Why not monks?

[EUBanana]

I think I have to remind, as we get distracted by the minutiae of artificial arena battles, that I'm not trying to prove monks are The Badass. I don't think I have to, though.

These guys look pretty comparable to the cavalier and paladin in my own TT group. YMMV I guess, depends on magic items, depends on what you fight in your campaigns, depends on how much teamwork is expected, but for the games I have played at least the monks seem fine on paper. Different strengths, different weaknesses, but I'd expect and hope for them to be different. The crane guy would generally have the highest AC in our party, aside from when the charismadins smite evil is in operation, if he was using exploit weakness defensively. Damage seems OK to me, depending on situation. Nifty fun abilities, check. Good opportunity for skills, check. 60' movement rate and good stealth, can't hurt.

A class worth playing, seems to me.

 

[Mad Hamish]

I would assume that you can use a move action as another swift action if you wanted, but that would imply just an attack action. So if you wanted to 'clam up' you would do that.

From Combat - Pathfinder_OGC
"A swift action consumes a very small amount of time, but represents a larger expenditure of effort than a free action. You can perform one swift action per turn without affecting your ability to perform other actions. In that regard, a swift action is like a free action. You can, however, perform only one single swift action per turn, regardless of what other actions you take."

So no you can't do 2 swift actions in a round.

re. the bebilith, I am assuming that this monk would have something to ignore the DR. I dont think thats much of an assumption. In our level 10 party all the melee have good aligned weapons, or people can be arranged to have good aligned weapons, so in actual play the DR isn't gonna be a biggy. Monks do damage with a bunch of attacks, so DR or not DR obviously changes things massively.

It's going to depend a lot on the campaign as to whether that's a reasonable assumption or not. Holy does seem to be a very popular enchant option with players (my 11th level fighter has a +2 hold adamantite falchion for example but he's also been up against demons in the campaign)

It does leave you using a d6 damage at best weapon instead of the unarmed attack damage and swapping back and forth between options means that resources are split (cash and feats, for example weapon focus only works on either the weapon or the unarmed attack)

At 10th level you'd be going from 2D6 on unarmed attack to d6 + 2d6 holy damage against evil creatures and going through some damage resistance so he's spending 18000 gp worth of resources for that trade off and that's out of a total of 62000 gp as standard for a 10th level character.

Actually checking the gear you've listed I get
belt of physical perfection +2 16000
headband of wisdom +4 16000
monk's robe 13000
amulet of natural armour +3 18000
ring of protection +2 8000
bracers of armour +4 16000
+1 holy weapon 18000

total 105000

which puts you almost 40000 gp over the expected wealth for a 10th level character and 23000 gp over expected wealth for a 11th level character

and if you spend any time fighting non-evil creatures holy does nothing (and it's certainly plausable that you'll be up against something that's needs neither good or lawful to get through DR)

2d6 + 12 with a power attack incidentally, 1/4/8, monk flurry BAB is treated as base BAB so power attack is applied in full for a flurry.

Yeah, I'd realised it did for attack bonus but hadn't thought about whether it does for power attack. Reading the wording I think you're right so thanks for pointing that out.

Re. the bebilith, I didnt do a full run down on the snake monk - I just cast that out pretty willy nilly. However, for the crane monk with a holy weapon, it looks like this.

Assumptions
monk fails exploit weakness 1 in 4 rounds, as he needs 6+
monk has +1 holy weapon
monk has no other buffs of any kind

Bebilith needs an 18 when exploit weakness works, 13 otherwise
Does an average of 15 damage a hit say
3 attacks, 15% chance of each hitting = 6.75 DPR on a successful exploit
= 18 DPR on a failed exploit weakness
9.5 DPR on average

That's with full crane turtling active is it?
Have you taken that into account on the monk's chance of hitting?

Ah, found Exploit Weakness Martial Artist power which does look pretty damned handy for a 1 on 1 fight (alternatively you could use it for the attack bonus and to get through DR and lose the holy weapon spending its value to boost defences or open up other options Dusty Rose Prism Ioun Stone).

Monk

2 attacks, 40% chance of each hitting, 3d6 + 12 = 25.2
2 attacks, = 14.7

= 40 DPR

Bebilith dies in 4 rounds, monk dies in about 6-7.

Sorry I'm not quite following your maths there.
I could be out of it after a week at work but on my calculations if you've got 2 attacks with a 40% chance of hitting doing 3d6 +12 on a hit then that's an average of
9 dpr for each attack so 18 total
if the other 2 are iterative attacks so at -5 to hit that makes them 15%
chances to hit so that gives them 3.375 dpr each so 7.75 total
total dpr is 25.75

I could be wrong or I could be missing something but I don't see where you're getting the 40 dpr from.

that puts it out to 6 rounds for the monk to take the bebilith down (which I think is quicker than the bebilith will take the monk down)

of course if the monk gets hit by a bite and fails a couple of fort saves against the Rot things could get very ugly for the monk as con damage is never nice...

If the snakey monk turtles, he could hold the bebilith off pretty well, assuming I'm correct in my assumptions re. swift actions. Depends on what you want to do.

The problem with that is that turtling makes you ignorable and the opposition can go hunting the other party members. Now in a straight 1 on 1 battle with a bebilith a monk with Spring Attack might do as well as anybody but in a group situation it just gives it time to chase the wizard

The iron golem was a bit flippant. The level 10 paladin in our party has AC 32 ish normally. The paladin is just going to eaten by an iron golem. It can't miss at all. So in that regard at least, the monk is better.

Well it hits 85% of the time. Against that the Paladin will probably have a fair amount more hit points, can heal himself significantly with Lay on Hands and has a fair chance of doing more damage than the monk
average 1.7 hits per round

based on some bucket maths the iron golem hitting the snake monk averages about a 25% chance with the sense motive on the first attack and 95% chance on the second
average 1.2 hits per round

I think the Crane Monk work out the same fighting defensive and having made the Exploit Weakness roll. If he fails it he will get him about 1.6 a round. I think it needs an 8 or better on the role so I think the average is about 1.4 hits per round.

I dont think so really. You've taken a character class based on a lot of smallish hits and put him up against something with DR 10 and assumed that he has nothing to bypass it. Obviously, this colours things a lot.

Hey, I took your suggested build in terms of gear and you were the one who said that it would beat the Bebilith.

I dont think you can say they are weak on offence based on that. Fighters have to specialise in their weapons, a fighter specialising in a melee weapon is going to do not much damage at all versus a target which can fly - like maybe 0 if he's particulary unprepared - but how fair a comparison is that?

Again I didn't suggest the opponent, nor the gear.
What the melee based fighter can do depends a lot on what the enemy is and how prepared he is.
A readied action might be enough for a lot of opponents, if not a 10th level fighter should have a backup missile weapon of some sort and boots of flying aren't out of the question.

But a lot of small attacks cuts both ways. If your many small attacks are being foiled by DR 10, thats bad, thats very bad. If on the other hand your many small attacks are augmented by +2d6 holy, thats good, thats very good.

sure, but if you're looking at that a 2 weapon ranger, fighter or rogue (or 50% rogue/50% ranger) is right up there for multiple attacks
(the rogue or ranger rogue getting sneak attack with flanking...)

Look at that crane monk vs bebilith. I think a paladin would do better but probably only a paladin, at least with the magic items our gang has.

my 11th level fighter with less equipment than you've given your monk by price has attacks of
+20/+15/+10 doing 2d4 +24 +2d6 holy damage while power attacking and has an AC of 31
At level 10 he'd have been +19/+14

so at level 10 he hits on a 3+ for the first attack and 8+ on the second giving an average of 55.8 dpr without considering that he's got a 15+ threat range...
With another 23000 gp for equipment he'd likely go for gloves of dueling giving him another +2 to hit and damage with the falchion and amulet of natural armour up to +2 giving him 32 AC (his options would change if I was optimising him for the bebilith)

and paladins, IMHO, are extremely powerful. Especially against bebiliths. Kinda his specialist subject you might say.

Paladins are very powerful when they can get smite in against an evil creature.
They're less powerful against a group of evenly powered creatures and will hate facing a powerful neutral enemy (Slaad for example, or any of the new CN outsiders)

Rangers are right up there against their favoured enemies but nowhere near as good against non-favoured enemies.

Sneaking around and picking targets carefully. Heavy armour dudes go at the front. Softskins go behind the heavy armour dudes.

Whether that's practical depends a lot on the setup. It's far less practical in a typical dungeon encounter than it is in a wilderness encounter and in an encounter with a choke point the heavy armoured characters might take it and going past them exposes you to being pummelled from all sides.

After battle is joined, skirmishers pick away at targets of opportunity. Spring attacking barbarians with relatively low AC running in and hitting and running back out again. Shadow stepping monks stealthing up to the enemy softskins and suddenly opening the can of whupass on them. That sort of thing.

As the barbarian it means you're trading off number of attacks for making it more awkward for people to get to you. As you level up that tradeoff is less and less favourable.
And it leaves the opponent free to move as wanted without risking attacks of opportunity.
The monk teleporting into the soft targets can be very effective but it can also put you well out of range of help and an archer can probably threaten as much of the field without being anything like as exposed and pretty much always getting full attacks.

One of my biggest criticisms of d20 combat is the huge benefit of standing toe to toe and swapping full attacks versus being mobile. As a general rule once you get multiple attacks you're much better off standing toe to toe (there are exceptions and class design can make a difference, iirc the Harrier from Iron Heroes did a fair job, and I think the Scout made a reasonable attempt from 3.5, there might be some charging based classs that do enough)

With the improvements for archers in Pathfinder I suspect that a Fighter, Ranger or (possibly) Zen Archer Monk or Inquisator built for Archery are probably more generally useful than a melee based skirmisher build.

 

[EUBanana]

So no you can't do 2 swift actions in a round.

Well thats a bit of an arse.

I would say its still good though.

It's going to depend a lot on the campaign as to whether that's a reasonable assumption or not. Holy does seem to be a very popular enchant option with players (my 11th level fighter has a +2 hold adamantite falchion for example but he's also been up against demons in the campaign)

We tend to be fighting evil stuff a lot, so holy is kinda akin to bane, except evil alignment is far far more common then the various bane subtypes.

In any case its a distraction - theres a character with a lot of attacks there but the attacks only do ~15 damage, if you have DR 10, then thats biasing the combat enormously.

A cavalier able to charge would be doing the precise opposite with one huge attack, but that doesnt mean the cavalier > monk.

That's with full crane turtling active is it?
Have you taken that into account on the monk's chance of hitting?

Yeah, it's only -1 to hit.

Ah, found Exploit Weakness Martial Artist power which does look pretty damned handy for a 1 on 1 fight (alternatively you could use it for the attack bonus and to get through DR and lose the holy weapon spending its value to boost defences or open up other options Dusty Rose Prism Ioun Stone).

I think all monks are very biased towards 1 on 1. I think it is in the nature of the class. However I think they have the required tools to engineer 1 on 1 encounters better than the other melee types - except for ranger maybe.

Yes, you could use it to bypass the bebiliths DR but IMHO if you did that the bebilith would probably give the monk a good beat down. The ability to ignore DR as needed is very useful though.

I could be wrong or I could be missing something but I don't see where you're getting the 40 dpr from.

Yeah I think I messed up there, its lower than that. But its still pretty good I think all things considered.

The bebilith is still not going to be pleasant for the monk. Against a humanoid the monk will have a bunch more attacks due to vicious stomp and crane wing, and absorb one free attack a round. A bebilith may be CR 10 and so an appropriate challenge, but it's pretty much one of the worst CR10 things a monk would want to fight.

of course if the monk gets hit by a bite and fails a couple of fort saves against the Rot things could get very ugly for the monk as con damage is never nice...

Lady luck applies to everybody. Monks do have pretty good saves, FWIW.

The problem with that is that turtling makes you ignorable and the opposition can go hunting the other party members. Now in a straight 1 on 1 battle with a bebilith a monk with Spring Attack might do as well as anybody but in a group situation it just gives it time to chase the wizard

Perhaps, but turtling still grants AoOs and you still get in the way. And in a real game the monk is not on his own so limiting damage and getting in the way might be all that you need to do.

Well it hits 85% of the time. Against that the Paladin will probably have a fair amount more hit points, can heal himself significantly with Lay on Hands and has a fair chance of doing more damage than the monk
average 1.7 hits per round

I dunno. My level 10 paladin has 2 attacks and does d10 + 13 damage usually after divine favor is cast. Strength 14, +2 longsword, +6 for power attack, and +3 for divine favor, which is cast in pretty much 100% of fights. There could be a bit more with more buff time than a round, but generally its only a round or two. But it's not a lot of damage when smite is out of the equation. Admittedly this is not a particularly offensively built paladin. But I think the monk could fight alongside a char like that and be effective in his own way, in the same way as everybody else.

sure, but if you're looking at that a 2 weapon ranger, fighter or rogue (or 50% rogue/50% ranger) is right up there for multiple attacks
(the rogue or ranger rogue getting sneak attack with flanking...)

Flanking only happens with buddies, or with feints and single attacks. A monk with buddies is a whole different ballgame again. And monks get all the multi attack stuff for free. They'll have a bunch of other stuff as well, like a style or whatever else tickles their fancy - not so for fighters or rogues, who will be paying precious feats for that stuff, and may be tempted by other things instead. The multiattacks are simply a given.

my 11th level fighter with less equipment than you've given your monk by price has attacks of
+20/+15/+10 doing 2d4 +24 +2d6 holy damage while power attacking and has an AC of 31
At level 10 he'd have been +19/+14

An interesting thing to bring up, because against the crane monk, it seems to me like the fighter is going to have one hell of a fight. The fighter is going to be looking for 15/20/20 to hit or thereabouts if exploit weakness works - and it usually will - and on top of that, the monk is cancelling the first hit and gaining an AoO when it happens. You do way more damage but you have to hit the monk twice to actually hurt him. Without knowing more about the fighter I can't really comment any further but it seems to me that the two are definitely in the same league at least, which is what this thread is about.

On top of that, the monk has far better utility. He could be stealthing around at 60' per turn almost as competently as a rogue with a trait. You don't really need abundant step necessarily at that point if the terrain permits, sneaking around ridiculously fast and having reasonable acrobatics might be enough. So imagine what happens when the monk ambushes some humanoid who isn't an extremely capable melee fighter, with stunning fists, trips, grapples, Jawbreaker moves, or whatever else you picked. It's gonna be ugly.

And you get to be Bruce Lee.

Do you really think monks are so gimped?

The monk teleporting into the soft targets can be very effective but it can also put you well out of range of help and an archer can probably threaten as much of the field without being anything like as exposed and pretty much always getting full attacks.

Archery is great, it has its flaws same as anything else though.

 

[Glade Riven]

Well, it's nice to see other people defending the monk. Usually around here I end up in arguments with people who want to weeaboo it with house rules.

Personally, I see the monk as the epitome of the anti-mage. Can a caster take on a monk with the right combo of spells? Well, sure, but a caster can do that with anyone with the right combos. Who else can tumble past AoO, dodge spells with all good saves, and run up on a caster's spot in a single turn followed by punching 'em in the face? Maybe a rogue or a ranger with just the right build, but they are inherently better at other stuff.

 

[EUBanana]

Well, it's nice to see other people defending the monk. Usually around here I end up in arguments with people who want to weeaboo it with house rules.

I think having to use an amulet of mighty fists instead of a magic weapon - ie the errata on brass knuckles - is pointlessly sadistic. So I'd probably houserule that they can indeed use brass knucks.

Though you can always use a monk weapon, thats a bit of a copout.

 

[Glade Riven]

Little things like that I have no problem with (or minor rule tweaks that would allow normal clothing to be enchanted as a weapon, since a monk's body is a weapon) - but there have been threads on Enworld that are about completely rebuilding the class to put it "in-line" with the fighter or paladin that, when combined with the maneuverabily of the monk, make it egregiously superior.

 

[Mad Hamish]

In any case its a distraction - theres a character with a lot of attacks there but the attacks only do ~15 damage, if you have DR 10, then thats biasing the combat enormously.

It's not exactly uncommon for CR 10 monsters
Checking a few from the prd
Aluum, Clay Golem, Protean (Imentesh), Angel - Movanic Deva, Piscodaemon...and Bebilith all have 10 DR
Rakshaka have DR15...

It's something that characters have to deal with.

Spellcasters have to deal with SR, weapon users have to deal with DR and as you go up levels more things have DR and either you spend resources to negate it or you have to be able to go through it.

A cavalier able to charge would be doing the precise opposite with one huge attack, but that doesnt mean the cavalier > monk.

But it does mean that they will get past damage resistance more easily (against that if you're getting 1 attack on charging it really sucks rolling a 1)

I think all monks are very biased towards 1 on 1. I think it is in the nature of the class. However I think they have the required tools to engineer 1 on 1 encounters better than the other melee types - except for ranger maybe.

Yes, you could use it to bypass the bebiliths DR but IMHO if you did that the bebilith would probably give the monk a good beat down. The ability to ignore DR as needed is very useful though.

Lady luck applies to everybody. Monks do have pretty good saves, FWIW.

they've got a good progression on all saves, but tthe build you suggest has relatively low con and nothing to boost his saves, so I think he's got a +8 fort save and the rot has a DC 23. 15+ to save isn't ideal.

Perhaps, but turtling still grants AoOs and you still get in the way. And in a real game the monk is not on his own so limiting damage and getting in the way might be all that you need to do.

Generally in D20 offence trumps defence.

There might be the very odd encounter when having a character do nothing but limit damage and block is useful but typically you want to be focusing on taking opponents down and if you aren't a realistic threat you can be ignored for other targets (now locking an opponent down or splitting groups of opponents so that only some of them can attack can win encounters but there's nothing that I can see in your suggested build that would make it overly good at it)

I dunno. My level 10 paladin has 2 attacks and does d10 + 13 damage usually after divine favor is cast. Strength 14, +2 longsword, +6 for power attack, and +3 for divine favor, which is cast in pretty much 100% of fights. There could be a bit more with more buff time than a round, but generally its only a round or two. But it's not a lot of damage when smite is out of the equation. Admittedly this is not a particularly offensively built paladin. But I think the monk could fight alongside a char like that and be effective in his own way, in the same way as everybody else.

If the Paladin has 14 str it's less than 'not a particularly offensively build paladin'

Flanking only happens with buddies, or with feints and single attacks. A monk with buddies is a whole different ballgame again. And monks get all the multi attack stuff for free. They'll have a bunch of other stuff as well, like a style or whatever else tickles their fancy - not so for fighters or rogues, who will be paying precious feats for that stuff, and may be tempted by other things instead. The multiattacks are simply a given.

Have a look at the number of feats fighters get. Rogues gets sneak attacks on both attacks so if they go that way they get a pretty big offensive boost.

they also have other options for their builds but if you see getting bonus dice on multiple attacks they are all options (and sneak attack is king of it)

An interesting thing to bring up, because against the crane monk, it seems to me like the fighter is going to have one hell of a fight. The fighter is going to be looking for 15/20/20 to hit or thereabouts if exploit weakness works - and it usually will - and on top of that, the monk is cancelling the first hit and gaining an AoO when it happens.

Until the day when there are Pathfinder arenas where you're doing PC fights I'm not overly interested in how a class will go against each other 1 on 1

Note that I think the Monk needs 18 or on his primary attacks to hit the fighter without the fighter doing anything to bump his AC and with gear which is more general (and 20000+ gp less...)

off the top of the head for the arena battle I'd drop
Cloak of Resistance, Handy Haversack, change the abilities on the sword (maybe even just a straight +4), get the gauntlets of dueling, boots of speed

which gives haste for 10 rounds a day, +4 to hit & damage over the above stats (+1 more to hit with haste on)

and if he struggles to hit he can stop power attacking and get another +3
and still have 2D4 + 19 damage with the gloves and modified sword (threat range 15-20)

+27/+27/+22

You do way more damage but you have to hit the monk twice to actually hurt him. Without knowing more about the fighter I can't really comment any further but it seems to me that the two are definitely in the same league at least, which is what this thread is about.

But which one contributes more to most encounters or parties?

The fighter has better base AC, has a much higher chance to hit, does much more damage on a hit, can take more damage

On top of that, the monk has far better utility. He could be stealthing around at 60' per turn almost as competently as a rogue with a trait. You don't really need abundant step necessarily at that point if the terrain permits, sneaking around ridiculously fast and having reasonable acrobatics might be enough. So imagine what happens when the monk ambushes some humanoid who isn't an extremely capable melee fighter, with stunning fists, trips, grapples, Jawbreaker moves, or whatever else you picked. It's gonna be ugly.

if a 10th level character can't take out somebody who isn't an extremely capable opponent they've got problems.

But the fighter with more balanced gear will average 29 damage power attacking or 20 without power attack with much higher attack bonuses than the monk.

And you get to be Bruce Lee.

Do you really think monks are so gimped?

I think Monks and Rogues are the two weakest character classes in core Pathfinder (although Bards depend heavily on helping other characters in a party) and I don't think there's anything that are as weak or weaker in the extensions.

I do think they're playable but I think you're constructing 1 trick ponies and getting excited by their AC.
Build a shield based fighter and see what it gets in AC.

 

[EUBanana]

It's not exactly uncommon for CR 10 monsters

I dunno, most of the time we fight classed humanoids, not monsters at all, and monks are very good against them.

Against your fighter as statted, and not for arenas - why would he be, the monk wasnt - the monk would probably kick his ass, dependent on what other stuff he had going for him. An NPC human fighter, he would definitely kick his ass, as NPCs do not generally have a gear advantage.

Exploit weakness can ignore DR, if you have a healer to back you up and are not dead set on resisting all incoming damage, as a skirmishing monk would be, then the monk is going to be OK. His AC would still be about the same as your fighter if he was using exploit weakness offensively, it would just be inadequate against the bebilith.

Generally in D20 offence trumps defence.

There might be the very odd encounter when having a character do nothing but limit damage and block is useful but typically you want to be focusing on taking opponents down

Last fight I spent ten odd rounds doing nothing but laying on hands, channelling, combat expertising and fighting defensively, so I think it certainly happens sometimes.

If the Paladin has 14 str it's less than 'not a particularly offensively build paladin'

Dunno, I think having charisma real high and strength adequate has been the way to go so far. At least, if you are a protector rather than an asskicker.

Have a look at the number of feats fighters get. Rogues gets sneak attacks on both attacks so if they go that way they get a pretty big offensive boost.

Monks essentially get one every level as well.

Until the day when there are Pathfinder arenas where you're doing PC fights I'm not overly interested in how a class will go against each other 1 on 1

I agree completely, but you do fight humanoids in the typical adventure.

The monk was not designed with duels in mind, why should you be? This proves nothing.

But which one contributes more to most encounters or parties?

The fighter has better base AC, has a much higher chance to hit, does much more damage on a hit, can take more damage

Not necessarily. Your fighter as statted had a by my reckoning <10% chance of hitting at least once in a round (~15+ on the first hit, 20 on the others, first hit ignored). Unless you had some sort of special trip defence this is not true of the monk, and the monk would have 2 attacks a round with a decent chance of hitting and a couple more with a less than decent chance of hitting. CMD 31, at a minimum, 38 at max, if you try and do to him what he's doing to you.

Depends what you are fighting, really.

if a 10th level character can't take out somebody who isn't an extremely capable opponent they've got problems.

Well, he'd probably annihilate the typical 10th level fighter in a one on one, especially an NPC 10th level fighter.

I do think they're playable but I think you're constructing 1 trick ponies and getting excited by their AC.
Build a shield based fighter and see what it gets in AC.

Not really, it's the combination of masses of attacks and AoOs, a massive CMD, decent CMB which is well leveraged by the masses of attacks which can be turned into masses of maneuvers at will, and reasonable damage from a strength in the 20s and power attack. An AC which is at least in the same league as an equivalent fighter, stealth slightly worse than a rogue and perception probably slightly better, a speed (even stealthed with a trait) as fast, unhasted, as a hasted opponent. On top of that he's got a few immunities (exhaustion, fatigue), some resistances (he has DR against ability damage essentially - interesting point actually, you brought up bebilith rot, the monk is immune to it), and some nifties (stunning fist with a DR of 20 isnt bad against low fort save targets, exploit weakness is just plain good, 6 skill ranks per level is reasonable and aside from charisma its pluses from attributes across the board, and he has no armour penalties for the dex based ones).

Why does a guy with all that stuff have to be better than a fighter in toe to toe combat? The irony is that he is not a one trick pony compared to a fighter. The fighter is going to be out with the first willpower affecting spell. The fighter can't hide. He can't run. His touch AC is probably terrible. He probably has no special resistances to anything, unless bravery counts, and he might have ray shield I suppose. He probably has negligible skills compared to the monk, and wearing armour will hamper them unless he pays for mithril (in which case he's not paying for adamantine, which is likely better for him stats depending...). The fighter is hardly God. Neither is the monk, but thats fine, I'm not arguing that.

The guy had natural strength 20, power attack, and the equivalent of most of the two weapon style feats, as well as 4 AoOs and plenty of ability to leverage as many of them as possible a round. I cannot see why you think this is "low damage". For most of his items I went with generalist stuff which is probably want you want to go adventuring with, like the belt of physical perfection. You could swap the headband of wisdom for a magic weapon or something I suppose if you wanted more beats and less defence, the guy didn't have a magic weapon after all.

 

[Mad Hamish]

I dunno, most of the time we fight classed humanoids, not monsters at all, and monks are very good against them.

So you're judging monks based on a campaign where your major enemies are ones that monks do well on, and even then the question is partly how well does a Monk do compared with another class.

Against your fighter as statted, and not for arenas - why would he be, the monk wasnt - the monk would probably kick his ass, dependent on what other stuff he had going for him.

Your initial gear list was all AC or stat boosting items apart from the monk's Robes, then you added a Holy Weapon and you were about 40000gp over the recommended wealth for the level

a) If you aren't geared specifically for arenas then you're doing things strangely
b) you can't complain if I gear up the fighter to the same value of items you have and focus them on combat for a 1 on 1 fight
c) your monk needs an 18 on primary attacks to hit the fighter (19 with Haste on the fighter) meaning he'll hit about every 4th round with a primary attack without the fighter having haste, every 5th round with haste on, and every 10 round with a secondary attack.
if the monk power attacks his primary attacks need 20 to hit...

with the same amount of equipment you've given the monk the fighter has +28/+28/+23 to hit so even if the sense weakness works I believe he needs 10+ on primary attacks and 15 on the secondary
So he's got a 25% chance of both primary attacks hitting and an 18.75% chance of 1 primary and the secondary and a 6% chance of all 3 attacks hitting
which means he'll get at least 1 undodgable hit 19+18.75+6 in 43.75% of rounds. When the Exploit Weakness fails (which I think you said was about 1 in 6) it's very likely that the fighter will get at least 2 hits.

So
a) I'm not convinced
b) even if so it'd be slow enough that the fighter will rip through a fair few things first.

An NPC human fighter, he would definitely kick his ass, as NPCs do not generally have a gear advantage.

what do you think would happen to a 10th level NPC monk against a 10th level PC fighter?

You're 40000gp over the recommended wealth and you're complaining about gear I want?

Exploit weakness can ignore DR, if you have a healer to back you up and are not dead set on resisting all incoming damage, as a skirmishing monk would be, then the monk is going to be OK. His AC would still be about the same as your fighter if he was using exploit weakness offensively, it would just be inadequate against the bebilith.

The fighter has a better attack bonus than the Bebilith and does more damage per hit.
And the Monk's attack bonus is terrible in comparison.

Last fight I spent ten odd rounds doing nothing but laying on hands, channelling, combat expertising and fighting defensively, so I think it certainly happens sometimes.

Dunno, I think having charisma real high and strength adequate has been the way to go so far. At least, if you are a protector rather than an asskicker.

which means you're looking at comparing a Monk versus a paladin designed not to do damage.
And again, if you're turtling with combat expertise and fighting defensively why will the opposition give a stuff about targeting you?
It opens the way to go after the squishies...

I agree completely, but you do fight humanoids in the typical adventure.

depends very much on the adventure.
and the type of humanoids you're fighting can have a fair impact as well...

The monk was not designed with duels in mind, why should you be? This proves nothing.

You're 40000gp over the recommended wealth and you're complaining about gear I want to buy?

Not necessarily. Your fighter as statted had a by my reckoning <10% chance of hitting at least once in a round (~15+ on the first hit, 20 on the others, first hit ignored). Unless you had some sort of special trip defence this is not true of the monk, and the monk would have 2 attacks a round with a decent chance of hitting and a couple more with a less than decent chance of hitting. CMD 31, at a minimum, 38 at max, if you try and do to him what he's doing to you.

according to hero labs the fighter has 34 CMD, what bonus does your monk have to trip? Because if he gets 24 or less he goes prone rather than the fighter...

Well, he'd probably annihilate the typical 10th level fighter in a one on one, especially an NPC 10th level fighter.

what do you think a 10th level fighter, ranger, paladin, inquisator etc would do to a 10th level NPC fighter given 10000+gp worth of gear?
They _might_ take a bit more damage but they'll go through it quicker which means they'll be able to go after other targets.

Not really, it's the combination of masses of attacks and AoOs, a massive CMD, decent CMB which is well leveraged by the masses of attacks which can be turned into masses of maneuvers at will, and reasonable damage from a strength in the 20s and power attack.

The problem is the pretty low attack bonus which means you're flailing against things with high AC.
Admittedly a fighter is probably top of the attack bonuses but the other melee classes have ways of buffing themselves (Judgements, spells, smite, favoured enemies)

An AC which is at least in the same league as an equivalent fighter,

It's about in the same league as my 2 handed fighter, it'd be behind a sword and board fighter

stealth slightly worse than a rogue and perception probably slightly better, a speed (even stealthed with a trait) as fast, unhasted, as a hasted opponent.

as fast as most hasted humanoid opponents. Quite a few monsters will be in the same league and you're got nothing against flying creatures (or wizards with overland flight up....)

On top of that he's got a few immunities (exhaustion, fatigue), some resistances (he has DR against ability damage essentially - interesting point actually, you brought up bebilith rot, the monk is immune to it)

a martial artist monk is immune to it.
I think the bebilith fight was looking at the snake style one who isn't a martial artist but I won't claim to be sure of that

, and some nifties (stunning fist with a DR of 20 isnt bad against low fort save targets, exploit weakness is just plain good, 6 skill ranks per level is reasonable and aside from charisma its pluses from attributes across the board, and he has no armour penalties for the dex based ones).

exploit weakness is pretty much amazing. Makes the Martial Artist extremely tempting
The point is a lot of other classes provide things not that far off of them
Inquisator, Paladin, Ranger, Alchemist etc all give options for things you can do.

Why does a guy with all that stuff have to be better than a fighter in toe to toe combat? The irony is that he is not a one trick pony compared to a fighter.

I was refering to a 1 trick pony in combat rather than in general.

The fighter is going to be out with the first willpower affecting spell.

My fighter has +10 will saves,+12 on fortitude and +9 on reflex.
I believe those are the same or bettr as your first suggested monk build.

The fighter can't hide. He can't run. His touch AC is probably terrible.

18 touch AC which is well behind the monk
at 10th level a few potions of invisibility will give the fighter a pretty good chance to hide, or a party wizard can do it.
boots of speed can give him some rounds of quick movement or boots of striding and springing give him reasonable mobility and he can afford to drop a feat on run if desired...

He probably has no special resistances to anything, unless bravery counts, and he might have ray shield I suppose. He probably has negligible skills compared to the monk, and wearing armour will hamper them unless he pays for mithril (in which case he's not paying for adamantine, which is likely better for him stats depending...). The fighter is hardly God. Neither is the monk, but thats fine, I'm not arguing that.

he's got -3 armour penalty (magic full plate, armour training)
not a lot of skills (Perception and Intimidate have most of the skill points, with dips in climb, ride and swim)

The problem is that
a) pathfinder is largely combat based in most campaigns
b) every round that opponents stay up is 1 round more that they can do things to the party
c) your suggested monks are doing so much to boost their AC defences that their offence suffers.
d) if you get double teamed quite a few of your abilities are only usable against 1 opponent.

The guy had natural strength 20, power attack, and the equivalent of most of the two weapon style feats, as well as 4 AoOs and plenty of ability to leverage as many of them as possible a round. I cannot see why you think this is "low damage".

The problem you've got with power attack is that your attack bonus isn't that high to start with.
AoO really comes down to how many chances you get to use them and depending on your opponents that might not happen at all.
Two weapon style feats (or flurry) give you a lower chance to hit on each attack and you don't have bonus dice on your attacks.

For most of his items I went with generalist stuff which is probably want you want to go adventuring with, like the belt of physical perfection. You could swap the headband of wisdom for a magic weapon or something I suppose if you wanted more beats and less defence, the guy didn't have a magic weapon after all.

You didn't go with generalist stuff on the list you gave.
You went for
belt of physical perfection +2
headband of wisdom +4
monks robe
amulet of natural armour +3
ring of protection +2
bracers of armour +4

which gives you +12 to AC, a bonus to monk abilities and stat bonuses

you've got nothing generalist at all.

and you gave him a holy weapon against the Bebilith...

 

[EUBanana]

So you're judging monks based on a campaign where your major enemies are ones that monks do well on, and even then the question is partly how well does a Monk do compared with another class.

It's not an unusual campaign. Lots of published adventures. We did Castle Ravenloft as the last big plot arc, Count Strahd et al, doesn't get much more boilerplate D&D than that. He'd have been fine in Castle Ravenloft, I have no doubt. Almost everything in it is humanoid, most of the humanoids fight with a weapon, and almost everything would be eminently trippable.

I say humanoids purely because Crane Wing only works against weapon attacks, that doesn't mean he's an arena fighter, it means his feats work best against weapon attacks, which are pretty damn common it seems to me. If something has a weapon he's in the game. If something is trippable he's in the game. If something doesn't have a weapon and isn't trippable (bebilith) then he isn't. Nobody is god except maybe the wizard.

I hardly think the humanoid thing is a big deal. A cavalier of the standard 'charge on horseback for 70-100 damage' sort is ended completely simply by difficult terrain, which is everywhere. Or even a ladder for that matter, horses simply can't go some places. A ranger is ruined by fighting things he's not specialised in, which are fairly tightly defined in some cases. A paladin becomes a crap, albeit tough, fighter against things that aren't evil. I think the monk working best against things with 2 legs and some steel in their hand is pretty minor really.

Your initial gear list was all AC or stat boosting items apart from the monk's Robes, then you added a Holy Weapon and you were about 40000gp over the recommended wealth for the level

a) If you aren't geared specifically for arenas then you're doing things strangely

The 10th level paladin I've been playing for a year has got

+4 headband of charisma
+2 full plate
+2 small shield
+2 longsword
+1 holy mace
+2 amulet of natural armor
+2 ring of protection
A couple of pearls of power

So I picked, broadly speaking, similar stuff for the monk.

Bonuses to attributes are not defensive, they are all around good. A headband of wisdom +4 is an excellent pick for a martial artist monk, both offensively and defensively. It makes his stunning fist DCs higher, it makes his AC higher, it makes exploit weakness more likely to work, it improves willpower saves, it ups perception. It's a lot of bang for the buck, in all manner of things. It is emphatically not a purely defensive item.

And a belt of physical perfection is, of course, generalist, thats the whole point of it.

This sort of thing is good for monks because they have so many attributes that turn into bonuses. MAD is not a flaw if you up the abilities.

which means you're looking at comparing a Monk versus a paladin designed not to do damage.
And again, if you're turtling with combat expertise and fighting defensively why will the opposition give a stuff about targeting you?
It opens the way to go after the squishies...

Because I was standing in the way? The only way they were headed for squishies was through me. If this wasn't the case I wouldn't have been turtling (as it happened I didnt have a single swift action spare to even put up smite evil on something). Given I took 90 damage in one round if I wasn't there someone else woulda been dead, so mission accomplished.

It doesn't matter if I'm doing less damage if someone else is doing more damage. A paladin and an archer, working together, is essentially a gestalt entity which has AC 34 and does heinous damage with ranged attacks, and self heals itself with not much loss of damage output - you don't even need a cleric wasting actions to cast heals when a paladin is taking the hits.

We are digressing, though.

and the type of humanoids you're fighting can have a fair impact as well...

So long as they are armed and trippable, thats the main thing for that specific build.

But you don't have to be a trip monkey with a whip in one hand, that coulda been weapon focus and weapon spec instead.

according to hero labs the fighter has 34 CMD, what bonus does your monk have to trip? Because if he gets 24 or less he goes prone rather than the fighter...

+18 by my reckoning - level 10 monk, +6 strength, +2 trip feat. He does, however, have a whip, which is a trip weapon.

The reason I gave him a whip is because as I said before, he works best 1 v 1, and a 15' trip reach weapon with 4 AoOs help keep the masses at bay while he works on someone.

If you're out of range he'd use exploit weakness offensively of course, which brings it up to +20, which will be good enough against most things he's likely to fight... even monsters. Clay golem is CMD 30, so 50/50, big earth elementals are 30... he's in the running.

The problem is the pretty low attack bonus which means you're flailing against things with high AC.
Admittedly a fighter is probably top of the attack bonuses but the other melee classes have ways of buffing themselves (Judgements, spells, smite, favoured enemies)

So does he - tripping up his opponents, judicious use of exploit weakness to get +2. Smite evil is grotesque though, of course it's not as good as that.

My fighter has +10 will saves,+12 on fortitude and +9 on reflex.
I believe those are the same or bettr as your first suggested monk build.

Only through magic items and odd attribute choices. The monk could have higher, its just a case of what priorities you choose to have. A fighter with +7 to will saves strikes me as rather unusual. The monk only has +4, and still has a slightly higher will save. The bottom line is, monk saves are considerably better than a fighters either way you cut it, how you choose to gear up or not is up to you.

at 10th level a few potions of invisibility will give the fighter a pretty good chance to hide, or a party wizard can do it.
boots of speed can give him some rounds of quick movement or boots of striding and springing give him reasonable mobility and he can afford to drop a feat on run if desired...

Well, the monk in our game would always be hasted without fail and would always have bless without fail if you want to bring up likely buffs from teammates. And probably prayer and maybe even enlarge as well. This is a line of reasoning that cuts both ways.

The problem is the pretty low attack bonus which means you're flailing against things with high AC.
Admittedly a fighter is probably top of the attack bonuses but the other melee classes have ways of buffing themselves (Judgements, spells, smite, favoured enemies)

Most monsters of CR10 have ACs below 25, and bear in mind a monk by the book is not expected to fight a CR10 critter on his own - the whole party together would fight a bunch of CR 8s or 9s. NPC humanoids of that sort of level will likely not have an AC of 30 unless they are seriously geared up by NPC standards, AC being as it is mostly dependent on equipment (in which case, the monk is gonna end up with a lot of loot and things will auto correct).

It's about in the same league as my 2 handed fighter, it'd be behind a sword and board fighter

So yeah, pretty much in the same league as the class with the highest AC in the entire game. Seems pretty good to me.

a) pathfinder is largely combat based in most campaigns
b) every round that opponents stay up is 1 round more that they can do things to the party
c) your suggested monks are doing so much to boost their AC defences that their offence suffers.
d) if you get double teamed quite a few of your abilities are only usable against 1 opponent.

You can change c) yourself if you want a more offensive monk. The whip is to limit double teaming - I think it'd be pretty effective at that when combined with combat reflexes, and trip is good as it means a lot of bad guys might essentially be losing their action for a round. However, it wouldn't need to be a whip, there's a lot of awesome monk weapons in UC, like kusarigamas. And I think four, maybe six, maybe even ten (or 11, with haste) attacks with natural strength 20 and fighter with two weapons BAB is pretty good, whether they are trips, punches or whatever.

It's the sort of thing which is really going to make the lower AC targets explode into gibs. And given even something like clay golem or a bebilith or a huge earth elemental only has AC < 25... I think this is more likely than you seem to think.

The problem you've got with power attack is that your attack bonus isn't that high to start with.
AoO really comes down to how many chances you get to use them and depending on your opponents that might not happen at all.
Two weapon style feats (or flurry) give you a lower chance to hit on each attack and you don't have bonus dice on your attacks.

His attack bonus IMO is perfectly adequate for what is essentially a 2W fighter. It's fighter BAB +3, assuming he fights defensively. Almost no magic items involved. Thats going to be 50/50 with his main attacks against most foes, before any tripping goes on.

AoOs, he's gonna get at least some except in unusual circumstances. He's got a 15' reach weapon, so bad guys attempting to close will almost certainly get 1, probably 2 on the way in. Vicious stomp means you may as well spam trips when they are right next to you as then you get an AoO when you succeed. Being hit with a weapon will cause an AoO as well. People getting up will be provoking as well, which will probably cause either punches to the face (if in base to base) or disarms (if not). If he chooses to trip with an AoO it'll be at full fighter BAB, so thats hardly a poor attack, it's an excellent attack.

This took feats, if he didn't have those feats he'd have other stuff though, like weapon specialisation maybe if you want more damage. Penetrating strike when he's a bit higher level. Whatever you want.

You didn't go with generalist stuff on the list you gave.
You went for
belt of physical perfection +2
headband of wisdom +4
monks robe
amulet of natural armour +3
ring of protection +2
bracers of armour +4

which gives you +12 to AC, a bonus to monk abilities and stat bonuses

you've got nothing generalist at all.

I'm trying to go RAW which means no brass knuckles +3 or some such, and he uses a whip. And he needs the other hand free to use crane wing. This means no magic weapon. If you wanted a more offensive monk you could lose the whip and get something else, like magic tonfa or something (another +1 AC when fighting defensively and you can rock the magic tonfa), but I'd prefer the whip personally. If you allow magic clothes and magic brass knucks then things would change but this is not RAW.

Amulet of mighty fists strikes me as a ripoff and unnecessary for a martial artist who can situationally ignore DR anyway. If he wasn't a martial artist I might rejig things a bit, but I do like that archetype, and I think that char has been designed to play to the archetypes strengths, ie 1 v 1.

If he was qigong monk instead, for example, he'd have barkskin as a qigong ability without a doubt, which means no amulet of natural armour, which means maybe he really would have an amulet of mighty fists instead.

If you want even more damage, three levels of fighter brawler and pick up all the weapon specialisation feats in fists. This guy here would be at +1 to hit +2 damage at level 11 if he then switched to fighter, +1/+4 damage at level 12, and +1/+7 damage at level 13 due to the brawler archetype. With so many attacks there, that is some evil class synergy going on, however I'm trying to keep multiclassing out of it.

I think a lot of your response was focused on too many magic items, so I have reworked that, and I've even made him rather more offensive though personally I'd not spend quite so much money on offensive stuff.

amulet of wisdom +4 16,000
amulet of physical might +2, dex/str = 10000
bracers of armour +3 = 9000
ring of protection +2 = 8000
wand of barkskin, CL 6 = 4500
wand of greater magic fang, CL 12 = 13500

10 less hit points, same AC after being wanded by a buddy, +3 fists for a working day after being wanded by a buddy.

I know some people don't like wands, but 50 charges a pop, assuming one use of each in every session you play, and assuming you D&D once a week, thats a 1 year campaigns worth of wandings, a pretty negligible cost really. Of course you might not need either wand, it depends on who is in the party, but aside from someone to zap you with it thats pretty self contained.

I am slightly puzzled though by what you want out of a monk. If it's simply to be able to stand next to the fighter and be essentially equivalent to him, then I do wonder why you would have a monk class at all, because at that point the monk would be a fighter to all intents and purposes. The classes need to have some sort of different role after all. A cavalier wouldn't be very good at simply being a fighter either, at least, it certainly isn't playing to his strengths. You have to play to the strengths. Really fast, really mobile, more than competent in 1v1s... The maneuverability and the 1v1s thing obviously synergies really well.