My first character in Adventurer's League was a Way of the Drunken Master Monk. I loved playing him, but when you lay out the subclass's features, it's clearly not the kind of "optimized" character you find in AL usually. For a class that, especially in 5.0, needed a fair boost from its subclass, you weren't getting a ton. Particularly bad, in my opinion, was Drunkard's Luck, the level 11 feature, which allowed you to expend two Ki points to cancel disadvantage on a d20 test (not that that term was used yet). Not just get advantage, but only cancel disadvantage, and the cost of two ki points.
The thing is, flavor-wise, I love the Drunken Master. It's a really fun idea, going for the tradition of Drunken Boxing, popularized and made famous by Jackie Chan (the degree to which this was ever used practically as an actual combat form is... unclear. But martial arts have often been a meditative and performative practice as well).
Now, World of Warcraft has, actually since before even WoW, had the idea of the Pandaren tradition of the Brewmaster (Chen Stormstout was one of the allies you could get for Rexxar in the "Founding of Durotar" campaign in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne). Brewmasters combined martial arts with literal brewing of beer-like tonics and elixirs that could be used both to enhance themselves in combat and also as a weapon, spewing flammable brews on foes to burn them.
I had always thought that, given the heightened fantasy of D&D, it would make sense for Drunken Master monks to have some kind of brewing mechanic. Well. Guess what? The WoW crossover book is going to do exactly that in order to better embody the Brewmaster Monk from WoW. Let's look at the features. (Again, credit to Insight Check's video as my source.)
Level 3:
Bonus Proficiency:
Starting with the most minor feature, we get proficiency with Performance and Brewer's Supplies if we don't already have it.
I would have liked to give them Alchemist's Supplies as well, but this is pretty minor. Performance is rare to use even on a Charisma character, but I'd also encourage DMs to let you make Dexterity Performance checks if it's a display of your martial arts techniques.
Drunken Technique:
When you expend a focus point using Patient Defense, your speed increases by 10 feet until the end of the current turn and you can make one Unarmed Strike immediately after the bonus action.
So, this used to go off of Flurry of Blows, and would give you the speed increase and prevent you from taking opportunity attacks. A FP-spending Patient Defense now gives you both dodge and disengage, so this kind of makes up for the loss of your unarmed strike by giving you an unarmed strike.
The only reason this isn't strictly a nerf is that you will get the benefits of dodging, though if we were using this to get away from foes, that might not be that helpful. That being said, you will be able to use this offensively - if you need an extra 10 feet to get to your target. Still, I think this could have been redesigned more radically, and right now it seems pretty bad, honestly - like, I'd prefer the Xanathar's version.
Level 6:
Tipsy Sway:
You get two benefits:
Leap to Your Feet: When you are Prone, you can stand using just 5 feet of movement.
Unchanged, and certainly situational, but nice to have. Given Monk speeds, that 5 feet is nearly nothing.
Redirect Attack: When an enemy misses you with an attack roll, you can take a Reaction and spend 1 FP to cause that attack to hit one creature of your choice other than the attack that you can see within 5 feet of yourself.
This is also unchanged. This situation might not come up as often as you like, given that you probably don't want to be in melee with two enemies at a time. But you sometimes are, and you can also use this on a ranged attack. But if you can turn one of the monsters' really hard-hitting attacks on one of its allies, this is great - when you can pull it off.
Mystic Brew:
When you finish a long rest while holding Brewer's Supplies, you can use that tool to magically produce a magical beverage with one of the following properties. A pint of the beverage appears in a bottle of flask you are carrying. If any beverage remains when you finish another short or long rest, it vanishes.
Only you can benefit from drinking the beverage. You must drink the full pint to gain its benefit, which takes 1 minute to drink. You then gain the benefits for 1 hour or until you drink another beverage.
We will see how to extend this, but long story short: you get a buff potion that you can create every rest.
These are the beverage options:
Cinnamon Dragon: You can take a Magic Action to exhale toxic flames in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in the cone makes a Dex save (based on your Focus DC). On a failed save, the creature takes Fire damage equal to four rolls of your Martial Artts die and has the poisoned condition until the end of its next turn. On a success, they take half damage only.
Now this is where we get cooking. At this level, this will be 4d8 damage, or about 19 on average, which replaces two attacks that are probably doing 1d8+4 each, or 8.5 each, meaning that even against a single target, this is going to probably out-damage your attacks (obviously AC versus Dex save bonuses for the monster can change this, though its save-for-half nature gives us almost a Graze-like benefit here). While getting magic items like Wraps of Unarmed Prowess might skew this a bit, if we can hit more than one target, this is going to basically always out-damage are regular attacks. Then, there's the poison aspect, which is also great. The only times I wouldn't use this is if we're fighting creatures that are immune to fire damage or if we really need to be careful not to hit friends or civilians. Remember that you no longer need to take the Attack action to use your bonus action unarmed strike or Flurry of Blows (and can even do those before your action,) so this can really be used liberally.
Heavenly Spirit: You gain resistance to two of the following damage types: Cold, Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant.
This one's more situational: do you know what kind of damage you're expecting to encounter?
Refreshing Dip: You have a pool of dice the same type as your Martial Arts die. The maximum you can have is equal to your Wisdom modifier plus half your Monk level rounded down. Whenever you regain HP, you can expend and roll one die from this pool to regain additional HP equal to the number rolled.
So, this can be a decent healing boost, though the size of the pool is pretty big: with a +3 to Wisdom, at this level you'll have six dice. Are you likely to be healed six times over a day? It does pair really well with an ally's Lay on Hands - just have them hit you with a single point and then roll the die. But yeah, my default Brew will certainly be Cinnamon Dragon.
Finally for this feature, when you create a magical beverage, you can expend 1 FP to extend its benefits to 8 hours.
I would recommend you do this every time. 1 hour is decent, but 8 hours means having this up effectively all day. Even if you do have a 16-hour adventuring day, you'll probably have a Short Rest somewhere in there to refresh this. Now, because you make the brew at the end of the rest, I assume you'll need to always have that one point "invested" in the brew, and don't just immediately get it back (otherwise, why would we even have this cost?) But I think that's super worth it. Again, unless you really need the benefits of the other two, I think Cinnamon Dragon should be your default choice any day you're expecting combat and aren't in, like, the elemental plane of fire.
Level 11:
Wizened Brewer:
You gain three new options for your Mystic Brews feature.
Blue Lightning: Whenever you take a reaction that isn't making an opportunity attack or casting a spell, you can make one Unarmed Strike as part of that reaction.
Monks use reactions all the time for Deflect Attacks, so you can punish a foe for striking you. I don't know that this is going to necessarily be an extra attack every round, but it's going to probably be a lot of extra attacks. Funnily enough, this lets you punish a foe for landing a hit on you with this and punish them for missing you with Tipsy Sway.
Drunkard's Luck: You gain Heroic Inspiration if you don't already have it. In addition, you can give yourself Heroic Inspiration when you make an ability check or saving throw without it.
So, we need to parse this: I think there are two readings. One is that you effectively can just have advantage on all ability checks and saving throws, which would be insane. A more conservative reading is that you get it on every other one, as the check or save you make without it can't use that Heroic Inspriation, but the next one can. Even with this more conservative reading (and one that I actually think is less likely,) this is quite good. (Infinitely better than the original version of Drunkard's Luck). Notably, this is also going to be far better in non-combat situations, where you're mainly making ability checks, so a great choice for a day of cloak-and-dagger intrigue or the like (but which is still useful in combat if it breaks out).
Stumbling Monk: When you take a bonus action other than Patient Defense, you can also use Patient Defense immediately after that Bonus Action.
This one's a bit wonky, but the simplest upshot is that you'll basically always be Disengaging with this, as Monks basically never don't use their bonus actions. However, in a bizarre way, you can kind of turn this into a means of pumping out more attacks: You use Flurry of Blows (at this level adding three attacks) and then spend a second FP to get the dodge part of Patient Defense, which, with Drunken Technique, gives you an additional unarmed strike, letting you make 4 attacks with one bonus action.
I still think that Cinnamon Dragon gives these a run for their money, but while the other two options at level 6 were probably more situational and not as good, these three all look like they have a lot of potential, and I'm not sure which of these really is the best "default" option. That's a good thing, though, because I think all of these are good and well worth the 1 FP to get them for 8 hours. (And if Drunkard's Luck lets you use the Heroic Inspiration the moment you get it, that's kind of insane.)
Level 17:
Master Brewer:
When you create a magical beverage using your Mystic Brew feature, you can choose two different options and produce one magical beverage. Drinking it will provide the benefits of both options.
This is great. This lets you have a bit more flexibility, and potentially work in something that is going to be more situational with something else that is more broadly useful, or just in general have two really great benefits working at the same time. The fact that these buffs will both be maintained for just a single FP (which at level 17 isn't that expensive) is very nice.
Intoxicated Frenzy:
Immediately after you use Patient Defense, you can move up to your Speed. During this movement, whenever you enter a space within 5 feet of a creature, you can make an unarmed strike targeting the creature. In addition, when you hit a creature with an unarmed strike granted by this feature, they make a Dex save or are knocked prone. We can only target a creature with these unarmed strikes once per turn.
An update to the original subclass capstone, this is better. First off, if we have Stumbling Monk going, this means that we will always be able to effectively dash whatever bonus action we take. If we use Step of the Wind, we'll be able to move twice our speed as a bonus action if we have that brew up, meaning we'll be blindingly fast. We will also, thanks to Drunken Technique, potentially get one additional unarmed strike (if we spend an FP). What we essentially get here is a Monk AoE, as at this level we're talking about something like 110 or 120 feet of movement, and then like 165 or 170 (can't remember when we get a 60-foot movement speed) if we do that aforementioned combo. At that speed, we can probably pass by every foe on the battlefield.
Now, a single attack against all those enemies isn't going to be that much damage, but we could also knock a lot of them prone.
The real benefit here, though, is that this is free. In fact, we'll never actually need to use our normal free bonus action Unarmed Strike again, because we can just Patient Defense instead and will get at the very least our attack against the target we would have been attacking anyway. Ok, technically if we can't move for some reason, we'll need the normal attack, because we do need to "enter" a space within 5 feet of the target to use this. But if we have any wiggle room at all (and with the disengage from Patient Defense, we don't need to worry too much about where foes are positioned) we should always use this in its place, because of the ability to knock a foe prone.
Overall Thoughts:
Look, some theorycrafter might find out that this isn't actually that powerful of a subclass, and is still weighed down by endemic problems with the Monk (despite its 5.5 buffs). The Mystic Arts Monk is probably better simply by virtue of being a spellcaster.
But this is so damn fun. The subclass won't really take off until tier 2, admittedly, though Monks in general are pretty good in tier 1 thanks to their built-in pseudo extra attack. But once you start belching fire, I really feel like this is going to be just super fun to play.
Man, I really wanted my next character to be darker in theme, but I'm feeling the pull of the whimsical here. I think I actually already did a "vs Wyvern" post on the UA version of this, but I might want to get into the weeds and especially see how the new Monk-targeted feats in the WoW book will affect it. At the very least, I can imagine this becoming one of the top Monk subclasses.
(This is also the problem with friends who do only years-long campaigns. I really wanted to play the new Elements Monk and have not had a chance, and now this one's pushing it out as the subclass I most want to play.)
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