The Monk is a class I've always really liked in terms of its design - which is funny given that I didn't, before D&D, really care much for the "unarmed" or "unarmored" classes in other games. The class did kind of struggle with its resources and somewhat undertuned mechanics. While D4's recent single-class Monk build yielded somewhat disappointing damage results, the class's far-improved survivability (largely just due to the change from Deflect Missiles to Deflect Attacks) makes it, I think, very good at standing toe-to-toe with your bad guys, second only to the Barbarian.
Monk subclasses have historically been somewhat undertuned, and sometimes full-on crippled by design that seems to imagine that Ki Points (now Focus Points, though not as written for any of the subclasses we're looking at) are unlimited. That means, though, that we might be in a place where they could get some much-desired rehabilitation. We do have one great example of this: the Warrior of Elements is genuinely a good subclass (if not perfect) that fills the conceptual niche that the Way of Four Elements Monk from 2014 did, which it accomplishes by doing a total mechanical overhaul - truly a new subclass that just shares the same conceptual vibe with the old one.
There are certainly some long-forgotten subclasses here that we will look at. These include the Long Death, Drunken Master, Kensei, Sun Soul, Astral Self, and Ascendant Dragon.
Long Death: No
Monks actually don't really lack for "dark" subclasses, possessing already the Warriors of Shadow and Mercy (the latter of which, while it's a healing-capable subclass, is still very much creepy-plague-doctor-coded). I think you can cover this subclass's (subclass'?) conceptual vibe pretty well with the others, especially Mercy (as a person who studies the forces of life and death,) and I don't think anyone really cared much for this one's mechanics.
Drunken Master: Yes
I'll come right out and say I want to see a real mechanical overhaul here. The recent UA (which I've generally been ignoring for these posts) brought a new brewing mechanic that needs a lot of refinement, but shows a lot of promise. The old version was mechanically pretty underwhelming, so I'm happy to toss out what existed before and just play in the conceptual space. Some have argued (like the Eldritch Lorecast) that, because Drunken Boxing is a real martial art, this should stick to mundane fighting techniques. I disagree wholeheartedly, as I think that we're in a similar space to losing the cooler, "I have a dragon pet" version of the Purple Dragon Knight and getting what we got with the really disappointing Banneret. Perhaps renaming this to something like "Warrior of the Brew" or the like could demonstrate that emphasis.
Kensei: Yes
I'll concede that I don't really get super excited by the concept of this one, but I do think that with Monk design leaning further into letting them focus exclusively on Unarmed Strikes, having a subclass that encourages the use of weapons gives it a clearer identity. The mechanics here could use another pass, probably, but I think there's potential here.
Sun Soul: No
Sun Soul was always a cool concept, letting you Hadouken all over the place with ranged unarmed attacks. I could be talked into a yes, because this is definitely one that could use a mechanical revision. But I also think that we get something pretty close to this with the new Elements monk.
Astral Self: Yes
I didn't realize that this subclass was probably meant as a reference to the anime Jojo's Bizarre Adventure until long after I read it. The problem with this subclass is that it just truly sucks - if you run out of Focus Points, you don't have a subclass at all, and the cost of activating your astral form is far, far, far, far, far too expensive. But I do feel like there's huge potential in a more "mental" Monk subclass, either with this kind of "astral form" idea or perhaps psionics. Put the entire mechanical basis for this class into the garbage disposal and start from scratch. The one idea I'd preserve is the allowing you to use Wisdom as your attack stat, which could really shift what we're getting out of a Monk like this.
Ascendant Dragon: No
While Dragons and martial arts feel like a natural match, this also pushes us into that cultural specificity that they seem to be trying to move away from. Once you remove that East Asian dragon imagery, what you find is a subclass that I think does a lot of very similar things to the Elements Monk. It's not that the concept is bad, as much as it is that I think we can safely move on from it.
So, I'm a little less conservative with this one, I suppose, as I think half of these are worth another look. Monks got so many changes in 2024 that any subclass is going to probably feel pretty different regardless. What you will notice, though, is that the ones I've said yes to generally don't just need a little tweak to their mechanics, but generally a total overhaul.
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