D&D 5E (2024) What's not going to cost discipline points for the Monk to do now?

[mellored]

What do you mean by "DI"? I don't recognize the abbreviation.

Miss type DP.

 

[mellored]

It’s not damage, but I love the Drunken
And I’d give them BA disengage for free. They’re supposed to move in an out of the thick of it, it makes sense.

Just because it has the perfect name...

Miss Step
When you miss with a unarmed attack, you can move 5' without provoking an opportunity attack. You may intentionally miss.

 

[strawbellebelle]

It’s not damage, but I love the Drunken Master’s ability to use disengage as part of FoB.

Still, I think the Monk has room for something. They’d be a great class to get expanded crit range in the base class, and should be able to spend a DI as a BA to add 2 MA dice to an attack that has hit, so you can go for the big wham sometimes rather than the many smaller pop-pops.

And I’d give them BA disengage for free. They’re supposed to move in an out of the thick of it, it makes sense.

But they don’t need as much as some folks like to say they do.

The thing is that there's always room to build on 5e and its classes, to tweak and improve in various areas to make classes more fun to play.

But there's a difference between comparing the UA6 Monk to the 5e Monk—a solid upgrade in many regards, and only "nerfed" by making a single ability less exploitable—to something like the UA7 Fighter vs. the 5e Fighter—gaining the ability to use powerful and chooseable free effects on every single attack without limitation, getting a multiple-use +1d10 to any ability check (that doesn't even expend a use if it doesn't succeed!), getting advantage after every missed attack.

There's classes that have received reasonable upgrades and changes in the OneD&D playtests, and classes that have received frankly unreasonable upgrades and changes. For example, Weapon Mastery—pertinent in complaints with how Monks engage with the mechanic. The problem is that mechanics that are unbalanced in the way that Weapon Mastery is are adored by many responding to the playtest surveys, because they want mechanics that give them free and easy benefits and have unbalanced options that allow them to pick the clearly-better/best choices. (Cunning Strikes is another perfect example of this.)

So yes, Monk should get new bells and whistles, like other classes. The problem is that many of the survey respondents are interested in encouraging unreasonable upgrades for some classes, to the point where near-all-around improvements to another class are decried because they aren't just as unreasonable.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The thing is that there's always room to build on 5e and its classes, to tweak and improve in various areas to make classes more fun to play.

But there's a difference between comparing the UA6 Monk to the 5e Monk—a solid upgrade in many regards, and only "nerfed" by making a single ability less exploitable—to something like the UA7 Fighter vs. the 5e Fighter—gaining the ability to use powerful and chooseable free effects on every single attack without limitation, getting a multiple-use +1d10 to any ability check (that doesn't even expend a use if it doesn't succeed!), getting advantage after every missed attack.

There's classes that have received reasonable upgrades and changes in the OneD&D playtests, and classes that have received frankly unreasonable upgrades and changes. For example, Weapon Mastery—pertinent in complaints with how Monks engage with the mechanic. The problem is that mechanics that are unbalanced in the way that Weapon Mastery is are adored by many responding to the playtest surveys, because they want mechanics that give them free and easy benefits and have unbalanced options that allow them to pick the clearly-better/best choices. (Cunning Strikes is another perfect example of this.)

So yes, Monk should get new bells and whistles, like other classes. The problem is that many of the survey respondents are interested in encouraging unreasonable upgrades for some classes, to the point where near-all-around improvements to another class are decried because they aren't just as unreasonable.

Nah, sorry but, this ain’t it.

Weapon Mastery is fine, Cunning Strikes is fantastic*, and the monk absolutely should get a similar boost to fighters.

WM and CS are situational, and the majority of players aren’t powergamers, and even if you have a powergamer running a fighter/rogue or soemthing, they aren’t going to obviate other characters.

*the last thing rogue needs is to deal less damage, so the fantastic has the caveat that I’d rather they make it cost a BA than a sneak attack die, and give the rogue a 1-2 per short rest Backstab that lets them get a really nasty “nova” hit a few times a day. But barring that, CS is still great.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just because it has the perfect name...

Miss Step
When you miss with an unarmed attack, you can move 5' without provoking an opportunity attack. You may intentionally miss.

Why the miss condition? 5’ without OA is pretty small beans, why not just let it be hit or miss? Or it’s a BA if you hit but no action if you miss, I guess. But the idea is to be able to swoop in, pop-pop, swoop out.

 

[strawbellebelle]

Nah, sorry but, this ain’t it.

Weapon Mastery is fine, Cunning Strikes is fantastic*, and the monk absolutely should get a similar boost to fighters.

WM and CS are situational, and the majority of players aren’t powergamers, and even if you have a powergamer running a fighter/rogue or soemthing, they aren’t going to obviate other characters.

*the last thing rogue needs is to deal less damage, so the fantastic has the caveat that I’d rather they make it cost a BA than a sneak attack die, and give the rogue a 1-2 per short rest Backstab that lets them get a really nasty “nova” hit a few times a day. But barring that, CS is still great.

Weapon Mastery doesn't work well with the fact that they apply on every attack and that some properties don't "stack" compared to others. Topple is a chance to knock prone on every attack, Graze affects every missed attack, Vex grants advantage after every hit...but Sap only disadvantages one attack, Slow only reduces movement speed once, Push is awkward to apply to a single target multiple times. That's ignoring the relative strengths of each property—knocking an enemy prone is obviously much more useful than reducing their movement speed. And, also affecting the Monk, there really isn't any problem with martial-weapon users having access to optimal mastery properties regardless of weapon type.

Cunning Strikes is not a bad idea, but the problem is that a single d6 of Sneak Attack damage is an insignificant price for an ability that has zero cost and limitation otherwise, for the chance to apply powerful effects on top of damage. Just at Level 5, the Rogue gets a chance to disarm, poison for one minute, knock prone, or get to disengage without any action or even movement cost...and can do so an unlimited number of times, with the only cost being lowering their Sneak Attack bonus from 3d6 to 2d6 for that attack. And that price becomes more insignificant as the Rogue gains levels.

Both of them have the thing that a lot of survey respondents are taking offense with for other classes and changes: wanting classes to get potent abilities that have zero cost in both resource management and action economy. And when other classes get upgrades that completely ignore these two pillars of the game, is it any surprise that the class that revolves around thoughtful management of both compares poorly to them?

 

[mellored]

Why the miss condition?

Mostly because I wanted to use the name "Miss Step".
But also, doing it every attack seems a bit much. And why not make missing more fun?

And I just imagine a drunken style doing a crazy big swing, the opponents easily dodging, and the monk stumbling away.

Or perhaps a kick flip off the enemies shield.

Or other fun stuff like that.

5’ without OA is pretty small beans, why not just let it be hit or miss? Or it’s a BA if you hit but no action if you miss, I guess. But the idea is to be able to swoop in, pop-pop, swoop out.

5' is enough to get away from most enemies. Could boost it to 10' at higher levels (1/2 your Unarmed Movement?)

You can pop-in, and swoop out.
Or "risk" hitting a third time and not moving. But you hit so you can't really complain.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Mostly because I wanted to use the name "Miss Step". But also, doing it every attack seems a bit much. So why not make missing more fun?

I mean fair on the name. But also it could just be a once per turn ability.

And I just imagine a drunken style doing a crazy big swing, the opponents easily dodging, and the monk stumbling away.

Or perhaps a kick flip off the enemies shield.

Or other fun stuff like that.

5' is enough to get away from most enemies. Could boost it to 10' at higher levels (1/2 your Unarmed Movement?)

So yea. You can pop-in, and swoop out.
Or "risk" hitting a third time and not moving.

But the monk doesn’t need that sort of trade off, it’s already full of them.

 

[mellored]

I mean fair on the name. But also it could just be a once per turn ability.

Doesn't seem as fun IMO.

But the monk doesn’t need that sort of trade off, it’s already full of them.

What trade off?

If you want to move, you move.
If you want to move far, step on the wind is still 1 DP.
If you want to attack, you attack (and maybe move).

I mean, Graze isn't adding a trade-off...

 

[Clint_L]

"Not remotely accurate" means "the exact damage numbers are wrong"?

The creators aren't going to change the game because some YouTuber thinks gameplay happens in featureless voids where only one set of circumstances are ever in play. (Even if said YouTuber openly encourages his followers to harass and spam the creators because they didn't give Monks 3d6 attacks.)

What you seem to not understand is that you can't discuss DPR in a vacuum, or without taking normal factors of gameplay into a result. Any white boxing of just DPR shows monks falling further behind as they level up, and it isn't close. That isn't even worth arguing with you about; I encourage you to look up the relevant math as it has been done many times.

But at a very basic level, consider that the value of each combatant essentially comes down to damage done AND damage nullified or tanked. So let's just look at a level 1 barbarian and a level 1 monk, and we'll put the up against the most standard of level 1 foes, the goblin (+4 to hit, 7 HP, AC 15).

Monk is +3 dex, +2 wisdom, +2 constitution; AC 15, 10 HP. Barbarian is +3 str, +2 constitution, +2 dex, AC 14, 14 HP. So the monk's DPR against the goblin is 7.15. The barbarian's DPR is 6.6. The goblin's DPR is 2.75 vs the monk, 3.025 vs. the barbarian...except the barbarian is raging, so that gets cut in half and then round DOWN to the nearest whole number, per the rules. So the goblin's actual DPR against the barbarian is a flat 1.

If it's one goblin, both monk and barbarian basically kill it in one round, and though the monk takes a much larger percentage of their health in damage, it's not much of an issue. But when is it ever just one goblin?

So let's white room this into an ongoing stream of goblins and the difference in value to the party between the monk and barbarian becomes stark. The monk survives 4 rounds, delivering 28. 6 damage while tanking 10. Net value to the party is +38.6 HP in this scenario. The barbarian survives 14 rounds, delivering 92.4 damage and tanking 14, so has a value of +106.4 HP, around three times the value of the monk. Note that if the barbarian never rages they still come out on top but it is much closer, as their value drops to 47 HP.

So who is actually the better damage dealer, and which do you want in your level 1 party? Unsurprisingly, the barbarian is going to be much more valuable. This tracks with what you experience at the table - if the monk tries to tank a group of goblins they are going to die fast, while the barbarian can keep going.

You might argue that the monk shouldn't be tanking, that they are a light skirmisher. Okay, so what is the value added there? To begin with, you have to have a tank; a light skirmisher is a non-essential element. In general, ranged combatants can do the job more efficiently. But even among light skirmishers, the monk is a poor cousin to the rogue. The one really good monk trick, stunning strike, was heavily nerfed in the last UA, with nothing much added to replace it.

So we have a class that gradually falls behind on the DPR curve until at high levels it isn't even in the running unless you play a Mercy monk, which barely keeps up, has a secondary niche at best, and isn't even the best class at that niche. Which is why monk is getting yet another redesign in the next UA.

There's a reason that the monk is pretty universally regarded as the weakest class in 5e.

Edit: My numbers are a bit off because I forgot to factor in critical hits but the 5% makes no difference in the end results. Also note that we could swap in a paladin or fighter and get mathematically similar results to the barbarian, with their high armour absorbing a similar amount of damage as rage.