Playtest 8: Monks

 I'm doing this out of order because this was the class I most wanted to look at, and which received the most changes.

The Monk is a class that I really love, conceptually, but one that has always had a ton of asterisks preventing it from living up to its full potential. And while there's one big change that they have not made, the class itself has received in this playtest a bevy of improvements that... I think could possibly add up to a fixed class?

The change that has not been made is that Monks still have a d8 hit die, instead of going up to a d10. I still don't understand the rationale behind putting these masters of physical conditioning at the same base HP as a Warlock, but lest we get too disheartened, let's move on to the real good changes coming.

Actually, one bit of bad news first as well: Monks are not getting Weapon Mastery. I... I think this is just kind of mean. Yes, Monks are supposed to focus instead on unarmed strikes, but if basically every other class that thinks to pick up a weapon gets this cool new feature, I don't think Monks should have it taken away. I honestly suspect the main culprit here is Nick, so that Monks don't get a base of four attacks per turn after level 5. But let's move on.

As a note, we're going to go level-by-level, but I'm only going to touch on features that have changed. I'm not going to mention Unarmored Movement, for example, because it works the same as before.

1st level:

First off, Monk Weapons are back. Monks are now proficient with any simple weapon and any martial weapons with the Light property, and all of these count as Monk Weapons, meaning you can attack with them using Dexterity, and also they'll scale up with your Martial Arts die (which, as we should recall from the last playtest, has all been shifting up, starting now with a d6 and going up to a d12). So, a Monk's Shortsword at high levels will hit as hard as a Greataxe.

Next, a subtle change: you can now just make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, regardless of what else you did on your turn. This is a nice quality-of-life improvement that gives the Monk a bit of flexibility, but while welcome, I don't think it'll be earth-shatteirng.

Perhaps a bigger deal is that Monks can now use Dexterity to determine the DCs of Grapples and Shoves. This is, I think, very cool - it always seemed that Monks should be able to do these effectively, and this change supports that.

2nd level:

Now, let's get into the revisions around Discipline Points. I will be using "DP" to refer to this and will just trust our readers not to giggle like a thirteen-year-old every time I use it (I make no promises not to do this myself).

Flurry of Blows is unchanged except that, like your free Martial Arts bonus attack, you no longer need to take the Attack action to use it.

Patient Defense now has two modes: for free, you can Disengage as a bonus action, no DP required. If you spend 1 DP, you both Disengage and Dodge.

Step of the Wind also has two modes: for free, you can Dash as a bonus action, no DP required. If you spend a DP, you also gain the benefits of the Disengage action and on top of that your jump distance is doubled.

    So, this is a good start. Being able to freely Dash or Disengage as a bonus action now lets Monks catch up with Rogues. It will still, I think, reinforce the idea that Monks are running into and out of melee rather than holding their ground, which I don't love, but at least it's going to be more sustainable. You will also still need to use up that bonus action to do these things, meaning your damage is going to take a hit. But we'll see how some other things will make that less painful.

Uncanny Metabolism is another feature that lets you, once per long rest, regain all your DP when you roll initiative. You also roll your Martial Arts die and add your Monk level and regain that much HP.

    So, that's actually pretty good: if you've expended a ton of resources but then the big boss shows up, this is when you want to blow this ability.

3rd level:

Deflect Attacks works as Deflect Missiles did in the previous playtest, except that it now works on melee attacks as well. If you reduce damage of a melee attack to 0, you can spend one DP to target a creature within 5 feet of you (including, potentially, the one who attacked) and deal damage to them (two rolls of your Martial Arts die plus your Dex modifier) with a dex save for half.

    This is actually what I was hoping for as a Monk damage mitigation ability. While there's more of a comparison to Uncanny Dodge here than Rage, this could potentially seriously reduce a Monk's incoming damage. It's limited to Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing damage, but like the ranged version, this becomes all damage at level 13. 1d10 plus your Monk level at that stage is 17.5, and that's free every round with a reaction. Deflect Missiles was always a really cool ability Monks never got to use, but now it's going to be a major part of Monk survival moving forward.

5th level:

Stunning Strike will now deal extra damage if the target succeeds on the save. If the target succeeds on its save, you deal extra Force damage equal to a roll of your Martial Arts die plus your Wisdom modifier.

    This is odd - it takes some of the pain of a successful save away, but also weirdly creates rare scenarios in which you might prefer a target succeeds on its save. Stunning is a super-powerful effect, to be sure, but this could potentially kill off an enemy. Indeed, if you fight something that's immune to the Stunned condition, you've now created a scenario in which you always want them to succeed on this save, and thus get essentially a Hands of Harm bonus damage effect.

10th level:

We now get some improvements to existing features in an umbrella feature called Heightened Discipline.

Flurry of Blows now gives you three Unarmed Strikes up from two. Patient Defense will now grant you Temp HP equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die when you spend the DP. Step of the Wind, when you spend the DP, will now let you choose a willing creature who is Large or Smaller and within 5 feet of you, and you move the creature with you until the end of the turn (not provoking Opportunity Attacks).

    So, on pure damage numbers, the additional Flurry of Blows attack is pretty sweet. The other features here are nice bonuses, and let you be a lot more helpful to your allies. The Flurry of Blows boost is nice, though as it's still limited by resources, it's not quite the equivalent of the Paladin's extra d8 of radiant damage or the Fighter's third attack, but this does come a level earlier.

Also, Self-Restoration lets you end the Charmed, Frightened, or Poisoned effect on yourself and the end of your turn, no action required.

    This actually resolves a weird hiccup in the rules - if you have Dominate Person affecting you, your action is being controlled by the spellcaster, so how would you use the action to remove the Charm? Perhaps some clarification here could also add that you can use this even if a Charm effect would normally prevent you from doing so, but this is probably fine.

13th level:

Not new to this playtest, but Deflect Energy upgrades your Deflect Attacks to work on attacks that deal any damage type. This is actually very important given all the powerful Demon Lords and such whose weapons deal Force damage since Monsters of the Multiverse came out - meaning a Monk can potentially take less damage from them than a Barbarian.

15th level:

Perfect Discipline now sets your DP to 4 if you have 3 or fewer when you roll initiative, and no longer requires you to be totally out of DP.

    I hope this will be replicated in other features of this sort: You're now no longer punished for leaving a drop of gas in the tank. Fantastic change.

20th level:

Body and Mind is a new capstone that mirrors the Barbarian's: your Dexterity and Wisdom scores both increase by 4, and your maximum for each becomes 26 (understanding that at level 19, the ASI feat can now put something up to 22).

    This is actually incredible, and better for Monks than the equivalent for Barbarians is for them, because this means not only that their main attack modifier goes up by 2, but their AC jumps up 4 points! If you used Point Buy and started with 16s in Dex, Con, and Wis, spending all feats on ASIs to get your Dex to 22 and Wis to 20 at level 19, this will put you at 26 and 24, giving you +8 Dexterity +7 Wisdom and an AC (without any magic items) of 25. That's pretty cool! Of course, as a captstone feature it's unlikely to see play very often, but this feels like a very welcome capstone.

Now, the Warrior of the Open Hand also got some changes here, so let's take a look.

3rd level:

Open Hand technique's Addle option no longer allows for a saving throw. The addition of one in the last playtest was a bad idea, so it's good to see it gone here. Push also moves the target 15 feet away.

6th level:

Wholeness of Body no longer costs DP, but instead has a limited number of uses per Long Rest equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of 1).

    Very welcome. DP is a little easier to get back now, but I'm hoping that we will see more subclass features use alternate resources and let DP be used mainly with the options in the base class.

11th level:

Fleet Step now lets you get Step of the Wind when you use any other bonus action (and I assume you can choose either mode).

    So, this means that you can take the Dash Action along with something like a normal bonus action martial arts attack - we might need a little clarification on order here - if I need to dash to get to a monster, can I take the Unarmed Strike bonus action but use the movement of Step of the Wind to get to the target before I need to make the attack? I'd guess not, but it's a little ambiguous.

17th level:

With Quivering Palm, rather than taking a full action to end the vibrations and deal the Force damage, you can now simply replace one of your attacks during the Attack action. However, the ability now costs 4 DP and deals 10d12 Force damage.

    So, I'll be honest, the Open Hand Monk has never really appealed to me when there are weirder versions available, so I don't have much to say about this subclass.

But overall, the question I think we'll have to consider is whether all of these changes ultimately wind up fixing the issues the Monk has. Certainly Deflect Attacks will be a more reliable thing to use than Deflect Missiles, and the functionality we've gained with Patient Defense and Step of the Wind is very welcome. I'm curious to see the new magic items that will enhance unarmed strikes, because I think we're finally adding up to a place where the Monk can put out some serious damage.

The big question is how they're doing defensively. I really wish we'd seen them getting a d10 (or even d12) hit die. While they can get an absurdly high AC at level 20, I think they're still likely to be lagging a bit behind in the early levels. Will Deflect Attacks and the free version of Patient Defense be enough to keep them alive?

This is all very clearly a step in the right direction, but I think I'd have to playtest it to see if it actually gets us where we need to go.