New Monk | 2024 Player's Handbook | D&D

tell me all about the new things in the monk there is so much when we embarked on creating the new players handbook we knew that the monk was going to get a lot of attention partly because the monk satisfaction scores over the last decade have often been unfortunately a bit low yeah and the monk in terms of actual play numbers has tended to be low as well that combination told us this class needs some attention now every class got a lot of loving attention but we knew the monk was going to need some deep work done to it and the Deep work that we did in the monk similar to deep work we did in the ranger really amounts to this class and the ranger largely being new classes when you look at the features for the monk you look down that list you're going to see a lot of familiar friends but also you're going to see some new things that is right away at first level when you dig into the main feature of the monk at that level martial arts uh where you will find out that right away your selection of Monk weapons has been broadened to be all simple melee weapons as well as Marshall melee weapons that have the Light Property that's going to give you some more flexibility uh than you had before uh and we've also now made it so that you can now make with this feature a unarmed strike as a bonus action regardless of what else you're doing on your turn we used to have it so that the monk had to set up their bonus action on arm strike uh before they could they could do it now you don't need the setup you just simply have always the option to make an unarmed strike as a bonus action now there's even more going on here than that suggests because we have in the rules glossery redesigned the unarmed strike itself and this is a redesign that affects all characters but will be especially felt by Monk players because of how often monks make unarmed strikes so it used to be in 2014 that the unarmed strike was just a way for anybody to deal some damage if they were uh without a weapon yeah now monks and a few other characters were happy to make unarmed strikes because they often were very effective at them what we've now done is we have made it so that when you make an unarmed strike you now have three options of what it does it can deal damage like it did before or you can try to initiate a grapple or you can try to shove your target really what we've done is we've taken three different things that used to exist on their own in the game dealing unarmed damage grappling yeah and shoving and we've combined them all into your unarmed strike we've kind of weapon mastered unarmed strikes basically and we did this for everyone so that you had sort of a single place you could go to for the cool options for your character when you are throwing down with your fist or you're wrestling or you're just trying to push someone back but we also wanted to make it so that the monk could really benefit from this because this means unlike in 2014 anytime the monk is making an unarmed strike including as a bonus action that UNM strike could be dealing damage or it could be starting a grapple or it could involve shoving somebody that means the monk has an amount of uh tactical versatility that is with their UNAM strikes which is akin to the Tactical versatility that our weapon users have who are using weapon Mastery absolutely and but a whole lot is a fun is hiding out in the unarmed strike itself and how it then combines with the monks various abilities that use the unarmed strike and that is evident right away in the martial arts field you can just be pushing someone all around the map and also you know boom bonus action starting a grapple uh later on as monks are able to get more and more unarmed strikes on their turn each of those unarmed strikes could be a different one of these options uh you could be shoving one person starting a grapple with another punching them kicking away the other person with the shove uh it it is really cinematic and exciting in actual play yeah the monk through this martial arts feature can now use their dexterity rather than their strength to set the DCS for the new grappling and shove options that are inside the unarmed strike so we we wanted to make sure that the monk uh who is most interested in having a high dexterity and secondarily a high wisdom that they did not need to then sort of also need to have a really good strength we wanted monks to be able to take that dexterity and have it even uh support them when they're using their grappling and shoving options within unarmed strike monks also have their martial arts die and this is the die that they use for their unarmed strikes it's also uh the diey uh that they can use with their mung weapons and as they go up in level uh at various times the die improves which then means of course the damage of their unarmed strikes is improving and the damage of their monk weapons is potentially improving depending on what the weapons damage die was originally across the board the martial arts diey has been improved and so it now starts at a D6 at level one and goes all the way up to a D12 at level 17 which means monks have just simply had a buff across the board on their damage output because we we realize digging into the the acies of the class's math that it just was not delivering the amount of damage that it should and so this is a rare case in this player's Handbook of a class just simply getting a Flatout damage buff just a Flatout damage buff yeah and we were able to do that because this is also the unusual class that has so much of its damage passing through a single feature and in this case it's the martial arts feature whereas we have other classes where damages in instead routing through different weapons it's routing through different spells whereas with the monk so much funnels through this level one feature you ready for some more monk excitement yes I am ready for more monk excitement I'm concerned that this is going to be a three-hour video on the so uh at level two yeah we made it a level wow we got to level two so in in the new feature called monks Focus this is this is a replacement for a feature that used to be called key and this has changed in way more than just name it is I mean other than sort of some surface details of you get some points to spend on various things there are so many functional changes in here that I'm I'm glad just for that reason alone that the feature has a new name to signal to people yeah pay very close attention to this uh because in the new monks Focus you have you have uh a pool of points that are now called Focus points to spend not only on the options that are in this feature but also a number of the options that appear later in the class and anyone curious about using any monk material that was published prior to this book anything that referred to key points in the past is should essentially just be read as now referring to focus points in inside this feature you still have these sub options that were there before but they're really only here in name uh Flurry of Blows patient defense and step of the wind I say they're here really only in name because so much has changed functionally because there have been major enhancements here first patient defense now lets you take the disengage action as a bonus action without spending any points wow before it required points yeah now when you get monks Focus you simply gain the ability to take the disengage action as a bonus action similarly the step of the wind component of monks Focus lets you take the dash action as a bonus action so what these now do that relates to focus points is you can now use Focus points to enhance them so for example you could spend a focus point with patient defense to yes take the dis disengage action as a bonus action but also the Dodge action at the same time similarly step of the Wind on its own let you just take the dash action as a bonus action or you can spend a focus point to be able to take the disengage and dash actions together and have your D your jump distance doubled for the rest of the turn jeez and so now spending your focus points rather than it unlocking the Bas ability is instead about enhancing the base ability uh now Flurry of Blows is the one of these three options within monks Focus that only has a version where you spend Focus points on it yeah and that is you spend a focus point to make two unarmed strikes at a bonus action the reason why it doesn't have a sort of freebie version like patient defense and step of the wind oh you've already gotten that exactly you got the freebie version back at first level yeah because at first level you now get the ability to just for free as a bonus action boom use your unarmed strike yeah so now what Flurry of Blows does is let you enhance that by spending a focus point I really love this new approach where again your focus points in a way are about amping up the volume rather than needing them to do your Baseline you don't need them for the identity of this class yeah exactly because now the way we've structured it even if you're out of focus points you can do all the Baseline monk things yeah and focus points now become just really cool spice uh that's how you crank it up Focus points are also critical for some of your higher level abilities that can be used only with Focus points now we also took to heart though that even though we had lessened how many of your Baseline things require Focus points that monks have often felt Focus point constrainted and too constrainted because we always want when there when there is a limited resource in the game for there to be a sense of limit I mean that's the point for you to feel like your resource decisions matter and for there to be that growing sense of danger as you see you know your basically your power tank going down toward empty whether it's Focus points or spell slots or something else but even with all of that in mind we felt we could give monks a little more breathing room and so with that in mind at level two they get a brand new feature after all this other brand new called uncanny metabolism and what this lets the monk do is when they roll initiative just decide to regain all their expended Focus points you're getting this feature now at level two now once you use this feature you can't do it again until you finish a long rest but that means once per day when a battle starts you can just say I get all my points back and that's not all uh you also regain a certain number of hit points when you do that so this uncanny metabolism is you just drawing in your personal resources and saying I'm ready for another fight and that's probably going to keep you going uh for the rest of the adventuring day or at least a good part of it nice now when you get to level three we're at level three um you now get defle attacks and this feature has been redesigned so that it is more versatile than it was before this used to be the feature that gave you a chance of catching a projectile that was fired at you and if you managed to zero out the damage completely you then had the option of trying to hurl it back and then there were some complexities of the nature of that projectile affected the damage that you were sending back we wanted it to be easier and more fun for monks to use this ability uh and so what we did is we now made it easier just the whole operation for the monk to figure out you know H how they reduce the damage we're no longer care about the N the the physical quality of the thing that's hitting you all we care about in this Rule now is that it deals budgeting piercing or slashing damage so whatever ever it is that's coming in you can try to deflect it uh and reduce the damage and then if you reduce it to zero uh and that reduction by the way is you roll a d10 and you add your dexterity modifier and your monk level and if all of that combined zeros the damage out you have the option of spending a focus point to then basically red redirect the attack's force towards somebody else and now that other Target now has to make a saving throw and if they fail you get to do an amount of force damage to them based on your Martial Arts dies and remember your Martial Arts dies are way better than they used to be yeah this feature gets even spicier at higher level and I'm going to skip ahead uh because later on eventually it's energy yes all the way at level 13 you get a feature now called deflect energy where you can now use deflect attacks to uh deflect any damage type uh no matter what it is whatever energy is coming in the the monk with their just their preternatural uh abilities can use their focus to bounce that fire over there you know deflect that wave of Thunder towards somebody else uh it's pretty badass yeah that's amazing in addition to their damage output being improved we have also looked at ways to improve their survivability and that is that's evident in how their Superior defense feature works at level 18 uh it is also evident in their disciplined Survivor ability which is what they can use to roll saving throw um it's also especially evident at level 10 in their self-restoration ability which is a new feature that combines elements that they used to have in other features where when they get to their end of the the end of their turn if they're Charmed frightened or poisoned and again this is at level 10 they can just say no I'm not and and before this had an action economy cost associated with it no not any more now just the monk they get to their end of their turn and it is literally this good of their charm frightened or poisoned n we really wanted monks to have this kind of superheroism uh in how not only they fight others but also in how they're able to keep themselves alive uh we also uh have adjusted in a level 10 feature called heightened Focus what you can do with Flurry of Blows patient defense and step of the wind so we already enhanced those three options back at level two well when you get to level 10 they all get even better uh and we did this because these three options are so fundamental to the monk you know one being about uh keeping themselves alive and the form of patient defense Flurry of Blows is essentially their damage output option for their mon focus and step of the wind is their Mobility option and again all three get better at level 10 in between when they got those features back at level two and them getting improved at level 10 they also now have their stunning strike which has been adjusted now this is one of the only places in the monk where a features power got ton down a slight bit right yeah and we don't feel bad about it given how much the monk has been buffed yeah um we've now made it so that stunning strike can be used just once per turn uh because there have been cases in the past 10 years where uh stunning strike can get a little out of hand if a monk player uses it over and over and over again um but I think the sting of that limitation will pass very quickly when people realize that we've now made it that if the target even if they succeed on the their saving throw they're still affected to a certain extent so if if they fail their saving throw against your stunning strike they're stunned as you would expect if they succeed on their saving throw their speed is haved until the start of your next turn and the next attack roll made against them has Advantage so when you use stunning strike it's going to have an effect on your Target and really they're making a saving throw to find out what that effect is going to be uh so in the end stunning strike actually got buffed it and it's just it's really we've limited how often you can use it that's perfect so on top of all of that yeah monks like everybody else get epic Boon at 19th level and uh also then have some majorly enhanced sub classes one of my absolute favorite ones just because the just from look of them and and the mix of healing and acryic damage is uh the warrior of mercy and this is a subclass that appeared for the first time in Tasha's cauldron of everything where it appeared with the name way of mercy and people will see that all of the monk subclasses now have a naming pattern of warrior of something yeah it's the same subass as before uh just now with Warrior at the front instead of way of and in several of our class classes we have unified how that class's subclasses are named when we get to the sorcerer we'll talk about how all their their subass names have been unified uh and we've done that in a variety of places to to not only get the names so that they're all structured the same way but also to set up how we'll name the subclasses in future books so the warrior of mercy of the four monk subclasses in the book is the one that has evolved the least partly because it it it's most recent in the new designs exactly it's the most recent and so the main thing that has happened here with this monk who's all about both help and harm has been integrating it into the revised class so otherwise this is the subass people know and love from Tasha's cauldron but now fully integrated into this completely redesigned Monk class but the the subass features themselves other than some tweaks and wording to make it so that they fully integrate it's it's what you saw the last time you you played and enjoyed this subass this incredibly fun subclass now when we get to the other three subclasses we have the warrior of Shadow we have the warrior of the elements and the warrior of the open hand so the warrior of the elements completely replaces the the way of the four elements uh the way of the four elements sadly uh in terms of satisfaction was often the lowest rated subass in the 2014 Players handbook yeah um and so looking at it we realize the best path forward is to replace it yeah and the warrior of the elements is a subass that people got to see a draft of in the unearth Arcana process and now the final version is here in the book this is a monk who is all about channeling the elemental forces of the Multiverse and using those elemental powers as part of their martial arts and so you're going to see a number of really fun things here related to that first off these monks are able to increase the reach of all of their unarmed strikes as they use wind and water and fire and Earth to extend their reach so you can imagine you know cool tendrils of water going out to make it so that this monk can punch someone uh you know like 10t over there and it's not Mr Fantastic or one piecing over there with a stretchy punch no it's the elements themselves reaching out to extend their reach uh we also give them and you you alluded to this we give them a new cantrip the element mentalism cantrip that allows them to shape the elements around them shape water fire earth Etc so that they uh can feel like they have some of this Elemental Magic even when they're outside combat and when you get the subclass Because by the way this is all right when you first get the subass you gain these benefits you gain elementalism you gain your extended reach and you also are able to do your Elemental strikes and so whenever you hit somebody now with that extended reach that the elements are giving you and you are dealing damage to them uh you can first off change that damage type to a list one of a list of damage types that we provide all elementally themed but then you can also Force the target to make a saving throw and if they fail you can move them around the battlefield as the wind is blowing them or water is causing them to flow away or fire is is causing them to stumble back whichever element it is that you're deploying you suddenly with that extended reach get to be like no you're here you're now over there so a lot of tactical fun uh is waiting for you right here at level three when you first get the subass then when you get up to level six you gain the ability to essentially extend your elemental power to a greater distance now you'll be able to take a magic action expend some Focus points and then cause an explosion of elemental power up to 120 ft away from you and this is a 20ft radius sphere explosion who where you now deal damage and it and it is based on your Martial Arts Dice and so is something that will scale with you as your Martial Arts die gets better uh so even better than we did with the the way of the four elements we're giving you the ability to easily just bring some spectacular Elemental effects to the battlefield and rather than expecting you to choose a particular element that you use all the time the theme of The Way of the elements and it's partly why we changed the name of the subass uh rather the warrior of the elements is you are tapping into the whole Elemental chaos you're not necessarily tied to any particular Elemental plane instead you're tapping into the chaotic mixture of all of them which is one of the reasons why we made it so that you can choose every time you use these abilities to pick a different one of the damage types uh that are available here it's also why even in the art for this subass you'll see in the monks image that she is channeling multiple different elements all at the same time uh rather than just being a a monk of fire or Earth or wind or what have you uh we also have made it so that um while you have those benefits going of that extended and you're using your Elemental strikes which I should have mentioned earlier you have to actually activate they're not on all the time right um You have to spend Focus points to turn them on um and so when you're just going about your day you don't have water extending from your from your hand distracting um but yeah if you use Focus points to turn on these Powers well that power that you've turned on on just gets better and better as you go up and level so once you reach level 11 whenever you've activated your Elemental atunement that's the name of the feature that gives you that extended reach and those Elemental strikes now you also have a fly speed and a swim speed because you are carried a loft by the winds you are you are pushed along By the Waters uh so now you have uh Supreme Mobility on top of the outstanding Mobility that monks already have then at level 17 you get a feature called Elemental epitome and this also improves your Elemental Attunement ability you now get an elemental damage resistance that you get to choose and you get to choose it at the start of every one of your turns so oh wow so every time your turn starts you just get to decide if that turn or rather until you know the start of your next turn you have resistance to acid cold fire lightning or thunder and in certain battles that could be really useful to be able to just keep switching those yeah um also we've made it so that when you use your step of the wind while your Elemental Attunement is going your speed increases so now you're even faster uh and as you move around the battlefield you can cause damage to to foes that you're moving by because of all this elemental power that is swirling around you in many ways you can almost imagine the warrior of the elements as the cousin of the circle of the sea Druid right because both of them are going to have these sort of destructive auras around them but they use them in very different ways although they can the two of them fly and swim together yeah that's why I kind of think of them as buddies you also in this Capstone ability have have the the option to just once per turn deal some extra damage because of all of this elemental power that is swirling around you uh and so all of these features combined make the warrior of the elements this Elemental Powerhouse who's going to be moving around quickly on the battlefield who has not only an extended reach but also a builtin magical ranged uh ability to blow up uh an area I think going to be super exciting so now let's talk about the warrior of Shadow I I have played this subass quite a bit this has had significant quality of life improvements in it makes you even more dangerous if you wanted that shadow fell the threat in the darkness feeling this is this is the subass for you yeah we wanted to make it so that the warrior of Shadow was even more suffused by Shadow than it was before and one of the ways that we did that is we preserved the ability for this subass to cast The Darkness spell but now we've made it so that you can see in that Darkness anyone who has used that spell you know that part of its power is very few creatures in the game can see through that Darkness yeah and so being being able to create that darkness and see in it and then later use your own darkness that you've created to fuel Your Shadow step the teleportation that these monks get that relies on you being in dim light or Darkness you can start creating synergies with yourself uh that are just super fun yeah the advantages you get by by being able to see someone in the darkness and them being able to see you are extreme yes yeah I mean you you now are uh in many ways the the uh scary companion to the Assassin Rogue yeah uh it it just as the the warrior of the elements is the the Buddy of the circle of the sea Druid the warrior of Shadow and the monk is definitely the Buddy of the Assassin and I could see these two being a really scary pair uh hun down the bad guys uh we have taken that uh Shadow step ability which is so core to the identity of the warrior of Shadow preserved it but then improved it at level 11 with improved Shadow step we've now made it so that when you use your Shadow step you now have the option of expending a focus point to make it so that you are not required to start or end the teleport in dim lighter darkness and CU we found that as cool as Shadow step has always been one of the most difficult aspects of it were being in an adventuring context where there is no dim light or Darkness yeah and now we've we've sort of double solved for this here by giving you this Darkness you can create and see in so you can use that because if you are physically in the light that's still an issue yes and and we really we wanted to make sure you could always use your core ability as that that's a part of this subass but but there's more an improved Shadow step we've also made it so that if you spend that Focus point you not only don't have to start or end in dim light or Darkness but as the part of the same bonus action when you teleport hey you also get to make an unarmed strike yeah uh immediately after you teleport so you can just suddenly appear next to somebody and caban yeah finally at level 17 we have a much improved uh cloak of Shadows ability and this not only lets you turn invisible yeah but it also makes you partially incorporeal yes so that now you can pass through occupied spaces as if they were difficult terrain uh and you can use your Flurry of Blows which is normally cost a focus point to make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action you can now use that while you're in this this limited time uh cloak of Shadows form you can use that Flurry of Blows without spending any Focus points now instead you are spending Focus points to activate your cloak of Shadows but once you've activated it uh you can just be this shadowy force moving around and punching or kicking the he out of things I mean obviously this this has nice Synergy with the Gloom stalker Ranger as well as the Assassin but I boy I would either like to see these two together or fighting each other the Fay Patron warlock teleporting all over the battlefield and the shadow monk doing the same thing and they're just trying to get at each other it's like a constant chess match it's not a PVP game but it is in my head not when I play it's a co-op fun listen sometimes have the best Adventures start off with everyone not getting along Guardians of the Galaxy but any anyone who is like you uh what I would encourage is absolutely absolutely what's going to come next oh no no no this is It's a dming tip yeah absolutely take inspiration from classes and subclasses for the monsters that you create yeah uh because yeah there are some really cool abilities here that you absolutely could Riff on in a a monster NPC uh and then you can absolutely create some of those awesome uh moments that you're thinking of yeah and that brings us to the final Warrior yes the warrior of the Open Hand the warrior of the Open Hand we can kind of think of as the most Monkish of the monks uh really leans into the core kit of the class the unarmed strikes the high mobility and what we wanted to do here is just make sure it was delivering those goods uh in as fun a way as possible we took for instance wholeness of body at level six and before this was a way for this monk to heal thems it would took a whole action now it's a bonus action uh so we want you to be able to just weave this into what other the other things you're doing on your turn uh and you can also now use this multiple times per day uh and this is a part of our effort uh to enhance monk survivability we also have uh a brand new feature in the Warrior of the Open Hand called Fleet step and what this feature does is whenever you take a bonus action to do anything other than step of the wind you can also use step of the wind oh wow immediately after that bonus action so I was just telling you about oh these these monks can now heals as a bonus action well the very next feature combos with that and it means even if you use your bonus action to heal yourself you can also step of the wind yeah and that's because we wanted while some of the other monk subclasses are again getting things like flight or teleportation we wanted these to be the monks who are just zipping around the battlefield and even when they're like patching themselves up is oh my gosh how fast is she running yeah um and then uh finally uh we revised quivering Palm uh this was the I touch you and then at some point you you may or may die um we we've now made it so that it now deals a truckload of damage on a failed save and a smaller truckload of damage on a successful one it does no longer just instantly zero a a creature out uh this was a a one of the the only other places in the monk where we needed to adjust the power down a little bit because quivering Palm before essentially had kind of the theoretical possibility to deal infinite damage because it it could reduce any creature no matter how high their hit point pool was down to zero and this was just not scaling well particularly with some of the higher level encounters that we want highlevel characters to be able to have and have those encounters still be a challenge yeah so what we did even though we took away the deal infinite damage uh portion of quivering Palm we did make sure that the damage it deals is as I said a truckload okay perfect so all of these things together amount to a class that has been reimagined redeveloped yes we've play tested the heck out of it and it is a ton of fun when you pre-order the digital physical bundle you also get an exclusive digital Gold Dragon mini for our 3D virtual tabletop the dragons of D and D digital art book 15 dice sets 34 frames and 15 backdrops and if you pre-order the digital 2024 player handbook on D and D Beyond you get exclusive bonuses 12 sets of digital dice representing each class 10 new frames and five new backdrops and all of those players handbook bonuses are available right now on D and D Beyond you can find the links to all of that in this video description thank you so much for watching we have a ton of video content coming out about the new players handbook and all the new core rule books the new monster manual the new dungeon Masters Guide so be sure to check out all of that content and thank you for watching

Channel: Dungeons & Dragons

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Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, gaming, roleplaying game, ttrpg, forgotten realms, eberron, Wizards of the Coast, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, tabletop, RPG, Todd Kenreck, dnd, Wildemount, Critical Role, Vecna, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, D&D Beyond, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 3, BG3, Larian, Corerulebooks

Id: HsiIgMutKKU

Length: 40min 33sec (2433 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2024