The Bloodhunter Class is Causing me Existential Despair

[stoutstien]

Odd, it's like that's an opinion vs a consensus. Just looking at the color code over on RPG Net I see the Cobalt Soul rated Green. So not as good as Mercy or Long Death but better than Four Elements, Kensei and Sunsoul.

Extract Aspects is rated top tier, Extort and Debilitating Barrage are rated Green. Meanwhile the two low tier abilities, one is rated Low tier because a Monk normally dumps Int and the other because it burns Ki Quickly.

Got to be careful with sites like that because they tend to color their opinion based on a particular style of play rather than looking at the full range.

Like they rate the level 3 feature as green but failed to realize that they key off flurry of blow and missed attacks. Now to be fair a lot of monks like to use flurry of blows but when you have low lv features that are tied to ki consumption it really limits them into a set tactic and this isn't a good one. (They overlook this with kensei because they got hung up on the whole weapon image thing but free AC is massive for monks).
This feature is also dependent on the DM basically home brewing a lot. I would say this subclass is stronger at my table because I tend to make a lot of custom NPCs but for tables that run through standard fair type options it's a wall of text that is meaningless besides potentially a reaction attack... Which is gated behind the enemy missing the Monk. No this doesn't work if they actually hit the monk or they attack somebody else. That's a lot of ifs.
Sure they have PD but that's also a bonus action and cost additional Ki. By the time you get in a position one can really leverage this the fight's probably over.

Monks already have a strong use for reactions with deflect missile and slowfall so it's a ok feature as long as it doesn't get them killed trying to proc it.

Extort true is ok. It's actually fairly abusable with certain party combinations. Oh they get select growing expertise in a skill that is a low priority stat. I actually like that feature all n all. I also think that expertise should be used to strengthen lower ability scores but I'm in the minority here.
This is the heart of the subclass and it should come online a lot sooner. there's no reason why the first iteration of this feature cannot start at level three.

Lv 11 is trap adjacent. It seems like a good trade but you have to have a particularly good reason to use it or you are ki dumping and then SS/FoB is still a better return. The only time where I've seen this really shine is in giant focus game where you can use deflect missile repeatedly. Even then I think it feels better than it actually is. Most enemies with half a brain are going to realize that unless the monk is actively threatening them (read SS) it's actually a very bad idea to target them until last.


The capstone is fiddly and fairly low impact because the things that you really want to affect tend to have immunity and by this time the party should have plenty of resources for bypassing any hurdles dealing with damage types. They get empty body one level later.

It has the potential to be really good but it didn't. It doesn't have any real synergy with monks and ki hungry which is the common feature of all the monk subclasses that lag behind.