D&D 5E Comparing Monk DPR

[Mort]

In one of these threads someone mentioned the latest season of Crit Role, which is up to session 130 and includes a monk with an above average stat line. The fans keep detailed notes on every interaction and roll that happens on air, so this is an amazingly thorough public test of the monk. I'll try to find the results but they've fought a broad range of enemy types over the course of 130 sessions and the statistical verdict was that monk with maxed out Wis still has a pretty abysmal chance at stunning enemies in general.

Funny, pretty sure that was actually me.

Here is the relevant link.

The monk has tried stunning strike 103 times and succeeded 31 times - so a 30% success rate. She's used about a a third of her Ki on stunning strike.

 

[Bupp]

One level of fighter early (either start at fighter, or dip at 2nd level, depends on what saves and proficiencies you prefer), lets you choose the unarmed fighting style, and your unarmed strikes are now d8's.

 

[auburn2]

It is a solid number crunching, the problem is you can't put a DPR value on stunning strike. For my money, that's THE signature ability of monks in 5E. Period. When the crossbow expert can fire four "stunning shots" per round, then it will be a fair comparison.

THIS!!!

Further if a Monk lands stunning blow on his first attack of the turn, all subsequent attacks against that creature by the monk that turn, all attacks by allies that round and all the monks attacks the next turn ALL have advantage. That means 1 stunning strike and a 6th level Monk can land up to 7 more attacks with advantage and the enemy can't take an action, reaction or move. A 6th level Monk has 18 ki per day (assuming 2 short rests), meaning he or she can use stunning strike several times per fight.

Finally stun is the least resisted condition in the game. Almost nothing is immune to stun. Liches, Iron Golems, Terrasques etc. ... they are immune to all sorts of conditions but not immune to stun

 

[auburn2]

One level of fighter early (either start at fighter, or dip at 2nd level, depends on what saves and proficiencies you prefer), lets you choose the unarmed fighting style, and your unarmed strikes are now d8's.

Only when not wielding a weapon.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Barely used my stunning strike. Knocking stuff probe and moar damage did the trick. While prone you get advantage to hit along with everyone else.

Sure, that's how you play, but JG said:

He gets to key enemies and ties them up to prevent them from destroying his allies while those allies deal the damage.

Generally speaking, enemies that can "destroy" your allies (i.e. do significant damage to them and/or significantly CC them) cannot be stopped from doing so merely by proning them and having a single character hit them, because usually they're either casters, or do so much DPR you don't want to be next to them. You seem to be acting as what in Dark Age of Camelot we might have called "the leader of the assist train", i.e. you prevent an enemy from escaping and make them more vulnerable and other melee PCs come and help you murder them. That's viable though equally someone with Shield Master or whatever that Feat is called can do the same. It's not specific to Monks.

Whereas Stunning Strike is, but is conventionally used either to prevent an enemy from unleashing some sort of nasty ability, or to set them up to get freight-trained much harder than mere prone would allow (because ranged can join in and the target can't even use Reactions or anything, rather than just losing a Move action to stand up).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

THIS!!!

Further if a Monk lands stunning blow on his first attack of the turn, all subsequent attacks against that creature by the monk that turn, all attacks by allies that round and all the monks attacks the next turn ALL have advantage. That means 1 stunning strike and a 6th level Monk can land up to 7 more attacks with advantage and the enemy can't take an action, reaction or move. A 6th level Monk has 18 ki per day (assuming 2 short rests), meaning he or she can use stunning strike several times per fight.

Finally stun is the least resisted condition in the game. Almost nothing is immune to stun. Liches, Iron Golems, Terrasques etc. ... they are immune to all sorts of conditions but not immune to stun

Again this is a bad thing, not a good thing.

Monks are a one-trick pony precisely because Stunning Strike is pretty powerful and spammable. If they didn't have it, or it was limited in some other way, they could be significantly increased in power in other regards.

This sort of balance issue is pretty common in MOBAs, MMOs, and other class-based combat games. Personally I'd suggest limiting it differently to the rest of the Monk abilities. Maybe once per short rest or something.

 

[auburn2]

I think the class is mostly fine BUT has been powercrept out by optional rules.

1. Feats. The -5/-10 ones.
2. Scag cantrips.
3. Optional Tasha rules.
Monks don't benefit much from any of that.

Additionally I doubt most people are doing the two short restsand 6-8 encounters.

So if monks got some cool optional rule ability or variant on ki points (eg double them refresh on long rest). Or a -5/+10 feat.

They're a skirmisher in a game that doesn't really care about skirmishing.

Oh and MAD with default array. Much like 3E don't play one if you're using default array.

I liked my monk but picked one of the better subclasses and healer feat to encourage short rests and had higher stats than default which benefits Monks more.

Monks can take sharpshooter -5/+10 feats and use a short bow or crossbow using dedicated weapon or a Kensai with a longbow. Depending on your DM, this can also be used with thrown weapons like daggers or spears.

This works really well as a Kensei with a long bow when combined with stunning strike. Use a BA stunning strike unarmed attack, if it fails, use flurry of blows and make another one. Then back up (no AOO because he is stunned) and make your two longbow attacks with advantage and -5/+10. You get another 2 longbow attacks with advantage to start the next turn and can add an additional 1d4 to both those using your BA if desired. The advantage more or less cancels out the -5.

If you don't do Kensei, you could do this with a shortbow. If you use a crossbow and do not take XBE, you can do it with a crossbow but you would do it differently - you would do 1 regular unarmed attack, 1 martial arts bonus attack and then back up and make 1 -5/+10 crossbow attack.

 

[Noxrim]

Thanks everyone for your contribution. Here are few things I wanted to address.

- The biggest criticism against using DPR is Stunning Strike not being factored in. I definitely agree that it is an amazing ability, but I think that the class should still function well without it. If the Monk is spending all their Ki on Stunning Strike, they are not using their other cool abilities that they have from the class or the subclasses. I am not factoring any ability or spell that the Warlock has and could use, but it still does good damage.
At early levels, the Monk is doing fine in that regards, all Ki points can be used on whatever the Monk fancies. They can spend it on Stunning Strike, or other abilities they have and they would still do good damage (better than that of a Warlock). At later levels, they don't gain any new abilities, just more resources to do the same things, but they suffer greatly in damage compared to other classes.

- Some suggested that we should use a different baseline; That the Warlock was above average and we should use a baseline Fighter or a Rogue. But that is exactly what I did. The Rogue (with no extra feature other than Sneak Attack) surpasses the Warlock at all levels. It is even improving at a better rate since Sneak Attack improves every 2 levels. If we use that for baseline the Monk is going to look even worse.
The Fighter is lower than the Warlock in this case, but is still ahead of the Monk at 11+ (without focusing on damage).

Maybe I am underestimating Stunning Strike, but I feel that as a martial class, can't it do decent damage as well as have access to it?

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah it's above average.

Baseline is sword and board fighter or rogue (without scag cantrips) IMHO.

Yea, but EB+AB is literally dice+mod, increasing at every tier increase (5,11,17). It's like the platonic ideal of what the damage curve for other classes should look like.

 

[NotAYakk]

Yep, the at-will damage of a Rogue exceeds that of the Hex-enhanced EB+AB spamming Warlock.

As it should be.

EB+AB spamming warlock as a baseline is a good choice. They shouldn't be high damage, because they have invocations and spells to fall back on.

The longsword+shield fighter in plate shouldn't be baseline damage, because it is intentionally built defensively. Possibly its ability to defend allies should be higher than it is (imo). The other problem is how easy it is to boost its damage output (take PAM, swap sword for spear) (while the warlock's EB+AB+Hex is far more difficult) which doesn't make it a very "stable" baseline.

Warlock EB+AB+Hex is not a tricky bit of charop. It is something most people can see as a way to be ok at dealing damage playing a single-classed PC. And it isn't one build choice away from having its damage boosted by 50%.

The sword-and-board LS fighter isn't far off the EB warlock either.

16 at level 1, 18 at level 4, 20 at level 8. Fighter takes a feat at level 6.

+1 rod/weapon at level 5, +2 at level 11, +3 at level 17.

1: 9 vs 9.5
2: 12 vs 9.5
4: 13 vs 10.5
5: 26 vs 23
8: 28 vs 25
11: 42 vs 40.5
17: 56 vs 43.5
20: 56 vs 58

These numbers are really close. The fact that magic weapons add +1 damage, while implements do not, makes a difference here.

Add in PAM at level 6, no reaction attack ever:

1: 9 vs 9.5
2: 12 vs 9.5
4: 13 vs 10.5
5: 26 vs 23
6: 26 vs 30.5
8: 28 vs 33.5
11: 42 vs 49
17: 56 vs 53
20: 56 vs 67.5

The reaction attack adds another 10-13 DPR on top of that if it always goes off.

But this analysis is both more complex and more fiddly than "use warlock EB+AB+Hex" as baseline damage.

The warlock damage curve is simple, not that extreme, and is in a class that can do more than just do damage. It is a decent baseline.

Treating characters dealing less than it as "not doing much damage" is reasonable. And the conclusion, that at level 11+ monks don't do much damage without expending Ki, and even that doesn't keep up, is useful information.