Foreshadowing the monk?

[DLichen]

@ Rechan

That's a good point, monks being the stand your ground full round attack action type characters seems kind of off.

 

[Rechan]

That's a good point, monks being the stand your ground full round attack action type characters seems kind of off.

Depends. After all, the dwarf is a Brute, not a skirmisher or lurker. An unarmed defender is just as easily doable as an unarmed striker.

However, to answer the OP, I don't think this is really indicative of a forthcoming Monk any more than any other monster's ability is forthcoming of another class's abilities. Many, many monsters have abilities PCs will never get.

 

[Andor]

@ Rechan

That's a good point, monks being the stand your ground full round attack action type characters seems kind of off.

I dunno. It's more that he's flexible, being able to trade movement and attacks at will. That dwarf practically has 3 generic actions around which he can mix between movement and attacks as he pleases.

Nuts now I want that ability.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

Did anyone else notice that "staff" is a weapon category that contains only one weapon, the quarterstaff? Here's hoping that this is a preview to a monk built somewhat like the 4e fighter, with powers that gain various benefits based on weapon selection.

The Fighter class section suggests that staff based fighters should have a good Con score. But there aren't any Fighter powers that give any special benefit to staff users, much less benefit from a high Con.

I think that's just WotC leaving a window open for them for later design: the staff is a separate category so other things might also work with "staffs" and other weapons might count as staffs.

But since no significant design work had been done on the Monk when the core books went to the printers, I don't think this dwarf is a preview of a monk so much as just a monster with unarmed attacks. The mechanics of the monk might resemble these, or might be totally different. We'll have to wait at least two years to see (or so... one PHB every year and no Ki in the PHBII).


The Ranger hack works really well for all my Monk NPCs, though.

 

[Tony Vargas]

An at-will minor action attack would go completely against the 4e emphasis-on-mobility philosphy and the whole idea of splitting up actions into minor, move, and standard.

Because a character could cash in his move for a minor, you have the return of the 'Full Attack' with two minor attacks plus a standard action. And, the Full Attack is supposed to be anathema in 4e.