D&D (2024) Monk Playtest

[shadowoflameth]

With the play tests ongoing and Warriors likely to come soon, I've been thinking about the Monk, and what I might recommend based on what we've seen of One D&D so far.

My thoughts:
Martial Arts. Generally a good ability. Give the Monk a fighting style at 1st. The Unarmed style shores up the 1d4 to start if you feel that it's weak, D6 if you are using a Monk Weapon or D8 if not. It looks like melee attacks might be doing some things differently too which might affect the Way of the Open Hand.

Ki Points. Not a bad mechanic but some abilities overdraw on them.
1 Ki Point to do Flurry of Blows is OK but does not scale very well. Make it 1 ki point to do a second Attack action. Then at 5th with Extra Attack, it will scale at least a little.
Patient Defense and Step of the Wind don't need to require Ki Points. Just make the Monk able to Dodge, Disengage or Dash as a bonus action without spending a resource to do it.
Unarmored Movement is fine. If you're a skirmisher, more speed is a strong ability.
The Monastic Traditions deserve their own attention and fixes.
Deflect Missile is fine. It scales well and doesn't break anything.
Ability Score Improvement and Feats working the same for the Monk as with other classes is fine now and with the play test changes that we've seen so far.
Slow Fall is fine but streamline it. Just say you reduce falls up to your walking speed. That scales, it's impressive when it comes up and doesn't break the game.
Extra Attack is fine. It works like it works for other classes that get it.
Stunning Strike is strong and this deserves to cost a Ki Point.
Ki-Empowered Strikes is fine. It's in line with what other classes with similar abilities get at 6th.
Evasion is strong. The level may need to adjust as some other abilities are in the play test. It works fine.
Stillness of Mind is situational, but strong when it comes up. Does it need to be an action? Maybe. IMHO.
Purity of Body is a nice ability. Poison comes up often. Neat, simple and gives you something useful.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon Neat, simple and gives you something useful.
Diamond Soul is strong. I don't know that the Ki Point to re-roll is even needed. Had multiple Monks during 5E and never seen a player need it.
Timeless Body, mostly flavor but fine.
Empty Body is strong and it should be at 18th level, or 17th if the play test adjusts it. The Ki Point cost may need to adjust.
Perfect Self is bad. Really bad compared to some capstones. It's bad at 20th and would still be bad at 18th. Just say 1/day the monk can regain all Ki Points on a rest.
Epic Boons becoming the 20th level capstone, I have the same thought as with all classes. I like this, but make an epic boon truly epic in power. It's likely the last ability your character will ever gain.

I have thoughts on the sub-classes in the PHB too. Generally though, I just want to say, sub-classes need to have abilities at least as effective as the options that the class gets at the same level. I hope they get that.

As ever, I respect the thoughts of my fellow gamers and these are IMHO only

 

[MechaTarrasque]

For the longest time, I had difficulty reconciling monks being put in the same group with fighters and barbarians, and then I realized that what they have in common is no one can agree how super they are supposed to be. Perhaps the warrior group could have some ability that got stronger the longer the fight goes on, so if you are just beating up some poor orc marauders in a couple of rounds, the fighter is some dude swinging a sword a lot, the barbarian is an angry dude, and the monk is a kung fu fighter (cue the song), but if the group spends an hour fighting Tiamat, the fighter becomes Captain America, the barbarian is the Hulk, and the monk is Goku at some late point in the fight. I am not quite sure how that should work, but I think establishing the Warrior group as the Main Event types of the party.

Edit: Maybe a bloodied condition.....

 

[Clint_L]

I would increase their hit dice to a base D10 like other frontline warriors, I would start unarmed strikes on a D6 and go up from there, I would add their proficiency modifier to ki points, I would limit stunning strike to once per round, and Step of the wind would just use a bonus action.

 

[Stalker0]

Probably one of the biggest issues with the monk is its incredible consumption of healing resources.

If you look at the standard classes: Fighter has a great AC and second wind for some self healing. Barbarians take half damage from most things, so less need for healing. Rangers get healing spells. Even Rogues can take half damage, and can often move in and out without OAs to reduce damage.

Monks on the other hand have lower ACs in general and very little self healing (assuming you allow the Tasha's houserule). As a consequence, monks consume a party's healing resources far more readily than most fighter classes. that is something that I think needs to be fixed, monks maybe need some kind of meditation healing or something that can give them better durability.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Probably one of the biggest issues with the monk is its incredible consumption of healing resources.

If you look at the standard classes: Fighter has a great AC and second wind for some self healing. Barbarians take half damage from most things, so less need for healing. Rangers get healing spells. Even Rogues can take half damage, and can often move in and out without OAs to reduce damage.

Monks on the other hand have lower ACs in general and very little self healing (assuming you allow the Tasha's houserule). As a consequence, monks consume a party's healing resources far more readily than most fighter classes. that is something that I think needs to be fixed, monks maybe need some kind of meditation healing or something that can give them better durability.

Monks as of Tasha's guide have a nearly unlimited resource for healing: ki points.

So at least the designers agree with your assessment and I do too.

 

[Stalker0]

Monks as of Tasha's guide have a nearly unlimited resource for healing: ki points.

So at least the designers agree with your assessment and I do too.

If by unlimited you mean so precious you can't believe it

In seriousness, the problem with the current model is that it uses ki....as does EVERYTHING ELSE THE MONK DOES. So you get back into the classic monk problem, they blow through their ki so quickly to do X that now they can't do Y.

Healing should not be tied to ki, it could be an X per day thing. Or maybe a monk can meditate and after 1 minute, spend healing die. They are still limited, but now can activate that source of healing much more readily than their fellows can.

 

[Yaarel]

Move the esoteric features of the Monk to the subclass, so the Monk base class can handle more character concepts, including nonmagic unarmored warrior, like Athlete.

A nonmagic base class can also help avoid overdependence on ki.

 

[Stalker0]

So here is my short list of the issues with the monk. I do not think the monk is as bad off as people often complain about, but it does need some love.

• Remove or reduce the scaling of unarmed strike damage. This is legacy from 3e and doesn't work in the more bounded accuracy series of 5e. Monk fists should do respectable damage at 1st level, and not crazy damage at 20th. A monk shouldn't need a quarterstaff to be able to compete in combat.
• Stunning fist should be weaker, and the rest of the monk made stronger (right now too much of the monk's power is pushed into this one mechanic).
• Their ki for dodge ability should be some kind of reaction. Forcing the monk to spend precious resources on a defense ability it might not need in a round is an unfun mechanic and it creates too much of a strain on offense versus defense.
• The monk could use some ability to convert their speed into X during a turn. Speed is a very DM dependent thing, in some games the DM makes that high speed almost vital, in other games, its basically a ribbon. It would be nice to have a meatier, more mechanical way to use speed that is more consistently useful for the monk. Or perhaps you combine this with your patient defense concept, to get something like:
  • Speedy Defense (replaces Patient Defense): The monk has learned to channel their incredible speed into evading danger. At the start of the monk's turn, they can forgo their unarmored movement bonus and gain a +1 to AC. The monk is not required to move to gain this bonus. The bonus increases to +2 at 10th level, and +3 at 18th level (aka when you gain +10 feet of speed).
• Better self-healing (as I noted in a previous post).
• Probably should divorce their AC from stats, as it creates too much of a stat dependency on the class right now to be combat competent. All monks just HAVE to have high dex and wis to feel competent.

 

[mellored]

I think they just need to adjust the ki and AC to have more at lower levels, and scaling a bit less.

Like...
ki = 4 + half your monk level.
AC = 14+Dex or Wis while holding monk weapons, unarmed, and no shield (and doesn't work with polymorph).

 

[Bill Zebub]

It seems most people agree on the basic wish list: a bit more damage, a bit more survivability, and a bit more Ki. I will be interested to see how those are accomplished (if WotC agrees).