So Monk is the one class we didn’t get a prior UA for, which means all the changes are totally new. I’m still wrapping my head around it. Martial Arts die increase: good. Martial Arts die not affecting weapons: bad. Step of the Wind buff: good. Stunning Strike nerf: bad but reasonable?
I feel like they knew Monks needed help, but it doesn’t really seem like they made as much effort to fix that as I think they really needed to. Anything I might be missing that saves the Class here?
I’m lukewarm on it. By my measure, the critical flaw in the monk’s design is stunning strike. Any discussion on the monk that I’ve had has invariably been pulled to that singular ability.
It’s an incredibly swingy ability that only costs one point. As a result all monks need to weigh all their point-cost abilities against it, and in combat either the monk is a mediocre contributor or they undermine the whole encounter by disabling key actors. SS was nerfed, but I’d like to see a version where it was removed entirely and it’s power was distributed throughout the class.
A key compromise that I think would be healthy is to transplant stunning strike into a subclass. That way players who enjoy that playstyle can opt for it, and DMs who dislike running games for those builds can disallow them at their table.
As for all the other details, I’m uncertain. There are some improvements, but it’s hard not to see the system bending over backwards and straining to fit around stunning strike.
I am amazed WotC managed to take weakest class in the game and find a way to STRIP ALL GOOD THINGS IT HAD GOING FOR IT! And then, to add insult to injury, they put a Bard subclass whose whole thing is “Be better Monk than the Monk” in the same UA.
At this point we should just ask them to make Monk a half-caster because that’s the only way anyone at WotC will actually care about the class.
Saw a comment yesterday that really rung true to me about monk: “We finally have a versatile, interesting monk! …All it took was for it to be a bard subclass” (referring to the college of dance, which gets unarmored defense and unarmed strikes)
On a serious note, though, overall the monk is pretty bleh IMO. It nerfed the monks strongest ability (stunning strike), which was not unexpected, but it gets little in the way to make up for it, which i feel is going to leave the monk behind overall.
At least 4 elements looks like it could actually be fun, now.
The new 4 elements looks awesome. The ability to switch damage types will be super fun to avoid resistances and pile on vulnerabilities which really supports team play and in game research which I love. I love the crown control with the push and pull on these strikes at 10 ft. which is also a great teamwork play.
For me, the fact that the reach of unarmed strikes increase by 10 ft is enough for me to be interested.
