The most common homebrew changes I’ve seen people make for monks is making things like ki = level + wisdom, hightening their damage die on each step (D4 to D6, D6 to D8, etc.) and, to a lesser extend, raising their hit die to a d10.
For people who have done all or at least two of these changes at once or have experienced another player do that, how did it go? I’m genuinely curious!
What I did for my monk’s is that they have a ki point pool equal to their monk level times their proficiency bonus. Not only that, when they flurry of blows, they can strike their targets a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus.
Now pair that with the fact that I give all my players the ability to take another action or bonus action on their turns and you get some crazy stuff. By level 5, the monk would have 15 ki points, can attack twice with extra attack, 3 attacks with flurry of blows, and then 3 more attacks if they choose to do so again. And I recently gave the party the formula to make gloves of soul catching.
It’s a lot of fun!
My group tried buffing monk, including some of your ideas.
Our conclusion was, that no matter how you buff them, there are some fundamental problems with 5e that monks bad to play. Monk is the tip of the iceberg, and until you address larger issues, monk will never feel great to play.
elaborate please?
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movement is pretty irrelevant. after you get to your target you are done, no need to do drifts in the battlefield
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disregarding ki being a problem with the assumption the +WIS fix helped, the actual uses for it are not very great
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lack of martial options for battlefield control. if there is more than 1 enemy you are kinda out of your league
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lack of monk magic items (and proper codified GM advice on distributing them that is beyond a lil rarity that doesnt help)
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the entire existance of spells
along others
they get +x to hit and to damage and magical unarmed strikes with uncommon/rare/very rare versions now.
(wrappers from book of many things, or insignia of claws from another book that has been out a while)
that’s a good start, bc it lets you up your dmg just like other martials who get +1 wpns in tier 1 already.
there’s the dragonhide belts that add Ki points and up the DC of monk features, bracers of defense, boots of springing and striding… ring of walter walking (who wants to wait until 8th lvl anyways?!)
I don’t think there’s really a lack of magic items for monks. sure, heavily depends on the DM, but don’t most things??
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If you’re looking into this I strongly suggest you look through Laserllama’s homebrews and, more precisely, his Alternate Monk. It’s a good approach for monk, vastly playtested and more interesting than the traditional one
Thanks for the shout out! If anyone wants to checkout the class you can find it here - The Alternate Monk
Always open to feedback!