Way of the Sun Soul Monk 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

There is something deeply silly to me about a character so dedicated to their creed, so pious and measured in their faith, that they unlock the ability to shoot beams of light from their hands with relative power to how hard they can kick.

Way of the Sun Soul exists as a somewhat ranged option you could explore, but I really struggle to see much mechanical benefit in it over most of its competition. If you really dig shooting light beams from your hands in place of unarmed strikes, this gives you that, but with nothing coming in the utility department, and the mid-tier features being 1st and 2nd level spell effects that cost ki, I'm not anywhere near impressed.

3rd Level: Radiant Sun Bolt

Radiant Sun Bolt gives you an alternate way to strike with a fancy 30 ft. ranged spell attack, but the spell attack modifier is Dex and you also add Dex to hit (which basically makes it a ranged weapon attack numerically). It shares a dice size with your Martial Arts, scales with Extra Attack, and has a Flurry of Blows equivalent baked in, but literally nothing else. This reads as a 30 ft. extension of your unarmed strikes, but you can't use Stunning Strike with them.

This starts out as equivalent to a sling, but lacking the 120 ft. long range. It grows into a worse shortbow, then a worse longbow, and eventually a loading-free heavy crossbow. If you want ranged weapon attacks, take literally any class with those proficiencies, and voila! You're making ranged attacks as good as Radiant Sun Bolt, but without it costing you a 3rd level feature.

Dedicated Weapon, an optional feature in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, even gives you a way to use ranged weapons as monk weapons. All this then offers you compared to not having it at all is the Martial Arts feature at a 30 ft. range. That isn't nearly enough.

6th Level: Searing Arc Strike

Searing Arc Strike lets you weave bonus action Burning Hands into your attacks at the cost of 2 ki points a pop, with the exciting option to up-cast for 1 bonus point per level up.

This is a complete failure of a feature. Monks are very tight on ki, even at this stage. 2 ki points for a 3d6 damage cone is fine, but you're forgoing 1 ki point for two attacks or beams by this point. If you're ever hitting two or fewer creatures, this is going to be roughly 1d6 bonus damage to each for an extra ki point compared to Flurry of Blows two extra attacks. Those attacks include your modifiers to damage, have a longer range, can be made against the same target, and keep up more options for later.

This only will be particularly exciting against three to four enemies, and I just can't get excited at 6th level for a 3d6 damage cone for a 3rd of my resources when Wizards get Fireball for 8d6 at a better range with a better area.

There being no features here that give you something to do without spending ki is a sin. You needing to spend 2 ki points on a 1st level spell is a sin, even with the expedited cost. Not getting any out-of-combat utility at all is a sin. Searing Arc Strike is about as terrible as Way of the Four Elements, an infamous subclass lambasted by almost everyone.

11th Level: Searing Sunburst

Things don't get much better for Way of the Sun Soul, unfortunately. Searing Sunburst gives you a new free damage option for your action where you throw a 2d6 radiant damage grenade with an 150 ft. range. It is situational, as 2d6 damage is worse damage per target than a single attack from you would probably be, leaving it as something you need to sink ki into to justify its use or be a tool for engaging enemies you otherwise couldn't. It doesn't scale and will only get comparatively worse as your Martial Arts dice keep going up.

Getting Fireball damage for 3 ki points six levels after wizards and sorcerers got Fireball isn't all that exciting, as it uses a 4th of your total resources while forgoing all of the other abilities your character's been getting up to this point that care about Martial Arts.

17th Level: Sun Shield

Sun Shield is the nail in the coffin for this option. The only text you get from this monastic tradition empowers you to play at range up to this point. Its capstone being a reward for getting hit is hilarious. You've spent all this time building a character trying your best to make the most out of 15, 30, and 150 ft. bursts of light, the rest of your class be damned, and you close it out by getting a feature that wants you to take as many hits as possible to deal bonus damage back.

Or at least, it WOULD if it wasn't also gated by a reaction. A reaction for 5 plus your Wisdom modifier damage, as a 17th-level feature, is about as bad as it gets. Fire Shield is a 5th level spell that reflects 2d6 fire damage on hit for 10 minutes, no reaction necessary. For some reason, this is gated to reaction usage and stuck on an option whose entire identity is being the magical ranged monk option.

All Together

Way of the Sun Soul is one of the worst designed monk options available. All it functionally does is give you somewhat competitive options for actions you could already take for ki points you could already spend with the lone benefit of the privilege of using them with a 15-150 ft. range.

I won't lie, I love the aesthetic this offers. Blasting radiant light from my fingertips as a holy warrior is my flavor of dumb magic. Getting next to no mechanically interesting features that empower monks in any way beyond “ranged” isn't what monks need to succeed.
Way of the Sun Soul desperately wants spellcasting to supplement its beams of light. Even just a couple of cantrips and a 1st and 2nd level slot would go so far in bringing this fantasy to life, but it doesn’t get that. It gets beams of light and not much else.

I wouldn't recommend anyone wanting powerful features that give their character more to do ever consider this trash.

Thank you for visiting!

If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.

The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.