Donald Braden
First Post
one additional 4 hit point attack will break things badly?
the question is more centered on the situation where you expend no ki and you get the monk weapon and an unarmed attack. If you spend ki you get the monk weapon attack and two unarmed strikes. Picking up one additional d4 damage in an attack sequence seems like a pretty low return for spending a ki point on.
As [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] pointed out, you get bonus damage on each monk unarmed strike, so your maximum from a three-attack flurry is actually well into the 20s, and from a four-attack flurry could pretty easily pass 30.it is a power balance issue, I am just worried the fifth level thing would shoot past the mark...In effect, through 4th level, 95% of my attacks look just like a normal monk weapon attack plus unarmed strike. Periodically I expend one of my 4 ki points to do flurry of blows in addition to the usual attack sequence.
The thing that seemed unbalanced to my DM, I am speculating, is that the fighter character, when expending superiority die (forgive me, just learing the 5e system so some of this be off) they can end up with rounds where they are delivering easily 20 or more points of damage while the monk character, spending a ki point maxes out around 16 if the normal unarmed strike is removed in order to spend that ki point.
Its still a bonus action so your 5th level sequence is right. You could use it on 2 or 4 but not both unless there is something I have missed that allows for 2 bonus actions per round. Of course, the rules are really suggestions for your DM, so its really up to their discretion.So, playing a monk in 5e. My dungeon master and i talked this through as I researched some african martial arts traditions when developing my character.
The monk Martial Arts feature indicates that the monk can make one unarmed blow as a bonus action. In the real world description of the goal of some of these martial arts traditions is to "use the entire animal" so if you strke a weapon with your fighting stick you should use your momentum to drive your elbow into the side of your head.
DM made the call that as a martial artist that counts as just part of the attack action then.
We decided that because otherwise you are talking about a significant expense of a ki point to gain just 1 additional strike and that seems a steep price to pay for a very limited resource.
I have not reached 5th level yet, I imagine we will land on only being able to make use of the martial arts unarmed strike once, while still being to expend a ki point for two additional blows.
So at 4th level my attack sequence is:
1. Quarterstaff strike.
2. unarmed strike (which would be an elbow or some other follow through sort of strike with a body part)
3. (opitinal with expense of ki point) two additional unarmed strikes.
5th level would look like this
1. quarterstaff strike
2. unarmed strike (optional, if used here, can not use unarmed strike 4)
3. quarterstaff strike (extra attack feature)
4. unarmed strike (can be used only if not used in attack 2)
5. (optional with expense of Ki point) Flurry of Blows
Of course now, typing it out the momentum argument would need to apply to both the attack and extra attack...
What are other people's thoughts?