Quote Originally Posted by Zeb_by_Proxy View Post
As for cantrips, I mostly wanted to keep things simple and reflective of the Four Elements sub class. The “default” elemental ability just feels like a cantrip to me (a la Prestidigitation) so i thought a cantrip option (but combat) would be fair and occasionally useful. I didn’t want to load up just to prevent this from treading too heavily into Cleric space. I want to keep the martial arts feel as much as possible.

As for the L6 ability, I was feeling a Zealot vibe when I wrote that, but it could be optional I suppose. I wanted to encourage the player to lean into a holy-light/holy-darkness element there, but it isn’t really necessary :-).
In that case, I would be tempted to make lv6 even more like Zealot, then: once per turn when you (deal damage? hit with a melee attack?), you may deal an additional Martial Arts die worth of damage to one target; this damage is radiant or necrotic, chosen when you gain this feature. People already remark on how Monk's damage falls off in tier 3: maybe make that lv11 and move the Con save buff to lv6, giving an improved save before Diamond Soul?

The cantrip gets pretty strong as your main action as it scales up: it might even bypass the Attack action depending on situation and ability scores (and Bane/Curse, which buff the save cantrips). I don't know if that's desirable.