A small point of the elements monk, the reach tag increases the reach by 10 additional fts, so you now have a base 15ft unarmed attack and 20ft with a bugbear. It isn’t a game changer but it is a strong addition to the subclass
I think this is the worst UA out of all of them so far. Rouges - Cut damage Druids - This version is weaker than the last Monk - You all covered the nerfs Bard - Unneeded buffs to the moon Ranger - Nerfed and given shitty spells free Cleric - I KINDA like it but jury is still out
When Jeremy Crawford said that increasing the Martial Arts damage die would've been enough to "fix" the Monk, my heart dropped. You could see it on Todd's face as well. There is clearly a disconnect in WoTC on how good the Monk is.
Agreed, I heard Jeremy say this, and I was like "oh no". Honestly, I don't know who WoTc people have been playing with if they considered the class as a whole overpowered.
there has been some discourse in the community after WotC released a video discussing the monk where they said that they give damage values to status effects, stun, prone etc according to wotc monks deal as much damage as a crossbow expert fighter thanks to stunning strike so they didnt know what to change because it would skew the balance
If 'stunning strike' is that much, then they should drop stunning to 'daze' and beef up the rest of the class. I don't want to play a character whose only way to be good is to ONLY do 1 thing and that thing is save or suck.
@@finalfantasy50 Huh. I had not heard about this but that is incredibly interesting. But there have been a few times where they have discussed certain mechanics and it's made me wonder if they look at a lot of things in a vacuum. Because once you factor in the CON save that soooo many creatures have that calculation would have to go down, one would think.
I can’t believe wotc had all this time to attempt to fix the monk as they should be well aware of how bad the base monk is and essentially did nothing. The new four elements monk is slightly more fun and shadow is alright but man, monk seriously needs feedback to say ‘nothing of monk works, it needs a drastic rework’
The only way to fix it is to home brew it and communicate between the DM and players and talk about their expectations, mechanics and class features. My main issue is that there are not enough Ki points to do anything. It should start at 5 Ki points at the least.
Yeah it's even more insulting that they clearly pushed this one back over and over again because they must have been lamenting they couldn't figure out anything good
"Lets say someone held a gun to your head and said you had to play this monk...." "SHOOT" 🤣 I absolutely love both of you guys, and it's nice to see my thoughts on the new monk are shared by my favorite channel inspirations!
I’m at the point where I’m not concerned about monks being too powerful, especially at high levels. I genuinely think they could print “starting at 11th level, all features that require discipline points have their cost reduced by 1 point (minimum of 0)” and have the Monk not be overpowered. Backwards compatibility be damned.
I mean which feature from this playtest before 11th level would even come close to being overpowered without costing Ki? Your statement is obvious, because all the Ki-costing class features before 11th level are just not worthy of costing ki, apart from maybe flurry of blows but even that I would rule without costing Ki in my game. The perfect state of the Monk is if he doesn't need a Resource for his features to be balanced. I mean Ki is a cool flavour, but do we really need such a weird resource? A resourceless Monk is the Monk we should in theory aspire to have in the version. Obviously it will still have Ki-Points in the 2024 PHB and that's fine, but without Resources it would just be better imo. You can limit some of his features in another way, maybe PB times per Long rest or Wisdom mod times per Long rest if you absolutely need to, but everything else balances itself out without needing Ki. I've made my own version of a reworked monk on GMBinder, where I've completely removed Ki as a Resource and basically kept 90% of the features like they already were and although I haven't playtested it, I do not feel like it would be broken in any way. The only things I really changed were proficiencies, HP and scaling of Martial arts and the rest I basically kept the same just without costing Ki.
The main concern with that would be the Way of Mercy monk able to heal up the entire party to full HP in a short amount of time. I've been playing with a homebrew capstone for the monk where the monk gets a free temporary ki point each round on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, and the workaround on Way of Mercy is that if the temporary point is used to restore any HP, it grants temporary HP instead.
@@derektom14Okay, but even that only kicks in at the end, way past when most people stop playing. Seems simpler to just note on the Way of Mercy Monk that that use of Ki still requires ki points even after level 11.
There's a layer of hell where the punishment is just reliving the experience of reading the UA6 Monk for the first time. The disappointment I felt with each successive feature (with a paltry few exceptions) was just... I was truly sad which I can't say has been true in any of the other playtests. Part of it was because they had 'taken a lot of time to get it right', part of it was because I thought everyone was on the same page about how big of a lift the Monk needed, part of it was because classes that had few to no problems whatsoever (Wizard, Cleric, Bard) got buffs in prior ones. Let's just say my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined.
Hey guys, I love the new Monk subclass where their unarmed strikes scale faster and they can cast spells now... Oh wait, that's the Dance Bard. Jokes aside, I like that we can move the darkness but I want my pass without trace dang it! That's the biggest nerf, in my opinion. Although moving said darkness just at the start of their turn might not be optimal.
I know that pass without trace will probably be nerfed. But I fully agree. At the very least, give the shadow monk back the other spells so that they have more _options._ Options are always good
I can never understand why WotC take away options. Why did they take away Tongue of the Sun and Moon or Timeless Body. They don't have to take away to add. Options are good even if they are ribbon features.
So while new Monk is bad, I'm seeing this comment a lot and it's a misunderstanding of the rules. Dance Bard gets to make an US once per turn using a dice equal to their Bardic Inspiration (and I believe only when a dice is expended). Even if that weren't the case though, Monks attack many times per turn whereas Bard does not. Again; Monk still needs loads of work.
@@Twisttheawesome bards can use their unarmored strike whenever they expend a die, be it an action, bonus action, or reaction, get the monk's unarmored defense, a better version of their evasion at a lower level, on top of other abilities the monk doesn't get. by level six, they have your entire class at seventh level, and the bard's stuff on top of it.
I like the idea of "no resource cost on a miss" that we've seen on other classes. It would also be great to have reduced or eliminated costs if conditions are met, like free flurry of blows when you have advantage, or have an ally in 5 feet of your target. That is not out of line with a Rogue getting sneak attack! As much as I agree with Colby's "my body is my weapon" approach, I also believe that monks should be Martial Artists with weapons as well. Let me be the one who walks into battle with a robe and a glaive! Give me more forced movement options. "If you hit a target with at least two unarmed strikes on your turn, that target is shoved 10 feet plus 5 feet per additional attack that hit". The one minute short rest at 2nd level would allow a monk to burn BOTH discipline points on two fights if the rest of the group doesn't want to slow down enough to allow a proper short rest every day. Give more ways for the Wisdom modifier to apply in and out of combat. If a Barbarian can use Strength for Perception checks, monks should be able to at least add Wisdom to all proficient checks, for example.
I legit like the idea of taking a subclass and grating those features into the main class. Hunter for Ranger, Open Hand for Monk, Battlemaster or Champion for Fighter...
Monks need "Unarmed Mastery", it is definitely part of their class fantasy! A lot of people thought monks would get to do weapon mastery/manovres with their unarmed strikes. Such a shame. Also it should be noted there are many loopholes to getting around Darkness also impeding allies. When Darkness is cast on an object, the spell specifically states it can be covered to prevent the darkness from "emanating" from it any further. You can RAW do silly things like cast it on something like a ring you wear on your hand, then at the end of your turn say you put your hand in your pocket. Obviously this means the Darkness doesn't really protect you, but you still get the benefits of it on your turn, and that's better than requiring all allies have Devilsight.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. For some reason, the designers seems to think that about 75% of fights are happening in situations where the characters have been stripped of all their equipment. The weight they give to any abilities that don’t require you to have a weapon or armour or whatever is just wild. It’s the same reason they seem to think that material components are a suitable balance for overpowered spells.
While I agree with you 100 percent, the first word in the game's name is Dungeons, so it's always been implied that the party gets thrown in a cell at some point. Of course that entirely depends on your DM, table, and game, but...
@@StephenHutchison That’s my point. They seem to balance things around the idea that you won’t have that focus a huge amount of the time. Any ability that allows you to do things without equipment is always FAR weaker than anything that requires equipment.
My fix for the Monk that gives them a non-Discipline dependant ability and fixes their weapon masteries: STANCES. You spend movement to enter a stance and can do it once per turn. You begin knowing 2 stances and at level 20 know 5. A Stance confers the benefits of one type of Weapon Mastery along with another small bonus. For example: Mantis Style: Costs 15 movement to enter. When you miss an opponent with an unarmed strike, you deal damage to them equal to your Dex or Strength modifier. Opportunity Attacks made in this stance that hit reduce an enemies movement by 5 feet. (Or: You become Proficient in Slight of Hand Checks, or something like that). Something like this is essential as Unarmed Strikes have no Weapon Mastery property. As Unarmed Strikes advance faster now, this means you're highly encouraged to ditch weapons (and thus, the fun new weapon mastery system they just introduced). Stances also allow Monks to do things without spending Ki! Different Subclasses could also each include their own unique Stance. Please copy/paste this in the survey if you agree folks
@@targetdreamer257 Nope! I'm just happy if it gets picked up. I am an indie game maker (Will Donelson) so it'll be neat if I get a shout out but I really just want a good monk
I wish monks got a feature like rouges cunning strikes, imagine eye strike to blind, a disarming strike, trips, maybe even some niche ones like a throat chop to silence or a solar plexus strike that makes them lose their breath ( only for fighting under water, or in a poison cloud or other cloud spell. )
It’s really weird to me that Shadow Monks can only move their Darkness at the start of their turns. That means if you love it to blind your enemies it’ll also bling your allies. Best case scenario you still need to cast Darkness on an object that you’re holding.
I see the movement of darkvision as beting better at infliltration/teleportation effects. bouncing it out in front of you to run, then teleport somewhere you couldn't before, you could cover like 110 feet in 1 turn and stun/blind a BBEG, while the party deals with minons. Can be super effective
They should of allowed them to adjust the size of the darkness from 15ft radius to a 10ft or 5ft radius. Don't see the point of moving it since u can attach it to an object your holding which is the best option.
@@JoshuaSmith-hl1xj the movement is to create the area of darkness where you need it for your shadow step. It’s a nice feature when needed, but yes, I’d go the held object route most of the time
2 changes: 1st: when you create your darkness it is UP TO X ft radius. You decide. Add (maybe at later levels) As a reaction, spend 1 point to move or change the size of your ki. Or maybe those 2 things are a subclass feature at higher levels showing you've mastered your shadow
The monk is missing two things : survivability and resources to do cool stuff. I love what they did for Warrior of Shadow and Warrior of the Elements with a 1 Discipline cost for 10 min benefit (Darkness / Elemental attunement). I hope they expand this design concept on ALL the monk subclasses. Here are the updates on the base monk I would love WOTC to implement (it will be in my feedback survey) : Unarmored Defense that scales with monk levels. Formula : "10 + ((monk level - 1) / 3)" (rounded down). This is 10 + dexterity + wisdom, +1 each 3 monk levels after the first one, ending at 16 + dexterity + wisdom at level 19 (I chose +6 for high end to keep up with +3/+3 from a magic armor and shield). The base number progression (10 to 16) would show on the monk table next to the Unarmored Movement bonus progression. This will allow the monk class to be a bit less multiple ability dependant, since you don't need anymore to cap DEX and WIS in order to have an average AC in higher levels. Heightened metabolism moved at level 2 and being able to be used constitution modifier times per day (with minimum once). If providing short rest is too strong because of multiclassing, change the wording to : "If you spend at least 1 minute resting, you can regain all your expended Discipline points and you can spend a number of Hit Dice less than or equal to your Monk level to regain hit points as you would do in a Short Rest. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest." This would allow a more constitution oriented build to thrive being able to use more their Discipline features, and give an incentive to new player to invest in constitution in the class. Also, I would like to match the Rogue's feat/ASI progression with a feat/ASI at level 10, if possible. More options in the build cannot hurt, and would allow to even more be able to take actual feats instead of pure ASI. I will ask to entirely remove the "Stunning strike" feature. Then replace it with a "Combat stance" feature at level 5, where you can go in a stance to apply Weapon Mastery property to your unarmed attacks. "Your advanced training with unarmed combat allows you to adopt two kind of combat stances, greatly improving your Unarmed Strikes. Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can change the combat stances you chose. At the start of your turn, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to imbue yourself with focus and take a new combat stance. Choose one of the two stances you selected and apply its associated Weapon Mastery property to your Unarmed Strikes for 1 minute, until you have the Incapacitated condition or until take a new combat stance." Then below you can see a table with the name of the Combat stance, the starting level where you can use it, and the associated weapon mastery property. For instance : - Stance of the Cyclops (from level 5) : Cleave - Stance of the Wyvern (from level 5) : Sap - Stance of the Cockatrice (from level 5) : Slow - Stance of the Minotaur (from level 8) : Push - Stance of the Griffon (from level 8) : Vex - Stance of the Kraken (from level 11) : Topple - Stance of the Hydra (from level 11) : Graze Providing an access to Graze at level 11 should help with the average damage. They should probably, in addition, allow monks at level 5 to also be able to use the Martial die for weapons they are proficient with, to avoid making weapons totally irrelevant compared to unarmed strikes, for players who want to use weapons. Allow easier shove/grapple by updating the "Dextrous attacks" text of the "Martial arts" feature to "You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack, damage rolls [and saving throws] of your Unarmed Strikes and Simple Weapons, except those that have the Two-Handed property." And I agree with Chris, Perfect discipline should drop the condition to regain 4 Discipline. "When you roll Initiative, you regain 4 expended Discipline Points." That's it. If you want you can add: "Those regained Discipline Points are automatically lost at the end of combat if they have not been expended in this combat."
I've got a recommendation for you both, so I'll post this on Treant's half as well. What if we copy the design from Cunning Strike's for Rogues and apply it to Monk's Stunning Strike. Example: 5th Level *New Stunning Strike*: You have honed your abilities to attack the weak points in your opponents for a variety of effects. Once per turn when you hit you may force the enemy to make a saving throw against your DP DC. Upon failing the save, you may apply one of these three effects to your enemy till the start of your next turn: - You apply the Grappled Condition and deal 1 Martial Arts die of damage (0 DP) - You apply the Daze condition (1 DP) - You apply the Stunned condition (3 DP) Then later 10th Level *Weak Point Manipulation*: You have have become so adept at attacking your opponents weak points that you're strikes can create near magical effects. Your Stunning Strike may now be applied twice per round. Once an opponent has failed a save you may not attempt against the same opponent. In addition you gain the following 3 effects added to your Stunning Strike List : - You apply the Frightened condition to your enemy, while Frightened the opponent must use its action to Dash away from you. (4 DP) - You apply the Charmed condition to your enemy, while Charmed you may control your enemy's next action as the Dominate Monster Spell (5 DP) - You apply the Paralyze condition to your enemy (6 DP) Maybe add on a 3rd attempt to "Stun" at 15 or 16. This allows for Stunning Strike to be appropriately costed to what a Stun Condition would be, adds on additional affects for tactical flexibility, and gives the Monk a free option so they don't feel like they have to burn through their Ki in order to actively act as a Monk. Also for everyone out there thinking Stunning Strike is OP, you really need to look at all the Arcane/Primal/Divine spells that do the exact same thing with 1st - 9th level spells. All for the low price of concentration a caster can apply every kind of condition.
Really hope to hear Chris's full complete breakdown on this entire playtest. I do appreciate Cobly's breakdown and it was good, but like to see Chris's opinion on it as well as his critiques. Either way great job to both on this Monk breakdown and good to have Chris back after a long week!
Honestly, because WotC has been looking so hard at survey and online feedback I think that the design teams are being more exposed to the "Monks are Broken" factions than they are to the "Monks Need Help" factions. And so THAT might be influencing the more... controversial design choices that keep rearing their ugly heads.
They nerfed stunning strike to be only once per turn...I don't think it should cost ki-points anymore, it should be free (is a Constitution saving throw anyway so what's the problem?) Ki-points should be for stuff that's more usefull like flurry of blows, step of the wind and subclass features.
Just add wisdom to monk dmg. Rewards being Mad and gives extra dmg to each hit. Add this to 2014 version w weapon mastery’s and martial weapon proficiency. Even Treantmonk would play that guy!
I love the new Elements Monk because it feels like the easiest way to be a Firebender. Also the Reach bit is extended by 10 feet so you get a 15 foot reach normally and 20 feet with a Bugbear
But we can't be a Waterbender, Earthbender or Airbender...!!! They're totally dropping the ball on us for us wanting to play the Avatar...! Makes no sense.
@@EpicRandomness555 Which is DUMB honestly. There should be. Or, just represent each through the already existing ones. Water = Cold, Piercing and/or Bludgeoning Air = Bludgeoning, Piercing and/or Slashing Earth = Thunder, Bludgeoning and/or Piercing
@@TheGloryXros , Play the Avatar RPG then... Edit: Sorry, that was uncalled for. Yet, if you have the friends, and really want to play a bender, maybe that RPG would be a nice break from 5e.
@@TheGloryXros Earth- Bludgeoning (which is standard for monk), Thunder Water- Acid or Cold (which is already included) Air- Lightning (which is already included) or Thunder. The only damage type not listed that I would want to see included would be Thunder. I am increasingly annoyed at Thunder being left out of elemental damage.
Awesome video for sure, this is a great colab. I have watched both parts now. Here are my fixes for monks as a base class. 1. Hp needs to be 1d10, they are part of the warrior class. 2. As stated in the video, weapon mastery needs to be given for unarmed strikes, and also martial weapons should be added or dedicated weapon mastery included. Perhaps we should just auto include all options from Tasha, as backwards compatibility seems to be a very big thing the designers keep speaking about. 3. Either AC should be enhanced to include 1/2 proficiency at levels 5, 10, 15, 20 or provide temp hp somehow, perhaps equal to your monk level that you can summon per wis or dex modifier, lasts until depleted and as usual doesn't stack with other temp hp. 4. More Ki points awarded per level, perhaps 2 per level, then at later progression, say 14 they taper off down to 1 or none. 5. Provide a consistent increase in damage, for example spending 1 or 2 ki point provides 1/2 wisdom or dex mod at level 5, then full modifier at level 9 or 10, applicable to both weapon and unarmed strikes, lasts a minute. 6. Stunning Strike, should have the save changed to Wisdom, and their power increased by spending 1 or 2 ki providing disadvantage to the save, also if the enemy saves no ki spent. Also, it should last until the end of your next turn, same as current/old monk. I'm fine with it only being once per turn. 7. The new 7th level feature, Heightened Metabolism should come at level 3 or 4. Though maybe with the amount of ki I suggested this feature may not be needed at all. 8. Stillness of mind should be retained but use a bonus action, and clarify that one can use it to defeat being charmed or frightened if effected by those conditions. 9. Resistance to poison and disease should be retained. The designers seem to be moving away from immunity. 10. Getting proficiencies in all saving throws should be moved from level 14 to 10 or 11. Where most people end their campaigns at. Anyway, I do know the designers have been listening to feedback but they need to push this class much further to make it equal to the improvements made with the other martial classes, specifically the barb and fighter. Take care all.
The four elements elemental fists should be like a +1 weapon type effect, since you're definetely not using weapons and then make it scale, it'd be fantastic
I believe it says "When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal". Wouldn't that make your melee range 15 feet even on a standard monk?
"I'm buying new books all the time" - at this point I glanced over Chris' shoulder and noticed how one shelf of his bookshelf is trying its absolute hardest to hold itself together. I believe you my man!
Let's actually fix the Monk. Here's my two cents: Glossary: Unarmed Strike An Unarmed Strike is a Melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, shove, or distract a target within 5 feet of you. Whenever you use your Unarmed Strike, choose one of the following options for its effect or if you have a Weapon Mastery with Unarmed Strikes, you can also apply Grapple, Shove or Distract when you chose to deal Damage with an Unarmed Strike. Damage. You make an attack roll against the target. Your bonus to hit equals your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. On a hit, the target takes Bludgeoning damage equal to 1 + your Strength modifier. Grapple. The target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (it chooses which), or it has the Grappled condition. The DC for the saving throw and any escape attempts equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. This grapple is possible only if the target is no more than one size larger than you and if you have a hand free to grab it. Shove. The target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (it chooses which), or you either push the target 5 feet away or cause it to have the Prone condition. The DC for the saving throw equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. This shove is possible only if the target is no more than one size larger than you. Distract. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have Disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn. NOTE: Shove works as the Topple and Push masteries for weapons, so Distract was added to mimic the Sap mastery for Unarmed Strikes. Other options come to mind, but I'm just throwing out some ideas to see how it goes. Monk: 1st Level - Weapon Mastery Your training with weapons allows you to use the Mastery property of two kinds of Simple weapons of your choice, such as Daggers and Spears, or Unarmed Strikes. Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can change the kinds of Simple weapons or Unarmed Strikes you chose. For example, you could switch to using the Mastery properties of Maces and Slings. 2nd Level - Martial Discipline ... Flurry of Blows. Immediately after you take the Attack action you can spend 1 Discipline Point to make two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action. When you reach 11th Level in this class you can make three Unarmed Strikes instead of two. Patient Defense. You can take the Dodge action as a Bonus Action. If you spend 1 Discipline Point you can also add one Martial Arts Die roll to your Armor Class until the start of your next turn. Step of the Wind. You can take the Disengage, Dash or Help actions as a Bonus Action. If you spend 1 Discipline Point you can also take another of those actions as part of the same Bonus Action. You can only take two of these actions as a Bonus Action at any time. Martial Disciplines can only be used as long as you aren't wearing armor or wielding a shield. 5th Level - Stunning Strike When you hit a creature with a Simple Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, you can attempt a stunning strike. You can spend 1 Discipline Point and force the target to make a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the start of your next turn. If the target succeeds the Constitution saving throw it is Dazzed until the start of your next turn, instead. At 14th level you can spend 2 Discipline Points instead of 1 and force the target to make a Wisdom saving throw instead of a Constitution saving throw. 6th Level - Empowered Strikes Whenever you deal damage with your Unarmed Strike, it can deal your choice of Force damage or its normal damage type. Moreover you can spend 3 Discipline Points to empower your Unarmed Strikes for 1 minute. When you do so, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack and damage rolls of your Unarmed Strikes and they are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances. NOTE: Requiring magic weapons to overcome resistances might not be a thing in future damage resistances for monsters. 10th Level - Self-Restoration Through sheer force of will, you can use a Bonus Action to remove one of the following conditions from yourself: Charmed, Frightened, or Poisoned. You can use this Bonus Action in this way even if another creature has control over your actions. In addition, forgoing food and drink doesn’t give you levels of Exhaustion. 14th Level - Disciplined Survivor Your physical and mental discipline grant you proficiency in all saving throws. Additionally, whenever you make a saving throw and fail, you can spend 1 Discipline Point, roll a Martial Arts die and add it to the saving throw, potentially turning a fail into a success. 15th Level - Perfect Discipline You can use Heightened Metabolism twice, instead of once per Long Rest and when you roll Initiative, you regain 4 expended Discipline Points. 18th Level - Superior Defense As a Bonus Action, you can spend 6 Discipline Points to perfectly bolster yourself against harm for 1 minute or until you are Incapacitated. During that time, you have resistance to all damage except Force damage and once per use of Superior Defense, if you drop to 0 Hit Points, you roll four Martial Arts dice, and add the dice together. Your number of Hit Points instead changes to the total rolled. 20th Level - Pinnacle of Discipline On one of your turns you can channel your inner discipline into becoming self-perfected for 1 minute (no action required). During that time your Monk abilities cost 1 Discipline Point less to activate and your Martial Arts die increases to a d20. Once you use this feature you can't do so again until you finish a Long Rest.
Optimize to your party. Darkness should rarely be an issue for you. The bigger issue is that shadow monk is now the “I cast darkness” subclass and not much else.
Chris, you are my favorite person for assessing D&D content. As soon as I saw the playtest monk, my thought was "let's see what Chris has to say," because I knew you'd tease out details and nuances that most would miss, and you've done just that.
The video to pdf comparison is very similar to the rogue one. I remember JC saying "the rogue is a beloved subclass, so we only changed quality of life things and didn't temper with it a whole lot" and it was the most altered class of that pdf, and everything was a nerf.
I hear your criticism and I agree with it for the most part. My biggest concern for the new monk was playstyle. Monks need to be able to disengage reliably every turn. Spending resources to get out of combat as well as the opportunity cost to not flurry or patient defense is bad design. They need to fix that, too.
With Chris being on vacation, I was so excited to see a new video get published. Then, I was even more hyped seeing it's an hour long video. And then it was like Christmas when I saw that this was part 2 to a 2 part series, and the other video was posted on Cody's channel today! And then I saw ... the topic was on The Monk .... I guess you can't win them all. Side note: if WotC doesn't fix this class, can we just community-wise skip all Monk-related topics in the future?
I think they need to give base monks weapon mastery on unarmed strikes like you mentioned in the first video, and then make Open Hand all about enhancing weapon masteries, so maybe you can apply two per turn, and you get more choices, or something like that
Proposed change for Quivering Palm: When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you may overexert yourself to inflict a fatal blow. You expend all of your remaining discipline points, the creature makes a CON save and on a failure you roll a number of martial arts dice equal to twice the points expended. On a success the creature takes half damage and you regain 4 discipline points. This feature may only be used once per long rest.
Interesting idea but if you would rule it that way, you would have to use this feature with at least 10 but probably more Ki-points left for it to be worthwhile damage and if you do, then you don't have enough Ki left for the rest of the combat, because due to the con save everyone would still succeed on the save automatically, so half damage and 4 Ki-points left for the rest of combat... not a good situation to be in. So, interesting idea but the execution unfortunately isn't much better, because you would probably never end up using it, because you just lose all your Ki-points for not big enough value...
I would watch several hundred hours of the two of you discussing d&d, or at least I would listen to it, since my job puts me in a position to listen to tens of hours of audio every week. I've watched every video with the two of you on either of your channels more than once, and probably more than thrice, though there might be an exception. PLEASE DO MORE COLLABS TOGETHER!!!
What if monks got a pool of Discipline Points equal to Wisdom+PB at the start of every combat? Scaling that goes up as you level and a sizable chunk at early levels too.
Made this comment on Colby's vid. After a long rest your points should reset to your proficiency bonus. Every combat, gain points equal to proficiency. Maybe you use em all, maybe you don't. Resets after long rest.
@@brettmajeske3525 my other idea is you have a much smaller pool of points but you get points back every round. You'd have to rebalance the number of points actions cost but you could cash them in for extra flurry of blows attacks under this idea. Let's say you have 4 in your pool, you spend one for stunning strike, land it, you can then make your bonus action FoB and get 3 hits off of it.
I think binding it to Wisdom is not good in the current state, just bind it to Dexterity instead. At best, you'll have +2 Wisdom at 1st through 4th level = 4 Ki-points, so with Dex you had at least 5 Ki points per combat scaling up to 11 instead of 8 or 9 at 17th level.
@@mojin7470 wisdom does a few things for monks though. AC, Stunning Strike DC, and now bonus Ki. It incentivizes players to bump wisdom and thus more of their monk features.
I'd change monks entirely, give them a free martial arts attack each round (more at higher level), either this is an unarmed strike (keep dmg low), or a special ability like a sweep, stunning fist, flying kick, ki shout etc. Keep dispiline points for extremely special abilities.
I like it how the best step in the right direction was keeping the Mercy monks untouched, because every other step they took with the monk was making it worse.
I have a file on my account's "About" (can't share link, because RUclips is dumb 😡) that I really hope anyone interested will see, because I'm interested to hear what thoughts you all have. It covers what I believe to be a pretty solid fix to the One D&D monk and its old (and new) problems. It it also more or less what I am going to pull from for my answers to the survey.
One thing I really like about the dragon monk is the ability to replace a single attack with a feature rather than the entire action. It gives me much better feeling if Weaving your abilities into your martial arts. That's how Id like to see them handle the elemental monks Aoe burst
An easy fix for the darkness problem is that you can choose a number of allies equal to you WIS modifier to be able to see through your spell along with you. Removing the Silence spell from their list makes them alot weaker to spell casters. Between this and the Divine Smite being classified as a spell in this UA, it seems that they're intentionally making martial classes more inferior to spell casters in the next edition.
Amusingly I had an advert kickin just after treantmonk asked “what do you think of the way of the 4 elements monk?” singing “b.o, b.o, whatever you do you can’t make it go”😂😂😂
My friend plays a Mercy Monk in our game, and he has tattoos on his knuckles of PIMP for his harm hand and SIMP for his healing hand. So he backhands the enemies with his pimp hand and boosts his friends with his simp hand. It always gives us a good chuckle.
Hi guys! This collaboration is amazing! I'm enjoying it, and I hope there will be more. If I can contribute with my two cents, I would like to say: 1) Not applying the martial die to weapons is HUGE. My monk is using a whip, which in a monk hands with the feat Slasher (and the Dedicated weapon feature) is very, very useful, tactically speaking. I tried a lot of martials, but no one is such a controller of the battlefield like a monk with a whip (excluding the rangers with proper spell selection, but they are half-caster so it does not count). Making enemies prone, pushing them, slowing them, stunning them: monks are truly martial controllers. Making the whip still a d3 weapon whereas your punch deals a d8 or a d10 is definitely underwhelming. I agree with Chris to give monks unarmed mastery, but at the same time they should still apply their martial die to the weapons with which they have proficiency. And here comes my second point. 2) Yaking away the Dedicated Weapon feature screws the monk even more. Now, even if you have proficiency with special weapons (whips, longspears, swords...) means that you cannot use your dexterity with them either, their damage die do not change, and they just became useless in a monk hand. I really find those weapons iconic of the class, but maybe I'm biased. 3) Unlike you, I played on the table a 4 elements monk and.... it was very cool. As a background of the group: we try to optimize, but we do not care to sacrifice power for fluff. For example, we have a Glory paladin in the group, and it is fine for us. In this environment, the 4e monk is quite good, I have to say. Of course, the problems you highlighted are all true: too few ki points, not a great defense, too much need of short rests, elemental powers are way too expensive. But the few times I used them, it was very very cool. Now, the new elemental monk looks... vanilla to me. The fact that you cannot customize it is really what kills it in my eyes: I would never want to play a subclass where, what you have to do from one level toi another, is just read the text of their new fixed powers without being able to make it truly yours. Maybe the new elemental class is "more powerful" (which is extremely debatable. I do not know in theory crafting, but on thetable, based on my experience, the new subclass is definitely not, especially at high levels when the old 4element monk could cast gaseous form and cone of cold and wall of fire, and the new one... well, add some more elemental damage once per turn), Let's see how it goes! Hugs, Luca
The problem with poison resistance is that when it rains it pours. They need a way to have areas where all the enemies are undead, but only some of them are resistant to poison. Imagine a system where in each encounter, the DM can make a small number of enemies "key enemies." Then the statblocks can have a list of things to add when this enemy is a "key enemy." In this case, poison immunity can be a thing mostly reserved for the "key enemies" of encounters.
Here's my idea for fixing stunning strike. "When you hit a creature with a Simple Weapon or an Unarmed Strike that doesn't have the stunned condition, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn. If the creature succeeds on the save they receive the daze condition instead" This would only allow the monk to stun a creature that doesn't already have the stunned condition. Allowing monsters to have a turn where the monk cant keep them locked into the stunned condition. Now you wouldn't need to make it once per turn because its wouldn't be as powerful and wouldn't need a nerf. if the creature does succeed you now get something because they would get daze giving the monk the feel of still having a strong control ability.
Little mention that the subclasses are still mostly drawing from the same pool of resources as the main class. Lessened in a lot of cases but still not great in my opinion.
For backwards compatibility, I'm fine with a free PDF telling us how to adjudicate supplemental sub-classes, feats, etc. That takes care of backwards compatibility and lets you do whatever you need to make the new not-edition great.
Compared to the base class, I was actually impressed by the subclasses. Shadow got much stronger, Elements is actually playable and they fit into the flavor of the Western media tropes they draw upon. But more and more I find myself wondering why even have Monk as a playable class to begin with when you could get a more effective and survivable character by playing a Battlemaster Fighter with Unarmed Fighting style and the Crusher feat.
The number of flurry of blows you do, should be equal to your Proficiency bonus. Also, Unarmored Defense should be AC10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier + Proficiency bonus. This should help the Monk scale better.
To put into perspective how much of a nerf the 10d12+monk level really is, If it was 14d12+monk level, on average you'd still be dealing less damage assuming all creatures succeed at all times. 15d12+monk level is the absolute minimum amount of damage it should deal.
I'm just brainstorming here so this may be a dumb idea, but here's what I'd like to see for the monks: One of the ideas behind the monk is to make many smaller attacks rather than few big ones, but they still cap out on like 4 small attacks which is no more than a fighter can do without expending resources at max level. I think that it would be cool if there was a feature where if the monk was attacking with a damage die that is at least a d6 they should be able to reduce it by one size and get an extra attack with it at that level. So instead of punching once for 1d6, they would punch twice for 1d4. And this could scale based on damage die, where you would get 1 more attack for each die size you went down. I've done zero math on this so I don't know what the balance looks like, but I do know it sounds cool to me.
That actually sounds interesting. I mean they are turning the Sneak Attack dice into a resource that can be spent. But honestly the monks should get something like the Battle Master Superiority dice. Not exactly that but that template so they can use that extra resource to do "Monk" stuff or as a recharge on Ki points.
I think open hand monks should get the vibrating palm from the Mighty Boosh. It has not apparent effect, but two hours later the victim goes out and buys a hat that doesn't suit them. It's about as effective as the rest of the monk arsenal!
I just don’t understand how they went so wrong with this. I mean, they recognized that the Ranger needed fixing, and they implemented changes that ACTUALLY fixed stuff. They did such a good job in lots of ways with the Ranger. How did they miss the mark so badly with this? It just confuses me and makes me very disappointed. Come on man! People like Chris are giving such honest and easy feedback to fix it, just do less talking and more listening! Editing to add that when Chris shouted “SHOOT!” It had me rolling 😂
Looking forward to seeing this. Started watching Colby's, saw the notification of your new video on discord so thought I would come see the same thing here. Needless to say I am back on Colby's channel watching part 1! Back later 🙂
It’s very funny how the wide consensus is “the monk needs a drastic rework, and we like how unique the warlock is and how it plays” and then you get WotC to give warlock as massive rework and hardly touch monk at all
I have an insane idea for Open Hand Level 3: - Remove the caveat that you need to use your Flurry of Blows attacks to use the extra effects, those are weak versions of the Weapon Masteries (except maybe the reaction one?), why do we need to spend resource to do the same thing everyone else can do if this subclass' whole deal is that we've MASTERED unarmed fighting, also as you said add weapon masteries to our unarmed strikes. Personally I would give default monk 1 mastery and open hand 2 unarmed masteries. - Patient Defense reduced to 0 cost, it says we've learned to protect ourselves, what better way than Free dodge. But since WotC loves us to use ki/discipline I will posit this: "Through training you have learned to capitalize on your opponents mistakes. When a creature makes a melee attack against you while using Patient Defense, you can expend a ki/discipline to make an unarmed attack against the creature without expending your reaction. " If the idea is that the monk is so focused and disciplined, what better way to show that mechanically than being able to react MORE (by expending resources) - Also Step of the Wind reduced to 0 cost at level 3, and this feels like overkill but I wanted to follow the pattern of just making the ki options you already have better, alas: Fury of the Wind: By expending 1 ki/discipline you may also make an unarmed strike as part of your Step of the Wind action. I was a bit worried that being able to attack so many times and with the bonus of unarmed mastery would feel extra broken but fighters can just do their weapon mastery whenever they attack so if I am picking the subclass that tells me I do not need a weapon I also need that to be reflected mechanically.
Feats & magic items. What Chris said about feats is true- but theres also not really any magic items for monks. There are magic swords & armor... but monks dont really use those. If there were magic handwraps or even rings that affected to-hit/dmg... or magic robes for armor boosts (not like those intended for casters), i think this could provide a much needed boost to help monk get to where the other martials are.
I was just listening many hours ago now, fell asleep at some point, & I remember thinking about the _Dome of Darkness_ even before (like moments or simultaneously maybe even) you brought up "changing the size of the dome" that I was conceiving of if it's 30' D = _15' r that the Outer 5' was Shadow, the Inner 5' was regular Darkness, & the Middle 5' was the Darkness on the order of Fog Cloud._
Unless the charioteer can see through the Darkness, he will then probably disembark his shuttle, exiting the darkness. The steed no longer being compelled will remain balked as do most animals in utter darkness. Providing a very nice hiding place behind or in for everyone on the field of battle. ???
@@Derry_A_Deryni I'm picturing this not on land, but underground. The steed's infravision spoiled (ergh, _"Darkvision"_ ), the Human Adventurer's lamp light abruptly ending at the static "screen" of *darkness & the sounds of a pair of stomping, echoing steel hobbed & knobbed & toed boots loudly emerging into the light, foreshadowing*
@@ButlerianG-Haddinun _ +1 Halberd of Thundering _ _the underscores didn't slant_anyway, because "Thundering" underground complex is like an_ * Alarm * _ *_OH I SEE NOW, the _ & * have to touch the phrase_* ~typing magic has rules!~
@@FlyingAxblade_D20 then, once the Thunder powered Halberd becomes party treasure, before it is used, Silence could be cast at the back of the foe aggressors whereby defeating the Alarming status of the effect. LET"S PLAY!
I had a random cool idea - what if we give monks ALL weapon masteries. Say, at the start of their turn they can take a 'stance' that can give them any one Weapon Mastery on unarmed strikes for that turn. Or maybe stances stay always, but it takes a BA to change them, something among these lines. That would be a very thematic buff!
Problem of Monks will also be lack of magic bonus to unarmed strikes (when compared to magic weapons). Solution: Give Monks +X Magic bonus to their unarmed Strikes, where it scales +1 at lvl 5, +2 lvl 11 and +3 at lvl 17. (Or make it PB/2 rounded down, which is also at the same except it is 2 from lvl 9).
I think the backwards compatibility mania of WotC is mainly based on the development of the upcoming DnD Beyond VTT. The less changes to 5e, the cheaper to produce. No need to implement both 5.0 AND 5.5 rulesets for them.
I firmly believe the Monk needs to be reworked from the ground up. I'd like to see a "combo point" design, where landing hits builds up points that could be spent on special moves and big finishers. But something tells me that would be too "complicated" for 5e.
Interesting RAW interaction for Shadow Monk as written, it says "you can see within the area of your Darkness spell." So, if we were going purely RAW, this would allow you to see even if under the Blinded condition or in another sight-blocking effect, like Fog Cloud, within the area. I think *most* GMs would not interpret it this way, but right now it is there.
I believe base class monk would be really ok with - access to short swords, some pole arms, and other traditional monk weapons. - a weapon specialization for unarmed strike - a flat AC bonus that increases with level up together with martial arts die - fighting style feats during class progression
I agree with Chris and Colby - would appreciate a fresh start! As long as I can play the old 5e adventures with the new core rule books, the character creation process can be separate - either use 5.5 or use 5e, no need to make this more complicated for myself!
Suggested Changes to Monk Monks get martial weapon proficiency but still no monk weapons. Martial arts dice apply to unarmed strikes only. Martial arts changes. When you take the attack action and make an unarmed strike on your turn you can make one additional unarmed strike as part of the same action. (If damage output low This action can be combined with two weapon fighting nick property along with flurry of blows helps boost monk attacks to match fighter attack damage progression and helps the image of a monk unleashing a flurry of attacks. Moving the additional attack out of bonus action allows the monk to keep up damage with other martial characters and allow the monk to use their bonus action for other features.) 2nd level Ki/Discipline changes. Starting at 2nd level you receive a number of ki/Discipline points equal to your proficiency bonus that you use to fuel various monk features. You regain any spent ki/Discipline points at the start of each of your turns. (Only need to rework ki/discipline point cost for subclass features and/or make them limited time use per day to keep balanced. Any ki/Discipline healing features become limited use per day features) Flurry of blows (changes)- 1 ki/discipline points. When you take the attack action and make an unarmed strike on your turn you can make two additional unarmed strikes as part of the same action. Step of the Wind. You can spend 1 Ki/Discipline Point to take both the Disengage and Dash actions as a Bonus Action, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn. Patient Defense. You can spend 2 Ki/Discipline Point as a Bonus Action to reduce the damage of melee attacks. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing melee attacks until the start of your next turn. 4th level feature slow fall moved to 7th level with evasion remove heightened metabolism feature as it is no longer needed. Empowered strikes 6th level feature moved to 4th level. Ability score improvement/feat at 6th level. Stunning strike changed to Dazing Strikes. As an action spend a number of Ki/Discipline points to make a number of unarmed attacks to a target or targets within range. Each creature hit by this unarmed attack must make a constitution saving throw. If you hit a creature with more then one unarmed attack during this action, they receive a -2 penalty to this saving throw equal to the number of additional unarmed attacks that hit them (example, spend 3 ki points to make 3 unarmed strike against a single creature, if all three hit, the creature make a constitution saving throw subtracting 4 from their total). On a failed saving throw, the creature(s) gains the dazed condition until the start of your next turn. You get an ability score/feat at 10th level. Gain resistance to poison damage with self-restoration feature. 15th level perfect disciple feature replaced by “new” feature Stunning strike. Your Dazing strike ability now stuns a target on a failed saving throw and dazes them on a successful saving throw. (Limited times per day use if proving to be too strong or once per turn). 20th level ability Your Dexterity and Constitution scores increase by 2. Your maximum for those scores is now 24. (Works with the new 19th level ability score/feat idea that you can boost an ability score to 22) The way of the open hand monk changes. Change 3rd level ability to an ability that allows you to choose a weapon you are proficient with. You can apply that weapon’s mastery property to your unarmed strikes. At later levels you can choose more weapon master properties to apply to your unarmed strikes.
"While the spell persists, you can move its area of darkness to a space within 60 feet of you at the start of each of your turns." As this is worded, you can have your friend dimension door you across the city and then instantly move the darkness across the city to within 60 ft. I'm sure there's combat potential, but I'm laughing at the idea of teleporting far away enough and then using the feature to cause your orb of darkness to move farther than the speed of light.
For species/racial flight, I think Colby might have been thinking of the dragonborn. Their first pass at it removed Fizban flying from their abilities - but it returned in the revised species. That's still only a 1/day 10 minute fly, though.
Open Hand 3 with tweaks (once per turn rather than on Flurry) being baseline for Monks would be a great solution to the Weapon Mastery gap. It gives a lot of Mastery-style control, combined with Fighter-like flexibility, but without doing it the same way as a Fighter. Yeah, the more I think about it, making Open Hand baseline (again with a few tweaks) is a great move. Then include Kensei in the base book, since having a subclass which goes hard with weapons is as necessary as letting base monks be fine without weapons.
Great video! With a moveable darkness for Shadow Monks, they make the default best option for ranged monks. The darkness won't be in middle of melee combat so team mates should be fine. Combos well with a devil sight warlock slinging eldritch blasts at advantage.
Something I feel like would really suit the base monk thematically and give them a slight boost would be resistance to bludgeoning damage at say lvl 3 or gain bludgeoning resistance for a turn when you use a ki point or make an unarmed strike.
I think two simple changes would help the monk out, they would need more but would be a better start: change hit die to 1d10 and add to Martial arts: For you Unarmed Strikes count as a Martial weapon and gains the following: • The Light weapon property • The Nick Weapon mastery
would be nice if monks could share their devil sight when within a certain range of allies so that improves team cohesion, improved shadow step should absolutely allow you to teleport your party with you (ki cost or x times per day), that would be so fun for infiltration and battlefield control
My opinion on backwards compatibility is the subclasses in the other books should be rolled forward to the same standard implemented in the phb. I spent $1k on getting every book in dndbeyond, and the amount of work to do minor adjustments to the other books is a relatively small lift in my opinion. This then allows them to make big changes as well as not make people feel like they have lost their investment.
My opinion on the new monk is even if you gave them unlimited discipline they would not compete with a battle master, or a bard or so many other classes. I do think stunning strike could be game breaking in the 2014 phb version so understand the nerf to once per turn, however the entire class was the weakest without redemption, and now is even more weak.
Adding way of the open hand to base class seems like a great idea.. the make open hand…. Get more fighting styles and maneuvers? Now you have “monk” with shades of, rouge(shadow), damage caster(elements), mercy(healer), warrior hand. But yes some free stuff, free “mark”. As always you are so well prepared. They can crunch numbers, just as you did.
Thought experiment on this side! patient defense let's you use your bonus action to add your proficiency bonus to your AC until the start of your next turn instead of taking the dodge action.
Oh, and alternatively, you can use it as a reaction to getting hit by a melee attack to halve the damage. You can't use the reaction option if you've taken patient defense using your bonus action. Just spit balling ideas here
I wanted to see something akin to barbarian rage. For example spending 1 ki to go into a stance for 1 minute. Instead of spending 1 ki to flurry of blows for 1 turn, you spend 1 ki to take a flurry stance and flurry every turn for 1 minute. Then your subclass can have their own stance that enhance your unarmed strikes like shadow stance giving penalties to creature's attack for a turn; elemental fist dealing elemental damage until Ki-empowered adds a damage dice; and open hand stance would put disadvantage on saves.
Part 1 of this 2 parter is on Colby's channel. See it here: ruclips.net/video/OEEXc9CofuM/видео.html
A small point of the elements monk, the reach tag increases the reach by 10 additional fts, so you now have a base 15ft unarmed attack and 20ft with a bugbear. It isn’t a game changer but it is a strong addition to the subclass
Thank you 2 guys for the work. It must have been torture for both, and I could feel Colby's disappointment from here, in Brazil. Terrible.
I think this is the worst UA out of all of them so far.
Rouges - Cut damage
Druids - This version is weaker than the last
Monk - You all covered the nerfs
Bard - Unneeded buffs to the moon
Ranger - Nerfed and given shitty spells free
Cleric - I KINDA like it but jury is still out
When Jeremy Crawford said that increasing the Martial Arts damage die would've been enough to "fix" the Monk, my heart dropped. You could see it on Todd's face as well. There is clearly a disconnect in WoTC on how good the Monk is.
Agreed, I heard Jeremy say this, and I was like "oh no". Honestly, I don't know who WoTc people have been playing with if they considered the class as a whole overpowered.
there has been some discourse in the community after WotC released a video discussing the monk where they said that they give damage values to status effects, stun, prone etc
according to wotc monks deal as much damage as a crossbow expert fighter thanks to stunning strike so they didnt know what to change because it would skew the balance
If 'stunning strike' is that much, then they should drop stunning to 'daze' and beef up the rest of the class. I don't want to play a character whose only way to be good is to ONLY do 1 thing and that thing is save or suck.
@@finalfantasy50 Huh. I had not heard about this but that is incredibly interesting. But there have been a few times where they have discussed certain mechanics and it's made me wonder if they look at a lot of things in a vacuum. Because once you factor in the CON save that soooo many creatures have that calculation would have to go down, one would think.
Oh god it’s like him saying flex is a powerful new mechanic.
I can’t believe wotc had all this time to attempt to fix the monk as they should be well aware of how bad the base monk is and essentially did nothing. The new four elements monk is slightly more fun and shadow is alright but man, monk seriously needs feedback to say ‘nothing of monk works, it needs a drastic rework’
to be fair its the same thing they did with the rogue in the first ua with it, so hopefully they'' do monk better the 2nd time like rogue
The only way to fix it is to home brew it and communicate between the DM and players and talk about their expectations, mechanics and class features. My main issue is that there are not enough Ki points to do anything. It should start at 5 Ki points at the least.
@marcdavis4509 why should I pay 60 dollars to homebrew my class into working? It's up to the designers to do their job
The only class wotc seems to like less is the Artificer, what with the lack of options.
Yeah it's even more insulting that they clearly pushed this one back over and over again because they must have been lamenting they couldn't figure out anything good
"Lets say someone held a gun to your head and said you had to play this monk...." "SHOOT" 🤣 I absolutely love both of you guys, and it's nice to see my thoughts on the new monk are shared by my favorite channel inspirations!
I'm always up for a Chris and Colby collab.
But Chris losing his mind over the way of the open hand monk was both deserved and priceless
I’m at the point where I’m not concerned about monks being too powerful, especially at high levels. I genuinely think they could print “starting at 11th level, all features that require discipline points have their cost reduced by 1 point (minimum of 0)” and have the Monk not be overpowered. Backwards compatibility be damned.
I mean which feature from this playtest before 11th level would even come close to being overpowered without costing Ki? Your statement is obvious, because all the Ki-costing class features before 11th level are just not worthy of costing ki, apart from maybe flurry of blows but even that I would rule without costing Ki in my game. The perfect state of the Monk is if he doesn't need a Resource for his features to be balanced. I mean Ki is a cool flavour, but do we really need such a weird resource?
A resourceless Monk is the Monk we should in theory aspire to have in the version. Obviously it will still have Ki-Points in the 2024 PHB and that's fine, but without Resources it would just be better imo.
You can limit some of his features in another way, maybe PB times per Long rest or Wisdom mod times per Long rest if you absolutely need to, but everything else balances itself out without needing Ki.
I've made my own version of a reworked monk on GMBinder, where I've completely removed Ki as a Resource and basically kept 90% of the features like they already were and although I haven't playtested it, I do not feel like it would be broken in any way.
The only things I really changed were proficiencies, HP and scaling of Martial arts and the rest I basically kept the same just without costing Ki.
The main concern with that would be the Way of Mercy monk able to heal up the entire party to full HP in a short amount of time. I've been playing with a homebrew capstone for the monk where the monk gets a free temporary ki point each round on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, and the workaround on Way of Mercy is that if the temporary point is used to restore any HP, it grants temporary HP instead.
@@mojin7470Please provide a link! I need more alternate monks in my life!
@@derektom14Okay, but even that only kicks in at the end, way past when most people stop playing. Seems simpler to just note on the Way of Mercy Monk that that use of Ki still requires ki points even after level 11.
There's a layer of hell where the punishment is just reliving the experience of reading the UA6 Monk for the first time. The disappointment I felt with each successive feature (with a paltry few exceptions) was just... I was truly sad which I can't say has been true in any of the other playtests. Part of it was because they had 'taken a lot of time to get it right', part of it was because I thought everyone was on the same page about how big of a lift the Monk needed, part of it was because classes that had few to no problems whatsoever (Wizard, Cleric, Bard) got buffs in prior ones.
Let's just say my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined.
Hey guys, I love the new Monk subclass where their unarmed strikes scale faster and they can cast spells now... Oh wait, that's the Dance Bard. Jokes aside, I like that we can move the darkness but I want my pass without trace dang it! That's the biggest nerf, in my opinion. Although moving said darkness just at the start of their turn might not be optimal.
I know that pass without trace will probably be nerfed. But I fully agree. At the very least, give the shadow monk back the other spells so that they have more _options._ Options are always good
I can never understand why WotC take away options. Why did they take away Tongue of the Sun and Moon or Timeless Body. They don't have to take away to add. Options are good even if they are ribbon features.
So while new Monk is bad, I'm seeing this comment a lot and it's a misunderstanding of the rules. Dance Bard gets to make an US once per turn using a dice equal to their Bardic Inspiration (and I believe only when a dice is expended). Even if that weren't the case though, Monks attack many times per turn whereas Bard does not. Again; Monk still needs loads of work.
@@Twisttheawesome bards can use their unarmored strike whenever they expend a die, be it an action, bonus action, or reaction, get the monk's unarmored defense, a better version of their evasion at a lower level, on top of other abilities the monk doesn't get. by level six, they have your entire class at seventh level, and the bard's stuff on top of it.
I like the idea of "no resource cost on a miss" that we've seen on other classes. It would also be great to have reduced or eliminated costs if conditions are met, like free flurry of blows when you have advantage, or have an ally in 5 feet of your target. That is not out of line with a Rogue getting sneak attack!
As much as I agree with Colby's "my body is my weapon" approach, I also believe that monks should be Martial Artists with weapons as well. Let me be the one who walks into battle with a robe and a glaive!
Give me more forced movement options. "If you hit a target with at least two unarmed strikes on your turn, that target is shoved 10 feet plus 5 feet per additional attack that hit".
The one minute short rest at 2nd level would allow a monk to burn BOTH discipline points on two fights if the rest of the group doesn't want to slow down enough to allow a proper short rest every day.
Give more ways for the Wisdom modifier to apply in and out of combat. If a Barbarian can use Strength for Perception checks, monks should be able to at least add Wisdom to all proficient checks, for example.
I legit like the idea of taking a subclass and grating those features into the main class. Hunter for Ranger, Open Hand for Monk, Battlemaster or Champion for Fighter...
Grafting*
Monks need "Unarmed Mastery", it is definitely part of their class fantasy! A lot of people thought monks would get to do weapon mastery/manovres with their unarmed strikes. Such a shame.
Also it should be noted there are many loopholes to getting around Darkness also impeding allies. When Darkness is cast on an object, the spell specifically states it can be covered to prevent the darkness from "emanating" from it any further. You can RAW do silly things like cast it on something like a ring you wear on your hand, then at the end of your turn say you put your hand in your pocket. Obviously this means the Darkness doesn't really protect you, but you still get the benefits of it on your turn, and that's better than requiring all allies have Devilsight.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. For some reason, the designers seems to think that about 75% of fights are happening in situations where the characters have been stripped of all their equipment. The weight they give to any abilities that don’t require you to have a weapon or armour or whatever is just wild. It’s the same reason they seem to think that material components are a suitable balance for overpowered spells.
While I agree with you 100 percent, the first word in the game's name is Dungeons, so it's always been implied that the party gets thrown in a cell at some point. Of course that entirely depends on your DM, table, and game, but...
Material components? You mean those things where using a spell focus eliminates the need for 95% of them?
@@StephenHutchison That’s my point. They seem to balance things around the idea that you won’t have that focus a huge amount of the time. Any ability that allows you to do things without equipment is always FAR weaker than anything that requires equipment.
Surprised that Treantmonk took the time to completely reorganize his room between the two videos.
My fix for the Monk that gives them a non-Discipline dependant ability and fixes their weapon masteries:
STANCES.
You spend movement to enter a stance and can do it once per turn. You begin knowing 2 stances and at level 20 know 5. A Stance confers the benefits of one type of Weapon Mastery along with another small bonus. For example:
Mantis Style:
Costs 15 movement to enter.
When you miss an opponent with an unarmed strike, you deal damage to them equal to your Dex or Strength modifier. Opportunity Attacks made in this stance that hit reduce an enemies movement by 5 feet. (Or: You become Proficient in Slight of Hand Checks, or something like that).
Something like this is essential as Unarmed Strikes have no Weapon Mastery property. As Unarmed Strikes advance faster now, this means you're highly encouraged to ditch weapons (and thus, the fun new weapon mastery system they just introduced). Stances also allow Monks to do things without spending Ki! Different Subclasses could also each include their own unique Stance.
Please copy/paste this in the survey if you agree folks
This man speaks wisdom
Wow! I hadn't even thought of spending movement! Brilliant! By doing that it totally pay to get higher levels in monk!
Hey do you mind if I copy and re-post this in the comments of other videos?
@@targetdreamer257 Nope! I'm just happy if it gets picked up. I am an indie game maker (Will Donelson) so it'll be neat if I get a shout out but I really just want a good monk
@@targetdreamer257 Please do!
I wish monks got a feature like rouges cunning strikes, imagine eye strike to blind, a disarming strike, trips, maybe even some niche ones like a throat chop to silence or a solar plexus strike that makes them lose their breath ( only for fighting under water, or in a poison cloud or other cloud spell. )
It’s really weird to me that Shadow Monks can only move their Darkness at the start of their turns. That means if you love it to blind your enemies it’ll also bling your allies. Best case scenario you still need to cast Darkness on an object that you’re holding.
I see the movement of darkvision as beting better at infliltration/teleportation effects. bouncing it out in front of you to run, then teleport somewhere you couldn't before, you could cover like 110 feet in 1 turn and stun/blind a BBEG, while the party deals with minons. Can be super effective
They should of allowed them to adjust the size of the darkness from 15ft radius to a 10ft or 5ft radius. Don't see the point of moving it since u can attach it to an object your holding which is the best option.
@@JoshuaSmith-hl1xj the movement is to create the area of darkness where you need it for your shadow step. It’s a nice feature when needed, but yes, I’d go the held object route most of the time
2 changes:
1st: when you create your darkness it is UP TO X ft radius. You decide.
Add (maybe at later levels) As a reaction, spend 1 point to move or change the size of your ki.
Or maybe those 2 things are a subclass feature at higher levels showing you've mastered your shadow
Remember Darkness is Concentration so they can end it at any time without an action
The monk is missing two things : survivability and resources to do cool stuff. I love what they did for Warrior of Shadow and Warrior of the Elements with a 1 Discipline cost for 10 min benefit (Darkness / Elemental attunement). I hope they expand this design concept on ALL the monk subclasses. Here are the updates on the base monk I would love WOTC to implement (it will be in my feedback survey) :
Unarmored Defense that scales with monk levels. Formula : "10 + ((monk level - 1) / 3)" (rounded down). This is 10 + dexterity + wisdom, +1 each 3 monk levels after the first one, ending at 16 + dexterity + wisdom at level 19 (I chose +6 for high end to keep up with +3/+3 from a magic armor and shield). The base number progression (10 to 16) would show on the monk table next to the Unarmored Movement bonus progression. This will allow the monk class to be a bit less multiple ability dependant, since you don't need anymore to cap DEX and WIS in order to have an average AC in higher levels.
Heightened metabolism moved at level 2 and being able to be used constitution modifier times per day (with minimum once). If providing short rest is too strong because of multiclassing, change the wording to : "If you spend at least 1 minute resting, you can regain all your expended Discipline points and you can spend a number of Hit Dice less than or equal to your Monk level to regain hit points as you would do in a Short Rest. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest."
This would allow a more constitution oriented build to thrive being able to use more their Discipline features, and give an incentive to new player to invest in constitution in the class. Also, I would like to match the Rogue's feat/ASI progression with a feat/ASI at level 10, if possible. More options in the build cannot hurt, and would allow to even more be able to take actual feats instead of pure ASI.
I will ask to entirely remove the "Stunning strike" feature. Then replace it with a "Combat stance" feature at level 5, where you can go in a stance to apply Weapon Mastery property to your unarmed attacks. "Your advanced training with unarmed combat allows you to adopt two kind of combat stances, greatly improving your Unarmed Strikes. Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can change the combat stances you chose. At the start of your turn, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to imbue yourself with focus and take a new combat stance. Choose one of the two stances you selected and apply its associated Weapon Mastery property to your Unarmed Strikes for 1 minute, until you have the Incapacitated condition or until take a new combat stance."
Then below you can see a table with the name of the Combat stance, the starting level where you can use it, and the associated weapon mastery property. For instance :
- Stance of the Cyclops (from level 5) : Cleave
- Stance of the Wyvern (from level 5) : Sap
- Stance of the Cockatrice (from level 5) : Slow
- Stance of the Minotaur (from level 8) : Push
- Stance of the Griffon (from level 8) : Vex
- Stance of the Kraken (from level 11) : Topple
- Stance of the Hydra (from level 11) : Graze
Providing an access to Graze at level 11 should help with the average damage. They should probably, in addition, allow monks at level 5 to also be able to use the Martial die for weapons they are proficient with, to avoid making weapons totally irrelevant compared to unarmed strikes, for players who want to use weapons.
Allow easier shove/grapple by updating the "Dextrous attacks" text of the "Martial arts" feature to "You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack, damage rolls [and saving throws] of your Unarmed Strikes and Simple Weapons, except those that have the Two-Handed property."
And I agree with Chris, Perfect discipline should drop the condition to regain 4 Discipline. "When you roll Initiative, you regain 4 expended Discipline Points." That's it. If you want you can add: "Those regained Discipline Points are automatically lost at the end of combat if they have not been expended in this combat."
I've got a recommendation for you both, so I'll post this on Treant's half as well. What if we copy the design from Cunning Strike's for Rogues and apply it to Monk's Stunning Strike.
Example:
5th Level *New Stunning Strike*: You have honed your abilities to attack the weak points in your opponents for a variety of effects. Once per turn when you hit you may force the enemy to make a saving throw against your DP DC. Upon failing the save, you may apply one of these three effects to your enemy till the start of your next turn:
- You apply the Grappled Condition and deal 1 Martial Arts die of damage (0 DP)
- You apply the Daze condition (1 DP)
- You apply the Stunned condition (3 DP)
Then later 10th Level *Weak Point Manipulation*: You have have become so adept at attacking your opponents weak points that you're strikes can create near magical effects. Your Stunning Strike may now be applied twice per round. Once an opponent has failed a save you may not attempt against the same opponent. In addition you gain the following 3 effects added to your Stunning Strike List :
- You apply the Frightened condition to your enemy, while Frightened the opponent must use its action to Dash away from you. (4 DP)
- You apply the Charmed condition to your enemy, while Charmed you may control your enemy's next action as the Dominate Monster Spell (5 DP)
- You apply the Paralyze condition to your enemy (6 DP)
Maybe add on a 3rd attempt to "Stun" at 15 or 16.
This allows for Stunning Strike to be appropriately costed to what a Stun Condition would be, adds on additional affects for tactical flexibility, and gives the Monk a free option so they don't feel like they have to burn through their Ki in order to actively act as a Monk.
Also for everyone out there thinking Stunning Strike is OP, you really need to look at all the Arcane/Primal/Divine spells that do the exact same thing with 1st - 9th level spells. All for the low price of concentration a caster can apply every kind of condition.
Congrats you're a better designer than whoever made the 1D&D Monk
Really hope to hear Chris's full complete breakdown on this entire playtest. I do appreciate Cobly's breakdown and it was good, but like to see Chris's opinion on it as well as his critiques. Either way great job to both on this Monk breakdown and good to have Chris back after a long week!
Honestly, because WotC has been looking so hard at survey and online feedback I think that the design teams are being more exposed to the "Monks are Broken" factions than they are to the "Monks Need Help" factions. And so THAT might be influencing the more... controversial design choices that keep rearing their ugly heads.
They nerfed stunning strike to be only once per turn...I don't think it should cost ki-points anymore, it should be free (is a Constitution saving throw anyway so what's the problem?) Ki-points should be for stuff that's more usefull like flurry of blows, step of the wind and subclass features.
Just add wisdom to monk dmg. Rewards being Mad and gives extra dmg to each hit. Add this to 2014 version w weapon mastery’s and martial weapon proficiency. Even Treantmonk would play that guy!
I love the new Elements Monk because it feels like the easiest way to be a Firebender.
Also the Reach bit is extended by 10 feet so you get a 15 foot reach normally and 20 feet with a Bugbear
But we can't be a Waterbender, Earthbender or Airbender...!!! They're totally dropping the ball on us for us wanting to play the Avatar...! Makes no sense.
@@TheGloryXros Well there’s not Earth, Water and Air damage. They’ve always said that Fire, Cold, Lightning and Acid were the “elemental damage types”
@@EpicRandomness555 Which is DUMB honestly. There should be. Or, just represent each through the already existing ones.
Water = Cold, Piercing and/or Bludgeoning
Air = Bludgeoning, Piercing and/or Slashing
Earth = Thunder, Bludgeoning and/or Piercing
@@TheGloryXros ,
Play the Avatar RPG then...
Edit: Sorry, that was uncalled for. Yet, if you have the friends, and really want to play a bender, maybe that RPG would be a nice break from 5e.
@@TheGloryXros Earth- Bludgeoning (which is standard for monk), Thunder
Water- Acid or Cold (which is already included)
Air- Lightning (which is already included) or Thunder.
The only damage type not listed that I would want to see included would be Thunder. I am increasingly annoyed at Thunder being left out of elemental damage.
Love seeing a double team by two experts! Thanks Chris and Colby.
Awesome video for sure, this is a great colab. I have watched both parts now. Here are my fixes for monks as a base class.
1. Hp needs to be 1d10, they are part of the warrior class.
2. As stated in the video, weapon mastery needs to be given for unarmed strikes, and also martial weapons should be added or dedicated weapon mastery included. Perhaps we should just auto include all options from Tasha, as backwards compatibility seems to be a very big thing the designers keep speaking about.
3. Either AC should be enhanced to include 1/2 proficiency at levels 5, 10, 15, 20 or provide temp hp somehow, perhaps equal to your monk level that you can summon per wis or dex modifier, lasts until depleted and as usual doesn't stack with other temp hp.
4. More Ki points awarded per level, perhaps 2 per level, then at later progression, say 14 they taper off down to 1 or none.
5. Provide a consistent increase in damage, for example spending 1 or 2 ki point provides 1/2 wisdom or dex mod at level 5, then full modifier at level 9 or 10, applicable to both weapon and unarmed strikes, lasts a minute.
6. Stunning Strike, should have the save changed to Wisdom, and their power increased by spending 1 or 2 ki providing disadvantage to the save, also if the enemy saves no ki spent. Also, it should last until the end of your next turn, same as current/old monk. I'm fine with it only being once per turn.
7. The new 7th level feature, Heightened Metabolism should come at level 3 or 4. Though maybe with the amount of ki I suggested this feature may not be needed at all.
8. Stillness of mind should be retained but use a bonus action, and clarify that one can use it to defeat being charmed or frightened if effected by those conditions.
9. Resistance to poison and disease should be retained. The designers seem to be moving away from immunity.
10. Getting proficiencies in all saving throws should be moved from level 14 to 10 or 11. Where most people end their campaigns at.
Anyway, I do know the designers have been listening to feedback but they need to push this class much further to make it equal to the improvements made with the other martial classes, specifically the barb and fighter. Take care all.
The four elements elemental fists should be like a +1 weapon type effect, since you're definetely not using weapons
and then make it scale, it'd be fantastic
Just make +X weapon where X = half of your PB (rounded down)
It would mean +1 at lvls 5-8, +2 at 9-16 and +3 at 17+.
The joy of your collaboration is how angry Chris gets😂. I'm vexed by his normal politeness.
He is always like this if he speaks about the monk
@@FreeFromAllThings with good reason
I believe it says "When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal". Wouldn't that make your melee range 15 feet even on a standard monk?
That's how i would rule that RAW.
"I'm buying new books all the time" - at this point I glanced over Chris' shoulder and noticed how one shelf of his bookshelf is trying its absolute hardest to hold itself together.
I believe you my man!
Let's actually fix the Monk. Here's my two cents:
Glossary:
Unarmed Strike
An Unarmed Strike is a Melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, shove, or distract a target within 5 feet of you.
Whenever you use your Unarmed Strike, choose one of the following options for its effect or if you have a Weapon Mastery with Unarmed Strikes, you can also apply Grapple, Shove or Distract when you chose to deal Damage with an Unarmed Strike.
Damage. You make an attack roll against the target. Your bonus to hit equals your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. On a hit, the target takes Bludgeoning damage equal to 1 + your Strength modifier.
Grapple. The target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (it chooses which), or it has the Grappled condition. The DC for the saving throw and any escape attempts equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. This grapple is possible only if the target is no more than one size larger than you and if you have a hand free to grab it.
Shove. The target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (it chooses which), or you either push the target 5 feet away or cause it to have the Prone condition. The DC for the saving throw equals 8 + your Strength modifier + your Proficiency Bonus. This shove is possible only if the target is no more than one size larger than you.
Distract. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have Disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn.
NOTE: Shove works as the Topple and Push masteries for weapons, so Distract was added to mimic the Sap mastery for Unarmed Strikes. Other options come to mind, but I'm just throwing out some ideas to see how it goes.
Monk:
1st Level - Weapon Mastery
Your training with weapons allows you to use the Mastery property of two kinds of Simple weapons of your choice, such as Daggers and Spears, or Unarmed Strikes.
Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can change the kinds of Simple weapons or Unarmed Strikes you chose. For example, you could switch to using the Mastery properties of Maces and Slings.
2nd Level - Martial Discipline
...
Flurry of Blows. Immediately after you take the Attack action you can spend 1 Discipline Point to make two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action. When you reach 11th Level in this class you can make three Unarmed Strikes instead of two.
Patient Defense. You can take the Dodge action as a Bonus Action. If you spend 1 Discipline Point you can also add one Martial Arts Die roll to your Armor Class until the start of your next turn.
Step of the Wind. You can take the Disengage, Dash or Help actions as a Bonus Action. If you spend 1 Discipline Point you can also take another of those actions as part of the same Bonus Action. You can only take two of these actions as a Bonus Action at any time.
Martial Disciplines can only be used as long as you aren't wearing armor or wielding a shield.
5th Level - Stunning Strike
When you hit a creature with a Simple Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, you can attempt a stunning strike. You can spend 1 Discipline Point and force the target to make a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the start of your next turn. If the target succeeds the Constitution saving throw it is Dazzed until the start of your next turn, instead.
At 14th level you can spend 2 Discipline Points instead of 1 and force the target to make a Wisdom saving throw instead of a Constitution saving throw.
6th Level - Empowered Strikes
Whenever you deal damage with your Unarmed Strike, it can deal your choice of Force damage or its normal damage type. Moreover you can spend 3 Discipline Points to empower your Unarmed Strikes for 1 minute. When you do so, you can add your Wisdom modifier to the attack and damage rolls of your Unarmed Strikes and they are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming resistances.
NOTE: Requiring magic weapons to overcome resistances might not be a thing in future damage resistances for monsters.
10th Level - Self-Restoration
Through sheer force of will, you can use a Bonus Action to remove one of the following conditions from yourself: Charmed, Frightened, or Poisoned. You can use this Bonus Action in this way even if another creature has control over your actions. In addition, forgoing food and drink doesn’t give you levels of Exhaustion.
14th Level - Disciplined Survivor
Your physical and mental discipline grant you proficiency in all saving throws. Additionally, whenever you make a saving throw and fail, you can spend 1 Discipline Point, roll a Martial Arts die and add it to the saving throw, potentially turning a fail into a success.
15th Level - Perfect Discipline
You can use Heightened Metabolism twice, instead of once per Long Rest and when you roll Initiative, you regain 4 expended Discipline Points.
18th Level - Superior Defense
As a Bonus Action, you can spend 6 Discipline Points to perfectly bolster yourself against harm for 1 minute or until you are Incapacitated. During that time, you have resistance to all damage except Force damage and once per use of Superior Defense, if you drop to 0 Hit Points, you roll four Martial Arts dice, and add the dice together. Your number of Hit Points instead changes to the total rolled.
20th Level - Pinnacle of Discipline
On one of your turns you can channel your inner discipline into becoming self-perfected for 1 minute (no action required). During that time your Monk abilities cost 1 Discipline Point less to activate and your Martial Arts die increases to a d20. Once you use this feature you can't do so again until you finish a Long Rest.
Optimize to your party. Darkness should rarely be an issue for you.
The bigger issue is that shadow monk is now the “I cast darkness” subclass and not much else.
Chris, you are my favorite person for assessing D&D content. As soon as I saw the playtest monk, my thought was "let's see what Chris has to say," because I knew you'd tease out details and nuances that most would miss, and you've done just that.
The video to pdf comparison is very similar to the rogue one. I remember JC saying "the rogue is a beloved subclass, so we only changed quality of life things and didn't temper with it a whole lot" and it was the most altered class of that pdf, and everything was a nerf.
I hear your criticism and I agree with it for the most part. My biggest concern for the new monk was playstyle. Monks need to be able to disengage reliably every turn. Spending resources to get out of combat as well as the opportunity cost to not flurry or patient defense is bad design. They need to fix that, too.
With Chris being on vacation, I was so excited to see a new video get published. Then, I was even more hyped seeing it's an hour long video. And then it was like Christmas when I saw that this was part 2 to a 2 part series, and the other video was posted on Cody's channel today! And then I saw ... the topic was on The Monk .... I guess you can't win them all.
Side note: if WotC doesn't fix this class, can we just community-wise skip all Monk-related topics in the future?
I love the idea of giving the Warrior of the Hand features to the baseline monk.
I think they need to give base monks weapon mastery on unarmed strikes like you mentioned in the first video, and then make Open Hand all about enhancing weapon masteries, so maybe you can apply two per turn, and you get more choices, or something like that
Proposed change for Quivering Palm: When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you may overexert yourself to inflict a fatal blow. You expend all of your remaining discipline points, the creature makes a CON save and on a failure you roll a number of martial arts dice equal to twice the points expended. On a success the creature takes half damage and you regain 4 discipline points. This feature may only be used once per long rest.
Interesting idea but if you would rule it that way, you would have to use this feature with at least 10 but probably more Ki-points left for it to be worthwhile damage and if you do, then you don't have enough Ki left for the rest of the combat, because due to the con save everyone would still succeed on the save automatically, so half damage and 4 Ki-points left for the rest of combat... not a good situation to be in.
So, interesting idea but the execution unfortunately isn't much better, because you would probably never end up using it, because you just lose all your Ki-points for not big enough value...
That's still absolutely horrendous for a capstone.
I would watch several hundred hours of the two of you discussing d&d, or at least I would listen to it, since my job puts me in a position to listen to tens of hours of audio every week. I've watched every video with the two of you on either of your channels more than once, and probably more than thrice, though there might be an exception. PLEASE DO MORE COLLABS TOGETHER!!!
What if monks got a pool of Discipline Points equal to Wisdom+PB at the start of every combat? Scaling that goes up as you level and a sizable chunk at early levels too.
Made this comment on Colby's vid. After a long rest your points should reset to your proficiency bonus. Every combat, gain points equal to proficiency.
Maybe you use em all, maybe you don't. Resets after long rest.
I like this far better.
@@brettmajeske3525 my other idea is you have a much smaller pool of points but you get points back every round. You'd have to rebalance the number of points actions cost but you could cash them in for extra flurry of blows attacks under this idea. Let's say you have 4 in your pool, you spend one for stunning strike, land it, you can then make your bonus action FoB and get 3 hits off of it.
I think binding it to Wisdom is not good in the current state, just bind it to Dexterity instead. At best, you'll have +2 Wisdom at 1st through 4th level = 4 Ki-points, so with Dex you had at least 5 Ki points per combat scaling up to 11 instead of 8 or 9 at 17th level.
@@mojin7470 wisdom does a few things for monks though. AC, Stunning Strike DC, and now bonus Ki. It incentivizes players to bump wisdom and thus more of their monk features.
I'd change monks entirely, give them a free martial arts attack each round (more at higher level), either this is an unarmed strike (keep dmg low), or a special ability like a sweep, stunning fist, flying kick, ki shout etc. Keep dispiline points for extremely special abilities.
I love this crossover 😯✨✨✨
I like it how the best step in the right direction was keeping the Mercy monks untouched, because every other step they took with the monk was making it worse.
Chris, it was great fun to see you so irked about what the current state of monks is. I agree. I would not play one as they are right now.
I have a file on my account's "About" (can't share link, because RUclips is dumb 😡) that I really hope anyone interested will see, because I'm interested to hear what thoughts you all have. It covers what I believe to be a pretty solid fix to the One D&D monk and its old (and new) problems.
It it also more or less what I am going to pull from for my answers to the survey.
One thing I really like about the dragon monk is the ability to replace a single attack with a feature rather than the entire action. It gives me much better feeling if Weaving your abilities into your martial arts.
That's how Id like to see them handle the elemental monks Aoe burst
Dragon Monk feels like an early test for the new elements Monk.
@@Jordan-kq3qw yea dragon monk is basically a revised elements monk, I just wish they'd take the "replace an attack" approach for this one too.
An easy fix for the darkness problem is that you can choose a number of allies equal to you WIS modifier to be able to see through your spell along with you. Removing the Silence spell from their list makes them alot weaker to spell casters. Between this and the Divine Smite being classified as a spell in this UA, it seems that they're intentionally making martial classes more inferior to spell casters in the next edition.
Amusingly I had an advert kickin just after treantmonk asked “what do you think of the way of the 4 elements monk?” singing “b.o, b.o, whatever you do you can’t make it go”😂😂😂
My friend plays a Mercy Monk in our game, and he has tattoos on his knuckles of PIMP for his harm hand and SIMP for his healing hand. So he backhands the enemies with his pimp hand and boosts his friends with his simp hand. It always gives us a good chuckle.
Hi guys! This collaboration is amazing! I'm enjoying it, and I hope there will be more.
If I can contribute with my two cents, I would like to say:
1) Not applying the martial die to weapons is HUGE. My monk is using a whip, which in a monk hands with the feat Slasher (and the Dedicated weapon feature) is very, very useful, tactically speaking. I tried a lot of martials, but no one is such a controller of the battlefield like a monk with a whip (excluding the rangers with proper spell selection, but they are half-caster so it does not count). Making enemies prone, pushing them, slowing them, stunning them: monks are truly martial controllers. Making the whip still a d3 weapon whereas your punch deals a d8 or a d10 is definitely underwhelming. I agree with Chris to give monks unarmed mastery, but at the same time they should still apply their martial die to the weapons with which they have proficiency. And here comes my second point.
2) Yaking away the Dedicated Weapon feature screws the monk even more. Now, even if you have proficiency with special weapons (whips, longspears, swords...) means that you cannot use your dexterity with them either, their damage die do not change, and they just became useless in a monk hand. I really find those weapons iconic of the class, but maybe I'm biased.
3) Unlike you, I played on the table a 4 elements monk and.... it was very cool. As a background of the group: we try to optimize, but we do not care to sacrifice power for fluff. For example, we have a Glory paladin in the group, and it is fine for us. In this environment, the 4e monk is quite good, I have to say. Of course, the problems you highlighted are all true: too few ki points, not a great defense, too much need of short rests, elemental powers are way too expensive. But the few times I used them, it was very very cool. Now, the new elemental monk looks... vanilla to me. The fact that you cannot customize it is really what kills it in my eyes: I would never want to play a subclass where, what you have to do from one level toi another, is just read the text of their new fixed powers without being able to make it truly yours. Maybe the new elemental class is "more powerful" (which is extremely debatable. I do not know in theory crafting, but on thetable, based on my experience, the new subclass is definitely not, especially at high levels when the old 4element monk could cast gaseous form and cone of cold and wall of fire, and the new one... well, add some more elemental damage once per turn),
Let's see how it goes! Hugs,
Luca
The problem with poison resistance is that when it rains it pours. They need a way to have areas where all the enemies are undead, but only some of them are resistant to poison. Imagine a system where in each encounter, the DM can make a small number of enemies "key enemies." Then the statblocks can have a list of things to add when this enemy is a "key enemy." In this case, poison immunity can be a thing mostly reserved for the "key enemies" of encounters.
Huzzah, let's see the legends' take on things and potential fixes he might make^^
Here's my idea for fixing stunning strike. "When you hit a creature with a Simple Weapon or an Unarmed Strike that doesn't have the stunned condition, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn. If the creature succeeds on the save they receive the daze condition instead" This would only allow the monk to stun a creature that doesn't already have the stunned condition. Allowing monsters to have a turn where the monk cant keep them locked into the stunned condition. Now you wouldn't need to make it once per turn because its wouldn't be as powerful and wouldn't need a nerf. if the creature does succeed you now get something because they would get daze giving the monk the feel of still having a strong control ability.
With all the Monk talk I thought the School of Dance Bard might come up.
That's mostly a joke but can make for a funny comparison.
Warrior of the Hand? Please, WOTC, please change the name
Little mention that the subclasses are still mostly drawing from the same pool of resources as the main class. Lessened in a lot of cases but still not great in my opinion.
For backwards compatibility, I'm fine with a free PDF telling us how to adjudicate supplemental sub-classes, feats, etc. That takes care of backwards compatibility and lets you do whatever you need to make the new not-edition great.
I was really goad to see how supportive of eachothers channels yall were.
Compared to the base class, I was actually impressed by the subclasses. Shadow got much stronger, Elements is actually playable and they fit into the flavor of the Western media tropes they draw upon. But more and more I find myself wondering why even have Monk as a playable class to begin with when you could get a more effective and survivable character by playing a Battlemaster Fighter with Unarmed Fighting style and the Crusher feat.
The number of flurry of blows you do, should be equal to your Proficiency bonus. Also, Unarmored Defense should be AC10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier + Proficiency bonus. This should help the Monk scale better.
To put into perspective how much of a nerf the 10d12+monk level really is,
If it was 14d12+monk level, on average you'd still be dealing less damage assuming all creatures succeed at all times.
15d12+monk level is the absolute minimum amount of damage it should deal.
Dropping in from d4, loved the Collab and will be checking out the rest of your videos!
I'm just brainstorming here so this may be a dumb idea, but here's what I'd like to see for the monks: One of the ideas behind the monk is to make many smaller attacks rather than few big ones, but they still cap out on like 4 small attacks which is no more than a fighter can do without expending resources at max level. I think that it would be cool if there was a feature where if the monk was attacking with a damage die that is at least a d6 they should be able to reduce it by one size and get an extra attack with it at that level. So instead of punching once for 1d6, they would punch twice for 1d4. And this could scale based on damage die, where you would get 1 more attack for each die size you went down. I've done zero math on this so I don't know what the balance looks like, but I do know it sounds cool to me.
That actually sounds interesting. I mean they are turning the Sneak Attack dice into a resource that can be spent. But honestly the monks should get something like the Battle Master Superiority dice. Not exactly that but that template so they can use that extra resource to do "Monk" stuff or as a recharge on Ki points.
I think open hand monks should get the vibrating palm from the Mighty Boosh. It has not apparent effect, but two hours later the victim goes out and buys a hat that doesn't suit them. It's about as effective as the rest of the monk arsenal!
I just don’t understand how they went so wrong with this. I mean, they recognized that the Ranger needed fixing, and they implemented changes that ACTUALLY fixed stuff. They did such a good job in lots of ways with the Ranger.
How did they miss the mark so badly with this? It just confuses me and makes me very disappointed. Come on man! People like Chris are giving such honest and easy feedback to fix it, just do less talking and more listening!
Editing to add that when Chris shouted “SHOOT!” It had me rolling 😂
I was waiting for this
Looking forward to seeing this. Started watching Colby's, saw the notification of your new video on discord so thought I would come see the same thing here. Needless to say I am back on Colby's channel watching part 1! Back later 🙂
Yay for part 2! For all of us who wish the monks finally get respect, count me in!
The extra range on the four elements attacks essentially gives you a free disengage so long as the creatures reach doesn’t exceed 15 feet
It’s very funny how the wide consensus is “the monk needs a drastic rework, and we like how unique the warlock is and how it plays” and then you get WotC to give warlock as massive rework and hardly touch monk at all
I have an insane idea for Open Hand Level 3:
- Remove the caveat that you need to use your Flurry of Blows attacks to use the extra effects, those are weak versions of the Weapon Masteries (except maybe the reaction one?), why do we need to spend resource to do the same thing everyone else can do if this subclass' whole deal is that we've MASTERED unarmed fighting, also as you said add weapon masteries to our unarmed strikes. Personally I would give default monk 1 mastery and open hand 2 unarmed masteries.
- Patient Defense reduced to 0 cost, it says we've learned to protect ourselves, what better way than Free dodge. But since WotC loves us to use ki/discipline I will posit this: "Through training you have learned to capitalize on your opponents mistakes. When a creature makes a melee attack against you while using Patient Defense, you can expend a ki/discipline to make an unarmed attack against the creature without expending your reaction. " If the idea is that the monk is so focused and disciplined, what better way to show that mechanically than being able to react MORE (by expending resources)
- Also Step of the Wind reduced to 0 cost at level 3, and this feels like overkill but I wanted to follow the pattern of just making the ki options you already have better, alas: Fury of the Wind: By expending 1 ki/discipline you may also make an unarmed strike as part of your Step of the Wind action.
I was a bit worried that being able to attack so many times and with the bonus of unarmed mastery would feel extra broken but fighters can just do their weapon mastery whenever they attack so if I am picking the subclass that tells me I do not need a weapon I also need that to be reflected mechanically.
Feats & magic items.
What Chris said about feats is true- but theres also not really any magic items for monks. There are magic swords & armor... but monks dont really use those. If there were magic handwraps or even rings that affected to-hit/dmg... or magic robes for armor boosts (not like those intended for casters), i think this could provide a much needed boost to help monk get to where the other martials are.
The base class monk rightfully deserves the Battle Master options.
I feel like Kyle Brink needs to make another apology tour for the Monk. #WayoftheFrustratedMind
LOL
I was just listening many hours ago now, fell asleep at some point, & I remember thinking about the _Dome of Darkness_ even before (like moments or simultaneously maybe even) you brought up "changing the size of the dome" that I was conceiving of if it's 30' D = _15' r that the Outer 5' was Shadow, the Inner 5' was regular Darkness, & the Middle 5' was the Darkness on the order of Fog Cloud._
Unless the charioteer can see through the Darkness, he will then probably disembark his shuttle, exiting the darkness. The steed no longer being compelled will remain balked as do most animals in utter darkness. Providing a very nice hiding place behind or in for everyone on the field of battle. ???
@@Derry_A_Deryni I'm picturing this not on land, but underground. The steed's infravision spoiled (ergh, _"Darkvision"_ ), the Human Adventurer's lamp light abruptly ending at the static "screen" of *darkness & the sounds of a pair of stomping, echoing steel hobbed & knobbed & toed boots loudly emerging into the light, foreshadowing*
@@ButlerianG-Haddinun _ +1 Halberd of Thundering _ _the underscores didn't slant_anyway, because "Thundering" underground complex is like an_ * Alarm * _ *_OH I SEE NOW, the _ & * have to touch the phrase_* ~typing magic has rules!~
@@FlyingAxblade_D20 then, once the Thunder powered Halberd becomes party treasure, before it is used, Silence could be cast at the back of the foe aggressors whereby defeating the Alarming status of the effect. LET"S PLAY!
I had a random cool idea - what if we give monks ALL weapon masteries. Say, at the start of their turn they can take a 'stance' that can give them any one Weapon Mastery on unarmed strikes for that turn. Or maybe stances stay always, but it takes a BA to change them, something among these lines. That would be a very thematic buff!
Problem of Monks will also be lack of magic bonus to unarmed strikes (when compared to magic weapons).
Solution:
Give Monks +X Magic bonus to their unarmed Strikes, where it scales +1 at lvl 5, +2 lvl 11 and +3 at lvl 17. (Or make it PB/2 rounded down, which is also at the same except it is 2 from lvl 9).
I really like, and find easy to implement, the idea of giving all the open hand subclass to the base class and start from there.
I think the backwards compatibility mania of WotC is mainly based on the development of the upcoming DnD Beyond VTT. The less changes to 5e, the cheaper to produce. No need to implement both 5.0 AND 5.5 rulesets for them.
I firmly believe the Monk needs to be reworked from the ground up. I'd like to see a "combo point" design, where landing hits builds up points that could be spent on special moves and big finishers. But something tells me that would be too "complicated" for 5e.
Sounds kinda Pathfinder, but it could be made to fit 5e's design space.
Interesting RAW interaction for Shadow Monk as written, it says "you can see within the area of your Darkness spell."
So, if we were going purely RAW, this would allow you to see even if under the Blinded condition or in another sight-blocking effect, like Fog Cloud, within the area.
I think *most* GMs would not interpret it this way, but right now it is there.
Looking forward to seeing future monk revisions. Monk os a very cool class, and everyone would love to see more from it.
I believe base class monk would be really ok with
- access to short swords, some pole arms, and other traditional monk weapons.
- a weapon specialization for unarmed strike
- a flat AC bonus that increases with level up together with martial arts die
- fighting style feats during class progression
Congratulations, you just remade a weaker version of the 3rd edition Monk...
@@johannesstephanusroos4969 your mom is a weaker version of 3rd Ed Monk
When Chris said "SHOOT!" I almost crashed my car I laughed so hard
you had me laughing when ya pretended Colby was Twisting your arm lol
I agree with Chris and Colby - would appreciate a fresh start! As long as I can play the old 5e adventures with the new core rule books, the character creation process can be separate - either use 5.5 or use 5e, no need to make this more complicated for myself!
Suggested Changes to Monk
Monks get martial weapon proficiency but still no monk weapons.
Martial arts dice apply to unarmed strikes only.
Martial arts changes. When you take the attack action and make an unarmed strike on your turn you can make one additional unarmed strike as part of the same action. (If damage output low This action can be combined with two weapon fighting nick property along with flurry of blows helps boost monk attacks to match fighter attack damage progression and helps the image of a monk unleashing a flurry of attacks. Moving the additional attack out of bonus action allows the monk to keep up damage with other martial characters and allow the monk to use their bonus action for other features.)
2nd level Ki/Discipline changes. Starting at 2nd level you receive a number of ki/Discipline points equal to your proficiency bonus that you use to fuel various monk features. You regain any spent ki/Discipline points at the start of each of your turns. (Only need to rework ki/discipline point cost for subclass features and/or make them limited time use per day to keep balanced. Any ki/Discipline healing features become limited use per day features)
Flurry of blows (changes)- 1 ki/discipline points. When you take the attack action and make an unarmed strike on your turn you can make two additional unarmed strikes as part of the same action.
Step of the Wind. You can spend 1 Ki/Discipline Point to take both the Disengage and Dash actions as a Bonus Action, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn.
Patient Defense. You can spend 2 Ki/Discipline Point as a Bonus Action to reduce the damage of melee attacks. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing melee attacks until the start of your next turn.
4th level feature slow fall moved to 7th level with evasion remove heightened metabolism feature as it is no longer needed.
Empowered strikes 6th level feature moved to 4th level.
Ability score improvement/feat at 6th level.
Stunning strike changed to Dazing Strikes. As an action spend a number of Ki/Discipline points to make a number of unarmed attacks to a target or targets within range. Each creature hit by this unarmed attack must make a constitution saving throw. If you hit a creature with more then one unarmed attack during this action, they receive a -2 penalty to this saving throw equal to the number of additional unarmed attacks that hit them (example, spend 3 ki points to make 3 unarmed strike against a single creature, if all three hit, the creature make a constitution saving throw subtracting 4 from their total). On a failed saving throw, the creature(s) gains the dazed condition until the start of your next turn.
You get an ability score/feat at 10th level. Gain resistance to poison damage with self-restoration feature.
15th level perfect disciple feature replaced by “new” feature Stunning strike. Your Dazing strike ability now stuns a target on a failed saving throw and dazes them on a successful saving throw. (Limited times per day use if proving to be too strong or once per turn).
20th level ability Your Dexterity and Constitution scores increase by 2. Your maximum for those scores is now 24. (Works with the new 19th level ability score/feat idea that you can boost an ability score to 22)
The way of the open hand monk changes. Change 3rd level ability to an ability that allows you to choose a weapon you are proficient with. You can apply that weapon’s mastery property to your unarmed strikes. At later levels you can choose more weapon master properties to apply to your unarmed strikes.
"While the spell persists, you can move its area of darkness to a space within 60 feet of you at the start of each of your turns." As this is worded, you can have your friend dimension door you across the city and then instantly move the darkness across the city to within 60 ft.
I'm sure there's combat potential, but I'm laughing at the idea of teleporting far away enough and then using the feature to cause your orb of darkness to move farther than the speed of light.
That...
I'm...
I'm just trying to wrap my head around the shenanigans that can be pulled off with that. Brilliant! Excellent catch!
For species/racial flight, I think Colby might have been thinking of the dragonborn. Their first pass at it removed Fizban flying from their abilities - but it returned in the revised species. That's still only a 1/day 10 minute fly, though.
Chris yelling, "SHOOT" made my night! 🤣🤣🤣
Open Hand 3 with tweaks (once per turn rather than on Flurry) being baseline for Monks would be a great solution to the Weapon Mastery gap. It gives a lot of Mastery-style control, combined with Fighter-like flexibility, but without doing it the same way as a Fighter.
Yeah, the more I think about it, making Open Hand baseline (again with a few tweaks) is a great move. Then include Kensei in the base book, since having a subclass which goes hard with weapons is as necessary as letting base monks be fine without weapons.
Great video! With a moveable darkness for Shadow Monks, they make the default best option for ranged monks. The darkness won't be in middle of melee combat so team mates should be fine. Combos well with a devil sight warlock slinging eldritch blasts at advantage.
Something I feel like would really suit the base monk thematically and give them a slight boost would be resistance to bludgeoning damage at say lvl 3 or gain bludgeoning resistance for a turn when you use a ki point or make an unarmed strike.
I think two simple changes would help the monk out, they would need more but would be a better start:
change hit die to 1d10 and add to Martial arts:
For you Unarmed Strikes count as a Martial weapon and gains the following:
• The Light weapon property
• The Nick Weapon mastery
would be nice if monks could share their devil sight when within a certain range of allies so that improves team cohesion, improved shadow step should absolutely allow you to teleport your party with you (ki cost or x times per day), that would be so fun for infiltration and battlefield control
My opinion on backwards compatibility is the subclasses in the other books should be rolled forward to the same standard implemented in the phb. I spent $1k on getting every book in dndbeyond, and the amount of work to do minor adjustments to the other books is a relatively small lift in my opinion. This then allows them to make big changes as well as not make people feel like they have lost their investment.
My opinion on the new monk is even if you gave them unlimited discipline they would not compete with a battle master, or a bard or so many other classes.
I do think stunning strike could be game breaking in the 2014 phb version so understand the nerf to once per turn, however the entire class was the weakest without redemption, and now is even more weak.
Adding way of the open hand to base class seems like a great idea.. the make open hand…. Get more fighting styles and maneuvers? Now you have “monk” with shades of, rouge(shadow), damage caster(elements), mercy(healer), warrior hand.
But yes some free stuff, free “mark”.
As always you are so well prepared. They can crunch numbers, just as you did.
I liked this
doing half on each channel
Thought experiment on this side! patient defense let's you use your bonus action to add your proficiency bonus to your AC until the start of your next turn instead of taking the dodge action.
Oh, and alternatively, you can use it as a reaction to getting hit by a melee attack to halve the damage. You can't use the reaction option if you've taken patient defense using your bonus action.
Just spit balling ideas here
I wanted to see something akin to barbarian rage. For example spending 1 ki to go into a stance for 1 minute. Instead of spending 1 ki to flurry of blows for 1 turn, you spend 1 ki to take a flurry stance and flurry every turn for 1 minute.
Then your subclass can have their own stance that enhance your unarmed strikes like shadow stance giving penalties to creature's attack for a turn; elemental fist dealing elemental damage until Ki-empowered adds a damage dice; and open hand stance would put disadvantage on saves.