Way of the drunken Fist - Need some feedback

[Uzgul]

In an upcoming campaign one of my players wants to play a drunken master, so I decided to homebrew a monk subclass for him.
The goal of this subclass is to create an option that feels similar to the 3.5 version of the drunken master and a monk profits more from strengh than dex.
Now I need some feedback regarding the balance of this class in comparison to the existing options for monks.

Lv3
Tavern Brawler Style
Improvised Weapons count as Monk Weapons.

Fast Drinker
You are able to drink alcohol expetionally fast. You only need a bonus action to drink.

Drunken Ki State
When drinking alcohol, you may expend one point of ki to enter a special drunken state for one hour. While in this state you gain the following benifits and penalties:
- advantage on str and con checks
- disadvantage on wis and int checks
- not poisoned by alcohol
- you may ignore the influence of the prone condition on any attack roll made by you or against you.
As long as your drunken ki state doesnt end, you may drink additional alcohol to resett the duration to one our without expending additional ki.
When under the effect of Drunken Ki State, you may burn the alcohol with your ki to heal yourself. You can expend 1 ki point, to regain 1d8+wis hitpoints. Doing so ends your Drunken Ki State as if the duration has expiered.


Lv6
Uncanny Dodge
As the Rogue class feature


lv11
Master of the Tavern Fights
Whenever you succesfully shove a creature, you may decide to deal damage equal to your strengh mod.
In addition: If you succesfully shove a creature, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.


Lv17
Fire breath
In any round you have drunken strong alcohol, you may spend 6 ki points to breath fire as an action, dealing 10d6 fire damage in a 15ft cone.
A Dexterity Save haves this damage.

- Master of the Tavern Fights: unarmed strike damage replaced by strengh mod
- Damage bonus to improvised weapons removed
- Option to end Drunken Ki State added

[Leuku]

Tavern Brawler Style
Improvised Weapons count as Monk Weapons.
When using improvised weapons, you deal your unarmed strike damage plus 1. This bonus increases to plus 2 at lv 11, to plus 3 at lv 17.

Why plus 1? Why is there a damage bonus?


Drunken Ki State
When drinking alcohol, you may expend one point of ki to enter a special drunken state for one hour. While in this state you gain the following benifits and penalties:
- advantage on str and con checks
- disadvantage on wis and int checks
- not poisoned by alcohol
- you may ignore the influence of the prone condition on any attack roll made by you or against you.
As long as your drunken ki state doesnt end, you may drink additional alcohol to resett the duration to one our without expending additional ki.p

One hour seems a bit long. Why not 1 minute? Justification for 1 minute: You're burning off the alcohol's effects at an accelerated rate due to your training and special techniques, so the alcohol is metabolized much more quickly.


lv11
Master of the Tavern Fights
Whenever you succesfully shove a creature, you may decide to deal damage equal to your unarmed strike damage.
In addition: If you succesfully shove a creature, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

Why not strength mod instead of unarmed strike damage?

[Uzgul]

Why plus 1? Why is there a damage bonus?
The original Drunken Master gets a skaling damage bonus and I wanted to give this version something good for combat. On the other hand, getting creative with improvised weapons might already be enough for combat at this level.
Any idea for a replacement?


One hour seems a bit long. Why not 1 minute? Justification for 1 minute: You're burning off the alcohol's effects at an accelerated rate due to your training and special techniques, so the alcohol is metabolized much more quickly.
That feature is planed to be mostly permanent, to give the character a reason to be drunk most of the time. I might just change it to "while you are drunk and have at least one ki point left".



Why not strength mod instead of unarmed strike damage?
Just because I didn't think of it. Str mod fits the goal far better. I will change this.

[Leuku]

The original Drunken Master gets a skaling damage bonus and I wanted to give this version something good for combat. On the other hand, getting creative with improvised weapons might already be enough for combat at this level.
Any idea for a replacement?

No need for replacement. Just get rid of the scaling bonus. 5e does a good job of doing away with most minor, incremental modifiers. You're already letting improvised weapons scale with Monk damage die size, which is potent enough.



That feature is planed to be mostly permanent, to give the character a reason to be drunk most of the time. I might just change it to "while you are drunk and have at least one ki point left".

Issue with this is that we don't know what alcohol does to a PC mechanically under normal circumstances. I think whether a person wants to be drunk all the time or only when he needs to be should be up to the player's aesthetics choice. And 1 hour with disadvantage on Int and Wis checks is quite debilitating. Imagine a player wants to break down a door, so he downs some alcohol to get advantage on his strength check. He succeeds, and what immediately follows is a puzzle. Now the player has to wait an hour for his mental stats to return to normal.

I still recommend changing it to 1 minute. It's long enough to get things done, but short enough to let a player do something else soon enough.

[Uzgul]

No need for replacement. Just get rid of the scaling bonus. 5e does a good job of doing away with most minor, incremental modifiers. You're already letting improvised weapons scale with Monk damage die size, which is potent enough.
Got rid of it.



Issue with this is that we don't know what alcohol does to a PC mechanically under normal circumstances. I think whether a person wants to be drunk all the time or only when he needs to be should be up to the player's aesthetics choice. And 1 hour with disadvantage on Int and Wis checks is quite debilitating. Imagine a player wants to break down a door, so he downs some alcohol to get advantage on his strength check. He succeeds, and what immediately follows is a puzzle. Now the player has to wait an hour for his mental stats to return to normal.

I still recommend changing it to 1 minute. It's long enough to get things done, but short enough to let a player do something else soon enough.
I designed the class with a particular player in mind, so I didn't think of the possibility, that the character wants not to be drunk at any point of time.

I added an option to end the Drunken State and heal a little bit. The old Drunken Master had both of them, so this fits quit well.

[RATHSQUATCH]

This looks very similar to what I was working on:

THE WAY OF DRUNKEN FIST
Monks of the Way of the Drunken Fist study the chaotic movements of an inebriated individual and use this as a diversion to gain an advantage on offense and defense when they fight. By either acting drunk (or in some cases actually being drunk) they can become deadly combatants.

DRUNKEN FIGHTING
Starting at 3rd level when you select this Monastic Tradition, you gain proficiency in improvised weapons. These weapons are also treated as Monk weapons. Also, you have no disadvantage when fighting while prone and attackers do not gain advantage on attacks when attacking you while you are prone. Also, as long as you’ve comsumed at least a shot of liquor or a mug of beer, you receive a +1 to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks.

RUBBER BODY
Starting at 6th level, you can sway your hips and contort your body so that the blows of weapons become just glancing blows instead of full blown hits. When hit with a critical hit, you can spend 4 ki points to ignore the critical hit and make it just a normal hit instead. In addition, at the beginning of your turn, you can spend 2 ki points to gain resistance to piercing, bludgeoning and slashing damage until your next turn.

THE HEALING DRINK
At 11th level, whenever you consume an alcoholic beverage (at least a shot of liquor or a mug of beer) you heal as if someone had cast cure wounds on you.
You may use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier then require a long rest before you can use it again.

DRUNKEN FLAME
At 17th level, you can beltch up a minor flame catching opponents by surprise. By spending 3 ki points, you spew forth flame as a bonus action on your turn. This deals 4d10 points of fire damage to all within a 20-ft cone of your choosing. Targets can make a Dexterity saving throw to take only ½ damage.

[WunSukong]

It seems to me that one of the key things about the Drunken state is it removes the penalties of being prone.

I always thought it would be interesting that, for the Drunken Master, the dichotomy between standing and being prone should be important.

For example (this is off the top of my head):
While he is in a drunken state, the Drunken Master can use his Action to make a Flying Two-Fist Strike. This attack has advantage and deals damage as two of your Unarmed Strikes, but knocks you prone. If you spend 1 ki point, this attack also knocks the enemy prone and deals damage as four Unarmed Strikes.

And then, some other ability that either deals extra damage to prone enemies or has some sort of synergy / power related to getting back up from prone. This would emulate the drunken master's advantage from falling and getting back up as though stumbling drunk.

Or maybe, here me out: As a reaction, whenever the Drunken Master would be hit by an attack, he can spend 1 ki point to suddenly drop to the ground, reducing half of the damage from that attack and allowing him to make one unarmed strike against the foe that struck him.

[RATHSQUATCH]

It seems to me that one of the key things about the Drunken state is it removes the penalties of being prone.

Or maybe, here me out: As a reaction, whenever the Drunken Master would be hit by an attack, he can spend 1 ki point to suddenly drop to the ground, reducing half of the damage from that attack and allowing him to make one unarmed strike against the foe that struck him.

I would say the expense of only 1 Ki point might be a little overpowered. 2 Ki points would make this a bit more balanced I think anyways. I always looked at Drunken Masters as having "wobbly reflexes" where they get hit, but it sort of shrugs it off, which is why in my build I would use "Rubbery Body". Now, should this work against magical attacks? Poison damage? All of those are things to consider I guess.

[ImSAMazing]

Maybe make the reaction when he is hit by an attack and can spend ki points to halve the damage and hit the attacker with an unarmed strike, make it 1/rest? It seems really OP, especially when you are lvl 20 and you get massive damage by a dragon's breath weapon

[Alerad]

Nice idea, thanks for sharing.

I wanted to use this template and have couple of comments/questions:

Fast Drinker
PHB 190 already gives an example of "drink all the ale in a flagon" to be interacting with an object (free). Did you intend to make it possible to drink 2 drinks on your turn? If there is no such need maybe you can replace it with something else.

Being prone doesn't give you disadvantage on attacks, and doesn't grant advantage on melee attacks against you. You still have to crawl, but also benefit from ranged attacks against you made with disadvantage, correct?

Lv 11
This is practically Stunning Strike right? You can say shoving counts as a melee weapon attack, allowing you to do Stunning Strike and possible other actions.
(I'm not very clear on the rules, do unarmed attacks for Monks count as melee weapon attacks?)

Lv 17 won't be overpowered even if you add one or two more spell-like abilities, although I'm out of ideas. :smallsmile:

[Alerad]

Maybe make the reaction when he is hit by an attack and can spend ki points to halve the damage and hit the attacker with an unarmed strike, make it 1/rest? It seems really OP, especially when you are lvl 20 and you get massive damage by a dragon's breath weapon

EDIT: I'm sorry, I thought you're talking about the original class. I didn't really check the alternative class, but now that I read it it does seem a little OP.

I think the Uncanny Dodge is fine, the Rogue gets it even faster (at level 5).

As for breath weapons, most of them require saving throws and not attack rolls, so I think they don't qualify for damage reduction. (You can still use Evasion though.) That's just my interpretation of course :smallsmile: