Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2632067" data-attributes="member: 13966">Then what are they, Crothian?  If not support frontliners and support sneaks, what the hell are monks for other than watching their less-magic-resistant allies drop like flies and then running away to waste the party's funds on many Raise Deads just because the monks are of little help in combat?The monk cannot sneak as well as a rogue or ranger.  He does not have the awareness skills and the skill points for movement skills on top of that.  The monk may have Climb, Hide, Move Silently, Tumble, and even Jump or Swim if he's human or has above-average Intelligence (as if he could even afford that luxury).  But what good is he at sneaking and scouting, when he can't make good use of Spot and Listen to find enemies, Search and Disable Device to get past traps in the villain's manor/dungeon/lair, Open Lock to get past barriers without the noisy racket of breaking through violently, Bluff and Disguise and/or Forgery to get past the few guarded areas that are impossible to sneak through undetected, Read Lips (is that covered by Sense Motive in 3.5?  No matter, the monk's shortchanged on skill points anyway) to observe (from a safe distance) the villains making their plans, or Wilderness Lore to track down the enemies while scouting?The monk cannot always support or replace rangers and rogues as a scout or sneak.  He doesn't have their special sneaking-related class features anyway, such as the ranger's Camouflage and whatnot, or the rogue's Skill Mastery and potential Skill Focus bonus feats (one of the roguish special ability options is a bonus feat, after all).The monk also cannot be a highly-effective frontline combatant, as you keep saying, but he should at least be decent at frontline combat support.  Sure, the monk's main role is that of the survivor, however at odds that may be with his poor AC and mediocre HP.  He just doesn't survive very well against normal opponents, as in the non-magic-using kind.  And he can hardly hit very well.  UNLESS the monk has all-around great Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom scores.  Only then can the monk effectively fill the melee support role.  With high Constitution, or Dexterity and Wisdom, he could instead decently fill a survivor/ranged support role.  But still, the monk is dependant on high ability scores to be effective at anything.  Otherwise he's either ineffective at everything (incapable of spellcasting too), or he's barely useful in one very specialized support role and sucks horribly at everything else.The monk only does two things well.  Move a lot and survive a lot of special attacks, such as spells.  Neither really helps win a battle, unless you're the party cleric and thus able to keep restoring the other party members to functionality after suffering status afflictions, but monks aren't clerics.</blockquote>

Verification