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I've altered the Unchained Monk in a number of ways such as giving the monk their Monk level + Wis for the ki pool, made it slightly less MAD by giving them Dex to attack and Wis to damage, the monk gains four more ki powers throughout their career, and allowed the monk to be enchanted like any other weapon/item (either by themselves or by another spellcaster).
But the main change is that most of the monk abilities (such as purity of body, tongue of the sun and moon, and even fast movement and evasion) are not ki abilities that the monk can choose to take.
In doing so I also went through many of the archetypes and instead of replacing a certain ability, the monk must be a certain level to select that ability.
A few other changes is dropping the monk back to d8 hit die, upping their skill points per level to 6+Int, and increased their unarmed damage die.
I've got it all written up in a google doc: here.
Bump
I feel this (but I may be mistaking) as a very all-purpose, ever-changing class. The unfettered monk may change what he is and what he is capable of whenever he feels like to, as long as he takes the time to do it. And it's all Dexterity and Wisdom, I like the imagery and the concept. It's fun. I like those ideas very much.Under 'Ki Abilities' it says this:
This shuffling of ki abilities is not instantaneous, the monk must spend 8 hours a day for one week in meditation per ki ability forgotten to learn a new one in its place. Until this process is completed, the monk cannot use the forgotten ability and does not gain the use of the new ability. Until this process is completed, the monk cannot use the forgotten ability and does not gain the use of the new ability.
In games where there is little to no downtime, this will basically be impossible to do, but games that have a lot of downtime this isn't as much of an issue. Though since you mentioned clarification below, I'll add something to it (in bold).
However, the build has a too-good-at-everything feeling. Some things should be moved to ki abilities (such as the bow proficiency). If Inner Strength is to be kept, and I feel it as one of the key abilities of this class, it should not allow for a spellcaster to enchant the monk on top of that.
I'm leaving the weapon proficiencies as they are because they're weapon proficiencies. Various monks from around the world trained with many different weapons, including bows. The list is still narrow compared to a fighter or any other martial class.
As for the enchanting...I'm kind of on the same page as you, but I think that could put the monk ahead of others because if that is the only way, then the cost should be less, especially since unlike other characters they cannot pick up new weapons and benefit from it.
The limitations of those abilities should be clarified. For example, if the monk's body count as silver and cold iron, you should clarify, either that it concerns only damage reduction overcoming, or that if someone sends at the monk something with special effects on metal, the monk will be affected as if he was in metal (this starts to look like a cyborg...). Another example, you should state that a single limb can never have a total enhancement bonus higher than +10 (+5 enhancement bonus plus +5 from special qualities).
I figured these things were obvious and didn't need to be said, but in regards to completeness, you make a good point. I've added those clarifications in.
I'm reading rapidly what is after Inner Strength. The Constant Ki explains why there is no much ki points and ki abilities.
Actually, this was in response to some of the most common issues I've seen about the Unchained monk and suggestions on what could help fix them. There are four things in total:
1) Bumping up the Ki to level+wis (even this seems low for the Unchained monk considering how almost all of its abilities require ki points)2) Making them less MAD (Str, Con, Dex, Wis is ridiculous) so now they still need three good scores (Dex to attack, Wis to damage, and Con because they are not a d10 class so they need the help)
3) Increase the number of ki powers a monk gets in their career (only 4 more than the Unchained Monk in total, which is less than the double which I've seen some people suggest)
4) Allowing the monk to be enchanted normally without needing AoMF as a crutch
Here again, you might want to clarify by what action (move action ? standard action ? one-hour-long ritual ?) the monk may release a constant ki ability, and the first use of ki, from 3rd level, still feel overpowered.
I didn't realize I had forgotten to add that (fixed now), it's suppose to be a free action. I'm open to changing it to something else, but since it is the monk's own power, I see it kind of like us choosing to stop walking or moving a finger, it just happens when we want it to.
I've altered the Ki Pool a bit, so that the monk has a ki pool of half monk level + wis modifier at 3rd level, monk level + wis modifier at 8th level, and monk level + half wis score at 13th level. I've also changed made it so that the monk must be 4th level to be able to spend 1 ki point per round as a swift action to gain one of the listed bonuses.
I'm not sure expanding lifespan is a good idea. There's nothing similar in the game, it's a lot of time, I'm not sure it adds anything to the class. As for Immortality, it might be good to add some drawback (other than not knowing in what the monk will reincarnate), even if removable (per wish or something), and you should add that the monk can still die of old age (like a druid).
The reason for the increased life span is meant to symbolize their inner focus and mastery, very much the 'old wise monk on the top of the mountain' sort of thing. I'm not familiar with every class, but I do not believe any capstone ability has drawbacks. As I understand the reincarnate spell, the one being reincarnated has to agree to it/want it, so at some point the monk would probably be like, 'nope, I've had enough, I'm done'. I also feel like something on the level of a god would probably be able to interfere with it, but so can wizards if they are able to trap the monk's soul.
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Changes made:
*Altered the AC Bonus so that the Monk gains +6 at 19th level instead of maxing out at +5 at 20th.
*Dropped the Unarmed Damage back down to match the normal Monk progression.
It feels like you're trying to combine all the archetypes into one with this revision. I'd say it seems OP but considering how many people say the monk is under-powered but every time someone plays a monk in my group they end up being absolute murder machines so I'm not sure I'm a good judge of that.
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Many of the things archetype monks are able to do with their Ki Pool do not seem to have any reason why a non-archetype monk not do them as well, and since they are 1 ki point for usually one specific action for one round, it doesn't seem as if it would break anything to put them into the base monk ki pool..tricks I guess, for lack of a better term.
As far as I've understood things, monk's can be powerhouses, IF you take certain feats, certain styles, certain archetypes, etc, and you still have to min-max and you're still no good outside of combat.
A GM asked me when he and I were talking about this, "Why not just play Unchained, and use archetypes to remove some of the issues?"
To which I responded, "If an archetype is needed to make a class viable, then the class needs to be fixed first. Not only that, but no archetype (or combination) fixes the monk's problems, in fact they mostly exacerbate them or create new issues (for instance the Qinggong did create a way to help the monk, but at the same time made them even more ki point dependent without an actual boost to the their ki pool). IF there were a combination of archetypes that did fix the Unchained monk's problem, then unlike other classes, the Unchained monk would HAVE to be those archetypes to be viable. But even then, it would run contrary to how Paizo put it themselves about archetypes:
Originally Posted by Paizo
Archetypes are a quick and easy way to specialize characters of a given class, adding fun and flavorful new abilities to already established adventurers."
Many monk abilities are bad or pointless (Tongue of the Sun and Moon for instance), and this pervades their archetypes. So allowing a monk to choose what ability they want eliminates, at least a bit, the poor monk abilities. They're still (monk)level dependent, and more powerful abilities still take more than one level's worth of investment. It's the Qinggong idea of ability swapping taken to the next level.
Good to have some free Unfettered Monk stuff out there for PF1e. ;)