Correction: I mention using Deflect Energy at 13:04 to reduce the damage of a Green Dragon breath weapon, but you can't use Deflect Energy to reduce poison damage.
Is it worth pointing out that monks have evasion at 7th level? A lot of abilities that deal the deflect energy-able damage types require a dex save, so the expected damage is slightly less.
When you did the stunning strike how much wisdom did you have to fail them all? The astral self focusing on wisdom before dex (getting both to 20 of course), allows for easier stunning strikes earlier on. I know it's not a redeeming factor, but it's there. Especially for people who don't use point buy and can get those 20's sooner and some feats by 11 and 12. I do think they should have put the extra attack on 11, and kept the ki regen on kills with level 17 from UA.. What they need to do for monks is change the table to start at 1d6, and go up faster, adding 2d6 and 2d10 to the end of the table. They can also greatly help monks by adding weapon enchantments to gloves.. So a monk can have a flametongue glove.. for instance.. allowing them the 2d6 fire dmg added to unarmed strikes. Might be a good homebrew weapon request.
@@nastube4052 There is actually two good magic items for unarmed attacks, Eldritch Claw Tattoo & Insignia of Claws. They ad a total of +2, and for 1 min/day 1d6 extra damage on hit and 15 ft melee range.
Right? "Oh no, this monk does a bit more DPR than Open Hand, that's not allowed! I should go complain incessantly on reddit about Astral Self" Edit: Original UA Astral self also didn't do more DPR than Open Hand. It was still pretty terrible until level 17. But at least it was better than this.
I remember people saying Astral monk being crazy overpowered when it was UA. It did not seem that powerful then, and it's even weaker now. I wish monks were on par with other classes. Drunken fist and Open hand monk look like they would be really fun to play if they just did enough damage or something to be effective.
I don't understand why they wouldn't codify grappling with the Astral Arms. That's one of the coolest things people mistaken as possible in the UA Astral Self. People clearly wanted one monk capable of being a Grappler and this could have been that.
@@zpal4187 Even if you ignore 'use astral arms to make unarmed strikes' part, there's also the fact the range is limited to just on your turn. End of turn, suddenly your reach with the Astral Arms is reduced back to 5, ergo the creature is no longer in your grip if you end your turn 10ft away from them. Personally as a DM with an Astral Monk, I do handwave all this away myself. It's just shitty to consistently have to fix WotC's mistakes.
let me talk about UA for a second, I know you dont look at UA much due to the expectations it creates. Astral self was actually decent maybe even good in UA, and reviewers here and on other platforms like reddit reviewed it calling it "most op subclass in d&d" "must ban UA monk" and more. And it was certainly not that. Not even close (astral arms cost 2 Ki at level 3) but it seems to have made WotC nerf it so hard that its now insanely useless ;/ so it would seem that the community not seeing how bad monks are is actually influencing how WotC is making the subclasses for the monk :(
It wasn't decent. In fact it was one of the biggest design mess I have seen in UA for a while. It actually was worse than published version: from levels 3 to 10 it was just unplayable as your damage was even worse than for the monk with no subclass as you wasn't able to use your Astral Arms with Flurry of Blows and damage was as bad as it is now (d4-d6). You also have to sacrifice your first round BA to summon Hands without any extra effects. So all in all you get less ki and deal less damage if you would use your features than if you would not. But at high levels you got some OP shit that actually made this subclass worth playing. You could actually make more attacks than any other class AND essentially got unlimited ki, so you become quite broken. Astral Self in UA was probably the worst kind of subclass desing: horribly underpowered at low levels to the point of being unplayable and tremenously overpowered at high levels being basically best monk subclass by far. It is terrible way to desing player choices. So I actually think that the published version is better. It is underpowered as fuck, but it is still better for the fact that low levels with it a little bit less painfull.
@@Quintal100kg i understand your points well :D yes i agree there was certainly things that needed to be done to make it a good subclass. i would not argue that it should have been published as it was (it shouldnt be) i think there were ways to make it playable in low levels, just going full wis was a very very bad idea indeed xD it was certainly weak early on - pretty much like any monk. slightly worse maybe, a monk without a real subclass feature. All the way to 11 where it became ... uhm decent? At 17 the abuse of a bag of rats would obviously have to be addressed that seems kinda obvious to me that no DM would allow that / play nice with that (especially given how long that party would have played together at that point). And yea it still became kinda insane at 17 - like the open hand that one shots at that point. or the sorc that gets 3 character (him and 2 simulacrums) and so much other ridicules stuff. I honestly dont even think the astral self would make the top 5 at levels 17 to 20^^ well... my point was supposed to be "its sad how the community's perception of the monk as not being up influences the design and that ideas to make it stronger are shut down immediately by the community"
@@keeganmbg6999 yup i agree :) math matters :P weaker early (unless you are able to short rest A LOT - which admittedly many parties are.) and slightly better very very late. :)
I know it may seem like Wizards nerfed the UA because of reviewers, but I am thoroughly convinced they don't listen to us at all and the nerfing is just business as usual.
I think there's a few minor benefits to Arms of the Astral Self here that were unmentioned: 1) Using Wisdom in place of Strength as a monk is great for utility when making Athletics checks outside of combat. 10 minutes is often long enough for a lot of skill challenges, and if you dumped Strength (8) but took Athletics and have a 16 Wisdom, that brings Athletics from +1 to +5 at 3rd level. 2) When fighting something like a Grung, where you can suffer for touching your enemy, having spectral arms make the attacks is good.
Those points are valid, but still count as niche benefits. Honestly having the arms just be something you set up after a long rest would help this kit considerably. Having to set up the arms every ten minutes sucks, especially when many of the benefits of the kit are utility and not combat related. Not to mention just walking around with giant ghostly arms would be lots of fun for the player no matter what else was going on.
@@johngleeman8347 I did say they were minor benefits. I think the former would come up more than the latter in my games, but I have my PCs do a lot of skill checks and the like as a part of adventuring and have noticed my monk PCs doing a lot of Athletics checks despite having relatively low Strength.
Aww, I think I thought a lot of these abilities were better than they actually were. I think you do a good job of discussing the abilities though. Thank you very much for sharing.
Quick Reminder that if you want to play this for the astral self aesthetic, you can do so with any class or subclass in the game. Champions (fighter subclass) in Theros literally exude their heroic self just like the astral self when they are championing. warlock? your eldrich blast is your astral self that flies and strikes the target. cleric? spiritual weapon is your astral self or even spirit guardians. the new spirit shroud spell from tasha for any other spellscaster, etc.
Plus tactically , the monk can stand 5 feet behind the tank and take pot shots at a creature starting at 3rd level with his 10 foot minimum reach or more depending upon his race
one thing i would add, is the stat economy you can get by making wisdom your primary stat instead of dex and put points in dex second. By having wisdom be used for attacks, armor, and the stunning strike DC, it makes this the best subclass for a build focused on stunning enemies. it's still gonna cost a lot of ki points and still sucks, but worth mentioning.
Treat monk has discussed (at length) why a stun focused build is bad. Most notably now, there isn’t an item that increases Ki DCs like there are for spells.
I gotta say, at first glance I had great hopes for the Astral Self and sort of scratched my head at the Mercy Monk. After I read each in detail, I came to some of the same conclusions that you did. I do think that the Astral Self is a small step up from the PHB and XGE Monks, specifically because it makes a WIS focused Monk at least passably possible. It's still not really worth it though. The thing that I think makes the Mercy monk so solid is the same thing that keeps Paladins' smite so important. They don't expend their resource unless the know it's worth it. This means that with few resources available, at least each of those Ki points is guaranteed to deliver value. The Astral forms just don't deliver much value for their Ki.
I think the main problem with monks is that the ki systel is "a point spent" system assigned to a melee fighter class: you burn out really quick then you die unable to do anything. I really don't like that class design choice in that version of d&d. It would be better if instead of spending the ki points, we could assign our monk abilities (each with a ki cost) once per short rest (meditation) capped by the total ki level of the monk, like 3 points for the furry of blows (available every turn), 2 point for stunning strike once per fight against each enemy, all those points capped by the total of ki point of the monk and a number of use per fight per ability. Allow all the monk abilities to be learned by any monk who find a willing teacher(reward from a quest?) but make the ki cost super low for the member of that school. Lot of variety, lot of options and no monk running out of ki mid-fight.
Honestly I’d rather we get less ki points and more of this stuff was just free. 1 free stunning strike each round, spend Ki to do more, you can make two unarmed attacks as a BA every turn instead of just one unarmed for free. Spend the Ki to take the disengage action as a free action, etc. If they have less damage, then increasing the action economy while decreasing their Ki use without punishing their actions feels like at least a more interesting way to go.
Like I said in my review, I think the Astral self is middle of the pack within the monk subclasses (which isn't saying much). It's certainly not in the bottom. But the mercy monk is definitely the coolest monk subclass yet. - The Innkeeper
@@ShardPF2e I dipped into fighter for the unarmed fighting style plus second wind. I’m playing in Tomb of Annihilation and expect it to go to about 13/14th level per my GM. Figure the dip will help bump up that damage and the second wind will give some extra survivability. Hope that Treantmonk revisits this with some optimization builds.
Somebody flipped the order of abilities. If the last ability was first and didn't cost 5 ki points this kit wouldn't have to limp along for its entire career. XD
I've had players play a couple monks now, Astral Self, Way of Long Death. So idk have some homebrew I've let my players use in long campaigns that haven't seemed to break balance at all. >Ki pool: Letting players add Wisdom Modifier to their pool of usable Ki. At low levels this is a significant boost that lets Monks use Flurry more often for DPS, and at higher levels lets them Ki dump their big stuff while having a small reserve of extra ki to still use the original 3 abilities. >Deflect Missiles: Everything as normal, but also you can spend 1 ki per additional missile that the enemy shoots at you that turn. So if the Bandit Lord shoots 3 arrows at the monk, they can deflect that first arrow for free, spend 1 ki to fling it back, then spend 2 ki to also deflect the other 2 arrows but they can't return these ones. Bandit Minion then shoots 1 arrow at the monk, they can't deflect that arrow. >Slow Fall: Simple change, if an Ally is within 5 feet of you, you can touch them and spend 1 ki to provide them with the benefits of your Slow Fall. This was added after the Monk and Rogue did a leap of faith together, and I thought it'd be cool. And it was cool. Let monks be cool. That's it for base monk changes. For the subclasses I've Dm'd for... Way of Long Death: > Touch of Death was a little bit annoying, since the monk had to kill the enemy to get the benefit; "When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points " and had to almost fight with the party to get the benefits of the level 3 ability so just one change to this ability to be "When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike and it gets reduced to 0hp before the start of your next turn, you gain temporary hit points" Outside of that the subclass is pretty okay for what it does. Way of the Astral Self: Hey look its what this video is about. >Arms of the Astral Self, everything stays the same, but you add Wisdom to damage, not in place of Dex or Str. This is a pretty sharp damage boost, but in defense to this: Average damage at level 5, over 5 rounds of combat (so this includes Extra Attack), taking average damage using anydice.com without spending 1 ki every turn for Flurry of Blows is 144 damage. A Hexblade Warlock using Eldritch blast plus Charisma deals 135 damage, and yes I will compare apples to oranges. >Visage of the Astral Self: No longer costs 1 ki and is just an upgrade to Arms of the Astral Self. >Body of the Astral Self: Now costs 1 ki to gain the benefits. Everything together is worth the 2 ki cost, 1 ki might be too cheap. >Awakened Astral Self: Now we've never reached level 17 in a game, so I don't know if with the changes to Arms of the Astral Self if Astral Barrage might be doing too much damage (Probably not), but if in your game you feel like it is, easy change is to make Astral Barrage from "Whenever you use the Extra Attack feature to attack twice, you can instead attack three times if all the attacks are made with your astral arms." to "Whenever you use the Flurry of Blows feature, you can instead attack three times if all the attacks are made with your astral arms." just so the extra extra damage costs 1 additional ki.
Actually, if you read the description correctly, you can use the arms for grappling. "While the spectral arms are present, you gain the following benefits: You can use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Strength modifier when making Strength checks and Strength saving throws." Grapples are Strength (Athletics) checks. So you can forget any part of your argument based on that being some kind of shortcoming.
I honestly think that echo-knight delivers the mechanics of a stand better anyway, Astral really only works for short range stands like Dio's and Jotaro's. They should've at least gotten more attacks on flurry of blows so they can embody the fast punching memes. Speaking from experience, wildfire druid also works well as a flame stand, I literally called my elemental 'fool of flames' after Iggy's 'fool of sand' (I know Advol has a flame stand).
I really want to know who took the UA Astral Monk survey and said "OMG OP Plz Nerf!" It still had the same problem in not having a damage buff at all until level 11, but at least it was much stronger at level 11+.
Fun thing: 20 wisdom and with your arms a very high/long jump is an athletics check which means you technically have a 20 in Str for jumping add ring of jumping + boots of springing. if you have a potion of growth/enlarge you can jump with adv to grapple an adult dragon out of the sky within 85 feet. With step of the wind it's 144 feet and your reach to grapple a flying dragon is 156 feet with your astral arms.
One thing that might make this work if you are starting with a race that gets a feat at level 1, take a fighter weapon style, unarmed combat. Get d8 unarmed strikes out of the gate. Unless there is some wording that stops this from working. I think why monks work for a lot of people is the partys they are in are so under optimized your baseline damage is actually high damage.
This works at levels 1-4, but no better than it does for any other monk (and arguably worse, since you can't afford to flurry as often). At levels 5+ all the other monk subclasses are actually getting more from Dueling then Unarmed Fighting, so you're back to giving up your reach just to match other subclasses on damage or doing worse damage and spending more ki to have long arms.
@@shanebernier2483 not if you grapple. Every attack you make will now do 1d4 extra damage which lets it still compete with dueling i think. Correct me if I'm wrong about this making it competitive
Wow, really suprised. I did not go over new Monk subclasses and just thought Way of Aster Self is Monk version of Gloomstalker and Way of Mercy is another bad... I mean typical Monk subclass with Healing flavor. Last 2 vidoes really opened my eyes.
Thank you so much for using pictures of netero for the astral monk instead of just jojo stands. I'm still gonna fuck around with it + fighting initiate for the d8 unarmed strikes and the D4 when grappled. May as well try and make a grapple build with it
I played two monks a couple of years ago and I found that Stunning Strike did hit roughly half of the time. It didn’t always succeed, but it succeeded enough that everyone at the table cheered when it did succeed because it gave us a full round of free attacks against that opponent.
I really like this monk for when you want to just focus on wisdom so your stunning strike is actually effective so you just use arms of the astral self and stunning strike
Astral Self monk UA vs Tasha's reminds me a lot of a nerf in Pokémon that happened. Gale Wings Talonflame. Yeah it was maybe a little bit too strong, but changing it in any way to try and bring it down just a little bit ended up just nerfing it to uselessness.
I am amazed and appalled that Tasha's didn't include a feat that grants a few ki points and give some monk-y stuff like Metamagic Adept feat does for sorcs
I still say removing the ki cost of Flurry of blows/Patient defense/Step of the Wind and deflect missiles; Plus the scaling extra attack of fighters, would be a HUGE step in the right direction.
Glad you got to have fun with the monk. Making yourself the target of attacks really makes monk’s mobility something you actually want to take advantage of. (Of course, this doesn’t work when you’re hit with a hypnotic pattern)
It's also hard to do for the monk in general, since their only reliable means of avoiding damage in melee is using their bonus action, which cuts sharply into their DPR. IMO the best fix for this would just be grabbing Mobile ASAP, but that's going to put you behind on damage as well.
@@shanebernier2483 For me when monks get magical attacks they should do extra damage per attack equal to their martial arts die on their bonus attack and either have the mobile feat baked in or get more asis.
I really like the flavor of this class, I imagine an Wise old monk who is the party sage who becomes a surprisingly powerful fighter in the heat of battle. Not necessarily there to be a big damage dealer, but able to hold their own, perhaps to the surprise of the party.
We recently did a tournament arc in our DND campaign. The whole thing consisted of my sorcerer, a bunch of fighters, some multiclasses, some barbarians, a paladin... And our little Way of Mercy monk. The majority of the fights were these brutal slugfests, resulting in very close fights through most of the tournament... And then there was the Monk. She did get defeated early on due to one of her opponents expending two of her three consumables (a Superior Healing Potion and a Potion of Speed, respectively) to just get the edge in the fight. But this tournament had a loser's bracket... And one by one, when her turn came up, the shiny rainbow-scaled half dragon monk continued to dominate, spending almost all her ki every fight (short rest equivalent between fights), stunning and flurrying and dealing a very solid amount of damage... In the end she carved her way past 3 barbarians (She managed to keep two from raging by stunning them first turn, the other she had to actually take down through full Bear Totem rage resistance) , a fighter, and the cleric that made it to the finals in the winner's bracket... To take for herself the title of Bear-Hearted, becoming this year's champion of the arena! So yeah... Way of Mercy is good and fun.
Imo the problem is the astral self monk lends itself to going unarmed and that tends to put you below the baseline. Unarmed. In dnd 5e is simply not good dpr. The mercy monk gets around this due to consistent extra dmg early. Kensei monk gets around this because theu use weapons and gets a dmg boost. Drunken master, shadow, open hand and astral. Dont get these damage boost. 4 elements can get a one turn dmg boost but that will burn all their ki.
Ironically, they gave the fix to the Beast Barbarian... when they make an unarmed attack with their claw option, they can make an additional attack. Period. No further limitation or qualifier. It stacks with Extra Attack, and does NOT consume the Bonus Action. Considering how much of an impact static bonuses have on averages, even with the small die that martial arts uses, adding another attack in to the baseline would completely change their averages. Having it NOT consume additional action economy or resources would be an absolute MUST, if this is the change the Monk's overall performance. Changing martial arts mechanics in this way still wouldn't put them in competition with a GWM Barb or SS Archer. But it would at least make their damage sufficient to justify taking the class.
I don't know if this would change anything, but you can use your wisdom for your unarmed strikes, although it would be _worst_ damage, there was not a single mention with how your AC, Damage and _stunning strike DC_ all improve now that you can invest fully into wisdom. Sure it costs 1 extra ki to set up, but when I initially say this subclass, I never saw damage, I saw "Stun bot monk." There isn't enough people mentioning that stunning strike is a bit better now. That is how I played my astral soul monk, and you can indeed threaten a lot of stuns on single powerful enemies, especially when you can stun an enemy on the first hit, get advantage on all other attacks and save the other ki points (I would just skip flurry of blows because I personally think the ADV on the next 2 hits is equivelant to a flurry of blows thanks to advantage). And nowadays with Fizban's new magic items, the one for monk increases your stunning strike save DC so it makes it even better.
I've played an astral self monk for levels 8 to 15 and I can say that it's actually extremely powerful and fun. Since wisdom was used as an option for the astral arms unarmed strikes, that increased the potency of Stunning Strike by a crazy amount, especially since you could then now do it at a distance with the added 5 feet reach. It also put a target on my back from the DM but that's a compliment to my playstyle and the build's strength (imagine playing this as a bugbear and have a +10 reach with the astral arms, untouchable) and bc of the duration of the arms and visage and so on, ki expenditure wasn't much of an issue unless you use stunning strike way too often. The visage allowed me to help traverse and lead my party through dark and difficult areas and dungeons which proved immensely useful. It excels in utility. In all, like everything else, approached right, tbis could actually be the most versatile and scary builds ya can go up against
@@RokuroCarisu idk what gave ya that impression, I got the most out of it by just playing the Astral Self monk on it's own but if you wish to multiclass for any other reason, then it would make sense to multiclass. He was a tortle too so it has led to some very fun and amazing power plays inside or out of combat
@@dagotrejo624 It's probably just that I would want my character to be good for more than stunning and seeing in the dark. Maybe I'm too focused on damage output, but that tends to be the primary measure of efficiency in most campaigns as they progress. Also, a turtle with an astral self playing a support role... I think I've heard that one before... _Ya-ya yeah!_
@@RokuroCarisu Possibly, since there are some neat things ya can do besides combat and crunching damage numbers. And combat can be held in different ways such as control. I made a Dao Genie Warlock that has Spike Growth and the Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar invocations so instead of going full blaster. He blasts and shreds enemies, a combination of control, damage output, and a pretty horrifying image roleplay wise in game and super fun and effective. Like I said on my original post, like anything, it's a matter of how ya approach a build
You could take the fighting initiate feat for unarmed fighting to make the astral arms do d8 damage, but even so, I see your point that astral self monk is too lacking in dpr as a dedicated damage class.
I disagree with your assessment of the level 3 benefits a bit, and a solid chunk of the others. It largely comes down to what I feel is you underestimating reach with unarmed attacks, which is a little surprising as your major issue with the monk seems to be their squishyness. With unarmed reach attacks, the monk can hit for all of their attacks, 2-3 at level 3, depending on if flurry of blows is used, and then back off from the fight without needing to worry about opportunity attacks. With their high mobility, they even end up far enough away that most enemies won’t even be able to catch them, and even if they do they’ll probably need to dash as well. This easily keeps them out of the stickiest of situations. I think you also underestimate the value of making it possible for the monk to focus more heavily on wisdom. With astral self, they can put their focus on a stat that lets them boost their AC, their Attack/Damage, and their spell casting modifier. That last one comes quite in handy not only for stunning strike, but also for crowd control. Not just for the standard stunning strike, but also for the astral arms themselves. It’s not that unreasonable to get 3 enemies in a 10 ft radius of the monk, and at level 8, it’s pretty realistic for that to be a DC 16 dex save (dc 17 at 9, and honestly 13 at 3 isn’t bad either, neither is 14 at 4 and 15 at 5). That’s very solid odds of outperforming flurry of blows. On top of all that, it’s still at reach, which means that the monk can get right out of the way afterwards. Tl:dr Astral self eliminates the conflict between increasing an ability that boosts AC and attack vs AC and spell casting modifier, gives it a superior option to flurry of blows for crowd control, and gives it the reach it needs to take advantage of its mobility to avoid being hit. Visage I mostly agree with, but even then I still think you’re underselling the out of combat applications a bit. Its not as good as telepathy, theres solid potential for battlefield coordination and scouting. A warlock with devil sight and telepathy could probably do better sure, but it’s a solid option if you don’t have one. I disagree with your assessment that mercy monk gets more at level eleven than body of the astral self. Both of the abilities you get their require a ki use for both (through the use of flurry of blows). Hands of harm does more, because it gets the wisdom modifier, but it’s damage die is still a martial arts die. Empowered strike gives you that each turn. And, your wisdom modifier will probably be +5 vs +3 with a dex focused build. Also, it costs an extra ki to pull that off, so your spending two ki for the one action. The healing aspect is nice, but then it’s giving up damage to heal, which is rarely a wining prospect unless there’s a downed ally next to you. I’m curious as to how you’re getting that rogue does more damage on average at 17 as well? 9d6 for sneak attack is about 31.5, give it a d10 for base and +5 from dex. So give it an extra 10.5 and you’re at 41.5. 5d10+20(3 astral self attacks and a bonus action all with +5 from wisdom, and + empowered self for the fifth d10) and I’m showing around 47.5. (Without taking into account chance to hit, which I’m not actually sure improves things for the rogue)That’s without flurry of blows (which should add an extra 10.5) You could give the rogue cross bow expert, and I’m not sure that would be much better(albeit with a smaller die) You should also be at 20 ac by level 17, at least, with an extra 2, you’re at 22, Which I’m pretty sure is solid for a character that won’t start the turn able to be hit by an opponent if you’re smart, between reach and their high mobility. Add in a stunning strike dc of 19 by that point, not the best, but certainly not terrible, and you’ve got a pretty solid damage dealer and even boss killer, that’s going to be pretty hard to hit if played smart.
@@sharkforce8147 You’d have superior reach with a ranged weapon, sure. But then you’re getting into all the issues that come with that, including cover, positioning, and I’m not sure how you’d get around having a lower ac. You’d be significantly slower too. Fighter, when not using their one time action surge, is also going to have less attacks until level 11, unless you take something like cross bow expert, and even then that’s just evening the playing field. There’s not a ton of options with the fighter subclasses that are really going to be on the same level with a ranged fighter as stunning strike when wisdom is the main stat either. You have a fair point on feats, but if you’re going into magic items, that’s all DM dependent at that point, and you could just as easily then bring up assorted magic items, tattoos, etc. that benefit the monk as well, so I don’t really buy that. Any class can do amazing things if the dm is handing out the items. And this was never about there being better options, just that the math doesn’t actually work out as described in the video, especially if it’s comparing to the rogue as much as it is. I don’t see that math as being accurate, unless their making some key assumptions about accuracy that I’m not seeing. If you want to play a ranged fighter, that’s cool, they’ll have better health and range, but that doesn’t actually detract from the astral self monk which will have advantages that lay elsewhere.
@@sharkforce8147 Except then you lose the range bonus and aren’t anywhere nearly as mobile when it comes to disengaging, and pulling out the rapier now means your damage is far more on par. You have to drop whatever ranged weapon you have and draw/equip a rapier and shield so you’re behind on average damage already. For fighter always doing more damage, that’s going to depend on the level. If we look at level and feats taken. Can’t have both the extra damage feats and the stat buff early on after all, same with boosting the ranged attacks come to think of it. Long bow has a d8, while the cross bow has a d10 but you need to give up the dx boost to pick that up too. So we can look at both for a level 5 comparison. 2(d10(average 5.5)+3)= 17 compared to 2(d8(average 4.5)+4)=17. Neat to know that evens out actually. If you use the hand crossbow to get the 3rd bonus action attack, 3(d6(average 3.5)+3)= 19.5 (higher than the other two actually and will definitely be lower than the monk who has the +4 damage) Compared with the level 5 monk 3(d6(average 3.5)+4)= 22 So it is actually incorrect to say the fighter out damages the monk at all levels, especially early ones that matter quite a bit. To get to these higher damage outputs the fighter also needs to give up their feats that get around the cover issue too... You’re making the claim that a monk without Ki is useless is rather silly when, in most fights, the astral arms are still going to be in play, so you’re getting 2-4 reach attacks per level, and are quite fast, with a higher AC still unless the fighter drops their damage output. You can’t really claim to have the better damage, see above math, and then claim to have the better base AC while doing so would require you to drop your damage, the already low damage. You have some points about the battle master having “similar” techs, but none of them actually do the same, and the battle master isn’t going to have as many superiority die as the monk will have Ki. We’re approaching the view of magic weapons from two very different lenses likely due to differing experiences with dms, so I just don’t think we’ll see eye to eye there. You are claiming that an effectiveness tax is being paid to play the monk, and then are citing a very specific build of fighter, which wasn’t even really brought up in the video, as why the monks are taxed, and then the math doesn’t even really support it.
@@sharkforce8147 And what are these styles? Because archer doesn’t boost damage, which is specifically what you are trying to claim is a good alternative to the astral self monk which I was claiming avoids the worst of the agro by avoiding direct melee and being able to take advantage of the monk speed. The video claims a big issue with the monk is their squishiness, and the astral self monk avoids that by being able to deal all the monk damage/attacks while essentially still acting in a mid to back line role. The whole point is they don’t need to disengage. Your next point about there being no ki meaning no arms is silly, because that’s then supposing that there have been multiple fights already, and that abilities have run out. If you’re going that far, you have to assume the battle master is out of die, second wind, and action surges, in which case, the monk still does more damage. They’re slightly squishier sure, but not outrageously so. They still have more speed as well, and possibly more Ac depending on how the fighter leveled up. At this point you may as well be complaining about the low amount of spell slots on a wizard. You seem to be applying all the fighter feats and styles in your argument at once, despite the progression not actually supporting that, and then calling the monk inferior because of it. You claimed that a ranged Battlemaster could out damage the monk, I demonstrated that that’s false at level 5 at least. (And that’s going to hold true through level 7 at minimum, with the possibility existing to match at 6). And let’s be honest, trying to claim any of the Battlemaster’s maneuver’s are the equivalent of Stunning strike is silly. Stunning strike gives advantage to all attacks on the target, they can’t move, they can’t speak, and all until the end of the monks next turn, meaning the monk could also get to take full advantage of all their attacks on the target next turn as well. Disarming? If your using the action from a range, that’s not going to do a whole lot, it’s going to require someone else to get their weapon/spellcasting focus away from them. Distracting? It’s a single attack that gets advantage. And the fighter can’t even take full advantage themself. Feint? A bit of extra damage, which is nice, and a single advantage. Decent, but not the same. Also needs to be within 5 feet of you, so not an option for your ranged fighter. Goading? A better save ability score certainly, but also only disadvantage. Trip? Requires another ally to take full advantage of, and they can always get back up on their turn. So yeah, in the example you’ve presented, at level five with two battles and no short rest the BM will have one more “use” of a superiority die, but none of the uses will be as helpful as stunning strike. The ranged BM would still be out damaged, and would need to go into melee to out ac them. It seems to me that you’re trying to force a fighter into a role that the monk fits better into in a, failed, attempt to claim that the monk is somehow “bad”. If the monk was really a tax to play, you’d have more examples than this one attempt at a ranged fighter.
@@sharkforce8147 we actually can math this out fairly easily, using the formula presented in the video on this channel linked in the description. If the fighter is using a long bow and takes a dex boost with archery fighting style, they have +2 (+10%)to hit compared to the astral monk. If they chose cross bow mastery, it’s only +1(5%) So using that assumption we compare to the monks average damage of 22 and multiply by 95% and 90% (subtracting the odds that the fighter would hit and the monk wouldn’t, this should keep things even for a comparison across all ACs) and we get 20.9 and 19.8 So we can compare the 20.9 to the hand crossbow expert damage of 19.5(it having only +1 on the roll to hit because they didn’t take the dx boost), and see the monk does more, and the 19.8 compared to the long bow’s 17. And we see that the monk deals more damage. So with the monk dealing more damage, the other point about not being able to function without Ki is still moot. (Edit: re thought about this and realized it would be slightly lower. It would be damage comparable to the hand crossbow (17.55 at 90% and 18.525 at 95%, still lower, but Still higher than the long bow and heavy crossbow though) The other half of this, if the monk is expecting there to be there to be no more fights, and they are relying on the astral arms, it would be rather situational for them to have ended a fight with zero and not bothering to short rest before the next. And even if they are in that situation, they still deal more damage. But hey, if you’re tapping out, that’s fine, have a good one. I just wanted to establish that I’m covering my angles if you’re going to throw out accusations.
I'll be honest, I couldn't be bothered to read the responses from the other person to your post, mostly because they weren't providing a lot of mechanical substance to discuss. That said, I'd like to pick at a few of your points more directly. Regarding the reach of Astral Arms keeping the monk safer: The Mobile feat just does this better. Unlike the reach of arms, it isn't invalidated by facing enemies that also have more than a 5 foot reach, and the boost to your movement speed makes up for needing to get closer to hit people. On top of that, it doesn't require any ki, and still works when you use a weapon (allowing for greater average damage in tiers 1 and 2). A feat is a steep cost for a feature I know, but if the reach is the only real benefit of the Astral Monk then starting as a V.Human or Custom Lineage is a small price to pay to get the same benefit with an entire other subclass. Regarding making the Monk SAD: First of all, elephant in the room, you are only WIS based when your arms are summoned, so you'll be losing out on a noticeable amount of ki compared to traditional monks. More importantly, even the Astral Self monk wants a high DEX, so the only benefit of being more focused on WIS is a higher DC for stunning strike and the arms AoE, neither of which are great. Treantmonk has explained in previous videos the issues with Stunning Strike, while the AoE is... well... Regarding the Astral Arms AoE: Martial Arts die x2 is worse damage at most levels that Martial Arts die + ability modifier. Most enemies with a low enough HP to worry about this AoE also have strong DEX saves. You don't have the option to stack multiple instances of this damage onto a single target (unlike Flurry of Blows). There are undoubtedly instances where this is better than Flurry of Blows, but you'd probably need closer to 4 or 5 valid targets to make up for these shortcomings, and those scenarios are fewer and further between, especially if you are trying to position yourself where all such targets are exactly 10 feet away from you. Regarding Astral Visage: It sounds like we are all on the same page here, no need for debate. It has uses out of combat or in specific party compositions, but it is by definition overly circumstantial. Regarding Body of the Astral Self Vs. Flurry of Healing and Harm: Hand of Harm should be dealing an extra 3 points of damage per trigger at this level, and possibly 4 points one level later. Admittedly Body of the Astral Self is triggering roughly 16% more often if both flurry every round, but on a trigger it is dealing about 40% less damage at a minimum. On top of that, Hand of Harm is still applying poisoned without a save, and it doesn't lock the Way of Mercy Monk into a set fighting style, leaving the options to augment their regular attacks with racial martial weapons, feats like Fighting Initiate (Dueling), multiclassing, or just straight up magic weapons. Oh, and it gives you the option to bring an ally up from 0 and still make 3 attacks and a Hand of Harm in the same round for just 1 ki. Regarding the Rogue damage: I can't speak for Treantmonk, but there are lots of ways for a base Rogue to improve their damage over the option you listed. Just using their subclass or a feat to get Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade raises the DPH by 13.5 before you even look at the possible secondary damage. If not that, then using XBE/Dual Wielding to get a second attack makes Sneak Attack much more likely to land every round, which boosts expected DPR by nearly as much even before looking at the extra weapon damage. Having a reliable source of advantage (both from use of Stealth and now Aim) would also push those numbers higher. Regarding Tier 4 play: By level 17, every class except the Druid could have a 19 AC through purely mundane means by using feats or class abilities. Most have means to temporarily boost their AC by at least 2 points, and all but 2 have at least as many hit points as the monk if not more. Also, pretty much all monks have a stunning strike save DC of 18 or 19 by this level, and those that don't have 19 will likely boost it at level 19.
I think the only way to make this work is to utilize the extra arms. I'm thinking a grappling build Bugbear that grapples and holds things 10 feet away, so that this locks down monsters. You can hold up to 2 creatures in this way. Then pummel with the Astral arms. Repeat. As Chris points out, your damage won't be high, but you will be contributing in other ways and hopefully the Bugbear reach keeps you from taking damage.
@@sharkforce8147 You are correct. I was just sort of spitballing. I had never really looked into those particular mechanics. I still argue a grappler could make this monk somewhat effective.
@@chrismack3949 "Could"? At best you're using Ki and a class feature just to pretend you are a STR build, literally any STR based character is just as good at grappling without expending any resources at all.
At this point I figure giving Monks infinite ki from level 2 might be a good way to fix the class, just due to the simplicity of it. After all, if the biggest problem of the Monk is having to spend resources to do what other classes can do for free, then the obvious thing to do is make those things free for the Monk as well. And if somehow that's overpowered, then make core Monk features free and have subclass features retain their costs. The subclasses would remain terrible, but at least the chassis would be usable, and a multiclass would actually be desirable for once.
I'm against trying to fix an unbalanced class with a subclass as then "well if I play Monk then I pretty much HAVE to play this subclass" then if there ever is a v2 monk that is balanced then you'll have the problem that this subclass makes the v2 monk too powerful. You need to fix the BASE Monk. Also, some subclasses are in themselves bad. Like Sun Soul, that's a ranged attack that's just so much worse than a bow or a cantrip. Drunken Master just gives so little it feels like you haven't picked a subclass at all.
*Aberrant Mind and Clockwork glaring in the distance* To be faiiiiiir, Sorcerers are fine, they are still the only other arcane caster despise having a butchered list, and while some Metamagic options are better than others and also having 2 for half their career, it’s still powerful. It’s just that Wizards are too dang OP xD But yeah, honestly what’s missing to fix up sorcerers is just… more Metamagic options besides 2 and maybe that UA feature to change one spell per long rest (Come fight me no longer Vaciant casters! It was there for balance reasons!)
The best way I've come up with to make a Monk, at low level only so far, is to go Variant Human, take Fighting Initiate, then choose the Unarmed Fighting fighting style. With a Dex of 16 (as is only natural) you do 1d8+3 with your attack, plus the 1d4+3 of your Martial Arts bonus action.
Great video Chris!! I'll be playing a one shot soon that will basically be one big boss battle and I was wondering what class you would recommend for just pure single target damage. Thanks in advance
@@TreantmonksTemple oh yeah sorry, level 15 for this particular one shot but would love to hear your pick for the best single target damage class for a 1-20 campaign
This subclass sounded way better until I saw this video. I'm a sucker for single stat builds, but this doesn't sound like it's worth it... and you can't still forget Dex because it affects a lot of your other skills...
Fighting initiate allows you to get the fighter feat Unarmed Fighting. This brings your unarmed attacks to 1d8 from as early as 4th level. Which means your attack and bonus action attack is 2d8 damage per turn withiut ki, and 3d8 with flurry of blows. At level 5 it's 4d8 force with flurry. Switch to a different fighting style when your martial die equals the d8. Wisdom focus on ability scores will allow you to stunning more often.
As always, thanks for your esquisite and balanced reviews. They are greatly helpful. In the last few days I re-rewatched your whole wizards build series. The Illusionist Kenku Is still one of your best build in my opinion. Keep It up!!
11:00 I recall seeing an interview with crawford where he said that the reason devil's sight doesn't work in dim light is because it makes the ability strange and spooky instead of just being better darkvision, so the same kind of reason probably applies here with astral sight.
Sounds a bit to me like he's just making up a reason for what is actually a rules oversight to argue that "It's not a bug, it's a feature," but that's just my opinion.
@@shanebernier2483 Considering that there are a number of features that work this way spread across several books and none of them have gotten an errata, I wouldn't assume that it was an accident.
Looking at your baseline analysis, I've got to say one of the (many) reasons why monk has looked pretty good in season 2 of Critical Role is that the homebrew subclass gives both combat bonuses (giving a limited peak at the monster statblock for free when you hit with flurry of blows, a non-damage buff that helps everyone) and out of combat abilities that DM Matt has ensured will be used and feel useful (investigation expertise, roleplay opportunities not available to non-organization members).
Without having done the math myself, it seems like taking the Fighting Initiate feat and choosing the Unarmed Fighting fighting style might make this subclass more viable. It's certainly not without cost, though. It would bring your unarmed attack damage to a d8, putting you one damage dice below the longsword while also increasing the damage of your Flurry of Blows. It comes at the cost of a +1 ASI half feat, so you won't be able to start with an 18 in anything. I haven't actually crunched out how much of a net positive or negative impact that has, but my gut reaction is that in the early levels--and ONLY in the early levels--it makes this subclass far more viable. It's not a total waste later, but it's certainly not a rockstar feat. My best guess is at level 8 or 12 you swap it over to the Superior Technique fighting style for a couple of maneuvers, since at that point your Martial Arts dice has caught up with your d8 feat damage. The fighting style also gives a d4 grapple damage, which looks like it has some surface level synergy with the WIS-based grapple checks, but it's just a d4 so it doesn't really seem worth building anything around.
Even if you do that, the Astral Self is no better than any other monk who chose to take the same feat in terms of damage dealing. On top of that, at level 5+ other monks actually get a bigger damage boost from the Dueling fighting style, which Astral Self can't apply to its arms.
Yup, you're not wrong, I've been thinking about that after posting this. Way of Mercy is just straight up better, but if there were some more effective way to leverage the +5 WIS I think this subclass could at least be viable
@@James-lz1in If it worked like the Hexblade's stat change (available at level 1, no resources or action required, applies to weapons) then I could see it being good for dip from Druids or Clerics who want to be better in melee. As is though no WIS class wants to give up 3 levels of spell progression to be better with a 1d4 weapon that uses up their bonus action and a limiter resource just to switch on.
Astral Self probably needs to change the base monk features to use wisdom so they can actually dump dex; Unarmored Defense is 10+2*WIS and Deflect Missiles uses the Astral Arms. I don't know what level makes sense, but it would be nice if it was level 3.
dumb question: instead of having the martial arts die increase with steps (1d4->1d6->1d8->1d10), why not have it increase as multiple dice? 1d4->2d4->3d4->4d4? At the same levels of 1, 5, 11, 17? Or if that is way too much, mix the two in some ways, 1d4->1d6->2d4->2d6. 3.5 had a better progression on martial arts, but it got completely screwed over to make it """simple""".
IMHO this is what the level 11 ability of the Astral Monk should have done. Instead of adding to one attack, it should add to all attacks. I haven’t done the math, but it feels like that would help out a lot on damage at later levels. Doesn’t fix the subclass completely, but would help a ton.
My guess would be too much damage per round. Taking the highest level and using flurry of blows for a total of 4 attacks. d10: [5.5 (avg) + 5 mod]*4 = 42 dpr 4d4: [2.5 (avg)*4 + 5 mod]*4 = 60 dpr Now add crits with doubling die and it gets even more skewed. But maybe this change would make monks more viable?
@@Exterminator5k that wouldn’t make up for the -3 to hit and -3 to damage monks get by not using +3 weapons at that level. A fighter with a +3 Greatsword does 8d6+32 compared to a monk using their fists getting 16d4+20 or if they use a +3 weapon for two attacks 16d4+26. 8d6+32= 60 16d4+20= 60 16d4+26= 66 This means 6 extra damage with two of the attacks losing 15% chance to hit. I don’t think it’s unbalanced by any means considering the Fighter would also have magic armor on, could do 8 attacks easily twice a short rest (if not more also easily), that the fighter gets two additional ASI’s and we haven’t even factored in subclasses.
@@keeganmbg6999 I completely agree, compared to other melee classes monk lags way behind. Especially if we factor in PAM and GWM, and certain classes don't even have to spend resources to achieve these higher numbers. I was just guessing that WotC do not want monks to be top damage as they have other skills like stunning strike, and utility (disengage/dodge BA, slow fall, etc.). Not saying that these skills/utility make up for the damage disparity. That's why I think the Xd4 option might make monks more viable/attractive. Devil's advocate, monks could do the figurative 60 dmg at lvl 17 with no eqpt. While fighters would have to wait until 20 with +3 gear (depending on DM might not be possible) to do the same 60 dmg.
I know this isn't a fix for every situation, but the addition of the unarmed fighting style from Tasha's is absolutely a MUST have. Im waiting on a campaign to start to play a Variant Human Astral Monk. I'd love you you to do a build
Hi TM, about your video "monk sucks", i respect your well presented arguments but i feel monks arent designed to be specialists, so i dont expect them to excel at anything, they can do a bit of everything and im ok with that. Of course because of them being generalists, they fit best as a supporting PC in a party where all the roles are covered. Im actually playing a Kensei with the tasha optional feats (my party: Paladin as tank/face, Rogue as striker/exploration, Tasha's Ranger as archer/exploration, Warlock as ranged magic/face) and im having fun and feeling useful. He contributes to the "Role pilar" with his high insight, reading people and informing to the party; contributes to the "exploration pilar" with his high perception; and in combat starts to harass the enemy with his longbow, repositioning with his mobility to not be hit until the Paladin engages, then switch to longsword and acts as a striker (i play Vhuman with mobile feat, i really need this to be a striker, if you play monk as a melee fighter youll be decimated in seconds). Because of his high mobility, he can be wherever is needed in his turn and then reposition himself out of danger, sometimes focusing fire with the frontline, sometimes helping the warlock if being harassed, sometime helping to take out ranged enemies. Im just level 4 and im going full striker, i picked the "slasher" feat to get some debuffing (i know, im losing 1 point of AC and 1 DC to stunning strike because of the wis ASI, but since i have mobile, agile parry and i will use SS only for casters and vulnerable foes, i dont really care). As an archer i think ill be decent with 2 attacks per turn (3 with ki fueled attack if i use deft strike or focused aim) scaled to 1d10+1d4+DEX because Kensei Weapon+Kensei shot, and im working with my DM in some magic swords wishlist (im thinking in sword of wounding or flametongue). My weapons could become +3 in big boss battles, adding damage consistency. Not excepting to be the best archer or melee, but being versatile and helpful. I would be very grateful if you can revisit Kensei-post Tasha, i think the damage is better now with ki-fueled attacks, you become a better archer also, making you more versatile and feeling more like a "weapon master" and you can make better use of magic weapons in comparison to other monk subclasses. I even heared Sharpshooter is now viable with Kensei, but i havent tried. And magic tattoos seems interesting for all monks, specially the eldritch claw and blood fury ones damage-wise. P.D. Sorry for the grammar, english is not my mother language.
100% agree with this. I watched the videos but whenever I actually play with a monk in the party they consistently do very well. I usually DM. In this case there's a Long Death wood elf monk. His insane mobility allows him to be everywhere in the battlefield and also catch up to enemies who try to flee. On 3 separate occasions I've tried to run with strong enemies i wanted to bring back and he just outpaces them. The party is level 5. Since he's able to get temp hp every time he kills a creature it adds a nice level of tankiness which means he goes down less. In addition, deflect missiles is very strong. I literally can't damage him with ranged attacks. Had devils with spikes, cultists with bows, nothing. Not to mention the occasional stunning strike which lands, slow fall, and the new tashas abilities, plus the elven accuracy feat! And off combat he's also very useful with survival, tracking, insight, etc. So far, I'm not seeing anything at all about the monk that is any less effective than the rest of the party. And this is basic monk. No multiclass shenanigans or homebrew.
@@xaosoax81 good to know someone else is having fun with monks. About deflect missiles, remember is a reaction, so you just need a second arrow to hit after the feat is used and you cant reduce the damage. Same if the monk did an opportunity attack that round. P.D. in my game last night i catched a couple of arrows, was soooo funny.
I see this all the time about dim light, but I think there are two easy fixes: 1. Its easily implied that if you can see in darkness you can see in dim light. 2. Even if there is a so called RAW ruling from Crawford, house rule it and move on. Its not something to worry about or think too hard on. I always get confused when the obvious "solution" is ignored and people go "wow this is soooo difficult, terrible, etc." CLEARLY if you can see in darkness dim light shouldnt be an issue...lol.
With Multiclassing and Feats, Way of the Astral Self could work pretty well with a 1 Lv Dip into War Cleric and 2 Levels of Fighter. The Unarmed Fighting Style also works wonders on the early levels
You see this right here? This is why you don't go talking about how the new UA monk is incredibly powerful and going to break the game before release, because the designers will change it and make it useless. *Look how they massacred my boy*
People refusing to believe that the monk chassis sucks is the root cause of the Astral Monk being unplayable. Blame the people who think they're actually helping the monk by going 'yeah, but when we were fighting this squishy BBEG spellcaster with no Legendary Resistance and I was full of ki points, I was MVP'.
@@maltheopia People act like as if there is only one fight per short rest for most people. You will probably have 2 or 3 once you reach level 5 (at low levels you probably get bumfucked if you don't but still) and then when you spread out those ki points suddenly the monk doing 3 attacks of 1d6+4 around isn't great because everyone else has a way to do additional damage every round.
@@moto2442 And they buffed the already really good Peace and Twilight domains. Let's just face it: the game designers accidentally hating on monks is a tradition dating back to Gygax modern game designers are still honoring.
14:50 "Don't assume a L17 Monk will have a good armor class compared to others" They'll have 20+magic items. Unless your DM is handing out +3 armor they'll be competitive even before this.
Literally every martial class except Monk and Rogue has been able to rock a 19 AC or better since level 1 without expending any resources or using any magical equipment, and they all have more health to boot. Those numbers also continue to rise with the use of class features in most cases, and they have broader access to magical AC boosts. Heck, some of the casters can beat a 20 AC passively as well before magic items, and they don't have to stand in melee with it.
So, knowing that we can overcharge the subclass a bit because base monk is weak, what if: Level 3: You get two bonus arms you can attack/grapple with, using wisdom instead of the relevant stat with +5ft reach, once per turn when making an unarmed attack your arms each attack once. Level 6: When spending ki to summon your arms you can summon a spectral visage instead (or alongside of them) for free. The powers of the visage are unchanged. Optional feature: Your arms count as +1 weapons. Level 11: Deflect Energy, when taking non physical (piercing, blunt, slashing) damage you can get resistance to that damage type until the end of your next turn a number of times per short rest equal to your wisdom modifier, no action required. Empowered arms replaced with Astral Barrage, when using the attack action you can attack three times instead of two as long as at least one of these attacks is made by the arms. Optional feature, your arms count as +2 weapons. Level 17: When spending ki to summon both your arms and visage you can summon alongside them your astral body at no additional costs. Armor of the spirit, unchanged. Optional feature, your arms count as +3 weapons. Astral Barrage replaced with Empowered arms, choose two: Empowered Astral Arms: You gain two more astral arms, allowing you to attack four more times total when making an unarmed attack (can be taken twice) Astral Sword: Bonus reach increased to 10ft, damage increased to 2d6. Astral Shield: AC increased by 2, gain the benefits of the Protection fighting style, for its purposes your Astral Shield counts as a shield and you can choose an ally between 10ft of you instead of 5ft. Astral Bindings: You gain advantage on grapple checks and creatures grappled by your arms cannot teleport away. Astral Juggernaut: When summoning your arms you gain HP (increasing your HP total) equal to your usual max hp (doubling your effective hp) and can use your wisdom modifier for strength, dexterity and constitution saving throws, you also gain advantage on these saving throws. Would that be more acceptable or going way too far the other way?
It seems to me that the first ability "You use Wisdom instead of Strength for strength checks" would apply when making a Grapple attack : "Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use)." Any reason why it doesn't?
There is something that Tasha's added that is great for the monk. A feat that gives a fighting style and a new fighting style called "unarmed fighting" which turns your unarmed strike to a D8
The only issue with that is that the monk's unarmed damage die will surpass that d8 in later levels. When you feel like you need a feed for it to be good that's just bad design.
@@rylandvarney5218 you get a d8 with martial arts at 11th level... And then you change the fighting style you picked at 12th for Blind Fighting or something more useful. No worries there
By level 5 you get a higher DPR by using a one handed weapon and Dueling with your monk than by using Unarmed Fighting. It is pretty solid levels 1-4 if you started with a feat though.
I think a number of monk subclasses rank high on the "fun" scale, as long as you're not overly concerned about the crunch. Shadow monk has infinite teleports and a couple good spell-like abilities. Both Silence and Pass Without Trace had a big influence on my party's success when the monk used them.
Yeah, as long as you can keep yourself from comparing, a monk can be fun! And yes, I think Shadow is probably best monk, because if you're not going to do awesome damage or pull off SSs, you might as well be doing buff/utility, and shadow monk spells on SR resources are great. A ranger/lock would be better, but that wouldn't come online at lvl 3.
Easy fix: level 2: arms of the astral self add your wisdom to damage. Level 7: armour adds 1 martial die, temporary hp. Level 11: when you take the attack action, each attack adds an extra martial arts die to damage
I agree that Tasha's astral monk is terrible. UA astral monk was a late bloomer class but I think a pretty good one. As far as I was concerned, astral monk was okayish at lv 3 as it could operate wis heavy which would make stunning strike better once that came into play but the ki cost hurts. It is something that'd improve later. The level 6 ability was pretty weak as well. However, I think it started to bloom at 11 with a deflect energy that was twice as strong as the Tasha's version and the extra hit on astral arms which turned that 2-3 ki investment into 10 mins of flurry of blows without further expenditure. This more or less made lv 11 UA astral monk into the most ki conservative monk, free to spam the other ki abilities without worry. Then at 17 they get the much stronger complete form which pushes their downpaid flurry of blows to triple shots and became a prolific mob clearer with the ability to regain ki though the initial ability cost a lot more. I think that it'd be interesting to run the numbers between UA astral monk and Tasha's astral monk. I imagine the damage output would favor the Tasha's version in early play but for anything 11 and beyond, the UA version would hit a massive power spike and I think is pretty good for late game play. Personally, I tell my players that if anything interests them in UA, they can ask and I'll approve it on case by case basis and I'll just stick to the UA astral monk.
Speaking of being effective in ways other than damage: You have done the ultimate Tank build before, but what is (in your opinion) the ultimate support build. I am not talking about pure healing, but a character that helps the party in multiple ways in combat (and out of it). I really enjoyed playing Divine Sorcerer for Bless and twin Haste, but I want to know your opinion on build options that do that better.
Homebrew as an NPC with added Astral Reach to "Mage Slayer" a niche githzerai class that hunts mages who oppose the lich queen! Sentinel makes any Astral Self a great control build.
I agree with everything you’re saying, but hear me out here... in the Word of the Spirit ability it says that you can make it so that a specific creature of your choice can hear you. Although it’s functionality telepathy, you are actually talking. What if a caster multiclasses into monk for 6 levels, casts darkness so it can’t be seen, while still being able to see through the darkness and using this ability to make it so that only the monk’s allies can hear the verbal components, making it so nothing can be counterspelled and they have advantage on all spell attacks while they throw spells left and right. Not amazing but a pretty cool interaction
Neat, I'll give it that. Not sure I'd ever go 6 levels deep into monk and use concentration on darkness when 3 levels in sorcerer gets the same thing from subtle spell without losing spell slots or concentration, but...
Very interesting that way of the astral self is worse in combat than a way of mercy monk! One thing I wonder, and this occupies a racial choice (as well as a rulebook, for Adventurer's League) is how much better a drow astral self monk would do? The ability to see in magical darkness (which, thanks for pointing out how it sucks way of shadows can't do!) and gain advantage may help, but at a heavy cost limited to only some enemies.
AA Monk can work but you basically need the Variant race and grab the Fight technique Unarmed Fighter. This could turn you into a single attribute monk, I agree I like mercy more as its not situationally good but you could take 4 attacks at level 3 that have a 10 foot reach and are force damage, yes its limited but i think arguable they could deal respectable damage from 3 to 9 if built this way
Really looking forward to your Ranger videos. I’ve been looking at options for melee rangers (don’t want to just do archery every time) and it looks like the new subclasses may be good for that.
With optimization, this can be ok. Unarmed fighting style makes the astral arms palatable at d8s, being a race that can access Darkness gives an excellent use to the level 6 ability, and in theory it would multiclass decently with druids or clerics on account of being wisdom dependent. If you get astral arms and divine favor from 1 level of War Cleric, and the fighting style feat from vhuman, you could deal at level 6 4d8+4d4+16. Which is reasonable but requires a lot of setup. The problem is, you could do that with any monk subclass and be more effective, but the astral monk requires an extra bonus action setup, making this very unwieldy. So it is still inferior to the other options available. Pretty much the main thing I can see using the astral arms for is a Druid multiclass, where the ability to use bonus action attacks based on WIS while in beast shape is pretty decent. Even the see-in-darkness thing isn’t that useful for Darkness, because the standard shadow monk 5 hexblade 2 does it better by casting darkness and hexblade’s curse in the same turn, as opposed to astral arm activation. All in all, pretty disappointing except for Druid multiclasses.
By itself, yes. But with the right combination of racial features, multiclass features and feats, it can still become fun to play. In my case, that meant: Simic Hybrid with Grappling Appendages, Echo Knight Fighter with Unarmed Fighting and Grappler.
Can't wait to see what you'll say about the ranger changes, honestly pretty impressed with most of thing things they got. Sure Favored Foe/Enemy was better in the UA since it gave hunters mark for free but as it is in the book, you do have a bonus to damage you can activate even if you're using the action and bonus action on other things. Thanks for the great video!
What would happen if the monk's martial arts die was changed from d4/6/8/10 to d6/8/10/12? Would that be a decent enough improvement, or would it still do too little damage?
For most monks, this does even less than just starting with longsword proficiency from your race. It's only an extra 0.65 DPR (or 1.3 with FOB) until level 11 or 17 depending on their proficiencies and feats.
@@shanebernier2483 still, only some races give the weapon proficiency, so for non-elf/dwarf/etc. monks that's a d8 starting at lv 5, same as using a quarterstaff. I don't think we should assume that, because of Tasha's, all monk's are going to have longsword a or battle axes, as only multiclassing or racial proficiencies are going to give the proficiency, and I assume no one is going to take a feat for something that you ecenty won't need anymore
Fixes: Add counterattack to the lvl 3. I know its kinda huge but it makes sense flavorwise and well monk and this subclass suck Make it so that you dont need to Spend extra ki for the visage. Make the range absolute, all time not only on your time. Also you could further boost the AC bonus at lvl 17
I had been thinking about this for a while, the idea of Monk being not terribly strong, and I thought "I love the idea of a character punching someone, like a boxer or a brawler, but the best thing we have is Monk (and now the Unarmed Fighting Style), but what if something could do punch better?" I've actually made, and am still tinkering with, a Barbarian subclass that should hopefully do just that, giving it a strong unarmed strike that gets stronger (and heightens during Rage), having Unarmored Defense calculate differently (10 + Str Mod + Con Mod, (+ Dex Mod if Dex is negative)), and emulating some Monk-like features while keeping things close to the idea that a Barbarian is going to utilize such ability for sheer force rather than a more well-rounded martial art. It's still not 100%, and it's also untested, but I like it so far (though I admit that making a subclass to do like another class but... I don't want to say better, but different, does seem a bit petty, though with the issues Monk has, fulfilling a different archetype of the Super Strength Hero is nice)
I'm not sure if adding half your proficiency bonus to attack and damage rolls for punch as the 14th ability is too strong or not, but to me it makes these punches on par with high-level magic gear, making them into a +2, then a +3 at 17th, weapon
Also, just to mention how much the punches do, they start at d6 or d8 if not holding a weapon or shield (just like unarmed fighting style), then rage makes that d8/d10; at 6th level, it overcomes magic resistance/immunity to nonmagic bludgeoning, and the die size increases one step, so d8/d10, and rage d10/d12, so you're essentially always armed with either a warhammer equivalent, or a bludgeoning great weapon.
Visage of the astral self is kind of an update to the level 3 ability, as the same bonus action and 1 ki point brings all those feature benefits up. Nvm it’s 1 bonus action to spend 2 ki points for both :/
You honestly opened my eyes to how lackluster this subclass is. It is a shame too considering this subclass fits perfectly for a kalashtar or Aasimar. Maybe if the arms were allowed to wield weapons? Idk, I won't pretend to understand balance considering I was so off base with thinking this subclass was really good.
I quite like this monk. Most of its weaknesses can be overcome with a little imagination. The one thing I really don't like about this monk (and mercy) is that without ki you have no subclass abilities at all.
For a long time I wanted to make a monk that had a STRONG healing ability, but stunning strike was claimed to be so powerfull that was afraid of making the monk even stronger. I never liked stunning strike, way, way to easy to resist specialy by things above lvl 7 and if you don't focus on wisdom. So I just took it away and gave the monk a healing pool equal to 10 times it's monk lvl. It's only more hp, hp that I have to spend actions to gain but I think the roleplay potential makes it worth it the weak enemys I may be able to stun by wasting all my ki.
I do wonder if there are some options to improve the output or survivability of these monks. I've had a couple guys trying to add hex, but I think Divine Favor would be a strictly better option for not eaten all of your bonus action.
You could get slightly higher damage using a versatile weapon. If you're playing a wood elf, that Longsword is going to go a long way with the Optional Class Features from Tasha's.
Imo. Not using unarmed (which is the point of playing a monk) is the way to improve dmg. The monk misses out on the dmg die and dmg boosts magical weapons apply. Best subclass for this is kensei. If you realy want to go unarmed, mercy monk is best. I woulsnt go hex and divine favor as it conflicts with flurry of blows. I would consider improving your action economy to increase your dpr such as multiclassing with fighter to get action surge and a fighting style + maybe battlemaster for maneuvers and/or barbarian for reckless attack For example if i'd want to play unarmed monk in a 10 level campaign/one-shot. I'd go 4 battlemaster, 6 mercy. I get action surge, superior technique fighting style for another superior dice maneuver, 4 superior dice maneuver from battlemaster, plus 2 feats i could use for ability score increas to 20 and maybe martial adept (for another superior dice maneuver). I get 4 attacks per round (with FOB) with the possibility to nova for 6 with action surge with all the regular attacks boosted bya superior dice maneuver when i need to kill a high priority target (as i should have 4-5 at this point). The above build would also allow me to save ki for FOB as i wouldnt need stunning strike for debuffs as i can inflict those via hand of harm and the different maneuvers (i could possibly land prone, frightened as well).
@@TheRobversion1 The monk suffers from the unarmed thing in more ways than one. At the start of 5e, the devs wanted magical weapons to be a "maybe". If you compare the monk to martial classes (sans paladin) without magical weapons or armor of their own... they'll still get the short end of the stick but the comparison is a lot closer than what we see today where +2 weapons at least aren't so unusual.
@@nathansalvetti8232 yup. Imo. Martial classes NEED to be given magical weapons to catch up with spellcasters. At my tables generic +1, +2 weapons are common place. Especially since the advent of artificers. The dms i've played with generally give uncommon magic weapons mid way to tier 1 and rare magic weapons mid way to tier 2.
Do you think if a DM allowed the Astral Arms to grapple, would that make the subclass any better in your eyes? Being able to grapple at a 10ft distance, and getting mileage out of a monks extra movement to drag
@@lunathedolphin6748 The first bullet point about making strength checks covers grappling. You declare attack action, you decide if any and how many of your attacks will be grapples, check is made with Wisdom via the arms. Grappling doesn't involve attack or damage rolls, so the later bullet has no bearing.
People say they can't grapple with the arms because grappling is not listed as something you can do with the arms... it's unfortunate really. I had the idea that I could grapple with them and move my enemy 10 feet away from me to prevent getting melee attacked. ..
I think that with a Tortle's fixed AC, a person could completely dump Strength and Dexterity, and make a Wisdom only Monk, making them less MAD, and finally forcing a decent Save for Stunning Strike. Just an idea.
Eh... the only base stat Monk need other than SEX or WIs already is CON for more health. Tortles have a higher AC than most monks at low levels, but are behind by level 8 and at this point only have 8 more HP. Sure you could dump in several feats, but those won't make up for your lost damage from not using weapons or for your lower AC. Unfortunately there jut aren't a lot of feats that give Monks much benefit.
In the way of mercy monk video I think you misunderstood the new monks ability that allows you to do an unarmed strike as a bonus action whenever you use any ki. Do you think that would effect the monks baseline damage much or did you already factor that in? As always love your content!
It helps the damage output for monks like Kensei, Shadows, and Four Elements who could not use their bonus action on Martial Arts in some situations. This is actually decent for some Kensei builds, but in general isn't enough to save these subclasses. It helps monks that will spend ki as part of their attack (like way of Mercy) a tiny bit, but only by a tiny bit at most levels. It helps Astral Self and Sun Soul least of all, because both of these are ostensibly supposed to be playing at a range and with a type of attack where making weapons attacks with a bonus action isn't something they can use unless they are choosing not to use their subclass features.
Correction: I mention using Deflect Energy at 13:04 to reduce the damage of a Green Dragon breath weapon, but you can't use Deflect Energy to reduce poison damage.
Smartarse me came here to point that out.
To be fair, by 10th level monks are immune to poison damage
Is it worth pointing out that monks have evasion at 7th level? A lot of abilities that deal the deflect energy-able damage types require a dex save, so the expected damage is slightly less.
When you did the stunning strike how much wisdom did you have to fail them all? The astral self focusing on wisdom before dex (getting both to 20 of course), allows for easier stunning strikes earlier on. I know it's not a redeeming factor, but it's there. Especially for people who don't use point buy and can get those 20's sooner and some feats by 11 and 12. I do think they should have put the extra attack on 11, and kept the ki regen on kills with level 17 from UA.. What they need to do for monks is change the table to start at 1d6, and go up faster, adding 2d6 and 2d10 to the end of the table. They can also greatly help monks by adding weapon enchantments to gloves.. So a monk can have a flametongue glove.. for instance.. allowing them the 2d6 fire dmg added to unarmed strikes. Might be a good homebrew weapon request.
@@nastube4052 There is actually two good magic items for unarmed attacks, Eldritch Claw Tattoo & Insignia of Claws. They ad a total of +2, and for 1 min/day 1d6 extra damage on hit and 15 ft melee range.
It’s a good thing everyone complained so much about the UA on this one. We wouldn’t want more than 1 effective monk subclass.
It's a shame, the ki regeneration ability it had in UA really could've helped it out late game
Right? "Oh no, this monk does a bit more DPR than Open Hand, that's not allowed! I should go complain incessantly on reddit about Astral Self"
Edit: Original UA Astral self also didn't do more DPR than Open Hand. It was still pretty terrible until level 17. But at least it was better than this.
So sad dude, goddamn haters
I remember people saying Astral monk being crazy overpowered when it was UA. It did not seem that powerful then, and it's even weaker now.
I wish monks were on par with other classes. Drunken fist and Open hand monk look like they would be really fun to play if they just did enough damage or something to be effective.
It's due to those same people that think the monk is already really strong and have no understanding of the game.
when you make something weak stronger, people think its op even if its substandard.
I don't understand why they wouldn't codify grappling with the Astral Arms. That's one of the coolest things people mistaken as possible in the UA Astral Self. People clearly wanted one monk capable of being a Grappler and this could have been that.
100% agree grappling at reach would of been awesomeness
We'll...nothing is stopping you from grappling with actual arms then attacking with the astral arms.
@@zpal4187 Even if you ignore 'use astral arms to make unarmed strikes' part, there's also the fact the range is limited to just on your turn. End of turn, suddenly your reach with the Astral Arms is reduced back to 5, ergo the creature is no longer in your grip if you end your turn 10ft away from them.
Personally as a DM with an Astral Monk, I do handwave all this away myself. It's just shitty to consistently have to fix WotC's mistakes.
"you had careful spell this whole time?!"
Saving that.
Reasons to play the Astral Self Monk: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure memes.
That's it. That's the whole list.
Additional reason: if you multiclass into Druid, you can play a bird with humanoid arms
(At least, I’m pretty sure I’m reading those rules right)
@@llGalexyll AND if you make your druid circle of wildfire, you can become Magician's Red.
Isaac Netero
let me talk about UA for a second, I know you dont look at UA much due to the expectations it creates.
Astral self was actually decent maybe even good in UA, and reviewers here and on other platforms like reddit reviewed it calling it "most op subclass in d&d" "must ban UA monk" and more. And it was certainly not that. Not even close (astral arms cost 2 Ki at level 3) but it seems to have made WotC nerf it so hard that its now insanely useless ;/ so it would seem that the community not seeing how bad monks are is actually influencing how WotC is making the subclasses for the monk :(
It wasn't decent. In fact it was one of the biggest design mess I have seen in UA for a while. It actually was worse than published version: from levels 3 to 10 it was just unplayable as your damage was even worse than for the monk with no subclass as you wasn't able to use your Astral Arms with Flurry of Blows and damage was as bad as it is now (d4-d6). You also have to sacrifice your first round BA to summon Hands without any extra effects. So all in all you get less ki and deal less damage if you would use your features than if you would not.
But at high levels you got some OP shit that actually made this subclass worth playing. You could actually make more attacks than any other class AND essentially got unlimited ki, so you become quite broken.
Astral Self in UA was probably the worst kind of subclass desing: horribly underpowered at low levels to the point of being unplayable and tremenously overpowered at high levels being basically best monk subclass by far. It is terrible way to desing player choices. So I actually think that the published version is better. It is underpowered as fuck, but it is still better for the fact that low levels with it a little bit less painfull.
I agree. It seemed crazy OP to so many people (me even at first until I did the math and found out it was basically in line with a rogue).
@@Quintal100kg i understand your points well :D yes i agree there was certainly things that needed to be done to make it a good subclass. i would not argue that it should have been published as it was (it shouldnt be)
i think there were ways to make it playable in low levels, just going full wis was a very very bad idea indeed xD
it was certainly weak early on - pretty much like any monk. slightly worse maybe, a monk without a real subclass feature. All the way to 11 where it became ... uhm decent?
At 17 the abuse of a bag of rats would obviously have to be addressed that seems kinda obvious to me that no DM would allow that / play nice with that (especially given how long that party would have played together at that point). And yea it still became kinda insane at 17 - like the open hand that one shots at that point. or the sorc that gets 3 character (him and 2 simulacrums) and so much other ridicules stuff. I honestly dont even think the astral self would make the top 5 at levels 17 to 20^^
well... my point was supposed to be "its sad how the community's perception of the monk as not being up influences the design and that ideas to make it stronger are shut down immediately by the community"
@@keeganmbg6999 yup i agree :) math matters :P
weaker early (unless you are able to short rest A LOT - which admittedly many parties are.) and slightly better very very late. :)
I know it may seem like Wizards nerfed the UA because of reviewers, but I am thoroughly convinced they don't listen to us at all and the nerfing is just business as usual.
I think there's a few minor benefits to Arms of the Astral Self here that were unmentioned:
1) Using Wisdom in place of Strength as a monk is great for utility when making Athletics checks outside of combat. 10 minutes is often long enough for a lot of skill challenges, and if you dumped Strength (8) but took Athletics and have a 16 Wisdom, that brings Athletics from +1 to +5 at 3rd level.
2) When fighting something like a Grung, where you can suffer for touching your enemy, having spectral arms make the attacks is good.
Those points are valid, but still count as niche benefits. Honestly having the arms just be something you set up after a long rest would help this kit considerably. Having to set up the arms every ten minutes sucks, especially when many of the benefits of the kit are utility and not combat related. Not to mention just walking around with giant ghostly arms would be lots of fun for the player no matter what else was going on.
@@johngleeman8347 I did say they were minor benefits. I think the former would come up more than the latter in my games, but I have my PCs do a lot of skill checks and the like as a part of adventuring and have noticed my monk PCs doing a lot of Athletics checks despite having relatively low Strength.
Aww, I think I thought a lot of these abilities were better than they actually were. I think you do a good job of discussing the abilities though. Thank you very much for sharing.
Now that there's an ok monk out there, we need to see that treant monk build!!
Pp
P
Quick Reminder that if you want to play this for the astral self aesthetic, you can do so with any class or subclass in the game. Champions (fighter subclass) in Theros literally exude their heroic self just like the astral self when they are championing. warlock? your eldrich blast is your astral self that flies and strikes the target. cleric? spiritual weapon is your astral self or even spirit guardians. the new spirit shroud spell from tasha for any other spellscaster, etc.
Or the other way around. The Astral Self Warforged would just look like itself. ;-)
Plus tactically , the monk can stand 5 feet behind the tank and take pot shots at a creature starting at 3rd level with his 10 foot minimum reach or more depending upon his race
one thing i would add, is the stat economy you can get by making wisdom your primary stat instead of dex and put points in dex second. By having wisdom be used for attacks, armor, and the stunning strike DC, it makes this the best subclass for a build focused on stunning enemies. it's still gonna cost a lot of ki points and still sucks, but worth mentioning.
Treat monk has discussed (at length) why a stun focused build is bad. Most notably now, there isn’t an item that increases Ki DCs like there are for spells.
Yeah but Dex saves are great idk if it's really good losing them
I gotta say, at first glance I had great hopes for the Astral Self and sort of scratched my head at the Mercy Monk. After I read each in detail, I came to some of the same conclusions that you did.
I do think that the Astral Self is a small step up from the PHB and XGE Monks, specifically because it makes a WIS focused Monk at least passably possible. It's still not really worth it though.
The thing that I think makes the Mercy monk so solid is the same thing that keeps Paladins' smite so important. They don't expend their resource unless the know it's worth it. This means that with few resources available, at least each of those Ki points is guaranteed to deliver value.
The Astral forms just don't deliver much value for their Ki.
I think the main problem with monks is that the ki systel is "a point spent" system assigned to a melee fighter class: you burn out really quick then you die unable to do anything. I really don't like that class design choice in that version of d&d.
It would be better if instead of spending the ki points, we could assign our monk abilities (each with a ki cost) once per short rest (meditation) capped by the total ki level of the monk, like 3 points for the furry of blows (available every turn), 2 point for stunning strike once per fight against each enemy, all those points capped by the total of ki point of the monk and a number of use per fight per ability. Allow all the monk abilities to be learned by any monk who find a willing teacher(reward from a quest?) but make the ki cost super low for the member of that school. Lot of variety, lot of options and no monk running out of ki mid-fight.
Honestly I’d rather we get less ki points and more of this stuff was just free. 1 free stunning strike each round, spend Ki to do more, you can make two unarmed attacks as a BA every turn instead of just one unarmed for free. Spend the Ki to take the disengage action as a free action, etc.
If they have less damage, then increasing the action economy while decreasing their Ki use without punishing their actions feels like at least a more interesting way to go.
@@sharkforce8147 do you have a link for it? I’d like to read it please.
@@sharkforce8147 thanks.
Like I said in my review, I think the Astral self is middle of the pack within the monk subclasses (which isn't saying much). It's certainly not in the bottom. But the mercy monk is definitely the coolest monk subclass yet.
- The Innkeeper
Perfect timing, I’m set to play an Astral self monk starting tomorrow!
Uh...did you watch the video?
(Chuckles) “I’m in danger”
My condolences
Pick up the unarmed fighting style from the fighting initiate feat and use your reach and you'll do just fine with this monk
@@ShardPF2e I dipped into fighter for the unarmed fighting style plus second wind. I’m playing in Tomb of Annihilation and expect it to go to about 13/14th level per my GM. Figure the dip will help bump up that damage and the second wind will give some extra survivability. Hope that Treantmonk revisits this with some optimization builds.
Somebody flipped the order of abilities. If the last ability was first and didn't cost 5 ki points this kit wouldn't have to limp along for its entire career. XD
I've had players play a couple monks now, Astral Self, Way of Long Death. So idk have some homebrew I've let my players use in long campaigns that haven't seemed to break balance at all.
>Ki pool: Letting players add Wisdom Modifier to their pool of usable Ki. At low levels this is a significant boost that lets Monks use Flurry more often for DPS, and at higher levels lets them Ki dump their big stuff while having a small reserve of extra ki to still use the original 3 abilities.
>Deflect Missiles: Everything as normal, but also you can spend 1 ki per additional missile that the enemy shoots at you that turn. So if the Bandit Lord shoots 3 arrows at the monk, they can deflect that first arrow for free, spend 1 ki to fling it back, then spend 2 ki to also deflect the other 2 arrows but they can't return these ones. Bandit Minion then shoots 1 arrow at the monk, they can't deflect that arrow.
>Slow Fall: Simple change, if an Ally is within 5 feet of you, you can touch them and spend 1 ki to provide them with the benefits of your Slow Fall. This was added after the Monk and Rogue did a leap of faith together, and I thought it'd be cool. And it was cool. Let monks be cool.
That's it for base monk changes. For the subclasses I've Dm'd for...
Way of Long Death:
> Touch of Death was a little bit annoying, since the monk had to kill the enemy to get the benefit; "When you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you gain temporary hit points " and had to almost fight with the party to get the benefits of the level 3 ability so just one change to this ability to be "When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike and it gets reduced to 0hp before the start of your next turn, you gain temporary hit points"
Outside of that the subclass is pretty okay for what it does.
Way of the Astral Self:
Hey look its what this video is about.
>Arms of the Astral Self, everything stays the same, but you add Wisdom to damage, not in place of Dex or Str. This is a pretty sharp damage boost, but in defense to this: Average damage at level 5, over 5 rounds of combat (so this includes Extra Attack), taking average damage using anydice.com without spending 1 ki every turn for Flurry of Blows is 144 damage. A Hexblade Warlock using Eldritch blast plus Charisma deals 135 damage, and yes I will compare apples to oranges.
>Visage of the Astral Self: No longer costs 1 ki and is just an upgrade to Arms of the Astral Self.
>Body of the Astral Self: Now costs 1 ki to gain the benefits. Everything together is worth the 2 ki cost, 1 ki might be too cheap.
>Awakened Astral Self: Now we've never reached level 17 in a game, so I don't know if with the changes to Arms of the Astral Self if Astral Barrage might be doing too much damage (Probably not), but if in your game you feel like it is, easy change is to make Astral Barrage from "Whenever you use the Extra Attack feature to attack twice, you can instead attack three times if all the attacks are made with your astral arms." to "Whenever you use the Flurry of Blows feature, you can instead attack three times if all the attacks are made with your astral arms." just so the extra extra damage costs 1 additional ki.
Actually, if you read the description correctly, you can use the arms for grappling.
"While the spectral arms are present, you gain the following benefits:
You can use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Strength modifier when making Strength checks and Strength saving throws."
Grapples are Strength (Athletics) checks. So you can forget any part of your argument based on that being some kind of shortcoming.
I honestly think that echo-knight delivers the mechanics of a stand better anyway, Astral really only works for short range stands like Dio's and Jotaro's. They should've at least gotten more attacks on flurry of blows so they can embody the fast punching memes. Speaking from experience, wildfire druid also works well as a flame stand, I literally called my elemental 'fool of flames' after Iggy's 'fool of sand' (I know Advol has a flame stand).
Treantmonk I love you and your content. Thank you so much for what you do.
I really want to know who took the UA Astral Monk survey and said "OMG OP Plz Nerf!" It still had the same problem in not having a damage buff at all until level 11, but at least it was much stronger at level 11+.
Fun thing: 20 wisdom and with your arms a very high/long jump is an athletics check which means you technically have a 20 in Str for jumping add ring of jumping + boots of springing. if you have a potion of growth/enlarge you can jump with adv to grapple an adult dragon out of the sky within 85 feet. With step of the wind it's 144 feet and your reach to grapple a flying dragon is 156 feet with your astral arms.
One thing that might make this work if you are starting with a race that gets a feat at level 1, take a fighter weapon style, unarmed combat. Get d8 unarmed strikes out of the gate. Unless there is some wording that stops this from working. I think why monks work for a lot of people is the partys they are in are so under optimized your baseline damage is actually high damage.
This works at levels 1-4, but no better than it does for any other monk (and arguably worse, since you can't afford to flurry as often). At levels 5+ all the other monk subclasses are actually getting more from Dueling then Unarmed Fighting, so you're back to giving up your reach just to match other subclasses on damage or doing worse damage and spending more ki to have long arms.
@@shanebernier2483 not if you grapple. Every attack you make will now do 1d4 extra damage which lets it still compete with dueling i think. Correct me if I'm wrong about this making it competitive
Wow, really suprised. I did not go over new Monk subclasses and just thought Way of Aster Self is Monk version of Gloomstalker and Way of Mercy is another bad... I mean typical Monk subclass with Healing flavor. Last 2 vidoes really opened my eyes.
Thank you so much for using pictures of netero for the astral monk instead of just jojo stands. I'm still gonna fuck around with it + fighting initiate for the d8 unarmed strikes and the D4 when grappled. May as well try and make a grapple build with it
I played two monks a couple of years ago and I found that Stunning Strike did hit roughly half of the time. It didn’t always succeed, but it succeeded enough that everyone at the table cheered when it did succeed because it gave us a full round of free attacks against that opponent.
I really like this monk for when you want to just focus on wisdom so your stunning strike is actually effective so you just use arms of the astral self and stunning strike
Astral Self monk UA vs Tasha's reminds me a lot of a nerf in Pokémon that happened. Gale Wings Talonflame.
Yeah it was maybe a little bit too strong, but changing it in any way to try and bring it down just a little bit ended up just nerfing it to uselessness.
Appreciate the Isaac Netero artwork. This was the first thing I thought of when reading about this subclass for the first time.
I am amazed and appalled that Tasha's didn't include a feat that grants a few ki points and give some monk-y stuff like Metamagic Adept feat does for sorcs
I still say removing the ki cost of Flurry of blows/Patient defense/Step of the Wind and deflect missiles; Plus the scaling extra attack of fighters, would be a HUGE step in the right direction.
At least than your have an incentive not to only use flurry of blows
Glad you got to have fun with the monk. Making yourself the target of attacks really makes monk’s mobility something you actually want to take advantage of. (Of course, this doesn’t work when you’re hit with a hypnotic pattern)
It's also hard to do for the monk in general, since their only reliable means of avoiding damage in melee is using their bonus action, which cuts sharply into their DPR. IMO the best fix for this would just be grabbing Mobile ASAP, but that's going to put you behind on damage as well.
@@shanebernier2483 For me when monks get magical attacks they should do extra damage per attack equal to their martial arts die on their bonus attack and either have the mobile feat baked in or get more asis.
Personally I like this archetype not necessary for its power, but because it looks cool. I agree the abilities should stack more tho
When a monk is weak it's especially bad news because it's not like you're going to find a magic set of astral arms somewhere.
Lol, at least we have insgina of claws and the eldritch claw tattoo.... you know if your dm lets you request a magic item to be put in the game.
I really like the flavor of this class, I imagine an Wise old monk who is the party sage who becomes a surprisingly powerful fighter in the heat of battle. Not necessarily there to be a big damage dealer, but able to hold their own, perhaps to the surprise of the party.
We recently did a tournament arc in our DND campaign. The whole thing consisted of my sorcerer, a bunch of fighters, some multiclasses, some barbarians, a paladin... And our little Way of Mercy monk. The majority of the fights were these brutal slugfests, resulting in very close fights through most of the tournament...
And then there was the Monk. She did get defeated early on due to one of her opponents expending two of her three consumables (a Superior Healing Potion and a Potion of Speed, respectively) to just get the edge in the fight. But this tournament had a loser's bracket... And one by one, when her turn came up, the shiny rainbow-scaled half dragon monk continued to dominate, spending almost all her ki every fight (short rest equivalent between fights), stunning and flurrying and dealing a very solid amount of damage... In the end she carved her way past 3 barbarians (She managed to keep two from raging by stunning them first turn, the other she had to actually take down through full Bear Totem rage resistance) , a fighter, and the cleric that made it to the finals in the winner's bracket... To take for herself the title of Bear-Hearted, becoming this year's champion of the arena!
So yeah... Way of Mercy is good and fun.
Imo the problem is the astral self monk lends itself to going unarmed and that tends to put you below the baseline. Unarmed. In dnd 5e is simply not good dpr. The mercy monk gets around this due to consistent extra dmg early. Kensei monk gets around this because theu use weapons and gets a dmg boost. Drunken master, shadow, open hand and astral. Dont get these damage boost. 4 elements can get a one turn dmg boost but that will burn all their ki.
Ironically, they gave the fix to the Beast Barbarian... when they make an unarmed attack with their claw option, they can make an additional attack.
Period. No further limitation or qualifier.
It stacks with Extra Attack, and does NOT consume the Bonus Action.
Considering how much of an impact static bonuses have on averages, even with the small die that martial arts uses, adding another attack in to the baseline would completely change their averages. Having it NOT consume additional action economy or resources would be an absolute MUST, if this is the change the Monk's overall performance.
Changing martial arts mechanics in this way still wouldn't put them in competition with a GWM Barb or SS Archer. But it would at least make their damage sufficient to justify taking the class.
I don't know if this would change anything, but you can use your wisdom for your unarmed strikes, although it would be _worst_ damage, there was not a single mention with how your AC, Damage and _stunning strike DC_ all improve now that you can invest fully into wisdom.
Sure it costs 1 extra ki to set up, but when I initially say this subclass, I never saw damage, I saw "Stun bot monk."
There isn't enough people mentioning that stunning strike is a bit better now.
That is how I played my astral soul monk, and you can indeed threaten a lot of stuns on single powerful enemies, especially when you can stun an enemy on the first hit, get advantage on all other attacks and save the other ki points (I would just skip flurry of blows because I personally think the ADV on the next 2 hits is equivelant to a flurry of blows thanks to advantage).
And nowadays with Fizban's new magic items, the one for monk increases your stunning strike save DC so it makes it even better.
I've played an astral self monk for levels 8 to 15 and I can say that it's actually extremely powerful and fun. Since wisdom was used as an option for the astral arms unarmed strikes, that increased the potency of Stunning Strike by a crazy amount, especially since you could then now do it at a distance with the added 5 feet reach. It also put a target on my back from the DM but that's a compliment to my playstyle and the build's strength (imagine playing this as a bugbear and have a +10 reach with the astral arms, untouchable) and bc of the duration of the arms and visage and so on, ki expenditure wasn't much of an issue unless you use stunning strike way too often. The visage allowed me to help traverse and lead my party through dark and difficult areas and dungeons which proved immensely useful. It excels in utility. In all, like everything else, approached right, tbis could actually be the most versatile and scary builds ya can go up against
But that basically means you have to multiclass to get the most out of it, right?
@@RokuroCarisu idk what gave ya that impression, I got the most out of it by just playing the Astral Self monk on it's own but if you wish to multiclass for any other reason, then it would make sense to multiclass. He was a tortle too so it has led to some very fun and amazing power plays inside or out of combat
@@dagotrejo624 It's probably just that I would want my character to be good for more than stunning and seeing in the dark. Maybe I'm too focused on damage output, but that tends to be the primary measure of efficiency in most campaigns as they progress.
Also, a turtle with an astral self playing a support role... I think I've heard that one before...
_Ya-ya yeah!_
@@RokuroCarisu Possibly, since there are some neat things ya can do besides combat and crunching damage numbers. And combat can be held in different ways such as control. I made a Dao Genie Warlock that has Spike Growth and the Repelling Blast and Grasp of Hadar invocations so instead of going full blaster. He blasts and shreds enemies, a combination of control, damage output, and a pretty horrifying image roleplay wise in game and super fun and effective. Like I said on my original post, like anything, it's a matter of how ya approach a build
@@dagotrejo624 did you dumb dex? What was your dex score?
You could take the fighting initiate feat for unarmed fighting to make the astral arms do d8 damage, but even so, I see your point that astral self monk is too lacking in dpr as a dedicated damage class.
I disagree with your assessment of the level 3 benefits a bit, and a solid chunk of the others.
It largely comes down to what I feel is you underestimating reach with unarmed attacks, which is a little surprising as your major issue with the monk seems to be their squishyness.
With unarmed reach attacks, the monk can hit for all of their attacks, 2-3 at level 3, depending on if flurry of blows is used, and then back off from the fight without needing to worry about opportunity attacks. With their high mobility, they even end up far enough away that most enemies won’t even be able to catch them, and even if they do they’ll probably need to dash as well.
This easily keeps them out of the stickiest of situations.
I think you also underestimate the value of making it possible for the monk to focus more heavily on wisdom. With astral self, they can put their focus on a stat that lets them boost their AC, their Attack/Damage, and their spell casting modifier.
That last one comes quite in handy not only for stunning strike, but also for crowd control. Not just for the standard stunning strike, but also for the astral arms themselves. It’s not that unreasonable to get 3 enemies in a 10 ft radius of the monk, and at level 8, it’s pretty realistic for that to be a DC 16 dex save (dc 17 at 9, and honestly 13 at 3 isn’t bad either, neither is 14 at 4 and 15 at 5). That’s very solid odds of outperforming flurry of blows.
On top of all that, it’s still at reach, which means that the monk can get right out of the way afterwards.
Tl:dr Astral self eliminates the conflict between increasing an ability that boosts AC and attack vs AC and spell casting modifier, gives it a superior option to flurry of blows for crowd control, and gives it the reach it needs to take advantage of its mobility to avoid being hit.
Visage I mostly agree with, but even then I still think you’re underselling the out of combat applications a bit. Its not as good as telepathy, theres solid potential for battlefield coordination and scouting. A warlock with devil sight and telepathy could probably do better sure, but it’s a solid option if you don’t have one.
I disagree with your assessment that mercy monk gets more at level eleven than body of the astral self. Both of the abilities you get their require a ki use for both (through the use of flurry of blows).
Hands of harm does more, because it gets the wisdom modifier, but it’s damage die is still a martial arts die. Empowered strike gives you that each turn. And, your wisdom modifier will probably be +5 vs +3 with a dex focused build. Also, it costs an extra ki to pull that off, so your spending two ki for the one action.
The healing aspect is nice, but then it’s giving up damage to heal, which is rarely a wining prospect unless there’s a downed ally next to you.
I’m curious as to how you’re getting that rogue does more damage on average at 17 as well? 9d6 for sneak attack is about 31.5, give it a d10 for base and +5 from dex. So give it an extra 10.5 and you’re at 41.5.
5d10+20(3 astral self attacks and a bonus action all with +5 from wisdom, and + empowered self for the fifth d10) and I’m showing around 47.5. (Without taking into account chance to hit, which I’m not actually sure improves things for the rogue)That’s without flurry of blows (which should add an extra 10.5)
You could give the rogue cross bow expert, and I’m not sure that would be much better(albeit with a smaller die)
You should also be at 20 ac by level 17, at least, with an extra 2, you’re at 22, Which I’m pretty sure is solid for a character that won’t start the turn able to be hit by an opponent if you’re smart, between reach and their high mobility.
Add in a stunning strike dc of 19 by that point, not the best, but certainly not terrible, and you’ve got a pretty solid damage dealer and even boss killer, that’s going to be pretty hard to hit if played smart.
@@sharkforce8147 You’d have superior reach with a ranged weapon, sure. But then you’re getting into all the issues that come with that, including cover, positioning, and I’m not sure how you’d get around having a lower ac. You’d be significantly slower too.
Fighter, when not using their one time action surge, is also going to have less attacks until level 11, unless you take something like cross bow expert, and even then that’s just evening the playing field.
There’s not a ton of options with the fighter subclasses that are really going to be on the same level with a ranged fighter as stunning strike when wisdom is the main stat either.
You have a fair point on feats, but if you’re going into magic items, that’s all DM dependent at that point, and you could just as easily then bring up assorted magic items, tattoos, etc. that benefit the monk as well, so I don’t really buy that. Any class can do amazing things if the dm is handing out the items.
And this was never about there being better options, just that the math doesn’t actually work out as described in the video, especially if it’s comparing to the rogue as much as it is. I don’t see that math as being accurate, unless their making some key assumptions about accuracy that I’m not seeing.
If you want to play a ranged fighter, that’s cool, they’ll have better health and range, but that doesn’t actually detract from the astral self monk which will have advantages that lay elsewhere.
@@sharkforce8147 Except then you lose the range bonus and aren’t anywhere nearly as mobile when it comes to disengaging, and pulling out the rapier now means your damage is far more on par. You have to drop whatever ranged weapon you have and draw/equip a rapier and shield so you’re behind on average damage already.
For fighter always doing more damage, that’s going to depend on the level. If we look at level and feats taken. Can’t have both the extra damage feats and the stat buff early on after all, same with boosting the ranged attacks come to think of it. Long bow has a d8, while the cross bow has a d10 but you need to give up the dx boost to pick that up too.
So we can look at both for a level 5 comparison. 2(d10(average 5.5)+3)= 17 compared to 2(d8(average 4.5)+4)=17. Neat to know that evens out actually. If you use the hand crossbow to get the 3rd bonus action attack, 3(d6(average 3.5)+3)= 19.5 (higher than the other two actually and will definitely be lower than the monk who has the +4 damage)
Compared with the level 5 monk 3(d6(average 3.5)+4)= 22
So it is actually incorrect to say the fighter out damages the monk at all levels, especially early ones that matter quite a bit.
To get to these higher damage outputs the fighter also needs to give up their feats that get around the cover issue too...
You’re making the claim that a monk without Ki is useless is rather silly when, in most fights, the astral arms are still going to be in play, so you’re getting 2-4 reach attacks per level, and are quite fast, with a higher AC still unless the fighter drops their damage output. You can’t really claim to have the better damage, see above math, and then claim to have the better base AC while doing so would require you to drop your damage, the already low damage.
You have some points about the battle master having “similar” techs, but none of them actually do the same, and the battle master isn’t going to have as many superiority die as the monk will have Ki.
We’re approaching the view of magic weapons from two very different lenses likely due to differing experiences with dms, so I just don’t think we’ll see eye to eye there.
You are claiming that an effectiveness tax is being paid to play the monk, and then are citing a very specific build of fighter, which wasn’t even really brought up in the video, as why the monks are taxed, and then the math doesn’t even really support it.
@@sharkforce8147 And what are these styles? Because archer doesn’t boost damage, which is specifically what you are trying to claim is a good alternative to the astral self monk which I was claiming avoids the worst of the agro by avoiding direct melee and being able to take advantage of the monk speed. The video claims a big issue with the monk is their squishiness, and the astral self monk avoids that by being able to deal all the monk damage/attacks while essentially still acting in a mid to back line role.
The whole point is they don’t need to disengage.
Your next point about there being no ki meaning no arms is silly, because that’s then supposing that there have been multiple fights already, and that abilities have run out. If you’re going that far, you have to assume the battle master is out of die, second wind, and action surges, in which case, the monk still does more damage. They’re slightly squishier sure, but not outrageously so. They still have more speed as well, and possibly more Ac depending on how the fighter leveled up. At this point you may as well be complaining about the low amount of spell slots on a wizard.
You seem to be applying all the fighter feats and styles in your argument at once, despite the progression not actually supporting that, and then calling the monk inferior because of it.
You claimed that a ranged Battlemaster could out damage the monk, I demonstrated that that’s false at level 5 at least. (And that’s going to hold true through level 7 at minimum, with the possibility existing to match at 6).
And let’s be honest, trying to claim any of the Battlemaster’s maneuver’s are the equivalent of Stunning strike is silly.
Stunning strike gives advantage to all attacks on the target, they can’t move, they can’t speak, and all until the end of the monks next turn, meaning the monk could also get to take full advantage of all their attacks on the target next turn as well.
Disarming? If your using the action from a range, that’s not going to do a whole lot, it’s going to require someone else to get their weapon/spellcasting focus away from them.
Distracting? It’s a single attack that gets advantage. And the fighter can’t even take full advantage themself.
Feint? A bit of extra damage, which is nice, and a single advantage. Decent, but not the same. Also needs to be within 5 feet of you, so not an option for your ranged fighter.
Goading? A better save ability score certainly, but also only disadvantage.
Trip? Requires another ally to take full advantage of, and they can always get back up on their turn.
So yeah, in the example you’ve presented, at level five with two battles and no short rest the BM will have one more “use” of a superiority die, but none of the uses will be as helpful as stunning strike. The ranged BM would still be out damaged, and would need to go into melee to out ac them.
It seems to me that you’re trying to force a fighter into a role that the monk fits better into in a, failed, attempt to claim that the monk is somehow “bad”. If the monk was really a tax to play, you’d have more examples than this one attempt at a ranged fighter.
@@sharkforce8147 we actually can math this out fairly easily, using the formula presented in the video on this channel linked in the description.
If the fighter is using a long bow and takes a dex boost with archery fighting style, they have +2 (+10%)to hit compared to the astral monk. If they chose cross bow mastery, it’s only +1(5%)
So using that assumption we compare to the monks average damage of 22 and multiply by 95% and 90% (subtracting the odds that the fighter would hit and the monk wouldn’t, this should keep things even for a comparison across all ACs) and we get 20.9 and 19.8
So we can compare the 20.9 to the hand crossbow expert damage of 19.5(it having only +1 on the roll to hit because they didn’t take the dx boost), and see the monk does more, and the 19.8 compared to the long bow’s 17.
And we see that the monk deals more damage.
So with the monk dealing more damage, the other point about not being able to function without Ki is still moot. (Edit: re thought about this and realized it would be slightly lower. It would be damage comparable to the hand crossbow (17.55 at 90% and 18.525 at 95%, still lower, but Still higher than the long bow and heavy crossbow though)
The other half of this, if the monk is expecting there to be there to be no more fights, and they are relying on the astral arms, it would be rather situational for them to have ended a fight with zero and not bothering to short rest before the next.
And even if they are in that situation, they still deal more damage.
But hey, if you’re tapping out, that’s fine, have a good one. I just wanted to establish that I’m covering my angles if you’re going to throw out accusations.
I'll be honest, I couldn't be bothered to read the responses from the other person to your post, mostly because they weren't providing a lot of mechanical substance to discuss. That said, I'd like to pick at a few of your points more directly.
Regarding the reach of Astral Arms keeping the monk safer: The Mobile feat just does this better. Unlike the reach of arms, it isn't invalidated by facing enemies that also have more than a 5 foot reach, and the boost to your movement speed makes up for needing to get closer to hit people. On top of that, it doesn't require any ki, and still works when you use a weapon (allowing for greater average damage in tiers 1 and 2). A feat is a steep cost for a feature I know, but if the reach is the only real benefit of the Astral Monk then starting as a V.Human or Custom Lineage is a small price to pay to get the same benefit with an entire other subclass.
Regarding making the Monk SAD: First of all, elephant in the room, you are only WIS based when your arms are summoned, so you'll be losing out on a noticeable amount of ki compared to traditional monks. More importantly, even the Astral Self monk wants a high DEX, so the only benefit of being more focused on WIS is a higher DC for stunning strike and the arms AoE, neither of which are great. Treantmonk has explained in previous videos the issues with Stunning Strike, while the AoE is... well...
Regarding the Astral Arms AoE: Martial Arts die x2 is worse damage at most levels that Martial Arts die + ability modifier. Most enemies with a low enough HP to worry about this AoE also have strong DEX saves. You don't have the option to stack multiple instances of this damage onto a single target (unlike Flurry of Blows). There are undoubtedly instances where this is better than Flurry of Blows, but you'd probably need closer to 4 or 5 valid targets to make up for these shortcomings, and those scenarios are fewer and further between, especially if you are trying to position yourself where all such targets are exactly 10 feet away from you.
Regarding Astral Visage: It sounds like we are all on the same page here, no need for debate. It has uses out of combat or in specific party compositions, but it is by definition overly circumstantial.
Regarding Body of the Astral Self Vs. Flurry of Healing and Harm: Hand of Harm should be dealing an extra 3 points of damage per trigger at this level, and possibly 4 points one level later. Admittedly Body of the Astral Self is triggering roughly 16% more often if both flurry every round, but on a trigger it is dealing about 40% less damage at a minimum. On top of that, Hand of Harm is still applying poisoned without a save, and it doesn't lock the Way of Mercy Monk into a set fighting style, leaving the options to augment their regular attacks with racial martial weapons, feats like Fighting Initiate (Dueling), multiclassing, or just straight up magic weapons. Oh, and it gives you the option to bring an ally up from 0 and still make 3 attacks and a Hand of Harm in the same round for just 1 ki.
Regarding the Rogue damage: I can't speak for Treantmonk, but there are lots of ways for a base Rogue to improve their damage over the option you listed. Just using their subclass or a feat to get Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade raises the DPH by 13.5 before you even look at the possible secondary damage. If not that, then using XBE/Dual Wielding to get a second attack makes Sneak Attack much more likely to land every round, which boosts expected DPR by nearly as much even before looking at the extra weapon damage. Having a reliable source of advantage (both from use of Stealth and now Aim) would also push those numbers higher.
Regarding Tier 4 play: By level 17, every class except the Druid could have a 19 AC through purely mundane means by using feats or class abilities. Most have means to temporarily boost their AC by at least 2 points, and all but 2 have at least as many hit points as the monk if not more. Also, pretty much all monks have a stunning strike save DC of 18 or 19 by this level, and those that don't have 19 will likely boost it at level 19.
I think the only way to make this work is to utilize the extra arms. I'm thinking a grappling build Bugbear that grapples and holds things 10 feet away, so that this locks down monsters. You can hold up to 2 creatures in this way. Then pummel with the Astral arms. Repeat. As Chris points out, your damage won't be high, but you will be contributing in other ways and hopefully the Bugbear reach keeps you from taking damage.
@@sharkforce8147 You are correct. I was just sort of spitballing. I had never really looked into those particular mechanics. I still argue a grappler could make this monk somewhat effective.
@@chrismack3949 "Could"? At best you're using Ki and a class feature just to pretend you are a STR build, literally any STR based character is just as good at grappling without expending any resources at all.
At this point I figure giving Monks infinite ki from level 2 might be a good way to fix the class, just due to the simplicity of it. After all, if the biggest problem of the Monk is having to spend resources to do what other classes can do for free, then the obvious thing to do is make those things free for the Monk as well.
And if somehow that's overpowered, then make core Monk features free and have subclass features retain their costs. The subclasses would remain terrible, but at least the chassis would be usable, and a multiclass would actually be desirable for once.
Great video Chris. Thanks as always
I'm against trying to fix an unbalanced class with a subclass as then "well if I play Monk then I pretty much HAVE to play this subclass" then if there ever is a v2 monk that is balanced then you'll have the problem that this subclass makes the v2 monk too powerful. You need to fix the BASE Monk.
Also, some subclasses are in themselves bad. Like Sun Soul, that's a ranged attack that's just so much worse than a bow or a cantrip. Drunken Master just gives so little it feels like you haven't picked a subclass at all.
I suspect that the optional class features in Tasha's are as much of a v2 monk as we are going to get in 5e.
@@TreantmonksTemple Homebrew it is then.
*Aberrant Mind and Clockwork glaring in the distance*
To be faiiiiiir, Sorcerers are fine, they are still the only other arcane caster despise having a butchered list, and while some Metamagic options are better than others and also having 2 for half their career, it’s still powerful.
It’s just that Wizards are too dang OP xD
But yeah, honestly what’s missing to fix up sorcerers is just… more Metamagic options besides 2 and maybe that UA feature to change one spell per long rest (Come fight me no longer Vaciant casters! It was there for balance reasons!)
The best way I've come up with to make a Monk, at low level only so far, is to go Variant Human, take Fighting Initiate, then choose the Unarmed Fighting fighting style. With a Dex of 16 (as is only natural) you do 1d8+3 with your attack, plus the 1d4+3 of your Martial Arts bonus action.
This subclass was done dirty by the changes from UA. I reviewed that version and was hopeful for an actually decent subclass, sadly not any more
Great video Chris!! I'll be playing a one shot soon that will basically be one big boss battle and I was wondering what class you would recommend for just pure single target damage. Thanks in advance
Well I'm not Chris, but I personally think that the vengeance paladin with Great weapon master and polearm master is probably the best
What level?
@@TreantmonksTemple oh yeah sorry, level 15 for this particular one shot but would love to hear your pick for the best single target damage class for a 1-20 campaign
This subclass sounded way better until I saw this video. I'm a sucker for single stat builds, but this doesn't sound like it's worth it... and you can't still forget Dex because it affects a lot of your other skills...
Fighting initiate allows you to get the fighter feat Unarmed Fighting.
This brings your unarmed attacks to 1d8 from as early as 4th level. Which means your attack and bonus action attack is 2d8 damage per turn withiut ki, and 3d8 with flurry of blows. At level 5 it's 4d8 force with flurry. Switch to a different fighting style when your martial die equals the d8.
Wisdom focus on ability scores will allow you to stunning more often.
As always, thanks for your esquisite and balanced reviews. They are greatly helpful. In the last few days I re-rewatched your whole wizards build series. The Illusionist Kenku Is still one of your best build in my opinion. Keep It up!!
Thank you for your feedback and good advice. Happy new year!
11:00 I recall seeing an interview with crawford where he said that the reason devil's sight doesn't work in dim light is because it makes the ability strange and spooky instead of just being better darkvision, so the same kind of reason probably applies here with astral sight.
Yes, he mentioned that in a tweet
Sounds a bit to me like he's just making up a reason for what is actually a rules oversight to argue that "It's not a bug, it's a feature," but that's just my opinion.
@@shanebernier2483 Considering that there are a number of features that work this way spread across several books and none of them have gotten an errata, I wouldn't assume that it was an accident.
I realized a lot of what you explained in the video but I still want to play it just because of how cool the it is.
THIS right here should be the core of every character. Having fun isn't just crunching numbers.
Monks are the martial arts expert that are in King Fu movies by the hundreds.
Fighter is Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Bruce Lee in the same movie.
Looking at your baseline analysis, I've got to say one of the (many) reasons why monk has looked pretty good in season 2 of Critical Role is that the homebrew subclass gives both combat bonuses (giving a limited peak at the monster statblock for free when you hit with flurry of blows, a non-damage buff that helps everyone) and out of combat abilities that DM Matt has ensured will be used and feel useful (investigation expertise, roleplay opportunities not available to non-organization members).
Without having done the math myself, it seems like taking the Fighting Initiate feat and choosing the Unarmed Fighting fighting style might make this subclass more viable. It's certainly not without cost, though.
It would bring your unarmed attack damage to a d8, putting you one damage dice below the longsword while also increasing the damage of your Flurry of Blows. It comes at the cost of a +1 ASI half feat, so you won't be able to start with an 18 in anything. I haven't actually crunched out how much of a net positive or negative impact that has, but my gut reaction is that in the early levels--and ONLY in the early levels--it makes this subclass far more viable. It's not a total waste later, but it's certainly not a rockstar feat. My best guess is at level 8 or 12 you swap it over to the Superior Technique fighting style for a couple of maneuvers, since at that point your Martial Arts dice has caught up with your d8 feat damage.
The fighting style also gives a d4 grapple damage, which looks like it has some surface level synergy with the WIS-based grapple checks, but it's just a d4 so it doesn't really seem worth building anything around.
Even if you do that, the Astral Self is no better than any other monk who chose to take the same feat in terms of damage dealing. On top of that, at level 5+ other monks actually get a bigger damage boost from the Dueling fighting style, which Astral Self can't apply to its arms.
Yup, you're not wrong, I've been thinking about that after posting this. Way of Mercy is just straight up better, but if there were some more effective way to leverage the +5 WIS I think this subclass could at least be viable
@@James-lz1in If it worked like the Hexblade's stat change (available at level 1, no resources or action required, applies to weapons) then I could see it being good for dip from Druids or Clerics who want to be better in melee. As is though no WIS class wants to give up 3 levels of spell progression to be better with a 1d4 weapon that uses up their bonus action and a limiter resource just to switch on.
Astral Self probably needs to change the base monk features to use wisdom so they can actually dump dex; Unarmored Defense is 10+2*WIS and Deflect Missiles uses the Astral Arms. I don't know what level makes sense, but it would be nice if it was level 3.
@@brennennestvogel3983 yeah, the other problem is your first two levels of monk still need DEX.
Starting with a bugbear and one level dip in fighter for the unarmed style could be interesting.
Could also take the feat at level 4.
@@dragonhearthx8369 Look at the feat requirements again.
@@because4337 short swords are martial weapons
@@dragonhearthx8369 It looks as though the app I normally use to look things up has incorrectly listed the prerequisites.
@@because4337 I use "5e Character" by The Dungeon Developer. On android.
dumb question:
instead of having the martial arts die increase with steps (1d4->1d6->1d8->1d10), why not have it increase as multiple dice? 1d4->2d4->3d4->4d4? At the same levels of 1, 5, 11, 17? Or if that is way too much, mix the two in some ways, 1d4->1d6->2d4->2d6.
3.5 had a better progression on martial arts, but it got completely screwed over to make it """simple""".
You can do all sorts of stuff to make the martial arts die not shit, but +1d4 each time is elegant and easy for players to remember. Good call.
IMHO this is what the level 11 ability of the Astral Monk should have done. Instead of adding to one attack, it should add to all attacks. I haven’t done the math, but it feels like that would help out a lot on damage at later levels. Doesn’t fix the subclass completely, but would help a ton.
My guess would be too much damage per round. Taking the highest level and using flurry of blows for a total of 4 attacks.
d10: [5.5 (avg) + 5 mod]*4 = 42 dpr
4d4: [2.5 (avg)*4 + 5 mod]*4 = 60 dpr
Now add crits with doubling die and it gets even more skewed. But maybe this change would make monks more viable?
@@Exterminator5k that wouldn’t make up for the -3 to hit and -3 to damage monks get by not using +3 weapons at that level. A fighter with a +3 Greatsword does 8d6+32 compared to a monk using their fists getting 16d4+20 or if they use a +3 weapon for two attacks 16d4+26.
8d6+32= 60
16d4+20= 60
16d4+26= 66
This means 6 extra damage with two of the attacks losing 15% chance to hit.
I don’t think it’s unbalanced by any means considering the Fighter would also have magic armor on, could do 8 attacks easily twice a short rest (if not more also easily), that the fighter gets two additional ASI’s and we haven’t even factored in subclasses.
@@keeganmbg6999 I completely agree, compared to other melee classes monk lags way behind. Especially if we factor in PAM and GWM, and certain classes don't even have to spend resources to achieve these higher numbers.
I was just guessing that WotC do not want monks to be top damage as they have other skills like stunning strike, and utility (disengage/dodge BA, slow fall, etc.). Not saying that these skills/utility make up for the damage disparity. That's why I think the Xd4 option might make monks more viable/attractive.
Devil's advocate, monks could do the figurative 60 dmg at lvl 17 with no eqpt. While fighters would have to wait until 20 with +3 gear (depending on DM might not be possible) to do the same 60 dmg.
I know this isn't a fix for every situation, but the addition of the unarmed fighting style from Tasha's is absolutely a MUST have. Im waiting on a campaign to start to play a Variant Human Astral Monk. I'd love you you to do a build
Hi TM, about your video "monk sucks", i respect your well presented arguments but i feel monks arent designed to be specialists, so i dont expect them to excel at anything, they can do a bit of everything and im ok with that. Of course because of them being generalists, they fit best as a supporting PC in a party where all the roles are covered.
Im actually playing a Kensei with the tasha optional feats (my party: Paladin as tank/face, Rogue as striker/exploration, Tasha's Ranger as archer/exploration, Warlock as ranged magic/face) and im having fun and feeling useful. He contributes to the "Role pilar" with his high insight, reading people and informing to the party; contributes to the "exploration pilar" with his high perception; and in combat starts to harass the enemy with his longbow, repositioning with his mobility to not be hit until the Paladin engages, then switch to longsword and acts as a striker (i play Vhuman with mobile feat, i really need this to be a striker, if you play monk as a melee fighter youll be decimated in seconds). Because of his high mobility, he can be wherever is needed in his turn and then reposition himself out of danger, sometimes focusing fire with the frontline, sometimes helping the warlock if being harassed, sometime helping to take out ranged enemies.
Im just level 4 and im going full striker, i picked the "slasher" feat to get some debuffing (i know, im losing 1 point of AC and 1 DC to stunning strike because of the wis ASI, but since i have mobile, agile parry and i will use SS only for casters and vulnerable foes, i dont really care). As an archer i think ill be decent with 2 attacks per turn (3 with ki fueled attack if i use deft strike or focused aim) scaled to 1d10+1d4+DEX because Kensei Weapon+Kensei shot, and im working with my DM in some magic swords wishlist (im thinking in sword of wounding or flametongue). My weapons could become +3 in big boss battles, adding damage consistency. Not excepting to be the best archer or melee, but being versatile and helpful.
I would be very grateful if you can revisit Kensei-post Tasha, i think the damage is better now with ki-fueled attacks, you become a better archer also, making you more versatile and feeling more like a "weapon master" and you can make better use of magic weapons in comparison to other monk subclasses. I even heared Sharpshooter is now viable with Kensei, but i havent tried. And magic tattoos seems interesting for all monks, specially the eldritch claw and blood fury ones damage-wise.
P.D. Sorry for the grammar, english is not my mother language.
100% agree with this. I watched the videos but whenever I actually play with a monk in the party they consistently do very well. I usually DM. In this case there's a Long Death wood elf monk. His insane mobility allows him to be everywhere in the battlefield and also catch up to enemies who try to flee. On 3 separate occasions I've tried to run with strong enemies i wanted to bring back and he just outpaces them. The party is level 5. Since he's able to get temp hp every time he kills a creature it adds a nice level of tankiness which means he goes down less. In addition, deflect missiles is very strong. I literally can't damage him with ranged attacks. Had devils with spikes, cultists with bows, nothing. Not to mention the occasional stunning strike which lands, slow fall, and the new tashas abilities, plus the elven accuracy feat! And off combat he's also very useful with survival, tracking, insight, etc. So far, I'm not seeing anything at all about the monk that is any less effective than the rest of the party. And this is basic monk. No multiclass shenanigans or homebrew.
@@xaosoax81 good to know someone else is having fun with monks. About deflect missiles, remember is a reaction, so you just need a second arrow to hit after the feat is used and you cant reduce the damage. Same if the monk did an opportunity attack that round. P.D. in my game last night i catched a couple of arrows, was soooo funny.
I see this all the time about dim light, but I think there are two easy fixes: 1. Its easily implied that if you can see in darkness you can see in dim light. 2. Even if there is a so called RAW ruling from Crawford, house rule it and move on. Its not something to worry about or think too hard on. I always get confused when the obvious "solution" is ignored and people go "wow this is soooo difficult, terrible, etc." CLEARLY if you can see in darkness dim light shouldnt be an issue...lol.
With Multiclassing and Feats, Way of the Astral Self could work pretty well with a 1 Lv Dip into War Cleric and 2 Levels of Fighter. The Unarmed Fighting Style also works wonders on the early levels
You see this right here? This is why you don't go talking about how the new UA monk is incredibly powerful and going to break the game before release, because the designers will change it and make it useless.
*Look how they massacred my boy*
People refusing to believe that the monk chassis sucks is the root cause of the Astral Monk being unplayable. Blame the people who think they're actually helping the monk by going 'yeah, but when we were fighting this squishy BBEG spellcaster with no Legendary Resistance and I was full of ki points, I was MVP'.
@@maltheopia People act like as if there is only one fight per short rest for most people. You will probably have 2 or 3 once you reach level 5 (at low levels you probably get bumfucked if you don't but still) and then when you spread out those ki points suddenly the monk doing 3 attacks of 1d6+4 around isn't great because everyone else has a way to do additional damage every round.
@@moto2442 And they buffed the already really good Peace and Twilight domains. Let's just face it: the game designers accidentally hating on monks is a tradition dating back to Gygax modern game designers are still honoring.
Way of Mercy is my favorite!!! I love healing and the damage
14:50 "Don't assume a L17 Monk will have a good armor class compared to others" They'll have 20+magic items. Unless your DM is handing out +3 armor they'll be competitive even before this.
Literally every martial class except Monk and Rogue has been able to rock a 19 AC or better since level 1 without expending any resources or using any magical equipment, and they all have more health to boot. Those numbers also continue to rise with the use of class features in most cases, and they have broader access to magical AC boosts. Heck, some of the casters can beat a 20 AC passively as well before magic items, and they don't have to stand in melee with it.
So, knowing that we can overcharge the subclass a bit because base monk is weak, what if:
Level 3: You get two bonus arms you can attack/grapple with, using wisdom instead of the relevant stat with +5ft reach, once per turn when making an unarmed attack your arms each attack once.
Level 6: When spending ki to summon your arms you can summon a spectral visage instead (or alongside of them) for free. The powers of the visage are unchanged. Optional feature: Your arms count as +1 weapons.
Level 11: Deflect Energy, when taking non physical (piercing, blunt, slashing) damage you can get resistance to that damage type until the end of your next turn a number of times per short rest equal to your wisdom modifier, no action required. Empowered arms replaced with Astral Barrage, when using the attack action you can attack three times instead of two as long as at least one of these attacks is made by the arms. Optional feature, your arms count as +2 weapons.
Level 17: When spending ki to summon both your arms and visage you can summon alongside them your astral body at no additional costs. Armor of the spirit, unchanged. Optional feature, your arms count as +3 weapons. Astral Barrage replaced with Empowered arms, choose two:
Empowered Astral Arms: You gain two more astral arms, allowing you to attack four more times total when making an unarmed attack (can be taken twice)
Astral Sword: Bonus reach increased to 10ft, damage increased to 2d6.
Astral Shield: AC increased by 2, gain the benefits of the Protection fighting style, for its purposes your Astral Shield counts as a shield and you can choose an ally between 10ft of you instead of 5ft.
Astral Bindings: You gain advantage on grapple checks and creatures grappled by your arms cannot teleport away.
Astral Juggernaut: When summoning your arms you gain HP (increasing your HP total) equal to your usual max hp (doubling your effective hp) and can use your wisdom modifier for strength, dexterity and constitution saving throws, you also gain advantage on these saving throws.
Would that be more acceptable or going way too far the other way?
I'm not sure without running the math
It seems to me that the first ability "You use Wisdom instead of Strength for strength checks" would apply when making a Grapple attack : "Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use)."
Any reason why it doesn't?
I thought the lvl 11 ability gave you an extra die on each attack not once per turn. Thats completely awful. Thanks for the video
There is something that Tasha's added that is great for the monk. A feat that gives a fighting style and a new fighting style called "unarmed fighting" which turns your unarmed strike to a D8
The only issue with that is that the monk's unarmed damage die will surpass that d8 in later levels. When you feel like you need a feed for it to be good that's just bad design.
@@rylandvarney5218 yeah but that's at 17th level. Most games don't go that high
@@rylandvarney5218 you get a d8 with martial arts at 11th level... And then you change the fighting style you picked at 12th for Blind Fighting or something more useful. No worries there
By level 5 you get a higher DPR by using a one handed weapon and Dueling with your monk than by using Unarmed Fighting. It is pretty solid levels 1-4 if you started with a feat though.
I think a number of monk subclasses rank high on the "fun" scale, as long as you're not overly concerned about the crunch. Shadow monk has infinite teleports and a couple good spell-like abilities. Both Silence and Pass Without Trace had a big influence on my party's success when the monk used them.
Yeah, as long as you can keep yourself from comparing, a monk can be fun! And yes, I think Shadow is probably best monk, because if you're not going to do awesome damage or pull off SSs, you might as well be doing buff/utility, and shadow monk spells on SR resources are great. A ranger/lock would be better, but that wouldn't come online at lvl 3.
Easy fix:
level 2: arms of the astral self add your wisdom to damage.
Level 7: armour adds 1 martial die, temporary hp.
Level 11: when you take the attack action, each attack adds an extra martial arts die to damage
I think for all of your videos about monks, you should end it with
"I'm gonna sit back, relax, and have some fun, because I'm not playing monks"
But mercy monk was one that he enjoyed lol
"Lets talk about the bad stuff; lets get started with the Astral monk". Sums up the rest of the video really.
I agree that Tasha's astral monk is terrible. UA astral monk was a late bloomer class but I think a pretty good one. As far as I was concerned, astral monk was okayish at lv 3 as it could operate wis heavy which would make stunning strike better once that came into play but the ki cost hurts. It is something that'd improve later. The level 6 ability was pretty weak as well. However, I think it started to bloom at 11 with a deflect energy that was twice as strong as the Tasha's version and the extra hit on astral arms which turned that 2-3 ki investment into 10 mins of flurry of blows without further expenditure. This more or less made lv 11 UA astral monk into the most ki conservative monk, free to spam the other ki abilities without worry. Then at 17 they get the much stronger complete form which pushes their downpaid flurry of blows to triple shots and became a prolific mob clearer with the ability to regain ki though the initial ability cost a lot more. I think that it'd be interesting to run the numbers between UA astral monk and Tasha's astral monk. I imagine the damage output would favor the Tasha's version in early play but for anything 11 and beyond, the UA version would hit a massive power spike and I think is pretty good for late game play. Personally, I tell my players that if anything interests them in UA, they can ask and I'll approve it on case by case basis and I'll just stick to the UA astral monk.
Speaking of being effective in ways other than damage: You have done the ultimate Tank build before, but what is (in your opinion) the ultimate support build. I am not talking about pure healing, but a character that helps the party in multiple ways in combat (and out of it). I really enjoyed playing Divine Sorcerer for Bless and twin Haste, but I want to know your opinion on build options that do that better.
Homebrew as an NPC with added Astral Reach to "Mage Slayer" a niche githzerai class that hunts mages who oppose the lich queen!
Sentinel makes any Astral Self a great control build.
I agree with everything you’re saying, but hear me out here... in the Word of the Spirit ability it says that you can make it so that a specific creature of your choice can hear you. Although it’s functionality telepathy, you are actually talking. What if a caster multiclasses into monk for 6 levels, casts darkness so it can’t be seen, while still being able to see through the darkness and using this ability to make it so that only the monk’s allies can hear the verbal components, making it so nothing can be counterspelled and they have advantage on all spell attacks while they throw spells left and right. Not amazing but a pretty cool interaction
Neat, I'll give it that. Not sure I'd ever go 6 levels deep into monk and use concentration on darkness when 3 levels in sorcerer gets the same thing from subtle spell without losing spell slots or concentration, but...
@@shanebernier2483 100%, but it’s a pretty cool meme build
Very interesting that way of the astral self is worse in combat than a way of mercy monk! One thing I wonder, and this occupies a racial choice (as well as a rulebook, for Adventurer's League) is how much better a drow astral self monk would do? The ability to see in magical darkness (which, thanks for pointing out how it sucks way of shadows can't do!) and gain advantage may help, but at a heavy cost limited to only some enemies.
AA Monk can work but you basically need the Variant race and grab the Fight technique Unarmed Fighter. This could turn you into a single attribute monk, I agree I like mercy more as its not situationally good but you could take 4 attacks at level 3 that have a 10 foot reach and are force damage, yes its limited but i think arguable they could deal respectable damage from 3 to 9 if built this way
Really looking forward to your Ranger videos. I’ve been looking at options for melee rangers (don’t want to just do archery every time) and it looks like the new subclasses may be good for that.
With optimization, this can be ok. Unarmed fighting style makes the astral arms palatable at d8s, being a race that can access Darkness gives an excellent use to the level 6 ability, and in theory it would multiclass decently with druids or clerics on account of being wisdom dependent. If you get astral arms and divine favor from 1 level of War Cleric, and the fighting style feat from vhuman, you could deal at level 6 4d8+4d4+16. Which is reasonable but requires a lot of setup.
The problem is, you could do that with any monk subclass and be more effective, but the astral monk requires an extra bonus action setup, making this very unwieldy. So it is still inferior to the other options available.
Pretty much the main thing I can see using the astral arms for is a Druid multiclass, where the ability to use bonus action attacks based on WIS while in beast shape is pretty decent.
Even the see-in-darkness thing isn’t that useful for Darkness, because the standard shadow monk 5 hexblade 2 does it better by casting darkness and hexblade’s curse in the same turn, as opposed to astral arm activation.
All in all, pretty disappointing except for Druid multiclasses.
What a shame. I was really eager to play the "Stand User" Monk, but I guess that it's just another weak choice.
By itself, yes. But with the right combination of racial features, multiclass features and feats, it can still become fun to play.
In my case, that meant: Simic Hybrid with Grappling Appendages, Echo Knight Fighter with Unarmed Fighting and Grappler.
Can't wait to see what you'll say about the ranger changes, honestly pretty impressed with most of thing things they got. Sure Favored Foe/Enemy was better in the UA since it gave hunters mark for free but as it is in the book, you do have a bonus to damage you can activate even if you're using the action and bonus action on other things.
Thanks for the great video!
Vid will be out on Monday
@@TreantmonksTemple Looking forward to it :D
What would happen if the monk's martial arts die was changed from d4/6/8/10 to d6/8/10/12? Would that be a decent enough improvement, or would it still do too little damage?
For most monks, this does even less than just starting with longsword proficiency from your race. It's only an extra 0.65 DPR (or 1.3 with FOB) until level 11 or 17 depending on their proficiencies and feats.
@@shanebernier2483 still, only some races give the weapon proficiency, so for non-elf/dwarf/etc. monks that's a d8 starting at lv 5, same as using a quarterstaff. I don't think we should assume that, because of Tasha's, all monk's are going to have longsword a or battle axes, as only multiclassing or racial proficiencies are going to give the proficiency, and I assume no one is going to take a feat for something that you ecenty won't need anymore
@@geoffreyperrin4347 Even without martial weapon proficiency, the numbers I provided still stand until level 11.
Fixes:
Add counterattack to the lvl 3. I know its kinda huge but it makes sense flavorwise and well monk and this subclass suck
Make it so that you dont need to Spend extra ki for the visage.
Make the range absolute, all time not only on your time.
Also you could further boost the AC bonus at lvl 17
I had been thinking about this for a while, the idea of Monk being not terribly strong, and I thought "I love the idea of a character punching someone, like a boxer or a brawler, but the best thing we have is Monk (and now the Unarmed Fighting Style), but what if something could do punch better?" I've actually made, and am still tinkering with, a Barbarian subclass that should hopefully do just that, giving it a strong unarmed strike that gets stronger (and heightens during Rage), having Unarmored Defense calculate differently (10 + Str Mod + Con Mod, (+ Dex Mod if Dex is negative)), and emulating some Monk-like features while keeping things close to the idea that a Barbarian is going to utilize such ability for sheer force rather than a more well-rounded martial art. It's still not 100%, and it's also untested, but I like it so far (though I admit that making a subclass to do like another class but... I don't want to say better, but different, does seem a bit petty, though with the issues Monk has, fulfilling a different archetype of the Super Strength Hero is nice)
I'm not sure if adding half your proficiency bonus to attack and damage rolls for punch as the 14th ability is too strong or not, but to me it makes these punches on par with high-level magic gear, making them into a +2, then a +3 at 17th, weapon
Also, just to mention how much the punches do, they start at d6 or d8 if not holding a weapon or shield (just like unarmed fighting style), then rage makes that d8/d10; at 6th level, it overcomes magic resistance/immunity to nonmagic bludgeoning, and the die size increases one step, so d8/d10, and rage d10/d12, so you're essentially always armed with either a warhammer equivalent, or a bludgeoning great weapon.
Also also, I apologise for advertising a homebrew I made
Visage of the astral self is kind of an update to the level 3 ability, as the same bonus action and 1 ki point brings all those feature benefits up.
Nvm it’s 1 bonus action to spend 2 ki points for both :/
You honestly opened my eyes to how lackluster this subclass is. It is a shame too considering this subclass fits perfectly for a kalashtar or Aasimar. Maybe if the arms were allowed to wield weapons? Idk, I won't pretend to understand balance considering I was so off base with thinking this subclass was really good.
I quite like this monk. Most of its weaknesses can be overcome with a little imagination. The one thing I really don't like about this monk (and mercy) is that without ki you have no subclass abilities at all.
For a long time I wanted to make a monk that had a STRONG healing ability, but stunning strike was claimed to be so powerfull that was afraid of making the monk even stronger. I never liked stunning strike, way, way to easy to resist specialy by things above lvl 7 and if you don't focus on wisdom.
So I just took it away and gave the monk a healing pool equal to 10 times it's monk lvl.
It's only more hp, hp that I have to spend actions to gain but I think the roleplay potential makes it worth it the weak enemys I may be able to stun by wasting all my ki.
I do wonder if there are some options to improve the output or survivability of these monks. I've had a couple guys trying to add hex, but I think Divine Favor would be a strictly better option for not eaten all of your bonus action.
You could get slightly higher damage using a versatile weapon. If you're playing a wood elf, that Longsword is going to go a long way with the Optional Class Features from Tasha's.
Imo. Not using unarmed (which is the point of playing a monk) is the way to improve dmg. The monk misses out on the dmg die and dmg boosts magical weapons apply. Best subclass for this is kensei.
If you realy want to go unarmed, mercy monk is best. I woulsnt go hex and divine favor as it conflicts with flurry of blows. I would consider improving your action economy to increase your dpr such as multiclassing with fighter to get action surge and a fighting style + maybe battlemaster for maneuvers and/or barbarian for reckless attack
For example if i'd want to play unarmed monk in a 10 level campaign/one-shot. I'd go 4 battlemaster, 6 mercy. I get action surge, superior technique fighting style for another superior dice maneuver, 4 superior dice maneuver from battlemaster, plus 2 feats i could use for ability score increas to 20 and maybe martial adept (for another superior dice maneuver). I get 4 attacks per round (with FOB) with the possibility to nova for 6 with action surge with all the regular attacks boosted bya superior dice maneuver when i need to kill a high priority target (as i should have 4-5 at this point).
The above build would also allow me to save ki for FOB as i wouldnt need stunning strike for debuffs as i can inflict those via hand of harm and the different maneuvers (i could possibly land prone, frightened as well).
@@TheRobversion1 The monk suffers from the unarmed thing in more ways than one. At the start of 5e, the devs wanted magical weapons to be a "maybe". If you compare the monk to martial classes (sans paladin) without magical weapons or armor of their own... they'll still get the short end of the stick but the comparison is a lot closer than what we see today where +2 weapons at least aren't so unusual.
@@nathansalvetti8232 yup. Imo. Martial classes NEED to be given magical weapons to catch up with spellcasters. At my tables generic +1, +2 weapons are common place. Especially since the advent of artificers. The dms i've played with generally give uncommon magic weapons mid way to tier 1 and rare magic weapons mid way to tier 2.
As a halfling with 8 str, I love the idea of being able to use my 20 wis for str checks.
Edit: and darkvision
Hey it’s my monk at the end with the beetle armor ^^ ! I’m luca_mosqa on Instagram
I’m proud you used my art ^^
That's an awesome picture, I really liked the pose beneath the armor.
Hey Chris, i'm looking forward you to give us your opinion on tasha's new sorcerer's subclasses. I think aberrant mind is amazing and powerful
Do you think if a DM allowed the Astral Arms to grapple, would that make the subclass any better in your eyes? Being able to grapple at a 10ft distance, and getting mileage out of a monks extra movement to drag
It would help
Why do people think the arms can’t grapple?
@@matthewconlon2388 it's something to do with the phrasing of an unarmed strike vs an attack action. I don't understand it.
@@lunathedolphin6748 The first bullet point about making strength checks covers grappling. You declare attack action, you decide if any and how many of your attacks will be grapples, check is made with Wisdom via the arms. Grappling doesn't involve attack or damage rolls, so the later bullet has no bearing.
People say they can't grapple with the arms because grappling is not listed as something you can do with the arms... it's unfortunate really. I had the idea that I could grapple with them and move my enemy 10 feet away from me to prevent getting melee attacked.
..
I would be interested in Treantmonk's opinion of a Tortle Astral Self Monk. Their AC is pretty much fixed anyway.
I think that with a Tortle's fixed AC, a person could completely dump Strength and Dexterity, and make a Wisdom only Monk, making them less MAD, and finally forcing a decent Save for Stunning Strike. Just an idea.
Eh... the only base stat Monk need other than SEX or WIs already is CON for more health. Tortles have a higher AC than most monks at low levels, but are behind by level 8 and at this point only have 8 more HP. Sure you could dump in several feats, but those won't make up for your lost damage from not using weapons or for your lower AC. Unfortunately there jut aren't a lot of feats that give Monks much benefit.
In the way of mercy monk video I think you misunderstood the new monks ability that allows you to do an unarmed strike as a bonus action whenever you use any ki. Do you think that would effect the monks baseline damage much or did you already factor that in? As always love your content!
It won't affect this subclass at all because the ki expenditure is using your bonus action
It helps the damage output for monks like Kensei, Shadows, and Four Elements who could not use their bonus action on Martial Arts in some situations. This is actually decent for some Kensei builds, but in general isn't enough to save these subclasses.
It helps monks that will spend ki as part of their attack (like way of Mercy) a tiny bit, but only by a tiny bit at most levels.
It helps Astral Self and Sun Soul least of all, because both of these are ostensibly supposed to be playing at a range and with a type of attack where making weapons attacks with a bonus action isn't something they can use unless they are choosing not to use their subclass features.