Aett_Thorn
2017-07-21, 02:06 PM
Another thread on Four Elements Monks got me thinking about how they could be fixed. Before I put this on the Homebrew forum, I wanted to see what others thought, and to see if there are any issues that I haven’t thought of.
Now, when people usually complain about 4E Monks, the usual (and understandable) issues are:
1) High ki costs of the abilities
2) Lack of versatility in what you can do
3) Ability ki costs and action economy competing with normal things that you can do as a normal Monk
4) Abilities are usually fairly weak by the time that you can get them
5) Abilities not really jiving with the basic Monk chasis
Now, the high ki costs can be addressed by just lowering pretty much all of the abilities by 1 ki. But the rest of these would still remain. So how would I address most of them (and I admit not all) – Enter the Wu Jen Mystic subclass. Well, actually, just their Disciplines. What if you replaced Elemental Attunement with having access to Energy Beam, and at each level where you’d normally chose a single new ability, you’d instead chose from between:
• Mastery of Air
• Mastery of Fire
• Mastery of Ice
• Mastery of Water
• Mastery of Weather
• Mastery of Wood and Earth
You’d of course use ki to fuel these abilities, and you’d have all of the other restrictions on how many ki you could use at a single time for your level. Also, you’d be allowed to use the Psychic Focus for each one.
As a Monk, you have significantly less ki to spend than the Mystic’s Psi points, but you get them back on a short rest instead of a long one, which helps to balance that out. Using these Disciplines creates the following benefits:
1) A range of ki costs depending on what you want to do. You can either be stingy with your ki, or at later levels, you can burn through them quickly for stronger effects. But having a focus up allows you to still do something with your choices even if you don’t want to spend much ki on them.
2) Opens up a lot of versatility in what you can do, since each Mastery has a range of options for a range of ki
3) Ki costs would still compete with action economy over all, but some Masteries give you bonus action options if you still want to get some punches in.
4) Disciplines scale as you level, allowing you to start them off weak, and grow as you level
5) Abilities are still outside of the normal Monk chasis, but many of these Disciplines would allow you to feel more like the element Bender that the subclass is based on.
Potential problems as I see them:
• Some of the Mastery abilities might be too powerful for their cost (so might need some adjustment)
• Monks weren’t really made to have concentration abilities
• Still have some very expensive ki costs (Summoning an elemental would cost over a third of your ki at level 20)
• A lot less simple to implement than just reducing ki costs of the standard abilities
• A LOT more versatile than any of the other Monk options
Still, I think that it would be a lot more fun to have these options instead of the ones that 4E Monks get right now. However, the added versatility would be a huge balance issue. Maybe there would need to be a limit on the number of Disciplines you can chose as replacement abilities to the normal stock of options.
Now, when people usually complain about 4E Monks, the usual (and understandable) issues are:
1) High ki costs of the abilities
2) Lack of versatility in what you can do
3) Ability ki costs and action economy competing with normal things that you can do as a normal Monk
4) Abilities are usually fairly weak by the time that you can get them
5) Abilities not really jiving with the basic Monk chasis
Now, the high ki costs can be addressed by just lowering pretty much all of the abilities by 1 ki. But the rest of these would still remain. So how would I address most of them (and I admit not all) – Enter the Wu Jen Mystic subclass. Well, actually, just their Disciplines. What if you replaced Elemental Attunement with having access to Energy Beam, and at each level where you’d normally chose a single new ability, you’d instead chose from between:
• Mastery of Air
• Mastery of Fire
• Mastery of Ice
• Mastery of Water
• Mastery of Weather
• Mastery of Wood and Earth
You’d of course use ki to fuel these abilities, and you’d have all of the other restrictions on how many ki you could use at a single time for your level. Also, you’d be allowed to use the Psychic Focus for each one.
As a Monk, you have significantly less ki to spend than the Mystic’s Psi points, but you get them back on a short rest instead of a long one, which helps to balance that out. Using these Disciplines creates the following benefits:
1) A range of ki costs depending on what you want to do. You can either be stingy with your ki, or at later levels, you can burn through them quickly for stronger effects. But having a focus up allows you to still do something with your choices even if you don’t want to spend much ki on them.
2) Opens up a lot of versatility in what you can do, since each Mastery has a range of options for a range of ki
3) Ki costs would still compete with action economy over all, but some Masteries give you bonus action options if you still want to get some punches in.
4) Disciplines scale as you level, allowing you to start them off weak, and grow as you level
5) Abilities are still outside of the normal Monk chasis, but many of these Disciplines would allow you to feel more like the element Bender that the subclass is based on.
Potential problems as I see them:
• Some of the Mastery abilities might be too powerful for their cost (so might need some adjustment)
• Monks weren’t really made to have concentration abilities
• Still have some very expensive ki costs (Summoning an elemental would cost over a third of your ki at level 20)
• A lot less simple to implement than just reducing ki costs of the standard abilities
• A LOT more versatile than any of the other Monk options
Still, I think that it would be a lot more fun to have these options instead of the ones that 4E Monks get right now. However, the added versatility would be a huge balance issue. Maybe there would need to be a limit on the number of Disciplines you can chose as replacement abilities to the normal stock of options.