How Broken Would This Be?

[Amechra]

Monk 1 — Mind Over Body
You may use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Constitution modifier when determining the HP you gain from your Monk levels, as well as the number of HP that you recover through Monk hit-dice.

...

Yes, this would be in addition to the other stuff that they get at 1st level. This is pretty much purely an attempt to make Monks less MAD by giving them another stat that they can kinda-sorta dump (you still need Con for saves, after all!)

[Old Harry MTX]

Monk 1 — Mind Over Body
You may use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Constitution modifier when determining the HP you gain from your Monk levels, as well as the number of HP that you recover through Monk hit-dice.

...

Yes, this would be in addition to the other stuff that they get at 1st level. This is pretty much purely an attempt to make Monks less MAD by giving them another stat that they can kinda-sorta dump (you still need Con for saves, after all!)

Should be fine, also good for multiclassing... In alternative, you can just add a bunch of ASIs, like a fighter or a rogue.

[stoutstien]

Fine but fiddly. I'd just say give them bonus HP equal to ki.

[Ionathus]

I like it. Also gives Monks another reason to invest in WIS, which depending on your subclass can sometimes feel more like an obligation than an actual investment.

[Yakk]

In my opinion, monks are trying to perfect their mind and body. So my approach is different.

Ability Score Increase: At level 4, 8, 12, 16 and 19 a Monk increases their strength, dexterity, constitution and wisdom scores by 1 to a maximum of 20. For each of these attributes that is already 20, you can instead increase one of these attributes by 2. In addition, you can either choose to increase 2 different attributes by 1 each, or gain a feat. In no case can an attribute be increased by more than 2 this way.

This fits the theme of the monk (perfecting mind and body) quite well. At 20, your monks can have 20s in str/dex/con/wis relatively easily (and 20s in dex/wis by default), but honestly this doesn't break anything.

[Ionathus]

I'll support any change that makes MAD classes less tedious to level up.

Personally I like the homebrew where every ASI gives you the 2 increase points to spend AND a feat (which can also include half-feats)...but you can only increase any ability score by 1 at a time. So it becomes harder for SAD classes to max by level 8, but also gives everyone a little bit more freedom to pick up that roleplay feat they could never justify before. Your ability score increases are more consistent and you're forced to spread them out a bit more, so reaching 20 can feel like a greater achievement.

Haven't tested it out yet, would love to run a game with this sometime.

[Breccia]

I mean...I don't like it, but Barbarians do the same with Con adding AC via Unarmored Defense and hit points. So I guess it's fair.

That said, "they still need Con for saving throws" but...do they? They're immune to poison, immune to disease, proficient in all saves, don't eat, drink, or age. The change you're suggesting would make Con a very obvious dump stat.

[Just to Browse]

Love it. Very smart stat binding.

[Ionathus]

That said, "they still need Con for saving throws" but...do they? They're immune to poison, immune to disease, proficient in all saves, don't eat, drink, or age. The change you're suggesting would make Con a very obvious dump stat.

CON's never really ever gonna be a true dump stat: even accounting for poison and disease immunity, loads of pure-damage spells target CON (https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells?filter-class=0&filter-search=&filter-tags=5&filter-save-required=3&filter-verbal=&filter-somatic=&filter-material=&filter-concentration=&filter-ritual=&filter-sub-class=), nearly as many as target DEX (https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells?filter-class=0&filter-save-required=2&filter-search=&filter-tags=5) in fact. There are plenty of nasty high level spells that target CON (Horrid Wilting, Finger of Death, Harm among them), plus nasty monster effects like paralysis, that keep CON in the "big 3" even for an endgame monk with this homebrew.

Plus, almost all of those bonuses you mentioned wouldn't come online until level 10 and above, so if you dumped CON you'd be spending the majority of most campaigns (likely the entire campaign) more prone to poison, disease, and other dangers. Proficiency on all saves doesn't come until level 14, when enemy save DCs can easily crack 20. Even with that proficiency, a negative CON stat can hurt bad when the enemy's got a 21 save DC - and failing a CON save in Tier 4 can mean some pretty horrendous effects.

[KyleG]

I'll support any change that makes MAD classes less tedious to level up.

Personally I like the homebrew where every ASI gives you the 2 increase points to spend AND a feat (which can also include half-feats)...but you can only increase any ability score by 1 at a time. So it becomes harder for SAD classes to max by level 8, but also gives everyone a little bit more freedom to pick up that roleplay feat they could never justify before. Your ability score increases are more consistent and you're forced to spread them out a bit more, so reaching 20 can feel like a greater achievement.

Haven't tested it out yet, would love to run a game with this sometime.

I too am curious how that would play on both MAD and SAD classes and also on fighter and rogue specifically with their extra asis.

[Amechra]

I too am curious how that would play on both MAD and SAD classes and also on fighter and rogue specifically with their extra asis.

So, I crunched some numbers (on both the initial idea of the thread and the "better ASIs" stuff), and I came to the following conclusions (assuming that your table min-maxes stats):


Forcing people to spread out ASIs actually hurts the (unarmored) Barbarian and the Monk more than you'd think. Monks are kinda-sorta designed around the idea that you can get +1 AC for one ASI, and making them spread out their ASIs makes it so that they get +2 AC for every two ASIs they invest, which averages out to the same thing but results in a -1 to AC from 4th to 7th and 12th to 15th. This might get balanced out by all of the extra feats you end up getting, but seeing that everyone else is getting that boost too...
It powers up people using GWM or SS shenanigans — you get the feats for your nonsense for "free" and don't end up behind on Str/Dex like you normally would.
If the calculations in this blog post (https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=7338) are accurate, casters will notice far more than martial characters will, thanks to "good" save bonuses scaling far more quickly than AC. Martial characters will notice a slight drop-off in damage, while casters will notice that it's almost never worth the effort to use spells that target a "good" save.
Other than that? Not much would change, other than some normally not-worth-taking feats suddenly getting a second chance at the spotlight (I can see Rogues mainlining Dual Wielder, since the +1 AC and +1 damage become WAY better when the normal boost from ASIs for that stuff is +0.5 instead of +1.).




As for the central idea of the thread... one thing I didn't consider is that it's actually a massive boost in toughness for the Monk (assuming that you're min-maxing your stats). It's going to be +1 to +2 HP per level at lower levels, topping out at +3 to +4 HP by the end of Tier 3. It makes you roughly as tough as a Fighter at early levels (minus Second Wind, of course), and pushes your HP past that in T3 (assuming that the Fighter is spending their ASIs on stuff other than increasing HP — I feel like that's a safe assumption to make, because unlike the Wis-to-HP Monk they aren't getting +1 to AC and their save DC out of the deal as well). I honestly think that this is fine — the Monk usually ends up being more fragile than it probably should be if you're playing with the standard array, and the Fighter gets better armor and what is effectively a free hit-die per short rest, so it's not like the Fighter is suddenly sobbing in the face of the super swole Monk.

If that bothers you, you can drop the Monk's hit-die to a d6, which makes ye olde "I start with my Wis at 16, and go from there" Monk balance out to roughly being equivalent to a normal Monk with Con 14 for T1 to T2, and then gives them some extra HP in T3 (when they start getting their "you're tougher than nails" features, which kinda feels appropriate?).

In general, that's why I decided to go with "Wis to HP" instead of +1 HP (that's what "ki to HP" is, unless you've got some extra house rules that fiddle with how much Ki you get) — it gives a stronger "mind over body" vibe than just getting a flat bonus on top of your Con score. In conjunction with the features that the Monk starts getting at the end of T2/start of T3, it adds a little narrative that the Monk slowly becomes so enlightened that they don't really need to be healthy in the traditional way anymore. Which I rather like, but I can see why someone wouldn't.

The reason it only affects Monk levels/HD is because I'm not sure if it'd be healthy to let Druids dump every non-Wis stat even harder than they currently do (it'd also be an absolute pain to recalculate your HP while wild-shaped).