D&D 5E Making a melee class like monk that doesn't have ki.

[Anthony Vu]

For my campaign, I'm thinking about having something of a melee class like monk but more of a brawler. Aka I guess basically a monk without ki. Is there something out there already or is there a way to make it work? Opinion/help please

 

[hejtmane]

For my campaign, I'm thinking about having something of a melee class like monk but more of a brawler. Aka I guess basically a monk without ki. Is there something out there already or is there a way to make it work? Opinion/help please

MY son has one he used Tavern Brawler + Totem Barbarian using rages and went totem bear bear then elk he wanted that super strong tough guy that can shrug of hits and elk (SCAG) for the pass through

He leveraged a lot of the graple early on with the bonus action from Tavern Brawler; as the GM I allowed the bonus damage from the rage for the unarmed attacks because it did not break anything and made sense in my book I mean a a 2h weapon gets it why not the fist or knee etc

Other option is Tavern Brawler Fighter I would look at Champion or Battle Master if I went fighter route

 

[mellored]

Fighter, with tavern brawler feat. Perhaps with 1 level barbarian for armor.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Th Pugilist is a popular implementation of this idea. http://www.dmsguild.com/product/184921/the-Pugilist-Class

 

[Blue]

MY son has one he used Tavern Brawler + Totem Barbarian using rages and went totem bear bear then elk he wanted that super strong tough guy that can shrug of hits and elk (SCAG) for the pass through

He leveraged a lot of the graple early on with the bonus action from Tavern Brawler; as the GM I allowed the bonus damage from the rage for the unarmed attacks because it did not break anything and made sense in my book I mean a a 2h weapon gets it why not the fist or knee etc

Other option is Tavern Brawler Fighter I would look at Champion or Battle Master if I went fighter route

I like these ideas.

As a side note, if I was DM and a player came to me with a martial character and said "I'd like to trade in my Martial Weapon proficiency for Tavern Brawler so I can go unarmed and punch people", I'd totally run with it.

 

[Anthony Vu]

Thank you you all. I'll give your feedback a try. I like the tavern brawler thing and the pugilist.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For my campaign, I'm thinking about having something of a melee class like monk but more of a brawler. Aka I guess basically a monk without ki. Is there something out there already or is there a way to make it work? Opinion/help please

For a long, long time, the D&D fighter was utterly dependent on high STR & heavy armor to be viable in combat. At first, there was basically no option for the light-armored, anachronistic duelist or muskateer type character, and for the both unarmed-and-unarmored type we had the orientalist/supernatural Monk.

There have been many attempts to provide those non-supernatural martial artist or fencer in D&D, in 3.x there were feats, builds, and even whole classes and PrCs devoted to finagling together unarmored and/or unarmed characters. In 4e the martial classes were split between STR and DEX and there was a 'brawling' fighter.

5e finally made it seamless for anyone, but especially fighters, to simply choose to be light-armored & finesse-weapon using or heavy-armored & medieval-weapon using (OK, in the process it made ranged weapon users too good), but it still failed to come though with the un-armed/armored martial artist without supernatural powers. It would be lovely to see something like that. But, adding it might be as simple as a Combat Style and/or sub-class of the fighter focused that way.

 

[Greg K]

As someone that has never liked the D&D Monk mechanics, there are other options. Someone mentioned the Pugilist. There is also, if I recall correctly, a Martial Artist class at either Reddit/r/Unearthed Arcana or the Homebrewery (perhaps both via a link to Homebrewery) that received good reception.

 

[Stalker0]

As others have mentioned The totem barbarian with tavern brawl or is near perfect. I literally don't know what else you would need. I also greatly like the idea of trading in Marshall proficiency for the feet for free

 

[TwoSix]

Th Pugilist is a popular implementation of this idea. http://www.dmsguild.com/product/184921/the-Pugilist-Class

+1 for the Pugilist, it's pretty great.