificing your DPR- punishing a monk for engaging in WOTC's cool new system.
Improvement: Step of the Wind is a little better, and eventually actually quite good, boosting their defense.
Caviate: Stunning Strike has been nerfed so that you expend from a very limited pool to get an effect you may not even benefit from, harming their offense.
Improvement: Stillness of mind now only requires a bonus action to use, not an action.
Caviate: Monks lose their immunity to poison damage, a feature that helped partially make up for their generally aweful defense, all be it situationally.
Every good change that has been made has also been cancelled out, as far as I can see, by an equally bad change- making this monk no better than the old monk!
Calling me delusional is not an argument, it's name calling. *This* is an argument.
@dwil0311 The martial arts die affecting other features is a good point, and one I hadn't thought of.
It's not enough for me to not consider Monk to be mostly the same as it was before, leaving all its flaws untouched, but it is enough for me to say you have a point.
The abilities that scale on martial arts die are held back by one key point: the size of the dice scales, but not the number of dice- which is arguably more important. Take the Open Palm monk's healing. This is competing for your limited dicipline and your bonus action (which most monk features now use). This combined with the fact that despite being melee focused Monks are very fragile, it *should* be better than second wind. Instead, what would have been 5 average healing with old martial arts die becomes... 6 healing!
The monks that benefit the most from this change are 100% mercy and four elements monk, and even that isn't great. 3d6 going to 3d12 is not a big enough improvement for their shatter-esque ability IMO.
Besides, it shouldn't be up to a subclass to make up for a classes short comings when we are playtesting a *redesign*
i agree, the new bard is amazing, i love how much more flexible and customizable they are.
I have barely even played Monk myself but every "design" decision WotC made for them is an afront to TTRPGs as a whole. The first Druid pass was laughably embarrassing, but this is downright infuriating. The designers must have playtested this in the vacuum of space, because no oxygen got to their brains on the revamp of an already underpowered class. Im pretty sure they forgot about Monk and just had an intern change some words in the 2014 PHB so it was "less broken" 5 minutes before the playtest release
Barbarian: "My rage duration increased 10 fold and I'm a super skill monkey!" 🙉
Fighter: "I'm a weapon master plus I'm awesome at saving throws!" 😎
Monk: *Sad punching noises* 😥
This one onednd playtest functions as an excellent ad for LaserLlama's alternate monk
As a player who mains monk, and a dm, it’s frankly a stunning strike on me to see wizards get it so wrong. I mostly balanced it in my games years ago and homebrewed a half caster way of the third eye monk and somehow these grown ass adults are just like “instructions unclear ki points stuck in ceiling fan”
Since you can reposition darkness every turn, you can for free teleport 30 feet wherever you want by positioning the 15 foot radius sphere of darkness such that you and the destination are at the edges of the sphere.
It's honestly baffling how badly the Monk changes went. Like at least with most of the others they made sense and felt like genuine effort was put in, even if the community didn't like it. Like Warlock & Druid. Monk still sucks.
Idea: WEAPON MASTERY in MARTIAL ARTS. Take existing weapon masteries (that make sense) and describe how the monk performs these as unarmed strikes. Give styes equal to proficiency bonus. Players name their styles. "Toppling Rhino! Vexing Snake!"
100% love this idea stances rather than weapon masteries
WotC to Monk: "Your life is worth NOTHING! You serve 0 PURPOSE!"
"You're the FIRST anomaly you're a mistake you were never supposed to be a class. Just give up and go away!"
You should spend Ki for a 2 dpr increase NOW
Hi Akihiko
@@burnin8trxx*cue thunder thaumaturgy*
Thief Rogue and Dancer Bard are more monk then the class that's named and described as Monk. Wow.
I'm pretty sure fighters and barbarians larping as monks are still better, too.
Had a thought to help with Ki points... Monks get their wisdom modifier added to their Ki points. That would help in lower level play in increasing their resources without breaking the game.
You could literally double their ki and that wouldn't break anything. I'm with Kobold here that more of their abilities need to be free and others have a number of uses that can be done before using ki.
@@joelsasmadWhy not all three? I like all three. Double the Ki points, add the wisdom modifier, and make more abilities free.
If they did add more ki points like that, I'd prefer it be tied to PB instead. It gives a smoother curve, and slightly reduces MAD
Level + Wisdom modifier is exactly what 3rd edition used, lol. 5th Edition is trash, and OneDnD even more so, WotC needs to stop proving me right
@@The_Yukki Some would say so, but you could also deal 16d8 per unarmed strike
Easy fix for Step of the Wind: You can take the Dash or Disengage action as a bonus action on your turn. Alternatively, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to take both as a bonus action. If you do so, your jump distance is also doubled until the end of your turn.
I think if they arent going to give monk a d10 at least allow a monk to use Patient Defense as a bouns action without the cost of Ki. It would allow a player to make the choice between do you want to deal damage or have a chance to survive another round. If anything cook Paitent Defense into Unarmored Defense.
Being self-restoration back down to 7 where stillness of mind was and let us get Heighten Metabolism eariler or cook it into another feature.
Defy Death is cool to me but it comes way to late (capstone lawl)
"Ki" should also be scaled off Monk level + proficiency bonus
My fix for ki points is to let you regenerate 1 ki point at the start of every turn of combat. That way, it's expected that you use a 1 point ki feature every turn. More expensive or using multiple features are what dip into your reserves. Not using ki would let you rebuild. Non-combat features and features that give you spells should not use ki and be limited to X times per long rest like other classes. Then, since ki is limited to combat features and ki regeneration is already high, just give all ki back when combat ends.
Now we just need to change the later ki recovery features at levels 7 and 15. First off I'd swap the names. The level 7 feature would let you take an action that recovers several ki points that you can use x times recharging on a long rest. The level 15 feature would let you recover 2 ki points a turn instead of 1.
Halving the ki point maximum might be a good balancing option, but that would require some playtesting before I'd commit to it. Otherwise some ki point cost fine tuning may be appropriate.
I'd also want to drop the word ranged from the deflect missiles feature and rename it to deflect strikes. I never really understood why this only applied to ranged attacks when blocking and counterstrikes are a big part of the martial artist fantasy too. Its a nice defensive change for a melee fighter. Also a damage buff near level 11 that doesn't require another attack, for gameplay speed, would help keep damage consistent with other martials. Even if it's just a once per turn martial arts die damage bonus on a hit. Finally, bring back monk weapons to the 2014 version.
WOTC when they see martials with good abilities: NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF
WOTC when they realized spell casters were only demigods in 5e: Pls take this buff my child.
Nah it is more like here you go martial have this small insignificant change that is a very minor buff if at all that should balance out everything as we NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF everything else, same thing for half casters
While spellcasterss, nerf them? What for they are obviously the weakest classes in the game and need to buff all their spells they need all the help they can get
Like... I get why they'd make Stunning Strike 1/turn because rolling 4 attacks then forcing up to 4 saves was almost as annoying to process at the table as a Conjure spell horde, but forcing a single creature to make multiple save or sucks on a turn was also the one special niche they had in 5e. The devs totally dropped the ball on compensating them for it, though, and somehow thought also tuning down *any* of their other features was appropriate.
In the design space they've set up, a consolation prize for a failed stun would absolutely be in order, whether that's applying a lesser condition like dazed, slowed, a free dodge for the monk, just something (maybe subclass-dependent). Speaking of, adding unarmed strike weapon masteries could be a cool way of both differentiating the subclasses and helping to compensate for the stun spam nerf. And is there any reason they shouldn't have a d10 hit die at this point?
Also RIP to the poison *damage* immunity on that level 10 feature. Given how prevalent that damage type is, that's a huge defensive loss.
But kobold, the new monk capstone allows him to *remain* a dragon for longer once the wizard has turned him into one! After all, your number of Hit Points changes to the total you roll *instead* of dropping to 0 hit points, so polymorph doesn't end prematurely!
Except polymorph removes all your class features, including this capstone
@@elvenchakra Which makes my gator impersonation even better!
Think it looks like monk will again need to be multiclassed with to gain more utility.
But with the decisions theyve been making with other classes its looked pretty obvious theyre trying to discourage multiclassing so monk is just extra boned while wizard and sorcerer get stronger like usual.
Especially since the Discipline Point starvation already discourages multiclassing Monks.
Homebrewed the Monk half caster to see if it was really broken but it is great. It scales well with others and makes you actually feel like a real avatar style bender. I am now on the Monk half caster band wagon
It’s a 10 ft GREATER reach for the 4 Elements monk. So 15 Ft unarmed strikes, which I actually think is pretty cool.
if you are a bugbear you can throw hands at 20ft
The point of the Four Elements burst attack is to use your range to push enemies close together, then use your ranged burst to hit them both, which is a super cool visual
The fact that we getting in-depth commentary on these changes from somoene who doesn't even work at the company shows Wizards of the Coast must not have dedicated players on their staff who know as much about their own product.
I had two buffs to monk
For every odd level you get two ki (now at level 20 you get 30 Ki)
And at level 11 you get another attack as well as a subclass
Also revert stunning strike nerf
I have a pdf that is a fix to the playtest 6 monk on my account's "About", but I can't share it 🥲, because youtube.
At least regarding Stunning Strike, if we keep the playtest version as is but add one thing, it might help in some way. Have it take away the target's ability to use reactions. Con saves are pretty good on m9nsters, so the odds of Stunning Strike working in the first place is low, so have the actual stun part of things be an additional penalty if they fail the save instead of being the only thing. Still helps to ensure getting SOMETHING out of it for expending your fleeting resources
I’m more bummed about the lack of new exciting features here rather than the nerf to Stunning Strike. I’ve always hated the feature because it encourages Monk players to drain all of their ki on a feature that works like 1/10th of the time at higher levels. And yes when it does it’s amazing, but with that CON save it’s just not even reliable.
What they should’ve done is rewritten it to either not pull from your ki and limit its number of uses (based on when it succeeds, not when you use it), or just keep it the same and change the condition to Dazed.
Honestly I’d rather they just remove the feature and do something far more cool and reliable to help the Monk be useful, but WOTC is probably looking at this and thinking they’ve made the monk OP now 😂
Love the videos!
Removing capstones just encourages players to multiclass because there's nothing to strive for late game, but then they spread out class features so much we're punished for trying to multiclass early and midgame. Thing is they've never had good balancing for late game, so almost nobody even tries to run high level campaigns.
It's a collection of frustrating game design choices that only is getting worse.
With every UA for OneD&D my faith in the new edition wanes.
Defy Death cost is damned expensive at a time where you are almost certain to be low or out of ki - unless you're nearly one-shot at the beginning of your first combat after a short rest, you're likely OUT OF KI before it comes up.
I like that you get to punch as a bonus action before you use Environmental Burst because it gives you the chance to push an enemy closer to other enemies, potentially increasing the number of creatures caught in the AoE damage. The punch even has 15ft reach so you don't really have to go into melee to try this.
*This is the best solution I found following WotC's design style. If they can't find a better solution I think I will play with my design.*
*1st: Martial Arts - Quick Strike (Bonus Unarmed Strike).* When you use the Attack action with an Unarmed Strike or a Simple Weapon on your turn, you can make one Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action on the same turn. If you use a force point during your turn, you can decide to move your Bonus Unarmed Strike as part of the Attack action. It is still possible to make this extra attack only once per turn.
*1st: Unarmed techniques (or Unarmed Mastery)*
*2nd: Inner Force (Martial Discipline)*
*Iron Strike (replaces Flurry of Blows).* Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you can choose to spend 1 Force point and add a Martial Arts die to the damage roll. *If you have advantage over a creature, you can decide to sacrifice it to perform an Iron Strike without having to spend Force points. *The additional damage is of the same type as your unarmed attacks.
*Patient Defense.* [...] + If at the end of Patient Defense no one has attacked you, then you may use your reaction to make unarmed attack against a creature within your unarmed reach.
*Step of the Wind.* [...] and your step is so light that for the turn you can run through the air.
*2nd: Unarmored Movement* [...] + Additionally, while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, you can take the Dash or Disengage actionas as a bonus action on your turn. When you use one of this actions your jump distance is doubled
*5th: Stunning Strike.* When you hit a creature with Iron Strike of your Inner Force feature, you can attempt a Stunning Strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the end of your next turn. You cannot use this feature in combination with another unarmed techniques.
*6th: Assimilation (replaces Empowered Strike).* You can assimilate one simple weapon with magical properties into your body and use its magical properties with your unarmed attacks. A small tattoo that resembles the item absorbed appears on the skin of your arm. The absorbed item is undetectable by normal means, although the effect is detectable via Detect Magic. The item can be discharged as an action and the weapon is automatically equipped. You must be capable of holding the weapon or it falls to your feet (such as if you had no hands free). If you are unconscious or dead the assimilated weapon automatically separates from you. This feature can only be used with unarmed attacks and cannot be added to other items that enhance unarmed attacks.
*10th: Self-Cultivation (Self-Restoration).* [...], and have advantage in saving throws against the Charmed, Frightened and Poisoned conditions. [...].
*11th: Flurry of Blows.* Your Martial Arts feature now confers two extra Quick Strikes rather than one. If you spend 1 force point or more as an action that is not an attack action on your turn, you can make the Flurry of Blow as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
*15th: Patient Resistance.* When you have Patient Defense active and a creature that can be seen hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage by 1d10 plus your Dexterity modifier plus your monk level.
*18th: Flurry of Iron Strikes.* Your unarmed attacks have never been more powerful. Now Iron Strike is no longer limited to once per turn, but that is only if you sacrifice advantage to execute it.
*20th: Enlightenment.* Through your Inner Force and your physical and mental discipline, your being has achieved enlightenment. You raise three ability scores of your choice and increase them by 2. The maximum for those scores is now 30. Additionally, each time you roll for initiative, you always have a number of Force points equal or above your wisdom modifier.
Let's face it, DMs will have to allow homebrew for the martial classes if they have any hope of being as powerful and as helpful to the party as the other classes. I tried to make homebrew subclasses for the Barbarian, Fighter, and Monk, but the only one I am happy with is the Rune Smith I made for the fighter which takes the rune concept and adds customization to the class. In short with just the level 3 feature, you work with the DM to determine if a spell could be considered an activated or passive effect, you can choosespells from any spell list, you create one rune per long rest by inscribing it on a piece of equipment, you can give these rune inscribed items to your party members and they also can use the runes, you can activate the activated half of the rune a number of times equal to half your proficiency rounded down every short rest, and the only other downsides being you can only create a number of runes equal to twice your proficiency, creating a new rune when already at maximum removes the oldest rune, and you can only choose spells of a level a full caster of the same Fighter level can cast.
As for monk, I would increase their Unarmored Defense by their proficiency on top of their DEX and WIS, and let them recover one ki point if they miss a bonus action attack or if a target succeeded on their saving throw against your monk features. That will give some needed power to the 5e monk.
The monk DEFINITELY needs help. They should start off with 4 ki at level 2, and need some serious damage boosts built into the BASE class past level 5 (maybe get something fantastic at level 10?).
Or, you can choose to do 2 attacks, 1 normal action, 1 bonus action, when you run out of KI (instead of 3 with flurry). Just saying, it's only 1 swing difference.
I always fixed monks by giving them: +their Wis mod KI, up their martial dice by 1 step d4->d6 etc), +1 stat on any level giving an ASI and if you are monk from level 1 you get+4 stats.
Monks problems are primarily hp, ac and KI. These buffs mostly fix that i feel without messing too much with individual design elements or having to micro manage everything in the class
I wonder if monk would be fixed by just making flurry of blows not require ki, so all their ki abilities just become situational buffs rather than tied to their damage.
I would do that and make step of the wind free as well because in current 5e
A rogue gets to do all of that stuff for free but monks have to spend ki.
@@The_Yukkidon't they both get evasion tho? Not the first time it happened and it would be a welcome change
Thanks PT. Ill make sure to take these into account when making my version of the Monk
Someone made a monk homebrew that took the "my body is a weapon" part of monk literally, ty dnd creators for stuff like this.
Ty pointyhat in particular.
My homebrew step of the wind for my monk player was a no ki cost copy of Cunning Action with Hide swapped out for Escape.
You can take a bonus action on each of your turns in combat. This action can be used only to take the Dash, Disengage, or Escape action.
To make then the ultimate uncatchable skirmisher
Reading through the playtests, one thing I did notice was the effort to move away from effects that can be triggered more than once per turn, like Stunning Strike. Divine Smite was made a bonus action spell, so you can’t divine smite multiple times on your turn, or stack it with another smite spell, or cast any other spell on your turn for that matter. Spells like Hex and Hunter’s Mark now only trigger the additional damage once per turn. Even Druids got an optional feature to add 1d8 to the damage of weapon attacks and Wild Shape attacks, but it is only allowed once per turn. I think WorC has a solid rule for the playtests that seems to be trying to curb ability spam in game. I honestly agree with the choice, to an extent, but it also means that the ability in question needs to be worth investing your turn and resources into.
You should regain 3 Ki per turn, scaling to 5 Ki per turn at level 11. On top of that, you should be able to regain all ki points after 1 minute of concentrated breathing out of combat.
Also revert stunning strike.
I don't always agree with you, but you're 100% spot-on here. Monk got nerfed while other classes got stronger.
I don't understand how the designers view Monk and why they're so scared of Stunning Strike. Monk is and continues to be squishier and more fragile than a Warlock; how does that make any sense?
What's worse is if you read through the comment threads in here, there are actually people defending this change and saying it's good 😂
I agree to nerf stunning strike. I would rather see a strike replacing one of the melee attacks once on the monks turn and gives the target dazed condition till starting of the monks next turn. The strike is an attack roll instead of a saving throw by the target which is much more reliable. And the target can spend their action to roll a con saving throw to end the condition at the end of their turn. The monk can do this strike without using ki but only wisdom modifier times per long rest. This way reduce the ki shortage problem and limit the spamming of the dazed strike which some seems to worry. Normally you should be looking at a 60-70% chance to land the strike which is not bad chance. The target usually have something like 60+% chance to make the con saving throw at the end of their turn to end the condition (if they choose not to take other action) but that will be the only action the target take on their turn. So depending on the initiative order, the strike can be more powerful if the monk's turn is directly after the target.
Some changes I'd suggest i could see them making with where their heads are at:
> d10 hit die
> Enhanced metabolism is like monks version of the new second wind or rage.
>Enhanced metabolism should start out only restoring ki and later be allowed restore full short rest benefits
> monks get a feature that lets them apply the alternate effects of unarmed attacks but not have to forgo damage. They can choose to use Dex or ki save for the DC. And can do this once a turn per option.
> stunning strike changed to adding a new additional effect to unarmed strikes that lets you Daze on con save and spend ki point to force reroll. At higher levels it goes from daze to stun.
> the feature that is timless body should add poison condition
>Feature at higher level that lets you add an additional martial art die to damage like paladin feature
> Deflect missles is changed to work on any attack and the ki point to return fire makes them take damage for range or apply an unarmed strike effect for melee.
Shadowmonk darkness can actually be moved significantly more than 60ft now. It can be moved _to anywhere within 60ft of you_ - which means that if last turn you took Step of the Wind, and moved directly away from your darkness, the furthest point from its previous location to which you could move it would amount to a distance of twice your movement plus 120ft. Even assuming you never move (or stay within a few squares), you can move it _anywhere_ within that 60ft radius of yourself, every turn.
Epic Boons are where they always were: in the DMG post-20.
Take Perfect Discipline/Self from level 15 down to 11.
Add the following to it: When you roll initiative you gain a number of temporary Discipline (Ki) points equal to your initiative bonus. At the end of your turn you loose one temporary Discipline (Ki) Point if you did not spend any Discipline (Ki) points during that turn. At the end of combat any remaining temporary Discipline (Ki) points are instantly lost.
You have abilities that cost 8 of the darn things and a base maximum of 20 at max level. You need to burn points to just keep up at this level so the bonus pool will not last all that long and any costly ability will quickly have you burning through your regular daily pool which really should be for letting your character shine rather than keep up.
Idea for stunning Strike for 2 points the CON save is made at disadvantage or for one point if the target is dazed on a fail (It is still costing one of your attacks and a Discipline Point.
With the loss of MA die for Monk weapons after level 5 unarmed attacks are doing more damage than all but Great Club. are they trying to wean Monks off weapons
beautiful video, i see a lot of opinion about the new monk so i did what a normal personwould do: fixing the monk
New monk Class & subclass
Primary ability: dexterity and wisdom
1ST LEVEL: MARTIAL ARTS
Change: none
1ST LEVEL: UNARMORED DEFENSE
Change: none
1ST LEVEL: WEAPON MASTERY
Change: not only the monk can use the Mastery proprety,
but during a long rest he can select a wepon and use it
as a monk wepon “using dex insted of str” (this last untile a long rest)
2ND LEVEL: MARTIAL DISCIPLINE
Change: the number of Discipline points are equal to the monk lv + twice your proficency bonus
>Step of the wind: cost nothing
>patient defend: cost nothing
2ND LEVEL: UNARMORED MOVEMENT
Change: none
3RD LEVEL: DEFLECT MISSILES
Change: not only the monk as the ability to block Bludgeoning, Piercing
Or Slashing damage; but he can also use this feature against any damage Type.
Plus the damage and range increase with the monk lv
(lv 3 = 60 feet & it dose two rolls of the martial arts die)
(lv 9 = 120 feet & it dose three rolls of the martial arts die)
(lv 12 = 180 feet & it dose four rolls of the martial arts die)
(lv 16 = 240 feet & it dose five rolls of the martial arts die)
4TH LEVEL: SLOW FALL
Change: no
5TH LEVEL: EXTRA ATTACK
Change: no
5TH LEVEL: STUNNING STRIKE
Change: make it so he can use more than one time stunning strike and he can use
Simple weapon, monk weapon or unarmed strike
6TH LEVEL: EMPOWERED STRIKES
Change: make the monk weapon also deal magical damage
7TH LEVEL: EVASION
Change: none
7TH LEVEL: HEIGHTENED METABOLISM
Change: none
9TH LEVEL: ACROBATIC MOVEMENT
Change: none
10TH LEVEL: SELF-RESTORATION
Change: maybe the monk as resisten to poison damage and he is immune to the poisoned condition
And as a bonus action he can end on him self or a other allied with in 5 feet the following
Condition: Charmed, Frightened, stunned, paralyzed and poisoned
11TH LEVEL: DEFLECT MAGICAL ENERGY
Change: when you use your deflect missiles and you are targeted by a spell that need a saving throw and succed, you can spend 4 Discipline points and roll a D20 + your wisdom modifier and if you succed against the dc (that is equal 10 + the spell lv); if you fail the dc nothing happen’s but if you succed you return back to the caster
13TH LEVEL: IMPROVED UNARMORED DEFENSE
Change: whe you reach this lv in monk your unarmord defense is now 13 + dex + wis, now when you use the step of the wind feature you do not provoke attack of opportunity, difficult terrain do not impose disadvantage, you have advantage with athletic and acrobatic abilities
14TH LEVEL: DISCIPLINED SURVIVOR
Change: none
15TH LEVEL: PERFECT DISCIPLINE
Change: When you roll Initiative, you regain four time your martial arts die if you have none remaining; plus now you can attack three times and your flurry of blows now makes four attacks
18TH LEVEL: SUPERIOR DEFENSE
Change: instead of 1 minute is hour X LV, Additionally, you can spend 6 ki points to cast the astral projection spell, without needing material components. When you do so, you can't take any other creatures with you.
20TH LEVEL: MASTER OF LIFE, MASTER OF ENEMIES
Change: you have trained body, mind and soul to surpass every difficulty in your path to then become a true master: you have advantage with all saving throw plus if you fail you can use 2 point of your Discipline points to succed instead; when you or an allied fall to 0 hit points you can spend 3 Discipline points to roll six time your martial arts die and regain the total number of those die
enjoy :)
My personal favorite Monks are the Lacer from Incarnate, Last of the Lacers (An Avatar the Last Airbender adaptation of 5e)
Lacers (benders) are like Ki based Half Casters, except they can pick from a number of bending forms that are similar to spells (in some cases worse in some cases better), and gain them at the same levels. 1st Level spells cost 2 Ki, Second Level Spells cost 3 Ki, 3rd cost 4, 4th cost 5, and 5th cost 6.
More than that, they get an elemental strike that's essentially as good as getting Crossbow Expert at level 1.
I'm playing as a Waterbender and I'm loving this Monk fix!
13:45 Surprise wasn't replaced like the death save thing or some spells, so it still is as it was in 5e.
Especially considering how they directly mentioned the mechanic in the assassin, they either don't want it changed or forgot that they didn't actually say that the mechanic was replaced like they did with death saves.
Heres a couple ideas:
Monks should get proficiency bonus number of ki points per turn, which helps fix their economy issue, and limits stunning strike at 5th to 2 tries.
Flurry of blows should be changed to "when you hit with an unarmed strike or simple melee weapon, you can spend 1 ki to make 2 unarmed strikes as part of that attack". I leave the wording open enough to allow the monk to machinegun punch if they want to at their own peril.
One idea i saw that ibliked alot was changing the abilities that use ki to be free, but inhanced by ki. Heres what i mean:
You can dash or disengage as a bonus action, and can spend 1 ki to take one of these actions imediately after hitting and dealing damage with an unarmed strike or simple weapon.
When you hit with an unarmed strike or simple weapon and do damage, you can force the target to make a wisdom save, or be slowed until the end of their turn. Spend one ki point to instead stun them on a failed save.
Deflect missles should be changed to deflect/ parry, and allow you to use your reacrion to reduce the damage of an attack you take. You can spend one ki point during this reaction to use your attackers might against them, empowering your next attack by the damage reduced by this feature.
Like most people I'm pretty sad about the changes but after watching this and remembering the ranged monk build and i guess it becoming the more viable build I just wanna say level 4 shadow monk and level 16 gloomstalker ranger. You can create darkness for your gloomstalker abilities by yourself and dont have to force your party to fight at night. You can also move the darkness to react to the battlefield. Every fight you will be invisible if the enemy has true sight, blind sight or tremmor sense you can either use step of the wind or deflect missile. You also have atleast 120 feet darkvision and both classes need Dex, Wis and Con. You can also wear armor as none of the monk features you are using require you to be naked. So using the standard array + background bonus + a feat like piercer you could have 18 Dex, 14 Wis, 14 Con and use medium armor to get to around 16 AC
- Ki should be Level+WIS
- Deflect Missiles should cost 0 resources and affect all projectiles out of the box
- Step of the Wind should be free
- Monk Weapons need to come back and/or give Unarmed Strikes mastery options
- Poison Immunity should come back
- Stunning Strike needs to be spammable
- Give Monks a d10 Hit Die
- Do SOMETHING to improve Monk AC. I saw someone mention 10+DEX+WIS+PB, which could get busted at higher levels but martials need some busted features and a nigh-unhittable ninja totally fits the class fantasy.
- I’m tempted to suggest that Monks should have more Extra Attacks like Fighter
Here's my fix to Stunning strike, Make it a weapon master feature for monks, on unarmed strikes. Make it free, and make it so you can only stun a TARGET once per turn, so you can either focus fire damage, or go around spreading damage, but perhaps stunning multiple targets. but most important in this change, it leans into monks having any form of weapon specialization on unarmed strikes, and it now is just something that happens for free, and the once per turn is way less painful.
You can always pick aberrant dragonmark and hope to the dice gods you roll a mat 19 or above at level 10 or higher.
I think what would not just make monk better but still have the heavy resource management gameplay is if they had a way to regenerate individual ki points by performing certain actions (such as every time an enemy is defeated) or just get 1 ki point back each round, with later features giving ways to boost this for a turn or at higher levels just permanently.
this issue is they value Stun as about 13 damage of power, everything about the game translates into "Virtual damage" or "health" for them. Its a very funny way of looking at it.
The classes are balanced around their power over 3 rounds against a single target using all of their resources(conservation is a issue for out of combat not in).
Keep thing in mind when rating class features and it opens your perspective a bit on how they view the game.
They what
@@bongosmcdongos4190 Yes.
I actually tested this out, and found this to be true, its fucking insane.
They mainly look at damage over 3 rounds assuming they are using EVERYTHING on a single target, no resource conversation, and mainly look at pure guaranteed consistent damage, any variables like summon/animate spells they do not consider. Any other ability is valued in "virtual" damage.
You can see them use this exact same method for monsters in the DMG, this is not new.
They added new bold mechanics to the rogue, they could have easily done that with monk where you generate discipline with with each successful melee. BOLD, fun! Would encourage going into melee. The open palm monk does it's crazy stuff with it's bonus action, why cant the others? Run in, pop pop, cool I made discipline, with my bonus I use my ability that consumes them. Or, I'll save them for next round, because the more I have I can do something cooler, or the same abiility but stronger.
I love the idea of a monk pushing people around.
But the way the subclass work, it sounds like in most fight, every single attack of the monk will force at least one saving throw.
I hope they find a way to keep the "punch around" feeling without slowing down the game that much.
I really like the changes they made to the rogue even though IO didnthave the chance to look at subclasses yes
I'm gonna throw this out real quick, "most of which were inspired by the Player's Handbook survey in 2021". I would assume most suggested changed were made by frustrated dungeons masters. This is also the first monk playtest. The first Druid playtest was dreadful. Constructive change requires constructive feedback.
Everyone be sure to suggest positive and noteworthy changes.
Plenty of DMs would love people to be unfairly underpowered because they would be easy targets for not-so-nice DM antics.
18:19 circles are squares on grids? is that like an offical thing? cause we just use the closest thing - either drawing a circle and counting any square with more than 50% coverage, or - for single AOE like fireball.. picking a point and seeing how many creatures are within range of it in a straight line
Kobold is actually wrong about this. Well MOST of the circles in dnd can be simplified as squares, once a circle is past a certain size it no longer covers the corners of a square. That and there are some spells that only effect creatures that are entirely inside the aoe, such as with the silence spell.
@@timthefluffydragon oh yeah, I didnt really think about the fact smaller circles are usually squares on the board anyway, good point - and its good to know I wasn't being crazy! Thanks
Some fixes I'd apply to the Monk:
- Give them 2 reactions
- Step of the Wind is free
- 'Unarmoured' features work with light and medium armour (i.e. Dex + Wis + armour = ac; Monks should be hard to hit, thus the d8 hit die can be justified)
- You choose which of your mental scores is used to calculate your dc and ac, giving players more freedom in character creation
- Killing or knocking an enemy unconscious causes you to regain 1 ki
- ASI at level 6 and 14 (to compensate for the multi ability score dependancy)
- Extra attack at level 11
- Also at level 11, flurry of blows now gives 2 extra attacks
A way to fix things; Make Flurry not use a Ki point. It already uses your bonus action. Nothing else I can think of uses a resource point at the same time as the action.
I waited and I waited for them to improve the monk. I don't they could have done a worse job helping the worst class in the game. I was mad at how little the barbarian got, and the monk somehow suffered more! They must have told Joe the intern to write the monk changes on his lunch break. Joe's only instructions were:
-Stunning Strike is too powerful as written. Tone it down (this bullet point was underlined several times).
-Unarmed damage is too low. Make it more powerful, but only by a small amount.
-The monk was a "glass cannon" in older editions so don't adjust the hit-points or Unarmored Defense feature of the current monk. The older players appreciate that nod to their starting rules.
-Change the names of the less well-known abilities to make it seem like we're changing everything from top to bottom.
I am right there with you on being annoyed with the barb changes last ua and this monk "changes" are even worst some how
On dealing force damage instead of magical bludgeoning:
There are nine creatures resistant to force (four of those are amethyst dragons) and seven immune to it, with only one of those being from the Monster Manual.
Meanwhile there are 38 creatures resistant to bludgeoning damage, no matter if it is magical, (usually plants and swarms) and one being immune to it.
Honestly if they wanted to limit stunning strike, a good compromise might have been a number of times per short rest equal to proficiency bonus instead of once per turn. Separating it from ki to cut down on resource use; but also preventing the monk from stunning constantly like wotc has perceived.
Or make it its own resource independent of ki
The amount equal to prof bonus is fine, but then it shouldn't count/lose a use if the stunning strike didn't actually stun
Huge thing on the elemental monk.
It increases reach by 10 feet GREATER than normal.
Normal reach is 5, 10 feet great is actually 15. So elemental monk has insane area control. Grab sentinel.
Combine with the later flying featue and you can lift enemies 3 times for fall damage on each attack.
Be a bugbear and increase that range by another 5 feet to punch someone in the face 20 feet away
@@mohammadmurie oh good catch.
@@draegonspawn5361 ye no problem
I feel like Ki should be split into Mind and Body, with both of them being proficiency bonus/rest, idk between short or long. This means that their uses could be split between the 2 resources AND can be affected by subclasses differently.
There's another hidden nerf. Before you could multiclass into ranger to get hunter's mark and deal extra damage on each hit. 4 attacks makes Hunter's mark as a 1st level spell slot something barely decent. But now it works only once per turn. It also applies to hex and equivalents. So basically the only boost monks had in regarding other classes, which was early 4 attacks, it's gone.
Hopefully we will see a few edits to the Monk before the final version
One buff that I think they could give to Monks, is to give Unarmed Strikes the Vex property. And make Unarmed Strikes Simple Weapons again.
I only wanted 2 things for monks a caetus/brass knuckles weapon type unique and locked to monks and a luchador/WWE subclass that works like the fighter battlemaster but all your techniques are different body slams and holds that have different effects
I don't love requiring a feat to make a class useful at its primary function, but Mobility makes a monk come alive as a melee scrapper. You can charge through a group striking and slide past them on the other side without reactions from whoever you even try to strike. Unless I missed an update about feats or functionality in this version, in which case I retract my selection on the basis of sheer ignorance.
The problem with the shadow monk is that to use its best feature it will attack with disadvantage for the dim light
17:25 are you sure you didn't mean a 1/3 caster? That would be more in line with every other martial extra casty stuff.. ohh.. imagine they get low level spells for their monk level compared to casters, but they could use ki - ahem- oh sorry.. "diSapLinE" to upcast them to do decent damage. So they could do like a really high level scorching ray or something.. wih their body!
Stunning Strike is basically a 1st level spell. Like, Stunned is a strong condition, but gating it behind both an attack roll and a Con save makes it mediocre even by the standards of a 1st level spell.
The fact it used to get a uniquely cheap and effective Quicken was pretty good, but at best that raises it to the level of a 2nd level spell.
This is the flagship feaure that WotC saw fit to nerf into the ground.
You know what would be a way better version? Bringing back the OD&D Stunning Fist where if your attack roll exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more (or if you crit) it stuns until the start of your next turn. Yes, that style of feature comes from 1974, not PF2e. And it has a ton of nifty qualities. It's faster, because you don't need to roll an extra die. It keeps a resourceless feature from being overpowered against bosses. It removes a resource tax from the resource-strapped Monk. It gives Monks some extra defensive power in melee where they desperately need it. The duration ending at the start of your next turn prevents the worst sort of stunlocking loops.
It's not that hard to fix the monk...
What i'd do...
• free disengage or dash when you spend one or more ki on your turn
• one more ASI at lv ~10
• some options to fighting styles
• magic items to improve your unnarmed strikes (besides soul catching)
• some way to get a "absorbtion damage pool", something like the abjurer's shield. Consistently without hurting the action ecconomy... maybe something like, your PB every time you spend a ki, with a limit equals your monk level.
The stunning strike nerf makes sense if and only if monk gets more Ki. It eats too much of the power budget of Ki because of you add more it allows SS spam to do more resistance fishing and multi enemy stunning. But they didn't really buff other ki features or give extra ki
WoTC really did bring out a Shotgun just make sure Monk is dead alright.
another simple change to help monks with ki from level 2-6 is adding their wisdom mod to the amount of ki/disipline they get.
wont impact high level as much but would give them extra for low level
also speaking of less options, rogues lost hand crossbows for some reason yet non many seem to have noticed it as it was in the old expert class ua too
Here we go, fixed up that monk for them:
drive.google.com/file/d/1xxGHoY0IS8Qw9UqqLyJhbzEilfEjvoRH/view?usp=sharing