D&D 5E How Magical or Non-Magical Should the Monk Be?

Frankly, the non-magical Monk shouldn't be a class unto himself. The Martial Artist is a Fighter (the best Unarmed Fighter in all the land is a Fighter, after all, according to the Fighter design logic already put out in Next). You can hit all the Martial Arts fundamentals under a combat superiority package. Just append something for fighting without armor and go to town. Rock-shattered blows? Deadly Strike. Ability to block attacks or resist damage? Parry. Add Superiority techniques at 1,3, and 5 to flavor.

For the aestheticism aspect of the traditional monk you can easily put together a Specialty to covers a couple of tricks for low levels - and is also open for aesthetics that don't fit the "fighting monk" profile - scholars, artists, and priests proper from those temples and whatnot.

At higher levels you could build off of this with more exotic techniques and advanced specialties.

The idea that a monk always needs to be a huge bundle of random immunity abilities, flurry-of-misses, bad hit-dice, and ridiculous scaling of land speed and falling resistance is just an homage to his dysfunction history - not good class design.

- Marty Lund

That's why I look to the Swordsage and 4E monk for design lessons. Both were very different, but both captured the feel of battlefield mobility and mystical combat in a way that the 3E monk (and earlier, design was always a mess) didn't.

We shouldn't reduce the monk to specialties, we should look at the very unique designs that have created a class totally different from the fighter in the past, and use those.

GreyICE said:

We shouldn't reduce the monk to specialties, we should look at the very unique designs that have created a class totally different from the fighter in the past, and use those.

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The problem is that all those implementations have been failures, IMO. Their contributions in combat have been either bad versions of what a Fighter can do or a way to monopolize unarmed Martial Arts so the Fighter is bad at it. Their other unique features were generally completely self-centered piles of immunity balanced only by the fact that they were down-right terrible at taking any proactive stance against enemies. Their social interactions were limited to being lie-detectors and their exploration options were basically being a really awful rogue who was exceptional at jumping and falling.

That's not a class. That's a horribly designed Martial Artist being saddled with (and monopolizing) the Aesthetic Contemplative moniker. There's no reason a Martial Artist needs to be a contemplative other than to artificially prop up a bad Monk class. There's no reason for a Contemplative character to be a Martial Artist other than to artificially prop up a bad Monk class.

By no means should the traditional Monk be a class if this requires monopolizing Martial Arts and Contemplative Aestheticism away from everyone else - destroying the idea of the brawler, street-fighter, wrestler, unarmed gladiator, etc. on the one hand and the contemplative priest, artisan, archer, naturalist hermit, etc. on the other.

That's the kind of niche-carving mistake that's marred class design in the past editions. It shouldn't be carried forward into DNDNext. The Shaolin Warrior-Monk should be something you can easily build, but it doesn't need to be its own class if it means that kind of bad niche-carving.

If it's 80% swapping "sword" with "fists" and 20% bag-o-tricks then it's either a customization of the fighter (Shaolin Style) or the Gish (Anime Style).

- Marty Lund

I don't mean to be insulting, but have you ever actually looked at the 4E monk?

All monk powers were the 4E equivalent of full actions, and let you do a move action and an attack. So, for instance, one of the monk's attacks let him make a jump for distance up to his movement speed and then make an attack when he landed. Another let him shift 2 squares (essentially make 2 5' steps) and then do an AOE.

What does this mean? Well, say there's a pack of archers, fronted by some shieldsmen. The Fighter (in ANY edition) shrugs his shoulders, gets his weapon ready, and gets ready to rumble and block some arrows. The monk leaps 30' through the air, lands in the middle of them, next turn sweeps them all with his AOE and makes it impossible for them to shift away, and then gets to work.

The fighter should not have the ability to make 30' jumps, IMHO. The monk should. That sort of whirlwind movement power is really something totally unique, and not something the fighter class should have.

The fighter, of course, gets other toys. But not 30 foot jumps. Not dragon tail kicks that do blasts of fire damage. Not dancing through crowds of enemies perfectly safe and laying down a flurry of damage on everything around him. That's what a Monk is.

Seriously go look up the 4E monk, and you'll see something different from every fighter ever made, something that deserves its own class.

GreyICE said:

I don't mean to be insulting, but have you ever actually looked at the 4E monk?

The fighter, of course, gets other toys. But not 30 foot jumps. Not dragon tail kicks that do blasts of fire damage. Not dancing through crowds of enemies perfectly safe and laying down a flurry of damage on everything around him. That's what a Monk is.

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Did you look at the 4e fighter much? A high-STR 4e character trained in Athletics can jump 30', with a running start. The 4e fighter had a number of powers that let him shift into position - and notoriously one that pulls enemies to him - and more than a few close burst attacks, too. Ixnay on the fire damage, of course... unless you have a flaming weapon... or are a dragonborn with that breath weapon...

The 4e monk was distinct from the fighter, not in what it did as a martial artist, but in it's role function, mechanics, and, most significantly in being a psionic class that simply got a wider range of powers than martial classes. That is, it was an implementation of the 'mystic' or 'magical' concept of the monk.

GreyICE said:

I don't mean to be insulting, but have you ever actually looked at the 4E monk?

The fighter, of course, gets other toys. But not 30 foot jumps. Not dragon tail kicks that do blasts of fire damage. Not dancing through crowds of enemies perfectly safe and laying down a flurry of damage on everything around him. That's what a Monk is.

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Did you look at the 4e fighter much? A high-STR, not too low-level, 4e character trained in Athletics can jump 30', with a running start - or with the Fighter Utility 2, Mighty Leap. The 4e fighter had a number of powers that let him shift into position - and notoriously one that pulled enemies to him - and more than a few close burst attacks, too. Ixnay on the fire damage, of course... unless you have a flaming weapon... or are a dragonborn with that breath weapon...

The 4e monk was distinct from the fighter, not in what it did as a martial artist, but in it's role function, arbitrarily unique mechanics, and, most significantly in being a psionic class that simply got a wider range of powers than martial classes. That is, it was an implementation of the 'mystic' or 'magical' concept of the monk, and an exercise in the afore-mentioned niche-carving.

Tony Vargas said:

Did you look at the 4e fighter much? A high-STR 4e character trained in Athletics can jump 30', with a running start. The 4e fighter had a number of powers that let him shift into position - and notoriously one that pulls enemies to him - and more than a few close burst attacks, too. Ixnay on the fire damage, of course... unless you have a flaming weapon... or are a dragonborn with that breath weapon...

The 4e monk was distinct from the fighter, not in what it did as a martial artist, but in it's role function, mechanics, and, most significantly in being a psionic class that simply got a wider range of powers than martial classes. That is, it was an implementation of the 'mystic' or 'magical' concept of the monk.

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Well the Swordsage and the 4E Monk have both been mystical. The 3E monk had the five point palm exploding heart technique and other things that didn't seem at all mundane - it was just a terrible, misbuilt class in every way.

So I agree the monk should be pretty mystical. Not necessarily a spellcaster, but I'd like it if they had a bunch of different techniques they could learn that gave them a lot of mobility and effects - very different from the fighter's constant competence.

Also Mighty Leap about summarizes the difference. The fighter could jump with a +5 check once per combat, and provokes opportunity attacks from everyone he jumps over (so good luck jumping over the front line safely).

The Monk can do the same thing, but leap across the entire battlefield, no roll required, no opportunity attacks, and make an attack as part of that power.

Yeah. That's the difference. The fighter makes a big, powerful jump. The monk makes a graceful, beautiful leap that no one can stop and makes it part of an attack.

The Fighter is Bruce Willis. The Monk is Bruce Lee.

As much as I agree that the 4E Monk was a totally distinct, well-constructed class in the context of that game, he's also a PHB3 Psionic refugee that has basically nothing but the class name in common with the version of a monk most other people are advocating putting into the D&D Core. He's a Fist-base Gish emphasizing movement. They want an up-gunned version of the failed AD&D / 3E / Pathfinder monk design.

I'd be much more inclined to support a 4E take on the monk than the prior versions. I think the Martial Artist should be a Fighter build, though. The fireball chucking, supernatural leaping, lightning-fisted Shoto-clone monk is another kettle of fish, basically a Gish using fists and feet instead of sword-magery.

On the whole note of "uses X instead of a sword" tangent: I'd like to see ZERO classes in DNDNext that are defined to an exclusive weapon or weapon group (unarmed, blades, axes, whatever) rather than being a build option specialty (crossbow sniper, great weapon wielder, etc.). That means no "sword-mage" who can't use an axe, hammer, or pole-arm instead of a heavy or light blade, etc.

- Marty Lund

Why not take a page from the Class Compendium and rename the Monk the Mystic?

Then you could have purely martial arts characters be fighters or fighter/rogues.

And the mystic could come in three categories of builds:

Mild- some iron skin and action movie mobility; Ozymandius catching a bullet

Medium- traditional monk with big wuxia leaps and more subtle attacks like quivering palm, stunning fist, etc.

Hot- full on environmental manipulation anime type monks with energy attacks etc.


The martial types might have better round to round flexibility in terms of maneuvers as the tradeoff for giving up the mystical options, but the core combat stats (expected damage, etc.) should all even out. This tradeoff might also be in terms of crowd control vs. one on one combat, with the most mystical monk being the best at crowd control and the purely martial character being the best at one on one combat.

I would actually makes styles into Specialities so that they're accessible cross class. Then you could have a dojo or FR-style monastery with different classes and different mystic builds that all have a common set of moves.

mlund said:

The problem is that all those implementations have been failures, IMO. Their contributions in combat have been either bad versions of what a Fighter can do or a way to monopolize unarmed Martial Arts so the Fighter is bad at it. Their other unique features were generally completely self-centered piles of immunity balanced only by the fact that they were down-right terrible at taking any proactive stance against enemies. Their social interactions were limited to being lie-detectors and their exploration options were basically being a really awful rogue who was exceptional at jumping and falling.

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Failures might be a strong term. I think generally monks have not been well-made in the history of DnD but I don't see what that has to do as far as the viability or uniqueness of a class. A monk is a terrible fighter and it isn't exactly a rogue either (no sneak attack or trap finding) but it is certainly as much rogue as it is fighter. It is a 'martial' class that uses skills (or tricks or w/e) to provide extra ability beyond simply standing there and fighting.
Has it been designed poorly in the past? Possibly but that doesn't invalidate the attempts.

That's not a class. That's a horribly designed Martial Artist being saddled with (and monopolizing) the Aesthetic Contemplative moniker. There's no reason a Martial Artist needs to be a contemplative other than to artificially prop up a bad Monk class. There's no reason for a Contemplative character to be a Martial Artist other than to artificially prop up a bad Monk class.

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No one but you seems to saying that monks are martial artists. Or rather that no one is saying all martial artists should be monks. A few of us have been saying that monks use martial arts. And for that you take objection (I'll go over that below).

As far as the 'contemplative' class. I think that is much more spot on. What other classes are even trying for that role?

By no means should the traditional Monk be a class if this requires monopolizing Martial Arts and Contemplative Aestheticism away from everyone else - destroying the idea of the brawler, street-fighter, wrestler, unarmed gladiator, etc. on the one hand and the contemplative priest, artisan, archer, naturalist hermit, etc. on the other.

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Who says that monks can't have martial arts while letting every other (or any other) class have unarmed abilities too? Like I said earlier, unarmed monks and flurry have been things adopted onto the frame of monks so I think they NOW belong but I have never said that they are the only ones who deserve to have unarmed. The flurry I see as unique but I don't have problems with other classes getting TWF for example.

But as far as this whole monk = martial artist and martial artists = brawler, street-fighter, wrestler, etc. Then I can completely see what you are talking about.

It is like my looking at paladins and saying that they don't deserve to be a class because they are the only ones with that whole 'smite' thing. And that any number of backgrounds deserve to have smite. All that is true. But smite isn't all that is about paladins. There is so much more and you are getting fixated on the unarmed part of the monk which is so very minor.

That's the kind of niche-carving mistake that's marred class design in the past editions. It shouldn't be carried forward into DNDNext. The Shaolin Warrior-Monk should be something you can easily build, but it doesn't need to be its own class if it means that kind of bad niche-carving.

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Outside of the overly large fighter, wizard and cleric (the rogue is debatable as to how stretched it is) ALL classes have niche protection. I'm not seeing a lot of fighters who worry about wildshaping. I don't see many rogues who want to be able to smite like a paladin. Or many wizards who want to track like a ranger. Even with the core four you have niche protection. The wizard isn't going to have the armor or weapons of a fighter and a fighter isn't going to have the spells of a wizard.

Outside of niche protection though I think that most concepts should be as universal as possible. That is my main objection to CS dice. But so far WotC doesn't seem to worry about giving everyone CS dice and yet you aren't raising any hell about that.

If it's 80% swapping "sword" with "fists" and 20% bag-o-tricks then it's either a customization of the fighter (Shaolin Style) or the Gish (Anime Style).

- Marty Lund

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Okay, but monks, real monks not just unarmed combatants, are more like 25% fighter, 25% rogue, 15% wizard, 10% cleric, and 25% something none of them has, a sort of X-factor.

That's why I say monk is a good 5th class. Because invariably other classes (paladin, druid, ranger, bard) have some variation on this but not usually all four classes.


Also, if anything monk is that one class that belongs as a hybrid of fighter and rogue unlike any other class. Rangers in a sense are (at least in later editions) but in the grand history of DnD rangers have been more nature-y or divine related than pure fighter-rogue related, but I digress.