Sun Soul revised

[Greywander]

I'm not super familiar with monks, but I was looking at Sun Soul recently and thought it seemed okay-ish, but could use a bit of revision.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eic-RV22t4SBE-MKFw02vHYV28oZWBDThqx0eo7FgSs/edit?usp=sharing

Here's some of the logic of this:

Radiant Sun Bolt doesn't really let you do anything you couldn't already do with a shortbow. It was an interesting ability, but it didn't make the monk stronger, just a bit more versatile, and that versatility came at the cost of power. Most of your other monk features can't be used with the sun bolts (which, to be fair, is also true for a shortbow). So I tweaked it a bit to make it more of a "ranged monk" ability, allowing you to use more of your existing features. Because it's now a weapon attack instead of a spell attack, you can buff your range with Sharpshooter if you want to.

I thought Searing Arc Strike was mostly fine, but people like being able to change the damage type. I added the option, but with a ki cost, and offered a couple different damage types.

Since Stunning Strikes, the bread and butter of the monk, require a melee weapon attack, I gave the Sun Soul a Blinding Strike ability that works with any weapon attack (ranged or melee). Blinded isn't as good of a condition to inflict as stun, but it's better than nothing. Stunning Strike still gives you a reason to close to melee range, but Blinding Strike allows you to still contribute while keeping your distance.

People also complain that Searing Sunburst does no damage on a successful save. I agree that this hurts, but it's also a fairly powerful at-will ability. I added a ki cost to make it half damage on a passed save.

Sun Shield was always underwhelming. I made it not require a reaction to deal damage to an attacker, and instead you can use a reaction to (basically) turn invisible until the start of your next turn (at the cost of 1 ki). It struck me as odd that an ability with "shield" in the name didn't really have any defensive properties.

Thoughts? Experienced monk players, how does this stack up? Too strong, too weak?

[Damon_Tor]

Unpopular opinion: I don't think the sun soul needs any help except the frankly silly capstone. No other monk can straight up turn their ki directly into damage as efficiently as the sun soul when they cast burning hands. That's their niche and it's fine. I strongly disagree with damage type swapping abilities. I don't like it on wizards, I don't like it on sorcerers, and I don't like it here. A monk who doesn't like being resisted can take elemental adept like everyone else.

My only houserule specific to this subclass is that they get a flight speed equal to their current ki reserves * 5 while using their capstone. Because let's be real, if you're playing a sunsoul monk, odds are you want to be the Dragonball guy. So flight is a must.

[Dark.Revenant]

I do agree that Radiant Sun Bolt needs a ki-free bonus action option, because it's BS that you can't at least use it as proficiently as standard martial arts. The alternative would be to add a special effect to the 1-ki bonus action, but this would frontload the class too much.


Searing Arc Strike (and Searing Sunburst) suffers from Sun Soul's complete dependence on Dexterity—Radiant Sun Bolt is even more limited than unarmed strikes in terms of ways to improve your attack/damage from buffs, items, etc. Your save DC will never be amazing and a Sun Soul sure as hell can't afford Elemental Adept (you can't take it as your Variant Human feat because you don't know any spells at 1st level). As a result, it's only really useful in situations when you can hit a large group of creatures.

Searing Arc Strike, being a cone effect, is also extremely dependent on how the rules work at your table. If you houserule cones to be a 90 degree arc (yes, that's a houserule), it's stronger. Similarly, if your DM uses the proper area of effect rules, you need only touch the square a creature is in to hit them; God help you if you use the standard cone and also have to completely envelop a creature to damage them.

I think the *fairest* fix would be to allow a choice between using burning hands for 2 ki or Aganazzar's scorcher for 3 ki. The latter scales somewhat better but is usually trickier to target with, yet being able to have the choice would be a tremendous quality-of-life improvement.


Having a Tier 3 Sun Soul myself, I know how bad Searing Sunburst feels to use if the dice don't go your way. It's a horrible feeling to line up a great room full of targets to hit, blow 3 ki and an action on blasting them, and then... nothing.

However, that's how most save-or-nothing-happens spells work. It sucks for anyone involved. The real problem is that the area of effect really precludes using the ability more than once a combat, since your party will usually be mixed in with the enemies once they figure out you can throw not!fireballs.

Again, I think the fairest fix is to allow the option to shape it like a lightning bolt (i.e. Searing Sunbeam): just a 5x100 line of death with the same exact ki cost and damage.


And yes, the capstone sucks and doesn't even really make any sense when you combine it with the Empty Body ability you get at 18th. Plain old flight equal to your walking speed (+ hover!) would be a good fix.

[Ogrillian]

I like the Sun Soul pretty much as is I just tweaked two things (the burning hands become Radiant and I added a level 9 Barbarian’s Rage ability to the capstone while in use, cause let’s face it if you’re gonna go Super Saiyan you might as well bring something to the table and it’s abilities fit quite well to actual Super Saiyan mode.