Yes. But we still need an replacement for AC increase.
Bonus AC for monk levels make up for loss of shield. They can wear
bracers of armor and max out dex. If they're made viable as fighters, they don't need as much armor class.
They should be able to have a primary role in the group. 'Great 5th member' is kind of an insult.
Great 4th member. Trapfinding isn't needed the majority of the time. We often forego rogues since no one likes to play them. Players enjoy the monk.
Sorry, here you loose me. What things? And the saves are not much better than the ones of a paladin, who has most often a better AC and more HP.
How does the paladin in your campaign have a much better AC? You building your monk wrong? Or are you under-valuing touch AC?
And now you want yet another class's abilities. So because the paladin, a warrior built for defense, has equal saves to a monk that somehow makes the great saves the monk gets not as valuable? You're losing me because monk and paladin are the two big save classes.
Paladin doesn't have the movement or the evasion abilities to make the high save as effective. Or all the other nifty little abilities.
Monks are weak, because there is not enough support for the unarmed archetype, they have MAD, cannot move and attack properly in the same round, and their supernatuarl abilities are not helping much (SR, minor self-healing). They are secondary fighters, as you said above. And this is considered weak.
The MAD is the only thing I see making them weak. They have great survivability and do fairly good damage once they have a solid magic item tree.
2d10 damage with 7 to 9 attacks is nothing to scoff at. My friend usually takes +3 or 4
amulet of mighty fists and an enhancement of some kind such as holy or energy. Ups his damage substantially. He picks his targets well. He positions well to get him bonuses to hit.
And if you want a monk that can move, the new
Dimensional Agility feat chain answered your wish. So Paizo gave you a nice bone to take advantage of monk movement.
I have on player that plays a monk every single campaign in both 3E and
Pathfinder. He's trying a ninja this time because he wants to see how it works. But in every other campaign he plays a monk. He loves monks. He loves their versatility. He loves their movement. He loves not having any weak saves. He loves their damage output when he uses a key point and gets a large number of attacks. He loves that all his attacks use full Power Attack, so when he gets buffed with
bless and
prayer he's smashing for good damage. He loves having maxed out Perception, Sense Motive, and being able to Stealth.
I'm wondering why my player finds way to take advantate of the varied abilities of the monk to make the character a very powerful contributing party member, but your groups can't seem to find ways to take advantage of the monk.
Monks fast movement makes them awsome scouts. Monks great saves often have them resist aura attacks, spells, area of effect attacks, and the like. Monks high touch AC makes them poor targets for many dangerous abilities like
enervate and the like. Monks
Abundant Step allows them to escape from behind walls, out of pits, from trapped rooms, away from enemies that try to trap them, and the like. I've seen so much clever play from monk players that other classes can't do that I never understand threads like this.
I really can't help but think no one plays monks in your guy's campaigns, so you've never really seen high level monks in action. Whereas I see them in action almost every campaign. They are always a huge pain in my behind as a fourth character. Far moreso than any rogue could ever hope to be.
And the only thing we don't do that other groups do is use 15 point point buy. So MAD isn't a factor. When you're not dealing with MAD, monks are very fun and potent to play.
