5e Monk: Flurry of Blows tweak

[BerzerkerUnit]

Flurry of blows
Once per turn, when you hit with an unarmed strike or monk weapon, you can use the opening created to follow up with a combination of lightning fast unarmed strikes that deal additional damage equal to one roll of your martial arts die.
Beginning at level 5, you can perform additional flurries on your turn. Each additional flurry costs 1 point of Ki.
You can spend up to your proficiency bonus in Ki in this way on your turn.


Any thoughts?

[Loek]

Once per turn, when you hit with an unarmed strike or monk weapon, you can use the opening created to follow up with a combination of lightning fast unarmed strikes that deal additional damage equal to one roll of your martial arts die.

This is an interesting change. The monk will still be making 1 or 2 attacks (1 normal attack, 1 bonus from the Martial Arts feature). And instead of using 1 ki point to boost that 1 bonus action attack to 2, you get a free boost to 1 attack.
Basically changing a "spend to have an additional chance" into a "free option to boost, if you hit".
The means a lower output vs higher AC enemies. A higher out put against low AC enemies. And overal less options to hit a lot of small things.

Probably a boost (especially since there is no cost attached to it, so you can do it each and every turn. Like a weak, but mostly unlimited sneak attack), but nothing game breaking.


Beginning at level 5, you can perform additional flurries on your turn. Each additional flurry costs 1 point of Ki.
You can spend up to your proficiency bonus in Ki in this way on your turn.

Very much a nova option.
What is unclear to me though, is does each flurry need to be triggered individually? So 1 hit = 1 option to do a flurry? Or is it, 1 hit = however many flurries you feel like triggering?
As the first is probably balanced. The second is very much not. (Also thematically it seems like you'd suddenly go DBZ for a few seconds, which... isn't really D&D Monk to me :-p)


That said, this might be an interesting idea for a monk Way, instead of just plain buffing the base monk.
Either which way the "spend ki up to proficiency bonus" feels wrong.

[BerzerkerUnit]

This is an interesting change. The monk will still be making 1 or 2 attacks (1 normal attack, 1 bonus from the Martial Arts feature). And instead of using 1 ki point to boost that 1 bonus action attack to 2, you get a free boost to 1 attack.
Basically changing a "spend to have an additional chance" into a "free option to boost, if you hit".
The means a lower output vs higher AC enemies. A higher out put against low AC enemies. And overal less options to hit a lot of small things.

Probably a boost (especially since there is no cost attached to it, so you can do it each and every turn. Like a weak, but mostly unlimited sneak attack), but nothing game breaking.



Very much a nova option.
What is unclear to me though, is does each flurry need to be triggered individually? So 1 hit = 1 option to do a flurry? Or is it, 1 hit = however many flurries you feel like triggering?
As the first is probably balanced. The second is very much not. (Also thematically it seems like you'd suddenly go DBZ for a few seconds, which... isn't really D&D Monk to me :-p)


That said, this might be an interesting idea for a monk Way, instead of just plain buffing the base monk.
Either which way the "spend ki up to proficiency bonus" feels wrong.

Thank you so much for your feedback.

As originally conceived you trigger a flurry by making an attack, but the more I think about it, the more I prefer the option of being able to burn ki to up the damage. It is a nova option but given the monk’s limited Ki pool, love affair with stunning strike, and generally subpar damage, I don’t think it’s an issue.

I wanted monk to compare a little better to rogue at higher levels.

While I can see the DBZ similarity, I think it also models Wuxia better and mechanically communicates a successful blow leading to a combo chain like a fighting game better than the standard option.

Since Ki is limited and proficiency scales apart from Ki pool, I didn’t think this was a bad metric. What would you prefer?

[Kane0]

Seems alright to me. This essentially turns Flurry into a once-per-turn damage boost with the option of spending Ki on increasing it further (though I would personally prefer keeping the once-per-turn aspect and increasing the rolls with Ki expenditure rather than allowing more uses with the Ki spend, like a smite).