So is the Rogue, and the Cleric, both of whom have d8 hit dice.Honestly, the reason I want d10 for the Monk is it still a combatant that has to wade into melee ...
One thing I added to my game was stance.Stances?
As a bonus action, you enter a stance. You can only have one stance active at a time.
Iron stance: you gain resistance to all damage. Your speed is halved.
Flurry stance: once on your turn, you can an Unarmed attack without taking an action. If you don't make the attack the stance ends.
Step of the wind stance: increase your movement speed by 20'. Your movement does not trigger reactions.
Elemental stance (subclass): increase your Unarmed reach by 10'. You gain an aura...
Level 5/11/17: you can have 2/3/4 stances at once.
Ime it absolutely is and they start getting prickly if the PC who literally has no needs in an edition that tries hard to ensure PCs never need anything from the GM aren't given bracers of defense and cloaks of protection by level 5 or so.So I don't think its the intention for people to make the monk as tanky as a fighter or barb. Just narrow the gap a bit. Even if a monk was at a d10 hitpoints it still wouldn't have the damage reduction (barb) or self-healing (fighter) so its tankiness would still be a good bit less.
Yeah, I think a tanky monk sub-class would fit very well with the popular conception of the martial artist - almost every martial arts film has at least one such fighter, after all.
What I’m doing in my esoteric master of arms rewrite of the monk is combine Unarmored defense, patient defense, and deflect [attacks] into one feature, along with martial arts and flurry of blows, and Unarmored movement and step of the wind.So is the Rogue, and the Cleric, both of whom have d8 hit dice.
Monks are not supposed to be able to soak up damage; they’re supposed to be good at avoiding damage. Better AC would be the more fitting way to improve their survivability. Give them an Improved Unarmored Defense feature that increases their unarmored AC at certain levels to help compensate for the lack of magic armor.