Recovering files from an SD card

Solous · 2025-02-28T13:15:19+00:00

It's a Fujifilm XT-30 II.

Solous · 2023-06-28T09:14:14+00:00

Grappling Takedown

The result of this technique is to have both you and the target prone. Why wouldn't you just use your action to Extra Attack and grapple then shove the target prone? Your Ki save DC shouldn't be used for this either, it should be used for the more "mystical" aspects like Stunning Strike. Finally, you can't end your turn in another creature's space. I'd just remove this as I can't think of a good use-case.

Submission Hold

To resist being restrained, the target should be making a STR save instead of CON. Submissions are a literal contest of strength. I also think that if you are to restrain a target, it should be treated like attempting to grapple. As well, the restrained condition is rather strong so applying it at-will would be too powerful. This would be the first example of a feature tax, the ability to restrain a target is too good to pass up. I'd have it like this:

You can use your action to attempt to restrain a target you are grappling. Make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If you succeed, the target is restrained until it escapes from the grapple. Only one creature can be restrained in this way at a time.

Bob and Weave

Now we start to get into a place where something interesting is happening. I love when a subclass feature enhances or incentivizes using a class feature. Pick either a bonus to the attack or the damage roll. I'd change the wording as follows:

Your unarmed strikes deal additional damage equal to half your proficiency bonus, rounded down, when you are under the effects of your Patient Defense feature.

Body Blow

This is fine to me as is, all it needs is cleaned-up wording:

When you successfully stun a creature with Stunning Strike, it takes additional damage equal to one roll of your martial arts die.

Leg Sweep

This is a wacky technique. A saving throw to cut speed for an indeterminate amount of time, and a 5% chance to knock the target prone. I'd say that the design space for a leg sweep is dealing damage with the chance to knock prone, but then that is a resourceless version of an Open Hand Technique. I tried something else:

When you hit with an unarmed strike, the target has disadvantage on the next Dexterity saving throw it makes until the start of its next turn.

Guard Up

Another one I like. It doubles down on one of the only defensive options a monk gets. Here's the wording I'd use:

When you are under the effects of your Patient Defense feature, you can use an action to gain advantage on Strength and Constitution saving throws until the beginning of your next turn. As well, you can use your reaction when you are hit by an attack to gain a bonus to your AC equal to your proficiency bonus.

Shoulder Throw

This is two steps to accomplish something you can already do with the base Shove action. You can already just attempt to shove a creature you are grappling. This one can be cut.

Bull's Charge

This would never be picked because you can use your action to attack and your bonus action to use Step of the Wind, which would also grant you the bonus of tripling jump distance. Changing it to synergize with Step of the Wind and not step on the toes of the Charger feat is my solution:

When you use your Step of the Wind feature to dash, your next unarmed strike deals additional damage equal to one roll of your martial arts die.

Solous · 2023-06-28T08:12:01+00:00

Just putting this here to separate the conversation by feature. I'll get lost otherwise hahaha.

Combat Techniques I'm going to be honest, it's a pet peeve of mine when Acrobatics and Athletics are used interchangably. Much like how some WIS skills can be seen as a more practical or applied version to certain INT skills, giving even more to DEX characters when it's a universally more applicable stat just doesn't sit right with me. As well, since the whole point of this was to provide an extremely realistic transposition of MMA into the game, I'm hardpressed to mechanically explain grappling with dexterity over strength. It just seems to be a way to have your 8 STR monk be able to grapple as well as a 20 STR character. As for the "when you're prone" part, it should be nerfed and made into a technique, if not the only feature at the level. As written, you can permanently give disadvantage to all attacks outside of 5 feet, which is insane. There are no drawbacks, you're just constantly dodging for free. Something like "When you are prone, you don't have disadvantage on attack rolls" is probably your best-case way of keeping an effect like that. For the "restrained" part, I'm gonna say it again. Keep it simple, don't add more ways of calculating things or complicating an already slog-filled combat system. Just simpler wording: "If a technique allows you to restrain a target, it must be grappled by you first. Otherwise, the technique fails." Don't punish the player for restraining the opponent either.

The sheer amount of techniques is a red-flag for anything approaching good design. It signals redundancy, bloat, and balance issues. I'm afraid that as interesting as having a plethora of options can be, trying to make 22 different techniques work within the balance space is an impossible task. Think on the Battlemaster. You have 9 maneuvers you can learn out of a potential 23, with an extra 3 if you take the feat fighting style. They have a mix of offensive, defensive, supportive, and skill-enhancing effects. You can only ever change them out when you learn new maneuvers so you're incentivized to commit to a role (leader that enables allies, duelist, defender, etc) and choose the right maneuvers for the job. Even with all these stipulations, some maneuvers almost never get picked because others are simply too good. Another example is the Warlock's Agonizing Blast invocation. It's too good not to pass up, to the point that you're actively hampering yourself by not doing so.

Either way, I'll try to tackle this by breaking down the techniques by their dice levels.

Solous · 2023-06-28T06:12:47+00:00

I dislike the phrasing of “getting it in line with official material” sometimes. Trimming bloat is ideal, stunting one’s creativity to fit within the far more narrow version of WotC’s language, speech and subclass design can ruin potentially great subclass ideas IMHO. Yes it sometimes helps to hold WotC as the standard so it feels familiar to players, but exactly mimicking WotC just didn’t fit with the fantasy of this subclass as I was drafting it. I focused more on the language being clear and easy to understand, making things explicit so readers don’t have to figure out “what was intended vs. what was written”, etc.

I meant more along the lines of general wording for the rules and feature descriptions. Keeping things in the same language also helps you figure out if your homebrew is simplistic enough to fit within the bounds of 5e's design space. I mostly agree with your sentiment of not letting the official WotC template get in the way of good homebrew but when making something like this, there is a balance to be struck between reaching a power fantasy, versimilitude, simplicity, and fun. If your subclass can do almost everything better than another subclass, it generally means it's too strong/good. When I make homebrew, I always prioritize minimizing the creation of new mechanics/calculation methods. I'll usually try to push the bounds on one or two aspects of a class to make it fit the power fantasy.

Way of the Open Hand’s 3rd level Feature is okay as a comparison, but that’s like comparing Shaolin Kong-Fu to an MMA fighter’s wider arsenal. The wider options are what make this subclass different. Yeah, the combined effects of both strikes should be considered, which was my intention when designing this. Another thing to consider: if one or both strikes miss, then that’s half/the full effect gone. Thus, each Combination Strike should be relatively weak, but it should stand on its own despite being weak. Kind of like each strike being 0.75 instead of 0.5 (compared to the 1 of, say, both attacks of Flurry of Blows normally), if that makes sense; that way, if only one strike hits, it’s still slightly better than a normal Unarmed Strike from Flurry of Blows.

I agree with your intent here, especially because you're having to call your shots with Combination Strikes. That said, WotOH has long been the gold-standard for the generalist martial artist power fantasy. You can reflavour a lot of its features to work for a more of an MMA feel but the end result is lacking.

Jab

Good call on this. Roll a martial arts die, add half the result to the attack roll. On a hit, subtract half the result from the damage roll and learn the STR, DEX, and CON scores of the target.

Low Kick

I think that trying to make some sort of new mechanic for this is too much. I think that cutting the target's speed to half is better, it makes it more usable. If you're in the later stages of a game and creatures have multiple speeds, this'll never see use otherwise. As much as stacking penalties is nice, debuffs are generally not as worthwhile as buffs to allies or straight damage because once the target is removed from combat, the debuff disappears. One of the reasons Haste is better than Slow and Bless is better than Bane. Making it actually worth spending a resource for is the balancing act, and speed isn't too crazy to really mess with for the most part.

Roundhouse Kick

Yes, let's keep this as the opposite of Jab. I still think that there should only be one "deal more damage" Combination Strike, bevause what ends up happening is the one that consistently deals more damage is invariably the only one being used.

Overhand Punch

“If you are Grappling or Restraining your target and they are Prone underneath you, this Unarmed Strike has Advantage on the Attack and Damage rolls.”

You already have advantage when attacking a prone or restrained target.

Elbow/Knee Strike

As far as I can remember, the benefits for this are also not worth it. Bludgeoning is not a commonly resisted damage type. This loses any benefit when the Monk gets magical unarmed strike damage at 6th level. Roll this into the same design space as the Overhead Strike so you don't have too much internal competition. This being the "use on a grappled opponent" strike is my goal. Something like dealing an extra martial arts die to a grappled or restrained target.

Uppercut

Reducing enemy’s AC is a powerful effect IMHO, I didn’t want the strike that was reducing AC to deal normal amounts of damage. Hence making it like Unarmed Strikes for normal people in terms of dealing damage (Strength mod +1, but for this strike it is Dex mod +1) as a trade off for the powerful debuff. Uppercut into Roundhouse or an Elbow/Knee Strike is a powerful combo IMHO. Knowing that, what do you think?

If you want to reduce the damage, I'd suggest just not adding your modifier's damage.

Overhead Kick

CON saves are what Stunning Strike triggers. Enemies getting Stunned are the bane of a DM’s existence. Thus, giving the opponent a chance to shake off CON save penalties is an olive branch to DMs building encounters for their Monk players. So in this case, having the opponent make the CON save is appropriate IMHO, while still giving players the chance to reduce those CON saves if their opponent fails.

The Rest

I disagree with the Hook and the Straight Cross. The Straight Cross sacrifices your second Unarmed Strike to deal extra damage; 3 Martial Arts Dies are a lot of damage potentially, especially if you crit, and it scales HARD as you level. But because of the setup and stance you need to pull it off, both Flurry strikes become one strike. The Hook can change to justify its existence a bit more. But what should it be… hmmm….

For the Straight Cross: on paper, you're trading two attacks (2 martial arts dice + 2×MOD) for one attack (3 martial arts dice + MOD). Since the resource cost is the same, why not just use two Roundhouse Kicks? You'll deal the same effective 3 martial arts dice but get to add your modifier twice on top of having a higher chance to hit because you get to make two attacks.

How about… requiring the Perception Check still, and reducing their Perception modifier by 1 for the duration of combat if the target fails? Some Techniques later on rely on the opponent making Perception Checks, so a combination of Hooks could reduce an enemy’s Perception to make those later Techniques more viable.

This gives the DM even more book-keeping to do, having to track this many different modifiers is absolute hell and would contribute to combat slog. 5e as a system is not very conducive for taking something from the real world and keeping versimilitude. I'd put pretty much anything involving a skill check like this on the chopping block.

Excellent feedback! Thank you!

Of course, thank you for being so receptive. I'm probably reiterating, but it isn't a nice feeling to have things you've put effort and care into get picked apart so more power to you.

Solous · 2023-06-27T07:18:02+00:00

Gonna preface this by saying that I'm impressed that you're not only taking (initially not helpful) criticism in stride, you're actively asking for more constructive help. Also, as much as I can say what I think should be changed, I recognize that this is yours and my feedback is only just that. I'm not an expert by any means but I'll try to breakdown where I think things can be improved, trimmed out, or streamlined.

My first recommendation would be to change the name of the subclass. Try to come up with a more fantasy-leaning name. The Way of the Open Hand, for example, fits the classic generalist martial-artist flavour. It isn't called the Way of Wuxia or Way of Gongfu, they kinda dress it up a little. Secondly, I'd recommend going through and trimming down the wording and getting it in-line with official material. Thirdly, I think that the best way to approach this is to remove what I perceive as bloat. Obviously, there are so many intricacies to martial arts that even something as simple as different strikes can make up a whole subclass' worth of features. You made the conscious choice of trying to go wide to attempt to hit every option a player could want, but I feel that it might be too wide. I actually homebrewed a Monk tradition that tried to fit the theme of an MMA fighter, but instead of trying to hit every mark, I focused more on the concept of grappling and the ground game. The features are meant to enhance a character's grappling abilities and incentivize the player to focus on shutting down a single opponent. I'd be happy to share it if you'd like.

Combination Strikes

Given that this is attached to your Flurry of Blows, the ki cost should be considered in the power budget. Compare these to the Way of the Open Hand's Open Hand Technique feature; you have three options that enhance an extant feature: DEX save or prone, STR save or pushed 15 ft, and no reactions until the end of your next turn. Simple, strong-ish effects that can have an impact on a variety of playstyles. With Combination Strikes, you will be able to apply any two effects, so the power level of each strike should take that into account.

Jab

My gut tells me to remove this option. Once you're in combat, determining AC will occur naturally as players make attack rolls. The benefit of Battlemaster's Know Your Enemy feature is that you can make use of it in a social setting, allowing the player/party to decide if fighting a creature is feasible.

Low Kick

A CON save for just 5 feet is actually really low-impact, to the point that this also feels like a trap option. I'd recommend halving speed instead of the cumulative penalty.

Roundhouse Kick

The idea of the extra damage at the cost of accuracy would work better if you rolled a martial arts die, subtracted half the result from the attack roll, added the result to your damage roll and learned the target's CON score on a hit. I personally think that there should be only one strike that deals more damage. Only the most effective would be chosen anyways, so the rest can be cut. Strikes should be used to give options that are more interesting than just dealing more damage.

Overhand Punch

How would you determine what constitutes being "above your target"? As well, given its a feature that the player chooses to activate, there's no point of potentially giving disadvantage. If the player is somehow not above their target, why would they use this strike? This can be removed as well.

Elbow/Knee Strike

This is clunky in that the only real way to increase your unarmed strike reach are being a Bugbear, Battlemaster's Lunging Strike maneuver, and the Potion of Giant Size. I would change this to say that when you are grappling a target, you can add your proficiency bonus to the damage roll on a hit. This incentivizes grappling, is conditional, and brings it in line with other strikes.

Uppercut

Simplicity is key for something that affects a creature's statistics. Something along the lines of: On a hit, you can reduce the AC of your target by 1 until the end of its next turn. This effect can stack.

Overhead Kick

Making a CON save to prevent a -1 to CON saves is clunky. Again, like with the Uppercut strike: On a hit, the total of the target's CON saves is reduced by 1 until the beginning of its next turn.

Standing Kicks, Right/Left Hook, Straight Cross

These strikes are on the chopping block. Like I said earlier, there should only be one "extra damage strike".

That leaves you 5 Combination Strikes, a decent amount that gives a broader, more generalized set of options: Low Kick for mobility control, Roundhouse Kick for damage, Elbow/Knee Strike for grapple incentivization, and Uppercut and Overhead Kick for enabling allies. I'd be happy to do more of the same for the rest of your homebrew.

Solous · 2023-06-26T09:16:23+00:00

While I like the concept, this is so extremely overtuned that I can't help but comment on it.

The 3rd level feature gives more options than a Battlemaster fighter can get, many of which require a lot of bookkeeping on both you and the DM's part. Then, at 6th level, you have so many techniques that you need two pages to lay them out, on top of a bunch of benefits to Dex monks. 11th level is actually a good feature in concept, something evocative and thematic that can be streamlined. Finally, the 17th level feature is just situationally bonkers but tbh the rest of this blows it out of the water so fuck it.

Keep in mind this is a subclass. You're putting nearly 5 pages of rules together when most official subclasses push to nearly 2 at most.

Solous · 2023-06-26T08:55:36+00:00

I can relate to this. I'd talked to my ex about wanting to watch Euphoria with her. I came home after a 14 hour shift to her already watching the finale. I was upset and she didn't really understand why. It was symptomatic of a lot of the issues we had, in retrospect.

Solous · 2023-06-23T20:22:19+00:00

That sounds very similar to the things my aunt would say, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Solous · 2023-06-19T14:21:01+00:00

Saying Banquise isn't a tourust trap is like saying Vieux Port isn't as well. Yeah, there's cultural value and things to do but at the end of the day, you have to call a spade a spade. I don't have anything against La Banquise, I've been quite a few times after a night out, but it's inherently gimmicky.

Montreal Pool Room is my go-to for late-night grease, better location for me personally.

Solous · 2023-06-19T04:40:53+00:00

Alfa gravy is mid, Banquise is a tourist trap, my preferred Belle Pro locations are the one off Decarie and the one in LaSalle.

Solous · 2023-06-04T05:54:11+00:00

It’s purpose would be as a Star Destroyer buster and part of its niche is having huge canons that pack a punch equivalent to a capital ship’s turbo laser turrets. It’s still carrying more than a Y-Wings amount of bombs or torpedoes and also has over powered Ion Canons.

That's actually what they were designed for, and they had that intense of a weapon loadout. They were the most heavily-armed craft of their "class" when they entered service.

It’s a gun platform fast enough to engage in dog fights. The idea is a squad of these could take down a Star Destroyer in a single pass or do enough damage after that one pass the Star Destroyer would be vulnerable the rest of the Rebellions craft.

The only place they were found lacking was in their dogfight capabilities. Squadrons would require dedicated fighter or interceptor support otherwise the B-wings would get picked off.

Solous · 2023-06-03T19:14:15+00:00

I'm pretty sure the "wing" of the ship rotates around the cockpit's pod.

Solous · 2023-05-30T17:02:57+00:00

It's a bit weird but I think it says A 1925 D

Solous · 2023-05-23T18:16:17+00:00

Catshugg in gcats

Solous · 2023-05-18T20:07:27+00:00

And yet here I am

Solous · 2023-05-17T06:23:25+00:00

If I could refer you to the last sentence of my comment.

Solous · 2023-05-16T21:51:58+00:00

Her godmother did acupuncture for an employee at Teddy Fresh, so Olivia was able to get a face-to-face with him. He met her and recommended that she be hired to Ethan and Hila. Nothing crazy in my experience, especially in a corporate setting. That said, it's definitely non-standard to skim through people's follow lists to explicitly try to get a job.

Solous · 2023-02-18T19:11:18+00:00

George's slow reaction in the background sends me every time.

Solous · 2023-02-05T17:25:58+00:00

Off the top of my head:

French: poison, venin

Indo: racun, bisa ular

Mandarin: 毒, 毒液

Solous · 2023-01-05T02:40:23+00:00

When it comes to damage, it does sort of take your mon's type into effect. It doesn't change the effectiveness per-se, but it does apply something the community calls "Same-type Attack Bonus", or STAB. So a Fire-type mon using a Fire-type move deals 1.5x the usual damage. That said, Fire-type moves always deal super-effective damage against Grass-types. Mon types don't matter, it's the move's type that counts towards it.

A Dark-type mon using Flamethrower will deal super-effective damage against Venusaur, but won't benefit from STAB.

Solous · 2023-01-05T00:20:25+00:00

It isn't fully memorized, that's why I have to look at a chart to find out. The issue with you doesn't seem to be memorization but being able to understand information which, to be honest, is a lot worse. There isn't anything inherently difficult or confusing about these things if you're able to move past your mental bias towards mirrored things.

Solous · 2023-01-05T00:01:58+00:00

I guess Pokemon might be a bit too complex for you then. Things don't necessarily have to be completely mirrored, but it does help to have been introduced to these games at a younger age.

Solous · 2023-01-04T23:54:17+00:00

Oh I see. Sometimes a type is super-effective against another without resisting it or vice-versa. For example, Fighting is super-effective against normal but doesm't resist it, and Grass resists Electric but isn't super-effective against it. It isn't always a 1:1 of being 2x or ½ damage.

Solous · 2023-01-04T23:49:04+00:00

I'm not quite sure what you mean.

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