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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 2667393" data-attributes="member: 707">I think there are a couple of things that heavily favor the wizard in an arena combat.The first is, as mentioned by Saeviomagy, the fact that a wizard is a class of limited resources.  Over the course of the day, the monk is (theoretically) balanced against the wizard due to the fact that the wizard can't normally blow everything he has in one fight, and expect to be useful for the rest of the day.  He has to conserve his power so he can continue to contribute throughout the adventure.  In this state, he is (in theory) balanced with the other classes.The arena breaks that, by allowing a wizard to throw everything he's got into a single battle.  In this scenario the wizard can bring a lot more firepower to bear than the monk.  The monk can't throw four encounters' worth of kung fu at the wizard.  The wizard can throw four encounters' worth of spells at the monk.Secondly, a wizard's spells are hindered by unpredictability.  If the wizard is going to be fighting a barbarian, or a dragon, he's going to prepare different spells.  In an adventuring scenario, there are almost always going to be spells that the wizard guessed in the morning would be useful, but turn out to be unnecessary or ineffective for whatever reason.  This, too, helps balance the wizard's capabilities.The arena setup breaks that too.  The wizard's player knows what he's facing.  A single monk opponent.  This means that his entire spell load is going to be tailored to kicking a monk's behind into next week.  The monk, meanwhile, cannot tailor his abilities specifically to fight a wizard.  He can't trade in his ki strike (lawful) for something else more suited to beating on wizards.These points, taken together, lead me to believe that this kind of arena bout really doesn't say anything about class balance.  Yes, in a one-on-one arena matchup, the wizard is king.  But since I've never played in a game that consisted of nothing but arena battles, this comparison is relatively unrelated to the actual playing of the game.  An interesting exercise, but in the end relatively meaningless.I'm going to assume you meant "underpowered" in the above quote.  I think the main reason is the disparity between what the class does, and players' expectations of the class.  When people think of the monk, they think of Bruce Lee or Qui Chang Kane or even Jet Li or Jackie Chan.  In short, they're expecting someone who can put a serious beat-down on baddies, with a kung-fu flavor.Instead, the class is built as a skirmisher/scout.  So when folks get to playing a monk, they find him extremely weak for what they want him to do.  In 4e, I'd really like to see the monk made into a prestige class based on the fighter.  Make it a frontline fighter class.  That's what people are expecting, and folks are going to continue to be disappointed so long as the class's function remains contrary to expectations and flavor.</blockquote>

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