So I’m the DM for a group of 5 players. One pf the players is a monk and decided to go sun soul. This player recently came to me and complained about feeling underpowered. At this point in the game all the players are level 6 and the monk player is doing pitiful damage compared to the other PC’s. The other characters are an oath of ancients paladin, a fiend warlock, evocation wizard, and an eldritch knight. My main concern is how to make the monk player actually do something useful for the party. I’m open to homebrew.
I find sun soul to be relatively underpowered compared to other monk subclasses, but the bigger problem is probably that once you get into tier 2+, monks lose some of their edge in damage and get some battlefield control ability.
It also depends on how many battles your party is taking per short/long rest. Though the party seems reasonably balanced between long and short rest classes, it's possible the monk is only comparing themselves to each of the others at the others' best.
Any additional specifics you could give us would also be helpful. Stuff like race, feats, what invocations the Warlock might have, etc.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that despite having access to the standard array, the Monk is lagging behind a bit on their primary stats. With a +2 Dex / +1 Wis (or vice versa) race and an ASI they could have 18/16 at this point.
In terms of tactics, the Sun Soul has a few things at their disposal. First, Stunning Strike is great (though since they left their Wisdom low for some reason, they'll have a lower than usual save DC for it. But that's on the player, not the class). You can throw out up to 4 of these in a turn if you really need to, and the Stunned condition will grant advantage to you and all of your allies. It will also make a target automatically fail their saving throw against Searing Arc Strike.
Against a single opponent, you can lay out 4 attacks at (1d8+4)*2 + (1d6+4)*2 using Flurry of Blows. Against more, you can do (1d8+4)*2 + (4d6 save/half) *number of targets using Searing Arc Strike. In both cases you can append your Stunning Strikes to the melee attacks, which powers up the rest of the routine and prevents the enemy from acting. They also have a ranged attack for kiting, if necessary.
Stunning Strike is a big contributor on its own; keep track of how many extra hits the rest of the party lands due to the second roll of Advantage, or enemies auto-failing saves. You can basically consider all of those hits to be part of the Monk's damage output. Not to mention the enemy actions prevented!
So the monk has 15AC, 45HP, has 45 feet of movement, and can do (30) 4d6+16 radiant damage from 30 feet away per turn. And feels inferior to the warlock with 10 AC, 51 HP, with 30 movement, with (19) 2d10+8 force damage (26 damage with hex) at 120 feet?
Other than range, the monk should out everything the warlock. The paladin and wizard might do more burst damage, but will run out faster. There isn't a rogue to challenge the monk in stealth or mobility.
Sun soul is on par with any other monk subclass, it just specializes in range and aoe.
Monk (all sub-classes) is simply a class that rewards intelligent play, and shines more and more the higher you go with it. Judging from the statistics alone, I would suspect player decision-making to be the source of any perceived inferiority.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
You have two parts here, both are moving parts, as others have responded Monk requires dex and wisdom to be high, and con for those moments when a high ac is no substitute for the hitpoints to survive it. To summarise: If you dont have ridiculous stat numbers, monks can seem a little underwhelming due to fragility or damage output.
The second part is you have an evocation wizard - IE: a magical shotgun. A fiendlock - IE: a magical machine gun with underbarrel grenade launcher. And the Ancients paladin, who despite being the only real tank unless your monk is the one in front, and I guess the only healing because there isnt anyone else is probably using either a two handed weapon or spell slots on smites, because otherwise the Monk player shouldnt be feeling too bad in comparison. *If this is the case then, again as Lunali mentioned you may need to look at your encounter plan. One big fight will be detrimental to a short rest dependant character (in this case warlock and monk) but allow the wizard and paladin to purge all their slots in a muh shorter time than would otherwise be possible.
How can a monk do more damage? The easiest option is when you have an asi choose a feat that will provide something - magic initiate - hex, will allow for up to an hour per day extra damage - but at the cost of the bonus action it takes to set it up, which isnt great on weak waves of enemies but multi round tough opponents will be depleted faster.
Unfortunately like rogues, monks can find themselves unable to out perform warriors in a generic terrainless battleground, which is only an issue if it disappoints the player. However in terrain that requires high speed, balancing on small surfaces (acrobatics) and dropping from higher levels, the monks abilities mark them as superior. This is a shame if the fights only ever take place on even flat ground but that is something within your remit to provide as a DM, the second or third time the monk skips across a rickety wire to drop a drawbridge, Ki dodging to avoid enemies or stunning the really nasty commander just to allow the party to cross and enter the fight, no one will care if the damage was equal - he just Jackie Chan Stunt Doubled an encounter.
Thanks for all the feedback! This really helped me and the monk player. I’ve redesigned a few of the upcoming encounters to be more balanced for all the characters. I’ve also showed this thread to the player and now he has a better idea of the monks roll in the party.
If you play the sun soul carefully, it's very powerful. But you have to think a little bit instead of just showing up to play. Monks are a ton of fun!!
Do you guys play Theatre of the Mind or do you guys play with maps. if you play with maps there is something that you can do to help the Monk. Give him interesting landscapes that he may be able to use in some way with the powers he has coming online.
But as Moon kind of touched on. Level 6 through about level 9 are hard monks if all your doing is comparing your damage to everybody else damage. many of the other classes are just getting their AoE's and some of their big stuff online at that point. On top of that the Paladin was already front loaded with damage and his damage doesn't increase dramaticly at high level. more his utility and survivability does. But because these guys are bringing these big attacks online at this level. The monk at straight damage comparison lags a fair bit. But if the monk can bring his other powers into play and show off some of the fancy tricks that he can do that can help quite a bit. And that is true for all monks and not just the sun Soul Monk. The more intelligently the monks player can take advantage of the battle fields he's given and the power he has. The more he is going to get to show off even if He's not doing the biggest hits in the group. And that ability to show off will grow as he levels and combines with certain spells and such the other party members might be able to do.
Theatre of mind can do the same but it's often a bit harder because people have trouble really picturing the stuff they are dealing with and combat tends to boil down quite a bit to basics and not feel as creative. So you might have to encourage him to be a bit more creative with how he describes the theatre of the mind stuff and maybe get a little leeway to pull off things that are descriptively more cool.
Here are a few important things to help your Monk PC:
- AC is inexorably tied to Wisdom and Dexterity - implore your Monk to put every possible resource into these abilities. Make sure you start at 15 in both at creation (if using Point Buy) and make sure to use ASIs to increase these. Dex improves AC and To-hit, and Wis improves AC and DC on strikes.
- Every Monk I've ever seen played never uses Patient Defense. Far too often, Monks rush into the front line with amazing speed so they can pull off their Flurry of Blows to do as much damage as possible. Patient Defense is SO POWERFUL and UNDERUSED and people forget:
1) Dodge gives disadvantage to EVERY attack until the start of your next turn. If the enemy needs a 11 to hit, 50% of attacks will hit normally. With disadvantage, 25% of attacks will hit normally.
2) Dodge gives ADVANTAGE on Dex Savings throws. At 7th level, a Monk also gets Evasion. At 7th level, your typical Evocation Wizard with 18 Int has a DC of 15, and your typical Monk with 18 Dex has a Saving Throw of 7. With Advantage on the Saving Throw, that means the Monk has an 87% chance of succeeding on the Saving Throw and taking NO damage. If you're looking for the kind of character that can draw attacks AND survive a Fireball right on top of him, this is the guy.
- Radiant Sun Bolt: Combined with the Monk's speed, means you basically make Monk attacks attack at range a range of 30ft. With that mobility, you literally are untouchable by any melee attacks. If you're 50ft away from an enemy as a level 7 monk, you can move into 30ft range, attack twice at range, use 1 Ki point to get two more attacks with your bonus action, and move back out to a range of 55ft. The ONLY way your enemies will get into attack range is if they dash, which means they can't attack you anyways. You have become the ultimate kiting attacker.
- Searing Sunburst: Another ability that requires 0 Ki Points. A 150ft ranged mini-Fireball. For 3 Ki points, it literally *is* a Fireball.
- Step of the Wind: Don't underestimate this one either and don't just think of it as a Dash, it also can be used to Disengage. Disengage and walk through the wall of opponents and assault their Spellcaster hiding in the rear. Two many enemies in a row that you can't walk by? Guess what! Step of the Wind also doubles your Jump distance. And at level 9 you can walk across liquids and along vertical surfaces... literally nothing can stop you from getting to that Spellcaster. Bonus Strategy: Use 1 Ki for Step of the Wind, and use your regular Action to Dodge - now you can run 65ft right through their defenses and position yourself right BESIDE their Spellcaster in the opening round AND not be worried about retaliation of any kind. Watch as your enemy's strategic advantage in position evaporate :)
Those are just a few ideas! Feel free to use/abuse!
While Flurry of blows can be useful and it does up your damage. it's mostly a trap power. Particularly at low levels. It's definitely a trap a lot of players fall into because all they think about is dps. It's not as much of a trap at higher levels where you have a bit more spare ki on several archetypes of monks to kind of play around with and a couple of them even rely heavily on flurry to some extent(which is not a very good thing in my opinion). There are so many ways to use the Ki that you have to be open to using it in other ways and not just draining your pool as fast as possible for a little bit extra damage. You can end up being as effective if not more so than the huge number damage dealers. And as your monk damage dice scales and other tricks become available. you will catch up with them in damage a fair bit as a monk and you'll be doing much more across the battlefield than they can do on top of it.
The Deflect Missiles feature is another often overlooked feature that can be quite strong. it makes ranged physical attacks less useful on you. Particularly when your in a position where you may not have or certainly wouldn't have used your reaction anyway. Causing a ranger to basically potentially just use up on of it's ranged attacks if not it's only ranged attack on you each turn is a great deterrent against one of your actual weaknesses. And the ability to cut possibly as much as 35 damage out of a ranged sneak attack or critical hit under the right circumstances is a huge reduction. in the harm that you could have suffered from that hit. And even at 3rd level when you first attain the power, just assuming the 15 dex from stat array without racials your already looking at reducing any incoming shot by 6-15 damage with a potential for slightly more with a higher dexterity modifier. And if they happen to be relatively close to you for just a single ki point if you block all the damage you basically can get a potential free ranged hit out of that same single reaction on top of that.
Was this supposed to say 3d6 for Burning Hands? I'm just making sure I didn't miss something like it does more damage for the Sun Soul and starts as a Spell Level higher or something lol
I play a Sun Soul Monk and I'm usually the tank and damage dealer of the party (other members include Arcane Trickster Rogue, Raven Queen Warlock, and Circle of Dreams Druid).
Is he utilizing his stunning strike and flurry of blows? Is he able to use his speed boost? Remembering radiant sun bolts for ranged radiant damage? Bonus action Burning Hands? There are a plethora of options for him to use to deal damage. He may not be able to compete with the paladin doing Divine Smite for a total of 3d8-4d8 damage, but he can lock down enemies and keep them distracted.
Actually kinda offended by saying this subclass was underpowered. Haha
This makes me concerned now as a soon-to-be sun soul monk player.
same lol... and my dm never ever creates encounters with not flat ground... its kinda a thing in our group that the dm never writes out descriptions. the battles are always in, you know, a regular street or a blank room.
- Every Monk I've ever seen played never uses Patient Defense. Far too often, Monks rush into the front line with amazing speed so they can pull off their Flurry of Blows to do as much damage as possible. Patient Defense is SO POWERFUL and UNDERUSED and people forget:
1) Dodge gives disadvantage to EVERY attack until the start of your next turn. If the enemy needs a 11 to hit, 50% of attacks will hit normally. With disadvantage, 25% of attacks will hit normally.
2) Dodge gives ADVANTAGE on Dex Savings throws. At 7th level, a Monk also gets Evasion. At 7th level, your typical Evocation Wizard with 18 Int has a DC of 15, and your typical Monk with 18 Dex has a Saving Throw of 7. With Advantage on the Saving Throw, that means the Monk has an 87% chance of succeeding on the Saving Throw and taking NO damage. If you're looking for the kind of character that can draw attacks AND survive a Fireball right on top of him, this is the guy.
FACTS. I play a Way of the Open Hand Monk and I've just recently realized that a lot of the time doing Flurry of Blows or just regular Martial Arts is not worth it over Patient Defense in a lot of cases, and whenever I have used Patient Defense, it's worked out much better. I've devised a general plan to use Patient Defense unless the enemy seems like it's looking extra rough or I need to use one of my (albeit situational) additional effects that my subclass offers Flurry of Blows. To all other monks reading this, note: USE PATIENT DEFENSE AS YOUR DEFAULT. You're a frontline class but your hit die is too low to tank hits the regular way, you need to be able to dodge where possible and be more effective at avoiding fire. There is a reason two of our main class features make us harder to hit inherently, and it's because we're the opposite of a barbarian: We don't want to be hit, we want to hit things a lot and avoid the repercussions as much as possible.
So I’m the DM for a group of 5 players. One pf the players is a monk and decided to go sun soul. This player recently came to me and complained about feeling underpowered. At this point in the game all the players are level 6 and the monk player is doing pitiful damage compared to the other PC’s. The other characters are an oath of ancients paladin, a fiend warlock, evocation wizard, and an eldritch knight. My main concern is how to make the monk player actually do something useful for the party. I’m open to homebrew.
Not much we can do to help if you don't give us everyone's stats.
I find sun soul to be relatively underpowered compared to other monk subclasses, but the bigger problem is probably that once you get into tier 2+, monks lose some of their edge in damage and get some battlefield control ability.
It also depends on how many battles your party is taking per short/long rest. Though the party seems reasonably balanced between long and short rest classes, it's possible the monk is only comparing themselves to each of the others at the others' best.
We used the standard array
Monk PC
STR 9
DEX 18
CON 14
INT 11
WIS 15
CHA 13
Wizard PC
STR 8
DEX 12
CON 14
INT 18
WIS 13
CHA 12
Paladin PC
STR 16
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 13
CHA 14
Warlock PC
STR 8
DEX 10
CON 16
INT 12
WIS 14
CHA 18
Fighter PC
STR 17
DEX 8
CON 14
INT 14
WIS 10
CHA 12
Any additional specifics you could give us would also be helpful. Stuff like race, feats, what invocations the Warlock might have, etc.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that despite having access to the standard array, the Monk is lagging behind a bit on their primary stats. With a +2 Dex / +1 Wis (or vice versa) race and an ASI they could have 18/16 at this point.
In terms of tactics, the Sun Soul has a few things at their disposal. First, Stunning Strike is great (though since they left their Wisdom low for some reason, they'll have a lower than usual save DC for it. But that's on the player, not the class). You can throw out up to 4 of these in a turn if you really need to, and the Stunned condition will grant advantage to you and all of your allies. It will also make a target automatically fail their saving throw against Searing Arc Strike.
Against a single opponent, you can lay out 4 attacks at (1d8+4)*2 + (1d6+4)*2 using Flurry of Blows. Against more, you can do (1d8+4)*2 + (4d6 save/half) *number of targets using Searing Arc Strike. In both cases you can append your Stunning Strikes to the melee attacks, which powers up the rest of the routine and prevents the enemy from acting. They also have a ranged attack for kiting, if necessary.
Also keep in mind that cones just have to touch a square on a grid, rather than cover 50% (that's just for spheres).
Stunning Strike is a big contributor on its own; keep track of how many extra hits the rest of the party lands due to the second roll of Advantage, or enemies auto-failing saves. You can basically consider all of those hits to be part of the Monk's damage output. Not to mention the enemy actions prevented!
Ludic: adjective (formal). showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.
So the monk has 15AC, 45HP, has 45 feet of movement, and can do (30) 4d6+16 radiant damage from 30 feet away per turn. And feels inferior to the warlock with 10 AC, 51 HP, with 30 movement, with (19) 2d10+8 force damage (26 damage with hex) at 120 feet?
Other than range, the monk should out everything the warlock. The paladin and wizard might do more burst damage, but will run out faster. There isn't a rogue to challenge the monk in stealth or mobility.
Sun soul is on par with any other monk subclass, it just specializes in range and aoe.
Monk (all sub-classes) is simply a class that rewards intelligent play, and shines more and more the higher you go with it. Judging from the statistics alone, I would suspect player decision-making to be the source of any perceived inferiority.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
You have two parts here, both are moving parts, as others have responded Monk requires dex and wisdom to be high, and con for those moments when a high ac is no substitute for the hitpoints to survive it. To summarise: If you dont have ridiculous stat numbers, monks can seem a little underwhelming due to fragility or damage output.
The second part is you have an evocation wizard - IE: a magical shotgun. A fiendlock - IE: a magical machine gun with underbarrel grenade launcher. And the Ancients paladin, who despite being the only real tank unless your monk is the one in front, and I guess the only healing because there isnt anyone else is probably using either a two handed weapon or spell slots on smites, because otherwise the Monk player shouldnt be feeling too bad in comparison. *If this is the case then, again as Lunali mentioned you may need to look at your encounter plan. One big fight will be detrimental to a short rest dependant character (in this case warlock and monk) but allow the wizard and paladin to purge all their slots in a muh shorter time than would otherwise be possible.
How can a monk do more damage? The easiest option is when you have an asi choose a feat that will provide something - magic initiate - hex, will allow for up to an hour per day extra damage - but at the cost of the bonus action it takes to set it up, which isnt great on weak waves of enemies but multi round tough opponents will be depleted faster.
Unfortunately like rogues, monks can find themselves unable to out perform warriors in a generic terrainless battleground, which is only an issue if it disappoints the player. However in terrain that requires high speed, balancing on small surfaces (acrobatics) and dropping from higher levels, the monks abilities mark them as superior. This is a shame if the fights only ever take place on even flat ground but that is something within your remit to provide as a DM, the second or third time the monk skips across a rickety wire to drop a drawbridge, Ki dodging to avoid enemies or stunning the really nasty commander just to allow the party to cross and enter the fight, no one will care if the damage was equal - he just Jackie Chan Stunt Doubled an encounter.
Thanks for all the feedback! This really helped me and the monk player. I’ve redesigned a few of the upcoming encounters to be more balanced for all the characters. I’ve also showed this thread to the player and now he has a better idea of the monks roll in the party.
Glad we could be some assistance, i hope you both continue to enjoy yourselves :)
This makes me concerned now as a soon-to-be sun soul monk player.
Why? The conclusion of the thread was that sun soul is equal in strength to other monks.
If you play the sun soul carefully, it's very powerful. But you have to think a little bit instead of just showing up to play. Monks are a ton of fun!!
Professional computer geek
Do you guys play Theatre of the Mind or do you guys play with maps. if you play with maps there is something that you can do to help the Monk. Give him interesting landscapes that he may be able to use in some way with the powers he has coming online.
But as Moon kind of touched on. Level 6 through about level 9 are hard monks if all your doing is comparing your damage to everybody else damage. many of the other classes are just getting their AoE's and some of their big stuff online at that point. On top of that the Paladin was already front loaded with damage and his damage doesn't increase dramaticly at high level. more his utility and survivability does. But because these guys are bringing these big attacks online at this level. The monk at straight damage comparison lags a fair bit. But if the monk can bring his other powers into play and show off some of the fancy tricks that he can do that can help quite a bit. And that is true for all monks and not just the sun Soul Monk. The more intelligently the monks player can take advantage of the battle fields he's given and the power he has. The more he is going to get to show off even if He's not doing the biggest hits in the group. And that ability to show off will grow as he levels and combines with certain spells and such the other party members might be able to do.
Theatre of mind can do the same but it's often a bit harder because people have trouble really picturing the stuff they are dealing with and combat tends to boil down quite a bit to basics and not feel as creative. So you might have to encourage him to be a bit more creative with how he describes the theatre of the mind stuff and maybe get a little leeway to pull off things that are descriptively more cool.
Here are a few important things to help your Monk PC:
- AC is inexorably tied to Wisdom and Dexterity - implore your Monk to put every possible resource into these abilities. Make sure you start at 15 in both at creation (if using Point Buy) and make sure to use ASIs to increase these. Dex improves AC and To-hit, and Wis improves AC and DC on strikes.
- Every Monk I've ever seen played never uses Patient Defense. Far too often, Monks rush into the front line with amazing speed so they can pull off their Flurry of Blows to do as much damage as possible. Patient Defense is SO POWERFUL and UNDERUSED and people forget:
1) Dodge gives disadvantage to EVERY attack until the start of your next turn. If the enemy needs a 11 to hit, 50% of attacks will hit normally. With disadvantage, 25% of attacks will hit normally.
2) Dodge gives ADVANTAGE on Dex Savings throws. At 7th level, a Monk also gets Evasion. At 7th level, your typical Evocation Wizard with 18 Int has a DC of 15, and your typical Monk with 18 Dex has a Saving Throw of 7. With Advantage on the Saving Throw, that means the Monk has an 87% chance of succeeding on the Saving Throw and taking NO damage. If you're looking for the kind of character that can draw attacks AND survive a Fireball right on top of him, this is the guy.
- Radiant Sun Bolt: Combined with the Monk's speed, means you basically make Monk attacks attack at range a range of 30ft. With that mobility, you literally are untouchable by any melee attacks. If you're 50ft away from an enemy as a level 7 monk, you can move into 30ft range, attack twice at range, use 1 Ki point to get two more attacks with your bonus action, and move back out to a range of 55ft. The ONLY way your enemies will get into attack range is if they dash, which means they can't attack you anyways. You have become the ultimate kiting attacker.
- Searing Sunburst: Another ability that requires 0 Ki Points. A 150ft ranged mini-Fireball. For 3 Ki points, it literally *is* a Fireball.
- Step of the Wind: Don't underestimate this one either and don't just think of it as a Dash, it also can be used to Disengage. Disengage and walk through the wall of opponents and assault their Spellcaster hiding in the rear. Two many enemies in a row that you can't walk by? Guess what! Step of the Wind also doubles your Jump distance. And at level 9 you can walk across liquids and along vertical surfaces... literally nothing can stop you from getting to that Spellcaster. Bonus Strategy: Use 1 Ki for Step of the Wind, and use your regular Action to Dodge - now you can run 65ft right through their defenses and position yourself right BESIDE their Spellcaster in the opening round AND not be worried about retaliation of any kind. Watch as your enemy's strategic advantage in position evaporate :)
Those are just a few ideas! Feel free to use/abuse!
Brewsky does bring up a bit of a specific point.
While Flurry of blows can be useful and it does up your damage. it's mostly a trap power. Particularly at low levels. It's definitely a trap a lot of players fall into because all they think about is dps. It's not as much of a trap at higher levels where you have a bit more spare ki on several archetypes of monks to kind of play around with and a couple of them even rely heavily on flurry to some extent(which is not a very good thing in my opinion). There are so many ways to use the Ki that you have to be open to using it in other ways and not just draining your pool as fast as possible for a little bit extra damage. You can end up being as effective if not more so than the huge number damage dealers. And as your monk damage dice scales and other tricks become available. you will catch up with them in damage a fair bit as a monk and you'll be doing much more across the battlefield than they can do on top of it.
The Deflect Missiles feature is another often overlooked feature that can be quite strong. it makes ranged physical attacks less useful on you. Particularly when your in a position where you may not have or certainly wouldn't have used your reaction anyway. Causing a ranger to basically potentially just use up on of it's ranged attacks if not it's only ranged attack on you each turn is a great deterrent against one of your actual weaknesses. And the ability to cut possibly as much as 35 damage out of a ranged sneak attack or critical hit under the right circumstances is a huge reduction. in the harm that you could have suffered from that hit. And even at 3rd level when you first attain the power, just assuming the 15 dex from stat array without racials your already looking at reducing any incoming shot by 6-15 damage with a potential for slightly more with a higher dexterity modifier. And if they happen to be relatively close to you for just a single ki point if you block all the damage you basically can get a potential free ranged hit out of that same single reaction on top of that.
Was this supposed to say 3d6 for Burning Hands? I'm just making sure I didn't miss something like it does more damage for the Sun Soul and starts as a Spell Level higher or something lol
I play a Sun Soul Monk and I'm usually the tank and damage dealer of the party (other members include Arcane Trickster Rogue, Raven Queen Warlock, and Circle of Dreams Druid).
Is he utilizing his stunning strike and flurry of blows? Is he able to use his speed boost? Remembering radiant sun bolts for ranged radiant damage? Bonus action Burning Hands? There are a plethora of options for him to use to deal damage. He may not be able to compete with the paladin doing Divine Smite for a total of 3d8-4d8 damage, but he can lock down enemies and keep them distracted.
Actually kinda offended by saying this subclass was underpowered. Haha
same lol... and my dm never ever creates encounters with not flat ground... its kinda a thing in our group that the dm never writes out descriptions. the battles are always in, you know, a regular street or a blank room.
im a tad bit fruity
FACTS. I play a Way of the Open Hand Monk and I've just recently realized that a lot of the time doing Flurry of Blows or just regular Martial Arts is not worth it over Patient Defense in a lot of cases, and whenever I have used Patient Defense, it's worked out much better. I've devised a general plan to use Patient Defense unless the enemy seems like it's looking extra rough or I need to use one of my (albeit situational) additional effects that my subclass offers Flurry of Blows. To all other monks reading this, note: USE PATIENT DEFENSE AS YOUR DEFAULT. You're a frontline class but your hit die is too low to tank hits the regular way, you need to be able to dodge where possible and be more effective at avoiding fire. There is a reason two of our main class features make us harder to hit inherently, and it's because we're the opposite of a barbarian: We don't want to be hit, we want to hit things a lot and avoid the repercussions as much as possible.