The more I think about it, the more issues I discover in our gameplay. Not unresolvable but we gotta address them.
The main problem is that Vanilla D&D is a turn-based game that is played in real-time. People sit at a table and react to each other's moves in an instant. We are playing D&D as a semi-real-time game in which everything in each turn happens simultaneously, yet we play round- based because everyone types at different times and the DM's move is a monolithic block of text. There is no chance to interfere in the middle of the DM's turn. That's a problem. I have Deflect Arrows, Yulya has Silvery Barbs. In an ordinary game, the DM would roll dice for his monster's attacks one after the other. He scores a critical hit and a player would immediately say nope, I deflect this attack or I use Silvery Barbs. We can't do that. There are 2 solutions.: Deflect Arrows is easy because I have this reaction every turn. It's a bit cheesy but I'd simply let Joy decide which attack I deflect if several hits occur.
Silvery Barbs is a different beast because it literally invalidates the DM's entire turn in our play. Yulya would have to state afterwards that she forces a certain re-roll and you'll have to re-do your entire turn. It's just once-per-day but still I see no way to handle this properly.
Now back to Monk mechanics.
Honestly, I'm no Bera-tier genius and I can't really understand the consequences of your game mechanics yet. I can barely understand the simpler Vanilla rules. I still think it puts me at a severe disadvantage because I need to hide every turn which I don't have to in Vanilla to avoid being targeted. I just have to end my move out of sight or reach. So I'm one action short each turn. which either costs me movement or an attack and ruins my action economy.
https://tabletopjoab.com/action-economy-in-dd-5e-explained/You'd have to give me Hide as an additional bonus action but that opens an entire world of new problems and seems like a bad idea. I mean Alice is weak in this form, that's ok, but I fear that won't improve even at higher levels with these game mechanics.
I also don't like the idea of not announcing Ready actions but making them standard. We have no means to determine if an enemy has spent his actions last turn if we discover him. That's the reason why in Vanilla, you cannot ready an action if you are not aware of the specific trigger. Otherwise all enemies you don't surprise would constantly lay in wait as defenders. Imagine this in the goblin cave. You have 10 goblins with readied bows and every approaching adventurer would get showered with poisoned arrows before having the chance to do anything. That's realistic but not feasible for adventurers storming dungeons with enemies outnumbering them 10:1. Similarly you could man the palisades with 5 crossbowmen which shoot everything that moves. That's not allowed in Vanilla rules. Neither for the DM nor for players. It only works like 'I see this goblin or know he's hiding behind that corner. I ready my bow and shoot him if he comes out'. This is to avoid a WWI -tier trench warfare scenario where both sides lay in wait for 50 turns and the first one who moves loses. That's called the Ready Action Dogpile and known to make the game unplayable.
https://tabletopjoab.com/the-ready-action-in-dd-5e-everything-you-need-to-know/The Ready action also consumes an action and a reaction so if you ready an action you can't take other reactions like opportunity attacks.
But whatever, I don't think talking about it helps. We're at a nice cliffhanger so why not have a short intermission?
Alice vs. Goblins. I wanna see how this works out before I make something stupid that ruins the actual game.
Plot me against a few goblins in a high cover environment in this threat and let's see where this goes! I don't know myself, gotta test it. I have more time tomorrow so we should be able to play a few rounds.
I'll make a few scenarios too so you can tell me how they'd go.
