D&D 5E Monks Suck

[Guest 6801328]

If I had to summarize this thread, I would identify two general groups (with exceptions in both cases, of course):

People with charts and graphs who say monks suck.

People with experience playing monks who say they are fine.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

It's been my experience that a lot of monk defenders way overestimate how many ki points will be available to them.

An hour is a very long amount of downtime, narratively speaking. If you're storming the castle or escaping from prison or defending the city from waves of bandits, you're not going to get an hour between the waves unless you feel like quitting or putting your mission in jeopardy. Always getting five minutes between encounters when you need to is a reasonable expectation when you're skulking about a drow's underground mansion, an hour is not. A lot of monks will make it sound like the DM is picking on them by not allowing regular short rests, but that's just the way action-adventure fiction is structured. You beat up the BBEG's lieutenants in the outer keep, you then confront the BBEG or their second-in-command immediately thereafter unless there's some other complication like one of your other attendants betraying you or an earthquake freeing the dungeon prisoners or whatever. Getting an hour in-universe between the action setpieces is not a reasonable expectation.

The thing is, though, monks fall off hard when they're not getting regular short rests. I remember when I was in a CR9 party that fought three waves of hill giants and ogres, it was not pretty for the monk. And while that's an extreme example, that's far from rare. For example, let's say you're a level 8 Shadow Monk -- how are you budgeting your ki points across two encounters?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The thing is, though, monks fall off hard when they're not getting regular short rests. I remember when I was in a CR9 party that fought three waves of hill giants and ogres, it was not pretty for the monk. And while that's an extreme example, that's far from rare. For example, let's say you're a level 8 Shadow Monk -- how are you budgeting your ki points across two encounters?

If that's the nature of the campaign, then the Monk isn't the only person suffering.

The Warlock, Fighter, and Rogue (with some subclass exceptions) all require short rests to be fully effective. While many Warlocks are built to EB spam, they (like Monks) are very much short-rest dependent.

If you are running your campaign such that there are no short rests but there are ample opportunities to long rest, then the problem isn't with the Monk.

(Finally, you should be able to budget ki points across two encounters. There should be 6-8 encounters per day per the guidelines, with 2 short rests and one long rest, which means that a "typical day" per the guidelines should be approximately 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounter, long rest.)

 

[Rofel Wodring]

If I had to summarize this thread, I would identify two general groups (with exceptions in both cases, of course):

People with charts and graphs who say monks suck.

People with experience playing monks who say they are fine.

This is not an honest representation of the argument. Plenty of people with charts and graphs have in-game experience of monks sucking. It's just that we realize that without the numbers, it'll just devolve into a 'he said/she said' argument.

I can give you tons of anecdotal, non-numerical evidence of monks being bad, both from the DM side and player side. For example, a lot of monks emphasize their ability to be 'single-target spellcaster wreckers' -- do you want me to tell you how effective we found that niche in Storm King's Thunder and Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation? I currently play in a West Marches server on Discord, which involves a lot of exploration into unknown terrain. The monk is terrible there, because encounters often start way further than 60' away and if the monk uses their maneuverability to get in position they'll often overextend themselves and get ganked. Meanwhile the other party members (including the STR-based martials) can stand back and plink away with arrows or javelins and get free damage before the monsters approach. For times in which that's not a good strategy (such as against hill giants) it involves moving the group together as a blob and taking advantage of any natural cover or concealment.

Except, we in the 'charts and graphs' camp know that those kinds of stories are a waste of time, because people will just dismiss all of that with 'oh yeah, well, in MY campaign monks did this and this and made the DM mad by stunlocking the spellcaster BBEG'.

 

[Dausuul]

It's been my experience that a lot of monk defenders way overestimate how many ki points will be available to them.

There are two ways of framing this:

1. Monks are fine if the adventure allows the balance of short rests to long rests (roughly 2 to 1) suggested in the DMG.
2. Monks are underpowered because many DMs and adventures do not in fact allow that balance of short rests to long rests.

Both are valid ways of looking at it. I have generally been taking a pro-monk stance in this thread, but with caveats, and one of the big caveats is that they are a short-rest class and suffer badly when they don't get those rests.

I regard this as a problem with the short rest rules rather than the monk class, however. Warlocks have the same problem. (Fighters are also affected, but they are less reliant on their rechargeable resources and lean much more heavily on a strong at-will attack, so it doesn't hit them as hard.)

 

[Helldritch]

That rogue is in serious trouble at my table, if that’s their strategy. They’re absolutely gonna need Uncanny Dodge.

Both of you, and some other folks, seem to value ranged combat much too highly, as well. Do your DMs not include spellcasters, archers, flyers, and slippery skirmishers, in your battles? I’d consider any fight where the ranged characters are safe to be either an intentionally easy fight, or a fight that I failed to design well.

And THAT is a major problem of encounter design I see in many D&D in my area. A lot of DM often forget the goblin's ability to disengage as a bonus action and many others. An encounter with 2 ogres is fine for 4th level characters. But an encounter with 1 ogre, 2 hobgoblins and 4 goblins archers is way more interesting (using XGtE).

And this is also the kind of fights where the monk will shine like a star. He will get past the ogre and the hobgolins to get to the archers. With his missile defense, the goblins will have a hard time getting the monk down and this will free up the caster(s) of the group to do their stuff relatively safe. The more varied your encounters are, the more a monk will be useful. The more you are making monotype encounters, then the more a rogue will shine. Variety of encounters will ensure that both will shine at their time.

Edit: Number of ogres and party level were wrong. Damn big fingers and phone digital keyboards...

 

[Rofel Wodring]

If that's the nature of the campaign, then the Monk isn't the only person suffering.

The Warlock, Fighter, and Rogue (with some subclass exceptions) all require short rests to be fully effective. While many Warlocks are built to EB spam, they (like Monks) are very much short-rest dependent.

If you are running your campaign such that there are no short rests but there are ample opportunities to long rest, then the problem isn't with the Monk.

(Finally, you should be able to budget ki points across two encounters. There should be 6-8 encounters per day per the guidelines, with 2 short rests and one long rest, which means that a "typical day" per the guidelines should be approximately 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounter, long rest.)

The thing is, the Warlock and Fighter don't drop off as hard in T1/T2 as the Monk does when they don't get a lot of short rests. The AB + Hex + EB spammer Warlock is boring, but it's still effective. Even single-classed BM fighters who used up their dice and action surge and second win are still high-AC/good-HP/good-damage dealers even if, again, the class is boring.

And if we have magical items in play, the Warlock can augment their endurance with stuff like wands and staves and even scrolls. Or even certain invocations in certain cases.

If a Monk is running on empty, they're completely screwed. They have mediocre defenses and poor damage and can't do anything else.

 

[MwaO]

Getting an hour in-universe between the action setpieces is not a reasonable expectation.

A DM should most certainly be designing their encounters such that not getting a short rest every 2-3 combats should be exceedingly rare. And to realize that if they don't do that, they are deliberately going against DMG guidance and a consequence of that is that it will punish primarily short rest classes.

 

[OB1]

Rough analysis for Open Hand monk prone effect:

Party attack damage with flurry of blows and no prone = 67.67 = 40.6 DPR
Party attack damage with flurry of blows and 100% prone (no benefit to monk) = 43.9

Essentially +3.3 DPR due to the prone - when flurry of blows is used. Possibly more if the ranged allies target a different enemy, although then the benefits of focus fire are lost. By level 5 you can use it 5/8's of the time. That's an average of +2.1 DPR. By level 8 it's 100% of the time and so the average is +3.3 DPR then. Except those values need reduced by the chance you have of landing the prone. I'm using 60% for now. So +1.26 DPR at level 5 to +1.98 DPR at level 10.

Which is enough to for the monk to be ahead of the 2 swords rogue from level 5-10.

Great analysis @FrogReaver Was just thinking that rather than win % of a Champion Fighter vs an OH Monk, I'd love to see expected win percentages of a party against a 5th Level deadly encounter with a few permutations.

Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard
Monk, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard
Fighter, Monk, Cleric, Wizard
Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Wizard
Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Monk

In my mind, that's the real metric for determining if a class is underpowered. Have no idea how to calculate this though.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If a Monk is running on empty, they're completely screwed. They have mediocre defenses and poor damage and can't do anything else.

1. By what you wrote, you are inherently assuming certain builds; yes, some Warlocks do the EB/AB/Hex spamming, but, and this may shock you ... that is not a class requirement. There are plenty of interesting and fun Warlock characters that don't do that. Your insistence on certain models makes me think that you play a certain way, which is fine, but isn't a requirement.

2. If you aren't allowing short-rest character classes to get short rests, then ... you are deliberately disadvantaging those people who chose that class mechanic for their character. Which means that it is incumbent on you to allow a balance between the long rest and short rest classes; you can use the alternate "5 minute" short rests, or what have you. But simply throwing your arms up in the air (like you just don't care) and saying that the class is weak because you aren't allowing for short rests isn't a failure of the class.


TLDR; if the objection is, "The short rest class sucks, because we don't have short rests," then the problem isn't the class.