I've been playing the UA of this subclass for the past couple levels. It's good, janky fun.
While I think the jank needed fixing, I don't think that it was overpowered.
Information is sourced from this video.
Level 3 - Bonus Proficiencies
2014: Performance and Brewers' Supplies.
UA: Performance and Brewers' Supplies, replacing if you already had performance proficiency.
New: Performance or another monk skill, and Brewer's Supplies.
A definite improvement. Performance is the worst skill in the game, and this allows you to instead take a heavy hitter like Insight or Stealth.
Level 3 - Drunken Technique
Old: Improves Flurry of Blows with +10 feet of movement and no opportunity attacks on use.
New: Improves Focused Patient Defense with +10 feet of movement and an unarmed strike immediately after use.
I see the vision, it definitely fits the Drunken Master, but I'm not a big fan of this change.
The old feature enabled you to do some pretty major shit.
- Flurry of Blows, grapple two allies, and move them to a more advantageous position.
- Flurry just for movement to close the gap and get punching.
- Flurry to do a full round of monk damage and then leave untouched, dipping in and out of melee like a Monk should.
The new one isn't terrible... but I see no reason why we couldn't just have both of them.
As it stands, any UA Drunken Monks (or 2014 Drunken Monks playing 2024) are gonna lose the core mechanic of the old subclass, and in order to make use of the new one they're going to wind up doing strictly worse damage than every other monk since they can't dip out of the frontline if they're using Flurry.
Level 6 - Tipsy Sway
Old: Standing up from prone only costs 5 feet of movement. You can spend 1 FP as a reaction to make a melee attack that misses you hit another creature within 5 feet.
New: Standing up from prone only costs 5 feet of movement. You can spend 1 FP as a reaction to make an attack that misses you hit another creature within 5 feet.
This feature was nearly useless. With the old Drunken Technique, it was rare for multiple enemies to end their turn next to you, so you just wouldn't get the opportunity for this to trigger.
Now that it can redirect ranged attacks (that is, assuming the omission of melee in the video is intentional), that's a pretty good power boost.
Level 6 - Mystic Brew
Old: On a short or long rest, give yourself a 1 hour buff (or 8 hours if you spend 1 Focus).
New: You can only have one buff active at a time and you cannot save brews.
The UA Mystic Brews were extremely janky, turning the game into a sort of timetable management to maintain as much buff duration as you could. You would be chaining short rests before and after long rests, hoarding extra brews, and drinking at the tail end of a rest so you can maximize the duration of a hoarded drink before you spawned a new one. Cool on paper, annoying at the table.
It got to the point where on any day with a significant amount of downtime/travel, we would just handwave it and say the monk just had all the buffs, and you know what? Even with all the buffs at his disposal at all times, they weren't overpowered, it's just that it was annoying to track.
They were all just super niche, so if we're being forced into one brew at a time, the brews are gonna have to be a lot better to compensate... and unfortunately, most of them aren't. Out of the basic three, only Heavenly Spirit received improvements. Cinnamon Dragon is exactly the same and Refreshing Dip was nerfed.
As it stands, you're just gonna be using Heavenly Spirit at all times for Necrotic resistance.
Cinnamon Dragon
4 monk dice of fire damage in a cone with a dex save for half, poisoned on a failed save (no changes afaik).
This takes the place of your attack action, and whether it's better than your attack action depends entirely on things you can't usually predict when you're resting.
- What's my target's AC?
- What's my target's dex save? Do they have evasion?
- Does the target have fire resist?
- Is the target immune to poisoned?
- Am I going to be hit with penalties to my attack rolls in the next 8 hours?
- How many targets can I feasibly hit with this without baking my team? Is using fire going to be a bad idea for a particular battlefield.
This feature has been a lifesaver when the DM whips out a statblock that dumps two levels of exhaustion on you and suddenly I can't hit with anything.
Heavenly Spirit
Old: Gain resistance to Psychic and Radiant damage.
New: Gain resistance to two damage types from the following; Cold, Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant.
Even with 100% uptime on this buff, the old version came up exactly once in 11 sessions. Granted, it saved us from a TPK, but still.
Psychic is an uncommon damage type unless the campaign centers abberations, and Radiant almost never comes up except by players and allies.
Being able to resist Necrotic instead of Radiant is a massive boon, that shit comes up constantly.
Refreshing Dip
Old: Add your martial arts die to every instance of healing received.
New: Now limited by a dice pool.
It's unclear from the video how this works exactly, as I don't know how the dice pool refreshes. Is it on short rest? Long rest? On consuming a new Refreshing Dip?
This is a good change, since before it was far too good when combined with a table of Munchkins, particularly if those Munchkins had access to Lay on Hands or Goodberry, but it just doesn't feel good to take.
Level 11 - Wizened Brewer (was Master Brewer)
Old: Gives access to Blue Lightning and Drunkard's Luck as Brew options.
New: Now also gives Stumbling Monk as a brew option.
More options is neat, but you're only choosing one brew, so you can only benefit from one of your six brew options at any given time and you have no ability to change that on the fly. The UA would also make you choose the brews, since it was just completely impractical to rest spam enough to have more than three brews or so active at a time, but the new version feels too strict.
As it stands, even though all three of these are super cool, you're just going to take Stumbling Monk every time because the new Drunken Technique demands you take it to unlock your kit.
Blue Lightning
(Unchanged) When you take a reaction that isn't making an Opportunity Attack or casting a spell, you can make one Unarmed Strike as part of that reaction
A very solid brew when paired with Deflect Attacks, Tipsy Sway, or the new monk feats.
Drunkard's Luck
Old: Gain Heroic Inspiration if you don't have it. Gain it again if you roll initiative without it.
New: Gain Heroic Inspiration if you don't have it. Gain it again if you make an ability check or saving throw without it.
A massive improvement, allowing you to basically always have a re-roll in your back pocket.
Stumbling Monk
When you take a Bonus Action other than Patient Defense, you can also use Patient Defense immediately after that bonus action.
OK so here we have a problem.
This being a brew in a one-brew system means none of the other brews exist anymore. At the cost of spending FP faster, you get to benefit from both Flurry of Blows and Patient defense every turn, which combines with the new Drunken Technique for six attacks per turn plus the dodge action and renewing temp HP from Patient Defense.
Level 17: Master Brewer
Your Brews now choose two options.
This is an insult.
The UA monk was running around with three brews at once at level 6. Getting a fraction of that returned at level 17 is a slap in the face.
Level 17: Intoxicated Frenzy
Old: Your Flurry of Blows now gains an additional 3 attacks, but only if each attack targets a different enemy.
New: When you use patient defense, you can unarmed strike every creature you move within 5 feet of once this turn. On a hit, the target must succeed on a dex save or fall prone.
This is amazing. A massive improvement over the old one, and almost perfect... almost.
I think we can push this a bit further; make Frenzy last until the start of your next turn, and make it apply to enemies that approach you during that time.
TL;DR Drunken Technique shouldn't have lost the old functionality, and the new brews are too restrictive for what they do. This isn't a subclass that has ever even come close to being a balance problem, don't hamstring it by being afraid of it. Since I doubt we'll be getting buffs before this thing releases fully, I'll probably be asking my DM if I can homebrew it to keep the fun parts of what my character has been able to do up until the point.
Recommended Changes/Homebrew
- Drunken Technique now grants both Drunken Flurry (2014/UA Drunken Technique) and Drunken Defense (5.5e Drunken Technique). You can only trigger Drunken Technique once per turn.
- Brews now always last 8 hours and always cost FP. You can use a number of brew effects equal to your proficiency bonus. The cost of a brew is a number of Focus Points equal to the number of options chosen. Resting or using Uncanny Metabolism will not recover these Focus Points so long as the brew effect they paid for is active. The monk can "sober up" once on each of their turns as a free action, ending one effect from your brew in exchange for recovering one focus point. FP spent on brew effects are also restored if the brew expires naturally or it is removed by overwriting the old brew with a new one.
- Master Brewer reworked entirely. When you create a brew, you can serve drinks to allies, giving each of them one Brew effect of your choice for one hour. You may give different allies different brews. If a brew references martial arts dice, use the brewer's dice. If a brew allows the use of a monk feature, it can only be granted to a creature that has that feature.
- Intoxicated Frenzy now also triggers attacks when creatures enter a space within 5 feet of you before the start of your next turn.