D&D General me finally making the big monk discussion thread

[doctorbadwolf]

I will try to summarize why the monk is mechanically weaker than others.

2. They have d8 Hit die. So from the above we know Monks deal low-ish damage, and have mediocre AC. D8 is not great, but most melee classes are D10, except Cleric, but they are full casters and usually have heavy armour. Rogues occasionally get in melee, but they have Uncanny Dodge and bonus action hide to help survive. When Monks get hit, it hurts.

Patient Defense, Deflect Missiles, evasion.

3. They benefit little from Crits, but suffer greatly from misses. Low Martial Arts damage die means less extra damage from crits, but each miss is one less Stunning Strike chance.

This is just backwards, IMO. A single missed attack matters less for a monk than for almost anyone else.

4. Their main selling point, high movement speed, is not that important. Speed is nice for closing gaps. Once the gap is closed, its a slugfest, and Monks aren't good at slugfests. Speed is good for running away, but there needs to be lots of open space for that. And Mobile is mandatory.

You...wha...? You are playing a different game from any I’ve ever seen played with 5e.

5. Their high level features are weak. Are you looking forward to walking on water, Tongue of Sun & Moon, Timeless Body, and Perfect Self? I am not. The monsters you face get stronger, but at least you can't be aged magically, and can save on those ointments for your backpain.

6. Stunning Strike alone deserves discussion. At low levels, it can stun-lock monsters until its dead, making single strong enemies a non-challenge. At high levels, most monsters have massive bonus to CON saves on top of Legendary Resistances. Trying to burn legendary resistances could back fire by burning through your own Ki.

You just...don’t use stunning strike like a spam button?

EDIT: I think Monks are unsatisfying to play also because they get less support from their allies. That Sharpshooter Fighter or GWM Paladin is obviously more deserving of Haste and Bless than the Monk.

Bless is pretty big for the monk. If your every party has SS and GWM, you might be in a game that is hyper focused on optimization, which the game shouldn’t try to solve for.

I mean, that's not really a comparison. Boxers and Kung Fu Masters are both martial artists, using similar techniques. This isn't just me "reflavoring" insomuch as finding something that is spiritually similar and using that as a base.Yes, and the class can have the identity of "martial artist" and not just "eastern martial artist". It allows for way more variety in what they can do.

If the monk worked so well for your boxer, what’s the issue? And I never said anything about eastern martial artists. I said mystic.

Again, I’m down for some alt features. I don’t need my monks to speak all languages, for instance. That’s a weird one even for the core monk archetype.

But other than somehow making strength viable without completely changing the monks identity ( Maybe a proficiency + wis AC calculation?) I don’t see much missing in the core monk.

Why not? Are boxers not martial artists? Do you not think they have their own feats of strength associated with them? This seems like a very arbitrary limit.

Monks aren’t just martial artists.

God no. First off, the boxer has way more in common with the Monk than the Fighter in 5E and I don't even understand how this is an argument. Why have the fighter "lose proficiencies for "Unarmored Defense: Int" when you can just use the Monk chassis? The Monk chassis also has built-in advancement for unarmed attacks, which is yet another thing you'd have to take from the Monk and add to the Fighter.

The fighter already has an unarmed fighting style. An Unarmored defense feature would serve a lot more than just the boxer. and the features of the fighter fit a mundane martial artist of any culture better than the features of the monk, which is a mystic.

The Monk works for Western Martial Artists incredibly well. The class would do well to simply diversify a bit more; it'd help it thematically within settings as well to have more options than just Eastern Martial Arts.

If you can only think of a Monk in terms of Eastern Martial Arts, then you're trying to tell me that it's not a problem that this class can't effectively do grappling arts like Judo? Seriously?

Well, since the idea that I’m thinking of the monk as an eastern martial artist is purely an invention of your imagination, I’m not sure what to say to this.

And it can grapple. It can’t do reactive grappling, but that is a build that I’m working on putting into a subclass. A feat that lets you grapple anytime you attack as a reaction would be cool. (With other bullet points, obv)

Not how I'd do it, but it's a start, I suppose.



I mean, honestly we need to just start giving them features instead of Ki stuff because honestly it sucks to have all these moves and not enough ki to use them. Ki is a good idea, but the devs were very over-reliant on using it to try and balance the whole class and now it's acting as a bottleneck for it.

No more than Spellcasting on rangers and Paladins. The monk just ha

Eh? Some things you need training for. The grapple rules are serviceable, but like the combat they could use some spice.

Grappling is part of nearly every culture’s martial arts training. Anyone trained in weapons should be trained in basic grappling. The monk should have some kind of extra benefit with an expanded grappling system, but it shouldn’t be a monk thing.

Unarmed combat should be the monk thing. Trying to add anything that isn't Eastern Martial Arts just makes the Fighter class more of a mess than it already is; trying to retrofit it for unarmed combat when you have class that already does that more than adequately doesn't make sense.

Not gonna lie, I despise the notion of unarmed combat belonging to one class. The Unarmed Fighting Style in Tasha’s fixes that issue quite nicely. The damage due is high enough that it’s no worse than a light weapon fighter, and a Battlemaster has all the manuevers it could ever need to be a martial artist.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But it can't
That's the point.
You can't make a mystical boxer or a mystical wrestler without overriding more of the monks key features.


And you keep saying it's easy to do without showing your proof.

For example, to make a mystical wrestler, you might have to:

• Change Unarmored Defense to 10 + Str + Con
• Change the last feature of Martial Arts to damage after a grapple.
• Change the 3 features of Ki
• Change Deflect Missiles to Deflect Strike and make it deflect melee attacks based on Str

That's too much for a subclass.

No it doesn't. It has an option for unarmed fighters. It isn't good.

That's like saying a fighter with cantrips replaces the wizard. "It's an option for magic"
No, it doesn't replicate to feeling, image, or playstyle of the wizard anymore than a unarmored unarmed fighter replaces a boxer.


An explosion attack that isn't garbage? A range over 30ft. A better combo attack. Different types of ki blasts. Other aspect of the genre like afterimages, energy deflection, and "teleportation"



because they are one way people see "magical martial arts" past the 1970s.


If I what to play a Greco-Roman warrior who slams orcs into the ground in nothing but a lioncloth, I should e able to make that character unless it doesn't fit the setting. And to me, it fits many settings.

Same with a mystical boxer who focuses on Str and Dex to deal a heavy knockout blow and might go for body shots to wear down tougher foes first.

The Sun Soul and the 4 Elements monk display how bad the monk pulls off other images of martial artists. And some argue the Drunken Master is bad as well. So the Boxer and Grappler would be hard to fit in as well.

You aren’t even trying to have a discussion. I’m done. Have fun.

Also, if you think the sun soul does a bad job...LOL

 

[Tonguez]

The issue is that the barbarian doesn't play like how the archetype does and has a flavor mismatch in rage.
It has the stats and bonus to grapples but the mindlessness of rage and the technicality of wrestling conflict.

It would have to go through fighter or monk in flavor but you would have to swap out core features and assumptions.

Rage say you fight with primal ferocity and cant cast spells or use concentrate it does NOT say or even imply mindlessness. Really if you can adapt the mystical monk to non-mystical fighters then you can adapt primal ferocity to high energy, power wrestling without it being mindless

Barbarians make great wrestlers

 

[Minigiant]

You aren’t even trying to have a discussion. I’m done. Have fun.

Also, if you think the sun soul does a bad job...LOL

I've stated changes I'd make to the monk and described how the fantasy achetype would fight.
I don't see how that is not having a discussion.

If you don't think those archetypes should be in D&D or don't get what the archetypes are in the first place, just say so.

But laughing and ending the conservation on your end is rude. And such attitudes is of the reasons why 5e has such a stiff base and why TCOE has so many class feature swaps.

Again clearly, many don'tget the difference between "X is bad" and "X doesn't play like the image in my head."

 

[Minigiant]

Rage say you fight with primal ferocity and cant cast spells or use concentrate it does NOT say or even imply mindlessness. Really if you can adapt the mystical monk to non-mystical fighters then you can adapt primal ferocity to high energy, power wrestling without it being mindless

Barbarians make great wrestlers

Again there is a the difference between "X is bad" and "X doesn't play like the image in my head."

Wrestling isn't about entering a super mode. It's about grappling foes and then slamming, throwing, or locking them.

Rage only lasts a minute. You have few uses of Rage until Tier 3. And Rage requires constant attacking or damage to continue.

The Barbarian makes a good wrestler. The Barbarian doesn't play like a wrestler.

It's a weird concept but a character can do something well but still look and play wrong to the archetype.
it's like if the default fighter casted spells. It would be a better warrior but not look or play like the fighter in the heads of many.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've stated changes I'd make to the monk and described how the fantasy achetype would fight.
I don't see how that is not having a discussion.

If you don't think those archetypes should be in D&D or don't get what the archetypes are in the first place, just say so.

But laughing and ending the conservation on your end is rude. And such attitudes is of the reasons why 5e has such a stiff base and why TCOE has so many class feature swaps.

Again clearly, many don'tget the difference between "X is bad" and "X doesn't play like the image in my head."

Jeeeeeeeeeeebus fine. I’ll try again.

Firstly, I don’t think anyone thinks you’re saying the monk sucks. We get that you just don’t think it’s capable of doing archetypes that you think it should be good at.

Here’s the thing. The pro wrestler needs a more robust base game grapple system, mostly in the form of more “special attacks” related to grappling. That isn’t a monk issue, and trying to use the monk to fix it won’t actually fix it.

I don’t want mysticism in my damn Andre The Giant. He’s a Battlemaster fighter, and chokeslam is a grapple attack and then a trip attack, reflavored. The mechanical effect is exactly right. And he can do that in one action. Perfect!

He can even do it as an action without spending dice, because both are special attacks, IIRC, so they replace an individual attack.

I don’t understand what from the monk would even benefit the concept, or how the concept is related to the mystical warrior in the first place. The brawler has always been a fighter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's a weird concept but a character can do something well but still look and play wrong to the archetype.

I definitely agree with this. I just, in this case, feel that way about a mundane martial artist and the monk class.

To me, the whole point of the monk is to be a mystic warrior, not a mundane warrior.

The mundane warrior, they person who is a highly skilled expert in martial arts (ie, the arts of war, physical combat, etc) is the fighter.

But! I am full of ideas to make monk subclasses, alt features, and balanced additional features, to the monk to allow a mystic version of these archetypes.

 

[Justice and Rule]

If the monk worked so well for your boxer, what’s the issue? And I never said anything about eastern martial artists. I said mystic.

Again, I’m down for some alt features. I don’t need my monks to speak all languages, for instance. That’s a weird one even for the core monk archetype.

But other than somehow making strength viable without completely changing the monks identity ( Maybe a proficiency + wis AC calculation?) I don’t see much missing in the core monk.

The point is that you can open up the class a bit more and offer all sorts of martial arts stuff, rather than just the current kung-fu focus.

The "mysticism" literally just comes from the eastern martial arts stuff. There aren't any current archetypes beyond the psychic one that don't directly play into some Eastern Martial Arts stuff (and it might; I haven't really looked at it). Even the Path of Mercy is stuff is based around that stuff.

Monks aren’t just martial artists.

I mean, they kind of are. The mystic is stuff is flavoring. Even the Mercy Monk is totally a kung-fu artist.

The fighter already has an unarmed fighting style. An Unarmored defense feature would serve a lot more than just the boxer. and the features of the fighter fit a mundane martial artist of any culture better than the features of the monk, which is a mystic.

The unarmed fighting style doesn't even compare to the Monk, who actually gets support for it. And the idea that certain "fighting styles" must be "mundane" is already incredibly limiting. Focusing on "mystic" versus "mundane" is an incredibly bad way to look at the class.

Well, since the idea that I’m thinking of the monk as an eastern martial artist is purely an invention of your imagination, I’m not sure what to say to this.

I mean, you've basically made the "mysticism" inherent to those martial arts as the most important part, so it's a distinction without a difference. In the end, it's incredibly limiting when the concept could be opened up much more.

And it can grapple. It can’t do reactive grappling, but that is a build that I’m working on putting into a subclass. A feat that lets you grapple anytime you attack as a reaction would be cool. (With other bullet points, obv)

I mean, anyone can technically grapple. Right now it's just not really good at it. But I think Strength grappling for Greco-Roman and Dexterity grappling for stuff like Judo would be a smart fix.

Really, the Grappler feat just needs to be better because as it is it's kind of lame. The grappling system, while simple, could also use a bit more definition. <shrug>

No more than Spellcasting on rangers and Paladins. The monk just ha

I think this got unfinished, but no more spellcasting on Rangers would be welcome. Paladins... doable I suppose (Warlock chassis?). I'm all for fewer spellcasters in general, given that something like half the classes are full or half casters.

Grappling is part of nearly every culture’s martial arts training. Anyone trained in weapons should be trained in basic grappling. The monk should have some kind of extra benefit with an expanded grappling system, but it shouldn’t be a monk thing.

Not gonna lie, I despise the notion of unarmed combat belonging to one class. The Unarmed Fighting Style in Tasha’s fixes that issue quite nicely. The damage due is high enough that it’s no worse than a light weapon fighter, and a Battlemaster has all the manuevers it could ever need to be a martial artist.

I'd like it if one class didn't own it, either, but 5E is built that way. Simplicity creates lanes in which certain classes just do much better at certain things, and unarmed/unarmored combat is definitely the monk's thing. If it were me, I'd want all martial classes to have burnable resources closer to how the monk is anyways, with monks focusing on finesse, fighters focusing on strength, and barbarians focusing on constitution.

But that's a whole system rebuild, at which point I'll just look for a new system. Fixing the Monk in general would make most of the more esoteric mystic stuff optional ribbons, as well as fixing the ki pool bottleneck by either giving a better balance of ki points across the class' lifetime or rebalancing the flavor of the subclasses so that ki isn't as important. I'm more for the latter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The point is that you can open up the class a bit more and offer all sorts of martial arts stuff, rather than just the current kung-fu focus.

The "mysticism" literally just comes from the eastern martial arts stuff. There aren't any current archetypes beyond the psychic one that don't directly play into some Eastern Martial Arts stuff (and it might; I haven't really looked at it). Even the Path of Mercy is stuff is based around that stuff.

The path of Mercy is based on European hermeticism. The elemental monk is based on pop culture and Avatar. The mystic warrior is the base identity of the monk. It’s the reason the class still exists rather than having been eaten by the decades years ago.

I mean, they kind of are. The mystic is stuff is flavoring. Even the Mercy Monk is totally a kung-fu artist.

No, it isn’t. It’s a hermetic alchemist warrior, which is a European based form of mysticism. European hermeticism has roots in Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu, esoteric practice, but it is European by the time plague doctors and humors become relevant to it.

The unarmed fighting style doesn't even compare to the Monk, who actually gets support for it. And the idea that certain "fighting styles" must be "mundane" is already incredibly limiting. Focusing on "mystic" versus "mundane" is an incredibly bad way to look at the class.

No, it’s a very good way to look at the class. It’s what separates it from the fighter. This is like claiming that “Rangers are about the natural world and the border between it and civilization” is too limiting, or that Paladins shouldn’t always be divine.

The mundane version of the Ranger is a fighter or rogue (rogue is better, they chose correctly. The Ranger is more expert than warrior in identity these days), as is the mundane version of the Paladin (the Knight Chevalier), and the mundane version of the Monk (the expert martial artist).

I mean, you've basically made the "mysticism" inherent to those martial arts as the most important part, so it's a distinction without a difference. In the end, it's incredibly limiting when the concept could be opened up much more.

You know mysticism isn’t exclusively eastern, yes?

I mean, anyone can technically grapple. Right now it's just not really good at it. But I think Strength grappling for Greco-Roman and Dexterity grappling for stuff like Judo would be a smart fix.

Really, the Grappler feat just needs to be better because as it is it's kind of lame. The grappling system, while simple, could also use a bit more definition. <shrug>

The only part of that that is a monk issue is figuring out a grappler monk once you’ve “fixed” grappling. The rest is a base game issue. We should fix it. I want more fully realized grappling. I want to be able to smoothly make a monk sub that has a feature that expands Deflect Missile to melee attacks, and gets the ability to grapple and either trip, throw, lock, or pin, anytime they can make an attack.
If we also add reaction-grapple to the grappler feat, cool!

I think this got unfinished, but no more spellcasting on Rangers would be welcome. Paladins... doable I suppose (Warlock chassis?). I'm all for fewer spellcasters in general, given that something like half the classes are full or half casters.

I mean I only support a spell-less ranger because the people who want it, want it bad. But if I built a spell-less ranger or Paladin, it would still be very magical, it just wouldn’t cast spells.

I'd like it if one class didn't own it, either, but 5E is built that way. Simplicity creates lanes in which certain classes just do much better at certain things, and unarmed/unarmored combat is definitely the monk's thing. If it were me, I'd want all martial classes to have burnable resources closer to how the monk is anyways, with monks focusing on finesse, fighters focusing on strength, and barbarians focusing on constitution.

But that's a whole system rebuild, at which point I'll just look for a new system. Fixing the Monk in general would make most of the more esoteric mystic stuff optional ribbons, as well as fixing the ki pool bottleneck by either giving a better balance of ki points across the class' lifetime or rebalancing the flavor of the subclasses so that ki isn't as important. I'm more for the latter.

To me, you’re already making a new class that isn’t the monk, which means the issue isn’t that the monk isn’t doing what it needs to, but rather that the game lacks a thing you want, and you personally see the monk as closer to it than anything else the game does have.

At which point...okay, make a variant class. Sounds fun. I’m currently building what amounts to an alt monk Swordmage, and a Captain built on a monk chassis.

 

[Minigiant]

I definitely agree with this. I just, in this case, feel that way about a mundane martial artist and the monk class.

To me, the whole point of the monk is to be a mystic warrior, not a mundane warrior.

The mundane warrior, they person who is a highly skilled expert in martial arts (ie, the arts of war, physical combat, etc) is the fighter.

But! I am full of ideas to make monk subclasses, alt features, and balanced additional features, to the monk to allow a mystic version of these archetypes.

That's the thing.

Pro wrestling isn't the f word but it is scripted. So doing it in "real life" is a bit mystical. You can't really chokeslam people.

Same with boxing people with swords. It's a bit mystical. It isn't real Mile Tyson. It's video game Punch out Mike Tyson.