This. THIS. Wizards printed the overpowered Subclasses that are the Peace and Twilight Domains, on a base class that is already exceptional. Yet for some reason they can't be asked to give Monks a really good subclass. The closest we've had is the Shadow Monk and maybe the Mercy Monk. It's so frustrating. I'm letting my players use the UA version of the Ascendant Dragon instead of the garbage that we're getting in Fizban's. Unfortunately I have to hope that I can have a DM that will let me play the same, or just make some NPCs that use the UA version.
@@jcdenton2187 Not to mention the heresy that is how much they spoil the Wizard class; they have even tried to make a loophole into giving them bloody healing.
@@kendrajade6688 Monks sucking conceptually is a big reason why they suck mechanically, too. The D&D concept of a monk is simultaneously too broad and too narrow -- the monk can represent the Iron Fist and Scorpion pretty okay, but it doesn't represent other famous fist-fighters like Kenshiro or Ryu very well -- and this aesthetic philosophy is reflected in a bunch of wildly diverse but mechanically junk classes that are all over the place.
@@maltheopia Rangers kindve fell into the same sort of trap. They are a figher that is good at hiding like a rogue but also loves nature like a druid. Monks are just like fighters with less armor and a focus on ki that amounts to really small things. Both have weak concepts, they just made monks suck a lot more
@@maltheopia Open Palm was more like Toki yet still it's best skill comes online so late the game been over. Fighters are so frontloaded they don't need to get 13+ to be "complete" Some are legit done by level 8 and everything past that is RP and fluff. Yet monk is over there hoping for a feat or maybe more stat growth.
@@maltheopia yeah, they seemed to have badly mixed the old shaolin monk and kung fu movie stereotypes from older editions and the Wuxia fantasy genre of chinese martial arts without really understanding what the genre is in the first place. Fantasy Eastern Martial Arts and Wuxia fantasy, in general, train their bodies to produce Ki to A) reinforce the body to make them superhuman, and B) to make magical spell like abilities. So to use class features to explain my point. Their Unarmored Defense would work like Barbarian and be Dex+Con, as the more they make a tough body, the more the KI acts as armor. Their Ki pool would be Monk levels and Con Modifiers. Any spell or spell like abilities would still use Wisdom. Now this sounds MAD because IT IS. All non-MC Fantasy Monks would typically choose from three routes to grow. The External type to focus on close combat and train their bodies directly. The Internal type to focus on magic and techniques. Then the mixed type of variating degrees. If I ignore the past and genre stereotypes and just look at the Class as a Function of Dnd game design, then I would make them Off-tanks that does small but consistant damage. They support the other front lines with small crowd control and/or aggro control. They take a hit or two so the Main tanks can breath and heal before they hop off the front lines and either protect the back lines or harrass the other backline.
@@optimus2200 Sure, but we're talking actual flight. That's a reasonable cost for flight when we're talking Monk. At level 11, flight can be almost as powerful as Empty Body giving invisibility and resistance. And it's not like the Monk was concentrating on anything else.
Would it really have been that bad to let the Monk fly for a limited time at the cost of ki points? I guess it'd be useless for Aarakocra and Winged Tiefling Monks but that's the only thing I can think of.
but REAL good. We're talking about Hulk Jumps, since not many other people can jump 135 feet high or long at 6th level. (Heck, if you are a wood elf with the mobile feet, we're potentially talking about 180 feet jumps - not to mention about a mobile tabaxi occasionally making a 330 feet "leap")
Hot tip: make a new dragonborn undead warlock 1/psi warrior x. By level 8, it has almost every ability of this monk subclass but (repeat after me everyone) better, earlier, or both. Heck, if you go psi warrior first, during levels 3 and 5 you will have more psionic dice than a monk has ki.
@@ExeErdna I'd respectfully disagree with that. Given interviews from Jeremy Crawford, it's highly likely it was due to survey feedback. He's publicly said they're in the happiness business, and that they don't balance classes for damage potential. I'd bet the survey feedback played huge into the final result.
@@Vagran Like I said they don't test as well as they think they do. For a lot of people not going for a gimmick the monk is bad, they burn through their resources too quick and their subclass skills are outclassed by others. Like I said elsewhere here. Just make a fighter, go human, tavern brawler at level 1, go battlemaster at 3 and crusher at 4 that's a better "Monk" I wasn't even talking about DPS, Monks just don't work in long haul, whe Druids can do everything. Clerics are the best class overall. Warlocks are more useful. Fighters are consistent. in 5e Monks don't work
@@mcullennz the 17 is a pretty big buff. Tiny clinging breath is subpar to huge range blow out an army. The aura range was pretty much the only nerf that was not negligible.
Man, the designers are *really* terrified of monks. Or they hate them. You can’t even stay aloft if you use Wings Unfurled in consecutive turns! Aaggh!
@@amadhollow635 I would also like to say that astral self monk is not good at all. The only thing good about it is that you can focus on wisdom a little more but you sacrifice not using a weapon. Which is one of your best options until tier 3
I’m guessing the design crew at WoC has an inflated opinion about the strength of the Monk chassis, and they temper subclass features to “compensate.” That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why they screw the Monk over, and over whenever they come up with new content.
I’m not sure whether they feel monk is strong or not, but they have said they are concerned when making a new subclass that it doesn’t just outstrip old ones and make them obsolete, so maybe they are aware of the issues and just have to live with it until 5.5 comes out.
They just don't care about the Monk, you see it with a lot of the classes, compare the Bard to the original Ranger, someone who loves a class makes a good job of it, but it's more that they don't seem to think about how it works in play, it's "that sounds cool".
I'm convinced someone important on the design team has a totally unfounded belief that Wisdom is the most powerful stat, and so any class that gets benefits from it has to pay for that. Monk pays out the ass, because they get a bonus to AC from it, which is of course completely overpowered. This person has seniority, so nobody can question them, and so we have 5e Monk and Ranger. Cleric got "nerfed" by healing being more readily available, and Druid got nerfed by making Wildshape utility, not turning into a flying grizzly bear that poops lighting and more grizzly bears.
@@gamecavalier3230 yeah those are good points. I was just pointing out what they’ve said in the past about subclass balance trying to even out within a class. Maybe they just got tired of hearing about sorcerer and ranger being underpowered. Dunno. Not saying it’s logical or is what they have adhered to, just what they’ve said.
TL;DR Once again, WotC hates Monks for no reason. If you want to play a dragon-flavored Monk, play a Fighter with the Unarmed Fighting Style, take the Eldritch Knight subclass, flavor spells as dragon-related.
Level 1 dragonblooded Sorcerer dip is always a thing. Covers you in gnarly scales and such. Cornerstone of turning a Tortle Fighter/Paladin from a happy turtle guy into King Bowser.
That would be a wise (😉) DM ruling: any skill can technically use any ability as per rules; DM gets to decide the attribute with which to make the check. If it were not so, they wouldn't specify the default as [(attribute) skill].
That 17th level cone damage effect seems ok at first, especially when you consider that monks actually have lots of ki at the level. That is, until you realize the sorcerer in the party can cast an EMPOWERED METEOR SWARM for 7 times the damage in an even more gigantic area. Its actually embarrassing.
I was incredibly disappointed that the level 17 ability wasn’t “Shapechange/True Polymorph into any dragon of your challenge rating or below for an hour once per long rest.”
@@muddlewait8844 Yes! I was thinking something similar as well! Its so disappointing they never get anything like that. It reminds me of the Astral self Monk getting extra Arms but no ability to slap people around any more than any other monk.
All I could think of is that a 17th level monk can now do about the same damage as a 5th level caster with fireball. Sure, the area is larger, but it becomes a bit superfluous in most battles. Trying to avoid allies also becomes a problem, though at that level the damage is pretty minor.
To be fair that’s not much of a Monk issue than a “All Martials pale in comparison to Casters at later levels” kinda issue. Even the Fighter, king of DPS, isn’t that exciting versus a Wizard who literally cloned himself.
Well a Sorcerer can only do that once. Dragon Monk can do this 6 times for free or empowered for a total of 6 ki points or use all of their ki points to use it 10 times.
I don’t really understand why they keep making subclasses that do so little damage and have such poor abilities. Are they afraid they’ll make monks too powerful?
I get the feeling that they value Stunning Strike WAAAAYYYY more highly than most people. Which is actually a common new DM problem. Sure Stunning strike is cool but once you get to higher levels with high con saves (Con usually being one of, if not THE, highest stat and save on monsters) it falls off pretty quickly, not to mention the monk is burning through Ki points like a fiend.
@@luketfer Stunning Strike or A fighter hitting something 6 times at the same level... I'll rather just make a fighter. Go human, get tavern brawler at lv 1 and then crusher at 4 ironically a better "monk"
Somehow, Wizards managed to make a subclass that is worse than Astral Self and Four Elements in tier 1. Before you get Extra Attack at level 5, if you decide to use your measly 2d4 breath weapon, you need about 3+ targets to make it worthwhile due to the opportunity cost of not just using your unarmed strikes and Flurry of Blows. But if you use the free breaths, you replace your only attack with something that is neither an unarmed strike nor a monk weapon, therefore you cannot use a bonus action unarmed strike via Martial Arts. You also do not qualify for Ki-Fueled Attack, because you did not spend any Ki after all. And the way the feature is written, you cannot expend Ki until you're out of free uses. It feels like Astral Self's bonus action Arms of the Astral self is better because you keep your action, you spend less ki, you're less impeded by creatures granting cover to other creatures in the area due to it being a radius with you being the center, and you also get all the Astral Self features on top of that. How can you even look at some of the worst Monk subclasses in the game and decide that you need something on a similar (if not lower) power level, when Mercy Monks should have permanently raised the bar to some acceptable levels?!
can't you flurry of blow off the breath attack? If so the opportunity cost is only the single attack from your action, which is probably the quarterstaff die+mod. It's not great but at least is situational
The ONLY advantage I can see with draconic strike is that it comes earlier than "your fists are magic" so you can overcome resistance to mundane damage sooner than other monks, well also you can mess with creatures like trolls that regen hp unless you burn em so two circumstantial advantages, then again the flavor of having your fists enveloped in lightning or flames like a Mortal Kombat character is pretty neat.
You missed a few applications. Your monk can punch a pitcher of water or lemonade with cold damage to instantly create a more refreshing beverage. You can also punch an ally at any time with poison to make sure they haven't been replaced with vampires, demons, or warforged since the last time you saw them. You save literally dozens of silver on Tindertwigs, since you can just punch a stick into fire. You can punch fresh fruits or vegetables, or even meat with acid damage to pickle it on the spot, and polish up dingy metal objects in a flash. Cleaning supplies are also a thing of the past. You can count your bite as an unarmed attack (unless you're a lizardman, unfortunately), and deal fire damage to your meal, warming it up without needing a microwave or campfire. You can also burn that nasty stuff you just stepped in off with fire damage, too. And there's a market for those deep tissue, electrical massages, not all of it wholesome. If you can bootstrap this late medival/early modern society into the early industrial era, you can also probably get some huge results out of a bunch of these guys generating vast quantities of electricity. Moral of the story, this is probably the single most handy level 3 hireling in the game, and any indulgent overlord worth their salt will train every one of their maids and butlers to level 3 Monk, just for this suite of abilities.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 the utility is high and can help with environmental challenges and food as you can refrigerate foods. It’s like a whole mix of all the odd uses casters want to do with their spells without the spell slots infinitely. There is some vulnerabilities around as well and being able to change it is more flexible than casters.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Honestly the pickling, eating raw food cooking in mouth, and checking on allies are the only unique ideas because prestidigtation and shocking grasp is like the rest of what you said.
Its sad for sure. My dm uses them though, especially for many undead and fiends since he thinks resistance/immunity to radiant is odd given there are subclasses that already give you extra radiant damage when you attack them.
The problem is that x2 is too much. I don't want Pokemon when the correct move deals twice as much damage and all you do is spam it. If vulnerability was weaker then it would work and be fun.
Too many resistences and immunties yet very few weaknesses. Yet too many still see Yuan-Ti are too strong of a race or any race that has a res especially to poisons
@@nilsjonsson4446 Not really with res cuts the damage in half that's IF it hits for decent damage. 2x for playing smart should be a reward for players. Using blunt or acid versus skeletons, armor and constructs. Just give some use to the spell list to allow players to be more creative than fireballing every room because it works.
Treantmonk saying Ice Elementals weren't vulnerable to fire was the moment I realized my DM has been adding in vulnerabilities over the years to his monster blocks.
So the problem with you, Treantmonk, is that you know what every other class has and can do. If you could just forget what you know in every other class can do, including mages, and forget how the rules work, then you would see the power, beauty, and awesomeness of the monk . . . No. No you wouldn’t. You would still realize monks suck. Never mind. Carry on. 👍
I agree, the subclass is bad (not surprised). But I do think some of the features might have more benefit than you give them credit for. Draconic Strike. True, mostly ribbon, but it will be useful occasionally. We're not just looking at vulnerabilities, but also things like a trolls regeneration or flesh golem's fire aversion. Or things that have resistance to our normal attacks, like treants or swarms. Yeah, even with these other uses, it wont be useful every session, but it should at least come up several times in a campaign. Breath of Dragons. It's not much damage compared to your normal attacks at 3rd level when we get it. But let's look at it at 11th level. Now we're comparing 3d8 (13.5 damage) to maybe 1d10+7 (12.5 damage, assuming a +2 longsword used in two hands and Dex of 20). Now it's doing more damage against a single target, and any other targets are gravy. If you have enemies clustered, this can be some decent damage. The other benefit is that it's a Dex save for half, but our attacks do nothing on a miss. Its especially useful against enemies that have high ACs but low Dex saves. Wing Unfurled. Yes, this is a bad ability. But it is (technically) better than jumping. You have to jump in a straight line (or a parabolic curve if you like physics), but this gives you some maneuverability in the air. You could fly out a window and into a different window, or you could fly to a balcony on the opposite side of a tower, etc. Despite this, it's still not very useful, so maybe I'm just being nitpicky on this one.
Not only do parties spread out, monks in particular are supposedly supposed to be skirmishers, using their extra movement speed and step of the wind to duck in and out of combat. 10' resistance aura isn't bad, but synergizes much worse with the monk than with a front line fank like the paladin meant to create and control a static central position in combat.
Devil's advocate. It's actually good on a Monk. Most Paladins really really want to be on the front lines, holding it. If a Paladin falls back to get the backrow in Aura range, then the Paladin can't also be maintaining the front line. Maybe you have a Fighter, too, and that's fine, but if you don't, then either your backrow doesn't get the aura, or your backrow has become your front line. The Monk isn't beholden to that duty, but even if they are, the extra movement means they're more likely to be right back where they need to be, and can actually reach everyone in that spread out party, which the Paladin may not even be able to do. The Monk is free to bring that defensive support to the characters that need it most, and actually facilitates the highly theoretical pop in and out strategy Monks are often accused of using. It takes advantage of the one good thing the Monk has, mobility, to carry around a defensive buff to whoever needs it at the moment. Frankly, more abilities like this could be what saves the Monk. Make them aura stooges and support monkeys. You don't need to be good yourself, you just need to be a pair of hands that are always in the right place.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 yeah I’d much rather hit the enemy and run back to fire resist the wizard from dragons breath than stay up in the front the cover a raging barbarian. I’m not sure what OP is doing 🤔
I think if you use step of the wind that is a ki point and a bonus action right? so then you would be losing on damage and your valuable ki. Monks are not good skirmishers but I think youre right the concept of being one seems to be part of their unfulfilled niche.
Damm i guess mercy was just a fluke then. And here I was thinking wizards were going to give monk some slack, i bet if they found out that mercy monk was a decent option they would think it's broken.
Someone started furiously writing errata when they heard in the subclass rating vids that a Monk could flurry of blows a wall for free heals. Bag of Rats is legal, but martial arts dance Monk must suffer.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 if your dm makes you hit a wall to use that feature they're just a bad dm in my opinion lol, there is no reason outside of combat you can't just use it
At the very least, at least this subclass' features don't require ki to activate right out of the gate! That's certainly something! Are they good features? Not really, but at least they don't eat into your Flurries or Stunning Strikes unless you want them to. Head and shoulders above the Sun Soul and Drunken Master monks, though that isn't saying much.
Except a lot of them eat your bonus action, which IMO is actually worse. Once you get to level 6+ ki is not very limiting. But bonus action is! Monk should be using that BA to attack pretty most of the time, and only using it for other things situationally. PS Drunken Master is one of the best monks because it leans into the play-style the base monk class is good at: hit-and-run many attacks per turn. It plus Open Hand and Mercy are the best monks mechanically for combat (though flavour-wise and on other aspects Shadow monk is awesome). The dragon monk just seemed off right from the UA. Both flavour-wise and mechanically. e.g. how does studying dragons and their philosophy lead you to be able to turn your fists into lightning? How does a monk's training make their friends better at resisting fire? Feels like they just slapped a few bits of the dragon statblock into a subclass and called it a day.
@@regaleagle6533 he is referring to how the activation for the 11th level fear ability is a bonuse action atleast that's the only one I see that takes a bonus action
@@Pgoodso step of the wind was already a thing. If you weren’t going to try to bounce out of a fight you weren’t going to use the enhanced version. The breaths are part of your attack action. The fist change is part of attack action and rest of ribbon isn’t a bonus. The resist part of aura is useful enough when it’s useful and unused when it’s not. The fear/reaction half of the ability were both rubbish. So basically you are only using a single bonus action to throw up an aura for a full minute and the rest of bonus action usage is standard. This is much less restrictive than say mercy monk.
Right off the bat, my initial thoughts on how to fix this is to add Wisdom to Persuasion and Intimidation checks, up the damage of the breath and make it scale better, make the 17th level breath range boost part of the 3rd level feature, at level 6 you get 10 minutes of real flight with hover when using the feature, make the aura at 11th level 30 feet and recoverable on a short rest and 60ft at 17th level, the fright effect of the aura does not require a bonus action to affect another target each round, Explosive Fury deals half on a success and more damage, and make the blindsight 60 feet and give +120 feet of darkvision (like a real dragon). Also, at 11th level, when you activate Aspect of the Wyrm, you can also choose to activate Wings Unfurled with the same Bonus Action.
Adding Wisdom to those charisma checks just seems like such a no-brainer, especially when Fey Wanderer ranger gets a charisma proficiency, and +WIS modifier to ALL charisma checks at the same level while also being an easier class to max out wisdom on if you wanted to get the best out of the ability. A fey wanderer can easily be just as competent at social encounters as any warlock, paladin or sorcerer if they want now. But nope monks get one roll a day, lol.
Path of the Storm Herald from XGtE's 10th level ability makes the aura give resistance to the a set damage type to any creatures of your choice. This strikes me as very similar to the Wyrm resistance aura, since it is only active during Rage (which is a limited resource), but the Barb chose the element already, where as the monk can pick a different one each activation in exchange for uses beyond the first costing 3 ki. In fact, this seems class shares a lot in common with Storm Herald, but instead of being tied to rage, they double dip by adding limits in addition to things costing stupid amounts of Ki.
Don't even need to leave monk to find something better than the 'flight' at level 6. Shadow monks can teleport 60 ft as a bonus action at the same level. Doesn't work in bright light, but it can be used every turn without ki.
combo their ability to use the darkness spell with the invocation feat to get devil sight and you can throw around spheres of magical darkness and go wherever you want with it.
@@sha2143 That's the plan for the shadow monk I have. Just hit level 6, debating if there's enough stuff I want in warlock to dip or just wait until 8 and take the eldritch invocation feat.
@@sha2143 Leaning towards dipping genie warlock to pick up hex and the extradimensional storage. Relatively low CHA though, so need to pick the right spells.
@@spiderwrangler4457 keep in mind you can put target darkness onto an object, so you can take like a normal dart cast darkness on it, then throw it and pick it up again to move it. Also you could grab the fey touched feat and get a half ASI, the misty step spell and hex. Only one cast a day on those though, unless you have other spell slots. Misty step can be useful if you don't want to put down darkness, or cant.
@@sha2143 Yeah, I've used darts of darkness before, just couldn't see through the darkness, so it was like closing his eyes and throwing the dart to where he remembered wanting to hit. If Shadow monks got the same ability to see through darkness that shadow sorcerers do...
I think resistances are common enough, but I would love to see more vulnerabilities, and not necessarily just for creatures, it would add more tactical depth to the game. Unfortunately the designers seem to want to ignore them because they want to make creatures harder and more accurate to their conceived notions of challenge rating and vulnerabilities add another layer of complexity.
I think Vulnerability in general is just too swingy. If a Paladin learns that "oh these creatures are vulnerable to radiant damage" they're going to cleave through the encounter to make it a joke. I know its for simplicities sake, but I prefer scaling vulnerability where you give the player a bit more damage. Vulnerability 1 = +1d6 damage Vulnerability 2 = +2d6 damage Vulnerability 3 = +3d6 damage So using Water/Cold spells on a Fire elemental is an actual tactical advantage rather than just...Meh.
WOTC likes making their campaigns virtually impossible to beat without a large, highly optimized party. I'm not sure why they have chosen to do this, but I think their contempt for their customers is probably a factor.
@@PlanetOfTheApes999 because DM's cry on forums all them time about how they can't beat their players but they also don't want to do any work into making anything.
Once again, you've voiced my thoughts on a monk subclass almost verbatim. I try to like monks, I really do. But there's always something the designers do to crap on them for no reason. There's no practical reason to play this subclass when you could just be one one of the new Dragonborn + have a mechanically solid class. And that's just crazy to me. I remember when people said, "race features aren't supposed to be stronger than class/subclass features". Now, Imma point to this and say, "Well they are now."
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was. I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB. I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e. I really don't get it.
Proposed changes I'd make: Lv3: Rather than changing the damage type to a different element, they can instead add an amount of elemental damage equal to their Wisdom modifier to all damage rolls made that turn. This ability activates whenever the Monk uses Flurry of Blows. Lv3: Allow the monk to substitute their Wisdom modifier in for Intimidation and Persuasion checks in addition to the reroll. Lvl3: Change wording to allow the monk to sacrifice any number of attacks to the breath weapon, including attacks that would be taken as a bonus action. The number of dice rolled is multiplied by the number of attacks sacrificed. Lv6: Activating Step of the Wind causes the wings to grow for one minute at no additional cost. While the wings are present, you have a fly speed equal to your walk speed and can use the Step of the Wind action without expending ki. Lv11: The Monk can activate their frightful presence at will (bonus action). The range is 30 ft, and any creature that enters our starts their turn there must make a save or be frightened of the monk for 1 minute. After successfully making the save, they are immune for 24 hours. Lv11: The Monk gains a floating immunity (like the fiend Warlock's level 10 ability), subject to the same choice restriction. The Aura is 10ft and the elemental type can be changed with a short rest. Anyone within the Aura who successfully makes their save against damage of the chosen type instead takes no damage. Lvl 17: Replace the abilities granted with: The Monk can transform into a dragon (as the spell Shapechange) 1/rest. Additionally, the radius of their elemental resistance aura increases to 30 ft.
You mirrorred my thoughts exactly. I thought this subclass was weak when I saw it in UA, but they nerfed it even more. I think they just seriously over-value the power of changing your damage type, it seems to be the majority of the power budget for this AND Astral Self.
Sometimes I think the subclasses designers are unaware of how rare vulnerability truly is. Now in my games I add lots of vulnerabilities, just so damage type matters. If they are playing in those type of games and forgot those are house rules...
True, but it also gets an improvement to another feature and has other decent features generally. Most importantly though, Psi Warriors don't tell you that you'll be able to fly in the description and then not deliver on that...
It's one of their two features they get at level 7. And level 7 is kind of the ribbon level for fighters anyway. Champion gets Remarkable Athlete, Battlemaster gets Student of War, Arcane Archer gets Magic Arrow, Cavalier gets to give an adjacent creature Shield-but-maybe-worse a few times. Eldritch Knight and Samurai get good stuff, but then again, Samurai also gets two things, like the Psi Warrior.
...and yet it's for double the distance, regenerates a resourceless use on a short rest, and has less competition for the bonus action, and there are times at early levels where a psi warrior will actually have more psionic dice than an equal-leveled monk has ki, and you can use any weapon or armor without losing essential class features. Psi warrior is indeed the most monk like of fighter subclasses, to be sure. That just makes it for the most part better than any monk subclass.
The only usable feature in my eye for this monk is the 3rd level Draconic strike. Which may make an interesting build with 6 level of Storm Cleric. We can make 40 feet forced movement a turn now.
Changes I would make: Draconic presence: put Deception checks in there too; Breath of The Dragon: damage is two martial arts die PLUS proficiency bonus. You can spend ONE ki point to use this feature again; Wings Unfurled: the flying vanishes at the END of your NEXT TURN (the monk wanna fly? fine, but it will cost him ki points); Aspect of the Wyrm: uses per day equal procifiency bonus (I'm ok with the 3 ki points after the free uses); Augment Breath: No Ki cost; includes proficiency bonus to the damage, just like I said in the breath of the dragon; Blindsight 30 feet - one could argue Truesight is a better feature for this level; Explosive Fury: I don't know man, that's so bad that even if I say "add proficiency bonus to the damage and if the enemy makes the save, it will take half damage" it would still be bad :(
Draconic presence: Say you use Wisdom for it instead of cha Breath of the Dragon: Damage is martial arts die times two 3rd /four times 9th level /five times 17th level. Can be used equal to prof for free and use it for 1 ki if run out. Wings Unfurled: Flight for 10 minutes equal to prof mod aspect of the Wyrm: 30 ft radius keep 3 ki but the fright is to any number of creatures in the aura and resistance is automatic but you choose the resistance when you set it up. Augment breath: basically the same but add monk level to damage. Blightsight 20 feet: I would say true sight as well but eh. Explosive fury: With my extended range of it when Aspect of the wyrm its fine, but lets say its a half damage on save and because it can hit multiple enemies keep the 3d10.
@@WhyYouMadBoi you don’t see anything unbalanced about casting cone of cold upcast at 8th level and then doing more attacks on top of that for 1 ki and having 5 elements to choose? That’s what like getting back 17 8th level spell slots on a short rest at 17th level. Hahaha pretty 🥜
It means a lot to my player group and myself that you objectively reviewed this Sub-class. No shots taken, just calmly explained what the issue is. I know I've called you on it in the past so I want to make sure you know how much I appreciate this.
Comparing this to Drakewarden, it's almost like looking at subclasses in two different books by two different teams of designers. Drakewarden isn't earth-shatteringly amazing, but it's cool and it works. This... Doesn't.
tbh, i don't really want them to make stronger monk subclasses, because that will be at the expense of the existing ones. I think what needs rework is the monk chassis. More ki points or maybe a way to recharge some ki points during combat.
As far as the first half of that goes: That's an issue for nearly every class, the Xanathar, and Tasha ones just tend to get more and fancier toys to play with. I personally think it's getting to be time for a 5.5 edition that works to bring the power of everything back in line by buffing the weaker stuff, maybe nerfing the strong stuff and fixing the broken stuff.
I can almost understand why a Monk would be worse at magic then a true Mage, but this is a game and games are fun. I wish every Sub-class did Way of Mercy's blend of flavor and power.
Crazy how a tiny change like "equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts Die plus your WIS modifier) could turn that feature from crummy to pretty good. It doesn't use a Ki point, so the potential is really there.
I thought they wanted to make this the new way of the four elements monk - and they succeeded. They clearly needed to make a better version of this maligned subclass and they thought options are better then combat power in a combat class!
I will say that the paladin giving an aura of saving throws is essentially similar to resistance if the player would otherwise fail the saving throw. But it is on a paladin as opposed to a monk. And works on stuff that doesn't do damage.
I think, objectively speaking, someone at WotC dislikes martials and especially hates monk. If it was just once or twice I would think it was merely issues in testing or there was some broken interaction that we just haven't found yet, but release after release monks get shafted. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” - Ian Fleming
I think the designers (irrationally) don't want to give Monks flight because they're the naturally fastest class. But... you can break speed in the game really easily already. Mobile Feat, haste, boots and potions of speed, just playing a Tabaxi. This is not a problem, this is not a threat to the game, the fly spell gives you a speed of 60ft, which is the exact same as a 20th level Monk's speed bonus. WHAT!? WHY?! You give the Open Hand monk a free potential instakill, and this Monk gets good area control with bad damage. WHY!?
Flying ain't even all that on a Monk. Monk Aarakorcra are still pretty much the worst Aarakocra, and that includes the Aarakocra classes that give up some of the armor they could be wearing to fly. Monk Aarakocra has nothing on Fighter Aarakocra with a pike.
@@20100langlois Monks suck really bad at grappling. Most will have a 8-10 in STR. That's already quite unreliable, but let's say they get a source of Expertise and some form of advantage like from a Barbarian multiclass. They still suck at it. A 8-10 STR gives them a carrying capacity of 120 - 150 lbs. That's not enough to drag a lot of medium-sized creatures, and large-sized? Forget about it. They can Push/Drag/Lift 240-300 lbs., but that will cause their speed to drop to 5 feet. Meaning they can't actually meaningfully drag their target on most battlemaps.
@@maltheopia I disagree. You didn't build it correctly. Here's an example: Ascendant Dragon 6, Gloomstalker 3, Tabaxi 1 half feat of choice for 18 str (Crusher, Slasher, Piercer, whatever), 14 dex, 14 con, 13 wis Base speed 30 + 15 from monk + 10 from gloomstalker + 10 Longstrider = 65 base, 130 with tabaxi burst, 260 with step of the wind Ranger Canny gives expertise in athletics for grapple. That's 2*Proficiency bonus +4 on your grapple roll. At level 6, that's +10. Level 9, +12. High strength gives them carrying capacity. With this framework, you can grapple from far away and fetch enemies back to your group. Bonus points if you leverage fall damage. You are still functional as a melee damage dealer with a weapon. If you take Mobile Feat on top of this, you can do hit and run tactics as it will not trigger attacks of opportunity. And if you continue just a bit in Gloomstalker, you get Spike Growth. You also get Enhance Ability to buff your STR for advantage and double carry capacity.
So... Do WoTC think Monk is fine as is? Are the designers afraid of making a Monk subclass too powerful? I'm so confused by their total lack of balance understanding
@@becomeanastronaut6232 This is the same design team that got rid of the original DnDNEXT playtest of fighter which was almost universally loved by old players and new. The one that baseline got 2 maneuver dice per round (that's per round, not 4 per short rest) and could pick from maneuvers more often (I believe it was 2 new every 3 levels). They got up into their own head that it was "too complicated for new players" and then we got the Battlemaster and champion split...
@@becomeanastronaut6232 they get a lot of feedback complaining about rangers or barbarians being weak and much less feedback about monks being weak. Not much incentive to buff monks if a lot of the community seems (inexplicably to me) satisfied with them, but that is definitely the case. Tons of people will jump to monks defense if you argue why they’re weaker, and those same people’s voices have given wotc the perception that theres no need to power monks up if people are largely happy with them.
Couple mechanic thoughts. Its not clear if you have to change your strike into elemental. B/c if you do you remove the ability to use crusher. The other issue is the breath attack replaces an unarmed attack. In tier1, that means you have no unarmed strikes, so you cant use martial arts on that attack. The final thought is that dex saves go crazy in tier4, and the likelihood of failure is very high (leading to no damage).
Isn't horizontal jump distance tied to a character's Strength score? For most Monks, that probably means a normal jump distance of 8 or 10 feet - so even doubling that doesn't give a Monk "a jump distance equal to their walking speed." And that's not even considering vertical jumps, which are even more limited. Don't get me wrong, the end of turn limitation still makes this so-called flight feature bad and extremely circumstantial. But I think Fly 45' is a bigger upgrade over the 15-20' jump (4-6' vertically!) normally granted by Step of the Wind than you're giving it credit for.
Yeah. And we can dash 3 times, so that could be 135 feet at 6th level, scaling up to 180'. I agree with Treantmonk that they're being cheap with monks by always restricting their features more than they do for other classes. But this is still a decent ability on a monk. Not fantastic. Not great. Not good. But decent. Still... the entire package isn't what I would want in a subclass. I'll stick with sharpshooter Kensei and Mercy monks.
@@AdamZollo yeah step of the wind comes with a free dash so I think you get a good 90 feet then punches. Definitely run into situations with dragons or beholders are out of reach for jumps but not epically soaring through the air and punching their face.
@@brettmajeske3525 obviously it costs a bonus action. I was obviously talking about the OP saying when you USE step of the wind you have a 45 foot flight but it comes with a free dash so it’s double that. You can’t vertical jump double and start running upwards.
Yeah but when I think of the benefits of flight it doesnt give it. The biggest benefit of staying out of the way of bad guys doesnt apply since you have to be on the ground again. Good if your caster does plant growth or spike growth but you have to really plan around the ability
I always hear people claiming monk is fine, I want to know where they got this delusion, because they weren't good in just about every edition of the game, even over in Pathfinder they weren't all that great compared even to other martials. Fifth edition is just showing in full that we need a new class design team for the monk, or just don't make it a class ever again.
Speaking from my 5e monk play experience, i found the monk fun to play. Here's why I like them: they're mobile, they get around the battlefield and if done right they are always where the attacks are not. Skirmish: leap in, attack (stun is fun) then disengage and be somewhere else. Jumping and decorating saves so high I once jumped ON a Roc (a giant bird), rode this violent beast trying to throw me off to no avail, and then jumped off from a mile high and landed (negating I think all damage). Another time we were fighting a dragon? We ran and though last I outran everyone and was NOT flambé-ed. Another time we were fighting a beholder and we had to jump over chasm to reach him. I was the only one with no fear of jumping. Yes they're not the strongest, or the tankiest , but I found them fun to play
Honestly, with how archetypes and subclasses have come to define D&D, the Monk could realistically just be subsumed into a subclass for Barbarian, Rogue, and Sorcerer, each capitalizing on a different style of Monk-ery. Barbarian for physical transcendence Kenshiro types, rogue for karate chopping someone to death using reliable unarmed Sneak Attacks instead of Martial Arts die or what have you oraoraora style, and Sorcerer for shooting Hadoukens out of your feet or being an evil... uh... kung fu sorcerer. Maybe Fighter if you want to throw some 8 Diagram Pole Fighter in there. Lightly armored, nimble Fighter whacking people with sticks could be cool.
@@AAron-gr3jk it's great that you had a great experience with monk! But for me, when I started playing I chose shadow monk and that experience just soured the monk class for me. I always wondered why the paladin did more damage and tanked more, or why the casters could be as mobile if not more so with the right spells, or why I seemed to run out of ki so quickly. In the end, I switched to a battle smith artificer and found more enjoyment there.
@@unwithering5313 I have not had the chance to play Pathfinder 2e yet, but I will have to consult with the other DM/GM's to get info on it from their players if anyone is even playing one.
I can't wait to see how you buff this class like you've done with every other monk subclass. At least it's not outright terrible like other monk subclasses.
I think his changes to martial arts die largely fix the issue with the breath attack, alongside adding the Wis or Dex modifier to damage. . Wings Unfurled though is something else…
@@Iceblade269 Agreed, his changes make a huge difference, especially at Lvl20… As per WoTC rules… If you can’t rest after a fight you burned through ki and “freebies”, you can’t use a single ability in this subclass… Is that a resource management thing, sure… But a lvl11 Fighter could technically attack more times and still be able to use some of their passive subclass skills, and outperform your lvl20 monk… disappointing… I love monks so much too, but this is a subclass I’d only ever take for the sake of flavor… But probably not even then, as I could get all the benefits of this subclass just by going Gem Dragonborn…
I see one funny way to use this "jump good" thing. Grapple (action)+Step of the Wind (bonus) + Go up (movement) and then fall together with a Slow fall (reaction) If we use tabaxi to do that, it can be 90 ft drop on lvl 6 = 45 (base)*2 (step of the wind)*2 (tabaxi) *0.5 (grapple). The enemy will also be both grappled and prone, if he survives that. But ofc a monk like that will need STR much more then 8 as well, if he is going to carry anything bigger then a gnome.
I'm convinced at this point that entirely seperate people construct different parts of the actual written game content in the splatbooks. How else is that you can consistently have wildly different balance between any two random pieces of content from the game? Furthermore, I'm confused as to why they don't seem to have any semblence of "general balance", because its obvious that the people who say, made Twilight Cleric, did not make this subclass. When people work in a company for creative writing and game design like this isn't there supposed to be some established sense of a shared philosophy in game design, perhaps even with a rigorous balancing document that could serve as a guide to new members of the team? I just can't understand why it seems like WoTC is satisfied with essentially drawing straws and allowing each individual designer to do whatever they want without any consistency in levels of power throughout play between content, often within the same exact books.
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was. I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB. I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e. I really don't get it.
(13:35) - Wings Unfurled : A use of this that might be beneficial would be if you had to move vertically. Misty step upwards 30' then with your 'wings' move another 30' vertically to say a ledge or a window in a castle. otherwise I agree that this feature isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
That capstone is depressing, the only saving grace is that a 60 feet cone is massive so if you're fighting an army of baddies with not much hp, maybe basic goblins or orcs, you can vaporize dozens of them per turn, other than that punching is just better, why they gotta do my monks like that man.
Treantmonk saying Ice Elementals weren't vulnerable to fire was the moment I realized my DM has been adding in vulnerabilities over the years to all of their monster blocks.
Good lord. If the Wizard was designed like a monk, Bladesong would be a 14th level feature and would require a spell slot to activate, and then another spell slot and a reaction per turn to boost your AC with it.
I did 5 minutes of thinking and I thought up tiny ways that makes the subclass usable. - Breath of the Dragon now adds twice your WIS mod to the damage. (And tripled and quadrupled for the higher effects.) - Step of the Wind and by extension Unfurled Wings now has a concentration effect where you can maintain it for several rounds. - Aspect of the Worm has a 15ft aura, and enemies must save against fright the moment they’re in the aura. Mind you these won’t make this subclass mercy monk good, but it would make the subclass... You know... NOT a trap?
"Hey, what if Monks could fly?" "Hmmm. Sounds powerful. Let's tie it to an ability that already burns Ki points." "good point, good point. Can't have a monk ability that doesn't cost Ki am I right?" "That's right. Also we've been doing a lot of stuff with uses based on proficiency lately, what if we added that?" "Good plan. Should it reset every short or long rest?" "Let's make it long. Flight is powerful, can't just have monks flying around everywhere." "Excellent point. Give one a shortbow and flight and they will be making a bunch of ranged attacks where no-one can fight back. 6th level sound good?" "Yeah sure, that's about when the fly spell comes in. Hey, coming in on saturday for our game?" "Wouldn't miss it for the world. My Genie pact warlock just hit 6th level, I can't wait to play with my new features!"
17:25 Storm Herald Barbarian - at level 10, their aura (10 feet) gives damage resistance to fire/lightning/cold to party members in it. Dragon monk's is later but more versatile (can choose the damage type when casting and can choose the firghtful presence instead if the resistance isn't useful), but the barbarian can have this effect every rage. My theory for why monks get so much less mechanically than many other classes is because their stuff is cool. Some players do not face things that need them to be doing the most damage, so in those cases, someone doing less damage or having weaker resources than another class/subclass is not as important. Monks get to do so much stuff that feels and looks cool (if you ignore the numbers) that players still enjoy playing as them (lightning fists and breathing fire are awesome visuals, not taking into account the numbers). I think most people who watch your videos are not in that group, however. I think that you could balance monks numerically/mechanically and keep the cool, but it might explain why more of the focus seems to be on giving monk subclasses cool stuff to do rather than focusing on giving them comparable skills to other classes/subclasses.
I don't know why the desing doesnt contemplates choosing the Dragonborn race interact and enhance this subclass features or the Sorcerer Draconic Bloodline. Futermore, choosing the feats of the Dragonborn (XGE) also must interact with subclass only and even greater if you match the race + sublclsss. Then you have a spell Dragon's Breath that's also ignore those things. Today you can have 3 differents Breath Weapons and no interectacion between. From a game design point it just lazy.
@@TreantmonksTemple might I recommend mentioning this aspect in future subclass review videos? Even in the description or as a comment would be nice, since I really like the tier list and relative rankings.
In all fairness I'm pretty sure there's an enternal design document they have to follow that just says "monks have to be bad" it would honestly explain a lot.
I remember when ascendant dragon monk first came out people kept complaining it was stronger than the dragonborn race. I remember thinking " well of course it would be terrible design to make a subclass weaker than a race!" But then I look at this and I'm trying to think if it is in any way not just objectively weaker than a monk without a subclass playing a gem dragon born from the same book? You get better breath weapons, real flight a full level earlier, and no class resource expenditure for either.
If you look for the negatives, they're always there to find. For those still wanting to play monk, and interested in exploring what the sub offers over alternatives, haha strap in. I had a lot to get off my chest apparently, and would like to highlight plenty of fun stuff. Level 6 Wings Unfurled is not Jumping, but if it was, this would be an unprecedented boost to it. I love when a big jump with Step of the Wind lets me accomplish something on my turn I otherwise couldn't. Doesn't happen often. That's because while a 26ft running jump or a 10.5ft reach running vert is very solid for a jump...it's not that much movement. With this, we're usually looking at 45 or 90 feet of "Jump Good" to play with. The first thing I thought of is how useful this will be for your Dragon Breath. Cones and Lines aren't...terrible. These AoE patterns do come up. There are many hinderances that usually keep them subpar. 20ft is welcome from the usual 15ft Cone. Having both targeting methods at once is another huge step up. Totally unique. An issue with all AoEs is friendly fire. Well, monks have good Dex and maneuverability. So at the start of combats before enemies can scatter, or allies mix in, this can help position you regardless of terrain/obstacles. Most casters with narrow cones, or short lines, do not have the speed and durability to get up front like a Monk can. Let alone get in, and out as needed. This "flight" offers a third targeting modality as well. Lines and cones don't hit that many squares. Targets usually need to be scrunched up/bottlenecked. Having both methods means being able to consistently target more enemies, but Samurai Jack's got another trick. Fly above your desired enemy cluster and aim the cone downward. Now you're targeting a 10ft radius. By my math and/or table, your typical equilateral 15ft cone/triangle hits 6 squares. We have a spiffy 20ft cone upping this to 10 squares. Make it a 10ft radius circle and RAW you've got a 4x4 square. Arguably a 5x5 from the air? At my table, where we do circle rules wrong, you get 5x5! And you get a 5x5! Either way, you went from 10 squares to 20, if not 25. Two times or 2.5x over your spesh cone. Three to four times the standard 15ft cone. Fly 10-15ft above your enemies to avoid Reach, and then fly back after your breath attack(s). FALL down, safely, if need once horizontal movement is covered. You can't do that with jumps. Gravity demands you make one way trips. No leaping forward and then backpedaling through the air. You usually won't have the jump power/speed to anyway without BA dashes. I'd rather not land in the center of all the targets I just blasted. This one turn duration flight gives us a lot of placement power. Now I said breath attack(s) because...nothing is stopping the Ascendant Dragon from going the new Metallic Dragonborn race. It'd kind of be silly not to. So, it's not really a slap in the face to the monk, and what he can do by comparison. Anyone can reach for these newly empowered, racial breath attacks. I doubt many will do better with them than the monk and specifically this monk sub. It's the right package for the job. BA dash, disengage, or dodge will help a ton. Cunning action can do some, but when the cones and lines are setup perfectly for you, you're only getting in one. The monk can use his sub breath and the racial breath once he's level 5. You're also throwing away sneak attack. It's a nerf to the Rogue. The monk can easily meet or beat total damage output they'd do with a weapon attack or unarmed strike. Monks can not only do Breath, Breath, bail. They can do double breath and Flurry of Blows when they want to splurge on damage. Which, they usually can and do. They also can still use their weapons and standard attacks when that is the better option. I don't see how this takes away from the monk AT ALL. It only adds. Breath, cone, and line attacks are usually stuck doing one single damtype that will run into resistance often if not total immunity. It REALLY hurts to see a perfect line, or set of bowling pins, and being told you can't knock em down. Now, this is still true for the Metallic breath damage, but Ascendant Dragon can almost always capitalize on the right moments. Is anything immune to 5 elements? Should even hit some vulns once in a blue moon. Now, the Metallic still has to choose one pretty classic damtype (fire, lightning, cold, or acid). Acid is seldom resisted/immune. It's also seldom dealt...so I think the monk might be better served with going Brass/Gold for Fire affinity dborns. Since you also gain that resistance. Evasion and Dex proficiencies will help a lot with this as well, but you'll still probably get the most mileage out of fire. Especially early on where your durability needs it most. Your level 11 aura also will help you pivot to the less common damtypes as needed. The Aspect of the Wyrm aura is a little janky, but it will help combo to bolster you up further. If you run into fire resist/immunity, then maybe you just attack, or... Enervating Breath and Repulsion Breath. Two more cone options given to the new Dborn once per long rest that offer control instead of damage. Same thing really in my book. Con saves to incapacitate for a round, or Str saves to push 20ft AND knock prone. Monks don't do a ton of damage, but they can contribute enough while being enablers. Battlemasters can do a ton of both, but don't enable ranged attacks as much. They don't have the maneuverability to get to the most desired targets and points of origin. They're probably the second best pairing for the dborn with extra attack, action surge, and some tankiness. Foregoing weapon attacks for breaths though means sacrificing synergy with most their feats and subclass. These breath weapons come online at level 3, and the monk doesn't give up its ability to use some attacks, stuns, or their bonus actions to do any of it. No one is going to get more mileage out of these amazing abilities. Alright, back to this sub, and their flight. Want to go straight up with it for grapple shenanigans? Well, thanks to Slow Fall at level 6 when you get this, 9d6 damage averages out to 31.5 damage. You reduce fall damage by 30 at this point. So if big vert is what you want, the potential only goes up from here. Throw in a Tabaxi race and/or some magic. Things can get nutty. These two subclass abilities so far being tied to your proficiency bonus means we'll usually want to combo them together. If you do, there will still be chances to run up walls! Get your blasts/grapples off just the same. Save ya some uses. If you have a cliff, maybe you can set up an ever bigger drop by running them up it round 1, isolate them, and then taking to the skies round 2 or 3. Aspect of the Wyrm (11th level feature). I can't say I love it, but there will be times when it's good. For max benefits, I think the Resistance aura should be thought of less like an aura and more like a personal to dual benefit absorb elements. It is definitely not smart to group the party to "maximize" this ability. Same for others like it. Stay spread out, and when an isolated backliner or busted up front liner needs it, go to them. Maybe there will be another ally there in range, but I can see it working out well plenty. By this level you have a ton of defenses against ranged abilities. Position yourself in between the backliner and enemy ranged weapon attacks. Deflect Missiles is quite potent. Save. their. bacon. Maybe take the dodge action. Throw up the aura. Maybe it was already on and you can zip around to who needs you with your BA. This could be the god wizard barely holding on to a concentration spell the team desperately needs to maintain. Doesn't matter how good their Concentration check is if they go down. A lot of games pigeonhole tanks into front liners, but when enemies can reach the backline you need a more versatile defender. Even if the beefier front lines can somehow fall back--safely and far enough, will they have any effect? Unlikely. They're likely better serving by holding the line of melee invaders. This is something the monk can be. The in the kiter, the peeler, the Visa. The hero in between, and everywhere you want to be. This subclass really pushes that vision further into reality. Frightful Presence is even more situational by comparison. I definitely don't love it. Auras in my mind should be passive things limited by their scope and range. The range here is small, and they want it to compete with a MONK'S BONUS ACTION? Rough. This does shore up a weakness of the subclass, however, and bolsters a strength of the monk. By level 11, Monks are NOT starved for Ki. If there is a big bad, you can bet they're going to have to worry about multiple saves against stun. Wis is likely higher on this monk for the breath DC than most others. It IS a problem for the DM to think about. So, overwhelm the monk and Co. with numerous enemies. That's usually a big problem for monks. Maybe not parties in general, but Ascendant Dragon welcomes it. More AoE that barely cuts into your action economy is fantastic for these scenarios, which the monk pretty much creates by joining the table. So maybe instead of a big bad and its buds, or two sets of buds, it's two big bads. Maybe three to four. Well, Ki and Stuns are going to be spread thin now. THIS monk can focus instead on locking down 2-3 scary targets instead of 1-2 each turn. Dborn breath weapons for if there's still a group you want to help control. It may not be the move often, but it will be effective. These are Wis saves against your solid or high DC. Unless the DM is always going to come at you with Fear immunity, then yeah. Not the best DM. They could also keep throwing damtypes to bypass your Resistance feature. We all know that it shouldn't go that way 100%. If your DM likes to hard counter, you have other tools, and likely aren't the character that comes to mind when feeling oppressed! Another point, monk underdog.
Think YT is angry with my comment size. I ain't done! Part 2: At this level the subclass Breath damage goes up as well. Then lastly, if we're ever at level 17, it just pours on the gravy. Another damage bump and tripling the AoE for 1 ki. Ignore the Ki cost. You're a level 17 monk somehow. You eat Ki for breakfast. Upgrade it every time you need more squares. You own them all now. Including a 60ft diameter from the above. No, you're never going to wipe out anything with these blasts. Neither were the best AoE blasting spells, which eat your entire turn as a caster. Even those are sometimes the right thing to cast. So how is it bad when you're replacing one MONK attack. Monk attacks aren't scaling in damage, folks. At this level, they're tickles and stun attempts. This level increases your total damage output big time. It's not even sacrificing focus fire at this point. Your breath is 0.5 more average damage even when the target saves. I imagine AC might be harder to bypass now than a Dex save as well. Maybe you even stunned it first, because why on earth wouldn't you be opening with a stun attempt at this level? Well, dex saves then auto fail. So even though you have advantage on the next attack, you're better off doing the breath weapon to double damage for another Ki. This is just considering ONE target. Which you can still Flurry! Make it rain Ki. This is the last fight of your life. You are only ever adding damage with this subclass now. Blindsight at this level. Okay, you could have gotten it at level 1 with various other dips or um...blowing a whole feat on it, but did you want to? Was the build ever reliant on that? Or is it just entirely given to you, and now fewer curveballs are an issue. Why is this so negative lol. Most monk subs are getting one feature at this level, and it's niche. Or not good, or crazy expensive. Sometimes all of the above. Huzzah! You made it to the end of your MONK subclass! You got a giant Ki pool, aaand it's gone. Enjoy inflation. You are a melee martial who fits the bill perfectly for the Blind Fighting mechanic. This should be built into the class late game, but it's not. We shouldn't be upset one subclass ponied up even if late. Last feature, Explosive Fury. I hate it. The end. Okay, just kidding, it's bad, but it's extra. It's ribbon. How many times has Treantmonk explained bad features can't spoil a good package, and by this point, I hope I've shown value. Explosive Fury doesn't make your aura any worse or situational. More complex for sure for when you want to activate it, but I think it'll make it more fun. Decision making is what makes combat and this game interesting. That's why homeboy loves the God Wizard more than anything else. No reason you wouldn't want to turn this on mid fight. After seeing the damtypes your enemies are wielding, and you're mixing it up in melee. Activate to go for some extra damage, and then scoot back to the ally you wanted to help. Or maybe you were using Frightful Presence. Nobody is turning that on at the start of combat. They'll use it only after realizing Resistance won't be needed. So, maybe you do some extra damage. Maybe it actually is significant. It COULD even down something. Perhaps something left an opening in their Dex save...like Stunning Strike. Things still can drop into single digit hit points at this level. Maybe you don't have to waste another attack or two finishing off a low target because this handled it for you and you were going to activate it anyway. AoE always offers that utility. Especially when you can resolve it before your main action. Ayeesh! Finally, picking apart the video, which I am grateful for! Some of these subclass features can be closely compared to others that are more impressive, but should they? I'm not sure that really matters unless the whole sub/class combo can be compared, CLOSELY, to another. More importantly, could this sub be overshadowed by another Monk subclass entirely? Or even another martial? Yes, the S Tier (Broken) Twilight cleric can easily Fly. So can Genie, the now strongest overall Warlock. How much does that benefit a Caster? How many casters already can Fly in some way? How much more could it help a martial? This martial. These two subs encapsulated power creep at its finest. It's not like every Tasha's subclass got this treatment. Plenty were duds, plenty were in great spots. Can any class Fly this fast at 6th level? Can any class Fly this fast...ever? Find where it's different, and you'll find new tricks, new builds. Yes, Form of Dread is embarrassing thee most niche feature of this sub. It gets it right away instead of level 11. So... ? You made a monk to be a monk, and you did not make THIS monk to do this trick. If you wanted this trick, you'd be The Undead Lock. You're not here to be the Undead Lock. You came to be, or hope to be, a monk. You get a taste of someone else's bread and butter. The Lock is super front loaded. You could see it as something they can do just from level 1. Or you can realize it's the main power you buy into, foregoing the alternative choices. This power is not really excluded from the monks, or any class. I'd say it actually fits monk playstlye and mechanics better. Everyone loves a little dip in the Warlpool. You want that ability? Dip! Or take it off the bat. It is great, and will serve your character well. Even without the scaling temp hp. Hex and Bane certainly aren't bad for monk, namely this monk. I think it's silly NOT to dip a caster with level 1 subs as monk. It's an easy trade up for power and versatility at many points. Probably not the thing you want, but if it was, it's still there. I think we're arguing backwards. Could this sub be better? Sure. Almost all the monk subs could. Probably get a lot more done with tweaks to the class. I'm sure they're coming, and a lot of people homebrew as they see fit. Or throw more magical goodies the monk's way, slightly, compared to the others. Signs of a good DM. Love or hate monks, most feel they're last place. I believe it's always overstated just how much help the monk needs. The race more often than not is pretty close. Most monk players enjoy their class. I think that says more than quick, under the microscope analysis within a vast system. Don't be afraid to pass on Mercy Monk. I think we got a solid contender here. That's why I just spent...hours playing devil's advocate. It was also really enjoyable. Helped me fully figure out what I can do with it. Hopefully can help others too find a positive spin on a new, fun build to play.
The designers simply dislike the idea of monks. There's no other explanation. There were classes in 3.5 that lead designers disliked and deliberately made weaker than others, and I see no reason why that would have changed.
Here is my Way of the Ascendant Dragon Race: Gem Dragonborn (Already have better 1st and 6th features, same damage at 17th using ki) 10 levels of Ancients Paladin, 1 level of undead warlock (11th ability but better) 5 levels of Ancients Paladin, 1 level of fighter (blindfighting at 17th if you that's what you care about) Whatever you want from here. If you wanted, you have several levels of ancient paladin to play with if the 3d10 in 10 ft range at 17th level is super important to you As a reminder, we can be roleplaying a monk this entire time.
This class had some good ideas but executed them poorly. I think giving subclass abilities that can use ki after they run out solves the problem of not enough resources. It’s just a shame that it’s a bad ability.
11:20 Listening to you roast Wings Unfurled not actually being flight makes me think back to the original Toy Story movie where Buzz tries to demonstrate he can fly and Woody is all "That's not flying; that's falling with style!". :D
I wanted to write that maybe this subclass isn't powerful on the purpose that they're going to rework base monk - because subclass that makes a bad class good would make a good class OP - but then I've actually read the features and holy shit it's bad. Flight for one turn? Single-target fear as a bonus action on the most BA-heavy class? What were they thinking? This would be a garbage subclass even on a good class.
I would really want someone to ask Wizards of the Coast why they hate Monks so much. It's not Treantmonk who hates Monks, it's *WotC hates Monks* . I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was. I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB.
I'm gonna say double the damage of the breath weapon and Lv17 feat, make the fly speed permanent and increase the aura's range to 30 feet and you actually have a decently balanced subclass.
Here's two things I wanted to mention about this: First, and to rub some salt on the wound of this monk, on the topic of Blindsight: if Feats are available, then V.Humans and Custom Lineages can also get this capstone feature at 1st level, and every other class can get it as early as 4th, if Fighting Initiate is in the pool of usable feats. This includes any Monk, including this one, and what's more, it's far more useful to have it taken as a feat earlier than as late as they actually get it. Second, and on a more positive note, while these features are lackluster, I do appreciate how they are trying to make more monk abilities that don't necessarily cost more ki points to use, given their scarcity between rests. It doesn't make for how said abilities are, as you've shown, worse either in when they're given, how strong they are, or both. It'd be really interesting if we got a Monk Subclass that either didn't rely on Ki Points or at least passively boosts abilities already using them in substantial ways. Or, even more, was able to regain Ki Points, like the UA version of Astral Self.
How to make an effective monk . Step one. Race: Dragon . Step two. Age ancient. .Step three. Level up. You will be Equivalent to other melee characters and half casters, but still behind full casters.
Good analysis :-) One use I can see for the breath weapon is where the opponent in range is dropped unexpectedly or uses a reaction to move out of range. Having a ranged attack available at least gives you something to do. Very situational.
I have my own way of fixing the monk and it is all low level things to adjust, really only at level 1, 2, and 3 as far as major changes that any thing would need to change and it would make it much better, not make it the best class in the game but free it up a lot without changing what people know too drastically. Level 1: Your unarmed strikes deal 1d10 damage by default, you lose the ability to make an additional unarmed strike as a bonus action, the reason for this is the fix at level 2. Move the first unarmored movement bonus to this level. Lack luster level, but that's ok. I would also include a tie into improvised weapons here but I just thought of that while writing this up so is undeveloped. Level 2: Martial Arts - now an ability that lets you use your bonus action to either furry of blows, step of the wind, or patient defense. You cannot use the same selection you used on your last turn. This does not cost a resource, You can just do it and emulates the patience and strategy used for martial artists to strike when the moment is right. Flurry of blows strikes with martial arts die and stays as described as WOTC starting off as a D4 and scaling as is shown already on the Monk level progression table. Now your regular attack doesn't do substandard damage and you can still get those extra licks in reasonably every other turn. That's all pretty good for a single level. You must take the attack action to use your martial arts with your bonus action. Level 3: Move Deflect missiles to level 5 for right now, thematic reason for this as you will see. Also this is where you gain your monastic tradition and also where we pick up ki points. Ki points are solely a way to use your subclass features. Level 4: No Change Level 5: No longer extra attack, instead WHEN USING MARTIAL ARTS you gain................an additional bonus action. This is not something any other class has and focuses on the monk being quick and dexterous and chaining things together. With this you can now use step of the wind to disengage and dash (dart in and out master as they are prescribed to be), or really lay on the damage with two flurry of blows. Recall our stipulation on martial arts is that you can not use the ability you used on your last turn and per that wording if we use flurry of blows on this turn and have an additional bonus action we would be able to do it again. This plus our heightened initial damage should make up for our lack of extra attack. We also get deflect missiles here now instead as it is a level where our monk just gets faster and more skilled at doing martial arts based things. Lets also move our unarmored movement speed here to keep the spacing the same as well as the theme Likewise this opens monks up for some multiclassing options and features that would become more useful without messing up their aciton economy Level 6: We now get stunning strike at 6th level as this level is thematically about improving offensively with our punches. It is no longer part of the initial attack. We can do it more often now and potentially twice in a single turn should it fail the first time as we are going to make it a new martial arts feature that uses our bonus action and we have to declare that is what we are doing, it also does not cause damage. It is no longer tied to wisdom and the DC is calculated by 8 plus our proficiency plus 1/2 our max martial arts die. At level six this would be 8+3+3 and 14. This is reasonable and you dont have to make concessions. By level say 15, this will scale up to 17. Level 7: I am ok as it is but I also liked treant monks way of doing things by making it auto at the start of the turn. I am easy either way on this one. No changes until Level 14 Level 14: Diamond Soul now uses your reaction and also works off your proficiency bonus per long rest. No Change until 18 Level 18: You can cast invisible 1 per short rest and you can cast astral projection once per day. Done and Done Level 20: Now we gain extra attack and our martial arts die becomes a D12. Not a crazy capstone but I think it is better than it was before certainly. I await having this ripped apart :D
If your DM allows UA and you have the stats to go MAD, take a level in Phoenix Sorcerer. Mantle of Flame allows you to add your CHA bonus to your fire damage rolls during your turn. Draconic Strike allows you to change your unarmed strikes to fire damage. Mantle of Flame also states that whenever a creature touches you while you have it activated, that creature takes fire damage equal to your CHA bonus. Unarmed strikes, by their nature, make you have physical contact with your enemy, so you can argue that whenever you hit with Draconic Strike (Fire) and Mantle of Flame activated, the CHA bonus damage should be applied twice based on the feature's wording.
I think that the devs value the enhanced speed of the monk to be far more valuable than most of us do, and believe that the Monk needs to have generally weaker abilities to compensate for that. And like, I can kind of see that, but only in very specific situations. Depending on the party composition and environment (and once their speed actually gets high enough at later levels) they can basically kite the enemies, getting hits in, disengaging, and still having enough movement to get out of range of the enemies (or at least far enough away that if the enemies wanted to attack them they'd be risking AoOs from the Fighters and Paladins). Or in a situation where the Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Barbarian are all doing different things on the battlefield, apart from each other, the Monk can run around delivering help to whomever needs it most in the moment. The problem is that most of the time those situations are either not likely to happen or are avoidable with a bit of decent of planning. While I definitely like the high speed on the Monk, it's not nearly enough IMO to justify the much weaker abilities.
That's a MMO mentality and even then Monks aren't tanks the only time I've seen them be anywhere near "tanky" was in Dungeon Fighter Online. Yet speed ain't great if you're get caught winded since oops no more ki and due to running around you're a bit out of place compared to the rest of the team.
Would you ever consider doing an episode about fixing monks where you review viewer fixes? Or even homebrew subclasses, just so we can get some idea of what a good monk so class would even look like. your analysis of poor features always inspires me to write my own. Or if anyone else has any recommendations for one I could look up that would be cool too. I’ve written class feature variance, sub classes, and feat to try to fix some of monks problems.
@@macc.1132 I know he has done things that are similar I really enjoyed those videos, what’s the weather looking for permission to send in my homebrew because I don’t want to spam him. Because he takes so much time to read the comments, he is appreciated.
I think you're not giving the breath weapon enough credit. It gains 2 damage at 5th level, a modest increase to be sure, but that's 2 damage per target. You make a big deal about how many opponents you need to hit before it's worth trading a regular attack, but as long as there's two targets within 30 feet of each other, you can always draw a line between them at the very least. Hitting more than two targets shouldn't be too much of an ask, but even assuming worst case scenario, this is essentially "free" damage... lots of disclaimers, but sometimes hitting things is difficult, and this side-steps a lot of those challenges. I wouldn't say it's so compelling I'd play a monk just for this ability, but I could make use of it from time to time. The 6th and 11th level abilities are confoundingly bad, though, and the 3rd level breath attack is only good if you're willing to invest deep into martial arts, so I'd say the real problem with it is that it's more of a trap than it is outright bad.
@@shawnpeterson2523 clever. Snark aside, I never said it was good, I just think it can replace a normal unarmed strike more easily than Chris claims in his video. It doesn't redeem the monk class. Maybe it's just a side-grade, which would have been fine if later powers added more.
@@malusvir I think you are forgetting lack of ability mod to damage. What is better, 2d6 or 1d6+4? The extra dice are only more damage if they also include an ability mod damage bonus.
@@brettmajeske3525 You're either overrating the ability modifier to damage or underrating the extra die. 2d6 is 2-12 damage, for an average of 7; a d6+4 is 5-10 for an average of 7.5, so the d6+4 does come out very slightly ahead, but only against a single target, and only if you hit. The 2d6 is guaranteed to do something since you can always pick a damage type that isn't resisted. It may only be 3.5 after a successful save, but that's more than 0, which is a better delta than the .5 you get when comparing ability bonus vs. extra die. And again, that's only against a single target. I don't know I've ever played in a campaign where I've never had two targets within 30 feet of each other, but I guess your mileage may vary... I don't know why I have to defend this stupid ability. IT'S NOT GOOD, but it IS a fine replacement for an unarmed strike IF YOU'RE ALREADY PLAYING A MONK. EDITED TO ADD: In fact, assuming a 60% hit rate compared against a 50% chance your target makes its save, the 2d6 edges out the d6+4, but we're really splitting hairs at this point.
@@malusvir you are ignoring the fact that you don't have to use unarmed strike. You could use a longsword instead for d10+4 damage. So it is 7 vs 9.5 now. Much more noticeable difference and it also ignoring magic weapons that you could also get by this point. Also 7 damage to 2 targets more often than not doesn't equal 14 damage to one target. Single target damage is more valuable in most situations because you want to focus your enemies as much as possible, spreading damage is not a very wise thing.
Here's my updated version of the Ascendant Dragon Monk, appearing in "D&D Rebalanced: Classes and Subclasses" on the DMs Guild: Draconic Disciple (Changed) At 3rd-level you can channel your draconic ki to imbue your unarmed strikes with the essence of a dragon’s breath and to use your connection with draconic creatures to magnify your presence. You gain the following benefits: - Draconic Presence. You can use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier on Charisma (Persuasion) and Charisma (Intimidation) checks. If you fail one of these checks, you can use your reaction to reroll the check, as you tap into the mighty presence of dragons. Once this feature turns a failure into a success, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest. - Draconic Strike. When you damage a target with an unarmed strike, you can change the damage type to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison, and add your proficiency bonus to the damage dealt. - Tongue of Dragons. If you can’t already, you learn to speak, read, and write Draconic. Breath of the Dragon (Changed) At 3rd-level you can channel your ki into destructive waves of energy like the dragons you emulate. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one of the attacks with an exhalation of draconic energy in either a 30-foot cone or a 60-foot line that is 5 feet wide (your choice). Choose a damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. Each creature in the area must make a Dexterity saving throw against your ki save DC, taking damage of the chosen type equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failure, or half as much damage on a success. At 11th level, the damage of your breath increases to four rolls of your Martial Arts die. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. While you have no uses available, you can spend 1 ki point to use this feature again. Wings Unfurled (Changed) At 6th-level when you use your Step of the Wind, you can unfurl spectral draconic wings from your back. While the wings exist, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. The wings disappear after 1 minute, unless you use Step of the Wind to refresh their duration. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. While you have no uses available, you can spend 1 ki point when you activate Step of the Wind to use this feature again. (Clarification: In this book, Step of the Wind does not cost ki.) Aspect of the Wyrm (Changed) When you reach 11th-level the power of your draconic ki now radiates from you, protecting your allies from harm and punishing any who raise arms against them. As a bonus action, you can create an aura of draconic power that radiates 30 feet from you for 1 minute. For the duration, you gain the following effects: - Frightful Presence. When you create this aura, and as a bonus action on subsequent turns, creatures of your choice in the aura must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your ki save DC or become frightened of you for 1 minute. An effected creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a successful save. - Resistance. Choose a damage type when you activate this aura: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. You and your allies within the aura have resistance to that damage. Once you use this bonus action, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend 3 ki points to use it again. Ascendant Aspect (Changed) At 17th-level your draconic spirit reaches its peak. You gain the following benefits: - Augment Breath. When you use your Breath of the Dragon, you can spend 1 ki point to augment its shape and power. The exhalation of draconic energy becomes either a 60 foot cone or a 90 foot line that is 5 feet wide (your choice), and each creature in that area takes damage equal to five rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. - Dragon Sight. You gain blindsight out to 30 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn’t behind total cover, even if you’re blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you. Additionally, you can spend 1 ki point to gain truesight out to 30 feet until the end of your next turn. - Explosive Fury. When you activate your Aspect of the Wyrm, draconic fury explodes from you. Choose any number of creatures you can see in your aura. Each of those creatures must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against your ki save DC or take 5d10 acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage (your choice).
It''s interesting something like this just came out. I *just* made a dragon monk homebrew for my Sunday games. It was allowed to be taken at level 1 (only feature at 1 was you can use Cha instead of wis for unarmored) and the main features through level up were spending 1 ki for a bonus action reflavored burning hands. The feature scaled naturally but you could spend more ki for two more dice. Then the other features were immunity to fear, bonus to AC, and stunned enemies are instead paralysed at high level. Oh and this was for enemy monks the players would fight, so I didn't try to make it good.
So, I like monks in general. I find they have a pretty mediocre base of class features, but some of those features are quite optimizable and I enjoy the challenge of making monks that hit just as hard as any other martial, or have some unique tactical or utility approach. On the surface, this subclass gives virtually nothing, and I’m pretty disappointed. Usually, for an effect based monk, I’d go variant human for the Mobile feat, moon druid 2 monk X and pump wisdom. Then, in battle, become a giant hyena/warhorse. With 70-80 ft speeds, Mobile’s free disengages, unarmored defense, deflect missiles, and eventually evasion, I’d expect to actually be able to pull off skirmishing tactics. From there, you can reasonably expect to pull off your gimmick. For a Long Death monk, this works pretty well; you’ve only focused on WIS, so your DCs are reasonable. You can use Stunning Strike to single-target CON saves, Hour of Reaping to mass-target WIS saves, or Entangle to mass-target STR saves, and the first two work while wildshaped, and Hour of Reaping costs no resources. When you don’t need crowd control, you can attack and deal reasonable damage. Not the strongest character, but well balanced, flexible, and pretty good on defense, so you won’t be a burden to the party by constantly going unconscious. But these sorts of builds do nothing for the Dragon monk. The effects they get are so weak, they don’t improve on the base moon Druid 2/monk multiclass, except in very circumstantial ways. So, at the end of the day, it is another Sun Soul/Open Hand/Drunken Master. Not much they do by themselves, and few special benefits from optimization.
I'm just gonna stop clicking on these, the last thing I want after a day of work is the sheer amount of bitterness that gets poured into all these videos.
Even as a monk fan it feels like sub classes are balanced around the base class being an absolute monster by itself. Like so-so subclass abilities are supposed to add a little flavor, while in reality the monk needs those abilities to complete itself into a useable niche. I just don't think a 1d10 punch at max character level is as badass as they seem to think it is.
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was. I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB. I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e. I really don't get it.
Some of these features make a little more sense in hindsight if you figure they were considering backwards compatibility for OneD&D with this. Step of the Wind is better now, martial arts die scales better now... Not enough to make these features OP, but a bit of a buff!
I feel like the idea of this subclass is really cool, but I suggest home brewing it slightly to make it better overall. Have damage types have some sort of practice purpose overall, like extra damage or an effect (this could probably be implemented overall though), make the step of the wind ability give you the ability to maintain flight, and the breath weapon should be the normal breath weapon attack damage plus 2 martial damage die (1d6 + 2d4 + dex) at lower levels. This makes it strong at any level, and keeps in line with the idea of getting stronger and being like a dragon!
I see all of your points about the weaknesses of this subclass, in particular, and the monk class as a whole. But why do so many people still say the monk is OP. Is it just because of the stunning strike?
These are the 2 reasons, in fact the only reasons you would think Monks are OP 1) Because they're new, most likely rolling for stats above 74 2) They never played pathfinder or 3.5 hell any other TTRPG
@@WhyYouMadBoi Ok. Given that, I'm a member of a streaming DnD community and we were planning running PvP 1v1 melee tournament style competition, and they were talking about banning monks as a class option because they are so OP. And if monks were to be allowed, then they would disallow stunning strike. This seems to be completely counter to the analysis of the effectiveness of a monk based on Treatmonk's videos. Would the analysis change if he was looking at it from a 1v1 perspective?
@@BrentDnD Might, I would say that the Monk would have a +6 to attack vs ACs of 16 to up to 19 and if they don't conserve the ki then they won't be using it much unless its a one per turn. I recommend the ruling be 1 divine smite per turn, 1 stunning fist per turn
@@BrentDnD Monks are pretty good at first level, drop off quickly there after. Stunning strike seems far more powerful than it actually turns out to be, unless the monk is targeting someone with poor CON saves. That means most players are weaker against Monks than most monsters. Stunning Strike doesn't scale well, and by level 10 it just isn't enough. Many people ignore scaling when evaluating features, Chris is somewhat different in that he looks at how features scale.
I know this is 2 year's late to the game, but had to mention... I wonder if each class had a specific team of people that worked on them, and they never received proper feedback. Many subclass features can have small issues across the board, but the monks design philosophy is so different from all the others and so far off the mark to even be interesting. Besides the general consensus that wotc hates monk, it's almost the only logical conclusion. As if the team never collaborated with others about concepts. Either way, i am happy to have the 2024 monk to look forward to. Here's hoping!
Wow, that makes 2 cool-but-not-particularly-powerful monk subclasses butchered before release! Because monks are just too darn strong to get average subclasses, they have to suck! I strongly encourage any player interested in the fantasy of this subclass to ask your DM about using the UA version, it isn't gonna make you super powerful, but at least you get to feel like a cool dragon monk without being totally worthless.
I always say that monks are my favorite class, but I think from now on I'll just play a Battle Master with 1 level in monk and the Unarmed Fighting fighting style.
The apparent design concern that monks might get too powerful, from a company that printed twilight and peace clerics is absolutely bizarre
This. THIS.
Wizards printed the overpowered Subclasses that are the Peace and Twilight Domains, on a base class that is already exceptional. Yet for some reason they can't be asked to give Monks a really good subclass. The closest we've had is the Shadow Monk and maybe the Mercy Monk. It's so frustrating.
I'm letting my players use the UA version of the Ascendant Dragon instead of the garbage that we're getting in Fizban's. Unfortunately I have to hope that I can have a DM that will let me play the same, or just make some NPCs that use the UA version.
@@jcdenton2187 Not to mention the heresy that is how much they spoil the Wizard class; they have even tried to make a loophole into giving them bloody healing.
@@unwithering5313 Eberron and maybe Ravnica allowed them via expanded spell lists.
@@unwithering5313 If you play with Strixhaven in a wizard can be a witherbloom student and have cure wounds added to their spell list for example
@@unwithering5313 nowadays anyone can get healing tbh
I don't see why people accuse you of hating Monks when clearly it's the designers who hate Monks.
He DID kind of say they sucked CONCEPTUALLY in his Monks Suck video.
So...
@@kendrajade6688 Monks sucking conceptually is a big reason why they suck mechanically, too. The D&D concept of a monk is simultaneously too broad and too narrow -- the monk can represent the Iron Fist and Scorpion pretty okay, but it doesn't represent other famous fist-fighters like Kenshiro or Ryu very well -- and this aesthetic philosophy is reflected in a bunch of wildly diverse but mechanically junk classes that are all over the place.
@@maltheopia Rangers kindve fell into the same sort of trap. They are a figher that is good at hiding like a rogue but also loves nature like a druid. Monks are just like fighters with less armor and a focus on ki that amounts to really small things. Both have weak concepts, they just made monks suck a lot more
@@maltheopia Open Palm was more like Toki yet still it's best skill comes online so late the game been over. Fighters are so frontloaded they don't need to get 13+ to be "complete" Some are legit done by level 8 and everything past that is RP and fluff. Yet monk is over there hoping for a feat or maybe more stat growth.
@@maltheopia yeah, they seemed to have badly mixed the old shaolin monk and kung fu movie stereotypes from older editions and the Wuxia fantasy genre of chinese martial arts without really understanding what the genre is in the first place.
Fantasy Eastern Martial Arts and Wuxia fantasy, in general, train their bodies to produce Ki to A) reinforce the body to make them superhuman, and B) to make magical spell like abilities.
So to use class features to explain my point. Their Unarmored Defense would work like Barbarian and be Dex+Con, as the more they make a tough body, the more the KI acts as armor. Their Ki pool would be Monk levels and Con Modifiers. Any spell or spell like abilities would still use Wisdom.
Now this sounds MAD because IT IS. All non-MC Fantasy Monks would typically choose from three routes to grow. The External type to focus on close combat and train their bodies directly. The Internal type to focus on magic and techniques. Then the mixed type of variating degrees.
If I ignore the past and genre stereotypes and just look at the Class as a Function of Dnd game design, then I would make them Off-tanks that does small but consistant damage. They support the other front lines with small crowd control and/or aggro control. They take a hit or two so the Main tanks can breath and heal before they hop off the front lines and either protect the back lines or harrass the other backline.
"They haven't really given a monk full flight" -- oh but they have. Four Elements Monk can cast fly for 4 ki points at level 11!
and you have to give up one of your 3 known elemental disciplines to have that.
@@adamkaris and four ki . and concentration.
😂😂
@@optimus2200 Sure, but we're talking actual flight. That's a reasonable cost for flight when we're talking Monk. At level 11, flight can be almost as powerful as Empty Body giving invisibility and resistance. And it's not like the Monk was concentrating on anything else.
@@LibertyMonk The 4E monk hypothetically could be. They can have Hold Person, Stoneskin, and Wall of Fire.
Enemy: "You can fly?"
Ascendant Dragon Monk: "no, jump good."
Monks can already Fall with Style (Slow Fall), now they can Jump with Style.
it's kind of like the character in "Mystery Men" that can turn invisible, but only when no one looks at him.
Good ol' Jack
Would it really have been that bad to let the Monk fly for a limited time at the cost of ki points? I guess it'd be useless for Aarakocra and Winged Tiefling Monks but that's the only thing I can think of.
but REAL good. We're talking about Hulk Jumps, since not many other people can jump 135 feet high or long at 6th level. (Heck, if you are a wood elf with the mobile feet, we're potentially talking about 180 feet jumps - not to mention about a mobile tabaxi occasionally making a 330 feet "leap")
Hot tip: make a new dragonborn undead warlock 1/psi warrior x. By level 8, it has almost every ability of this monk subclass but (repeat after me everyone) better, earlier, or both. Heck, if you go psi warrior first, during levels 3 and 5 you will have more psionic dice than a monk has ki.
Reading this made me really sad as someone who wants to see some cool and effective monk subclasses.
@@Vagran Me too, dude.
All this shows is that they don't test as well as they think they do.
@@ExeErdna I'd respectfully disagree with that. Given interviews from Jeremy Crawford, it's highly likely it was due to survey feedback. He's publicly said they're in the happiness business, and that they don't balance classes for damage potential. I'd bet the survey feedback played huge into the final result.
@@Vagran Like I said they don't test as well as they think they do. For a lot of people not going for a gimmick the monk is bad, they burn through their resources too quick and their subclass skills are outclassed by others. Like I said elsewhere here. Just make a fighter, go human, tavern brawler at level 1, go battlemaster at 3 and crusher at 4 that's a better "Monk"
I wasn't even talking about DPS, Monks just don't work in long haul, whe Druids can do everything. Clerics are the best class overall. Warlocks are more useful. Fighters are consistent. in 5e Monks don't work
I was told by my fans the ascendant dragon monk would change my opinion on monk. It seems I have been lied to once again lmao.
It's been nerfed/changed since UA
@@mcullennz the 17 is a pretty big buff. Tiny clinging breath is subpar to huge range blow out an army. The aura range was pretty much the only nerf that was not negligible.
Probably not even in the top half of Monk subclasses. *MONK* subclasses.
because wizards decided to kick the monk when it was down, YET AGAIN. I have zero faith that the designers of 5e know what they're doing anymore.
@@sumisu_senpai_6280 same here, I'm not even surprised in the slightest
Man, the designers are *really* terrified of monks. Or they hate them.
You can’t even stay aloft if you use Wings Unfurled in consecutive turns! Aaggh!
I'm depressed now, i thought after the mercy monk, that the devs had finally understand how to make a monk...
They made the Astral monk in the same book lol
@@becomeanastronaut6232 those are both good tho
nah. They dont understand a great many things.
@@amadhollow635 I would also like to say that astral self monk is not good at all. The only thing good about it is that you can focus on wisdom a little more but you sacrifice not using a weapon. Which is one of your best options until tier 3
@@chrisvelo2595 most monks don’t use weapons and astral is literally busted
I’m guessing the design crew at WoC has an inflated opinion about the strength of the Monk chassis, and they temper subclass features to “compensate.”
That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why they screw the Monk over, and over whenever they come up with new content.
Okay but consider the redesign of the Bladesinger
On the class that gets spellcasting 0-9.
And all the best spells.
I’m not sure whether they feel monk is strong or not, but they have said they are concerned when making a new subclass that it doesn’t just outstrip old ones and make them obsolete, so maybe they are aware of the issues and just have to live with it until 5.5 comes out.
They just don't care about the Monk, you see it with a lot of the classes, compare the Bard to the original Ranger, someone who loves a class makes a good job of it, but it's more that they don't seem to think about how it works in play, it's "that sounds cool".
I'm convinced someone important on the design team has a totally unfounded belief that Wisdom is the most powerful stat, and so any class that gets benefits from it has to pay for that. Monk pays out the ass, because they get a bonus to AC from it, which is of course completely overpowered.
This person has seniority, so nobody can question them, and so we have 5e Monk and Ranger.
Cleric got "nerfed" by healing being more readily available, and Druid got nerfed by making Wildshape utility, not turning into a flying grizzly bear that poops lighting and more grizzly bears.
@@gamecavalier3230 yeah those are good points. I was just pointing out what they’ve said in the past about subclass balance trying to even out within a class. Maybe they just got tired of hearing about sorcerer and ranger being underpowered. Dunno. Not saying it’s logical or is what they have adhered to, just what they’ve said.
TL;DR Once again, WotC hates Monks for no reason.
If you want to play a dragon-flavored Monk, play a Fighter with the Unarmed Fighting Style, take the Eldritch Knight subclass, flavor spells as dragon-related.
Level 1 dragonblooded Sorcerer dip is always a thing.
Covers you in gnarly scales and such. Cornerstone of turning a Tortle Fighter/Paladin from a happy turtle guy into King Bowser.
They couldnt just let you make intimidation & persuasion checks with wisdom?
Or actually add Wis like with Feywanderer subclass for Rangers!
That would be a wise (😉) DM ruling: any skill can technically use any ability as per rules; DM gets to decide the attribute with which to make the check. If it were not so, they wouldn't specify the default as [(attribute) skill].
That 17th level cone damage effect seems ok at first, especially when you consider that monks actually have lots of ki at the level. That is, until you realize the sorcerer in the party can cast an EMPOWERED METEOR SWARM for 7 times the damage in an even more gigantic area. Its actually embarrassing.
I was incredibly disappointed that the level 17 ability wasn’t “Shapechange/True Polymorph into any dragon of your challenge rating or below for an hour once per long rest.”
@@muddlewait8844 Yes! I was thinking something similar as well! Its so disappointing they never get anything like that. It reminds me of the Astral self Monk getting extra Arms but no ability to slap people around any more than any other monk.
All I could think of is that a 17th level monk can now do about the same damage as a 5th level caster with fireball. Sure, the area is larger, but it becomes a bit superfluous in most battles. Trying to avoid allies also becomes a problem, though at that level the damage is pretty minor.
To be fair that’s not much of a Monk issue than a “All Martials pale in comparison to Casters at later levels” kinda issue.
Even the Fighter, king of DPS, isn’t that exciting versus a Wizard who literally cloned himself.
Well a Sorcerer can only do that once. Dragon Monk can do this 6 times for free or empowered for a total of 6 ki points or use all of their ki points to use it 10 times.
I don’t really understand why they keep making subclasses that do so little damage and have such poor abilities. Are they afraid they’ll make monks too powerful?
I get the feeling that they value Stunning Strike WAAAAYYYY more highly than most people. Which is actually a common new DM problem. Sure Stunning strike is cool but once you get to higher levels with high con saves (Con usually being one of, if not THE, highest stat and save on monsters) it falls off pretty quickly, not to mention the monk is burning through Ki points like a fiend.
Monk using Wisdom to attack: Can you handle my most threatening aura?
@@luketfer i wonder if their playtesting scenarios have a lot of monks with diviner wizard friends forcing failures on con saves.
@@luketfer Stunning Strike or A fighter hitting something 6 times at the same level... I'll rather just make a fighter. Go human, get tavern brawler at lv 1 and then crusher at 4 ironically a better "monk"
@@ExeErdna they don't even need tavern brawler now they can just unarmed fighting lol
Somehow, Wizards managed to make a subclass that is worse than Astral Self and Four Elements in tier 1.
Before you get Extra Attack at level 5, if you decide to use your measly 2d4 breath weapon, you need about 3+ targets to make it worthwhile due to the opportunity cost of not just using your unarmed strikes and Flurry of Blows. But if you use the free breaths, you replace your only attack with something that is neither an unarmed strike nor a monk weapon, therefore you cannot use a bonus action unarmed strike via Martial Arts. You also do not qualify for Ki-Fueled Attack, because you did not spend any Ki after all. And the way the feature is written, you cannot expend Ki until you're out of free uses. It feels like Astral Self's bonus action Arms of the Astral self is better because you keep your action, you spend less ki, you're less impeded by creatures granting cover to other creatures in the area due to it being a radius with you being the center, and you also get all the Astral Self features on top of that.
How can you even look at some of the worst Monk subclasses in the game and decide that you need something on a similar (if not lower) power level, when Mercy Monks should have permanently raised the bar to some acceptable levels?!
can't you flurry of blow off the breath attack? If so the opportunity cost is only the single attack from your action, which is probably the quarterstaff die+mod. It's not great but at least is situational
29 minutes and 11 seconds is now the world record for the longest someone has been able to describe the word "bad" for.
Did you miss the 45 minute 'monks suck here's why' video?
@@ClubbingSealCub nah, that one describes "terrible".
@@Yvädastra touché
The ONLY advantage I can see with draconic strike is that it comes earlier than "your fists are magic" so you can overcome resistance to mundane damage sooner than other monks, well also you can mess with creatures like trolls that regen hp unless you burn em so two circumstantial advantages, then again the flavor of having your fists enveloped in lightning or flames like a Mortal Kombat character is pretty neat.
You missed a few applications.
Your monk can punch a pitcher of water or lemonade with cold damage to instantly create a more refreshing beverage.
You can also punch an ally at any time with poison to make sure they haven't been replaced with vampires, demons, or warforged since the last time you saw them.
You save literally dozens of silver on Tindertwigs, since you can just punch a stick into fire.
You can punch fresh fruits or vegetables, or even meat with acid damage to pickle it on the spot, and polish up dingy metal objects in a flash. Cleaning supplies are also a thing of the past.
You can count your bite as an unarmed attack (unless you're a lizardman, unfortunately), and deal fire damage to your meal, warming it up without needing a microwave or campfire. You can also burn that nasty stuff you just stepped in off with fire damage, too.
And there's a market for those deep tissue, electrical massages, not all of it wholesome. If you can bootstrap this late medival/early modern society into the early industrial era, you can also probably get some huge results out of a bunch of these guys generating vast quantities of electricity.
Moral of the story, this is probably the single most handy level 3 hireling in the game, and any indulgent overlord worth their salt will train every one of their maids and butlers to level 3 Monk, just for this suite of abilities.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 the utility is high and can help with environmental challenges and food as you can refrigerate foods. It’s like a whole mix of all the odd uses casters want to do with their spells without the spell slots infinitely. There is some vulnerabilities around as well and being able to change it is more flexible than casters.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 That was a good read. Thanks. XD
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 lol that was amazing
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Honestly the pickling, eating raw food cooking in mouth, and checking on allies are the only unique ideas because prestidigtation and shocking grasp is like the rest of what you said.
I also lament the lack of vulnerabilities in this game. Having vulns would make knowledge and type changing much more interesting.
Its sad for sure. My dm uses them though, especially for many undead and fiends since he thinks resistance/immunity to radiant is odd given there are subclasses that already give you extra radiant damage when you attack them.
The problem is that x2 is too much. I don't want Pokemon when the correct move deals twice as much damage and all you do is spam it. If vulnerability was weaker then it would work and be fun.
Too many resistences and immunties yet very few weaknesses. Yet too many still see Yuan-Ti are too strong of a race or any race that has a res especially to poisons
@@nilsjonsson4446 Not really with res cuts the damage in half that's IF it hits for decent damage. 2x for playing smart should be a reward for players. Using blunt or acid versus skeletons, armor and constructs. Just give some use to the spell list to allow players to be more creative than fireballing every room because it works.
Treantmonk saying Ice Elementals weren't vulnerable to fire was the moment I realized my DM has been adding in vulnerabilities over the years to his monster blocks.
So the problem with you, Treantmonk, is that you know what every other class has and can do.
If you could just forget what you know in every other class can do, including mages, and forget how the rules work, then you would see the power, beauty, and awesomeness of the monk . . .
No. No you wouldn’t. You would still realize monks suck.
Never mind. Carry on. 👍
Lol!
Heheheh.
Also, I would expect any designer worth their salt to know what every other class and subclass can do.
I agree, the subclass is bad (not surprised). But I do think some of the features might have more benefit than you give them credit for.
Draconic Strike. True, mostly ribbon, but it will be useful occasionally. We're not just looking at vulnerabilities, but also things like a trolls regeneration or flesh golem's fire aversion. Or things that have resistance to our normal attacks, like treants or swarms. Yeah, even with these other uses, it wont be useful every session, but it should at least come up several times in a campaign.
Breath of Dragons. It's not much damage compared to your normal attacks at 3rd level when we get it. But let's look at it at 11th level. Now we're comparing 3d8 (13.5 damage) to maybe 1d10+7 (12.5 damage, assuming a +2 longsword used in two hands and Dex of 20). Now it's doing more damage against a single target, and any other targets are gravy. If you have enemies clustered, this can be some decent damage.
The other benefit is that it's a Dex save for half, but our attacks do nothing on a miss. Its especially useful against enemies that have high ACs but low Dex saves.
Wing Unfurled. Yes, this is a bad ability. But it is (technically) better than jumping. You have to jump in a straight line (or a parabolic curve if you like physics), but this gives you some maneuverability in the air. You could fly out a window and into a different window, or you could fly to a balcony on the opposite side of a tower, etc. Despite this, it's still not very useful, so maybe I'm just being nitpicky on this one.
Not only do parties spread out, monks in particular are supposedly supposed to be skirmishers, using their extra movement speed and step of the wind to duck in and out of combat. 10' resistance aura isn't bad, but synergizes much worse with the monk than with a front line fank like the paladin meant to create and control a static central position in combat.
Devil's advocate.
It's actually good on a Monk.
Most Paladins really really want to be on the front lines, holding it. If a Paladin falls back to get the backrow in Aura range, then the Paladin can't also be maintaining the front line. Maybe you have a Fighter, too, and that's fine, but if you don't, then either your backrow doesn't get the aura, or your backrow has become your front line.
The Monk isn't beholden to that duty, but even if they are, the extra movement means they're more likely to be right back where they need to be, and can actually reach everyone in that spread out party, which the Paladin may not even be able to do.
The Monk is free to bring that defensive support to the characters that need it most, and actually facilitates the highly theoretical pop in and out strategy Monks are often accused of using.
It takes advantage of the one good thing the Monk has, mobility, to carry around a defensive buff to whoever needs it at the moment.
Frankly, more abilities like this could be what saves the Monk. Make them aura stooges and support monkeys. You don't need to be good yourself, you just need to be a pair of hands that are always in the right place.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 yeah I’d much rather hit the enemy and run back to fire resist the wizard from dragons breath than stay up in the front the cover a raging barbarian. I’m not sure what OP is doing 🤔
I think if you use step of the wind that is a ki point and a bonus action right? so then you would be losing on damage and your valuable ki. Monks are not good skirmishers but I think youre right the concept of being one seems to be part of their unfulfilled niche.
Damm i guess mercy was just a fluke then. And here I was thinking wizards were going to give monk some slack, i bet if they found out that mercy monk was a decent option they would think it's broken.
Someone started furiously writing errata when they heard in the subclass rating vids that a Monk could flurry of blows a wall for free heals.
Bag of Rats is legal, but martial arts dance Monk must suffer.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Wait, REALLY?!?! Lol, it's already being errata'd for the Wall stuff?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 if your dm makes you hit a wall to use that feature they're just a bad dm in my opinion lol, there is no reason outside of combat you can't just use it
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 it still costs ki, that's STILL NOT FREE!!!
It really feels like they're treating monks poorly on purpose
At the very least, at least this subclass' features don't require ki to activate right out of the gate! That's certainly something! Are they good features? Not really, but at least they don't eat into your Flurries or Stunning Strikes unless you want them to. Head and shoulders above the Sun Soul and Drunken Master monks, though that isn't saying much.
Except a lot of them eat your bonus action, which IMO is actually worse. Once you get to level 6+ ki is not very limiting. But bonus action is! Monk should be using that BA to attack pretty most of the time, and only using it for other things situationally.
PS Drunken Master is one of the best monks because it leans into the play-style the base monk class is good at: hit-and-run many attacks per turn. It plus Open Hand and Mercy are the best monks mechanically for combat (though flavour-wise and on other aspects Shadow monk is awesome).
The dragon monk just seemed off right from the UA. Both flavour-wise and mechanically. e.g. how does studying dragons and their philosophy lead you to be able to turn your fists into lightning? How does a monk's training make their friends better at resisting fire? Feels like they just slapped a few bits of the dragon statblock into a subclass and called it a day.
@@agilemind6241 what do you mean by lots of them “eat into your bonus action” this makes no sense.
@@regaleagle6533 he is referring to how the activation for the 11th level fear ability is a bonuse action atleast that's the only one I see that takes a bonus action
@@blackpeoplestorytime802 "Flight" also requires Step of the Wind, which is also a bonus action.
@@Pgoodso step of the wind was already a thing. If you weren’t going to try to bounce out of a fight you weren’t going to use the enhanced version. The breaths are part of your attack action. The fist change is part of attack action and rest of ribbon isn’t a bonus. The resist part of aura is useful enough when it’s useful and unused when it’s not. The fear/reaction half of the ability were both rubbish. So basically you are only using a single bonus action to throw up an aura for a full minute and the rest of bonus action usage is standard.
This is much less restrictive than say mercy monk.
Chris doesn’t hate monks; WOTC hates monks.
Right off the bat, my initial thoughts on how to fix this is to add Wisdom to Persuasion and Intimidation checks, up the damage of the breath and make it scale better, make the 17th level breath range boost part of the 3rd level feature, at level 6 you get 10 minutes of real flight with hover when using the feature, make the aura at 11th level 30 feet and recoverable on a short rest and 60ft at 17th level, the fright effect of the aura does not require a bonus action to affect another target each round, Explosive Fury deals half on a success and more damage, and make the blindsight 60 feet and give +120 feet of darkvision (like a real dragon). Also, at 11th level, when you activate Aspect of the Wyrm, you can also choose to activate Wings Unfurled with the same Bonus Action.
Adding Wisdom to those charisma checks just seems like such a no-brainer, especially when Fey Wanderer ranger gets a charisma proficiency, and +WIS modifier to ALL charisma checks at the same level while also being an easier class to max out wisdom on if you wanted to get the best out of the ability. A fey wanderer can easily be just as competent at social encounters as any warlock, paladin or sorcerer if they want now.
But nope monks get one roll a day, lol.
Path of the Storm Herald from XGtE's 10th level ability makes the aura give resistance to the a set damage type to any creatures of your choice. This strikes me as very similar to the Wyrm resistance aura, since it is only active during Rage (which is a limited resource), but the Barb chose the element already, where as the monk can pick a different one each activation in exchange for uses beyond the first costing 3 ki.
In fact, this seems class shares a lot in common with Storm Herald, but instead of being tied to rage, they double dip by adding limits in addition to things costing stupid amounts of Ki.
Don't even need to leave monk to find something better than the 'flight' at level 6. Shadow monks can teleport 60 ft as a bonus action at the same level. Doesn't work in bright light, but it can be used every turn without ki.
combo their ability to use the darkness spell with the invocation feat to get devil sight and you can throw around spheres of magical darkness and go wherever you want with it.
@@sha2143 That's the plan for the shadow monk I have. Just hit level 6, debating if there's enough stuff I want in warlock to dip or just wait until 8 and take the eldritch invocation feat.
@@sha2143 Leaning towards dipping genie warlock to pick up hex and the extradimensional storage. Relatively low CHA though, so need to pick the right spells.
@@spiderwrangler4457 keep in mind you can put target darkness onto an object, so you can take like a normal dart cast darkness on it, then throw it and pick it up again to move it. Also you could grab the fey touched feat and get a half ASI, the misty step spell and hex. Only one cast a day on those though, unless you have other spell slots. Misty step can be useful if you don't want to put down darkness, or cant.
@@sha2143 Yeah, I've used darts of darkness before, just couldn't see through the darkness, so it was like closing his eyes and throwing the dart to where he remembered wanting to hit.
If Shadow monks got the same ability to see through darkness that shadow sorcerers do...
I don't know why they nerfed it so much from the UA version. The last one was perfectly average.... This is just jank
I think resistances are common enough, but I would love to see more vulnerabilities, and not necessarily just for creatures, it would add more tactical depth to the game. Unfortunately the designers seem to want to ignore them because they want to make creatures harder and more accurate to their conceived notions of challenge rating and vulnerabilities add another layer of complexity.
Right? When the default is magical bludgeoning damage, switching to an elemental damage type to overcome resistance is almost unheard of
I think Vulnerability in general is just too swingy. If a Paladin learns that "oh these creatures are vulnerable to radiant damage" they're going to cleave through the encounter to make it a joke. I know its for simplicities sake, but I prefer scaling vulnerability where you give the player a bit more damage.
Vulnerability 1 = +1d6 damage
Vulnerability 2 = +2d6 damage
Vulnerability 3 = +3d6 damage
So using Water/Cold spells on a Fire elemental is an actual tactical advantage rather than just...Meh.
@@SupaBass1793 Obviously you would ideally balance the damage types, I don't think they'd go, "alright, now everything is vulnerable to fire!"
WOTC likes making their campaigns virtually impossible to beat without a large, highly optimized party. I'm not sure why they have chosen to do this, but I think their contempt for their customers is probably a factor.
@@PlanetOfTheApes999 because DM's cry on forums all them time about how they can't beat their players but they also don't want to do any work into making anything.
Once again, you've voiced my thoughts on a monk subclass almost verbatim.
I try to like monks, I really do. But there's always something the designers do to crap on them for no reason. There's no practical reason to play this subclass when you could just be one one of the new Dragonborn + have a mechanically solid class. And that's just crazy to me.
I remember when people said, "race features aren't supposed to be stronger than class/subclass features".
Now, Imma point to this and say, "Well they are now."
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was.
I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB.
I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e.
I really don't get it.
Proposed changes I'd make:
Lv3: Rather than changing the damage type to a different element, they can instead add an amount of elemental damage equal to their Wisdom modifier to all damage rolls made that turn. This ability activates whenever the Monk uses Flurry of Blows.
Lv3: Allow the monk to substitute their Wisdom modifier in for Intimidation and Persuasion checks in addition to the reroll.
Lvl3: Change wording to allow the monk to sacrifice any number of attacks to the breath weapon, including attacks that would be taken as a bonus action. The number of dice rolled is multiplied by the number of attacks sacrificed.
Lv6: Activating Step of the Wind causes the wings to grow for one minute at no additional cost. While the wings are present, you have a fly speed equal to your walk speed and can use the Step of the Wind action without expending ki.
Lv11: The Monk can activate their frightful presence at will (bonus action). The range is 30 ft, and any creature that enters our starts their turn there must make a save or be frightened of the monk for 1 minute. After successfully making the save, they are immune for 24 hours.
Lv11: The Monk gains a floating immunity (like the fiend Warlock's level 10 ability), subject to the same choice restriction. The Aura is 10ft and the elemental type can be changed with a short rest. Anyone within the Aura who successfully makes their save against damage of the chosen type instead takes no damage.
Lvl 17: Replace the abilities granted with: The Monk can transform into a dragon (as the spell Shapechange) 1/rest. Additionally, the radius of their elemental resistance aura increases to 30 ft.
You mirrorred my thoughts exactly. I thought this subclass was weak when I saw it in UA, but they nerfed it even more. I think they just seriously over-value the power of changing your damage type, it seems to be the majority of the power budget for this AND Astral Self.
Sometimes I think the subclasses designers are unaware of how rare vulnerability truly is. Now in my games I add lots of vulnerabilities, just so damage type matters. If they are playing in those type of games and forgot those are house rules...
The psi warrior fighter gets limited flight like this at level 7.
True, but it also gets an improvement to another feature and has other decent features generally. Most importantly though, Psi Warriors don't tell you that you'll be able to fly in the description and then not deliver on that...
And he raved about it for the Psi Warrior 🤔🤔🤔
At least they had the sense to label that one a "leap"
It's one of their two features they get at level 7.
And level 7 is kind of the ribbon level for fighters anyway. Champion gets Remarkable Athlete, Battlemaster gets Student of War, Arcane Archer gets Magic Arrow, Cavalier gets to give an adjacent creature Shield-but-maybe-worse a few times.
Eldritch Knight and Samurai get good stuff, but then again, Samurai also gets two things, like the Psi Warrior.
...and yet it's for double the distance, regenerates a resourceless use on a short rest, and has less competition for the bonus action, and there are times at early levels where a psi warrior will actually have more psionic dice than an equal-leveled monk has ki, and you can use any weapon or armor without losing essential class features.
Psi warrior is indeed the most monk like of fighter subclasses, to be sure. That just makes it for the most part better than any monk subclass.
The only usable feature in my eye for this monk is the 3rd level Draconic strike. Which may make an interesting build with 6 level of Storm Cleric. We can make 40 feet forced movement a turn now.
Changes I would make:
Draconic presence: put Deception checks in there too;
Breath of The Dragon: damage is two martial arts die PLUS proficiency bonus. You can spend ONE ki point to use this feature again;
Wings Unfurled: the flying vanishes at the END of your NEXT TURN (the monk wanna fly? fine, but it will cost him ki points);
Aspect of the Wyrm: uses per day equal procifiency bonus (I'm ok with the 3 ki points after the free uses);
Augment Breath: No Ki cost; includes proficiency bonus to the damage, just like I said in the breath of the dragon;
Blindsight 30 feet - one could argue Truesight is a better feature for this level;
Explosive Fury: I don't know man, that's so bad that even if I say "add proficiency bonus to the damage and if the enemy makes the save, it will take half damage" it would still be bad :(
Draconic presence: Say you use Wisdom for it instead of cha
Breath of the Dragon: Damage is martial arts die times two 3rd /four times 9th level /five times 17th level. Can be used equal to prof for free and use it for 1 ki if run out.
Wings Unfurled: Flight for 10 minutes equal to prof mod
aspect of the Wyrm: 30 ft radius keep 3 ki but the fright is to any number of creatures in the aura and resistance is automatic but you choose the resistance when you set it up.
Augment breath: basically the same but add monk level to damage.
Blightsight 20 feet: I would say true sight as well but eh.
Explosive fury: With my extended range of it when Aspect of the wyrm its fine, but lets say its a half damage on save and because it can hit multiple enemies keep the 3d10.
@@WhyYouMadBoi Good thinking on the draconic presence. Using wisdom makes sense for the class!
your changes would totally help this poor subclass too
@@WhyYouMadBoi you don’t see anything unbalanced about casting cone of cold upcast at 8th level and then doing more attacks on top of that for 1 ki and having 5 elements to choose? That’s what like getting back 17 8th level spell slots on a short rest at 17th level. Hahaha pretty 🥜
It means a lot to my player group and myself that you objectively reviewed this Sub-class. No shots taken, just calmly explained what the issue is.
I know I've called you on it in the past so I want to make sure you know how much I appreciate this.
Comparing this to Drakewarden, it's almost like looking at subclasses in two different books by two different teams of designers. Drakewarden isn't earth-shatteringly amazing, but it's cool and it works. This... Doesn't.
tbh, i don't really want them to make stronger monk subclasses, because that will be at the expense of the existing ones. I think what needs rework is the monk chassis. More ki points or maybe a way to recharge some ki points during combat.
As far as the first half of that goes: That's an issue for nearly every class, the Xanathar, and Tasha ones just tend to get more and fancier toys to play with. I personally think it's getting to be time for a 5.5 edition that works to bring the power of everything back in line by buffing the weaker stuff, maybe nerfing the strong stuff and fixing the broken stuff.
I can almost understand why a Monk would be worse at magic then a true Mage, but this is a game and games are fun. I wish every Sub-class did Way of Mercy's blend of flavor and power.
Crazy how a tiny change like "equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts Die plus your WIS modifier) could turn that feature from crummy to pretty good. It doesn't use a Ki point, so the potential is really there.
I thought they wanted to make this the new way of the four elements monk - and they succeeded. They clearly needed to make a better version of this maligned subclass and they thought options are better then combat power in a combat class!
I will say that the paladin giving an aura of saving throws is essentially similar to resistance if the player would otherwise fail the saving throw. But it is on a paladin as opposed to a monk. And works on stuff that doesn't do damage.
I think, objectively speaking, someone at WotC dislikes martials and especially hates monk. If it was just once or twice I would think it was merely issues in testing or there was some broken interaction that we just haven't found yet, but release after release monks get shafted. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” - Ian Fleming
Ah, shit, here we go again.
I think the designers (irrationally) don't want to give Monks flight because they're the naturally fastest class. But... you can break speed in the game really easily already. Mobile Feat, haste, boots and potions of speed, just playing a Tabaxi. This is not a problem, this is not a threat to the game, the fly spell gives you a speed of 60ft, which is the exact same as a 20th level Monk's speed bonus. WHAT!? WHY?! You give the Open Hand monk a free potential instakill, and this Monk gets good area control with bad damage. WHY!?
Flying ain't even all that on a Monk.
Monk Aarakorcra are still pretty much the worst Aarakocra, and that includes the Aarakocra classes that give up some of the armor they could be wearing to fly.
Monk Aarakocra has nothing on Fighter Aarakocra with a pike.
Why even be worried about speed. A monk could have 500 feet of movement speed and they're not going to use it in a combat scenario.
@@snazzyfeathers Not if you combine with grapple.
@@20100langlois Monks suck really bad at grappling. Most will have a 8-10 in STR. That's already quite unreliable, but let's say they get a source of Expertise and some form of advantage like from a Barbarian multiclass. They still suck at it.
A 8-10 STR gives them a carrying capacity of 120 - 150 lbs. That's not enough to drag a lot of medium-sized creatures, and large-sized? Forget about it. They can Push/Drag/Lift 240-300 lbs., but that will cause their speed to drop to 5 feet. Meaning they can't actually meaningfully drag their target on most battlemaps.
@@maltheopia I disagree. You didn't build it correctly. Here's an example:
Ascendant Dragon 6, Gloomstalker 3, Tabaxi
1 half feat of choice for 18 str (Crusher, Slasher, Piercer, whatever), 14 dex, 14 con, 13 wis
Base speed 30 + 15 from monk + 10 from gloomstalker + 10 Longstrider = 65 base, 130 with tabaxi burst, 260 with step of the wind
Ranger Canny gives expertise in athletics for grapple. That's 2*Proficiency bonus +4 on your grapple roll. At level 6, that's +10. Level 9, +12. High strength gives them carrying capacity.
With this framework, you can grapple from far away and fetch enemies back to your group. Bonus points if you leverage fall damage. You are still functional as a melee damage dealer with a weapon. If you take Mobile Feat on top of this, you can do hit and run tactics as it will not trigger attacks of opportunity.
And if you continue just a bit in Gloomstalker, you get Spike Growth. You also get Enhance Ability to buff your STR for advantage and double carry capacity.
So... Do WoTC think Monk is fine as is? Are the designers afraid of making a Monk subclass too powerful? I'm so confused by their total lack of balance understanding
They actually are in the camp of "monk is strong", so we may never see a great subclass for them. Mercy was probably the closest we'll ever get.
@@SnarkyRogue how can they be so completely blind?
@@becomeanastronaut6232 This is the same design team that got rid of the original DnDNEXT playtest of fighter which was almost universally loved by old players and new. The one that baseline got 2 maneuver dice per round (that's per round, not 4 per short rest) and could pick from maneuvers more often (I believe it was 2 new every 3 levels). They got up into their own head that it was "too complicated for new players" and then we got the Battlemaster and champion split...
@@becomeanastronaut6232 they get a lot of feedback complaining about rangers or barbarians being weak and much less feedback about monks being weak. Not much incentive to buff monks if a lot of the community seems (inexplicably to me) satisfied with them, but that is definitely the case. Tons of people will jump to monks defense if you argue why they’re weaker, and those same people’s voices have given wotc the perception that theres no need to power monks up if people are largely happy with them.
@@becomeanastronaut6232 they give monks a bunch a really small options and think that puts them in a good place I guess
Couple mechanic thoughts. Its not clear if you have to change your strike into elemental. B/c if you do you remove the ability to use crusher. The other issue is the breath attack replaces an unarmed attack. In tier1, that means you have no unarmed strikes, so you cant use martial arts on that attack. The final thought is that dex saves go crazy in tier4, and the likelihood of failure is very high (leading to no damage).
My head literally hurts from how isolated the "spend BA every turn to fear one creature" is from the rest of the monk kit. Why do this? Just... WHY?
I've been waiting for this!
Isn't horizontal jump distance tied to a character's Strength score? For most Monks, that probably means a normal jump distance of 8 or 10 feet - so even doubling that doesn't give a Monk "a jump distance equal to their walking speed." And that's not even considering vertical jumps, which are even more limited.
Don't get me wrong, the end of turn limitation still makes this so-called flight feature bad and extremely circumstantial. But I think Fly 45' is a bigger upgrade over the 15-20' jump (4-6' vertically!) normally granted by Step of the Wind than you're giving it credit for.
Yeah. And we can dash 3 times, so that could be 135 feet at 6th level, scaling up to 180'.
I agree with Treantmonk that they're being cheap with monks by always restricting their features more than they do for other classes. But this is still a decent ability on a monk.
Not fantastic. Not great. Not good. But decent.
Still... the entire package isn't what I would want in a subclass. I'll stick with sharpshooter Kensei and Mercy monks.
@@AdamZollo yeah step of the wind comes with a free dash so I think you get a good 90 feet then punches. Definitely run into situations with dragons or beholders are out of reach for jumps but not epically soaring through the air and punching their face.
@@regaleagle6533 The dash isn't free, it costs a bonus action so no attack in that scenario!
@@brettmajeske3525 obviously it costs a bonus action. I was obviously talking about the OP saying when you USE step of the wind you have a 45 foot flight but it comes with a free dash so it’s double that. You can’t vertical jump double and start running upwards.
Yeah but when I think of the benefits of flight it doesnt give it. The biggest benefit of staying out of the way of bad guys doesnt apply since you have to be on the ground again. Good if your caster does plant growth or spike growth but you have to really plan around the ability
I always hear people claiming monk is fine, I want to know where they got this delusion, because they weren't good in just about every edition of the game, even over in Pathfinder they weren't all that great compared even to other martials. Fifth edition is just showing in full that we need a new class design team for the monk, or just don't make it a class ever again.
Speaking from my 5e monk play experience, i found the monk fun to play. Here's why I like them: they're mobile, they get around the battlefield and if done right they are always where the attacks are not. Skirmish: leap in, attack (stun is fun) then disengage and be somewhere else. Jumping and decorating saves so high I once jumped ON a Roc (a giant bird), rode this violent beast trying to throw me off to no avail, and then jumped off from a mile high and landed (negating I think all damage). Another time we were fighting a dragon? We ran and though last I outran everyone and was NOT flambé-ed. Another time we were fighting a beholder and we had to jump over chasm to reach him. I was the only one with no fear of jumping. Yes they're not the strongest, or the tankiest , but I found them fun to play
Honestly, with how archetypes and subclasses have come to define D&D, the Monk could realistically just be subsumed into a subclass for Barbarian, Rogue, and Sorcerer, each capitalizing on a different style of Monk-ery.
Barbarian for physical transcendence Kenshiro types, rogue for karate chopping someone to death using reliable unarmed Sneak Attacks instead of Martial Arts die or what have you oraoraora style, and Sorcerer for shooting Hadoukens out of your feet or being an evil... uh... kung fu sorcerer.
Maybe Fighter if you want to throw some 8 Diagram Pole Fighter in there. Lightly armored, nimble Fighter whacking people with sticks could be cool.
@@AAron-gr3jk it's great that you had a great experience with monk! But for me, when I started playing I chose shadow monk and that experience just soured the monk class for me. I always wondered why the paladin did more damage and tanked more, or why the casters could be as mobile if not more so with the right spells, or why I seemed to run out of ki so quickly. In the end, I switched to a battle smith artificer and found more enjoyment there.
I heard that are at least viable in Pathfinder 2e, I hope they aren't lying
@@unwithering5313 I have not had the chance to play Pathfinder 2e yet, but I will have to consult with the other DM/GM's to get info on it from their players if anyone is even playing one.
Use _Wings Unfurled_ to fly as high as you can above your enemy then hit them with the fall damage, it's the strongest thing a monk can do.
I can't wait to see how you buff this class like you've done with every other monk subclass. At least it's not outright terrible like other monk subclasses.
I think his changes to martial arts die largely fix the issue with the breath attack, alongside adding the Wis or Dex modifier to damage. .
Wings Unfurled though is something else…
why bother
@@Iceblade269 Agreed, his changes make a huge difference, especially at Lvl20… As per WoTC rules… If you can’t rest after a fight you burned through ki and “freebies”, you can’t use a single ability in this subclass… Is that a resource management thing, sure… But a lvl11 Fighter could technically attack more times and still be able to use some of their passive subclass skills, and outperform your lvl20 monk… disappointing… I love monks so much too, but this is a subclass I’d only ever take for the sake of flavor… But probably not even then, as I could get all the benefits of this subclass just by going Gem Dragonborn…
I see one funny way to use this "jump good" thing.
Grapple (action)+Step of the Wind (bonus) + Go up (movement) and then fall together with a Slow fall (reaction)
If we use tabaxi to do that, it can be 90 ft drop on lvl 6 = 45 (base)*2 (step of the wind)*2 (tabaxi) *0.5 (grapple). The enemy will also be both grappled and prone, if he survives that.
But ofc a monk like that will need STR much more then 8 as well, if he is going to carry anything bigger then a gnome.
I'm convinced at this point that entirely seperate people construct different parts of the actual written game content in the splatbooks. How else is that you can consistently have wildly different balance between any two random pieces of content from the game? Furthermore, I'm confused as to why they don't seem to have any semblence of "general balance", because its obvious that the people who say, made Twilight Cleric, did not make this subclass. When people work in a company for creative writing and game design like this isn't there supposed to be some established sense of a shared philosophy in game design, perhaps even with a rigorous balancing document that could serve as a guide to new members of the team? I just can't understand why it seems like WoTC is satisfied with essentially drawing straws and allowing each individual designer to do whatever they want without any consistency in levels of power throughout play between content, often within the same exact books.
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was.
I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB.
I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e.
I really don't get it.
(13:35) - Wings Unfurled : A use of this that might be beneficial would be if you had to move vertically. Misty step upwards 30' then with your 'wings' move another 30' vertically to say a ledge or a window in a castle.
otherwise I agree that this feature isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
That capstone is depressing, the only saving grace is that a 60 feet cone is massive so if you're fighting an army of baddies with not much hp, maybe basic goblins or orcs, you can vaporize dozens of them per turn, other than that punching is just better, why they gotta do my monks like that man.
Treantmonk saying Ice Elementals weren't vulnerable to fire was the moment I realized my DM has been adding in vulnerabilities over the years to all of their monster blocks.
Good lord. If the Wizard was designed like a monk, Bladesong would be a 14th level feature and would require a spell slot to activate, and then another spell slot and a reaction per turn to boost your AC with it.
I did 5 minutes of thinking and I thought up tiny ways that makes the subclass usable.
- Breath of the Dragon now adds twice your WIS mod to the damage. (And tripled and quadrupled for the higher effects.)
- Step of the Wind and by extension Unfurled Wings now has a concentration effect where you can maintain it for several rounds.
- Aspect of the Worm has a 15ft aura, and enemies must save against fright the moment they’re in the aura.
Mind you these won’t make this subclass mercy monk good, but it would make the subclass... You know... NOT a trap?
"Hey, what if Monks could fly?"
"Hmmm. Sounds powerful. Let's tie it to an ability that already burns Ki points."
"good point, good point. Can't have a monk ability that doesn't cost Ki am I right?"
"That's right. Also we've been doing a lot of stuff with uses based on proficiency lately, what if we added that?"
"Good plan. Should it reset every short or long rest?"
"Let's make it long. Flight is powerful, can't just have monks flying around everywhere."
"Excellent point. Give one a shortbow and flight and they will be making a bunch of ranged attacks where no-one can fight back. 6th level sound good?"
"Yeah sure, that's about when the fly spell comes in. Hey, coming in on saturday for our game?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world. My Genie pact warlock just hit 6th level, I can't wait to play with my new features!"
DND: new monk subclass release
Treantmonk: Ahhhhhhh shit, here we go again
17:25 Storm Herald Barbarian - at level 10, their aura (10 feet) gives damage resistance to fire/lightning/cold to party members in it. Dragon monk's is later but more versatile (can choose the damage type when casting and can choose the firghtful presence instead if the resistance isn't useful), but the barbarian can have this effect every rage.
My theory for why monks get so much less mechanically than many other classes is because their stuff is cool. Some players do not face things that need them to be doing the most damage, so in those cases, someone doing less damage or having weaker resources than another class/subclass is not as important. Monks get to do so much stuff that feels and looks cool (if you ignore the numbers) that players still enjoy playing as them (lightning fists and breathing fire are awesome visuals, not taking into account the numbers). I think most people who watch your videos are not in that group, however. I think that you could balance monks numerically/mechanically and keep the cool, but it might explain why more of the focus seems to be on giving monk subclasses cool stuff to do rather than focusing on giving them comparable skills to other classes/subclasses.
I don't know why the desing doesnt contemplates choosing the Dragonborn race interact and enhance this subclass features or the Sorcerer Draconic Bloodline. Futermore, choosing the feats of the Dragonborn (XGE) also must interact with subclass only and even greater if you match the race + sublclsss. Then you have a spell Dragon's Breath that's also ignore those things. Today you can have 3 differents Breath Weapons and no interectacion between. From a game design point it just lazy.
Where would you rank this on your universal subclass ranking, and will you be announcing rankings of future official subclasses as they come out?
It's hard to rank a subclass I've never seen in play, but I'm guessing near the open hand monk
@@TreantmonksTemple might I recommend mentioning this aspect in future subclass review videos? Even in the description or as a comment would be nice, since I really like the tier list and relative rankings.
In all fairness I'm pretty sure there's an enternal design document they have to follow that just says "monks have to be bad" it would honestly explain a lot.
Just noticed you have an animated outro screen now. Looks great!
Yes! Thank you!
I remember when ascendant dragon monk first came out people kept complaining it was stronger than the dragonborn race. I remember thinking " well of course it would be terrible design to make a subclass weaker than a race!" But then I look at this and I'm trying to think if it is in any way not just objectively weaker than a monk without a subclass playing a gem dragon born from the same book? You get better breath weapons, real flight a full level earlier, and no class resource expenditure for either.
If you look for the negatives, they're always there to find. For those still wanting to play monk, and interested in exploring what the sub offers over alternatives, haha strap in. I had a lot to get off my chest apparently, and would like to highlight plenty of fun stuff.
Level 6 Wings Unfurled is not Jumping, but if it was, this would be an unprecedented boost to it. I love when a big jump with Step of the Wind lets me accomplish something on my turn I otherwise couldn't. Doesn't happen often. That's because while a 26ft running jump or a 10.5ft reach running vert is very solid for a jump...it's not that much movement. With this, we're usually looking at 45 or 90 feet of "Jump Good" to play with.
The first thing I thought of is how useful this will be for your Dragon Breath. Cones and Lines aren't...terrible. These AoE patterns do come up. There are many hinderances that usually keep them subpar. 20ft is welcome from the usual 15ft Cone. Having both targeting methods at once is another huge step up. Totally unique. An issue with all AoEs is friendly fire. Well, monks have good Dex and maneuverability. So at the start of combats before enemies can scatter, or allies mix in, this can help position you regardless of terrain/obstacles. Most casters with narrow cones, or short lines, do not have the speed and durability to get up front like a Monk can. Let alone get in, and out as needed. This "flight" offers a third targeting modality as well.
Lines and cones don't hit that many squares. Targets usually need to be scrunched up/bottlenecked. Having both methods means being able to consistently target more enemies, but Samurai Jack's got another trick. Fly above your desired enemy cluster and aim the cone downward. Now you're targeting a 10ft radius. By my math and/or table, your typical equilateral 15ft cone/triangle hits 6 squares. We have a spiffy 20ft cone upping this to 10 squares. Make it a 10ft radius circle and RAW you've got a 4x4 square. Arguably a 5x5 from the air? At my table, where we do circle rules wrong, you get 5x5! And you get a 5x5! Either way, you went from 10 squares to 20, if not 25. Two times or 2.5x over your spesh cone. Three to four times the standard 15ft cone. Fly 10-15ft above your enemies to avoid Reach, and then fly back after your breath attack(s). FALL down, safely, if need once horizontal movement is covered. You can't do that with jumps. Gravity demands you make one way trips. No leaping forward and then backpedaling through the air. You usually won't have the jump power/speed to anyway without BA dashes. I'd rather not land in the center of all the targets I just blasted. This one turn duration flight gives us a lot of placement power.
Now I said breath attack(s) because...nothing is stopping the Ascendant Dragon from going the new Metallic Dragonborn race. It'd kind of be silly not to. So, it's not really a slap in the face to the monk, and what he can do by comparison. Anyone can reach for these newly empowered, racial breath attacks. I doubt many will do better with them than the monk and specifically this monk sub. It's the right package for the job. BA dash, disengage, or dodge will help a ton. Cunning action can do some, but when the cones and lines are setup perfectly for you, you're only getting in one. The monk can use his sub breath and the racial breath once he's level 5. You're also throwing away sneak attack. It's a nerf to the Rogue. The monk can easily meet or beat total damage output they'd do with a weapon attack or unarmed strike. Monks can not only do Breath, Breath, bail. They can do double breath and Flurry of Blows when they want to splurge on damage. Which, they usually can and do. They also can still use their weapons and standard attacks when that is the better option. I don't see how this takes away from the monk AT ALL. It only adds.
Breath, cone, and line attacks are usually stuck doing one single damtype that will run into resistance often if not total immunity. It REALLY hurts to see a perfect line, or set of bowling pins, and being told you can't knock em down. Now, this is still true for the Metallic breath damage, but Ascendant Dragon can almost always capitalize on the right moments. Is anything immune to 5 elements? Should even hit some vulns once in a blue moon. Now, the Metallic still has to choose one pretty classic damtype (fire, lightning, cold, or acid). Acid is seldom resisted/immune. It's also seldom dealt...so I think the monk might be better served with going Brass/Gold for Fire affinity dborns. Since you also gain that resistance. Evasion and Dex proficiencies will help a lot with this as well, but you'll still probably get the most mileage out of fire. Especially early on where your durability needs it most. Your level 11 aura also will help you pivot to the less common damtypes as needed. The Aspect of the Wyrm aura is a little janky, but it will help combo to bolster you up further. If you run into fire resist/immunity, then maybe you just attack, or...
Enervating Breath and Repulsion Breath. Two more cone options given to the new Dborn once per long rest that offer control instead of damage. Same thing really in my book. Con saves to incapacitate for a round, or Str saves to push 20ft AND knock prone. Monks don't do a ton of damage, but they can contribute enough while being enablers. Battlemasters can do a ton of both, but don't enable ranged attacks as much. They don't have the maneuverability to get to the most desired targets and points of origin. They're probably the second best pairing for the dborn with extra attack, action surge, and some tankiness. Foregoing weapon attacks for breaths though means sacrificing synergy with most their feats and subclass. These breath weapons come online at level 3, and the monk doesn't give up its ability to use some attacks, stuns, or their bonus actions to do any of it. No one is going to get more mileage out of these amazing abilities.
Alright, back to this sub, and their flight. Want to go straight up with it for grapple shenanigans? Well, thanks to Slow Fall at level 6 when you get this, 9d6 damage averages out to 31.5 damage. You reduce fall damage by 30 at this point. So if big vert is what you want, the potential only goes up from here. Throw in a Tabaxi race and/or some magic. Things can get nutty. These two subclass abilities so far being tied to your proficiency bonus means we'll usually want to combo them together. If you do, there will still be chances to run up walls! Get your blasts/grapples off just the same. Save ya some uses. If you have a cliff, maybe you can set up an ever bigger drop by running them up it round 1, isolate them, and then taking to the skies round 2 or 3.
Aspect of the Wyrm (11th level feature). I can't say I love it, but there will be times when it's good. For max benefits, I think the Resistance aura should be thought of less like an aura and more like a personal to dual benefit absorb elements. It is definitely not smart to group the party to "maximize" this ability. Same for others like it. Stay spread out, and when an isolated backliner or busted up front liner needs it, go to them. Maybe there will be another ally there in range, but I can see it working out well plenty. By this level you have a ton of defenses against ranged abilities. Position yourself in between the backliner and enemy ranged weapon attacks. Deflect Missiles is quite potent. Save. their. bacon. Maybe take the dodge action. Throw up the aura. Maybe it was already on and you can zip around to who needs you with your BA. This could be the god wizard barely holding on to a concentration spell the team desperately needs to maintain. Doesn't matter how good their Concentration check is if they go down. A lot of games pigeonhole tanks into front liners, but when enemies can reach the backline you need a more versatile defender. Even if the beefier front lines can somehow fall back--safely and far enough, will they have any effect? Unlikely. They're likely better serving by holding the line of melee invaders. This is something the monk can be. The in the kiter, the peeler, the Visa. The hero in between, and everywhere you want to be. This subclass really pushes that vision further into reality.
Frightful Presence is even more situational by comparison. I definitely don't love it. Auras in my mind should be passive things limited by their scope and range. The range here is small, and they want it to compete with a MONK'S BONUS ACTION? Rough. This does shore up a weakness of the subclass, however, and bolsters a strength of the monk. By level 11, Monks are NOT starved for Ki. If there is a big bad, you can bet they're going to have to worry about multiple saves against stun. Wis is likely higher on this monk for the breath DC than most others. It IS a problem for the DM to think about. So, overwhelm the monk and Co. with numerous enemies. That's usually a big problem for monks. Maybe not parties in general, but Ascendant Dragon welcomes it. More AoE that barely cuts into your action economy is fantastic for these scenarios, which the monk pretty much creates by joining the table.
So maybe instead of a big bad and its buds, or two sets of buds, it's two big bads. Maybe three to four. Well, Ki and Stuns are going to be spread thin now. THIS monk can focus instead on locking down 2-3 scary targets instead of 1-2 each turn. Dborn breath weapons for if there's still a group you want to help control. It may not be the move often, but it will be effective. These are Wis saves against your solid or high DC. Unless the DM is always going to come at you with Fear immunity, then yeah. Not the best DM. They could also keep throwing damtypes to bypass your Resistance feature. We all know that it shouldn't go that way 100%. If your DM likes to hard counter, you have other tools, and likely aren't the character that comes to mind when feeling oppressed! Another point, monk underdog.
Think YT is angry with my comment size. I ain't done! Part 2:
At this level the subclass Breath damage goes up as well. Then lastly, if we're ever at level 17, it just pours on the gravy. Another damage bump and tripling the AoE for 1 ki. Ignore the Ki cost. You're a level 17 monk somehow. You eat Ki for breakfast. Upgrade it every time you need more squares. You own them all now. Including a 60ft diameter from the above. No, you're never going to wipe out anything with these blasts. Neither were the best AoE blasting spells, which eat your entire turn as a caster. Even those are sometimes the right thing to cast. So how is it bad when you're replacing one MONK attack. Monk attacks aren't scaling in damage, folks. At this level, they're tickles and stun attempts. This level increases your total damage output big time. It's not even sacrificing focus fire at this point. Your breath is 0.5 more average damage even when the target saves. I imagine AC might be harder to bypass now than a Dex save as well. Maybe you even stunned it first, because why on earth wouldn't you be opening with a stun attempt at this level? Well, dex saves then auto fail. So even though you have advantage on the next attack, you're better off doing the breath weapon to double damage for another Ki. This is just considering ONE target. Which you can still Flurry! Make it rain Ki. This is the last fight of your life. You are only ever adding damage with this subclass now.
Blindsight at this level. Okay, you could have gotten it at level 1 with various other dips or um...blowing a whole feat on it, but did you want to? Was the build ever reliant on that? Or is it just entirely given to you, and now fewer curveballs are an issue. Why is this so negative lol. Most monk subs are getting one feature at this level, and it's niche. Or not good, or crazy expensive. Sometimes all of the above. Huzzah! You made it to the end of your MONK subclass! You got a giant Ki pool, aaand it's gone. Enjoy inflation. You are a melee martial who fits the bill perfectly for the Blind Fighting mechanic. This should be built into the class late game, but it's not. We shouldn't be upset one subclass ponied up even if late.
Last feature, Explosive Fury. I hate it. The end.
Okay, just kidding, it's bad, but it's extra. It's ribbon. How many times has Treantmonk explained bad features can't spoil a good package, and by this point, I hope I've shown value. Explosive Fury doesn't make your aura any worse or situational. More complex for sure for when you want to activate it, but I think it'll make it more fun. Decision making is what makes combat and this game interesting. That's why homeboy loves the God Wizard more than anything else. No reason you wouldn't want to turn this on mid fight. After seeing the damtypes your enemies are wielding, and you're mixing it up in melee. Activate to go for some extra damage, and then scoot back to the ally you wanted to help. Or maybe you were using Frightful Presence. Nobody is turning that on at the start of combat. They'll use it only after realizing Resistance won't be needed. So, maybe you do some extra damage. Maybe it actually is significant. It COULD even down something. Perhaps something left an opening in their Dex save...like Stunning Strike. Things still can drop into single digit hit points at this level. Maybe you don't have to waste another attack or two finishing off a low target because this handled it for you and you were going to activate it anyway. AoE always offers that utility. Especially when you can resolve it before your main action. Ayeesh!
Finally, picking apart the video, which I am grateful for! Some of these subclass features can be closely compared to others that are more impressive, but should they? I'm not sure that really matters unless the whole sub/class combo can be compared, CLOSELY, to another. More importantly, could this sub be overshadowed by another Monk subclass entirely? Or even another martial? Yes, the S Tier (Broken) Twilight cleric can easily Fly. So can Genie, the now strongest overall Warlock. How much does that benefit a Caster? How many casters already can Fly in some way? How much more could it help a martial? This martial. These two subs encapsulated power creep at its finest. It's not like every Tasha's subclass got this treatment. Plenty were duds, plenty were in great spots. Can any class Fly this fast at 6th level? Can any class Fly this fast...ever? Find where it's different, and you'll find new tricks, new builds. Yes, Form of Dread is embarrassing thee most niche feature of this sub. It gets it right away instead of level 11. So... ? You made a monk to be a monk, and you did not make THIS monk to do this trick. If you wanted this trick, you'd be The Undead Lock. You're not here to be the Undead Lock. You came to be, or hope to be, a monk. You get a taste of someone else's bread and butter. The Lock is super front loaded. You could see it as something they can do just from level 1. Or you can realize it's the main power you buy into, foregoing the alternative choices. This power is not really excluded from the monks, or any class. I'd say it actually fits monk playstlye and mechanics better. Everyone loves a little dip in the Warlpool. You want that ability? Dip! Or take it off the bat. It is great, and will serve your character well. Even without the scaling temp hp. Hex and Bane certainly aren't bad for monk, namely this monk. I think it's silly NOT to dip a caster with level 1 subs as monk. It's an easy trade up for power and versatility at many points. Probably not the thing you want, but if it was, it's still there. I think we're arguing backwards. Could this sub be better? Sure. Almost all the monk subs could. Probably get a lot more done with tweaks to the class. I'm sure they're coming, and a lot of people homebrew as they see fit. Or throw more magical goodies the monk's way, slightly, compared to the others. Signs of a good DM. Love or hate monks, most feel they're last place. I believe it's always overstated just how much help the monk needs. The race more often than not is pretty close. Most monk players enjoy their class. I think that says more than quick, under the microscope analysis within a vast system. Don't be afraid to pass on Mercy Monk. I think we got a solid contender here. That's why I just spent...hours playing devil's advocate. It was also really enjoyable. Helped me fully figure out what I can do with it. Hopefully can help others too find a positive spin on a new, fun build to play.
@@Guyoverthere07 Finally, someone stands up for monks.
The designers simply dislike the idea of monks. There's no other explanation. There were classes in 3.5 that lead designers disliked and deliberately made weaker than others, and I see no reason why that would have changed.
For a subclass that can "fly", there seems to be a lot of incentives to use this subclass in constrained areas like buildings, caves, and dungeons.
Here is my Way of the Ascendant Dragon
Race: Gem Dragonborn (Already have better 1st and 6th features, same damage at 17th using ki)
10 levels of Ancients Paladin, 1 level of undead warlock (11th ability but better)
5 levels of Ancients Paladin, 1 level of fighter (blindfighting at 17th if you that's what you care about)
Whatever you want from here.
If you wanted, you have several levels of ancient paladin to play with if the 3d10 in 10 ft range at 17th level is super important to you
As a reminder, we can be roleplaying a monk this entire time.
This class had some good ideas but executed them poorly. I think giving subclass abilities that can use ki after they run out solves the problem of not enough resources. It’s just a shame that it’s a bad ability.
11:20 Listening to you roast Wings Unfurled not actually being flight makes me think back to the original Toy Story movie where Buzz tries to demonstrate he can fly and Woody is all "That's not flying; that's falling with style!". :D
I wanted to write that maybe this subclass isn't powerful on the purpose that they're going to rework base monk - because subclass that makes a bad class good would make a good class OP - but then I've actually read the features and holy shit it's bad. Flight for one turn? Single-target fear as a bonus action on the most BA-heavy class? What were they thinking? This would be a garbage subclass even on a good class.
Use wings to jump over a group of enemies, use breath weapon, 20ft cone becomes 20 foot circle on the ground.
I would really want someone to ask Wizards of the Coast why they hate Monks so much.
It's not Treantmonk who hates Monks, it's *WotC hates Monks* .
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was.
I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB.
I'm gonna say double the damage of the breath weapon and Lv17 feat, make the fly speed permanent and increase the aura's range to 30 feet and you actually have a decently balanced subclass.
Monk feels like it’s balanced for another game and not one with caster classes capable of war crimes at single digit levels.
Here's two things I wanted to mention about this:
First, and to rub some salt on the wound of this monk, on the topic of Blindsight: if Feats are available, then V.Humans and Custom Lineages can also get this capstone feature at 1st level, and every other class can get it as early as 4th, if Fighting Initiate is in the pool of usable feats. This includes any Monk, including this one, and what's more, it's far more useful to have it taken as a feat earlier than as late as they actually get it.
Second, and on a more positive note, while these features are lackluster, I do appreciate how they are trying to make more monk abilities that don't necessarily cost more ki points to use, given their scarcity between rests. It doesn't make for how said abilities are, as you've shown, worse either in when they're given, how strong they are, or both.
It'd be really interesting if we got a Monk Subclass that either didn't rely on Ki Points or at least passively boosts abilities already using them in substantial ways. Or, even more, was able to regain Ki Points, like the UA version of Astral Self.
How to make an effective monk
. Step one. Race: Dragon
. Step two. Age ancient.
.Step three. Level up. You will be Equivalent to other melee characters and half casters, but still behind full casters.
Good analysis :-)
One use I can see for the breath weapon is where the opponent in range is dropped unexpectedly or uses a reaction to move out of range.
Having a ranged attack available at least gives you something to do.
Very situational.
I have my own way of fixing the monk and it is all low level things to adjust, really only at level 1, 2, and 3 as far as major changes that any thing would need to change and it would make it much better, not make it the best class in the game but free it up a lot without changing what people know too drastically.
Level 1: Your unarmed strikes deal 1d10 damage by default, you lose the ability to make an additional unarmed strike as a bonus action, the reason for this is the fix at level 2. Move the first unarmored movement bonus to this level. Lack luster level, but that's ok. I would also include a tie into improvised weapons here but I just thought of that while writing this up so is undeveloped.
Level 2: Martial Arts - now an ability that lets you use your bonus action to either furry of blows, step of the wind, or patient defense. You cannot use the same selection you used on your last turn. This does not cost a resource, You can just do it and emulates the patience and strategy used for martial artists to strike when the moment is right. Flurry of blows strikes with martial arts die and stays as described as WOTC starting off as a D4 and scaling as is shown already on the Monk level progression table. Now your regular attack doesn't do substandard damage and you can still get those extra licks in reasonably every other turn. That's all pretty good for a single level. You must take the attack action to use your martial arts with your bonus action.
Level 3: Move Deflect missiles to level 5 for right now, thematic reason for this as you will see. Also this is where you gain your monastic tradition and also where we pick up ki points. Ki points are solely a way to use your subclass features.
Level 4: No Change
Level 5: No longer extra attack, instead WHEN USING MARTIAL ARTS you gain................an additional bonus action. This is not something any other class has and focuses on the monk being quick and dexterous and chaining things together. With this you can now use step of the wind to disengage and dash (dart in and out master as they are prescribed to be), or really lay on the damage with two flurry of blows. Recall our stipulation on martial arts is that you can not use the ability you used on your last turn and per that wording if we use flurry of blows on this turn and have an additional bonus action we would be able to do it again. This plus our heightened initial damage should make up for our lack of extra attack. We also get deflect missiles here now instead as it is a level where our monk just gets faster and more skilled at doing martial arts based things. Lets also move our unarmored movement speed here to keep the spacing the same as well as the theme Likewise this opens monks up for some multiclassing options and features that would become more useful without messing up their aciton economy
Level 6: We now get stunning strike at 6th level as this level is thematically about improving offensively with our punches. It is no longer part of the initial attack. We can do it more often now and potentially twice in a single turn should it fail the first time as we are going to make it a new martial arts feature that uses our bonus action and we have to declare that is what we are doing, it also does not cause damage. It is no longer tied to wisdom and the DC is calculated by 8 plus our proficiency plus 1/2 our max martial arts die. At level six this would be 8+3+3 and 14. This is reasonable and you dont have to make concessions. By level say 15, this will scale up to 17.
Level 7: I am ok as it is but I also liked treant monks way of doing things by making it auto at the start of the turn. I am easy either way on this one.
No changes until Level 14
Level 14: Diamond Soul now uses your reaction and also works off your proficiency bonus per long rest.
No Change until 18
Level 18: You can cast invisible 1 per short rest and you can cast astral projection once per day. Done and Done
Level 20: Now we gain extra attack and our martial arts die becomes a D12. Not a crazy capstone but I think it is better than it was before certainly.
I await having this ripped apart :D
If your DM allows UA and you have the stats to go MAD, take a level in Phoenix Sorcerer.
Mantle of Flame allows you to add your CHA bonus to your fire damage rolls during your turn. Draconic Strike allows you to change your unarmed strikes to fire damage. Mantle of Flame also states that whenever a creature touches you while you have it activated, that creature takes fire damage equal to your CHA bonus. Unarmed strikes, by their nature, make you have physical contact with your enemy, so you can argue that whenever you hit with Draconic Strike (Fire) and Mantle of Flame activated, the CHA bonus damage should be applied twice based on the feature's wording.
I love these videos on an individual subclass! Thanks for the great content!
I think that the devs value the enhanced speed of the monk to be far more valuable than most of us do, and believe that the Monk needs to have generally weaker abilities to compensate for that.
And like, I can kind of see that, but only in very specific situations. Depending on the party composition and environment (and once their speed actually gets high enough at later levels) they can basically kite the enemies, getting hits in, disengaging, and still having enough movement to get out of range of the enemies (or at least far enough away that if the enemies wanted to attack them they'd be risking AoOs from the Fighters and Paladins).
Or in a situation where the Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Barbarian are all doing different things on the battlefield, apart from each other, the Monk can run around delivering help to whomever needs it most in the moment.
The problem is that most of the time those situations are either not likely to happen or are avoidable with a bit of decent of planning. While I definitely like the high speed on the Monk, it's not nearly enough IMO to justify the much weaker abilities.
That's a MMO mentality and even then Monks aren't tanks the only time I've seen them be anywhere near "tanky" was in Dungeon Fighter Online. Yet speed ain't great if you're get caught winded since oops no more ki and due to running around you're a bit out of place compared to the rest of the team.
Would you ever consider doing an episode about fixing monks where you review viewer fixes? Or even homebrew subclasses, just so we can get some idea of what a good monk so class would even look like. your analysis of poor features always inspires me to write my own.
Or if anyone else has any recommendations for one I could look up that would be cool too.
I’ve written class feature variance, sub classes, and feat to try to fix some of monks problems.
He's done this - check out a recent video. It's an interesting exercise and a good video!
@@macc.1132 I know he has done things that are similar I really enjoyed those videos, what’s the weather looking for permission to send in my homebrew because I don’t want to spam him. Because he takes so much time to read the comments, he is appreciated.
"Surely you can see this is demonstrably worse" Drag them King!
I think you're not giving the breath weapon enough credit. It gains 2 damage at 5th level, a modest increase to be sure, but that's 2 damage per target. You make a big deal about how many opponents you need to hit before it's worth trading a regular attack, but as long as there's two targets within 30 feet of each other, you can always draw a line between them at the very least. Hitting more than two targets shouldn't be too much of an ask, but even assuming worst case scenario, this is essentially "free" damage... lots of disclaimers, but sometimes hitting things is difficult, and this side-steps a lot of those challenges.
I wouldn't say it's so compelling I'd play a monk just for this ability, but I could make use of it from time to time. The 6th and 11th level abilities are confoundingly bad, though, and the 3rd level breath attack is only good if you're willing to invest deep into martial arts, so I'd say the real problem with it is that it's more of a trap than it is outright bad.
It puts my alchemist that I'm playing with my son to shame!
@@shawnpeterson2523 clever.
Snark aside, I never said it was good, I just think it can replace a normal unarmed strike more easily than Chris claims in his video. It doesn't redeem the monk class. Maybe it's just a side-grade, which would have been fine if later powers added more.
@@malusvir I think you are forgetting lack of ability mod to damage. What is better, 2d6 or 1d6+4? The extra dice are only more damage if they also include an ability mod damage bonus.
@@brettmajeske3525 You're either overrating the ability modifier to damage or underrating the extra die. 2d6 is 2-12 damage, for an average of 7; a d6+4 is 5-10 for an average of 7.5, so the d6+4 does come out very slightly ahead, but only against a single target, and only if you hit. The 2d6 is guaranteed to do something since you can always pick a damage type that isn't resisted. It may only be 3.5 after a successful save, but that's more than 0, which is a better delta than the .5 you get when comparing ability bonus vs. extra die. And again, that's only against a single target. I don't know I've ever played in a campaign where I've never had two targets within 30 feet of each other, but I guess your mileage may vary...
I don't know why I have to defend this stupid ability. IT'S NOT GOOD, but it IS a fine replacement for an unarmed strike IF YOU'RE ALREADY PLAYING A MONK.
EDITED TO ADD: In fact, assuming a 60% hit rate compared against a 50% chance your target makes its save, the 2d6 edges out the d6+4, but we're really splitting hairs at this point.
@@malusvir you are ignoring the fact that you don't have to use unarmed strike. You could use a longsword instead for d10+4 damage. So it is 7 vs 9.5 now. Much more noticeable difference and it also ignoring magic weapons that you could also get by this point. Also 7 damage to 2 targets more often than not doesn't equal 14 damage to one target. Single target damage is more valuable in most situations because you want to focus your enemies as much as possible, spreading damage is not a very wise thing.
Ascendant Dragon Monk: Why do you always think, you are better than me?
Dragonborn Fighter, with boots of flying: I *am* better than you
Here's my updated version of the Ascendant Dragon Monk, appearing in "D&D Rebalanced: Classes and Subclasses" on the DMs Guild:
Draconic Disciple (Changed)
At 3rd-level you can channel your draconic ki to imbue your unarmed strikes with the essence of a dragon’s breath and to use your connection with draconic creatures to magnify your presence. You gain the following benefits:
- Draconic Presence. You can use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier on Charisma (Persuasion) and Charisma (Intimidation) checks. If you fail one of these checks, you can use your reaction to reroll the check, as you tap into the mighty presence of dragons. Once this feature turns a failure into a success, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
- Draconic Strike. When you damage a target with an unarmed strike, you can change the damage type to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison, and add your proficiency bonus to the damage dealt.
- Tongue of Dragons. If you can’t already, you learn to speak, read, and write Draconic.
Breath of the Dragon (Changed)
At 3rd-level you can channel your ki into destructive waves of energy like the dragons you emulate. When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one of the attacks with an exhalation of draconic energy in either a 30-foot cone or a 60-foot line that is 5 feet wide (your choice). Choose a damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. Each creature in the area must make a Dexterity saving throw against your ki save DC, taking damage of the chosen type equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failure, or half as much damage on a success.
At 11th level, the damage of your breath increases to four rolls of your Martial Arts die.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
While you have no uses available, you can spend 1 ki point to use this feature again.
Wings Unfurled (Changed)
At 6th-level when you use your Step of the Wind, you can unfurl spectral draconic wings from your back. While the wings exist, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. The wings disappear after 1 minute, unless you use Step of the Wind to refresh their duration.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
While you have no uses available, you can spend 1 ki point when you activate Step of the Wind to use this feature again. (Clarification: In this book, Step of the Wind does not cost ki.)
Aspect of the Wyrm (Changed)
When you reach 11th-level the power of your draconic ki now radiates from you, protecting your allies from harm and punishing any who raise arms against them. As a bonus action, you can create an aura of draconic power that radiates 30 feet from you for 1 minute. For the duration, you gain the following effects:
- Frightful Presence. When you create this aura, and as a bonus action on subsequent turns, creatures of your choice in the aura must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your ki save DC or become frightened of you for 1 minute. An effected creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a successful save.
- Resistance. Choose a damage type when you activate this aura: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison. You and your allies within the aura have resistance to that damage.
Once you use this bonus action, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend 3 ki points to use it again.
Ascendant Aspect (Changed)
At 17th-level your draconic spirit reaches its peak. You gain the following benefits:
- Augment Breath. When you use your Breath of the Dragon, you can spend 1 ki point to augment its shape and power. The exhalation of draconic energy becomes either a 60 foot cone or a 90 foot line that is 5 feet wide (your choice), and each creature in that area takes damage equal to five rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
- Dragon Sight. You gain blindsight out to 30 feet. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn’t behind total cover, even if you’re blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you. Additionally, you can spend 1 ki point to gain truesight out to 30 feet until the end of your next turn.
- Explosive Fury. When you activate your Aspect of the Wyrm, draconic fury explodes from you. Choose any number of creatures you can see in your aura. Each of those creatures must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against your ki save DC or take 5d10 acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage (your choice).
It''s interesting something like this just came out. I *just* made a dragon monk homebrew for my Sunday games.
It was allowed to be taken at level 1 (only feature at 1 was you can use Cha instead of wis for unarmored) and the main features through level up were spending 1 ki for a bonus action reflavored burning hands. The feature scaled naturally but you could spend more ki for two more dice. Then the other features were immunity to fear, bonus to AC, and stunned enemies are instead paralysed at high level.
Oh and this was for enemy monks the players would fight, so I didn't try to make it good.
So, I like monks in general. I find they have a pretty mediocre base of class features, but some of those features are quite optimizable and I enjoy the challenge of making monks that hit just as hard as any other martial, or have some unique tactical or utility approach.
On the surface, this subclass gives virtually nothing, and I’m pretty disappointed.
Usually, for an effect based monk, I’d go variant human for the Mobile feat, moon druid 2 monk X and pump wisdom. Then, in battle, become a giant hyena/warhorse.
With 70-80 ft speeds, Mobile’s free disengages, unarmored defense, deflect missiles, and eventually evasion, I’d expect to actually be able to pull off skirmishing tactics.
From there, you can reasonably expect to pull off your gimmick. For a Long Death monk, this works pretty well; you’ve only focused on WIS, so your DCs are reasonable. You can use Stunning Strike to single-target CON saves, Hour of Reaping to mass-target WIS saves, or Entangle to mass-target STR saves, and the first two work while wildshaped, and Hour of Reaping costs no resources. When you don’t need crowd control, you can attack and deal reasonable damage. Not the strongest character, but well balanced, flexible, and pretty good on defense, so you won’t be a burden to the party by constantly going unconscious.
But these sorts of builds do nothing for the Dragon monk. The effects they get are so weak, they don’t improve on the base moon Druid 2/monk multiclass, except in very circumstantial ways.
So, at the end of the day, it is another Sun Soul/Open Hand/Drunken Master. Not much they do by themselves, and few special benefits from optimization.
I'm just gonna stop clicking on these, the last thing I want after a day of work is the sheer amount of bitterness that gets poured into all these videos.
Even as a monk fan it feels like sub classes are balanced around the base class being an absolute monster by itself. Like so-so subclass abilities are supposed to add a little flavor, while in reality the monk needs those abilities to complete itself into a useable niche. I just don't think a 1d10 punch at max character level is as badass as they seem to think it is.
I played a Four Elements Monk up to level 16 in the DnD Next playtests. I gave WotC a lot of feedback on how bad it was.
I was very disappointed when I saw the Monk in the PHB.
I come from 3rd edition, where Monks were a joke among players. I had hoped they would fix that in 5e.
I really don't get it.
Some of these features make a little more sense in hindsight if you figure they were considering backwards compatibility for OneD&D with this. Step of the Wind is better now, martial arts die scales better now... Not enough to make these features OP, but a bit of a buff!
I feel like the idea of this subclass is really cool, but I suggest home brewing it slightly to make it better overall. Have damage types have some sort of practice purpose overall, like extra damage or an effect (this could probably be implemented overall though), make the step of the wind ability give you the ability to maintain flight, and the breath weapon should be the normal breath weapon attack damage plus 2 martial damage die (1d6 + 2d4 + dex) at lower levels. This makes it strong at any level, and keeps in line with the idea of getting stronger and being like a dragon!
I see all of your points about the weaknesses of this subclass, in particular, and the monk class as a whole. But why do so many people still say the monk is OP. Is it just because of the stunning strike?
pretty much. and before level 5 its flurry of blows, which can do a lot more damage than characters that just does one attack in tier 1.
These are the 2 reasons, in fact the only reasons you would think Monks are OP
1) Because they're new, most likely rolling for stats above 74
2) They never played pathfinder or 3.5 hell any other TTRPG
@@WhyYouMadBoi Ok. Given that, I'm a member of a streaming DnD community and we were planning running PvP 1v1 melee tournament style competition, and they were talking about banning monks as a class option because they are so OP. And if monks were to be allowed, then they would disallow stunning strike. This seems to be completely counter to the analysis of the effectiveness of a monk based on Treatmonk's videos. Would the analysis change if he was looking at it from a 1v1 perspective?
@@BrentDnD Might, I would say that the Monk would have a +6 to attack vs ACs of 16 to up to 19 and if they don't conserve the ki then they won't be using it much unless its a one per turn.
I recommend the ruling be 1 divine smite per turn, 1 stunning fist per turn
@@BrentDnD Monks are pretty good at first level, drop off quickly there after. Stunning strike seems far more powerful than it actually turns out to be, unless the monk is targeting someone with poor CON saves. That means most players are weaker against Monks than most monsters. Stunning Strike doesn't scale well, and by level 10 it just isn't enough. Many people ignore scaling when evaluating features, Chris is somewhat different in that he looks at how features scale.
I know this is 2 year's late to the game, but had to mention... I wonder if each class had a specific team of people that worked on them, and they never received proper feedback. Many subclass features can have small issues across the board, but the monks design philosophy is so different from all the others and so far off the mark to even be interesting. Besides the general consensus that wotc hates monk, it's almost the only logical conclusion. As if the team never collaborated with others about concepts. Either way, i am happy to have the 2024 monk to look forward to. Here's hoping!
Wow, that makes 2 cool-but-not-particularly-powerful monk subclasses butchered before release! Because monks are just too darn strong to get average subclasses, they have to suck! I strongly encourage any player interested in the fantasy of this subclass to ask your DM about using the UA version, it isn't gonna make you super powerful, but at least you get to feel like a cool dragon monk without being totally worthless.
I always say that monks are my favorite class, but I think from now on I'll just play a Battle Master with 1 level in monk and the Unarmed Fighting fighting style.