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D&D 5E Way of the Four Elements in actual play?

The 4 elements halfling monk player in our group bailed on the character (she stayed behind in Ravenloft), largely because it was hard to balance standard monk abilities and special elemental abilities. Anytime any "Airbender" stuff happened it was an outlier; it never really seemed like a significant part of the character. Standard monk options always seemed more attractive.
 

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One simple fix I did was allow the Way of the Four Elements Monk to change his damage type for all of his attacks that use his Martial Arts damage. So instead of all of his unarmed attacks being bludgeoning he can change it to piercing with icicles or earthen spikes. Or he can do slashing with air or water. Fire, of course, does fire damage and he can use water and ice to do cold damage. Of course he can still do bludgeoning with air, earth or water. This doesn't enhance his damage at all, but it means that he his fighting with his elements every single round of combat and it has the sometimes useful benefit of getting around resistance or taking advantage of vulnerabilities.

The other thing was to use the Fangs of the Fire Snake as a template and allow the Monk to do any of his damage types at a range of 15' for 1 Ki point, plus 1 Ki point each time he adds 1d10 damage to a hit.

Then just reduce the Ki cost of spells to equal the level of the spell and add more spell options and you are done. :)
 

I've had fun with it - I made a Mortal Kombat "Scorpion" expy monk using the 4 elements path. Water whip for the "Get Over Here" move, also turned out to be very useful for doing damage. (Helped by the fact that i was playing with a Diviner wizard who could almost guarantee the big bad failed a save against it when we needed him too.)
 

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