Soul Knife Monk, from the Mike Mearls HFH. What do you think?

[jaappleton]

So, back when Mike did the Happy Fun Hour, there was a time when he divided up some of the Mystic subclasses to some other classes, giving them Psionic archetypes.

Big thank you to ThinkDM for taking the time to transcribe it from the HFH video.

https://thinkdm.org/hfh/soul-knife-monk/

So, two questions:

1. Is it balanced enough for play?

2. Does it capture the feel of what it sets out to do?

[Misterwhisper]

The is quite overpowered.

All he did was give it a better ranged attack than sun soul.

Give it the added options on flurry like open hand, some of which are broken.

It can do one of best damage types in the game free, and at range at level 3.

Gains empty body lite rip off as a capstone.


Overall it is garbage power creep but it seems they want power creep now.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The 3rd level is definitely overtuned. Psychic Slash seems stronger all around than Open Hand Technique, and then you throw the already-powerful Soul Knife? Sheesh.

I'd suggest dropping Soul Knife's reach extension and limiting Psychic Slash to only triggering once/round. Either that or keep Soul Knife as is and drop Psychic Slash altogether.

[jaappleton]

There is something that I feel needs to be added to this discussion:

During a HFH broadcast, I forget if it was this one or if he made the comment during a Ranger video:

Mearls said that the per round damage output for Monks, past lv5, scales lower than they had hoped for. As a result, future Monk archetypes would be designed to push out a little more DPR.

This is a bit more powerful than your standard Monk archetype. That is true.

My question is, and I admit it’s a tricky question to answer: Is this actually out of bounds, or is it out of bounds only when compared to other Monk archetypes?

[Misterwhisper]

There is something that I feel needs to be added to this discussion:

During a HFH broadcast, I forget if it was this one or if he made the comment during a Ranger video:

Mearls said that the per round damage output for Monks, past lv5, scales lower than they had hoped for. As a result, future Monk archetypes would be designed to push out a little more DPR.

This is a bit more powerful than your standard Monk archetype. That is true.

My question is, and I admit it’s a tricky question to answer: Is this actually out of bounds, or is it out of bounds only when compared to other Monk archetypes?

It is just like Hexblade, they try to bandaid whole class problems by overloading a subclass to the point it is far and above more powerful than the others.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If they wanted to boost T2-4 damage, he shouldn't have front-loaded it with control powers. C'mon, man. :smallconfused:

[MeeposFire]

This is a common problem when you have a different version of a game. Some call it power creep others will say that the newer stuff is closer to where the power should be and the older stuff was made too conservatively. I tend to agree that the monk could use some more damage at higher levels though of course it is easier for me to houserule that than it is for WotC to do a global change which is unlikely (my current way is to increase the numbers of attacks from martial arts and flurry of blows by one at level 11).

[Jerrykhor]

I don't care if its balanced or not, Soul Knives are Psions first and foremost. It should be on a Full Psionic class like the Mystic.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I don't care if its balanced or not, Soul Knives are Psions first and foremost. It should be on a Full Psionic class like the Mystic.
It's, um, never been a full psionic class. It was a prestige class in 3e and a base class in 3.5, and neither got more than a tiny smattering of manifesting. While I don't like the idea of cutting the Mystic down to a handful of subclasses, I actually think the Monk is the perfect place for a wannabe-Jedi option.

[Seclora]

It's, um, never been a full psionic class. It was a prestige class in 3e and a base class in 3.5, and neither got more than a tiny smattering of manifesting. While I don't like the idea of cutting the Mystic down to a handful of subclasses, I actually think the Monk is the perfect place for a wannabe-Jedi option.

I'll second this!

I played a Soulknife in 3.5, and honestly it doesn't play like a Psion at all. In practice, a Soulknife is somewhere between Rogue and Fighter, with a little bit of extra flavor and a flexible magic weapon that scales. Monk, Fighter, or Rogue would all be entirely suitable for a Soulknife Subclass. A spell-less, dual-wield Ranger would also work, in a pinch.

[Amechra]

I'd have to see it in play. Synaptic Overload stands out as powerful, but it has anti-synergy with Soul Knife. Honestly, though, it feels like Mearls shoved two unrelated concepts into one subclass - Invoke Wrath screams "I am a tank subclass", which doesn't really synergize with anything other than maybe Life Steal.

[Foxhound438]

>gives them the range of a sun soul while allowing them to stun from range
>also gets an additional ability
>said additional ability has 167% of the options that the open hand monk's full feature grants
>literal can double damage from level 3

didn't take long to see this is busted

[Teaguethebean]

I don't care if its balanced or not, Soul Knives are Psions first and foremost. It should be on a Full Psionic class like the Mystic.

Fun fact monks are a Psionic class. In 4e monks powersource was psionic not martial.

[MeeposFire]

Fun fact monks are a Psionic class. In 4e monks powersource was psionic not martial.

They also made the monk have psionic abilities in 1e in the monk redo they did in Dragon Magazine. It was created due to how they saw the mess the 1e monk was (granted it did not really fix the problem but they were at least thinking about it).

[Vogie]

I think it's an interesting combination. Most subclass features don't cancel each other out - it's genuinely odd that you can EITHER use Flurry of Blows with Psychic Slash OR extend the reach of your attacks with a bonus action via soul knife. I don't know who would actively choose slashing damage over psychic, so it's a really a false choice. I can see why the printed Sun Soul's just had ranged attacks, complete with ranged flurry of blows, all with radiant damage.

I do think that 5 options for the flurry hits is too much. I think the Soulknife Monk should have to pick 2 of the list, maybe get a 3rd later on. Either that, or have it tied to something different, as both Open Hand and Drunken Master upgrade Flurry of Blows. Astral Slide is a bit too much like Open Hand Technique, Life Drain is Long Death's Touch of Death, and Synaptic Overload seems unneedingly OP for such a low-resisted damage type.

Aura sight is fine, I suppose.

Spectral blades is fine. It could be insane, but thankfully the monk can't see through walls, and isn't guarenteed darkvision

Psychic Form is fine, although it seems more like a Paladin feature than a monk one.

If I were to make a change, it'd be combining Soul Knife & Psychic slash into a single feature. Something like:


Psychic Knives
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you can use your psionic energy to manifest blades that disrupt your foes’ minds. You can choose to make your unarmed strikes deal psychic damage instead of bludgeoning damage each time you hit a creature.

In addition, you can use a bonus action to increase the reach of your unarmed strikes by 30 feet until the end of your turn, and make a single unarmed attack. Whenever you hit a creature with an unarmed attack, you can spend 1 ki point to invoke one of the following effects on the target:

Terror - The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.
Wrath - The target suffers disadvantage on all attack rolls against targets other than you until the end of your next turn.


With this design, you get almost everything you'd want - 2-3 attacks a turn (depending on level), at range, with psychic damage, with the ability to add some riders to it that are uniquely "Soul knife"