D&D 5E Monks Suck

[FrogReaver]

Warlock, absolutely. Fighter and Rogue? Absolutely not. Both have their primary abilities available at-will all day long. Both are highly effective just hitting things with their weapon (the rogue sneak attacking as they do). The monk without Ki points is not highly effective just hitting things, because their damage is that much lower, as is their AC and hit points relative to the fighter.

At level 5

A gwf does 24.66 damage (with style). 22 damage (without style)
A monk with no ki does 23.5 damage.

It’s not much of a difference.

 

[Helldritch]

That's not the Oberoni fallacy. That fallacy is the false statement that role playing and optimisation are not compatible.

Or a Fighter. Or a Warlock. Both classes are also Short rest dependent alongside the Monk.

Rogues are rest neutral. Barring Arcane tricksters.

Paladins, all other Casters and Barbarians are long rest dependent.

Like, if you're DMing and you're ignoring the DMG, that's on you. Dont point the finger at the rules, when the rules not only expressly give you clear options to for you to use to fit the narrative pacing you choose for your own game, but also actively encourage you to do so.

This is one of the rare times where I fully support @Flamestrike. A lot of the monk weakness relies on the fact that the class needs short rest. I usually recommend 2 to 3 short rest per day with 6-8 encounters per day. So far, this enable short rest character to shine, long rest character tend to nova a lot less and I have no need for deadly encounters all the time so this means that the characters have a wider array of tactical choices before them.

In situations where you can nova all the time and you do the 5mwd, almost never have short rest, the monk and other short rest classes become poor character choices as you will not be able to use their strength to the fullest.

When you follow the guidelines, 6-8 encounters per day, everything fall neatly into place. The only thing I do give the monk, is Ki based on wisdom. Low level monks need a bit more ki. So I gave them their wisdom bonuses in Ki. It is not that much, but surprisingly, it helps a lot, even the monk subclass of Way of the 4 elements gets good with just 2 points of Ki added... And it causes some monks to ASI their wisdom, giving them both AC and Ki. On a two short rest, it can be anywhere from 4 to 6 more Ki points. On a 3 short rest, well, it 6 to 9. That can be a big difference in the long run.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Warlock, absolutely. Fighter and Rogue? Absolutely not. Both have their primary abilities available at-will all day long. Both are highly effective just hitting things with their weapon (the rogue sneak attacking as they do and usually then hiding with cunning action). The monk without Ki points is not highly effective just hitting things, because their damage is that much lower, as is their AC and hit points relative to the fighter.

Indeed in every campaign of 5e I've played, the Fighter is the one saying "let's press on" when faced with deciding to short rest or not. The rogue, if they're not too banged up, is right behind them. Meanwhile, the warlock is crying in the corner saying, "guys, you just don't understand. Two spell slots. TWO!!" meanwhile, the monk is dead in the corner (I kid, I kid).

If the monk is being deprived of short rests, that's a DM issue. If the DM can't, or won't, do it correctly, just convert the ki to "long rest" equivalent (3x, recharge on long rest) and you're good to go.

Otherwise, I am unclear why you are bringing this up.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

ALERT - Goodreads is monitoring my EnWorld posts!!!

See recent ad in the weekly Goodreads email...

And I think this is something we haven't been paying attention to -

Some agree a monk can survive a 30'x30' cage fright with a GWM Fighter.
Others are pretty sure a live monk is better than a dead bard (barely)
But...
CAN a monk survive... the modeling industry?

(Ok, back to your regularly scheduled serious discussion of monk suckage)
(And, I have no idea what that book is actually about, but besides the word "monk" in the ad copy, I'm not interested)

 

[Mistwell]

I rarely see people MC with small amounts of Monk. People take dips of Fighter, Rogue, Warlock and maybe Wizard ime. But rarely Monk.

Not sure what that means, but it must support someone's argument somewhere...

I wish Monk's unarmed strikes worked as you'd expect they would with a Moon Druid's wildshape forms. Crawford says they don't, and I think that's a bad ruling myself.

I think a Monk / Echo Knight could be a good combination. There are bonus action issues there, and I have not worked such a build out quite in my mind, but I suspect there is a very interesting type of character in that combination.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

CAN a monk survive... the modeling industry?

Evidence suggests ....

Spoiler: Curse word for "posterior"

...yes, mos def.

 

[Esker]

Also...you know rangers aren't all archers, right? This is just a tangent, but...you keep implying that they are buy only talking about hunter's mark in a ranged context, and...no. I've been at a lot of AL tables, introduced a lot of people to dnd at library games and home games, and spend a lot of time with the dnd community on twitter, reddit, here, tumblr, and tik tok, and a majority of rangers I've seen are melee focused, or took Defensive so they could switch without losing anything, but spend more time in melee. And I've never seen any data that suggests that most rangers are archers.

In my experience rangers are at their best when they focus on archery, but sure, melee rangers exist. Generally, melee rangers get less out of hunter's mark than ranged rangers do. Melee rangers are probably better off concentrating on something like Zephyr strike. But anyway, this part of the discussion is pretty tangential.

The warlock is using a much, much, more limited primary resource, and no bonus action. Which is giving up more to cast the spell is debatable, but this entire line of argument stems from the absurd claim that Monks have no multiclass synergy, so I don't really care about that.

How is the warlock's resource more limited? If the thing they are choosing to concentrate on is Hex, which is a bad idea most of the time, after tier 1, but set that aside since monks also can't do the things warlocks should be doing instead, they can have it up pretty much all the time, because it lasts so long, and their spell slots refresh on short rests.

No one but you is talking about solo boss fights.
Just challenging fights.

Challenging fights, almost without exception, have around as many monsters as PCs, or perhaps more; not fewer.

The warlock can cast 2 spells in any fight, maximum, until level 11. Even at 11, it's 3 spells. The monk can stun up to a number of times equal to their level.

I don't even need two spells per fight to out-control stunning strike. Phantasmal Force / Suggestion / Hypnotic Pattern / Banishment... even Hold Monster --- all of those have a higher expected value in a single casting than stunning strike can be expected to do in a whole encounter.

This paragraph tells me that nothing you have to say on the topic can be taken seriously. If your entire calculation is just DPR in an "optimized" party, then...yeah I can't even take that seriously on any level.

People keep saying that I'm mono-focused on DPR. Are you not reading my posts?

Most fights last multiple rounds per enemy. That could be anywhere from 3 to 6 rounds, depending on how big a fight it is.

3 to 6 rounds with how many monsters? Rounds per enemy is 'rounds the fight lasts' divided by 'number of enemies'.

I don't need your help, bud. No one here needs your help. Your problem here may very well be that you think others need help understanding the game, when in fact we all understand the game just fine.

It's not about who understands the game; it's about discussing in good faith with transparency, vs hand-waving and moving goal posts.

 

[Mistwell]

If the monk is being deprived of short rests, that's a DM issue. If the DM can't, or won't, do it correctly, just convert the ki to "long rest" equivalent (3x, recharge on long rest) and you're good to go.

Otherwise, I am unclear why you are bringing this up.

I agree with you. Monks and Warlocks need short rests, and all of our DMs keep that in mind and allow it to happen most sessions. There will be the odd session where a short rest is denied due to time constraints. But then there might be an odd session where spells don't work well due to antimagic, or a rust monster makes the fighter weep for lost equipment. But in general, a short rest or two during an adventuring day is the norm for us if we have a warlock or monk.

As for why I am bringing it up? I was responding to the claim that fighters and rogues want to short rest as often as warlocks and monks. I think that's not an accurate claim.

 

[Asisreo]

I wish Monk's unarmed strikes worked as you'd expect they would with a Moon Druid's wildshape forms. Crawford says they don't, and I think that's a bad ruling myself.

I think a Monk / Echo Knight could be a good combination. There are bonus action issues there, and I have not worked such a build out quite in my mind, but I suspect there is a very interesting type of character in that combination.

Oh, a monk/echo knight. Very original. Controlling a ghost that can punch really good. Doesn't sound like anything anyone has ever tried before.

Yare yare daze.

 

[Asisreo]

It's not about who understands the game; it's about discussing in good faith with transparency, vs hand-waving and moving goal posts.

Which is why we need a standardized and complete evaluation of everything.

People say the movement boost is insignificant but there's no actual data showing a cause-and-effect that the movement may have helped kite an enemy or whatnot. We handwave the discussion to only fit the criteria which we're comfortable displaying.

Someone said the tongue of sun and moon was too circumstantial and someone else is likely to have comprehend language, but that doesn't disprove whether it's useful or not. It's just a prediction based on what we imagine to be useful or not. We haven't actually even resolved that point.