Level Up (A5E) Adept Warrior Monk

[Thorlike]

Unsure whether this is a bug or feature, or I'm just misunderstanding.

Warrior Monk's 6th level feature "Way of the Fist" lets you regain exertion equal to half your prof when you crit with unarmed strikes. Lets take an Adept Warrior Monk at level 9 with +4 prof bonus. So you regain 2 exertion per crit.
Paralyzing strike at 9th level paralyzes the target on a failed saving throw, until the end of your next turn for 2 exertion. Which gives melee attackers both advantage and automatic crits. If you use paralyzing strike on your first attack. That gives you 5 attacks that can crit over the next 2 rounds. With roughly 87% chance to hit against "normalized" AC. So even if the target fails their save only 50% of the time. You will still end upon average with a net gain of exertion points.
The "math" might be of. But my understanding is that you can basically use these features to "farm" exertion points. So I guess my question is; is there supposed to be a "cooldown" on "Way of the Fist"? Or is it supposed to only work with nat 20s?

 

[VenerableBede]

Don’t have the book in front of me - isn’t a balancing factor here the fact that Paralyzing Strike goes off a CON save, which monsters tend to be strong at, and the fact that monsters afflicted by Paralyzing Strike get to repeat the save every turn? Sure, there’s the rare instance where you can Exertion farm, but only if luck is really on your side (and your party doesn’t annihilate the paralyzed creature immediately).
I think the monk - sorry, Adept - needed significant improvements like this anyway, even if this one is locked to one archetype. The O5e version is terrible, while, at least on a read-through, I’d consider the A5e version at least playable. It’s still an Exertion black hole, just like the 05e monk is for Ki, but it gets a little more use out of its exertion, and some luck-reliant ways to get exertion back won’t break the class overall.

 

[Thorlike]

I 100% agree that monks needed an overhaul. No arguments there.
Big fan of the changes so far. But this one in particular seems abit too much.
I am currently DMing for a monk, and yes CON saves are on average the highest stat for monster. But stunning strike still lands slightly more often than not. A lot of the monsters with actual Con save prof are usually not your average mook. Its usualy the one "big guy" in the encounter.

Feel like i should apologize for sounding like I was insinuating that this was an error. Should have presented it more as an exploitable game mechanic.

 

[VenerableBede]

Naw, you're good. Conversation is good, and we're just trying to come to a deeper understanding of things.
Maybe the critical balancing element that you bring up, then, is that this will easily land on mooks, who die very quickly—hard to farm goblins and kobolds, but you can't farm the dragon if it keeps making its saves (or just waves the save away with that ability with the name I forget).

 

[Mike Myler]

Legendary Resistance is the skip a save trait you are thinking of.

Adepts burn through exertion really fast—33 of the possible features an adept can get require exertion, plus obviously any combat maneuvers they use. In comparison a fighter has a handful of features outside of combat maneuvers that use exertion, and the berserker, herald, ranger and rogue have fewer still.
Because of that adepts are making a lot more decisions about their resource usage (more so than an O5E monk I reckon, or any other A5E class; it's why they have that bonus exertion going on), but not every player is going to embrace that aspect of the class so one of the archetypes is keyed to make the resource more available than the others. It's something that get taxed for later in that archetype's capstone feature (Perfect Fist is cool but it is not cheap and costs more than almost every other thing an adept can do), and having only unarmed strikes to get that focus refresh negates one of the means to increase the critical threat range (adamantine weaponry).
Which brings us to the final bit: that focus refresh is a bit of a gambling mini-game for the adept player, and one of the reasons for the sprinkling of combat maneuvers among the lower degrees for very short windows of higher critical threat range. Is it better to try for a Stunning Strike or Paralyzing Strike and take a chance on the saving throw, or focus on the attack rolls instead and use a critical-friendly combat maneuver? Can you get advantage from your allies somehow? Will the marshal grant you an extra attack off-turn? Would it just be safer altogether to spend an action using Battle Meditation for a definite exertion gain and a big assault next turn, vice versa, or have you put all your focus features in the critical hits boat?

It's definitely a useful feature and makes the warrior-monk a very attractive pick, but if the player is using fair dice it shouldn't be activating constantly and as the most offensive-oriented archetype it's definitely the one that needs to have a bit more oomph in the exertion pool.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't think the feature makes the adept imbalanced per say. However, does it make the subclass superior to all the others? I think you could make that case, the subclass in theory may have a LOT more exertion than its subclass siblings.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

The combo that’s really getting me is warrior monk +tempered iron (stunning assault). Have cake and eat it too with stunning strike and really decent chance on regenerating those spent points

 

[tetrasodium]

The combo that’s really getting me is warrior monk +tempered iron (stunning assault). Have cake and eat it too with stunning strike and really decent chance on regenerating those spent points

As a GM I think it's a dramatic improvement to place some skill & a bit of luck (hitting when needed) as the bar rather than "and it's down">Monk:"Lets take a short rest"

 

[This Effin’ GM]

my concern here is that with 4 attacks a round at that point, I feel it’s less a luck issue and more a “way more efficient and possible chance to earn it all back” issue, no short rest needed. I’m just nervous about it but we will see when I get to watch it in action Tuesday

 

[This Effin’ GM]

my concern here is that with 4 attacks a round at that point, I feel it’s less a luck issue and more a “way more efficient and possible chance to earn it all back” issue, no short rest needed. I’m just nervous about it but we will see when I get to watch it in action Tuesday

Update: the Adept player was sick and we spent most of our sessions shopping to make sure we had the necessary tools to maintain equipment. Sigh. Tested out the travel rules though, my player with the physician feat is ecstatic!