White lotus riposte being prickly if you are using arcane at-wills anyway.... I know likely only at lower levels or a tough day ... Precedent for prickly by way of feat anyway
I was kind of thinking we make the Way of the Gentle Hand include the Martial Takedown stance instead of a flury but you sounded like you were thinking in addition to? But just defang the flurry. The Way of the Gentle hand becomes a modifier for the other Monk Traditions then? Like how certain feats change a bunch of different powers. (Cruel Cut Style is kind of the opposite for a fighter - with cross class impact)
I suppose we do need to have the Flurry as a source of additional enemies to be affected by other abilities (like the pressure points) - this becomes a tactical choice do I drop into the Takedown stance or do I Flurry
Basically, too many specific features are baked into the base class, leaving little or no room to flesh out different kinds of subclasses.
For example, I would like to see a Brawler as a martial Monk archetype, that fights weaponless or with improvised weapons. Basically a combination of bar fighter and mixed-martial-arts fighter, with some athletic stunts in the mix. Heh, this is definitely a nonmystical kind of Monk.
And so on.
A cleaner base, would make more room for other Monk archetypes.