Unearthed Arcana: Monk & Barbarian

[Reevh]

As it’s written, and maybe I’m reading it wrong.... (PLEASE correct me!)

But strictly as written, I don’t think you can Flurry with the Astral Arms.

Also, while they’re called Monk weapons, and again reading STRICTLY RAW, I don’t think it works with Stunning Strike. That requires a melee weapon attack.

I believe the intent is fairly clear that it should work with Stunning Strike but I’m not positing about Flurry.

It seems clear to me that they don't work with Flurry, since you have to use a bonus action for the bonus astral arms attacks. Though I suppose you could attack with your astral arms, and then if in melee, spend the ki point to use your flurry of blows. But that's spending a ki point to use a feature that's worse than your astral arms feature gives you for free. I suppose it could let you do stunning strikes...

[Reevh]

I believe all THP expire with a rest, no?

Long rest, yes, unless otherwise specified by the feature that grants them.

[jaappleton]

It seems clear to me that they don't work with Flurry, since you have to use a bonus action for the bonus astral arms attacks. Though I suppose you could attack with your astral arms, and then if in melee, spend the ki point to use your flurry of blows. But that's spending a ki point to use a feature that's worse than your astral arms feature gives you for free. I suppose it could let you do stunning strikes...

Well, its also a bonus action to use martial arts bonus action attack. So the fact that two features compete for bonus actions is absolutely nothing at all new for a Monk, they have so many uses for reaction, bonus action, etc that its ridiculous. One more thing being possible with a BA is nothing out of the ordinary. I don't THINK you can Flurry with them, but I want that clarified is all.

The Stunning Strike thing is... Quite a bit more murky to me. They got a lot of flak for Sun Soul's radiant sun bolt not being able to be used to strike.

[Sahe]

At level 3 they get an ability that for 10 minutes gives you wisdom based, 10 foot reach, radiant damage martial attacks that scales with character level up to giving 2 attacks at level 3, 3 at 11 and 4 at 17.

It is radiant unarmed eldritch blast as a class feature.

Sorry mr fighter anyone with 3 levels of monk gets 4 attacks before you do.

Here mr cleric have a super holy beat down unarmed attacks, wisdom to hit, damage, and ac along with a few other goodies for 3 levels of monk.

Damage types don't usually matter that much, especially pre level 6 when Monks get Magic Fists.

In terms of number of Attacks the Astral Monk pulls ahead of the normal Monk by Level 11 (before that they already can BA Attack with their Unarmed Attacks thanks to Martial Arts)

It's not nearly as strong as you make it out to be. Essentially all you gain is Reach and Wisdom for Strength stuff for 10 mins. It get's strong come level 11. But even then. At that point your Fighter has nice magical weapons and armor and get's 3 Attacks for an Action (Astral Monk has 4 for a greater expense of an Action and BA)

[Fnissalot]

Damage types don't usually matter that much, especially pre level 6 when Monks get Magic Fists.

In terms of number of Attacks the Astral Monk pulls ahead of the normal Monk by Level 11 (before that they already can BA Attack with their Unarmed Attacks thanks to Martial Arts)

It's not nearly as strong as you make it out to be. Essentially all you gain is Reach and Wisdom for Strength stuff for 10 mins. It get's strong come level 11. But even then. At that point your Fighter has nice magical weapons and armor and get's 3 Attacks for an Action (Astral Monk has 4 for a greater expense of an Action and BA)

At 3rd level you can only use it once for 10 min per short rest and then you only have 1 ki left. You won't be able to use it every combat and in the other combats you will have not optimal attributes to do pretty much anything.

Edit. corrected statement on usage

[Misterwhisper]

At 3rd level you can only use it once per short rest and then you only have 1 ki left. You won't be able to use it every combat and in the other combats you will have not optimal attributes to do pretty much anything.

It lasts 10 mins.

And you get ki back I. A short rest. Not that big of a deal.

As someone mentioned earlier, no you can’t flurry with the arms, but you can with your own.

It is like the ba martial arts attack, not like flurry.

[jaappleton]

It lasts 10 mins.

And you get ki back I. A short rest. Not that big of a deal.

As someone mentioned earlier, no you can’t flurry with the arms, but you can with your own.

It is like the ba martial arts attack, not like flurry.

Do you believe the intent is to be able to Stun with it?

[Fnissalot]

It lasts 10 mins.

And you get ki back I. A short rest. Not that big of a deal.

As someone mentioned earlier, no you can’t flurry with the arms, but you can with your own.

It is like the ba martial arts attack, not like flurry.

But how often are multiple fights within 10 minutes of each other. You probably won't have it in every fight.

[Misterwhisper]

Damage types don't usually matter that much, especially pre level 6 when Monks get Magic Fists.

In terms of number of Attacks the Astral Monk pulls ahead of the normal Monk by Level 11 (before that they already can BA Attack with their Unarmed Attacks thanks to Martial Arts)

It's not nearly as strong as you make it out to be. Essentially all you gain is Reach and Wisdom for Strength stuff for 10 mins. It get's strong come level 11. But even then. At that point your Fighter has nice magical weapons and armor and get's 3 Attacks for an Action (Astral Monk has 4 for a greater expense of an Action and BA)

There is a big difference between magical bludgeoning and radiant damage.

Radiant damage is resisted by like 2 maybe 3 things.

Magic bludgeoning is resisted by anything that rages and multiple monsters.

[Misterwhisper]

Do you believe the intent is to be able to Stun with it?

They are monk weapons, so sure you could stunning strike with it.

[stoutstien]

How bad would it be to allow the wild soul to control the flumph spirits? By my reading the aoes don't stack so it a 4 weak ones so I can't see it hurting.
Also I think they either need to scale with lv or add an ablity of control over them at some point. Maybe at lv 10 they can roll twice on the table and pick one.

Further thoughts on the spell recharge I believe it could be handled the same. Roll 2d4 pick one vs upgrading to d6. Combined with a limit of some sort like x times per LR or once target per LR this could be a a really fun option with just a little bit of tinkering.

[Fnissalot]

They are monk weapons, so sure you could stunning strike with it.

Monks can stunning strike with non-monk weapons. The question is if they count as melee weapon attacks.

[Misterwhisper]

Monks can stunning strike with non-monk weapons. The question is if they count as melee weapon attacks.

Don’t know why they wouldn’t they are weapons with a 10 foot reach that are essentially attached to you.

Same as an unarmed strike really.

[jaappleton]

Don’t know why they wouldn’t they are weapons with a 10 foot reach that are essentially attached to you.

Same as an unarmed strike really.

I agree the intent is pretty obvious.

But I’m sure you agree: It’s always best to be sure with UA.

[NaughtyTiger]

that monk is waaaay overpowered. geez. every feature feels like it was written by a group 12 year old kids.

[jaappleton]

Dan Dillon, newest WOTC staff member, confirmed to me that the Astral Arms are absolutely melee weapons and the next draft of this will explicitly state that.

So Stunning Strike is a full go.

Will report back on the Flurry topic if I hear anything.

[Reevh]

Wow, that means you can, like, add Holy Weapon to them, for instance. 2d8 extra radiant damage on 6 attacks.

6*(5.5(1d10 Astral Arms)+5(WIS mod)+9(2d8 Holy Weapon))+5.5(Extra Astral damage once per turn)=122.5 average damage if it all hits. And it's radiant damage, and isn't based on a major cooldown like Action Surge.

[ThePolarBear]

Will report back on the Flurry topic if I hear anything.

If those are weapons, you can't make unarmed attacks with them. The issue solves itself.

[Misterwhisper]

If those are weapons, you can't make unarmed attacks with them. The issue solves itself.

That is why it comes with its own version of bonus action attacks.

Ex.

At 5.

You could attack with spectral arm x2 normally and bonus action attack with them as their own ability

Or

You attack with them normally x2 and then spend a ki to flurry with your own unarmed attacks but might have to move into range.

At 11

2 normal and 2 as bonus with spectral arms.

You can stunning strike with any of them.


Still one of the biggest issues with monks is total lack of magic weapons for unarmed, lack of feat support, not that many monks can squeeze in a feat anyway, and almost nothing for magical armor.

There are no +1,2,3 gloves, cestus, knuckledusters or whatever to boost your to hit like everyone else can get. That is a pretty big issue

[Trickery]

Dan Dillon, newest WOTC staff member, confirmed to me that the Astral Arms are absolutely melee weapons and the next draft of this will explicitly state that.

So Stunning Strike is a full go.

Will report back on the Flurry topic if I hear anything.

If they're weapons, can we Blade Pact / Hexblade them? Hexblade 3 could make this archetype...silly.

[Misterwhisper]

If they're weapons, can we Blade Pact / Hexblade them? Hexblade 3 could make this archetype...silly.

They are not manufactured weapons they are more like natural weapons.

That would be like having a T-Rex bite as a summoned weapon.

[Fnissalot]

If they're weapons, can we Blade Pact / Hexblade them? Hexblade 3 could make this archetype...silly.

Aside from MAD, you cannot make it to a blade pact as you can only have it out for 10 min and you need 60 to create the bond.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

They are not manufactured weapons they are more like natural weapons.

That would be like having a T-Rex bite as a summoned weapon.

Just gonna be honest, not seeing a problem here outside of damage scaling.

Simce it's summoned you could cap it at 1d10 and then scale it.

[jaappleton]

Confirmed:

Can NOT Flurry with the Astral Arms

CAN Stunning Strike

[Burley]

My next character is, 100%, gonna be this monk.

Shi devoted their life to meditation, finally gaining enlightenment, by making contact with a Great Old One. They rip off their own arms in the insane rage that comes with understanding the true nature of all things. They now can mentally open portals to allow the Great Old One to project into our plane.
When not being actively used to slap the unworthy (at the cost of ki points to focus and control the tentacles), tentacles rest comfortably wrapped around Shi's throat.

Tell me I can't.

[Misterwhisper]

It would be odd to play the monk as a Simic Hybrid.
2 normal arms
2 big crab claws
2 even bigger spirit arms

Would look very odd.

While fighting with the ancestral arms I would keep my normal arms occupied by doing things like taking notes, reading a book, smoking a pipe, or filing my nails or something.

Also this would be a total monster in an antimagic area.

[jaappleton]

It would be odd to play the monk as a Simic Hybrid.
2 normal arms
2 big crab claws
2 even bigger spirit arms

Would look very odd.

While fighting with the ancestral arms I would keep my normal arms occupied by doing things like taking notes, reading a book, smoking a pipe, or filing my nails or something.

Also this would be a total monster in an antimagic area.

.....mind if I steal this?

[Misterwhisper]

.....mind if I steal this?

Feel free.

It will be an npc in my game next weekend.

He will be dancing and playing maracas with his claws clock along while the arms beat on people.

Triple self high 5, high 30.

Fear the power of Captain Castanet

[jaappleton]

Feel free.

It will be an npc in my game next weekend.

He will be dancing and playing maracas with his claws while the arms beat on people.

Triple self high 5, high 30.

Monk / Bard

One man band!

[Misterwhisper]

Monk / Bard

One man band!

Captain Castanet is just a monk with performance.