D&D 5E [poll] Monk Satisfaction Survey

[Ancalagon]

To get back to the actual question in this poll itself, I have three main complaints

1: As almost everyone else, I'm disappointed in the elemental monk. *Great* idea, poor execution. The other 2 are well done

2: I have a new player in our game who was pretty taken with the idea of playing a monk. This is a person who last played D&D in 3e over 5 years ago, so a bit fuzzy on the rules. It's working well, but the monk's way to attack is very fiddly. I think some players enjoy that, but there is a lot of choices just to make an attack - do you flurry or not, what order to make the attacks, spending Ki or not etc.

3: This is something we've discovered just last session, and maybe we got the rules wrong but... Jumping in 5e is a bit strange, and monks see less good at it than they should be. First of all, distance is not affected by movement speed, so a road-runner fast high level monk doesn't get any more jump distance. Second, it's strenght base, and monks are normally dex-built. This means that the monk, *when spending ki*, is about as good as jumping as the strengh-built fighter in plate mail...

edit: All this being said, I'm still voting as mostly satisfied. This isn't perfect, but it's not bad!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I would make two tweaks:

(1) Make the capstone recharge your ki up to four points if you've been under four ki for 5 minutes, instead of tying it to "whenever you roll initiative." Tying it to initiative is too combat-centric, and makes it behave weirdly in the presence of Speed Factor initiative or similar, extended skirmishes against enemies using hit-and-run tactics, and enemies that come in waves. It's just unnecessarily messy.

(2) Stillness of Mind should be a reaction, not an action, so that it can be used even against charm effects that incapacitate you (like Hypnotic Pattern). If necessary you could write in text to the effect that "after you do this, you lose your next action" if you're trying to mimic the monk having to spend a moment in tranquil meditation to overcome these effects, but I don't think it's really necessary. Just consider "a moment" to have been the space of a long breath, represented by the loss of your reaction--it doesn't have to be a full six second action.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This is the first one I've voted dissatisfied on, and even now I'm conflicted. On the one hand, on paper the class is exciting: it's full of special abilities that when exploring possible characters always make me want to squeeze in more monk levels. On the other hand, no one has ever decided to take any monk levels at my table, nor have I played in a game where anyone chose to. Also, when it comes time to switch from exploring character builds to finalizing concepts for NPCs and PCs, the monk levels always seem to be the ones that end up in the chopping block.

Checking a hypothesis: do you play with point buy? And/or do you play with small parties?

Monks are so MAD that they're not really fun unless you happen to roll a good stat array. Something with a 16, 17 in it is about where I start thinking about a monk, and even then only if either (1) the party is large enough that other roles are already covered; or (2) the campaign is focused more on individuals than on a party per se, so that roles are less relevant than ability to operate independently.

(I don't mean "roles" in any specific, jargony sense here BTW--definitely not a fixed Strike/Tank/etc. terminology. Just, does the party have a way to tackle all the problems the DM is likely to throw at you?)

 

[Ancalagon]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION]: Hmmm... but the versatility of the monk may lend it well to *small* parties no?

Our player is in a 4 member group, and used standard point buy. Managing ok with that

 

[Xetheral]

Checking a hypothesis: do you play with point buy? And/or do you play with small parties?

Monks are so MAD that they're not really fun unless you happen to roll a good stat array. Something with a 16, 17 in it is about where I start thinking about a monk, and even then only if either (1) the party is large enough that other roles are already covered; or (2) the campaign is focused more on individuals than on a party per se, so that roles are less relevant than ability to operate independently.

(I don't mean "roles" in any specific, jargony sense here BTW--definitely not a fixed Strike/Tank/etc. terminology. Just, does the party have a way to tackle all the problems the DM is likely to throw at you?)

Yes, we use point buy. No, we don't have a small group: my most recent campaign had 10 PCs, with 4-10 showing up per session (at the low end at the start of the campaign, at the high end near the end). For the players, many were new to D&D, so classes were chosen well before stats. Accordingly, I doubt there's a correlation between our use of point-buy and the lack of monks.

As a player, yes, the games I've been in used point-buy. They were normal-sized (4-6 players) groups.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION]: Hmmm... but the versatility of the monk may lend it well to *small* parties no?

Our player is in a 4 member group, and used standard point buy. Managing ok with that

You've got a monk in a small, point-buy group? Okay, yeah, that's evidence against that hypothesis. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[Ancalagon]

You've got a monk in a small, point-buy group? Okay, yeah, that's evidence against that hypothesis. Thanks for sharing it.

Well, sample size of 1, so not much evidence... clearly there is a lot of variation between individual players and between tables. Each gaming group is its own gaming micro-culture. (I think you are right about the stats, it is a bit of a demanding class. Party size less so?)

But... overall, the evidence is strong. Despite a decent level of satisfaction with the class (more than some others), Monks are by far the least popular class to play.

(I was going to try to find the link to that other poll, but the search feature is borked at the moment, sorry)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, sample size of 1, so not much evidence... clearly there is a lot of variation between individual players and between tables.

That's okay. Bayesian analysis involves collecting all the evidence both for and against a hypothesis, and then basically multiplying all of the evidence by the prior to get the final probability. Sometimes even a true theory has evidence against it; but it winds up getting outweighed by the evidence for it.

In any case, right now I'm just collecting evidence. No worries about me taking a given piece of evidence too seriously.

Each gaming group is its own gaming micro-culture. (I think you are right about the stats, it is a bit of a demanding class. Party size less so?)

But... overall, the evidence is strong. Despite a decent level of satisfaction with the class (more than some others), Monks are by far the least popular class to play.

Interesting.

 

[Yaarel]

The Monk is a fun concept, and at least some of the ways you can build a Monk are solid.

My main critique about the Monk is, too many specific features are baked into the base class. Many of these features do better to relocate into a class archetype, becoming optional. This allows the Monk more flexibility to have more options for different kinds of archetypes to choose from, from a strictly nonmagical unarmed combatant to a highly magical elementalist or else a force-wielding jedi, or somewhere in between, like a ninja.

 

[Coroc]

What I miss, is a subclass which would be a more western option. For those of us who do not want to be a monk a karate kid or a teenage mutant ninja turtle or a kung fu panda, but rather a brother tuck from robin hood.