An Urban monk -- ideas thread

[Silkensword]

I'm thinking about creating a monk subclass that is flavored to be at home in the city rather than a secluded cloister- some ideas i've had so far:

-Improvised weapons count as monk weapons

-Wall jump attack (when making a melee attack and a wall is behind you, ability to jump over enemy and land on the other side, no opportunity attacks against them during this movement)

I'm excited to hear other ideas you guys might have!

[Misterwhisper]

I'm thinking about creating a monk subclass that is flavored to be at home in the city rather than a secluded cloister- some ideas i've had so far:

-Improvised weapons count as monk weapons

-Wall jump attack (when making a melee attack and a wall is behind you, ability to jump over enemy and land on the other side, no opportunity attacks against them during this movement)

I'm excited to hear other ideas you guys might have!

Check out the Pugilist Class on DMs guild.

It is what you are looking for.

[RogueJK]

You don't necessarily need to change anything mechanically. Just refluff the backstory and features.

My last Monk wasn't the stereotypical kung fu monastery student. He was an urban bareknuckle boxer and barroom brawler. He still used his fists and feet to fight, with Ki and other Monk features being refluffed simply as his inner resolve/stubbornness, combined with some dirty tricks he'd picked up over the years.

[Silkensword]

Check out the Pugilist Class on DMs guild.

It is what you are looking for.

I have had a look at it, and I found it interesting, albeit not what i'm looking for!

[Ganymede]

The Drunken Master tradition likely gets you most of what you want mechanically.

At the heart of the monk is the ability to harness an inner wellspring of resolve in order to accomplish uncanny feats. If you change that, it isn't a monk anymore, so be sure to preserve that essence. Otherwise, as others have said, most of this is fixed with an appropriate backstory and personality.

[Atavis]

The Urchin background gives you Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Disguise kit, thieves' tools and a map of the city. Add to that its City Secrets feature that gives you the ability to travel between any two locations in the city twice as fast as your speed would normally allow.

You could use:
• Open Hand to simulate a skilled hand to hand fighter
• Drunken Master to be a drunken brawler
• Kensei to be an upscale duelist with a sword or any weapon
• Long Death to be that brawler nobody to should mess with
• Shadow to be the sneaky type that's extra scary in the dark corners

With a good back story, you'd have everything but improvised weapons as monk weapons.

[djreynolds]

You probably have like a 40 movement already at 3rd, at 9th you can run up walls so you do that move.

But I like the idea, look at 3 levels of thief for second story work

[Silkensword]

The Way of the Alley
The monks of Waterdeep’s newest cloister follow their doctrine to the letter. They patrol the streets in roving gangs or alone, supplying anyone who would listen, and many who would rather not, with their songs on the nature of virtue.
Singing to the streets of waterdeep carries, of course, the risk of making some unfriendly people rather unhappy, especially in such holier-than-thou tones.
As a rule, the followers of the way of the Alley carry no weapons. They are against any instrument crafted primarily to cause harm, arguing that such objects themselves cause strife.

They are, however, not helpless. Any Waterdeep unsavory type who’d gotten into scuffles with these monks would know that in their hands, anything could be used to inflict serious harm.

Never Cornered
Starting at 3rd level, your life in the city and your training at the cloyster have granted you the following abilities:

Always armed: When you choose this tradition at 3rd Level, you gain proficiency in improvised weapons. They count as monk weapons for you.

Wall jump: Whenever you make a melee attack against an enemy and are adjacent to a wall that is at least 5ft’ tall, you may immediately leap 10 feet onto the opposite side of the enemy. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.


Bring no Weapon
Starting at 6th level, your training has turned anything in your hand into a lethal weapon.

Improved improvised weapons: When using an improvised weapon, they gain the finesse and light property so long as you can use them in one hand.
When using an improvised weapon that needs to be used with two hands, it gains the reach property.
When using a thrown improvised weapon, its range increment is increased to 60’ - 120’.

Serpents’ Lash: You can spend 1 Ki to get the benefits of Wall Jump without needing to be adjacent to a wall. Additionally, you may spend 1 additional ki point to make an additional unarmed strike against the enemy you are jumping over.




Think like Oil
Starting at 11th level, you have learned to be impossible to pin down.

Release the Shackle: When grappled or restrained, you may expend 1 Ki point to escape the grapple or to end the restrained condition, no action required.

Quick of Spirit: You may add your wisdom modifier to your initiative modifier.


Still trying to think of what to do for level 17.

[Man_Over_Game]

The Way of the Alley
The monks of Waterdeep’s newest cloister follow their doctrine to the letter. They patrol the streets in roving gangs or alone, supplying anyone who would listen, and many who would rather not, with their songs on the nature of virtue.
Singing to the streets of waterdeep carries, of course, the risk of making some unfriendly people rather unhappy, especially in such holier-than-thou tones.
As a rule, the followers of the way of the Alley carry no weapons. They are against any instrument crafted primarily to cause harm, arguing that such objects themselves cause strife.

They are, however, not helpless. Any Waterdeep unsavory type who’d gotten into scuffles with these monks would know that in their hands, anything could be used to inflict serious harm.

Never Cornered
Starting at 3rd level, your life in the city and your training at the cloyster have granted you the following abilities:

Always armed: When you choose this tradition at 3rd Level, you gain proficiency in improvised weapons. They count as monk weapons for you.

Wall jump: Whenever you make a melee attack against an enemy and are adjacent to a wall that is at least 5ft’ tall, you may immediately leap 10 feet onto the opposite side of the enemy. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.


Bring no Weapon
Starting at 6th level, your training has turned anything in your hand into a lethal weapon.

Improved improvised weapons: When using an improvised weapon, they gain the finesse and light property so long as you can use them in one hand.
When using an improvised weapon that needs to be used with two hands, it gains the reach property.
When using a thrown improvised weapon, its range increment is increased to 60’ - 120’.

Serpents’ Lash: You can spend 1 Ki to get the benefits of Wall Jump without needing to be adjacent to a wall. Additionally, you may spend 1 additional ki point to make an additional unarmed strike against the enemy you are jumping over.

Think like Oil
Starting at 11th level, you have learned to be impossible to pin down.

Release the Shackle: When grappled or restrained, you may expend 1 Ki point to escape the grapple or to end the restrained condition, no action required.

Quick of Spirit: You may add your wisdom modifier to your initiative modifier.


Still trying to think of what to do for level 17.

Level 3: Can move behind enemies within 5 feet of you

Level 6: Can throw or use reach with your improvised weapons. Can spend a ki point to do the conditional jump, and another ki point to attack

Level 11: Escape grapples, increased initiative

I'll be honest, it's a bit bland. Not only do improvised weapons provide nothing for you (since you can just attack with your fists/shortbow anyway), but using them with enhanced range doesn't allow your wall jump to work, since you can only move 10 feet to land behind them. I'd tack on some kind of special clause to improvised weapons, things like:


Enemies hit by your improvised weapons lose their reaction.
If you have Disadvantage to attack with an improvised weapon, you gain Advantage to attack. (Designed mostly to balance the throwing-at-melee-range penalty)
When an ally within 30 feet of you is attacked, you can spend your Reaction to throw an improvised weapon at their attacker. Whether this hits or misses, the enemy's attack against your ally is made with Disadvantage.

[loki_ragnarock]

Isn't an urban monk just a superhero?

I mean, they'd run around dark allies beating up ne'er do wells with fisticuffs, are identified as much through their residence (Gotham City, Metropolis, New York) as anything else, form partnerships with other exceptional people to defend their chosen locale.


I don't know. That could have legs.


3rd - Secret Identity: So long as you have some notable article of clothing that you can don or doff, you may only be identified as the person associated with that article. Be it a mask you don, tights you fill out, or glasses you remove, people react as if you are this alternate identity. You may don this article of clothing as a bonus action. So long as no one directly witnesses you take this bonus action they may not see through the deception by magic, skill, or insight. Such is the power of this ability that though people may wonder where you got off to while this identity was in action, they'll never be able to make the connection between you.

3rd - Fearsome Reputation: While in your alternate identity, your foes recognize your previous acts of heroism. Choose good or evil. Against creatures of that alignment, you gain advantage on intimidate checks and insight checks to see if they're lying.



And that's about as far as I need to go with that.

[Grimmnist]

KibblesTasty just released a similar monk homebrew this morning, might give you some ideas. Way of the Outcast monk sort of a tavern brawler. https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/aq7nxc/5e_way_of_the_outcast_monk_a_monk_that_has_lost/

[Keravath]

I have a shadow monk with the urban bounty hunter background .. works fine for a monk in an urban setting for me.

Also, there is really no requiremement for any sort of cloistered background .. monks are martial artists but there are any number of ways they could have learned their skills .. a monastery would be only one option. One can easily imagine martial arts schools in an urban setting without requiring a specific archetype for it.

[Foxhound438]

I'll start out by agreeing that everything you would ever want is already available for monks. You can already run up walls, you can get better jumps and have the fail safe of slow fall, and in an urban environment your shadow monks can typically find some shade from a building to teleport to and from.



Always armed: When you choose this tradition at 3rd Level, you gain proficiency in improvised weapons. They count as monk weapons for you.

This can definitely be dangerous in terms of balancing, as improvised weapons are already a very loosely ruled category and a monk could potentially abuse this to have a heavy melee weapon, which the writers of the edition are distinctly against (citation: kensai nerfs from UA to book).


Wall jump: Whenever you make a melee attack against an enemy and are adjacent to a wall that is at least 5ft’ tall, you may immediately leap 10 feet onto the opposite side of the enemy. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.

again, you can kind of already do this, albeit at a later level. I like bringing the ability to do it down to a more accessible level, but I think the wording is in a way that makes it too hard to actually use. Something like "Urban Acrobat: your skills in movement allow you to use your environment and even your enemies as pathways. You can move through an enemy's space on your turn, but can't end your movement inside their space" allows it to be used in more areas, and doesn't demand that you walk up to a wall to do it. You could flavor the movement at any point how you like, such as the wall jump idea.


Improved improvised weapons: When using an improvised weapon, they gain the finesse and light property so long as you can use them in one hand.


this is redundant, as being a monk weapon allows the use of dex in your attack and damage roll. Only corner case would be allowing sneak attacks with random junk in a multiclass build, not sure if that's the intention but if it is then it's actually kind of cool.


Serpents’ Lash: You can spend 1 Ki to get the benefits of Wall Jump without needing to be adjacent to a wall. Additionally, you may spend 1 additional ki point to make an additional unarmed strike against the enemy you are jumping over.

not a big fan of giving one subclass the ability to make even more attacks. Drunken master does this as well but they get away with it in my opinion by requiring that you split your targets with the flurry there. Note also that the DM extra attacks come online way later in levels.


Release the Shackle: When grappled or restrained, you may expend 1 Ki point to escape the grapple or to end the restrained condition, no action required.

Quick of Spirit: You may add your wisdom modifier to your initiative modifier.
This one looks relatively okay, but in all you have literal twice as many abilities as any other monk gets from their subclass (barring kensai). That alone is honestly enough of a knock against it that I would probably say no to a player asking to use this homebrew before really considering how much each ability gives you.

In any case, it might do you well to post this in the Homebrew forum for extra feedback over there.

[Mercurias]

I have an urban Shadow Monk waiting to play. He was raised and trained in back alleys and sewers by his mentor, and he's part of an order of hidden monks that operate as their own faction to protect that particular city.

[Vogie]

I threw together an Urban Monk Archetype over on the Homebrew Forum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?580729-Urban-Monk-(PEACH)) that you may be interested in.