I know it's only in UA at this point, and with the massive swath of other subclasses (and even a full class) that have gone through testing in the last year with no announced corresponding book release, it could be a very long time before we actually see an official printing of the Warrior of Intoxication, the recent revision of the Way of the Drunken Master monk subclass.
As I mentioned before, I have a deep affection for the Drunken Master, as it was the subclass for the Monk I played in Adventurer's League. Drunken Master, as a subclass, is conceptually great, but mechanically a bit underpowered, and this revision potentially makes it a lot better.
Of course, it's helped by the fact that the Monk got significantly better in the 2024 revision to D&D.
What intend to focus on, here, though, is the math behind the Cinnamon Dragon brew option you get at 6th level. If there's one critique I have of the UA subclass, it's that I think this brew outshines basically every other option by quite a lot. But I wanted to get a sense of how to optimally use it.
To remind those who don't have the UA out to look at, you can pick one of the subclass's brews at the end of each short or long rest (if you have Brewer's Supplies - DMs, don't take this Monk's Brewer's Supplies away). You then can drink that brew over the course of a minute to get its benefits for 1 hour. You can also invest 1 Focus Point when you finish the rest to make it last 8 hours instead.
(This is a design that I think could lead to some feel-bad situations. I might have it both faster to drink and just last 8 hours by default.)
I'd say that unless you have a very clearly-delineated day of adventure ahead of you, you should probably invest the FP to make it more likely you'll have this always-active, and then drink it the moment you're in any sort of environment with any danger whatsoever (possibly just have it right away).
Now, the Brew I'd go by default is Cinnamon Dragon. This allows you to, as a Magic Action, exhale a cone of toxic flames in a 30-foot cone. Each creature within makes a Dex save. On a failure, they take fire damage equal to four rolls of your Martial Arts die and are poisoned, and on a success, they take have damage only.
As a note, this is better in most ways than the Elements Monk's elemental burst, dealing more damage and being more FP-efficient (in fact, it costs none if you only have the 1-hour version). It is a cone, rather than a sphere, which makes it trickier to place, but you can still get a lot of foes in the area.
The real question, though, is when to use it.
My guess is that it'll always be worth it if you can get two enemies within the cone, assuming they're not immune or resistant to fire damage (this is going to be basically worthless if you're on the Elemental Plane of Fire or in the Nine Hells).
But could this be good even in single-target situations? When would it be worth it to use this instead of taking the Attack action. Notably, thanks to the 2024 revisions, our bonus action attack and Flurry of Blows are now fully independent of what we do with our action - we can even do them before our action. So what we are sacrificing here to spit our flaming brew is just the two attacks we get with our normal attack action.
Naturally, it's hard to model exactly how often a foe will fail their saving throws, because ability scores vary much more than ACs, and saving throw proficiencies can make that even more out of whack.
If we just assume hits and failures, and look at the raw damage, a level 6 Monk with +4 to Dexterity is going to hit for 1d8+4 on each attack, or 8.5 on average. They make two attacks, so the potential there is 17.
Four rolls of our martial arts die, or 4d8, is an average of 18 damage. So we are truly ahead, even against a single foe.
If we get to level 11, when our martial arts die goes up to d10s, and if we've gotten our Dexterity to 20, that means our attack action is giving us two attacks that each do 1d10+5, or 10.5 on average, for a total of 21. But four rolls of our d10 now is 22 average damage.
Then, at 17, when we've got d12s, our two attacks are going to be doing 1d12+5, or 11.5 each, for a total of 23, while our fire damage is 4d12, or 26.
Now, sure, I'd hope that by this point we had gotten our hands on some Wraps of Unarmed Prowess. By level 17, it wouldn't be absurd for us to have +3 versions. So now, we're rolling 1d12+8 per hit, or 14.5, giving us an overall damage of 29 (we'll also be hitting more often because of the Wraps).
But, of course, damage numbers aren't the whole story. If you only hit half the time, you're doing only half the damage (well, a little bit more because of crits).
So, let's imagine a scenario:
Let's say you're fighting some kind of undercity crime boss. A Bandit Crime Lord, to be precise. This feels like the kind of antagonist that Jackie Chan would fight. And at CR 11, they'd be a pretty serious foe for a 6th level character to encounter.
Our Monk, we'll assume, has started off with a 17 in Dex and 16 in Wisdom, taking something like the Grappler feat at level 4 to bring Dex up to 18. Thus, at 6, they have a +7 to hit, and the DC on their abilities (including the brew) is 14.
The Crime Lord has an AC of 17, and their Dex save bonus is +9 (quite hefty, and their best save by far).
On attacks, thus, we're hitting on a roll of 10 or higher, or a 55% chance (and as usual, a 5% chance to crit). The Crime Lord will succeed on a saving throw against the fire on a roll of 5 or higher (80% chance). (By picking this foe, we've certainly skewed things toward attacks, but let's follow through).
So, each attack is going to do 8.5x55%, or 4.675, plus 4.5x5%, or .225, for a total of 4.9. We get two attacks, so that's 9.8 average damage.
Our fire breath is doing 4d8, or 18 damage, or half as much on a success. Thus, 20% of the time, we're doing 18, and 80% of the time, we're doing 9. 18x20% is 3.6, and 9x80% is 7.2, giving us an average damage of 10.8.
Hot Damn!
Yes, it appears that even against a very dex-y foe, the fact that it's a save-for-half effect means that we're still beating the damage of our attacks in a single-target situation. Now, if that guy has a bunch of minions we can catch as well, we're doing absurdly higher damage.
In other words, what I'd suggest for players of this subclass is to always use the Cinnamon Dragon breath in place of attacks with only exceptions for when you A: are facing foes that are resistant or immune to fire or B: can't avoid hitting allies or innocent bystanders in your cone (or if your DM would rule that you set the building on fire, though the feature does not mention igniting flammable objects).
And that's even before we take into account that this will poison foes!
Boy, I really hope they don't nerf this.
No comments:
Post a Comment