Deep diving into the the warriors of the leaden crown, pride and regret.
In Grim Hollow monks tend to focus more on personality than spiritualism. This seems to be the driving force behind their powers, whether that be an irrepressible ego or a sense of regret, these monks are more about how their character flaws influence their abilities than how their training might.
The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 monk subclasses. They are:
- Warrior of the leaden crown – Driven by a desire to fight back against otherworldly powers, these monks seek political power to influence mortal destiny.
- Warrior of pride – Beware those that hurt this monk’s ego, these monks are particularly devastating when wounded.
- Warrior of regret – Burdened by the grief of past evils, these monks seek to atone for their misdeeds, channeling this into their abilities.
In this article, I’ll dive into each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.
Warrior of the leaden crown
What are they?
Honour-bound to fight against the dominance of otherworldly powers, these monks hone their abilities to withstand would-be oppressors from beyond the mortal plane. They are also engaged in politics in order to sway society towards independence from such entities.
Key abilities
Subtle hand (lv3)
An extra 5ft reach with unarmed strikes and psychic damage makes hit and run tactics easy and your attack damage rarely resisted at an even earlier level.
Psionic prowess (lv3)
Invisible mage hand is a strong utility spell. The other spells are pretty good too. Shatter gives you some rare crowd control, hold person is decent for a save or suck spell and levitate and detect good and evil are reasonably useful.
Wisdom as a spellcasting ability is a good option on the wisdom-strong monk.
Unsubtle strike (lv6)
Theres no resource cost here so push and pull to your heart’s delight (once per turn of course). You’ll likely want to push away strong melee opponents and pull in spellcasters and ranged enemies.
Psychic crush (lv11)
There’s a bit of an action economy and focus point trade off to make here. It’s 1d8 damage per pressure point, but you’re competing here with flurry of blows (same focus cost) which will be 3 attacks at 1d10 + probably 4-5 (average of about 31.5 damage if all attacks hit). That means you need about 7 pressure points to equal that damage.
That’s not necessarily hard for the high attack monk (5 attacks per turn at this level with flurry of blows) so you could exceed this in 2 turns with mostly hits. But you’re relying on a single enemy surviving this long to then make this worthwhile. And attacking another creature will remove all existing pressure points. And it’s another thing to track. Essentially, this is only great against really tough enemies, if you limit who you attack, and you must keep track of another resource. It does cause restrained, but you already have stunning strike for an even stronger effect here.
Psionic mastery (Lv17)
Some good spell options here make you a bit more of a utility option and give you more you can do in combat. Wall of force is a particularly good option for some battlefield control. The good thing for monks is they make more attacks with their bonus action than their actions (with flurry of blows). This means expending an action on a spell doesn’t reduce your damage output as much as it would for a fighter for example.
What are they good at?
Hit and run tactics, casting utility spells and tackling one powerful enemy at a time.
How effective are they?
Extra reach on a monk is always good as it can usually keep you out of an enemy’s reach which keeps you safer when using hit and run tactics. Utility spellcasting is a nice add on, though most parties will have spellcasters in the group and are likely to be able to grab many of these spells. But another partial caster is no bad thing.
Sadly, psychic crush falls a bit flat for me. You need the right conditions and setup to make this more worthwhile than flurry of blows which means at least 2-3 turns of setup and forcing focus fire on a single enemy. It’s a bit contrived for something that replaces flurry of blows unfortunately.
Score: 3/5
Warrior of pride
What are they?
These monks advance themselves to gain recognition from others. Not only do they seek mastery of their martial prowess, but they also seek admiration from those around them. This means enhancing their appearance as well as their ability.
Key abilities
Tall tales (lv3)
Monks struggle to invest in charisma. This either means that a skill proficiency in a face skills is wasted on them, or you might view it as a chance to compensate a little depending on how your party plays social situations. Either way, it’s a ribbon feature really.
Bruised ego (lv3)
You should be aiming to get your wisdom fairly high anyway. This means 3-5 temporary hit points most turns, and 6-10 when you’re bloodied. This is actually a lot of easily regenerated temporary hit points, especially as you’ll use focus points a lot in tougher encounters. This is a really strong resilience feature.
Assertive attacker (lv3)
Even more reason to up your wisdom modifier and things always get better when bloodied. I wouldn’t suggest you try and be bloodied to take advantage of this (surviving longer is still better and you’d get the same amount of time being bloodied to deal extra damage). But you may want to save focus points uses more for when you are bloodied as this will apply more damage and more temporary hit points.
Even at this level, with flurry of blows, this is likely to be an extra 9-15 damage per turn (if all attacks hit). This can get up to 25 by level 11 and at level 20 and beyond, it’s not hard to make your wisdom 24+. This is potentially a big boost to damage output when bloodied.
Irrational retaliation (lv6)
Advantage against a creature that hits you. It’s a reaction and a focus point, but the cost seems fair and with 3+ attacks to potentially blast their way, that’s rolling advantage for a potential 3 or more attacks. It’s almost like this monk wants to be attacked!
Redoubled efforts (lv6)
Slightly better critical hits are nice. There’s only a 5% chance of landing a critical, but with lots of attacks per turn and the potential for a fair bit of advantage, this could be more common for the pride monk than most.
Ever prideful (lv11)
I had to read this quite carefully. The important part is that you’re immune to the unconscious condition. Part of the unconscious condition means you become incapacitated, but since you aren’t unconscious, I don’t think you become incapacitated either (though you aren’t immune to being incapacitated).
This basically means you can keep fighting while you take death saving throws which is really strong! But be aware, you’re now a threat so enemies are more likely to attack you which means more death saving throws failed so you’ll want to keep away from danger even more and probably heal yourself (easier now you’re conscious as you could use a potion of healing).
Basically, this is really good, but use with caution.
Egotistical (Lv17)
Now you’ve got that bloodied damage boost whenever you’re below your hit point maximum. It’s probably worth just having the barbarian slap you every morning so you lose 1HP and can fight at maximum strength. It also means your criticals will hit a bit harder and your temporary hit points when using focus will be at their best. This seems understated, but it’s a major boost!
What are they good at?
Hitting harder and taking more damage than any other monk. They’re at their best when bloodied, so beware the wounded pride of this monk.
How effective are they?
Mechanically, it’s interesting to have characters adjust in power as they become more or less injured. We don’t see that much in D&D 5e.
There’s enough going on here when you’re not bloodied, that this remains a good subclass even then, but get a pride monk bloodied and it’s a fairly terrifying prospect that flirts with being broken. I don’t think it’s quite broken, but it is very powerful, and noticeably so compared to other monk subclasses. I wouldn’t outright ban this at my table, but I might consider removing the level 17 feature and shuffling some features to higher levels just to keep the balance a bit more.
Score: 5/5
Warrior of regret
What are they?
Warriors of regret are haunted by past misdeeds. While they accept that such evils cannot be undone, they do seek to atone for them, channeling their grief and remorse into a weapon.
Key abilities
Shade of regret (lv3)
It’s kind of handy that you can make attacks from the location of a shade instead. This is good for keeping you safe but the drawback is when the shade needs to move within range of enemies, that will require a bonus action which is a drain on your potential attacks.
Still, you can more easily surround enemies and it does give options for attacks. It also means force or necrotic damage from level 3.
The road not travelled (lv3)
Teleport 60ft instead of dashing and you can use this for your ally. Really handy safety feature. Challenge is going to be having your shade in the right places. I almost think that this is going to be easier to use to get allies into combat rather than out of it. Handily, step of the wind means this can be done as a bonus action. And no need to use a focus point on it as you won’t need to disengage if you’re teleporting.
Aid not given (lv6)
The help action isn’t great for a monk as a bonus action. Ideally you’d grant this for advantage on an attack, but that means wasting the opportunity for a whole separate attack. A rogue struggling to get advantage for a sneak attack might be a good option here, otherwise, I’d prefer to just make the attack.
The healing is very useful. It’s not going to be a huge amount of hit points, but perfect for recovering an ally that’s been knocked to 0HP. My issue with this is that there’s no resource cost for the healing, which I think is an oversight. It means that after every combat, the warrior of regret can just heal everyone until they’re at full health. I’d either limit this by having it cost a focus point, or give a number of uses equal to your wisdom modifier each long rest.
Crushing guilt (lv11)
Decent area, decent damage and knock creatures prone. It’s solid for 3 focus points and gives you some much needed crowd control.
Relive the past (lv17)
An extra attack through your shade and it can use stunning strike. All great options for more power and more safety.
What are they good at?
Keeping at a safe distance from enemies while still making important mele attacks. They’re also good for a bit of light healing.
How effective are they?
They’re OK. The problem with the warrior of regret is their effectiveness kind of depends on how well you can get your shade into the right places. The ability to hit and run has never been the monk’s issue, even if this does enhance that. The problem is it’s quite a sacrifice moving your shade around.
It’s also a little convoluted to make all of this work. It should be pointed out that unlimited healing is a design flaw and even if in other ways, the warrior of regret isn’t overpowered, unlimited healing makes a mockery of hit dice which I think is unintentional. Give it a resource limit and you should be all fine.
Score: 3/5
Which monk subclass is best?
The warriors of the leaden crown and regret are only decent for me. They try some interesting things, but ultimately, they don’t quite stick the landing on the use of shades or psychic crush.
However, the warrior of pride is an outstanding subclass that just barely doesn’t cross the line of being a broken subclass. It is really powerful though, and an interesting option if you want a character that gets more dangerous the more it gets hurt.
One thing to note is that while some Grim Hollow subclasses just seem too nasty for most players to want to play, the monk subclasses feel a little more roleplay friendly. The warrior of regret in particular is one of those that manages to nicely fit the darkness of the setting while feeling like a character type you could comfortably play.
What do you think of Grim Hollow’s monk subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.
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