Spellcasting is a common feature in 5E - only four classes don't get it or Pact Magic, and the Rogue and Fighter each have a subclass that allows you to get a very limited form of spellcasting. Even as only 1/3 casters, the Arcane Trickster Rogue and the Eldritch Knight Fighter are considered among if not the very best of their respective classes' subclasses.
Well, chalk up a third one-third caster: the Monk Warrior of the Mystic Arts.
It's a little bit different, though for the most part functions similarly to the others, and particularly has a lot of parallels with the Eldritch Knight. Let's get to it!
Level 3:
Spellcasting:
This is your sole 3rd level feature, though it's a pretty big one. Again, like EKs and ATs, MAs (I guess?) get one-third spell progression. So, at level 3, you'll have 1st level spells, getting 2nd level spells at 7, 3rd level spells at 13, and 4th level spells at 19. Thus, you're really going to have to focus a lot on efficient spells and cantrips.
Monks already focus on one of their mental stats a lot anyway, so thankfully they just make your spellcasting ability Wisdom, rather than Intelligence like the other 1/3 casters. However, the other big difference here is that you'll be taking spells from the Sorcerer spell list, rather than the Wizard one.
Spell slot and cantrip progression is the same as the other 1/3 casters, but there's absolutely no limitation on spell school (something that was relaxed but not eliminated in the 5.5 revamp for the others).
I will say, some of the spells that I get really excited about on an EK are not quite as impressive here - Shield, for example, is still not a bad choice to pick up, but thanks to Deflect Attack, you have some powerful competition for that reaction, and already had something that does a roughly equivalent thing.
But, obviously, spellcasting is very powerful, and between utility spells like Jump (which is extra cheap for Monks given their high movement speed) and anything that can boost the damage of their attacks (admittedly there aren't a ton of those at 1st or 2nd level) will be very powerful, though at least looking solely at the PHB, they don't get, like Conjure Minor Elementals, and while they get Magic Weapon, that's not going to help with Fury of Blows. Oh man, they don't get Spirit Shroud either...
Still, I'm sure there are some good spells to pick from, and it's the kind of feature that technically expands every time they add new Sorcerer spells to the game.
For Cantrips, True Strike can work fine, but I'd go for Booming Blade/Green Flame Blade if you can use older content. Monks can fight fully unarmed, but you can use a weapon for your main Attack Action attacks. (We'll also see soon why we want a good attack cantrip). Booming Blade can combo well with a Shove as a bonus action, especially as it scales up at higher levels and will eventually out-damage an unarmed strike, probably (4d8 is like 18, and a tier 4 unarmed strike with +3 Wraps is 1d12+8, or 14.5. Even at level 20 with 24 Dexterity it's only 16.5).
One thing that feels a little wrong here is that we don't get any other 3rd level feature. Arcane Tricksters get Mage Hand Legerdemain and Eldritch Knights get War Bond. These guys ought to get something on that power level.
Level 6:
Mystic Focus
Much like a Sorcerer can convert spell slots to sorcery points and vice versa, MA Monks can do the same with Focus Points. You can expend a spell slot to regain FP equal to the slot's level (no action required). And then, as a bonus action, you can convert FP into spell slots, gaining a 1st level slot for 2, 2nd level for 3, 3rd level for 5, and 4th level for 6 (you can only regain expended slots, and thus can't get higher level slots at a lower level).
I believe this is the same cost progression that Sorcerers have. But there's a real powerful hack here: Monks get FP back on a short rest. Thus, you can kind of be a "coffee monk," converting all leftover FP before you take a short rest into recovered spell slots, so you could theoretically keep recovering your spell slots constantly if your DM allows you to take lots of short rests. Monks also have a lot more ways to regain FP in 5.5, so this could be really, really strong.
Mystic Fighting Style:
When you take the Attack Action, you can replace one of your attacks with a casting of a Sorcerer cantrip that has a 1 action casting time.
So yes, looks like the "Bladesinger Extra Attack" feature is becoming much more common. This is obviously good. While we might be less excited about weapon-based cantrips like True Strike, Booming Blade, or Green-Flame Blade given that we want to be punching things, there's no reason we can't have a Spear or what-have-you. Indeed, thanks to Martial Arts, the weapon we use to attack with one of these cantrips is going to scale in damage. I tend to like GFB for its multi-target damage, but Booming Blade, as mentioned before, works nicely with the Monks' ability to make Unarmed Strikes as a bonus action, so you can Booming Blade them and then shove them away, potentially forcing them to take the extra damage if they want to close the distance again (it's not quite as elegant as just using a Push weapon with it, but still good). I will also say that something like Mind Sliver could be great for making Stunning Strike more likely to work. And Blade Ward (one of the suggested spells) can effectively boost your AC by 1d4 for the cost of an attack (potentially supplemented with Shield).
Level 11:
Centered Focus
When you expend a Focus Point on Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, or Step of the Wind, you have advantage on any saving throw you make to maintain concentration on a spell until the start of your next turn.
By level 11, I think this basically means every turn. Getting a big chunk of the Warcaster feat is also really nice for a class that is very multiple ability-score dependent (you'd prefer to just take ASIs for the most part). Now, what your best concentration spells? Enlarge is a strong option to give yourself an extra d4 on each of your attacks (I'd forgotten about that when figuring out good spells for MA Monks) but there are also lots of crowd control/utility spells to consider (Sleep, for instance).
Level 17:
Improved Mystic Fighting Style
When you take the attack action on your turn, you can replace two of the attacks with a casting of one of your level 1 or 2 Sorcerer spells that has a casting time of an action.
This is utterly worthless. Ok, maybe it's not utterly worthless, because if you take two levels of Fighter and want to Action Surge... No, this is worthless.
This is a copy-and-paste of the Eldritch Knight's Improved War Magic, but spending two attacks to cast a spell makes sense because a Fighter at these high levels has three attacks. For a Monk, why in the world are we not just going to cast a spell of any level we can with the Magic action?
Now, if this let us replace any two attacks on our turn with the casting of a 1st or 2nd level spell, that would be different - we could Flurry of Blows to cast a spell as a bonus action and then have an Unarmed Strike left over (remember that we get 3 attacks from FoB by level 10 now). But here, two attacks is the entirety of our Attack Action. So we're just not getting anything out of this.
Overall Thoughts:
Just having spellcasting is going to make this a powerful subclass. But I think they could do some more work on making it interesting beyond the spells it gains. Whatever is added doesn't need to - and in fact, should not be - very powerful, but I just want to get a little bit of special flavoring here.
And again, the capstone is profoundly worthless, essentially not even a feature at all. (The only scenario in which I can possibly imagine it being useful is if you multiclass into Fighter to get action surge, and for some reason you need to attack a target before casting the chosen spell, and your DM is a stickler about making you take your regular action before your action-surge action, which cannot be the Magic action. This is such a profound corner-case that I just don't think it justifies this nothing feature.) Given how pointless it is, I really wonder if the intent is instead that you can replace any two attacks with a spell, including your bonus action attacks, which would actually make this feature somewhat decent. But the way it's worded implies it's only from the attacks you get with the Attack action. (Oh, and maybe if you somehow got a weapon mastery and a nick weapon, you'd technically be making three attacks with your action. Still an edge case.)
Being able to cast a spell as part of, say, a Flurry of Blows would actually be somewhat akin to a Sorcerer using Quickened Spell, which would reinforce why Mystic Arts Monks get the mostly inferior Sorcerer spell list rather than the Wizard one.
Basically, really solid potential, and it might already be one of the best Monk subclasses, but it needs another pass or two.
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