D&D 5E Monks Suck

[FrogReaver]

A lightly armored warrior who attacks enemies at close or melee range and retreats when approached with determined stronger melee opponents.

Commonly found on melee rangers, some dex fighters, thrown weapon users, melee rogues,... and many monks.

My monks generally stay put and dodge rather than retreat if survivability is needed.

 

[Minigiant]

My monks generally stay put and dodge rather than retreat if survivability is needed.

Monks I've played withing tried that and burned through ki like crazy.

 

[Asisreo]

Monks I've played withing tried that and burned through ki like crazy.

What were they burning Ki on? If it was only Patient defense, they would be burning Ki at 1Ki per round.

 

[Esker]

If you want to precisely measure it, I guess, but it takes only a few moments of consideration to realize that their damage is decent until level 11, unless you are including limited resources or the -5/+10 feats. And that their AC is fairly decent compared to every class out there.

Limited resources are part of the game, so we should take them into account, making some effort to average out their impact over the course of the day.

As for AC, they likely are going from 17 to 18 over the course of tier 2. That's slightly ahead of rogues, non-Hexblade warlocks, and non-Valor bards, but that's about it (even wizards and sorcerers, who have no reason to get into melee, can sit at 16 and bump that to 21 when they need it). Warlocks and bards can take a feat, dip one level of something, or use a magical secrets pick, to boost their defenses. That has opportunity cost, to be sure, but it's at least an option. Rogues have a lower opportunity cost than monks to avoid getting attacked (either staying at range, possibly hiding, or disengaging for free), because their ability to maintain their baseline level of damage doesn't require their bonus action to the same extent that monks do, and on top of that they can halve damage from one hit per round completely at will.

Even a fighter that specs entirely for offense and invests nothing in defense except for gold (which, let's be honest, isn't a major bottleneck in most campaigns after tier 1) can usually have an 18 for most of tier 2. So monks focusing on offense are slightly behind on defense compared to other characters focused on offense... and for doing that they gain... ell, is their offensive output in that case actually on par with other offense-focused martials, even those who don't take -5/+10 feats?

Their resourceless damage is on par with that of a featless greatsword-wielding champion through tier 2, and then when you take into account the fact that champion doesn't have any resources to spend to boost that, then yes, monk comes out ahead. But that's a pretty cherry-picked comparison, because fighters level 6 feature is a bonus feat. So we should give the champion Polearm Master at least. And if we do that, the champion's at-will damage is on par with a monk who flurries every round, but they also threaten a 10' radius with opportunity attacks going in or out. Alternatively, they could trade the reach for +2 AC by taking dueling style and using a spear. It may still be about even, or maybe the monk is even a bit ahead, once you factor in the monk's subclass. But if the best you can say is that a good monk subclass is offensively about even with and defensively behind a bad fighter subclass, you haven't shown much.

What happens when a monk boosts their defense? They can spend their bonus action and ki to dodge, which functionally gives them an AC of about 21-22 on those rounds, which is on par with a fighter with a shield and the defense style, for those rounds. But the opportunity cost they're paying to do that is higher than the fighter, because (a) that leaves the monk with that many fewer chances to stun someone, and (b) on rounds when they use their bonus action to do something other than attack, they're left doing about 2d8+10 potential damage, which is equal to a sword and board fighter who uses no resources or bonus action whatsoever, and is less than a defense fighter who uses that extra ASI they got at 6th (or who is a variant human) to pick up polearm master to do 2d6+1d4+15 with a spear or staff with no resource cost at all (if they're variant human they might have sentinel on top of that, resulting in them doing even more damage due to extra reaction attacks, and/or drawing attacks away from allies more effectively than the dodging monk).

Add the fighter's hitpoint advantage and hopefully you are starting to see why some of us are saying that defense-oriented monks are lacking in offense compared, not to offense-oriented fighters, but to defense-oriented ones.

 

[Asisreo]

Doesn’t help either. Nothing to say those monk players do anything tactically sound. Or that monk players in general aren’t generally tactically unsound. Etc. we acknowledge that monk takes more intelligence to play well after all.

It would help. We could directly analyze exactly what options the players tend to do. It could be easily parsed from a play-by-post log by looking up keywords like "Stunning" "Unarmed" and "Ki."

But if the problem isn't monk's abilities but their ability to translate their better features and strengths onto a format that a casual reader can understand, then it would give a good idea that the changes to monks might need to more effectively communicate their strengths so people don't fall into the trap of "Must always flurry and stunning strike!"

I find there may be some classes that are much more straightforward than others. And if the issue for why people think monks are bad are poorly due to poor communication, then those are the types of changes I'd want to see so that more people can enjoy the class as much as I do.

 

[Esker]

Okay.

The monk's role is to satisfy those people who like monks.

Q.
E.
to the D.

I think Snarf solved the debate right here. Monks are fine because their job is to please people who think they're fine. And those people think they're fine. So they're fine. End of discussion. We can all go home now, finally.

 

[Minigiant]

What were they burning Ki on? If it was only Patient defense, they would be burning Ki at 1Ki per round.

If you are having 2-3 combats a short rest, you can burn through Ki using patient defense fast.

 

[Esker]

Many people have alluded to, or outright stated, that they use monks in different ways, but that's not really taken up because, again, path dependency. The people that have done so have gotten crowded out in the nearly 1000 comments of DPR.

I don't know why people keep saying that those of us critiquing monks are monomaniacally focused on DPR. I've said over and over again that we need to look at the full picture, not just one dimension, and that when you do that, monks fall short (on the bright side, they reduce their falling damage by five times their level, so they have that going for them). I don't think anyone else is claiming that DPR is the only consideration either. It's a consideration, and more of one for the monk than for most other classes, because those other classes have a different primary role (controller, buffer, tank, etc.), but it's not the only consideration. It's fine for a class to do multiple things, as long as when you put those things together you get a whole PC's worth of stuff.

 

[Asisreo]

If you are having 2-3 combats a short rest, you can burn through Ki using patient defense fast.

I guess it then depends on combat lengths since mine usually last only 2-3 rounds, especially on a 6-8 encounter model.

 

[Esker]

I guess it then depends on combat lengths since mine usually last only 2-3 rounds, especially on a 6-8 encounter model.

I and others have used a reference of "8 rounds per short rest". Sounds like that might be a little higher than your table has, so it might be good to also look at what happens if it's more like 6, say.