Monk - Base Class

Duncehack Edition

So who are you?

Just some tosser with an over inflated sense of self importance.

Send verbal abuse via Minds.com

What is the Duncehack?

It emerged from a place of frustration. There's quite a number of areas where 5e could be improved but... it's not going to happen for various reasons.

The Duncehack is my attempt to fix these problems I have. Plan is to go through the whole game - all of it - and homebrew it into the game I think is should have been.

Feel free to disagree with me, but ultimately I think there's no harm in putting my thoughts out there, at the very least if even one DM decides to adopt these rules, then my job is done.

No DM Guild? No OGL Release?

I chafe under binding contracts and both of these are exactly that.

The DM Guild gives you more room to mess with established rules, but basically demands that all be under the service of flagship settings.

The SRD on the other hand gives more room for interesting settings but clamps down extremely hard on what established rules you're allowed to use. Their biggest contention is that they don't want someone to sell a sourcebook that removes the need for core books. Translation: they don't want Pathfinder to happen all over again.

More to the point, both assume money will change hands. I don't want money, I just want Wizards to fix their game.

Groundrules

Groundrules for the Duncehack are as follows:

• No Nerfs: the goal is to bring weaker archetypes on the level of the stronger ones.

• Remove Traps: incentives built into classes and archetypes should provide an active payoff, rather than be the suboptimal choice.

• Frontload Agency, Backend Power: Generally speaking, people like having more options to do things, rather than more raw power. As a design rule: things that feel like core class features, or are defining class mechanics, should happen in the first ten levels, sheer numeric increases in power should come after that.

No money changed hands here

This is a passion project. I want to keep it that way.

I also want to avoid legal issues for self-evident reasons.

No UA?

Too much changes between UA and official release.

The fewer corrections I have the do between UA changes, the better.

Obligatory Natural Crit Plug

http://www.naturalcrit.com/

Someone else made a thing that lets me make homebrews without having to post them on pastebin or something. They deserve a lot of credit for that.

Obligatory /tg/ Plug

The feedback I got from various Anons on this helped me build it into something that wasn't bad and stupid.

I love you all in a way only abused spouse can possibly understand.

No Images?

Needed to get it under 8mb so I could upload it literally anywhere.

So what in Monk needs fixing?

I don't know why, but the fact your martial arts doesn't end in d12 really annoys me. Irrationally, unendingly so. Dunno why. It's probably fine and doesn't actually need fixing, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Also the capstone is awful in the way the Sorcerer one is.

Other than that, the big elephant in the room is that they can't quite remove the MAD from the class. Essay next page.

What if I think these are too much?

I barely did anything though!

Fine, here's couple of tweaks:

• 1d10 hit die.
• Scale Martial Arts to 1d12. The die type increases are at 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th.
• Remove Ki point cost from Deflect Missiles.

What's Wrong with Monks?

The one big issues with monks in every edition of the game, including 5e, has always been suriving the first 5 levels, and multiple attribute dependancy.

5e is not anywhere near as bad on this subject, but Monks remain perhaps the most ASI hungry of the classes, and many of the features meant to keep them safe in a melee take a couple levels to come online. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, they're designed to be up with the Fighters and Paladins (who are likely in heavy armour) and Barbarians (who have rage).

Frontline Fighter with Caster HP

Survivability is a big issue with Monks, especially in the early game where they don't have the ASIs for extra Con. Barbarians get HP and AC from their features, but for extra HP Monks need Con, leading to a mild Multiple Attribute Dependancy (I say mild because you don't need to max Con necessarily), on a class that's already ASI hungry.

Barbarians can also get around early game issues with survivability just by sticking heavier armour on until their Unarmoured Defence catches up.

Rogues get away with being d8 hit die because they have hide as a bonus action. Clerics get away with it because the frontline domains tend to have heavy armour, shields and a whole spell list of get-out-of-trouble abilities. Blade Warlocks have access to warlock stuff, Bards have shenanigans, Druids have the fact they can turn into a bear.

Monks have patient defense. Problem is, anyone who's played a monk can tell you that they've already burnt their Ki on stunning the big threats in the first couple of rounds, which for the Ki investment is a much better utility for the party - a stunned wizard can't fireball. Problem is, that comes at the direct cost of the feature they're meant to be exploiting for personal safety. D&D is a team game, and if the choice is between your character's safety and party safety, well, guess which one wins out?

This smooths out in the later levels, where ki is more abundant.

Safety options are skewed

You can use 1 ki point for Patient Defense to reduce the number of attacks that hit you. So far so good, and the superior option when dealing with hordes.

You can also spend 1 ki point to use a Stunning Strike, the victim of which cannot attack, and everything that attacks it has advantage on the attack. Great to putting down big dudes.

But you can also spend 1 ki point to spend a reaction reduce the damage of a singular ranged attack and hopefully get a free attack out of it. Great for...

When do you actually use this feature?

If you're getting nailed by archers, you're likely also getting tied up by frontline enemies, meaning that if you're trying to stay safe, you're spending your Ki on Patient Defence.

If you're not being tied up by frontline and can charge straight at the archer, you're better off hitting Step of the Wind and getting into melee range, which is the safest place to be against a ranged combatant in 5e anyway.

You might be able to make an argument that 'it's an extra attack' - except that only applies if you reduce the damage to 0.

An argument can be made that 'it's a reaction feature, so you can use it when you're needing your bonus action for other things', but it costs Ki - and by the time you have the feature, you have 3 whole points to spend. Ki might come back on a Short Rest, but each point is just so damn valuable.

You could make the argument that 'oh it's not an issue later when you have more Ki points', to which I'd point out late game survivability isn't an issue with Monks, it's early game survivability that's the problem.

ASI Hungry

Quick comparison:

If you aren't getting 20 in both Constitution and Strength as a Barbarian, you're not necessarily doing it wrong, because while Constitution is extemely efficient as a stat, there's builds and archetypes (Polearm Master Zealot springs to mind) that can make use of particular feats, and Rage is a massive boost for effective hit points. Constitution for a Barbarian is entirely a defensive stat and can be made up for in other ways. Every saving throw that matters and every weapon attack is based off Strength.

If you aren't getting 20 in both Dexterity and Wisdom as a Monk, you are doing it wrong. Every weapon attack is based of Dexterity. Every saving throw is based on Wisdom. For Monk to work properly however, you really need those Stunning Strikes to work, but for Stunning Strike to work, you have to first land the hit in the first place.

You could make the argument that a Monk can just 'go full damage' and use their Ki points on Flurry of Blows, ignoring the need for Wisdom.

Problem with that thinking: What about your AC?

This isn't so bad as such, there's few feats that a Monk would care about (Mobile comes to mind) and 'fixing' the Wisdom/Dexterity reliance is... not easy.

So instead the better solution would be to take a swing at the issues pulling Monks toward Constitution.

(Side note, I also think Monks should get an ASI at 10th, but that's just me).

Class Features

As a Monk, you gain the following class features

Hit Points

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• Hit Dice: 1d10 per Monk level
• Hit Points at 1st Level: 10 + your Constitution modifier
• Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d10 (or 6) + your Constitution modifier per Monk level after 1st

Proficiencies

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• Armor: Shields
• Weapons: simple weapons, shortswords
• Tools: Any one type of artisan's tools or any one musical instrument of your choice

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• Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity
• Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Religion, and Stealth.

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) any two weapons given by your monk proficiency or (b) shortsword and shield
• (a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack
• artisan's tool or musical instrument you are proficient in
• (a) any simple weapon or (b) 10 darts

1d10 Hit Die?

To ease off Constitution Multiple Attribute Dependancy, which is a big issue with the class.

Shields? Monks don't use-

Stop. Look up 'Shaolin Sword and Shield' on Youtube.

There's entire Martial Arts, plural, surrounding the use of shields.

Unarmored Defense

Beginning at 1st level, while you are wearing no armor, your AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier. You may benefit from this feature while using a shield.

Martial Arts

Your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use unarmed strikes and monk weapons, which are shortswords, darts and any simple melee weapons.

You gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding only monk weapons and you aren't wearing armor.

• You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes and monk weapons - for the purposes of rules interactions they are considered finesse weapons.
• You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike or monk weapon. This die changes as you gain monk levels, at 5th level it becomes a d6, at 9th it becomes d8, at 13th it becomes a d10 and at 17th it becomes a d12.
• When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon while you are not using a shield on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
• At 11th level, when you use your Martial Arts feature to make an attack in your bonus action, you may make two attacks instead of one.
• If you would make a Strength Based attack with a Monk Weapon or an Unarmed Strike, if the damage die would show a result lower than your Strength Modifier, treat the result as displaying your Strength Modifier instead.
• When using a ranged or thrown monk weapon with which you are proficient, you can use a bonus action on your turn to make your ranged attacks with a monk weapon more deadly. When you do so, any target you hit with a ranged attack using a monk weapon takes an extra 1d4 damage of the weapon's type. You retain this benefit until the end of the current turn. Once you reach 5th level, you can spend 1 Ki point to change this die to the die listed in your Martial Arts column.

Monk Weapons

You practice your martial arts with specially chosen weapons, which become monk weapons for you. You can choose a number of weapons to be your monk weapons equal to 5 + your Wisdom modifier (minimum of five weapons).

Martial Weapons with the Heavy Property cannot be used with Dexterity and are not considered Finesse weapons with the Martial Arts feature unless another rule or feature would make that weapon a finesse weapon, however they still count as Monk Weapons for Strength Based attacks.

Fighting Style

You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty.

Unarmored Movement

Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you are not wearing armor or wielding a shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain monk levels, as shown in the Monk table.

At 9th level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the move.

Martial Arts

For it not to scale to d12 irrationally annoyed me.

Preventing Shield using monks from using the free Unarmed Attack?

Don't want Shield use to drown out other monk weapons.

Extra attack at 11th in bonus action?

To give a power spike at 11th for parity with the likes of Fighters and Paladins.

Why bonus action? Because Patient Defense exists.

Why did you drop the 'Two-Handed' and 'Heavy' restrictions on the Martial Arts feature?

Because it literally only affects greatclubs. If you use PHB rules, Quarterstaffs do the same damage anyway.

If you use the rules I outlined for the Greatclub in the quick and dirty changes, they become a 2d4 damage, heavy weapon. Does mean there's potential for Monk access to Great Weapon Master. Remember: the bonus action attacks specify that they're unarmed though.

Fighting Style

I get the logic, Paladins and Rangers get Fighting Styles but Monks and Barbarians don't?

I'll list this here as an optional rule simply because I can see this one being a huge source of diagreement.

If you're wondering why 1st level: Because you don't have Ki to not die yet.

Allowing Strength Based Monks?

Monks already can go Str based without interfering with any class features as none of them actually call for Dex. It's just, Dex is superior because Martial Arts. Having this extra line about strength based attacks however, means you can go either way.

Moved Kensei Shot?

To support the new ranged weapon access in the base class.

Ki

Starting at 2nd level, your training allows you to harness the mystic energy of ki. Your access to this energy is represented by a number of ki points. Your monk level determines the number of points you have, as shown in the Ki Points column of the Monk table.

You can spend these points to fuel various ki features. You start knowing three such features: Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, and Step of the Wind. You learn more ki features as you gain levels in this class.

When you spend a ki point, it is unavailable until you finish a short or long rest, at the end of which you draw all of your expended ki back into yourself. You must spend at least 30 minutes of the rest meditating to regain your ki points.

Some of your ki features require your target to make a saving throw to resist the feature's effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:

Ki save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Ki Fuelled Strikes

If you spend at least 1 ki during your turn, you can spend your bonus action to make an unarmed attack.

(i.e., even if you do not take the attack action on your turn)

Flurry of Blows

When you take the attack action, you can spend a ki point to take an extra unarmed attack during your bonus action. If a bonus action attack is provided by any other feature, such as Ki Fuelled Strikes or Martial Arts, this feature adds another attack to that bonus action.

Patient Defense

You can spend 1 ki point to take the Dodge action as a bonus action on your turn.

Step of the Wind

You can spend 1 ki point to take the Disengage or Dash action as a bonus action on your turn, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn.

Distant Eye

When you make a ranged weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to prevent attacking at long range from imposing disadvantage on your attack rolls until the end of the current turn.

Quickened Healing

As an action, you can spend 2 ki points and roll a Martial Arts die. You regain a number of hit points equal to the number rolled.

Monastic Tradition

When you reach 3rd level, you commit yourself to a monastic tradition, chosen from the list of available traditions. Your tradition grants you features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.

The list is: Open Hand, Shadows, Four Elements, Long Death, Sun Soul, Drunken Master, and Kensei.

Deflect Missiles

Starting at 3rd level, you can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack. When you do so, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + your monk level.

If you reduce the damage to 0, you can catch the missile if it is small enough for you to hold in one hand and you have at least one hand free. If you catch a missile in this way, you can make a ranged attack (range 20/60 feet) with the weapon or piece of ammunition you just caught, as part of the same reaction. You make this attack with proficiency, regardless of your weapon proficiencies, and the missile counts as a monk weapon for the attack.

The roll becomes 1d12 instead if you are wielding a shield, however you cannot use your reaction to throw the missile.

Ability Score Improvement

At 4th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 16th and 19th levels you gain +2 to one ability score, or +1 to two ability scores. You cannot raise an ability score above 20 this way.

Slow Fall

Beginning at 4th level, you can use your reaction when you fall to reduce any falling damage you take by an amount equal to five times your monk level.

Extra Attack

Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Flurry of Blows

Gave it some clearer wording that should make it work better with other monk features.

Deflect Missiles changes

Removed the Ki point cost. It's already situational as it requires you to completely nullify the damage to make the reaction attack.

Put the line in about shields, I don't want it to eclipse other weapon loadouts for damage and utility.

Extra Ability Score Improvement

I've seen rather impassioned arguments about how Monks should at least have one extra ASI compared to other classes. I understand the rationale, they are martials after all. I suspect the main reason for the argument is that the class is so damn ASI hungry - you need 20 Dex and 20 Wis to do their job, and you need to have a half decent Con score to not explode the moment you're hit in the early game.

So if you think this to be the case and want to add an ASI, I'd say 10th level is the best place to stick it. Poison immunity is nice, but disease immunity is a ribbon.

Stunning Strike

Starting at 5th level, you can interfere with the flow of ki in an opponent's body. When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

Ki-Empowered Strikes

Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes and monk weapons count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Evasion

At 7th level, your instinctive agility lets you dodge out of the way of certain area effects, such as a blue dragon's lightning breath or a fireball spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.

Stillness of Mind

Starting at 7th level, you can use your action to end one effect on yourself that is causing you to be charmed or frightened.

Adamantine Flesh

At 9th level, whenever you make a saving throw and fail, you can spend 1 ki point to reroll it and take the second result.

Purity of Body

At 10th level, your mastery of the ki flowing through you makes you immune to disease and poison

Tongue of the Sun and Moon

Starting at 13th level, you learn to touch the ki of other minds so that you understand all spoken languages. Moreover, any creature that can understand a language can understand what you say.

Steel Focus

Starting at 13th level, whenever you spend Ki on an effect that would force a saving throw (Such as Stunning Strike), you can spend the Ki point cost again to impose disadvantage on the roll.

Diamond Soul

Beginning at 14th level, your mastery of ki grants you proficiency in all saving throws.

Unending Discipline

At 15th level, when you roll for initiative and have no ki points remaining, you regain a number of ki points equal to your Wisdom Modifier (minimum 1).

Timeless Body

At 15th level, your ki sustains you so that you suffer none of the frailty of old age, and you can't be aged magically. You can still die of old age, however. In addition, you no longer need food or water.

Empty Body

Beginning at 18th level, you can use your action to spend 4 ki points to become invisible for 1 minute. During that time, you also have resistance to all damage but force damage.

Additionally, you can spend 8 ki points to cast the astral projection spell, without needing material components. When you do so, you can't take any other creatures with you.

Perfect Soul

At 20th level, you are the living paragon of discipline and focus. Your Dexterity and Wisdom scores increase by 4. Your maximum for those scores is now 24.

Adamantine Flesh

Moving half of Diamond Soul here because safety needs to be staggered in earlier into this class.

Moving global saving throws earlier is a bit much though.

Steel Focus

This exists solely to ease off ASI reliance a step or two, but at a cost within the class. Basically you can have your 'full damage dex build but these three feats' and still be effective, but you're going to burn through your Ki rapidly (meaning that Wisdom helps you maintain you ki, which is thematically appropriate).

It also gives an option for Stunning Strike to be usable against high level creatures.

Unending Discipline

This was the old Perfect Soul (It's a good name, wanted to keep it for the capstone).

Made this more comparable to things like the PHB Battlemaster 15th level feature... because it is directly comparable.

Perfect Soul

I'm going to get a lot of disagreement for this one. I personally see Monks as a mirror to Barbarians. Barbarians fight harder, Monks fight faster. Barbarians can take a hit, Monks don't get hit. I could go on.