So Monk is the one class we didn’t get a prior UA for, which means all the changes are totally new. I’m still wrapping my head around it. Martial Arts die increase: good. Martial Arts die not affecting weapons: bad. Step of the Wind buff: good. Stunning Strike nerf: bad but reasonable?
I feel like they knew Monks needed help, but it doesn’t really seem like they made as much effort to fix that as I think they really needed to. Anything I might be missing that saves the Class here?
I can agree that Stunning Strike was bad design, for sure.
It’s interesting when you compare the Monk to casters, who typically also have incap abilities that cost a resource. While I don’t think casters are designed perfectly either, a caster isn’t useless if they can’t use their incap spell on an enemy (through immunity or high saves or whatever) whereas a Monk that can’t stun is doing really nothing but subpar damage. Casters usually spend more of their resources on an incap spell, and they sure aren’t spamming it three times per round. Hypnotic pattern can still cause ridiculous swinginess when it comes to balancing fights of course, so maybe it’s not the best benchmark anyway.
With that in mind, I think Stunning Strike should probably be less spammy (which is the main part of what they did) but obviously it needs to be made up for by making the rest of the Monk much better, which I don’t feel was really achieved here.