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Revlid
2016-07-23, 12:25 PM
Way of the Monster
Across the civilized world and the lair-studded wastelands, tales abound of heroes who engage their enemies unarmed, superhuman brawlers who tear the arms from man-eating ogres and shatter bared fangs with a punch. But if such heroes train to defeat monsters, why should others not train to become them?

Such practitioners discard the noble arts of refined martial artists, and instead draw deep on the core of brutish resentment that lurks in every heart. They find transcendence in savage fury and enlightenment in the process of humbling would-be heroes, reducing their enemies to crimson jelly with casual, cathartic cruelty. This is the Way of the Monster.

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Retribution Will Follow
Starting at 3rd level you can use your action to boil your brain with furious ki, causing you to enter a rage. This state may include cosmetic changes like burning eyes or bristling hair, but is otherwise identical to the Barbarian class feature except that it does not offer a damage bonus. Instead, your other ki-fueled powers are modified, as described below. You can enter this state a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, or an unlimited number of times at 20th level.

Joyful Cessation of Restraint. You can choose to focus your fury when you make a Flurry of Blows, directing all the attacks you make this turn on a single creature. If you do so, you make three additional unarmed attacks instead of two.
Fist Meets Fist. If a creature within reach makes an attack against you and misses while you are engaged in a Patient Defense, you may use your reaction to make an immediate unarmed or monk weapon attack against them.
Raging Behemoth Charge. If you move more than 20ft or complete a jump after using Step of the Wind this round, you may make an immediate unarmed or monk weapon attack against a target within reach. If you do so, you lose your reaction for this round.


World-Breaker Grip
Your grasp becomes a thing of monstrous power at 6th level, allowing you to heft creatures with casual cruelty. Your Martial Arts feature already allows you to use Dexterity in place of Strength while making or maintaining grapples, but now you may use a bonus action to treat any creature you are grappling as a monk weapon you are proficient with for the rest of the round. The damage die for this weapon is equal to the standard hit die for that creature's Size (Monster Manual, pp. 7). This attack suffers disadvantage, as the unfortunate cudgel squirms and struggles, but it can wound both weapon and victim; apply the lower attack roll to the target, and the higher roll to the grappled creature.

While you are in a rage, your speed is not impaired by dragging another creature and you may attempt a grapple in place of any unarmed strike, not just as an Attack action.

One Hand Fury
Starting at 11th level you can spend 1 ki point when you enter a rage to become an avatar of pure fury, distorting your body in some monstrous fashion suited to your martial style. You might burn with an unnatural and heatless fire, sprout additional arms that flail and pound, or take on a bestial or demonic aspect. Whatever the cosmetic aspect of your transformation, you become one Size Category larger and inflict an additional 1d4 damage with all unarmed attacks and monk weapons.

Crack the Sky
Starting at 17th level, you can spend additional ki points whenever you make a Stunning Strike to fling the target in a direction of your choice. They are thrown 100 feet for every extra ki point spent, or half that if they succeed on their initial saving throw. When the creature completes their violent journey, or hits an object deeply rooted enough to halt it (e.g. a mountain), they and whichever surface they struck suffer the usual falling damage for the full distance they traveled.

Lalliman
2016-07-24, 03:16 AM
Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Raging Behemoth Charge is weird, as it uses your reaction to do something on your turn, which is not what reactions are for. I suggest you make the extra attack free, but require the user to move a certain distance in a straight line first.

2. One Hand Fury seems way too powerful. There's little reason not to have it active all the time, so it essentially gives a permanent +4-5 damage boost and applies the effect of Open Hand Technique to all your attacks, while the Open Hand Monk only gets it on up to two attacks, and only if he spends ki on FoB. At the same level, the other archetypes get Cloak of Shadows, which is highly situational, and Tranquillity, which is practically a ribbon. I suggest you add a ki cost and make it last for 1 minute.

3. Crack the Sky is ludicrously cool, but probably overpowered. For 2 ki and no action cost, you can deal 20d6 damage, stun the target for one round and remove them from the combat for another 1-3 rounds. There's no saving throw, so the effect always triggers and Legendary Resistance can do nothing against it. Like all features that trigger on a melee attack (Stunning Strike, Open Hand Technique, Quivering Palm), it needs a saving throw. Probably Strength?

Revlid
2016-07-24, 09:05 AM
Here are some of my thoughts.Thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated.


1. Raging Behemoth Charge is weird, as it uses your reaction to do something on your turn, which is not what reactions are for. I suggest you make the extra attack free, but require the user to move a certain distance in a straight line first.Maybe, yes. Or just have the attack remove your ability to use your reaction, because you're moving too fast. I don't want to overload the subclass with tons of free attacks, basically. If you think "move at least 40ft in a straight line" is an acceptable restriction, I can go with that instead.


2. One Hand Fury seems way too powerful. There's little reason not to have it active all the time, so it essentially gives a permanent +4-5 damage boost and applies the effect of Open Hand Technique to all your attacks, while the Open Hand Monk only gets it on up to two attacks, and only if he spends ki on FoB. At the same level, the other archetypes get Cloak of Shadows, which is highly situational, and Tranquillity, which is practically a ribbon. I suggest you add a ki cost and make it last for 1 minute.Yeah, I'm not really sure what to do with One Hand Fury. Its only cost at the moment is "you have a freaky demon arm", which some but not all people are going to be distressed by, assuming you don't cover it up somehow. At the same time, putting a Ki cost on it would make this subclass even more Ki-heavy. When you first join the tradition you can pop fury once and then enjoy its benefits once and that's it, you're done.

So I figure I'll either need to tie it fury, or give it a Ki cost but remove the Ki cost from fury in favour of making it X times/per long rest like a Barbarian's Rage.


3. Crack the Sky is ludicrously cool, but probably overpowered. For 2 ki and no action cost, you can deal 20d6 damage, stun the target for one round and remove them from the combat for another 1-3 rounds. There's no saving throw, so the effect always triggers and Legendary Resistance can do nothing against it. Like all features that trigger on a melee attack (Stunning Strike, Open Hand Technique, Quivering Palm), it needs a saving throw. Probably Strength?
Well, I was specifically comparing it to Quivering Palm, actually. For 2 Ki on Quivering Palm your opponent takes 10-100 necrotic damage, or (if they fail a saving throw) die outright. Crack the Sky cannot autokill you - at the absolute most, assuming the creature doesn't hit something early or have some facility for reducing falling damage, it inflicts 20-120 bludgeoning damage (a more common resistance, iirc). By comparison to Quivering Palm, it assumes you automatically passed your saving throw, and in exchange you get to remove them from the immediate area for a round or two. The "rest of the round" stunning is mainly just to invalidate featherfall or flying movement.

Of course, Quivering Palm also lets you delay your opponent's death for as long as you want, which has utility applications.

Amnoriath
2016-07-24, 11:09 AM
1. Hero-maiming hands is at risk to chain debuff and is very problematic if DM's are using recurring villans.
2. World Breaker Grip, as is it seems that it is a damage increase against larger opponents while always inviting another attack against the other opponents. It is very strong.
3. Yes, just make it like Rage and it be an improvement.
4. Except you must remember Quivering Palm is an action in and of itself so usually that means you need to wait every other round while not being able to damage anything else on your turn. Yours though can be delivered to multiple opponents in a round. This is more equivalent to Hurl through Hell and is pretty much superior in every way.

Lalliman
2016-07-24, 01:53 PM
Well, I was specifically comparing it to Quivering Palm, actually. For 2 Ki on Quivering Palm your opponent takes 10-100 necrotic damage, or (if they fail a saving throw) die outright. Crack the Sky cannot autokill you - at the absolute most, assuming the creature doesn't hit something early or have some facility for reducing falling damage, it inflicts 20-120 bludgeoning damage (a more common resistance, iirc). By comparison to Quivering Palm, it assumes you automatically passed your saving throw, and in exchange you get to remove them from the immediate area for a round or two. The "rest of the round" stunning is mainly just to invalidate featherfall or flying movement.

Of course, Quivering Palm also lets you delay your opponent's death for as long as you want, which has utility applications.
First of all, Quivering palm costs 3 ki and, as Amnoriath said, takes an action in addition to the melee attack used to apply it.

Secondly, the problem is in the battlefield control more so than the damage. Consider the following situation: You hit an enemy with a melee attack and spend 1 ki to use Crack the Sky. Instead of throwing him into the distance, you throw him into a nearby wall, dealing less-than-optimal damage, but allowing your allies to attack him while he's stunned and benefit from the advantage on attacks and the auto-failed saves. You basically just used Stunning Strike without a saving throw, and dealt some extra damage in the process. You can continue doing this every turn as long as you have ki remaining, rendering the target unable to act with nothing they can do about it. Yes, you need to land a melee attack for it to trigger, but with +11 to hit and 3+ attacks, the chance of missing all of your attacks in a round is tiny. For cheesiness, you could throw the target straight up into the air instead, causing them to take the full 10d6 falling damage and still end up stunned in the same place where they started.

Some alternative ways to balance the issue, aside from adding a save to resist the effect:
- The target is stunned until they hit the ground.
- The target is stunned until they hit the ground. On impact, they must succeed at a Con save or be stunned until the end of your next turn.
- The target is stunned until they hit the ground. If they travelled at least 100 feet before hitting an object, they are stunned until the end of your next turn. (This mostly prevents using it like Stunning Fist, but doesn't prevent the straight-into-the-air cheese.)

In all cases, I would also raise the base ki cost to 2. It's a significant amount of guaranteed damage and a powerful crowd control, so it should certainly be more expensive than Stunning Strike. (Knocking someone a hundred feet away is weaker than stunning them, but in many cases still nullifies their next turn.)

Revlid
2016-07-24, 05:08 PM
1. Hero-maiming hands is at risk to chain debuff and is very problematic if DM's are using recurring villans.
I'm not especially worried about this, to be honest. It only hits one opponent each round, while in rage, while not improving the actual power of the Flurry of Blows at all. I mean, 17/20 of the results on the Lingering Injury Table are removed by any magical healing, or even good-quality mundane healing (and of those, 7/20 are largely cosmetic). It's only 1, 2, and 3 that require heal or regenerate to remove (and a lot of "recurring" villains are going to have access to similar treatments). Sure, hitting with all four attacks increases the odds of getting one of those three from 3/20 to 7/20, but...

Thanks for the commentary from both you and Lalliman on the rest of the subclass. In response, I've made the following changes:
1) You now simply get access to Barbarian rages at 3rd level, but instead of the damage boost you get those modified ki powers.
2) Raging Behemoth Charge prevents you from using your reaction this round, instead of consuming a reaction.
3) One Hand Fury effectively lets you apply enlarge to yourself for 1 ki when you enter rage.
4) Crack the Sky now keys off Stunning Strike. You spend extra ki to throw people, and if they pass their initial Con check the distance is halved.

Lalliman
2016-07-25, 12:54 AM
Clever changes. The class looks really good now. Given how powerful rage is, I'm not certain if it's balanced, but given that you still have d8 hit dice and no bear totem, it might be. One Hand Fury and Crack the Sky seem good now, though the name of One Hand Fury is now a bit random. I think it's ready for play testing.

Revlid
2016-07-25, 04:43 AM
Clever changes. The class looks really good now. Given how powerful rage is, I'm not certain if it's balanced, but given that you still have d8 hit dice and no bear totem, it might be. One Hand Fury and Crack the Sky seem good now, though the name of One Hand Fury is now a bit random. I think it's ready for play testing.

Thank you very much!

In response to a request from my DM I've returned the Flurry of Blows modification to "make an additional unarmed attack against your target", as he agreed with Amnoriath that it had the potential to be too problematic.

One Hand Fury is named for the associated Exalted Charm – I'll change all these names when I get this up on Homebrewery, anyway.