I had an idea for a character that was a werewolf who follows the way of the Astral Self to suppress his curse. I thought it seemed appropriate given the whole "separating spirit from body" theme. I thought it would be cool if he didn't transform, but his Astral form still looked like a werewolf.
You can go 19 astral monk and 1 fighter (mariner to get that plus 1 AC, and Jotaro turned into a marine biologist which makes this reasonable). Start as human variant for the tough feat and prioritize your wisdow, dumb strength (with proficiency on athletics and on the saving throw dumbing it is not a problem). If you go standard point array you can cap WIS by lvl 8/9 (if you get the fighter lvl earlier) and cap your DEX by the end, although I woul leave DEX at 18, since mariner cover it, and invest a bit more in con. By the end of the build you would have 20/21 base AC, an avarage of 180/200 hit points and a strong ass stand, heck even without your stand you can go "hamon user" since your fists are magical and as strong as your stand, you don't suffer from old age, can't get poisoned and walk on water.
This class reminds me of the Susanoo from Naruto, in the sense where you summon an astral or force warrior that extends your reach and enhances your defense
It's good to be backloaded.. because monks early with flurry are so front loaded in the base class, and suck at higher levels. This subclass is so good at helping them build back up instead of fading away.
We are going to cover every single subclass in 5e then move into unearthed arcana and new classes as they come out, so stay tuned and thanks for watching!
@@CamachoElMacho well for rp really. Unless you can twin cast it or something. But effect everyone is a 60 foot range but stack the word of the spirit onto it and the affected is the same but everyone in the 600ft range just heard that their mother is blah blah blah ( fill in your own insult here) which would or could put a target on the bard monk. I would allow it in my game.
f-yeah! checked yesterday to see if you had a video on this but couldn't find it. Trying to make a character for a monk and a ranger, classes i don't like, and this was the only monk class i would want to play.
I was playing a mercy monk and my party took a evil kobolt and any time he would disobey my party I would hand of harm him and when he made up for it I would hand of heal him...he ended up killing a river hag for us 🙃
Man, such a cool concept for a subclass. But I really can't get behing the execution. The ki costs alone make me never want to play it, which just leaves me kind of sad. Thanks for always reviewing all these subclasses! I love getting to see breakdowns and other people's thoughts. It doesn't always change my opinion, but just hearing a different view can be enough for me to appreciate something a whole lot more than I did
But the Arms have the added benefit of allowing you to perform strength saves and skill checks using your Wisdom mod. So you can grapple someone with Wis, and then beat them to death with your ghost hands.
Geez. Cant even get threw the video and I already have a character concept for Astral Monk. A warforge (cant remember if a warforge can keep his armor and the monk ac bonus, if it cant. Take the armor) that had its arms ripped off from the shoulders. Monks found him/her....it? And did the best they have could. So the warforge helped out around the monastery doing what it could. But is learning the spiritual way of the monk. Blah blah blah. Goes adventuring. A no armed monk that still kicks butt. Could use just about any humanoid race. But for flavor. My brain went with a warforge. Its astral armor looks like its armor before it got "forcibly removed" along with its arms. For visuals, think Sym-Bionic Titan Ok brain overworked now. Have fun kiddies! Lmao
im doing that but multiclass with wild magic barbarian. essentially i am being the energizer bunny. If a spellcaster runs out of spell slots ill give them one on a d3 roll.
Looking for a second opinion, I have a DM who like to counter our character strength with weak excuses to make the fight harder. Like giving no short rest for warlocks and having all fights take in well lit places so l gloom stalker are nerfed. We have a one shot coming up and with new level 10 character. I'm trying to find a fun sub class that he can't easily nerf. I'm thinking Wild Magic barbarian, any other suggestions,
Ya if your dm is really making it hard to play a class you made, you need to bring that up and talk with the rest of the party.Its a cooperative game where anyone's class can work together,you shouldn't have to work around having fun.
Hope you DM learns how to actually run a game. I’d try to focus on features that have slot of resources or are completely passive. Cavalier fighter teaming up with a rogue with the sentinel feat would be good party synergy. Cav marking a creature increases the rogues def by imposing disadvantage on that creatures attack roll vs rogue. If creature attacks rogue, it likely misses and if it hits the fighter gains a weapon attack with advantage and bonus damage on following turn. If creature attacks fighter, rogue can make a reaction attack for a 2nd chance at sneak attack in the same round. These Defense and offense features work flawlessly together, as the reaction choices are mutually exclusive.
Astral self is trash. Reach doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything with it. Also it’s reach “niche” is now easily replaced by using a whip. This subclass spends all its features to promote a play style change locked behind ki points, that is basically spending points to be a monk with no features. There’s no synergy at all. 4.5 in combat?! Where? Where is that number coming from? You rated this higher than a mercy monk? I don’t understand.
Couple points (I will try to keep it short): - "Niche Reach" A whip is a martial weapon which monks don't have prof with also a whip is only 1d4 and slashing damage (easily resisted) whereas the astral arms are force damage (one of if not the least resisted damage types) - "Playstyle locked behind ki points" basically sums up most monk subclasses as Ki points are the driving mechanic in the class. Nothing wrong with it being behind ki points, since the duration is going to be more than enough (10 min) most times and you only have to activate it at the start of a fight. Also, you get ki points back on short rest. - "No synergy at all" I mentioned with monk's unarmored movement, having reach can be a big deal as you can dart in and out of combat without opportunity attacks. Also, as you said, ki points are very important to the subclass (which is your main class feature). Having magical darkvision and seeing normally in darkness can be niche, but is useful especially depending on how your DM runs things - "4.5 in combat?! Where?" See above responses, but also a few additional things: being able to reduce elemental damage every as a reaction turn can add up very quickly and save healers spell slots. An extra martial arts die of damage every turn is small, but again, it adds up over time. At 17, +2 to AC and a third attack is also nothing to sneeze at. This is especially true when you are able to focus purely on Wisdom score of 20 making stunning strike a respectable 19 DC giving you advantage on your 4 or 5 attacks. When you are attacking 4/5 times a turn with advantage, you are going to be doing 45/55 damage per round pretty reliably (not even considering critical hits or the creature being stunned for allies to wail on them). I do have to admit that I scored this MUCH lower initially, but Alex was able to convince me otherwise. - "You rated higher than Mercy Monk?" Technically, they have the same total score of 10.5, we just gave Mercy a higher synergy score and astral a higher combat score. In terms of power, they are somewhat comparable. Wow that wasn't really short at all...lol. Hope that makes it a bit clearer for our thought processes! Thanks for watching!
@@URGE they are not comparable. The only combat boosts the astral monk actually gets start at level 11. I brought up whips because with tashas new race guidelines, it’s incredibly easy to get proficiency with a martial weapon without sacrificing stat allocation, and was a major buff to the monk class as a whole. This one buff far outstrips anything this subclass has to offer offensively until level 17, unacceptable. Magical dark vision is niche, and even in that niche you may not be able to make use of it due to ki point limitations. Spending 1 ki point to “effectively” make use of a slightly higher DC targeting a bad save attribute is not nearly as effective as being able to force that save a second time for the same ki cost. Everyone complained about this monk in the UA as being over powered, and as a consequence not only was it over nerfed, the entire subclass is designed around a concept that bypasses the base class feature updates needed to make the monk competitive with other classes/subclasses. This monks can’t effectively make use of the dedicated weapons or ki-fueled attack which are almost necessary for almost all monk subclasses to be competitive in a combat capacity. The extra martial die on a single hit should have been a level 3 feature.
Tottaly agree with bobby. Until lvl11 u better use a quaterstaff has better dmg than unarmed strike, and if u do that u should focus on dex20 other wise your worse than a monk without a subclass. After lvl 11 imagine u went wis20 fine now u are dealing the same damage than everyone else. At lvl 11 u get +1martial die/turn damage. Wich at lvl11 d8 plus damage is not that much. So until lvl 17 your damage is still bad in combat and now u get some good features. At lvl 17 in reality not many game you gonna play with it anyways. Darkvision is always nice but u cant cast yourself darkness spell so in combat rearly usefull since you need a friend who can cast it and also see in the drakness which is niche skill. So the only thing u got yourself is the reach on behalf sacrificing dmg from lvl1-11. If u want to get reach that much just start a bugbear and u wont have to play 11 lvl just to be as good than everyone else or just take the mobil feat. This class until lvl17 can almost be replaced by 1 feat. Deflect energy is nice at least it could add up. Focusing on wis might seem good but at lvl 12 u can get wis 18 easly anyway so whats the point w8ing 11 lvls just to be slightly better at 11-12. I also like to rate skill higher when you get it earlier getting a skill that is just good at lvl 17 is meh. On that bombshell i think this subclass is weak no where near 4,5. sry for my english gram.. bla bla bla
While reach is pretty good... This subclass is pretty weak.. it spends most of it's features on getting the concept up to a level equal to a regular monk and doesn't get any real benefits untill high level. This is a problem similar to yh sun soul monk where they don't really get any substantial benefits initially because all it's points are spent on the basics. All monks get magical attacks.. the astral monk still needs Dex as well as wisdom.. honestly.. the subclass behaves like a basic monk with reach for most of it's playtime.. pretty weak. Yes the lvl 17 feature is decent but comes online way too late..should be a lvl 11 feature at the latest. Mercy is much more viable in combat since it actually enhances the monks damage output and adds the poison condition
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I had an idea for a character that was a werewolf who follows the way of the Astral Self to suppress his curse. I thought it seemed appropriate given the whole "separating spirit from body" theme. I thought it would be cool if he didn't transform, but his Astral form still looked like a werewolf.
That's awesome!
Holy crap that is badass, and I am def stealing it lol
Soo... Razor from Genshin?
So, you don’t need a complicated build for a stand? You just need an Astral monk?
That or Echo Knight. If you still rather punch things, take unarmed fighting style
You can go 19 astral monk and 1 fighter (mariner to get that plus 1 AC, and Jotaro turned into a marine biologist which makes this reasonable). Start as human variant for the tough feat and prioritize your wisdow, dumb strength (with proficiency on athletics and on the saving throw dumbing it is not a problem). If you go standard point array you can cap WIS by lvl 8/9 (if you get the fighter lvl earlier) and cap your DEX by the end, although I woul leave DEX at 18, since mariner cover it, and invest a bit more in con. By the end of the build you would have 20/21 base AC, an avarage of 180/200 hit points and a strong ass stand, heck even without your stand you can go "hamon user" since your fists are magical and as strong as your stand, you don't suffer from old age, can't get poisoned and walk on water.
I used the astral monk to create Diavolo from part 5 of jojos, it was quite fun.
Astral Self? More like STANDO POWAH-
I heard people also use it for melee magical girls
Pretty surprised Adv. on Insight and Intimidation, and Word of the Spirit didn't show up for RP Value
This class reminds me of the Susanoo from Naruto, in the sense where you summon an astral or force warrior that extends your reach and enhances your defense
I felt the same exact way and I also felt like it was a Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Flurry of Blows with this skill is just MudaMudaMudaMuda
There's monks that were killed by the Akatsuki... They used astral form
It's good to be backloaded.. because monks early with flurry are so front loaded in the base class, and suck at higher levels. This subclass is so good at helping them build back up instead of fading away.
I want this class to be so awesome. Imagine a zen monk "floating" in meditation supported by an astral self kicking a$%.
Love the series, and LOVE the beards; You guys rock!!
Thanks for watching!
Could you guys go over the phantom rogue please?
We are going to cover every single subclass in 5e then move into unearthed arcana and new classes as they come out, so stay tuned and thanks for watching!
That 6th level has the potential to put Vicious Mockery to epic proportions
How so?
@@CamachoElMacho well for rp really. Unless you can twin cast it or something. But effect everyone is a 60 foot range but stack the word of the spirit onto it and the affected is the same but everyone in the 600ft range just heard that their mother is blah blah blah ( fill in your own insult here) which would or could put a target on the bard monk.
I would allow it in my game.
@@DracosDiabolis ok now I see it. Yeah that's really fucking cool!!
Mockery Sniper!
f-yeah! checked yesterday to see if you had a video on this but couldn't find it. Trying to make a character for a monk and a ranger, classes i don't like, and this was the only monk class i would want to play.
I was playing a mercy monk and my party took a evil kobolt and any time he would disobey my party I would hand of harm him and when he made up for it I would hand of heal him...he ended up killing a river hag for us 🙃
Man, such a cool concept for a subclass. But I really can't get behing the execution.
The ki costs alone make me never want to play it, which just leaves me kind of sad.
Thanks for always reviewing all these subclasses! I love getting to see breakdowns and other people's thoughts.
It doesn't always change my opinion, but just hearing a different view can be enough for me to appreciate something a whole lot more than I did
Describing this as having a stand is more accurate, considering how we can customize how the face, hands, and body looks like
This whole sub class is a massive jojo reference.
Are, are you OK Tasha throat punching, good Lord
That’s hilarious though
Actually as a bugbear you get 15 feet reach. You forget it says AN ADDITIONAL 5 feet. JC confirmed
That is what we were trying to say, but we weren't very clear I guess xD Thanks for watching!
@@URGE mos def, I love your content
Would this pair well with gunslinger?
Zenyatta for Overwatch is for sure Astral Monk!
Finally a monk that can grapple, I'm gonna play a Vuman with skill expert athletics for crazy athletics with arms of the astral self
I think, you can't do any action with the astral arm unless do a attack. There's a sage advice talking that, I think
But the Arms have the added benefit of allowing you to perform strength saves and skill checks using your Wisdom mod.
So you can grapple someone with Wis, and then beat them to death with your ghost hands.
Why don’t you guys do Xanathar’s lost notes videos?
We plan to get caught up with all of the sourcebook options, then we will look into stuff like Unearthed Arcana and DMsGuild. Thanks for watching!
Imagine multi passing with echo knight
Geez. Cant even get threw the video and I already have a character concept for Astral Monk.
A warforge (cant remember if a warforge can keep his armor and the monk ac bonus, if it cant. Take the armor) that had its arms ripped off from the shoulders.
Monks found him/her....it? And did the best they have could. So the warforge helped out around the monastery doing what it could. But is learning the spiritual way of the monk.
Blah blah blah.
Goes adventuring.
A no armed monk that still kicks butt.
Could use just about any humanoid race. But for flavor. My brain went with a warforge. Its astral armor looks like its armor before it got "forcibly removed" along with its arms.
For visuals, think Sym-Bionic Titan
Ok brain overworked now. Have fun kiddies! Lmao
So this class is basically a excuse to play a JoJo character.
If my DM allows it, I'm definitely playing tabaxi astral self monk.
im doing that but multiclass with wild magic barbarian. essentially i am being the energizer bunny. If a spellcaster runs out of spell slots ill give them one on a d3 roll.
Thats a pretty dope idea
Any advice on my current lvl 2 tabaxi astral self monk? I feel like theres a lot of potential but depends on what the dm allows
Looking for a second opinion, I have a DM who like to counter our character strength with weak excuses to make the fight harder. Like giving no short rest for warlocks and having all fights take in well lit places so l gloom stalker are nerfed. We have a one shot coming up and with new level 10 character. I'm trying to find a fun sub class that he can't easily nerf. I'm thinking Wild Magic barbarian, any other suggestions,
Ya if your dm is really making it hard to play a class you made, you need to bring that up and talk with the rest of the party.Its a cooperative game where anyone's class can work together,you shouldn't have to work around having fun.
Hope you DM learns how to actually run a game. I’d try to focus on features that have slot of resources or are completely passive.
Cavalier fighter teaming up with a rogue with the sentinel feat would be good party synergy. Cav marking a creature increases the rogues def by imposing disadvantage on that creatures attack roll vs rogue. If creature attacks rogue, it likely misses and if it hits the fighter gains a weapon attack with advantage and bonus damage on following turn. If creature attacks fighter, rogue can make a reaction attack for a 2nd chance at sneak attack in the same round.
These Defense and offense features work flawlessly together, as the reaction choices are mutually exclusive.
I wouldn't be to hard on him, He is trying
tortle astral self monk
aarakroca astral monk.. fly around with arms out and do fly buy pummeling
stuff and things
pixy character on some Saitama vs Subterranean biz
I say jojo’s bizarre adventure going on rn
Astral self is trash. Reach doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything with it. Also it’s reach “niche” is now easily replaced by using a whip.
This subclass spends all its features to promote a play style change locked behind ki points, that is basically spending points to be a monk with no features. There’s no synergy at all.
4.5 in combat?! Where? Where is that number coming from?
You rated this higher than a mercy monk? I don’t understand.
Couple points (I will try to keep it short):
- "Niche Reach" A whip is a martial weapon which monks don't have prof with also a whip is only 1d4 and slashing damage (easily resisted) whereas the astral arms are force damage (one of if not the least resisted damage types)
- "Playstyle locked behind ki points" basically sums up most monk subclasses as Ki points are the driving mechanic in the class. Nothing wrong with it being behind ki points, since the duration is going to be more than enough (10 min) most times and you only have to activate it at the start of a fight. Also, you get ki points back on short rest.
- "No synergy at all" I mentioned with monk's unarmored movement, having reach can be a big deal as you can dart in and out of combat without opportunity attacks. Also, as you said, ki points are very important to the subclass (which is your main class feature). Having magical darkvision and seeing normally in darkness can be niche, but is useful especially depending on how your DM runs things
- "4.5 in combat?! Where?" See above responses, but also a few additional things: being able to reduce elemental damage every as a reaction turn can add up very quickly and save healers spell slots. An extra martial arts die of damage every turn is small, but again, it adds up over time. At 17, +2 to AC and a third attack is also nothing to sneeze at. This is especially true when you are able to focus purely on Wisdom score of 20 making stunning strike a respectable 19 DC giving you advantage on your 4 or 5 attacks. When you are attacking 4/5 times a turn with advantage, you are going to be doing 45/55 damage per round pretty reliably (not even considering critical hits or the creature being stunned for allies to wail on them). I do have to admit that I scored this MUCH lower initially, but Alex was able to convince me otherwise.
- "You rated higher than Mercy Monk?" Technically, they have the same total score of 10.5, we just gave Mercy a higher synergy score and astral a higher combat score. In terms of power, they are somewhat comparable.
Wow that wasn't really short at all...lol. Hope that makes it a bit clearer for our thought processes! Thanks for watching!
@@URGE they are not comparable. The only combat boosts the astral monk actually gets start at level 11. I brought up whips because with tashas new race guidelines, it’s incredibly easy to get proficiency with a martial weapon without sacrificing stat allocation, and was a major buff to the monk class as a whole. This one buff far outstrips anything this subclass has to offer offensively until level 17, unacceptable.
Magical dark vision is niche, and even in that niche you may not be able to make use of it due to ki point limitations.
Spending 1 ki point to “effectively” make use of a slightly higher DC targeting a bad save attribute is not nearly as effective as being able to force that save a second time for the same ki cost.
Everyone complained about this monk in the UA as being over powered, and as a consequence not only was it over nerfed, the entire subclass is designed around a concept that bypasses the base class feature updates needed to make the monk competitive with other classes/subclasses.
This monks can’t effectively make use of the dedicated weapons or ki-fueled attack which are almost necessary for almost all monk subclasses to be competitive in a combat capacity.
The extra martial die on a single hit should have been a level 3 feature.
I tend to share opinions with you guys, but here I agree with Bobby. It seems a quite weak subclass in terms of combat. I like the flavor though.
Tottaly agree with bobby. Until lvl11 u better use a quaterstaff has better dmg than unarmed strike, and if u do that u should focus on dex20 other wise your worse than a monk without a subclass. After lvl 11 imagine u went wis20 fine now u are dealing the same damage than everyone else. At lvl 11 u get +1martial die/turn damage. Wich at lvl11 d8 plus damage is not that much.
So until lvl 17 your damage is still bad in combat and now u get some good features. At lvl 17 in reality not many game you gonna play with it anyways.
Darkvision is always nice but u cant cast yourself darkness spell so in combat rearly usefull since you need a friend who can cast it and also see in the drakness which is niche skill.
So the only thing u got yourself is the reach on behalf sacrificing dmg from lvl1-11.
If u want to get reach that much just start a bugbear and u wont have to play 11 lvl just to be as good than everyone else or just take the mobil feat. This class until lvl17 can almost be replaced by 1 feat.
Deflect energy is nice at least it could add up.
Focusing on wis might seem good but at lvl 12 u can get wis 18 easly anyway so whats the point w8ing 11 lvls just to be slightly better at 11-12.
I also like to rate skill higher when you get it earlier getting a skill that is just good at lvl 17 is meh.
On that bombshell i think this subclass is weak no where near 4,5.
sry for my english gram.. bla bla bla
While reach is pretty good... This subclass is pretty weak..
it spends most of it's features on getting the concept up to a level equal to a regular monk and doesn't get any real benefits untill high level.
This is a problem similar to yh sun soul monk where they don't really get any substantial benefits initially because all it's points are spent on the basics.
All monks get magical attacks.. the astral monk still needs Dex as well as wisdom.. honestly.. the subclass behaves like a basic monk with reach for most of it's playtime.. pretty weak.
Yes the lvl 17 feature is decent but comes online way too late..should be a lvl 11 feature at the latest.
Mercy is much more viable in combat since it actually enhances the monks damage output and adds the poison condition