I'm not going to try and quote all of the things I've seen here that are good, bad, or just plain wrong.
I'm also not going to try and sway anyone who has already fallen in love with the class and has made it work for them. All I can say is good for them.
This is for everyone else. Those who think the Monk is 'okay...but their [fill in the blank] is pretty weak' or who are considering playing one for the first time.
Not that I'm going to use Point Buy because if you get three rolls of 16+ for stats and can't make a decent character then I'm sorry but I can't help you.
The Monk'd AC is derived from a similar formula to the Barbarian's except instead of using Con and Dex the Monk uses Wisdom and Dex. The barb gets the better side of the deal because his Con also helps with his HP. Yes, the Monk's Wisdom helps with his Stunning Strike but seriously, that's a one-trick pony that doesn't work for a variety of reasons.
The defining features of the Monk core class are Unarmored Defense (which we just discussed), Martial Arts (an additional 1D4 + Dex or Str modifier per turn), and their Ki abilities. At level 1 the Monk is actually pretty good because unlike other classes the Monk suffers no penalty for their Bonus Action attack. So with 16 Dex you're getting 1D8 +3 with a Staff and 1D4+3 with the Unarmed Strike. Unless you're a Fighter and take TWF you're not going to get that. Cool...what about after level 1?
A stock Point Buy-statted Monk will have an AC of 16 max, 18 if they carry a shield, at level 2. Note that if you're using a shield you're giving up the Unarmed Attack. So now your AC is pretty good (many Rogues and Rangers have 17 at level 2) but your damage is beginning to suffer.
"But Darkaiser, the Monk gains 10' of movement at level 2!" That's nice, but I've never seen a character Move an enemy to death. Movement of 40' means that you can choose better positioning on the battlefield to be ineffective.
At level 2 you get 2 Ki points. I've seen 5e combats that were over quickly but I've NEVER seen one at level 2 that was over in 2 rounds. Most of your special abilities feed on the Ki pool and anyone that says that you'll have plenty of these before level 10 may be playing a different game than you are.
Patient Defense makes you really hard to hit...at the expense of that added damage we talked about earlier.
Step of the Wind is a purely mechanical movement aid that can either get you into a fight or out of one. But wait...I thought I heard someone raving about how MOBILE the Monk is. If their added mobility is SO good, why do they then need to spend a Ki point on it?
Flurry of blows brings us back to that added damage that the Monk can do...at the cost of their ONE resource that they seldom seem to have enough of.
So either you're using a staff and an empty hand in which case your HP are marginal and your AC sucks, or you're using a staff and a shield in which case your HP are marginal, your AC is pretty good but now your damage sucks. Seriously...we're at level TWO and already the character is having issues.
Level three and you get to pick a subclass...go tell it on the mountain! IMHO unless you're taking a Kensei Monk you're shooting yourself in the foot. The Kensei subclass lets you designate two weapons (one ranged, one melee) to be counted as Kensei weapons. These weapons cannot have the Special or Heavy properties (the Longbow is an exception) but to be honest that's not all that limiting. A Longbow and a Rapier work just fine for most other classes so the weapon selection is fine.
When you make an unarmed strike (so we're talking melee here) and you're hilding a Kensei weapon you gain a free +2 AC. This is great since it's encouraging you to hit things which is what you wanted to do anyway! The point-buy build we mentioned earlier would have an AC of 18 in melee doing this and that's pretty good, especially because we're still doing okay damage, have pretty good HP and the extra movement. Note that this doesn't help your AC at range so if you're trying to build a Monk shooter your AC is going to be a bit behind the curve. As for your shooting damage, you get an additional D4 with your Kensei weapon if you spend your Bonus Action as well as your action on the shot. Here's where the problems start.
Up until now, we haven't had to spend ANY Ki points on anything we get from our subclass. Note that this is NOT true of the other Monk Subclasses.
The Way of Mercy requires 1 Ki point for their Hands of Healing/Hands of Harm feature.
Way of Shadow charges you 2 Ki points to simulate any of a number of spells. Make it a good one because you only get ONE of these at this level.
The Astral Self charges you 1 Ki point to activate the Arms (although I don't mind this because the Astral Arms gives you a LOT of stuff so it's worth 1 Ki point IMHO)
The Way of the Drunken Master lvl 3 ability also costs 1 Ki point in that it allows you to Disengage after using Flurry of Blows. You can do that for 3 rounds tops and then you're out of steam.
I'm not going to talk about the Way of the Four Elements subclass much because frankly, it sucks. You're using Ki points to use any of your abilities that mimic spells similar to how the Way of the Shadow does. Believers of this subclass can say what they want but spending 3 Ki points to simulate a Burning Hands spell stinks.
The Way of the Long Death also does not charge Ki points for its lvl 3 feature in that if you reduce a foe within 5' of you to 0 HP you get Temp HP equal to your Wisdom mod + your Monk level which is about 6 points at this level. Not bad considering it's for free.
The Way of the Open Hand 3rd level feature tacks on additional effects if you strike a target with your Flurry of blows. The target must either make a Dex Save or fall prone (the Save would be about 13 or less at this level), Make a Str Save or be shoved 15' (same Save numbers), or they cannot take a Reaction until the end of your next turn (the only result that's automatic). So you have to spend the Ki, hit with the Flurry of blows (if you hit with your other attack it doesn't count), and THEN the target has to fail a roughly 50/50 save. Not good.
The Way of the Sun Soul has one of the worst options for the 3rd level feature. You gain a new option for your Attack action; a ranged attack that does 1D4 + Dex mod Radiant damage with a range of 30'. For 1 Ki point, you may choose to make this attack twice as a Bonus Action.
In other words, at the point in your career when you have a whopping THREE Ki points available, most of the subclasses are going to charge you 1-2 of them to make a single attack or use a spell-like ability. Forget about all of the OTHER things that are powered by your Ki because by round 2 of the fight you won't have enough Ki to open a door.
At level 4 you get your first ASI which you can use for your Dex or your Wisdom (if you're smart) or any of the other things you do with ASIs. Notice that I don't suggest taking a Feat at level 4 because you don't get another one until level 8. If you're still running the character then my hat is off to you.
At level 5 you get an additional Attack which is good because you're already falling behind the damage curve. Your AC is likely about average, as are your HP, and you've discovered that designing a class with EVERYTHING drawing from the same pool of points might not be a good idea. Note that at lvl 5 your Martial Arts die, the one you use for Unarmed Strikes, is now a D6.
At level 6 your Unarmed strikes (or Kensei weapon strikes if you went that way) count as magical for the purposes of circumventing creatures who are Resistant or Immune to non-magical attacks. This isn't anything special since by now casting classes can use spells for this and even the martial classes who don't have a magic weapon by now likely have an ally who can make one of their weapons magical. This is a nod from the developers who must have realized at some point that they'd messed up and now they're trying to fix it. Oh, by the way, your Unarmored Movement Bonus is now +15' instead of +10'.
At level 7 you get Evasion which is a nice ability IMHO. Any time you make a Dex Save to take half damage from a spell effect, you take no damage instead. Rogues get this same ability at the same level and it's very handy.
At level 8 you get your second ASI and with a Point Buy build your Dex or your Wisdom should now be maxed. Your AC will be 18 without a shield and 20 with one which is definitely appreciated. For me, this is a critical point in a character's career. I don't like optimizing builds that need 14 levels to come online and actually start being what you were aiming for when you started. By level 8 I want my character to be up and running. If they're missing a Feat or one last ASI I can live with that, but I want most of the abilities that make that character into the vision I had when I started. I really don't think the Monks have it.
Your AC is as good as a martial character with either the Defense Fighting Style, a Dex of 14 and a chain shirt and shield but with no more HP than a non-martial character. You have 2 attacks a turn base, just like the martial classes, plus a bonus action attack that does a D6 base. You FINALLY have enough Ki points to use Flurry of Blows every round through a typical fight of 4-5 turns with some left over for fancy maneuvers. You don't have the AC or the HP to tank, you don't do enough damage to be considered a heavy-hitter and although you're fast you don't have many ways to capitalize on your speed unless your DM allows Flanking. Even the Kensei Monk, the one that I consider to be the best bang for the buck, doesn't get their best feature until 11h level.
Many people who break down classes and subclasses on youtube or in the Forums have a Baseline of damage that they use that's essentially a Warlock with Agonizing Blast doing their Eldritch Blast every turn. This means two blasts of 1D10 + their Cha modifier each or (usually) 2 x 1D10+5 damage a turn. I'm not sure how or why this became the baseline because the number of Fighters in play far outnumber the Warlocks but whatever. It's relatively easy to compare apples to apples at this point. (Note that for this comparison I'm assuming no magic items, no spells other than those the character can cast themselves, no Feats, and at least one attack stat of 20 for the purpose of to-hit and damage):
A Monk using no shield and a Dex of 20 can make 2 attacks at +8 to hit for 1D8+5 damage plus a bonus action attack for 1D6+5. Their AC (with 16 Wis) is 18. If they spend 1 Ki point per turn and assuming a battle of 4 turns they can do an additional D6+5 with Flurry of blows.
A Rogue with Studded Leather will have 1 attack, likely for 1D8, plus 4D6 from Sneak Attack, plus 5 for the Dex bonus. Thair AC will be 17. It's much more 'hit or miss' but the damage is comparable, HP will be the same, and the AC is only one less. Note that I didn't say anything about ANY of the special abilities the Rogues have.
A Fighter can use a heavy crossbow for 2 attacks of 1D10+5. Once per short rest, they'll get Action Surge but we can't average for that. Note, however, that the Fighter can have as good or better AC (plate armor and Defense fighting style), a bonus to hit at range (from Archery fighting style), a damage bonus (from duelist or great weapon fighting). They also get a free self-heal from Second Wind. Note also that the Fighter gets an extra ASI so their stats will be better.
You can see where this is going. Compared to several other classes at level 8, the BEST monk subclasses barely hold their own. If the fight goes longer then they start to run out of Ki points. If they're getting hit a lot and need to pick up their shield for more AC then they're losing damage output. Stunning Strike requires a Con Save that many targets will be making about half of the time so that's half of the Ki points spent on that ability wasted. Sure, they can move fast and falling from heights isn't much of an issue but other than that they don't do anything better than any other class. There's nothing that makes them feel SPECIAL or unique at all.
I'm sure that there will be many rebuttals to these arguments but as I said at the beginning if you've already made up your mind and you've run one that works for you...great. Good for you. For everyone else, seriously look into builds and advice from people singing the praises of this class. It's not as horrid as some people claim but it's also nowhere near as good as its supporters advertise either.
I offer that because Monks are so stat dependent and ASI starved, they are absolutely more gear dependent. I would also say that I could make a Barbarian as a better monk than the monk class stands now because of their built in dependency on stats and not enough stat increases.
A monk who is behind on Dexterity in a bounded accuracy game, means he’s not going to land his strikes to land stunning blow/touch of death/quivering palm/Deft Blade Strike/Hand of Harm/empowered arms as often as they would need to. They would become absolutely reliant on magic simple weapons to cover for their deficiencies. And that wouldn’t even help the astral self and mercy bonus damage which requires unarmed strikes, or astral arms.
Same thing goes for AC, all your DCs, when you start compromising yourself by not maxing these things on level ups you put yourself considerably behind, having to split them means you never catch up until end game.
Except They don't. Because the Point to actually hit reliably enough is a lot lower than most people think it is. Specially in the first couple of tiers of play where Most people want to play and where the biggest Issue is. Bounded Accuracy is actually a bigger problem for Stunning Strike Landing than Landing your punches because it usually starts closest to the power level of play at that point and then is not dramatically approved until your getting into Tier 3 which puts it way behind. Which is why you see Spell Casters that rely on Save DC's not suffering misses like Monk's have Misses on Stunning Strike unless they have a dramatically lower spellcasting stat as well.
This does not create a need for magic weapons. Though they do help and they are an optional improvement. Being Behind by one ASI is almost un-noticable in the long run as far as hits go because you will make it up and your Dex was likely a bit above the Power Curve of the game anyway. And being able to Reliably stun actually over all increases your ability to hit because your Stuns have a useful uptime which automatically provides Advantage on attacks which then actually puts that slightly under par accuracy to Nicely Above par in much the same way as a magical weapon. A Magical Weapon is just a stop gap for the same thing that your relying on for that first hit so you can stun rather than All attempts to Stun as with a neglected Stunning Strike. Which there are almost no magical items to speak of that can raise your Stunning Strike DC so when it falls behind you cannot insert an optional piece of the puzzle like magical equipment to fix it. This is why At least alternating wisdom Bonuses is actually stronger overall. Because the Reliability of Stunning Strike improves the Reliability of most of your hits in average play (much like the bonuses on that magical weapon). Because here's the mathematic REality. The +1 to +4 that Advantage is going to give you. Depending on factors of what your trying to hit and where it appears on the results curve. This is The Same or More than you would get for the +1 in Dexterity that your arguing needs to happen to begin with. And the More you Monk relies on Abilities that are keyed off of either Wisdom or your Save DC. The less that Dexterity point matters. You don't need to shift the point if your not relying on Stunning strike to begin with. however if you are, Then you cannot neglect it because you cannot artificially improve your DC like you can your to hit modifier and stunning strike makes up for the lack. And if your Doing something like the 4 elements Monk which is Heavy in the area of Save DC based abilities that you can be using for most builds of it. Then you don't even feel the +2 difference as much. Specially because even if you miss a couple hits. Improving the Chance of Stunning Strike from Something like a minimum of 13 (+3 prof +2 Wis) at level 5 when you get stunning strike (3 proficiency and +2 wis mod) to Something like a 14 or a 15 or even a 16 by level 8 has a dramatic difference.
Considering that the end game is balanced with a DC of only 19 in mind and still have a reliable success rate against most things (unlike in the 20's for AC) and Con Saves for most things go up much slower. I believe the Average con save is something like 3 or 4. Even if the average con save is 4. You've basically pushed the failure rate to higher than 50% by the time that your level 5. With a fair bit of what your going against being more likely to be a 65-70% failure rate. PIcking up that 5% difference for your attack modifier if you need to makes a whole lot more sense. But even without that. Your Typically looking at a +6 Bonus at level 5 versus a +7 If you go with the Wis ASI instead. meaning your still looking at what works out to something like a 70% chance to hit still anyway. And it can be supplemented by other means. Even just playing in a game that does Flanking offsets that -1. And Anything that gives you advantage boosts your Hit rate up to something like 90% or so even with just a +6 bonus in that level range. Wisdom Becomes More and More of a Smart thing to do if your wanting to rely on Wisdom Abilities like Stunning STrike. Taking a 65-70% chance to hit but then having a 70-75% chance to apply the stunned condition which then gives you advantage and makes the rest of your hits for that turn unlikely to miss, And potentially the next turn Works out to be a lot better than Hitting for say 75% but then only having a 40% chance of getting that stun to work.
Making Stunning Strike Work better also improves your Ki Economy by having to spend less to apply stuns if your going to use STunning Strike. Your only other real choice for improving Ki economy is to not use Stunning Strike at all.
So your Question actually becomes. Miss 1 less attack for every 20 or so that you make on average By boosting your Wisdom so that you can do a largely improved stunning strike, Or hit one more time but take more hits and thus more ki to apply stunning strike, or not use stunning strike.
"I offer that because Monks are so stat dependent and ASI starved, they are absolutely more gear dependent. I would also say that I could make a Barbarian as a better monk than the monk class stands now because of their built-in dependency on stats and not enough stat increases."
I have very little doubt that I could make a Fighter as a better Monk than the Monk class and that's the big part of the problem for me. It's not hard to build a character that does a not of what a Monk does BETTER than a Monk. The Monk class simply doesn't know what it wants to be so it winds up not being good at anything.
I'm not going to try and quote all of the things I've seen here that are good, bad, or just plain wrong.
I'm also not going to try and sway anyone who has already fallen in love with the class and has made it work for them. All I can say is good for them.
This is for everyone else. Those who think the Monk is 'okay...but their [fill in the blank] is pretty weak' or who are considering playing one for the first time.
Not that I'm going to use Point Buy because if you get three rolls of 16+ for stats and can't make a decent character then I'm sorry but I can't help you.
The Monk'd AC is derived from a similar formula to the Barbarian's except instead of using Con and Dex the Monk uses Wisdom and Dex. The barb gets the better side of the deal because his Con also helps with his HP. Yes, the Monk's Wisdom helps with his Stunning Strike but seriously, that's a one-trick pony that doesn't work for a variety of reasons.
The defining features of the Monk core class are Unarmored Defense (which we just discussed), Martial Arts (an additional 1D4 + Dex or Str modifier per turn), and their Ki abilities. At level 1 the Monk is actually pretty good because unlike other classes the Monk suffers no penalty for their Bonus Action attack. So with 16 Dex you're getting 1D8 +3 with a Staff and 1D4+3 with the Unarmed Strike. Unless you're a Fighter and take TWF you're not going to get that. Cool...what about after level 1?
A stock Point Buy-statted Monk will have an AC of 16 max, 18 if they carry a shield, at level 2. Note that if you're using a shield you're giving up the Unarmed Attack. So now your AC is pretty good (many Rogues and Rangers have 17 at level 2) but your damage is beginning to suffer.
"But Darkaiser, the Monk gains 10' of movement at level 2!" That's nice, but I've never seen a character Move an enemy to death. Movement of 40' means that you can choose better positioning on the battlefield to be ineffective.
At level 2 you get 2 Ki points. I've seen 5e combats that were over quickly but I've NEVER seen one at level 2 that was over in 2 rounds. Most of your special abilities feed on the Ki pool and anyone that says that you'll have plenty of these before level 10 may be playing a different game than you are.
Patient Defense makes you really hard to hit...at the expense of that added damage we talked about earlier.
Step of the Wind is a purely mechanical movement aid that can either get you into a fight or out of one. But wait...I thought I heard someone raving about how MOBILE the Monk is. If their added mobility is SO good, why do they then need to spend a Ki point on it?
Flurry of blows brings us back to that added damage that the Monk can do...at the cost of their ONE resource that they seldom seem to have enough of.
So either you're using a staff and an empty hand in which case your HP are marginal and your AC sucks, or you're using a staff and a shield in which case your HP are marginal, your AC is pretty good but now your damage sucks. Seriously...we're at level TWO and already the character is having issues.
Level three and you get to pick a subclass...go tell it on the mountain! IMHO unless you're taking a Kensei Monk you're shooting yourself in the foot. The Kensei subclass lets you designate two weapons (one ranged, one melee) to be counted as Kensei weapons. These weapons cannot have the Special or Heavy properties (the Longbow is an exception) but to be honest that's not all that limiting. A Longbow and a Rapier work just fine for most other classes so the weapon selection is fine.
When you make an unarmed strike (so we're talking melee here) and you're hilding a Kensei weapon you gain a free +2 AC. This is great since it's encouraging you to hit things which is what you wanted to do anyway! The point-buy build we mentioned earlier would have an AC of 18 in melee doing this and that's pretty good, especially because we're still doing okay damage, have pretty good HP and the extra movement. Note that this doesn't help your AC at range so if you're trying to build a Monk shooter your AC is going to be a bit behind the curve. As for your shooting damage, you get an additional D4 with your Kensei weapon if you spend your Bonus Action as well as your action on the shot. Here's where the problems start.
Up until now, we haven't had to spend ANY Ki points on anything we get from our subclass. Note that this is NOT true of the other Monk Subclasses.
The Way of Mercy requires 1 Ki point for their Hands of Healing/Hands of Harm feature.
Way of Shadow charges you 2 Ki points to simulate any of a number of spells. Make it a good one because you only get ONE of these at this level.
The Astral Self charges you 1 Ki point to activate the Arms (although I don't mind this because the Astral Arms gives you a LOT of stuff so it's worth 1 Ki point IMHO)
The Way of the Drunken Master lvl 3 ability also costs 1 Ki point in that it allows you to Disengage after using Flurry of Blows. You can do that for 3 rounds tops and then you're out of steam.
I'm not going to talk about the Way of the Four Elements subclass much because frankly, it sucks. You're using Ki points to use any of your abilities that mimic spells similar to how the Way of the Shadow does. Believers of this subclass can say what they want but spending 3 Ki points to simulate a Burning Hands spell stinks.
The Way of the Long Death also does not charge Ki points for its lvl 3 feature in that if you reduce a foe within 5' of you to 0 HP you get Temp HP equal to your Wisdom mod + your Monk level which is about 6 points at this level. Not bad considering it's for free.
The Way of the Open Hand 3rd level feature tacks on additional effects if you strike a target with your Flurry of blows. The target must either make a Dex Save or fall prone (the Save would be about 13 or less at this level), Make a Str Save or be shoved 15' (same Save numbers), or they cannot take a Reaction until the end of your next turn (the only result that's automatic). So you have to spend the Ki, hit with the Flurry of blows (if you hit with your other attack it doesn't count), and THEN the target has to fail a roughly 50/50 save. Not good.
The Way of the Sun Soul has one of the worst options for the 3rd level feature. You gain a new option for your Attack action; a ranged attack that does 1D4 + Dex mod Radiant damage with a range of 30'. For 1 Ki point, you may choose to make this attack twice as a Bonus Action.
In other words, at the point in your career when you have a whopping THREE Ki points available, most of the subclasses are going to charge you 1-2 of them to make a single attack or use a spell-like ability. Forget about all of the OTHER things that are powered by your Ki because by round 2 of the fight you won't have enough Ki to open a door.
At level 4 you get your first ASI which you can use for your Dex or your Wisdom (if you're smart) or any of the other things you do with ASIs. Notice that I don't suggest taking a Feat at level 4 because you don't get another one until level 8. If you're still running the character then my hat is off to you.
At level 5 you get an additional Attack which is good because you're already falling behind the damage curve. Your AC is likely about average, as are your HP, and you've discovered that designing a class with EVERYTHING drawing from the same pool of points might not be a good idea. Note that at lvl 5 your Martial Arts die, the one you use for Unarmed Strikes, is now a D6.
At level 6 your Unarmed strikes (or Kensei weapon strikes if you went that way) count as magical for the purposes of circumventing creatures who are Resistant or Immune to non-magical attacks. This isn't anything special since by now casting classes can use spells for this and even the martial classes who don't have a magic weapon by now likely have an ally who can make one of their weapons magical. This is a nod from the developers who must have realized at some point that they'd messed up and now they're trying to fix it. Oh, by the way, your Unarmored Movement Bonus is now +15' instead of +10'.
At level 7 you get Evasion which is a nice ability IMHO. Any time you make a Dex Save to take half damage from a spell effect, you take no damage instead. Rogues get this same ability at the same level and it's very handy.
At level 8 you get your second ASI and with a Point Buy build your Dex or your Wisdom should now be maxed. Your AC will be 18 without a shield and 20 with one which is definitely appreciated. For me, this is a critical point in a character's career. I don't like optimizing builds that need 14 levels to come online and actually start being what you were aiming for when you started. By level 8 I want my character to be up and running. If they're missing a Feat or one last ASI I can live with that, but I want most of the abilities that make that character into the vision I had when I started. I really don't think the Monks have it.
Your AC is as good as a martial character with either the Defense Fighting Style, a Dex of 14 and a chain shirt and shield but with no more HP than a non-martial character. You have 2 attacks a turn base, just like the martial classes, plus a bonus action attack that does a D6 base. You FINALLY have enough Ki points to use Flurry of Blows every round through a typical fight of 4-5 turns with some left over for fancy maneuvers. You don't have the AC or the HP to tank, you don't do enough damage to be considered a heavy-hitter and although you're fast you don't have many ways to capitalize on your speed unless your DM allows Flanking. Even the Kensei Monk, the one that I consider to be the best bang for the buck, doesn't get their best feature until 11h level.
Many people who break down classes and subclasses on youtube or in the Forums have a Baseline of damage that they use that's essentially a Warlock with Agonizing Blast doing their Eldritch Blast every turn. This means two blasts of 1D10 + their Cha modifier each or (usually) 2 x 1D10+5 damage a turn. I'm not sure how or why this became the baseline because the number of Fighters in play far outnumber the Warlocks but whatever. It's relatively easy to compare apples to apples at this point. (Note that for this comparison I'm assuming no magic items, no spells other than those the character can cast themselves, no Feats, and at least one attack stat of 20 for the purpose of to-hit and damage):
A Monk using no shield and a Dex of 20 can make 2 attacks at +8 to hit for 1D8+5 damage plus a bonus action attack for 1D6+5. Their AC (with 16 Wis) is 18. If they spend 1 Ki point per turn and assuming a battle of 4 turns they can do an additional D6+5 with Flurry of blows.
A Rogue with Studded Leather will have 1 attack, likely for 1D8, plus 4D6 from Sneak Attack, plus 5 for the Dex bonus. Thair AC will be 17. It's much more 'hit or miss' but the damage is comparable, HP will be the same, and the AC is only one less. Note that I didn't say anything about ANY of the special abilities the Rogues have.
A Fighter can use a heavy crossbow for 2 attacks of 1D10+5. Once per short rest, they'll get Action Surge but we can't average for that. Note, however, that the Fighter can have as good or better AC (plate armor and Defense fighting style), a bonus to hit at range (from Archery fighting style), a damage bonus (from duelist or great weapon fighting). They also get a free self-heal from Second Wind. Note also that the Fighter gets an extra ASI so their stats will be better.
You can see where this is going. Compared to several other classes at level 8, the BEST monk subclasses barely hold their own. If the fight goes longer then they start to run out of Ki points. If they're getting hit a lot and need to pick up their shield for more AC then they're losing damage output. Stunning Strike requires a Con Save that many targets will be making about half of the time so that's half of the Ki points spent on that ability wasted. Sure, they can move fast and falling from heights isn't much of an issue but other than that they don't do anything better than any other class. There's nothing that makes them feel SPECIAL or unique at all.
I'm sure that there will be many rebuttals to these arguments but as I said at the beginning if you've already made up your mind and you've run one that works for you...great. Good for you. For everyone else, seriously look into builds and advice from people singing the praises of this class. It's not as horrid as some people claim but it's also nowhere near as good as its supporters advertise either.
There are so many major Mischaracterizations here.
Such as the Damage Sucking for the Monk at level 2. The Monk actually has some of the highest damage of any class of martial character at the first couple of levels. And it has the highest Sustainable damage in level's 1-3. They aren't already having problems at this point.
Your Also Mischaracterizing the health issue. Your making it sound like only the monk is suffering from danger of going down quickly and this is also not true. Everybody with Exception of perhaps the Barbarian is going to go down quickly.
Your Also Mischaracterizing the AC issue. An AC of 16 is not bad at level 1 or even level 2. Even the Fighter. That bastion of Heavy Armor that he is or his holy Counterpart the Paladin is not much higher than this in AC. Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1. And no way to ever get platemail before about level 4 under normal circumstances other than an overly generous DM. They are looking at about a 16 AC without shield and an 18 DC with shield. Even if they Pick up the appropriate fighting Style to increase their AC by one they are only looking at numbers of 17 and 19. On your Tanks. Even the Barbarian with all it's mass of HP is only looking at about a 16 AC on Average.
And those are just some of the biggest things that your mischaracterizing in one fashion or another.
A lot of it is heavily personally biased. There are various little things thta are not as simple as you make them like claiming a 50/50 save on the Effects of the Open Hand abilities added to flurry of blows. When the Reality is that they can actually be something more in the range of 75% in the favor of the monk if used intelligently even at level 3.
You also Make mischaracterizations about what a Monk is thta is heavily personally biased when you say all they are is unarmored defense, MA, and Ki abilities. There is a lot about them that does not actually have Ki Costs. Which I've already addressed previously but you seemed to completely ignore.
You also make mischaracterizations that are effectively calling them bad because they do not work like one of the Tanking Classes when they aren't a tanking class. Rogues Suffer from all of the same problems if you try to use them as a Tanking class because they are not one either.
your Statements about charging you 1 to 2 ki at level 3 just to make an attack are Completely wrong. As well as showing your Disdain and Biases. There are plenty of ways to make Attacks without having any costs of Ki. Ki Expenditure is a Choice. Not a requirement. And many other Subclasses actually run out of Steam by round 2 of a fight at level 2 and 3 as well. Caster's only last slightly longer because they are FORCED to spread out their resource expenditures. So they make it to round 4 or so. Even the Brilliantly acclaimed Battle Master with it's extra dice is spent in 4 rounds or less at level 3, and continues to have that problem and have it be worse as it gains in levels. But then that doesn't really help to point out when your busy attacking the monk does it?
Even When you Do things Like Mention the Rogue and what it has you say you didn't talk about any of their abilities but this is an outright lie. Because you used their Biggest Ability of the class in their Damage Calculation. That of Sneak Attack. Without this ability the Rogue's damage is downright pathetic. Maxing out at 1d8+5 for an average of 9 damage a turn. Even a Monk with no Ki what so ever and no bonus action or anything else and even using just it's unarmed attack is doing 1d6+5 twice for an Average damage of 16. Adding in Just the Bonus Attack of Martial Arts without bothering to use any Ki abilities what so ever is still netting you 24 average damage a turn on a monk before anything else. (As a important little detail the average damage for those sneak attack dice is 12 giving that rogue even with the Sneak attack an average damage of 21, 23 if you get nitpicky about the .5's) But You know. Lying about how good the damage is and the abilities your not supposedly using is a real comparison. Or the Fact that it's not doing that much different from the Monk even with it's Major Damage ability for it's class. So you end up in a Situation where the monk can do basically As much damage if you average out using and not using your bonus attack roughly as the rogue, Though outdo it if you get the bonus attack in every turn, With Better AC and better mobility than the Rogue as a default. But yep. That rogue is so much better than the level 8 monk when neither of them are using abilities.
The Fighter to make those Two Attacks with a Crossbow? They've had to give up better stats on their 1 additional ASI up to the point of level 8. Meaning their Stat's aren't better. Because they have been forced to buy Crossbow Master to get rid of the Loading Property to be able to make those Two Attacks. And Action Surge is less sustainable than even flurry of blows for as bad as your making it sound. It's only 2 extra attacks. Has No innate Ability to inflict conditions, Or to impose Disadvantage, or escape an enemy without AO's whether for a resource cost or not or even the Ability to guarantee half damage and potentially avoid damage altogether on any dex save. All for what is maybe 3 AC at most but is just as easily no AC difference with most builds that people use. A moderate amount of more hp, and a bit more damage. But again. That doesn't look so well for your comparison when saying how every other class is better is it.
But this is why All of your comparisons don't actually show the damage numbers isn't it? The Damage numbers just aren't as good. The various incidental bonuses kind of skew it as well.
Or When trying to claim that the Standard should be Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast on it as well for an example of good Damage. Despite the fact that is actually highly optimized damage for the Warlock And yet Ironically. Being only 20 damage on Average for a Turn at level 8. It's actually sustainable by the Monk to do this much damage on basically every turn. The Reality is that Eldritch Blast Being the Standard is Entirely because of the over-hyping of Eldritch Blast and it's the only way that the Warlock would be considered doing Good Damage at lower levels while pretending it's just a decent weapon damage die equivalent.
It's easy to take a level 3 monk and pretend that it doesn't gain survivability of it's own by say level 8. And then try to claim that it's Defenses are Bad. When the Defenses are amazingly on Par. At Best that Rogue has gotten +1 armor by level 8. Meaning an ac of 18. Interestingly enough exactly what the monk has. Naked. They both have evasion, They both have ways of disengaging, etc. There is a REason these two classes compare well at low to medium levels. They are doing mostly the same things at low to medium levels. They have a similar kind of job for the party with a similar kind of output.
In all honesty, I did not read most of the post that you cited. As a writer, I disagree with large walls of text when trying to explain something. The paragraph was created to signal the end of a thought and the beginning of the next thought. We're talking about a game. If it takes you 400 words to have a thought you might want to consider editing it down before you post. That being said:
"Such as the Damage Sucking for the Monk at level 2. The Monk actually has some of the highest damage of any class of martial character at the first couple of levels. And it has the highest Sustainable damage in level's 1-3. They aren't already having problems at this point."
I cited actual numbers in my post. This is an opinion. If you have some data, please share. Briefly...if you please.
"Your Also Mischaracterizing the health issue. Your making it sound like only the monk is suffering from danger of going down quickly and this is also not true. Everybody with Exception of perhaps the Barbarian is going to go down quickly."
So the Paladin (with AC 18 and D10 hit die), the Fighter (with a possible AC of 18 and D10 hit die), the Ranger (okay...you got me on the Ranger, PLUS a D10 hit die), and the Barb (AC of about 16 and the biggest Hit Die in the game) are ALL going to fold up as fast as the guy with a D8 hit die, a starting Con Bonus of +3 tops and a max STARTING ac of 16? I'm sorry, Dave, but this does not compute. Again, show me some numbers.
"Your Also Mischaracterizing the AC issue. An AC of 16 is not bad at level 1 or even level 2. Even the Fighter. That bastion of Heavy Armor that he is or his holy Counterpart the Paladin is not much higher than this in AC. Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1. And no way to ever get platemail before about level 4 under normal circumstances other than an overly generous DM. They are looking at about a 16 AC without shield and an 18 DC with shield. Even if they Pick up the appropriate fighting Style to increase their AC by one they are only looking at numbers of 17 and 19. On your Tanks. Even the Barbarian with all it's mass of HP is only looking at about a 16 AC on Average."
I covered this above but please allow me to say that the phrase 'Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1.' sounds a bit disingenuous to me. EVERYTHING that EVERY character has at level one is granted. I'm not saying this is YOUR fault but you make it sound like characters that are supposed to be fighting in the front lines getting armor to start with is a bad thing. My issue is not that they don't give Monks armor to start with, it's that they seemed to think it wasn't necessary for some reason.
"A lot of it is heavily personally biased."
Backed up by math, but yes. Are you going to tell me that your position isn't?
" There are various little things that are not as simple as you make them like claiming a 50/50 save on the Effects of the Open Hand abilities added to flurry of blows. When the Reality is that they can actually be something more in the range of 75% in the favor of the monk if used intelligently even at level 3."
Again, let's do some math, shall we? A group of four should be able to take on an equal CR opponent with a high chance of victory. There are lots of CR 1 creatures but let's take some basic ones like a Bugbear. AC 16 and 27 HP with a Dex and Str Save of +2. The Monk's Save DC for most of their abilities is 8+ WIS Modifier + PB so for a level 1 Monk with 16 Wis that's 13. So the Bugbear has to roll an 11 or higher to Save or about 45% chance. By the way, the Bugbear has an AC of 16 and the Monk will be striking with a +5 modifier so they actually only have a 45% chance to hit in the first place. Oh, and let's not forget that at level 3 you have 3 Ki points so that's three trips to the Flurry of Blows well before you're done. Your DM might let you take a 30-minute meditative nap after every encounter but I'll bet that's not all that common.
"You also Make mischaracterizations about what a Monk is that is heavily personally biased when you say all they are is unarmored defense, MA, and Ki abilities. There is a lot about them that does not actually have Ki Costs. Which I've already addressed previously but you seemed to completely ignore."
Actually, I seem to recall that I specifically called out several of them. Granted, I didn't mention The Way of the Brush or all of the language skills. My bad.
"You also make mischaracterizations that are effectively calling them bad because they do not work like one of the Tanking Classes when they aren't a tanking class. Rogues Suffer from all of the same problems if you try to use them as a Tanking class because they are not one either."
My issue is NOT that Monks aren't a tanking class. As you said, Rogues really aren't a tanking class either and I don't hear a lot of people crying about it. The issue is that the Monk isn't an ANYTHING class. Scan the Forums and you'll see people talking about how people are playing Monks wrong...'they make great tanks!' Sure they do...IF you take a shield (giving up damage output), and IF you take the Kensai path specifically, and IF you're in melee so your trait works...THEN you have an AC of 16+2+2 or 20 at lvl 3. You can do that all day because it costs no Ki points. The question is WHY would you? Why leap through burning hoops sideways in order to take a class that doesn't excel at much of anything and try to use it as a tank?
"your Statements about charging you 1 to 2 ki at level 3 just to make an attack are Completely wrong. As well as showing your Disdain and Biases. There are plenty of ways to make Attacks without having any costs of Ki."
Yep...we've seen a lot of the math on that. It sucks. If you have different numbers somewhere let's see them. Don't bury them in a dissertation...a sentence or two will do.
" Ki Expenditure is a Choice. Not a requirement. And many other Subclasses actually run out of Steam by round 2 of a fight at level 2 and 3 as well."
Not unless my character is a shooter and runs out of arrows, he doesn't. I'm not including expendables in my calculations as you imply. I'm talking about attacks made with weapons that, except for ammunition, won't run out. If the character has Action Surge that's great...but I'm not going to build an entire character around the alpha strike no matter what the Youtube creators say.
"Caster's only last slightly longer because they are FORCED to spread out their resource expenditures. So they make it to round 4 or so."
Um...most casters that I know have Cantrips. Those never run out. And those typically SCALE with higher levels! Hell, the baseline for damage that many people use (for some reason) is a Warlock with Eldrich Blast. Sure, the Wizard may only get ONE fireball but then again if you're relying on an expendable resource you're doing something wrong IMHO.
"Even When you Do things Like Mention the Rogue and what it has you say you didn't talk about any of their abilities but this is an outright lie. Because you used their Biggest Ability of the class in their Damage Calculation. That of Sneak Attack. Without this ability, the Rogue's damage is downright pathetic."
Yep...almost as if they designed the class around this ability, isn't it? How tough is it to get a sneak attack? Hey...how about if the Monk uses his superior movement and engages the target in melee? Or the Barbarian? Or the Paladin? Or the Melee Fighter? Or the melee Rang...um...or the other Rogue? By the way, since we've taken the debate to level 3: Swashbuckler gets Rakish Audacity...no allies needed for Sneak Attack. The Soulknife has a built-in second Attack (in case you miss with the first one), Masterminds can use Help as a Bonus Action, Inquisitives get Insightful Fighting which grants Sneak Attack as long as they make an Insight check (which by level 3 they can have Expertise in), Assassins have Advantage and thus SA as long as they go first (I like the V. Human/Alert Feat combo for this), and the Arcane Trickster has Cantrips that scale with level and don't even need Advantage. So...have we put the whole 'Rogues can't rely on Sneak Attack' topic to bed?
"The Fighter to make those Two Attacks with a Crossbow? They've had to give up better stats on their 1 additional ASI up to the point of level 8. Meaning their Stat's aren't better. Because they have been forced to buy Crossbow Master to get rid of the Loading Property to be able to make those Two Attacks. And Action Surge is less sustainable than even flurry of blows for as bad as your making it sound. It's only 2 extra attacks. Has No innate Ability to inflict conditions, Or to impose Disadvantage, or escape an enemy without AO's whether for a resource cost or not or even the Ability to guarantee half damage and potentially avoid damage altogether on any dex save. All for what is maybe 3 AC at most but is just as easily no AC difference with most builds that people use. A moderate amount of more hp, and a bit more damage. But again. That doesn't look so well for your comparison when saying how every other class is better is it?"
A Fighter/shooter can take a Dex of 16 and...any other stat they want because their attacks aren't reliant on TWO stats. So Dex and Con of 16? Sure...lots of HP down the road. Dex and Wis? Good Perception is important for a shooter. Dex and Str? Okay...I'll play Conan and like it I guess. As for the crossbow...you're right...I should have said Longbow. Or we can go back to V Human and Crossbow Expert out of the gate. The Fighter will STILL have a better chance to hit (Archery Fighting Style), more HP (yes, it's only 1-2 more but I said more...not Barbarian-level more), as good of an AC (16 wasn't it?). And that's not including Action Surge, Second wind, or any other features. That's bog-standard fighter. By the way...if you DON'T consider a difference of 3 AC to be important then we're playing different games.
(This is one of those paragraph things I mentioned earlier)
How about we take a Champion? Now I crit twice as often as you do. Yes, the Battle-Master is pretty resource-reliant However, you get them back on a Short Rest (just like the Monk), you get more of them out of the gate (4D8 when the Monk has 3 Ki points), and when the Monk is getting D8s on his Martial Arts damage WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE HIS 'THING', the Fighter will have D10s. The Psi Warrior's dice scale with PB (so SIX D8 at level 5!), the Rune Knight is powerful in SO many ways and even the Humble Samurai can get Advantage three times per Long Rest AND Temp HP to boot.
"It's easy to take a level 3 monk and pretend that it doesn't gain survivability of it's own by say level 8. And then try to claim that it's Defenses are Bad. When the Defenses are amazingly on Par. At Best that Rogue has gotten +1 armor by level 8. Meaning an ac of 18. Interestingly enough exactly what the monk has. Naked. They both have evasion, They both have ways of disengaging, etc. There is a REason these two classes compare well at low to medium levels. They are doing mostly the same things at low to medium levels. They have a similar kind of job for the party with a similar kind of output."
I beg to differ. Again...let's talk numbers. Your Monk at level 8 does 1D8 with a weapon and 1D6 with their Martial Arts attack. Typically 2 attacks a turn plus the Bonus Action melee attack. (Note that we're NOT going to talk about how the Rogue can do the same damage at range as they do in melee because they don't have to rely on the melee-centric Bonus Action attack). Your Monk has a standing AC of 18 Max without a shield and they're doing 1D8+4 +1D8+4 +1D6+4 = 24 on average. (Interestingly enough, just about as much as a melee Fighter with Duelist, a Longsword and Str of 20, who does 23, but I digress).
The Rogue is going to have about the same HP (14 Con/D8 Hit Die), better stats (the Rogue can put both ASIs into Dex instead of splitting them between Dex and Wis), and attack once for 1D8+5 +4D6 = 23. One point shy of the Monk. The Monk will likely have a higher AC by a point (18 vs the 20-Dex Rogue with Studded Leather). However, that one attack that the Rogue makes is at Advantage. Mathematically speaking that's about +5 to hit or +25%. The Monk will be fighting with +4 (from Dex) + 3 (PB) for +7 versus the Rogue's +13. Against a target with 17 AC the Monk will miss roughly half the time whereas the Rogue will hit MUCH more often.
None of this takes into account any of the subclass abilities or expendable resources for either case. Even if the Monk favors their Dex and slights their Wis with their ASIs (which has no effect on their AC), their to-hit only goes up by 1 and the damage by 2. And 20 Dex at lvl 8 means 16 Wis which means the Save for Stunning Strike is back to about 50%. The Rogue is still ahead of the curve on putting hits on-target with the same HP, the same or similar AC, the same or similar damage per turn, as well as more ASIs down the road to fill the gaps.
As I said at the beginning of my post, if you've found a Monk build and a DM and a game that you like...that's great. I'm happy for you. One of the joys of this game is building the character you want as long as the DM is okay with it. Personally, I simply think that the Monk class and several of its subclasses are struggling to figure out what they're supposed to be doing. In the meantime, they're not doing anything much better than any other class/subclass combo.
Don't feel bad...I actually think that a Barb/Rogue makes a better Ranger than a Ranger but that's a debate for another day.
"I offer that because Monks are so stat dependent and ASI starved, they are absolutely more gear dependent. I would also say that I could make a Barbarian as a better monk than the monk class stands now because of their built-in dependency on stats and not enough stat increases."
I have very little doubt that I could make a Fighter as a better Monk than the Monk class and that's the big part of the problem for me. It's not hard to build a character that does a not of what a Monk does BETTER than a Monk. The Monk class simply doesn't know what it wants to be so it winds up not being good at anything.
No, you literally couldn't. People have run the numbers and a Fighter built like a Monk (assuming you're talking about using the unarmed fighting style) NEVER outdoes a monk's damage. They also just don't have the same capabilities. Action Surge is too infrequent and it takes many levels before most Fighters can reach the same number of attacks as a monk. You're just that biased against monks if you think you can outdo the entire class in any way more than damage numbers. How will you get all the saves monks have? Evasion? Stillness of Mind? Their attacks? Their movement speed? EMPTY BODY? The monk class has many things it can be good and fun at. You're just upset that it doesn't specialize in the same way other martials do. Which makes no sense, if you don't like how the monk works, just play the other classes. It is not a detriment to the monk that it is built differently, and to say that it is not good at anything is just hyperbole of the worst degree.
Wow, 116. Almost an entire third of her ki, her defining class resource she needs for all her abilities, winds up devoted to Stunning Strike.
(33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances)
The fact they obviously value it so high and the fact that you can burn ki so easily trying is disheartening.
As someone who watched all of Campaign 2. This is just misinformation you are spreading. What you and others that try to use this as "evidence" ignore is that Beau spent most of the campaign with a 14 DC for her Ki. She was not built to maximize the use of stunning strike for the vast majority of the campaign. You also ignore incidents like with Obann in the Iron & the Coast arc where her stunning strike is the reason the BBEG didn't escape. You also probably haven't seen the Vox Machina vs Mighty Nein oneshot, where her stuns entirely disabled the other side along with her other monk abilities.
Also, this is a tally that represents a TWO YEAR CAMPAIGN. Of course she spent Ki on stuns so often. But that doesn't mean that she was just burning Ki for nothing. The Mighty Nein also took frequent short rests, as a party with a Monk should, and she never had to suffer over the loss of spent Ki. She wasn't stingy with her Ki, and that didn't hurt her because she understood the strengths of the monk class.
I'd like to see a breakdown of the magic items the team had. I don't hand out magic items like candy but if the rest of the team had their fair share, you can't blame Beau for having them as well.
Wow, 116. Almost an entire third of her ki, her defining class resource she needs for all her abilities, winds up devoted to Stunning Strike.
(33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances)
The fact they obviously value it so high and the fact that you can burn ki so easily trying is disheartening.
As someone who watched all of Campaign 2. This is just misinformation you are spreading. What you and others that try to use this as "evidence" ignore is that Beau spent most of the campaign with a 14 DC for her Ki. She was not built to maximize the use of stunning strike for the vast majority of the campaign. You also ignore incidents like with Obann in the Iron & the Coast arc where her stunning strike is the reason the BBEG didn't escape. You also probably haven't seen the Vox Machina vs Mighty Nein oneshot, where her stuns entirely disabled the other side along with her other monk abilities.
Also, this is a tally that represents a TWO YEAR CAMPAIGN. Of course she spent Ki on stuns so often. But that doesn't mean that she was just burning Ki for nothing. The Mighty Nein also took frequent short rests, as a party with a Monk should, and she never had to suffer over the loss of spent Ki. She wasn't stingy with her Ki, and that didn't hurt her because she understood the strengths of the monk class.
She had a 16 to start just like any other monk and had rolled exceptional stats. So normal....
She also got the benefit of two items that increased her stats (tattoo and headband of intellect)
She chose to wait to increase her WIS to 18 at level twelve.
That is four levels later than most but it also shows how desperately the monk needs to focus on maxing DEX and WIS as soon as possible
The fact she took a feat instead of increasing WIS cost her a lot then is what you are saying.
Even with all the breaks (good starting rolls, magic items, huge party) she struggled to make stunning work.
The only reason Matt says "Monks Man" is because he literally have her everything she needed to boost the weaknesses of monk... And even then she only was decent because Ashley didn't have any idea how to play barbarian.
I'd like to see a breakdown of the magic items the team had. I don't hand out magic items like candy but if the rest of the team had their fair share, you can't blame Beau for having them as well.
He did give out a lot but she not only had that but exceptional stats and a subclass designed to work well with the campaign and an item that boosted that ability score to near perfect.
Like that part didn't bother me it's just when people use her as an example for why monks are good it's a bit disingenuous
I'd like to see a breakdown of the magic items the team had. I don't hand out magic items like candy but if the rest of the team had their fair share, you can't blame Beau for having them as well.
He did give out a lot but she not only had that but exceptional stats and a subclass designed to work well with the campaign and an item that boosted that ability score to near perfect.
Like that part didn't bother me it's just when people use her as an example for why monks are good it's a bit disingenuous
Yeah, as you can see from some of my posts, if someone holds up something as the gold standard, it should be achievable. IIRC Grogg had a Str of 26 or so thanks to his various relationships to animated weapons.
I'd like to see a breakdown of the magic items the team had. I don't hand out magic items like candy but if the rest of the team had their fair share, you can't blame Beau for having them as well.
He did give out a lot but she not only had that but exceptional stats and a subclass designed to work well with the campaign and an item that boosted that ability score to near perfect.
Like that part didn't bother me it's just when people use her as an example for why monks are good it's a bit disingenuous
Yeah, as you can see from some of my posts, if someone holds up something as the gold standard, it should be achievable. IIRC Grogg had a Str of 26 or so thanks to his various relationships to animated weapons.
Fair.
Matt has a tendacy to fix balance issues with items then has to play rocket tag to catch up.
Wow, 116. Almost an entire third of her ki, her defining class resource she needs for all her abilities, winds up devoted to Stunning Strike.
(33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances)
The fact they obviously value it so high and the fact that you can burn ki so easily trying is disheartening.
As someone who watched all of Campaign 2. This is just misinformation you are spreading. What you and others that try to use this as "evidence" ignore is that Beau spent most of the campaign with a 14 DC for her Ki. She was not built to maximize the use of stunning strike for the vast majority of the campaign. You also ignore incidents like with Obann in the Iron & the Coast arc where her stunning strike is the reason the BBEG didn't escape. You also probably haven't seen the Vox Machina vs Mighty Nein oneshot, where her stuns entirely disabled the other side along with her other monk abilities.
Also, this is a tally that represents a TWO YEAR CAMPAIGN. Of course she spent Ki on stuns so often. But that doesn't mean that she was just burning Ki for nothing. The Mighty Nein also took frequent short rests, as a party with a Monk should, and she never had to suffer over the loss of spent Ki. She wasn't stingy with her Ki, and that didn't hurt her because she understood the strengths of the monk class.
She had a 16 to start just like any other monk and had rolled exceptional stats. So normal....
She also got the benefit of two items that increased her stats (tattoo and headband of intellect)
She chose to wait to increase her WIS to 18 at level twelve.
That is four levels later than most but it also shows how desperately the monk needs to focus on maxing DEX and WIS as soon as possible
The fact she took a feat instead of increasing WIS cost her a lot then is what you are saying.
Even with all the breaks (good starting rolls, magic items, huge party) she struggled to make stunning work.
The only reason Matt says "Monks Man" is because he literally have her everything she needed to boost the weaknesses of monk... And even then she only was decent because Ashley didn't have any idea how to play barbarian.
The headband of Intellect Doesn't help with Stunning Strike. And the Tattoo I don't remember which one she had. Being sick my brian is just fried 10x usual.
But there is every possibility it didn't help stunning Strike either if it was just standard from the books. it might have helped her physical attacking but would not help her stunning strike either. So Even if she's got a 16 Wis but doesn't increase it again until level 12. She's starting out Decent but she is basically falling behind by the time she increased it again. The DC for Stunning Strike is like the DC on Spells from Spell Casters. Once they fall behind they are much harder to catch back up.
As for Cobalt Soul. Except for a couple of abilities that do have DC's but actually compensate by actually having a rare save attached (Charisma) The Whole Subclass is far more suited to a dex Build with the Exception of a few abilities like Stunning Strike.
So Beau could get away with tanking her Wisdom until much longer for things other than stunning strike. yes her Stunning STrike saved the day a few times. But she Also tanked her ability to actually land them so those stunning strikes that saved the day were as much luck as anything.
On Top of that Ki points Spent is not the same thing as the Ki Points she had available.
But when you Put them all together. She just highlights how the Way people Build Monks And the Tactics they most often try to use with them do not mesh. She spent almost 1/3 of her overall expended ki over 2 years trying and mostly failing at Stunning Strike because of her Neglected DC. And that's not even taking into account how many times she might have targetted opponents that lowered her chances of success with it to some degree by having Con Save Proficiency, High Con, Or Both.
This all comes together to show how people don't really play Monk to what they can fully Be. And those making Guides do not help because she's an example to some extent of following the Prescribed Tactics but not realizing she's actually hindered herself in using those tactics. She was always far more successful at using her Cobalt Soul Abilities than she was with Stunning Strike. But those Abilities were also neglected in her playstyle at times. Though she did make effort to use them.
In all honesty, I did not read most of the post that you cited. As a writer, I disagree with large walls of text when trying to explain something. The paragraph was created to signal the end of a thought and the beginning of the next thought. We're talking about a game. If it takes you 400 words to have a thought you might want to consider editing it down before you post. That being said:
"Such as the Damage Sucking for the Monk at level 2. The Monk actually has some of the highest damage of any class of martial character at the first couple of levels. And it has the highest Sustainable damage in level's 1-3. They aren't already having problems at this point."
I cited actual numbers in my post. This is an opinion. If you have some data, please share. Briefly...if you please.
"Your Also Mischaracterizing the health issue. Your making it sound like only the monk is suffering from danger of going down quickly and this is also not true. Everybody with Exception of perhaps the Barbarian is going to go down quickly."
So the Paladin (with AC 18 and D10 hit die), the Fighter (with a possible AC of 18 and D10 hit die), the Ranger (okay...you got me on the Ranger, PLUS a D10 hit die), and the Barb (AC of about 16 and the biggest Hit Die in the game) are ALL going to fold up as fast as the guy with a D8 hit die, a starting Con Bonus of +3 tops and a max STARTING ac of 16? I'm sorry, Dave, but this does not compute. Again, show me some numbers.
Ok. I'm cutting down a bunch of this. But I find it interesting how you complain about walls of text. But all your post is, is a wall of text. probably hoping that people won't skim and see all the problems.
I'm just going to use this part as an example.
You claim the Paladin having a d10 hit die and 18 AC. Sure. It has an 18 AC. If it's using A shield. But we both know most Paladin builds don't use that Shield. So it's actually only AC 16. Same often goes for that Fighter. Even some of the "tanking builds" prefer the idea of tanking by offensive force and so emphasize two handed weapons to use things like PAM and GWM. Which means they have no shield. So again 16 AC. And a d10hp. But neither have the ability to inflict disadvantage on the opponent even once let alone more than once. So they have The Same AC, Only Slightly more HP, And very limited truely defensive abilities other than that. Relying entirely on the hopes that their armor is enough. But they are tanking and surviving so much better. Sure... If your playing everything as dumb as bricks and face tanking everything.
But then your not going to admit that if the monk is the Target the likeyhood of the Enemy hitting him through Disadvantage at low level is fairly small at an AC 16. Which effectively creates that hp difference by turning hits into misses. The ONLY thing that the Monk Doesn't compare to is a properly built Tank Barbarian. And then when you get into objective reality. The Paladin and the Fighter don't actually compare to a Tank Barbarian either. They barely compare to a barbarian that hasn't put everything into defensive tanking.
Even by Level 8. That Paladin and that Fighter. most often with those Two handed Weapons rather than sword and boarding are looking at 18 to 19 AC. And what do we have by level 8 on a Monk? That's an 18 AC (Yes. 18, Not the 16 you tried to misdirect to, but you actually know this), And defensive abilities like Evasion which extend their effective hp by halving or negating all of those dex based attacks. which have become increasingly a thing by level 8, Since magic is increasingly used and Dex just happens to be one of the most common saves on Spells for dealing damage. Something that the Fighter and the Paladin often don't have a good answer for because Dex has been neglected on their builds, They often aren't using Shields so they've never taken shield master, And the Paladin has likely neglected their Charisma up until that point so the bonuses to their saves is still quite low not making up for the lack of Dexterity. which suddenly enhances the Survivability of the Monk by quite a bit compared to those outright tanks.
and No. in your post. You didn't actually supplied numbers. You supplied a few examples of dice rolls but not what the outcomes are really like on that dice rolls. You tried to dazzle and misdirect through making it seem like it's a lot when the reality is that on Average they weren't nearly what you stated.
Everything else again was heavily riddled with your biases and not Objective in the Least. You wrote yourself a post without looking at the Rest of the Thread or taking it all in which was just meant to be confirmation bias for anybody that wanted it to be confirmation bias and that's it.
Wow, 116. Almost an entire third of her ki, her defining class resource she needs for all her abilities, winds up devoted to Stunning Strike.
(33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances)
The fact they obviously value it so high and the fact that you can burn ki so easily trying is disheartening.
As someone who watched all of Campaign 2. This is just misinformation you are spreading. What you and others that try to use this as "evidence" ignore is that Beau spent most of the campaign with a 14 DC for her Ki. She was not built to maximize the use of stunning strike for the vast majority of the campaign. You also ignore incidents like with Obann in the Iron & the Coast arc where her stunning strike is the reason the BBEG didn't escape. You also probably haven't seen the Vox Machina vs Mighty Nein oneshot, where her stuns entirely disabled the other side along with her other monk abilities.
Also, this is a tally that represents a TWO YEAR CAMPAIGN. Of course she spent Ki on stuns so often. But that doesn't mean that she was just burning Ki for nothing. The Mighty Nein also took frequent short rests, as a party with a Monk should, and she never had to suffer over the loss of spent Ki. She wasn't stingy with her Ki, and that didn't hurt her because she understood the strengths of the monk class.
She had a 16 to start just like any other monk and had rolled exceptional stats. So normal....
She also got the benefit of two items that increased her stats (tattoo and headband of intellect)
She chose to wait to increase her WIS to 18 at level twelve.
That is four levels later than most but it also shows how desperately the monk needs to focus on maxing DEX and WIS as soon as possible
The fact she took a feat instead of increasing WIS cost her a lot then is what you are saying.
Even with all the breaks (good starting rolls, magic items, huge party) she struggled to make stunning work.
The only reason Matt says "Monks Man" is because he literally have her everything she needed to boost the weaknesses of monk... And even then she only was decent because Ashley didn't have any idea how to play barbarian.
The headband of Intellect Doesn't help with Stunning Strike. And the Tattoo I don't remember which one she had. Being sick my brian is just fried 10x usual.
But there is every possibility it didn't help stunning Strike either if it was just standard from the books. it might have helped her physical attacking but would not help her stunning strike either. So Even if she's got a 16 Wis but doesn't increase it again until level 12. She's starting out Decent but she is basically falling behind by the time she increased it again. The DC for Stunning Strike is like the DC on Spells from Spell Casters. Once they fall behind they are much harder to catch back up.
As for Cobalt Soul. Except for a couple of abilities that do have DC's but actually compensate by actually having a rare save attached (Charisma) The Whole Subclass is far more suited to a dex Build with the Exception of a few abilities like Stunning Strike.
So Beau could get away with tanking her Wisdom until much longer for things other than stunning strike. yes her Stunning STrike saved the day a few times. But she Also tanked her ability to actually land them so those stunning strikes that saved the day were as much luck as anything.
On Top of that Ki points Spent is not the same thing as the Ki Points she had available.
But when you Put them all together. She just highlights how the Way people Build Monks And the Tactics they most often try to use with them do not mesh. She spent almost 1/3 of her overall expended ki over 2 years trying and mostly failing at Stunning Strike because of her Neglected DC. And that's not even taking into account how many times she might have targetted opponents that lowered her chances of success with it to some degree by having Con Save Proficiency, High Con, Or Both.
This all comes together to show how people don't really play Monk to what they can fully Be. And those making Guides do not help because she's an example to some extent of following the Prescribed Tactics but not realizing she's actually hindered herself in using those tactics. She was always far more successful at using her Cobalt Soul Abilities than she was with Stunning Strike. But those Abilities were also neglected in her playstyle at times. Though she did make effort to use them.
She rolled like the equivalent of a 49 point buy and only got better through items... Her DEX was an 18 at level 2.
She is one of the worst examples to use for monk because of this alone but also her subclass used INT and very little ki based abilities save those magic items... She got 19 INT for basically free.
She got electro gloves that gave her a 15ft reach and a +1 to unarmed attacks very early on.
Overall she is a terrible example of what an average monk user should expect from the game and she STILL underperformed.
33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances (for Beau in Season 2 of Crit Role). I will note, I haven't watched Season 2 yet, so I don't know the abilities of all of the party members.
This makes it sound like those 3 successes that were negated by legendary resistances were wasted uses of ki. But, I'd rather have the BBEG burning through their legendary resistances to negate a stunning strike, rather than using it to negate a higher level spell casted by a spell caster. That is a good use of ki.
I've played several monks, both low level and higher level. In the parties I've been in, my character always had one of the higher ACs. The low level ones usually had a16 AC at first level. The 18th level monk I'm currently playing has an AC of 23 (bracers of defense and +1 ring of protection).
As far as their movement, you have to play the monk differently than a fighter. I had one campaign where we surprised a camp of kobolds. Most of them were surprised and we were able to take them down quickly. Three of the kobolds weren't surprised and took off running as soon as we attacked the camp. At the time, my monk was 2nd level. I used a ki point for step of the wind and caught up with them fairly quickly. I got lucky on a couple rolls and managed to kill off all three. We ultimately learned that they were an advanced scout camp. If I hadn't caught those 3, they would have warned the main camp we were coming, and we would not have been able to sneak into the camp and steal the map we were sent after.
In another campaign, I was in, our party (12th level tabaxi monk, 12th level barbarian, multiclass bard/rogue, druid, and a multiclass sorcerer/wizard. The rogue and my monk were sneaking up on an enemy encampment. My monk walked up a vertical cliff, while the rogue stayed down below. The rogue walked into an ambush, which I was about 50 feet from him. I was able to get to him within one round and help him get out of the ambush (using 2 ki points, one for flurry of blows and one for stunning strike). We headed back and met the barbarian, who was charging forward once he heard the sounds of combat. After meeting up with the barbarian, we ended up in another fight involving the three of us. At the same time another group of enemies had snuck up behind the druid and the sorcerer/wizard. They were about 100 feet away from us. I used feline agility, rather than step of the wind and got to the spellcasters in 1 round. I would have used step of the wind it I wasn't a tabaxi. I was able to stun the barbarian that was attacking the wizard, which allowed the wizard to move out of melee range. With the druid and myself providing some cover, the wizard was able to use his spells to help rout the group attacking us from the rear.. I ended up using all but a couple of my ki points in that battle. But, we were able to take a short rest after the battle.
A monk's strength really is their versatility. Even without using step of the wind, they are capable of moving all over the battlefield. They can provide assistance to front line fighters, they can get behind the enemy lines and take out enemy spellcasters. They can chase down enemies that are trying to flee the battlefield, and they can drop back and protect the spellcasters who have had combatants get within range. They also can run up cliff faces/building walls to take out snipers positioned in those areas. They probably would not be as effective in a traditional dungeon crawl, but, how many campaigns rely upon those these days?
"I've played several monks, both low level and higher level. In the parties I've been in, my character always had one of the higher ACs. The low-level ones usually had a16 AC at first level. The 18th level monk I'm currently playing has an AC of 23 (bracers of defense and +1 ring of protection)."
I'm willing to bet that your base AC was about 20 which is not uncommon for high-level play. If you need magic items to fill a gap, then I consider that an issue.
"A monk's strength really is their versatility. Even without using step of the wind, they are capable of moving all over the battlefield. They can provide assistance to front-line fighters, they can get behind the enemy lines and take out enemy spellcasters. They can chase down enemies that are trying to flee the battlefield, and they can drop back and protect the spellcasters who have had combatants get within range. They also can run up cliff faces/building walls to take out snipers positioned in those areas. They probably would not be as effective in a traditional dungeon crawl, but, how many campaigns rely upon those these days?"
So if I make up a ranged Tabaxi with the Mobile Feat I'm good then, right? THIS is what many decriers of the Monk class are talking about; It's the old 'anything you can do, I can do better' thing from the Mupper Show. Other than Stunning strike (which has been demonstrated to be good but not 'hinge a whole class on it' good), the class doesn't do ANYTHING better than another build with a Feat or two. The base Ranger class has the same issue which is why many of the subclasses are now really good... they're trying to cover the gaps.
When you hear a class in D&D it should evoke some sort of reaction. When I hear Fighter I think 'versatile foundation' because you can build a Fighter to be almost anything. The word Paladin makes me think of the 'front-liner with party buffs' because that's how the class is designed and it does that job pretty well. You CAN make a Paladin that sneaks or a Fighter that is a primary caster but WHY would you? If you want to make some weird corner build just as a thought exercise that's fine but the core of a class should be designed around it being good at SOMETHING.
The Monk class, as it stands, isn't good enough at any one thing to evoke that reaction. When I hear the word Monk I'm thinking (before we get into weird elemental or psychic powers) of a disciplined warrior who dedicates their life to the pursuit of self-control and martial skill. The Kensei subclass feels the most like that to me and it STILL relies on the precious Ki points to really spread its wings.
I don't think any core class other than primary casters should be built around an expendable resource that powers virtually everything they do. Hell, even Barbarians, with their limited number of Rages a day, can fight without them passably well, and in most cases one Rage carries through an entire fight.
I'm willing to bet that your base AC was about 20 which is not uncommon for high-level play. If you need magic items to fill a gap, then I consider that an issue.
Does that go for other classes as well? Because fighters need magic items to feel a gap.
the class doesn't do ANYTHING better than another build with a Feat or two
are you comparing it to another class with the same number of feats / ASIs?
it STILL relies on the precious Ki points to really spread its wings
Just as the wizard depends on spell slots
I don't think any core class other than primary casters should be built around an expendable resource
Why should only primary casters be excepted?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Fair.
I'm not going to try and quote all of the things I've seen here that are good, bad, or just plain wrong.
I'm also not going to try and sway anyone who has already fallen in love with the class and has made it work for them. All I can say is good for them.
This is for everyone else. Those who think the Monk is 'okay...but their [fill in the blank] is pretty weak' or who are considering playing one for the first time.
Not that I'm going to use Point Buy because if you get three rolls of 16+ for stats and can't make a decent character then I'm sorry but I can't help you.
The Monk'd AC is derived from a similar formula to the Barbarian's except instead of using Con and Dex the Monk uses Wisdom and Dex. The barb gets the better side of the deal because his Con also helps with his HP. Yes, the Monk's Wisdom helps with his Stunning Strike but seriously, that's a one-trick pony that doesn't work for a variety of reasons.
The defining features of the Monk core class are Unarmored Defense (which we just discussed), Martial Arts (an additional 1D4 + Dex or Str modifier per turn), and their Ki abilities. At level 1 the Monk is actually pretty good because unlike other classes the Monk suffers no penalty for their Bonus Action attack. So with 16 Dex you're getting 1D8 +3 with a Staff and 1D4+3 with the Unarmed Strike. Unless you're a Fighter and take TWF you're not going to get that. Cool...what about after level 1?
A stock Point Buy-statted Monk will have an AC of 16 max, 18 if they carry a shield, at level 2. Note that if you're using a shield you're giving up the Unarmed Attack. So now your AC is pretty good (many Rogues and Rangers have 17 at level 2) but your damage is beginning to suffer.
"But Darkaiser, the Monk gains 10' of movement at level 2!" That's nice, but I've never seen a character Move an enemy to death. Movement of 40' means that you can choose better positioning on the battlefield to be ineffective.
At level 2 you get 2 Ki points. I've seen 5e combats that were over quickly but I've NEVER seen one at level 2 that was over in 2 rounds. Most of your special abilities feed on the Ki pool and anyone that says that you'll have plenty of these before level 10 may be playing a different game than you are.
Patient Defense makes you really hard to hit...at the expense of that added damage we talked about earlier.
Step of the Wind is a purely mechanical movement aid that can either get you into a fight or out of one. But wait...I thought I heard someone raving about how MOBILE the Monk is. If their added mobility is SO good, why do they then need to spend a Ki point on it?
Flurry of blows brings us back to that added damage that the Monk can do...at the cost of their ONE resource that they seldom seem to have enough of.
So either you're using a staff and an empty hand in which case your HP are marginal and your AC sucks, or you're using a staff and a shield in which case your HP are marginal, your AC is pretty good but now your damage sucks. Seriously...we're at level TWO and already the character is having issues.
Level three and you get to pick a subclass...go tell it on the mountain! IMHO unless you're taking a Kensei Monk you're shooting yourself in the foot. The Kensei subclass lets you designate two weapons (one ranged, one melee) to be counted as Kensei weapons. These weapons cannot have the Special or Heavy properties (the Longbow is an exception) but to be honest that's not all that limiting. A Longbow and a Rapier work just fine for most other classes so the weapon selection is fine.
When you make an unarmed strike (so we're talking melee here) and you're hilding a Kensei weapon you gain a free +2 AC. This is great since it's encouraging you to hit things which is what you wanted to do anyway! The point-buy build we mentioned earlier would have an AC of 18 in melee doing this and that's pretty good, especially because we're still doing okay damage, have pretty good HP and the extra movement. Note that this doesn't help your AC at range so if you're trying to build a Monk shooter your AC is going to be a bit behind the curve. As for your shooting damage, you get an additional D4 with your Kensei weapon if you spend your Bonus Action as well as your action on the shot. Here's where the problems start.
Up until now, we haven't had to spend ANY Ki points on anything we get from our subclass. Note that this is NOT true of the other Monk Subclasses.
The Way of Mercy requires 1 Ki point for their Hands of Healing/Hands of Harm feature.
Way of Shadow charges you 2 Ki points to simulate any of a number of spells. Make it a good one because you only get ONE of these at this level.
The Astral Self charges you 1 Ki point to activate the Arms (although I don't mind this because the Astral Arms gives you a LOT of stuff so it's worth 1 Ki point IMHO)
The Way of the Drunken Master lvl 3 ability also costs 1 Ki point in that it allows you to Disengage after using Flurry of Blows. You can do that for 3 rounds tops and then you're out of steam.
I'm not going to talk about the Way of the Four Elements subclass much because frankly, it sucks. You're using Ki points to use any of your abilities that mimic spells similar to how the Way of the Shadow does. Believers of this subclass can say what they want but spending 3 Ki points to simulate a Burning Hands spell stinks.
The Way of the Long Death also does not charge Ki points for its lvl 3 feature in that if you reduce a foe within 5' of you to 0 HP you get Temp HP equal to your Wisdom mod + your Monk level which is about 6 points at this level. Not bad considering it's for free.
The Way of the Open Hand 3rd level feature tacks on additional effects if you strike a target with your Flurry of blows. The target must either make a Dex Save or fall prone (the Save would be about 13 or less at this level), Make a Str Save or be shoved 15' (same Save numbers), or they cannot take a Reaction until the end of your next turn (the only result that's automatic). So you have to spend the Ki, hit with the Flurry of blows (if you hit with your other attack it doesn't count), and THEN the target has to fail a roughly 50/50 save. Not good.
The Way of the Sun Soul has one of the worst options for the 3rd level feature. You gain a new option for your Attack action; a ranged attack that does 1D4 + Dex mod Radiant damage with a range of 30'. For 1 Ki point, you may choose to make this attack twice as a Bonus Action.
In other words, at the point in your career when you have a whopping THREE Ki points available, most of the subclasses are going to charge you 1-2 of them to make a single attack or use a spell-like ability. Forget about all of the OTHER things that are powered by your Ki because by round 2 of the fight you won't have enough Ki to open a door.
At level 4 you get your first ASI which you can use for your Dex or your Wisdom (if you're smart) or any of the other things you do with ASIs. Notice that I don't suggest taking a Feat at level 4 because you don't get another one until level 8. If you're still running the character then my hat is off to you.
At level 5 you get an additional Attack which is good because you're already falling behind the damage curve. Your AC is likely about average, as are your HP, and you've discovered that designing a class with EVERYTHING drawing from the same pool of points might not be a good idea. Note that at lvl 5 your Martial Arts die, the one you use for Unarmed Strikes, is now a D6.
At level 6 your Unarmed strikes (or Kensei weapon strikes if you went that way) count as magical for the purposes of circumventing creatures who are Resistant or Immune to non-magical attacks. This isn't anything special since by now casting classes can use spells for this and even the martial classes who don't have a magic weapon by now likely have an ally who can make one of their weapons magical. This is a nod from the developers who must have realized at some point that they'd messed up and now they're trying to fix it. Oh, by the way, your Unarmored Movement Bonus is now +15' instead of +10'.
At level 7 you get Evasion which is a nice ability IMHO. Any time you make a Dex Save to take half damage from a spell effect, you take no damage instead. Rogues get this same ability at the same level and it's very handy.
At level 8 you get your second ASI and with a Point Buy build your Dex or your Wisdom should now be maxed. Your AC will be 18 without a shield and 20 with one which is definitely appreciated. For me, this is a critical point in a character's career. I don't like optimizing builds that need 14 levels to come online and actually start being what you were aiming for when you started. By level 8 I want my character to be up and running. If they're missing a Feat or one last ASI I can live with that, but I want most of the abilities that make that character into the vision I had when I started. I really don't think the Monks have it.
Your AC is as good as a martial character with either the Defense Fighting Style, a Dex of 14 and a chain shirt and shield but with no more HP than a non-martial character. You have 2 attacks a turn base, just like the martial classes, plus a bonus action attack that does a D6 base. You FINALLY have enough Ki points to use Flurry of Blows every round through a typical fight of 4-5 turns with some left over for fancy maneuvers. You don't have the AC or the HP to tank, you don't do enough damage to be considered a heavy-hitter and although you're fast you don't have many ways to capitalize on your speed unless your DM allows Flanking. Even the Kensei Monk, the one that I consider to be the best bang for the buck, doesn't get their best feature until 11h level.
Many people who break down classes and subclasses on youtube or in the Forums have a Baseline of damage that they use that's essentially a Warlock with Agonizing Blast doing their Eldritch Blast every turn. This means two blasts of 1D10 + their Cha modifier each or (usually) 2 x 1D10+5 damage a turn. I'm not sure how or why this became the baseline because the number of Fighters in play far outnumber the Warlocks but whatever. It's relatively easy to compare apples to apples at this point. (Note that for this comparison I'm assuming no magic items, no spells other than those the character can cast themselves, no Feats, and at least one attack stat of 20 for the purpose of to-hit and damage):
A Monk using no shield and a Dex of 20 can make 2 attacks at +8 to hit for 1D8+5 damage plus a bonus action attack for 1D6+5. Their AC (with 16 Wis) is 18. If they spend 1 Ki point per turn and assuming a battle of 4 turns they can do an additional D6+5 with Flurry of blows.
A Rogue with Studded Leather will have 1 attack, likely for 1D8, plus 4D6 from Sneak Attack, plus 5 for the Dex bonus. Thair AC will be 17. It's much more 'hit or miss' but the damage is comparable, HP will be the same, and the AC is only one less. Note that I didn't say anything about ANY of the special abilities the Rogues have.
A Fighter can use a heavy crossbow for 2 attacks of 1D10+5. Once per short rest, they'll get Action Surge but we can't average for that. Note, however, that the Fighter can have as good or better AC (plate armor and Defense fighting style), a bonus to hit at range (from Archery fighting style), a damage bonus (from duelist or great weapon fighting). They also get a free self-heal from Second Wind. Note also that the Fighter gets an extra ASI so their stats will be better.
You can see where this is going. Compared to several other classes at level 8, the BEST monk subclasses barely hold their own. If the fight goes longer then they start to run out of Ki points. If they're getting hit a lot and need to pick up their shield for more AC then they're losing damage output. Stunning Strike requires a Con Save that many targets will be making about half of the time so that's half of the Ki points spent on that ability wasted. Sure, they can move fast and falling from heights isn't much of an issue but other than that they don't do anything better than any other class. There's nothing that makes them feel SPECIAL or unique at all.
I'm sure that there will be many rebuttals to these arguments but as I said at the beginning if you've already made up your mind and you've run one that works for you...great. Good for you. For everyone else, seriously look into builds and advice from people singing the praises of this class. It's not as horrid as some people claim but it's also nowhere near as good as its supporters advertise either.
Except They don't. Because the Point to actually hit reliably enough is a lot lower than most people think it is. Specially in the first couple of tiers of play where Most people want to play and where the biggest Issue is. Bounded Accuracy is actually a bigger problem for Stunning Strike Landing than Landing your punches because it usually starts closest to the power level of play at that point and then is not dramatically approved until your getting into Tier 3 which puts it way behind. Which is why you see Spell Casters that rely on Save DC's not suffering misses like Monk's have Misses on Stunning Strike unless they have a dramatically lower spellcasting stat as well.
This does not create a need for magic weapons. Though they do help and they are an optional improvement. Being Behind by one ASI is almost un-noticable in the long run as far as hits go because you will make it up and your Dex was likely a bit above the Power Curve of the game anyway. And being able to Reliably stun actually over all increases your ability to hit because your Stuns have a useful uptime which automatically provides Advantage on attacks which then actually puts that slightly under par accuracy to Nicely Above par in much the same way as a magical weapon. A Magical Weapon is just a stop gap for the same thing that your relying on for that first hit so you can stun rather than All attempts to Stun as with a neglected Stunning Strike. Which there are almost no magical items to speak of that can raise your Stunning Strike DC so when it falls behind you cannot insert an optional piece of the puzzle like magical equipment to fix it. This is why At least alternating wisdom Bonuses is actually stronger overall. Because the Reliability of Stunning Strike improves the Reliability of most of your hits in average play (much like the bonuses on that magical weapon). Because here's the mathematic REality. The +1 to +4 that Advantage is going to give you. Depending on factors of what your trying to hit and where it appears on the results curve. This is The Same or More than you would get for the +1 in Dexterity that your arguing needs to happen to begin with. And the More you Monk relies on Abilities that are keyed off of either Wisdom or your Save DC. The less that Dexterity point matters. You don't need to shift the point if your not relying on Stunning strike to begin with. however if you are, Then you cannot neglect it because you cannot artificially improve your DC like you can your to hit modifier and stunning strike makes up for the lack. And if your Doing something like the 4 elements Monk which is Heavy in the area of Save DC based abilities that you can be using for most builds of it. Then you don't even feel the +2 difference as much. Specially because even if you miss a couple hits. Improving the Chance of Stunning Strike from Something like a minimum of 13 (+3 prof +2 Wis) at level 5 when you get stunning strike (3 proficiency and +2 wis mod) to Something like a 14 or a 15 or even a 16 by level 8 has a dramatic difference.
Considering that the end game is balanced with a DC of only 19 in mind and still have a reliable success rate against most things (unlike in the 20's for AC) and Con Saves for most things go up much slower. I believe the Average con save is something like 3 or 4. Even if the average con save is 4. You've basically pushed the failure rate to higher than 50% by the time that your level 5. With a fair bit of what your going against being more likely to be a 65-70% failure rate. PIcking up that 5% difference for your attack modifier if you need to makes a whole lot more sense. But even without that. Your Typically looking at a +6 Bonus at level 5 versus a +7 If you go with the Wis ASI instead. meaning your still looking at what works out to something like a 70% chance to hit still anyway. And it can be supplemented by other means. Even just playing in a game that does Flanking offsets that -1. And Anything that gives you advantage boosts your Hit rate up to something like 90% or so even with just a +6 bonus in that level range. Wisdom Becomes More and More of a Smart thing to do if your wanting to rely on Wisdom Abilities like Stunning STrike. Taking a 65-70% chance to hit but then having a 70-75% chance to apply the stunned condition which then gives you advantage and makes the rest of your hits for that turn unlikely to miss, And potentially the next turn Works out to be a lot better than Hitting for say 75% but then only having a 40% chance of getting that stun to work.
Making Stunning Strike Work better also improves your Ki Economy by having to spend less to apply stuns if your going to use STunning Strike. Your only other real choice for improving Ki economy is to not use Stunning Strike at all.
So your Question actually becomes. Miss 1 less attack for every 20 or so that you make on average By boosting your Wisdom so that you can do a largely improved stunning strike, Or hit one more time but take more hits and thus more ki to apply stunning strike, or not use stunning strike.
"I offer that because Monks are so stat dependent and ASI starved, they are absolutely more gear dependent. I would also say that I could make a Barbarian as a better monk than the monk class stands now because of their built-in dependency on stats and not enough stat increases."
I have very little doubt that I could make a Fighter as a better Monk than the Monk class and that's the big part of the problem for me. It's not hard to build a character that does a not of what a Monk does BETTER than a Monk. The Monk class simply doesn't know what it wants to be so it winds up not being good at anything.
There are so many major Mischaracterizations here.
Such as the Damage Sucking for the Monk at level 2. The Monk actually has some of the highest damage of any class of martial character at the first couple of levels. And it has the highest Sustainable damage in level's 1-3. They aren't already having problems at this point.
Your Also Mischaracterizing the health issue. Your making it sound like only the monk is suffering from danger of going down quickly and this is also not true. Everybody with Exception of perhaps the Barbarian is going to go down quickly.
Your Also Mischaracterizing the AC issue. An AC of 16 is not bad at level 1 or even level 2. Even the Fighter. That bastion of Heavy Armor that he is or his holy Counterpart the Paladin is not much higher than this in AC. Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1. And no way to ever get platemail before about level 4 under normal circumstances other than an overly generous DM. They are looking at about a 16 AC without shield and an 18 DC with shield. Even if they Pick up the appropriate fighting Style to increase their AC by one they are only looking at numbers of 17 and 19. On your Tanks. Even the Barbarian with all it's mass of HP is only looking at about a 16 AC on Average.
And those are just some of the biggest things that your mischaracterizing in one fashion or another.
A lot of it is heavily personally biased. There are various little things thta are not as simple as you make them like claiming a 50/50 save on the Effects of the Open Hand abilities added to flurry of blows. When the Reality is that they can actually be something more in the range of 75% in the favor of the monk if used intelligently even at level 3.
You also Make mischaracterizations about what a Monk is thta is heavily personally biased when you say all they are is unarmored defense, MA, and Ki abilities. There is a lot about them that does not actually have Ki Costs. Which I've already addressed previously but you seemed to completely ignore.
You also make mischaracterizations that are effectively calling them bad because they do not work like one of the Tanking Classes when they aren't a tanking class. Rogues Suffer from all of the same problems if you try to use them as a Tanking class because they are not one either.
your Statements about charging you 1 to 2 ki at level 3 just to make an attack are Completely wrong. As well as showing your Disdain and Biases. There are plenty of ways to make Attacks without having any costs of Ki. Ki Expenditure is a Choice. Not a requirement. And many other Subclasses actually run out of Steam by round 2 of a fight at level 2 and 3 as well. Caster's only last slightly longer because they are FORCED to spread out their resource expenditures. So they make it to round 4 or so. Even the Brilliantly acclaimed Battle Master with it's extra dice is spent in 4 rounds or less at level 3, and continues to have that problem and have it be worse as it gains in levels. But then that doesn't really help to point out when your busy attacking the monk does it?
Even When you Do things Like Mention the Rogue and what it has you say you didn't talk about any of their abilities but this is an outright lie. Because you used their Biggest Ability of the class in their Damage Calculation. That of Sneak Attack. Without this ability the Rogue's damage is downright pathetic. Maxing out at 1d8+5 for an average of 9 damage a turn. Even a Monk with no Ki what so ever and no bonus action or anything else and even using just it's unarmed attack is doing 1d6+5 twice for an Average damage of 16. Adding in Just the Bonus Attack of Martial Arts without bothering to use any Ki abilities what so ever is still netting you 24 average damage a turn on a monk before anything else. (As a important little detail the average damage for those sneak attack dice is 12 giving that rogue even with the Sneak attack an average damage of 21, 23 if you get nitpicky about the .5's) But You know. Lying about how good the damage is and the abilities your not supposedly using is a real comparison. Or the Fact that it's not doing that much different from the Monk even with it's Major Damage ability for it's class. So you end up in a Situation where the monk can do basically As much damage if you average out using and not using your bonus attack roughly as the rogue, Though outdo it if you get the bonus attack in every turn, With Better AC and better mobility than the Rogue as a default. But yep. That rogue is so much better than the level 8 monk when neither of them are using abilities.
The Fighter to make those Two Attacks with a Crossbow? They've had to give up better stats on their 1 additional ASI up to the point of level 8. Meaning their Stat's aren't better. Because they have been forced to buy Crossbow Master to get rid of the Loading Property to be able to make those Two Attacks. And Action Surge is less sustainable than even flurry of blows for as bad as your making it sound. It's only 2 extra attacks. Has No innate Ability to inflict conditions, Or to impose Disadvantage, or escape an enemy without AO's whether for a resource cost or not or even the Ability to guarantee half damage and potentially avoid damage altogether on any dex save. All for what is maybe 3 AC at most but is just as easily no AC difference with most builds that people use. A moderate amount of more hp, and a bit more damage. But again. That doesn't look so well for your comparison when saying how every other class is better is it.
But this is why All of your comparisons don't actually show the damage numbers isn't it? The Damage numbers just aren't as good. The various incidental bonuses kind of skew it as well.
Or When trying to claim that the Standard should be Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast on it as well for an example of good Damage. Despite the fact that is actually highly optimized damage for the Warlock And yet Ironically. Being only 20 damage on Average for a Turn at level 8. It's actually sustainable by the Monk to do this much damage on basically every turn. The Reality is that Eldritch Blast Being the Standard is Entirely because of the over-hyping of Eldritch Blast and it's the only way that the Warlock would be considered doing Good Damage at lower levels while pretending it's just a decent weapon damage die equivalent.
It's easy to take a level 3 monk and pretend that it doesn't gain survivability of it's own by say level 8. And then try to claim that it's Defenses are Bad. When the Defenses are amazingly on Par. At Best that Rogue has gotten +1 armor by level 8. Meaning an ac of 18. Interestingly enough exactly what the monk has. Naked. They both have evasion, They both have ways of disengaging, etc. There is a REason these two classes compare well at low to medium levels. They are doing mostly the same things at low to medium levels. They have a similar kind of job for the party with a similar kind of output.
In all honesty, I did not read most of the post that you cited. As a writer, I disagree with large walls of text when trying to explain something. The paragraph was created to signal the end of a thought and the beginning of the next thought. We're talking about a game. If it takes you 400 words to have a thought you might want to consider editing it down before you post. That being said:
"Such as the Damage Sucking for the Monk at level 2. The Monk actually has some of the highest damage of any class of martial character at the first couple of levels. And it has the highest Sustainable damage in level's 1-3. They aren't already having problems at this point."
I cited actual numbers in my post. This is an opinion. If you have some data, please share. Briefly...if you please.
"Your Also Mischaracterizing the health issue. Your making it sound like only the monk is suffering from danger of going down quickly and this is also not true. Everybody with Exception of perhaps the Barbarian is going to go down quickly."
So the Paladin (with AC 18 and D10 hit die), the Fighter (with a possible AC of 18 and D10 hit die), the Ranger (okay...you got me on the Ranger, PLUS a D10 hit die), and the Barb (AC of about 16 and the biggest Hit Die in the game) are ALL going to fold up as fast as the guy with a D8 hit die, a starting Con Bonus of +3 tops and a max STARTING ac of 16? I'm sorry, Dave, but this does not compute. Again, show me some numbers.
"Your Also Mischaracterizing the AC issue. An AC of 16 is not bad at level 1 or even level 2. Even the Fighter. That bastion of Heavy Armor that he is or his holy Counterpart the Paladin is not much higher than this in AC. Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1. And no way to ever get platemail before about level 4 under normal circumstances other than an overly generous DM. They are looking at about a 16 AC without shield and an 18 DC with shield. Even if they Pick up the appropriate fighting Style to increase their AC by one they are only looking at numbers of 17 and 19. On your Tanks. Even the Barbarian with all it's mass of HP is only looking at about a 16 AC on Average."
I covered this above but please allow me to say that the phrase 'Thanks to the armor they are granted at level 1.' sounds a bit disingenuous to me. EVERYTHING that EVERY character has at level one is granted. I'm not saying this is YOUR fault but you make it sound like characters that are supposed to be fighting in the front lines getting armor to start with is a bad thing. My issue is not that they don't give Monks armor to start with, it's that they seemed to think it wasn't necessary for some reason.
"A lot of it is heavily personally biased."
Backed up by math, but yes. Are you going to tell me that your position isn't?
" There are various little things that are not as simple as you make them like claiming a 50/50 save on the Effects of the Open Hand abilities added to flurry of blows. When the Reality is that they can actually be something more in the range of 75% in the favor of the monk if used intelligently even at level 3."
Again, let's do some math, shall we? A group of four should be able to take on an equal CR opponent with a high chance of victory. There are lots of CR 1 creatures but let's take some basic ones like a Bugbear. AC 16 and 27 HP with a Dex and Str Save of +2. The Monk's Save DC for most of their abilities is 8+ WIS Modifier + PB so for a level 1 Monk with 16 Wis that's 13. So the Bugbear has to roll an 11 or higher to Save or about 45% chance. By the way, the Bugbear has an AC of 16 and the Monk will be striking with a +5 modifier so they actually only have a 45% chance to hit in the first place. Oh, and let's not forget that at level 3 you have 3 Ki points so that's three trips to the Flurry of Blows well before you're done. Your DM might let you take a 30-minute meditative nap after every encounter but I'll bet that's not all that common.
"You also Make mischaracterizations about what a Monk is that is heavily personally biased when you say all they are is unarmored defense, MA, and Ki abilities. There is a lot about them that does not actually have Ki Costs. Which I've already addressed previously but you seemed to completely ignore."
Actually, I seem to recall that I specifically called out several of them. Granted, I didn't mention The Way of the Brush or all of the language skills. My bad.
"You also make mischaracterizations that are effectively calling them bad because they do not work like one of the Tanking Classes when they aren't a tanking class. Rogues Suffer from all of the same problems if you try to use them as a Tanking class because they are not one either."
My issue is NOT that Monks aren't a tanking class. As you said, Rogues really aren't a tanking class either and I don't hear a lot of people crying about it. The issue is that the Monk isn't an ANYTHING class. Scan the Forums and you'll see people talking about how people are playing Monks wrong...'they make great tanks!' Sure they do...IF you take a shield (giving up damage output), and IF you take the Kensai path specifically, and IF you're in melee so your trait works...THEN you have an AC of 16+2+2 or 20 at lvl 3. You can do that all day because it costs no Ki points. The question is WHY would you? Why leap through burning hoops sideways in order to take a class that doesn't excel at much of anything and try to use it as a tank?
"your Statements about charging you 1 to 2 ki at level 3 just to make an attack are Completely wrong. As well as showing your Disdain and Biases. There are plenty of ways to make Attacks without having any costs of Ki."
Yep...we've seen a lot of the math on that. It sucks. If you have different numbers somewhere let's see them. Don't bury them in a dissertation...a sentence or two will do.
" Ki Expenditure is a Choice. Not a requirement. And many other Subclasses actually run out of Steam by round 2 of a fight at level 2 and 3 as well."
Not unless my character is a shooter and runs out of arrows, he doesn't. I'm not including expendables in my calculations as you imply. I'm talking about attacks made with weapons that, except for ammunition, won't run out. If the character has Action Surge that's great...but I'm not going to build an entire character around the alpha strike no matter what the Youtube creators say.
"Caster's only last slightly longer because they are FORCED to spread out their resource expenditures. So they make it to round 4 or so."
Um...most casters that I know have Cantrips. Those never run out. And those typically SCALE with higher levels! Hell, the baseline for damage that many people use (for some reason) is a Warlock with Eldrich Blast. Sure, the Wizard may only get ONE fireball but then again if you're relying on an expendable resource you're doing something wrong IMHO.
"Even When you Do things Like Mention the Rogue and what it has you say you didn't talk about any of their abilities but this is an outright lie. Because you used their Biggest Ability of the class in their Damage Calculation. That of Sneak Attack. Without this ability, the Rogue's damage is downright pathetic."
Yep...almost as if they designed the class around this ability, isn't it? How tough is it to get a sneak attack? Hey...how about if the Monk uses his superior movement and engages the target in melee? Or the Barbarian? Or the Paladin? Or the Melee Fighter? Or the melee Rang...um...or the other Rogue? By the way, since we've taken the debate to level 3: Swashbuckler gets Rakish Audacity...no allies needed for Sneak Attack. The Soulknife has a built-in second Attack (in case you miss with the first one), Masterminds can use Help as a Bonus Action, Inquisitives get Insightful Fighting which grants Sneak Attack as long as they make an Insight check (which by level 3 they can have Expertise in), Assassins have Advantage and thus SA as long as they go first (I like the V. Human/Alert Feat combo for this), and the Arcane Trickster has Cantrips that scale with level and don't even need Advantage. So...have we put the whole 'Rogues can't rely on Sneak Attack' topic to bed?
"The Fighter to make those Two Attacks with a Crossbow? They've had to give up better stats on their 1 additional ASI up to the point of level 8. Meaning their Stat's aren't better. Because they have been forced to buy Crossbow Master to get rid of the Loading Property to be able to make those Two Attacks. And Action Surge is less sustainable than even flurry of blows for as bad as your making it sound. It's only 2 extra attacks. Has No innate Ability to inflict conditions, Or to impose Disadvantage, or escape an enemy without AO's whether for a resource cost or not or even the Ability to guarantee half damage and potentially avoid damage altogether on any dex save. All for what is maybe 3 AC at most but is just as easily no AC difference with most builds that people use. A moderate amount of more hp, and a bit more damage. But again. That doesn't look so well for your comparison when saying how every other class is better is it?"
A Fighter/shooter can take a Dex of 16 and...any other stat they want because their attacks aren't reliant on TWO stats. So Dex and Con of 16? Sure...lots of HP down the road. Dex and Wis? Good Perception is important for a shooter. Dex and Str? Okay...I'll play Conan and like it I guess. As for the crossbow...you're right...I should have said Longbow. Or we can go back to V Human and Crossbow Expert out of the gate. The Fighter will STILL have a better chance to hit (Archery Fighting Style), more HP (yes, it's only 1-2 more but I said more...not Barbarian-level more), as good of an AC (16 wasn't it?). And that's not including Action Surge, Second wind, or any other features. That's bog-standard fighter. By the way...if you DON'T consider a difference of 3 AC to be important then we're playing different games.
(This is one of those paragraph things I mentioned earlier)
How about we take a Champion? Now I crit twice as often as you do. Yes, the Battle-Master is pretty resource-reliant However, you get them back on a Short Rest (just like the Monk), you get more of them out of the gate (4D8 when the Monk has 3 Ki points), and when the Monk is getting D8s on his Martial Arts damage WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE HIS 'THING', the Fighter will have D10s. The Psi Warrior's dice scale with PB (so SIX D8 at level 5!), the Rune Knight is powerful in SO many ways and even the Humble Samurai can get Advantage three times per Long Rest AND Temp HP to boot.
"It's easy to take a level 3 monk and pretend that it doesn't gain survivability of it's own by say level 8. And then try to claim that it's Defenses are Bad. When the Defenses are amazingly on Par. At Best that Rogue has gotten +1 armor by level 8. Meaning an ac of 18. Interestingly enough exactly what the monk has. Naked. They both have evasion, They both have ways of disengaging, etc. There is a REason these two classes compare well at low to medium levels. They are doing mostly the same things at low to medium levels. They have a similar kind of job for the party with a similar kind of output."
I beg to differ. Again...let's talk numbers. Your Monk at level 8 does 1D8 with a weapon and 1D6 with their Martial Arts attack. Typically 2 attacks a turn plus the Bonus Action melee attack. (Note that we're NOT going to talk about how the Rogue can do the same damage at range as they do in melee because they don't have to rely on the melee-centric Bonus Action attack). Your Monk has a standing AC of 18 Max without a shield and they're doing 1D8+4 +1D8+4 +1D6+4 = 24 on average. (Interestingly enough, just about as much as a melee Fighter with Duelist, a Longsword and Str of 20, who does 23, but I digress).
The Rogue is going to have about the same HP (14 Con/D8 Hit Die), better stats (the Rogue can put both ASIs into Dex instead of splitting them between Dex and Wis), and attack once for 1D8+5 +4D6 = 23. One point shy of the Monk. The Monk will likely have a higher AC by a point (18 vs the 20-Dex Rogue with Studded Leather). However, that one attack that the Rogue makes is at Advantage. Mathematically speaking that's about +5 to hit or +25%. The Monk will be fighting with +4 (from Dex) + 3 (PB) for +7 versus the Rogue's +13. Against a target with 17 AC the Monk will miss roughly half the time whereas the Rogue will hit MUCH more often.
None of this takes into account any of the subclass abilities or expendable resources for either case. Even if the Monk favors their Dex and slights their Wis with their ASIs (which has no effect on their AC), their to-hit only goes up by 1 and the damage by 2. And 20 Dex at lvl 8 means 16 Wis which means the Save for Stunning Strike is back to about 50%. The Rogue is still ahead of the curve on putting hits on-target with the same HP, the same or similar AC, the same or similar damage per turn, as well as more ASIs down the road to fill the gaps.
As I said at the beginning of my post, if you've found a Monk build and a DM and a game that you like...that's great. I'm happy for you. One of the joys of this game is building the character you want as long as the DM is okay with it. Personally, I simply think that the Monk class and several of its subclasses are struggling to figure out what they're supposed to be doing. In the meantime, they're not doing anything much better than any other class/subclass combo.
Don't feel bad...I actually think that a Barb/Rogue makes a better Ranger than a Ranger but that's a debate for another day.
This thread recently popped up in the dnd 5e subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/ph0yjf/why_are_monks_considered_a_weaker_class
The responses, I think, accurately demonstrate the common issues with monk.
One thing I found particularly disheartening was the abysmal rate of success for stunning strike for Beau....
https://www.critrolestats.com/beaus-ki-points
Wow, 116. Almost an entire third of her ki, her defining class resource she needs for all her abilities, winds up devoted to Stunning Strike.
The fact they obviously value it so high and the fact that you can burn ki so easily trying is disheartening.
No, you literally couldn't. People have run the numbers and a Fighter built like a Monk (assuming you're talking about using the unarmed fighting style) NEVER outdoes a monk's damage. They also just don't have the same capabilities. Action Surge is too infrequent and it takes many levels before most Fighters can reach the same number of attacks as a monk. You're just that biased against monks if you think you can outdo the entire class in any way more than damage numbers. How will you get all the saves monks have? Evasion? Stillness of Mind? Their attacks? Their movement speed? EMPTY BODY? The monk class has many things it can be good and fun at. You're just upset that it doesn't specialize in the same way other martials do. Which makes no sense, if you don't like how the monk works, just play the other classes. It is not a detriment to the monk that it is built differently, and to say that it is not good at anything is just hyperbole of the worst degree.
As someone who watched all of Campaign 2. This is just misinformation you are spreading. What you and others that try to use this as "evidence" ignore is that Beau spent most of the campaign with a 14 DC for her Ki. She was not built to maximize the use of stunning strike for the vast majority of the campaign. You also ignore incidents like with Obann in the Iron & the Coast arc where her stunning strike is the reason the BBEG didn't escape. You also probably haven't seen the Vox Machina vs Mighty Nein oneshot, where her stuns entirely disabled the other side along with her other monk abilities.
Also, this is a tally that represents a TWO YEAR CAMPAIGN. Of course she spent Ki on stuns so often. But that doesn't mean that she was just burning Ki for nothing. The Mighty Nein also took frequent short rests, as a party with a Monk should, and she never had to suffer over the loss of spent Ki. She wasn't stingy with her Ki, and that didn't hurt her because she understood the strengths of the monk class.
I'd like to see a breakdown of the magic items the team had. I don't hand out magic items like candy but if the rest of the team had their fair share, you can't blame Beau for having them as well.
She had a 16 to start just like any other monk and had rolled exceptional stats. So normal....
She also got the benefit of two items that increased her stats (tattoo and headband of intellect)
She chose to wait to increase her WIS to 18 at level twelve.
That is four levels later than most but it also shows how desperately the monk needs to focus on maxing DEX and WIS as soon as possible
The fact she took a feat instead of increasing WIS cost her a lot then is what you are saying.
Even with all the breaks (good starting rolls, magic items, huge party) she struggled to make stunning work.
The only reason Matt says "Monks Man" is because he literally have her everything she needed to boost the weaknesses of monk... And even then she only was decent because Ashley didn't have any idea how to play barbarian.
He did give out a lot but she not only had that but exceptional stats and a subclass designed to work well with the campaign and an item that boosted that ability score to near perfect.
Like that part didn't bother me it's just when people use her as an example for why monks are good it's a bit disingenuous
Yeah, as you can see from some of my posts, if someone holds up something as the gold standard, it should be achievable. IIRC Grogg had a Str of 26 or so thanks to his various relationships to animated weapons.
Fair.
Matt has a tendacy to fix balance issues with items then has to play rocket tag to catch up.
The headband of Intellect Doesn't help with Stunning Strike. And the Tattoo I don't remember which one she had. Being sick my brian is just fried 10x usual.
But there is every possibility it didn't help stunning Strike either if it was just standard from the books. it might have helped her physical attacking but would not help her stunning strike either. So Even if she's got a 16 Wis but doesn't increase it again until level 12. She's starting out Decent but she is basically falling behind by the time she increased it again. The DC for Stunning Strike is like the DC on Spells from Spell Casters. Once they fall behind they are much harder to catch back up.
As for Cobalt Soul. Except for a couple of abilities that do have DC's but actually compensate by actually having a rare save attached (Charisma) The Whole Subclass is far more suited to a dex Build with the Exception of a few abilities like Stunning Strike.
So Beau could get away with tanking her Wisdom until much longer for things other than stunning strike. yes her Stunning STrike saved the day a few times. But she Also tanked her ability to actually land them so those stunning strikes that saved the day were as much luck as anything.
On Top of that Ki points Spent is not the same thing as the Ki Points she had available.
But when you Put them all together. She just highlights how the Way people Build Monks And the Tactics they most often try to use with them do not mesh. She spent almost 1/3 of her overall expended ki over 2 years trying and mostly failing at Stunning Strike because of her Neglected DC. And that's not even taking into account how many times she might have targetted opponents that lowered her chances of success with it to some degree by having Con Save Proficiency, High Con, Or Both.
This all comes together to show how people don't really play Monk to what they can fully Be. And those making Guides do not help because she's an example to some extent of following the Prescribed Tactics but not realizing she's actually hindered herself in using those tactics. She was always far more successful at using her Cobalt Soul Abilities than she was with Stunning Strike. But those Abilities were also neglected in her playstyle at times. Though she did make effort to use them.
Ok. I'm cutting down a bunch of this. But I find it interesting how you complain about walls of text. But all your post is, is a wall of text. probably hoping that people won't skim and see all the problems.
I'm just going to use this part as an example.
You claim the Paladin having a d10 hit die and 18 AC. Sure. It has an 18 AC. If it's using A shield. But we both know most Paladin builds don't use that Shield. So it's actually only AC 16. Same often goes for that Fighter. Even some of the "tanking builds" prefer the idea of tanking by offensive force and so emphasize two handed weapons to use things like PAM and GWM. Which means they have no shield. So again 16 AC. And a d10hp. But neither have the ability to inflict disadvantage on the opponent even once let alone more than once. So they have The Same AC, Only Slightly more HP, And very limited truely defensive abilities other than that. Relying entirely on the hopes that their armor is enough. But they are tanking and surviving so much better. Sure... If your playing everything as dumb as bricks and face tanking everything.
But then your not going to admit that if the monk is the Target the likeyhood of the Enemy hitting him through Disadvantage at low level is fairly small at an AC 16. Which effectively creates that hp difference by turning hits into misses. The ONLY thing that the Monk Doesn't compare to is a properly built Tank Barbarian. And then when you get into objective reality. The Paladin and the Fighter don't actually compare to a Tank Barbarian either. They barely compare to a barbarian that hasn't put everything into defensive tanking.
Even by Level 8. That Paladin and that Fighter. most often with those Two handed Weapons rather than sword and boarding are looking at 18 to 19 AC. And what do we have by level 8 on a Monk? That's an 18 AC (Yes. 18, Not the 16 you tried to misdirect to, but you actually know this), And defensive abilities like Evasion which extend their effective hp by halving or negating all of those dex based attacks. which have become increasingly a thing by level 8, Since magic is increasingly used and Dex just happens to be one of the most common saves on Spells for dealing damage. Something that the Fighter and the Paladin often don't have a good answer for because Dex has been neglected on their builds, They often aren't using Shields so they've never taken shield master, And the Paladin has likely neglected their Charisma up until that point so the bonuses to their saves is still quite low not making up for the lack of Dexterity. which suddenly enhances the Survivability of the Monk by quite a bit compared to those outright tanks.
and No. in your post. You didn't actually supplied numbers. You supplied a few examples of dice rolls but not what the outcomes are really like on that dice rolls. You tried to dazzle and misdirect through making it seem like it's a lot when the reality is that on Average they weren't nearly what you stated.
Everything else again was heavily riddled with your biases and not Objective in the Least. You wrote yourself a post without looking at the Rest of the Thread or taking it all in which was just meant to be confirmation bias for anybody that wanted it to be confirmation bias and that's it.
She rolled like the equivalent of a 49 point buy and only got better through items... Her DEX was an 18 at level 2.
She is one of the worst examples to use for monk because of this alone but also her subclass used INT and very little ki based abilities save those magic items... She got 19 INT for basically free.
She got electro gloves that gave her a 15ft reach and a +1 to unarmed attacks very early on.
Overall she is a terrible example of what an average monk user should expect from the game and she STILL underperformed.
33 successes, 3 successes negated by legendary resistances (for Beau in Season 2 of Crit Role). I will note, I haven't watched Season 2 yet, so I don't know the abilities of all of the party members.
This makes it sound like those 3 successes that were negated by legendary resistances were wasted uses of ki. But, I'd rather have the BBEG burning through their legendary resistances to negate a stunning strike, rather than using it to negate a higher level spell casted by a spell caster. That is a good use of ki.
I've played several monks, both low level and higher level. In the parties I've been in, my character always had one of the higher ACs. The low level ones usually had a16 AC at first level. The 18th level monk I'm currently playing has an AC of 23 (bracers of defense and +1 ring of protection).
As far as their movement, you have to play the monk differently than a fighter. I had one campaign where we surprised a camp of kobolds. Most of them were surprised and we were able to take them down quickly. Three of the kobolds weren't surprised and took off running as soon as we attacked the camp. At the time, my monk was 2nd level. I used a ki point for step of the wind and caught up with them fairly quickly. I got lucky on a couple rolls and managed to kill off all three. We ultimately learned that they were an advanced scout camp. If I hadn't caught those 3, they would have warned the main camp we were coming, and we would not have been able to sneak into the camp and steal the map we were sent after.
In another campaign, I was in, our party (12th level tabaxi monk, 12th level barbarian, multiclass bard/rogue, druid, and a multiclass sorcerer/wizard. The rogue and my monk were sneaking up on an enemy encampment. My monk walked up a vertical cliff, while the rogue stayed down below. The rogue walked into an ambush, which I was about 50 feet from him. I was able to get to him within one round and help him get out of the ambush (using 2 ki points, one for flurry of blows and one for stunning strike). We headed back and met the barbarian, who was charging forward once he heard the sounds of combat. After meeting up with the barbarian, we ended up in another fight involving the three of us. At the same time another group of enemies had snuck up behind the druid and the sorcerer/wizard. They were about 100 feet away from us. I used feline agility, rather than step of the wind and got to the spellcasters in 1 round. I would have used step of the wind it I wasn't a tabaxi. I was able to stun the barbarian that was attacking the wizard, which allowed the wizard to move out of melee range. With the druid and myself providing some cover, the wizard was able to use his spells to help rout the group attacking us from the rear.. I ended up using all but a couple of my ki points in that battle. But, we were able to take a short rest after the battle.
A monk's strength really is their versatility. Even without using step of the wind, they are capable of moving all over the battlefield. They can provide assistance to front line fighters, they can get behind the enemy lines and take out enemy spellcasters. They can chase down enemies that are trying to flee the battlefield, and they can drop back and protect the spellcasters who have had combatants get within range. They also can run up cliff faces/building walls to take out snipers positioned in those areas. They probably would not be as effective in a traditional dungeon crawl, but, how many campaigns rely upon those these days?
"I've played several monks, both low level and higher level. In the parties I've been in, my character always had one of the higher ACs. The low-level ones usually had a16 AC at first level. The 18th level monk I'm currently playing has an AC of 23 (bracers of defense and +1 ring of protection)."
I'm willing to bet that your base AC was about 20 which is not uncommon for high-level play. If you need magic items to fill a gap, then I consider that an issue.
"A monk's strength really is their versatility. Even without using step of the wind, they are capable of moving all over the battlefield. They can provide assistance to front-line fighters, they can get behind the enemy lines and take out enemy spellcasters. They can chase down enemies that are trying to flee the battlefield, and they can drop back and protect the spellcasters who have had combatants get within range. They also can run up cliff faces/building walls to take out snipers positioned in those areas. They probably would not be as effective in a traditional dungeon crawl, but, how many campaigns rely upon those these days?"
So if I make up a ranged Tabaxi with the Mobile Feat I'm good then, right? THIS is what many decriers of the Monk class are talking about; It's the old 'anything you can do, I can do better' thing from the Mupper Show. Other than Stunning strike (which has been demonstrated to be good but not 'hinge a whole class on it' good), the class doesn't do ANYTHING better than another build with a Feat or two. The base Ranger class has the same issue which is why many of the subclasses are now really good... they're trying to cover the gaps.
When you hear a class in D&D it should evoke some sort of reaction. When I hear Fighter I think 'versatile foundation' because you can build a Fighter to be almost anything. The word Paladin makes me think of the 'front-liner with party buffs' because that's how the class is designed and it does that job pretty well. You CAN make a Paladin that sneaks or a Fighter that is a primary caster but WHY would you? If you want to make some weird corner build just as a thought exercise that's fine but the core of a class should be designed around it being good at SOMETHING.
The Monk class, as it stands, isn't good enough at any one thing to evoke that reaction. When I hear the word Monk I'm thinking (before we get into weird elemental or psychic powers) of a disciplined warrior who dedicates their life to the pursuit of self-control and martial skill. The Kensei subclass feels the most like that to me and it STILL relies on the precious Ki points to really spread its wings.
I don't think any core class other than primary casters should be built around an expendable resource that powers virtually everything they do. Hell, even Barbarians, with their limited number of Rages a day, can fight without them passably well, and in most cases one Rage carries through an entire fight.
Does that go for other classes as well? Because fighters need magic items to feel a gap.
are you comparing it to another class with the same number of feats / ASIs?
Just as the wizard depends on spell slots
Why should only primary casters be excepted?