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Grynning
2016-07-11, 12:04 PM
Newest article on FMD is a monk path with a unique fighting styled inspired loosely by Polynesian martial arts:
http://forgotmydice.com/index.php/2016/07/11/way-of-the-shark/

Knaight
2016-07-11, 03:34 PM
I'm seeing some broken grappler possibilities. One With The Sea + Expertise (Athletics) can be reached as early as level 5, and can eventually yield a completely ludicrous +22 modifier, and that's before working in Champion Fighter. Apart from that, it looks solid. The concept in particular is seriously cool.

R.Shackleford
2016-07-11, 04:27 PM
Just have One With Sea give expertise in Strength (Athletics) checks.

Even with an 8 modifier in Stregth you will have a +11 to athletics.

You could also say that whenever you can make a Strength (Athletics) check you may instead make a Dexterity (Athletics) check.

This fits in with how the system actually does work. The skill system allows for skills to be used with different ability scores.

ravencroft0
2016-07-11, 04:56 PM
First, I'd like to say that the concept is awesome. I recommend everyone check out YouTube for, Grynning, correct me if I'm wrong, Lua fighting style, or Polynesian fighting style. When I first saw garrote as a monk weapon, I thought "????" It works.

Backgrounds: Shark monks abilities are strongly tied to athletics and intimidation. Athletics is a class skill but Intimidation isn't. I'd recommend the soldier background for this monk. Sailor fits the "way" description, but soldier is solid for class abilities. In your game your soldiers could be trained with boat fighting to mix sailor and soldier, which would be even better.

Teeth of the Shark: I would clarify that it ignores the resistance of bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Elemental or non-physical damage resistance wouldn't fit here, unless you're putting in a ki cost.

Ocean Hunter: "You have trained your body to be more like the shark’s, ... learning to use your ki to breathe water." The water breathing is cool but conditional. Water breathing is 3rd level spell that targets 10 creatures and is good for 24 hours. Ocean Hunter targets only self and is not a spell so much as it's a supernatural ability. It almost seems like it would need at least 1 ki, but this could go either way. Cool feature regardless.

War Dancer: Intimidation is not a monk skill, and unless you take a certain background, this feature isn't going to give you the mileage you'd want. I get why this feature is here, but being able to apply your wisdom bonus to a skill with a dump ability seems... meh. I feel like this should be a toned down version of the dragon's frightful presence instead. YMMV.
"Your choice of a maximum amount of creatures within sight equal to your Wisdom modifier must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw become frightened for 1 minute.

Frightful Presence DC = 8 + your Wisdom modifier + your proficiency bonus
A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is a success or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to your frightful presence for the next 24 hours.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest."

Shark Jaw Grip: I would include a ki cost to prevent magical escape, "magic to fight magic."

Great build. The name could be a little more esoteric, but great build.

Grynning
2016-07-12, 09:52 AM
First, I'd like to say that the concept is awesome. I recommend everyone check out YouTube for, Grynning, correct me if I'm wrong, Lua fighting style, or Polynesian fighting style. When I first saw garrote as a monk weapon, I thought "????" It works.

Backgrounds: Shark monks abilities are strongly tied to athletics and intimidation. Athletics is a class skill but Intimidation isn't. I'd recommend the soldier background for this monk. Sailor fits the "way" description, but soldier is solid for class abilities. In your game your soldiers could be trained with boat fighting to mix sailor and soldier, which would be even better.

Teeth of the Shark: I would clarify that it ignores the resistance of bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Elemental or non-physical damage resistance wouldn't fit here, unless you're putting in a ki cost.

Ocean Hunter: "You have trained your body to be more like the shark’s, ... learning to use your ki to breathe water." The water breathing is cool but conditional. Water breathing is 3rd level spell that targets 10 creatures and is good for 24 hours. Ocean Hunter targets only self and is not a spell so much as it's a supernatural ability. It almost seems like it would need at least 1 ki, but this could go either way. Cool feature regardless.

War Dancer: Intimidation is not a monk skill, and unless you take a certain background, this feature isn't going to give you the mileage you'd want. I get why this feature is here, but being able to apply your wisdom bonus to a skill with a dump ability seems... meh. I feel like this should be a toned down version of the dragon's frightful presence instead. YMMV.
"Your choice of a maximum amount of creatures within sight equal to your Wisdom modifier must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw become frightened for 1 minute.

Frightful Presence DC = 8 + your Wisdom modifier + your proficiency bonus
A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is a success or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to your frightful presence for the next 24 hours.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest."

Shark Jaw Grip: I would include a ki cost to prevent magical escape, "magic to fight magic."

Great build. The name could be a little more esoteric, but great build.

Glad you like the references to Lua. I've always thought it was a cool martial art.

On the damage resistance thing - outside of multiclassing and magic items, the monk doesn't really have ways to deal other types of damage, and if it comes up...I'm kinda fine with it, honestly. Not everything has to have a rock-solid flavor explanation in D&D. I am going to add a line that clarifies that it's with unarmed strikes or monk weapons though, since that was the intent.

The water breathing is unlimited just because it is so situational. You can see similarities with other abilities monks get like not aging, not eating and drinking, speaking all languages, etc.

On war dancer - I gave them Wis to intimidate to make up for the fact that most monks will dump Cha; and it will reward builds that find a way to be proficient, and won't really matter to those that don't. The frightful presence thing you suggest is a toned down version of the fear spell; the ability to cast fear seemed right to me as the other monk paths with spell equivalents can cast level 3 spells by level 11. It's kinda six of one, half dozen of the other in my opinion.

Adding a ki spend to enhance grapples is a good idea, I may play with that and revise it. And yeah, I had trouble thinking of a good name. I didn't want to use a Hawaiian name because my knowledge of the culture and language isn't sufficient to do so in a respectful way IMO.

As to the issue of adding Dex to grapple - I played with other versions similar to what you guys are suggesting, and here's why I went with what I did. One, grappling is seriously under-represented in 5E right now, and I wanted to really incentivize using it. Second, I wanted to reward actually having a high strength score on a Monk, since right now many monk builds will dump it. So, basically, I still wanted the grappling to be at it's core a Strength check, but not punish a Monk player who didn't put much in strength at low levels and then decided to take the path later (because they just discovered it existed, basically). All of the shenanigans mentioned require multiclassing and having multiple high attributes (if you're maxing both strength and dex your Wis and Con will suffer, and monks need those as well), so I don't consider them to be a particular worry. *edit* - not getting shark jaw grip will also cause major fall off at high levels as well, since the advantage and negating FoM effects is kinda what allows this to stay viable against high-CR monsters.
If you want to use this and seriously don't like that though, I suppose you could replace that ability with Expertise: Athletics as someone suggested (which will actually end up adding much more on its own, but won't stack with Expertise from other sources).

Edit - I have updated the blog post. The capstone has been changed (it now requires Ki, but also allows grappling larger foes), and there is now an addendum about adjusting the Athletics ability.

Grynning
2016-07-12, 10:44 AM
...that's before working in Champion Fighter...
I remembered Remarkable Athlete only adds to things you aren't proficient in, so there's no way it could add to the final grapple modifier if you also dip Rogue for expertise. Action Surge is good enough that I can see people multiclassing Rogue 1/Fighter 2 with this character a lot, but honestly...I don't see much reason not to do that on a Monk anyways if you're going all 20 levels in a campaign.