D&D 5E (2014) Buffing monks: with simple changes.

[Garthanos]

One idea I thought of if the monk is going to be a master of mobility in combat they need methods for making that mobility safer like any opportunity attack granted by monk movement might be made at a disadvantage.

 

[Starfox]

I am not afraid of changes. My Homebrew Monk with extensive changes.

My Editor's Notes for this:
The elephant in the room for monks is the lack of ki points. This version solves the problem by renewing the ki pool with the dodge action. This naturally creates other problems, that had to be solved with things like limited uses per day.

The other major issue with the monk is lack of defenses, the monk has mediocre hot points an a poor armor class, yet is supposed to be a front-line combatant. My solution is that a monk can dodge (without regaining ki) simply by spending a point of ki. This should give the monk defenses on par with other melee combatants and with a flavor of its own.

There is also a major change in that none of the abilities covered under the Ki ability now require an action. This includes the dodge mentioned above, but also flurry of blows - which now gives one additional attack, which combined with martial arts gives the same number of attack with the same cost as before.

Inspired by Treantmonk, I gave monks the ability to use light and medium armor. I also gave them access to martial weapons, but the ability to use weapons with Dex remains mostly as it was. This allowed me to add monk weapons to the weapon table that certainly are not simple weapons. It also opens the possibility of Strength based monks. I made a table that clearly shows which abilities work with which types of armor, you give up quite a lot in order to use medium armor.

I also increased the martial arts die up to an alarming d20. This also matches Treeantmonk's damage calculation, I bow to his experience there. The idea is to increase the die average by about 50% with each improvement, and going from d12 to d20 does that. The biggest issue here is really that the step from d6 to d8 is too small, ideally a 1st-level monk should have a d5 martial arts die, but lets not go into new dice.

Minor changes include:

• Unarmored movement now gives a jump bonus
• Deflect missiles is greatly simplified and normally does not use a reaction
• Quickened healing is once per rest because ki is no longer a limit outside of combat.
• Stillness of mind now actually works.
• Timeless body gained some actual utility,
• Perfect self now recovers ki points every turn. Astral Projection now works on others. A single-target astral projection is next to useless, these are things you do as a team.

 

[Starfox]

I am not afraid of changes. My Homebrew Monk with extensive changes.

I am quite likely to cut this back a bit before actually using it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm also going to mention that the monk has to be a worse warrior than a fighter. Otherwise, with all their other advantages, why would you want to be a fighter?

I think this is a really important point. A monk can do all sorts of cool things that fighters cannot do. So I don't really support the goal of increasing a monk's damage to equal a fighter's.

The caveat here is that I've never played monk's at high level, which is where they really fall behind on damage. I can see an argument for giving them some kind of damage boost above level 11.

And I also could see a small boost to Ki. Not necessarily because they "need" it, but because spending Ki is fun. A few possible approaches:
1. Let subclass abilities get used once each for free, with additional uses costing Ki. (This would really help 4E monks.)
2. Let Ki get regenerated on specific unpredictable events, e.g. on crits. This would be fun, but hard to design well, imo.
3. Just give more Ki points, e.g. add Wisdom modifier.

 

[Starfox]

Hom much can a Monk do (especially assuming they are short on Ki) that a fighter can't? I don't see so many things any more. 5E did away with most armor penalties. Yes, they run faster, but the rest is mainly about skills, and a fighter can get these skills as well.

 

[Quartz]

For those fearful of multiclassing cheese, try applying 'The lower of X or your levels in the Y class' to the ability in question.

 

[Garthanos]

For those fearful of multiclassing cheese, try applying 'The lower of X or your levels in the Y class' to the ability in question.

The time I tried MCing with the Monk it was really disappointing ... the KI requirement on so many of their abilities seems to be a detriment even for somewhat deeper dips.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think this is a really important point. A monk can do all sorts of cool things that fighters cannot do. So I don't really support the goal of increasing a monk's damage to equal a fighter's.

Would you mind talking about some of the examples?

Because, one thing I think is a bit obvious in hindsight for me is that Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense exist only to bring the monk up to parity with a fighter/ranger/barbarian/Paladin 's proficiencies. And since the use of armor and weapons is baseline, as is the ability to use dual-weilding.... in the end their entire power budget can be shrank to being the same as the dual-wielding fighting style.

And many of the low-cost or passive monk abilities that are not equivalent, like slow fall and deflect arrows, are not only occasionally niche but then have to be compared to things like... spellcasting, lay on hands, rage, ect.

I've heard that "there should be a cost to not having to use weapons and armor" but considering that means you CAN'T use magic armor and are unlikely to find good magical weapons, and the game assumes you can use armor and weapons and therefore access abilities and powers that way... I am beginning to suspect this is why the monk is under-powered, because... should there be a cost to not using weapons and armor if the goal is to start about the same or weaker and grow to... about the same?

 

[Garthanos]

Hom much can a Monk do (especially assuming they are short on Ki) that a fighter can't? I don't see so many things any more. 5E did away with most armor penalties. Yes, they run faster, but the rest is mainly about skills, and a fighter can get these skills as well.

Indeed and as has been said unless you can use that mobility to bring home something else substantive (a payload) it is mostly meaningless. It can be an alternative to ranged effects of other classes (but is defensively inferior to anything but really really short range ones)

The stunning ability is cool and somewhat nice to the delivered item but when the ability is only like 1/3 on average chance of going to work? TM made the first proficiency uses in a day not cost Ki... maybe that is enough, but maybe we can give it another buff that would fit would be saying you get it every crit too(not a huge thing)

I would like things like more improved knockdown throws (size does not matter) and slowing or paralyzing pressure point strikes and similar too.

 

[Garthanos]

Would you mind talking about some of the examples?

Because, one thing I think is a bit obvious in hindsight for me is that Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense exist only to bring the monk up to parity with a fighter/ranger/barbarian/Paladin 's proficiencies. And since the use of armor and weapons is baseline, as is the ability to use dual-weilding.... in the end their entire power budget can be shrank to being the same as the dual-wielding fighting style.

And many of the low-cost or passive monk abilities that are not equivalent, like slow fall and deflect arrows, are not only occasionally niche but then have to be compared to things like... spellcasting, lay on hands, rage, ect.

I've heard that "there should be a cost to not having to use weapons and armor" but considering that means you CAN'T use magic armor and are unlikely to find good magical weapons, and the game assumes you can use armor and weapons and therefore access abilities and powers that way... I am beginning to suspect this is why the monk is under-powered, because... should there be a cost to not using weapons and armor if the goal is to start about the same or weaker and grow to... about the same?

Yeh the basic features are virtually flavor text and just playing catch up.