Challenging the enlarged monk

[Lord Pendragon]

If Enlarge Person allows the monk to come close to the damage output of the fighter/barbarian...shouldn't you be more worried about the cleric deciding to buff the fighter/barbarian instead?

 

[Kalendraf]

Hmm. It doesn't sound that much lower than normal magic to me. Standard PC gear value would be 36,000 at 9th level.

Target wealth is 70% the recommendation of the DMG. So it's slightly lower, but not by a huge amount.

+1 robe (difficult to price--I'll put it at 5,000 stince that's the cost of rose prism ioun stone which most closely approximates its function)

Using the recommended cost of a slotted sacred item, the cost turns out to be 2500 gp.

Staff (difficult to price under normal circumstances--I'd guess something around 6,000 which is 75% of the price of a +1 defender staff).

The staff is a campaign-specific minor artifact called the Staff of Harmony. To keep things simple, I just rule that artifacts have no gold value (or at least an undefined one), and this particular item does not count against the character's wealth total.

He has virtually no other items as he just sold virtually everything to get money for the monk's belt. So he's hanging pretty close to the 70% mark, as are the other characters.

 

[Liquidsabre]

It's not the equal damage I'm worried about, but rather the fact that the enlarged monk gains reach and has those nasty trip & stun attacks which combined with this high damage capability make him much more devestating than the fighter/barbarian in many combats.

Stun should be fine, but how are you handling the mechanics for tripping? This may be a contributing factor to your concerns about combat.

In general the party is using a good tactic with the monk. I wouldn't worry about it too much, let them do it. Challenge them with normal stuffs, should be fine. Others remarks of how poorly the monk handle big nasty critters is important to note.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't think you should try and make things extra-difficult for the monk. What if the fighter picks up expertise and improve trip? Are you going to penalise him if he gets enlarged to make the most of his capabilities? What if the Monk chose exotic weapon (spiked chain) and started using that to do improved trip at 10ft range or any one of a dozen other strategies.

If the monk was going to completely outshine all the other melee PCs by doing this you might have something to worry about, but you are not going to so why bother?

Most of the threads about Monks you'll find on ENworld are about how hard it is for them to find a role in melee *anyway*!

Cheers