When writing a guide for the 2014 Open Hand Monk, I discussed the meaning of the word “away” within the context of the rules, and then used that understanding of the rules to turn the Open Hand Monk into a walking home run bat. In the 2024 rules, WotC has wisely chosen to use “directly away” in most cases in order to crack down very specifically on my nonsense.
In the 2024 rules, WotC cracked down on most things that knock creatures away, but not all of them. For some reason, they chose to leave Open Hand with the ability to punch monsters into the air. But don’t worry, I didn’t just rewrite our 2014 example build. That would be boring. Instead, I turned the Open Hand Monk into an aggressive taxi cab.
