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Belzique
2017-12-24, 08:48 AM
Good day,

This is a barbarian subclass that tries to utilize the Ki feature of monks to create a barbarian with a slightly different skillset based on options and choices given a limited resource.

This thread was originally posted with quite a different mindset behind the abilities (which are still relatively similar) and the old version can be found in the spoilers at the bottom of the post. I've decided to keep the original name of the post, although I'd prefer to call the current version "Path of the Ancient Sentinel".

The premise this is built on is that if a Four Elements monk uses all of their Ki to cast spells, they are casting approximately the same amount of spells as a ranger or a paladin, effectively making monks "half casters" in a sense. This means that a "full caster" monk would get 40 Ki per short rest, and a "1/3rds caster" monk would get 13.33 Ki per short rest. Using this information, as well as the fact that the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster exist, I've created this "1/3rds caster monk" subclass for the barbarians. Here are its features:

Path of the Ancient Sentinel

Often in the company of druids or rangers, barbarians of the Path of the Ancient Sentinel draw on the power of nature. Having a particular affinity for the most prominent aspect of living nature, trees, they create tree totems to signify their connection.

Spiritual Connection
When you adopt this path at 3rd level, you can spend 1 hour in ritual to summon a totem which acts as a conduit to the spirits you channel. Your access to these spirits is represented by a number of spirit ethos, from now on referred to as ethos points. Your barbarian level determines the number of points you have, as shown in the Ethos Points table found below. You may only have one totem at a time, performing the 1 hour ritual to summon a totem while you already have one active instantly destroys the previous totem.

The totem has the statistics of a warhammer or a maul when wielded as a weapon by you (your choice whenever you summon it). If you choose for your totem to have the statistics of a warhammer when wielding by you, it has the statistics of a club when wielded by others. Likewise, if you choose for your totem to have the statistics of a maul when wielding by you, it has the statistics of a greatclub when wielded by others. While wielding your totem you can calculate the AC granted to you by your Unarmored Defense feature as 10 + your Wisdom Modifier + your Constitution modifier. All other rules of the feature apply. Your totem counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Whenever you are wielding your totem you can spend ethos points to fuel your two ethos features: Earthshock and Enchant Totem. Once you spend ethos points they become unavailable until you finish a short or long rest.

Some of your ethos features require your target to make a saving throw to resist the feature's effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:

Ethos save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Earthshock

As an action on your turn while you are raging, you can spend 1 ethos point to slam your totem into the ground, creating a thunderwave that damages nearby creatures. Each creature within 10 feet of you must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 1d8 thunder damage. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage. The damage this feature does increases by 1d8 for each additional ethos point you spend to perform it, although you can never spend more ethos points than listed in the Ethos Points table.

Enchant Totem

As a bonus action on your turn, you can spend 1 ethos point to enchant your totem with the spirits. The totem remains enchanted until the end of your turn or until you successfully hit a creature with an attack, at which point the attack does damage equal to the damage you would do on a critical hit, and the enchant ends. While your totem is enchanted you cannot critically hit with it. If you perform this ethos feature on the same turn as your Earthshock ethos feature, the enchantment instead lasts until the end of your next turn.

Here we're basically giving the barbarian the "1/3rds caster" version of the Ki feature. The totem is mostly for flavor and can easily be replaced or removed, but it's also a nice way to give the barbarian this alternate version of unarmored defense keying off of Wisdom to make them less MAD. I felt it makes sense to have the Ki features key off Wisdom to keep in line with monks. Earthshock is comparable to the thunderwave spell in that a Four Elements monk would use 2 Ki points to cast a 1st level spell, and thunderwave even has a rider in the pushback that earthshock doesn't have. Enchant totem is likelier to be the Ki (or well, ethos) dump for barbarians, but I hope it's balanced out by the fact that it's basically useless if you miss or crit.

Fissure
At 6th level, whenever you use your Earthshock ethos feature, you can choose to have the area it affects be a line 5-feet wide and 120-foot long originating from you.

As the 6th level feature has usually been a ribbon-ish (semi-useful only) one for barbarians and I was lacking an idea for this subclass I threw in this slight buff for the earthshock ethos feature. It can easily be replaced by anything if it makes earthshock too powerful, especially considering the next part.

Aftershock
Starting at 10th level, whenever a creature fails the Constitution saving throw on your Earthshock ethos feature (including echo waves created by the Echo Slam feature) or when you hit a creature with your totem while it is enchanted by your Enchant Totem ethos feature, you can spend 1 ethos point in an attempt to surge it with additional power to stun it. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

Basically a worse version of the monk's Stunning Strike, requiring you to spend Ki points to even get the option to spend even more Ki in an attempt to stun.

Echo Slam
At 14th level, whenever you use your Earthshock ethos feature, you can spend 3 additional ethos points to amplify it. Each creature besides you in the radius affected echoes the wave you created, prompting each creature within a 10-feet radius of that creature to be subject to the feature's effects. This feature cannot damage you. If a creature is hit by multiple Earthshock effects as a result of this feature, it only makes one saving throw to determine whether it succeeds or fails.

Just like last time, this is really where the balance falls apart. This is not a good feature if you're facing a small amount of enemies but likely way too good if you have a large amount of opponents facing you.

Ethos Points Table
| Barbarian Level | Ethos Points | Max Ethos Per Earthshock |
| 3 | 5 | 3 |
| 5 | 6 | 3 |
| 7 | 7 | 3 |
| 9 | 8 | 4 |
| 11 | 9 | 4 |
| 13 | 10 | 5 |
| 15 | 11 | 5 |
| 17 | 12 | 6 |
| 19 | 13 | 6 |


All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

I wanted some evaluation of my earthshaker inspired barbarian subclass, hope I'll find some here.

Enchant Totem
When you adopt this path at 3rd level, you build a totem which acts as a conduit between you and the spirits you channel. The totem has the statistics of a maul when wielded as a weapon by you and is considered a druidic focus to you. If you are raging and are wielding your totem you can use an action to cast the earth tremor spell by slamming your totem down. The spell is cast at a level equal to half your proficiency bonus (rounded down) and its DC is equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier. If you do so your totem becomes enchanted for 1 minute or until your rage ends. If your attack against a target hits while your totem is enchanted, you may choose to roll your damage dice as if it had been a critical hit, at which point the totem loses its enchantment early. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Strength modifier. You regain all uses of this feature when you finish a long rest.

Compared to the features granted by Totem Warrior path I figure being able to cast one specific spell five times a day is reasonable. The crit damage on a hit is what I'm less sure about. I figure the way it scales with Brutal Critical would make it balanced across levels but I'd appreciate input here. Note that it is not an auto-crit, but rather you have to hit first and then you can make the damage of a critical hit.

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 10 feet

Components: V, S

Duration: Instantaneous

You cause a tremor in the ground within range. Each creature other than you in that area must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone. If the ground in that area is loose earth or stone, it becomes difficult terrain until cleared, with each 5-foot diameter portion requiring at least 1 minute to clear by hand.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Druidic Spirit
At 6th level, you learn a number of druid spells that you can cast as rituals. These spells are carved into your totem, which you must have in hand while casting one of them. You learn one 1st-level druid spell of your choice that has the ritual tag. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for spells cast in this fashion. If you come across a spell in written form, such as a magical spell scroll or a druid's scripture, you might be able to add it to your totem. The spell must be on the druid spell list, the spell's level can be no higher than half your level (rounded up), and it must have the ritual tag. The process of copying the spell onto your totem takes 2 hours per level of the spell, and costs 50 gp per level. The cost represents material components you expend as you experiment with the spell to master it, as well as the paint and adornments you work into your totem while recording it.

As the 6th level feature has usually been a ribbon-ish (semi-useful only) one for barbarians and I was lacking an idea for this subclass I threw this nerfed (one spell instead of two) and subpar (who'd choose druid, really?) version of ritual caster in here. I justify it by having this subclass have a greater connection to the spirits in my setting.

Aftershock
Starting at 10th level, your Enchant Totem feature becomes stronger. All creatures within range of the earth tremor spell cast through the feature must now also succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier) or be stunned until the start of your next turn.

A barbarian will probably have a pretty high Strength modifier, meaning the DC will be at its highest. So this is basically a pretty good chance to stun everyone in a 10 feet radius (6x6 square area if I'm reading the spell correctly). I figured I'd offset this by having the stun only last until the start of the next turn instead of end of the next turn.

Echo Slam
At 14th level, your Enchant Totem feature becomes even more powerful. The damage the spell does increases by 1 per creature inside the radius of the spell.

Feature changed somewhat since original posting, see comment #3. Like this it's not a great feature for a typical adventuring encounter but in return you can quite easily slaughter up to 240 low CR creatures in 30 seconds, assuming they're tightly packed enough and you can get into the middle of them.

I'd really appreciate feedback here, as I know homebrew tends to be very unbalanced.

Mith
2017-12-24, 12:22 PM
I like the concept of it. I cannot give much feedback on the material though. I would compare to the Storm Barbarian path (unless I am thinking of the Sorcerer here) for comparison simply because of similarity as elemental rage paths. It might not be what you are going for though.

Lalliman
2017-12-24, 01:13 PM
Great flavour. It's hard to judge, since it doesn't really resemble anything else in the game, but it seems intuitively balanced. Stunning in a 15 foot radius is powerful, but I think it's balanced out by the fact that A) you yourself don't benefit from it offensively, and B) your allies, who might benefit from it, have to be 15 feet away to avoid being affected. Will require playtesting.

One little technical thing, Echo slam says: "the damage the spell does increases by 1d6 per creature inside the radius of the spell." To me this implies that if there are five targets, each target takes 5d6 extra damage. I assume that's not what you meant. "the spell damage increases by 1d6" should be sufficient for what I assume you meant.

Belzique
2017-12-25, 10:15 AM
I like the concept of it. I cannot give much feedback on the material though. I would compare to the Storm Barbarian path (unless I am thinking of the Sorcerer here) for comparison simply because of similarity as elemental rage paths. It might not be what you are going for though.

I can't say I modeled it after any other subclass, this is basically me trying to put the abilities of the Dota 2 hero Earthshaker into 5e form.


Great flavour. It's hard to judge, since it doesn't really resemble anything else in the game, but it seems intuitively balanced. Stunning in a 15 foot radius is powerful, but I think it's balanced out by the fact that A) you yourself don't benefit from it offensively, and B) your allies, who might benefit from it, have to be 15 feet away to avoid being affected. Will require playtesting.

Those were my thoughts. It is also expending a rather limited resource compared to f.x. monks, who will have much more ki to spend throughout the day for a stun of much greater significance, albeit of course single target only.


One little technical thing, Echo slam says: "the damage the spell does increases by 1d6 per creature inside the radius of the spell." To me this implies that if there are five targets, each target takes 5d6 extra damage. I assume that's not what you meant. "the spell damage increases by 1d6" should be sufficient for what I assume you meant.

The idea was to have it go up by 5d6 if there were 5 creatures inside its radius actually, but I was so preoccupied with the stun effect that I forgot to put much thought into the balance of this.

Current thoughts are skipping the increased radius and perhaps changing the damage scaling (as you suggested/implied) to be something like "the damage the spell does increases by 1 per creature inside the radius of the spell". With the original radius of 10 feet (5x5 area) this would mean a maximum of 48 creatures (assuming each square is occupied by 2 creatures and you are occupying the middle square) will be hit, this would be the barbarian jumping into an army or something similar, and everyone inside the radius would then take 48+2d6 (and later 48+3d6) damage.

This is assuming they don't make the saving throw however, but if they do they of course take no damage. Perhaps the 6th level feature could be enemies taking half damage even if they make the save? But then there's the other thing to consider, how often will you be jumping into army ranks as opposed to fighting just 3-5 enemies? That's a pretty bad damage increase for a 14th level feature, bumping a 5x day ability damage by 3-5, but I guess it's offset by the fact that you can jump into army ranks and decimate them I suppose.

Requilac
2017-12-25, 11:48 AM
At a first glance, this class seams well balanced to me, aside from aftershock. Stunned is a nasty condition, and being able to stun groups of enemies up to five times a Day is very up to question. This could practically devastate any encounter you come across, unless your DM gets really creative that is. The mook though is a rather common concept, and being able to entirely disable enemies such as that even for one round is questionable. I would advise against allowing it to hit so many targets at once. You should really make it so that only one target in the area of the earth tremor gets stunned, or possibly give targets another separate saving throw against it.

What also could be interesting is that instead of using that feature, you could give earth shakers something like the monk’s stunning strike. You can expend resources to force a creature to succeed on a saving throw or become stunned on a hit. It is Thematically appropriate, still very useful, and proven to be balanced. I suppose that might not be what you are looking for though.

Belzique
2017-12-27, 11:03 AM
At a first glance, this class seams well balanced to me, aside from aftershock. Stunned is a nasty condition, and being able to stun groups of enemies up to five times a Day is very up to question. This could practically devastate any encounter you come across, unless your DM gets really creative that is. The mook though is a rather common concept, and being able to entirely disable enemies such as that even for one round is questionable. I would advise against allowing it to hit so many targets at once. You should really make it so that only one target in the area of the earth tremor gets stunned, or possibly give targets another separate saving throw against it.

If left the way it is all the enemies in the radius would have a chance to make the dexterity save to avoid the effects of the spell entirely, including the stun. If they are unlucky enough to not make the dexterity saving throw the constitution save can still be passed.


What also could be interesting is that instead of using that feature, you could give earth shakers something like the monk’s stunning strike. You can expend resources to force a creature to succeed on a saving throw or become stunned on a hit. It is Thematically appropriate, still very useful, and proven to be balanced. I suppose that might not be what you are looking for though.

Although I'm not going to jump on it immediately/go straight into an overhaul, I am going to explore this idea more. Based on the premise that monks are half casters (60 ki over an entire day gives access to approximately the same amount of spells as a ranger or paladin has over a day if you look at the 4-elements spellcasting) a "1/3rds caster" archetype could be created with ki, a la eldritch knight and arcane trickster. This could possibly give a more balanced base to work on. Thank you for the idea.

Requilac
2017-12-27, 01:55 PM
If left the way it is all the enemies in the radius would have a chance to make the dexterity save to avoid the effects of the spell entirely, including the stun. If they are unlucky enough to not make the dexterity saving throw the constitution save can still be passed.

So they do get a second constitution save to avoid being stunned, I did not realize that. Oh, that is fine. Sorry, i thought that earth tremor required a constitution save to avoid being knocked prone, not a dexterity save. I thought that if the enemy failed the initial saving throw they would get stunned, but I misinterpreted that. Thanks for clearing that up.



Although I'm not going to jump on it immediately/go straight into an overhaul, I am going to explore this idea more. Based on the premise that monks are half casters (60 ki over an entire day gives access to approximately the same amount of spells as a ranger or paladin has over a day if you look at the 4-elements spellcasting) a "1/3rds caster" archetype could be created with ki, a la eldritch knight and arcane trickster. This could possibly give a more balanced base to work on. Thank you for the idea.

You are welcome, hope I helped. Although I was not quite reffering to ki in my post, I am glad to see that I have inspired you to think of something. I am rather satisfied with the current version though and would not recommend changing it. Now creating a variant that uses ki could be interesting, but its current form seems fine to me.

Belzique
2018-03-14, 03:34 PM
This has been updated with a major revamp after Requilac prompted the idea of balancing this around monks, just in case anyone is interested.

Requilac
2018-03-17, 09:01 AM
You do realize that you can change the name of the thread to “Path of the Ancient Sentinel” if you would like. Just open the edit pane of the original post, click on the line with the title, change it to what you want and then save your changes and the thread name will be changed.

Spiritual connection: Ethos points are fine from what I am seeing so far, but I am a little confused about this totem weapon. How does one get their totem? Does it just magically appear on your person when you reach 3rd level, does a random maul on your person suddenly become enchanted or does something else happen? What happens if your totem is destroyed? Can you have multiple totem weapons? Can you change which weapon is your totem weapon? You mention that when wielded by you the totem acts as a maul, but if someone else picks it up what would it’s statistics be? Why does the totem have to be a maul? Not all barbarians fight with two-handed weapons, some use a shield and a one-handed weapon or even two light weapons so they make use of the extra rage damage . Maybe you should make it so that the totem can have the stats of any bludgeoning weapon instead. Does it count as a magical weapon? Can you calculate your AC this way only when you hold the totem in your hand or is just having it on your person enough? There is a lot vagueness surrounding the totem.

Earthshock: My first impression is that it seems fairly weak, but seeing as how you can spend extra ethos points to increase the damage it should be fine.

Enchant Totem: So you can spend an ethos point to get a guaranteed critical if you hit. At first I am a little leery of this, but seeing as how in 5e you are expected to fight six encounters my worries are lessened. Part of me does not like how spam- able it is though, and I find it kind of boring and don’t quite see how it reinforces the theme, but balance wise it is fine.

Fissure: Ooh, this is pretty cool and an interesting take on the 6th level barbarian feature. I am personally rather fond of it and I see nothing wrong here.

Aftershock: This seems fair, I don’t see anything wrong with it at a first glance.

Echo slam: This is actually pretty interesting and seeing as how it costs 3 ethos points to pull off balanced too. I don’t quite see anything wrong with this, but I have a couple of questions. What do you mean by “A creature only makes one saving throw to determine damage received when affected by this feature”? Does that mean a creature hit by the original earth shock is immune to the echo waves? Second, can you use the aftershock feature to stun a creature hit by an echo wave, or can only people which failed the saving throw of the original earth shock be affected by aftershock?

________________________

Verdict: Over-all it seems like an interesting and mechanically balanced class, especially with the interesting use of the earthshock feature. You need to clarify some of the features though for them to be understandable. As a DM I would totally allow someone to play this if the rules regarding the totem weapon were all cleared up. Great job!

Belzique
2018-03-18, 04:58 PM
You do realize that you can change the name of the thread to “Path of the Ancient Sentinel” if you would like. Just open the edit pane of the original post, click on the line with the title, change it to what you want and then save your changes and the thread name will be changed.

I know, I just figured that in the very unlikely case someone wanted to find the old one they'd be confused if I changed the title, so I decided to do it like this instead.


Spiritual connection: Ethos points are fine from what I am seeing so far, but I am a little confused about this totem weapon. How does one get their totem? Does it just magically appear on your person when you reach 3rd level, does a random maul on your person suddenly become enchanted or does something else happen? What happens if your totem is destroyed? Can you have multiple totem weapons? Can you change which weapon is your totem weapon? You mention that when wielded by you the totem acts as a maul, but if someone else picks it up what would it’s statistics be? Why does the totem have to be a maul? Not all barbarians fight with two-handed weapons, some use a shield and a one-handed weapon or even two light weapons so they make use of the extra rage damage . Maybe you should make it so that the totem can have the stats of any bludgeoning weapon instead. Does it count as a magical weapon? Can you calculate your AC this way only when you hold the totem in your hand or is just having it on your person enough? There is a lot vagueness surrounding the totem.

All excellent points, thank you. I've modified the original post now. Regretfully a mace-type weapon with the Light property that makes sense (why isn't there a 1d6 one that you can throw like the handaxe?) is lacking so additional homebrewing would need to be done if such a weapon was wanting. I've decided to leave that out (for now at least).


Earthshock: My first impression is that it seems fairly weak, but seeing as how you can spend extra ethos points to increase the damage it should be fine.

It is basically balanced around Four Elements monk spellcasting and Thunderwave. Thunderwave is a 1st-level spell, meaning it would cost a Four Elements monk 2 Ki to cast (if he/she could cast it) and it does 2d8 damage + pushback. It is therefore indeed a bit weaker, but the ability to stun creatures it hits once you reach higher levels should boost it back up a bit.


Enchant Totem: So you can spend an ethos point to get a guaranteed critical if you hit. At first I am a little leery of this, but seeing as how in 5e you are expected to fight six encounters my worries are lessened. Part of me does not like how spam- able it is though, and I find it kind of boring and don’t quite see how it reinforces the theme, but balance wise it is fine.

As this was originally inspired (and kind of still is) by the Earthshaker hero from Dota 2 and one of his main spells gives him true strike and a crit I felt this was the best representation. You have to spend ethos points to use it and you'll max get 3 attempts to utilize it (3 attempts at hitting the creature, which is required for it to proc). Then there's also the chance that you'll get a nat 20 (~10% if you're using Reckless Attack) and then it's wasted anyway. But in return it does get boosted by Brutal Critical, so I'm hoping it's balanced enough in the end.


Fissure: Ooh, this is pretty cool and an interesting take on the 6th level barbarian feature. I am personally rather fond of it and I see nothing wrong here.

It doesn't change the amount of squares that earth shock affects but it does change the shape to something quite humorous, being 120-feet long.


Aftershock: This seems fair, I don’t see anything wrong with it at a first glance.

Good to hear. You have to spend ethos points (and must hit/the target must fail a ST) for you to even attempt it, unlike monks, but instead you can potentially stun more people at once.


Echo slam: This is actually pretty interesting and seeing as how it costs 3 ethos points to pull off balanced too. I don’t quite see anything wrong with this, but I have a couple of questions. What do you mean by “A creature only makes one saving throw to determine damage received when affected by this feature”? Does that mean a creature hit by the original earth shock is immune to the echo waves? Second, can you use the aftershock feature to stun a creature hit by an echo wave, or can only people which failed the saving throw of the original earth shock be affected by aftershock?

Basically, because another creature "echoes" the earth shock you did, a third individual might be hit twice (once from you and once from the other creature). This was basically a sentence thrown in there to reduce the number of ST's being rolled, as if it was a tightly packed group there'd be a lot of rolls and that'd just bog the game down. I've tried to clarify the text a bit now, thank you. Regarding the second point, I've modified the text of Aftershock to clarify this also, thanks again.

________________________


Verdict: Over-all it seems like an interesting and mechanically balanced class, especially with the interesting use of the earthshock feature. You need to clarify some of the features though for them to be understandable. As a DM I would totally allow someone to play this if the rules regarding the totem weapon were all cleared up. Great job!

Thank you, and thank you for the replies. I really do appreciate them :smallsmile:.

Requilac
2018-03-18, 08:07 PM
All excellent points, thank you. I've modified the original post now. Regretfully a mace-type weapon with the Light property that makes sense (why isn't there a 1d6 one that you can throw like the handaxe?) is lacking so additional homebrewing would need to be done if such a weapon was wanting. I've decided to leave that out (for now at least).




Basically, because another creature "echoes" the earth shock you did, a third individual might be hit twice (once from you and once from the other creature). This was basically a sentence thrown in there to reduce the number of ST's being rolled, as if it was a tightly packed group there'd be a lot of rolls and that'd just bog the game down. I've tried to clarify the text a bit now, thank you. Regarding the second point, I've modified the text of Aftershock to clarify this also, thanks again.

Thank you for the clarifications, these particular feature makes so much more sense now.




As this was originally inspired (and kind of still is) by the Earthshaker hero from Dota 2 and one of his main spells gives him true strike and a crit I felt this was the best representation. You have to spend ethos points to use it and you'll max get 3 attempts to utilize it (3 attempts at hitting the creature, which is required for it to proc). Then there's also the chance that you'll get a nat 20 (~10% if you're using Reckless Attack) and then it's wasted anyway. But in return it does get boosted by Brutal Critical, so I'm hoping it's balanced enough in the end.

Ah yes fair enough, I did not get the reference so I was unaware of the reason behind it, but if you had that purpose in mind then it is fine.




It doesn't change the amount of squares that earth shock affects but it does change the shape to something quite humorous, being 120-feet long.

I do not see anything inherently humorous about an 120 ft. line, What do you mean by this?

________________________




Thank you, and thank you for the replies. I really do appreciate them :smallsmile:.

Now that everything is cleared up it looks alright to me. Great job here! It is both thematically interesting and pretty well balanced. Its good to see this project work out so well. Best of luck to you Belzique.

Morphic tide
2018-03-18, 10:30 PM
...Is there any particular reason this doesn't use a straight up Ki pool?

Requilac
2018-03-19, 04:47 AM
...Is there any particular reason this doesn't use a straight up Ki pool?

It does use a Ki pool, it has just been renamed as ethos points, but the only mechanical difference between the two is the features which they can fuel.

Morphic tide
2018-03-19, 08:26 AM
It does use a Ki pool, it has just been renamed as ethos points, but the only mechanical difference between the two is the features which they can fuel.

I know. I'm wondering if there's an actual reason for it to not be spendable on Monk abilities. It’s a lower progression rate, so it's not giving much extra in the way of endurance or sheer power. Trading power and longevity is, like, the keystone of multiclassing.