D&D 5E Do you think the monk has too few ki points? And my proposal.

[Rya.Reisender]

I don't think the number of Ki points is an issue. A monk can use all his resources in two rounds by going all out, but so can a Warlock. Also, having more Ki available und on level up feels nicer when you struggled with Ki points before.

 

[Quartz]

If you think the Monk has too few Ki points there's nothing stopping you riffing on the Martial Adept feat. I think 2 Ki points seems about right.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The worst-case scenario - if you're good at sticking to a budget - is that you spend half of your points in the first fight, half of your points in the second fight, and then you're completely out for the next five fights that day.

There's no guarantee that you'll get any short rests during a day. Every day is different, and resting is often limited by circumstances.

But that is the same for the warlock. And that is what males it interesting. One problem of 4e was exactly the predictability of short rests. So even if you tried to work against it. The question was always, when in the first 2 rounds is it best to blow my encounter powers no matter how much sense it made story wise. That got boring after a short while.

 

[GlassJaw]

I could see giving monks 1 more point but I wouldn't argue strongly for it.

Way of the Four Elements definitely needs help though. At the minimum, I would Reduce the ki cost of all spells by 1, and some probably more. Burning 4+ ki points at a time is rough, regardless of the benefit.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But that is the same for the warlock. And that is what makes it interesting. One problem of 4e was exactly the predictability of short rests. So even if you tried to work against it. The question was always, when in the first 2 rounds is it best to blow my encounter powers no matter how much sense it made story wise. That got boring after a short while.

Sure, but with the caveat that different people find different things interesting. Knowing that you have two spells in every encounter isn't necessarily more or less interesting than not knowing; it just provides different constraints for you to work within. Kind of like how slow healing, and budgeting your resources over a long time scale, is not necessarily more or less interesting than budgeting your resources over the course of one day.

I have my own preferences, of course, but the fact that ki powers are all pulling from the same pool (as compared to Encounter powers, which were not interchangeable), already goes a long way toward alleviating that tedium. Now you're deciding whether this Flurry is worth the potential trade-off of possibly later using a Burning Hands, rather than knowing you get exactly one Flurry per encounter and the only cost of using it now is that you can't Flurry later in the fight.

 

[Valetudo]

The monk is fine. The elemental is a little goofed, the the core of the monk class is pretty solid. They are not ment to go all out every single round.

 

[5ekyu]

The worst-case scenario - if you're good at sticking to a budget - is that you spend half of your points in the first fight, half of your points in the second fight, and then you're completely out for the next five fights that day.

There's no guarantee that you'll get any short rests during a day. Every day is different, and resting is often limited by circumstances.

Yes absolutely you might have 5- 50 or moe fights in a row with no rests ever.

How many ki points do we need for that?

How may spell slots for the mage?

No matter what your balance point is, other than instant recovery at encounter, you can extol some situation where the assumptions are out of whack.

So, what estimation of short rest to encounter ratio do you think *should* be used for the baseline balance between short and long rests?

 

[Otterscrubber]

I don't know what build your player has or what role he has in the party. In general the monk is about speed, hit and run tactics and using your imagination with acrobatics. Monks with the right race are already the fastest class, have the most attacks & nearly unkillable at higher levels. Why should they be getting more Ki points? Improving gameplay lies in thinking about what other skills and profiencies the character has at thier disposal. DM's should punish monks who rely soley on Ki not reward them.

Ya, they get enough Ki for between short rests I think. Although in my group we are pretty liberal about short rests, almost treating powers that reset after a short rest like encounter powers in 4e.

But yeah, mobility is often overlooked I think. Even a little bit opens up a lot of tactical fun. Combine that with mobility feat and assorted magic items/spells that can increase your movement and monks can do some crazy stuff in combat along the lines of hit and run. Also super solid when facing enemies that move fast or have legendary actions to move when it's not their turn. I just made a lvl 15 monk/warlock and he ended up with a move of 60ft, plus a bonus action for shadow step in dim areas for another 60ft (shadow monk obviously) and I can't wait to take him for a spin

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yes absolutely you might have 5- 50 or more fights in a row with no rests ever.

How many ki points do we need for that?

How may spell slots for the mage?

No matter what your balance point is, other than instant recovery at encounter, you can extol some situation where the assumptions are out of whack.

So, what estimation of short rest to encounter ratio do you think *should* be used for the baseline balance between short and long rests?

That's not quite where I was going with this. It's not that assuming two short rests per long rest is necessarily bad. The bad part is failing to realize that the assumption doesn't always hold, and that you can't always predict when it will fail.

You said that you'll usually have about half of your points to spend in any given fight, and often you'll have all of your points when you need them for a big fight. You didn't mention that, sometimes, you won't have any points in a fight.

Budgeting short-rest resources is much more difficult than budgeting long-rest resources. A wizard is fine whether you have two short rests between encounters, or alternate 1/4/1, or even 1/1/1/1/1/1. A monk needs to guess how many encounters there will be between rests, and guessing incorrectly will leave them with wasted or excess ki points.

Of course, the monk will also be fine if they take a short rest after six encounters in a day, where a wizard is just out of luck, which might actually happen sometimes. Like I said, resting can be unpredictable. It's even less predictable for short-rest classes, though.

 

[nswanson27]

Thing about monks (single-class) is that their damage output falls off compared to other classes as levels go up - they transition from a DPR role in early levels to a CC support role at later levels. They need ki points or they aren't much of anything.