D&D 5E Monks Suck

[doctorbadwolf]

Emperor’s Guard: Kensei Monks. Trained with specialized weapons symbolic to the Empire. Often blend in with courtiers and are trained to interact with petitioners and know the court in order to predict threats.

Emperor’s Hands: Shadow Monks. Little explanation needs.


The monk is there for a specialized order of Warrior-Mystics. That’s more of a clear identity and purpose than some of the other classes, IMO.

 

[Mort]

Disagree. Most of the later core features are mediocre to bad, I grant you, but some of the subclasses are very good. Since I went with Way of Shadow above, I'll stick with it here: You get some handy spells including pass without trace, which is the uberspell of stealth, and later on you can turn invisible at will! Opportunist is too high-level for me to care about it much, but it's pretty darn nice as well.

As I said above, I think monks are overspecialized, and they have the same problem as warlocks when the DM doesn't make sure they get a chance for short rests. But within those limits, they are absolutely an effective class.

The fact that the 6th and 11th level Shadow abilities don't require ki goes a long way to making the subclass more effective. Being able to essentially misty step at will is HUGE (It's rare there will be no shadows around).

 

[Guest 6801328]

Emperor’s Guard: Kensei Monks. Trained with specialized weapons symbolic to the Empire. Often blend in with courtiers and are trained to interact with petitioners and know the court in order to predict threats.

Emperor’s Hands: Shadow Monks. Little explanation needs.

This makes me think there needs to be a sub-class that correlates to Emperor's Harem.

 

[Minigiant]

Define top tier damage.

Whatever the fighter is doing.

The fighter isthebaseline of was a warrior's damage is supposed to deal. If a monk s a pure warrior class, it should deal similar damage.

Why not?

A body guard and an assassin are two completely different jobs.

5e doesn't have strict roles? Maybe you're trying to apply a model from previous editions that just doesn't fit?

It's entirely possible that if you white room it to death (or monte carlo sim it to death) you'll find that the monk's combination of offense, defense, and resource replenishment leaves it behind other classes. Ok, so that's possibly an argument for giving it some buffs (something has to be in last place, but maybe it's so far behind it needs some love.)

But that has nothing to do with whether it "serves a purpose" or not. It's fun to play. It kills enemies in a way that feels different from rogues and fighters. What other purpose is there?

Maybe I'm not explaining it right.

Say I am a lord of an area. In my employ,I have a fighter, a rogue, a ranger, and a monk.

Why am I paying the monk instead of hiring another fighter, rogue, or ranger?

 

[Guest 6801328]

The fact that the 6th and 11th level Shadow abilities don't require ki goes a long way to making the subclass more effective. Being able to essentially misty step at will is HUGE (It's rare there will be no shadows around).

Get a cantrip somehow (feat, race, dipping) and take dancing lights. Pre-fight, position your lights wherever you need them.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Maybe I'm not explaining it right.

Say I am a lord of an area. In my employ,I have a fighter, a rogue, a ranger, and a monk.

Why am I paying the monk instead of hiring another fighter, rogue, or ranger?

For the sex, clearly.

Think about it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

More seriously...

• You're not. That band of mystical do-gooders hiding in their so-called "school" is nothing but trouble.
• You've banned all weapons from your palace (for "reasons") and they are your guard.
• They are your warrior-diplomat-envoys.
• Because the last time you relied only on warriors, your enemies took them all out with poison gas and nearly got you, too. So now you always keep two high-level monks lurking in the shadows.

It's a funny thing about fantasy games. If you want to like something, you can find reasons to like it. If you don't like something, you can find reasons for that, too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I fear the whole "monk's suck" argument is grossly dismissing some of the best features of monks while also showcasing just how biased some campaigns can be. I'll take a list of natoable arguments and share my take on each.

1. Monks have low DPS
This is pretty untrue in alot of scenarios. When I see people comparing the DPS of a fighter/barbarian to a monk, they forget one key offensive trait the monk has over them: Magical Attacks.

Not alot of creatures have immunity to nonmagical BPS, but there's a plethora of monsters, especially at high levels, that are at least resistant. This means that it's possible in any given encounter that a fighter's/barbarian's damage is being halved. The monk has no such burden.

There's also the fact that stunning strike also carries it's own DPR. Any additional DPR added by your teammates that are influenced by the Stunning Strike is Stunning Strike's damage. If a fighter would normally do 62.2 DPR and he now does 89.61 DPR, that 27.41 damage is directly attributed to Stunning Strike.

2. Stunning Strike isn't a good feature.

I agree, monks are over-reliant on Stunning Strike and it tends to hurt them more than help them. It's probably better to spend your Ki points to constantly dodge so you tank very well or dash to be a good mobile character. That said, it is useful to attack multi-target enemies, against the intuition of most people.

You get 4 attacks and you can distribute them to 4 separate enemies. If your enemies are equally difficult such that one is no more important to target than the other and you're in a typical fight, they're around CR 7-10 which doesn't have the amazing con saves that the single boss encounter would. You're also able to reduce the enemy capabilities to some degree even if you don't get all of them. 3 targets normal and 1 stunned is better than the single boss encounter normal still.

3. Ki is rare.

This is the most foreign point I can feel. Maybe I'm the weird one for maximizing my potential.

If you prescribe to the 2 short rests per adventure, you have Ki equal to 3 x monk level. That's plenty for most adventures.

But I see people literally gimping their own group by not taking advantage of short rests. It's essentially at-will, you just need a place to barricade, which is common in any type of adventure, and recover. If you don't use up all of your spellslots, all of your hitdice, all of your resources, you've gimped your party from an optimal game. And if you're not playing optimally, you shouldn't complain that you feel underpowered. That one's on you for not simply saying "I want to take a short rest." It's beneficial to everyone unless a character gimped themselves by not using their short rest feature.

Time pressure is rarely ever so tight as to not have around 2-3 hours to rest within an adventuring day. I feel that time pressure is training wheels for a DM. They don't know how to pace their games and how to actually challenge the adventurers so they remove opportunities for the adventurers to properly use their natural abilities. Short rests should really just happen after every 1-2 combat encounter by sheer principle of being efficient.

In my games, it's not rare for 4-5 short rests a day. Their hit dice should be extremely low or I've never actually decided to challenge my players by pure virtue of challenge.

I think the issue here was that short rests are more rare if you don't have a lot of encounters per day, which is pretty common in my experience. If you have one big fight prior to long rest, than you have the same recharge as the long rest people, which means your power is reduced relatively.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Emperor’s Guard: Kensei Monks. Trained with specialized weapons symbolic to the Empire. Often blend in with courtiers and are trained to interact with petitioners and know the court in order to predict threats.

Emperor’s Hands: Shadow Monks. Little explanation needs.


The monk is there for a specialized order of Warrior-Mystics. That’s more of a clear identity and purpose than some of the other classes, IMO.

In my upcoming setting, the monk's monastery will actually be mercenary academies where members make a vow to offer the most excellent service to their employer. They fight unarmored and unarmed because there's no one that can guarantee that the lord employing them will actually be able to pay for their equipment. They are disciplined spies, diplomats and warriors, but they do it for one reason only: profit. They are loyal to a fault, but goes where the money takes them. They will honor a contract, even if it means death for them, but if the other said can buy them off...well that's another story. They take a vow of celibacy to avoid having a family that could be taken hostage and used as a leverage to make them change camp. Same with money: monks do not own anything, all their gains belongs to the Monastery, but in exchange, their Monastery insure that the Monk is never lacking in anything. Thus, monetary gain cant be a leverage against a Monk.

Think the ''Gardens'' from FF8 or the Unsullied from ASoIaF. Or the class called ''paladins'' in Pillars of Eternity 1.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Monks aren't tough
Monks don't use the best weapons nor deal top tiers of damage
Monks don't have the top tier in AC

I mean you can't get a straight answer out of the community. If a monk a warrior, an assassin, a skrimisher, an expert, a debuffer or a mix of these.

Which role(s) does the monk have?

Monks are the class that rely on themselves. Any monk is a better assassin than the assassin rogue as they just need to isolate their target or even not - although assassins (who win initiative) get their one-hit-kill - but it's all or nothing; a monk beatdown might be a round slower, but has stunning fists to keep the target quiet. A weapons check won't stop them and nor will being observed and seen as suspicious. Monks, even more easily than rogues, can blend in to the population.

And yes they are assassins and yes they are skirmishers, and yes they are warriors although not full tanks. They are adaptable but in terms of combat role overlap a lot with the rogue. Why is this hard?