Mystic Arts Monk vs. Wyvern

 So, this is going to be a little tricky because while the presumably final version of the subclass is locked, and the YouTube channel Insight Check has a break-down of it, I cannot seem to find a written version of the subclass. For readers, that won't be a big deal, but for me it will mean referring to the video that breaks it down.

Still, the playtest version in the UA seems to have largely come through unchanged, with the exception of the nonfunctional capstone, which was fixed to now replace attacks within a Flurry of Blows rather than the attack action. This does mean that it will cost a Focus Point to get that spell in, but I think it's probably worth it, as you'll likely be doing that every turn by that level anyway.

We also don't really need to worry about it too much, as we'll only really care about the 3rd and 6th level subclass features, which I believe are unchanged.

So: what are the relevant features?

Well, first off: spellcasting. At level 10, we'll have 1st and 2nd level spells, along with cantrips. Like Eldritch Knights, Enlarge/Reduce is probably going to be our best concentration spell to boost our damage, as we'll be adding 1d4 to each of our hits with the Enlarge effect active on us. It'll also potentially help us grapple, as we'll now be able to grapple Huge sized creatures. Arguably, we'll actually get a greater benefit from this spell than EKs do because we can do more attacks in a turn with the level 10 boost to Flurry of Blows.

The other relevant piece here will be that we can weave a cantrip into our extra attack feature. Many of the same cantrips are available to us. Blade Ward can, of course, be a nice defensive option, and one that is probably more "affordable" to us because any given attack on a Monk isn't that much damage. But as I'd suggest with Bladesingers, EKs, Valor Bards (though they won't be able to pick them up immediately) I'd really suggest getting the excellent Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade cantrips to let us do enhanced versions of attacks we'd want to make anyway. If you can't get these, True Strike is certainly an option, though note that this spell requires us to use our spellcasting ability, rather than merely allowing us to do so.

In terms of feats, I'd guess that Mystic Art Monks are probably going to want to lean a little further into Wisdom than some other Monks. You might choose to just go straight ASIs at each feat level to ensure you cap Dex, Wisdom, and get Con as high as you can. That said, I'm always down for taking Grappler on a 5.5 Monk. Weapon Master actually could be a decent choice if we want to dual-wield two light weapons - the damage dice for them will upgrade for us, so it's a nice little d8 boost of damage (at level 10).

Let's assume, though, that we're just getting raw stats with our feats, and we'll also be primarily using spells that are Wisdom-agnostic. We're going to assume, then, that by level 10, we've capped Dex so we can just focus our late-game feats on bumping Wisdom.

In order to use Booming Blade (our assumption for single-target situations, though GFB will always slot in for when there's cleave potential unless we're sure we can force them to move and get the punishment damage) we do need to be using a weapon that is worth at least 1sp. Luckily, Spears and Quarterstaffs both cost more than that. I'd guess that Spears are the better option (unless you're fighting skeletons) simply because of the option to throw them, though thanks to Martial Arts, we can really use any Simple melee weapon, or even martial melee weapons with the light property (which I think is just shortswords and scimitars?) They'll all be doing a d8 of damage, and the light property on weapons if we don't also somehow have Nick is kind of irrelevant in the face of our Martial Arts ability, so it's pretty arbitrary. (Actually, daggers can be great on a Monk because their damage will be just as good as anything else, and like spears, they can be thrown).

Now, a quick calculation: if we assume that the monster will move if we shove them away from us after hitting with Booming Blade, that'll add 2d8 damage. But if we just make another attack, we'll get 1d8+5, which is very slightly higher damage, so we're not going to pull those shenanigans unless we have a way to guarantee a knockback without sacrificing our damage.

So, the gameplan is this:

Turn one, we use our Action to cast Enlarge/Reduce on ourselves, growing to Large size and adding a d4 to each of our attacks. We then use Flurry of Blows to attack the target three times with unarmed strikes. On the first hit, we'll attempt a Stunning Strike. 

Turn two, we will use our (let's say) Quarterstaff to attack first with Booming Blade, and also attempt a Stunning Strike. Then, we make an additional attack (it doesn't matter if we make an unarmed strike or quarterstaff attack) and then again Flurry of Blows for three additional attack.

Let's figure out what kind of damage we're doing.

Actually, one last thing: let's assume we started with a 16 Wisdom and have not yet been able to raise that.

Ok:

Turn One:

Again, we Enlarge ourselves with our action. Then, it's three Flurry of Blows attack.

We have a +9 to hit, and so we hit the Wyvern's AC of 14 on a roll of 5 or higher, meaning an 80% hit chance. Each hit does 1d8+1d4+5 damage, or 12 average, with an additional 7 on a crit. So, 12x80% is 9.6 and 7x5% is .35, so we are doing 9.95 damage on that first attack.

Now, in the 80% chance that we hit on this attack, we will also try to Stunning Strike. Our DC will be 15. The Wyvern has a +3 to Con saves, so they fail on an 11 or lower, meaning a 55% chance to fail and 45% chance to succeed.

Here's where it gets a little messy: we get advantage on the next attack regardless, but we won't get it on the third attack unless they fail. But also, in the 20% chance that we miss, we won't have been able to use Stunning Strike. This isn't that hard to do for attack number 2, but it'll get more complicated the more attacks we get (turn two will be a lot crazier).

So, attack #2 is guaranteed to have advantage if we hit with the first attack. So, 20% of the time, it'll be the same average damage as the first attack, but 80% of the time, our hit chance grows to 96% and our crit chance to 9.75%. 12x96% is 11.52 and 7x9.75% is .6825, so with advantage our average damage is roughly 12.2. 12.2x80% is 9.76 and 9.95x20% is 1.99, so this attack will do 11.75 damage on average.

Now, attack 3 is where the headaches begin. We have advantage under the following circumstances: if the target failed the Con save versus Stunning Strike on attack 1, or if we hit the target on attack 2 after missing on attack 1.

So, the chance for that first scenario is 80%x55%, or 44% (the chance we hit on the first attack times the chance that the Wyvern failed). The chance for the second scenario is 80%x20%, or 16% (the chance we hit on the second attack without advantage times the chance we missed on the first attack). So, I believe this comes to a 60% chance that we get advantage on attack 3. Thus, we take the 11.75 average damage when we have advantage and multiply it by 60%, giving us 7.05 and then the 9.95 average damage when we don't have advantage and multiply it by the remaining 40%, giving us 3.98, for a total of 11.03.

Thus, on turn 1, totaling this, we can expect to deal an average of 32.73 damage. Frankly not too shabby for a set-up round.

    Now, onto turn two:

Here, that complexity is going to start going crazy as we have to figure it out over the course of 5 attacks.

Our first attack is now a Booming Blade attack, meaning it will hit for 2d8+1d4+5, so the damage and crit bonus goes up by 4.5, meaning average damage of 16.5 and crit bonus of 11.5.

Stunning Strike's effects, on a success or failure, end at the start our turn, so no worries about advantage on this first attack... which actually means we should probably save Booming Blade for our second attack.

If we then do so, we'll thus just do the familiar 9.95 average damage on this attack.

Booming Blade's advantage/disadvantage chances are the same as attack 2's on the first turn, so we're looking at an 80% hit and 5% crit chance 20% of the time and a 96%/9.75% 80% of the time. Without advantage, we're looking at 13.2 plus .575, for 13.775, and then with advantage, we're looking at 15.84 plus roughly 1.12, so 16.96. 13.775x20% is about 2.76, and 16.96x80% is about 13.57, so in total, this is doing 16.33 damage.

Now, our first Flurry of Blows attack should look identical to the first turn's attack 3, so we'll just use that value again, adding 11.03 damage.

Attack 4 on this turn is going to get really complicated: we get advantage if we hit on attack 1 and the Wyvern failed the save, if we missed on attack 1 and then hit on attack 2 and the wyvern failed, or if we missed on attacks 1 and 2 and then hit on attack 3. So, the first is the same familiar 80%x55%, or 44%. The second scenario is again 20%x that same 44%, or 8.8%. The third scenario is 80%x20%x20%, or 3.2%. So the chance we have advantage (if I've kept all these concept straight in my head) is 56%. So, we are looking at 11.75x56% and 9.95x44%, giving us 6.58+4.38(ish) for a total of 10.96.

Attack 5 (this is the last one, thank the gods) adds one more iteration onto this. Thus, we need to have missed with the first three attack and then hit with the fourth attack, or we need to have missed with attack 1 and hit with attack 2 and then the Wyvern must have failed their save, or missed with attacks 1 and 2 and hit with attack 3 and the Wyvern failed their save. Oh, or we need to have hit on the first attack and the wyvern failed their save, of course.

So, the first scenario is 20%x20%x20%x80%, or .64%. Scenario two is 20%x80%x55%, or 8.8%. Scenario three is 20%x20%x80%x55%, or 1.76%. Scenario four is that original 44%. Boy, I hope I didn't leave something out. Anyway, this gives us a 55.2% chance to have advantage. For sanity, I'm going to round that to 55%, and so we have 11.75x55%, or 6.46ish and 9.95x45%, or 4.48ish, giving this attack an average damage of 10.94, which you'll note is only .02 less than attack 4, meaning we might have been able to just approximate all of this.

Anyway, this means that by turn two, the average damage is 59.21, which is actually really freaking good.

This does require us to expend two FP each turn, but at level 10, that can be sustained for 5 turns. Concentration might not be the easiest thing to maintain here, given that we're probably going to be looking at a +3 bonus at most (and likely only a +2,) though Deflect Attacks can make Concentration saves a little easier.

We do have a set-up turn, but again, thanks to the fact that we're actually making more attacks with our bonus action than with our attack action, that doesn't punish us nearly as much as some other classes. Even if the combat only lasts two rounds, we average out to 45.97 damage, and that goes up if things get to round three.

This is beating a lot of my other builds. Indeed, if you didn't even use Stunning Strike and were making all attacks without advantage, you're still looking at 53.575 average damage on turn 2. It turns out that if you can add damage to every attack a Monk makes, they start really taking off, damage-wise.

And the nice thing is that this is relatively sustainable if you get some short rests in there. Assuming I have the numbers right, getting a 2nd level spell slot back can be done with 3 FP with a bonus action. While that'd be rough in combat, it's a great thing to do right before a short rest. At this level, you'll have 3 2nd level spell slots, so you might not even need to do that, but I think that's enough that you can probably afford to cast the spell every combat. Protecting concentration will be important, so you might consider delaying your Dex progression to take War Caster (which will feed into your Wisdom progression) but it's not the end of the world if you drop concentration, given how relatively easy it is to get those spell slots back.

The Warrior of Mystic Arts, Monks Joining the Third-Caster Club

 With Arcana Unleashed as the next official D&D release, I've been thinking a lot about how the books will affect 5.5. I am, as I have been in a lot of 5.5, been a little underwhelmed given how many options and spells are simply getting reprints, given that we don't really need a reprint of, say, Synaptic Static or Absorb Elements, given that, unless they're getting functional changes, they should already be available from Xanathar's Guide to Everything (I believe both were in that). The whole point of 5.5 was to be backwards compatible, and it is to a large extent. (You could give every Warlock subclass a blanket rule that they get their old "expanded spell list" as "patron spells" and kind of cover things that way.)

That said, the Warrior of Mystic Arts is simultaneously a new option as well as one that uses a tried-and-true formula. The Eldritch Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue are among the most popular and powerful (the power likely a cause for the popularity, though not exclusively) subclasses for their respective classes. While a one-third caster for a Barbarian probably can't work without taking a wrench to the core Rage mechanic, the idea of a spellcasting Monk is not actually that crazy.

Indeed, in 2014, the Way of Four Elements actually replicated a lot of actual spells, but for some reason didn't work the same way, relying entirely on Ki Points (now Focus Points) for its spells and thus being extremely limited in its spellcasting capabilities. The revamped Warrior of Elements took the flavor of the Four Elements Monk but utterly reworked its mechanics, making it arguably the most powerful (or at least a respectable) subclass for Monks in the PHB (I think the argument for it as a powerful subclass is largely built on its capacity to be a grappler who holds foes far enough away that they can't fight back). But this did not take what I thought might have been the more obvious route and just made them a spellcaster (it might have been harder to enforce the specific relationship with elemental magic).

Here, though, we have a subclass that is built along the same way.

What's interesting, though, is where it differs from the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight.

Both of those subclasses, which have been core to 5E since 2014, borrow the Wizard's spells, and the flavor of them is similar to the Wizard in the notion that these are magic spells that have been learned, and while you don't have a spellbook to endlessly collect spells, I've always felt the intended interpretation of the subclasses is that the knowledge of this magic is acquired in a similarly scholarly way, or at least via an intellectual understanding of the magical principles, the way that Wizards and Artificers cast their magic.

Indeed, these subclasses actually gave the only other options that mechanically encouraged high intelligence beside the Wizard in the 2014 PHB. Later, we'd get the Artificer, but this is part of the reason why 5.0 really produced a lot of himbo characters with low intelligence (while Dexterity and Charisma were quite common). I think those pressures are still there (between Bards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Paladins, Charisma's still a very important stat for a lot of people) but we're perhaps seeing a little broader of a spread now.

But while Mystic Arts Monks are third-casters, they're the only ones who A: don't use Intelligence and B: don't use the Wizard spell list.

The former is certainly wise: Monks already rely on Wisdom as their second-most-important stat (though Con is also pretty important). It's also already the source of their saving throw DCs for their Focus-Point-consuming abilities (one confusing thing for grappler monks is that they have two DCs to track, as the Grapple/Shove DC is based on Dexterity) so forcing them to invest in Intelligence as well would kind of hamstring the subclass (though I will say that you can build a very good Eldritch Knight who basically never worries about how high their Intelligence is - using cantrips like Booming Blade and spells like Shield, Misty Step, or Enlarge/Reduce, the latter to cast on yourself as a buff, means you could be dumb as a brick and do just fine).

The latter is kind of curious, though. Naturally, Arcana Unleashed is all about arcane magic, which doesn't have a mechanical definition (though it nearly did). But instead of Wizard spells, Mystic Arts Monks get Sorcerer spells. Now, I think there's arguments to be made over whether Sorcerers or Wizards are more powerful (I'd generally lean the latter just because they have such unparalleled utility, but probably in combat specifically, the Sorcerers might have the edge - though they lack some of the insane power-spells, primarily Conjure Minor Elementals).

I actually think that Monks getting into Wizard magic would make a ton of sense, as both are classes that have an association with cloistered practice and study. I mean, real monks (I think both in the East and West) are often very scholarly, with acts of intellectual study incorporated into their spiritual practice. In fact, I think that it would make a lot of sense to give them the Cleric spell list as an alternative (I like the idea of a Cleric who is a mystic that is very into esoterica).

But I imagine one of the reasons they chose Sorcerer is more mechanical than flavorful: Monks and Sorcerers both have a point-based resource equal to your level in that class. The parallels between Sorcery Points and Focus Points are pretty clear, and this subclass effectively allows you to use the latter as the former.

I think the most potentially exploitable/optimizable element here will be the fact that Focus Points come back on a short rest, and because they can be converted into spell slots, a Monk who gets to take multiple short rests in a day can potentially have significantly more spellcasting opportunities than their Rogue and Fighter brethren.

Simply adding spellcasting to just about any class makes it more powerful because of the breadth of options - indeed, while many bemoan the Ranger's design flaws (guilty as charged,) its half-caster nature often puts it ahead of non-caster classes in a lot of optimizers' tier rankings (a format of criticism that I know is very flawed by nonetheless I feel compelled by).

At the same time, as I've talked about in my critique of the subclass when it was first previewed, there are some things that Monks can do that already kind of get some of what you want out of spells already. Shield is an amazing spell for Eldritch Knights (because they can stack it on top of heavy armor - it's already amazing for anyone who can get it) but given the power of Deflect Attacks, it's not... bad to have, but it's also partially redundant, as Monks can often fully negate the damage of an attack as one of their core class features. Similarly, Misty Step, as spell that I think I'll take on just about any character who can get it (though I'll concede I don't think I've cast it on my Wizard in a while) is somewhat less appealing when playing a character who can already disengage or dash, or both, as a bonus action.

My suspicion is that the Mystic Arts Monk might suffer a bit from taking the Sorcerer spell list - the power of the Sorcerer is largely that it takes a lot of Wizard spells and tosses metamagic and Innate Sorcery on top of them, neither of which the Mystic Arts Monk has, so it'd probably be better off if it got the Wizard list just to broaden the options (there are some spells Sorcerers get that Wizards don't, but the opposite is a much larger category). But compared to other Monks? I think it's likely to be a real powerhouse.

Elements Grappler Monk vs Wyvern

 Yeah, I'll do new builds here, but I wanted to update some of the ones that I had had against a Death Knight.

The Warrior of Elements Monk has the potential to be an insane grappler, because in theory, they can grapple a target while it's out of melee range, acting as a pretty powerful crowd control, while they are still fully able to pummel the target.

As before, the plan was to just pick up the Grappler feat at level 4 and then probably do ASIs for 8 (and 12 and 16 if we were going to higher levels) because we'd really like to be able to cap out Dexterity and start working on other stats later on.

As a note, as long as we're a Medium creature, we should be able to grapple a Large Wyvern. The actual character I'd want to play would be a Cloud Goliath, so he'd be able to get bigger and potentially grapple Huge creatures, but this should work for anyone who isn't Small, as you can grapple creatures that are up to one size larger than you.

By level 10, our Unarmed Strikes are just as good as any weapon a Monk can use with Martial Arts, so unless we have a Vicious/Flametongue Weapon, we'll be fine to just stick to unarmed attacks (and hopefully our DM will have given us +X Wraps of Unarmed Prowess - if you're a DM who has a Monk and don't give those to them in the course of a long campaign, you need to ask yourself whether you think you're a good person).

Before, we basically ignored the ability to grapple simply because Death Knights have legendary resistance, but in this case, we really need to take it into account. I don't even think we really found out a good DPR because we were focused more on how quickly we could burn through a Death Knight's resistances.

One really nice thing is that Monks actually get a power boost at level 10 (unlike Fighters, Paladins, or Warlocks, who wait until level 11). Mainly, that's that our Flurry of Blows upgrades to doing three attacks rather than two. So, by level 10, we can often put out five attacks a round. With 10 Focus Points at this level, we can likely be fairly liberal with them, and given that a typical combat lasts like 3-4 rounds, I'm going to more or less just assume we'll be using Flurry of Blows every turn.

The real question, though, is grappling.

The Grappler feat gives us three benefits: the first is that we can attempt to Grapple a target when we hit them with the damage version of an unarmed strike once per turn. Note that we do have to hit them, so they're only making that saving throw if we land the hit. The second is that we have advantage attacks against the target we're grappling. The last part simply lets us move normally while dragging a grappled target. There's for sure some shenanigans to be had by dragging foes off of cliffs and using Slow Fall to survive, but we'll ignore that for these purposes.

Another note is that grappling a flying creature that doesn't have Hover means that they'll fall when their speed is reduced to zero. For our purposes, though, we'll assume the Wyvern has landed and not take that fall damage into account.

Now, here's where our "white room" scenario butts up against actual realistic conditions. Because I think we have two options:

One is to simply try to grapple the target the first time we hit, and then just make more punches (or really elemental blasts). The other is to keep attempting grapples on subsequent attacks, sacrificing damage for control.

Truly, in an actual game scenario, the latter might be the better call. But I think both because it will be simpler to calculate and also because we want to see how much damage we can do, we're going to go with the former option. It will still be plenty fiddly.

Now, I usually ignore Origin Feats. The character I'd play with this build would be a Sailor (specifically an airship sailor) and thus get the Tavern Brawler origin feat. There's some redundancy with being a Monk here, but there are a couple benefits - at this level, our d8 Martial Arts die would go from an average of 4.5 damage to 4.9375, and we'd be able to push targets 5 feet away from us once per turn when we hit. But we do generally ignore origin feats on these, and also 4.5 is going to give us much rounder numbers, so we'll just set that aside and note that we'll do slightly higher damage with Tavern Brawler.

If you want a 17 in Dex to start off, you won't be able to get 16s in both Wisdom and Constitution (unless you roll stats and get lucky). I'll assume, though, that we go Wisdom for the better AC and Focus Save DC. (The Sailor Background also can provide Wisdom but not Constitution.) So we'll assume a Wisdom of 16.

Ok, so here's the game plan:

At the start of our first turn, we activate Elemental Attunement, giving our unarmed strikes a 15-foot reach. We don't really care about the damage types for Wyverns, though if we want to use the push/pull aspect, we'll need it to be one of the elemental types. I'll default to Thunder (which is only rarely resisted).

Then, we'll just do unarmed strikes. It's arbitrary whether we do our Flurry of Blows first or our Attack Action. We spend 2 FP this turn, and then we'll spend 1 each turn beyond this, unless we want to do other things.

Now, truthfully, we should probably try Stunning Strike. Indeed, because they'll automatically fail the save against being grappled if they're stunned, we really should go for this. It does mean spending 2 FP per turn, but we can sustain that for 4 turns if we're willing to empty the tank.

Another interesting question: if we stun the target with a Stunning Strike, can we use the free Grappler grapple after they've been stunned? There's not a clear order of operations here. I'd check with your DM, and I think there are reasonable interpretations on both sides, but I'm going to say you can choose in what order to apply these effects.

So, the first hit we land, we'll first try Stunning Strike. If they fail that save, we automatically grapple them. Otherwise, we force them to make a save against being grappled. If they still aren't grappled, we'll just make regular attacks.

Thus, what we'll need is the math for that first attack's damage, then to figure out how likely we are to get them grappled, and then the math for subsequent attacks made at either advantage or not (the latter being the same damage as the first attack).

If we miss on our first attack, though, we push that whole "first attack" process to the second attack, and so on and so forth.

    Thus:

Our first attack (and any future attacks made without advantage):

We have a +9 to hit (because we capped Dex at level 8) and each attack deals 1d8+5 thunder damage, or 9.5, with an extra 4.5 damage on a crit. Thus, we hit on a roll of 5 or higher, meaning that we have an 80% hit chance.

9.5x80% is 7.6, and 4.5x5% is .225, so these attacks will do an average of 7.825.

Now, if we land this, we make a Stunning Strike and then a grapple attempt. Our DC for this is 15. The Wyvern has a +3 to Con saves, so it fails on a roll of 11 or lower, or 55% of the time. If it gets stunned, it auto-fails the save against the grapple, but if it isn't stunned, it will probably use Strength to resist it. Our DC, however, is higher because it's based on our Dexterity, so it's a 17, meaning that with +4 to Strength saves, the Wyvern now fails on a 12 or lower, or 60% of the time.

Thus, the chance that it beats both saving throws is 45%x40%, or 18% of the time. And therefore, we'll expect advantage on our next attack 82% of the time.

Now, things start to get more complicated, because there are several potential further scenarios:

First is that everything goes great - we hit our target, stunned them, grappled them. The second is that we hit them, and thus tried Stunning Strike, but they beat their save, but then we did manage to grapple them. The third is that we hit them, but they beat both saving throws. And the last is that we fully missed them, and will try to use Stunning Strike and Fast Grapple on this attack.

Now, the good news is that in scenarios one and two, the math is the same, because we get advantage on them as long as they're grappled. We actually also get advantage on them in scenario three, because Stunning Strike still gives us advantage on the next attack we make even if they succeed on their save.

So: actually, before we get in the weeds here, let's just quickly establish what our attacks do on average if we have advantage - then we'll just figure out the relative proportions for each of our 5 attacks.

At advantage, with a base 80% hit chance, our hit chance goes up to 96% and our crit chance becomes 9.75%. 9.5x96% is 9.12 and 4.5x9.75% is roughly .44 (it's really .43875, but I've got to start rounding these off more). Therefore, we should be dealing 9.56 damage per attack when we have advantage.

Rounding both to the first decimal place, our damage-per-attack is:

7.8 without advantage.

9.6 with advantage.

Now, how often do we have advantage on our second attack? In this case, as long as we hit, we will, because of Stunning Strike. So, 80% of the time, we'll have advantage, and 20% of the time we won't. 9.6x80% is 7.68 and 7.8x20% is 1.56, so our average damage here becomes about 9.2. (total damage up to this point is 17)

For our first Flurry of Blows attack, we go fully into the weeds: If we hit on our first attack (80%) and the target is either stunned and grappled or at least grappled, we have advantage. So, within that 80%, there's an 82% chance we lined up that advantage. So, that is about 66%. Then, in the 20% chance we missed on the first attack, we'll try these things on attack 2. Thus, within that 20%, in the 80% chance we hit with the second attack, we'll apply Stunning Strike and guarantee advantage. So, 16% of the time we're getting advantage thanks to the second attack. Thus, we add them up and get an 82% chance to have had advantage on this attack. 9.6x82% is about 7.9, and 7.8x18% is about 1.4, so we're looking at an average damage of 9.3 (bring our total damage up to 26.3)

You know what, I'm genuinely starting to lose track of how to even approach this. There are so many branching possibilities - like, did we miss on the first attack, hit on the second, but fail to get them grappled, but still have advantage on the third attack because of Stunning Strike.

If I had more mental energy for this math, I'd try to be more precise, but considering that (if I did this right) the average damage of the third attack was only 0.1 more than the second attack, I think I'm willing to believe that there will be if anything even more negligible differences for attacks 4 and 5. Thus, we'll just assume that the subsequent attacks are doing 9.3 as well.

That means that our total damage (on this first turn at least) is 44.9. It'll be a little better on the next turn, as we're likely to have the Wyvern grappled already (especially if we stunned them - but the Wyvern is no more likely to break out of our grapple than they were to resist it in the first place even if they do use an action to escape).

And it's a bit heartening to see the Monk doing pretty decent damage. It's comparable to the Staff-and-Board Eldritch Knight (though without the reactive strike) and this can provide really powerful battlefield control. Now, I'm sure that a Great Weapon Master EK build would do even better (I'm tempted to run that soon, though I feel like I should branch out) but this does seem like it could be quite potent and fun.

Elements Monk vs Death Knight

 When the new Player's Handbook came out about a year and a half ago, I think the class that got the biggest glow-up was the Monk - many of its issues were solved, and in many cases the class was simply empowered. That being said, I've also seen a number of theory-crafters argue that, while improved, it's still around the bottom rung of the class power.

Now, one thing I think these optimizers often ignore is defensive capabilities: by changing Deflect Missiles to simply Deflect Attacks, the Monk now has one of the most powerful defensive abilities in the game, probably only second to the Barbarian's rage (even with significantly lower AC than a Fighter or Paladin in full plate with a shield, I found that a Monk wound up taking less damage even from a Marilith, whose many attacks per action dilute the single-attack damage reduction of the Monk's Deflect Attacks).

However, this series has focused on damage output, and so we shall continue to.

The Warrior of Elements is, ostensibly, the update to the Way of Four Elements subclass from 2014, but in truth, it's a totally different subclass, merely replacing the old one by sharing its elemental theme while rebuilding everything from the ground up in terms of mechanics.

The subclass is built around Elemental Attunement, which you can activate to grant you various benefits, not the least of which is that your attacks gain a much longer reach.

Now, there's a weird nuance here, and I don't know if there's been any official ruling on it, but the reach affects all of your Unarmed Strikes, which now includes both grappling and shoving a target.

If we then assume that this reach is not in any way interrupted by, well, just not being currently in the act of attacking, it should allow us to grapple targets up to 15 feet away from us, which could be a huge defensive boon, as it could effectively shut down a foe that doesn't have ranged attacks.

Assuming this interpretation is correct - that we could hold a foe and continue to strike at them while they can't hit back - we can build a character around grappling.

Notably, this might not be amazing against our boss monster, the Death Knight, because they are A: very strong and B: have legendary resistances. Still, it'd be a decent gameplan for a whole campaign, and could still wind up having an effect on the boss fight. Let's get into the build:

    Feats:

I always run into this problem: I know that feats are powerful enough that it's often fine to leave a score uncapped in favor of getting the functionality of a feat. But it bugs my OCD tendencies. And Monks, in particular, really want high Dex, high Wisdom, and high Stamina.

Now, the thing with Monks, though, is that a lot of martial feats don't really do anything for us. Great Weapon Master doesn't work with any Simple weapons, and Polearm Master's biggest boon, the Pole Strike attack, is kind of redundant with our martial arts. We don't natively get Weapon Masteries, so Dual Wielder isn't really going to help us. Crusher can be ok for us, but we already get the ability to push targets with our elemental strikes.

But Grappler is pretty great: as Monks, we can use our Dexterity to set the DCs for our grappling attempts, and we're already making plenty of Unarmed Strikes anyway. Finally, the Fast Wrestler aspect of the feat lets us drag grappled targets quite far given how fast we move (and with Slow Fall, we can even drag foes off of ledges to potentially give them fall damage while we can just absorb it).

So, we'll assume we get 17 Dex at level 1 and then bump it to 18 with Grappler at 4. And then... I think we just cap it with an ASI at level 8.

It's probably "optimal" to just take 15s in Con and Wisdom at level 1 as well and dump the other three stats, though I never really like to do that (I hate having more than one negative modifier). Instead, I'll assume we do try to get Wisdom up to 16 at the start, and have at least a 14 in Con, but we might not have utter garbage scores otherwise.

I've generally avoided talking about origin feats here - Tavern Brawler actually has a lot of redundancy with being a Monk, but it does still boost our damage a little, letting us reroll 1s. This gives d6s an average roll of 3.9ish, a d8 an average of 4.9ish, a d10 an average of 5.95, and a d12 an average of 6.96ish, so essentially giving you .4 damage per hit, and thus, with a level 10 Flurry of Blows, about 2 damage overall if everything hits. It's not nothing, but it's not huge either.

Still, the Sailor background will cover you for this feat and your preferred ability scores. I'm not going to take Tavern Brawler into account for my calculations - grabbing Tough or Alert, Lucky, what-have-you, might be more ideal depending on your campaign.

    Grappling a Death Knight:

Now, the big thing: grappling in 5.5 has the target make a saving throw - their choice of Strength or Dexterity. Normally, this is set by your Strength modifier, but Monks have special dispensation to instead base it on their Dexterity (I think there's a world in which Monks should be a Strength-based class, but overall they're probably better-off being Dex-based. I need to take a look at the Pugilist class).

At level 10, we should have a Dex of 20, which means that the saving throw DC for our grapples will be 17.

Now, a Death Knight is strong, but like Paladins, they don't actually have proficiency in Strength saving throws. Thus, they merely add their Strength to the roll. Also, while they have Magic Resistance and they also have Marshal Undead, they are explicitly not personally affected by the latter feature (which grants other undead creatures of the Death Knight's choice within 60 feet of themselves advantage on attack rolls and saving throws).

Thus, the Death Knight is actually more likely than not going to fail the save against our attempts to grapple them. On a roll of an 11 or lower, they fail, meaning we have a 55% chance to grapple them.

That's actually great news. But I also don't think that means it's likely we actually will grapple them: this is something the Death Knight will probably use their legendary resistances to get out of.

Because we have the grappler feat, there's no actual cost to trying to grapple them once per turn, and we reap a great reward if we succeed - we get advantage on our attacks against them (which is pretty great given how high a Death Knight's AC is.)

So, how do we account for this?

Well, I think I'm going to go the simplest route: the DK is always going to LR out of being grappled by us - while they do have some ranged options, like Hellfire Orb, the Fell Word legendary action, or their spells, being grappled by us and allowing us to just pelt them with elemental strikes from afar is just not acceptable.

But that's great, because if we can burn through their legendary resistances, it opens up our allies to get them with various spells and such that might be even worse for them.

    Gameplan:

We're assuming this is a major boss and we're pulling out all the stops, and that means using Flurry of Blows every turn. I think we're also going to be using our action to attack, but I will check the average damage of Elemental Burst to ensure that that's actually correct. Still, we'll be burning a Focus Point each turn to get what are now three additional attacks as a bonus action (once we hit level 10, which we are).

At this level, unless we have a magic weapon, our unarmed strikes will hit just as hard as a spear or quarterstaff or greatclub anyway, and we get the extra range for them from Elemental Attunement, so we'll just stick to them. (Also, DMs, if you're handing out magic items, give the Monk some Wraps of Unarmed Prowess. Honestly, I'd have liked to see Very Rare wraps that add damage dice as well, like a Vicious Weapon).

We have 10 Focus Points at this level. We need to spend 1 to get Elemental Attunement going, but then we have 9 left to spend on other features. We're assuming one each turn for Flurry of Blows. Our Focus saving throw - which is based on Wisdom - is only 15 at this level, but that does mean that a Death Knight has to land a 10 or higher to save against Stunning Strike, as they only have a +5 to Con saves.

Thus, I think it's actually worth it for us to spend a point on Stunning Strike each turn as well (assuming we hit) to burn through Legendary Resistances that much quicker. If we can land a grapple and a stun on turn 1, we could burn through all 3 LRs on turn 2 (though we'd have to be fairly lucky. Given that we're making 5 attacks per turn - assuming we aren't Elemental Bursting - there's a strong chance we'll land at least one attack per turn, but there's only about a half chance that the DK fails the save on any of these).

Thus, we're spending 3 FP our first turn and then 2 more for each subsequent turn, meaning we can sustain this for four turns, which is actually pretty good - few combats go longer than that. Now, we might need to use FP on other things - naturally if we get into a situation where we need to do something like Patient Defense or Step of the Wind, this "blank room" simulation no longer really applies.

    Damage Per Attack:

All of our attacks do the same damage and have the same hit chance, so this will be a pretty simple thing to calculate: We have a +9 to hit at this level, so we hit 50% of the time. Our attacks do 1d8+5 damage, or 9.5 on average, with an additional 4.5 damage on a crit. Thus:

50%x9.5 is 4.75 and then 5%x4.5 is .225, so we're looking at 4.975 damage per attack.

If we were to just leave it at that, with 5 attacks, that's a total of 24.875 damage.

That's not terribly impressive, but let's consider some other options.

    Elemental Bursting:

Because our various bonus action attacks are no longer tied to having to first take the Attack Action, we can actually replace our attacks with Elemental Burst. This costs 2 Focus Points, but lets us drop a Fireball-sized sphere of elemental energy that does, well, a Shatter's worth of damage. It deals, at level 10, 3d8 damage (we'll say Thunder as a default as that's pretty reliable, though all should work on a Death Knight). On a successful save, creatures take half damage.

Now, our Focus save DC is only 15. A Death Knight has a +6 to Dex saves (they get proficiency in Dex saves rather than Charisma, compared to a Paladin) but on top of that, they have Magic Resistance, so they'll have advantage on this save.

Thus, if they succeed on a 9 or higher and have advantage, we're looking at only a 40% chance squared, or 16% chance to actually fail the saving throw.

On a failure, they take 3d8, or 13.5 average damage, but they still take half, or 6.75 damage on a success.

Thus, this will do 13.5x16%, or 2.16 plus 6.75x84%, or 5.67, giving us a total damage of 7.83. Not only are we spending 2 FP on this, but we're also sacrificing our two regular attacks, which each do 4.975 damage on average, meaning we're about 2 damage behind.

Yeah, Elemental Burst is not bad for big groups of foes, but it's not worth it in this case for a single-target encounter.

    Burning Through Legendary Resistances:

Now, we need to talk about the nuance of advantage. In an ideal world, we can grapple the Death Knight, or stun them, and thus get advantage on our attacks against them.

Now, there's an interesting nuance at play here: a stunned target automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. While Stunning Strike is not as powerful as it used to be because it ends before our next turn (and we can only use it once per turn,) we can still use it both to give our subsequent attacks on our turn advantage as well as to automatically get our grapple off. However, we also do automatically get advantage on our next attack even if they succeed on their save, so there's some utility to trying it even if we can't get a failed save. The stun is somewhat ephemeral - it only lasts until the start of our next turn (though that's fantastic for our allies) but if we can stun them, we should then be able to automatically grapple them, and they'll notably not have an action on their next turn to break the grapple, so we will have advantage on our attacks thanks to the Grappler feat.

Stunning Strike is maybe the number one thing that a Death Knight would spend Legendary Resistances on.

So, how quickly can we burn through them?

Again, our Grapple DC is 17 while our Stunning Strike DC is 15. We'll assume we're burning both every turn. Both require us to land an attack on the target. With 5 attacks every turn and a 50% chance to miss, we have around a 97% chance to hit with at least one attack each turn, so I think we're talking really extraordinary bad luck if we don't.

If we have the opportunity to make a Stunning Strike, the Death Knight will make the save on a roll of 10 or higher - a 55% chance to succeed.

Against our one free grapple attempt per turn, the DC is higher, though they can choose to make a Dex save instead, which is actually higher for them. With a +6 against our DC of 17, they succeed on an 11 or higher, so a 50% chance.

So... what if we did something else?

What if we sacrificed our own damage to try to lock down this Death Knight on our first turn?

If we chose to, rather than attack, just try to grapple over and over on our first turn, how likely is it that they'd fail their saves?

(I'll concede here that as someone who hasn't taken a math class in about 21 years, I'm not sure if I have the tools to figure this out).

Now, we do need to land an attack to try Stunning Strike, and we also get a free grapple attempt if we hit with an unarmed strike, but only if we hit.

Ok, screw it, let's say that we just want to try to grapple the Death Knight at least to start with - to lock them down as soon as we can. In this case, we're going to make 5 grapple attempts.

With a 50% chance to fail or succeed, the chance that they don't fail on at least one of those attempts is a little over 3%. Thus, it's a little less than 97% that the Death Knight has to burn a legendary resistance.

But how likely is it that we can burn through all 3 on turn one?

Again, my early-2000s high school math skills are very fuzzy in the back of my memory, but let me imagine how to approach this:

With 5 attacks, we figure that there's a 97% chance that we get at least one failure. But if we set that failure aside, we now have 4 attacks that we'll need to have at least one failure in. Over four attacks, we've got a 93.75% chance for one to fail. Then, if we had those two failures, there are three remaining attacks on that turn, so there's an 87.5% chance that there was one failure among those.

So... uh... What does that actually tell us?

Ok, I think I've got it:

Basically, we have a 97% chance to burn through one LR. Within that 97% chance, there's a 94% chance (we're going to round) that we burn another one, so that's about a 91% chance. Then, within that 91% chance to burn two legendary resistances, we have an 87.5% chance to burn one on the other three attempts, giving us around an 80% chance to burn three.

That doesn't seem right, does it? Is the flaw here that we're accounting for the earlier saving throws multiple times? Given that we need a majority of the saving throws to fail, I'd assume that with even odds, that'd be less likely to happen than not. Or is this just a place where intuition is misleading me?

Again, let me think about this:

We figured out the chance for any one of the saving throws in a set of 5 is to fail was 97%, because every single one failing would be 50% to the fifth power, which is about 3%.

Is the next move to multiply that by the chance that we get a failure on the four remaining dice?

Ah, this is driving me nuts and it's late at night. I'm sure someone who understands basic statistics would figure this out for me in moments. But, let's just figure out one more thing:

    Damage with Advantage:

There are a lot of ways to get advantage on our attacks in 5.5, and while we don't have the Vex property to work with, if we do succeed in grappling and/or stunning the Death Knight, how will that affect our damage output?

Well, thankfully, with a clean 50% hit chance, it's pretty easy to figure out what our hit chance is with advantage: 75% to hit, and the usual 9.75% to crit. Once again, our hit damage is 1d8+5, or 9.5, and our extra d8 of damage on a crit is 4.5. So, 9.5x75% is 7.125 and 4.5x9.75% is .43875, so our average damage per attack when we have advantage is roughly 7.6.

Thus, if and when we do get advantage on all our attacks, our damage jumps up to 37.8 per turn, which is a pretty enormous jump, and I think pretty respectable.

I'm sort of giving up on how long it will take us to burn through a Death Knight's legendary resistances to accomplish this state. (I really don't feel like there's an 80% chance we get 3 failures on turn one, but I can't figure out where the logic in my math falls apart.) But not only will it greatly benefit us, it will also potentially really help protect our party. Other combatants won't get the advantage we gain from grappling the target, sure, but we can ensure the Death Knight isn't able to attack the squishier members of the party, and we can drag them through dangerous terrain (I will say, there's a bit of a rules blind spot when it comes to dragging a foe around us rather than just pulling them after us) - like pulling the Death Knight through a Spike Growth or something of the sort.

UA: Warrior of Venom Monk

 I love 5E Monks, even if the theorycrafters say that even with the 5.5 update, they're still lagging behind in terms of power. Monks just get so many cool features (and I also think people are underselling how good Deflect Attacks is as a defensive feature, second probably only to Barbarians' Rage).

While the Monk as a class focuses on the East Asian martial arts of, like, the Shao Lin tradition, Monks more broadly speaking are, of course, people who dedicate their lives to spiritual practice, often eschewing traditional lifestyles in favor of one focused on the discipline of their practice. This does open the door to mysticism and potentially some really weird stuff.

Right off the bat, "Venom" as a theme implies Poison damage, which is notoriously one of the least reliable damage types in D&D, as multiple creature types are often fully immune to it (Undead, Fiends, Constructs). So, can they make a good subclass themed around it? And is that even what this is? Let's read through and find out.

Level 3:

Envenom Weapon

At the start of your turn, you can expend 1 Focus Point to apply a toxin produced from your blood to one Monk Weapon that you're holding. A creature that takes damage from the weapon is subjected to one of the following effects (you choose when you apply the toxin).

The toxin lasts 1 minute or until a creature takes damage from the Toxin.

Slowing Toxin: Until the start of your next turn, the target's speed is halved, it cannot take reactions, and it can take either an action or bonus action on its turn, not both.

    This is pretty strong - while not all monsters have an interesting bonus action, some - especially those higher-level legendary monsters - do, and given that this is a no-save effect, that's really potent.

Venom: The target takes Poison damage equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die.

    Unfortunately we cannot crit-smite with this, as we need to do this ahead of time. Is this enough damage? A Focus Point will net us an additional attack with Flurry of Blows, which at level 3 is 1d6+3, probably, which is comparable damage. By tier 3, we're doing two extra attacks for 1d10+5 (probably,) at which point this certainly falls behind (though to be fair I haven't seen the other features). We could blow a bunch of FP to get a bunch of extra damage out, but I don't know that Venom feels powerful enough to really make it an optimal choice, even if you're fighting something you're confident takes poison damage.

    Overall, I think that allowing you to spend the FP on a hit, rather than at the start of your turn, would make this a more exciting and powerful ability - not only for Crit-Smite potential but also just to make the effect more of a fun surprise. It'll suck if you apply this and then miss on that turn.

    Also, interesting that this forces the Monk to stick with a weapon - not unprecedented (see the Kensei) but it does mean that our Monk is probably going to want both a magic weapon and Wraps of Unarmed Prowess.

Potent Arsenal:

You gain a Poisoner's Kit, and you have proficiency with it. When creating a Basic Poison, you can do the work over the course of 1 day (8 hours of work). Additionally, whenever you deal Poison damage with a Monk feature or Monk weapon, you can change that damage to Acid damage.

    Bam! There we go. That's what makes this work. As long as we're not fighting Yugoloths or Black Dragons (or I guess many oozes) we are now going to be able to make everything work pretty reliably. Fantastic. Basic Poison is worth 100g, so it would typically take I believe 50g and two full work weeks to make, so this is actually amazing for turning you into a poison factory. At low levels this could honestly be a pretty solid downtime activity to generate revenue (not that a Monk needs much in the way of money, but for the party). But the main thing here is getting to do Acid damage, which is just so much more reliable than Poison.

Level 6:

Toxic Touch:

As a magic action, you can expend 1 FP to apply a potent toxin to a creature you touch. The target makes a Con save. On a failure, they are poisoned for 1 minute. While poisoned, they are also affected by one of the following effects of your choice.

Intoxicant: The target is Charmed for the duration or until you or your allies deal damage to it.

Sedative: The creature falls asleep and has the Unconscious condition for the duration. Another creature can use an action to shake the creature awake and end the condition.

Truth Serum: The target can't knowingly communicate a lie for the duration.

    These are solid effects, assuming you can poison the target. I like that the Truth Serum effect gives the Monk a bit of cool utility in non-combat scenarios. I might like the duration to be a little longer, at least for the Truth Serum one, as I can imagine having to apply this several times during an interrogation to get all the right questions asked.

Level 11:

Toxin Refiner:

You gain immunity to Poison damage. When you are subjected to poison damage, your Envenom Weapon options each deal extra Poison damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die, and you can't get this benefit again until the end of your next turn. Additionally, whenever you ingest a poison, you regain a number of HP equal to a roll of your Martial Arts die.

    Thematically, I love this. Sadly, 5.5 Monks lost their poison immunity, but this gives it back. Once again, remember that we can change our Poison damage to Acid, so even if we get a big breath in the face by a Green Dragon, we can turn that poison breath into acid to strike back at them (if we're fighitng a Black dragon, well, we will stick to poison damage). Funnily enough, the "ingest poison" thing turns those Basic Poisons we're making into kind of less-powerful healing potions. I do think we need to define what it means to ingest a poison: if we're in a poisonous swamp, how much swamp water do we need to drink in order for it to count?

Toxic Blood:

Whenever a creature hits you with a melee attack roll, the attacker takes 1d6 Poison damage. I fyou are bloodied, they instead take Poison damage equal to one of your Martial Arts dice.

    Punishing attackers is actually probably good for a Monk's survival. I think they can simplify this and just have it always do your Martial Arts die. A this level that's a d10, which is only two more damage on average than a d6. If we wanted it to be more powerful when Bloodied, just make it two martial arts dice then.

Level 17:

Hallucinogenic Breath

When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can expend 2 FP and replace one of your attacks with an exhalation of hallucinogenic vapors at one creature within 30 feet of you. The creature makes a Con save, and on a failure, they take Poison (or, again, Acid) damage equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die and become Frightened for 1 minute or until they take damage. While frightened, they take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest route on each turn unless there's nowhere to move. On a success, the take half damage only.

    Real quick, obviously the initial damage doesn't break the frightened condition there. This notably circumvents immunity to the poisoned condition. The damage here is a side-feature - the main thing is that this is a single-target crowd control for potentially the entire encounter. And, notably, you can use this on multiple creatures, as using it on a second one doesn't cancel the effect on the first.

    That said, it's a Con save, so there's a fair chance they succeed against it. Still, I really like the flavor of this. Is it powerful? Is it worth 2 FP? I'm not entirely sure, though at least FP is pretty cheap by level 17. How many foes that we face are immune to being Frightened, though, at this level?

Overall Thoughts:

    I honestly think this is a pretty solid attempt at making a subclass based around Poisoning things, and accomplishes this largely by allowing you to swap in a different damage type (though weirdly, do we all think of both Poison and Acid as "green" damage types?)

    I'd love to allow you to Envenom your own unarmed strikes, as the subclass doesn't really do anything interesting with the fact that you need to fight with a weapon. But yeah, there are some cool ideas here, and overall these "villainous options" have demonstrated a lot of originality that I'm here for.

UA: Warrior of the Mystic Arts Monk

 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.

Monk of the Storm

 So, fun fact, my first post-2024 character concept I came up with was a Goliath Warrior of Elements Monk. The concept was that he was from a flying city (ancient cloud giant runestones keep it aloft) and a crew member (sailor background) on an airship that flies into storms to collect elemental energy.

This concept actually works really well in Eberron, perhaps minus the flying city. But I realized there was a way to make it really powerful by level 8.

First off, we find a way to get Mark of the Storm as our origin feat. We could make him a House Lyrandar heir as his background. This will allow him to boost his Dex with the background, though it doesn't help Wisdom, which is a little tough as I generally want +3s to both at level 1.

Now, Monks are a lot better than they were, but they still don't quite overcome characters with powerful damage-enhancing spells. But now we can! And it's even quite on-theme.

We'll take some appropriate Dex feat at level 4 to boost our Dex from 17 to 18. Then, we take Potent Dragonmark at level 8, which is, conveniently, the level at which we'll get a 4th level spell slot from it.

This will give us access to Conjure Minor Elementals (hey, we're an Elements Monk). Now, each attack we land within 10 feet of us will hit for 2d8 extra damage.

And while it does cost us our action to cast this spell, we can immediately Flurry of Blows to make two attacks. At this level, that's two attacks that are each doing 3d8+4, or 17.5 damage each, or 35 total.

But then, on subsequent turns, with another Flurry of Blows, we can hit four times, meaning 12d8+16, or 70 damage.

At level 10, we get two upgrades: our Flurry of Blows now does one more attack, and also our Conjure Minor Elementals will get upcast to 5th level. So, now, on turn two, we're doing five attacks that are each hitting for 4d8+4, or 22 per hit, giving us 110 damage.

Obviously, this is just damage potential, as this assumes all attacks hit. We're also slightly delaying our Dexterity progression (though we can boost Wisdom with the Potent Dragonmark feat, so we're still getting something we'd want to boost anyway).

At 10, barring Wraps of Unarmed Prowess (though I'd hope our DM would give us some) we have a +8 to hit. Against a target with a 15 AC (weirdly common at level 10, even if that feels low) we would have a 70% hit chance.

So, we have 22x70%, or 15.4, plus 18 (our extra damage for crits)x5%, or .9, giving us 16.3 damage per attack.

Thus, on round one, we're doing an average of 48.9 damage, and on subsequent rounds we've got 81.5 damage, and that is pretty damn good if you ask me.

We will only ever be able to do this once per day, but I think that's fine - this is our boss-melting move. Given that we're likely an Airship captain, this is our "GET! OFF! MY! SHIP!" move.

Which Subclasses Should Get a Revision: Monk

 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.

Cinnamon Dragon and the Action Economy

 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.

UA: Warrior of Intoxication Monk

 My primary Adventurer's League character, and my second major (maybe third?) D&D character concept overall, was a Drunken Master monk. While now I look back on that subclass and feel it was kind of underpowered, I love the flavor of it. And nothing would delight me more than to see a really good version of the Drunken Master that meets its full potential.

First off, not a comment on the mechanics, but I hate this new name. Drunken Master is so much better than "Intoxication." They mean the same thing, but one calls to mind the classic martial arts form of Drunken Boxing, as made particularly famous by Jackie Chan's Drunken Master movies.

I will say, one new addition to this is something I felt the original version was missing, which also links it a bit with World of Warcraft's Brewmaster Monks, which we'll get to. The Monk overall got a lot stronger in 2024, so any subclass will benefit. Let's see how it is!

Level 3:

Bonus Proficiencies:

You gain the Performance skill, or another Monk proficiency if you already have it. You also gain proficiency with Brewer's Supplies (but evidently don't get a different one if you already have that).

    It's a ribbon, but fun.

Drunken Technique:

When you use Flurry of Blows, your speed increases by 10 feet until the end of your turn and your movement on that turn doesn't provoke opportunity attacks.

    This is unchanged, giving you a free disengage and speed boost when you use what most Monks are going to be using most turns. Monks don't need to rely as much on being evasive as they used to thanks to Deflect Attacks, but it's nice. Is this enough for level 3? Eh, Monks are particularly strong in tier 1, so it's probably ok (and I think the other 2024 Monk subclasses don't get a ton at level 3).

Level 6:

Tipsy Sway:

When you are prone, you can stand up using just 5 feet of movement. If a creature misses you with a melee attack, you can spend 1 FP as a reaction to cause the attack to hit one creature of your choice that is within 5 feet of you and isn't the attack.

    In practice, I didn't get to use the Redirect Attack feature all that much (frustratingly, I had a moment were, RAW, I should have been able to, but because the swarm attacking me had to be within the same space to attack, the DM ruled it couldn't be redirected 5 feet away). Flavorfully, this is a lot of fun. Combined with Deflect Attack, you can really punish people for attacking you.

Mystic Brew:

When you finish a short or long rest while holding Brewer's Supplies, you can use the tool to magically produce a bottle or cask of one of the following beverages (the container appears when you brew the concoction and vanishes when you drink it). A beverage will last until you finish a short or long rest or until you drink it.

Only you can drink the beverage, and you have to drink a pint of it before gaining its benefits. You can spend 1 minute to drink a pint, and then gain its benefits for 1 hour.

If you expend 1 FP when you create the brew (presumably meaning after finishing the rest, so you don't immediately get it back,) the duration of the brew's effect now lasts 8 hours.

    This is brand new and finally makes actual brewing a part of the subclass. I LOVE this.

The brews are:

Cinnamon Dragon: You can take a magic action to exhale toxic flames in a 30 foot cone. Each creature in the cone must make a Dex save (DC based on Wisdom). On a failure, they take four rolls of your Martial Arts die of fire damage and are poisoned until the end of their next turn. On a success, they take half damage only.

    Ok, flavorfully I freaking love this - it's almost precisely the Breath of Fire ability from WoW, and feels perfect and what the old version was lacking. Let's figure out some math, though: we're sacrificing two attacks for this. If we have a +4 to Dex at this level, that means 1d8+4 twice, or 17 average damage. There are potentially crits and wraps of unarmed prowess and things that could affect that. 4d8 is 18 on average, and potentially hitting multiple targets. Yeah, this is probably worth it, then. It's save for half, which I think more than makes up for the lack of crits, and if we can hit multiple targets, that's huge. Even without the poison effect, this is great. Yeah, love it.

Heavenly Spirit: You gain resistance to psychic and radiant damage.

    Super situational. Not nearly as exciting. Not a ton of monsters do radiant damage. Might throw in, like, Necrotic?

Refreshing Dip: Whenever you regain HP, you regain additional HP equal to a roll of your MA die.

    Yeah, it's a small amount of bonus healing.

    For sure my default here would be Cinnamon Dragon. The others are both too weak and not nearly cool enough.

Level 11:

Master Brewer:

You gain two new brew options:

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.

    I mean, Monks are always making Deflect Attack reactions (or Tipsy Sway redirect attacks) so once again, we're really punishing foes for going after us. This is possibly the only competition for Cinnamon Dragon, but I still see that as my default.

Drunkard's Luck: You gain Heroic inspiration if you don't already have it, and you can give yourself Heroic inspiration when you roll initiative without it.

    While not as godawful as the old sole level 11 Drunken Master feature, I doubt this would be my choice when I could get Blue Lighting or Cinnamon Dragon.

Level 17:

Intoxicated Frenzy:

When you use Flurry of Blows, you can make up to three additional unarmed strikes with it (for a total of six) provided each strike targets a different creature this turn.

    This is unchanged, if I recall, from the old version, though of course Flurry of Blows get buffed at level 10 now to give you a third strike. Given that you can now only Stunning Strike once per turn, the most powerful aspect of this is gone, meaning it's essentially turning into glorified AoE, with damage equal to only 1d12+5, most likely.

Overall Thoughts:

I love the Brewing Mechanic, but I do think that we need to make the other options more exciting - Cinnamon Dragon is just so much better than almost all the other ones (please don't nerf it!) The rest of the subclass is nearly unchanged, and while again, they got rid of the most dogshit feature (the old Drunkard's Luck, which let you spend 2 Ki - 2! - to cancel disadvantage on a roll - not, like, give you advantage instead or something) I might take another pass at Intoxicated Frenzy and maybe even bump the Mystic Brew thing up to level 3.

I feel like it needs just a little oomph, but once again, I love, love, love the Mystic Brew idea, which might just need a bit of refinement.

UA: Tattooed Warrior

 The only brand-new subclass in this UA, or at least it would be brand new if it weren't in the previous Arcane Subclass UA, the Tattooed Warrior is a cool concept: a Monk who gains powers from the various tattoos or other markings on their body.

The problem I had with the previous version, though, was that I found it committed some of the sins of the Way of Four Elements Monk from 2014 (the Warrior of Elements is far better, and the 2024 subclass I actually have the strongest character concept for,) namely that activating anything in the class required the expenditure of Focus Points at the expense of other Monk features.

But let's look at this fresh.

Level 3:

Magic Tattoos:

You gain magic tattoos from other features in this subclass. Damage and injury doesn't impair the function, and the tattoos can also take the forms of brands, scarification, birthmarks, patterns on scales, etc. If their effects have a DC, you derive it from your Wisdom, like most Monk features with DCs. If the tattoo gives you a spell, your spellcasting ability is Wisdom.

On a Long Rest, you can swap one of your tattoos, changing it out with another choice from the same list.

    Basic stuff: the key is that you're not "upgrading" your old tattoos with the swapping mechanic. Instead, you're going to be able to swap with tattoos of the same power.

    As a note, my concern going forward is if the choices presented break up too many things that could be a single feature - choice is fine and fun, as long as it's not giving you a fraction of what another subclass would be getting automatically.

Beast Tattoos:

You get two animal tattoos, choosing from the following options:

Bat: You know Dancing Lights and gain Blindsight out to 10 feet.

    Thematically, I love Blindsight on a Monk.

Butterfly: You know the Light cantrip, and you can use Dexterity instead of Strength for calculating your High Jump distance.

    I wonder if this could also work with Long Jumps? Also, I feel like Moth would be the better animal for this, given their association with light.

Crane: You know Guidance. When you miss a creature with an attack from Flurry of Blows, you have advantage on your next attack roll against the target before the end of your next turn.

    Hm, a bit of concern: the others have been more utility, while this is a damage output feature.

Horse: You know Message, and when you expend 1 Focus Point to use Step of the Wind (getting Disengage along with your Dash) your speed increases by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.

    The good news is that this is attached to an existing use of a Focus Point rather than costing one independently. I don't know if I'd really bother with this because Monks are already pretty fast, and that 10 feet is kind of proportionately devalued. Then again, if you want to get the absolute hell away from a monster, this can be good.

Tortoise: You know Spare the Dying, and when you expend 1 FP to use Patient Defense, you also get a +1 bonus to your AC until the start of your next turn.

    Ok, so, spending the FP on Patient Defense gets you the Dodge effect (on top of a free Disengage). The extra AC will make the dodge somewhat more effective. I'm not really inspired by this one.

    Overall, I feel like you've basically got to take Crane, though at least the second choice is a bit more open. But how does this compare with the Mercy, Shadow, Elements, or Open Hand Monk's 3rd level features? I'd say it's not, like, profoundly less powerful, but I do think we might be hitting that "paying for the ability to choose" thing that worried me.

Level 6:

Celestial Tattoo gives you a new tattoo category, with three options, from which you choose one.

Comet: When you take the Search action (which covers most Wisdom skills, like Perception or Insight) you can expend 1 FP to roll your Martial Arts die and add the number to the check.

    Uh oh. Yeah, I know FP is easier to get back than Ki Points were in 2014, but this concerns me.

Eclipse: When you take the Hide action, you can expend 1 FP to roll your Martial Arts die and add the number to the Dexterity (Stealth) check.

    Yeah, this is a theme. Here, though, it's limited to a single skill.

Sunburst: When you take the Study action (i.e., most Intelligence checks) you can expend 1 FP to roll your Martial Arts die and add the number to the Intelligence check.

    You get it.

    Yeah, I think I hate these. You can't even choose to roll these after you've seen your initial roll, so sucks for you if you already rolled a natural 19 or something.

    As a tentative redesign, I might make it first that you get to see what you roll on the d20 before you commit the FP to boosting it. I would then probably also add in something like a Soulknife's Psi-Empowered Knack protection where the FP is only expended if this makes the check a success.

    But I still kind of don't like this. De-couple this from FP, maybe? I get that they want to give them a not-necessarily-combat ability. Couldn't we have one that boosts Influence actions? And what if this was just, like Wis times per long rest?

Level 11:

Nature Tattoo:

We get another tattoo list, this time themed on natural phenomena.

Sea Storm: You gain resistance to one of the following: Cold, Lightning, or Thunder damage. When you finish a short or long rest or use your Uncanny Metabolism feature, you can change this choice.

Volcano: Same idea except it's Acid, Fire, and Poison.

    I think you could just give all three all the time, just picking between one tattoo or the other. I don't think this is overpowered, in part because this subclass still hasn't gotten anything really powerful enough for me to want to play it. This is literally all you get at this level - effectively just one damage resistance at a time, with the privilege of being able to change which one if you can predict what kind of damage you're going to take.

Level 17:

Monster Tattoo:

Our last tattoo, we can pick out one themed on a classic D&D monster.

Beholder: At the start of your turn, you can expend 1 FP to gain a Fly speed equal to your speed for 10 minutes and can hover. Additionally, as a magic action, you can expend 1 FP to make four eye ray attacks with a range of 120 feet. You make a ranged spell attack for each ray (remember Wisdom is your spellcasting ability,) dealing damage equal to a roll of your Martial Arts die plus your Wisdom modifier on each hit.

    Ok, finally something cool. While spending the FP on the eye rays isn't as FP-efficient as attacking and then making a Flurry of Blows, as you'll be able to make 5 attacks after level 10 that way, it's more efficient than taking the Attack Action in action economy terms. You could potentially make 7 attacks in a turn if you spend an FP on this and Flurry of Blows, though just make sure you start at range and then close before your bonus action. The fly speed is fine, too.

Chromatic Dragon: When you take the attack action, you can expend 1 FP to replace one of your attacks with an exhalation of magical energy in a 30-foot cone. Creatures in the cone must make a Dex save, taking your choice of Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison damage equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die plus your Wisdom modifier, or half as much on a success.

    I get that Beholders have to fly to get around, but it feels cheap that the dragon tattoo doesn't also do that. The damage here isn't enormous - at level 20, assuming you maxed your Wisdom, we're talking 2d12+7, or around 20. But the fact that it's only replacing one attack does help, and a 30-foot cone is decent. Beholder seems better to me.

Displacer Beast: When you expend an FP to use Flurry of Blows or Step of the Wind, you can expend 1 FP to cast Mirror Image as part of that same bonus action.

    Mirror Image is better than it was in 2014, as it now only goes off if the attacker would have hit you, making it far better for high-AC characters. That said, waiting until level 17 for a 2nd level spell?

Troll: At the start of each of your turns, you regain HP equal to 5 plus your Wisdom modifier if you are bloodied and have at least 1 HP. Any severed body part regrows after you finish a short or long rest.

    Interestingly, this is a feature that will be very good in a lengthy dungeon crawl that really drains the party's health and resources. In combat, though, damage comes so fast that I don't know if will be all that impactful. Also, very few genuine game mechanics will sever a limb, so the regrowth is kind of a fun ribbon, but that's it.

    Personally, I think that some of these might work better if moved earlier. Let me get these monster tattoos at level... 6 or something. Sure, you might need to nerf one or two of them, but they're at least interesting.

Overall Thoughts:

Yes, my early concern feels validated. I think that when you look at all these features one after another, they look like a lot of cool things to have, but when you consider that you only get one from each list (ok, two from the first) it feels like the actual experience of playing this subclass will be constantly feeling like you should be getting more.

I think the tattoos could have cooler effects, but I also think it might be better to model this more like the Battle Master, where you just have one big pool of tattoos to choose from, and try to balance the options there.

I also feel like there's some obvious thing missing here, like the ability to summon forth or even transform into the shape of your tattoos, which the Monster Tattoos start to hint at

I know this was already a big redesign, but I think this version probably deserves to be scrapped too.