Rewriting the Monk

[Yunru]

So I've been slowly working on rewriting everything about 5e's classes, to bring everything more on-par.
And the Monk is a big one that's been needing it. It does cool stuff, poorly. These revisions hope to correct that last part:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MpHQdUJE_PWau1rfMJGSMq8UQeqoU7UWTjgsryiGo3U/edit?usp=sharing

[nickl_2000]

Added in some comments to the document.

[Yunru]

Thank you very muchly!

[J-Rad]

Hey, dunno if I'm lttp but I added a few thoughts on these.

[HPisBS]

Perfect Soul: At 20th level, you reach the peak of enlightenment. All your stats increase to 20, unless they were already higher.

For any game where you expect to play to 20, this would heavily incentivize taking feats instead of ASIs. Anyone who did reach lvl 20 but increased Dex and Wis would be bummed to see those choices wasted in the end. I know, lvl 20 games are exceedingly rare, but still.

Perhaps take a page from the Barbarian's book and simply give a flat +2 to Dex and Wis, increasing their max in the process.

(My version was just to let lvl 20 Monks spend 3 ki to gain +2 Dex for a minute. But you seem to be more generous and less worried about overpowering things than me.)

[heavyfuel]

Likes:
Dex based grapples

Separate ki pools. I don't like the scientific "adrenal" name, but that's minor. I'd call it maybe deep ki and shallow ki for a more mystical feel. Deep ki replenishes with rest, shallow ki replenishes after one minute of meditation.

Deflect Missile not using your Reaction. I think 1d10+Proficiency reduction is better than 1d10+Dex+Level, as the second makes you totally immune to ranged attacks, which might be too strong.


Dislikes:
Evasive Footwork. Yeah, Unarmored Defense sucks, but allowing armor isn't the way to go about it, I think. I'd probably just increase it from 10+Dex+Wis to 12+Dex+Wis and call it a day.

Martial Arts damage progression is still basically the same slow progression. It should start at d6 and end at 2d8 for it to be worth it when compared to weapons.

Stunning Strike targetting Cha. It makes no sense. You already solved a big part of Stunning Strike's problem when you created separate ki pools.

Inner Enlightenment is a bad feature from a design perspective. It encourages those who use Point buy to get a bunch of 8s (or lower after race mods) so that they can get a big increase at level 11. This is especially egregious for games that start in Tier 3, which means the Monk can now game the system.

Perfect Soul has the same problem on a smaller scale becaue fewer people will be willing to deal with low scores up until level 20, but it's still problematic.

[Yakk]

What I did for monk stats is that at ASI levels they get +1 str/dex/con/wis free. (If a stat is already 20, spend it anywhere, but max +2 in one stat).

Then either a feat, or +2 more. But you cannot exceed +2 in any one stat.

You'll end up with 20/20/20 but gradually.

---

For deflect missiles, I refunded the reaction if you spend the ki.

---

Stunning strike as you wrote it remains too good. It already is so good it dominates the class. Make it 1/turn/target.

---

MA damage is either [M]+dex, or [M]+str+1/2 dex (rounded up). This makes strength useful for monks.

---

With the above free attribute stuff, AC scales much better, as does strength. +5 str/dex/con/wis **before** spending ASIs, with overflow.

A 10 str/16 dex/12 con/14 wis /8 int/10 cha character goes

str/dex/con/wis:
L 4: 11/18/13/16
L8: 12/20/14/18
L 12: feat+14/20/15/19
L 16: feat+16/20/16/20
L 19: feat+18/20/18/20

You can also make it "+1 to all stats" with the +2 max cap, and if stat already 20 adds a floater.

[J-Rad]

What I did for monk stats is that at ASI levels they get +1 str/dex/con/wis free. (If a stat is already 20, spend it anywhere, but max +2 in one stat).

The main issue I see here is that you're encouraged to build in a sub-par way unless you know your finishing level, or else you're missing out on bonus stats. You lose a class feature for building into a specific style. Imagine you have 17 dex at level 3, hitting this, going to 18 and thinking that you don't need to boost dex because you think the game will go to 15th, and you'll have that boost at the higher levels, and maybe you could use that bonus to strength or something. Then the game only plays til 10th and you have 19 dex and you wasted that opportunity. It's small, but consider that that's a +1 to attack and damage rolls.

At level 10, that's an average dpr loss of 20%, losing those +1s. A little more, actually. I know monk isn't a damage monster, but you're losing a huge chunk of your already meager damage pool.

Even worse if you are at 20 already, you don't get any boost at all. That feels bad.

My solution would be to have a level 20 feature that goes for a temporary bonus that can exceed the cap.

As part of a short or long rest, you can gain a +2 bonus to 2 stats which last until you rest again and reassign them. These can't stack on 1 stat but do exceed the 20 cap.

How's that work instead? Perhaps the other class ability that functions as a precursor to the level 20 feature could be the first +2, with the second being at 20th.

[Yakk]

Putting points into dex early isn't that much of a cost for later on. You get the points back.

I guess if you pick a feat instead of a dex boost at level 8, you could regret it. But there are only so many good monk feats, and (in those sketched rules) all of str/con/dex/wis are useful to the monk. (I made the monk more MAD as part of this design, but then gave them piles of attribute points to make up for it).

Ie, if you are hitting 20 dex at level 8, then at level 12 you get +1 str, +1 con and +1 anywhere because your Dex was already capped before you "spend your ASI" on a feat or more attribute bumps.