Altered Arcana: the Monk - Read Ready, Print Friendly

# A Quick and Dirty Fix for the Monk

I love the Monk concept and I love its core interesting choice between attack, defense and movement.  However the Monk does suffer from a few things.  Limited resources, limited defenses and a weak tier III.  The concept here is to make the fewest changes possible to bring the monk up to a more equal play experience.

#### Ki Healing
You can direct your internal energy to heal yourself and others.  You have a pool of healing power that replenishes when you take a long rest. With that pool, you can restore a total number of hit points equal to your monk level × 5.

As an action, you can touch a creature and draw power from the pool to restore a number of hit points to that creature, up to the maximum amount remaining in your pool.

Alternatively, you can expend 5 hit points from your pool of healing to cure the target of one disease or neutralize one poison affecting it. You can cure multiple diseases and neutralize multiple poisons with a single use of Lay on Hands, expending hit points separately for each one.

This feature has no effect on undead and constructs.

#### Ki: 
* **Patient Defense**

*2nd-level monk feature (enhances Ki)*

~~You can spend 1 ki point~~ **If you have spent 1 ki point or more or made an unarmed strike as part of your action on your turn,** you can take the Dodge action as a bonus action before the end of the turn. **Alternatively, you can spend 1 ki point to use this if you haven't spent a ki point this turn, or made an unarmed strike.**

* **Step of the Wind**

*2nd-level monk feature (enhances Ki)*

~~You can spend 1 ki point~~ **You can take** the Disengage or Dash action as a bonus action on your turn, and your jump distance is doubled for the turn.

#### Unarmored Movement
*2nd level monk feature*

Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you are not wearing armor or wielding a shield. ~~This bonus increases when you reach certain monk levels, as shown in the Monk table.~~

At 9th level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the move.

#### Diamond Soul
*7th level monk feature (enhances Diamond Soul)*

Beginning at ~~14th level~~ 7th level, your mastery of ki grants you proficiency in all saving throws.

Additionally, *at 14th level* whenever you make a saving throw and fail, you can spend 1 ki point to roll your martial arts dice and add it to the result.

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> **Ki Healing:** Healing is a core concept to spiritual martial artists, either healing themselves or others.  This adds a second resource pool and moves it closer to the Paladin in it's power.

> **Patient Defense:** The Monk suffers from defense and doesn't have a lot of options to fix it.  Personally I'd rather make this a core choice than change some other fundamentals like HP.  This is limited to when you do Monk things, which imo, keeps it on theme.

> **Step of the Wind:** When the Rogue can run all other the place it feels off that the Monk can't do the same.

> **Unarmored Movement:**  I think the original here was to replace the Rogue's Cunning Action Dash, but the more important part of that Cunning Action is the Disengage.

> **Diamond Soul:**  At 7th level the Artificer gets Flash of Genius and the Paladin gets Aura of Protection, so I think this is a solid place for a save bonus.  Diamond Soul comes in too late, imo.  While I really like Evasion and Stillness of Mind I don't think they shoulder that weight.

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#### Stillness of Mind
*7th-level monk feature (enhances Stillness of Mind)*

Starting at 7th level, you can use your action to end one effect on yourself that is causing you to be charmed or frightened. **You can take this action even if the effect would otherwise prevent you from taking actions, or force you to use your action to do something else.  Alternatively, you can expend 5 hit points from your pool of healing from Ki Healing to remove one of these conditions from a creature you touch.**

#### Advanced Martial Arts
*11th-level monk feature*

Once on each of your turns you can take a second bonus action.  You can only use this bonus action to use Flurry of Blows, Patient Defense, Step of the Wind or make an Unarmed Strike.

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> **Stillness of Mind:**  This is a solid idea, but around half of the effects this should work on control your action.  I'm not convinced that that was the intent, so this is changed to work on those situations.

> **Advanced Martial Arts:**  Martial classes and martial half-casters get a damage bump at level 11.  The Monastic Traditions will rarely add enough to fill that gap.  Here the Monks does what it does best, just more so.