Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6637552" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Whoa. While blindsight would indeed be awesome to have for all the shenanigans you could then play in Stinking Cloud etc. (blindsight + immunity to poison in a heavily obscuring poison cloud = awesomesauce), I personally don't think Shadow Monks need any more awesome than they've already got. They excel as scouts due to Pass Without Trace and teleportation, and they've excellent mage-killers as well (make three DC 16 Con checks to avoid stunning, please). They're capable both in melee and in missile duels. They don't pump out a ton of damage but they are excellent at avoiding it with the Mobile feat (poorish AC but excellent mobility), so even though their primary job is pre-combat they can still contribute during combat.Note that my experience is with shadow monks within the context of a party with excellent ranged capabilities, where the monk doesn't need to be the DPR king because her job is to be a commando and intel specialist. That also means that in any given situation, either the ranged combatants can dominate the battlefield or the wood elf shadow monk can--it's very rare to have a situation where ranged firepower is useless and there is no dim light or natural darkness around. The only case I can think of would be a labyrinthine dungeon filled with magical darkness (so her darkvision cannot help her) but she's never run into that scenario. So the shadow monk complements archers very well, but if you have a melee-heavy party that just kicks down the next door of the dungeon and charges through, I expect shadow monks would be less useful to you.P.S. Tip for Shadow Monk: you may have noticed that the shadow monk can invisible via the Cloak of Shadows 11th level ability until he attacks, casts a spell, or enters an area of bright light. What you may not have noticed is that this ability does not take concentration and so is fully compatible with Pass Without Trace. You can get a +10 bonus to stealth for an hour and inflict disadvantage on Perception on (almost) all your enemies (barring blindsight/tremorsense/truesight or keen hearing/etc.), which is effectively like another +5 on stealth. A trained 11th level shadow ninja with Dex 18 can get +18 on all of his stealth checks while inflicting disadvantage on all of his enemies'. I have one of these in my games and he doesn't even bother to roll his Stealth checks most of the time--we both know that only a dragon is going to have blindsight and passive Perception high enough to spot him, even if he rolls a natural 1. So I just say, "Yeah, you sneak past the vampires." It is of course a different matter once the vampires are alerted to his presence (e.g. by an attack) and actively searching for him, but even then he almost always beats their active rolls as well.Of course, against things without darkvision you don't even need to use Cloak of Shadows, they have disadvantage on Perception checks to see you already due to light obscurement.</blockquote>

Verification