I legit chose touch of the fey for my feat and had tashad horrid laughter as my enchantment spell for it

Mage hand but more angry... Thasha's mage fist

The issue here is that both disengage and flurry of blows compete for your bonus action, and flurry of blows requires that initial attack standard action. It also doesn't help that Step of the Wind uses Ki too so it also competes for resources. Since the Monk's unarmed attacks aren't very strong for the majority of it's career it relies on that Flurry of Blows to actually do relevant damage. Basically you either have to choose to stay and tank for bellow average damage while using a resource, or zip in and out to do pitiful damage while also using a resource. Basically their mobility is hampered by the fact that using it often undermines the classes' ability to function as a striker.

@@Tomeroche yeah the main issue of monk is how everything works off of ki when so many classes get to do half the shit monks do for free, coughcoughroguecough the main class's issues are alleviated by taking a bunch of the base class's abilities off of ki and if you really want to "balance" it, just slap on a condition that it's free if you have at least one single ki point. but also perfect self is a very stupid ability that frankly should have been an ability five to ten levels ago. something that boosts your dex and wisdom like the barbarian gets for strength and constitution would have more than sufficed, and maybe making fury of blows free. finally monks really should get martial arts' bonus action attack and fury of blows regardless of whether you've attacked that turn but restrict it to unarmed attacks. also it is rather odd that monks use dex instead of strength, look at real martial art monks and you'll see why, and if we're sticking to it, might as well allow them to make athletics checks and grapples with dex. Or allow monks to use STR + WIS for their AC instead of DEX. The monk's unarmed attack die should START at a d6 like how the unarmed fighters do, and finally the monk should get an ability that regens ki faster than a short rest but make it limited. There's also some math showing that just giving early monks an extra static number of ki points it helps them at early levels then becomes irrelevant if just a bit more convenient at higher levels, WIS modifier sounds like a good use, plus it helps cover the cost of the Astral Self, the main gimmick of the subclass that has to share a resource pool with everything else the monk gets. so tl;dr, if we keep ki numbers as-is, make it only used by a couple of base monk abilities and free up usage for the subclasses. and you should do this anyway and either fix ki regen or give them some more ki at early levels.

So if astral self is jojo and sun soul is dragon ball, I wonder if any of the other subclasses have some sort of anime references in them.

​@@user-hs1xb9tv6eMercy Monk(The only good Monk in my oppinion) is Fist of the North Star Since the whole Healing Touch and also Death Touch

@@user-hs1xb9tv6e way of the four elements is an avatar reference

Coolest of beans

Isn't that litterly whitesnake from jjba

At that point it’s persona

That's just D4C

😂 The comment scroll was worth it for this comment alone

Damnit

JOKES ON YOU THERE IS AN ACTUAL CARACTER THAT SCREAM ARA ARA ARA INSTEAD OF ORA ORA ORA AND IS A MALE... a very gay one with memory problems

Dont forget to make her a mother so you have a Milf

booooo

As someone who hasn't fully committed to JoJo, This is the best "You Might Be A . . " Vid cause those references were the world lmao

​@@johnfranklin87 they were out of this ZA WARUDO

Let's be fair, considering the subclass ties with echo knight as being 'so you want to be a stand user?' for it's usual bs, if he didn't, it would be a wasted opportunity.

I'm actually doing a pirate build based off this very idea except a tabaxi

A fellow monk enjoyer, I see.

Guess what? You might be a jojo reference

Nice combo for dropping enemies onto other enemies from above :D Dont forget to take Expert feat to get Expertise in Athletic and cap wisdom to make enemies unable to leave your grapple! Great defensive layer due to most enemies have only 5ft reach!

I've played for a while but I don't get the devil fruit reference, what is it?

@dilans.5831 it's like Cursed Fruits or something. I don't remember the actual name of it but it's in the DM World Items segment of Tasha's, where you eat one and get something off a table of results that last 8 hours to a day.

dope

I agree with most of your comment, but there's a few things I like to add. MAD is basically one half a stunning strike problem, the other half an AC one. Astral Self *mostly* fixes the former at a small cost. However, even if Astral Self makes Stunning Strike better, casters have an immeasurable action economy advantage when it comes to control. This isn't just a Wall of Force problem, this is a Web problem. Spell slots might be shorter in supply, but their DC is higher (unless astral self) and they can target different saves without needing to hit with an attack roll first, the effects can target multiple enemies, often last multiple rounds, and spells can be fired off at range. Stunning Strike comes online at 5th level where it is already painfully outclassed. Then there's equipment. Gunks are indeed neat. Monks do very well with bows/guns + sharpshooter, particularly with TCE and an archery dip. However, this forgoes most of martial arts and stunning strike becomes not only even less reliable due to the feat tax, the same feat tax also kicks your AC in the balls. Still, the gunk makes excellent use of unarmored movement and its upgrades, which is really fun. In melee, it is a different story. Monks can't cast spells to augment their attacks and don't have features like smite and sneak attack. Fighters and barbarians have the same limitations, but they can use heavy weapons. When the monk does so, either they'll have awful AC because they need to invest into strength, or they wear armour and forgo martial arts and unarmored movement. Focused aim can make the latter ok, but at that point just play a barbarian for reckless attack. Also skirmishing in melee is a trap because everything has attacks of opportunity. Either you pray your enemy fails their con save on stunning strike, or you spend ki and a bonus action, or you take mobile, or you're not skirmishing at all. Also, if an enemy can't target you, they're just going to hit the barbarian. At that point you have to wonder, what party is more likely to win and survive a fight? One with a barbarian and a melee monk, or one with 2 barbarians? There's a few funky ways to play a monk effectively. Besides the Gunk, Mercy is honestly pretty neat just by itself. vHuman mercy monk with crusher is a fun support build with the right party. A tortle monk can afford to go stronk and dip barbarian for rage, reckless and a subclass. etc. You're also absolutely right in that a good DM can design their adventures around the monk's strengths (particularly their insane and mostly free movement). But overall, I do hope onednd ends up giving monks some love because they got it pretty rough in 5e.

@@bijnahonderdeuro very good response. i agree with your criticisms as well and mostly i just didn't wanna dig too deep into em.

This. Flurry of Blows Costa ki. Step of the wind costs ki. Literally the 2 things your Monk is supposed to do leaves you handicapped. Can't do any real damage without being stuck in place. Can't disengage with giving the enemy a little love tap

Pretty much, it's also hurt by a few errata that gave everyone 1d4 unarmed damage and unarmed proficiency which made their Martial Arts feature much less meaningful in the starting levels. It also doesn't combine with any natural weapon features. Probably the biggest kneecap to the monk was how it's made for mobility but it's only way to use said mobility is to give up Flurry of Blows for the turn (both use the bonus action). So they have to choose between just staying in melee but doing decent damage, or trying to move around the battle field but only doing pitiful damage. So much of the monk's frustration comes from how much parts of it compete with itself.

You mean like throwing fireballs (Dragonball) or teleporting through shadows (Nightcrawler)?

dont forget about the way of the four elements and the drunken fist either. media references in your dnd? more likely than you think

@@pl412 Fair, sometimes you do in fact just have to be the Avatar. But I'll give drunken master a pass because the martial art does technically exist independent of Jackie Chan in pop culture.

Astral Self sounds fun until you actually play it. Yes, only thing monk need is even more bonus action and ki starvation