Experiences Playtesting The New Monk

It's Better. How Much Better Depends On How Your DM Structures Fights.

At the start of the promo video for the monk,Jeremy Crawford said “the monk and the ranger are basically new classes.” Unlike the ranger’s heavy emphasis on hunter’s mark, which wasn’t in any public Unearthed Arcana test., we’ve been able to playtest this version of a monk for a while. Most of the new features discussed this week were in the later playtest for monks. 

Since I playtested this monk as a DM, I wanted to give my impressions of the changes based on the specifics in the playtest document. Of course, details may change in the final Player’s Handbook. But first, let’s talk about the two big things in the monk that needed change.

Why Monks Were Frustrating

First, a monk who runs out of ki (or decides not to use it) was hands down the weakest class in the 2014 PHB. They have offense than a fighter, paladin, or other martial class (except maybe at very low levels). Less durability than other martials. No spells. No bonus skills. 

To illustrate the problem take some level 10 monks, who have 10 focus points (the new name for ki).

If we’ve got a dungeon crawling adventuring day from Venca: Eve of Ruin with 9 fights in the first dungeon and no long rest, the monk is limited to around two focus points per fight if they get a short rest. If we’ve got an adventure from a heroic fantasy model of three fights per day, that’s five focus points for each fo the first two fights, a short rest, and a full set of focus points for the big fight of the day.

A 2014 monk in a heroic fantasy style of campaign could run out of ki. In a traditional dungeon crawl day like Vecna: Eve of Ruin they will either run out of ki or have to shut down their use early to save some for a boss fight.

I don’t think there’s any other class in 5th Edition that plays so differently based on how combats are structured in an adventuring day. Warlocks come close, but invocations give benefits like Agonizing Blast or Thirsting Blade that work all day.

Second, there were many games (particularly in the heroic fantasy style) where the monk didn’t necessarily run out of ki, so they started to expect to spam Stunning Strike at high level. This led to situations where the DM couldn’t do the boss fight they wanted or the monk was frustrated that their stuns failed.

Third, the monk was quite impacted on Bonus Actions. Their basic ki abilities gave either an attack, dash, disengage, or dodge as a bonus action. You can’t do all of them at once!

Now let’s talk about what the new monk gets.

More Focus Points

The new monk will get an ability to regain all their focus points when they enter initiative once per day. This is quite welcome, particularly for those dungeon crawls. In a heroic fantasy style of 2-3 fights per day, ki was still a limited resource. If a 2024 monk wants to use Stunning Strike every round along with Flurry of Blows or reflecting attacks they deflect back on an enemy, they will still blow through their focus points. Monks who are more measured to one focus point per round will proably be fine with some room to use more.

As someone who has played more warlock than monk, and never got short rests in that campaign, it stands out that the monk gets a full solution to the DM who won’t give short rests. The bard is getting a full solution by potentially spending spell slots to use more Bardic Inspiration. We have a good and consistent philosophy for two of teh other classes most dependent on short rests. But the warlock only gets half their spell slots back? This feels inconsistent, and isn’t the only thing.

Limiting Stuns

As a DM who had faced a lot of stun spamming monks, I wanted stunning strike to be limited to once per round and the monk to get other buffs to feel like a well rounded class instead of a stun bot. I think this has been achieved.

Improved Defenses

What stood out to me the most as a DM for the new monk was their improved defenses. At level 3, they can deflect any attack that does bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, reducing the damage by 1d10 + their monk level + their Dexterity modifier. On average, this is 11.5 damage mitigated every round when the monk gets the feature and only goes up.

Before getting into a deeper analysis, there’s a pair of big unknowns to this feature. First, what happens if a monster does some physical and some other damage type? For example, earlier this week I used a Hands of Havoc Firestarter from Planescape that does 1d8+3 bludgenoing damage and 2d8 fire damage. Does the physical damage still get mitigated? Second, WotC has been moving to more and more monsters not doing physical damage. How much will this trend continue?

At level 13 the monk can deflect all damage types and these questions are moot.

When we playtested this, the monk player and I disagreed on how strong this feature was. We agreed that it largely canceled out one attack per round, but just how valuable is that?

Higher Threat Heroic Fantasy: New Defenses Will Not Save You

In our games, the level 9 monk frequently won initiative and charged into battle because the monk has to be in melee. Then he used 1 focus point Patient Defense and Deflect Attack to try and survive.

The party was in a castle overrun by custom CR 3-4 gnolls and other demons so there were often 5 enemies in a room. The basic custom gnoll striker made 3 attacks a round to try and pin a target into their ground, restraining them with a spiked flail (inspired by Flee! Monsters), but only doing minor damage to unrestrained targets before they tried to bite.

These gnolls had +7 to hit in their cursed castle until the curse was lifted, so they’d hit the 17 AC monk 55% the time, or around 30.25% of the time with Patient Defense. Still, if there are 9 attacks coming in, one of them will hit and get deflected. I ruled that if the attack is deflected, the restraining doesn’t happen. But the monk probably gets hit a second time out of 9 attacks and restrained until the gnoll making the atack is killed or the grapple and restraint is escaped as an action.

In a higher threat game like mine with a few bigger fights per long rest, the monk can easily get into trouble in one of those fights even with their enhanced defenses and playing defensively. Alternatively, the monk can go full offense and get squished, or not rush in to the room and not be able to take advantage of winning initiative. My player said it felt like a bit of a no win situation in our game. Then again, regardless of character class, attempts to rush in and skirmish or set up stealthy ambushes have rarely gone well for them.

WotC Adventures: Bonus Action Dodge Goes A Long Way, But Costs Add Up

Now let’s look at some fights from the first chapter of Vecna: Eve of Ruin. Five wights? Similar number of monsters, but a wight only has +4 to hit. There’s only a 16% chance to roll 13 or higher on 2d20s, which is what a wight needs to hit this dodging monk. If there were six wight attacks, on average 1 hits. The monk deflects it for 0 damage unless it is a life drain. Wraiths only hit 25 percent of the time and only make 1 attack per round each, but their damage can’t be mitigated. The lonely sorrowsworn at the end of the chapter hits out dodging monk 30.25% of the time as well, for an average of 21 damage on its sole attack, which the monk cuts by 1d10+14 damage if it hits.

Because WotC adventure books tend to use a small number of monsters or many weak monsters in a dungeon room, and they tend to have relatively poor to-hit modifiers in their use of bounded accuracy, a patiently dodging monk can avoid many hits and often deflect what does get through unless it’s non-physical damage.

Assessment

Whether this combination of a monk being able to Dodge and deflect an attack every turn until your focus runs out will be appropriate depends significantly on how encounters are designed in your game. In a game like mine, the monk’s defenses still won’t seem that impressive. Other frontliners have some degree of magic armor to be at AC 21 or 18 + the shield spell on an eldritch knight or a barbarian’s bigger hit point pool and damage reduction. Negating one hit isn’t always enough. Since I use more accurate monsters, Dodge isn’t as impactful.

In a game envisioned by WotC adventure books, the monk could easily have too many defenses against physical attacks if they are patient.

I’m not a fan of class abilities that can give the DM the feeling that it is impossible to whittle down a PC’s hit points. DMs are human and our fun matters too. When a DM learns they need very lucky rolls to hit a PC, some get very frustrated. Think about feeling like you hit someone, then “the bard says I cast silvery barbs, roll again” and the hit becomes a miss. Deflecting an attack and reducing it to 0 damage can have similar table psychology and happen every round.

DMs frustrated by a high defense characters tend to start ignoring that PC and attacking the most vulnerable PCs or turn to effects that can incapacitate characters, which have their whole host of issues. I think Deflect Attacks is going to cause problems, particularly for DMs who run combat as WotC designs it in their adventure books and get frustrated by characters with obviously powerful defenses.

Every class, even tanks, should have a weakness. Barbarians and fighters have poor mental saving throws. Paladins get good saving throws and heavy armor but have to be in melee so they get hit. At level 14 monks get good saving throws, the ability to negate one attack per turn, and the ability to make two or three attacks while they dodge. In a game that doesn’t give the paladin magical armor or a magical shield to boost their AC well beyond Unarmored Defense, the monk can dodge as an action to be more defensive as the paladin, then spend 1 focus point to flurry of blows and do around as much damage as the smite once per round paladin.

That Level 20 Monk 

The monk got way too defensive for my tastes in my level 20 playtest. Since this was a one shot, and there’s only so much fighting you can do in four hours at level 20, the monk always had focus points to activate Superior Defense and get resistance to all damage. Between that and the ability to deflect 1d10+27 damage from an attack roll per round, the monk effectively had over 500 hit points. Resisting all damage and getting 24 Dexterity instead of Strength to go first in initiative steps all over the Barbarian’s party role.

Dealing with this monk was far more frustrating than dealing with any level 20 moon druid I’ve had at my games. However, the moon druid has never been intimidating in the handful of times I DMed for it. Sure it’s got tons of hit points, but their spell options about 5th level are so weak that they tend to be the least impactful of “optimized” characters in my level 20 high magic item games. Limiting the moon druid but allowing Superior Defense suggests the design team’s idea of high level play is so different than anything I do at conventions.

Clearer Bonus Action Attacks

Being able to make a bonus action Unarmed Strike to attack without having to have had to use the Attack action was very useful. The monk could do any number of bespoke actions and then still attack without having to spend resources. However, this got weird at level 10 when the monk used his main action to Dodge instead of making two attacks, then used his bonus action to make three attacks as a bonus action with Flurry of Blows instead of Patient Defense. 

The change to martial arts also means my druid with one level of monk can cast spells, then try to punch an enemy in the groin. In many fights, Patch’s basic turn is to cast primal savagery, make a bonus action unarmed strike, then try to blast the target with the Sea Druid’s core ability. It’s balanced because my Patch then has to end in melee range where monsters with big clubs can smack him around.

Using Unarmed Strike to try and grapple was a complete failure because it was done in a ruleset that made PC grapple attempts a saving throw for the target. This rule change makes it much harder to grapple many targets. It was usually a wasted action. Don’t use that rule. The earlier playtest rule to make grappling attempts an attack roll was a much more reasonable way to deal with the problem of some PCs being way too good at grappling.

Heavily Impacted Bonus Actions

Now that the monk can Dash or Disengage without spending focus points, there is more constraint on their bonus actions. There’s always a choice of making an additional attack (if not many with Flurry of Blows) versus doing other things. More abilities are good but this can slow down play for the monk, forcing decisions every turn.

In the playtest, we feared that several subclasses had high level abilities that enhanced Step of the Wind, which would come at the expense of 1 bonus action attack or three with Flurry of Blows. With the sacrifice of the majority of your attacks at high level, this felt like it wasn’t really a choice.

Shadow Monk vs. The World

As a convention DM, there are two things I hate the most at my table: a warlock who wants to use darkness with devil’s sight and someone carrying a staff of swarming insects. Both of these create a sphere of heavy obscurement that the character using them can see through, but no one else in the party can. While the player creating darkness has a fun time, none of the spellcasters in the party can see monsters in the darkness to target them with spells. There is always confusion at the table where other players get stuck, unsure of what they can do.

At best, the person creating darkness gets to have their own little mini combat and stay away from the rest of the party. At worst, others at the table start yelling at the person creating the darkness, who doesn’t care about how they hurt the rest of the party. It’s a coin flip which will happen. I’ve never seen anything cause as much strife between players at a table. Every one of these games has had rooms that are much wider than the narrow dungeons of a WotC adventure book. In one of their books, screwing over the rest of the party is inevitable.

I don’t want to DM for or play with a shadow monk. Period. It says a lot that Todd Kenrick talked in the video about how much he liked shadow monks as soon as they came up and ended by talking about how he wants to see the shadow monk in a PvP game, the getting wanted that D&D isn’t a PvP game. That’s how I see this shadow monk ability. It screws over the rest of the party that is can feel like PvP.

The shadow monk was the first of several announcements this week where it felt like the design team had a clear philosophy of “focus on what will make the player of this class or subclass happy and ignore how much it could negatively impact others at the table or the DM. Particularly the DM.¹

There’s a chance that if the shadow monk keeps the darkvision spell, they can help allies see through their darkness. But this would trivialize fights and be unfair for the DM who gets rolled over.

Other Features

Increasing the martial arts die isn’t as big of a boost as it seems. Any monk could attack with a weapon doing d8s of damage, so this is just two more damage per turn until level 10 with Flurry of Blows. It’s an increase of 5 damage per turn with Flurry of Blows at level 11 and higher. When my fomorians have 184 or more hit points at level 11, that 5 damage is certainly appreciated but not game breaking.

The ability to redirect attacks after reducing incoming damage to 0 felt like a focus point drain in the playtest and was barely used.

Changing the monk’s ability to end a charm to automatically happen at the end of their turn helped resolve a narrative issue: if I’m charmed, can I have the control to end that charm?

1. I have been at many tables where we had to tell the wild magic sorcerer to chill out and not get wild magic for a while. The new Divine Intervention allowing free raise dead is horrible for some games and puts DMs in a compromising position. The College of Dance bard’s boost to initiative can be way too powerful in a game where DMs roll initiative in the open and can’t fudge initiative rolls to enforce balance.