Five Fingers of Death

[DarkArtist]

This was a skill suggestion by Hung, forget the name for the moment and consider the idea.

Hung wrote:
So here's another suggestion. Add prime monk spell 'Five Fingers of Death'. It costs 100 mana and lasts for 1 tick, so it's unlikely to be used in groups. It makes hands glow red and adds, say, 15(maybe 10 for non-avatar, 15 for avatar) damage for each attack.

The suggestion got lost in the weeds of a different discussion so I'm putting it back up here. This is not a debate about where monk stands in relation to other classes, forget about it for a moment please.

The question I ask is should monks be able to divert mana into their damage?

The answer I come to is yes, that is really a cool concept. It creates a nice dichotomy between the thief class and it's brother class monk. Thief diverts movement into damage via the circle skill like a blast. Then monk is diverting mana, which makes sense in a fantasy reality way and in a mechanics way.

The first argument I see against this is: aren't you turning monks into mage's then? Not at all because the damage is being diverted thru the characters melee attacks. This means that the characters number of attacks and hitroll and opponent AC all play into it. And it also means that the damage being done is slow cumulative bonus rather than the mages large instant damage.

Another reason this would not be OP is because we could take the opportunity to fix some features i.e. nerf down the number of actions that monk can do while deathgripping. This would be a very nice bone to give in exchange for a necessary nerf.

So anyway I thought his idea deserved a second look. I don't care for the name and didn't examine the exact numbers he presented. But I think the concept is perfect for monk prime and it could be balance out easy enough.

[Hung]

The name(and glowing hands) came from this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Boxer
It's classic kung fu movie. One of Tarantino's favourites. It definitely influences his Kill Bill series.

I'd briefly remind the motivation. Warriors ability to make second strike by the cost of mvs + massive critical hit makes them do more damage per round bare-handed than monks. Which is weird and makes being prime monk pointless. Because being warrior makes you decent monk + gives you all warrior benefits. This could be balanced out by giving monks second strike by the cost of mana or mvs. That's the general idea behind FFD. I still support that idea, but think that it shouldn't add damage to hits but imbue them with some stylish proc. When it fires it does strike like damage. And probability of firing is about 15%. So, on high levels, when a monk makes 6 attacks per round at least one of them will fire and the monk will have his second strike. It'll be also very fun if proc fires more than once...

[DarkArtist]

Ok, again forgetting that the original motivation was envy...

Does anyone else thing the concept makes a lot of sense that the Monk class would have such a skill? It's similar to an immolation type attack in that it costs mana up front and then deals out damage gradually thru melee hits.

For the record Monk class works GREAT as it is. That is NOT at issue. I'm curious to know what other peeps think about the specific suggestion to A. add such a skill as described above and B. further restrict the types of actions that one may do while deathgripping.