D&D 5E Four Elements Monk - To buff or not to buff?

[abirdcall]

Yeah, this.

I ran a 2-year campaign where one of the PCs was a Sun Soul monk, and it became clear that Stunning Strike was far and away the best use of her ki. Get up to the biggest, scariest monster, blitz it with unarmed strikes, and toss a Stunning Strike on each one until the monster blows a save. Not only does the entire party get advantage to hit, but you effectively "heal" everyone for all the damage the monster would have laid down on its turn. It was infinitely more effective than any of her "spend a bunch of ki for a little AoE damage" abilities.

As a result, while the character certainly pulled her weight in combat, she became something of a one-trick pony. It looks like the Four Elements monk has the same issue, and upping its ki pool doesn't do anything to change this dynamic. The monk will still spam Stunning Strike; it will just go on longer.

I'd focus instead on bringing down the cost of elemental abilities. Or supply a dedicated "elemental ki" pool which can only be used for those abilities.

The Sun Soul gives the Monk better options in some fights.

The regular Monk excels at neutralizing big threats, hopefully with low Con. Enemy wizards are a great target.

Not every combat encounter has those creatures however. In that case Burning Hands is a better use for their Ki.

By the same regard their ranged attacks won't be useful in most combats, but every now and then they will. Radiant is the best damage type and fairly hard to come by so that is nice. The ranged part is decent, and overall better than a shortbow as they can flurry of blows with it (and they're magical radiant damage instead of non-magical piercing). Magic strikes starting at level 3 is also quite good as this is the time the party will have trouble fighting creatures that have resistance to non-magical attacks (and those creatures might also be weak to Radiant damage). Level 5 takes a long time to get through so having magic before 6 is good.

The Sun Soul is on the weaker end of the Monk subclasses, probably around the Drunken Master. The Sun Soul has abilities that are good, they're just narrow in use.

I don't think anything is going to save the 4 Elements Monk. I think the better way to approach it is to use the Sun Soul as a template. Pick an element and create abilities that incorporate the Monk framework. It's not just that it is very weak, the design of it is a mess as well. It is an attempt to make a 1/3 caster like the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster, only instead of getting spell slots, their spells eat into their Ki.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

My personal tweak on the archetype is to let them gain one of the Elemental Mastery Disciplines from the playtest Mystic.
They still have only a few disciplines to gain, but since each one split into different augmentable powers, it still feel like you know more than one. Also, most of them use a lot of ki (psi) points, but can be a good option to do something else than stun.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Follow the Sun Soul model for the disciplines and let the 4 Elements Monk cast them all as bonus actions. Just that one change makes the archetype competitive and actually interesting.

 

[Yunru]

Follow the Sun Soul model for the disciplines and let the 4 Elements Monk cast them all as bonus actions. Just that one change makes the archetype competitive and actually interesting.

This. From day 1 this was the change I advocated.

Of course they went and did the complete opposite.

 

[Caliban]

Another option I've considered is to allow the 4-Elements monk to better mix their ki magic and martial arts:

Whenever they use their action for a ki spell, they can make an bonus action unarmed attack or spend 1 ki point for flurry of blows.

You may still want to reduce the ki point cost of certain ki spells.

 

[cbwjm]

My change would be to allow them to choose the elemental disciplines from the mystic's wujen subclass.

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[Ancalagon]

I would highly recommend finding a way to reduce the costs of existing powers rather than increasing the ki pool. Otherwise you risk the PC simply spamming Stunning Strike more often instead of using the elemental powers.

As I mentioned, I recommend simply making these extra Ki points only usable for elemental powers.

 

[Herobizkit]

A simple and elegant solution might be "Choose one of the four elements that you feel particularly drawn to; Ki powers that relate to this element cost 1 less Ki."

 

[Sunseeker]

A simple and elegant solution might be "Choose one of the four elements that you feel particularly drawn to; Ki powers that relate to this element cost 1 less Ki."

Mmm, fair. Promotes specialization and themeing.

Seems like good grounds for a sub-sub-class within each element. Choose to specialize, get access to reduced power costs and extra powers or variant class features.

 

[CapnZapp]

I have a player who is thinking of making a Way of Four Elements monk and I've seen discourse here and there that suggests they're a little underpowered when compared to the other subclasses.
The common complaint seems to be that they run out of Ki too quickly.

Has anyone played a Four Elements Monk? What was your experience like? Were you always running short on Ki points?



My current thought is to give them a slight buff in the form of one extra ability:
Geomantic Energy.
From 3rd level, your connection to the elements allows you to siphon energy from the world around you.
Your Ki point maximum increases by an amount equal to your proficiency bonus.

Since the most common fix I've seen is "reduce all 4Elements Ki costs by one", this really tells me the subclass is severely, catastrophically, underpowered.

Even if such a huge change ends up making it a tad too powerful, I mean.


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