The Tattooed Warrior is one of two brand-new subclasses found in the Arcane Subclasses Unearthed Arcana. It's also the first new Monk subclass post 2024 PHB. The Monk, of course, got a huge glow-up with the revisions of the rules, so I've been eager to see what new ideas they might try with the better framework.
I'll say off the bat that I'm a bit skeptical about this one.
The Way of the Four Elements, from the 2014 PHB, was infamous as being among the worst subclasses in the game. While it had a cool flavor to it, the subclass was built all around spending Ki Points in order to generate spell-like effects (or just cast spells). But with only the spell power-scaling of a 1/3 caster (like an Arcane Trickster or Eldritch Knight,) and the tension of drawing upon your primary Monk resource and thus pulling away from your ability to spend Ki Points on other things like Flurry of Blows, it wound up being pretty unpopular.
The 2024 PHB completely redesigned the Elements monk from scratch, and the Warrior of Elements subclass that exists now is generally thought to be quite good - perhaps even the best Monk subclass, or at least in contention for such a title.
Thus, I'm a little surprised that the direction that the Tattooed Warrior goes is more akin to that 2014 Way of the Four Elements. Again, you'll be spending Focus Points to cast spells chosen from a limited menu.
But lest we condemn this without a fair look, let's get into the features.
3rd level:
Magic Tattoos is the core feature of the subclass. You have various physical markings on your body - whether they be tattoos, scarification, birthmarks, brands, or any other cosmetic alteration. Injuries and damage doesn't impair these (you don't lose one of your subclass features if that monster happens to slash you across your butt tattoo). If a tattoo's effect has a saving throw, the DC is based on your Wisdom, and on a long rest, you can change one of the tattoo options you've chosen to another from the same list.
Kind of a necessary "here's how all these work" feature, so nothing really to comment on here.
Beast Tattoos gives you your first selection of tattoo options. You get two from the following list of possibilities:
Bat: You get Dancing Lights and when you expend 1 FP on Patient Defense or Step of the Wind, you gain Blindsight to a range of 10 feet for 1 minute.
Ok, this one's actually kind of cool. Blindsight on a Monk feels very flavorful, and can be very useful in certain situations.
Butterfly: You get the Light cantrip and you can expend 1 FP to cast Silent Image without material components.
We're sort of getting into it now: the spells you can cast with this subclass cost FP equal to the spell's level (I think). This is better than the Four Elements Monk from 2014, which always cost the spell's level plus 1, for some godforsaken reason. Does reducing these costs by 1 fix it? Probably not. Does the fact that Monks can generally be more efficient with their FP now than they were with Ki Points back in 2014 fix it? Well, that does take it closer. Silent Image is situational, but potentially useful.
Chamelon: You know Minor Illusion and can expend 1 FP to cast Disguise Self.
I'd bet this is going to have broader application than Butterfly. The Cantrips, honestly, might be the real selling points on these tattoos.
Crane: You know Guidance, and when you miss with an attack granted by Flurry of Blows, you get advantage on subsequent attack rolls with that use of Flurry of Blows.
The math here is probably very complicated. This gets better when Flurry of Blows goes up to three attacks, but the funny thing is that the timing of your miss really changes how good this is. Naturally, you'd like to hit on every attack, but oddly, with this you're really going to hope that, if you do miss, you miss early. The second, or third at level 10 and beyond, attack won't really trigger this. Guidance is obviously good.
Horse: You know Message, and you can expend 1 FP to cast Longstirder.
Given how fast Monks are anyway, Longstrider is probably not terribly useful to them - though I suppose they can give this to a friend. Again, Message is a good cantrip.
Spider: You know Mending, and when you hit a creature with an attack from Flurry of Blows, the creature has disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn.
This kind of gives you the Sap mastery, but only if you expend the resources on Flurry of Blows. Admittedly, tying subclass features to Flurry of Blows is a pretty safe bet, as it's the most reasonable thing to spend FP on in the first place. I don't hate it.
Tortoise: You know Spare the Dying, and you can expend 1 FP to cast False Life without Material components.
Even though I wouldn't want to spend a ton of FP to upcast these spells (which was an option with the Four Elements Monk) I also wonder if I'd really find a 1st level False Life to be worth it compared to the extra damage I'd get through more conventional uses of that resource.
One note here is that none of these spells are damage-dealing spells, all of them being some form of utility. I think I find myself more drawn to the ones that interact with existing Monk abilities, though in doing so, they each cost 1 FP.
6th level:
Celestial Tattoo adds new magic tattoos. You choose one of the following options.
Comet: You can spend 2 FP to cast Find Traps.
Find Traps is a profoundly bad spell - the only trap you find with it is the spell itself. It literally doesn't do what it say sit does, and just tells you if there's a trap somewhere nearby, not where that trap is. Utter garbage, but that's more the spell than this feature.
Crescent Moon: You can spend 2 FP to cast Misty Step.
Misty Step, on the other hand, is a fantastic spell. That being said, I do think a Monk is less likely to need it. They can already Dash or Disengage as a bonus action for free, each of which will do a big part of what you generally need Misty Step for. That said, getting out of restraints is also nice. Misty Step is a spell I basically think you should always get on any character who can have it, so this is an obviously strong choice.
Eclipse: You can expend 2 FP to cast Invisibility without Material components.
Invisibility is a solid spell, especially useful outside of combat. Reasonable option.
Sunburst: You can expend 2 FP to cast Lesser Restoration.
You're not likely to get this kind of functionality as a Monk, so if you don't have someone who can cast it (or a Paladin with Lay on Hands) this might be nice to have.
Once again, none of these options deal any damage, and instead act as utility. Utility is great, and a Monk has a pretty decent amount of damage baseline, but I'm still finding it hard to get very excited about this.
11th level:
Nature Tattoo once again adds more tattoo options. You get one of the following:
Mountain: As a Magic Action, you can spend 3 FP to gain resistance to Acid damage and advantage on Con saves for 1 minute.
If you know you're going to fight a black dragon, sure, this might be useful. But you want me to spend my action and 3 FP for a 1-minute resistance buff? I think both the FP cost and the action-economy cost are too high here.
Storm: Similar, but gives Lightning Resistance and advantage on Dex saves.
I see where this is going. Let's just get through them.
Volcano: Fire resistance, Strength saving throws.
Wave: Cold resistance, Wisdom saving throws.
There are too many things at play here: do I know which element I'm likely to encounter today? Do I have the turn to spend my action getting this resistance? Does the element and the saving throw line up? I mentioned a Black dragon, for example: do I want advantage on the dexterity saves to dodge its acid, or do I want the acid resistance to reduce my damage taken when I fail that save? And it's just a single minute, so unless I shout this at my DM before they tell me to roll initiative, I've got to use up most of my turn to get this going if I'm lucky enough to have had the right tattoo for the fight.
17th level:
Monster Tattoo gives you one last magic tattoo, with the following options:
Beholder: You have a Fly Speed of 10 feet and can hover, and you can spend 3 FP to cast Counterspell.
While 10 feet is very slow, especially given that we're a Monk, one should note that that's an always-on passive. Counterspell is more situational, but this is concentration-free, resource-free, hovering flight.
Blink Dog: When you expend an FP on Patient Defense, you can expend3 FP to cast Blink immediately after that bonus action.
This one's weird: technically this all costs 4 FP. I'm assuming this is meant to say "as part of the same bonus action," but that should probably be clarified. Blink is a spell that's cool when it works but sometimes does nothing. And I actually think Monks sometimes want to stay on the battlefield between turns because they can potentially deal more damage with Deflect Attacks.
Displacer Beast: When you expend an FP to use Flurry of Blows or Step of the Wind, you can expend 2 FP to cast Mirror Image immediately after that bonus action.
Again, weird wording. Mirror Image is actually better for a Monk than it might have been before, as it now takes your AC into account. But again, this is a cost on top of a cost, which is the kind of unsuccessful design I though we were long past.
Guardian Naga: If you would be reduced to 0 HP but not killed outright, you instead change your HP to twice your Monk level. This can't be used again until you finish a long rest.
A pretty solid survival feature, and the only tattoo that doesn't require you to spend any FP.
Overall Thoughts:
I don't like it. I hate to say it, but I just don't think this is going to be very good at all. There is some interesting potential for utility here, but I think you get plenty of that with something like Warrior of Shadows while also getting cool Monk abilities.
I think this will leave you sucking on fumes. Ironically, by avoiding any real damage output options, it's actually probably better than the Four Elements 2014 subclass, because you won't feel tempted to use these for your damage output.
But I just think that this is probably not going to work very well or feel very good to play.
Next time, we'll look at the Ancestral Sorcery subclass for, strangely enough, the Sorcerer, which (if I recall correctly from my initial read of the UA) is actually quite good (and also reminds me of Justice Smith's character from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, where he was a Sorcerer descended from the famed wizard Elminster).
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