Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8070963" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I guess I'm the "person above" who you are referring to? If I did something wrong with the math, I'd be interested in seeing it corrected. Because, I keep seeing monks as on par with other martials and exceeding those martials who focus on defense. It is slightly behind with at-will when those classes start optimizing, and only really falls behind significantly when they start heavily optimizing. And, the lack of RAW options to pump Monk damage seems to be the sole cause of the difference. Followed by the only items being good for monk, being strangely kept at higher tiers, or locked behind "spellcaster only" barriers.Yes, cherry pick the one example out of my post about me realizing thatr Bracers of Defense are a garbage item that were poorly designed and use that to attack the monk. Right, but it "lags" because of the items. Take away all the magic items and the Figher with Plate and Shield has 20 AC. And a monk can match 20 AC with no magical items. But, whether because of legacy or something else, magical armor stacks and stacks and stacks. Let us return to the Bracers of Defense. With these a Monk could hit 22 AC. That is amazing, but are these an amazing item? No... in fact for just about everyone they suck. If you can wear any armor at all, the Bracers are equivalent to wearing studded leather, if they are your only magical item for AC. If you can use a shield... they are identical to a shield. Literally, they are +2 AC. But the Bracers only work if you wear no armor and wield no shield. So they are meant for Barbarians, Monks, Wizards and Sorcerers.... Except that a Barbarian can wear +2 or +3 Half-Plate, not use an attunement slot, and be far better off... And they can use a normal shield. A wizard or Sorcerer could use them... they are fine, but those classes tend not to be super needy for AC. So, it falls to the monk... who is the only class incapable of using magical armor, or magic shields (wizards and sorcerers can, through feats and races, but Monk's lose class abilities). So why do they cost attunement? For the Ring or the Cloak, they make sense to cost attunement because of the power of +1 to saves, and the fact that they stack with armor. And this is why I get so frustrated with this idea that the Monk's AC falls behind because they don't get magical armor. Because everything that boosts AC seems to have been limited because it can stack with magical armor. But a Dwarven Wizard can get +3 Half-Plate, +3 Shield, a Staff of Power, A ring and cloak of protection and have an AC of 29. Is that because wizards have amazing AC? No, it is because all of those items stack and are adding +10 to their total AC. But, I don't see this as a case of the monk having low AC or the wizard having high AC. I see this as the case that magical armor and magical shield with flat bonuses are incredibly powerful. Those two non-attunement items are granting +6 to AC in addition to their benefits as armor. While it costs an attunement slot to get a +2 AC if you forgo armor entirely. So yeah, if you count the fact that the monk has no access to magic items that are essentially free armor boosts in the base game, Monk AC falls behind. Just like my SUV tends to be slower than car that has jet engines strapped to it. The problem might not be that my car is slow, it might be the lack of jet engines.</blockquote>

Verification