One of the big messages WotC is pushing with the 2024 Core Rulebooks is that they'll be backwards compatible. While many of the PHB subclasses are getting updates in the new PHB, in theory any of the Wizard or Cleric subclasses from 2014 and any of the other subclasses in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and other sourcebooks from the past nine years should also work alongside the new versions of the core classes (in theory you should even be able to use the old Way of Shadow with the new Monk or the new Warrior of the Hand with the 2014 Monk... though I wouldn't recommend either).
With a lot of excitement over the Playtest 8 (really 9, but they're not counting Bastions and Cantrips in the numbering) giving us a Monk that, dare we say, might actually finally be caught up with the other classes in terms of power, I thought I'd revisit one of my earliest D&D characters - the Wood Elf Drunken Master Monk, Kaz Kariko.
The Way of the Drunken Master is one of the subclasses out of Xanathar's, and admittedly, it's not considered a very powerful one. But flavor-wise, Drunken Boxing is a really cool style of martial arts that, admittedly, might only exist in Kung Fu movies or as a performative style, rather than being a historically effective fighting style.
Still, the concept of it is really cool - through unpredictable movements that draw inspiration from someone who is stumbling drunk, you become difficult to read and extremely slippery.
Playtest 8 gives us the second version of the Monk in the current round of testing, which has done a lot to enhance various aspects of the class, such as making some mobility features free, allowing us to deflect all attacks rather than just ranged ones, and broadly giving us more ways to regain Discipline Points - the new name for Ki Points.
We do, here, come across the first thing we'll technically need some kind of update document to clarify, because old subclasses will refer to Ki Points and the new class does not have any of those. But that's a pretty minor quibble.
So, let's go through the Drunken Master subclass features and determine if they work with the new version of the Monk, if they create some redundancies, and whether they've gotten any better or worse thanks to the newer design.
3rd level:
Drunken Masters get two features at level 3. The first is some bonus proficiencies - in the Performance skill and in Brewer's Supplies. While I try to make tool proficiencies worthwhile when I run my games, they are admittedly sometimes ignored. Performance, likewise, is pretty rarely made use of, so this whole half of the level is kind of "ribbon" features.
Drunken Technique is a bit more substantial. When you use Flurry of Blows, you also gain the benefit of the Disengage action and your walking speed increases by 10 feet.
Disengaging is now pretty easy as a Monk, given that the new Patient Defense allows us to Disengage as a Bonus Action for free (and we can spend a DP to get it along with a dash and doubled jump distance with Step of the Wind). That said, getting it along with both a movement speed bonus and a Flurry of Blows does still help a lot with hit-and-run tactics. There's nothing here that is incompatible or redundant with the new Monk, and arguably this gets a little buff with level 10 giving us a third Flurry of Blows attack.
Now, I think you could still argue that this would need a bit of a buff to make it a full level's worth of features, but our main focus here is just seeing if the new Monk breaks this subclass.
6th level:
Our one 6th level feature is Tipsy Sway, but this is actually two features wrapped up together.
Leap to Your Feet allows you to spend 5 feet of movement, rather than half your speed, to stand up from Prone.
The only real downside to this feature is that getting knocked prone is not super common (not super rare either, to be fair). But yeah, this seems to function fine with the new Monk, and will save you a lot of feet of movement.
Redirect Attack lets you use a reaction when a creature misses you with a melee attack roll and spend a Ki Point (or DP) to cause that attack to hit a different creature of your choice (not the attacker) that you can see within 5 feet of you.
There is definitely some overlap here with the new Deflect Attack, but they're triggered in entirely different circumstances. And because of that, while both eat your reaction, there's actually some decent synergy here - if a monster hits you, you can Deflect the attack, and if they miss, you can redirect it. Deflect Attack is arguably more important to use, though, as it's a big part of your defensive capabilities, while this is actually more of an offensive ability.
The key to this feature is that you can create an auto-hit of friendly fire between foes. That's really powerful when you have hard-hitting monsters, but hard-hitting monsters are also the kind you want to have Deflect Attack ready for. So, while this isn't a true redundancy, I think Deflect Attack becomes a more important use of your reaction - this becomes great if you know that the monster is making its last attack and misses, but unless they've missed you on all of their attacks, you've probably used Deflect Attack already instead.
11th level:
Drunkard's Luck allows you to make d20 test that you would otherwise have disadvantage on as a straight roll if you spend 2 DP.
There's nothing about this feature that gets broken. The only problem with it is that it really, really sucks. Two Ki Points/DP only to cancel disadvantage (not gain advantage) is entirely too expensive, and I'd argue that it's too expensive at one. But again, this is not broken by the new system. It's just already brokenly bad.
17th level:
Intoxicated Frenzy is the Drunken Master's 17th level feature, which improves your Flurry of Blows in the following way: when you use Flurry of Blows, you can take three additional attacks (on top of the normal two, for a total of five) as long as each Flurry of Blows attack targets a different creature.
So, the first question to ask is: do we keep the number of additional attacks the same or the total the same? Because the current Monk gets three attacks as part of a Flurry of Blows at level 10 and higher. But this feature explicitly says three additional attacks for a total of five. This is very shaky rules-parsing, but I would favor the "three additional attacks" because the clarification that it's a total of five is in parentheses (I assume this reminder is to ensure people didn't think that it would simply be three Flurry of Blows attacks total).
However, even if we take the generous (and I think more correct) interpretation, there's still a bit of a dilution of this power. If our Flurry of Blows is two attacks and we can get five, that's 150% more attacks (not counting our Attack action). If it's three attacks and we get six, that's only a 100% increase.
The rider that these must be against separate targets, as well, has always been a real weight on this as a capstone subclass feature, because it goes against most of the common wisdom of how melee classes work - you're really rewarded in D&D for focusing down individual monsters, and spreading your damage like this could help against very weak foes, but it might be more valuable in a round to land three attacks on one target rather than one attack on six targets.
So, in summation:
The only feature here that is truly broken in the sense that it's not clear how it even works anymore is Intoxicated Frenzy, but I'd say that the appeal of Tipsy Sway has also taken a beating here.
Personally, I'd love to see an overhaul of this subclass because I adore its flavor (while it's probably the closest after the Open Hand/Warrior of the Hand to portraying a traditional martial artist, I find the overall vibe of this so much more fun - if Open Hand is Bruce Lee, this is Jackie Chan - who starred in the Drunken Master movies, so... not subtle.)
Anyway, as much as WotC tries to say there will be no conversion documents required to use the 2024 Core Rulebooks, it's clear that there will be little subtle things that could require a new clarification.
The bigger question, of course, is whether they'll revisit these existing subclasses to revise them and bring them in line power-wise with the newer design. And I'm of two minds on this: on one hand, I'd love to get a badass Drunken Master that is powerful and cool. On the other hand, I don't want to see the next ten years simply rehashing and revising all the existing things from the last nine at the expense of new concepts and ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment