D&D 5E Monks Suck

[Esker]

In a 4 round fight that means you are killing 1 enemy per round. The first enemy gets his attack and you kill him that round. That means there's no incapacitated enemies left. So you attack one of the incapacitated enemies. You go through the rounds and kill him but in that time he likely gets an attack in on the party. So ultimately the party takes 4 attacks. Without hypnotic pattern the party would take 10ish attacks assuming focus fire. The difference is 6. Not a perfect comparison. But a starting point.

If your party does 1 enemy worth of damage per round then they probably only take one attack in that scenario, since they can all ready actions to hit each incapacitated enemy at one time, and then some of them get their actual turns on top of that, before the enemy can act.

It depends on the size of the enemy groups encountered. The smaller the group the less useful. hypnotic pattern is. The larger it is the more useful it is.

Of course. It's also not the warlock's only spell option. In a single-target situation, they might use Phantasmal Force, for example, or Banishment, which have a good chance of taking a monster out of a fight entirely until the rest of the enemies are dealt with (or in the case of Banishment, possibly forever).

Depends on the damage difference. But sure, it's likely not enough to keep up with a wizard or sorcerer or warlock in terms of control potential. Of course that's more about showing caster supremacy than it is showing the monk is bad. In fact, that a monk has much better control abilities than DPR classes at all may be enough to vastly elevate him over those DPR classes. Just as you argued with the warlock being much better than the monk because of better control abilities.

Yes, that's a fair point. Which is why what we really need is to put control and damage onto a common scale. I would suggest converting damage into control rather than the other way around. But either way.

 

[FrogReaver]

Figuring out what CR distribution to use is really hard to standardize, since that part will vary greatly from table to table. But I just did a quick back-of-the-envelope scan, and if at level 8 you assume that

• 50% of enemies are CR4 (half the party's level)
• 25% are CR8 (equal to the party's level) and
• 25% are CR12 (1.5 times the party's level)
• within each CR band the monsters are sampled uniformly from "non-good-aligned" creatures in the MM and MToF
• you just look at CON save bonuses (ignoring legendary resistances and the like, which are presumably a significant factor for the higher CR enemies, for the sake of a quick back-of-the-envelope)

then for a monk that "splits the difference" and takes +2 DEX and +2 WIS (for a DC 15 save), on average monsters should fail their stun saves about half the time. If that's a reasonable description of the CR distribution you face, then 3-4 stuns per short rest is probably about right.

If your table tends to use fewer, higher CR monsters, the failed save rate will be less, but the value of the stun will be greater. I don't know how those balance out but my gut says that higher value stun is worth more than a higher fail rate.

So... at this level anyway, I'm fine with supposing that stuns work about half the time, unless someone wants to refine my arbitrary CR distribution based on something more concrete.

I looked at the example as 37.5% * 8 = 3. 50% * 8 = 4.

The range I cited of 3-4 covers Those probability ranges. Seems fair to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

I was assuming variant human, but sure. Without feats, looking at "at will damage", the defense style greatsword champion has probably 21 AC, and 17.1 DPR. The monk has 17 AC and 11.4 DPR. About 33% less (or the fighter has 50% more, depending on which way you look at it). But I'm not sure that in itself says that much, since on the one hand, at-will damage isn't that useful a measure, and on the other, Champion is a terrible subclass.

Those numbers aren’t correct.

 

[Undrave]

At level 5

A gwf does 24.66 damage (with style). 22 damage (without style)
A monk with no ki does 23.5 damage.

It’s not much of a difference.

A Fighter (or a Rogue) doesn't suffer loss of Defensive capability by running out of Short Rest resource (like a Monk without Ki), and a Fighter can take more hits than a Monk because they have better HD to begin with. They're trading DPS for better tanking.

First. Can we please acknowledge that "I can buy a horse" is the worst counter-argument for the monk's mobility ever conceived? I feel like I'm alone in remembering the first UA for the Cavalier where pretty much everyone agree that building a subclass based on mounted combat was a terrible idea, because horses lose effectiveness in all the places Adventurers go.

Agreed.

I am assuming +4 to main stat (because I did that math already) and that everyone has about the same Con. I am using no daily resources, no feats, no subclasses. Just the base numbers. I will acknowledge here, Barbarian has best HP, followed by fighter, and rogue and Monk essentially tie.

+4 to main stat?! You know that the standard array at level 1 stops at 15? You can't have more than +3. A Monk with the Standard array, assuming a +DEX/+WIS race can have 16 in both WIS and DEX (for an AC of 16) and then +1 to CON. A heavy armoured Fighter can have AC 16, +3 to STR and +3 to CON.

Do you know what else are optional rules?

Multiclassing.
Feats.

So can we stop with the whiteroom theorycrafting already? All the stuff that "assumes" certain optional rules, and then (as you do here) says, "Woah, pardner, those optional rules are different than the optional rules I use!"

Anyway, my point was more simple (and didn't use the pejorative "DM may I" language) - players have different strategies, and some classes fit those better than others.

I was not aware that Eldritch Blast, Hex and Agonizing Blast were only available as feats or multi classing? I'm not sure what Feats and MCing have to do with my objection to the idea that Monks are good because they can target weapon... If YOU can target a weapon, then so can the Great Weapon Fighter with his axe. It's not much of an advantage. If nothing else, I agree we should cut out feats and MCing when talking about problems with the Monk.

I will admit it is certainly cool and I WILL ask my DM if I can do some disarming attempt, but personally I think a weapon should have some pretty good damage resistance, considering its designed to HIT things. If the sword doesn't break when it inflict 1d10+4damage, I'm gonna need more than my d6+4 to break it.

 

[Oofta]

If I had to summarize this thread, I would identify two general groups (with exceptions in both cases, of course):

People with charts and graphs who say monks suck.

People with experience playing monks who say they are fine.

Just remember that if you enjoy playing a monk, you are obviously delusional because spreadsheets never lie.

 

[Asisreo]

Yes, that's a fair point. Which is why what we really need is to put control and damage onto a common scale. I would suggest converting damage into control rather than the other way around. But either way.

Or...we could get off this forum and actually obtain a large enough sample size of testing to actually come up with a correlation.

It really isn't that difficult to analyze the data once we get it, it just requires us to actually do the playtests.

No matter what, there will always be shadows of doubt unless a replicable procedure has been produced and the data is comprehensive and complete.

The easy part is literally organizing all the data and correlating the causes and effects.

 

[FrogReaver]

Or...we could get off this forum and actually obtain a large enough sample size of testing to actually come up with a correlation.

It really isn't that difficult to analyze the data once we get it, it just requires us to actually do the playtests.

No matter what, there will always be shadows of doubt unless a replicable procedure has been produced and the data is comprehensive and complete.

The easy part is literally organizing all the data and correlating the causes and effects.

It cracks me up that you keep suggesting that.

 

[Asisreo]

It cracks me up that you keep suggesting that.

Why is it so funny?

 

[Ashrym]

That's not high end focus and optimization what are you talking about? It's Warlock 101. And why would Hex not be sustainable? Eldritch Blast has range of 120 feet. If you're making concentration checks, you got more to worry about than your DPS.

It's because hex concentration is lost to checks OR given up to casting another concentration spell. A baseline should be typical and hex is atypical, especially as more concentration options become available and more powerful/versatile opponents are encountered.

It's an unreasonable assumption on how the spell slots get used.

The high focused optimization wasn't with that baseline. It's with the other class builds used to beat that baseline.

It's also a baseline for warlocks instead of classes in general. Straight forward PHB no feats or multi-classing for each class would help set a better baseline.

Having a high AC doesn't really contribute to the party. They mostly just help the fighter stay alive. But also their are a number of classes that get things like that.

Lol, TBF, AC comes into play a lot more often than poison immunity. However, something not really touched on is monks saving party resources with immunities and saving throws (later).

The 18th level ability you mean? A level when spellcasters are bending the fabric of reality itself?

It is a good ability and worth the ki cost.

But dead bards can make good cover, so there is that.

View attachment 124258

Best part of the flick. :-D

An hour is a very long amount of downtime, narratively speaking.

And yet the 5mwd is such a common concept?

A warlock who uses Hex is really suboptimal. That's why it's a "baseline". They'd be much better off casting real spells --- hypnotic pattern, for example, which they can do about as often as a tier 2 monk can stun something, and the expected value per use (measured in enemy turns denied) is significantly higher, because it's an AoE.

This one of the reasons hex should not be a base assumption.

I guess the alternative baseline could be a sword and shield champion fighter. But that’s bottom tier at that point.

Nope, can't see the hat as better either lol.

That feels counter intuitive. It's like if using your 1st level slot spent your 2nd level spell slots at the same time, you'd never use those 1st level slot.

More like a spell becoming outdated. Spells can be swapped, however.

It would be nice to have alernative choices to select from a list for ki powers.

And Tanking and DPR are usually trade off for one of the other. You sacrifice your tanking to hit harder, or you sacrifice your damage to be harder to hit. The Monk has the GREAT ability to do this on the fly, and that's a pretty cool concept... I just don't think it's calibrated properly.

On the fly is the actual advantage here. That's something that might have been overestimated in power.

I was not aware that Eldritch Blast, Hex and Agonizing Blast were only available as feats or multi classing?

The relevance and is in the other class builds beating that baseline.

EB+AG isn't a bad baseline without hex if other classes are following the same PHB options.

 

[Mistwell]

not really. if you start adding in GWM then the monk at that level has +2 dex in comparison.

Yes of course. That was already in your calculation wasn't it? What feat did they take if you had not accounted for it?