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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8048981" data-attributes="member: 58197">Okay, now that we have a summary, let's see...No argument here. The monk's baseline damage is strictly inferior to a martial class TWFing, and their resources to buff it are also poor. Laying down pure HP-based smack is not a monk's strong suit.Also no argument. Monks have decent AC, but not great, and between a lowish Hit Die and the need to invest in both Dex and Wis ahead of Con, their hit point pool is just too small to sustain heavy combat. They have some nifty defenses against spells and special abilities, but they are lacking in the basics, and the basics are more important.Oh, come on. Monks are a damn sight better than just "decent" at maneuverability. Comparing to a character on a horse is absurd--how often do you get to gallop around a dungeon on horseback? Besides, one stray AoE and you are riding a flamebroiled horseburger. Which is noticeably slower than a monk.Setting that silliness aside, TM cites a number of examples here, but a lot of them rely on subclasses, which means the monk gets to apply a subclass too, which means Way of Shadow and that's all she wrote. Nobody outmaneuvers a Way of Shadow monk. But even for the base class, TM is seriously undervaluing the always-on, zero-cost, unconditional movement buff. You don't have to burn spell slots or Channel Divinity or even your bonus action. You aren't relying on difficult terrain. You're just faster. Over the course of an adventuring day, it adds up.Plus you get a drastic reduction in falling damage, and at level 9 you can walk up walls and over liquid. At will, zero cost, always on. Very good stuff.TM has some fair points about the Con save, but those are about the only ones. Stunning Strike does not require an attack roll; when you use it, you've already hit. Yes, you do have to score at least one hit on your turn, but you were going to try to do that anyway, and with 3 attacks per round, you are very likely to connect at least once.As for the ki limitations, TM is clearly used to playing a "no short rests" game, because the assertion that monks get fewer Stunning Strikes than casters get spells is plainly wrong otherwise. A 5th-level monk has 15 ki points in a "standard" adventuring day; a 5th-level wizard has 10-12 spells (depending on how they allocate Arcane Recovery). And many of those spells are 1st-level; no 1st-level spell is as good as Stunning Strike.Disagree. Most of the later core features are mediocre to bad, I grant you, but some of the subclasses are very good. Since I went with Way of Shadow above, I'll stick with it here: You get some handy spells including pass without trace, which is the uberspell of stealth, and later on you can turn invisible at will! Opportunist is too high-level for me to care about it much, but it's pretty darn nice as well.As I said above, I think monks are overspecialized, and they have the same problem as warlocks when the DM doesn't make sure they get a chance for short rests. But within those limits, they are absolutely an effective class.</blockquote>

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