D&D 5E Barbarian vs Fighter vs Monk

Monks get 1 ki per level. Which is not a lot, but at least you can pretend to nova.

Monks without Ki are just sad. And Shadow Monks are sad at all times.
 
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Just to reiterate what others have said: the monk numbers in the OP are completely wrong because the OP is not using martial arts and flurry of blows properly. Plus he's not using a quarterstaff, which is free damage with no downside.

So the monks should get two staff attacks for 1d8+5 each, and using flurry of blows, two unarmed attacks for 1d6+5 each. (One unarmed attack without flurry.) All at +8.

So that's 15.125 dpr normally, and 19.8 with flurry, against the fire giant.

But even that is highly misleading, because in one level the fighter gets a 50% boost in dpr.

Plus, the survival numbers are just silly. Yes, if a monk stands still and lets the giant hit him in the face he'll die quickly. But the whole class is designed around mobility and disabling enemies.
 

FWIW, I just played out a couple of combats between a PHB monk and a Basic Addendum fire giant.

The first one was very short: the giant got initiative and killed the monk on his first round.

The second one was much more interesting as the monk stunned the giant on round one and then, thanks to Open Hand Technique, was able to keep the giant from making melee attacks until round 8 when he had to move in and stay close due to being out of ki points. The giant only hit with one of his two melee attacks and then the Monk was able to finish him off. I have the entire die-roll by die-roll transcript but couldn't remember how to hide something behind a spoiler tag.
 

Just to reiterate what others have said: the monk numbers in the OP are completely wrong because the OP is not using martial arts and flurry of blows properly. Plus he's not using a quarterstaff, which is free damage with no downside.

The OP was doing the numbers right...for the many months ago when this thread was made:)

I will at some point repeat the analysis with the finalized classes.
 





I would love to see how a wild shaped Druid of the Moon measures up in melee against the melee classes.
I'm pretty sure he can bring a lot of damage to bear.

Any with the multiple wildshapes, he can really bear a lot of damage.

I don't think you need to bear weapons to be competitive in melee.
 

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