Variant Sun Soul Feature, Blinding Bolt.

[MightyDuck]

First time posting in this forum so yay!

Anyways, I recently came up with a new feature for one of my players, who's playing a sun soul monk and is feeling a little let down by his class features which I kinda get. The feature is called Blinding Bolt, its essentially the Radiant Sun Bolt equivalent of the monks Stunning Strike feature, when you hit an enemy you can spend a ki point to blind them until the end of your next turn, on a failed constitution saving throw. I'm hoping this will give the monk some utility and better effectiveness at range but I'm not too confident with homebrewing so I'd like to know what you guys think. Is this feature good, overpowered or unnecessary and is there anything else I can do (any home rules or homebrew) that can make the subclass better?!

[Man_Over_Game]

First time posting in this forum so yay!

Anyways, I recently came up with a new feature for one of my players, who's playing a sun soul monk and is feeling a little let down by his class features which I kinda get. The feature is called Blinding Bolt, its essentially the Radiant Sun Bolt equivalent of the monks Stunning Strike feature, when you hit an enemy you can spend a ki point to blind them until the end of your next turn, on a failed constitution saving throw. I'm hoping this will give the monk some utility and better effectiveness at range but I'm not too confident with homebrewing so I'd like to know what you guys think. Is this feature good, overpowered or unnecessary and is there anything else I can do (any home rules or homebrew) that can make the subclass better?!

Welcome to the site! Glad to have you!

That's a good question. Sun Monks are known for being fairly boring. My recommendation is to allow them to make the Shove action with their bolts, using their Monk Save DC as their athletic's check.

I think that they should have more incentive to participate in melee combat, though. I like the idea of giving them the opportunity to regenerate a ki points in melee combat, something like:

As a bonus action, you can charge your fists with power, transferring energy from your foes into your powers. Until the start of your next turn, whenever you strike an enemy with an unarmed strike, you gain 1 ki point. These ki points last until the end of your next turn, and are used before any prior ki points.

Charge up, blast out a nova of Burning Hands or a Stunning Strike and get out of the way with your ki-evasion.

I'd make this feature available around level 4, when Monks are the most boring.


I'd be careful about adding a ranged, consistent blind. It's really powerful, but leads to a number of metagaming issues (you blind, and I'll Great Weapon Master chop him!).

I particularly like the Shove options as a solution. It's not too terribly strong, and it gives him a few more things to try. The idea that a Monk is crippling his opponent via forceful blasts, or shooting the target in key(ki?) locations on his body seems really flavorful. I'd add in a clause somewhere that you don't get disadvantage from enemies being prone, so that shoving them doesn't work against you.


Shove is relatively weak compared to Blind. The Ki point will cause more frustration, IMO, due to the fact that there's no guaranteed return on it, but if it was successful on a regular basis, then you're giving a consistent blind away, which is very powerful. Either it's too strong, or it's never relevant, and either's a concern.

As for the Ki regeneration, while it's very powerful, Sun Soul has no other real benefit to being in melee combat outside of Stunning Strike or Burning Hands. And ranged combat is relatively dull if you dont' have cool tactical powers to use. This is actually to give them incentive to get out of their comfort zone, to try new maneuvers, and to burn more Ki points in combat after taking well-timed risks.

[Foxhound438]

First time posting in this forum so yay!

Anyways, I recently came up with a new feature for one of my players, who's playing a sun soul monk and is feeling a little let down by his class features which I kinda get. The feature is called Blinding Bolt, its essentially the Radiant Sun Bolt equivalent of the monks Stunning Strike feature, when you hit an enemy you can spend a ki point to blind them until the end of your next turn, on a failed constitution saving throw. I'm hoping this will give the monk some utility and better effectiveness at range but I'm not too confident with homebrewing so I'd like to know what you guys think. Is this feature good, overpowered or unnecessary and is there anything else I can do (any home rules or homebrew) that can make the subclass better?!

this is pretty much the same thing that someone else came up with a while ago. If I remember correctly, the suggestion was to replace the 6th level feature.

Overall I think it's pretty much balanced, you get to do a debuff at range at the cost of it being relatively weaker when it lands. Also blind is a condition which more things are immune to in the first place, and many things have ways of working out okay while blinded anyway like pack tactics. I'd definitely take this over the burning hands feature given the option.

as for other things to make the subclass better, I think it's pretty much what you make of it. I always have fun with monks regardless of what options I take, as you really do get a lot of stuff to work with from base monk anyways. A sun soul for example has good options against pretty much any kind of enemy, having deflect missiles against ranged foes, sun bolts against melee foes, and against casters you can still run in and stun them.

[DarkKnightJin]

Considering that Blinded is usually a less problematic condition than Stunned, since the enemy can still take an action (to Dodge, for example), reactions, or even try to attack. Even if it's at Disadvantage, they might hit.
Ot they have Blindsense at they're basically unaffected for outgoing attacks.

And since it's within 30ft and still requires them to spend a Ki point to try and afflict the Blind.. I'd say this is flavorful, but not OP.

If they want to be more helpful, they get in close and try the regular Stunning Strike, which saves every from a round of attacks from that foe, giving everybody a breather. Or letting them just go HAM on thr poor soul.

[MaxWilson]

First time posting in this forum so yay!

Anyways, I recently came up with a new feature for one of my players, who's playing a sun soul monk and is feeling a little let down by his class features which I kinda get. The feature is called Blinding Bolt, its essentially the Radiant Sun Bolt equivalent of the monks Stunning Strike feature, when you hit an enemy you can spend a ki point to blind them until the end of your next turn, on a failed constitution saving throw. I'm hoping this will give the monk some utility and better effectiveness at range but I'm not too confident with homebrewing so I'd like to know what you guys think. Is this feature good, overpowered or unnecessary and is there anything else I can do (any home rules or homebrew) that can make the subclass better?!

Seems fine. Doesn't make Sun Soul overpowered or anything, but does give it more punch at range, and makes sense thematically. Go for it.

[Rp4man]

SOLAR FLARE!

Somebody had to say it some Souls pretty much a DBZ character

[MightyDuck]

It seems the consensus is that it isn't too powerful or anything, I'm aware that blindness is inferior to being stunned but that's the idea, since stunning strike requires you to be in melee and put yourself at risk it should be more powerful since the Radiant Sun Bolt along, allows you to bypass this weakness. it gives them the option to debuff and combo with allies (like stunning strike)but less effective, it gives them options and utility which is what I want since the subclass has a lot of straight damage abilities.

[guachi]

I like it and would absolutely allow it if it meant someone might actually play a Sun Soul Monk at my table.