Quivering Palm is too weak. How would you make it stronger?

[BlueWitch]

Don't you think?

Wouldn't you want your Monk to say "Omae wa mou shindeiru..." to the Big Bad Evil Guy? Then he says "NANI!?" and explodes xD

No but seriously I never see the DC for the save go over 25 and that's not that hard to make late game.

If I could rework it, I'd make it so you can expend Stunning Fist Daily Attempts to increase the save DC. (But no more than 5) And for every strike you made with a Flurry that turn it should increase the save DC by 1. Imagine that! Guy exploding after getting combo'd! XD **** would be hilarious!

What do you think?

[Zancloufer]

The Monk in general needs a re-write. Nothing wrong with it's concepts, just the numbers and mechanics.

On Quivering Palm specifically: In my go-to Monk fix the major changes are:

-Available at level 12 instead of 15
-Usable Wis/Mod levels per day (min 1) instead of, once per week. ONCE PER WEEK?!
-Can effect creatures normally immune to critical hits if the monk has a way of circumventing (even partially) their immunity.
-Has a straight one month duration instead of days/monk level.

Also getting the DC past 25 isn't too hard if you actually try and raise the Monk's wisdom a bit. Even starting at 14 wisdom the monk can pump it to 25-30 Wis (27-30 DC) without jumping through many hoops. Also it probably works better on things with bad fortitude saves.

[Falontani]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qvNH_MbGSz2aplMNBXrFco3uc_3oQeR1UICNcsAsAis/edit?usp=drivesdk

My homebrew monk. Doesn't change much. All changes are either highlighted or in gold text. Defensive Way is... Poorly worded, but I think you can understand the intent behind it.

[Particle_Man]

Maybe the longer you keep the quivering palm going, the higher the DC check? And if you keep it going a week, there is no save? This wouldn't help much in combat, but could be useful in other situations.

[Mr Adventurer]

Just remove the saving throw.

[BlueWitch]

Just remove the saving throw.

Eh, thats a bit much. But I like the idea of it doing a truckload more damage like those Level 9 Maneuvers from Tome of Battle.

Like on a successful save they still take an extra 10d6 damage or something like that.

And @ Zancloufer, I agree on the Week thing. I don't know what the creators were thinking.!

[rel]

Make it an at will rider you can add to any attack you make.
You make the attack as normal except that it doesn't do damage. Instead record the damage you would have done. Since you haven't actually done any damage things like DR, immunities, resistances and the like have no effect. Lets call this potential damage.
At any point in the next 10 minutes you can take a free action and cause all the potential damage currently on a single creature to become real affecting the creature as a single instance of untyped damage manifesting as spontaneous stigmatic injury.

Example:
A monk full attacks a ooze golem landing 5 hits and 1 crit dealing 25 damage each hit and 50 on the crit. The damage would normally be reduced to 15 due to the ooze golems extensive DR and the crit shouldn't have happened but none of that matters. No damage was done. The ooze golem is perfectly healthy and sitting on 5 X 25 + 50 = 175 potential damage.
After some banter, the monk takes a free action and the potential damage becomes real.
cracks spread across the ooze golem, it takes 175 untyped damage (unaffected by DR since it isn't a weapon attack or a natural attack) and the ooze golem explodes into a pile of slime and broken pottery.

[Vaern]

I've been kind of working on an ongoing rewrite but, at this point, the changed I've made would shift the monk from a mediocre class with interesting flavor to a very strong melee striker class. There is a bit of prefacing, though, before I get to my current version of Quivering Palm. Relevant changes are as follows:

Proficiencies:
Gain light armor proficiency; class features including ac bonus, flurry of blows, slow fall, evasion, and fast movement function when unarmored or wearing light armor and not carrying a medium or heavy load.

Flurry of blows:
Default version flurry grants one extra attack at max attack bonus while taking a -2 penalty to all attacks made that round, -1 penalty at 5th level, -2 penalty at 9th level, and a second attack at 11th level.
My rewrite grants one extra attack at max attack bonus plus one extra attack per iterative attack gained from having a high BAB while taking a -2 penalty to all attacks made that round, and allows the monk to apply Wisdom bonus to attack rolls instead of strength (only while flurrying). Effectively, the monk gains bonus attacks as though he has the full Two-Weapon Fighting tree. The -2 penalty to attack rolls is removed at 11th level, in lieu of the extra bonus attack that the default version of the ability gives.

Ki strike (magic):
Treats the monk's unarmed attacks as magic, as the default version.
In addition, my rewrite allows the monk to apply his Wisdom bonus to damage rolls with unarmed strikes when ki strike is acquired at level 4.

Here is the thought process behind these changes:
Giving monks light armor proficiency takes a bit of pressure off of them to have a high ability score in both wisdom and dexterity to have a respectable armor class for a melee character.
Giving monks the ability to use their wisdom score on attack rolls takes pressure off of them to have a high strength score to offset their lower BAB. If the monk's BAB is adjusted to full progression, it still serves to allow the monk to focus on a single primary stat and helps mitigate the MAD issues that make them difficult to play effectively. The ability to use wisdom on attack rolls is tied directly to the use of Flurry of Blows in order to prevent 1-level dips from being able to easily take advantage of it, as it can only be used on a full attack and in conjunction with unarmed strike and special monk weapons.
Adding their Wisdom bonus to unarmed strike damage with ki strike just seems to me like it fits with the flavor of the class and ability. It makes sense, and also further mitigates their MAD problem. Giving them this bonus at level 4 makes it a pretty deep dip for anyone looking to take a couple levels of monk for this one bonus specifically.

Now, on to Quivering Palm:
Starting at 15th level, a monk can instilling vibrations within the body of another creature that can thereafter become lethal if the monk desires. She can use this quivering palm attack once per day as a standard action, and must announce her intent before making the attack. She may choose to use Wisdom instead of Strength on this attack roll.
The monk lashes out with what onlookers perceive to be a single blurred open-palm strike, but in actuallity is several attacks of immense speed and precision. If the attack is successful and the subject takes damage, the quivering palm attack succeeds. What had appeared as a single attack was a series of blows of immense speed and precision. The monk rolls additional damage as though she had made a full attack using flurry of blows and records that number. Thereafter the monk can will the subject to feel the full effect of her quivering palm attack at any later time, as long as it is within a number of days equal to her monk level. The monk merely wills this to happen (a free action), and the subject immediately takes the additional damage that was recorded for the attack.
Although damage is calcualted as though the target has been struck by several attacks, quivering palm is treated as a single source of damage for the effects of massive damage or similar effects. If the attack roll made to apply quivering palm to the target was a critical hit, the additional damage is calculated as though the monk had critically struck with each attack of her flurry of blows.



End result: A monk using this ability can trigger its effect to deal damage as though she had made 6 attacks (or up to 8 attacks at level 16+, if adjusted to full BAB instead of 3/4). With adjustments to other class features to reduce the need for Strength and Dexterity, the monk has likely jacked her Wisdom through the roof. Let's say, for example, the she starts out with 12 Strength and 16 Wisdom, adds +3 to Wisdom by the time she picks quivering palm up at level 15, maybe finds a +2 tome somewhere along the way, and invests in a +4 periapt of wisdom for a total of 25 (+7). That'll give a +18 (or +22 with full BAB) to hit at level 15, barring weapon focus, weapon specialization, or magic items that apply bonuses to the monk's fists. Let's say, just for kicks, that the monk also gains a +4 belt of strength or something for a total of 16 (+3), since the way I currently have ki strike written the monk adds wisdom to attack damage; it does not specify that she adds wisdom instead of strength.
At this point, quivering palm will deal 12d6 + 60 damage, for an average of 102. The saving throw is removed, but the effect has been nerfed a bit from "instant death" to "extreme pain." Massive damage is still basically guaranteed prompting a save-or-die roll from the target, but you'll likely be up against things at that will only fail that saving throw on a natural 1 by that level. The damage may kill the target outright, but more likely you'll only be hitting them for a bit more than half their total health.

[Mr Adventurer]

Eh, thats a bit much.

Hardly. What's the saving throw against Gate to the Negative Energy Plane?

[Biggus]

No but seriously I never see the DC for the save go over 25 and that's not that hard to make late game.


Get a high-level Druid to cast Owl's Insight on you, that should boost the DC considerably.


Hardly. What's the saving throw against Gate to the Negative Energy Plane?

I feel the lesson here is that Gate is broken, rather than that Quivering Palm should be made saveless...

[Telonius]

If the target saves successfully, it still takes 1d4 Con damage. Comes online at 11th level. If the Wizard can have Disintegrate at that level, the Monk can have this.

Usable 1/day minimum, spend a Stunning Fist attempt to gain additional uses.

[Mr Adventurer]

I feel the lesson here is that Gate is broken, rather than that Quivering Palm should be made saveless...

There are plenty of no-save effects that magic can afflict, including things that are as good as death in the context of a deadly combat. That's just the context Quivering Palm exists in. You can change the context, but that's a different question, really.

[Bronk]

I've always thought quivering palm was pretty worthless too. A hard to use, limited target, once per week death effect that you don't get until level 15... and it's supernatural, but not ki based? Plus, half of its write up is some kind of weird extortion effect that's barely thematic, and then (for me) only because of a bit character from the Sanctuary series.

To fix it, first, I'd get rid of the extortion punch effect. It's foolish anyway, because it gives the target time to buff his saves.

Next, I'd make it usable once per day.

Then, looking around, it appears that a bunch of 5th level death spells are already better than this (circle of death, slay living, opalescent glare, ghoul gauntlet), and even one 4th level spell (vecna's malevolent whisper), so a wizard or a cleric would already be better at this than a monk at level 7. With that in mind, I'd make Quivering Palm a 5th level ki based class ability death strike powered by at least two stunning fist attempts, but using more would add to the save DC by a few points each. Even leaving it like that would be better than it is now, and scalable.

So, you'd get it at 5th level, then I'd have it improve every few levels. To start, it would have the same restrictions as the current ability. After a few levels, it would affect everything except undead and constructs. The next improvement would be to replicate the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique by requiring additional attacks to double the save DC, but only against creatures with hearts. Next, it would affect constructs. Finally, it would incorporate positive energy so it could effect undead while also being a raise dead effect for the living.

[Biggus]

There are plenty of no-save effects that magic can afflict, including things that are as good as death in the context of a deadly combat. That's just the context Quivering Palm exists in. You can change the context, but that's a different question, really.

Gate is no touch attack, no save, no SR. Struggling to think of many other spells in that category.

[Mr Adventurer]

Gate is no touch attack, no save, no SR. Struggling to think of many other spells in that category.

Well, you're the one who didn't want to take it as an example. I don't need to defend it - that's the point. It's only symptomatic of the operating environment.

[Zancloufer]

Gate is no touch attack, no save, no SR. Struggling to think of many other spells in that category.

Except that half of it's use are utility and the other half have other NOPE options. You can't force/summon anything with Divine Rank, or a specific creature/person to do a task for you. More than 2x your CL (or 1x if multiple) HD of creatures can be commanded and you can only give them one short (>rounds /CL) order.

Either way no save Quivering Palm would go:

Monk: "Is that creature I punched immune to critical hits?"
DM: "Nope"
Monk: "It is now dead."

I don't think there is any pre-epic ability in D&D (and even then it's slim) that goes: Unless you are immune to X you die. You can make it effectively so by jumping through hoops or just pouring on absurd damage but a no-save Quivering Palm would be too much on a monk.

[Mr Adventurer]

Except that half of it's use are utility and the other half have other NOPE options.

Do you mean NOPE options like - just so we're all on the same page - immunity to critical hits, to death effects, to physical attacks, to physical damage...?

[Zancloufer]

Do you mean NOPE options like - just so we're all on the same page - immunity to critical hits, to death effects, to physical attacks, to physical damage...?

First: If the creature is immune to Physical damage the Monk is probably screwed regardless of whether or not they use Quivering palm.

Second: Immunity to critical hits (or being a type creature that is immune to critical hits 99% of the time anyway) is the only thing that stops Quivering Palm for sure. Death Ward or other protections against death effects do not actually stop Quivering Palm. Nor does immunity to physical damage/attacks. As long as the Monk has some damage rider on their unarmed strike that can deal damage and the creature CAN be struck with a critical they have to make the fortitude save.