D&D General Monk WotMA Subclass (and a few others) from Arcana Unleashed—Leaked!

Silam · Jul 11, 2026

Not a Decepticon said:
The problem I have is that now anything I could do with other subclass I can probably do better with this one aside maybe healing.

Yeah. I am also a bit concerned about that… the Way of the Elements Monk in particular has quite a bit of overlap with spellcasting.

While it is a strongly entrenched principle in 5e to make everything nearly the same, and it certainly helps with balance, I wish they deviated more often from that.

For example, in the case of the Mystic Fighting Style, I was thinking the following formulation would have been an interesting variation:

When taking the Attack Action, you can replace one of the attacks with a Magic Action, as long as the Magic Action does not spend any slot nor is it used to affect a target beyond the reach of your Unarmed Strike.

The above formulation is both more and less flexible than the BS/VB’s Extra Attack and the EK’s War Magic. It is still aimed mainly at cantrips (does not spend any slot), but it can also be used with other Magic Actions, such as an already ongoing Vampiric Touch (the slot was spent in a previous round). In counterpart, it cannot be used at range (though if you want to aim a Ray of Frost in melee, why not?), so ranged cantrips used as such would still cost a full Action. This I think would have been a fair way to let the Way of the Elements Monk maintain their particular niche.

Paul Farquhar · Jul 12, 2026

On the MAD issue: it occurs to me that the Alter Self spell allows unarmed strikes using your casting stat. You can pick up an improved version of Alter Self at level 1 with the second skin dark gift (or transmutation faction background feat?). It’s not a complete solution, but it might be enough to tide you over until you can max out both stats at level 16.

Tigris · Jul 12, 2026

Another way helping a bit the mad issue is using stunning strike and then dex/strength saving throws since the automatically fail.

Of course the lower will is not ideal to hitting stunning strike, but you can try to target enemies which might not be soo good in them.

If you hit stunning strike you will also hit grapple (grappler feat), and then can cast create bonfire on the enemies space, move the enemy out of the space and in it again and have the eenmy standing there at the end of its turn.

So a single hit stunning steike at level 6 guarantees 6d8 damage from your cantrip. Rhats in average 27 damage vs the 8.5 a basic attack would do at that level.

Silam · Jul 12, 2026

Alter Self is interesting… though by the time a WotMA Monk gets their 2nd level spells at level 7, their Unarmed Strike damage is 1d8, and a stingy DM might rule that the spell would unfortunately supercede that back down to 1d6…

Alter Self:

Natural Weapons. You grow claws (Slashing), fangs (Piercing), horns (Piercing), or hooves (Bludgeoning). When you use your Unarmed Strike to deal damage with that new growth, it deals 1d6 damage of the type in parentheses instead of dealing the normal damage for your Unarmed Strike, and you use your spellcasting ability modifier for the attack and damage rolls rather than using Strength.

Monk’s Martial Arts:

Martial Arts Die. You can roll 1d6 in place of the normal damage of your Unarmed Strike or Monk Weapons. This die changes as you gain Monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk Features table.

Both features say they supercede the other so it’s not a stretch to say you can pick whichever is higher. That would make more sense too, like, why would a martial artist become weaker with claws?

The Second Skin feat is a nice find. I hadn’t come across it yet. Especially since it’s concentration-free, though only 1h / day.

Paul Farquhar · Jul 12, 2026

Silam said:
Alter Self is interesting… though by the time a WotMA Monk gets their 2nd level spells at level 7, their Unarmed Strike damage is 1d8, and a stingy DM might rule that the spell would unfortunately supercede that back down to 1d6…

Alter Self:

Monk’s Martial Arts:

Both features say they supercede the other so it’s not a stretch to say you can pick whichever is higher. That would make more sense too, like, why would a martial artist become weaker with claws?

The Second Skin feat is a nice find. I hadn’t come across it yet. Especially since it’s concentration-free, though only 1h / day.

One of the reasons I brought it up was I wanted to see if anyone had any reason for it not working. Personally, I see no reason not to rule that you can use whichever damage is highest.

Silam · Jul 12, 2026

Paul Farquhar said:
One of the reasons I brought it up was I wanted to see if anyone had any reason for it not working. Personally, I see no reason not to rule that you can use whichever damage is highest.

Even if you had a stingy DM on your hands, using a superior stat mod is likely still worth it…

1d8 does 1 more average damage than 1d6. If your Wis mod is just 1 higher than Dex/Str, then your average damage on a hit is on par, while your chance to hit still gets bumped up. These are basically rounding errors, not worth spending political capital to be stingy about

Tigris · Jul 12, 2026

Paul Farquhar said:
One of the reasons I brought it up was I wanted to see if anyone had any reason for it not working. Personally, I see no reason not to rule that you can use whichever damage is highest.

Well both of them replace the normal damage. Normally you need to chooce which replacement effect to take, at least in games with clear wordings (like magic the gathering etc.)

Silam · Jul 12, 2026

Personally, if/when I play a WotMA, I would probably tailor my spell selection towards stat-free spells. Bladeward, Shield, Mirror Image, Haste would likely be my top picks.

As for the rounds where Bladeward (or another concentration spell) is already active, for the Mystic Fighting Style, I would probably reach for a bladetrip like GFB or BB since those trigger a weapon attack without altering its stat mod.

Tigris · Jul 13, 2026

The arcane archer video is out and the Arcane Archer now looks better, but also a bit more like a (strange) clone of the battlemaster

You have now a dice size which increases in levels automatically
Your dices are 1 size smaller than Battlemaster (until level18 where they catch up and also become d12)
You will have 1 less use then battlemaster (3-5 instead of 4-6)
- However, the number of uses is linked to your intelligence modifier, so you need to invest into intelligence (which is not a good stat in general) to get up to 5 uses.
You get the uses back on shortrest and long rest
Your arcane shot uses are similar to the ones of the original arcane archer, but when you use an arcane shot you normally add this dice to your damage, depending on the option also several times (so weaker effects have higher damage so 2 times the dice damage instead of 1.
You can only use 1 arcane shot per turn
Arcane shot options must, unlike most battle master maneuvers, be called before you use the attack, so they can miss. (But some options add half damage on miss)
- The level 7 feature still lets you attack another target when an inbued shot misses, but you get some a nice other features as well allowing you some non combat magic 1 per short rest or for a second wind (making darkness, or a magical roap or opening doors/chests by being loud)
Level 10 (instead level 15) you gain back 1 use of the arcane shot when rolling initiative
- Level 15 feature instead lets you teleport when you use indomitable
Level 18 lets you as a reaction get away from an enemy when they miss and attack them.
- Which is great since this allows you to finally use more than 1 arrow per round
It still has some distinction to battle master, you can spam less, single attacks are stronger (also a single use can add more damage), and the non combat option are bound to a separate ressource.

Overall this is a lot more powerfull than the original subclass. You have more uses, and get some useful feature at each subclass level and get 1 more skill initially, and putting attribute points into int feels better now (a bit required).

A think this is a good upgrade over the initial subclass, although I am not sure why it needs to also use a pseudo superiority dice.

ECMO3 · Jul 20, 2026

Tigris said:
The arcane archer video is out and the Arcane Archer now looks better, but also a bit more like a (strange) clone of the battlemaster

You have now a dice size which increases in levels automatically

Your dices are 1 size smaller than Battlemaster (until level18 where they catch up and also become d12)

You will have 1 less use then battlemaster (3-5 instead of 4-6)

However, the number of uses is linked to your intelligence modifier, so you need to invest into intelligence (which is not a good stat in general) to get up to 5 uses.

You get the uses back on shortrest and long rest

Your arcane shot uses are similar to the ones of the original arcane archer, but when you use an arcane shot you normally add this dice to your damage, depending on the option also several times (so weaker effects have higher damage so 2 times the dice damage instead of 1.

You can only use 1 arcane shot per turn

Arcane shot options must, unlike most battle master maneuvers, be called before you use the attack, so they can miss. (But some options add half damage on miss)

The level 7 feature still lets you attack another target when an inbued shot misses, but you get some a nice other features as well allowing you some non combat magic 1 per short rest or for a second wind (making darkness, or a magical roap or opening doors/chests by being loud)

Level 10 (instead level 15) you gain back 1 use of the arcane shot when rolling initiative

Level 15 feature instead lets you teleport when you use indomitable

Level 18 lets you as a reaction get away from an enemy when they miss and attack them.

Which is great since this allows you to finally use more than 1 arrow per round

It still has some distinction to battle master, you can spam less, single attacks are stronger (also a single use can add more damage), and the non combat option are bound to a separate ressource.

Overall this is a lot more powerfull than the original subclass. You have more uses, and get some useful feature at each subclass level and get 1 more skill initially, and putting attribute points into int feels better now (a bit required).

A think this is a good upgrade over the initial subclass, although I am not sure why it needs to also use a pseudo superiority dice.