So Monk is the one class we didn’t get a prior UA for, which means all the changes are totally new. I’m still wrapping my head around it. Martial Arts die increase: good. Martial Arts die not affecting weapons: bad. Step of the Wind buff: good. Stunning Strike nerf: bad but reasonable?
I feel like they knew Monks needed help, but it doesn’t really seem like they made as much effort to fix that as I think they really needed to. Anything I might be missing that saves the Class here?
The flying ability is pretty sick, I’ll admit. The thing is abilities above 10th level are realistically hardly gonna get used, since most games don’t go that high, and even if they do they’re probably close to ending. I do think the high level abilities of the Elemental Monk are cool, but the lower ones look worse to me than of the other subclasses.
I do think Shadow looks pretty great now.
Yeah, high level abilities are always dicey to talk about due to no one ever really using them.
That said, I do think both the shadow monk and elemental have had a significant boost compared to 2014 phb. Also, they fixed the shadow monk being unable to see through their own darkness, which was always my biggest issue with it.
I guess I’m disappointed with them turning Four Elements, which was flavorful and interesting but seriously undertuned, into a pretty generic-looking Monk subclass that isn’t really doing anything new or unique, even if it is stronger. Just isn’t how I would have liked it to be handled, really. There are a lot of cool homebrew reworks of the subclass that are balanced and still interesting.