Talk:Mystic Fist (5e Class)

With Dark One's Hunger, I can have Temporary Hit Points of above 100 at higher levels. Lets say I'm at 10th level with a Wisdom modifier of +3 and roll a 3. I immediately gain 33 Temporary Hit Points. At level 20, you can gain at maximum (roll a 6, Wisdom mod of +10) 130 Temporary Hit Points. That's a lot of Temporary Hit Points, and given the somewhat ambiguous wording, the maximum could be 320 Temporary Hit Points (is it Wisdom modifier + 1d6 then multiplied by level or Wisdom modifier plus 1d6 multiplied by level?) That should be clarified! SirSprinkles (talk) 13:56, 19 March 2016 (MDT)

There are also loads of balance issues, like d10 hit dice (same as a fighter, compare the monk's d8), making this class basically a better monk. SirSprinkles (talk) 20:31, 9 October 2016 (MDT)

A few touch ups

The Iron Fist says it increases by 2 every even level; though in the following text, the damage increases by 2 at level 7, 10 & 20. I'm not sure if the damage resets when you include additional damage dice, but it is not consistent.

Path of the Oni Metamagic Empty Mind activates when you have no more ki points. As there aren't any ki points in the class, it should be replaced with spells slots. And the duration should be clearer; stating that it will take the user's next turn, or Empty Mind will end on the user's next turn. Also, I don't feel like Empty mind is a metamagic ability as it does not alter spells.

Working on Reworks

Seems to me that someone attempted to cram pretty much every single class into one class, which resulted in the mess we face now. I think I can rework this into a bit more balanced class. In short: I am reworking this. --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 03:42, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Gah, this class is one hard thing to chew. I thought combining monk and warlock would do the trick, but oh no, things just became too complicated and not crafty enough. I need some help here, if anyone has a good idea or two, please feel free to leave them here.

I just reverted the entire page back to where I first found it; my (unsuccessful) reworks can be found at the History page. Here are some ideas I thought would be useful:

• I chose Charisma, instead of Wisdom, to demonstrate that the mystic fist class channels their innate power through training, much like sorcerers. Part of the reason I used the phrase chakra instead of ki was also a part of it, plus in order to avoid the mess that would be caused when multiclassed with monk.

• While I'm at it, I tried to differenciate mystic fist with monk in various ways. The Iron Fist and One-inch Punch feature is one of the tryout: instead of making multiple unarmed strikes, the mystic fist focus on one, powerful blow. Since mystic fist gains pseudo-spellcasting ability, some monk features had to be deleted or shifted into the optional dharmas.

• I originally attempted to make mystic fist as a pseudo-spellcaster, spending chakras to make a temporary spell slots for spellcasting, as demonstrated at the DMG and the Wu Jen subclass from the Unearthed Arcana. Although I thought otherwise at my final draft and just copied from warlock's Eldritch Invocations, I still think that would make a versatile pseudo-spellcasting ability.

• The original works had two subclasses: Path of the Oni, which is, frankly speaking, a butchered version of warlock's features; and Path of the Enlightened Monk, which is, also frankly speaking, not even complete. My rework tried to make three subclasses: Training of Dukkha, which is mainly poison-themed and more evil-oriented version, complete with cursing and using cheap tricks, much like monk's Way of Shadow; Training of Nirvana, which is unfortunately incomplete, but attempted to be more support-oriented, much like monk's Way of Tranquility from Unearthed Arcana; and Training of Sunyata, which is, basically speaking, just an ordinary monk.

• The concept of monk with spellcasting is nice and all, but when it comes to implementing, it is just too hard to chew. The spell list choice is already too complicated to start with, and with all the beautiful toys monks get, spellcasting makes the class too overpowered. I had to come up with a way to balance out the two, which I was unsuccessful.

So yeah, I am taking a break from this one. Again, if you have any ideas and/or comments on this class's rework, please feel free to leave them here. --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 11:39, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, after a struggle with another class called the scion, I found a way to rework the mystic fist class. Here are the parts I considered when reworking on the mystic fist:

• Now that I think of it, there was no reason I should keep things with Charisma. So I reverted the main ability to Wisdom.

• I found that the concept of "one big punch instead of multiple blows" makes mystic fist more of a Strength-based class than a Dexterity-based class like monk, so I changed that, and voila! It worked! I benchmarked rogue's Sneak Attack feature to rework the Iron Fist feature, and the concept of Training of Sunyata was based on paladin's Divine Smite feature. The general idea of the new Iron Fist reminds me of Saitama from the manga/anime One Punch Man. (You know what, I could do with stop reading mangas and watching animes.)

• I re-used the Legacy Magic feature from the scion to make the Dharma Magic feature. Unlike scion, which is more of a spellcaster class, mystic fist has a decent close-combat abilities, so I kept a small list of spells while came up with some ways to integrate unarmed strikes and spellcasting. I took some leaves out of Kharazim from Heroes of the Storm for Training of Bodhi. (Yes, I should stop playing videogames as well.)

• Dharmas are basically warlock's Eldritch Invocations, but with monk's features instead of free spells and whatnots. I kept one spell per dharma because the new mystic fist is more of a hybrid class than a pure spellcaster.

So I proudly presents the new and improved (...maybe?) version of the mystic fist. If you have any comments, advises, and/or criticisms to make, please feel free to leave them here. You know what, I think reworking classes is a fun and interesting job! --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 05:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh, almost forgot - the idea of "one recharge per short rest"on the Fist of Samsara feature was originally from the Quantumancer archetype by AmplSi, from whom I took permission to "borrow" the concept to implement here. --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 05:51, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Concerning Some Anonymous Edits

Dear anonymous editor: I see you are very interested in editing this page, I appreciate your attention, that's what keeps this wiki running. However, I must also add that your edits are unfortunately not in scale with actual D&D gameplay mechanics. I will analyze some of them for you:

• Flight. Starting at 4th level, you attain the ability of flight through the use of liberation from the self and the reality around you, embodying the nothingness that is the cause and conclusion of all existence.

First of all, the most important part of the D&D wording is its gameplay mechanics. When you chop off fluffs and other pretty words, what we get is this: Starting at 4th level, you gain flying speed of (insert statistics here). It's incomplete.

The problem with flying speed is, as I have stated so many times elsewhere in this wiki, is that it makes your adventure too convenient, or too boring for some players. You can bypass so many things just by flying past or away from it. This is why not many class features give you flying speed, and even when you gain access to one, you are very restricted.

• Arms of Kali. Prerequisite: 5th level. Your arms move at a speed that the average eye cannot comprehend, giving a bonus attack phase if you are unarmed and not wearing armor.

First and foremost, there is no "attack phase" in D&D. You take a turn, and you use an action to make an Attack action. It's not Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Also, the designed mechanics of mystic fist is not making many attacks in a single turn, it's more of making one, just one attack, which damages like heck, not unlike rogue's Sneak Attack feature. I am sorry to say that this dharma is not in scope with such design mechanics.

• Astral Shift. Prerequisite: 7th level. You are able to shift your body mind and Brahmin from one place to another with a distance maximum of 4 times your wisdom modifier.

The misty step spell is a 2nd-level spell that probably does what you intend with this dharma. The Blurry Steps dharma already grants you this, at even lower level.

You must specify what action you use (action, bonus action, reaction, or does not take an action) to use this dharma. Also, "shift" is ambiguous; you either "move" (swim, crawl, climb, jump, fly) or "teleport", but never "shift", in mechanics.

• Liberation. Prerequisite: 14th level, Training of Sunyata. The bridge between form and formless is unified by your vessel allowing an immense flow of chakra to flow through you. increasing your Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and constitution by 6. Your hitscore and armor class are increased by half their original score. All attacks attain advantage. this temporal bridge lasts for 5 minutes plus your constitution and wisdom modifier and can only be utilized again after 2 days of rest.

So many unorthodox designs. In 5th edition, you almost never gain a direct bonus to your ability scores; even enhance ability spell gives you advantage on checks, but not directly influence your ability scores.

"Hitscore" is not a correct term; it is "hit points". Besides, your Dexterity dictates your Armor Class and your Constitution dicates your hit point maximum, which is defined in the rules. Adding half of "original" score is not only complicated, but also unorthodox.

Gaining advantage on all attack rolls is not a good design. Advantages must be situational, and temporary at best; for 5 minutes, that's too long.

Any feature or spell lasts either until the start/end of the turn, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour, or so. Never 5 minutes.

Two days of rest (what rest? Short? Long?) is also unorthodox.

Besides, the temporary boost makes a mystic fist terribly overpowered, and mystic fist already has plenty ways to boost combat abilities. This doesn't make things interesting enough, other than so-called "moar damage".

So that's it. Now, I'm not admonishing you or anything, it's just that I would like to advise you to clean things a bit or two to better fit it what is given in the basic rules of D&d and pre-made homebrew class. I hope you make more interesting and more balanced contributions in the future. --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 21:58, 19 October 2017 (MDT)

Talking about recent anonymous edits, I will explain why the recent edits to Improved Unlimited Chakra have been unhelpful and why it should really only recover 3 chakra and the general design behind having the feature. To start off with, the old Unlimited Chakra feature allowed you to recover 3 charka once at 6th level, and you could use it twice to recover a total of 6 charka at 14th level. The only current change to the feature was that you can now use the feature 3 times to recover a total of 9 chakra at 20th level. The idea behind such a feature is to allow the mystic fist to recover a certain amount of chakra when they are running low without having to rest to recover charka. As such, the feature shouldn't allow you to recover too much of charka and so the total amount that you can recover is limited to 1/2 or slightly less than 1/2 of your total charka amount. The recent edits to the feature however, have made you recover much more charka than what was intended, allowing you to recover 5 charka at a time which would almost entirely make it so you wouldn't need to take rests to recover a large portion of your charka. These edits seem to just jack up the power of the feature without any concern for balance or design behind why the feature exists, and as such the edits have been reverted.--Blobby383b (talk) 21:16, 22 November 2019 (MST)