In Dungeons and Dragons, resting serves as both a narrative pause and a crucial game mechanic. 5E has two types of rests: long rest and short rest. Warlocks can regain spell slots during a short rest, but the rest of the classes need a long rest. Wizards have a special ability called Arcane Recovery that allows them once per day to recover some spell slots after a short rest.
Warlocks get spell slots back after a short rest, but the rest of the classes need a long rest. Wizards have a special ability called Arcane Recovery that allows them once per day to recover some spell slots after a short rest. At the end of a short rest, a character may expend one or more Hit Dice to restore any lost hit points, up to their maximum number of Hit Dice. For each Hit Die expended, the character must begin the rest.
The spell “Rope Trick” does the same thing as with other spellcasting classes, such as Rangers, Paladins, Wizards, and Land Druids. They also have abilities to recoup some spells on a short rest or continue. Warlocks have their spell slots fully replenished after a short rest, while all other spellcasting classes need a Long Rest to completely recharge their spells.
Some classes recover practically all their resources on a short rest, while others recover their resources on a long rest. The answer is that Warlocks recover all the spell slots after a short rest, while all others are after a long rest. Monks and Battle Master fighters have their most important stuff recovering on a short rest. Rogues don’t really have limited use abilities, so they can regenerate spells on short rest.
Warlock slots replenish after a short or long rest, while regular caster slots regenerate only after a long rest (or by a limited amount based on the class).
📹 Short Rest feature recovery is going away, how might that look? D&D 5e
Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 5:48 Races 6:46 Feats 8:05 Barbarian 9:23 Bard 12:07 Cleric 15:04 Druid 16:30 Fighter 18:57 Monk 24:38 …
What do bards regain on a short rest?
Beginning when you reach 5th level, you regain all of your expended uses of Bardic Inspiration when you finish a short or long rest.
At 6th level, you gain the ability to use musical notes or words of power to disrupt mind-influencing effects. As an action, you can start a performance that lasts until the end of your next turn. During that time, you and any friendly creatures within 30 feet of you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened or charmed. A creature must be able to hear you to gain this benefit. The performance ends early if you are incapacitated or silenced or if you voluntarily end it (no action required).
By 10th level, you have plundered magical knowledge from a wide spectrum of disciplines. Choose two spells from any class, including this one. A spell you choose must be of a level you can cast, as shown on the Bard table, or a cantrip.
What do you get back on short rest?
A character can reclaim HP by rolling a number of their hit dies after an uninterrupted short rest, which can be used to quickly regain lost health after a long fight. Some classes, such as Warlocks and Fighters, can reclaim their key class features by completing a short rest, unlike other spellcasters. Warlocks can reclaim their spell slots by completing a short rest, while Fighters can regain their Action Surge feature by concluding a short rest.
Does short rest recover HP?
A character can spend Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to their maximum number, which is equal to their level. For each Hit Die spent, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier, regaining hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity for no more than 2 hours.
If interrupted by strenuous activity, the character must restart the rest to gain any benefits. At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points and spent Hit Dice, up to half of their total number (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, they can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
Do artificers get spells back on short rest?
The artificer table displays the number of spell slots and their level, which can be expended to cast a spell. These slots are regained after a long or short rest by recharging the artificer power stone. Artificers focus on inventions, magi-tech, and artefacts over spells, but can cast a limited number of spells powered by their power stone. Starting at 1st level, they know one spell from the artificer spell list.
Intelligence is the spellcasting ability for artificer spells, learned through study and memorization. It is used when a spell refers to the spellcasting ability and when setting the saving throw DC for a spell or invention.
Do Warlocks regain spell slots on short rest?
The Warlock table displays the number of spell slots and their respective levels. To cast a spell of 1st level or higher, one must expend a spell slot. These slots are regained after a short or long rest. For instance, at 5th level, you have two 3rd-level spell slots, and to cast a 1st-level spell, you must spend one slot. At 1st level, you have two 1st-level spells of your choice from the spell list.
Is KI restored on short rest?
A Warlock does not require a full rest to recover used spell slots, but a short rest can refill spells and a Monk’s Ki points if they spend at least 30 minutes in meditation. A long rest is 8 hours, with no interruptions for more than an hour. All HP and spell slots are restored at the end. Hit dice do not fully recharge on a long rest, but you gain half of your level back in hit dice. For example, a level 6 warlock would restore 3 hit dice after resting, bringing them back to their max of 6. However, if they use all 6 hit dice on their short rest, they would only have 3 hit dice until their next rest.
Who regains spells on short rest?
The Warlock classes have the capacity to recuperate spell slots through a number of methods, including the utilisation of a short rest, Arcane Recovery, and Natural Recovery. It should be noted, however, that JavaScript may be disabled or blocked by extensions or browsers that do not support cookies.
Do sorcerers get their spells back on short rest?
The Sorcerer Table indicates the number of spell slots that can be utilized for the casting of spells at or above the 1st level. In order to cast a spell, it is necessary to expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. All expended spell slots are restored following a period of rest. In order to create a level 1 sorcerer, the following steps must be followed: an ability score array must be selected, rolled, or assigned; two abilities must be switched; and no additional bonuses must be added.
What comes back on a short rest 5e?
The D and D 5E Free Basic Rules only cover a small portion of the content available on Roll20. Additional options are available in the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. Adventurers need rest to sleep, eat, tend wounds, refresh their minds for spellcasting, and prepare for further adventures. They can take short rests during an adventuring day and a long rest at the end of the day. These rules provide a comprehensive overview of the content available on Roll20.
Do wizards get spells back on short rest?
You can regain magical energy by studying your spellbook and choosing expended spell slots to recover once a day after a short rest. These slots can have a combined level equal to or less than half your wizard level, and none can be 6th level or higher. For example, a 4th-level wizard can recover up to two levels worth of spell slots. When reaching 2nd level, you can choose an arcane tradition, shaping your magic practice through one of eight schools, such as Evocation.
📹 NEW Long Rest Rules, DM Tips, & Homebrew for Rest in D&D 5e
STOP Players from Long Resting in Dungeons! DnD Short Rest, Long Rest, and a New Full Rest Homebrew Rule System and DM …
my guess is short rests are gonna be shortened to like 10 minutes so they can be used more often but they have less abilities tied to them. it’s a chance to heal up quickly without using spells or potions, but not much else and that way plays don’t want a disparity of short rests in the day to be optimal.
Short Rest as I’ve always internalized them, was the evolution on “Encounter” powers. Problem was always that it was a bad equivalent since it always feels like if you can take an hour rest, you can take an 8 hour rest, baring the whole arbitrary limitation on 1 long per day the point gets across. It’s a lot of time. I want to see Encounter abilities properly return, with a new ingame phrasing, where it merely requires 10 minutes of non-strenuous activity. So you can recover them in between encounters while you’re walking down the dungeon halls or from the tavern to the castle and so on.
No ki costs is indeed a pretty simple Monk fix. If I’m doing a full monk redesign, I think I’d base the class around having one ki point. You either have your ki focused, or you don’t. You’d have various actions you could take to focus it. While focused, you’d have both “passive” benefits, like all the standard level 2 ki uses would be free, but also there could be more powerful features which require you to expend ki. The various Four Elements spells (maybe also PBxPD or 2xPBxPD limited), stunning strike, a bigger Flurry of Blows effect (attack every enemy in 5 feet?), and so forth. I think it’d lead to an interesting play style, where you have to choose when to just vibe while focused for passive effects, and when to go into expend/gather cycles.
There’s another relatively easy one you can do with monks: recover Ki points equal to wisdom mod / prof bonus when you roll initiative. Turns out that the Monk isn’t really broken even with the extra Ki, and this requires no changes to any subclasses. However, I think a Monk without Ki is a better fix if for no reason than having fewer things to track and having it be easier to balance features against each other – the simple decision becomes: does this need to be limited? It just requires that every subclass be rewritten as well.
I think for website Divinity, it would be good to update it to proficiency bonus per long rest. The current CD scales pretty slowly. It goes up to 2 uses at level 6, then doesn’t increase again until level 18. Since it currently comes back on a short rest, that could still turn into 6 uses during a whole day once a cleric reaches 18. With a flat proficiency bonus per date rate, I think it scales more regularly, and is easier to track. I do also like the idea of doing something to regain uses between long rests, but I’m not very fond of tying it to healing or hit point recovery. It’s something to think about!
I have a slightly different thought. i agree that short rest recoveries are going away for most of the class features. BUT i think it will stay for martial classes. In tashas, Most of the class features are based on proficiency per long rest, except for classes like rune knight, and the phantom rogue which recover on short rests. the psionic subclasses also allow you to recover 1 extra dice per short rest, although the entire pool of psionic dice refresh on long rests. In my mind, if they have martial classes abilities refresh on short rests, and then change short rests to be 10 minutes, it could help boost martial classes. reducing the time to 10 minutes would also promote actually short resting, if only one party member gets anything back from a short rest, then its hard to convince a full party to rest for an hour, but 10 minutes might be perfect.
I think that something that should definitely be added is that the prof bonus per long rest should NOT be actually tied to the prof bonus. I think that it should just scale like the proficiency bonus. If it was directly tied to prof bonus then multiclassing could get out of hand very quickly with characters being able to do things many times with very little effort put into actually getting more of the ability.
I wonder if the Healer feat would be switched to more like “You can heal an individual creature using this feature a number of times up to your proficiency bonus. Once a creature has been healed from this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, they cannot be healed from this feature again until they take a long rest.
One solution for Warlock is to: 1.) have invocations grant either at-will spells and abilities or 1/2 proficiency bonus per long rest uses; so Misty Visions grants at-will silent image, and Sculptor of Flesh would grant 2 usages per day of polymorph for a 11th level warlock. 2.) Mystic Arcanum starts at 1st level and you gain one at each odd level thereafter. Having prof/day for some invocations may make them too powerful, even if it is conceptually easier. For example: a warlock who takes Minions of Chaos under this system could summon an elemental 3 times a day, whereas an equivalent wizard only once. For those invocations that mimic spells, I think the solution would be either to have it grant a spell of lower level (so instead of Conjure Elemental, it’s Summon Lesser Demon), or strip down the spell so that it’s less powerful (e.g. you can only polymorph a target into something of 1/2 your level in CR). I happen to like the latter, as I think from a design space it encourages the designers to think more creatively and thematically about what an invocation should or could do, and keeps the invocations from stepping on the toes of Mystic Arcana. I want to see more invocations like Tomb of Levistus, and fewer that are just “you can cast X spell Y times per day”.
I liked that there are classes that benefit more from short rests (fighters, monks, warlocks, etc) because when I play with gritty realism rules, the balance between the two types of classes is WAY more interesting, since I play in groups that do one short rest or no short rest per adventuring day, because one or two combat encounters per day. And with gritty realism rules, you don’t get some players pushing for a short rest and others not, because we all need to sleep at the end of the day and nobody wants exhaustion.
Make more abilities regained on rolling initiative. website Divinity can be a per-combat feature, once at level 2 to three times per fight at 18. Warlocks could also do this. Regain half their pact slots every time they roll initiative, and then they can choose which combats to use more than half their slots on. Your DM decides when you roll initiative. If you pull a rat out of a bag you don’t roll initiative, all you did was kill a rat.
I recently made a Fighter subclass that takes only the Eldritch Invocations from the Warlock. Adjusting Warlocks to just have a huge supply of Invocations at their disposal would be a pretty interesting design, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the Invocations themselves. So many of them require short or long rest recharge, and making them proficiency bonus per long rest uses would probably severely limit their effectiveness, or make others hilariously strong. Like Cloak of Flies would see a massive buff, because it doesn’t have an expiration on how long it can go, as long as you’re willing to keep it going. I honestly feel like keeping the way Pact Magic works currently is the way to go, but instead of it being tied to any sort of resting mechanic, it just has a passive recharge mechanic: Each hour, your expended Pact Magic spell slots are replenished. Or maybe every two or three hours. Make it this font of eldritch power, like a mana bar in TES games. Still the same number of limited slots, but they’re readily available and always at full power.
Love most of the fixes. These are really thought out. Every capstone feature will need to be updated/boosted for power level. For monk, I actually do like having dodge as a bonus action. Giving up 2 attacks with flurry of blows to gain disadvantage to be hit and advantage on dex saves seems like the normal attack action vs dodge trade. You are Losing half you attacks for defense (over half in tier 1). That sounds like a fair trade to me. sometimes you need the monk to be the tank. sometimes you need the DPS. at 3 levels investment, you are not likely to see many tank builds dip for just that. Still think monk martial arts die should be a d4 and scale like cantrips – 2d4 at lv5, 3d4 at lv 11 and 4d4 at lv 17. For warlock, similar to fighter getting action surge as start of combat or monks recovering ki, you could have the warlock regain a single spell slot at start of combat. Encourages more than just eldritch blasting, and keep base class going. Would be tough for out of combat mechanics, so an alternate would be similar to arcane/natural recovery. Spend a minute or ten outside of combat meditating to regain spell slot. I do like the option of more invocations though. You would need basic combat spells as part of the package.
I like your recommended fix for Fighter and battlemaster. Regaining 2 superiority dice when you roll initiative will not break anything, since battlemaster maneuvers are relatively low-impact when compared against spells and other spell like abilities. The capstone for the subclass would probably though need to be something like “at the start of your turn, if you have expended any superiority dice, you regain one.”
I would adore a spell slot-less, invocation focused Warlock redesign. I’ve seen a few suggested forum posts online about potential ideas to return them to their 3.5e philosophy, but nothing extensive. Please do consider making a article on how you’d make such a class, it sounds very interesting. Side note: I would also enjoy if WotC allowed Warlocks to use Intelligence instead of Charisma — more INT-focused options in 5e are needed.
“When you roll initiative” works for some features, but punishes others – take the Tasha’s maneuvers, for example, which focus on out of combat utility. Clearly WotC is trying to shift martials away from boring “I hit things and check my phone between combats” stereotypes. I’m not sure how they’ll handle the balance unless they perhaps shorten rests to 10 minutes or so, and also shift towards PB/LR for most other features. Another potential waste is a sorcerer’s Extended Spell Metamagic, with 1h concentration spells being Extended to 2h spells, and wasted for a class feature that requires concentration over a brief period. However they approach it, it will have to be delicate. I can already see resistance to any proposed changes. Edit: Also, Diamond Soul doesn’t currently require a reaction to reroll, but that would be the obvious fix for 5.5/6e.
Warlock Pact Magic 2.0 (by me): Warlocks at 1st level select 2 first level spells. Then at every level they get to choose another spell and add it to the known (lile a sorcerer, or bard would). Instead of using spell slots though, they cast it once per day at the minimum level as a spell-like ability. At the end of a long rest they select a number of spells they know equal to their proficiency. They can cast those spells at a higher level, up to the maximum allowed by their level (up to 5th). Eg. A 3rd level warlock knows and can cast three 1st/ one 2nd level spells. Say “false life, hex, hellish rebuke and invisibility”. After a long rest, they pick two of their first level spells and treat them as 2nd level spells. So thry end up with “hex, false life, hellish rebuke, invisibility”.
To keep things with the PB theme: Battlemaster: PB superiority dice per combat. This scales them nicely as they level, without breaking things. Warlocks: add Proficiency Bonus spell slots per day starting at 3rd level (level requirement is mostly to discourage multiclassing abuse, but might need tinkering)
Monk fix: Meditate: Proficiency bonus times per day you can as an action enter a meditative state. While in this state your speed is 0 and you are incapacitated. Entering this state recovers all of your Ki points to full. This state ends at the start of your next turn. This removes the short rest requirement and improves the Monks Ki resource pool nicely without allowing it to be spammed. This could be replicated for website divinity recovery also, call it “Prayer”. Or pact magic for Warlock. The incapacitated feature helps prevent some concentration shenanigans happening. Or for Fighter’s action surge and second wind call it focus? In all cases it’s about removing the 1hr duration of a short rest but preventing it from being exploitable in battle.
Barbarian: Relentless rage, resets when you begin raging. Bard: Font of Inspiration, recover all uses after a long rest. Can spend an action to recover a single use of inspiration, this can be done a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. So they essentially get 4+prof uses of inspiration per day for up to a total of 10 uses per day. Now this is fewer uses then taking 2 short rests during the day but its more than taking 1 short rest. Having it require an action still makes it viable in combat but at a cost. Spending an action or multiple actions out of combat is no big deal. Superior Inspiration, when you roll initiative you can recover one use of inspiration. Cleric: website Divinity, same as font of inspiration for the bard. 1, 2 or 3 + proficiency bonus in recharges. That still a decent number of uses per long rest. Three times per long rest at 2nd level, five times per long rest at 6th level, nine times per long rest at 18th level. That should be plenty of uses. If its not… spend 10 minutes in prayer and gain all uses back proficiency bonus number of time per long rest. So per long rest thats 3 at 2nd level, 4 at 5th, 6 at 6th, 8 at 9th, 10 at 13th, 12 at 17th, 18 at 18th. That is a big pool of uses after just spending 10min per recharge outside of combat. Druid: Wild Shape, same as the above possibilities. 2 uses + proficiency bonus in recharges for 1 use. Using an action to recharge. That should be plenty. Natural Recovery, Once per long rest is great.
My fix for fighter based on what you said for action surge was proficiency modifier in uses per long rest with a bonus to damage equal to proficiency modifier, with at most 2 extra uses added as extra uses are obtained at higher levels. I used a similar fix to Barbarian rage with damage/uses Tied to proficiency with decent results
One idea for a Warlock is that they can cast an amount of spell slots with levels that equal the Warlock’s level per long rest. Example: 4th level Warlock can cast four 1st level spells, two 2nd level spells, OR two 1st level and one 2nd level spell. They could also pair this up with them starting with a single invocation, but gain one every odd level (similar to how it is now, but they will get a head start on Invocations AND have two more than they normally get)
Here’s a sonewhat simple warlock fix idea. You still have pact slots (1 at 1, 2 at 3, etc). And they still level up. But instead of recovering on a short rest, you essentially get a Harness Divine Power that you can use PBtpLR. You spend a minute communing with your patron, and wam! pact slots renewed. You could do that twice at 1st level, 3 at 5th, and so on. Its the EFFECT of taking a short rest without the RESTRAINT of a short rest.
Just started the article and just wanted to say my kneejerk feeling is I do like the idea of 1/short moving to PB/long. It gives a sense of scaling power, and gives the player the agency to choose when to use those features. They can burst them out in one important moment or scatter them throughout the adventuring day, which I think just allows for a better feeling for the player and creates less demand for short rests during gameplay overall.
For your Warlock suggestion, I could see that if they also created an invocation that allowed you to choose a spell of a certain level and be able to cast that without spending spells slots, since that would allow for more control over their character creation. So if they increased the amount of selectable invocations, and also made spell-replacing invocations, then I could see that. It would probably make warlocks more half-caster like in terms of progression, as for balance reasons there would probably need to be a steep restriction to how many spells you may learn as invocations, and what level they may be.
I find that short rest features constrain the narrative. You sort of have to construct your narrative, so that players will take rests throughout the day. If you don’t, you are unfairly hurting the short rest classes. With this new change, you can fight a single big combat per day, and everyone will still feel useful.
That Monk fix is delightful, I’d actually consider a Monk that works like that. You could also just limit Stunning Strike attempts to 1/round when you hit with an attack. No action, no resources to use and track, just a binary: you have it until you use it and you get it back at the start of your turn.
With the suggested change to warlocks basing their powers entirely on invocations, there’s still room for variation. We already rate invocations on whether they give an at-will ability, a spell that can be cast with a pact slot, or provides one (or more) uses of a spell that recovers on X rest. Instead of weakening their progression, just include choices that give limited uses of level-appropriate spells. Depending on how many invocations the putative new warlock gets, these might be limited to once per LR, or maybe twice for some. Invocations usable PB times per LR doesn’t sit right, except as a higher level replacement of a one-shotter.
One of the good things about short rest recovery features is that it was a good way to shorten the gap in effectiveness between a fighter or monk and a wizard or sorcerer. My fear is the gap between these classes isn’t gonna change and we won’t have that out to make those classes feel effective anymore.
For the Battle Master’s superiority dice, I think Tasha’s has already given us the solution that we will see. Look at the rogue Soul Knife and the fighter Psi Warrior. Both of these have a dice pool mechanic that very strongly resembles the superiority dice, and they use “a number of these dice equal to twice your proficiency bonus.” You regain all expended dice when you finish a long rest, and additionally once per short or long rest you can use a bonus action to regain one use.
An idea I had for warlock would be for them to have proficiency bonus spell slots, and be able to recover them out of combat by dealing a certain amount of damage to themselves. This would fit the dark magic theme of warlocks, but it probably would be difficult to balance the amount of damage, since the party’s healing abilities will increase with level.
Here’s my suggestions: – website Divinity: Whenever you cast a cleric/paladin spell with a casting time of 1 minute or longer (including rituals), you regain your use of website Divinity. – Battlemaster: proficiency bonus superiority dice per long rest, but you can spend a fighter hit die in place of a superiority die if you are out of superiority dice. This would also mean that the Martial Adept feat becomes very attractive for Battlemasters.
For the warlock, what I think could be done: lvl 1-4 slots: same mechanic as pact slots, but recoverable x times per long rest (out of combat) = to proficiency; lvl 5-7 slots: minor arcana. Same mechanic as mystic arcanum, but recoverable 1 time per long rest (out of combat), then up to 3 times per long rest (5th slot). lvl 8-9 slots: major arcana. Same mechanic as mystic arcanum.
For the Warlock, the idea of invocations as their spell list is really cool. For more powerful or iconic spells that would be too powerful to be spammable, limiting them to the same proficiency bonus (or half proficiency bonus) per long rest also sounds like a good limiting factor. Only being able to cast these spells at their base level would also be good, perhaps with a feature to up the spell level. I’d be fascinated to see your take on it. You could also split up invocations into categories and only have say, 3 offensive invocations at level 5, 2 utility invocations, 2 invocations that modify offensive invocations, that sort of thing. Pick and choose your class out of x features available from your patron and choice of pact.
I think a mix of Chris’ suggestions for Warlock might work: – Have On Initiative as Chris mentioned. – Remove out of combat spells from the spell list. – Add increased invocation gain and options, with free will casting of the out of combat spells (balanced as appropriate). This removes the bag of rats problem while allowing for the most like-to-like transformation of the slots. Furthermore, it removes the pain that Warlocks suffer when they use one of their valuable level 5 spell slots to cast a level 1 utility spell out of combat.
I came to the same conclusions with my own complaints about the dichotomy between short and long rest features and homebrewed all short rest resources out of my game about two years ago. Every resource was recovered on a short rest and adjusted individually, I allowed a short rest to be 5 minutes per hit die spent to recover hp (but am changing that to a flat amount), and have incorporated hit dice into other homebrew features (mostly items but some feat-like boons). It has worked very nicely and I was glad to see official content seemingly moving in that direction. That said, I do not allow multiclassing at my table so who knows if that had any impact on the kinds of things players are getting up to. My solution to pact magic was to convert a normal full caster into spell points, and then turn those points into an equivalent number of spells for each level. However, I did also provide more invocations to warlocks in addition to changing all of their spellcasting invocations to allow one use without spending a slot and also giving each patron spells known 1-9 instead of spells available to learn from 1-5.
I agree that short rest feature recovery is probably going away. One option you don’t mention for replacing short rest recovery is a simple time based recovery. Both players and dungeon Masters are tracking spell and feature durations that last “10 minutes” or “1 hour”. I believe there may be features, like recovering website divinity, that reset 1 hour after last using them…
I’m a warlock player and I love them having a different spell casting mechanic; I agree that spell slots would make it boring. The other thing that scales with warlock is spell level access – maybe that’s how we work it? It’s always 2x the highest level of pact magic spell you can access? Nudge that to 3x from level 15 maybe? Agree also that changing and adding invocations would be a way of doing this too.
The warlock one could actually be really interesting. It would make it easier to pick between bladelock or an eldritch blaster, being able to get specific combo’s going with either. And personally, I think that getting some spells where you get acces to would also be really fitting for every subclass. As it stands now the non spell features are about the only ones that people currently care about with warlock subclasses.
On the warlock I guess they could go halfsies. Spells with spell slots equal to proficiency bonus times per day along with more invocations to choose and have. Or spell slots that you can regenerate proficiency bonus times per day by doing a one minute ritual to appease your patron, similar to website divinity and similar features that you want to limit the uses both in combat and between long rests.
Love your recommended changes for the monk and these fixes would make playing a monk more appealing. I totally agree with the fact that almost everything being tied to one resource in a class like the monk should be adressed. And I like how you try to make these fixes not too complicated so it wouldn’t be a headache to use in game.
I’ve just recently started playing a Warlock for the first time, and honestly I have to say I love the way it works right now. I’m not worried about changes coming up right away, it’s not like we’re going to change systems mid-campaign (I mean that’s the DM’s call really but I can’t see him doing it) but I’m one of those stick in the mud types who doesn’t like change and I’m worried about what might happen to what has recently become my favorite class. 😛
I have always thought the best fix for stunning strike is to remove the saving throw and add “Once a creature has been effected by this ability it cannot be effected by it again until it finishes a short of long rest”. This means that you would always get off a single round stun on an enemy, but there would be no stun lock potential.
As a Warlock, I totally approve and love the idea of no pact or spell slots and just more invocations. I think some invocations will be at will like now, but still some one use per long rest like say polymorph. Blend of predictable/unlimited lower power abilities mixed with limited high power abilities.
Why not just make short rests “short”? An Hour is too long for many parties to get use of them. Make a Short Rest 10 Minutes. Any time a caster wants to cast a Ritual Spell? It happens over the course of a Short Rest. Suddenly; Short Rests are paired with the Ritual casting waits – And MANY Classes are eager to take that time for a breather. And 10 Minutes is something that makes more sense in scenarios which are a little bit time sensitive.
Love the idea for warlock! The invocations are the best part of that class not the pact magic. One thing I’d be worried about is the presence of trap options. If you can customize every bit of the warlock it may be possible to build a useless character in a way that would be impossible for say, a rogue. It’s still possible in the current version but you have to go well off the beaten path to make yourself useless.
As a warlock warlock lover initially I was super apposed to treants idea, but i think if that was done in conjunction with making mystic arcanum’s start from 1st level then it could work For me the main appeal of warlocks is that they get all the cool toys full casters do without being useless without there slots.
Interesting on the Warlock. I’d probably go with collapsing Mystic Arcanum and Pact Slots. Each time you’d get a spell level (1st, 3rd, 5th, etc) you’d get one spell you could use Proficiency Bonus times per day of the appropriate level. Invocations would then either add spells to that list or they would make certain spells free. And then with the higher level Mystic Arcanum, you only get them once per Long Rest. That would actually simplify Warlocks down to Mystic Arcanum and Invocations while keeping them unique.
Another alternate way to deal with the monk’s three bonus action Ki abilities could be allowing an unlimited number of uses but you can’t use the same bonus action two turns in a row. You’d have to keep switching between offence, defence and movement. You could even tie stunning strike to once when you make a flurry of blows attack, preventing that from being spammed indefinitely. If there is going to be a 5.5e though I’d prefer a more radical redesign, something more interesting than Ki that still gives the monk a strong identity. You could, as an example in keeping with the above theme, have to choose at the beginning of your turn between aggressive, defensive and mobile stances, with their own game effects and action options.
One of the things I really like about the short rest mechanic, compared to 2nd and 3rd editions, is that for the classes that use it, tou can have a more realistic adventuring day. In 2e, 3e, you often have people nova in a single combat, and then go right back to a safe location for a long rest. I like adventuring days that take an actual day, and have many combats, like 5-8. I want more short rest mechanics not less, especially for the casters.
I really feel that the mini short rest is what they are going to do for a lot of features. In 4th Edition it was assumed that you were going to take a short rest between each combat since it was such a short period of time to take one. I think this a good idea that they could copy. Now if they made it, like your website Divinity suggestion, a 1 or 10 minute recovery period a number of times a day equal to proficiency modifier then classes like Warlock or Monk could have their features ready almost every combat. This would also give a sense of progression since as your character levels up they can do more in a day.
One thing I would really like in the future update would be two things that come to mind. First, the Spell Lists in the back of PHB need to have which school of magic that spell falls into listed next to it. 5e does it in the other books. Second, increase the amount of spells in PHB and have most of the added ones not be of the evocation school. I feel like players are pigeon hold into being a Evocationist.
I like the idea of converting Warlocks to half-caster+ (like the artificer) and giving them a 2nd level feature called Pact Magic that allows them to, as an action, produce the effect of a Warlock spell they know as if cast using a spell slot equal to half their Warlock level, rounded down. Pact Magic would have prof/long rest uses. This would mean a few things: 1. Pact Magic isn’t casting a spell and does not require components, therefore cannot be countered or trigger other spellcasting reactions. 2. Pact Magic rewards going into higher levels of Warlock by giving the ability to eventually use multiple 9th level effects, although only for upcasting spells of 5th level or lower. 3. Warlocks would also play more nicely in multiclassing with other casters by actually contributing to slot progression, but the whole coffeelock thing is gone. 4. Certain Warlock only spells can be rebalanced around being half-caster exclusive, like Find (Greater) Steed or Steelwind Strike, with an eye toward being powerful upcasting options.
What if there was a new resource that could be spent? And you spend those resource points to work like an instant “short rest”. Call it something like Recovery Points. And you get a number of recovery points equal to proficiency bonus. So perhaps when outside of combat you can use a recovery point to reset all those “reset on a short rest” abilities. Use a recovery point to gain back your pact slots or recover your action surge. And you can use them as many times equal to your proficiency bonus. No rest or time needed. Its simply a resource that you can use a certain number of times per day. This way there doesnt need to be drastic rule changes or rewrites of classes.
Considering that you can take Martial Adept many times it might become the best feat to take if you get a new dice every time to be used Prof. Bonus times. Let’s say take it twice with a battle master at Level 4 and Level 6 that’s plus 6 uses per long rest at level 6 and it scales quite well. I’ve been thinking about a building a Battlemaster or Psi Warrior that (in the current edition) that would focus on getting Superiority Dice with ASI and Fighting styles. This could make them quite strong
I love the warlock suggestion. I’ve always felt like warlocks being a caster was super weird. Like look at Kratos, he made a deal with Ares and stronger for it. It wouldn’t make sense if he could suddenly just start blasting dudes like his name is Danny DaVito. I really think expanding the invocations would make the class even better, and remove some cheesy multiclass options.
I did something similar with my warlock in a game, but the dm didnt like the idea of not having spell slots. so we converted it to spell points, as well as increasing the invocations. Only now, when you take the invocations to gain spells, they still cost spell points to cast. It works really well, and gives the warlock more customization choice, as well as a little more benefit from lower level spells. I would really love to see you make a article on how you would do the invocations with removing pact slots, and i hope arcanum as well. Please do that article!
The Relentless Rage change might require the rages to not be infinite at level 20. For the Warlock change: Getting invocations that let you cast some spells once per longrest might also go well with that. Bascially allowing for a more or less spell focussed warlock, but instead of being able to cast the same spell again and again like other classes, the warlock would have to switch between spells a lot.
Some people have kind of mentioned this, but I think a character might just be able to use Hit Dice outside of combat whenever they want. Hit Dice are a limited resource, so why not. They can also expend hit dice outside of combat to do other recovery-type things besides recover hit points such as recover Ki, rages, action surge, warlock spell slots, wildshapes, website divinity uses, bardic inspiration, etc. Players would have to decide if it’s worth it to recover those things rather than hit points. And you would keep the mechanic where you only recover half your Hit Dice on a long rest (which many people may not realize is there), so you really have to be careful about using more than half your hit dice. Then you use the Hit Dice mechanic in new and interesting ways AND figure out something besides Proficiency Times Per Long Rest for the abilities where that just doesn’t really work.
Really interesting article. Though a couple of things I find worth mentioning. The website Divinity requiring both a minute of concentration AND an additional action seems kind of overkill. Simply requiring the minute concentration seems more than enough. For Battlemaster I think It’s important to remember that Tasha added non-combat maneuvers so I don’t think a simple “Two per initiate” rule would work. Maybe we just need a table of how many you get per long rest at each level? IDk. For Monks I think it’s unreasonable to assume that Ki points are going anywhere. Remember that the Tasha Monks both currently run on the idea of ki. More likely they’ll just increase the number you get per level. (As a side note I’m not quite sure how infinite flurry of blows isn’t game breaking. Specifically prior to level 5 as you’d be doing near action surge levels of damage every turn.) I really do love the idea for warlocks, however I feel like there is a FAR easier method of adjusting them. Just increase the number of spellslots by 1, and turn their capstone ability to level a level 2 ability. You’ll have close to the same number of daily spells without sacrificing the warlocks uniqueness.
Great article! I could see the once (or x times) per combat/initiative features working. Especially for classes like Fighters since thematically they push themselves extra hard when using it, and then afterwards they just need a breather and they’ll be ready to do it again for the next fight. You did forget one Wizard base class feature though; Signature Spells allows you to cast each of your 2 chosen spells once per short rest. Assuming the feature otherwise doesn’t change I suppose the standard proficiency times per long rest would work here too. Although they might as well set a specific number of uses since by the time you’d get this feature your proficiency modifier is hardly a variable anymore and is almost guaranteed to be 6 for the rest of your character’s career.
We must turn the Monk into the quintessential bonus action martial class; at least three options at any given time! The way I’m thinking of to rework Stunning Strike is to make it so that you can use your bonus action to alter the effect of one unarmed strike, applying a penalty to hit similar to the haymaker feats, but if it lands, it stuns the target (so long as they’re not immune) until the start of your next turn in addition to dealing the normal damage for an unarmed strike. This way, there’s a sense of give-and-take… while there is a penalty involved, you can still do something to offset that instead of it being completely reliant on the opponent failing a saving throw they aren’t likely to fail; it should give the player some input and make it feel like when they boost their attack modifier, their character is getting better at doing their thing instead of it being inconsequential. —Oh, yeah, and limited uses, of course; “a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest” sounds fine if it’s as impactful as stealing a turn and landing as consistently as a haymaker,…Grasping Arrow is similarly valuable but comes online sooner, but that’s just what I think. You?
I would argue more features should refresh with short rests. Every time I offer to take a short rest as a character that’s dependent on them, everyone just says they don’t need one because it wont give them any features back. I think every class should have something important come back on a short rest.
Hello! Great article! I have a question. I have rewatched the Soradin article and I was wandering how can one cast web, spirit guardians or any other spell that has material components. I think you could use a staff as both spellcasting focus and weapon, but does it work with a spear? Thanks for your time!!!
For Warlocks, if going the route you highlighted, instead of linking the spells to invocations I think it’d be more elegant to have them be a separate category. As in you get a certain number of spells you can cast unlimitedly which goes up with level indicated on the warlock table. That way there aren’t so many invocations for new players to shift through with names different than the spell name. There’s Pros and Cons to decoupling spells from invocations. Alternatively you could couple them but organize the spell invocations separately and don’t add more names to the spell names. You could also add a separate list of spells you can cast once per long rest. Personally I think the spell slot and chosen available spell system is better; I would lean towards modifying the pact magic/ mystic arcanum system. You could allow warlocks to perform a pact ritual to get back all pact slots once per long rest and increase pact slots to 3 at 8th level or something.
For all the ones that you didn’t want to give number of uses PB per long rest. You can just have them recover out of combat a number of time equal to PB per long rest. So for Pact Magic just have it read “You can spend one minute meditating to recover all of your spell slots. You can use this feature to recover spell slots a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest”
I like the idea of Warlocks being entirely “At Will” but I worry it would be difficult to balance. A good alternative might be a mix of “At Will” and “Proficiency Times a Day”. So casting Invisibility or Silent image would be at will but invocations to cast “Greater Invisibility” or “Major Image” would be prof times per day. I’d also love more passive/innate magical abilities in general. Spells are great, but not all magical archetypes are casters. More things like the Sorcerer’s “Magical Guidance” would be awesome.
I think for some features and maybe warlock is a good example. Certain invocations might have a limited Action use. For example if you wanted counterspell as an invocation you get it 7th level, you get Half Prof bonus rounded down per “long” rest. The big problem with every combat for some things it makes them way more powerful and unless you changed the short rest feature to “end combat” you couldn’t really do a reset “every other” combat. Also the out of combat uses for some spells might make it a bit harder to track/reset some features. Tracking resets will need to be simple other wise Pen and Paper. Some homebrew features i’ve seen is you keep the short rest, but you add a quick reset which is how i’ve seen some tables run short rests. It’s about 10 minutes and fits spells like Prayer of Healing.
I always felt proper play ( barely medium optimization to high optimization) usually results in 3-5 short rests per adventuring day. My solution would be to just give more classes short rest features or just spread short and long rest features over all classes at a good balance (which is what I use for my homebrew fixes) and incentives short rests and have them be 10 minutes (which I also do as a DM). It really leads to the inverse of what Chris is suggesting anyways – the whole when rolling initiative recovery bit. I usually just allow people to recover for 10-20 minute after leaving Initiative and it leaves me the option open to roll initiative for non combat encounters and have things like RP Initiative tied to CHA or group challenge initiative with either WIS or DEX, etc. But making “in combat” or “entering combat” a condition or a status to tie stuff to it sounds very interesting as well. On the other hand at my tables I incentives uses of hit dice a lot to recover, so nobody has to be a healer or even a support class if they don’t want to. I’m not so sure if I like the whole proficiency bonus times per long rest, am not a fan; because it makes abilities scale very well with just dips while multiclassing. 2-3 level dip in barbarian, then gain 6 Rages per LR post character level 17 on a level 14/3 druid/barbarian? Nah bruh, don’t like that. I also feel like healing spells and other hit point recovery game systems are also balanced around the fact that people would be spending hit dice on short rests.
I swear I’ve heard a suggested alternative rule for short rests: Characters have two uses of short rest per day, and can choose to spend them at any time, instantly. (probably out of combat.) I like the idea of players being able to just choose when to refresh their skills. Do they top off early, or drag it out longer before refreshing their skills? Maybe you could make it take 5-15 minutes? Maybe you only refresh abilities, and hit dice takes longer? Idk, I’d love to see how this works. It makes it feel more like resting and stamina in Starfinder. It also balances/standardizes long/short rest classes.
Two things: 1) 4 elements Monk, make them a third caster BUT they have to select a single element, so for example fire would gain Shape flame and two other flame/light based cantrips and spells as a 3rd caster but selected from a curated list. Then the subclass abilities would key off that, so at 6th they could say add their MA die as fire damage on a successful unarmed attack once per round, at 10th they can replace one of their attacks with a cantrip like the Blade Singer (and gain another cantrip) etc. 2) I like replacing Pack magic with invocations but in addition they would need both more cantrips (3 or 4 at 1st level) and both more invocations as they level, maybe 2 at level one and one every level except ASI levels, but many of the invocations would also have to improve with level. A basic scheme would be “Once per day” then 3-4 levels later, “PB times per day” and maybe “At will” 3-4 levels later, but that would be spell dependent. Basic logic would be “If it has limited game impact/is a ritual spell, then at will is fine at some point”, so to use an existing example, Jump, you can get it at level one “Once per day”, then at level 4 it’s “PB times per day” at level 7 it’s at will. Other spells would have to be more limited, those with major game impact, Fireball for example, or your favorite Polymorph, that would be “Once per day” at level 7, and twice per day at 10 to 12, then, three times per day at 13 to 17 something like that.
I think that removing short rests would allow them to go a long way towards making classes more balanced, but it could also introduce a lot more problems too. Also, regarding the warlocks, I think that removing spell slots entirely would take out way too much of the utility a warlock could bring and leave them as a 5th wheel way too much. Also if you make all the invocations “at will” you don’t really have enough options for balancing them, but if you make some of them “PB/Day” you have WAY WAY more bookkeeping to track.
Taking a stab in the dark I think a more likely and simple approach for that 5.5e kind of release is something more broadly and consistently applied. Replace resources that are recovered on short rest with 1 minute recoveries based on proficiency bonus. For example Action Surge you can spend a minute and recover a single action surge proficiency bonus times per short rest. Warlocks can take a minute to beseech their patron for more power recovering two spell slots proficiency bonus times a day taking a minute to do so. Clerics can say a one minute prayer to their god to recover a use of website Divinity proficiency bonus times per long rest. Bards can tune their instruments for a minute to recover 2 of their bardic inspiration dice proficiency bonus times per long rest. Monks meditate to recover Ki. Druids commune with nature to recover Wildshapes etc. These numbers might not be perfect but I think they are close to similar or slightly better in most cases. Plus if you do take a short rest all of these would count as light activity that can be completed with the short rest. I don’t think the 10 minute short rest is a great idea which I have seen floating around. It makes catnap redundant for starters.
With the Warlock Idea of giving them At-Will Spells. Maybe they learn half as many spells with Pact Magic; But all can be cast At-Will. However – They gain access to higher level spells at a slowed rate. – 4th level, they can start learning 2nd level spells. – 7th Level; 3rd level spells. – 10th Level; 4th Level Spells. – 13th Level; 5th Level Spells. – 16th level; 6th Level Spells. Ends up similar in-practice to coffeelock stuff – without worrying over the complex mechanics involved there With this route: I would also shift Mystic Arcanum to be set up so they can keep up with full casters with the highest tier magic – but only once or twice per long rest “Mystic Arcanum: Gained at 3rd Level – The Warlock learns one 2nd Level Spell from the Warlock Spell List, which the Warlock can cast without expending a spell slot Once every long rest. When gaining a Warlock Level, you can replace the spell learned in this way with another spell no higher level than half your warlock level rounded up. Learn one Additional Spell to be used with Mystic Arcanum at 11th and gain an additional use of Mystic Arcanum at level 15.”
I think that a nice rebalance for the battlemaster for example would be to have their martial dice be 2*proficiency. From what I have seen, battlemaster was a bit to strong with the amount of times it could use it’s maneuvres at low level, then it became less and less impactful at higher levels. Getting it to go from 4 ending at 12 sounds like a better power scale.
I Love your change for Monks, if I still had one in my game, I’d give that to them as an option. Of course the thing I was most curious about was what you would recommend with Warlocks… but I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next article on that one 😉 P.S. Giving them Per Encounter abilities would be potentially interesting… but WotC might still be afraid of the Stink of 4e…. 😬
Here’s an idea for warlocks that’s a fusion of your idea and the current mechanics of the class: They keep pact casting but they only get a max of slots there entire career. And it recharges based on rolling for initiative.( this makes sense to me considering a lot of warlock players don’t reach level. I think making the max two would also allow Wotc to create stronger invocations with feeling they are breaking the game.let’s say they get the second slot at level 3 or 5) They keep mystic arcanum (mystic arcanum sort act as strong invocations so they should be kept) Lastly they increase the number of invocations to 10 adding an invocation at level 1 and level 11.( I definitely agree warlocks need stronger, more diverse, complimentary, and upcast-able invocations. Ex for upcast-able invocations: fiendish vigor gets up casted ever 5 warlock levels so a 5th level fiendish vigor is casted at 2nd level. Another example for complimentary invocations: have an invocation that lets warlocks cast magical darkness a number of times = to their proficiency bonus. And they are able to change the area of effect of the spell to make it smaller than 15 feet.
Great article! Love the suggestions! For the battle master, I think reducing the pool of Superiority dice to PB# might be moving too far in thay direction. Maybe as a compromise, we keep the number of dice and the increase progression the same (start with 4 and eventually go up to 6) but then we say they can recover half the maximum at the start of combat (so at the start, 4 is the max and they can recover up to 2 dice every time initiative is rolled)?
If a lot of class mechanics get tied to PB, multiclassing will be incredibly powerful. I’d tie progression to class levels. website Divinity, for example, could be WIS mod + 1/2 class level rounded down (min. 1) per long rest. Some mechanics might tie to attribute mods, scale per level, or two levels, or every five levels, as needed to remain balanced.
for warlock … maybe once per long rest, you spend 1 minute in meditation to recover your pact magic? additionally, expand the invocations to be more like 5th level invocation can choose form diverse list of 1st-level spells to use at will, 9th-level invocation can choose from diverse list of 2nd-level spells to use at will, etc. but you must choose the specific spell at the time of learning this invocation, with option to change at each level-up?
Thoughts on this change to the warlock? Get rid of spell slots entirely. Replace Pact Magic(spell levels 1-5) with a feature similar to mystic arcanum except that the warlock can cast each spell level(1-5) a number of times per long rest equal to their proficiency bonus without using a spell slot. Like mystic arcanum, they know only 1 spell per level from the base class and cannot upcast spells(no spell slots). Maybe add the expanded spell list from their chosen subclass to that 1 spell known per spell level. Whenever the warlock makes use of the expanded spell list, have them roll a wisdom save. On a failed save, roll on a table to determine the effect of the patron’s temporarily increased influence over the warlock. Changes to appearance, emotional state, compulsions, etc. Whatever is appropriate with a small table of 6-8 options per patron. Change the Eldritch Smite Invocation to a proficiency bonus number of d8s a number of times per day equal to the proficiency bonus. Use focus mechanic. Gain focus as a bonus action, expend focus when you eldritch smite. Focus lasts 1 minute or until expended.
Here is an idea for Spell Casting Recovery(SCR). I know this will get a lot of backdraft. First, all SCR is done during a Long Rest. Second, SCR is done in minutes. The base number of SCR in minutes is 11 minutes. However, you minus this 11 minutes by your Spell Casting modifier. For example, your a Wizard. You have a Int of 16. So an Int mod of +3 This would mean your SCR would take 11-3 (Int mod)=8 minutes. Third, as for website, Arcane Recovery, Pact Magic, and Wildshape class features would be able to recover in two ways. First, each one of them may recover during a Short Rest equal your Proficiency Bonus per day. After that they would recover during a Long Rest. Fourth, 11 minutes is not a random chosen number. If you do the math connected to Ability Modifiers than you would find a score of 29/30 would equal to a +10 mod. Which is achievable. A base number of 11 (minutes) would keep SCR from becoming free. Fithly, (and finally) a Warlock’s number of spells is pathetic. To me there are two options that could be done. Option 1, keep the amount of known spells the same. However, increase the amount on Invocations gained. Or, Option 2, which would be more work. Don’t increase the amount of Invocations gained. However, Patron Bonus Spells are added your known spells when the become open to you. The amount of known spells a Warlock would know would be equal to 6 plus your Cha mod. Then at each level gained a Warlock would get one Warlock spell of their choosing or may instead replace one of their non-Patron Spells.
I strongly agree with your suggestion for Warlock because I really liked it in the earlier editions when (as you say) it was all at-will spell-likes. You could even leave a few powerful “use this spell once per day” options, like their currently 6-9th level spells, and a few of their invocations. One place where it seems I might disagree with you, is that where possible I think more features should be “recharge when you roll initiative” (obviously avoiding things that would benefit from a bag of rats). By using PB per long rest, it allows more burst and I think that is an issue that D&D has long had. The kinds of stories that D&D tells have both long slogs of days going room by room through a dungeon, where resting just doesn’t make logical sense, and it has long overland travel where you may only have one combat encounter over the whole week of travel. Thus I would like to see more things be “encounter” abilities the way that 4th edition had. Where we expect that you can do them once (or twice) an encounter, but you can’t just spend all 4-5 daily uses in a single encounter. But, I think you might be right that they are going to treat them as PB/long-rest as you’ve rightly pointed out that is the mechanic they seem to be experimenting with.
I really like this article and I agree with most of the suggestions, and I don’t necessarily disagree here either, but I found it very funny that the proposals for both Monk and warlock we’re basically reverting them to their 3.5 forms. Warlocks of course only had invocations in 3.5 and that made them fit awkwardly in the prestige class focused meta that was part of the edition. Here it would be an issue with multiclassing, but that’s not quite as big a drawback as it was then. Plus I believe in 3.5 all of the invocations we’re at will and the 5e ones are not afraid to have casting limits. I can see it working but you might need a few features to scale to allow some multiclassing and I don’t hate it breaking the weird perfection that is Paladin/Warlock in 5e. Monks with unlimited flurry of blows and Stunning Strike as its own pool of resources only made me laugh because the design trends in 3.5 basically took Stunning Strike uses and transformed it into a resource pool for other options (usually feat, and then Pathfinder used it) which basically became the predecessor to 5e’s Ki. Again, not opposed, but funny how trends shift and shift back. Also, Chris, I’m sure you’re aware of all these. I’m not trying to pretend I’m pointing out anything novel. I was surprised you didn’t mention it, but also I know you didn’t want this to turn into history corner when that’s not actually a part of the discussion here. Again, not complaining or disagreeing, just laughing at the recurrence. – Case
Im with you most of the way, but I don’t think resetting at initiative works. Here’s the question: how often do you roll initiative? Take wave echo cave in LMOP. There are 11 rooms with monsters. So a level 5 monk would get 33 stunning strikes, without sacrificing any other resources. That seems like too many.
I know there are a million ideas for how to fix monks, but hear me out: what if instead of a pool of ki points per rest, they got a variable amount of ki points when they need them based on their martial arts die? Something like: “Whenever you roll initiative, or use your action to refocus, you harness your ki, allowing you to to roll your martial arts die and gain a number of ki points equal to the result of the roll. Unspent ki points remain usable for up to 1 minute or until you harness your ki again.” I think this does some good things to the balance. It’s not totally unlimited ki uses, but it’s effectively infinite as long as you can spend an action on it. The monk can’t just steamroll an encounter with this amount of ki, but they also aren’t blowing it all then sitting around doing nothing waiting for it to come back. Out of combat, ki effectively does become unlimited for most purposes, allowing them to use their enhanced mobility features more freely to solve environmental puzzles and explore their surroundings without caring about if they’ll need it in the next fight. I think it works better thematically, too. The monk can have moments of incredible martial skill, but also moments of serenity, even in the midst of battle. And roleplay-wise, refocusing your ki could be anything, making it a great way to illustrate what your monk’s training is like and how they get in the zone: taking a deep breath, saying a chant, shadowboxing, slapping yourself in the face, having a brief cry, setting your own scarf on fire, counting prime numbers, anything!
Warlock is my go-to class, and I love the ability to cast some spells for free, or have other unlimited spell-like abilities. As long as they dont under/overshoot the power such that the class remains viable, Id love a change like this. Take the best of what they’ve learned from 3.5 thru 5e and apply those lessons.
The website divinity one doesn’t seem to work, it means you essentially have to sacrifice a spell slot to gain CD back, and it would force all clerics to pack some healing, something that the class fortunately currently lets you opt out of if you want to. Killing specific creatures is way too dependent on the DM or the campaign setting. Usually you aren’t going to face undead every single day, and even then you have to be the one to kill it.