So Monk is the one class we didn’t get a prior UA for, which means all the changes are totally new. I’m still wrapping my head around it. Martial Arts die increase: good. Martial Arts die not affecting weapons: bad. Step of the Wind buff: good. Stunning Strike nerf: bad but reasonable?
I feel like they knew Monks needed help, but it doesn’t really seem like they made as much effort to fix that as I think they really needed to. Anything I might be missing that saves the Class here?
Saw a comment yesterday that really rung true to me about monk: “We finally have a versatile, interesting monk! …All it took was for it to be a bard subclass” (referring to the college of dance, which gets unarmored defense and unarmed strikes)
On a serious note, though, overall the monk is pretty bleh IMO. It nerfed the monks strongest ability (stunning strike), which was not unexpected, but it gets little in the way to make up for it, which i feel is going to leave the monk behind overall.
At least 4 elements looks like it could actually be fun, now.
The new 4 elements looks awesome. The ability to switch damage types will be super fun to avoid resistances and pile on vulnerabilities which really supports team play and in game research which I love. I love the crown control with the push and pull on these strikes at 10 ft. which is also a great teamwork play.
For me, the fact that the reach of unarmed strikes increase by 10 ft is enough for me to be interested.
Same. Extended reach with elemental damage for 1 discipline point. Count me in
I dunno, I’m not sold on it. I feel like it got less interesting and still doesn’t seem super strong. I might be underrating the forced movement, perhaps.
Forced movement + the flying ability= air juggling enemies and letting them drop to the ground. Could be pretty fun and potent
The flying ability is pretty sick, I’ll admit. The thing is abilities above 10th level are realistically hardly gonna get used, since most games don’t go that high, and even if they do they’re probably close to ending. I do think the high level abilities of the Elemental Monk are cool, but the lower ones look worse to me than of the other subclasses.
I do think Shadow looks pretty great now.
Yeah, high level abilities are always dicey to talk about due to no one ever really using them.
That said, I do think both the shadow monk and elemental have had a significant boost compared to 2014 phb. Also, they fixed the shadow monk being unable to see through their own darkness, which was always my biggest issue with it.
I guess I’m disappointed with them turning Four Elements, which was flavorful and interesting but seriously undertuned, into a pretty generic-looking Monk subclass that isn’t really doing anything new or unique, even if it is stronger. Just isn’t how I would have liked it to be handled, really. There are a lot of cool homebrew reworks of the subclass that are balanced and still interesting.
Yea Bard is absolutely nuts in this UA. The gap between Bard and Monk was pretty huge already, but now you can really feel it.
I agree, Stunning Strike nerf isn’t unreasonable but they needed to make up for it better than they did.
I love the college of dance. It looks like so much fun to play and able to support in such a new unique way. It was the combo that I didn’t know I wanted.
So that’s why the boosted the martial arts die! So it wasn’t straight up outclassed by bardically inspired fists. 😂
They also nerfed weapons.
You get mastery, but since they no longer follow your martial arts die, by 5th level you need to 2H wield a staff or spear just to keep up with the damage progression. Then you get force damage on unarmed strikes at level 6…
Unless your dm blesses you with a suitable magic simple weapon, or you really want the mastery effects, you are disincentivized from using weapons entirely. Which stinks if you want to theme your monk around a signature weapon a la TMNT.
Let’s break down mastery on simple weapons while we are at it.
Speaking of grappling, using Dex instead of Strength for grapple really needs to be added to Martial Arts
I kind of don’t see the point of monks getting weapon mastery without the scaling dice since it’s always lower damage. But if it scales it’s always better. It’s a real dilemma
Yes, it is a dilemma. Though, a lot of monk features still focus on unarmed attacks, either as a trigger (empowered strike, elemental attunement) or an effect (bonus attack, FoB, improved shadow step, environmental burst…), so they are not going to vanish from play.
Maybe if they made is clear that the the martial arts die may replace all of a weapons damage dice it would be less abusable. Then again, Fighters can get 4 attacks with a flame tongue greatsword, and then action surge. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Maybe it is just an experiment, or maybe they are holding it back as a Kensai subclass feature.
I like a monk with crowd control options so in general I like the idea of the prone and push options. Just needs to figure how it plays at the table if it’s worth the drop in damage